1637: No Peace Beyond the Line

by Eric Flint

  Tromp stared. “I don’t believe I have ever heard you use profanity before, Eddie.” He frowned. “Your misgivings must be grave indeed.”

  Eddie nodded. “Yeah, and it’s not like I don’t understand why this looks, and may be, a great opportunity to sink a lot of Spanish ships really quickly. Almost as many galleons as we sunk at Vieques. Or Grenada. And I totally get just how lame my counterargument is: I ‘feel’ like he’s sailing into a trap.”

  Tromp nodded. “A good naval commander listens to his instincts. But Dirck’s must take precedence, here. He is the one close enough to assess the situation, so his instincts are the ones we must trust.”

  Cas came running up the stairs, breathless. “Sir,” he said, handing a new flimsy to Tromp, “I do not think I’ve ever seen so many signals come from Captain Simonszoon.”

  “No,” muttered Eddie, “I’ll bet not.”

  Tromp was still reading. “Shall I synopsize?”

  Eddie just nodded.

  “Captain Simonszoon is unconcerned about map inconsistencies, citing how certain features can change over time.” Tromp raised an eyebrow. “Having approached the inlet, his leadsman and others have reported quantities of loose sand and debris consistent with a severe storm.

  “He sees no reason to send the jacht ahead since the eight galleons are of comparable draft to Resolve and they continue to move toward the north. He suspects they are making for an inlet on the other side of the lagoon which will allow them to rejoin the squadron standing off the west coast.”

  Which, Eddie had to admit, was just where another inlet was likely to be, since that was where another postwar construction project had cut a second channel through the barrier bank.

  Tromp was coming to the bottom of the flimsy. “Captain Simonszoon indicates that it is his intention to enter the lagoon, sink the enemy ships, withdraw, and rejoin the fleet with all speed.” Tromp folded the flimsy, then his hands, then looked squarely at Eddie. “Commodore, do you have a concrete reason why Captain Simonszoon should not do as he proposes?”

  Eddie sighed and shook his head.

  Tromp nodded and leaned toward the speaking tube to the wireless room. “Send to Captain Simonszoon: you are ordered to engage the enemy in the lagoon until all are destroyed, or you deem it wisest to disengage and break off.”

  Chapter 58

  Simpson’s Lagoon, St. Maarten

  Dirck Simonszoon slapped the flimsy with sharp, impatient vindication. “About time,” he grumbled. “Engine room: I will be calling for steam within the minute.” An affirmative cry came up the speaking tube.

  Rik glanced at the galleons sailing slowly away. “Admiral Tromp has authorized the attack?”

  “Yes, even over the obvious reservations of his up-time genius.” He glanced sideways at Rik. “Don’t tell Eddi—er, the commodore I said that. Frankly, he might well be a genius, and he’s been right far more often than he’s been wrong.” He leaned toward another speaking tube. “Mount One and Two, track designated targets. We will be moving at one knot.”

  He faced Rik again. “But Bjelke, have you ever noticed how fearful up-timers are of . . . well, of making a mistake? How did we ever become them, as we obviously did in that world?”

  Rik shrugged. “I have not given it much thought, sir. Other than that they are accustomed to having so much more control over their environment, so many more options for . . . well, for almost everything. I suppose that when one has so many more answers from which to choose, one becomes accustomed to spending more time and research on each choice. Particularly the important ones.”

  Simonszoon kept his smile in check. “For a fellow who hasn’t given it much thought, that’s a pretty well-reasoned answer. Now, let’s to business. As soon as we are into the lagoon, we will need to keep to the path the galleons took, and also, to angle ourselves so Mount Two may also bear. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir. You wish me to tend to that, I presume?”

  “Yes. Runner?”

  “Sir!”

  “What are you doing back there? Stand where I can see you, boy! Run this speaking trumpet to the leadsman. I need him to call out depth every fifteen seconds, and the moment we are at nineteen feet.”

  Rik spoke from over his shoulder. “You have steam for one quarter, sir.”

  “Tell them half of that and half again. Not more than a knot now, Rik. Mount One?”

  “Target acquired.”

