by Smith, Skye
"Choose a brave man, Gerrit." The admiral shook his hand. "Once the Hellburner has exploded, the other fireships will be sent towards the Spanish line. And once the Spanish break formation, our cannons will open fire. Tell the fireship crews that they should be safe enough in their dinghies because all the shots from both sides will be lobbed well over their heads. Tell them that they will be safest if they stay halfway between the fleets, rather than being close to one or the other, but that will be their decision to make during the heat of the battle.
Tell them that our gunners will be aiming high at the bridges and rigging, because we must immediately cripple them to make sure that they cannot escape us and land the army in Dunkirk. Tell them that we will not stop to pick them out of the sea, because if this all goes as planned and the enemy ships break from their line and make a run for it, we must already be under sail."
* * * * *
As the Freisburn left the Aemelia to carry Gerrit amongst his fireships to relay the orders, they could see that the crew of the Hellburner had already allowed it to drift closer to the Spanish line of ships. They had been briefed yesterday, before the gale had cancelled the battle, and they knew that they would be the first to attack and would lead the other fireships.
The Freisburn was scooting along under sail and oar to get Gerrit within easy hailing distance of the Hellburner. He wanted to confirm that yesterday's plan was to be used unchanged. The Hellburner was drifting faster towards the Spanish line than anyone realized, and as Gerrit was speaking to the gunner who had volunteered to light the fuse, the man was hit by Spanish sniper fire and fell into the sea.
Gerrit yelled at Cleff to pull right up to the fireship so he could leap aboard and replace the gunner. When the two ships bumped against each other, Gerrit made ready to leap, but Daniel held him back. "No, not you. You have to confirm the orders to the other fireships, and then get back to your yacht so you can protect the crews when they take to the dinghies."
"The ship is too close to the Spanish line. It is almost time to light the fire blankets. There is no time to search for another volunteer!" Gerrit yelled, fighting Daniel's grip on him.
"I'll do it! The other crewmen can show me the fuse!" Daniel shouted back and then leaped aboard the Hellburner. He was caught by strong arms and given his balance by one of the crew. He turned and yelled to Cleff, "After you drop Gerrit on the Drente, come back and look for me!" Then he pointed to a hulking oarsman holding a strung longbow. " Hey Anso! If you get the chance, kill that effing sniper for me!"
* * * * *
Luckily, the heat and smoke from the burning tar-paper blankets was drifting with the light wind ahead of the fireship towards the Spanish line, rather than choking the crew now gathered in the stern as they climbed down into their escape dinghy. Each of them shook Daniel's hand and each promised to come back for him.
His last words to them were to the man on the tiller. "Don't stop rowing away from here until it blows. Once it blows, row double-time back to pick me out of the sea." He held up the tin whistle that hung around his neck on a thong. "Listen for the whistle."
He watched them row away, and almost lost his nerve and almost called them back to get him. He had listened to their warnings, and they had thoroughly frightened him. You could not escape an explosion of this size by simply jumping into the water. The gunner had told him that after ships explode there are as many fish floating belly up as there are men, so there must be a killing force in water as well. A force beyond the searing heat and falling debris. Something to do with the blast itself.
The tillerman was waving to him. The signal that, as far as the rest of the crew were concerned, he could light the fuse. He sighed and made a short prayer to his loved ones to forgive him this stupidity, and then dropped the torch in his hand onto the two fuses. Two fuses just in case one did not work. And then he ran and dived off the stern.
Fireships were built light and sleek and low so that they were small targets for cannon, but still it was a dozen feet down to the water. The sea felt like a wall as he hit it and afterwards the cold grabbed him. The dinghy held his warm clothes and his boots, for he was wearing next to nothing beyond the layer of lard that the crew had smeared onto his skin. The cold made his skin feel like it was burning. It almost took his breath away, which would have been a disaster.
