The Cruise of the Albatros

by E. C. Williams

  Having at least partially satisfied Mr. Mooney's seemingly-insatiable lust for navigational information to update his charts and publications – he seemed to regard the squadron's cruise as being principally a hydrographic survey expedition, and only secondarily a military one – Sam ordered a course shaped for the island of Anjouan. By this time, it was sunset, and as Anjouan's harbor of Mutsamadu was just over forty-five sea-miles distant, it would be an overnight passage. The winds, thought still light, were more consistent, and both schooners sailed through the night on a broad reach, drifters set.

  Although Sam still considered Grande Comore the most likely site of a future pirate base, he realized after Christie's briefing that Anjouan was a strong contender for second place. It had a good harbor, an area of more than 400 square kilometers with a coastal plain suitable for agriculture, and was known to have a small remnant population of Stone Age fishermen. Ruins of several good-sized towns on the island had been left unexploited. Because of the presence of indigenous people of demonstrated hostility to strangers, the Kerg settlers on Nosy Be stayed away.

  The ancient commercial port of Mutsamadu had a mole running from the shore in a westerly direction, offering sheltered anchorage and berthing in all but strong west-south-westerly winds. An ancient wharf, now in ruins, ran along the entire southern side of the mole, and there had been additional berthing at a wharf, also in ruins, across the basin created by the mole. A small creek flowed into the harbor; this was probably the reason for the location of the port in prehistoric times.

  Sam, refreshed by an uninterrupted six hours of sleep during the passage, came on deck in the pre-dawn darkness and checked their estimated position. He had considerable confidence in it, since they had gotten a good star fix at evening twilight the day before, which had checked well with their DR track from Moheli. Finding that the squadron was within a couple of miles of Anjouan by dead reckoning, he ordered sail reduced. As the sun rose behind them, the island came into view and they crept along the northern coast toward the ancient harbor.

  Sam ordered Condition Alfa set, and lookouts with telescopes posted in the foretops. Anjouan's brilliant green vegetation was clearly visible to starboard now, in the bright sunlight of a tropical dawn.

  “Deck, there!” called the lookout. “Masts in sight. Two … four ... six masts visible.”

  “Battle stations,” ordered Sam immediately. Bosun's calls shrilled, the general alarm bells sounded, and the watch below poured up the gangways and took their stations. The same noises came from the Joan of Arc, just off Albatros's port quarter; her lookout had seen them, too.

  “Deck!” the lookout shouted over the din. “Two more masts in sight; eight total.”

  Sam could see them now through his telescope. Four two-masted dhows, with their immensely long lateen yards left hoisted but their sails neatly furled, obviously at anchor in Mutsamadu harbor.

  The squadron was about to face the enemy at the usual odds – outnumbered two to one.

  CHAPTER 17

  “Launch the motor sloop to tow!” ordered Sam. He intended to bottle the dhows up in the small harbor, where their advantage in numbers would be partly negated. “Signal Joan to do the same.”

  The two schooners were ghosting along slowly in light airs, all sail set. Sam stared in an agony of impatience through his telescope at the dhows as long minutes passed; the motor sloop and motor whaleboat were launched with the usual celerity, but nothing could speed the warm-up process of their Stirling-cycle engines. Both boats were themselves towed alongside the schooners by their sea painters while their motors reached operating temperature.

  Sam, by an effort of will, tried to make the dhows' lookouts sleepy, distracted, inattentive to their duty; but he failed. He soon saw signs of frantic activity in their rigging, their big lateen sails unfurling to the slight breeze. They would almost certainly slip their moorings, and with the breeze in the present quarter they could reach out of the harbor on one tack. But the wind was so light that the dhows, depending upon how much leeway they made, were in danger of drifting onto the ancient mole and ruined wharf. Sam tried to put himself into the mind of the commander of the enemy squadron, and decided that he would launch his boats to tow at an angle bisecting the wind direction and the desired heading, to counteract leeway.

  If the dhows cleared the harbor mouth before the arrival of the squadron, they had the choice of running or engaging. At the likely engagement ranges the Kerg squadron would lose its advantage of superior range. Sam had before now experienced the speed and accuracy with which the pirates could fire their bronze smooth-bores, so he thought the enemy commander would choose to give battle.

