by John Drake
I heaved from the uttermost depths of my stomach, over and over again, and Sammy nearly choked himself laughing. I suppose the joke is thousands of years old and the sailors of Athens told it to each other aboard their galleys, but it comes new to each fresh victim. The strange thing was that I felt better afterwards.
In a couple of weeks we’d joined the convoy and were under the command of Admiral of the Blue, Sir David Weston, flying his flag in the brand new ninety-gun second-rate, Ponderous. He had a dozen seventy-fours and an equal number of frigates to see the convoy safely out of range of French cruisers. There was even the chance that the French might try to intercept the convoy with a battle fleet, so there was every possibility of imminent action.
The convoy itself consisted of nearly a hundred merchantmen and they were stuffed with the produce of the northern manufactories and worth a fortune in prize money. Some were bound for Spain or Portugal and others for Gibraltar, but the centrepiece of the formation was a double row of big ships, some of them up to 1,200 tons that rolled proudly along with all the swagger of a line of battle. These were starting the long two-year haul out to the East Indies and back. They were John Company’s ships with the size and look of two-deckers and mounting something of a battery of guns. In reality they weren’t half so impressive as they looked. They could fight Malay pirates and the like but not a real warship.
The Admiral’s strategy was to keep his line-of-battle ships together, upwind of the convoy, in case of the appearance of a French fleet, and to encircle the whole great cluster with a cloud of nimble frigates which would be his eyes and ears and would see off the more likely threat of privateers. How well this worked I cannot say. The seventy-fours and the big Indiamen kept station well enough; but for the rest, as merchant masters will, they pleased themselves.
This meant a busy time for the frigates, with constant signals from the flagship to chase this ship or that back into line and Captain Bollington bawling himself hoarse at skippers who could not or would not obey orders. When all else failed we showed our teeth and made them do as they were told, with our guns.
Thus the first roundshot I ever saw fired was aimed across the bows of another British ship, a Newcastle collier named Mary Douglas. To judge from the look on Captain Bollington’s face, another five minutes’ disobedience from that ship would have seen the next shot fired into its hull. There was little love lost between the Merchant and the Naval service.
This went on for days as the convoy lumbered out into the Bay of Biscay. My seasickness faded and, despite myself, I began to enjoy life. For Captain Bollington and the officers it was a terrible time of work, worry and bother but for the rest of us it was simply exciting: dashing up and down the slow lines of merchantmen, firing off guns and generally enjoying our speed and power. A grand life for a lad and no mistake.
As well as doing our duty as sheepdog, Captain Bollington found time for gun practice and we began to appreciate the true depth of his passion for gunnery. Live-firing with shotted guns took place every day, and although I had taken part in gun-drill before, the exercise was a wholly new matter when carried out at sea, when the great clumsy guns took on a life of their own and rolled with the plunging decks.
Phiandra’s main battery consisted of eighteen-pounder guns, each weighing forty-eight hundredweight with the carriage, and measuring nine feet six in the barrel. They were all new guns picked by Captain Bollington for the longest-range accuracy that was to be had. With a six-pound charge of powder, the range of these guns at one degree of elevation was 600 yards to the first graze of the shot upon the water.
Naturally, the shot flew much further than this, hopping and skipping unpredictably across the waves without the least accuracy. As the elevation increased so did the range to the first graze, but so did the accuracy decrease. At maximum elevation, the range might have been a mile for all I know, but never in all my service did I see a ship’s gun fired in such a nonsensical way: at maximum elevation there was no talk of accuracy, rather it was a matter of pure random chance as to where the shot might come down.
In any case, for practice and for real action, Mr Seymour always had our guns laid point blank. Contrary to what I thought, this does not mean “very close” but to level the gun at zero elevation so the shot would skim flatly across the water to its target. That way there was no need to judge distance. Within its point blank range, what a gun pointed at, got hit ... in theory, at least. And for our eighteen pounders, that range was 300 yards.
