by Chris Durbin
HOLBROOKE’S TIDE
The Fourth Carlisle & Holbrooke
Naval Adventure
Chris Durbin
To
Kate
our musician
Holbrooke’s Tide Copyright © 2019 by Chris Durbin.
All Rights Reserved.
Chris Durbin has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Editor: Lucia Durbin
Cover designed by Book Beaver.
This book is a work of fiction. Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, or to events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Chris Durbin
Visit my website at:
www.chris-durbin.com
First Edition: 2019
Contents
Introduction
Nautical Terms
Principal Characters
Charts
Prologue: Contraband
1: Chance Encounter
2: A Calculated Risk
3: The Admiralty Secretary
4: Admiral Forbes
5: Portsmouth
6: The Cottage on the River
7: Christmas at Rookesbury
8: To The Ems
9: Behold Emden!
10: Horse Artillery
11: … Shall Suffer Death
12: Political Compromise
13: The Plan
14: The Rule of 1756
15: Ambush
16: The Pink
17: Major Albach
18: The Gunboat
19: The Commodore
20: News
21: The Dollart
22: A Dangerous Proposal
23: Holbrooke’s Tide
24: Tightening the Noose
25: The Pursuit
26: Negotiation
27: Emden Occupied
28: Ostend
29: The Dunkirker
30: Resolution
Epilogue
Other Carlisle & Holbrooke Naval Adventures
Bibliography
The Author
Feedback
Nautical Terms
Throughout the centuries, sailors have created their own language to describe the highly technical equipment and processes that they use to live and work at sea. This holds true in the twenty-first century.
When counting the number of nautical terms that I’ve used in this series of novels, it became evident that a printed book wasn’t the best place for them. I’ve therefore created a glossary of nautical terms on my website:
https://chris-durbin.com/glossary/
My glossary of nautical terms is limited to those that I’ve used in this series of novels, as they were used in the middle of the eighteenth century. It’s intended as a work of reference to accompany the Carlisle and Holbrooke series of naval adventure novels.
Some of the usages of these terms have changed over the years, so this glossary should be used with caution when referring to periods before 1740 or after 1780.
The glossary isn’t exhaustive, and a more comprehensive list can be found in Falconer’s Universal Dictionary of the Marine, first published in 1769. I haven’t counted the number of terms that Falconer has defined, but he fills 328 pages with English language terms, followed by a further eighty-three pages of French translations. It is a monumental work.
An online version of the 1780 edition of The Universal Dictionary (which unfortunately does not include all the excellent diagrams that are in the print version) can be found on this website:
https://archive.org/details/universaldiction00falc/
◆◆◆
Introduction
Britannia Resurgent
The end of 1757 marked a turning point for Britain’s global strategy. The execution of Admiral Byng in March had drawn some sort of a line under that ugly episode, and the navy was starting to be successful again, giving the British public faith in the eventual outcome of the war and the City the confidence to invest.
The Pitt-Newcastle ministry was formed in June 1757, a partnership which had seemed impossible only a short time before. It brought together several diverse parliamentary factions and created a stable government that could effectively implement Pitt’s war strategy. The ministry ended a period of dire political instability, because of which Britain had struggled to prosecute the war successfully. Pitt was a strong war leader with an outstanding grasp of strategy, but he lacked the support in parliament that was necessary to provide effective leadership. Newcastle, however, had a solid base of support in both houses and knew how to use it. Pitt directed the war strategy and foreign policy, while Newcastle controlled the nation's finances and patronage.
Pitt had a clear idea of what should happen next. He was happy to provide the finance for a Hanoverian and Prussian army to tie down the French in Germany and protect the King’s possessions without having to deploy British troops to the continent. At the same time, he used the Channel Fleet to threaten the French coastline and force the French to keep their army reinforcements on home soil. But his real aim was to isolate New France – Canada to the British – so that they could receive neither reinforcements nor supplies from France. He’d then employ a three-pronged attack along the St. Lawrence River, up the Ohio Valley and across the wilderness to Lake Ontario; to force the surrender of the French colonies.
Meanwhile, he would defend Britain from the threat of invasion and hold the French in the West and East Indies until he had the naval and military strength to start taking territory. For this he needed the ships that had been ordered at the beginning of the war to bring the Royal Navy up to strength, and that wouldn’t happen until later in 1758.
◆◆◆
Carlisle and Holbrooke
The year 1757 ended well for the two heroes of this continuing tale of adventure at sea in the mid-eighteenth century. Carlisle had distinguished himself in his frigate, Medina, surviving a hurricane in the Caribbean and saving from destruction a Spanish ship and its passengers, the governor of Spanish Florida and his family. Medina was ordered to take the governor to his capital at St. Augustine, a simple enough mission but for the efforts of some piratical villains from the governor’s past, who haunted the frigate on its journey through the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.
