Breakout

burning and cordite fumes. But the little cabin forward gave shelter to a few men. Others lay in the galley.

While the captain was busy navigating the ship, First Officer Dick Taudevin came to him and said, 'We ought to bury our dead at sea. It will help to keep up morale. And all these dead will cause consternation when we arrive.'

Coats agreed. Following such an action, not only did it seem to him fitting to bury his sailors at sea, but he thought grimly to himself, 'As our return is still by no means certain at least some of us will get a decent funeral!'

The dead were wrapped in weighted hammocks and one after another pushed over the side to splash into the waves, while Taudevin hastily read out the burial service. The ship could not heave-to for a proper funeral service as she might have sunk.

In wartime, lighthouses and lightships were darkened, but the Admiralty ordered the Orfordness light on the Suffolk coast lit up as a guide to Worcester in case she were still afloat. As he had no other means of navigation, Coats had to depend on this light to confirm his position.

At four o'clock in the morning, the weary doctor fell asleep with his head on the captain's table. At the same time the look-out saw a lighthouse beam and Commander Coats realized he had arrived where he ought to be.

Just before dawn, a bleary-eyed Taudevin shook the doctor awake saying, 'We are just coming up to the Sunk.' This was the Sunk Light Float at the entrance to Harwich Harbour. It was still dark when they climbed on deck together and the doctor went round the wounded again. The sky began to turn to grey. Dawn broke on the port bow and they could see the low misty coast of England.

Although the sea was much calmer, because of their slow speed in the fast running tide, they were nearly swept on to the sandbanks as they approached the harbour entrance. As they cleared them, they saw a convoy steaming out of Harwich and Coats turned to Taudevin and said, 'Am I glad to see them!' A Hunt Class destroyer signalled: 'Do you need assistance?' A winking lamp aboard Worcester proudly replied, 'We have come from Holland and we can manage the rest of the trip alone.' The signal added a request for ambulances to be ready to take off her wounded.

Refusing all help, Worcester steamed slowly up to the anchorage. She struggled into the harbour, listing heavily, full of holes with steam trickling from them. Her broken mast was still leaning against the funnel and her torn, smoke-blackened battle ensign was flying from a broomstick over the bridge, as all the ships in the harbour sounded their sirens. Whistles piped as they cleared lower deck and fell in aft to pay tribute to her. They stood cheering as Worcester drew abreast. When they approached nearer to land her crew also saw lines of sailors and Wrens standing cheering outside Shotley Sick Quarters. The Worcester's crew did not reply. There were too many dead.

Two waiting tugs were laid off until she was ready for berthing. All through the night Griffiths had wrestled with the oil pump, which had repeatedly broken down. But somehow he had managed to patch it up. Yet as the first hawsers were thrown across from Parkstone quay at Harwich the pump broke down again. This time he could not start it. It had packed up for good.

Then the ambulances began taking off the seriously wounded and the four men who had died during the night. In fact, they brought the total of dead to twenty-seven. There were only fifty-two unwounded survivors.

For the last time the doctor went wearily to his wrecked sick-bay, littered with torn bandages. His jacket was stiff with dried blood up to the elbows. The tops of his white sea boot stockings and the knees of his trousers were blood-soaked. The two lower jacket buttons were missing and he saw one of them battered and slightly splayed lying in the cabin. He instinctively picked it up and slipped it into his pocket.

It was only when he was lying in a hot bath in a Harwich hotel that the significance of the battered button dawned upon the doctor. For in the corresponding position on his stomach was a circular bluish-green bruise, two inches across, where the button had stopped a piece of shrapnel.

Last off the ship was Commander Coats, who pulled down the blackened battle ensign and carried it ashore.

Because of the magnitude of the disaster the crew were kept incommunicado for days. Douglas Ward, whose namesake E. Ward had died of wounds on the ship, was so worried in case there was a mix-up with the telegram that he obtained special permission to go to the police station to get a message through to his wife to say he was safe.

Chief Engineer Griffiths was afraid that his wife would think he was a casualty. To avoid giving her a shock he asked the Post Office to send her a greetings telegram. They did not do so. When she received an ordinary telegram she was so afraid of the news it might contain she asked her landlady to open it.

The rest of the flotilla was back at sea. Campbell and her sister destroyers had returned to Harwich by midnight to take on torpedoes to replace those fired, and replenish their ammunition. The destroyers searched all night but found no further trace of the German ships. This was fortunate for the Germans because the two battleships were partially crippled and all three still vulnerable.

Scharnhorst was ordered by Group North to make for Wilhelmshaven, Germany's chief naval base. As she made her way there at 3:50 a.m., a cipher message was received on Scharnhorst from Gneisenau reporting that, although damaged by a mine, she had reached the Heligoland anchorage with Prinz Eugen and they were both making for Brunsbuttel.

Though so near safety the Germans still had to face a period of near-disaster. Until they could reach the German ports all three captains were still worried about mines and air attacks. Yet no tugs or pilot boats were available to meet them after their gruelling voyage. It was one of the most inexplicable scandals of the operation from the German point of view.

Group North had made no arrangements and left them all night hanging about outside the harbours. It was almost as if they did not expect them to make it. Nor had they been supplied with any special charts of the approaches to the German coast. Captain Fein of Gneisenau recorded in his log: 'It would have been very useful in this situation to have had a chart prepared on a large scale for the navigational approaches of the Elbe, like the one given by Group West for the navigational approaches of harbours of refuge.'

After lengthy signal exchanges, Fein established that no pilots were available. Due to thickening ice and the uncertainty about his position, he decided he dare not sail into the Elbe without a pilot. Afraid to make a radio signal in case it alerted the British, he sent a small ship, barrier breaker 138, up the Elbe with the order to meet him at daybreak with pilots.

Although there was danger from the air, he considered that if he steamed to and fro on a dark night with poor visibility the danger of mines was greater, so he decided to anchor.

Prinz Eugen, following Gneisenau into Brunsbuttel, was also in the same dangerous situation. Fein signalled by a lamp to Brinkmann that there was no pilot but that one had been ordered for first light in the morning. While Gneisenau dropped anchor east of her, Prinz Eugen sailed at slow speed up and down all night. Her commander, Captain Brinkmann, refused to anchor, fearing torpedo or bomber attack more than Fein feared mines.

It was not until dawn that tugs and ice-breakers with pilots came out and Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen began to enter Brunsbuttel roadsteads. Even so the situation was still perilous.

Renewed air-raid warnings shortly before the tugs arrived made Fein afraid that the British would now, without regard to the consequences, employ all available aircraft to wreck the ships in the river estuaries. As a south-west wind was still blowing and high tide had still about two hours to run, it was not a good moment to try and bring the battleship into port. But in view of the alarms, Fein decided he must try and go in. He did not feel able to take responsibility for remaining at anchor and possibly being hit by bombs or torpedoes without at least making an attempt to secure his ship in the locks.

As Gneisenau slowly edged towards the mole her stern swung strongly in the current towards it. Fein ordered: 'Emergency — full speed astern!' But as his ship backed away from the mole she began to drift towards a wreck that was lying at the entrance. Fein hastily tried again to bring her to a stop in order to manoeuvre her clear. But he did not succeed in doing so. The racing tide smashed Gneisenau against the wreck.

He tried to go astern to disentangle his ship but did not succeed at first. Then the tide and wind came to his rescue, and with a rending crash the ship swung clear. The starboard propeller shaft tunnel was flooded. It had