  And if Sam could bottle him up in the harbor, he would have no other option but to fight.

  The sloop and whaleboat were at last ready to tow, after what seemed to Sam, in an agony of impatience, like an hour of warming-up, and both took a strain on their towlines. This small added impetus strengthened and brought forward the relative wind, so that the schooners were now on a broad reach, their drifters filling nicely, and the green shore slipped by to starboard at a perceptibly quicker rate. It would still be a close-run thing, however; Sam could see that all four dhows had set sail and apparently slipped their anchor cables, for they were creeping toward the harbor mouth.

  Sam saw that the 37 mm gun had a clear shot, and estimated – hoped – that the lead dhow – tow of its boats holding her bow on course, as he had anticipated – was now just about in range. “Main battery: open fire on the lead dhow,” he said to his phone talker. The gun's crew had anticipated this order, and had the gun run out to the starboard gun-balcony, its long, slim barrel trained in the direction of the enemy at maximum elevation. There came the ear-splitting crash that never failed to startle everyone at the first round, however much they expected it, and a tall spout of water erupted just off the bow of the enemy vessel.

  “Oh, good shooting!” Sam exclaimed involuntarily, then said to his phone talker: “Main battery: rapid fire on lead dhow.” This was an unnecessary order; the gun barked again in the middle of Sam's sentence, and this time splash just beyond the dhow. Another correction, and the third, and then the fourth, rounds hit the dhow squarely on her bow, and she immediately lost her slight headway. The dhow's bowsprit and headsail were shot away, and the towlines of her boats were severed, as well as the leading clew of her forecourse.

  Sam gathered that the lead dhow, now drifting toward the mole, was the flagship of the pirate squadron. She flew the pirates' green banner with white script on it, as did the others, but hers was twice as large. The damaged flagship's fore and main sails came down with a rush, and signal flags soared to the top of her mainmast. The sails of one of the other dhows came down in apparent response, but the other two vessels appeared to redouble their efforts to reach out of the harbor.

  But the two schooners closed onto the harbor mouth, and when within range of the 25 mm rifles, opened up with all they could throw at the escaping dhows. They scored numerous hits on the pirate craft, which apparently gave up the effort to escape the harbor, lowered their sails, and let go their spare bowers. The coming battle was to be fought at anchor.

  “Make to Joan: 'Squadron will anchor with springs in harbor mouth and engage enemy',” Sam said to the midshipman. “Send by flashing light and repeat with a flag hoist.”

  Well before the squadron had reached the point at which Sam intended to anchor, they came within range of the pirates' long bronze muzzle-loading three-inch guns. The two larger dhows were armed with two of these apiece, while the smaller ones, the two that had initially continued the attempt to escape, had one each. As always, they seemed to be so mounted that they could be quickly moved about the deck to the most advantageous firing positions, which must be an ingenious arrangement given the great weight of the tubes.

  Since the battle was now being fought at point-blank range, small arms added to the firepower of all six vessels. At this distance, the Kergs' advantage in range wa
s useless, and the pirates were working their guns so rapidly they maintained a rate of fire equaling that of the Joan and the Albatros. The pirates had the advantage in caliber, with six three-inchers against one 37 mm and four one-inch rifles. However, the Kerguelenians had a decided advantage in small arms. The sharpshooters with their powerful and accurate seal rifles, and the landing parties of each schooner armed with the new repeating rifles, picked off any pirate who made himself visible. The riflemen particularly focused on the dhows' high poop decks, where the pirate officers were presumed to be.

  By a quick exchange of signals, it was agreed that Albatros would engage the two larger dhows, and Joan the two smaller ones, a distribution of Kerg firepower roughly proportional to that of the enemy.

  Neither side could possibly miss at such close range, and while the schooners were wreaking fearful damage to the dhows, the pirates were doing the same to the schooners. Sam winced as each three-inch ball crashed into the fabric of his ship, as if it were rending his own flesh; he could have wept at the sight of man after man of his crew falling, pierced by small-arms fire, shredded by splinters, or frightfully mutilated by direct hits from cannon shot.