However, Carlisle missed the culminating acts of the year, having been injured in the final battle with the Dutch pirates, which resulted in the capture of a fine ship-rigged sloop named Torenvalk, Kestrel in English. His first lieutenant, George Holbrooke, was given temporary command of Medina and it was under Holbrooke that the frigate took part in Forrest’s action off Cape François, where three British line-of-battle ships routed four French opponents. Despite beating the French and sending them back into the safety of their port, Forrest’s squadron was severely damaged and had to return to Port Royal for refit, leaving Medina alone to watch the enormous French convoy that was waiting at Cape François. When the convoy sailed in November, Holbrooke took two prizes in cooperation with a pair of British privateers and destroyed a large French frigate, running it aground on a deadly reef on the edge of the Bahamas.
Holbrooke returned to Port Royal to find his captain recovered and ready to resume command of Medina. He was expecting to slip back into the role of second-in-command of the frigate, but a fatality at the Battle of Cape François – a more senior lieutenant who had
been promised a promotion – left the command of the newly-renamed Kestrel available. Admiral Cotes gave the sloop to Holbrooke and sent him to England with dispatches for the Admiralty.
Carlisle resumed command of Medina expecting to spend some time on the Jamaica Station with his wife who was established in a house in Kingston.
The story continues…
◆◆◆
Principal Characters
Fictional Characters
Commander George Holbrooke: Commanding Officer, Kestrel.
Lieutenant Charles Lynton: First Lieutenant, Kestrel.
Lieutenant Nicholas Deschamps: First Lieutenant, Kestrel.
Lieutenant Colin Treganoc: Officer Commanding Royal Marines, Kestrel.
Josiah Fairview: Sailing Master, Kestrel.
Stephen Varley: Master’s Mate, Kestrel.
Reverend John (David) Chalmers: Chaplain, Kestrel.
Jackson: Bosun, Kestrel.
Jacques Serviteur: Captain’s Servant, Kestrel.
Captain Edward Carlisle: Commanding Officer, Medina.
Colonel Reutter: Commander of the Austrian detachment at Emden
Major Hans Albach: Second in Command, Austrian detachment at Emden.
William Holbrooke: George Holbrooke’s father.
Ann Featherstone: Young lady.
◆◆◆
Historical Characters
Empress Maria Theresa: Sovereign of Austria and other countries, Holy Roman Empress.
Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick: Commander of the allied armies in Germany.
Duke d'Estrées: Commander of the French armies in Westphalia.
Admiral George Forbes: Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty.
Commodore Charles Holmes: Commander-in-Chief; Weser, Elbe and Ems.
John Clevland: Secretary to the Admiralty Board.
◆◆◆
Charts
The Southwest Approaches
The Southern North Sea
The River Ems Estuary
Emden and the Dollart
City of Emden
‘There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.’
◆◆◆
Marcus Junius Brutus
(according to William Shakespeare)
Julius Caesar Act 4, scene 3.
◆◆◆
Prologue: Contraband
Thursday, Seventeenth of November 1757.
Hind, at Sea. The Western Ems Estuary.
The south-westerly wind bore the rhythmic sound of the waves beating upon the sandbars of Borkum, just five cables under the frigate’s lee. She was lying-to under a curious set of sails, her foresail drawing, and her main course backed, and there were no sails set above the tops. The group of men on the quarterdeck of the frigate were acutely aware of both the wind and the state of the tide; it was the end of the ebb, and soon the strong flood would sweep them inexorably into the estuary of the Ems river. There was little room for manoeuvre in this tiny channel, barely eight cables wide, and once the flood tide took them, they’d be unable to make the open sea again and must anchor somewhere up the channel and await the next ebb. On this dark afternoon at the back-end of autumn, the sun would set in three hours, and by then they must be gone from this precarious position.
