By the afternoon of 17 July, the wolves had reached the Atlantic.
U-39 moved beneath the grey waters northwest of Scotland, almost completely invisible beneath a sea broken by long swells and intermittent rain. Forty-four men lived and worked inside her narrow steel hull among torpedoes, batteries, pipes and machinery, breathing air heavy with oil, warm metal and the close smell of too many bodies in too little space. Less than half an hour earlier, a lookout had spotted smoke on the horizon. Now Dönitz stood at the periscope, watching a British merchant steamer make steadily toward home.
The vessel was running southeast at roughly ten knots, her funnel trailing a dark ribbon across the overcast sky. Through the optics, Dönitz could make out little beyond her profile and flag. He did not know what she carried, nor did he particularly need to. She was British, she was heading toward Britain, and whatever lay inside her holds was something the enemy expected to receive.
U-39 slowly worked across the merchantman's course.
There was none of the spectacle that accompanied a battlecruiser interception. No signal lamp ordering the captain to heave to, no warning shell throwing water across the bow, no boarding party climbing over the rail. The attack existed almost entirely as numbers whispered inside a submerged steel tube: range, speed, heading and lead.
"Tube one ready?"
"Ready, Herr Leutnant."
Dönitz remained at the periscope another few seconds, watching the target rise and fall gently upon the swell.
"Hold course."
The steamer continued directly toward the point they had calculated.
"Fire."
Compressed air drove the torpedo from its tube with a dull mechanical thump. The weapon settled into the water, its motor took hold, and it began racing toward the place where the British ship would be when the two paths crossed.
Above them, nobody knew it was coming.
Little Billy Fraser had drawn the afternoon watch and hated almost every minute of it. At nineteen, he was one of the youngest deckhands aboard and had yet to acquire the mysterious indifference older sailors seemed to possess toward North Atlantic weather. His coat was damp through the shoulders, his fingers remained cold despite his gloves, and every gust seemed capable of finding some new opening beneath his collar.
Somewhere ahead lay Scotland.
Home waters, he kept reminding himself. Warm food. A dry bed. A harbour where the ground beneath his feet would finally stop moving.
The steamer's holds were packed with Canadian grain, thousands of tons of wheat destined for Britain, and after nearly two weeks crossing the Atlantic there was nothing remarkable left about the voyage. The sea was grey, the sky was grey, and Billy was mostly occupied with rubbing warmth back into his hands when something pale caught his attention beyond the port rail.
He frowned and leaned forward.
A white line was moving through the water.
At first he thought it was foam or perhaps the wake of something beneath the surface, but it was too straight and moving too deliberately against the swell.
"What the hell is that?"
An older sailor nearby glanced over reluctantly. "What?"
"There. Look."
The man shuffled toward the rail with the expression of someone expecting to be shown driftwood.
"Probably a bloody porpoise or—"
Then he saw it.
The irritation vanished from his face.
For a moment he said nothing at all. The narrow wake had already grown larger, a pale scar cutting directly toward the ship.
"No…"
Billy looked at him. "What?"
The sailor gripped the rail.
"Oh, Christ."
"What is it?"
"Torpedo."
Billy stared at him blankly.
"A what?"
The older man spun toward the bridge and bellowed with enough force to turn every head on deck.
"TORPEDO! PORT SIDE!"
Confusion became panic almost instantly. A bell began clanging. Boots hammered across wet steel while officers shouted toward the helm.
"Hard to starboard! Hard over!"
The steamer started turning, but a loaded cargo ship moving ten knots did not change direction quickly enough to escape something already so close.
Billy remained near the rail until another sailor seized the back of his coat. By then he could see the darker shape beneath the white wake, a long iron cylinder driving through the sea with dreadful certainty.
"GET DOWN!"
The torpedo struck beneath the port side.
For the smallest fraction of a second, there was only impact.
Then the warhead detonated.
The explosion punched through the hull from below the waterline and seemed to lift the entire ship beneath the men standing upon her. Steel plating buckled inward, rivets tore loose and deck plates jumped violently beneath boots as a column of water and debris burst outward from the wounded side. Billy struck the deck hard enough to empty his lungs, his ears filling with a high metallic ringing while men around him screamed and scrambled for anything solid.
Below, the damage was worse.
