Holbrooke's Tide

by Chris Durbin

  ‘Mister Matross. Get your men together and follow the marines. I want that bridge blown in ten minutes.’

  He could hear muskets being fired. It was too soon for Barton’s men to be engaged; it must be a few nervous Frenchmen, shooting at nothing. Of course, these weren’t field troops he was up against; these were garrison soldiers, too old or unfit to serve with the regular army that had swept aside the Duke of Cumberland. If this had been a regular French infantry regiment, the expedition would never have been attempted.

  The seamen were all leaping onto the barges now. Here was Jackson, jumping from boat to boat as he made his way to Holbrooke.

  ‘There are only six of ‘em, sir. With the tide turning and the current behind us, it’ll be easy to run down the river with two behind each boat.’

  ‘Yes. I don’t want to burn any if we can avoid it.’

  Any more than six would have needed to be burned. Each of the boats could tow two of the barges, leaving Kestrel’s longboat to cover their retreat with the two-pounder boat-gun.

  The musketry was becoming regular now, it must be Barton’s marines in action. Hopefully, they were holding off the French while Matross laid his charges. The French commander had a serious problem on his hands. He needed a disciplined, prepared force to storm the bridge, and that he didn’t have with his men being disturbed from the preparation of their supper. He couldn’t outflank the marines either to the left, where they’d have to ford the stream or to the right, where the reed bed protected the British force. Given time and daylight, neither obstacle was insurmountable, but at night, in the confusion of the first evening on the march, neither was likely. And presumably he didn’t know that the clock was ticking for him as the gunner worked methodically to lay his charges.

  Suddenly the darkness to the north was split by the sound of two explosions. They weren’t large charges, just twenty pounds of powder each, and they hadn’t been placed in a confined space, so the damage was limited. However, as Holbrooke later earned, they had lifted the wooden planks of the centre span of the bridge and left a twelve-foot gap with only the more massive longitudinal timbers surviving. The bridge could be repaired in half an hour, but Holbrooke didn’t intend to allow the French commander that much time.

  ‘Barges are all secured, sir,’ said Jackson.

  ‘Very well, hold against the jetty until the marines return.’

  ‘Here they come now,’ said Jackson, pointing inland.

  This was a very tight battlefield; the bridge was only two hundred yards from the jetty, and the nearest French bivouacs were only half a mile beyond. Evidently, enough Frenchmen had forded the stream to cause Barton to withdraw. Half a dozen marines came with a rush to the base of the jetty and knelt facing back up the road. Two more marines appeared out of the dark dragging another, apparently wounded. It came as a shock to Holbrooke to recognise Captain Barton, unconscious, his face pale and with a bloodstained waistcoat.

  A whistle blew, and the remainder of the marines came back with a rush, Treganoc last of all, passing through the rearguard.

  Treganoc saluted. ‘The marines have withdrawn sir.’

  ‘Then get them into the barges, Mister Treganoc, and don’t forget the captain.’

  ‘Mister Jackson, cast off, we’ll see you in the river.’

  ‘Aye-aye sir,’ he heard faintly. It was easy to leave the jetty; the winter rain that had built up in the lake was releasing a steady flow of water. As each boat with its pair of barges cast off, the current quickly took them, and they disappeared into the darkness.

  The rearguard was firing regularly now, and Holbrooke could see the answering flashes from the French as they crowded forward.

  Dawson had turned the longboat around so that it was secured by the bow, it’s stern held well out into the stream by the starboard oarsmen against the tug of the current.

  ‘Mister Treganoc. Now!’ shouted Holbrooke.

  The rearguard fired once more then turned and ran full pelt for the longboat. Treganoc walked – no, he strolled – back the boat and stepped deliberately aboard. Holbrooke stamped his foot in frustration. ‘Let go,’ he shouted as soon as Treganoc was in the longboat.

  The oarsmen backed water, and the longboat edged out into the stream. In a matter of seconds, they were taken by the current, and the gap between boat and jetty widened. A mass of soldiers, realising that the rearguard had withdrawn, charged onto the dock. A junior officer, more in control than the others was ordering his men into line for a volley that must surely kill or wound a quarter of the seamen and marines packed into the longboat.

