“How close ashore to the anchored boats would boat crews have to get before releasing them?” Lewrie asked.
“Well, that would depend on the run of the tide, Captain Lewrie. I should imagine that each boat will have a Midshipman with a passable skill in mathematics,” MacTavish said, shrugging off the problem. “Some of your, what-do-you-call-them… Master’s Mates, able to judge the height of the boats’ masts, and perform simple trigonometry to determine the distance, the speed of the tide, and set the clock timer accordingly.”
Boy Midshipmen with good mathematics? Lewrie wondered; Now there is a snag! A veritable paradox!
“As to the matter of suitable boats, sir,” Lt. Johns brought up once more. “We’ve only a small gig and an eighteen-foot jolly-boat on our inventory. To tow them in quickly, then make their way out just as quickly, it would be best if we had some boats larger than your two cutters… thirty-two-foot barges with two masts for lug-sails and a jib would be best. Or at least twelve-oared barges.”
“We’ll ask of the dockyard,” Lewrie told him. “I’m sure they might have some spares. What condition they’re in, well. If we need authorisation, who do we mention? Are we under Lord Keith and North Sea Fleet? Droppin’ a powerful name sometimes helps.”
“No worry, then, Captain Lewrie,” Mr. MacTavish said with a top-lofty smirk. “We have letters from Lord Melville, personally signed, authorising any expense or requisition. Might they do?”
Mine arse on a band-box! Lewrie thought; What do I want, what does Reliant need… and how much can I get away with?
“I expect they’d do main-well, Mister MacTavish,” Lewrie allowed. “Uhm… could I see these wonders? Not the plans here, but the real articles?”
“Aye, weel…,” Artificer McCloud grumbled, rubbing his beard.
“But of course, sir! This instant!” MacTavish quickly agreed.
* * *
“Hmm… rather big,” Lewrie commented once the canvas shroud had been drawn back just far enough to expose one of the devices to his eyes. To all outward appearances, the “cask torpedo” was a large water butt, about four feet tall and fat in the middle, tapering at each end to shallow hemispherical lids, not the usual flat wooden lids set into the ends two or three inches below the rims. Any large tun, cask, or barrel made to hold liquids was constructed with extra care, of course, so that the staves fit together so closely that only the slightest bit of seepage occurred. In this case, seepage inward would be the ruin of the device, so it had been slathered all over in tar, then wrapped with more tarred canvas.
“Th’ bottom’s heemispherical, ye’ll note,” McCloud pointed out, “sae thayr’s space feer th’ ballast, tae keep eet ridin’ oop-right een th’ water.”
“And the upper hemisphere is a void, a space for air,” MacTavish added. “That is where the clock mechanism sits, along with the pistol which ignites the charge at the proper time. When one is about to let one go, one first pulls the line with the blue paint on the last inches of the line… that will start the clock. The red-painted line cocks the primed fire-lock of the pistol. The clock gears drive a circular wooden disk, which has several dowels projecting from it. The trigger line is bound to one of the dowels, and, as the clock turns the disk, the line is drawn taut, ’til it pulls the trigger of the pistol, and… bang!” he gleefully concluded. “The gunpowder and the pyrotechnicals ignite, and adieu, Monsieur Frog, ha ha!”
“How much gunpowder?” Lewrie asked, getting up on his tip-toes to peer over the top of the torpedo, taking hold of one of the hoisting ring-bolts. “And how low in the water will it ride? I notice the top is not tarred, but painted black. And, how do you set the clock at the last minute?”
“One hundred and twenty pounds of powder,” MacTavish told him.
Lewrie stepped back a foot or two!
“D’ye mean it’s loaded, now?” he gawped.
“Weel, o’ course eet’s loaded!” McCloud said with a short snort of amusement. “But, the pistol’s nae primed, nor cocked, an’ th’ clock ain’t runnin’. Eet’s safe as sae many bricks!”
“So… when the time comes to prime the pistol’s pan, set the clock timer, and ready it to go, how do you, if the top’s sealed?” Lewrie asked, growing a bit more dubious of the whole enterprise, and feeling a faint shudder of dread in his middle.
