It was the evening of 5 November, 1940, and Convoy HX 84, in latitude 52°45? North, longitude 32°13? West — the very heart of the Atlantic — was steaming steadily, peacefully home to England. The sky was a cloudless blue: visibility was exceptional: light airs blew gently out of the south-east and the setting sun glittered across the burnished gold of a sea calm and quiet and smooth as the Atlantic almost never is.
In nine parallel lines, the big convoy slowly zigzagged its way across the broad face of the Atlantic. Thirty- seven ships there were in all in this convoy — including eleven tankers — and the total value of its cargoes of food and machinery and oil quite beyond computation. Millions of pounds, many millions of pounds, but then the value was not to be reckoned in terms of money but in terms of the lives of those who sailed the cargoes home from Halifax, in the lives and the freedom of those who so eagerly awaited these desperately needed supplies.
Among these thirty-seven ships there were some which, for one reason or another, took the attention and the eye more often than the others. The New Zealand RANGITIKI, for instance, 17,000 tons and the largest ship in the convoy: the PUCK, at the other end of the scale, a tiny 1,000 ton vessel that had no business at all on those great waters: or the CORNISH CITY, wearing the flag of the Convoy Commodore, Rear-Admiral Maltby. These caught the eye, and one or two others: but certainly no one paid much attention to two ships destined for a fame that has diminished but little with the passing of the years — the tanker SAN DEMETRIO, London and the Swedish motor vessel STUREHOLM, Gothenburg — or to the third, sailing steadily east and into immortality, the armed merchant cruiser JERVIS BAY.
The JERVIS BAY, the sole guardian and escort of all these ships, was in the middle of the convoy. Neither in appearance nor in fact was she calculated to inspire any confidence at all among the vessels she was supposed to protect. She was big — 14,000 tons — but in war size counts for little. What mattered was that she was old — built in 1922 — vulnerable, unarmoured, and equipped with only a handful of worn, weak and inaccurate 6-inch guns, twice as old as the JERVIS BAY herself: as a man of war, as a fighting ship, she had nothing: but then again she had everything — she had Captain Fogarty Fegen.
Captain Fegen, a big, tough, 47 year-old bachelor Irishman, son of an admiral, grandson of a captain, already twice decorated for his gallantry, was in his usual position on the bridge when a ship was sighted far to the north, hull-down over the smooth, unbroken horizon. That ship had no business to be there, and at once the challenge started nickering out from the Aldis lamp on the bridge of THE JERVIS BAY.
The stranger made no reply, but kept steaming at high speed towards the convoy. A second challenge went out. That, too, went unanswered. Then a third — but after the third there was no need for more. Fegen had her now. The fox was in among the chickens.
It was the 10,000 ton, 3O-knot pocket battleship ADMIRAL SCHEER, a powerful, heavily armoured raider equipped with six 11-inch guns of a phenomenal range, and a secondary armament of eight 5.9-inch guns. Only a NELSON, a RODNEY or a HOOD could have stopped her with certainty — nothing else. She was a killer against whom there was no defence and her helpless victims could only he there waiting for her, waiting for the inevitable execution: her hull was heaving over the horizon now, and HX 84 could see the setting sun striking golden glints off the white waters piled high at her bow as she raced south under the maximum power of her great engines.
'Action Station' bells sounded aboard the JERVIS BAY as the signal to the convoy fluttered up to her yardarm — 'Prepare to scatter'. Almost at the same moment, Rear-Admiral Maltby on the CORNISH CITY gave the order for an emergency turn to starboard, away from the enemy: at once all the ships in the convoy heeled far over to port as they broke south-east under cover of a smoke screen.
All the ships — except one. The biggest smoke screen ever laid, Captain Fegen realized grimly, wasn't going to make the slightest difference to the ADMIRAL SCHEER. She would slice through that swirling curtain of smoke as if it didn't exist, pursue and cut the fleeing convoy to pieces. Smoke was not enough: the convoy had to have time, time to scatter and lose themselves in the great wastes of the Atlantic, time to wait for the protective blanket of night… Fegen pulled the JERVIS BAY round to port under maximum rudder and headed straight for the ADMIRAL SCHEER.
