“Saving the Army, is it?” Chalmers gruffly asked with a confused look on his face. “I was only told that a convoy forming here was in need of additional escorts, and my Commodore offered my ship for the task. Frankly, I’d hoped I’d be bound for England, but…”
“You heard that we have two armies in Spain, sir?” Lewrie asked him. “Good. Well, so do the Frogs, and Napoleon himself is over the border with nigh a quarter-million troops. We’ve less than thirty thousand, somewhere round Salamanca, we think, smack in the middle of the Spanish mountains in Midwinter, runnin’ for Vigo or Corunna, we hope, t’get taken off before ‘Boney’ catches up with ’em. We’ve sixteen troop ships, and have t’get ’em North as soon as dammit, or we lose the whole army. London’s sendin’ more, but how soon they arrive is anyone’s guess. And, welcome to Gibraltar, by the way,” he concluded with a cynical grin.
“Egad!” was Chalmers’s drawn-out, stunned comment. “Then, it appears that we must be about it, what?”
“Amen!” Hugh Lewrie whispered, though still looking off to follow Maddalena’s receding figure. To Lewrie’s eyes, the lad didn’t look disappointed in his sire, but … appreciative.
“Let’s get on to the Convent, then,” Lewrie suggested, “and let General Drummond fill you in. There’s little he can do to help, from here, and explainin’ it to you will make him feel better, I’m sure.” He led off but Chalmers paused long enough to send Hugh back to the boat, and back to the ship.
“I hope to dine you and the Commanders off our two other ships aboard this evening, Captain Chalmers,” Lewrie bade, “and I wonder if you might allow my son to come, too. Catch up on old times, and see some of my retinue he knows.”
“It would be grand to see Desmond and Furfy, again,” Hugh said, casting a pleading look at Captain Chalmers.
“Well, somebody has to sit at the bottom of the table and pose the King’s Toast, I suppose,” Chalmers relented.
“Chalky’ll be glad t’see ye, too, Hugh, him and Bisquit. He was a good companion when I was laid up healin’ at Anglesgreen last year,” Lewrie said. “And, you can fill me in on what you’ve heard from Sewallis, and what he means by claimin’ he’s become a champion dancer, hah!”
“I look forward to it, sir,” Hugh said, beaming as he doffed his hat to his Captain and his father, and dashed back to the boat.
* * *
A whole two minutes passed in silence as Lewrie and Chalmers ascended the cobbled street uphill towards army headquarters.
“I am given to understand that your eldest son is also in the Navy, sir?” Chalmers at last enquired. He didn’t sound too pleased.
“He is,” Lewrie had to admit. “He’s spent the last five years aboard two-decker seventy-fours. He’s twenty-one, now, but lacks the last two years before he can stand for his Lieutenancy. His present ship pays off next year, and I hope he’s appointed into a brig-sloop or something below the Rates. I’ve always thought that smaller ships are the best schools for seamanship.”
“How did he…?” Chalmers asked, curious. In proper British families, it was the younger sons who went off to the Army, Navy, or the Church, sparing the heir and guarantor of the continuance of the family line.
“Sewallis found a way round me and his grandfather, and wrote an old friend of mine, gaining his own berth,” Lewrie sketchily explained, leaving out the lad’s forgeries. “He saw us sendin’ Hugh off and wanted his own chance to get vengeance against the French for the murder of his mother during the Peace of Amiens. They were shooting at me, but hit her, instead, the bastards.”
“Ah?” Captain Chalmers commented, sounding as if he found the account a bit too outré. “I do recall a comment your son, Hugh, said once. Tried to murder you? Who, and why?”
“Napoleon’s orders,” Lewrie told him. “Though I still don’t know why or how I rowed him at a levee at the Tuileries Palace in Paris. He fussed about our keepin’ Malta, interferin’ in how he was runnin’ Switzerland, why we hadn’t sent him a proper ambassador yet, and I suspect it was the sword exchange that pissed him in the eye,” Lewrie supposed, explaining how he had swapped half a dozen swords of dead French Captains and officers for the one he’d surrendered to Napoleon the first time he’d met him at Toulon in ’94, when he could not give Napoleon his parole and abandon his surviving crew, some of whom were French Royalists, sure to be executed on the spot.