  ‘Mister Matross, when you’re ready,’ shouted Holbrooke.

  A maddening few seconds followed, in which Matross fussed with the elevation screw and waited for the bows to be directly in line. The French could be seen ramming their muskets.

  Then suddenly the darkness was split by a violent tongue of flame and a roar that sounded loud for being so close. The two-pounder sent its cannister-load of musket balls towards the jetty. The last that Holbrooke saw, as the smoke cleared and before the whole was lost to the dark, was a struggling mass of bodies where the disciplined rank of soldiers had been. Not a shot followed them as the swollen stream carried them swiftly down to the Ems.

  ◆◆◆

  It should have been a happy crew that rode the ebbing tide down the Ems to the waiting squadron. Holbrooke, however, couldn’t shake off the feeling of depression that always came over him after he’d been in action, even when he won. That last lethal blast from the boat-gun had probably killed half a dozen Frenchmen and maimed the same number. He didn’t subscribe to the view that once in uniform, they were fair game, unlike civilians who so often had the prefix innocent applied to their description. Few of those soldiers had joined the French army by choice. Each had a story that would never be told: poverty, poor decisions in life, disinheritance, debt. The reasons for joining the army as a common soldier were endless, but few of them involved a free choice. And there was poor Captain Barton. He’d been shot somewhere between the chest and the stomach. It was impossible in the small boat to carry out any kind of treatment; it was hard enough just to make him comfortable. Holbrooke knew that a musket ball anywhere in the body was invariably fatal.

  ◆◆◆

  ‘An elegant operation, Mister Holbrooke. Very neat indeed,’ said the commodore, when Holbrooke and Treganoc had reported to his cabin before the sun had risen. ‘Captain Barton I know about, and I’m expecting the doctor’s report at any moment. But did you lose anyone else?’

  ‘No seamen were injured at all, sir. I’ll let Mister Treganoc give a report on his marines.’

  ‘We lost one man at the bridge, sir, at the same time as Captain Barton was shot. I judged it best to leave him as he was already gone. Another marine was shot in the shoulder as we withdrew, through-and-through missing the main arteries and the bones. With luck, he’ll be back on duty in a month.’

  Holbrooke hadn’t noticed a wounded marine when the landing party withdrew. The man must have had heroic fortitude to jump over those boats with a hole in his shoulder.

  ‘Would you describe the action at the bridge, Mister Treganoc?’ asked the commodore.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Treganoc paused for a moment, marshalling his thoughts. He was a man of extraordinary self-discipline, as Holbrooke had already noticed, and he started his narrative in a firm, steady voice, despite having been in close action less than an hour before.

  ‘Captain Barton formed the whole party in two lines, and we doubled up the jetty without any opposition. The bridge was easy to find, we just followed the path from the jetty and turned left on the road. It was only three hundred yards from the boats. We crossed the bridge without seeing anything of the enemy. The whole body of marines formed two ranks on the far side and prepared to receive a charge. Soon after, we heard musket shots close in front of us, but they weren’t well aimed and caused us no difficulty. Kestrel’s gunner, Mister Matross and two of his mates arrived with
the charges only seconds behind the marines, and they started work setting the kegs under the deck. After five minutes we could hear the first attack forming up in the darkness, but we held our fire until they charged, rather than waste our ammunition shooting into the dark. They gave us good warning, and when they charged two volleys cleared them, and none came closer than twenty yards. It was in that first attack that Captain Barton fell. He was to the front and received a ball as they withdrew.’

  Treganoc allowed a decent pause after describing the force commander’s wounding.

  ‘I took command and ordered the captain moved to the rear, but I couldn’t afford to lose any more men to take him back to the boats as the second attack was already forming up. We suffered two more attacks, but they weren’t pressed home with any vigour; it was plain to see that these were garrison troops, not a regular line regiment. When Mister Matross reported the bridge ready to be blown, I withdrew the marines to the near side of the bridge and formed them fifty yards away, ready to receive a charge, that being the distance that Mister Matross informed me was safe. I don’t believe that any French crossed the bridge before it was blown.’

