Man Of War mh-9

by Allan Mallinson

  But then, the entire ship’s complement was possessed of nothing but desire for a battle. The quarterdeck, lately a place for sunny recreation, swarmed with gun-crew; jollies, bristling for some sharpshooting, lined the gangways; and hands danced impatiently about the forecastle carronades. Here was death in twenty different calibres, and every man eager for its issue.

  A pigeon walked along the strings of the sauve-tête above the waist. Peto recalled he had not seen netting on a three-decker since Trafalgar . . .

  Another quarter of an hour, and then: ‘Dartmouth lowering a boat, sir!’

  Was there ever occasion when the quarterdeck listened so intently on a midshipman? Peto shook his head:politics.

  Five more minutes: ‘Pinnace sir, from Dartmouth, pulling for the fireship.’

  Peto saluted Admiral de Rigny’s flag in the frigate Sirène. As he turned to speak to his signal midshipman, a shot rang out from towards Dartmouth – a musket, perhaps a pistol, but a crack like fork lightning in the silent auditorium of the bay. And then a whole fusillade.

  ‘Shots from the fireship, sir! She’s firing on Dartmouth’s pinnace,’ called Midshipman Simpson.

  Peto leaned out over the weather rail to see how close was the first of the French line-of-battle ships, what support he could expect: but they had fallen well astern of Sirène. ‘Damn me if they haven’t reduced sail too soon!’

  He made for the poop for a better view. ‘Who is she, Mr Pelham?’

  ‘Scipion, sir. And Trident, I think, astern of her.’

  ‘She is either Trident or Breslau, Mr Pelham,’ replied Peto brusquely. ‘There is no good in being uncertain which.’

  ‘Ay-ay, sir.’

  ‘Fireship alight, sir!’ came the voice from the tops again.

  Codrington had not said if firing a brûlot was to be taken as the hostile act.

  ‘Dartmouth lowering her cutter, sir.’ Midshipman Simpson’s voice was becoming hoarse, but decidedly less reedy. ‘I believe the shots have struck the pinnace’s crew.’

  Peto cursed beneath his breath. He had to admire Codrington’s nerve, but it was like chipping flints atop a powder keg.

  Ten minutes crept by. Scipion drifted past, and Trident a hundred yards astern of her, as if pulled by plodding barge horses. Peto, back on the quarterdeck, shook his head. ‘A little bolder, our French friends might be, think you not, Mr Lambe? Our Russian friends press them hard.’ He nodded to the third column of sail fast approaching.

  ‘I do, sir. T’gallants and royals, at least.’

  Peto lowered his telescope, resolved. ‘We are too inactive, Mr Lambe. Lower the cutter. Dartmouth may require assistance towing the brûlot clear.’

  ‘Ay-ay, sir!’

  Captain Antrobus came up. ‘Permission to embark my landing party, sir?’

  Peto scowled. He did not require prompting to give his orders. Yet from the marines’ narrow perspective, Antrobus was right. He hated evasion – ‘Tirez les premiers’. It was a damned muddle-headed business, this: the government took sides in a war without taking any responsibility for action . . .

  He had an idea. ‘Wait for the cutter to get away and then get your men into the boats. The Turks will think you’re to make for Dartmouth, too. Have your men take off their jackets. God knows I detest such skulking, but if the devil drives . . .’

  ‘Ay-ay, sir,’ said Antrobus, keenly.

  ‘And show yourself well to us, mind, if you do land. I want no men killed by our guns.’ (He had seen it often enough in the French war, even if Antrobus had not.)

  ‘Ay-ay, sir.’

  ‘The recall signal – yellow at the stern. Go to it. And good luck.’

  Antrobus saluted, and bustled away.

  There was a sudden welter of shots.

  ‘Shots at Dartmouth’s boats from the fireship, sir!’

  The firing increased – an exchange of musketry for several minutes.

  ‘This may yet begin in a tuppenny-ha’penny fashion,’ said Peto. ‘Fellowes is showing admirable restraint, I would say.’

  ‘Indeed, sir,’ replied Lambe, his glass trained on Sphacteria, however. ‘And, most curious, still no sign of activity at the fort.’

  Peto shook his head. ‘Why would the shore batteries stay idle while the fireships are primed ready? It reeks of a ploy.’

