“Sail ho!” a lookout bawled out from high aloft.
“Where away?” Lt. Harcourt, who had the watch, shouted back.
“Three points orf th’ larb’d quarter!” the lookout cried.
Lewrie and Westcott, and the curious Marine Lt. Keane, drifted to the aft corner of the poop deck’s larboard side, but even from that height the horizon up to the Nor’east was unbroken, a severely straight line of blue against a fair-weather azure sky.
“In the Nor’east by East, or thereabouts,” Lewrie speculated. He turned and looked aloft at the long, streaming commissioning pendant which stood out fairly stiffly with its outer length fluttering to the East by South. The Bay of Biscay’s prevailing Westerlys had backed a point after dawn, giving his convoy a point free of sailing on a beam reach, perhaps endowing them with another half-knot above their usual plodding pace.
Whatever she is, she’s fast, Lewrie thought.
To a further question from Lt. Harcourt, shouted aloft with the aid of a brass speaking trumpet, the lookout gave more details about their stranger.
“I kin make our ’er t’gallants!” he yelled. “Nigh bows-on!”
That made Lewrie frown. Yesterday’s Noon Sights had placed them just below the 40th Latitude, hundreds of miles Due West of Cape Finisterre in Spain. Any friendly ship would have made its offing long before, and would not be sailing close-hauled out of the Bay of Biscay, or standing out round Finisterre.
She could be one of ours, leavin’ the blockadin’ squadrons for Gibraltar or Lisbon, Lewrie told himself as he clapped his hands in the small of his back and rocked on the soles of his boots; Maybe.
“Close-hauled on, say, Sou’-Sou’west?” he commented.
“Thereabout, sir,” Lt. Westcott grimly agreed.
Lewrie went to the forward edge of the poop deck to shout down to Lt. Harcourt. “Last cast of the log, Mister Harcourt?”
“Ehm … eight and a quarter knots, sir, half an hour ago,” Lt. Harcourt informed him.
“Hmm, not all that bad,” Lewrie decided, a bit surprised that Sapphire, and the lumbering transports, could make such a good pace.
The typical Westerlys had already backed one point to the West by North, and Lewrie thought it good odds that it might continue to back a point more by afternoon. He could order the convoy to alter course to the Sou’-Sou’east; sooner or later they would have to steer for the Straits of Gibraltar, anyway, and that would put that backing wind large on their starboard quarters, which was most ships’ best point of sail. They might even attain nine knots if he did so, but … why not?
“Mister Harcourt, make General Signal to all ships,” he decided. “Alter Course in Succession, South-Southeast.”
“Aye aye, sir!” Harcourt crisply replied.
He turned and looked up to the Nor’east, again, but there was still no indication of that strange sail to be seen from the deck.
Hard on the wind, is she, bows-on to us? he schemed; Our turn will lay us smack cross her present course, and she’ll have t’haul her wind, sooner or later.
He also wondered why the strange sail was sailing so hard on the wind; this far West of Cape Finisterre, she had bags of sea-room by now, and if she was friendly, and bound for Lisbon or Gibraltar, she could have hauled her wind to a beam reach long before.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” Lewrie said, keeping his suspicions in check, and off his face, “thankee for the exercise, Mister Keane, and I will see you all again at Noon Sights.”
He went down the ladderway to the quarterdeck, then aft into his cabins to partake in a tall glass of his cool tea to slake his thirst, and have a sponge-off, and perhaps a change of shirt. Silk, for combat, he wondered?
* * *
All officers, the Sailing Master, and all the Midshipmen under instruction turned up with their sextants to take the height of the sun to determine their position. Lewrie and Mr. Yelland both brought their Harrison chronometers, which were in satisfactory agreement as to the exact moment of Noon. As ship’s boys struck Eight Bells and turned the sand glasses, they all drew the sun to the horizon and locked the angle on their instruments. Lewrie and the ship’s officers made one syndicate, over by the door to the chart room, whilst the Mids huddled together over their slates to form another.
“Are we in agreement, then, gentlemen?” the Sailing Master asked. “Thirty-seven degrees, twenty minutes North, and Fourteen degrees, fourty-five minutes West? Then I will mark it so.”