The guns were arranged in two rows, one to larboard and one to starboard running the length of the gundeck. They were numbered in pairs from fore to aft and one full gun-crew of ten men had charge of a pair. Our crew, Sammy’s crew, manned the eighth pair back from the bow, and normally we’d fight one or the other gun. In the event of our being engaged on both sides at once, then each gun would be served by half the crew. Lieutenant Seymour was in charge of the gundeck with Lieutenant Haslam as his second in command. He also had six midshipmen, each with three pairs of guns to look after. In the deafening din of action, any commands would be yelled at close range into the ears of the mids, who would then shriek them into the ears of the gun-captains.
For our mid, we were given one Cuthbert Percival-Clive, the tall gangling adolescent that had come aboard with the Captain. He was a slovenly creature with a dirty-minded look about him and quite indifferent to his duties. He hadn’t the slightest aptitude for the Sea Service. We called him “Poxy Percy” or just Percy for short.
But the Captain cherished him and loved him and smiled upon him like the summer sun. And this for the best of all reasons. A reason that utterly transcended all matters of mere talent, or skill, or attention to duty. The fact was that young Percy’s father was Sir Reginald Percival-Clive, a parvenu with an enormous fortune in West India sugar. And better yet, Sir Reginald’s wife was younger sister to Billy Pitt the Prime Minister and Lord Chatham, the First Sea Lord.
Captain Bollington had moved heaven and earth to get Cuthbert into his ship, via the good offices of his wife who was a bosom friend of Lady Percival-Clive. And now there were not enough hours in the day for the Captain to give sufficient expression to his delight in getting the dirty little nose-picker, since it meant endless privileges for the ship; choice of guns, the best of stores and lots more beside. For there wasn’t a clerk, official or even an Admiral in the Service who’d dare to do less for the ship in which the Prime Minister’s nephew was serving.
By contrast, our gunnery Lieutenant, Mr Seymour, was a first rate officer who provided the technical competence that Captain Bollington needed on the gundeck. Of all the things that I unwillingly learned aboard Phiandra, the one that was dinned in deepest was Mr Seymour’s gun-drill. He raced each crew against all the rest and against the clock for speed. And he made each do the work of all the others in the team so we could take over from those mown down in action. And above all, we were practised each day, every day, over and over again. I remember every name of our gun-crew, which was Sammy’s mess and four others: two marines, Charlie Moore and Peter Godolphin and two men from other messes, Obediah Brompton and Donald McDouglas. Obediah had the important post of Second Captain.
In addition, to fetch cartridges up from the magazine, we had a shrivelled child of uncertain age, by the name of “Nimmo”. He was one of about twenty ship’s boys that lived in dank corners of the vessel down below the water-line. Phiandra’s boys were all street urchins that had been “saved” by the Marine Society, who caught them, cleaned them, fed them a bit, gave them the scrapings of an education and parcelled them off in batches to serve afloat. Captain Bollington approved of this scheme and took his ship’s boys from no other source.
I suppose even the Navy was better than starving in the gutter and there was always the chance of getting a berth aboard a merchantman where they could earn more money and the conditions were better. Nimmo thought so anyway.
“I’m ’oppin out o’ this ol’ tub first chance I get!” sa
ys Nimmo on one occasion.
“Oh yes?” says Sammy, winking at the rest of us. “And where would you go, lad?”
“I’m shippin aboard a Indiaman an’ I gonna make my fortune out east!”
“Oh dear me!” says Sammy. “I shouldn’t do that if I was you.”
“Why not?” says Nimmo.
“Well, mate,” says Sammy, “I can tell you this ’cos you’re a messmate and almost a man ... ”
“Yeah?” says Nimmo, wide-eyed.
“Fact is mate, them Indiamen skippers, well ... they uses their lads for unnatural purposes!”
“Garn!” says Nimmo, suspiciously.
“Oh yes!” says Sammy.
“Cor!” says the boy. And that was the least of the tales Sammy told him. But Nimmo was part of number eight crew and shared with all of us the formidable effort of muscle and skill that went into gun-drill.
