‘What the devil for?’
‘She draws less than the St George, Mr Rogers. Do you direct the watch officers to pay particular attention to all signals from the Elephant. We are to form part of a detachment under Nelson . . .’
The sudden activity of the fleet and the disencumbering of Edward had coincided to throw off Drinkwater’s depression. He suddenly felt ridiculously buoyant, a feeling shared by the impish Tumilty whose smile threatened to disappear into his ears.
‘ ’Twill be a fine music we’ll be playing to these damned knaves, Mr Rogers, so it will, a fine basso profundo with the occasional crescendo to make ’em jump about like eejits.’
‘Let’s hope we’re not too late, Mr Tumilty,’ said Rogers who had not yet forgiven Drinkwater for his mysterious behaviour over Waters.
‘Beg pardon, zur, but Mr Trussel sent me down with more orders just come, zur.’
‘Thank you Tregembo.’ Drinkwater took the packet and broke the wafer.
‘Beg pardon, zur, but may I speak, zur?’
‘What is it?’
‘ ’Tis well-known about the ship that the man we landed yesterday was a spy, zur.’
Drinkwater looked at the Cornishman. They both understood.
‘Mr Jex approached me some days ago, zur. It cost him two plugs of tobacco to learn you ain’t got no brother, zur.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Now, with your permission, zur, I’ll see to your sword and pistols, zur.’
‘They are all right, thank you Tregembo, I have not used them since last you attended to them.’
‘I’ll look at them, just the same.’
Drinkwater bent over the new orders. It was a general instruction to the bomb vessels to place themselves under the orders of Captain Murray of the Edgar. It was anticipated that they would be used against the fortress at Cronbourg. A note was included from Martin. The commander’s crabbed script drew Drinkwater’s attention to the fact that it was suspected that Zebra had suffered some damage on the Zeeland’s Reef and he might yet be able to render Drinkwater a service. Drinkwater fancied he could read the unwritten thought that lay behind that fatuous phrase, that he, Nathaniel Drinkwater, was an intimate of Lord Dungarth. Drinkwater wondered what Martin would do if he knew that the lieutenant, with whom he was currently currying favour, had just assisted a murderer to escape the noose.
Late in the afternoon the brig Cruizer was ordered forward to send in a boat to make a final demand of Governor Stricker at Cronbourg as to his intentions if the British fleet attempted to pass The Sound. It revealed to all, including the Danish commander, that Parker was still vacillating.
The following morning, Saturday March 28th, the wind hauled westerly and the temperature rose. The sun shone and the fleet weighed, setting all sail to the royals in an attempt to enter and pass The Sound. But the wind fell light and the contrary current held up the lumbering battleships so that Parker, learning from Brisbane of the Cruizer that Stricker had laughed in his face, could not risk his ships drifting under the heavy guns of the fortress. Once again the fleet anchored and in Virago’s cabin that night they debated how long it took to wear an anchor ring through the shank.
PART THREE
Lord Nelson
“It is warm work; and this day may be the last to any of us at a moment. But mark you! I would not be elsewhere for thousands.”
NELSON, COPENHAGEN, 2 April, 1801
Chapter Fourteen 29–30 March 1801
The Sound
‘Two guns from the flagship, sir.’
‘Very well, what o’clock is it?’
‘It wants a few minutes of midnight, sir; wind’s freshened a little from the west.’
Drinkwater struggled into his greygoe and hurried on deck. He looked up at the masthead pendant and nodded his approval as Rogers reported the hands mustering to weigh.
‘Sheet home the topsails, Mr Rogers, and have headsails ready for hoisting. Mr Easton!’
‘Sir?’
‘Have you a man for the chains?’
‘All ready.’
‘Very well.’
‘One thing we can do is weigh the bloody anchor in the middle of the night,’ offered Rogers in a stage whisper.
‘Virago ’hoy!’
‘Hullo?’ Drinkwater strode to the rail to see the dim shape of a master’s mate standing in the stern of a gig.
‘Captain Murray desires that you move closer inshore towards Cronbourg Castle, sir. The bombs are to prepare to bombard at daylight!’
‘Thank you.’ Drinkwater turned inboard again. ‘Can you make out Edgar in this mist?’
