1634: The Baltic War (assiti chards)

by Eric Flint

  And I'm not coming in from the north when I do enter it, he thought dryly. If there's one place where these people could make even crappy mines effective, that's it.

  And since he'd already demonstrated that seventeenth-century artillery wasn't going to do much more than scuff the paint on his ironclads, he'd been perfectly willing to take his chances on whatever he might happen to meet as he sailed calmly through the Great Belt from the Kattegat and from there to the Bay of Kiel.

  The wind was from the southeast, ideally placed for shipping headed for the North Sea from the Baltic, even if it wasn't very strong. He was sure the timberclads preferred the current conditions to the awkward, corkscrew roll that had afflicted them in the Skaggerak, and although visibility was patchy (not uncommon for these waters, especially in the spring), they'd already encountered several outbound ships and fishing vessels. That was one reason he'd reduced speed to little more than three or four knots; it had turned particularly patchy over the last fifteen minutes or so, and he didn't want to run anyone down.

  Of course, he thought as he watched the warship-French, from the look of her-solidifying out of the mist at a range of less than two miles, worse things could happen to a ship than a simple collision.

  Grosclaud gaped in disbelief. For a second or two, he couldn't imagine what he was seeing. It was too alien, too unlike anything he'd ever seen before. It was more like some sort of slab-sided building floating toward him than any proper sort of vessel.

  But it was only for a second or two. Then he knew what it had to be, and his blood ran cold as a second dark silhouette started blending out of the mist behind it.

  "Clear for action! Clear for action!"

  Even as he heard his own voice shouting the order, a part of his mind wondered what point there was to it. It had been far easier to decide the rumors about the newest American deviltry had to be grossly exaggerated when the ships those rumors swirled about were still sitting in the Elbe River at Magdeburg. It was quite a different thing, he discovered, when one saw them altering course directly toward one's ship.

  Shouts, the rousing tattoo of the drum, bellowed orders, and pattering feet sounded all about him as Railleuse's startled crew responded to his orders, and he stared up at the set of the sails.

  There was no wind, not really. The Kattegat this morning might almost have been a millpond, and Railleuse's canvas was scarcely even drawing. She couldn't have been making more than one or two knots, with barely a ripple around her cutwater, which meant there was no point trying to evade the oncoming monsters, and he looked at the suddenly white-faced sailing master.

  "At least we know now what the fellow was trying to tell us," Grosclaud said with a smile that held no humor at all. Then he shrugged. "Come four points to starboard. We'll try to engage with the port broadside."

  Simpson watched the other ship swinging to starboard, turning away from the squadron's line of advance and opening its port broadside. The range fell steadily as Constitution and her consorts foamed ahead, working up towards a speed of ten knots in obedience to his last maneuvering orders, and he wondered what the idiot in command of that ship thought he was doing.

  "Bullhorn!" he snapped.

  "Aye, aye, sir!" one of the bridge signalmen acknowledged sharply, and disappeared briefly into the conning tower. He reappeared on the bridge wing almost instantly, carrying the bullhorn that had once belonged to the Grantville Fire Department and now bore the crossed anchors of the Navy.

  "Ahoy!"

  Grosclaud had no idea what the single word booming impossibly across the narrowing gap of water between him and the Americans might mean. No doubt it was yet another of those "up-timer" words that were working their way into the world's proper languages.

  "This is Admiral John Simpson, United States Navy," the hugely amplified voice continued, this time in recognizable German. "Lower your sails and surrender, or I will be forced to fire into you!"

  "Captain?" a merely mortal voice asked closer to hand. Grosclaud turned his head and saw Leon Jouette, his second in command. Jouette's face looked like curiously mottled porridge, and Grosclaud wondered if his looked the same.

  "What do you expect me to do, Leon?" he demanded harshly.

  "But if the reports are accurate, what can we-"

  "Even if they are accurate, I can't simply haul down my flag the first time someone threatens me!"

