The Quick Boat Men

Part One

1905 – 1909

One

‘This,’ Edward Dante Bourdillon pointed out, ‘is a torpedo.’

The announcement was received with indifference by the older of the two girls sitting in the boat with him, with grave interest by the younger.

He pointed at the slim white shape in the water just ahead of them. ‘That’s a yacht. Ketch-rigged.’ He patted the polished teak of the long, low launch lashed alongside him. ‘This is Triton, a quick boat. The description was first used in the last century for the fast steam launches of John Thorneycroft of Chiswick. Uncle Egg borrowed it for his petrol and paraffin-driven boats. They’re capable of almost twenty knots.’

‘Can we get on?’ The older of the two girls could not hide her boredom. ‘We haven’t got all day.’

‘Right, Georgina.’ Edward recovered from the rebuff with an attempt at brisk forthrightness. ‘This–’ he patted the boat they were sitting in ‘–is a dinghy, muscle-powered–’

‘Oh, Teddy, do get on.’

Edward frowned. He had been developing his talk carefully and he was young enough to enjoy having a captive audience.

‘Right,’ he said again. ‘Back to where we were: this is a torpedo.’ He indicated the apparatus he had mounted on the bow of the launch alongside them. ‘It’s what’s known, in fact, as a spar torpedo. It takes its name from the fact that it’s mounted on a spar.’ He paused to let the information sink in. ‘The spar, of course, is itself mounted on a boat. The boat is aimed at the target and, as the torpedo on the end of the spar strikes the target, it detonates the explosive and the target is destroyed.’

‘So, I imagine,’ Georgina Reeves pointed out from the centre of the dinghy, ‘is the boat the torpedo’s mounted on.’

‘Ah.’ Edward considered the question with all the solemnity of a seventeen-year-old male endeavouring to explain a technical problem to a female he was trying to impress. ‘But it does work. They used a spar torpedo successfully as long ago as 1877. A copper canister on a pole mounted on a boat. Against an obsolete French naval vessel called the Bayonnaise.’

‘Mayonnaise is a funny name for a battleship.’ The speaker this time was Georgina’s thirteen-year-old sister, Augusta, who sat in the stern of the dinghy holding the oars, something her eighteen-year-old sibling wouldn’t have dreamed of doing. Augusta was all plaits, teeth, legs and enormous eyes. Edward regarded her severely. She wasn’t supposed to be with them.

‘Not Mayonnaise,’ he said. ‘Bayonnaise.’

‘Sorry.’ Augusta lowered her eyes humbly.

‘It means someone from Bayonne. As it ends with an ‘e’ I presume it means a female from Bayonne, which would seem normal as all ships are considered to be female.’

Augusta looked up, regarding him with adoration. Her sister’s attitude was more cynical. A year older than Edward, she considered herself – and was – more adult than he was. She was tall and slender and already shapely and beautiful, her face surrounded by a cloud of blonde hair tied back with a huge black bow. It took Edward’s breath away just having her there.

He was sitting in the dinghy, the August sun hot on his back, with Augusta firmly relegated to the stern behind him. He had hoped to sneak away alone with Georgina but she had joined them, happily ignorant of their wish to disappear quietly. It had been Edward’s intention to put on a show and nobody, he felt, could put on a show with a thirteen-year-old interrupting all the time.

The launch that lay alongside the dinghy was facing the yacht, Fairy. Pristine and polished to within an inch of its life, it belonged to Edward’s uncle, Egbert Bourdillon, who owned and ran the boat-yard that lay along the shore behind them.

‘Go on about the Mayonnaise,’ Georgina said casually.

Edward frowned, ignoring the deliberate mistake. ‘I suppose you’ve heard of the Battle of Tsu-Shima.’

The two girls looked blank.

‘It was in all the newspapers,’ Edward said. ‘Out in the East. China Seas. In Tsu-Shima Strait. The Russians lost thirty-four warships against the Japanese loss of three torpedo boats.’

They still looked blank.

‘It was only four months ago,’ he explained irritably. ‘27 May 1905. It started a revolution in Russia.’

‘The Russians are always throwing bombs.’ Georgina gave a little shudder. Revolution in Edward VII’s England was unthinkable.