“As to that, Captain Lewrie,” MacTavish said soothingly, “one must remove the bung set into the very top. The hole is wide enough for your average man to reach down into it, set the clock timer for the minutes judged best, pull the lock back to half-cock and prime the pan, then draw it to full cock…”
Oh, Jesus! Lewrie groaned inside; Pity the poor fool who does that from a wallowin’ rowin’ boat!
“… pull the trigger lines to set it all in motion, then drive the bung back in place,” MacTavish went on, not noticing Lewrie’s look of utter dread. “The torpedo will float with the top six inches free of the water, and, should waves slop over it, the bung will keep things dry enough for as long as the clock runs.”
“Mind noo, ye’ll hae t’wind th’ bluidy thing, feerst!” McCloud hooted, then turned to spit overside.
“That’s why the top is painted black, to hide it from a casual observer or lookout,” MacTavish breezed off. “The ring-bolts will do for hoisting out from this vessel, and for towing lines from the boat which takes it in close. The old socket bayonets will be fitted over muzzle stubs from old Tower muskets, and the same for the grapnels… all the metal fittings screwed in and washered, and tarred inside and out. But, we’ll do all that before they’re hoisted out.”
“So, right now we’re sittin’ on seven hundred twenty pounds of gunpowder,” Lewrie said, shaking his head, “and if anything goes amiss, we could take out old Sandwich yonder, the Medway Boom tenders, and an host of unwary workers?”
“Nae countin’ th’ spare kegs o’ powder stored below,” McCloud said, his head cocked over and nodding genial agreement with Lewrie’s estimate.
“Mister Johns, I think it best if you move Fusee out into the Great Nore anchorage near my ship,” Lewrie suggested.
Not too bloody near, thankee! he thought.
“Of course, sir!” Lt. Johns replied, stiffening with eagerness to be about the start of their “adventure.”
“We’ll take my gig in tow, and bring my boat crew aboard for a bit,” Lewrie added. “Alright with you, sir?” he had to enquire, for it was not his ship, and Lt. Johns was Fusee’s commanding officer.
“Very good, sir! Bosun, pipe all hands to Stations for taking in the anchors!” Johns bellowed.
Lewrie’s Cox’n and his gig’s oarsmen came tumbling aboard from the boat, and a long tow-line was bound to her stem bollard for towing astern. It would be a nice rest for them, instead of another long row of several miles. They began stretching and chattering, peering about at the oddness of a new ship, a type which most of them had never seen.
Patrick Furfy, “stroke oar” and Liam Desmond’s long-time mate from their Irish village, took out a short stub pipe and began to tamp shag tobacco into it.
“Furfy!” Lewrie snapped, looking aghast. “No smoking! If you please,” he added once he saw the surprise on Furfy’s face. “Not ’til we’re back aboard Reliant.”
And off this “Vesuvius”! Lewrie determined.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It was another of those fine Summer sunsets, the wind from off the North Sea just cool enough to rid the great-cabins of the warmth of the day as it wafted down through the opened windows in the coach-top overhead and through the half-opened sash-windows in the transom.
It was two days since Lewrie had discovered Fusee and her lethal cargo, and one day after Mr. MacTavish and Lt. Johns had briefed Reliant’s officers and Midshipmen. That had seemed to go well; did one consider “struck dumb” and “appalled” proper reactions. Lt. Merriman and Lt. Westcott had shared stunned looks, but would “soldier” along; Lt. Spendlove, Reliant’s Second Officer, though, had expressed his dist
aste for the torpedoes, calling them “infernal machines” and unworthy of a gentleman-warrior. “If they’re to revolutionise warfare at sea, sir, it will be a brute form of revolution. Does this war go on long enough, we’ll be shelling enemy cities, next,” he’d said, shaking his head in sadness. Oh, Lt. Spendlove would carry out his duties to the Tee, he’d quickly assured Lewrie, but he’d rather hoped that MacTavish and his torpedoes would prove a failure. Close blockade was the very thing, to Spendlove’s mind, just as the former First Lord of the Admiralty, the Earl St. Vincent, had determined.
This evening, Lewrie would not be dining in Lt. Johns, MacTavish, or McCloud, nor any of his own people, either. He and the cats dined alone, Toulon and Chalky atop his table with their separate bowls of victuals. With no one to impress, Lewrie could dress comfortably in an old pair of slop-trousers, old buckled shoes and cotton stockings, and just his shirt and loosened neck-stock. Once Pettus removed his soup and began to fill a plate with the entree, Lewrie could take the note from Lydia Stangbourne from a pocket and unfold it to read once more.