  Lambe had no opportunity to answer: two cannon spoke – like the crack of doom.

  ‘Turk frigate firing a-weather, sir, hard inshore!’ screeched Simpson.

  Cannon now roared a good deal closer.

  ‘Dartmouth answering, sir. And Sirène!’

  Smoke and flame suddenly erupted from New Navarin, and a second later came the thunder of her guns.

  ‘Starboard batteries, open fire!’ snapped Peto.

  Fountains of shot from New Navarin played ahead of Trident, before she was obscured by the smoke of Rupert’s broadside.

  Sphacteria now belched into life. Shot whistled through Rupert’s rigging, carrying away a spar from the mizzen, and one of the topmen. The captain of the forecastle threw a float over the side, but the man was dead in the water, his neck broken.

  ‘Mr Lambe, larboard battery, if you please!’

  Lambe raised his speaking-trumpet again. ‘Larboard battery, Fire!’

  The upper-deck battery roared as one gun, the middle- and lower- a split second later. Pulverized stone thickened the smoke which already wreathed the walls of the fort.

  Peto gave but one other order for the moment (the captains of the batteries knew their business, and their targets were obligingly immobile). ‘My compliments to Captain Antrobus, Mr Lambe, and bid him away to the shore.’

  ‘Ay-ay, sir.’

  ‘Turkish flagship firing on Asia, sir!’

  Peto was strangely relieved:Asia was engaged at last. There could be no doubt about the issue now.

  The action spread like a flame along a powder trail. Soon there was continuous cannonading, and smoke enough to fill the anchorage. A ball from Sphacteria struck Rupert by the break of the forecastle, scattering hammocks and showering the waist with splinters. Two marines fell, writhing terribly.

  ‘Sail, if you please, Mr Lambe. Let us give the Turks a harder mark still.’

  The starboard watch hauled up the main-topsail by the clewlines rather than sending more men aloft to furl. In a minute or so, with no wind in the (backed) sail to counter the fore and mizzen, Rupert began to make headway.

  ‘Bring her up into the wind a point, Mr Veitch.’ It would mean putting half of each broadside off its line, Peto knew, but that should be of no matter now that each gun captain had the range.

  The landing party was nearing the shore. He had a mind to recall them, for his guns would have the better of the fort soon enough if the Turks continued to fire so ill, one true hit in all of ten minutes.

  Midshipman Simpson called again, even more hoarsely: ‘Two more fireships ablaze, sir!’

  Peto made for the poop deck once more: with Rupert turning into the wind he ought to be able to see nearly as well as from the tops.

  He felt the roundshot tear the air just above his head, saw it graze the flag lockers and carry away the stern lantern before plunging into the sea, aft. He raised an eyebrow: as well he had not taken the ladder a moment earlier. But it was the way of a fight at sea, and he did not dwell on near misses. ‘Stand up, Mr Hart,’ he said briskly to one of the midshipmen, flat on his back and with an expression of astonishment.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I—’

  ‘Nothing from the flag, Mr Pelham?’

  ‘No, sir,’ replied the signal midshipman, surveying the wreckage of his flag locker in dismay.

  Peto took up his telescope to observe for himself. There was so much smoke it was a while before he could find the flagship. ‘Codrington has hot work of it, I see.’Asia was engaged at close quarters with one, perhaps two, of the Turkish Line. Peto shook his head: that decided it (their lordships did not send a three-decker to the Mediterranean to pound at shor
e batteries on the edge of a general action).

  He slid back down the ladder without a word (he had no time for signals now), before thinking better of leaving Pelham with nothing but carpentry. He turned and hailed him in a voice that would carry above the gunfire yet conveyed indifference to it. ‘Mr Pelham. I may have need of you on the quarterdeck!’

  He was surprised by how agreeable he found the young man’s ‘ay-ay, sir!’.

  ‘Make straight for the flagship, Mr Durcan!’ The third lieutenant had resumed the watch as soon as the captain had turned for the ladder.

  ‘Straight for her, sir!’

  The last of Admiral de Rigny’s frigates was nearing. Peto took Lambe’s speaking-trumpet to the starboard side. ‘Ahoy, monsieur!’ It ought to have felt strange: the only time he had ever hailed a Frenchman was to invite him to strike his colours.