Captain Chalmers followed all that with many a sniff or gasp, as if the tale was just too fabulous to be believed.
“That night, Caroline and I were warned t’flee Paris if we valued our lives, and made it to Calais before they caught up with us,” Lewrie related, leaving out the juicier parts concerning wigs, and costumes, play-acting, and the aid they’d gotten from a man who’d whetted his skills during the Terror of ’93, and styled himself the Yellow Tansy; Chalmers already sounded dubious enough.
“Whatever it was I did to set him off,” Lewrie concluded with a grin, “I pissed him in the eye once. With any luck at all, do we pluck our army from his clutches and get ’em clean away, we’ll piss him in the eye, again!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
When Lewrie’s little convoy had at last sailed from Gibraltar, its pace was heart-breakingly slow. It took a few days to breast the in-rushing current through the Strait, short-tacking into the stiff Winter winds, then bashing Westward many leagues to round Cape Finisterre and gain enough sea-room to avoid being blown onto a lee shore.
Once safely far out at sea, the struggling ships should have been able to turn North on a beam wind and rush on to Vigo, where information had it that part of the army was being evacuated, but the prevailing Westerlies turned into one howling gale after another, and the seas were steep, forcing all ships, transports and escorts alike, to reduce sail, brailing up to second or third reef lines, striking top-masts, and slowing them even more, and scattering them wide over many miles of sea. Even stout and slow HMS Sapphire, at over 1,100 tons burthen, rolled, pitched, and hobby-horsed like the merest wee gig, pricking every hand’s ears in dread to the great groans and moans of her hull timbers and masts, to the thundrous slamming and jerking each time the bows ploughed into the tall, disturbed waves, flinging icy water high over her beakhead rails and forecastle, and anyone in need of the “seats of ease” for their bowel movements risked being flung right off the ship!
No matter how tautly the deck seams had been tarred, the upper gun-deck berthing dripped cold water on hammocks, blankets, and wildly swaying men who tried to snatch a few hours’ rest from it all. Wood buckets were used for toilets, but no matter how often they were taken to the weather deck, dragged overside to clean them, then hauled back in, the stench became almost unbearable. The sailors who berthed on the lower gun deck might be drier, but their air was even closer, and foetid, to the point that serving watches in the open air, rain and cold and spray, was reckoned refreshing.
Despite tarred tarpaulin over-clothing, everyone’s shirts and trousers got soaked when on deck or aloft tending sail, and there was no way to dry anything out below, or in the great-cabins or the officers’ wardroom, either, and every morning’s sick call featured people with salt-water boils where their salt-crystal laden clothes chafed them raw. Even boiling rations in the swaying, rolling, pitching galley proved extremely risky. Christmas supper was a Banyan Day, with only oatmeal, cheese, hard ship’s bisquit, small beer, and a raisin duff for each mess to liven it.
Lewrie was amazed each raw dawn to see that all sixteen of his transports were still with him, and that Undaunted, Peregrine, and Blaze were still with him, dutifully chivvying stragglers back into their columns and urging the more widely scattered ships to rejoin.
They weren’t wanted at Vigo, though; Blaze had dashed inshore and had returned with word that Admiral de Courcy had been replaced by Admiral Hood, and that Moore would be making for Corunna, where there were yet only about thirty transports awaiting him, and that Hood would be sailing to there with nigh a hundred ships. It had taken Bla
ze a very long and frightful day to beat her way off a lee shore to bear word, and Lewrie had to order his convoy to come into the wind and claw out even more sea-room off the coast of Galicia to get above Cape Fisterra before he’d dare to risk the Costa da Morte, and a run Due East into Corunna.
* * *
“It’s clearing a bit, sir,” Sailing Master George Yelland said as he sniffed the winds and rubbed his chilled hands. “The wind and sea are almost moderate, thank God.”
“Is that a lighthouse I see on yon headland?” Lewrie asked, his telescope to his eye. “To the left of that inlet?”
“Ah, hmm,” Yelland pondered, employing his own telescope for a long moment. “Aye, it is, sir, the lighthouse at Corunna. The port will be round the other side of the heights. This inlet, Orsan Bay, is a dead-end, don’t be fooled by it. We’re almost there.”