  “Fire.”

  At only four hundred yards, wood and dust erupted from both sides of the galleon’s hull, the larger jet coming from the far side, where the shell had actually gone all the way through the ship. Dirck nodded in private satisfaction, ordered Mount One to fire again, and inquired about Mount Two’s readiness, thinking: now this; this never gets tiresome . . .

  “Sir,” cried the leadsman through the speaking trumpet, “depth is twenty feet. Thick weeds on either side of the channel.”

  Dirck managed not to roll his eyes. As if weeds on either side of a soil-sided inlet in the tropics were worthy of report. It would have been stranger if some growth wasn’t there.

  Mounts One and Two roared within a second of each other. One round was a near miss, vaporizing only the stern lantern before it shrieked out over the lagoon. The second projectile hit the hull where the maindeck rose to the quarterdeck; all manner of materials spewed out, and the ship seemed to stagger.

  The leadsman cried out again. “Holding at twenty feet. Pushing through some weeds in the channel, now.”

  Dirck nodded toward the bow, but muttered, “Am I the only captain afloat cursed with a leadsman more attentive to weeds than depth?”

  Rik had heard him. “Sir, it is odd that he remarks upon the weeds.”

  “Odd . . . or perverse. Look at all the growth.” Simonszoon gestured to either side. “Some is bound to drift into the channel and the Spanish ahead of us just pushed most of it out of the way. Hardly worth reporting.”

  Rik frowned, his gaze moving from the overgrown barrier bank on the left to the still-smouldering foliage that climbed up toward Billy Folly Hill on the right. “But sir, if the Spanish have been using this inlet regularly, wouldn’t it have already been clear of weeds?”

  Simonszoon half turned toward his XO. “That is a very good, and somewhat worrisome point, Mr. Bjelke. Go to the side and take a look at those weeds.”

  Mount One spoke again. A fourth shell scored a third hit near the base of the mainmast. It tipped slightly, just before the mainstays started to snap, one after the other. Canvas shredding as it fell, the mast fell forward and smashed down hard on the already-savaged starboard weather deck. The ship listed, lost way, and it looked as if men were already leaping off the opposite side of her waist. So much for Spanish tenacity. Simonszoon leaned toward the speaking tube. “Firing solutions?”

  “Both mounts have solutions on their next targets and are prepared to fire.”

  “Reload with standard round, fire, and then hold. Let’s see if they strike their colors.”

  Two hundred yards further beyond her, the next target beckoned. He momentarily wondered why neither the last ship nor the two he’d hammered to pieces on the way into the lagoon had so much as fired once, at least in defiance. The crews seemed to be more interested in hiding beneath the gunwales and fleeing—however slowly—than fighting back. Of course, at the ranges which Resolve engaged them, their guns would have been lucky to hit a target the size of . . . Well, at four hundred yards, the only thing their balls had any chance of hitting was the sea. The odds of doing that, at least, were pretty promising. So long as gravity continued to function.

  As the leadsman called out a depth of twenty-one feet, Rik Bjelke returned to the flying bridge. “Well,” Simonszoon prompted, “are they weeds or not?”

  “Sir, they are—but there are too many, I think.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Rik indicated both sides of the channel through which they had almost passed. “There is much loose or cut fol
iage all about us, sir. On the facing slope to our right and all along the bank to our left, from the seaside to the lagoon. Much of it is still burning—”

  “Well, that’s probably all you’re seeing: the parts of the wood and the bracken they laid up to create all the smoke that haven’t yet caught flame.” He shrugged. “Some wound up in the inlet.”

  “Yes, sir, no doubt. But about the brush on the barrier bank; it looks as if a great deal of it was not meant to catch flame, and hasn’t.” He hastened on as Dirck’s frown became impatient. “The parts that are burning, both near Pelican Point and on the bank, are all arrayed at the edge of or immediately overlooking the sea. Behind that, there is more of the same, but scattered. And it is not burning. Well, not much of it.” Rik waved a frustrated hand toward the channel that was now behind them. “It is quite a jumble, sir. But I am struck by how much effort the Spanish expended bringing down not just wood, but cuttings, and then not doing a better job of setting it all afire.”