“And let me see what a day on this course will fetch us, assumin’ the winds hold,” Lewrie suggested, starting to follow Yelland into the chart room.
“Deck, there!” a lookout’s shout stopped him. “It’s two strange sail! Three points off th’ larb’d quarter. Two sets of t’gallants an’ royals!”
“Bows-on?” Lewrie bellowed back, hands cupped round his mouth.
“Aye, sir! Bows-on, an’ comin’ close-hauled!”
Lewrie frowned and pursed his lips, feeling all the eyes on the quarterdeck on him. It was time to portray the proper sort of Royal Navy Captain, for their sakes.
“An hour, perhaps, before their tops’ls and courses fetch above the horizon,” he mused aloud, “and some goodly time before they’re hull-up. Three hours, altogether, before they’re anywhere in shooting range? If they’re enemy ships. We’ll let them come to us, and, when close enough, hoist our false colours. If that don’t daunt ’em, then we blow the Hell out of them.
“Carry on, sirs,” Lewrie told them all, “if strenuous exertion is in the offing, I think I’ll take a preparatory nap.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Lewrie didn’t take a nap, of course. He spent his time aft in his cabins, going over his written orders to Captain Knolles in HMS Comus and the transport masters, and to Colonel Fry of the Kent Fusiliers. He dined lightly, drank only cold tea instead of wine with his meal, and asked for some hot coffee round the time that he was informed that the two strange ships’ courses were above the horizon.
When a Midshipman came to report that the strangers were hull-up over the horizon, he buckled on his sword belt, took a brace of pistols already cleaned, oiled, and loaded from Pettus, and prepared to go on deck.
“Clear away all, Pettus. Off ye go to the magazine, Jessop, and the best t’both o’ ye,” he said. “Take care o’ Chalky and see to Bisquit.”
“As always, sir,” Pettus gravely replied.
Last of all, Lewrie unlocked his desk and fetched out the keys to the arms lockers.
* * *
“Captain’s on deck!” Midshipman Britton called out.
“Mister Elmes, I give you the keys to the arms lockers,” Lewrie told the officer of the watch. “Beat To Quarters, if ye will.”
“Aye aye, sir! Bosun Terrell! Pipe To Quarters!” Elmes cried.
Lewrie went to the larboard bulwarks of the quarterdeck to lift a telescope and inspect their strangers. They were still hard on the wind, coming strong, and sailing abreast of each other, with about a half-mile between them. They were three-masted, flush-decked, and gave him the impression that they were not the big 38- or 40-gunned frigates he had worried about. Warships, for certain, but perhaps smaller and weaker, somewhere round the same size and weight of metal as Knolles’s 24-gunned Comus. That would mean that they would be armed with nine-pounders, or the French equivalent of twelve-pounders.
“Good afternoon, sir,” Lt. Westcott said to announce his arrival on the quarterdeck. “Did you have a good nap?”
Lewrie tossed him a quick, sly grin, for Westcott knew that it had all been a sham.
“Leftenant Keane!” Lewrie called out, instead. “Do you keep your men down out of sight ’til called for, as we discussed!”
“Very well, sir!” Keane replied.
“I’ll have the gun-ports closed ’til we’re ready to run out, as well, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered.
“Done, sir,” Westcott told him.
Lewrie looked forward past the courses and jibs to determine that
the two transports off Sapphire’s bows showed no colours, as he had set out in his written orders, and that Comus was flying the Blue Ensign. He went up atop the poop deck to check on the two transports following his ship’s wake, and was pleased to note that they flew no colours, and were managing to maintain column and a rough one cable of separation. From that vantage, he gave the approaching ships a long inspection with his telescope, then trotted back down to the quarterdeck.
“If they’re indeed French, then they’re hopeful bastards. Or half-blind,” Lewrie commented. “They know Comus is a frigate by now, but can’t they see we’re not a big transport?”
“Even if they do recognise us for a warship, perhaps they’re counting on our lack of speed or manoeuvrability to cut one or two of the transports from our clumsy grasp, sir,” Westcott posed, tongue-in-cheek.
“Strange sail are French!” a lookout called down. “Deck, there! I kin see the cut o’ their jibs!”