“At last!” Lewrie breathed with relief that the ship could be brought to anchor, and blessed stillness, after too many days of risk. He had spent so much time on deck that he still felt chilled to the bone, and so in need of missed sleep that he could nod off on his feet and jerk back to wakefulness.
“Hawse bucklers removed, cables seized to the anchors and free to run, sir,” a weary and storm-ravaged First Officer, Lieutenant Westcott, came aft to report. Shaving had been such a deadly endeavour that everyone had given it up, so he looked as if he could have been a bearded courtier to Henry VIII.
“We’ll stand off a bit, and let the transports have the best anchorages nearest the town,” Lewrie told him. “Mister Kibworth?” he shouted aft to the Midshipman at the signal halliards. “Bend on a signal hoist for the transports to go in first, and for the escorts to stand in trail of us.”
“Aye aye, sir!” Kibworth shouted back.
Slowly, slowly, the little convoy, with Sapphire in the lead, rounded the tall headland and wore away South, standing into the harbour bay, with the escorts swinging wider out into the sheltered bay while the transports angled in round the fortified San Antonio Castle on a small island off the tip of the town.
Corunna was laid out in an L, with another fortress, the Citadel, dominating the short leg of the L to the North, and the civilian part of town angling off along the seashore behind tall sea walls to the Southwest. Even further along near the bottom of the harbour, near San Diego Point, was a commercial port of piers and warehouses close to a village of Santa Lucía; and all of it swarming with soldiers, ship’s boats beetling back and forth under oars, and anchored troop ships.
“Christ, what a pot-mess,” Lewrie wondered aloud. “Who’s in charge, and who do I report to?” He could see several ships of the line anchored, mostly Third Rate 74s, but only one larger Second Rate, so far. Admiral Hood’s armada of troop ships must still be working their way out of Vigo, or thrashing North through the same strong gales as Sapphire had.
“You’ll take time to shave and freshen yourself, first, sir?” Westcott asked.
“No time for the niceties,” Lewrie said with a shake of his head. “I may have to go ashore t’find where they want our ships to anchor … off the town here, or close to the piers down yonder.”
“Taking your Ferguson along, too?” Westcott teased.
“I’ll leave soldierin’ to the people in red, this time, no, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said with a chuckle. “Though I would wish to see the ground. Why? Ye wish t’borrow it and shoot a few Frogs, yourself, sir?”
“Signal from the Second Rate, sir!” Midshipman Kibworth called out. “The Interrogative.”
“Make our number to her, Mister Kibworth, and add that we’ve sixteen transports with us.”
“Aye, sir!” followed moments later by the news that the Second Rate had a Rear-Admiral aboard, and was showing the summons of Captain Repair On Board.
“Damme, we’ll have t’fire him a salute suitable to his rank,” Lewrie groaned. “Pipe hands to the twelve-pounders, Mister Westcott, and fetch up salutin’ charges from the magazines. And have a cutter brought round to the entry-port.”
Have to follow the traditions, Lewrie groused to himself; even if we were comin’ in half-sunk or on fire!
* * *
Matters were out of his hands, he learned after a brief talk aboard the Second Rate flagship. The captains of the anchored Third Rates and other escorts were already assigned roles to organise the boats from their own ships, and the transports, into flotillas to ferry soldiers and their gear out to the chosen troop ships, sick and wounded first, and those the regimental surgeons had determined to be utterly exhausted and useless for further fighting later. It was only then that fit troops would be sent out to other converted merchantmen for evacuation.
General Sir John Moore was in a cleft stick, really, for though he must rescue his army quickly, a French army under Marshal Soult was pressing close, and if he reduced his strength too quickly, he faced the risk that those still ashore might be overcome and taken, or massacred! Lewrie was told that there might be at least fifteen thousand British troops left from the thirty-two thousand that he, General Sir David Baird, and General Sir Henry Paget’s cavalry, had led into Spain. Some thirty-five hundred had been gotten off from Vigo. He also learned that during the long retreat, many artillery pieces had been abandoned, guns, caissons, limbers, and all as they broke down or the horse teams died. What was left to Moore had to be deployed in defensive positions to counter the French when they arrived, but must be evacuated as a point of honour, finally; the loss of one’s artillery was too shameful to be borne!
