Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [103]
When, at last, Roosevelt fixed an August rendezvous at Placentia Bay, off Newfoundland, the prime minister’s hopes were unbounded. He wrote to the queen before his departure on the fourth: “I must say I do not think our friend375 would have asked me to go so far for what must be a meeting of world-wide notice, unless he had in mind some further forward step.” He was in tearing spirits on the rail journey north, as was his entourage on discovering the lavish scale of catering provided. From Scapa Flow he cabled the president, using language that assumed a community of purpose far closer than that which Roosevelt acknowledged: “We are just off. It is 27 years ago today that Huns began their last war. We must make a good job of it this time. Twice ought to be enough.” Then, in Colville’s words “with a retinue which Cardinal Wolsey might have envied,”376 Churchill set sail aboard the great battleship Prince of Wales for Newfoundland. Harry Hopkins, newly returned from Moscow and once more in a state of collapse, joined them for the passage. That marvellously brave man had travelled most of the way from Russia in the gun blister of a Catalina flying boat.
One of the few useful purposes fulfilled by British battleships in the Second World War was to convey Churchill on his wartime journeys in a style befitting the arbiter of an embattled empire. There was an irony about his presence aboard Prince of Wales. Only a few weeks earlier, he had demanded courts-martial of officers deemed to have lacked resolution in the navy’s contest with the Bismarck. He was furious that Prince of Wales had broken off action after Hood’s sinking, even though the British battleship was damaged. The court-martial proposal was dropped only when Adm. Sir John Tovey, C-in-C Home Fleet, said that if any such retribution was attempted, he himself would resign his post and serve as “prisoner’s friend.”
En route to the Atlantic rendezvous, much less work was done than became usual on later voyages. There was no agenda to prepare, because the British delegation had no notion how the meeting might evolve. They seized the opportunity for rest. Churchill read with relish three of C. S. Forester’s Hornblower novels, tales of derring-do about the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars. He fantasised enthusiastically about a possible sortie from northern Norway by the Tirpitz, sister ship of the Bismarck, which might enable him to participate in a great naval engagement. Mothersill’s pills were much in demand as specifics against seasickness.
Humble members of the British delegation, such as a cluster of clerks, were amazed by manifestations of the prime minister’s informality. “Working in H[arry] H[opkins]’s cabin this morning,”377 Corporal Geoffrey Green wrote in his diary, “& WSC came in wearing only pyjama coat & cigar—no pants—grinned at us and said ‘good morning’—too amazed to reply properly!” The ship’s storerooms were packed with delicacies from Fortnum & Mason, together with ninety grouse, killed ahead of the usual shooting season to provide a treat for the prime minister’s exalted guests. On the American side, Hopkins cabled Washington suggesting that hams, wine and fruit, especially lemons, would be acceptable to the British party.
Placentia Bay is a rocky inlet on the south coast of Newfoundland, where some five hundred inhabitants occupied a fishing settlement ashore. The British discerned a resemblance to a Hebridean sea loch. Early on the morning of August 9, Prince of Wales began to stand in. Then her officers realised that the ship’s clocks were set ahead of the Newfoundland Time Zone. The ship turned and ploughed a lazy course offshore