The Invasion Year l-17

by Dewey Lambdin

  “They’re my torpedoes, Lewrie, my collier from which you’ll fetch them,” Speaks had briskly rattled off, a calculating little smile upon his face, “and I’m damned well going to see them handled properly.”

  A kindly and charitable man might have deemed Captain Speaks’s zeal admirable… the sort of fellow Captain Alan Lewrie definitely was not, even before the bastard had come aboard. No, what the fellow wanted the most, Lewrie suspected, was a chance to be at sea aboard a proper frigate, not a hired-in collier that mounted only pop-guns, and damned few of those. Reliant was a warship very much like Speaks’s last command of 1801, which, had he not come down with pneumonia and had had to be replaced, he might have sailed into the Baltic as a lone ship to scout the Danish, Swedish, and Russian fleets, then returned in time to take part in the glorious battle with Nelson at Copenhagen, and felt robbed of the opportunity.

  Lewrie was dead-certain that Speaks had no orders; his brief had been to test the catamaran torpedoes, then turn them over to some other officer to be employed. He might have felt a trifle sorry for the old fellow-had he not been as bristly as a currying brush, nowhere near the “firm but fair” and well-liked officer of old! And if he wished to be close to his charges, and take part in a battle, at long last, more power to him, Lewrie thought-so long as he did so anywhere else but aboard his ship!

  “Signal, sir!” Midshipman Munsell, high aloft, called down in a thin and shrill voice, reading off a string of number flags. “General to all ships, with two guns!”

  “It is… ‘Come to Anchor,’ sir,” Midshipman Rossyngton said, after a quick scan through his code book.

  “Anchor?” Captain Speaks barked. “We’re still five miles off!”

  “Have the signal repeated, Mister Rossyngton,” Lewrie told his Mid, “but I’d admire did we fetch-to, Mister Westcott, not anchor, as ordered. Do the French come out, we’d be immobile too long for my liking… and caught tryin’ t’go to Quarters and heave up the best bower and the entire length of a cable at the same time.”

  HMS Reliant was put up into wind, fore-and-aft sails still drawing to drive her forward, but with tops’ls aback to act as brakes, and let her make just a bit of stern and lee-way, practically immobilised, but still able to pay off and get back to speed in a mere minute, avoiding getting caught by a French sortie “with her pants down.”

  “It was an order,” Captain Speaks muttered half to himself, just loud enough to irk. “Ahem,” he covered, loudly clearing his throat.

  “Interpreted by all but the two-deckers and the flagship according to captains’ best judgement, sir,” Lewrie pointed out through gritted teeth, in a rictus of an outwardly pleasant smile. “The rest have fetched-to, the other frigates and such. As you can see,” he added as he swept an arm towards the lighter ships, which stood a little closer to the coast. “I doubt the cutters have anchor cables long enough.”

  “Now what, sir?” Lt. Westcott said, after coughing into a fist to change the subject.

  “We sit here long enough, Mister Westcott, we might heave up the rum keg, then serve the mid-day meal,” Lewrie cynically replied with a grimace. “I thought we’d just barge up to gun range and blaze away at once. But, that’s up to Admiral Lord Keith. Mister Rossyngton? Pass word for my steward, and he’s t’bring my collapsible chair up.”

  Captain Speaks, no fan of Lewrie already, goggled at the order, utterly convinced that Lewrie was the idlest lubber he’d ever met.

  “And my penny-whistle, too, Mister Rossyngton,” Lewrie added, sure that that would dismay the fellow even further; far enough, perhaps, to leave the quarterdeck and leave them all in peace? “What’d ye like t’hear, Mister Westcott? ‘Spanish Ladies’?”

  To Lewrie’s wicked delight, Captain Speaks produced a gargling sound, belched up a muffled, “Pah!” and took himself a brisk stroll up the larboard sail-tending gangway, swinging his arms like a man working up an appetite.

  “ ‘Fa-are-well, and adieu, to you fine Spanish ladies… fa-are-well, and adieu, to you ladies of Spain… fo-or we’ve received orders to-o sail for old England…,’ ” Lewrie sang out.

