by Seth Hunter
The combatants were still some five miles distant and in such a light wind it was likely to be an hour or more before they were within range, even if they did not change course in the meantime. They were still heading almost directly towards the squadron, both ships firing high in the hope of carrying away something vital. It was astonishing to Nathan that this had not happened already, for they were both taking a severe pounding, but as they came closer he saw that the courses and staysails were so full of holes he was surprised they could hold their wind. Still they came on and he could see the tricolour now at the stern of the ship to leeward. A French two-decker, then, in an ocean that was supposed to contain nothing more formidable, according to Governor Duncan, than a small frigate. Either she had not sighted the four ships bearing down on her from the north-west, or she was entirely indifferent to them. She was still partly masked by the East Indiaman, her upper decks almost completely enveloped in smoke, but the lookouts were well above the fog of battle and should have spotted them long before now if they had been doing their job properly. Nathan could only suppose that she intended to keep up the chase until the very last minute.
Closer and closer they came and he signalled Picket to continue on his present course, while the Cherry veered a full three points to the south-west so they would have her fenced in whichever way she broke. Closer … barely a mile between them now … and at last the Frenchman saw the danger.
The commander did what Nathan would have done in the same circumstances – he backed the mizzen to let the chase forge ahead and then began to wear ship, falling off the wind and turning more than twenty points of the compass to bring the bows round to the south-west. Clearly, he had decided that if there was to be a fight, he would rather take his chance with the Bombay and her consorts than with the big two-decker to leeward.
Nathan clapped the glass to his eye as she dropped off the wind and read the name at her stern. For a moment he thought it might be some trick of the imagination or a blurring of the vision. But it was neither. She was the Shiva.
‘What in God’s name is she up to?’ he wondered aloud as he and Tully studied her through the glass.
‘She must have been taken prize,’ Tully supposed.
It was the most logical explanation, but she had a hell of a lot of men for a prize crew. She looked like she was preparing to fight the guns on both sides, and she was making an excellent job of wearing ship – and coming much further into the wind than Nathan had anticipated.
‘She is going to cut through the squadron,’ he cried out as the plan became clear to him.
They brought the Cherry back on her old course but they were lagging a good thousand yards behind, and to his considerable alarm Nathan saw that the Shiva was heading straight for the gap between the Bombay and the Antelope. And there was not a thing he could do about it.
But the East Indiaman could. And did. No sooner was she freed from her tormentor than she dropped off the wind and fired a final broadside at a range of three or four hundred yards. It was a long shot but it did more damage than all the close-quarter work that had preceded it. The Shiva had just completed her turn when her foretopmast began to topple forward and sideways, with all the majesty of a towering pine lopped by the woodman’s axe. Down it came: spars, sails and all, over the side and into the sea.
The effect was as if a giant hand had reached out from under the water and seized her by the head. With nowhere else to go, the stern began to drift sharply to leeward until she was laid flat aback.
And the Pondicherry came swooping down on her, like Sister Caterina’s avenging angel.
Nathan could see the figures crawling all over the Shiva’s forecastle, fighting to free her from the wreckage hanging over her bow, but until they did, she was dead in the water – a sitting duck.
‘Let us serve her as we planned to serve the Forte,’ he said to Tully, ‘before Caterina went for her swim.’
Tully understood, but his expression was tense and his eyes shot up to the sails as he weighed up the problems involved. They were carrying a lot more canvas than when they were chasing the Forte, and it would be a much more difficult manoeuvre. Nathan opened his mouth to make a suggestion – and then snapped it shut. This was Tully’s affair – he was the captain of the ship, and he had always been a far better sailor than Nathan anyway. Nathan would be better employed fighting the guns, but the guns were now Mr Joyce’s domain.
There was nothing to be done but cross to the rail, clasping his hands firmly behind his back for fear he might start chewing his nails, and disgrace himself before the crew. The Shiva was still firmly held by the head, and the Bombay was now closing fast. Even as Nathan watched, the frigate veered sharply to windward and fired her entire starboard broadside at a range of about 600 yards: firing high and wide for the most part, but not without effect. A lucky shot parted the yard from the stump of her foremast and another mass of canvas and timber came crashing down on the men fighting to free her bow.
The Pondicherry was also turning to windward to cross the Shiva’s stern and Nathan could see the faces of the officers on the quarterdeck staring helplessly back at them. They would have known exactly what they were in for, and that there was not a single thing they could do about it, save to stand there on that exposed deck and brace themselves for the storm that was about to erupt.
Joyce gave the order to fire as you bear, and within seconds the great guns were in action, singly or in pairs, the 12-pounders on the upper deck and the 24-pounders below, with so little a gap between them it was like one long, rippling roar. Some of the guns would have fired high and some would have fired into the sea, but the vast majority fired straight into the Shiva’s stern, and it simply imploded – the elegant stern gallery, the windows, the transom – and with them, surely, the vital link between her helm and her rudder.
