The Bomb Vessel

by Richard Woodman

  ‘Beggin’ your pardon but ’tis a fucking disgrace . . . It’s a long story, zur, but Mr Drinkwater thrashed a bugger on the Cyclops and the bastard got even with him in the matter of a commission . . .’ A smile crossed Tregembo’s face. ‘Leastaways he thought he’d bested him, but he ended in the hospital at the Cape, zur.’ He leaned forward, his jaw rotating the quid as he spoke. ‘Men don’t cross the lieutenant too successfully, zur, leastaways not sensible men.’

  ‘Bloody wind’s still freshening, sir, and I don’t like the look of it.’ Rogers held his hat on, his tarpaulin flapping round him as he stared to windward. The white streaks of sleet blew across the deck, showing faintly in the binnacle lamplight. Both the officers staggered as Virago snubbed round to her anchor, sheering in the wind, jerking the hull and straining the cable.

  ‘Rouse out another cable, Sam,’ Drinkwater shouted in Rogers’s ear, ‘we’ll veer away more scope.’

  The good weather had not lasted the day. Hardly had the fleet come to an anchor in Vingå Bay than the treacherous wind had backed and strengthened. Now, at midnight, a full gale was blowing from the west south west, catching them on a lee shore and threatening to wreck them on the Swedish coast.

  Drinkwater watched the grey and black shapes of the hands as they moved about the deck. He was glad he had been able to provide them with warm clothing. Tonight none of them would get much sleep and it was the least he could do for them. They were half-way through bringing up the second cable when they saw the first rocket. It reminded them that out in the howling blackness, beyond the circumscribed limit of their visible horizon other men in other ships were toiling like themselves. The arc of sputtering sparks terminated in a baleful blue glare that hung in the sky and shone faintly, illuminating the lower masts and spars of the Virago before dying.

  ‘Someone in distress,’ shouted Easton.

  ‘Mind it ain’t us, Mr Easton, get a lead over the side to see if we are dragging!’

  Suddenly from forward an anonymous voice screamed: ‘Starb’d bow! ’Ware Starb’d bow!’

  Drinkwater looked up to see a pyramid of masts and spars and the faint gleam of a half-set topsail above a black mass of darkness: the interposition of a huge hull between himself and the tumbling wavetops that had been visible there a moment earlier.

  ‘Cut that cable!’ he shouted with all the power in his lungs. Forward a quick witted man took up an axe from under the fo’c’s’le. Drinkwater waited only long enough to see the order understood before shouting again:

  ‘Foretopmast stays’l halliards there! Cast loose and haul away! Sheet to starboard!’ There was a second’s suspense then the grinding crunch and trembling as the strange ship drove across their bow, carrying away the bowsprit. She was a huge ship and there was shouting and confusion upon her decks.

  ‘Christ! It’s the fucking London!’ shouted Rogers who had caught a glimpse of a dark flag at her mainmasthead. All Drinkwater was aware of were the three pale stripes of her gun decks and the fact that in her passing she was pulling Virago round to larboard. There was more shouting including the unmistakably patrician accents of a flagship lieutenant demanding through his speaking trumpet what the devil they were doing there.

  ‘Trying to remain at anchor, you stupid blockhead!’ Rogers bawled back as a final rendering from forward told where Virago had torn her bowsprit free of London’s main chains. The unknown axeman succeeded in cutting the final strands of her cable.

  ‘We’re under way, Easton, keep that God damn lead going.’ Easton had a lantern in the chains in a flash and Quilhampton ran aft reporting the foretopmast staysail aloft.

  ‘Sheet’s still a-weather, sir . . .’

  ‘Cast it loose and haul aft the lee sheet.’

  ‘Aye, aye . . .’

  Virago’s head had been cast off the wind, thanks to London. Now Drinkwater had to drive her to windward, clear of the shallows under their lee.

  ‘Spanker, Rogers, get the bloody spanker on her otherwise her head’ll pay off too much . . .’ Rogers shouted for men and Drinkwater jumped down into the waist. He wished to God he had a cutter like the old Kestrel that could claw to windward like a knife’s edge. Suddenly Virago’s weatherly, sea-kindly bluff bows were a death trap.