  Damn my eyes, but I do know how t’rile ’em! he gaily thought.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  It was late afternoon before the squadron got under way, again, with Lord Keith’s flagship, Monarch, leading all three frigates, bomb vessels, fireships, the Penarth collier, and all the brig-sloops and cutters closer to Boulogne.

  “Now, we’ll see something!” Speaks enthused, pacing the quarterdeck with jaunty steps and clapping his hands in eagerness for action.

  But no, they didn’t, for Monarch signalled for all ships to anchor again, this time just outside of the maximum reach of French cannon! In much shallower water, even the cutters could put down an anchor and find good holding ground without paying out too much scope of cable.

  “A word, sir?” Lt. Westcott whispered, near Lewrie’s shoulder.

  “Aye,” Lewrie allowed, just as guarded.

  “This doesn’t make any sense, sir,” Westcott grumbled, his face set in a beetle-browed frown. “We haven’t even been ordered to clear for action, and here we are, sitting ducks should the French come out, as you feared round Noon, when we fetched-to instead of anchoring.”

  “Well, it doesn’t make any sense t’me, either, if there’s comfort in mutual perplexity,” Lewrie gravelled back, shaking his head. “I would’ve thought we’d bring the other four ‘liners’ along. If Monarch can anchor this closely, so could the sixty-fours and the fifties.”

  “One hates to question the judgement of superior officers, but… surely, sir, were Nelson here, one would think we’d have been hot at it, hours ago,” Westcott said.

  “Second-guessin’ superior officers?” Lewrie said with a cackle. “Damme, Mister Westcott, that’s the Navy meat and drink! Hmm,” he went on after a long moment of pursing his lips and staring shoreward. “Perhaps Lord Keith’s of a mind t’launch the attack tonight, when fireships’d cause even more panic than they would in daylight. You may be in the boats and right under the French guns by midnight!”

  “One can only hope, sir,” Westcott eagerly agreed.

  “Mister Spendlove?” Lewrie called out to the officer of the watch. “You have the deck. I’m goin’ aloft for a look-see.”

  Since his first days as a raw and callow Midshipman in 1780, he had always been pluperfect-terrified of going aloft, hundreds of feet from the sane safety of solid decks, “yo-ho-hoing” out the futtock shrouds to hang like a spider nigh upside-down instead of using the “lubber’s hole” to the fighting top platform, scrambling higher up the narrowing shrouds and rat-lines to the cross-trees, or the fearful mast caps… going out to the tip of a tops’l, t’gallant, or royal yardarm to fist canvas, with upper arms locked over the yard and his feet teetering on a foot-rope that shimmied like a circus performer’s high wire, with a bare second of clumsiness dooming him to plunge overside to drown, or go Splat! on the upper deck!

  He slung his telescope over his shoulder and went up the starboard shrouds of the mizen mast. Damn what Captain Speaks thought of him, he eschewed the futtock shrouds and transferred to the counter-bracing cat-harpings to reach the top through the lubber’s hole.

  I ain’t a twenty-year-old topman, he grimly told himself; nor a twenty-year-old anything any longer!

  “Uh, evenin’, sir!” a spry young sailor bade him as Lewrie took a deep breath to steady his twanging nerves before extending his telescope.

  “Evenin’, Grimes,” Lewrie replied, sparing a moment to grin back, recalling that Grimes was one of the two-dozen or so that his old Bosun, Will Cony, now the owner of The Olde Ploughman public house in Anglesgreen, had recruited as volunteers when Reliant had been fitting out.

  “Ehm… d’ye think we might see a bit of a fight tonight, sir?” Grimes asked with a wolfish expression.

  “Ye never can tell, Grimes,” Lewrie told him. “If we don’t get ordered in, I don’t see the Frogs comin’ out to us. W
hat’s your station, do we go to Quarters?”

  “Well, I would be here, sir, t’tend sail and see to damage, but if we get t’launch those torpeder things, I’m down for Mister Houghton in his boat, and handle the swivel gun.”

  “You’d have more fun in Houghton’s boat,” Lewrie assured him as he turned his attention to the shore. “We might blow some French boats to Hell… and some Frogs with ’em.”

  “There’s a lot of ’em, sir,” Grimes commented.