“Jibs, sir?” Midshipman Fywell muttered.
“Jibs, younker,” Lt. Westcott turned to instruct him. “The way sailmakers in other nations cut their cloth and saw the panels together varies, depending on what they think the best and strongest way to take strong winds. A sharp-eyed, experienced man can sometime spot the difference.”
“I see, sir,” Fywell said with what passed for a sage nod.
Other Mids were coming to the quarterdeck to report that the lower gun deck was at Quarters, that the upper gun deck was ready, that sail tenders, brace and sheet and halliard tenders were in their assigned places and ready for action. Once reporting, they dashed back to their stations for Quarters.
“At Quarters, and ready for action, sir,” Lt. Westcott said at last, very formally doffing his hat in salute.
“Very good, sir,” Lewrie replied, all his attention on the two approaching ships. They were within two miles, by then, still on the wind. The one furthest off seemed to steer for the head of Lewrie’s column, as if to take on Knolles in Comus. The left-handed ship nearest to Sapphire seemed intent on sailing right up to the middle of the column. They still showed no colours.
“They couldn’t be ours, could they, sir?” Lt. Westcott wondered. “Two of our sloops of war or light frigates pulling a ‘Grierson’?”
A year or so before, a Commodore Grierson had come to Nassau to re-enforce Lewrie’s weak squadron of sloops, brigs of war and vessels “below the Rates”, keeping his identity secret ’til the very last moment, a very clumsy jest that had frightened the life out of the good residents of New Providence, and had re-dounded to no good credit.
“If it is, I’ll have both captains at the gratings, and flog ’em half t’death,” Lewrie vowed. “I didn’t find it all that amusin’ then, and damned if anyone pulls that jape on me a second time.”
He had ordered his frigate, Reliant, and three weak and small ships, all he had in harbour, out to confront Grierson’s large squadron, knowing it was suicide, but prepared to go game and fulfill his duty to the last.
“About a mile and a half, now, sir,” Sailing Master Yelland estimated. “Ah, there’s their damned Tricolour flags, at last. Frogs for certain.”
“And we’re s’posed t’be terrified,” Lewrie growled.
Damme, don’t they find it odd that we ain’t turnin’ about Sou’west and runnin’ for our lives? he had to ask himself; These must be the stupidest, or the greediest, Frenchmen in all Creation!
“Sir, I do believe that they’re not frigates, but corvettes,” Lt. Westcott exclaimed after a long look with his glass. “Like our old twenty-gunned sloops of war.”
“And about a mile off,” Mr. Yelland pointed out.
“I’d like ’em t’come nigh half a mile, first,” Lewrie said in rising excitement. It appeared that the French would not be daunted by the stolidly-plodding line of ships that showed no sign of fleeing.
Come on, come on, Lewrie thought, beginning a slow grin; Come see what we have for ye!
“Ehm … I estimate that it is half a mile, sir,” Mr. Yelland announced.
“Mister Britton?” Lewrie barked. “Hoist the Blue Ensign, and make a signal to the convoy. Number Ten!”
“Open the ports and run out, sir?” Westcott eagerly asked.
“Damned right, Mister Westcott!” Lewrie snapped. He ran up the larboard ladderway to the poop deck to see how all the other ships were obeying his orders, schemed with Ralph Knolles and pre-planned long before while still in port at the Nore.
Step One; Hoist Blue Ensign.
Step Two; Brail up main course, Navy fashion.
Step Three; Fifty Fusiliers to form by engaged side.
Step Four; Copy manoeuvres of escort ahead of you.
All four troop transports were showing the Blue Ensign, and their main courses were being brailed up, as a warship would to avoid the risk of sparks from her own gunfire setting it on fire. Soldiers in full kit were forming along the larboard bulwarks of the transports with their firearms. The Fusiliers wore shakos, not the tall, narrow-brimmed black hats of real Marines, but they gave a good impression of a frigate’s Marine complement, at a half-mile’s range. Good enough to fool the French.
Lewrie looked forward to see that Sapphire’s huge main course was brailed up out of the way, and that Lt. Keane and Lt. Roe were sending some of their men to the fighting tops, at last, and arraying the rest behind the stout bulwarks and stowed hammock racks.