‘Aye, sir, just, she’s hoisted lanterns.’
Drinkwater saw the flare of red orpiment from the Edgar’s stern.
‘Bengal light, sir, signal to weigh.’
‘Very well. Mr Matchett!’
‘Sir?’
‘Heave away!’
Virago filled her topsails as the anchor came a-trip and the water began to chuckle under her round bow. Keeping a careful watch to avoid collision Drinkwater conned the old ship southeastwards in the wake of the Edgar. On either beam dark shapes with the pale gleam of topsails above indicated the other bombs creeping forward ready to throw their fire at the intransigent Danes. Then, barely an hour after they had got under way, the wind shifted, backing remorselessly and beginning to head them.
‘Topsail’s a-shiver, zur,’
‘Brace her hard up, Mr Easton, God damn it!’
‘Hard up, sir, aye, aye . . . it’s no good sir, wind’s drawing ahead.’
The concussion of guns from the darkness ahead and the dark rose glow of twin Bengal lights together with a blue rocket signalled the inevitable.
‘Main braces, Mr Easton, down helm and stand by to anchor!’
Once again the anchor splashed overboard, once again Virago’s cable rumbled through the hawse pipe and once again her crew clambered aloft to stow the topsails, certain in the knowledge that tomorrow they would have to heave the cable in again. They were nowhere near close enough to bombard as Murray intended.
All morning Drinkwater waited for the order to weigh as the light wind backed a little. During the afternoon the rest of the ships worked closer inshore and by the evening the whole fleet had brought to their anchors four miles to the north west of Cronbourg castle. Drinkwater surveyed the shore. The dark bulk of the fortress was indistinct but the coast of Zeeland was more heavily wooded than at Gilleleje. The villages of Hellebaek and Hornbaek were visible, the latter with a conspicuous church steeple looking toylike as the sun westered to produce a flaming sunset. It picked out not only the villages of Denmark but small points of metallic fire and the pink planes of sunlit stone where the guns of the Swedish fortress at Helsingborg on the opposite side of The Sound peered from their embrasures.
Men lingered on deck in silence watching the Danish shore where figures could be seen on foot and horseback. Here and there a carriage was observed as the population of Elsinore came out to look at this curiosity, the heavy hulls of the British ships, the tracery of their masts and yards silhouetted against the blood red sunset. It seemed another omen, and to the Danes a favourable one. The image of those ships reeking in their own blood-red element was not lost on Drinkwater who wrote of it in his journal before turning again to the stained notebook he had consulted when the fleet had made for the Great Belt.
The book was one of several left him after the death of Mr Blackmore, the old sailing master of the Cyclops. Drinkwater had been his brightest pupil on the frigate and the old man had left both his notebooks and his quadrant to the young midshipman. The notebooks had been meticulously kept and inspired Drinkwater to keep his own journal in considerable detail. Blackmore had carried out several surveys and copied foreign charts, particularly of the Baltic, an area with which he had been familiar, having commanded a ship in the Scandinavian trade.
Drinkwater looked at the chartlet of The Sound. The ramparts of Cronbourg were clearly marked together with the arcs o
f fire of the batteries and a note that their range was no more than one and a half miles. The Sound was two and a half miles wide and the fleet could not hope to pass unscathed if they received fire from both Helsingborg and Cronbourg.
Drinkwater was familiar with the current. It had frustrated them already, usually running to the north but influenced by the wind with little tidal effect. The Disken shoal formed a middle ground but should not present any problem to the fleet. It was the guns of Cronbourg that would do the damage, those and the Swedish cannon on the opposite shore.
Drinkwater went on deck before turning in. It was bitterly cold again with a thin layer of high cloud. Trussel was on deck.
‘All quiet, Mr Trussel?’
‘Aye sir, like the grave.’
‘Moonrise is about two-fifteen and the almanac indicates an eclipse.’
‘Ah, I’d better warn the people, there’s plenty of them as still believes in witchcraft and the like.’
‘As you like, Mr Trussel.’ Drinkwater thought of his own obsession with Hortense Santhonax and wondered if there were not something in old wives’ tales. There were times when a lonely man might consider himself under a spell. He thought, too, of Edward, and where he might be this night. Trussel recalled him.