She was the daughter of the vicar whom Edward regarded as a sanctimonious old hypocrite, very like the school chaplain. The chaplain did a lot of hard work on his knees and liked to get the pupils to learn by heart not one of the sterner passages from the Old Testament or the Ten Commandments but the Song of Solomon which, it was firmly believed, he admired less for its inspirational beauty than for its erotic content.

As it happened, Georgina didn’t try very hard to conform to her father’s mould and had enough strength of character to stand up for herself. And she was useful to have around because she was virtually the only girl in the village of Porthelt of the right age and class – and class, in 1905, was important. Unfortunately, she wasn’t a good listener because in a group of two she always considered herself the more interesting.

At that moment, she was hitching at the belt at her waist and, smoothing her skirt over her knees, was showing rather more leg than was considered permissible. She didn’t care much for convention, however, and Edward was enjoying the view.

But he was beginning to feel she wasn’t taking him seriously. Now she was straightening the tie she wore under the sailor collar of her white blouse and wasn’t even looking at him.

‘After all–’ he spoke loudly to attract her attention ‘–it was only an experiment to see what would happen. The attack was made by a Thorneycroft boat with a French naval squadron and the Bayonnaise was unmanned and towed by a tug. There was a story about it in the Graphic. I cut it out and stuck it in a scrap book. It said the whole French squadron watched, expecting the torpedo to destroy the Thorneycroft as well as the Bayonnaise and–’

‘Who was driving the Thorneycroft?’ Augusta interrupted.

It was a normal enough question for Porthelt, even for a thirteen-year-old girl, because the village was dominated by the Bourdillon boat-yard. The local houses were hidden by its workshops and boat sheds which in turn were blurred by the forest of masts belonging to the yachts lying in front in the little bay made by the curve of the land.

‘A French officer, I suppose,’ Edward said.

‘Did he volunteer?’ Georgina asked.

‘You could hardly expect them to order a man to do a job like that.’

‘I wouldn’t volunteer.’

Edward looked at her angrily, still not sure whether she was genuinely interested in what he was trying to show her or whether she was deliberately making fun of him.

‘Well, he did,’ he said sharply.

‘How do you know?’

Edward glared at Georgina. ‘Are you really interested or are you just being clever?’

An expression of mock dismay crossed her face. ‘Oh, Teddy,’ she said, ‘I’m terribly interested. But it all sounds so silly. This man trying to blow himself up with a ship called the Mayonnaise. Please go on.’

Edward’s manner had grown a little stiff. ‘When the torpedo struck, there was a deafening–’ he lingered on the word for the drama it conveyed ‘–a deafening report and the Bayonnaise sank almost at once. As for the Thorneycroft, the shock caused it to bounce back a matter of fifteen metres – that’s a bit more than fifteen yards – then it went round and round in circles for a while as if dazed, until finally it resumed its course with the rest of the squadron.’

‘So it was all right?’

‘It was all right.’

‘I bet it gave the crew a headache,’ Georgina observed gaily. Edward frowned, convinced by this time that his demonstration wasn’t being treated with the respect it deserved. He was a well-built boy, beak-nosed and lean-faced, dark hair curling tightly round his ears. Augusta thought the world of him. Georgina felt he had too high an opinion of himself and needed taking down a peg or two from time to time.

He tried to ignore her smiles and indicated the long boom he had secured to the launch. He had required help from Augusta to get it into position, but the spar had finally been lashed stoutly down the length of the bow and protruded a matter of about eight feet beyond the stem.

‘I’ve directed it downwards so it’ll strike Fairy just on the waterline,’ he explained. ‘A proper spar torpedo, of course, is rigged underwater and parallel with the surface, but, since I can’t do that, I’ve aimed it just above the waterline so that the pressure of water against it won’t slow the launch or turn it off course.’

‘Won’t it sink Fairy?’ Augusta asked.

‘Not on your life.’ Edward laughed. ‘The launch will be going very slowly. With the engine at low revs, it’ll just hold her nose on to Fairy so we can pick her up.’

‘It’ll never work.’ The words this time came from the deck of the yacht itself where another youngster, older than Edward, sat dangling his feet over the side, watching with a grin on his face. Edward tried not to notice him.

