Dive! Dive! Dive!

By J.E. Macdonnell

They were in the minefield now.
Every instant the men inside, listening, waited for a projection on the hull to catch on a wire and drag the root’s explosive bulb down. In the control-room, Grayson, his breath coming in fast shallow gasps, stared at the depth gauge—seventy ... eighty ... ninety-five!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Piccadilly
• Release date: Nov 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215253168

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

The Home of Great

War Fiction!

They were in the minefield now.

Every instant the men inside, listening, waited for a projection on the hull to catch on a wire and drag the root’s explosive bulb down. In the control-room, Grayson, his breath coming in fast shallow gasps, stared at the depth gauge—seventy … eighty … ninety-five!

J E MACDONNELL 16: DIVE! DIVE! DIVE!

By J E Macdonnell

First published by Horwitz Publications in 1959

©1959, 2023 by J E Macdonnell

First Electronic Edition: November 2023

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.

Chapter One

THE SEA WAS a miracle of azure. It reached as flat as a plate on all sides to where sky and water touched in an almost imperceptible circular join. There was nothing in sight to affect the illusion that all the world was air and water; except at one point of brilliance to the west, where the lowering sun was about to rest, like a great yellow coin, its edge on the horizon.

A beautiful evening, calm and clear—and anathema to a submarine commander in hostile waters.

H.M. Submarine Arrow was at periscope depth, moving very slowly. The water of the Indian Ocean a few miles south of Java was bluely translucent, and from a boat above her the submarine’s hull would have been clearly visible—the bulbous nose with its six torpedo tubes, the long slim foredeck, the vertical bridge and the after-part, slimming down to the power-packed tail; all these sections welded together to form a streamlined shape which moved through the water with fluting lines running from every projection, from the knifing bow, the four-inch gun, the bridge, the after stanchion right on the stern which supported the heavy steel wire whose purpose, running up over the bridge and down again to the stem, was to negative projections and give the boat a smooth passage under a net placed to catch her.

She was moving so slowly that a school of fish swam along her length, curious, and through the three thick steel standards rising from the bridge. There were four fish close to the foremost of these. Suddenly they darted away, alarmed by a rasping noise transmitted plainly through the conducting water.

From the foremost standard an object emerged. It was long and thin, its brassy sheen glowed yellow in the blue water, and it was capped with a sloping, rectangular face of glass about six inches long. Those fish might have been more surprised if they had stayed to look into that glass face.

At the other end of the thirty-odd feet of steel tube was another face—human this time, rather heavy, built with a rugged strength, normally a placid sort of face, but now twisted into a mask of concentration as a pair of alert eyes projected their sight thirty feet up through the water and scanned the surrounding sea.

A dozen men in the control-room waited while Lieutenant-Commander Malcolm Grayson scanned the surface. They gave no sign of apprehension, or even that they were waiting for his next order; they stood by their levers, wheels and gauges, their backs to the captain at the periscope, but each man knew from long and sometimes bitter experience that this moment was the most dangerous in a submarine’s life, the time when she left the securely opaque depths of her element and bared herself to her enemies.

Relaxed, yet alert, they waited for the order which would plane them up to the surface and cool fresh air, or down to several hundred feet of lightless pressure.

Grayson swung quickly, a swift preliminary stare round the horizon. Then he elevated his lens and swept the sky. Satisfied there was no immediate threat, he swung the periscope more slowly. His forearms were hung over the handle-bars of the instrument, and as he pushed it round his legs trailed behind him on the deck, circling the edge of the deep well into which the periscope would house itself when he was finished.

Round he went, and the first-lieutenant, standing before his order-panel behind the two petty-officers on the hydroplanes, tensed a little as from the corner of his eye he saw Grayson pause to stare at something. Then the circular motion was resumed, and in a few moments the search was completed.

Grayson pushed himself upright and with a swift movement snapped the handles up and in against the periscope tube. There was no other order needed in this control-room. The leading stoker in the forrard end of the room pulled a lever, releasing high-pressure air to do its job. Greased wires whirred and the big brass tube sank down into its housing.

Surface, Grayson said. His voice was not a snap, but the word was concise, clipped. It was followed by a quick spate of orders from the first-lieutenant:

Open all main vents. Open lower lid.

The dogs of the hatch came out and the nicely-balanced lid swung open with a resonant clang.

Ready to surface, sir. Slow ahead together. Blow one main ballast, blow six, two, four …

The engine-room artificer played his blowing panel with hands that flicked like striking snakes. Shining levers slammed into place and high-pressure air at four thousand pounds per square inch burst into the ballast tanks and in vast breaths blew the water out. There was no nonsense about that air. In a few seconds Arrow had changed her neutral heaviness for positive buoyancy. She lifted out of the water in a flurry of foam and Grayson ordered:

Open up!

