Presumed Sunk

By J.E. Macdonnell

Following the hammering she’d taken from a Japanese convoy - as told in The Weak Link - H.M.A.S. Wind Rode was sent to Perth for repairs. But as it turned out, the top brass decided that Wind Rode had run her course and Lieutenant Commander Peter Bentley was given orders to sail her to Sydney, where she would be broken up and decommissioned.
It was as if the old girl knew her fate, because on the voyage everything that could go wrong did go wrong. It was crazy, Bentley knew, but it was as if Wind Rode was doing all she could to delay the inevitable. And when her engines finally gave out in the middle of an area crawling with Jap submarines and destroyers, he realized that she had chosen her watery grave, and that Wind Rode intended to go down fighting ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Piccadilly
• Release date: Feb 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215051016

J.E. Macdonnell

JAMES EDMOND MACDONNELL was born in 1917 in Mackay, Queensland and became one of Australia’s most prolific writers. As a boy, he became determined to go to sea and read every seafaring book he could find. At age 13, while his family was still asleep, he took his brother’s bike and rode eighty miles from his home town to Brisbane in an attempt to see ships and the sea. Fortunately, he was found and returned to his family. He attended the Toowoomba Grammar School from 1931 to 1932. He served in the Royal Australian Navy for fourteen years, joining at age 17, advancing through all lower deck ranks and reaching the rank of commissioned gunnery officer. He began writing books while still in active service.Macdonnell wrote stories for The Bulletin under the pseudonym “Macnell” and from 1948 to 1956 he was a member of The Bulletin staff. His first book, Fleet Destroyer – a collection of stories about life on the small ships – was published by The Book Depot, Melbourne, in 1945. Macdonnell began writing full-time for Horwitz in 1956, writing an average of a dozen books a year.After leaving the navy, Macdonnell lived in St. Ives, Sydney and pursued his writing career. In 1988, he retired to Buderim on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. He died peacefully in his sleep at a Buderim hospital in 2002. He is survived by his children Beth, Jane and Peter.Macdonnell’s naval stories feature several recurring characters – Captain “Dutchy” Holland, D.S.O., Captain Peter Bentley, V.C., Captain Bruce Sainsbury, V.C., Jim Brady, and Lieutenant Commander Robert Randall.

Book preview

Chapter One

LIEUTENANT COMMANDER PETER Bentley picked up his cap as he walked across the room. The girl was looking at him from the divan when he stopped at the door. He could see only one eye. It wasn’t fogged, or stupid, or drunken. It was as unblinking and full of hate as a pointed gun barrel.

He threw a ton’s weight of resolve upon his muscles, and drew back the door.

Outside the Darwin sky was brushed clear by the wind and the stars were swarming in a black sky. As he filled his broad chest with warm air, he squinted his eyes—the night’s heavy drinking had had its effect. He began to walk towards the pier.

It had been an unpleasant night, and he was glad he had got away from her. Though, he admitted with wry honesty, he had been thankful enough when she had come to his table in the hotel after dinner. But her capacity for drink, and for endless prattle, soon got him down. Let’s have another drink and talk about me … that was her theme song.

Normally, Bentley might have enjoyed her company—she had the physical measurements, if not the mental, to interest his sea-induced celibacy. But his ship was lying at her buoy, badly savaged by Japanese shells, and by the time they had reached her flat Bentley was forced to realise that the sea fight had taken more out of him than he suspected. He lost all desire to carry the meeting to its expected conclusion.

Unluckily, with this realisation had gone his tact. He had untangled himself and told her brusquely that he was leaving. She had not believed him at first: but when his purpose—or lack of it—had been made quite clear to her she had reacted with a coarseness which had shocked him, and with the hateful look that had followed him through the door.

Hell hath no fury, he grinned, and lengthened his pace through the sleeping town.

He forgot the girl. He had reason enough to. A quick inspection of destroyer Wind Rode had indicated that the damage was mainly superficial. But a later and more comprehensive check by a senior engineer from the boom-defence base ashore had discovered extensive damage. He’d shaken his head and wondered how the hell she was still afloat. The engineer had sent a signalled report to Navy Office, and it was that report, and what might be its outcome, that filled Bentley’s tired mind as he strode back towards the pier.

He had to get the ship, and his men, home to Sydney. If he did not, and they were kept here in Darwin, they could be drafted piecemeal until most of them were back in the fighting zones. Wind Rode’s crew would have stayed another twelve months fighting in the Mediterranean if necessary. They would have stayed—if they thought there was no chance, no hope, of their being relieved and sent home for leave.

