Flashman and the Seawolf

by Robert Brightwell

  If you want to learn how to fire cannon then a helpless and static target is a great way to start. So taking the opportunity I joined one of the gun crews and we started a pleasant evening of target practice. I have since fired thirty two pounders and other big guns and they are exhausting beasts to load and lay to a target. The little four pounders on the Speedy may have lacked weight of shell but were easier to aim and accurate at that range. With Cochrane and Archie spotting the fall of shot and calling corrections to aim, we blazed away. It was just getting hard to see the ships in the growing darkness when a fire broke out on one of them which illuminated our targets. The fire burned steadily for a while on just one ship when suddenly there was an explosion and a huge billow of flames which quickly spread to the other ships. One of the vessels had been carrying oil and now the ships burned like massive lamps with a light that would be visible across many miles in the darkness. We ceased fire, our work was done and weighed anchor. The light from the fires made it easy to see our way out of the bay in the darkness and even helped us find the mail boat when we were in open water to continue our journey down the coast.

  We had been able to see the glow from the flames for most of the night and had been well pleased with our work. But as the first light from the dawn spread across the sky from the east we saw that we had not been the only ones watching the glow. There in the east three large sets of masts could be seen heading in our direction.

  Trouble comes in various guises but rarely has it been more catastrophically misidentified. In his defence the light was poor but Cochrane’s confident assertion that these were “Spanish galleons from South America” seemed more hope than probability to me as surely these would have put in at Cadiz or another Atlantic port. If a treasure ship had tried to sail through the straits then every available ship from the Barbary Coast and Gibraltar would have been on it like hounds on a stag. Both Archie and I expressed doubts but with his usual monumental confidence Cochrane assured us that he was right. With what turned out to be suicidal stupidity we therefore turned towards the three large sets of sail.

  As the light slowly spread across the sky all eyes were turned to the three sets of sails as they gradually grew over the horizon. Looking back at the coast a plume of black smoke now climbed into the sky over the bay with the beached ships and clearly the newcomers were coming to investigate the source of the fire. Head on is the hardest angle to identify a ship, or cluster of sails above the horizon as these were when we first saw them. Even when the black lumps of the hulls came into view there was still uncertainty over what they could be. Only Cochrane was still confident that they could be Spanish ships from the Americas and he joked that to keep St Vincent happy he would have to kill nearly all the Speedy’s crew in capturing them to justify promotions for the survivors. It was a prophetic prediction.

  With the sun rising behind them in the east we were able to see the three ships long before they could see us in the darker western sky. But as the sun climbed higher they eventually spotted the Speedy and the mail boat in our wake, and spread out to make sure we did not escape. The shapes of two of them lengthened to go either side of us while one came straight on. From the side views we saw that they had three long cream stripes down their sides. They were battleships, ships of the line.

  Before we could begin to entertain hopes that they might be friendly, a French battle flag broke from the stern of the leading ship. I looked across at Cochrane and he stared aghast at the ships for a few seconds. They were well spaced out and on their new courses would trap us against the land with no room for escape. The single broadside from any one of them would be able to smash us to smithereens.

  That moment was one of the few occasions when I think I have seen Cochrane genuinely scared but within a moment he was back to himself, calculating angles and options to get us out of the trap we had sailed into. The French were upwind of us but the winds were light, our only hope was to out run them. Orders were shouted, we changed course away from French and within moments the crew were racing about the rigging to get every stitch of canvass she could carry stretched to catch every gust of wind we could. Other crew were unlimbering the massive oars called sweeps that could be used to move the ship when there were light or no winds at all. We had four sweeps on each side, each manned by four men who strained to give the ship extra purchase in the calm sea.

  Despite our efforts the French ships started to gain on us. Their masts were three times higher than ours and caught more wind.

  “We need to lighten the ship to go faster,” shouted Cochrane. “Throw the guns over board.”

  “But we will be defenceless,” said Archie.

  “We are defenceless now against the guns they have on those ships, our four pounders will not scratch them but their weight is slowing us down. Throw them over board and anything else heavy we can get rid off. If we don’t it will all be on the sea bed and us with it in an hour.”

  That got the men moving. Within seconds a stretch of bulwark had been removed and the little cannons were being unlashed and run through this new gap in the rail. More items followed, the heavy iron stove, the bricks we had cooked with on deck, all the cannon balls and powder, all but a handful of the fresh water barrels. These were followed by spare anchors and chains and boxes of biscuit and furniture, spare spars, rigging and everything not required to just to sail the ship as fast as possible right now. By reducing the weight of the ship we would ride higher in the water and this would give us less drag in the sea and more speed. But it was a desperate effort as we would only raise the ship a few inches. I looked over the stern rail and we were leaving a trail of floating boxes, furniture and stores, but they were moving astern at a painfully slow pace.