  The commodore nodded. It was a stirring tale of valour on a cold and dark night, told in stark, factual terms.

  ‘After the explosion, I inspected the bridge. Twelve feet of the deck had been destroyed but the beams all survived. Nevertheless, it had been sufficiently damaged to slow the enemy down for at least five minutes, in my judgement. I detached a rearguard under a sergeant to form a defensive position at the jetty and to take back the wounded. Some few minutes later we could hear another attack forming. I ordered a volley into the dark, then we withdrew through the rearguard and onto the barges. The rearguard followed in good order. The marines fought in the best possible manner, sir, I have no complaint to make against any man.’

  Holmes stood in silence for a moment, trying to imagine the scene at the bridge. He found that he couldn’t; nothing in his experience in any way matched the sheer courage of men standing firm, while an attacking force of unknown size and ability could be heard preparing their assault only yards in front of them, in the pitch-black. It would have been easy for the marines’ cohesion to crumble and the commodore appreciated that it was only the habit of discipline that kept them together.

  ‘Mister Holbrooke, you were able to withdraw the boats in good order?’

  ‘Yes, sir, we did. Seahorse’s longboat and yawl and Strombolo’s longboat took two barges each in tow, and we sent them away before the marine rearguard commenced their withdrawal. Mister Treganoc was the last to leave the jetty, just yards ahead of the French. Kestrel’s longboat cleared the jetty with canister from the boat gun and didn’t receive a single shot in return. We returned to the squadron without incident, sir.’

  Holmes was again lost in thought. His had been a typical sea officer’s career. He’d served in the last war and seen action against men-of-war and privateers. He’d taken prizes, and he’d defended convoys, but he’d never been involved in anything as personal as this bloody little fight at a bridge over an unnamed stream running into a river that nobody in England had ever heard of. He was having difficulty imagining it, and he was – in a way – envious of these two junior officers before him.

  There was a knock at the door, and the commodore’s steward admitted the surgeon. He was a brisk, energetic man, lean to the point of cadaverous. He didn’t look like the jolliest of messmates.

  ‘I regret to inform you, your honour,’ he said in his broad Scots accent, ‘that Captain Barton has died. It was the loss of blood, but he’d have died anyway given the nature of the wound.’

  Holmes looked shocked, more at the callous way in which the report was made than at the fact of the death. Holbrooke looked sideways at Treganoc. He was staring steadfastly at the door, his face showing no emotion except for a nervous movement of his jaw.

  ‘Then get out of here, Doctor, and make your report in writing. Good day to you,’ said Holmes savagely. The surgeon’s expression didn’t change. It was all one to him; he cared not what people thought of him, secure as he was in the certainty of his intellectual superiority.

  It occurred to Holbrooke that the commodore must also have been under intense strain these past hours. Holbrooke and Treganoc had found an outlet in action, but Holmes had been forced to wait in his cabin, knowing nothing of the success or failure of the expedition until the boats had appeared silently out of the darkness. If he’d lost the four boats and all those men, it would have tarnished the success of the operation against Emden. His part in ordering the boat expedition had a valour all its own.

  ◆◆◆

  26: Negotiation

  Monday, Twentieth of March 1758.

  Kestrel, at Anchor. The Dollart.

  Holbrooke was in the longboat again, with Chalmers sat beside him. He’d been sent at first light by the commodore to determine whether Emden was still defended, Chalmers acting as interpreter if required. The longboat sported the largest ensign that it would bear so that there should be no doubt as to which nation was claiming the conquest.

  Dawson steered the longboat up the western approach channel that they had buoyed little more than twenty-four hours before. So much had happened since then that it seemed like a lifetime ago, and it was almost a surprise to see that the buoys hadn’t been removed. The defenders of Emden had evidently decided that even such a minor act of resistance was worthless.

