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  Scimitar—a new ship with a green crew—was already at 25 knots and in the ridged sea she could take no more. Her nose was pointing straight at the Jap cruiser’s bridge. Snelling’s eye caught the flicker of tumbling numbers on the range-repeat dial. Five thousand yards. God, why hadn’t the Jap opened fire? Five thousand yards! He couldn’t miss. And then the Japanese cruiser opened up, and a storm of high-explosive burst all about them.

  Then the captain looked at his first mate, and the first mate would never forget the sight of his captain for as long as he lived. With his left hand clutched round his throat, red as though he had hauled it, dripping, from a tin of red paint, he bent over the voice-pipe and ordered, “Full ahead together.” Then he turned to them and spoke as if he tasted every word.

  “Stand by to ram!”

  J E MACDONNELL 1: STAND BY TO RAM!

  By J E Macdonnell

  First published by Horwitz Publications in 1958

  ©1958, 2022 by J E Macdonnell

  First Electronic Edition: August 2022

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by means (electronic, digital, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate

  Series Editor: Janet Whitehead

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Visit www.piccadillypublishing.org to read more about our books.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  A BEAUTIFUL NEW brute of a ship, square-tailed, slice-bowed and all grace and guts between, she curtsied her nose to the first deep-sea swell off Sydney’s Middle Harbour, liked it, and drank deep, almost to her flairs. The next swell, on the turn out through the Heads, caught her bilges and lifted her on a graceful roll that wiped the ruck of her stumpy, latticed-aluminium foremast in a tentative arc across the weeping sky. Then she was round, facing the waiting grey troughs of tumbling brine which the men aboard who built her, and her brand-new naval crew, meant her to master.

  Her captain. Commander Bruce Thornton Sainsbury, D.S.O. and Bar, known (very unofficially) as “Auntie,” swayed, seawise, beside the binnacle, feeling her with sympathetic understanding. Covertly, trying to hide the sneer which continually plucked one corner of his lips down, the first-lieutenant watched him.

  “Enjoying this, aren’t you, you blasted old woman?” Lieutenant Snelling thought, and his heavy face beneath the sou’wester was bitter. “Standing up there—the perfect example to junior officers. Hearts of oak, and all that tosh!”

  But Lieutenant Snelling did not know his new captain very well. Nothing was further from Sainsbury’s alert mind than his bridge team. He stood there, his short legs straddled like a pair of compasses, and he met the uneasy sway of the brand-new destroyer with the practised ease of a man long used to 300 ft. of power-packed hull, he was a trifle on the lee side of 40 years of age, and had been at sea since he was thirteen, so that the smell of funnel smoke and the sting of salt spray were the principal smells and feelings of his life. He was a wiry, severe shape, thin; his face was tanned to the shiny toughness of old leather. He wore on this proving cruise an old cover-less cap with the peak tipped down and his eyes always half-closed against sun and sea, were agate-grey. The personality of the man was unmistakable.

  That was the view Snelling had of him. Yet, when the captain turned to face you, the side-version impression of salty toughness was most peculiarly altered. Commander Sainsbury, D.S.O. and Bar, battle-wise veteran—and destroyer-man—seemed to have about him a look of primness. There was no other word for it. The primness came partly from the way he held his mouth, and the way he raised his eyebrows while listening to a report. And so he had carried with him throughout his long service career the totally undeserved appellation of “Auntie.” Now, Sainsbury glanced with apparent casualness at the rearing cliffs edging the harbour mouth on either side of the lean grey shape. He looked once more out to sea, dead ahead, and turned to Snelling beside and below him near the raised wooden grating on which the captain stood while manoeuvring. At once Snelling’s face took on a look of respectful attention—the first-lieutenant did not like his captain, but he had the healthiest respect for the disciplinary powers embodied in the three gold rings which Sainsbury wore on his sleeve.

  Sainsbury’s voice was quiet, and thin, yet with a peculiar penetrating quality.