Boom! The gun fires and heaves back like a mad black bull.
“Stop the vent!” cries Sammy, and takes up the slack of the trigger line as the gun’s recoil is held by the thick rope of the breeching tackle. He coils the line on the cascabel as Obediah jams a leather-sheathed copper plug into the touch-hole. This stops smouldering fragments being forced out when the rammer goes down the bore. A spark landing on a loose cartridge would kill us all.
“Sponge!” cries Sammy, and Norris and Daniel step smartly inside the breeching tackle as Thomas snatches the sponge down from the overhead hooks and wets the sheepskin head with water from our bucket. Daniel grabs the sponge and Norris and he together throw their weight on the long sponge-staff to drive it down the barrel. They twist the head well into the breech end and haul it out.
Daniel raps the staff hard on the gun to shake off anything brought out and Thomas whisks away the sponge to hurl it back into its hooks and pulls down the rammer in readiness.
“Load cartridge!” cries Sammy, and Peter thrusts a cartridge at Norris. This is a tight-packed flannel cylinder of gunpowder, sewn up along one side and gathered tight at the top. Norris shoves the cylinder as far down the gun as his arm will reach, then he and Daniel lean hard on the rammer, driving the powder-charge to the end of the bore. Two sharp blows seat it firmly in the breech.
“Shot your gun!” cries Sammy and Peter brings a round-shot from the racks and heaves it to Norris with a wad from the overhead net. Norris grunts as he tips the eighteen pound iron ball down the bore with a clang. The wad goes on top then Norris and Daniel ram it home. Instantly the rammer flies from Daniel to Thomas to the hooks above. Obediah jerks out the vent plug and the gun is loaded.
“Run out!” cries Sammy, and seizes the breeching rope to take up the slack as the gun moves. The handspike-men lever under the rear wheels with their five-foot iron-bound levers while I throw my weight on the lines with the other tackle-men to heave the gun’s snout through the port — brutal heavy labour that leaves me gasping for breath with the sweat running off me in rivers.
“Well!” cries Sammy. “Prick the cartridge!” and Obediah thrusts a long spike down the touch-hole to check the cartridge is home and pierce it.
“Well!” says he.
“Prime!” says Sammy, and Obediah half-cocks the gun lock and opens the pan. He takes a goose-quill priming tube and shoves it down the hole. He grabs the powder horn from its hook and primes the lock. In all the racing speed of the drill, this must be done with absolute care; fortune permits not even one mistake with loose powder. He snaps down the lock-pan.
“Well!” he cries.
“Point!” says Sammy and again we take up tackles and handspikes to slew the gun bodily left and right to his command. There is no elevating as the gun is already levelled and Sammy cries, “Make ready!” as he cocks the lock and darts back to the full extent of the trigger line and we all stand clear. He leans on his right knee with the left leg clear of the recoil and takes his final aim over the sights ...
“Fire!” says he and pulls the line. Boom! The gun roars again.
And all that, my lovely lads, was done a damn sight faster than you just took to read it. Phiandra was not a fast-firing ship as some were in the King’s Navy, for Mr Seymour’s emphasis was always on steady aimed fire, but if need be we could deliver three broadsides in five minutes.
At first, when I learned gun-drill, I was good for nothing but hauling on lines (and it’s that that put all the muscles on me). But later, Sammy took an interest in me, beyond the need that we should all know everyone else’s parts, to train me up as a gun-captain like himself.
And gun-drill, ruthlessly practised in the King’s ships, hour after hour, day after day, is precisely what did for the bloody French and their maniac Emperor and his precious New World Order. Because as long as we could beat their navy, then their army couldn’t invade England. And if they couldn’t invade England, then they could invade whomsoever else they pleased, and much good may it do ’em ... but our side would win in the end. And so we did, too!
What amazes me is that Boney never spotted where he was going wrong. After all, he was an artilleryman by training and you’d think a gunner would’ve worked it out, wouldn’t you?