She hoped that his assignment in Channel waters for the rest of the year would allow them to see each other again, more often, and even very often! Should he be called to London, that would be grand, and it would not involve round after round of gaming clubs; should he be back in port long enough, he must write her at once, and she would coach down so that they-
Thud! went his Marine sentry’s musket on the deck. “Midshipman Warburton… sah!”
“Enter,” Lewrie answered with a frustrated growl. There were a few times when solitude was welcome, and this was one of them!
“Mister Houghton’s duty, sir, and I’m to tell you that there is a boat hailing us, with a visitor,” Warburton announced.
“From Fusee?” Lewrie asked, scowling.
“From shore, sir… he appears to be a civilian,” Mr. Warburton told him.
Percy, come t’have my guts for toppin’ his sister? Lewrie wondered. No matter. “I’ll be on deck directly. Thankee, Mister Warburton.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Lewrie frowned, dabbed his mouth, and rose from the table, hiding Lydia’s note in a trouser pocket once more, silently damning all callers who’d disturb his supper, or ruin his good mood.
“Good God!” Lewrie said, though, once his visitor had boarded. “Where the Devil did you spring from? Hallo, Peel.”
“Sir Alan Lewrie, sir!” Mr. Peel-“ ’tis Peel, James Peel”-replied, doffing his fashionable thimble-shaped hat and bowing as grandly as he would at Court; laughing, though. “I bow to your grandeur! I’ll even kow-tow at your magnificence!”
“Now that’d be a sight,” Lewrie barked, laughing back and going to shake hands. “The last I heard from you two years ago was a letter from somewhere in the Germanies.”
“Well, soon as the war began again, things got a bit hot for me and my line of work, so the Foreign Office found something else for me to do closer to home. Damn my eyes, Lewrie, how do you keep?”
“Main-well, considerin’,” Lewrie replied. “Care for a bite or two of something? Or would ye care t’watch me eat while you sip a bit of brandy?”
“Just a dab or two of what you’re having… and the brandy!” Mr. Peel japed.
* * *
When Lewrie had first met James Peel in the Italics in 1795 or so, he had first taken him for a side of beef sent to bodyguard that old cut-throat from the Foreign Office’s Secret Branch, Mr. Zachariah Twigg. Peel was big enough for that duty; he was not quite six feet tall and “beef to the heel,” all of it lean muscle. And he could certainly look threatening with his very dark brown hair and eyes, a pair of strong hands, wide shoulders, deep chest, with the lean hips of a panther. A brainless bully-buck Peel was most certainly not, though, for he’d come from a distinguished family of the landed gentry, had a quick and clever mind, and at one time, before his cheating at cards in his regimental mess had caught up with him and forced his resignation, Peel had been a Captain of Household Cavalry-though even the Curraissiers thought that he “rode heavy.” Peel had been Twigg’s man in the West Indies during the slave rebellion on Saint Domingue/Haiti, and had aided Lewrie against the Creole rebel pirates in Louisiana, and again during the Franco-American Quasi-War of 1798-99.
“A growin’ lad needs his tucker,” Lewrie commented, watching the fellow eat part of his own supper and empty half the fresh-baked rolls in the bread barge.
“Ehm… you aren’t come from Mister Twigg with another of his harum-scarums, are you?” The fingers of his left hand were crossed to ward off that very occurrence, under the tablecloth.
“No, the old fellow’s done with spy-craft, and we’re the worse off for it, but… it comes to us all, sooner or later,” Peel said.
“Fading, is he?” Lewrie replied. “I recall my father mentioning he’d had a bad Winter, but when that was…?” He shrugged.
“Had several bad Winters,” Peel said between bites of pork chops. “His physicians finally told him to avoid London and its air like the plague, and Winter at his country estate in Hampstead. Oh, he’ll come down to London in the Spring, when the coal smoke’s not as heavy, but for the most part, he’s up at ‘Spyglass Bungalow’ spoiling his grand-children something sinful.”
“Thank God,” Lewrie commented, letting out a pent breath and un-crossing his fingers. “If he had wished to rope me in, I’m spoken for anyway. Something just as lunatick as any Twigg dreamt up.”
