Read HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour (1947) for Free Online Page B

again, expecting the Captain to say something, but as no word came from the dark figure in the chair he went on: ‘Then what we’ve got left, sir. There’s yourself, and the surgeon-lieutenant, and the engineer – that’s three officers, and twenty-eight men out of the Red Watch, the one that was on duty.’
    ‘Twenty-eight. Is that all?’
    ‘That’s all, sir. They lost seven seamen at ‘X’ gun, three by the boats, and two here. Then there’s seven of them down in the sick bay. That’s forty-seven altogether.’
    ‘How are the twenty-eight made up? How many seamen have we?’
    Adams straightened up and turned round from the table. This part of it he evidently knew by heart. ‘There’s myself, sir, and Leading Seaman Tapper, and seven ABs: the quartermaster and the bosun’s mate, that were in the wheelhouse: and Bridger. That’s twelve. Then there’s the hands who were on watch in the W/T office: the leading tel. and two others, and two coders. That makes seventeen altogether. The signalman up here, eighteen. The SBA, nineteen. The leading steward, twenty.’
    ‘Any other stewards?’
    ‘No, sir.’
    It didn’t matter, thought the Captain: no officers, either.
    ‘The rest were all engine room branch, sir,’ Adams went on. ‘Eight of them altogether.’
    ‘How are they made up?’
    ‘It’s pretty good, sir, as far as experience goes. The Chief ERA and one of the younger ones, and a stoker petty officer and five stokers. If it was just one watch they’d be all right. But of course there’s no reliefs for them, and they’ll have to be split into two watches if it comes to steaming.’ Adams paused, on the verge of a question, but the Captain, seeing it coming, interrupted him. He didn’t yet feel ready to discuss their chances of getting under way again.
    ‘Just give me those figures again, Adams,’ he said, ‘as I say the headings. Let’s have the fit men first.’
    Adams bent down to the light once more. ‘Yourself and two officers and twenty-eight men, sir.’
    ‘Killed and wounded?’
    Adams added quickly: ‘Four officers and twenty-eight.’
    ‘And missing, the First Lieutenant and seventy-four.’ He had no need to be reminded of the item: that ‘seventy-four’ would stay with him always. Not counting the accident to Number One’s damage control party, there must have been sixty men killed or cut off by the first explosion. All of them still there, deep down underneath his feet. Twenty-eight left out of a hundred and thirty. Whatever he was able to do with the Marlborough now, the weight of those figures could never be lightened.
    ‘Will I make some more cocoa, sir?’ said Bridger suddenly. He had been waiting in silence all this time, standing behind the Captain’s chair. The numbers and details which Adams had produced, even though they concerned Bridger’s own messmates, were real to him only so far as they affected the Captain: this moment, he judged instinctively, was the worst so far, and he tried to dissipate it in the only way open to him.
    The Captain’s figure, which had been hunched deep in the chair, straightened suddenly. He shook himself. The cold air was stiffening his legs, and he stood up. ‘No, thanks, Bridger,’ he answered. ‘I’m going to turn in, in a minute. Bring up my sleeping bag and a pillow, and I’ll sleep in the asdic hut.’
    ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Bridger clumped off at a solid workmanlike pace, his heavy sea boots ringing their way down the ladder. The Captain turned to Adams again. ‘We’d better work out a routine for the time between now and daylight,’ he said briskly. ‘We can leave the engine room out of it for the moment: they’re busy enough. You’d better arrange the seamen in two watches: the telegraphists and coders can work with them, except for the leading tel. – he can stay on the set. Send half the hands off watch now: they can sleep in the wardroom alleyway or on the upper deck, whichever they prefer. The rest can