The Pondicherry’s own helmsmen were spinning the wheel, bringing her bows hard a-starboard, with every hand that could be spared hauling on the braces, while the gun crews charged across the decks to the opposite side. The guns there were already loaded and run out, the range so close there was no need for trimming or hauling on tackle. Each gun captain simply applied the match the moment he sighted the target. Fired at almost point-blank range now, the heavy iron shot blew away what was left of the Shiva’s stern and travelled the length of the ship, smashing whatever was in its path, guns, carriages and men. The wind was blowing the smoke forward, and Nathan had an almost clear view of the shambles they had made. He doubted if he would ever forget it. He had been in three major fleet actions – he knew the effect of a twenty-four-pound ball of iron on the human body, but he had never seen anything like this. It was as if some demonic hand had ripped a hole in the universe to give him a brief glimpse of hell.
Nathan had no illusions about the nature of his profession, but sometimes illusion was preferable to the terrible reality. Sometimes it was all that kept a man sane.
He turned to Tully and saw in his eyes the same grim acknowledgement of what they were and what they did. It would not stop either of them from doing it. Shiva was not the destroyer here.
‘Lay off her stern,’ he said, ‘and we will pound her until she strikes.’
It was cold-blooded murder but it was the quickest way to end it. The Shiva was in irons, caught by the wreckage at her head; she could hardly bring a gun to bear. If her commander had half a grain of sense or humanity in him he would strike.
But Nathan’s experience should have told him there was neither rhyme nor reason in a battle at sea. The men were drunk with rum, rage and fear; the officers with glory, honour or shame, blinded by smoke and deafened by the roar of the guns. And you stood there, trying not to flinch, with every nerve in your body screaming at you to run and hide; standing, for God’s sake, not ducking or cowering or taking the least bit of cover, standing on those sand-scattered, blood-spattered decks, with solid iron shot hurtling through the air at over 1,500 feet a second and smashing into wood, canvas, metal, flesh an
d bone – seeing what horror such a missile at such a speed will make of a man. You could not stay sane in such a slaughterhouse; you had to be mad already. Any man with half a grain of sense or humanity would not be here; he would be safe ashore, playing hide and seek with his children.
So even as these thoughts passed through Nathan’s head, even though he prayed that someone, somewhere, would strike that big bold tricolour still flying from the shattered stern of the Shiva, he could see the crew hacking with their axes at the wreckage that still gripped them by the head, the officers up forward urging them on, the men in the tops firing down on their tormentor with small arms and swivel guns, a man with half an arm trying to heave a 12-pounder cannon with the other so that he could train it through the gaping hole that had once been a gunport, and the rest of the gun crew lying dead around him … Pandemonium. And worse was still to come.
The Shiva finally came free of the wreckage holding her by the head, but with the sails laid flat aback and the rudder gone she began to drift helplessly stern-first down on the Pondicherry. There was frantic activity on her upper deck. The men who had been hacking at the rigging came running aft led by their officers, snatching up whatever weapons were available to them. It was a moment before Nathan realised what they were about. And someone on the Pondicherry – it might have been Joyce – roared the command: ‘Stand by to repel boarders!’
Nathan looked to Tully. It was vital to widen the ever-closing gap between the two ships, but there was precious little room for manoeuvre. The Cherry could come no further into the wind, and to fall off would expose her to the same raking broadside she had dealt the Shiva – assuming she had guns left to fire and men to fire them. But they did not have to wait like dummies until they were boarded. Two could play at that game.
There were few rules for boarding in the King’s Navy – strangely so, given the care and discipline that went into the gunnery. For most captains it was a tactic of last resort, best left to pirates and buccaneers. They preferred to batter a ship to death with their heavy guns. But the crews, being pirates and buccaneers in their black hearts, were all for it, and some of the officers, too, even the younger admirals – Nelson was a great man for boarding.
Mr Joyce had devoted a great deal of time to cutlass drill and the brutal arts of close-quarter combat while the ship was lying idle in Bombay Harbour, and when Nathan took command he had left most of the arrangements as he had found them. Above a third of the crew had been detailed as boarders, in two divisions. The first wave was composed of the most vicious and violent of the hands, mostly waisters and servants (there was a belief among them that they were the men Mr Joyce was most eager to be rid of – and they derived a certain perverse pride from this). The second wave was drawn from the gun crews – one man from each gun – reliable, steady men, for the most part, more endowed with muscle than brain, and possessed of a certain brute force that came from the heaving of heavy cannon. The third division was composed of the redcoats, with their muskets and bayonets – another widespread belief among the crew was that their main role was to drive the other two divisions before them, and consider the killing of the enemy only as a secondary concern.
Their weaponry, with the exception of the soldiers, ranged from short swords and dirks for the officers, to pistols and cutlasses, pikes, axes and tomahawks, marlin spikes and belaying pins for everyone else – anything, in short, that might be employed in the murderous trade of close-quarter combat upon the crowded deck of a ship of war. And as to strategy – there was none. It was a brawl – and British seamen were traditionally good at brawling. It was assumed that they needed little instruction in the subject.
Nathan should have stayed well out it; he knew that. He should have stayed on the quarterdeck to direct the fighting and send reinforcements wherever they were required – but he could not bring himself to remain so detached, so godlike, not after the slaughter he had witnessed on the lower deck of the Shiva. It did not make it any better, but somehow it felt better, to subject himself to the same arbitrary throw of the dice that determined who was to live and who was to die, even if most of them lived and died by his own command.
