Flashman and the Emperor

by Robert Brightwell

  The admiral himself arrived back at Morro de São Paulo on the twentieth of May, having blockaded Salvador for two weeks. In addition to the coasters sent ahead with prize crews, the Emperor and the Maria da Glória were escorting three Portuguese ocean-going ships as further prizes.

  Chapter 18

  “My word, Flashman,” called Cochrane as I climbed aboard the flagship. He pointed to the stark white lines of the walls protecting the battery, “You are truly a miracle worker to build such a structure so quickly. What is there? Two tiers of eight guns? Were some of the marines former masons, then? You have done far better than I had expected.”

  I held up my hand to forestall the stream of questions. “It is more show than substance,” I admitted. “The bottom tier of guns is wooden logs and the walls are wood and canvas. I have kept the Portuguese away from it, but we have lost thirty marines to desertion and I would not guarantee that one of them would not sell the secret if it profited them.”

  “Well it would deter me from attacking the bay and that is the purpose for building it,” said Cochrane kindly. “Now, if you are short of powder, ball and canvas for powder charge bags, I am pleased to say that we have ample supplies of all three aboard the captured ships.”

  Cochrane’s return brought a new energy to the anchorage as the new supplies were distributed to the ships and the marines. For a few days the desertions stopped. Although we were no longer hauling guns up rock faces, I kept the marines busy with musket and artillery drills. Slowly, they started to improve. Once or twice they even hit the target. The admiral inspected both the frigates and declared that the Brazilian crews of the Nitherohy and Piranga were much improved. That week we were also joined by a third frigate, the Carolina. It had come from Rio with many experienced British and American seamen, attracted by the bonuses and promises of prize money that Cochrane was offering.

  We were getting stronger as a fighting force. While that made us less vulnerable, I was also uncomfortably aware that it was also likely to encourage our commander to some reckless folly. The only thing that seemed to deter him was the fact that he did not know where the enemy fleet was. It had disappeared after our engagement of the fourth of May. Cochrane had maintained his blockade without seeing any sign of it, getting word from fishermen that it was not in the harbour of Salvador. All that changed when we saw a small yellow sail on the horizon.

  The vessel that made its way slowly down the coast towards us was no larger than a fishing boat. Any doubt that it was searching for the Brazilian fleet was lost when the little craft sailed into the bay and dropped anchor near the flagship. I watched as a fat man climbed down into a jolly boat, with two boys at the oars, and started to make his way towards us.

  “Look at him staring at your battery, Flashman,” murmured Cochrane as he stood beside me. “I’ll wager that the Portuguese will have a full account of it by sunset tomorrow.”

  “You think he is a spy, then?” I asked. “Should we hold him here?”

  “No,” mused Cochrane. “We can use him for our own purposes. The Portuguese will think twice about moving against us here if they know of your battery. He can also report that we have another powerful frigate.” He turned to Crosbie. “I will take this fellow below. While he is in the cabin, row out some men to the Real and Guirani and make sure that they are visible in the rigging when he leaves. We don’t want him to know that we have abandoned those ships.”

  A few moments later our visitor hauled himself up the side of the ship. Cochrane gave him the honour of being piped aboard as a fellow captain. If I have ever seen a shiftier fellow I cannot recall it. He wore a brown jacket several sizes too small for his portly frame. Underneath was a shirt that, judging from the stains, had not been changed for a month. But it was his eyes that gave him away, darting glances all over the ship and, from his higher vantage point on the deck of the Emperor, at the shore beyond. I saw his gaze linger on the large encampment of the Portuguese crew and then at the ships around us. You could almost see his lips move as he counted either them or the guns they carried.

  Cochrane stood back a little, deliberately giving him time to carry out his inspection and then he stepped forward, holding out his hand in greeting. “Welcome, sir, to the Pedro Primeiro, flagship to His Imperial Majesty’s fleet in these waters. Admiral Cochrane at your service.”

  For a moment the stranger seemed unsettled by this cordial greeting; perhaps he had half expected to be thrown below in chains. But he recovered himself, wiped his palm on his shirt and took the offered hand. “The honour is all mine, señor. My name is Costa. I am just a simple fisherman, but a loyal servant to His Imperial Majesty. I bring you news of what is happening in Salvador.”

  “In that case,” announced Cochrane genially, “perhaps we should go below to discuss things in comfort. I have recently captured some fine madeira, I trust you will have a glass with me?” He turned to me, “Captain Flashman, perhaps you will join us.”

  We trooped down below with Costa glancing about the ship as he went. As we stepped from the gloom of the passage into the brightly lit stern cabin our visitor stopped in astonishment. “I must congratulate you, Admiral, on the speed with which you have repaired the damage from the battle with the Portuguese navy.”

  “Damage?” queried Cochrane. “Apart from a few broken ropes, there wasn’t any.”

  “But the Portuguese admiral claims that he raked your ship from stem to stern and killed many of your sailors. Look, it is reported here in the Bahia Gazette.” He pulled a folded news sheet from his jacket and spread it out on Cochrane’s desk. Neither of us was proficient in reading Portuguese and so I went to the door and sent word for Lieutenant Pinto to join us while Cochrane poured the wine.

  “Well, as you can see, sir,” said Cochrane as he passed a glass to his visitor. “Very slight damage was done, for these are all old timbers,” he said gesturing at the windows behind him.

  “I regret, sir,” admitted Costa, “that there are many lies in that publication. Including defamations of His Majesty the emperor, Prime Minister Andrada and most regrettably of yourself, señor.”

  This was confirmed by Pinto a few moments later, when he read through the news sheet. “The emperor is described as a treacherous usurper; Andrada is referred to as a tyrannical vizier; but they save their real venom for you, sir,” the lieutenant confirmed nervously.

