Medusa

The main broadcast suddenly blared out, Mault’s voice ordering the crew to harbour stations. I waited until he had finished his announcement, then suggested he signal Thunderflash to come and collect me, but he shook his head. ‘Sorry. You’ll have to wait until we’re anchored.’ He had hung up the mike and now had glasses trained on the main dock area where a crowd had gathered at the slip by Somerset Wharf. ‘The whole place will soon be in an uproar.’ He turned to the chart table, shaking his head. ‘Bad business.’

He shouldn’t have said that, not in front of me, and certainly not with the Navigating Officer standing beside him. And the way he said it, as though it were nothing to do with him — I knew then that he was trying to distance himself from his captain. At the time, of course, I put it down to the fact that he was older, a resentment at being passed over. Later I was to discover his grandfather had been an admiral in the First World War, his father killed at sea in the Second, and he himself had come up through the traditional officer education of the Navy, Pangbourne, Dartmouth, then service at sea. What had damaged his career was volunteering for submarines and then, when he was posted to HMS Dolphin for a submariners’ course, finding he was subject to claustrophobia and unable to concentrate when submerged.

In the circumstances it was a bit hard to find himself serving under a man who had joined the Navy as a boy seaman at Ganges and been commissioned out of the lower deck, was several years his junior and newly promoted to Lieutenant Commander, a rank he had held more years than he cared to remember. Added to which, he had never had command of a ship in his life, and now this raw young Welshman was plunging him straight into a first-class Mediterranean balls-up. That was his choice of words, and he went on: ‘There’s Chinese in the dockyard here, one of the latest Russian cruisers anchored in Grand Harbour, and the Libyans barely two hundred miles away. We should never have come to the wharf here. We should never have agreed to tie up alongside.’ He turned away, muttering something that sounded like, ‘He should have had more sense.’ Then he was giving orders for singling up and sailors were letting go all but the head and stern ropes and the springs.

The bridge had now filled up with the special sea duty men, the Navigator standing in the middle by the pelorus. Mault, watching from the bridge wing, finally told him to inform the Captain the ship was singled up and ready to proceed.

I was watching the quay, so I didn’t see Mault’s face as the Pilot put the phone down and told him the Captain was in the main communications office and he was to take the ship out to the new anchorage himself, but I did notice the sharpness in his tone as he gave the order to let go aft and, picking up the mike to the wheelhouse below, said, ‘Port thirty, slow ahead port, slow astern starb’d.’

I could feel the beat of the engines under my feet, saw the stern swing clear of the quay, then we were backing out past the rust-patched freighter moored at the Parlatorio Wharf. ‘Harbour launch, sir, coming away from Gun Wharf, heading towards us.’

Mault nodded his acknowledgement of the lookout’s report, the ship still going astern and turning. As soon as we were clear of the freighter and had sea room to complete the 180° turn, he went ahead, the long arm of the harbour opening up in front of us as we turned the end of Senglea Point with the massive fortress of St Angelo showing beyond it. The harbour was a broad lane of flat water ablaze with lights on either side and at the end of it the swinging beam of the St Elmo light flashing three every fifteen seconds, with the small light on the end of the breakwater winking steadily.

Mault moved to the chart table, calling to the Pilot to join him. ‘Plan to anchor about there,’ he said, pointing his finger to a position roughly south-west of what used to be Gallows Point but was now shown on the chart in Maltese as Il-Ponta Ta’Ricasoli.

‘Right in the fairway?’

‘Well no, a little in towards Bighi Bay.’

The Navigating Officer nodded. ‘Nine Fathoms Bank. You’ll have eighteen to nineteen metres. That do you?’ He had the plot going and there was a PO on the radar. Through the sloping windows I could see the Russian cruiser looming large and brilliantly lit. ‘Harbour launch on the port quarter, sir. About one hundred metres off. He’s signalling us to stop.’

‘Thank you, Stevens.’

There was a little group closed up around the capstan on the fo’c’s’le and I could see men on the deck of the cruiser. She looked enormous as we ran close down her starb’d side and it crossed my mind that if the Russians became involved in any way it really would be an international incident. And then I saw a man with a rag in his hand waving from the open door of the helicopter hangar aft and the thought was suddenly absurd.