But now it was different. They were on their way home, they had been relieved, and to get this far they had fought possibly the most savage battle of their lives. To be sent back to a war theatre now, when they had got so close to home … Naval discipline is firm, and intelligently administered. But men are still men …

No, Bentley thought as he swung down the path towards the pier, he had to get his ship and his men home to Sydney. And he was sure the old girl could do it. Then, repaired and refitted, they would take her north into whatever might be waiting for them—after their leave.

He asked the watchman at the flying-boat base at the end of the pier to signal Wind Rode for a boat. It was not long in coming and Bentley was glad for he was eager to get back on board.

He was faintly surprised to see Bob Randall, his friend and first-lieutenant, waiting for him at the gangway when the boat curved in alongside Wind Rode. Then he remembered that with Sub-Lieutenant Hanson dead—shot on the bridge by his captain ¹—Randall had offered to take his turn at watch-keeping duties until the ship reached Sydney.

But Randall had another reason for waiting up for his captain. He held out a sheet of signal paper in one hand as he saluted Bentley aboard with the other.

What’s this, Bob? Bentley’s voice was disinterested.

That, me boy, is Navy Office’s answer to the engineer’s signal.

What! Why the hell didn’t you let me know ashore?

Bentley’s immediate reaction, as he folded open the signal, was to curse the pointless hours he had wasted with the girl.

Because, Randall answered reasonably, knowing you and your habits, I hadn’t the faintest idea where to find you.

They were alone on the shell-ravaged quarterdeck, but the quick grin on the captain’s face eased away as he read the terse lines which had been wirelessed up from Melbourne.

He looked up at Randall and said:

You’ve read this, of course?

Yes, Peter. So they want to know if we can get the old girl back in one piece. I don’t know about you, but my feelings are ‘Yes!’ But definitely! Eh?

Bentley did not answer for a moment. He pretended to read the signal again. He was thinking now that his earlier decision to get Wind Rode back did not seem to be so clearcut and easy. Navy Board’s signal, requiring his opinion—his commanding-officer’s opinion—laid the decision and its consequences squarely on him. It highlighted his responsibility in the matter; it made him realise that he not only had a damaged ship to take to sea and get through Sydney Heads, but two hundred men as well. Before he had had no doubt whatsoever that he could do it. The fact of the signal seemed to imply that there could be, in the minds of those experienced brass-hatted officers in Melbourne, considerable doubt.

He lifted his head and looked along the narrow stretch of deck leading forrard to the bridge. Bloody but unbowed, was what he had thought of his ship when he had inspected her immediately after that last epic action. Unbowed she still was, he decided with a sudden surge of exaltation. He looked at Randall.

Yes, Bob, he nodded, we’ll sail her back. Get hold of the engineer and bring him along to my cabin.

Right! Randall grinned. He fumbled, in his pocket. Now you can have the other one.

Eh?

The other signal. Came with that one. He still held the pink slip in his big hand. I … well, I just wanted to hear you say we’d sail her back before I handed this one over.

His voice was oddly hesitant. Bentley looked at him sharply and curiously as he took the signal. He bent his head and read it in the shaded light of the gangway lamp.

Hell! he said softly. They can’t do it.

They can, Randall assured him grimly. That’s why we’ve got to see she’s steamed back, under her own power, and not finished here, or towed.

Bentley wet his lips and swallowed. He felt the soothing need of a cigarette, but he read the signal again before lighting it. The signal was brief and concise, and dealt with fact, not feelings. It told the commanding-officer of H.M.A.S. Wind Rode that as the ship under his command was old, and had been extensively damaged in an action with superior enemy forces—as per engineer’s signal so-and-so, stroke so-and-so—it was the decision of the Naval Board that on return to Sydney she would be scrapped.

It also said, under the capital-lettered classification, Confidential, Restricted, that a new destroyer was to be commissioned, to which Lieutenant-Commander P. J. Bentley was to be appointed, in command, with the entire ship’s company of Wind Rode transferred to the new vessel.

Randall was watching his friend with one eyebrow quizzically raised—waiting to see how the news of a new command would match the scrapping of the old.

Bentley’s They can’t do that, should have answered the question in the first-lieutenant’s mind. He had read and understood the import of his new command, and it had passed through his intelligence with practically no significance—he was a modest officer, but he had more than enough now to realise that you did not fight successful actions against a superior enemy force without being in some way rewarded. Therefore the news of a new command was not unexpected. The knowledge that this ship, his first command, was to be scrapped, broken-up under acetylene torches and hammers, hit him savagely.