  As they turned to the east around the island of Nessa, the whole city came into sight. Holbrooke was the first to see the entire objective of this expedition in the daylight, despite the blockade having been in place since early January. The walls, he now saw, were extensive but low, and on this seaward side they were pierced by several openings to allow ships to be warped to the quays right in the centre.

  There was the bastion that Lynton and Treganoc had bombarded the night before last. The damage, though superficial, was plain to see: chipped masonry, a broken crenellation, nothing that couldn’t be easily repaired, but there was no sign of any attempt to do so.

  A jetty protruded into the Emden Road half a mile east of the bastion. No vessels lay alongside, and everything looked entirely peaceful.

  ‘Put us alongside, Dawson,’ said Holbrooke, indicating the deserted wooden platform.

  The oars were tossed at the last moment, and Dawson ran the longboat neatly alongside. The bow oar carried the painter ashore and took a turn around a handy post, bringing the end of the painter back inboard. The situation ashore was unknown, and the longboat needed to be able to retire quickly if things should turn ugly.

  Holbrooke and Chalmers waited and watched. For a full ten minutes, there was no sign of life other than an occasional small boy, drawn by inquisitiveness, peering through the crenellations and scampering away when Holbrooke turned to look at him. At the base of the jetty there was a wide gap in the walls closed by double doors that looked like oak – new oak at that – with iron studs to turn aside axes and delay attackers. Holbrooke wasn’t going to compromise his dignity by attempting to force the gates; in any case, he didn’t have the means. The minutes passed, and the eerie silence persisted. Holbrooke took another look at the walls and the gate and turned to Chalmers.

  ‘We’ve tried knocking politely at the front door, Mister Chalmers, now we’ll try the servant’s entrance,’ he said pointing to the waterway just a few tens of yards further east that presumably penetrated the heart of the city. It didn’t look as though it was defended at all, and they should be able to row right up to where his chart told him the Town House should be. He had hoped that he wouldn’t have to take this route. The jetty gave him a useful means of retreat whereas once inside the walls it would be easy for his boat to be trapped, and he didn’t know the situation in the town. It could be still occupied by a French detachment; those that he’d engaged last night may have been only part of the garrison. And the Austrians could still be in the city, they probably were in fact. Then again, there wa
s an assumption that the Frisian citizens would welcome the British navy, but that wasn’t at all a certainty.

  ‘It would appear that the ball is in the Austrians’ court,’ replied Chalmers.

  ‘I wonder what they hope to gain by keeping us waiting here,’ said Holbrooke, staring at the gates as though willing them to open.

  ‘They may have some modern notions of negotiation, perhaps they’re attempting to work on our confidence,’ Chalmers replied. ‘But most likely they’re trying to decide what they should say to you and how they should respond to whatever you say. I find in this case that you have the decidedly upper hand, Mister Holbrooke.’

  ‘Well, we can’t wait all day,’ said Holbrooke. He took a last look at the gate before stepping down into the boat, and as he did so, he heard noise from the other side, the sounds of the bar of the gate being lifted.

  ‘Hold fast, Dawson,’ he said, ‘something’s afoot. Keep the painters in hand.’

  The gates opened outwards, not slowly or tentatively, but with a decisive push from four soldiers that swung them out on their hinges so fast that they bounced back a foot when they met the stone walls. The first thing that Holbrooke noticed was that the soldiers that pushed the gates back were dressed in brown. It was the Austrians that had come out to meet him. That was one less worry. At least it wasn’t the French.

  Two officers walked out of the gates and down the jetty towards Holbrooke and Chalmers. One was quickly identified as Major Albach. He was looking solemn, severe even, and he was unarmed except for his short artillery sword. Beside Albach came a much older man, in a similar brown uniform with red facings, brown breeches, high, black boots and a black tricorn hat with gold lacing. The only difference in the uniforms was a spray of gold at his shoulder where the aiguillettes of his rank cascaded in heavy loops. He looked frail, and he leaned on a gold-headed cane as he walked, but the most remarkable thing was his moustache, which extended beyond his cheek-bones and ended in carefully waxed tips that must have been visible from behind his head.