  ‘Mr Matchett! Will she take a jib or is the bowsprit too far gone?’

  ‘Reckon I c’d set summat forrad . . .’

  ‘See to it,’ snapped Drinkwater. ‘Hey! You men there, a hand with these staysails!’ He attacked the rope stoppings on the mizen staysail and after two men had come to his aid he moved forward to the foot of the foremast where the main staysail was stowed. His hands felt effeminately soft but he grunted at the freezing knots until more men, seeing what he was about, came to his assistance.

  ‘Halliards there lads! Hoist away . . . up she goes, lively there! Now we’ll sail her out like a yacht!’ He turned aft. ‘Belay that main topsail, Graham, she’ll point closer under this canvas . . .’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  ‘Cap’n, cap’n, zur.’

  ‘Yes? Here Tregembo, I’m here!’

  ‘Master says she’s shoaling . . .’

  ‘God’s bones!’ He hurried aft to where Easton was leaning outboard, gleaming wetly in the lamplight from where a wave had sluiced him and the leadsman. Drinkwater grabbed his shoulder and Easton looked up from the leadline. He shook his head. ‘Shoaling, sir.’

  ‘Shit!’ he tried to think and peered over the side. The faint circle of light emitted by the lantern showed the sea at one second ten feet beneath them, next almost up to the chains. But the streaks of air bubbles streaming down-wind from the tumbling wave-caps were moving astern: Virago had headway. He recalled the chart, a shoaling of the bay towards its southward end. He patted Easton’s shoulder. ‘Keep it goin’, Mr Easton.’ Then he jumped inboard and made for the poop.

  ‘Steer full and bye!’

  Out to starboard another blue rocket soared into the air and he was aware that the sleet had stopped. He could see dark shapes of other ships, tossing and plunging with here and there the gleam of a sail as some fought their way to windward while others tried to hold onto their anchors. He remembered his advice to Quilhampton on the subject of anchors. He had lost one now, and although he had not lost the ship, neither had he yet saved her.

  A moment later another sleet squall enveloped them. He looked up at the masthead pendant. Virago was heading at least a point higher without square sails and Matchett had succeeded in getting a jib up on what was left of the bowsprit. He wondered how much leeway they were making and tried looking astern at the wake but he could see nothing. He wondered what had become of the London and what old Parker was making of the night. Perhaps ‘Batter Pudding’ would be a widow before dawn. Parker would not be the first admiral to go down with his ship. He did not know whether Admiral Totty had survived the wreck of the Invincible, but Balchen had been lost with Victory on the Caskets fifty years earlier, and Shovell had died on the beach in the Scillies after the wreck of the Association. But poor Parker might end ignominiously, a prisoner of the Swedes.

  ‘Quite a night, sir,’ Rogers came up. He had lost his hat and his hair was plastered upon his head.

  ‘Quite a night, Sam.’

  ‘We’ve set all the fore and aft canvas we can, she seems to sail quite well.’

  ‘She’ll do,’ said Drinkwater tersely, ‘If she weathers the point, she’ll do very well.’

  ‘Old Willerton’s been over the side on the end of the foretack.’

  ‘What the devil for?’

  ‘To see if his “leddy” is still there.’

  ‘Well is it?’ asked Drinkwater with sudden superstitious anxiety.

  ‘Yes,’ Rogers laughed and Drinkwater felt a sense of relief, then chid himself for a fool.

  ‘Pipe “Up spirits”, Sam, the poor devils deserve it.’

  Virago did weather the point and dawn found her hands wet, cold and red-eyed, anxiously staring astern and out on either beam.
Of the fifty-eight ships that had anchored in Vingå Bay only thirty-eight were now in company. They beat slowly to windward, occasionally running perilously close together as they tacked, grey shapes tossing in heavy grey seas on which was something new, something to add greater danger to their plight: ice floes.

  Many of the absent ships were the smaller members of the fleet, particularly the gun brigs, but most of the bombs were still in company and the Anne Reed made up under Virago’s larboard quarter. Once they had an offing they bore away to the southward.