  The crew were still scouring the ship for things to throw overboard. They had even formed a chain to remove some of the ballast stones from the keel of the ship. This would make the boat lighter but more unstable. The only things that were stopped from going over the side were the last cases of the excellent wine that we had captured off the African coast months before.

  “Wait” cried Cochrane seeing them being carried out of the hatch. “We might as well be fortified for the battle ahead. Give a bottle to each of the crew.“ Then seeing the first of the sailors to get one about to knock the top off the bottle against the side of the ship he called “belay that, get Barrett to open them properly, there is no need to drink broken glass. Treat that wine with respect.”

  Barrett the cabin steward appeared and was soon opening the bottles as fast as he could while muttering that to waste such wine on the crew was putting pearls before swine. Between swigs of wine the crew carried on at the sweeps and a steady stream of ballast stones splashed over the side. We had nearly one hundred crew aboard as we had taken no prizes on this trip and so the men were rotated regularly to stop them getting tired and slowing down. Looking over the side at the receding trail of debris in the water we did seem to be moving slightly faster than before. But when I looked astern at the French ships spread out in our wake they seemed to still be gaining on us, especially the one at the front which was the furthest out to sea.

  “There is a gap opening between their first and second ship” murmured Cochrane to me quietly. “If we wait until the front ship is level with us and then tack towards them then we might just get away. We will be upwind of the first ship then and it will struggle to get back.” The third ship was well astern keeping close to the coast in case we tried to escape that way; it was the second or middle ship that worried me as it was heading almost straight in our direction.

  “What about that one?” I asked pointing at it.

  “We have to hope that their gunnery and seamanship are poor” said Cochrane grimly. He tried to brighten by adding “their Navy has been blockaded in port for months and so they can’t have had much sea time recently.” I looked him in the eye, I was no seaman but even I could see that the French ships were moving well and had spread out sensibly to trap us. They were well managed and
I did not doubt that their guns would be used handily as well.

  Cochrane’s shoulders sank slightly in resignation. “Well it is the best chance we have but I’ll grant you I would not wager a widow’s pension on it.”

  I returned to the stern rail. Several times sailing with Cochrane I had thought we were doomed but he had always got us out of it. But each time he had always been confident with plans up his sleeve. This was the first time that I had seen him genuinely lost for ideas in front of the enemy. The odds against us were enormous and many other captains would have struck their colours already but the crew, including me, had come to expect Cochrane to have a plan for all occasions at sea. To see him bereft of cunning schemes was a shock, a bit like seeing your father being thrown from a horse, someone who you thought was infallible showing that they were human like everyone else.

  The crew sensed the change in mood too. As they finished throwing the ballast overboard there was little to do except watch the approaching French ships and Cochrane pacing futilely about the deck. One of them, a gunner called Jarvis, approached me holding his open bottle of wine. For a moment I thought he was going to offer me a draught of it but then I saw that in his other hand he held a pen and ink and a piece of paper and that the bottle was empty.

  “Beg pardin sir” he said hesitantly, glancing across at Cochrane who had stopped to listen. “I am sure your honours will do your best to get us out of this but well… it does not look good. I was wonderin if you would be so kind as to help me write a note for my Judy that I can put in this ‘ere bottle and hope it finds a friendly shore if things go bad.”

  I also glanced across at Cochrane as some captains would have had the man flogged for such defeatist talk. He just smiled and nodded. Jarvis was around 40 and had probably been at sea since before Cochrane was born. The old sailor knew long odds when he saw them and Cochrane, who valued their skills as seaman and gunners, knew that they could judge the situation as well as he.

  “Certainly what would you like to say” I replied. As all the cabin furniture had gone overboard there was no point going below and so we sat down on the deck to write. Jarvis had never written a letter as he could not write and so he dictated to me what he wanted to say and I drafted the letter which I read back to him. I can’t remember exactly after all this time but it went something like this:

  To my dearest Judy

  We are about to go into battle against three French battleships and so I am getting this letter written in case I do not return.

  Use the prize money that you are going to receive to buy an Inn. Buy one on a main road a good thirsty walk away from any other Inn. Make sure it is out of range of the press gangs so Tom and Mark are not taken for the Navy. Don’t let them go for the Army either. I may be taken prisoner so don’t marry again unless you know I am dead.

  The romantic fool was going to end his letter at this touching note but I asked him a bit about his wife and added the following.

  You have been a good mother to our boys and I know you will bring them up strong and true. I am proud of them and of you as my wife these many years and I want you to know that I love you dearly. I will be thinking of you all in the hours ahead and trust that God will somehow find a way for me to hold you all in my arms again.