  Dirck found it vaguely disconcerting, but immediately chided himself. So was Dirck Simonszoon, terror of the Caribbean for almost twenty years, becoming as fretful as a twenty-three-year-old up-timer, imagining Spaniards hidden in every bush, terrors lurking behind every cloud of smoke?

  He snorted aloud at the thought. “Keep on the pilot, Bjelke. I don’t want the speed creeping up. And while you are at that . . . ”

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “Send word down to de Ruyter. All ship’s troops are to load their pieces. I want half of the Germans summoned to the weather deck. Keep the rest, including those Wild Geese of his, below. But keep them ready.”

  Billy Folly Hill, St. Maarten

  Captain Manrique Gallardo risked poking his head out of the makeshift command post and bunker on the rear slope of Billy Folly Hill. The enemy steam cruiser—half as long as the largest galleon ever built, but with only slightly greater freeboard—moved slowly past. The faint chegg . . . chegg . . . chegg . . . of its monstrous metal heart mimicked the pulse of a sleeping man. Even though its long, strange deck guns roared like thunder and hit like lightning bolts, there was still a palpable sense that the ship was moving cautiously.

  No doubt part of that was explained by the busy leadsman. Gallardo doubted he would have been any more trusting of the “safe depth” along the path that enemy ships had navigated before him. But whatever other reservations the enemy commander may have felt, the lure of so many easy kills was, as Fadrique had predicted, irresistible. “Because,” the admiral had confessed with a smile, “I am relatively sure it would be irresistible to me.”

  And he’d been right, as the grand old bastard usually was. He might be a hidalgo, might sip rather than swig his wine—well, usually!—but he was an old warhorse at heart and interested in only two things: Spain’s dominion and winning battles. Which, to Manrique Gallardo, were damned close to synonyms and all he required in a leader.

  He tapped one of his two runners on the shoulder. “Now, light the fuse.”

  The young fellow, eyes wide, almost left with his morion still on. Gallardo grabbed it, swatted the boy-soldier on the back of his head and resisted the urge to kick him down the hill. He refrained not out of kindness, but because a cloud of dust and tumbling youngster might draw the attention of someone on that demon ship.

  However, the lad was fleet of foot, small of body, and stealthy when he ran. He made it down to the large, sun-bleached tooth of rock behind which they’d sheltered the heads of the covered fuses, and uncoiled the slow-burning match that was wrapped around his forearm. In the last five years, the arquebuses of Spanish soldiery had disappeared and the remaining matchlocks were mostly in the hands of native auxiliaries, but they still had plenty of the matches used to fire both.

  The runner held the match to the fuse, which smoked, then flared, then burned its way downhill. Or so Gallardo imagined; except for the near end, the fuse was in a tube, concealed from sight and buried under a thin shield of small rocks along most of its course. Manrique realized he hadn’t started timing it, so began at “three” instead of “one” and counted up toward ten.

  At eight, he nodded at his other runner and they both ducked down beneath the lip of the bunker’s window, covering their ears and shutting their eyes.

  They waited. When Gallardo reach fifteen in his internal count, he stood. Downhill, the young runner who’d lit the fuse shrugged expressively.

  “Coño!” snared Gallardo. He slapped the other runner on the side of the head. “Go tell the sergeants. The fuse didn’t burn all the way to the charges.”

  “Anything else, Captain, sir?”

  “Yes, idiot! Tell them to get out there and fix them! Now!”

  Simpson’s Lagoon, St. Maarten

  Mount One fired, then Mount Two. The second of the galleons, its ribs already showing through its shattered starboard hull, was hit in almost exactly the same place as it had been by the last two rounds. Even before the bracings and pillars that supported it had finished flying outward to raise up dozens of geyser-like eruptions in the lagoon, Simonszoon heard another sound behind that rending of heavy timbers: a sharp crack, then another, then a long groan with a squeal of tortured wood rising up through its center. An immense section of the galleon’s side simply gave way, the structural integrity too shredded to persist. Beams splintered and strakes came ripping off, down to and even beneath the waterline.