Wind Rode was not just a ship in which he had served, with or without distinction, like so many of the others in his career. She was old, her gunnery layout was nothing like as efficient as the new destroyers, her accommodation was cramped, she lathered you with spray in any sort of a lop. But she was also the first ship he had commanded: Wind Rode had proved to him what every junior commander must find out for himself, through experience—he was fitted to command, he could command, he could fight a ship and bring it and its men safely through an enemy action. And he had done this with a dear old craft who could still fight like a Kilkenny cat if you asked her to.

Now the gallant old termagant was to be scrapped—useless, finished, unwanted. The new ship? He didn’t even know her name. She was a nebulous entity of unknown capabilities, tonnage, even whereabouts. While here he stood on his own quarterdeck, where every fitting was as familiar to him as the lines of his own face.

No one is to know about the scrapping, he told Randall, his voice quiet.

They won’t, Randall promised. I decoded this one myself.

Right. Get hold of Piggott—now.

Mr Piggott, the commissioned engineer, was not like a wrung-out rag—or a rifle pull-through, as one of his stokers had unkindly assessed—because he had his being normally in the sweat-inducing confines of the engine-room. Mr. Piggott was naturally built like a rail—and he was just as hard.

He was asleep when the big first-lieutenant shook him, but he got up at once—a captain does not send for one of his most relied-upon and senior officers after midnight unless something important has come up. Piggott was completely awake by the time he had sluiced his nut-brown face in cold water and walked along the upper-deck, seen only by the curious quartermaster on watch. He tapped on Bentley’s closed cabin door and entered.

Naturally alert at his summons, he took in the disposition of the cabin quickly—the whisky bottle and iced water on the bolted-down table eased his qualms: things didn’t look too serious. Bentley poured him a stiff drink, capped it with ice, handed it to him and pushed the box of cigarettes across. Piggott took the glass with one hand and brought out his preferred old pipe with the other.

Then, with the smoke-screen satisfactorily in action, Bentley handed across the first signal Randall had shown him. The engineer read it quickly, read it again to make sure he had missed no important point, and looked up at Bentley. His face was expectant.

I want to leave tomorrow, Chief, Bentley told him quietly.

With some officers, a captain’s pronouncement is received with instant acquiescence—the doubts as to whether the wish can be fulfilled come later. Not so with Mr. Piggott. He had been long enough with this hefty, bronzed young fellow to know that he wanted a sound decision, calculated advice, not sycophancy.

They waited while he sat there, drawing on his chipped black pipe, his left ankle resting on his right knee and held there by a thin brown hand. His mouth thinned open once or twice, to show his white teeth gripped on the pipe-stem. Then he said:

It won’t be before four o’clock, sir.

Listening to Bentley’s reply, Randall knew it was an indication of the trust placed in this wrinkled prune of a man.

All right, Chief. D’you want any help from the seaman branch?

Another engineer might have come in here with any one of a hundred jokes about the general uselessness of upper-deck swabs. But Mr. Piggott was a practical man, and he was too busy conning over what he had to do tomorrow to spare time for hackneyed jokes.

No, sir, he said at last. My blokes can manage. There’s a bit to do on a main bearing, and a fuel pump’s taken a bit of a belt out there somewhere. She won’t be fit for any power-trial, he cautioned the two younger men, but I think she’ll get us there.

Bentley looked at him, his eyes narrowed against the wreath of smoke that curled up from his cigarette. Next to Randall, this man had done more than any other for the ship and her captain. Whatever violence she had been enduring up top, Mr. Piggott below had watched and nursed her engines, never knowing when a broadside of shells or a salvo of torpedoes might burst her thin skin open to the rushing sea and smother the black-gang in a flash.

He deserved to know.

I want her to get back under her own steam, Chief. Bentley said, his voice still quiet. They’re going to scrap her then.

The engineer’s pipe had been in the process of being taken from his mouth. It halted, and his white teeth came together. They missed the end of the pipestem and closed together in an abrupt and audible click. For five seconds he stared at Bentley, his lips stretched into a thin line and his breath coming through his nose. Then he lowered his eyes to the table and pushed his glass forward with a short fierce gesture. I’d like another whisky, he growled.

Crisp and fresh in starched khaki, Bentley stepped ashore at ten the next morning to tell the Resident Naval Officer about the decision he had reached.

He had signalled Melbourne his intentions and time of sailing, and now needed only local confirmation.

It did not occur to him that he might be denied it.

A young lieutenant opened the door to the R.N.O.’s office, and the first person Bentley saw in the large windowed room was a girl