  He had been embarrassed to say such things himself for an officer to write despite the dire circumstances. But this obviously hit the mark as when I read it to him he welled up, murmured his thanks and went away with his letter cuffing the tears from his eyes. My reward for this good turn was a steady stream of seaman with bits of paper that they wanted to send to loved ones. This group included one sailor with two bottles, one for a girl in Port Mahon and one for a girl in Portsmouth.

  In other circumstances I might have resented becoming a seaman’s scribe but in this case I was glad to do it. It took my mind off those approaching banks of guns. On days with light winds such as that one, I have seen brave men crack as they spend hours watching those wooden walls of death creep slowly towards them across the ocean. I suspect that many of the seamen wrote the letters for the same reason. They must have known that there was little chance of a letter in a bottle in the Mediterranean finding its way to Portsmouth, Leith or London and especially Kingston Jamaica, as one optimistic top man was hoping. Planning and dictating the letters just gave them something to do.

  I was brought back to our perilous situation when Cochrane gave the order to tack to the west and cross the French line. I got up from the deck and looked across the sea to find that the leading French ship was now level with us and about a mile away. The middle ship was still heading towards us. Cochrane hoped to cross the bows of that one and the stern of the leading ship and thus miss both of their broadsides, but they were bound to react to our move. This was proven a few moments later when the side of the leading ship disappeared behind a wall of smoke. A fraction of a second later we heard the boom of their broadside across the water and even the whistle of a few balls. But at that range we would have been unlucky to have been hit as water spouts from balls hitting the sea sprang up in a wide area around us. As soon as they had fired the first ship started to turn towards us so that we would have to pass their guns again.

  A few moments later the bow chasers of the second ship opened fire and then the front facing guns on the first ship followed suit. From then on we were under constant fire and without guns to fire back ourselves we felt like ducks in a duck shoot. Some of the men went below for protection but the big twenty four pound balls could smash through our sides if they hit us and create a storm of splinters in a confined space. Others, like me, preferred to stay on deck. They say that you can see the arc of a cannon ball if it is fired directly at you and there was one moment when I thought I saw a black line flash across the sky, I ducked and second later there was a water spout in the sea a hundred yards behind us.

  They were getting the range though and our first casualty was a top man who screamed as a ball parted a line in the rigging. He fell and hit the side rail with a sickening crunch and then bounced over the side like a rag doll. He floated in the sea face down and appeared to be dead. I suppose that all of the crew that looked at him must have wondered if his end had been quicker and more merciful than the one that awaited them. Signal flags were flying between the French ships and when they were both half a mile away they both turned again to present their broadsides. There was nothing we could do to avoid the barrage and I was still debating in my mind whether it was better to crouch behind the wooden sides which could splinter or remain standing when I heard Archie murmuring an ironic version of the grace we said before each meal. “For what we are about to receive lord we are…” His final words were drowned out by the roar of the broadsides and at that moment sixty iron balls weighing around twenty four pounds apiece were screaming towards us from the two French ships.

  Many of the balls would have missed but this time more than enough found their targets. In a single second the deck was transformed into a maelstrom of hell. The planks beneath my feet bucked with the impact of iron into the ship. I heard screams below as balls must have smashed through our side. Above more ropes were parted and blocks and other bits of rigging were crashing to the deck while a topsail yard was smashed in two with the sail torn and useless. In the second it took me to realise that I was unhurt I also took in the carnage that had turned the deck into a charnel house. At least one ball had smashed through the rail and sent a shower of huge splinters into a group of men standing onto the main deck. I moved to help but was then frozen in horror at the sight of one corpse that was lying tangled in the scuppers, evidently thrown across the ship by the impact of the ball that had taken off its owner’s head. I was about to move on when I recognised a tattoo on the man’s arm. It was Eriksson the huge Dane who had so terrified the Spanish on the Gamo and who had spent hours teaching me how to fight. I looked around and saw the great battle axe that he liked to have with him in battle. Only minutes before I had heard other seaman ribbing him over t
he fact that it would be useless in this battle and they were right. Far from defending himself Eriksson would never have even seen the thing that had killed him instantly. I was about to move on when I remembered something Eriksson had told me about warriors only entering the Viking heaven of Valhalla if they died with weapons in their hands. While he spoke as though it was legend, I always thought that the Dane secretly at least half believed in the old Norse gods. I picked up the axe and pressed his lifeless fingers around its shaft. His advice had already saved my life once and was to do so several more times in my life, it was the least I could do.

  The screams of the wounded brought me back to the needs of those that could still be saved and nearby was another seaman covered in blood but still very much alive. I moved over to him, there was a wound in his chest but the more immediate need was a wound in his neck which he was trying to stem with his hand as blood spurted out of it. As he could not see his own neck he was making a poor job of it, but I could see where the blood was coming from and reached forward and blocked the gap with my finger. I looked round and shouted for Guthrie.

  “I’ll be with you in a minute” he replied.