‘Your cousin Maurice’s talking to you,’ Georgina pointed out.

‘My cousin Maurice can go and jump in the creek,’ Edward said.

‘He’s waving.’

‘Georgy–’ Edward’s expression was one of pure fury ‘–let him wave. He can only sneer. He doesn’t do anything at all himself, except sneak into Uncle Egg’s study and drink his sherry wine and go around with that lout, Barney Scholes-Dever from the Manor House. He ought to be learning something about the boat-yard. He’s expected to take it over one day.’

‘When he does, will you get a look-in?’

It was a good question. Edward’s father, Hubert Bourdillon, had been a very different type to his scholarly brother, Egbert, and, having got himself into trouble over a girl in Portsmouth, had run away to sea. More adventurous than Egbert, he enjoyed himself for three years around the world before returning quietly to take his share of responsibility for the growing boat-yard founded by their father. It had surprised everybody when he had brought with him an Italian wife, one Maddalena Uschetti, the daughter of another boat-yard owner in Livorno, known always to British people from its association with Nelson as Leghorn. Save for the fact that she wasn’t English, a state considered by the Bourdillons to be more or less essential for a happy life, Maddalena was regarded as an eminently suitable partner. But the boat-yard in Livorno was much bigger than the one at Porthelt and the Italian family’s indignation at Hubert Bourdillon’s cheek in marrying their daughter without permission resulted in her being cast out. There might have been a reconciliation – indeed, proceedings were under way – but for the fact that, sharing her husband’s love of the sea, Maddalena Bourdillon had been drowned with him when their yacht was run down in a sudden Channel fog by a coaster loaded with scrap iron bound for Cardiff. And Hubert’s brother, Egg, had taken in the orphaned Edward Dante, who had been brought up at Creek House, the Bourdillons’ untidy shambles of a home behind the boat-yard.

‘Well,’ Georgina persisted, ‘will you get a look-in?’

‘I’m supposed to,’ Edward said. ‘After all, my father and Uncle Egg were brothers and when my parents died he promised I would. He’s always said I’ll have a share.’

For all his quiet eccentricity, Egbert Bourdillon was essentially a fair man and a far more stable character than Edward’s father. But Maurice didn’t like Edward, resented his intrusion, was not as clever as Edward and had a mean streak in his character which suggested that when Egg was gone, he would do things his way, and his way was unlikely to include Edward.

‘That’s why I’m trying this out,’ Edward explained. ‘After all, Bourdillons isn’t just a yachtsman’s boat-yard. We build experimental stuff. The navy’s bought from us. There aren’t many bigger.’

It wasn’t entirely true because there were plenty of bigger yards. Apart from one or two experimental craft, Bourdillons normally built orthodox boats, but were required from time to time to build on licence to hard-pressed, larger and wealthier yards.

‘There’s Thorneycrofts, of course,’ Edward admitted. ‘And people like that. They’re the first string. But we’re only just below. Now–’ he gestured ‘–about this torpedo.’

‘It won’t work, Georgy,’ Maurice called.

‘Oh, yes, it will,’ Edward snapped back.

‘It’ll just push the spar back. The lashings will give.’

‘No, they won’t. I’ve anchored the other end against the wheelhouse.’

Edward turned back to his demonstration, frowning and red in the face.

‘It all sprang from the Merrimac–Monitor fight in the American Civil War,’ he said. ‘The Confederates made great use of torpedoes but in those days they were merely towed canisters of explosive and it was soon decided that small fast launches were a more suitable means of delivering an attack.’

‘You do know an awful lot about it, Teddy,’ Augusta said.

Edward smiled. ‘The Russians were among the first to use them, on another launch built by Thorneycrofts. They hit a Turkish monitor, but they were driven off without sinking it and the commander of the launch and his observer were badly wounded. Thorneycrofts have been building quick launches ever since. Uncle Egg wants to get into that line. He has some good ideas too. He’s working on one he expects to go at over thirty knots.’

‘That’s faster than a motor car.’ Georgina was impressed at last.

‘Well, yes. And he’s thinking of spar torpedoes. They’re normally carried above water and lowered to below the surface for the attack. All it needs is a determined captain.’