  Jouette looked as if he wanted to continue to argue, but he closed his mouth with a click as Grosclaud glared at him. Then he nodded spastically and turned and hurried away, shouting orders of his own as he went.

  "I repeat," the voice thundered again. "Strike your sails and surrender, or I will destroy your vessel!"

  "-destroy your vessel," Simpson said the into the microphone, then lowered it and watched the other vessel.

  It continued to swing to starboard, slowly under the current wind conditions, and his mouth tightened.

  "Clear the bridge," he said as gun ports began to open here and there along the other ship's side. The bridge wing lookouts moved smartly past him into the conning tower's protection, and he lifted his binoculars, looking across the water at the Frenchman-now less than eight hundred yards away.

  Eighteen-pounders, at best, he decided.

  He looked astern to where President foamed along in Constitution's wake. Captain Lustgarten's carronades were run out on either broadside, as were Constitution's. Despite their stubby barrels, both ships' carronades would have the range to engage the French ship within the next few minutes, whatever the other captain did. When that happened, there could be only one outcome. He knew that-which didn't mean he had to like it.

  "Captain," he said through the bullhorn, "I have no desire to destroy your ship and kill your crew, but if you do not surrender, I will have no other option. This is your final warning."

  "-your final warning!"

  Grosclaud's jaw set tight.

  The closest American was little more than five hundred yards away. The second ship followed perhaps two hundred yards astern of it, and he saw two more, identical ships beyond them. And beyond them was something else, something streaming smoke as it followed along behind.

  A voice deep inside gibbered that Jouette had been right, that not surrendering immediately was insane. Yet he couldn't do it. He simply couldn't do it.

  Simpson sighed, shook his head, and followed the lookouts and signalmen into the conning tower. Little though he might care for what was about to happen, he had no intention of standing heroically-and stupidly-on an open bridge while somebody fired eighteen-pounder cannon balls in his direction.

  "Very well, Captain," he said to Halberstat. "If he won't stop, we'll have to encourage him to see reason. Let's try firing one shot across his bow, first, though."

  "Yes, sir." Captain Halberstat looked at the signalman manning the voice pipes. "Pass the order to Lieutenant MacDougall. One shot across his bow, whenever is convenient."

  "One shot across his bow, whenever is convenient, aye, sir!" the signalman repeated, and bent over the voice pipes.

  Simpson was peripherally aware of one of the lookouts dogging down the clips that secured the armored bridge door, but most of his attention was for what he could see through the port vision slit. The French warship had finally gotten around on to its new heading, and the admiral shook his head.

  ***

  Grosclaud's head jerked up as the forwardmost gun in the slab-sided vessel's broadside lurched back. The sound of it was hard and flat, somehow unlike any of the artillery Grosclaud had ever heard before. It spewed out a vast gush of smoke, and the round shot made a peculiar hissing sound before it plunged into the water twenty yards in front of Railleuse.

  The splash was bigger than he would have expected from a gun that short. That was his first thought. Then, an instant later, his eyes flew open in shock as there was a second, much bigger-and higher-geyser of spray.

  "Mother of God!" he heard Jouette exclaimed. "That thing exploded!"

 
; Simpson observed the explosion with a certain degree of satisfaction. The fuse he'd designed for the navy's shells was as simple as it was crude, which had suggested that it ought to function fairly reliably. On the other hand, to explode underwater, it had to be watertight, and he'd been uncertain about how well he'd managed to achieve that aspect of the design.

  Now, Captain, he thought at the French ship's commander very loudly, notice the explosion. Draw the right goddamned conclusion so I don't have to kill all your men.

  Grosclaud clutched at the bulwark, staring forward, still trying to wrap his mind around what had just happened. No one had ever fired explosive shells out of a cannon before! That was what mortars were for! It was unnatural-preposterous!

  And exactly the sort of thing all the tales said he should have expected out of the accursed Americans.