The torpedo had torn open one of the grain holds and shattered surrounding fittings, throwing wheat and dust throughout the compartment. For an instant the interior filled with a dense suspended cloud of finely divided grain.
Then damaged electrical equipment sparked.
The grain dust ignited.
The second explosion came from inside the ship.
Flame flashed through the hold with frightening speed, racing through suspended dust before bursting upward through damaged hatch covers. Orange fire rolled across part of the deck, throwing burning grain, timber and fragments into the air. Men below who had survived the torpedo now found themselves trapped between seawater pouring through the hull and fire spreading through the cargo spaces. Broken steam lines filled corridors with scalding vapour, while damaged pumps failed almost before anyone could organize them.
The steamer began listing to port.
At first the angle was subtle enough to inspire false hope. Men shouted for pumps and damage-control parties while others tried reaching compartments already filling with water. Then the list increased and the deck visibly sloped beneath their feet.
The captain needed only a few minutes to understand what his ship had become.
"Abandon ship!"
That order changed everything.
Davits swung outward while frightened hands fought ropes they had handled dozens of times during drills. One lifeboat descended unevenly and struck the hull hard enough to crack timber. Another jammed halfway down and hung swinging above the Atlantic while sailors cursed and pulled desperately at the falls. Smoke continued pouring from the forward holds as water reached ever higher through the damaged side.
Billy reached a boat without remembering much of the journey there. Someone pushed him downward, another man fell in beside him, and within minutes they were pulling away from the ship that had carried them safely across nearly an entire ocean.
From the water they watched her die.
The damaged port side sank progressively lower until waves began washing across the deck itself. Flooded grain added enormous weight while seawater found more openings and spread through compartments farther aft. Fire still flickered within portions of the cargo as the bow descended and the stern slowly lifted.
For several moments the propeller showed above the water.
Then the vessel slipped beneath the Atlantic.
Billy stared at the place where she had vanished, surrounded by scattered wreckage, smoke and men calling between lifeboats.
He had never seen the submarine that killed her.
He never would.
Beneath the surface, Dönitz had already lowered the periscope. The explosion had reached U-39 as a muffled concussion through the water, followed later by the distant noises of a large hull failing as the merchantman went down.
"Target sinking," an officer reported.
Dönitz nodded.
There was no cheer aboard the submarine.
Beneath his uniform, hanging against his chest, rested the cross of the Church of the New Dawn. His fingers touched it briefly. Before leaving Germany he had already settled within himself what this war demanded. He had sworn obedience to God, Fatherland and the duty entrusted to him, and Britain had chosen to enter the conflict against Germany. British merchant ships carried the food, fuel and material that sustained Britain's armies, fleets and factories.
He did not need to hate the sailors aboard them.
He only needed to destroy what sustained their country.
"Course south," he ordered. "Remain submerged for another hour."
U-39 turned away.
Whether the boats above survived was no longer his concern. Perhaps another merchantman would find them. Perhaps the weather would remain calm. Perhaps it would not.
There were more ships ahead, and U-39 was only one submarine.
Through the night of 17 July and into the following days, the German commerce war spread across Britain's Atlantic approaches. U-boats hunted from darkness, fog and beneath the surface, sometimes surfacing to finish isolated ships with their deck guns, but increasingly relying on torpedoes whenever a target's identity was certain.
Farther west and south, the six battlecruisers continued their own methodical work. Merchantmen were ordered to stop, crews removed, papers checked and the ships scuttled before the Germans moved on. Against vessels of that size and firepower, resistance was usually pointless.
Soon the reports began arriving faster than anyone could make sense of them. Ships failed to reach port. Neutral vessels recovered survivors from lifeboats. Merchant captains spoke of German capital ships appearing far beyond the North Sea, while wireless operators passed warnings of submarines, strange wakes and attacks from unseen enemies.
Distress messages crackled through the wireless in broken Morse, sometimes ending halfway through transmission.
GERMAN WARSHIP SIGHTED—
ORDERED TO HEAVE TO—
SUBMARINE—
Then silence.
By 18 July, the pattern could no longer be dismissed as panic or confusion. German surface raiders and submarines were operating behind Britain's northern naval screen, and the damage was beginning to spread through the merchant routes.
The enemy was already behind the cordon.
Now the Admiralty had to decide how to stop them before the losses became something Britain could no longer ignore.