‘Take no notice of him, Georgy,’ Maurice shouted from the deck of Fairy. ‘Pa’s not thinking of them at all. They have locomotive torpedoes these days. They have built-in motors and run on gas or something. Eddy’s talking through the top of his head. Just showing off. There’ve been fish torpedoes for years. They used to carry them in davits and drop them into the water, and they had a winch to hoist them back aboard after a dummy run. These days they fire them from a tube on the bow.’

‘Ignore him, Georgy,’ Edward said, furious that Maurice knew as much as he did.

Georgina laughed. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘His voice is louder than yours.’

‘You should come with me,’ Maurice shouted to her. ‘In Fairy. I’m taking her out into the Solent this afternoon. It’ll be much better than arsing about with a kid like Eddy who likes to fiddle about with gadgets he doesn’t understand.’

Augusta rose in Edward’s defence. ‘You shouldn’t use words like arse,’ she said.

Edward looked up fretfully. ‘Are we going on with this experiment or not?’ he asked.

Georgina responded briskly. ‘I thought we were going to row downriver. I didn’t think we were going to war.’

‘One of these days,’ Edward said, ‘we shall be going to war. Everybody knows the Germans are getting too big for their boots and that the Kaiser’s building a fleet as big as ours.’

‘Rot,’ Maurice said. ‘Everybody knows the Kaiser’s mad and that the Germans can’t build ships like we can. They wouldn’t have a chance and they know it. That’s why there won’t be a war.’

Edward wasn’t so sure. The countries of Europe were like duellists – D’Artagnan or Cyrano – quick to quarrel.

‘We don’t want to go to war,’ Maurice went on, ‘because, with the Empire, we have everything we need and the Germans just daren’t. And anyway, what lunatic would attack a dreadnought with a spar torpedo?’

‘I didn’t suggest we’d attack a dreadnought with a spar torpedo,’ Edward yelled. ‘You’d have to use a mobile torpedo for that. I was just demonstrating how a spar torpedo works.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, shut up.’

‘Shut up yourself.’

Georgina turned her back on Maurice, who sat watching them, with all the arrogance of a nineteen-year-old who owned a motorcycle and was allowed to drive his father’s car and sail his yacht.

His voice came again. ‘Eddy had never heard of a spar torpedo until a day or two ago,’ he yelled. ‘I saw him reading it up. He ought to know they’re out of date and that it’s pointless experimenting with them.’

Goaded beyond endurance, Edward retaliated. ‘You’re an ass, Maurice.’

‘Ass or not,’ Maurice said, ‘when Pa goes, I’ll be running the yard and I’ll make certain you’re out on your ear. There’ll be no room at Bourdillons for half-wits.’

‘Uncle Egg promised me a place.’

‘And I suppose you’ll get one. But as soon as I’m running the show, you’re out.’ Maurice beamed and swung his legs. ‘Put that in your pipe and smoke it.’

‘Take no notice of him, Teddy,’ Augusta said primly, ‘I’m listening.’

‘Actually,’ Georgina announced, ‘this isn’t what I really expected to do this afternoon. Still, I’ll listen.’ She stared at the overhanging trees and the flat calm water and the white yachts reflected in its surface.

‘Considering the weather, though,’ she added under her breath, ‘I can’t think why.’

‘Well, all right,’ Edward said unwillingly. All the pleasure had gone out of the afternoon. ‘You have to allow for wind and tide and a few things like that, of course, but a skipper with experience could work that out in his head. All he has to do is place his boat alongside the enemy. That’s what Nelson always said. And that–’ he indicated Fairy with the grinning Maurice sitting on its deck ‘–is the enemy.’

He heaved on an oar and, as the dinghy with the accompanying launch swung, he drew a deep breath. ‘We’re now pointing directly at Fairy,’ he said. ‘What I’ll do now is release the lashings, lean over from the dinghy, set the gear lever to Ahead, and just pull the throttle back far enough for her to move slowly through the water. Actually,’ he pointed out pedantically, ‘throttles should be designed to be pushed forward to increase speed, not pulled back.’

‘Why?’