  "Captain? What do we do now?" Jouette demanded hoarsely.

  Grosclaud turned toward him, and the fear in Jouette's eyes hit him like a fist. Mostly because he was quite certain Jouette saw exactly the same fear in his own.

  "We have to at least try, Leon," he heard himself say calmly, almost reasonably. "If we don't, we'll never know."

  "Know what, Captain?"

  "Whether or not our guns can hurt them," Grosclaud said, and looked at the gunner.

  "Open fire," he said.

  ***

  "Damn," John Simpson said mildly as the Frenchman's side disappeared behind a bank of flame-swirled smoke. The range was down to no more than sixty or seventy yards, with Constitution following the other vessel around onto the same heading.

  "Return fire, sir?" Halberstat asked, and Simpson nodded unhappily.

  "You are authorized to fire, Captain. But let's not get carried away here. Give him one broadside from the carronades. Let's find out if he's willing to see reason after that."

  "Yes, sir. One broadside," Halberstat repeated. "Pass the word to Lieutenant MacDougall," he told the signalman on the voice pipes. "One carronade broadside, only."

  "One carronade broadside, only, aye, aye, sir."

  Grosclaud glared at the ugly, ponderous-looking American ship. He knew he'd hit it at least a half-dozen times, but as the smoke of his own broadside drifted away, the other vessel loomed up out of the water-close aboard, now-with absolutely no sign to mark the striking of his round shot.

  "Well," he started to say to Jouette, "now we know. So let's-"

  The end of the world arrived before he could complete the sentence.

  Constitution's guns fired.

  The range was childishly short for rifled guns, but, by the same token, both the target and the firing platform were moving through the water. And no matter how calm the Bay of Kiel might seem, or even be, compared to North Sea or normal Atlantic conditions, there was wave motion to take into consideration. Railleuse had fired a sixteen-gun broadside at Constitution, and (despite Grosclaud's estimate) had scored only four hits. Constitution's gunners (despite their shoreside practice) had woefully little actual experience firing at sea. Despite the low range, despite the fact that they, unlike Railleuse's gunners actually had sights, they scored only two hits.

  The effect of those two hits was somewhat different from Railleuse's four, however.

  The first shell hit Railleuse between the fourth and fifth gun ports on her port side. It smashed through the thick planking, slammed across the tween-deck space, struck the foremast, and detonated. The mast shattered, a section of decking six feet by eight feet erupted upward in a hail of splinters, and shell fragments ripped through the crowded gunners, killing seven and wounding another twelve.

  The second shell hit her aft, just below the level of the poop deck. It exploded in Grosclaud's sea cabin, blowing out the stern windows and reducing the captain's furniture to splinters. The helmsman staggered as the same explosion cut the linkage between the tiller bar and the whipstaff. The staff went abruptly loose in his hands, moving freely without affecting the rudder at all, and two seamen went down-one screaming; one already limp in death-as shell fragments and bits and pieces of deck blasted through them.

  The sheared off foremast toppled, crashing down with all its weight of canvas and spars, taking the main topmast with it. Railleuse seemed to slow, as if she'd dropped anchor, when the wreckage thundered into the water alongside. She pivoted around the sudden drag, her stern pushing away from the wind, and there was nothing at all the helmsman could do about it.

  Grosclaud felt as if someone had just hit him across the bottoms of his feet with a club. He heard the screams of maimed and wounded men, saw the wreckage of rigging trailing alongside, then stiffened as he smelled wood smoke.

  "Fire!" someone shouted. "Fire!"

  It was the greatest fear of any wooden ship, and the captain hurled himself toward the poop deck ladder as smoke came welling up out of his own sea cabin. Other men were already racing toward the flames, some with buckets of sand, others with nothing but their bare hands. They flung themselves into the smoke, treading on still more wounded crewmen in their haste. Some hurled sand at the flames; others snatched up burning wreckage, ignoring the pain in their hands when they got too close to the flames, and hurled it through the shattered stern windows into the sea. Still others ripped off shirts, or even trousers, and used them to beat at the flames, frantic to subdue them.