  The two larger dhows also proved to be armed with a fearsome close-range weapon the Kergs had seen before: the mortar or high-angled howitzer, that hurled fire bombs. At the first sight of the characteristic red streak, soaring up almost vertically from the deck of the flagship dhow, Sam flashed back to a scene he would never forget: an AB aflame from head to toe, screaming in agony and capering wildly in a grotesque dance until his shipmates tackled him and put out the flames. He now watched with his heart in his throat as the first bomb fell into the sea fifty yards beyond the Albatros.

  “To XO: Concentrate fire on the crew of that mortar,” Sam shouted over the din into the ear of his phone talker, who immediately repeated the order into his headset microphone.

  “XO acknowledges,” the phone talker said. Then: “Correction: Mister Christie acknowledges; XO is down.”

  Sam started, and said to the phone talker, “Say again?” At that moment, the phone talker was hit in the head, spraying Sam with blood and bits of bone and brain matter. His mate quickly dragged the body to one side – there was obviously no point in taking him below to sick bay – and snatched off and donned the bloody headset.

  Everyone who had been on board Albatros during the battle off Pirate Creek needed no orders to fire on the mortar – their memories were as vivid as Sam's. Every rifleman trained his weapon on the mortar crew. The disadvantage to the men working the mortar was that they had to expose themselves fully to enemy fire to load and train the weapon, unlike the three-inchers' crews, who could crouch or kneel behind the bulwarks to work their guns. The flagship dhow had grounded gently in the silt just off the ruined wharf, and was the nearest enemy vessel. Small-arms and one-inch fire quickly swept her decks, and made it impossible to continue firing her mortar.

  The next nearest enemy dhow was the second large one. Her anchor cable had been severed by an HE shell, and she was slowly drifting in a north-easterly direction toward the shore. This motion complicated her mortar crew's firing problem enough that she was unable to score a hit with her first three rounds. Then her crew was distracted by the need to fend off from the third dhow, anchored right in her path.

  Sam sensed some slackening of fire from the enemy, and hoped it wasn't just wishful thinking. The winner of this battle would be the last vessel still afloat, with enough surviving hands to man her, and his squadron had already suffered horrendous casualties. Both schooners had needed to man pumps from early on, as the three-inch balls pierced their hulls in multiple places below the waterline. Albatros's carpenter and his mates were scurrying about below, with wooden shot plugs, mauls, and the materials for cement patches to plug larger holes, and Sam was sure that the same thing was happening aboard Joan.

  Meanwhile, in Albatros's sick bay, Girard and her two interns were all operating on different patients as a steady stream of wounded came below. Normally, surgery was carried on in a curtained-off corner of sick bay, out of sight of other patients, the “operating theater” carefully sterilized. Now, the medicos were moving from cot to hanging cot, operating quickly on those deemed likely to benefit most from quick action. There was no time for the elaborate antiseptic precautions usually taken; men lay on cots soaked in the blood of other men, and the surgeons merely rinsed instruments in alcohol between patients. Triage, as wounded men were brought down by their shipmates, separated out both those who would survive without immediate care, and the gravely wounded likely to die whatever heroic measures were taken. These two categories were made as comfortable as possible on the deck, out of the way, to either die or wait their turn for care.

  Doctor Girard, with quick, deft movements, finished suturing the stump of a petty officer's left leg, so badly smashed by a three-inch ball that it had to be amputated at the knee, and moved on to the next cot. To her shock, she recognized the XO, Lieutenant Commander Kendall, pale with shock and blood loss, semi-conscious, a blood-soaked handkerchief wrapped around his neck. She went to work on him quickly but without much hope. The human neck was crowded with vulnerable but essential parts: windpipe, throat, spinal column, aorta, jugular vein. Wounds there were very often fatal.