  The wind shifted a little next day then, at one bell in the first watch, it backed south westerly and freshened again. Two hours later Virago followed the more weatherly ships into the anchorage of Skalderviken in the shelter of the Koll. Drinkwater collapsed across his cot only to be woken at four next morning. The wind had increased to storm force. Even in the lee of the land Virago pitched her bluff bow into the steep seas and flung the spray over her bow to be whipped aft, catching the unwary on the face and inducing the agonising wind-ache as it evaporated. Rain and sleet compounded the discomfort and Drinkwater succeeded in veering a second cable onto his one remaining anchor. At daylight, instead of rigging out a new bowsprit, the tired men were aloft striking the topgallant masts, lowering the heavy lower yards in their jeers and lashing them across the rails.

  Then, having exhausted themselves in self-preservation, the wind eased. It continued to drop during the afternoon and just after midnight the night-signal to weigh was made from St George. Nelson, anxious to prosecute the war in spite of, or perhaps because of, the disappearance of Parker, was thwarted before the fleet could move. The wind again freshened and the laboriously hove in cables were veered away again.

  Nelson repeated the signal to weigh at seven in the morning and this time the weather obliged. An hour and a half later the remnants of the British squadrons in the Baltic beat out of Skalderviken and then bore away towards the Sound and Copenhagen.

  By noon the gale had eased. London rejoined, together with some of the other ships. The flagship had been ashore on an uncharted shoal off Varberg castle and the Russell had had a similar experience attempting to tow off the gun brig Tickler. Both had escaped. Less fortunate was the gun brig Blazer which also ran ashore at Varberg and was captured by the Swedes.

  The fleet was hove to when Parker rejoined to await the results of Vansittart’s embassy. Just before dark the Blanche was sighted making up from the south. The news that she brought was eagerly awaited by men who had had a bellyful of shilly-shallying.

  Chapter Thirteen 24–28 March 1801

  Councils of Timidity

  There are many levels at which a man can worry and Drinkwater was no exception. Over-riding every moment of his life, waking and sleeping, was concern for his ship and its performance within so large a fleet. Beneath this constant preoccupation lay a growing conviction that the expedition had been left too late. In the two days since Blanche rejoined the fleet a number of alarming rumours had circulated. It was learned that Vansittart’s terms had been rejected by Count Bernstorff and the Danish government. Both Vansittart and Drummond, the accredited British envoy to the Danish court, had been given their passports and told to leave. Britons resident in Denmark had been advised to quit the country while the Swedish navy, already possessing its first British prize, the Blazer, was making belligerent preparations at Carlscrona. Worse still, the Russians were reported cutting through the ice at Revel.

  But it was the inactivity of their own admiral that most worried the British. Every hour the Commander-in-Chief waited, robbed them of surprise, and every hour the fleet lay idle increased the gossip and rumour that spread from passing boat to gunroom to lower deck. Vansittart had given Parker formal instructions to commence hostilities in one breath and warned him of the formidable preparations made at Copenhagen in another. Drummond endorsed the determination of the Danes and promised the hesitant Parker a bloody nose. After the first conference aboard London, at which Nelson was present, Parker had excluded his second-in-command and Rear Admiral Graves from further consultation. Instead he interviewed the pilots from the Hull Trinity House who were as apprehensive as the admiral and informed Parker that they were familiar with the navigation of The Sound alone, and could undertake no responsibility for the navigation of the Great Belt. Nelson, who saw the Russians as the greatest threat, thought that defeat of the Tsar would automatically destroy the Baltic Alliance, wished to take a detachment of the fleet by the Great Belt and strike directly at Revel. He had made his recommendations in writing and Dommett, the captain of the fleet, had emerged from Parker’s cabin, his face a mask of agony, to reveal to the assembled officers on the London’s quarterdeck that Parker had struck out every single suggestion made by Vice-Admiral Nelson.

  It was a story that had gone round the fleet like wildfire and together with the rumour circulated from Blanche about Danish preparations, added to the feeling that they were too late.

  Lieutenant Drinkwater was a prey to all these and other worries as he stood upon Virago’s poop on the freezing morning of March 26th. He was staring through his glass at a large boat flying the red flag of Denmark together with a white flag of truce, as it pulled through the fifty-two British ships anchored off Nakke Head at the entrance to The Sound.