“You mean your cask torpedoes?” Peel asked with a sly smirk.
“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, and besides…” Lewrie tried to wave off; with a fork full of mashed potatoes, in fact.
“Lewrie… recall! I’m Secret Branch?” Peel japed. “We know all about them, and I wish you the best of good fortune with them.”
“You’re here to check up on them?” Lewrie asked.
“God, no, not me!” Peel said, laughing. “That would be some anxious Admiralty sort, and he won’t pester you ’til you’ve had at least a few trials. No… I was making the rounds with Admiral Cornwallis of Channel Fleet, Admiral Lord Keith’s squadrons in The Downs, and one or two others, regarding the estimated numbers, types, and strengths of the invasion fleet Bonaparte’s building. Uhm, might I get a top-up of this excellent… whatever it is?”
“A single-chateau bordeaux, sir,” Pettus informed him as he did the duty. “The Captain brought several back from the Gironde.”
“You’ve numbers?” Lewrie asked. When he’d called upon the Admiralty in London, they’d given him the descriptions and some sketches of what they thought the various French invasion vessels looked like… but no idea of how they were armed, or how many he would face.
Peel gave him a cock-browed look, and a head-jerk at Pettus.
“Pettus… one of those ‘take the air on deck’ moments,” Lewrie told his cabin steward. “And take Jessop with you for a bit.”
“You are aware of the types?” Peel asked in a low voice once he was sure they were alone.
“There’s guilots, to transport horses and artillery batteries,” Lewrie ticked off on his fingers, “there’s some three-masted hundred-footer gunboats, what they call prames…”
“With twelve twenty-four-pounders,” Peel stuck in. “Though they build them so quickly, and of such light materials, that prames can’t stand against a frigate. Go on,” Peel urged with a sage nod.
“They showed me brig-rigged chaloupes,” Lewrie said, waiting.
“Three twenty-four-pounders and an eight-inch mortar,” Peel said.
“I’m told there are some lesser gunboats, two- or three-masted luggers, even cutter-rigged small ones?” Lewrie asked, pausing again for information.
“Might face only one twenty-four-pounder and an army field piece in the smallest Dutch-built ones, perhaps some older naval guns of lesser calibres in the French-built,” Peel enlightened him. He was picking his teeth as he did so.
“Then there’s all those damned penishes and c
aiques, all of ’em luggers, to carry troops and supplies,” Lewrie continued. “Admiralty said there were hundreds of ’em.”
“About seven hundred gunboats and escorts of various types, and their plans are for over two thousand transports,” Peel told him with a grave look. “I’m told, though, that both Admiral Cornwallis and Admiral Lord Keith estimate that it would take two or three tides to get all of them to England, and with Channel Fleet, our North Sea Fleet, and The Downs combined against them, given enough warning when they at last decide to try it on, we could massacre them. The French just don’t have that many experienced sailors, and most of their guns will be manned by soldiers with little knowledge of naval gunnery.”
“ ’Less it’s a dead-flat calm, when they come, their artillerists will find floatin’, bobbin’, and wallowin’ boats just won’t sit still as solid ground, where they learned their trade, aye,” Lewrie determined, almost ready to whoop with glee, and a wish that the French would try. “And, they can’t send ’em out to the slaughter without the support of their Navy, and we have their proper warships bottled up in Brest and Rochefort, or in The Texel in Holland.”
“They might get out, yes… but I doubt they will enjoy it!” Peel said with a snicker, topping up his own wine from the side-board. “After all, the Frogs must man those squadrons’ guns and retain enough sailors to handle the ships… and reserve even more skilled artillery men for the harbour and coastal batteries that ‘Boney’ has had erected all along the Channel coast, to boot. Is God just, the French may plan to have their infantry aboard the gunboats work their own guns to defend themselves! Perhaps they work to a tight budget?”
“Two for the price of one?” Lewrie snickered back, reaching to refill his glass, too.
“There is another matter, though,” Peel admitted at last; Lewrie became wary in an eyeblink, for this was the way that Mr. Twigg had begun to introduce his previous schemes. “There are, according to one of our… sources in Paris… several hundred more invasion craft to figure with.”
The Invasion Year l-17 Page 26