  The groan of ruined wood succumbing to its own unsupported weight gave way to a long, greedy moan of inrushing water. As if the belly of the eviscerated galleon was sucking it inward, a vicious fuming rose up around the breach; the weight and pressure was such that a good deal of the ravenous flood was pulverized into vapor. The galleon started to list in the direction of that vast wound, and was settling rapidly as she did.

  Simonszoon had seen many ships die in his many years at sea, but never one quite like this: so still and yet so grievously breached that she was sure to sink in less than a minute. But as she did just that, and her other side began turning toward the sky, the galleon’s stern was also being dragged slightly to the right, pulled by the greater volume of water growling in up close to the bow. And as it did, and as Resolve steered to ensure that Mount Two would be able to bear easily upon the next target, Dirck saw that not only were most of the gunports on the port side closed, but those few with open lids were as dark and empty as a blind seer’s eye sockets.

  Simonszoon started into an erect posture. Unless all those cannons had broken free of both their breeching ropes and gun and train tackle at a mere twenty-degree list, those ports had been completely empty the whole time. Which now added to the speed of the galleon’s death roll; since the starboard side that had faced him throughout showed all her muzzles, it meant that her port side hadn’t that weight of cannon. And now, whatever lines had helped keep the counterbalancing ballast on that side tore asunder, cracking like a dozen titans’ whips.

  The suddenly released counterweight slid from left to right, bringing the ship over so quickly that, for a moment, her keel rose almost thirty degrees above the surface of the lagoon. Then she settled to the extent that she could in so shallow a body of water.

  Dirck Simonszoon blinked in surprise at what he had seen—and as his eyes reopened, they showed him his surroundings anew. He was four hundred yards into a lagoon in which a galleon could not completely sink, even on its side. None of the ships were galleoncetes or pataches, although they had shallower drafts. As had been the first two galleons, all six remaining presented him with roughly the same perspective as he advanced: a view of their stern or starboard quarter. At no point would he see their portside hulls, as had the ship that had just gone down. A ship which, like half of those that remained, were among the darkest galleons he’d ever seen: so old that they warranted the adjective “venerable.” Or maybe more significantly, “decrepit.”

  And the muzzles that had been facing him from their starboard and stern batteries: did they even have crews? Was that the reason, rat
her than the futility, that they had not even fired once? Was it why the deck crew had so readily leaped clear of the other galleons? Had there even been a full crew aboard, or just enough to move these ships along?

  “These ships.” Were they, in fact, really ships anymore? Or were they just—he struggled to find the right word—decoys? No; it went beyond that. These were just props. Which meant . . .

  That young, duck-screwing up-timer was right!

  Pointe Blanche, St. Maarten

  With covered pots of burning oil arrayed on their poop decks, and combustibles stacked like hayricks near to hand, Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo’s four galleons-become-smoke-ships picked up speed as they rounded Pointe Blanche, the strong Atlantic wind now directly over their starboard quarters.

  Behind them, with Espada Santa in the lead, the newest hulls from the ways at Cuba and Santo Domingo had to keep their sails trimmed so as not to get ahead of the growing smoke screen. The Dutch sloop that had been spotted by the watchers on Guana Cay seemed to almost hop in fright as it heeled sharply southward, away from the enemy flotilla.

  Álvarez was ready with spyglass to eye as the Santa Ana la Real cleared the headland and the crews of his smoke ships began removing the lids of what had been whalers’ try-pots. He wouldn’t be able to see beyond them for much longer, since their crews would soon start adding a mixture of sawdust, sugar, and niter to the flames, the resulting smoke making observations impossible until they passed the doomed galleons.

  The glass revealed a scene not too different from the one Fadrique had envisioned. Approximately three and a half miles to the west, ten enemy ships were arrayed near Pelican Point. Another mile and a half still further to the west, about a dozen more were in a loose cluster. The purpose and nature of the farther group was obvious; it was the balance of the enemy’s conventional men-of-war, set in a screen to intercept any attack by the galleons waiting off the west coast. But the closer squadron was the one that commanded Álvarez’s primary interest . . . and concern.