  “Tell the hands, please, Number One.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” answered Snelling promptly, and picked up a microphone. “Ship is about to work up to full power,” his voice crackled into every compartment of the long ship. “Hands are warned to keep off the upper-deck.”

  The captain waited for him to finish, then bent to the voice-pipe which ran like a nerve to the wheelhouse below, and through it to the engine-room deep in her vitals; here a bell rang and a pointer jerked peremptorily to “Full ahead.” She coughed brown smoke from her funnel-mouth, which whipped instantly to shreds in the wind, and shook with the feel of her power. The subdued whine of the engine-room fans crescendoed to a hungry roar, sucking cold air into her hot iron throat. Deep down among the hum of turbines an overalled figure turned a large wheel. The hum mounted to a drumming scream of power. From her boilers, through the engine-room bulkhead, where pressured jets of oil-driven flame wrapped and wreathed round the tubes, 50,000 horse-power strained to spin her huge clover-leaves of phosphor bronze at 120 revolutions per minute. Their thrashing grip sent a smother of tossing white from her tail.

  The rev-counter stepped up—130, 140, 200. She was plunging into the oncoming combers and tossing them back over her head in white sheets of driven spray, clear over the bridge. Now and again a big one would catch her down, and 2400 tons of steel bucketed through the green wall. Then she lifted, up, higher, almost forefoot-clear; the wave ran under her bilges, passing the point of balance; her stem lifted and she smacked down as though she’d stamped her forefoot on something solid. She seemed to stagger in mid-flight before the strength of her engines regained her pace and drove her on over the ridged sea.

  Another fifteen minutes and Sainsbury, watching with a lifting pride in his heart and a non-committal look on his austere face, saw her rev-counter showing 300—30 knots into a force-4 sea and half a gale blowing. It was all-hands-grab-hold now—sliding, clinging and bracing as she pitched in frenzied purpose up and through and over, the bridge swept continuously by lathering gusts of spray.

  Only a few seasoned uniforms were on the bridge now. The daily paper reporters had left... Sainsbury, who had not moved from his voice-pipe, ordered: “Half ahead together. Starb’d ten.”

  The thrashing astern died to a mere heap of white; she nosed her bow round, confident now, disregarded the few final slaps, and in a minute or two was riding easily with wind and waves astern. In that savage hour’s run head-on into breaking seas at full power, she had twisted and forced and felt herself. Now she was a ship.

  But they had
not finished with her yet. Acceptance trials do their best to tear a ship apart. Outside the Heads the destroyer’s long 4.7-inchers were fired with full charges at extreme elevation and depression, and varying elevations in between. Then the nests of smaller anti-aircraft weapons had their innings, the deck-thrust, length of recoil and pressure in recoil-cylinders being carefully noted.

  Cylinders were then packed to reduce cubic area and the guns fired again. Pressure inside was tremendous—much more than the gun would normally be required to bear. Depth charges were dropped from rails on her stern, the explosions hammering against her plates.

  Engines were opened out again to full speed ahead, then reversed suddenly to full speed astern. The whole ship shuddered, her sides streaming with boiling froth. When steaming ahead flat-out the wheel was put hard over to starb’d; then, while the slim craft was heeling to the pressure of rudder and thrusting screws, the wheel was suddenly spun hard-a-port. The destroyer faltered, staggered, then came upright.

  To test anchors, cable and cable-holders her anchor was slipped in deep water. Its heavy cable jumped after it through the hawsepipe with a din like trip-hammers. The cable-holder was braked hard. Fifty fathoms of iron cable with a two-ton lump of steel on its end heading for the bottom were brought to an abrupt standstill. It seemed the foc’s’le plates would tear out of her, but she bowed her head, shook it, and ploughed steadily on.

  The civilian dockyard-manager did not appear to be perturbed as the ship took this thrashing. But, as he saw Commander Sainsbury nod his head, and smile his pinched smile, and then turn to the first-lieutenant, the manager took out a packet of cigarettes, lit one, and drew in the smoke deeply.