Even worse, Moore’s remaining army was in terrible shape, low in morale, dis-spirited and nigh-un-disciplined, the bright uniforms ragged, torn, and filthy, and their footwear (for those who still had them) worn through. Until the lead units had met a large supply convoy of waggons meant for the Spanish armies on the road from Corunna, they had also been starving, and badly in need of greatcoats and blankets, to boot.
General Sir David Baird had set up a large supply depot when he had landed his smaller army at Corunna, and Moore was drawing on that, stretching what was left out to feed and re-equip his own men as liberally as he could for as long as it lasted; what his troops ate, wore, and carried would not be left to the French, not one loaf of bread or side of bacon. Lewrie was also told that he’d missed all the fun from a few days before; there were four thousand kegs of powder that had been landed to be given to the Spanish, and General Moore had ordered it blown up in one spectacular blast. Every glazed miradore, the glass-enclosed balconies, in Corunna had been shattered! Not that there were many complaints from the Spanish owners, for the very good reason that most of them had packed up their valuables as soon as the first ragged regiments of the British army had shambled into town and fled into the bleak Winter countryside with as much food and drink as they could carry!
Once back aboard Sapphire, Lewrie had gathered his officers and Midshipmen together in his great-cabins and had given them the orders he’d received from the flagship. They would have to be rowed over to a specific set of troop ships that had come into port with them, get all their ship’s boats and the transports’ boats arranged into one group, and row ashore to the quays by Santa Lucía, and pick up soldiers from one certain regiment, then see them aboard those transports and keep it up ’til every last man of that regiment was accounted for and safely aboard. Lewrie volunteered himself to go ashore with the first boats; he was just too curious to sit idle and let events occur round him with nothing to do about them!
* * *
“A damned imposin’ place,” Lewrie said to his Cox’n, Liam Desmond, as the cutter was stroked towards the quays.
“Aye, sor,” Desmond agreed. “Fortified walls right down to th’ docks. Like they don’t much care f’r visitors.”
“Might be pretty, in Summer,” Lewrie speculated.
“If ye like rocks, sor,” Desmond slyly teased.
The foul weather might have moderated, as the Sailing Master had said, but Corunna, its harbour, and the surrounding country was bleak,
and very rocky; it was no wonder that the Spanish called this part of Galicia the “Coast of Death.” The long fortifications that ran from the Citadel in the upper town down to Santa Lucía were grim, grime-streaked pale tan, seated atop darker brown and massive slabs of stone, fouled with dead seaweed at low tide, green with a mossy ocean growth. Beyond and over those fortified walls, several ranges of hills rose to the West and South, all of them strewn with large boulders. What trees there were were dead Winter grey and bare, or the darkest, dullest green pine groves. Beyond those hills lay the formidable mountains of inner Spain, as stony and steep and impressive as any he’d seen at Cape Town two years before. And over all were grey and threatening cloud banks scudding low over those hills. Lewrie had never seen such a depressing place in his life!
Once he set foot atop the quays he became even more depressed. There were still wounded men laid out on carrying boards and their own blankets awaiting treatment aboard the transports. Beside the obvious combat wounds, there were fellows without shoes or boots, or wool stockings, their toes blackened by frostbite; those who had lacked gloves or mittens showed fingers or whole hands turned blue-black as well, and sure to suffer amputations before the poisons of their frostbite killed them. Once back in England, the army would discharge them with pittances for pensions, where, unable to work to support themselves, they might starve to death in a year.
“You, sir! You, there! Do you have a hospital ship for my wounded?” an army surgeon demanded as he came up to Lewrie.
“I’ve a transport, sir, not a hospital ship,” Lewrie had to tell him, doffing his hat in salute despite the fellow’s rudeness. “My own Ship’s Surgeon and his Mates can be sent aboard her to aid you, but…” He had to end with a helpless shrug.
“Well, Goddamnit!” the peppery little fellow swore. “I’ve done the best I could for them, God witness. There wasn’t much fighting, and those wounds I’ve treated, and those poor fellows that lived to this point only need rest. The exposure cases, though … yes, do send me your man. I fear there will be quite a number of amputations before the day’s done.”
Kings and Emperors Page 35