Tallinn-Haapsalu

THE WASA QUEEN begins to thread her way through the scatter of rocks and islands lying south of Helsinki. She is bound for Tallinn, the capital of recently Soviet-free Estonia, three hours across the Gulf of Finland. Islands, some wooded and rounded like porcupines, others half-submerged and rocky, loll like submarines or seals off the Finnish port, creating a feeling of frivolity. This is not serious water, more a playful ante-room to the austere Baltic further east. Hydrofoils tow their boiling wakes as they cross and recross at high speed, teasing the white, top-heavy ferry ships on their more stately passages.

Helsinki waterfront, with its formal row of eighteenth-century port buildings, their ochre regularity broken only by the copper and gold spires of Gornostayer's Uspensky Orthodox church and the soaring white dome and turrets of the Lutheran cathedral, dwindles behind us, the funnels of tugs, the masts of fishing boats, the cluster of cranes, slipping out of sight until there is only the slightest of indentations to be descried. Soon even the gulls cease their flap and screech.

*

Tallinn had come to my notice a long time ago. After the German unconditional surrender in 1945 it was arranged that the task of redistributing the German fleet among the victorious Allies should be handed to the Royal Navy. The German ships, ordered back to their various home ports from wherever they happened to be, ended up at Wilhelmshaven, Bremen, Hamburg and Kiel, an assortment of battleships, cruisers, destroyers, minesweepers, E-boats and submarines. When the quotas were agreed the idea was that German crews would sail their own ships under surveillance to ports in America, Britain and the Soviet Union, returning as passengers to Germany.

There was an immediate setback, for the first ship, 2521, to be returned under this operation, one of a draft destined for the Soviet Union, docked at Tallinn, its crew guaranteed safe conduct home. They were never seen again.

Not surprisingly, German captains showed no enthusiasm for following them, threatening to scuttle their ships rather than take them to a Soviet port. It was arranged, therefore, that in future ships would sail under sealed orders, commanded by a British naval officer, but with their German crew intact. Their destination would be revealed only when well out at sea. Once handed over, their crews would return home in ships of the Royal Navy.

That was the theory anyway. TS19 had sailed from Bremerhaven at 0900 under the command, as far as internal matters were concerned, of Korvetten-Kapitän Schlemmer; Peter Döblin, with whom I had been at school, was First Lieutenant. As we approached the roads west of the Kiel Canal my yeoman of signals clattered on to the bridge with an envelope. I knew before I opened it what it would say. We had cleared the crew off the ship before sailing and a thorough search of all decks and cabins had been made as an insurance against sabotage.

Schlemmer had gone below to his cabin just after we passed Heligoland on our port beam. Heligoland had been a U-boat base, but it was destroyed in one terrifying night attack by Mitchell bombers. As we closed on it the rock openings that housed the U-boats were clearly visible. It had been a holiday island once, now scarcely inhabited.

I knocked on Schlemmer's door and when he held it half-open a shape on his bunk was vaguely discernible. "You have company," I inquired, "perhaps I might be introduced?"

He appeared unconcerned, but muttered something over his shoulder. Reluctantly, the shape disentangled itself from its protective sheeting to reveal an attractive girl in her early twenties, rather grubby, and wearing only pants. She was Polish, a dockyard worker who had prevailed upon Schlemmer, whom she knew, to let her stowaway to wherever we might be destined.

I gave Schlemmer the news and also a raised eyebrow. "I cannot answer for my crew," he replied, "for they lost many friends on our sister ship, but of course I will comply with your orders."

"You must answer for your crew," I said, "because it is my responsibility to see this ship is handed over intact to the Russians and if it is not you will be for the high jump. And I too, probably."

We had a couple of armed marines on board, but if the German crew had taken it into their heads to scuttle the ship or overpower us, there was little we could do except shoot a few of them. I'm not sure whether either marine had ever fired a gun in anger and they looked as unsuitable agents of destruction as the guns themselves. Meanwhile, I gave the order to alter course to starboard.