"Swim, swim, swim,” he told himself and did a breast stroke under the water while refusing his body permission to head for the surface. Finally, he could resist the surface no longer and just before he reached it, he blew all breath out of his lungs. It took precious seconds to grab another full breath and then he was under again and swimming.
He snatched two more full breaths before the water all around him lit up like it was high noon on a summer's day. Luckily he had not surfaced then, because almost immediately the water above him was frothing and splashing as bits of who-knows-what hit the surface. He kept swimming until suddenly he felt like he was being crushed by the weight of the water above him. The pressure of the water hit him in the stomach, causing him to lose half of his air and he stopped swimming in his panic to see how far he was from the surface.
A roaring filled his head and his ears pained him as if he had made too deep a dive. Everything seemed to go dark and he was no longer sure which way was up to the surface. He needed to breathe. He so needed to breathe. Please, Freyja, don't let me die here underwater… not me, a Frisian. Where was the surface? He was sure he was swimming upwards. He should be there by now. Bubbles. Make bubbles and see which way they float. They went sideways. He twisted his body to follow them, and after an eternity broke the surface with a gasp.
The suck of air scalded his mouth and tongue and throat, and he began to cough and the sea water used the excuse of cooling his mouth to almost drown him. With his last gasp he blew out the sea water, and took another breath, smaller this time. Then another, and another, and then he couldn't stay on the surface anymore because large chunks of debris were falling, crashing, splashing into the sea all around him.
He stayed under as long as he could, and just when he was sure he had left it too long and was about to suck in a full lung of seawater, he broke the surface and dragged more air into his aching lungs. This time it was cooler. This time there was nothing falling on his head. This time there was a large plank to grab onto, to pull his head fully out of the water and just breathe and look all around him. What was left of the bow of the Hellburner was just slipping under the quiet sea, probably dragged under by the dead weight of the anchors.
By lifting himself a third out of the water onto the plank, he could gaze around for some piece of the Hellburner that was large enough to use as a raft. Large enough to allow him to pull himself fully out of the freezing water before he died of the cold. That was when an eight-foot by eight-foot hatch cover splashed down not twenty yards from him. It must have been blown straight up into the air by the blast in the hold, and was only now making its way back to sea level.
It took him not more than fifty strokes for him to make it to his new raft, but each one was an agony for his cramping and exhausted muscles. It was only when he had pulled himself onto the raft and out of the freezing water that he reasoned that the layer of lard had saved his life. Not only had it put a layer between the water and his skin, but lard was lighter than water, so it had helped to float him. Now the lard was saving him again, because it had hardened in the cold water and so was shedding that water faster than his skin would have. He was beginning to feel his skin again. He hurt all over. He was warming up. His brain was warming up.
With only lard between him and the cold air, he would be a goner within the hour. As he fought to keep his balance on the rocky raft, he first sat up, then knelt, and then stood up, all the while blowing on his tin whistle. Still in a daze, he turned all around trying to get his bearings. Trying to see anything that was shaped like the dinghy that would be his salvation. The only things that registered on his mind, which was still roaring with echoes of sounds,
were the other fireships. The real fireships. Five of them were now alight and just passing him on the way towards the Spanish battle line.
He could see the fireships only because flames were leaping up from their blankets. A sudden and dense white mist had hidden everything else from view. It reminded him of something. What? Of course. The eerie white mist they had encountered off the coast of Calais where they found the remains of the frigate that had blown up. He remembered the eeriness, but not the name of the ship. That bothered him, and he shook his head trying to clear his thoughts.
He wondered whether large explosions, or something about the sudden heat and smoke of large explosions, caused these white mists. He lost his balance and fell onto his bum and the bloody raft tipped. Luckily he found something to hold onto which stopped him from rolling back into the sea. He decided to stay low since the eerie mist had now obscured everything from his view.
That is when he heard the call through the white mist. "Keep blowin' your whistle you stupid bugger, else we'll never find you!" It was the sweetest poetry he had ever heard. He blew his whistle, oh how he blew his whistle!