  God, ain’t there, just! Lewrie thought as he levelled his telescope on the top-mast shrouds and rat-lines and got a good view. Even as dusk began to fall, there was still enough light for him to make out hundreds of vessels in Boulogne harbour, everything from prames, First Rate gunboats, to the smallest single-masted caiques. They were lined up against the inner harbour piers several rows deep, along the minor jetties where small fishing boats would tie up, in row after row round the harbour in deeper water, and all alongside the inner side of the stone breakwaters with only their masts showing… a deep forest of masts! Boulogne was so full of invasion shipping that any vessel attempting to sail out would have to pick a tortuous way without ramming into something.

  Closer to, the outside of the breakwaters was lined with long rows of every sort of barge and caique, arrayed two-deep, and there seemed to be at least two hundred of them, as Lewrie tried to keep a running count. Wee lanthorns were winking to light aboard them, among the vessels he could still see inside the harbour, and he began counting them instead of masts or hulls, but gave it up after a moment; it was as futile as trying to count all the stars in a clear West Indies night! Warehouses along the piers, houses, taverns, and shops began to blossom wee glims, too, and they all blended together. And beyond the harbour town, thousands of points of light emerged as the evening drew on, until every clifftop, every open field, every overlook above the sea, was transformed to a faeryland of winking lights, and Boulogne became a city as great as London, as well-lit as Paris when he had been there during the Peace of Amiens… the campfires and lanthorns and candles of a vast army encamped for miles and miles about in tents and huts!

  And the French were ready for them. Long before their revolution, in the time of French kings, Boulogne had been fortified, guarded by stone forts well-armed with good artillery, and with the ascendancy of Napoleon Bonaparte-an artilleryman!-the defences had gotten even stronger, with batteries erected on the breakwaters and flanking high ground in stout stone redans, or in thick earthen batteries every three miles along the French coast, the entire length of the Channel, from Ushant to Dunkerque. Smoke, not from cook-fires, arose from some of the stouter emplacements… furnaces and forges for heated shot?

  Near the harbour entrance between the enveloping arms of the breakwaters, Lewrie could barely make out some three-masted gunboats, swinging at single anchors to the wind and tide, where they could sortie if Lord Keith launched his attack. Out beyond them and the lines of boats along the outer breakwater faces, large armed launches were rowing, keeping a wary eye on the British squadron.

  “This could turn hopeless, fast,” Lewrie whispered to himself.

  “Say somethin’, sir?” Grimes asked.

  “Enjoy the view,” Lewrie said, louder, then turned to begin his descent to the safety of the deck.

  * * *

  “The tide’s beginning to run well, sir,” the Sailing Master, Mr. Caldwell, pointed out just after Lewrie stowed his telescope in the compass binnacle cabinet, “though the wind’s both perverse and scant for an assault.”

  “Perhaps we won’t be going in, after all, Mister Caldwell,” Lewrie replied with an impatient shrug, and a peek aloft to the commissioning pendant, which was streaming the wrong way. “If we send in the fireships, there’s a chance they’d just drift back onto us.”

  “We’ve the bomb vessels in place, the rocket ships anchored and in good range,” Captain Speaks grumbled. “If the wind won’t serve, at least we could begin to shell them, tonight. Stap me, this delay and dithering is maddening!”

  Should’ve stayed aloft, Lewrie thought; and avoided the pest a while longer!

  The bomb vessels that Lewrie had seen while aloft were of the newer type, with their two masts set far back to leave their two mortars free play up forward, set deep in re-enforced wells. They’d been anchored by a single stern kedge and both their bower anchors set out at extreme angles so tensioning or loosening their bower cables could swing their aim in great arcs. The older, converted rocket ships were beam-on to the shore, anchored from bows and sterns with springs on their cables to shift their aim. All seemed ready.

  “Aye, but how many rockets have we to fire?” Lewrie speculated aloud. “How many shells are aboard the bombs? We shoot off half of our bolts, without usin’ the fireships and torpedoes at the same time…?” he added, finishing with another, greater, arm-lifting shrug.

  “We’re to sit here and wait for tomorrow night’s tide, and hope the wind co-operates?” Captain Speaks groused. “Pah!”