  In response to Snelling’s order, hands appeared on the quarterdeck, working swiftly round the halliards on her ensign-staff. The captain spoke; a whistle shrilled. All hands stood to attention. The Red Ensign, emblem of dockyard control and shore-side responsibility, fluttered down to her wet steel decks. In its place, whipping and curling, rose the White Ensign, the flag she would wear until she died, the stern wind blowing its colourful red-white-and-blue forward towards her superstructure in proud benediction.

  Scimitar, now H.M.A.S., accepted destroyer of the Australian Fleet, headed home to base.

  Sainsbury conned her in through the Heads, and the towering rock cliffs accepted her into their shelter, standing on either side of the entrance with their feet in the water, beating back the heavy rollers into up-flung cascades of white spray. She rolled as she went through, reduced to the apparent size of a grey model ship, dwarfed by the giant watching headlands.

  Crouched over his bearing-sight, his eyes on the two white leading marks among the trees of Middle Harbour, Sainsbury forgot her anchors and guns and torpedoes—what she needed now was meticulous navigation. Leaving a pier was comparatively easy; coming back alongside, especially in a blustering wind such as this, was the real test.

  He saw the two leading-marks slide slowly towards each other, and when they were in line ordered:

  “Port fifteen.”

  His ear close to the wheel house voice-pipe, he heard the coxswain grunting as he twirled the wheel and repeated the order. Her bow began to wipe round the tree-clad hills opposite them, and then swung faster. Close on her port hand was the buoy marking a shoal; on her starb’d bow, coming up at fifteen knots, was a Manly ferry.

  The whole bridge was relaxed now. Her big test, outside, had been successfully accomplished. So they thought. Lieutenant Snelling was the only one on the bridge who completely appreciated what was happening now, in the calm waters of the harbour.

  Captain Sainsbury had handled her superbly outside—with a thousand miles of clear water to north and south of him. But now she was enclosed with dangers on all sides. Every buoy moored along the path she was taking represented a danger. Nothing, really, for a well-found ship and an experienced captain. But this ship’s master was as new to her as she was to her watery element. He had yet to find out just how fast she could swing, and under what degree of rudder; how quickly she would pull up, and under what revolutions of the engines. The big ferry was close on their starb’d bow.

  His eye alternating between the shoal-buoy on the left and the ferry on the right, Sainsbury waited. She was swinging quite fast now. Then, before Scimitar’s slender stem had reached a point half-way between the two dangers, he ordered:

  “Ease to ten.” And, almost at once: “Midships.”

  The wheel spun. She now had no rudder on at all. Then he countered her swing with right rudder.

  For one tight moment he thought he had left the countering order too late—the buoy seemed to be racing at them. But she answered quickly, her bow stopped swinging, and she straightened up, pointing at Rose Bay, the buoy slipping down her port side, the ferry, its rails lined with curious faces, moving smartly down the starb’d side.

  “I’ll pay that,” Snelling growled to himself. He looked at the gaunt, intent face of the captain. “But we’ve got to get alongside yet.”

  There is some power of thought transference in men who feel sufficiently strongly. In any case, the captain turned his head at that moment. He caught his first-lieutenant staring at him, his gaze intent. Sainsbury blinked once or twice, and turned away. There was a look of slight puzzlement on his face. Then he put Snelling from his mind and prepared to bring the ship round Bradley’s Head.

  Being a destroyer, needing a quick getaway if she were required, and this being war, Scimitar would berth with her nose pointing down harbour, so that she could slip her wires and get clear quickly. Her berth was ahead of a 12,000-ton cruiser. She would have to come up level with the big ship’s bow, well clear, and then swing in and slide past the other’s bow to her berth. It would be a good test of seamanship.

  Captain Sainsbury performed it exactly. He was lucky in that he had the wind pushing him in. She slid in easily and smoothly, and the wires went out.