We had been on a dissembling, roundabout route that had taken us out into the North Sea as far as Sylt in the Friesian Islands. Sylt is almost entirely composed of sand dunes, in which both the wealthier and poorer classes, at opposite ends of the island, had been accustomed to loll naked during the golden months in happier days. Döblin had often been there with his family and had tales of mountainous women and their vast, insect-bitten arses. He and his brother used to hide in the long grasses and spy on the better-looking ones, until, one day, so absorbed in their research, they failed to notice a huge brute of a fellow who descended on them from behind and gave them a beating.

We slowed down, the change in engine revolutions causing the same adrenalin increase as it had rarely failed to do on patrol during the war. There were some noises, indicators of potential danger, that never lost their power to alarm.

Good sense, fortunately, had prevailed. Schlemmer called his ship's company together, pointing out the cost of an injudicious insurrection, most likely a long spell inside, and emphasising the presence of British warships in the Baltic, stationed as guarantees of safety in the area of likely ports of disembarkation.

From then on, all went well. We inched through the canal, cleared Lübeck Bay, and made our way south of Bornholm into the Baltic. Two days later, near the island of Saaremaa, south-west of Tallinn, we kept a rendezvous with two destroyers, one Soviet and one British. The German crew was transferred to the British escort and a skeleton Russian crew took over TS19 with a great show of bossiness leading us into Tallinn harbour. The much relieved marines and I returned on a minesweeper in which I had served three years earlier.

*

That was then. Now, as we moved gently on a clear autumn afternoon across the Gulf, an accordion band playing and Finnish couples performing solemn waltzes and fox-trots in the saloon - I had incorrectly been led to suppose that the ships would be full of drunken Finns on their way to cheap Estonian liquor - I began to think again of "old" Schlemmer. "Old" now, of course, indeed dead, though when we first met in circumstances more uncongenial for him than for me he was far from old. I was twenty-four, and he was perhaps in his late thirties, a career sailor from a long established naval family. TS19 was his second command and not one that suggested further promotion. The way to glory in the German navy was via U-boats or capital ships, like the Tirpitz, or Hipper, whose name still sent shivers down my spine and whose officers I could still see in my mind's eye directing fire as she closed on Onslow, preparatory to finishing us off. Although Schlemmer had fashionable naval connections - Admiral Doenitz was one - he had evidently been regarded as lacking in political zeal, a competent enough seaman, but a man of rather sophisticated tastes and frivolous habits.

After our Baltic adventure Schlemmer returned to Hamburg, was denazified in the manner of the time, and demobilised. His family had property, and a printing business, in Lower Saxony, near Celle. I was at that time editing a magazine for naval forces in Germany and because his terms were good, and I liked and trusted him, it became possible to put some small business his way. He was inordinately grateful, as most German families, of whatever background, were on the bread line.

Richard Schlemmer was, in appearance at least, a ladies' man: good-looking in rather a caddish way, dark glossy hair en brosse, aquiline features. He never actually wore a monocle, but looked as if he might. He did, however, use a cigarette holder and but for rather doggily sincere brown eyes he could have been taken for a younger Conrad Veidt. He possessed a gold Fabergé cigarette case and he would tap it in actorish fashion when at a momentary loss.

There were many such moments for Germans in those bleak winters immediately after the war. Refugees, swathed up against the cold and pushing their worldly belongings in pathetic little handcarts, swarmed in from the east. The concept of war criminals floated over the heads of anyone engaged in political, military or administrative duties, and various underground movements, like Werewolf, continued to recruit in the illusion that Germany would soon be back on its feet, and that their secreted hoards of arms, usually in the mountains, could still come in useful.

Schlemmer was no sort of Nazi, but like most serving officers he had at least nominal allegiance to the Party. Over the period of our business dealings I learned that on his mother's side there were Polish and Estonian connections and that since the halting of the German push east and the subsequent Russian sweep towards Berlin all news of them had ceased.

I was able from time to time to make inquiries on his behalf though...