‘We will go in over the stern,’ he instructed Joyce and Dudley, the army captain. ‘Marines to the fore – I mean soldiers, of course,’ he addressed Dudley with an apologetic bow; astonishing how, even at a time like this, one remembered the niceties. ‘Once we have cleared the quarterdeck, instruct your men to line the rail and fire into the waist. If there is any fight left in them.’
This was all there was time for. The two ships came together with a grinding of timbers that sounded very like a groan. And then all hell broke loose. Five or six grappling lines snaked out from the Pondicherry and a great hail of hand grenades and smoke bombs – even stink pots – were hurled from the yards of both ships. Nathan grabbed a hold of the mizzenmast shrouds and climbed up on the rail, paused a moment, and then leaped the several feet onto the Shiva’s quarterdeck. It occurred to him, too late, that he should have yelled something inspiring.
‘Glory or a tomb at Westminster!’ Nelson had cried at the Battle of St Vincent.
Nathan had nothing so wonderful in mind, but it might have been an idea to have at least indicated that the rest of the boarders were to follow him.
But they needed no encouragement. Tombs and glory were subjects for admirals to ponder and they were welcome to both. Murder was what they had in mind, and the swiftest, most effective way of going about it. They were already swarming aboard the Shiva by every means at their disposal, a homicidal tide of blue and red, apparently led by the fourteen-year-old Mr Vivian with a pistol in one hand and a cutlass in the other and an expression of total savagery on his youthful features.
‘Eagerness and heat in action, especially in a first onslaught, ought never to be the cause of a man putting himself so much off his guard as to lift his arm to strike a blow with his cutlass,’ advised the Admiralty manual on the subject. On the contrary, their lordships proposed, the boarder should rush ‘sword straight out’, thus maintaining his guard and watching for his opportunity to make a thrust: ‘the slightest touch of the point being death to the enemy.’
Regarding the use of pistols, they advised the boarder to hold his fire ‘to the last extremity, until his life depend upon it.’
It was not to be supposed, for one instant, that the writer of this missive – or more likely the committee that had, after lengthy discussion, drawn it up – had based their advice upon personal experience. If they had, they would very shortly have made the discovery that an extended arm, even with a sword attached to it, is not anything like as long or as lethal as a pike, and of very little use against a barrage of small-arms fire.
In fact, most boarders discharged their pistols in the first rush and then hurled them at the enemy, before laying about them with every weapon at their disposal. The result was not elegant, but it was effective. It carried the boarders halfway across the enemy quarterdeck, sweeping all before them. Nathan went with the flow. He was half blinded by smoke and the flash of pistols and carbines. He felt the wind of a bullet past his ear, another tore the epaulette off his right shoulder. Men fell on either side. He was hurled into a steel hedgehog of pikes, felt a savage pain in his left side and a warm gush of blood, slashed right and left – ever mindful to keep a stiff right arm – and then suddenly, surprisingly, found himself standing in the clear on a patch of empty deck. Too empty, for he immediately became the target of a hail of missiles from above, mostly discharged from carbines and pistols, but also including at least two grenades which he was obliged to distance himself from with some rapidity.
His retreat brought him into the thick of the fighting again, and he found himself hard-pressed by two opponents, one wielding an axe, the other a pike: a combination which caused him some considerable heart searching, especially as they came at him from two different points of the compass. Fortunately, he still had a loaded pistol in his hand, not so much in compliance with the
Admiralty guide lines, as because he had simply forgotten to fire it. He did so now, though, discharging it at the man with the pike while simultaneously plunging his sword into the axeman’s thigh. If the pistol shot had the desired effect, the sword thrust proved a less effective deterrent, seeming more to enrage the victim than to disable him. He advanced like a berserker, albeit with a slight limp, swinging the axe at Nathan’s head with such dexterity that it threatened to revise the widely accepted proposition that a pointed weapon is more effectual than one that is edged. Nathan retreated with such rapidity he lost his footing on the greasy deck, sliding with comic abandon on a mess of blood and entrails. He rolled immediately to one side as a second blow smashed into the planking at his head, and sprang to his feet – only for a violent kick to send him sprawling in the scuppers. He looked up through a blur of blood and pain to see his assailant poised for one final, murderous blow – and then the point of a sword appeared through the man’s throat and he lost all further interest in the proceedings. As he toppled to the deck Mr Joyce appeared in his stead, holding out a hand to help Nathan to his feet.
‘I am very much obliged to you, sir,’ Nathan acknowledged with a bow, but the lieutenant’s gaze was directed at a point somewhat below Nathan’s belt. Following its direction Nathan experienced a similar alarm – indeed, he had been conscious for some moments of a not unpleasant warmth in the region of his crotch, but had put this down to something less serious than blood, if rather more embarrassing to explain. He now saw that his breeches were stained as red as a butcher’s apron. He felt anxiously about the affected area, but in as far as he could tell, all was intact and the blood was not his own. He looked up to reassure Mr Joyce that this was the case, but found him otherwise engaged halfway across the deck.