  It was an anti-climax to the period of tension which had held him coming down-harbour. But he kept his face austere, and the only sign apparent of the strain he had been under was his wiping of his eyes as he took off his binoculars and laid them on the windbreak.

  “All right, Number One, fall out the hands,” he ordered.

  Normally the captain dined in privileged aloofness in his sea-cabin, just under and handy to the bridge. But tonight, to celebrate the official taking-over of the power-packed weapon which he and his officers would shortly take to war, Sainsbury formally requested-permission of the first-lieutenant, president of the wardroom, to dine in that mess.

  Smiling, Snelling had said: “Of course, sir. Delighted to have you.” Behind the dutiful smile he was cursing. Tonight he had planned a carousal... God knows when they would get their next chance. For Snelling, also a destroyer-man, had no illusions about the grinding work ahead of them before Scimitar and her new crew would be fit for battle.

  Yet there was purpose in the captain’s apparent careless decision to dine with his officers. He knew little about them, apart from Mr. Hutchens, the commissioned-gunner. Hutchens had come up from the lower-deck, had been a seasoned petty-officer when Sainsbury was a snotty-nosed midshipman, well before the war. He was as dependable as anchor-chain. But, mused the captain as he tied his tie before the tiny mirror in his tiny cabin, you can learn a hell of a lot from a man’s conversation. They’ll be a bit close tonight, he reflected, and buttoned his coat. Watching their P’s and Q’s. Still, a word thrown in here and there...

  Commander Sainsbury stepped carefully out of his cabin, over the hatch-coaming, and made his slow and deliberate way down aft to the wardroom. He found himself smiling a little as he thought of the look of false welcome his presence would smear over the first-lieutenant’s face. He pulled himself up abruptly. Snelling had not been proved yet, certainly; neither had he been disproved. Sainsbury felt his dislike more than he was sure of it. He rattled noisily down the wardroom hatch ladder, to warn them, and pulled the brown curtain asi
de.

  “Ah—there you are, sir! Come on in.”

  Sainsbury was not surprised at the warmth in the voice; it belonged to Mr. Hutchens, the gunner. He stepped in over the coaming, and the gunner took his cap, at the same time as he lifted two fingers in a somewhat degraded version of the Victory sign to the pantry steward, watching alertly through his little sliding door. Sainsbury greeted the other officers, all standing respectfully. He gestured, and they sat down, careful not to spill their beer, the big leather armchairs creaking. The steward came in with two frosted glasses, and the captain took one with a nod of thanks.

  Though he kept a pleasant smile on his face, a line of muscles knotted in a little ridge along Sainsbury’s jaw. He had intended that this first drink should be a toast to their new ship; he had also noted as soon as he stepped into the mess that the mess-president, the ship’s second-in-command, was not present. He also knew that the gunner felt the unpardonable omission keenly. Hutchens’s face, seamed like a relief map, was a mixture of attention to his captain, and apprehension as he gazed now and then at the passage which led to the officers’ cabins. They waited, not daring to sip their beer in case the toast should be pronounced. The gunner said:

  “First-lieutenant shouldn’t be a moment, sir. Last I saw him, he was rooting round for a decent shirt.”

  “That’s all right, Guns,” Sainsbury answered casually. He looked round the ring of attentive faces. Then he got to his feet. They rose with him.

  “Gentlemen... the ship.”

  “The ship, sir,” the murmurs answered him.

  They drank, and in the bustle of reseating themselves the gunner said:

  “Gunnery trials went off hunky-dory, sir, I thought.”

  “M’mmm,” Sainsbury murmured, and sipped his beer. Snelling’s discourtesy could not be deliberate, he was thinking. If he thought it was... His mouth set. Then he cast the thought aside. They had barely commissioned the ship; they had tough weeks of working-up ahead of them. Too early to judge yet. If Snelling was a weak link in the chain of command, it would show soon enough—and definitely. There was a quick step in the passage outside. Snelling entered the room.