  Meanwhile in London’s great cabin, a confident young aide-de-camp with a message from Governor Stricker at Elsinore told Parker that if his guns were no better than his pen he had better return to England. There were two hundred heavy cannon at Cronbourg Castle, together with a garrison of three thousand men and Parker, used to the clear waters of the West Indies, was apprehensive of dark nights and fields of ice. Parker’s hesitation was obvious to the young Danish officer and the worried countenances of London’s officers, as they waited in the cold, led him to conclude they shared their admiral’s apprehensions.

  Drinkwater began to pace Virago’s poop as the watch idled round the deck, needlessly coiling ropes and unenthusiastically chipping the scale off a box of shot set on the after mortar hatch. A low mumble came from them and exactly reflected the mood of the entire fleet.

  Two days earlier, after conferring with Parker, Vansittart and Drummond had been sent home in the lugger Kite. Drinkwater had taken advantage of the departure of the lugger to send a letter to Lord Dungarth and the subject of that letter was the fundamental worry that underlay every thought of every waking hour. Since the interview with Jex, Drinkwater had striven to work out a solution to the problem of Edward. Sweating at the thought of his guilt, of the reception of his first letter to Dungarth sent by Lady Parker, and of Jex’s knowledge, he had spent hours formulating a plan, considering every turn of events and of how each circumstance would be regarded by others. Now the constant delays denied him the opportunity to land Edward. The last few days had had a nightmare quality enhanced by the bad weather, the freezing cold and the continual nagging worries over the fleet itself.

  For the first time in months he had a nightmare, the terrifying spectre of a white clad woman who reared over his supine body to the clanking of chains. With the illogical certainty of dreams she seemed to rise higher and higher above him, yet never diminished in size, while her Medusa head became the smiling face of someone he knew. He woke shivering yet soaked in sweat, his heart beating violently. Compelled by some subconscious urge he had risen in his night-shirt and struck a light to the cabin lantern and spread out the roll of canvas from the bottom of his sea-chest. Already the paint was cracking but, in the light of the lantern, it did not detract from the face that looked back at him: the face in his dream. The portrait was larger than the two now hanging on the forward bulkhead. It showed a young woman with auburn hair piled upon her head. Pearls were entwined in the coiffure that was at once negligent and contrived. Her creamy shoulders were bare and her breasts were just visible behind a wisp of gauze. The grey eyes looked directly out of the canvas and Drinkwater shivered, not from cold, but with the sensation of someone walking upon his grave. The love
ly Hortense Montholon had been brought off a French beach in the last days of peace. For months she had masqueraded as an émigrée, sending information from England to her lover Edouard Santhonax in Paris. She had been returned to France by Lord Dungarth and married Santhonax on his escape following the battle of Camperdown.

  Drinkwater had acquired the portrait by his capture of the French frigate Antigone in the Red Sea. She had been commanded by the same Santhonax and, though he had escaped yet again, Drinkwater had kept the canvas. It had lain in the bottom of his sea-chest, cut from its wooden stretcher and hidden from his wife, for it was unlikely that Elizabeth would understand its fascination. But to Drinkwater it symbolised something more than the likeness of a beautiful woman. The face of Hortense Santhonax was the face of the enemy, not the face of the tow-haired Danes but a manifestation of the force now consuming the whole continent of Europe.

  He could not see it objectively yet, but the liberal allure of the French Revolution had long faded. Even those staunch republicans, the Americans, had disassociated themselves from the lawless disregard for order with which the French pursued their foreign policies or instructed their ragged, irresistible and rapacious armies. He remembered something Dungarth had said the night they landed Hortense upon the beach at Criel: ‘Nine parts of humanity is motivated by a combination of self-interest and apathy. Only the tenth part hungers for power, and it is this which a prudent people guards itself against. In France the tenth part has the upper hand.’ As he stood shivering in the dawn Drinkwater glimpsed the future in a flash. This rupture with Denmark, whatever its sinister motivations from the steppes, was a single symptom of a greater cancer, a cancer that fed upon a doctrinaire philosophy with a spurious validity. He was engaged in a mighty struggle between moderation and excess, and his spartan life had filled him with a horror of excess.

  A wild knocking at his door caused him to roll the portrait up. ‘What is it?’