And the French!
“Got you, you ignorant shits!” Lewrie bellowed in his best quarterdeck voice at the foe, hoping they could hear him. “Mister Westcott? Serve the nearest one a broadside!”
The right-hand corvette, a little further off and aiming for the head of the long column, was already hauling her wind, putting her helm hard over and beginning to wear off the wind. Her main course was still spread, so she was fast off the mark. She had not even opened her gun-ports.
The one closest to Sapphire had begun to take in her course, and had opened her ports, but was also beginning to turn, presenting her starboard side to Lewrie’s ship.
“By broadside … fire!”
HMS Sapphire erupted, guns bellowing, great clouds of gunpowder smoke gushing out, and clouds of sparks swirling. Lewrie found that he had crossed the fingers of his right hand for luck. He knew that his gunners could shoot off a concentrated broadside at one cable’s range, but how would they do at close to half a mile?
“Beautiful!” he shouted, clapping his hands in glee.
There were tall pillars and feathers of spray arising round the French corvette, great slaps from 24-pounder shot, smaller ones from the 12-pounders, huge ones from the carronades that didn’t have the range and struck short, lumbering up from First Graze to still do damage when they hit the corvette’s outer plankings. Before his view was blocked out by the thick cloud of smoke, he even saw some roundshot slamming into her, punching star-shaped holes!
“Mister Westcott, come about to East-Sou’east!” he ordered. “Let’s go after her and serve her another!”
“Aye aye, sir! Helmsmen, make her head East-Sou’east,” Lieutenant Westcott repeated. “Bosun, hands to the sheets and braces, and take the wind fine on the quarter, nigh a ‘soldier’s wind’!”
“Mister Britton?” Lewrie shouted aft to the signals Midshipman. “Make to Comus … her number, and Pursue The Enemy More Closely.”
“Aye, sir!” Britton replied, sounding right chipper.
Sapphire was wheeling about, altering course to pursue her own target, slowly sailing back into the thinning, drifting pall of spent gunpowder smoke from her first broadside. That was a disadvantage for her, for this close to running “both sheets aft”, almost dead downwind, she could sail no faster than the wind itself, and would wreath herself with every broadside. He could feel the motion of his ship change under his feet.
Lewrie could barely make out the right-hand French corvette, which had managed to complete her wear-about, crossing the eye of the winds and taking it on her larboard quarter to run as
fast as her wee legs could carry her. His own, the left-hand one, was emerging from the smoke, becoming more substantial by the second. And she had been struck, for he could make out bashed-in scantlings, pale raw patches where heavy roundshot had shattered her oak side and bulwarks, leaving base wood clean of paint, tar, and grime. And she was close, no more than two cables off, now! She was turning away to run, but he had her.
“By broadside … fire!”
HMS Sapphire thundered and roared, long amber flames spewing from all her larboard battery, smothering herself, and any view of the corvette in a fresh fog of sour, reeking powder smoke.
All that Lewrie could see were the tops of her upper masts, and they trembled, they swirled about as if the Frenchman had struck a shoal.
“Sir! Sir!” Midshipman Britton was shouting, sounding as if he was chortling, in point of fact. “The transport astern of us is wearing in succession!”
At least somebody’s doin’ what I asked! Lewrie thought. With little risk to his ship, or his passengers, that transport’s master was tagging along, still playing “frigate”.
He turned back to see if he could spot what Knolles and Comus was doing, and damned if the transport astern of him was wheeling to follow his ship, too!
“There she is!” Lt. Westcott shouted, pointing out-board at the wraith-like image of the smoke-shrouded French corvette. “She’s lost her mizen top-masts, and her spanker!”
Looks like she’s been gnawed by rats, Lewrie thought; It seems my gunners can hit something, after all.
“Has she struck?” Lewrie could hear the Sailing Master exclaim in rising excitement. “Or is her staff just shot away?”
“She’s striking!” Westcott cried as someone fetched up a white bed sheet and began to wave it vigourously aboard the corvette.
“Cease fire! Cease fire, there!” Lewrie bellowed. “She just struck to us! Mister Westcott? Fetch us to, as close to the prize as you may. Mister Britton? Signal the transports to fetch-to!”
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