  The reply came at once, and heartily. ‘Je suis l ’Armide, capitaine! C’est une vraie battaille, n’est-ce pas? ’

  ‘Oui, capitaine, c’est ça.’ Peto was confident of his French, though he knew his accent to be that of an Englishman: ‘I have put ashore a party of marines to take the fort. They will have need of support but I must join the action. Will you take my place here?’ He prayed the Frenchman would not choose la gloire rather than the course of military reason.

  He need have had no concern. ‘Oui, capitaine, bien sûr . . .’

  The detail was dealt with briskly, so that Peto could thank his (to his mind still) unlikely allié with true gratitude, and assurance, before turning back to the helm.

  A ball crashed into the main mast just above the netting, and ricocheted into the waist. He closed his ears to the screaming of the wounded, as he had too often before.

  ‘More sail, Mr Lambe!’

  Another ball from Sphacteria crashed into Rupert’s hull – impenetrable save by one path. It struck the edge of a gunport aft on the middle deck just as its huge thirty-two-pounder fired, carrying away the retarder tackle, sending splinters the width of the ship. The gun itself reared up and over, killing outright a midshipman and two hands, and rendering eleven more for the orlop.

  An arching, heated shot from New Navarin plunged to the quarterdeck, taking off the head of a corporal of marines, which followed the hissy ball into the sea. Several men threw up as two older hands heaved what remained of the NCO over the side.

  Another ball from Sphacteria carried away the main-topmast cap, which flew half-way to Armide. A man fell headlong from the yard into the sauve-tête. Blood trickled to the quarterdeck like water from a faulty tap as hands tried to get the lifeless body to the side, and thence to its watery grave.

  Meanwhile the afterguard and marines were straining every muscle to extend the mainsail (all they wanted to do was get back to the contest of broadsides), while the topmen calmly overhauled the clewlines along the yard – those not trying to cut loose the now useless topgallant.

  But the fire from Sphacteria had slackened, even if its accuracy had increased. A three-decker might be an easy mark, but there was no doubting that three decks wrought heavy damage on the fort, and faster than any 74 could have done it. Peto reckoned that Armide with her single deck of eighteen-pounders would keep the Turks occupied until Captain Antrobus and his party decided the matter with the bayonet. As for New Navarin, the battery there was already under cannonade from the French Magicienne, who had found herself with otherwise little to do, since the fireships masked her allotted station at the eastern point of the horseshoe.

  He checked his instinct to see for himself the damage in the waist. Rupert was not a frigate: if the entire upper deck were out of action, there were two more. He fixed his gaze instead – as best he could in all the smoke – on Asia.

  Rupert made good headway. Peto thought to steer between Asia and the Turkish two-decker to her starboard, firing as they bore. If that did not silence her he would at least have bought Asia’s starboard battery a little respite. He would then turn hard across her bow to rake the other Turk from astern with the larboard battery. ‘Damage report, if you please, Mr Lambe,’ he barked as they left the traverse of Sphacteria’s remaining guns.

  A boy was swilling the quarterdeck, but no one spoke. They had been blooded, just as had the deck, and it was a powerful concoction, at once sobering and yet invigorating. The antidote was rum or more blood.

  Not long and he had his damage report: the main-topsail was gone, but sail and rigging were otherwise intact; two guns of the middle-deck batteries, one each side, were disabled. And – it had never been the practice in the French wars to report the human damage – one midshipman and six seamen dead, seventeen taken below.

  Peto nodded – no damage to trouble them, though a considerable surgeon’s bill for the opening of an action. ‘Thank you, Mr Lambe. Guns double-shotted again, if you please.’ He looked at his watch: a little after three o’clock. He had not thought it so late.

  Rupert bore down silently on Asia’s besiegers like some giant predator. She might use her bowchasers to some effect, but Peto reckoned on the greater shock of the broadsides. Whether the Turks saw or not, they made no move. It was the mark of the novice to be mesmerized by the fight at hand, when the mortal danger lay often in what threatened. Peto intended teaching a lesson that those who survived it would never forget.

  ‘Larboard batteries to hold their fire, Mr Lambe. Remind them that it is the flagship they see. Starboard batteries will fire as they bear.’

  Lambe had his midshipmen-repeaters relay the order to the larboard lower deck, and then back up again to be sure, before giving the discretionary order for the starboard guns to fire as they bore.