‘To speak the truth, Mr Drinkwater, I’d believe any omen if it meant making some progress. This is an interminable business, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Aye, Mr Trussel, and the Danes have been well able to observe every one of our manoeuvres.’
‘And doubtless form a poor opinion of ’em, what with all the shilly shallying. I’ve never seen so much coming and going even when the Grand Fleet lay at St Helen’s. Why your little boat-trip t’other morning went unremarked by anyone.’
The point of Trussel’s chat emerged and Drinkwater smiled.
‘Indeed, Mr Trussel, that was the point of it.’
‘The point of it, sir . . .?’ said Trussell vaguely.
‘Come, what is the rumour in the ship, eh? Ain’t it that the mysterious fellow we took aboard at Yarmouth is, in truth a spy?’
‘Aye, sir. That’s what scuttlebutt says, but I don’t always hold that scuttlebutt’s accurate.’
‘But in this case it is, Mr Trussel, in this case it most certainly is. Good night to you . . .’
In his coffin-like cot Mr Jex lay unsleeping. He felt a growing sense of unease at the quickening pace of events. The fruitless comings and goings of the last week, the weary handling of ground tackle and sails had scarcely affected him since he did no special duty at such times. True the bad weather had confined him sick and miserable in his cabin but he had at least a measure of satisfaction in abusing and belabouring his steward, a miserable, cowed man who was loved by no-one. But even Jex had overcome his sickness eventually and the prolonged periods at anchor had pacified his internal disquiet. Like his Commanderin-Chief, Jex did not wish to pass the fortress at Cronbourg, but whereas Parker was merely excessively cautious, Jex was a coward. He found it increasingly difficult to concentrate upon his columns of figures, even when they showed a rise in the fortunes of Hector Jex to the extent of yet wiping out the amount extorted by Lieutenant Drinkwater. Instead he found unbidden images of mutilated bodies entering his mind; of bloody decks strewn with limbless corpses, of the surgeon’s tubs filled with arms and legs.
Lieutenant Rogers’s bloodthirsty yarns lost nothing in the telling and Jex’s disgrace in the action with the luggers had left him a prey to the cruel and merciless wit of his brother officers. Rogers’s lack of either tact or compassion only fuelled the constant references to Jex’s cowardice so that the purser conceived a hatred for the first lieutenant that began to exceed that he already felt for his commander.
As for the latter, Jex had felt a hopelessness at having been out-manoeuvred yet again by Mr Drinkwater. The ostentatious departure of Waters from the ship had seemed to him to prove the accuracy of Drinkwater’s assertions about the mysterious landsman. All Jex could do was hope to determine whether or not a real murder had taken place at Newmarket, and whether or not the Marquis de la Roche-Jagu really existed. He could not himself conceive that it would have been reported without it being known in Newmarket whether or not the event had actually taken place. And it was this desire to live long enough to prove the arrogant Mr Drinkwater wrong that was constantly undermined by the growing horror of premature death.
Even as he lay there, a deck below the anchor watch who marvelled at the lunar eclipse, he saw himself dead; torn apart by cannon shot, his bowels spilling from his paunch.
Drinkwater stood in the sunshine and looked round the deck. He had done all he could to move Virago forward to a position where she might assist the seven bomb vessels if they required it, yet remain out of range of the guns of Cronbourg with her vulnerable cargo of explosives and combustibles.
He looked beyond the masts of the bomb vessels at their target. Anchored in a line, just outside the known arc of fire of the Danish guns they were preparing to bombard the castle.
Despite the fact that he had already trodden the soil of Denmark his preoccupation with Edward’s plight had so far blinded him to a full realisation of the enemy’s country. To date he had seen it as a series of landmarks to take bearings of, a flat coast with hidden, offshore dangers and a population amply warned of their approach. This morning he realised the alien nature of it. Weighing at daylight the bombs with the battleship Edgar and the frigate Blanche had taken up the positions attempted the previous day. The castle of Cronbourg loomed before them, an edifice of unusual aspect to English eyes, used to the towers of the Norman French. The red-brick walls, towers and cupolas with their bright green copper roofs had a fantastic, even fairy-like quality that seemed at first to totally disarm Sir Hyde Parker’s fears.