The lookout’s ready feet disappeared up the vertical ladder with monkey speed; there was a pause after his feet stopped; then the brother clang of the lower-hatch’s opening and a dazzling shaft of sunlight fell down into the control-room. A shower of salt water sparkled down the light-shaft, and Grayson ran up the ladder with the same agility as his predecessor.

Voice-pipe covers were unfastened and the water drained into buckets. Those pipes had been shut before the bridge had been vacated when she dived, but the covers had been under great pressure. Orders came down the pipes and shortly the quiet of the control-room was filled with the thud of diesels. A strong draught of air flowed past the crew as the big engines gulped in the fresh air, clearing the fuggy atmosphere.

On the bridge, gleaming wet in the remaining sunlight, Grayson and the lookout supplemented with binoculars what the periscope had told them. The captain moved his glasses very slowly, searching not for an obvious hull and superstructure, but the thin, distant pencil which would tell him a destroyer’s mast was coming up over the horizon.

He was dressed in a dark blue cotton singlet, round at the neck like a T-shirt, and a pair of football shorts and sandals. The rig looked out of place on this warship’s bridge, but the garments seemed at home on his body—chunky and broad-shouldered, with thick muscled legs. It was obvious that those football shorts had been put to their designed use.

Nothing in sight, sir, reported the lookout behind him.

There was the slightest pause before Grayson answered Very well, Beresford. The hesitation was not caused by any doubt that the report was not correct, but at the tone of the able-seaman’s voice. The words were delivered in a cultivated accent, and might have been spoken by the first-lieutenant, or Grayson himself.

Grayson never failed to be surprised when he heard that voice come from beneath a sailor’s cap and a greasy pair of overalls. He was quite sure the accent was genuine. He had heard of educated men—one even from Cambridge—who had joined the lower deck for the duration, but Beresford was the first man he had had in his own command.

Grayson had his own views on those fellows, but he had no inclination to voice them now. His attention was wholly focused on the needs of his ship, and the danger she was in.

He had deliberated for some time before deciding to surface in daylight, even though shortly it would be dark. The run through Sunda Strait into the Java Sea would be made tonight, on the surface. Arrow had been submerged most of the day, and inside she was foul—smelly with the sweat of seventy men, the stink of oily bilges.

They would submerge again as soon as the batteries were fully charged, to make the approach to the Strait. But these minutes on the surface would make all the difference to comfort and morale—the big diesels were drawing great currents of fresh air into the boat, cleansing her. If they had to dive, if they were forced down by an enemy patrol boat, the whole crew would be rejuvenated by this influx of oxygen.

There was another consideration. Although the dictates of caution limited the number of men on the bridge at any time to two, officer and lookout, Grayson knew that open hatches would have an invigorating effect on the men still below. They themselves could not come aloft to enjoy the sight of sea and sky, but they could feel the fresh air flowing strongly down, and they could see natural light falling into the control-room. The psychological effect was considerable.

His binoculars hung on their leather strap, Grayson looked automatically about him. His eyes took in the tranquil scene, the sun almost vanished below the rim of the world to the west, and his ears heard the thudding of the diesel pouring Arrow’s life-blood back into the batteries. But the keenest sensation was in his lungs.

He breathed deeply, consciously aware that he could almost taste the freshness of the sea-clean air, air which had been fouled by nothing since it had left the shores of Australia hundreds of miles to the south-east.

The air and the calmness and the absence of danger exhilarated him. Suddenly he felt a comradely kinship with the man who alone of all the crew shared this bridge vigil with him. He turned quickly to speak to Beresford, and his left hand swung hard against the sharp edge of the compass-gimbals.

Blast! he ejaculated, and rubbed the back of his hand. A moment later he was speechless with astonishment. His hand was held in Beresford’s, and the seaman was staring keenly at the broken skin. He spoke, and his cultured voice was as incisive as Grayson’s own: Nothing serious. First-degree contusion. You’d better get some sulphanilamide powder sprayed on it. Sooner the better in these parts. All sorts of complications can set in up this way.

Grayson recovered his composure. He pulled his hand away. Thoughts raced through his mind. He wanted to bottle the seaman, but the thought had no sooner formed than he found himself at a loss for words. Beresford’s action was completely outside his experience.

Beresford himself retrieved the situation. He looked up as the hand was withdrawn, to meet the gaze of a pair of coldly angry eyes.

I’m sorry, sir. I’d better get back to looking-out.

Precisely, Grayson said curtly.

The seaman walked back and stood near the periscope standard. Grayson turned back to the forrard end of the bridge. Not more than ten feet separated officer and rating; they were completely alone in the world, for all practical purposes, and embarrassment hung heavy in the balmy sunset air on the bridge.

The captain’s eyes were on the horizon to the northward, but his mind was wholly occupied with the extraordinary occurrence. Several explanations fitted into his thoughts, most of them unpleasant—the most odious one was the belief that Beresford was that despicable specimen, a crawler, a suck hole in lower deck parlance.

Grayson was an