The Ocean Liner

The Western Approaches

The blazing wreck lit up the night, a spectacle which almost the entire crew of U-113 had come on to the deck to see. It was their first kill of the war. Initially, there had been cheering and congratulations, but these had died down as they watched the stricken ship consumed in the fire which had been started by the two torpedoes they’d launched just after midnight.

She was the Robert Recorde, a 3,000-ton merchantman, built in Newcastle upon Tyne, registered in Cardiff, carrying a cargo of timber from Canada to the Clyde. This information had been provided by one of the survivors, whom they’d fished out of the sea, a sixteen-year-old boy rating named Howell Lewis. He was badly burned, and they’d dropped him near one of the lifeboats to be picked up. There were only three of these. The rest had been shattered when Todt had ordered the bridge and radio room to be machine-gunned. The British sailors huddled in the lifeboats shouted at the submarine as U-113 rumbled between them, playing its searchlight around the floating wreckage. The U-boat crew stared back silently, some taking turns to use the night-glasses.

‘What are they saying?’ Todt asked Hufnagel, who was beside him in the conning tower.

‘They say their lifeboats are taking on water,’ replied Hufnagel, who spoke some English. ‘And they say they have wounded. They are asking for medical assistance.’

Krupp, the medical officer, was on the bridge. ‘We could give them some first-aid supplies, Captain. We have enough.’

One of the lifeboats, which seemed to have an officer in it, began to row raggedly towards the U-boat, the men on board calling out hoarsely. Todt drew the Luger from his holster and fired three shots towards them. There was a scream and the sailors huddled for cover in the boat, dropping their oars. ‘Tell them I’ll use the flak gun on them,’ Todt commanded Hufnagel, who relayed the warning in English. To drive the point home, Todt ordered the machine gun to be trained on the lifeboats. The men in them fell silent, with sullen faces.

The Robert Recorde was settling in the water, but the torpedoes had evidently not done enough to send her to the bottom quickly. One of them, in fact, though it had made contact, had failed to explode. Flames were pouring up into the night sky in long, rolling surges of orange, shedding enough heat to make some of the observers shield their faces. Hufnagel watched through his binoculars. A lukewarm attitude towards National Socialism had slowed his progress through the ranks. Then he had fallen in love with Masha Morgenstern, practically on the morning of the Nuremberg Laws. As a result, he had waited in vain for his own command; while Todt had benefited from accelerated promotion. Hufnagel, not a jealous man, regarded it as part of his duty to encourage and advise his younger commander. ‘She’s full of wood. She’ll burn all night. Like a beacon.’

They were only a hundred miles east of Rockall. Hufnagel was right to be concerned. Fascinated as he was by the blaze, Todt gave the order to the deck gun crew. ‘Five rounds, rapid fire. Amidships. Waterline.’

The blasts from the deck gun lit up the sea and the boats in it. There were cries of rage or despair from the survivors in the lifeboats. For the first few moments it seemed the target was unaffected, despite the gaping holes that the explosive shells had torn in her hull. Then Robert Recorde began to sink fast. She went down by the bows, her rusty stern rising out of the water, ignominiously revealing her rudder gear and her single screw. For a few minutes, the stern of the merchantman towered over the scene, unearthly in the U-boat’s spotlight. Then, with a long groan, she sank into the depths. With the flames extinguished, the night rushed in and the stars began to be visible. The air became icy.

‘Waidmannsheil,’ Hufnagel said quietly to the captain.

Leaving a bridge watch strapped to the deck rail to endure the cold and the rough sea, the crew went below. It was their first kill and some of the excited younger men clamoured for a tot of schnapps, or at least a bottle of beer from the store that clinked in the galley. But Todt did not give the order. Instead, he retired to his quarters and drew the thin curtain which separated him from the crew.

The boat’s gramophone was in the captain’s quarters, connected to a series of speakers attached to the bulkheads throughout U-113. Also in the captain’s quarters was the boat’s collection of gramophone records, personally selected by Todt. These included the Unser Führer set of Adolf Hitler’s speeches as well as recordings of Beethoven, Wagner and Bruckner. A hiss from the speakers announced that Todt had put the needle on to a record and shortly, the opening chords of Bruckner’s mighty Eighth Symphony rolled through every compartment of the boat.

This choice was not popular with everyone. Most of the crew were very young and almost all were novices.

Some settled down with eyes closed and folded hands to listen dutifully or doze. Others were restless after being in action. The men had their own gramophone in the forward torpedo room, which also served as the crew’s quarters, with their own collection of records, not all of which were officially sanctioned; but there was no competing with Bruckner. They turned instead, as U-113 surged through the night, to their usual pastimes: looking at photographs of their families and girlfriends, playing chess on little portable boards, or leafing through dog-eared magazines they had already read a dozen times.