Even before the JERVIS BAY had straightened up on course, the ADMIRAL SCHEER, determined that it would not be baulked of its prey by this crazy gesture of defiance, opened up with its 11-inch guns. Some shells fell among the convoy. The RANGITIKI was straddled but miraculously escaped: the tanker SAN DEMETRIO, then and later, was heavily hit, set on fire, abandoned, then later resighted, boarded and sailed home in triumph.
But the SCHEER, at that moment, had no interest in the convoy, only in the big merchantman racing in on a collision course. Two ranging salvos fell one on either side of the armed merchant cruiser, dismaying testimony to the German reputation for gunnery of a quite phenomenal accuracy: the third salvo crashed solidly home into the hull.
In one stroke the foremast was shot away, the bridge all but destroyed, the director and range-finder wrecked, the transmitting station, which controlled all the guns, knocked out of action and the guns themselves rendered useless for all but primitive hand control — the cables feeding in the electrical supplies had been completely severed.
The battle had not yet properly begun, but already the JERVIS BAY was finished as a fighting unit. Kapitan Theodore Krancke of the ADMIRAL SCHEER knew that he had nothing more to fear from the big merchantman. He at once altered course to the east to overtake the fleeing convoy, only to find that his way was barred once more: the JERVIS BAY, too, had put over her helm, and was again closing rapidly on a head-on collision course.
Savagely the ADMIRAL SCHEER lashed out at the crippled merchant cruiser that so infuriatingly baulked him of the retreating convoy. Not one shell or two, this time, but salvo after salvo, each shell 650 pounds of high- explosive steel, screamed across the calm ice-cold surface of the sea and smashed, pairs and threes at a time, into their target with devastating accuracy, killing, maiming and destroying, scything across the upper decks and superstructure in a murderous storm of bursting shrapnel or exploding deep inside the already mortally wounded JERVIS BAY. There was no more thought, now, on the part of the Germans, of just silencing the JERVIS BAY'S guns and bypassing her to the south: they meant to finish her off, swiftly and without mercy.
But the JERVIS BAY was not to be so easily finished off. Impossibly, not only did she still survive, but she still held steadily on course, still making for the pocket battleship that was relentlessly hammering the life out of her. Great holes were now torn in her port side, above water level and below: the boiler room was severely damaged; the wireless room was gone: the bridge and superstructure had been hit again and again, and she was listing more and more heavily with the passing of each moment as rivers of water poured in through the gaping rents in her side.
Fogarty Fegen still stood on what shattered remnants were left of his wrecked and blazing bridge. In the first few minutes Fegen, like his ship, was wounded to death, but like his ship incredibly he survived and kept on closing with the enemy long after death should have claimed him.
He was terribly wounded. An exploding shell had blown his left arm off just below the shoulder, and the arterial blood was pumping out with every heartbeat: the agony must have been indescribable but Fegen ignored it. He still issued his orders calmly, concisely and with the courtesy that had always been his wont as he drove the JERVIS BAY ever closer to the enemy, as he directed the firing of those ancient and pathetic guns whose useless shells fell into the sea miles short of the ADMIRAL SCHEER.
Another exploding shell, and the main steering controls were severed. At once Captain Fegen ordered the quartermaster back to the emergency steering position — whatever happened they must retain steering control, move in ever closer on the German battle cruiser. The bridge, burning more furiously than ever and beginning to buckle under the captain's feet, became completely untenable. Steadying himself with his one good arm, Fegen descended the twisted steel ladder and staggered aft, along the promenade deck, through the choking smoke and eddying flames, to the emergency bridge, every foot of his progress marked by a smeared trail of blood on the charred and blackened decks.
Arriving aft, Captain Fegen, his face now chalk-white and bloodless and wracked by that murderous pain to which he never once gave expression, found himself too weak to climb up to the control position: but he was still the captain, still in command, with no purpose left in life but to shorten the distance between himself and the ADMIRAL SCHEER, to give the convoy every life-giving moment of grace he could so that they might make good their escape into the swiftly gathering dusk.
And thinking ever of the convoy, he ordered more smoke-floats to be dropped, to hide HX 84 from the SCHEER. He ordered burning cordite charges to be thrown overboard, fresh crews to man the few guns still firing, in place of those men who lay dead around them. But even yet, those worn and useless guns could not reach the enemy.