  On deck, Sam was beginning to have some hope of winning the battle. Although both schooners had settled low in the water, and were pumping furiously, they were still firing with all guns and in no immediate danger of sinking. The pirate flagship, the largest of the four dhows, had settled into the mud just off the ruined and silted-up wharf, and her fire had noticeably slackened, as had that of her consorts. Since she was only a cable's-length away from the Albatros,Sam feared most of all that she would try the now-familiar suicide ploy and blow herself up, taking the schooner with her. At that distance, if she used enough explosive, she would surely succeed in doing fearsome damage to the schooner. Sam hoped fervently that her magazine was now flooded by the numerous shot holes she clearly had sustained below the waterline.

  The second of the two larger dhows, having succeeded in fending herself off her sister that she had nearly fouled but in the process neglecting to let go another anchor, had now drifted aground in shoal water, in the angle formed by the ancient mole and the shore line, and only one of her two guns was still firing. Apparently, a round from the Albatros had dismounted the other. The two smaller dhows, anchored close aboard one another, were still firing their three-inch guns and small arms, but at a slower rate.

  A flurry of flag signals among the dhows caught Sam's eye. Minutes later, the flag hoist flying from the flag dhow came down sharply, obviously the “execute” signal, and boats darted out from the unengaged sides of all four dhows, two each from the larger two, one each from the smaller ones. The boats spread out in a line that spanned the width of the small harbor, and their crews pulled hard toward the two schooners.

  “Captain!” cried Mooney, the watch officer. “Should I pipe 'repel boarders'?”

  “No! Concentrate all fire on the boats – repeat, all guns fire on the boats! Pass that to Joan, gadget!”

  The pirates had no hope of getting close enough to the schooners to board, and in any event there weren't enough men in the boats to carry that off. Instead, Sam reckoned that every boat was packed full of explosives with a short fuse – a suicide mission.

  This was confirmed when one of the boats, suffering a direct hit by a 37 mm HE shell, exploded with an ear-shattering crash, sending a column of water a hundred feet into the air. When the splash subsided, there was not a trace of the boat left except a rain of small debris falling into the harbor. The wave caused by the blast made the Albatros pitch heavily, heaving fathoms of her anchor rode out of the water.

  There was a brief pause in fire as the schooners' gun crews stared in shock. Sam shouted, “Keep firing on the boats! Keep firing!”, and fire resumed, redoubled in urgency. Boat after boat blew up, disintegrated into splinters and shards of flesh, th
e result of multiple hits by 37 mm, one-inch, and rifle fire. The last exploded close enough to the Albatros to send debris scything across her deck, wounding men and cutting up rigging. Girard later reported removing fragments of human bone from some of the men so wounded.

  The suicide-boat attack seemed the last aggressive action of which the pirates were capable. The men in the boats, now all dead, must have represented a substantial portion of the surviving strength of the dhows. All four pirate craft continued to fire, but at a much reduced rate. The two dhows at anchor were settling fast, apparently not having enough hands to man their pumps and their weapons simultaneously. The two grounded dhows naturally didn't have to pump ship, but they had contributed two boatloads of men apiece to the suicide attack, and so were apparently even more short-handed than their consorts.

  The Kerg schooners were still able to keep up a steady fire from all their weapons – but only by employing every man still on his feet at either the guns or the pumps.

  The decks of the two anchored dhows came awash, one after the other, their guns firing until they had no more dry ammunition, and then their crews had to swim for it. The marksmen and riflemen of the Albatros, in a vengeful fury, fired at the pirates struggling in the water until Sam made them leave off. He knew that the pirates would have no such qualms if the situation were reversed, and that in any event he would have to deal with every surviving pirate eventually, but he was sickened by the slaughter of helpless men.

  Like Kerg seamen, only a small proportion of the pirates knew how to swim. But many of those Sam could see had managed to grab on to a bit of floating wreckage, and were kicking toward the shore.

  When the two anchored dhows had sunk, resting on the bottom of the harbor with only the upper halves of their masts visible, and the two grounded ones were silenced, Sam ordered away the motor boats, armed with a one-incher each, loaded with canister, and manned by a squad of riflemen, to set fire to the two larger dhows. Sam watched through his telescope. As he expected, the boats came under small-arms fire from diehard survivors. The motor boats – the sloop approaching the pirate flagship, the whale boat the other grounded dhow – soon silenced this fire with blasts of one-inch canister and closed on the pirate vessels.