  “Well, at least we may savour a good supper in peace,” Lewrie said with a chuckle. “My cook assures me he’s a cured ham for us, and if we don’t have to go to Quarters, we’ll dine on a hot meal.”

  “A hot supper!” Captain Speaks barked incredulously, sneering at Lewrie’s priorities. An inarticulate growl followed.

  “You’ll join me, Mister Caldwell?” Lewrie offered, grinning.

  “Gad, yes, I will, sir, and thankee most kindly!” Mr. Caldwell quickly responded, rubbing his hands in expectation.

  Speaks turned away to mumble something, which made Lewrie grin impishly. “D’ye know, Mister Caldwell, this puts me in mind of Copenhagen, the night before the battle, with the two fleets anchored not two miles apart, like ancient armies, glarin’ at each other, with the battlefield between ’em.”

  Lewrie knew how much that would rile Speaks, and determined he would expand on the subject over supper, which Captain Speaks would not turn down… unless he intended to sulk and fast in his hammock!

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  God only knew what the French made of it, but it was the following evening, October 2nd, that Admiral Lord Keith ordered the assault on Boulogne to begin. The winds had come round from a favourable quarter, the tide was running shoreward at a brisk pace, and, perhaps far aft in HMS Monarch’s great-cabins, a chicken had been sacrificed, and the auguries had been deemed auspicious.

  Boats from the flagship had rowed last-minute orders to all the ships, and alerting them to begin when Monarch fired a two-gun signal.

  Lewrie ordered Reliant’s crew to supper in the First Dog Watch, so the galley fires could be extinguished early, then had the frigate brought to Quarters at the start of the Second Dog, at 6 P.M.

  “On your way, Mister Westcott, and the best of fortune go with ye,” Lewrie bade the First Lieutenant, and his Midshipmen and the hands who would man the towing boats. The Penarth collier had already hoisted all her torpedoes from her holds and tethered them alongside, ready and waiting. “Give the Frogs Hell, Reliants!”

  “We’ll fetch you some frogs’ legs flambe, sir!” Westcott gaily promised as he ordered his men overside and into the boats. And they were all four well on their way and about to go alongside Penarth when the long, anxious peace between the French and the anchored squadron was broken at last by the sharp reports of two guns aboard HMS Monarch. Signal flags soared up her halliards ordering engagement.

  “Mister Merriman, you may open upon the boats anchored outside the breakwaters,” Lewrie shouted down to the waist.

  “Aye aye, sir!” Lt. George Merriman loudly replied, then turned to his waiting gun crews. “Raise the ports! Run out!”

  Monarch and the other frigates fired first, the edgy peace of a fine, mild early evening shattered by the deep, ear-splitting bellows of guns.

  “Prime your guns!” Lt. Merriman was roaring. “Captains, take aim! We will fire by threes! Quarter-gunners, see to your charges, and direct them to point at single targets! R
eady?”

  Gun-captains fiddled with elevation by raising the breech-ends of their pieces with crow-levers and wriggling the wood quoin blocks a bit aft, or a bit forward, to raise the muzzles to their best guess of the range. Some called for their gunners to lever the truck carriages left or right so the barrels pointed directly at specific boats in that long two-deep line of invasion vessels. Only then did they stand erect, clear of the guns’ recoil, drawing the trigger lines to the flintlock strikers taut, and raising fists in the air to signal their readiness.

  “By threes… fire!” Merriman shouted, chopping the air with his right arm, and the guns erupted, in groups from bow to stern, with lung-flattening roars, spurting great clouds of burned powder smoke shoreward, shot through with stabs of bright yellow-red flame and fire-fly sparks of vivid orange.

  “Swab out! Slow and steady does it, lads!” Merriman directed. “Overhaul recoil tackle, overhaul run-out tackle. Load cartridge!”

  The smoke-bank was drifting shoreward rapidly, thinning and rising as it went on a fair breeze, allowing Lewrie and Lt. Spendlove on the quarterdeck to lift their telescopes and survey the initial results. There were shot splashes near the invasion vessels, but so far they saw no evidence of hits; that would be far too much to hope for from the very first shots. It would take several more broadsides ’til the gun-captains honed their aims, and perhaps a couple of hours more of slow and steady hammering to inflict substantial damage.