12
Apart from turning Phiandra’s guns into something formidably deadly, Mr Seymour’s drills had two other effects that were more interesting to me. The first was to confirm Sammy Bone as the best gun-captain in the ship. It soon got to the point that when we practised for accuracy by shooting at a cask dropped over the side, Sammy wasn’t allowed to point our gun until all the other crews had fired and missed. Then Mr Seymour would wave him forward with a grin, and Sammy would blow the cask to splinters.
“It’s easy, lads,” he’d say. “We points her as close as we can, then the ship’s motion does the rest. All I do is fire as the gun comes on target.” He meant it too. He never understood the complexity of the calculations that he made so easily and unthinkingly in his head.
The other thing was more personal and I first noticed it one Sunday as we were lined up by divisions for church. Captain Bollington always took this as the occasion to come through the ranks of us, to stare each man in the face and get a feel of what mood his crew was in. We were supposed to stand to attention for this, like marines, and I found that I could no longer do it properly. If I held my arms straight, they wouldn’t rest flat, down the sides of my body. Rather, they stuck out at an angle with my clenched fists well clear of my hips. This was due to several weeks heavy labour and wolfing down all the food that I wanted. I’d always been big, but now I was strong into the bargain. My arms bulged with hard muscles and I found I could do tricks like a circus strongman. I could shove our gun about unaided, I could juggle eighteen-pound round-shot, and I could carry Norris and Johann about, each under one arm, with Sammy riding on my shoulders.
I thought this was all pointless fun until I discovered that I no longer needed my mates when I went round the lower deck to collect my debts. The other tars seemed only too willing to pay up and I noticed how small and puny some of them now seemed. To my amazement, physical strength had a business value! This happy period of our cruise with the convoy was the best time I spent aboard Phiandra. I was at peace with myself, I’d got friends again and I was making money. I should have known it couldn’t last, and it didn’t.
What with the disorderly behaviour of the merchant ships and a couple of days of mist and bad weather, a morning came when, instead of being in a powerful fleet with a neat convoy, we found ourselves alone with three small merchantmen and all our comrades over the western horizon. And worse, we soon had company of another sort. Two smudges of sail appeared far away on our port quarter, bearing up from the south-east. Long before we on the gundeck could see them, the look-outs had identified them as French.
Leaning out through number eight gun-port, eventually I could see them myself. Each had a huge spread of canvas over a small hull, and was thrashing along at a tremendous rate, with white water boiling under the bow — the very incarnation of speed. Twinkling from the maintop
was the blue-white-red of the French Republic. The first time I’d ever seen it.
“What are they, Sammy?” says I.
“Privateers!” says he at once. His eyesight was marvellous and his knowledge of ships profound. “The Frog navy has sloops and frigates for its cruisers like we do, but these is luggers. I’d say no more than a hundred tons apiece, with four-pounders, maybe sixes, on the gundeck and a big crew for boarding. They ain’t no threat to us but they’ll try and get round us and snap up one of them.” He jabbed his thumb at our merchantmen.
Sammy was dead right. And for several hours the two Frenchmen played catch-as-catch-can with our ship. They worked as a team and their game was for one to try to draw us off so the other could take the prize.
To stop this, Captain Bollington repeated the Admiral’s strategy in miniature; keeping to windward of the three sheep so we could fall on the wolves should they press home a real attack. And, for once, the danger was so immediate that the three merchantmen huddled together like children in fear of the bogeyman. This went on for hours as one after the other, the two luggers would swoop in as close as they dared, to tempt us to set off in chase. It was a waste of their time really for there wasn’t the slightest chance of Captain Bollington’s falling for this. And while we couldn’t have tackled both at the same time, should they attack separate ships, it would be pointless since we could easily outsail the prizes and recapture them. Their only hope was that some freak of accident or weather would give them the advantage. Equally, they must take care to keep too far off for us to do harm to them. It was a dangerous game for them, played just outside the range of our gunfire, which they had judged to a nicety.