Sir Richard Hughes, in command of His Britannic Majesty’s frigate Hind, was studiously ignoring his sailing master who in turn was studiously ignoring his captain. This wasn’t through any sort of mutual dislike, but each man knew that they had already stayed in the estuary longer than was prudent, and neither wished to admit it. The captain held his telescope to his eye, looking hopefully to windward, past the low outline of Rottum on the larboard bow. For Sir Richard was in a state of high frustration. He’d been ordered to this wretched coast to intercept the small vessels – bilanders, snows and busses for the most part – that were keeping the French army in Hanover supplied through their garrison at Emden. He’d been on the station for two weeks now but had achieved nothing. It was the geography of this coast that was defeating him. The supply vessels all came from the Dutch Netherlands, the Seven Provinces that stretched from the Austrian Netherlands all the way to the East Frisian border. When the weather was fair, and there was no British cruiser in the offing, the Dutchmen would leave the Zuiderzee by the deep, well-marked Texel passage and follow the chain of islands north and then east until they came to the Western Ems estuary, timing their arrival for the flood tide. However, with Hind cruising the coast they took the safer but slower inshore passage, between the shoreline and the Dutch islands, anchoring or taking the ground between the tides and moving eastwards on each flood tide. It was slower because the whole passage dried out twice a day as the tide receded, but no frigate could menace them in those neutral waters, and no captain of a British frigate would willingly hazard his ship in that uncertain littoral zone.
‘Mister Coggins,’ said Sir Richard, without turning around. ‘We’ll give it another twenty minutes and then make our offing.’
The master was used to his captain. They’d served together for a year, and had been moderately successful, taking two French privateers back in May, in company with Trident and Lowestoffe. But Coggins knew that wasn’t enough for his captain; Sir Richard thirsted for the success that would bring recognition in the Admiralty.
Coggins’ responsibility was to keep the frigate safe, and he knew that they could stay another twenty minutes, even though that was cutting it a little fine. They’d worked out this plan together. They couldn’t touch the supply vessels inside the chain of islands because that was clearly Dutch territorial water, and the Seven Provinces were neutral in this war. However, they knew that the masters of those ships could shave a day off the passage from the Zuiderzee by taking the offshore route. Time was money, and they’d gambled that if the Dutchmen didn’t see them for a few days, they’d risk the offshore passage in pursuit of a faster voyage and greater profit. Having studied the charts and the tides and used all the master’s experience to forecast the weather, they’d decided that today would be the day. Hind had withdrawn to the east for the two preceding days, to the Weser estuary, leaving the Dutch coast unwatched. They’d baited the trap and set the spring, and now they needed a mouse, but time was running out.
Five minutes passed, and the master noticed that the wind was dropping with the waning of the day, and it looked like it might veer into the west or even the north-west. Ten minutes, fifteen and no sign of a Dutchman. Sir Richard took a nervous turn to the taffrail and back. He caught the master’s eye and cleared his throat in preparation for the order that would send Hind back out into the cold wastes of the North Sea, leaving his plan unfulfilled. But the order was never given.
‘Deck there!’ shouted the lookout at the fore t’gallant crosstree. ‘Sail four points on the larboard bow! She looks like a two-masted Dutchman.’
‘Right on time,’ said the master, with deep satisfaction. ‘It’s too late for him to turn back now, the wind and tide won’t let him.’
‘Then lay the frigate a cable to windward of him, Mister Coggins,’ said Sir Richard, relieved that his plan had worked. In the confines of a frigate nothing was secret, and the people knew very well that their captain had invested half a week in this scheme. It wasn’t good for morale if he should be seen to fail too often.
‘Aye-aye sir,’ replied the master and he picked up his speaking-trumpet to give the orders that would set the topsails, the mizzen and the staysails.
‘Master Gunner,’ called Sir Richard. ‘Put a shot across her bows as soon as we’re in range.’
◆◆◆
Sir Richard watched as his longboat pulled the short distance back from the bilander. He’d sent his best master�
�s mate to investigate the ship’s inventory and destination, but in truth, she could hardly be sailing for anywhere other than Emden. There was nothing larger than tiny fishing villages in the remainder of the Ems Estuary, nor in the shallow, tidal saltwater lake called the Dollart at the head of the estuary. The only cargoes consigned to Emden were for the French garrison or d'Estrées’ army. Britain had taken steps to outlaw this trade carried out by neutral vessels, and it was odds-on that the Dutchman’s ship and cargo would be condemned under the current rather liberal interpretation of the Rule of 1756. So, it was with surprise that Sir Richard saw that the master’s mate was sat in the stern sheets when he should by rights be underway for Harwich.
‘I’ll see Mister Jensen in my cabin,’ he said as he stumped below, his ill-humour evident to everyone on the quarterdeck.
Five minutes later Jensen walked into the cabin with evident trepidation. He knew that he should by now be at the helm of the bilander, hard on the wind making his offing with the Dutch crew confined below decks.
‘Well, Mister Jensen, what do you have to say for yourself?’ Sir Richard was irritated at the return of his prize-master, but he also knew that his master’s mate was unlikely to have returned without a good cause; he was preparing for his lieutenant’s examination and very much needed his captain’s good word.
‘She’s a Dutchman, sir, last from Hoorn and bound for Emden with victualling supplies; beef, pork, bread and cheese and two tons of powder …’