  "Rig hoses!" Simpson snapped. "Captain Halberstat, circle around and stand by to go alongside!"

  Quick responses came back, but Simpson was already tearing at the latches, hurling the bridge door open and dashing back out onto it with his bullhorn. None of the abruptly crippled Railleuse's guns would bear on Constitution, but he was well aware that they were close enough for even a seventeenth-century matchlock musketeer to get lucky.

  Just going to have to hope none of them do, John, he thought.

  The corner of his brain told him he was being insane, given what he and his ships planned to do when they got to Luebeck. But they weren't at Luebeck yet. There was only one enemy warship in sight at this particular moment, and the smoke pouring out of its stern in steadily thickening clouds suggested that it might not be around a great deal longer.

  "Stand by for assistance!" he heard his own amplified voice bellowing.

  Here and there, someone aboard the French ship actually seemed to have noticed someone was talking to them. Some of them looked up with sudden hope; most of them simply looked blank, as if they couldn't conceive of what he might be talking about.

  He looked back over his shoulder to find Halberstat standing right behind him.

  "Get the hoses up on top of the casement, Captain. Then lay us across her stern."

  From his expression, Halberstat would have liked nothing better than to have argued with Simpson's decision. Whatever he would have liked, however, what he actually did was to salute.

  "Yes, sir," he said.

  Grosclaud was vaguely aware of the same thunderous voice he'd heard earlier. He had other things on his mind at the moment, though, and he concentrated on the effort to coordinate the battle against the flames.

  It was one he was losing.

  There'd been no time for Railleuse to clear for action properly. The canvas screens and flimsy partitions, the bedding and clothing, the spirit stores, the lamps hanging from the overhead-and their oil… All those highly flammable items that should have been struck safely below crackled and fumed and smoked, and the ship's seasoned, painted timbers were already well alight, as well.

  And then, suddenly, something loomed across the ship's stern like an iron-plated cliff, cutting off the smoky daylight. He turned, eyes widening, just in time to see the seamen standing on top of Constitution's armored casement with the canvas hoses open the valves on the bronze nozzles wide.

  The pumps driving the fire mains Simpson had thoughtfully provided were powerful enough to empty the ironclad's trim tanks completely in less than fifteen minutes. The pressure they could generate was sufficient to require at least two men, and preferably three, to control one
of the hoses. Jean-Marie Grosclaud-and over a dozen of his men-went down, bowled head over heels, in a torrent of icy cold saltwater. Railleuse's captain could scarcely believe the tidal bore force of that freezing cataract, but he didn't really care. All he cared about was the instantly quenching effect it had on the flames threatening to consume his ship.

  "Well, that was certainly exciting," John Simpson said mildly a couple of hours later. Captain Halberstat gave him a rather speaking glance, and the admiral chuckled.

  "I don't blame you, Franz," he said, speaking with unusual informality.

  "Blame me, sir?" Halberstat inquired politely.

  "Blame you for wondering if I'd lost my mind," Simpson amplified. Halberstat started to shake his head, but Simpson snorted.

  "Of course you did. Oh, the risk might not have been all that great, but we didn't know-I didn't know-how close all that smoke was to their powder store. Railleuse could have gone up any moment."

  "I suppose she could have," Halberstat agreed. "On the other hand, the force of the explosion would mostly have gone straight up. I doubt it could have done significant damage to Constitution, even if it had gone off, sir. Not right up to the last minute, when we went hard alongside, at least."

  "Well, there would have been that little matter of the exposed firefighting party," Simpson said dryly. "And, now that I think about it, that other little matter of the flag officer and captain standing out there on the bridge wing with their asses hanging out. That could have been rather… unpleasant."