‘You’re pushing speed forward into the boat. The other way, you’re pulling her back. Like reins on a horse. I’ve suggested it several times but Uncle Egg doesn’t listen. Now we’ll sit back and watch. Perhaps,’ he added hopefully, ‘Maurice will fall in the water at the shock.’

‘Not if she’s going dead slow,’ Georgina pointed out.

‘No,’ Edward admitted. ‘Not if she’s going dead slow. Ready?’

‘Yes.’

‘Here goes. Gear into Ahead.’ Edward leaned over and as he pushed the lever forward, the launch began to move slowly forward from alongside the dinghy.

‘A little more throttle, I think,’ he went on. ‘So she’ll do the job properly.’

‘Go on,’ Maurice shouted. ‘Open her full out. Then perhaps you’ll sink Pa’s boat and he’ll realise what a dummy you are and not allow you in the firm.’

‘I wish you’d go and boil your head.’ In his anger, Edward pulled the throttle lever too far back and, as the launch gathered speed and began to move away from him, his clutching fingers only served to open the throttle even wider.

The rumble of the exhaust increased and the launch shot forward, watched by the horrified group in the dinghy.

‘You bloody fool,’ Maurice yelled, scrambling to his feet as he saw the launch heading towards him at high speed.

‘You shouldn’t say bloody–’ Augusta stopped, her mouth open. ‘Oh, my,’ she breathed.

The point of the spar struck Fairy on the waterline with a resounding crash and the yacht’s mast oscillated wildly as the boat heeled. Edward’s idea of anchoring the stern end of the spar proved entirely successful; it didn’t tear loose, it just moved backwards enough to stave in the front of the launch’s wheelhouse and lift the roof.

‘Christ!’ he said.

Maurice, who was standing on the deck waving his arms as if he could repel the speeding launch, overbalanced and fell with a flat splash into the water. The launch, as Edward had predicted, the spar having struck something solid inside the yacht, bounced backwards, withdrawing the spar to leave a gaping hole, and was now setting off down the river on its own.

Ignoring the spluttering Maurice, Edward watched, helpless, as it swung in a wide arc back on its tracks. There were terrified screams as the launch threatened to do the same to the dinghy as it had done to the yacht, but it missed by a hair’s-breadth and went on to run up the shingle bank. There was a bang and a screech from the engine as the propeller shear-pin went, then it stopped dead, blue smoke rising slowly into the air.

The Fairy had listed sharply, and the hole in her side began to take in water. Sitting horrified in the dinghy, Edward watched as his uncle’s pride and joy sank lower and lower until she finally gave up the ghost, heeled over and lay on her side. The horrified spectators heard her lockers burst open and all the pots and pans Aunt Edith kept aboard for instant water-borne parties, cascade on to the cabin sole. As she sagged beneath the water, her mast at an angle of 45 degrees, Edward stared about him in desperation.

Maurice was still swimming, but at the crash windows had opened in nearby offices and workshops and people were running out. Someone was climbing into a dinghy and he was relieved to hear the clatter of oars. Pushing Augusta out of the way, Edward seized the oars of the dinghy and started to pull.

‘Where are we going?’ Georgina asked placidly.

‘Down-river,’ he said.

‘You’re in trouble, old Teddy,’ she said, beaming at him.

‘That’s why I’m going down-river.’

‘What about Maurice? Won’t he drown?’

‘Unfortunately not.’

‘I think that’s your uncle in one of the dinghies. He looks peeved.’

‘I don’t blame him.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Row down past Porthelt. You’ll have to row back.’

‘When I go out in a boat,’ Georgina said coldly, ‘somebody else takes care of that department.’

‘I’ll do it,’ Augusta said stoutly. ‘I can row. Where will you be, Teddy?’

‘God knows. I think it might be a good idea to join the French Foreign Legion. People always do that when they’re in trouble, don’t they?’

‘Africa’s a long way,’ Georgina pointed out cheerfully.

‘Perhaps I’d better just go to sea for a while. It might be a good idea if I never came back.’

‘Oh, Teddy,’ Augusta sighed.

As he tugged at the oars, Edward sighed with her. ‘There’s one thing,’ he added. ‘It proves my point about the throttle. If I’d been pushing instead of pulling it wouldn’t have happened.’

Two