The dinghy was closer than twenty feet before he could actually make out its dark shadow, and then it was beside him yet still fuzzy in the mist. The crew of the Hellburner helped him to scramble into the dinghy and then helped him to dress because he couldn't get his fingers to work. There were blankets, wool ones, not tarpaper ones, in the dinghy and they wrapped him in all of them while they rubbed his back and rubbed his chest and rubbed his legs.
"I think I am deaf!" he yelled at them.
"You don't have to yell!" the man on the tiller yelled back. "We aren't!"
His words were surprisingly loud. "I guess I'm not deaf after all. I just thought I was because I couldn't hear any cannon fire. Shouldn't there be the roaring of broadsides by know?"
"It's the mist,” the tillerman explained. "They can't sight anything in this fog. I'll tell you one thing, though. Our ships will be using those fireships to light their way closer to the Spaniards. The moment this fog lifts, all hell will break loose." And then it did. Not a hundred feet behind them some huge cannons spat flames and roared, and a moment later they could make out the huge shadow that marked the hull of a Dutchman drifting through the fog. The tillerman yelled at the men to stop rubbing the Englander like alehouse whores, and man the oars so they could clear out of its way.
While they rowed for their lives, they heard cannon fire begin all around them. The fog was lifting. It was creeping away from them towards the Spanish line and towards the cliffs of the shoreline behind their line. The gunners on the Spanish ships were still up high enough to be in the last of the fog, but the waterline of their ships was no longer hidden from the Dutch fleet. Every Dutch ship was now turning in parallel to the Spanish line to let go a broadside before the Spanish gunners could see what was happening.
Every Dutch ship that is, except for Gerrit Veen on his armed yacht. The Drente was clipping along between the Dutch ships, trying to keep out of the way of their broadsides while she collected the dinghies of men who had crewed the fireships. When it was their turn to be picked up, it was with great relief that there were strong hands to push and pull him up onto the deck of the Drente, because his own limbs could still not bear his weight.
Gerrit ordered that the Englander pistoleer be sat next to him in the cockpit and once the dinghy was in tow, ordered the ship towards the next of the dinghies. They were still out there bobbing helplessly between ships of the line, and half-hidden by the grey putrid smoke of cannons.
"Tromp will reward you handsomely for being the last man on the Hellburner,” Gerrit told him.
"I'll be satisfied if he just pays me for my cargo of Genever that he has been drinking for a month."
"Nay, friend. Look around. This is a battle for the history books, and all due to Tromp's plan with the false hellburners. The Spanish line has broken. See, the troop carriers refuse to risk the army to the hellburners, so they are beaching themselves. The defensive power of a battle line is that any attacking ship is within the aim of one of the line's broadsides. Now there are blind spots in their defensive line. It is only a matter of time before the line is broken."
Everyone on the yacht was watching the Dutch ships maneuver, like some slow contra dancing at a village fete. A dance on a massive scale with each ship finding one of these blind spots and using it to close in on the enemy ships that kept to the line. One by one the Spanish ships of the line were giving up that tactic.
Tromp had been so right when he pronounced that the Spanish were in a trap of their own making. With only a few hundred yards between them and the shore they had little room to maneuver, and yet their only salvation was to set their sails to move them along so that the helm could steer their broadside cannons into a position to aim at the Dutch. Their nightmare was that before the sails could build up forward speed to give them steering, they would push them into shallow water and aground.
Before every battle, it was normal for all deck boats to be dropped into the water and tied off. This not only cleared the decks for fighting but also had them already in the water to pick up the men who fell overboard. Now the Spanish were using the deck boats for another reason. They had oarsmen aboard their small boats who were trying to tow their bows around, not just to aim their broadsides, but so their sails could catch the wind without drifting them further into shore.
At a hail heard between cannon fire, Daniel swung his head around and saw the Freisburn just ahead of them. Every one of his clansmen stood while they rowed, scanning the debris of the hellburner as they searched for him in the water. He asked Gerrit to pass close so they could see he was safe and so he could order them to follow the Drente and stay safe under the guard of her cannons.