  ‘Mr Shand, we shall go about across Asia’s bows. Be ready if you please.’

  ‘Ay-ay, sir.’

  There was resolution in the master’s voice: tacking with so little sail would be the very devil;Rupert might be pushed a good way astern before gathering headway.

  Peto looked at his watch again: a quarter after three, and a hundred yards to run. Asia’s fire was slackening. He prayed she had not been too severely mauled.

  He clasped his hands behind his back. It was time for kind words. ‘An admirable course, Mr Veitch.’

  ‘Thankee, sir.’

  ‘Capital trim, Mr Lambe.’

  ‘Sir.’

  The smoke thinned a little. Peto peered disbelievingly, then raised his telescope. ‘That deuced cutter is alongside the flagship!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Robb – the deuced fool has put his boat between the flag and yon Turk. I do believe he’s firing! He must be sorely in want of promotion!’

  Lambe lifted his own glass. ‘He’ll be raised up one way or another,’ he said drily.

  Peto growled. Hind would likely catch a good deal of metal when they began raking the Turk. But it could not be helped.

  Rupert’s marines fired first as they ran in – sharpshooters and the fore carronade, sweeping the Turk’s quarterdeck, though half blind with the smoke, breaking every piece of glass in the stern. And then the starboard battery, gun by gun, simultaneously on each deck, regular enough to sound like the mechanism of a monstrous clock. The Turk – the Souriya – fired but two guns in reply, neither doing the slightest damage. Carronades swept her upperworks so completely that Peto thought there was not a man left standing to strike the colours. Below, the work of Rupert’s gun-decks had made of her nothing but a bloody mangle. The Asias cheered the Ruperts heartily. The larboard gunners returned the cheer, leaning out of the ports for three lusty ‘hoorahs’ before bracing for their own action.

  ‘Hard a-starboard, Mr Veitch!’ snapped Peto as the aftmost gun fired.

  The mates heaved mightily to put the rudder full to larboard.

  With her mainsail filling the more, Rupert answered well, rounding Asia’s bows with a graceful ease indeed – and to the great dismay of the second Turk, whose crew only now realized their fate.

  Rupert’s leading guns fired. At fifty yards, aim was nothing and th
e effect devastating. By the time the fourth bank fired, the Turk’s stern was shot right away above the counter. But Peto could not have checked Rupert’s firing even if he had wanted to. Shot upon shot tore the length of the dying ship, turning over her guns as if they were balsa. Flames were soon lighting the smoky darkness of her gun-decks, and she fell silent but for the agonies of her shattered crew, whose cries the Ruperts could now hear quite clearly.

  ‘Let go!’ The master’s speaking-trumpet recalled the topmen to their work – stretching the weather braces ready, hauling the lee tacks, weather sheets and bowlines through the slack . . . ‘Off tacks and sheets!’

  Rupert came into the wind. Peto gasped as he saw the Turk’s starboard guns were not run out. She had not had the crew to man both sides at once; and now she had not the crew to man a single gun. He had thought to sink her, but it was not worth the effort. The Ruperts began cheering again as flames took hold and the mizzen toppled. ‘Cease firing!’

  In the silence which followed, a single voice piped clear. ‘Fireships close on Dartmouth, sir, and corvettes engaging!’

  Peto made mental note to commend Midshipman Simpson in front of the crew when it was all done. ‘Let us hasten back to her, then, Mr Lambe.’

  * * *

  Twenty backbreaking minutes’ labour, the sailing-master barely drawing breath, Veitch himself taking the helm to feel with his own hands how close he could sail to the wind, and the gun-crews working like machines to have the batteries ready once more. Dartmouth’s perilous position compelled the Ruperts as no lash could: fire ringed her, and two corvettes off the lee beam plagued her with shot and grape.

  ‘Damnable,’ muttered Peto, several times. How had Fellowes allowed himself to be pressed so? And somewhere in that fog of smoke and flame was Rupert’s own cutter . . .

  The bowchasers opened up. The range was too great and the motion of the ship too uneven, however. Nevertheless the corvettes recognized the approaching danger. One of them began bearing away into the smoke; the other made a clumsy attempt to wear, and ended making unwelcome leeway instead. Peto smiled, ironically: the wind, such as it was, now worked to his advantage.