But even as they let their anchors go at six in the morning of March 30th the Danish flag was hoisted in the north westerly breeze that set fair for the passage of The Sound. The white cross on a red, swallow-tail ground had the lick of a dragon’s tongue about it, as it floated above the fortress, over the roofs of the town of Elsinore.
The men had breakfasted at their stations and Lettsom had come on deck to see for himself the progress of the fleet. Easton was pointing out the landmarks.
‘The town is Helsingør, Mr Lettsom, which we call Elsinore, the castle is called Cronbourg, or Cronenbourg on some charts.’
‘Then that is Hamlet’s castle, eh? Is that so Mr Drinkwater?’
‘I suppose it is, Mr Lettsom.’
‘And they tell me you had an eclipse last night.’
‘I think ’twas the moon that had an eclipse. Happily it had no effect upon us.’
‘Quite so, sir.’ Lettsom paused for a moment. ‘ “The moist star, upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands, Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse . . .” Hamlet, gentlemen, Act One . . .’
‘Sick to doomsday with anchoring more like, Bones’, put in Rogers.
Lettsom ignored the first lieutenant and produced another quotation: ‘ “But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastern hill . . .” ’
‘But it ain’t high, Mr Lettsom, thus proving Shakespeare did not know the lie of the land hereabouts.’
‘True, sir, but there’s such a thing as poetic licence. And here, if not the dawn, is Mr Jex.’
The assembled officers laughed as the purser came on deck, and the surgeon, in fine form now he had the attention of all, continued his thespian act.
‘Good morning Mr Jex,’ he said, then added darkly, ‘ “here is a beast that wants discourse of reason”.’
Bewildered by the laughter, yet conscious that he was the cause of it, Jex looked sullenly round.
‘ “A dull and muddy-metalled rascal”, eh, Mr Jex?’ Even Lettsom himself was scarce able to refrain from laughter and Jex was roused to real anger.
‘Do you mind your manners, Mr Lettsom,’ he snarled, ‘I’ve given you no cause to abuse me.’
‘ “
Use every man after his desert and who would ’scape whipping?” ’
‘Why,’ laughed Rogers unwilling to let Lettsom have all the fun, ‘both you and your eighth man would qualify there, Mr Jex . . .’ Laughter spread along the deck among the seamen who well understood the allusion to Jex’s corruption.
‘Aye, “be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.” ’
‘Hold your God damn tongue . . .’ burst out Jex, the colour mounting to his face at this public humiliation.
‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ Drinkwater temporised, ‘I beg you to desist . . . Mr Jex, I assure you the surgeon meant no offence but merely wished to air his knowledge of the Bard. I am by no means persuaded his powers of recall are accurate . . .’
‘Sir!’ protested Lettsom but Drinkwater called their attention to the fleet.
‘Let us see whether aught is rotten in the state of Denmark shall we?’
‘Mr Drinkwater, you o’erwhelm the powers of my muse,’ grinned Lettsom, ‘I shall betake myself to my cockpit and sulk like Achilles in his tent.’
The surgeon and purser were instantly forgotten as glasses were lifted to watch the fleet weigh from the anchorage and begin the approach to Copenhagen through the sound.
Led by Monarch, the foremost ship of Lord Nelson’s division, the ships of the line stood south eastwards in brilliant sunshine. It presented a magnificent spectacle to the men watching from the huddle of bomb ships that waited eagerly to play their part in the drama of the day. The wind had settled to a fine breeze from the north north westward, as Monarch approached Cronbourg. They could see her topmen racing aloft to shake out the topgallants from their stoppings.
‘London’s signalling, sir, “General bombs, commence the bombardment”.’
‘Thank you, Mr Easton. Mr Rogers, have the crews in the boats ready to render assistance, and Mr Tumilty, perhaps you will give us the benefit of your opinion in the action.’
‘I shall be delighted, Nat’aniel. Mark Zebra well, I hear she took a pounding on the reef t’other day and, though I believe her to be well built, if Bobbie Lawson overloads his mortars I think she may be in trouble.’
The Bomb Vessel Page 16