In the few minutes it took the Drente to close on the Freisburn, even more of the Spanish ships were being purposefully beached by their officers, or perhaps by their crews despite their officers. Some of them were not troop carriers, but the smaller of the warships who had decided that they had absolutely no chance against the professional Dutch gunners. The gunners who, cannon by cannon, ship by ship, were shooting chain to rob the Spanish fleet of their rigging and therefore make escape impossible.
The Freisburn had just slipped into the wake of the Drente when the English fortress at Deal opened fire with their mammoth shore batteries. Every Dutch head in the fleet turned to see who they were firing at. The huge balls made plumes of spray in the sea, but in areas where there were no ships of any fleet.
Because the fortress was now firing, the English fleet also fired their cannons. Again, every Dutch head spun around, hoping and praying that the English broadside would not wreak too much damage against Witte's Dutch squadron that had lined up to keep the English ships separate from the Spanish, And then every Dutch mouth cheered, for every English ball had fallen well short of Witte's ships.
"Peter White was right,” Daniel told Gerrit with a cheer. "It's one thing for the king's pandering officers to order an attack on Dutch ships, but it's another thing to convince the Jack gunners. Those lovelies followed orders and fired when they were told to, but the only aim they took was to make sure they didn't hit anything."
Within a few minutes there was a second English broadside that completely missed Witte's ships. Witte had not fired a single round in reply. Instead, Witte's own fireships were now setting their sails and Gerrit was glued to his looker trying to figure out their target.
"It's the Portuguese,” Gerrit finally called out. "The only ships left in the defensive line are the Portuguese fleet, and Witte is quitting his orders to keep the English fleet separated so he can attack them. His fireships are all heading for the Portuguese flagship. My God, what a day! What a battle! What a rout!"
And a rout it was. As the hours passed it was obvious that on this day both Spain and Portugal would lose their finest and newest ships. Most of the Spanish troops were safe enough on English shores, thanks to the b
eaching of the troop carriers. But they were not in Dunkirk. In the Downs where the battle had begun, where the Drente and the Freisburn still drifted about picking men out of the water, there was no longer any battle. The initial huge battle had quickly become twenty small battles to the north and to the south of the Downs, and the agile Dutch ships were winning all of them.
* * * * *
Once Daniel's strength had returned, he clambered down onto the Freisburn, which after being on the sleek yacht Drente seemed to him like a river barge in comparison. Every one of his crew reached out and touched him, as if they couldn't believe that he still lived.
"What now?" Cleff asked from the tiller. "What course?"
"Hah, what I would like is to go alongside the Aemelia and claim payment for our Genever, but the flagship is long gone chasing down the Spanish flagship. We are owed, no mistake. What say we see about claiming some of the prizes beached on the shore?"
The crew all looked around. There were about twenty ships beached, and any one of them would have enough wealth on board to set their village up for years. Cleff called out, "Ignore the troop carriers, lads. They will be too well guarded from the beach. How about that small frigate to the north of the troop carriers?"
It was a good enough thought to give them a rough heading. They wouldn't be able to choose a ship to plunder until they were close enough to see how well she was guarded. As they closed on the frigate, they could see that a lot of the English spectators from above on the cliff must have had a similar idea, and were now thronging down to the shore with wrecking bars in hand. There would be trouble on the beaches when the English wreckers reached the much demonized and hated Spanish soldiers.
The frigate that Cleff had chosen still looked like the best to try. The stern castle of the frigate had a gaping hole at the back where Dutch bow chaser balls had crashed through the timbers and cleared one of the gun-decks from stern to bow. Even better, the men who had been left aboard to guard the frigate were now crowding around the bow, and on the beach under the bow in an attempt to keep the English landlubber wrecking crews at bay. The guards were ignoring the stern since that was still safely floating in water deeper than a man's head.