  Cochrane laughed. “Well at least I am being maligned in good company. Go on, tell me the worst of it.”

  “They say you are a coward, sir,” admitted Pinto. “Attacking defenceless merchant ships but running away when challenged by the Portuguese fleet. But wait, sir,” Pinto turned the paper round to check the date and then continued. “This paper is dated yesterday and it confirms that the Portuguese admiral and his fleet are now back in Salvador.”

  “Is that true?” Cochrane asked our visitor.

  “Yes sir,” confirmed Costa. “The harbour is full of shipping as no merchant dare put to sea with your ships blockading the city. Now the naval fleet is there as well. The rumours are that for the last few weeks the fleet had sailed south as far as the Abrolhos Shoals in search of your vessels.”

  “Now that is interesting,” admitted Cochrane. The ripple of light from the sea outside sent moving reflections through the stern windows. They played across the admiral’s face and while it might have been my imagination, I could have sworn that I could see new ideas occurring to him. “So have you just brought me this news sheet, or do you have other information for me?” The admiral was suddenly brisk and business-like, which confirmed my suspicion that he was eager to start work on some new scheme.

  “There are imperial militia men fighting around the outskirts of Salvador,” announced Costa, “but the Portuguese soldiers keep them outside of the city.”

  “Do you have any messages from them?” enquired Cochrane.

  The visitor held out his hands in an open gesture. “I regret, señor, that I was unable to reach them before I came here.
But if you have a message for these forces then I will do all in my power to deliver it. Although some money to bribe officials to turn a blind eye might be necessary.”

  “Of course,” said Cochrane, supressing a grin. “Tell them that I look forward to meeting them in Salvador soon and here are some dollars for your time and trouble.” He passed across a small sack of coins he had taken from his drawer. I don’t think any of us doubted that the message would be delivered for a similar fee directly to the Portuguese, but the copy of the Bahia Gazette had been a useful source of information.

  When we got back up on deck, Costa evidently felt that he had the confidence of the admiral, for he pointed to the encampment on shore. “Who are those men?” he asked.

  “They are volunteers from the Brazilian army,” Cochrane replied. “There is a similar camp on the other side of the headland. They are the men that have built and will man that fine battery you can see. There are other batteries too to protect the anchorage from any approach from the south.”

  “You have clearly thought of everything, Admiral,” breezed Costa as he took his leave and made his way to the gangway. We stood at the rail and watched his men row him away.

  “He is probably already calculating how much he can charge the Portuguese for what he has learned,” I said scornfully. “I would not trust anything he says.”

  “The Portuguese are unlikely to trust him either,” agreed Pinto. “They probably know him even better than us, but the news sheet was genuine, I think.”

  “Of course it was genuine,” breezed Cochrane. “And it tells us two important things.”

  “It does?” I queried.

  “Of course,” continued Cochrane. “The governor must have approved the content and there was half a page defaming me and the fleet for our cowardly attacks and mocking my reputation. That shows that the citizens of Salvador are frightened of us and what we might do – and so they should be.”

  “What is the second thing? That the fleet is back?” I suggested.

  “In part,” admitted Cochrane. “The real news is that the harbour is packed with shipping and you know what that means, don’t you, gentlemen?” We both stared blankly at him while he rubbed his hands together in sudden enthusiasm. “Fire ships!” He announced the words as though he were a scientist revealing a new discovery. I knew he had used them with mixed success in his most famous victory for the Royal Navy at the Basque Roads, but I had not appreciated quite what an enthusiast for them he was. “With the prevailing winds from the east, we can get them into the anchorage easily. The river mouth is six miles wide; they could not put booms across even if they knew we were coming. We have the Real and the Guirani and those captured coasters: a small fleet of fire ships packed with combustibles, perhaps also some gunpowder, so that they explode in the middle of the enemy shipping to spread fire and deter anyone trying to board them to steer them away.” He pounded his fist on the rail as he added, “By God, we can destroy much of their fleet – merchant ships and navy – with barely any risk to ourselves!”

  Chapter 19

  For the next two days there was feverish activity around the anchorage, as all spare hands worked on preparing the vessels chosen as fire ships. With the six captured coasters and the two smaller Brazilian vessels, it was a sizeable force. The holds had to be filled with wood and the decks smeared with pitch and tar to help the flames spread quickly. In some of the holds, in the centre of the piles of wood, were barrels of gunpowder. These were wrapped in old sails that would be soaked with water before the attack, so that they would not explode until the fire ships were in the centre of the enemy vessels.

  It turned out that there was far more to fire ships than lighting them and rowing quickly away. Cochrane intended to pilot one himself with a small crew and sought volunteers for the others. He spent considerable time with them, talking about how to set the sails and rudder and to only abandon ship when it was close to the enemy. Some of his earlier attacks had failed when the crews had been over-eager to abandon these floating bombs, which were often under enemy fire during an attack. It seemed an entirely sensible sentiment to me, as I would have been off the damn things at the first opportunity. But Cochrane was determined for this attack to succeed. So the glory-hunters who had been foolish enough to volunteer were required to stay aboard until they were just a few hundred yards away from their targets. That was why all but the quarterdecks were covered with pitch, as the fire had to spread all over the ships as soon as they were abandoned.

  While Cochrane was showing ingenuity with the preparation of his fire ships, he was not alone. The day after Costa had visited us, I was overseeing some gunnery practice in the battery when Mallee approached me.

  “When the Portuguese come,” he asked, “will they not see that the false guns are not firing?”

  “They would,” I agreed. “But we hope that the sight of the battery will deter them from coming close enough for us to shoot at them.”

  “But if we do have to shoot they will see that the guns are false. Then they may think that the fort is false. It would be better if the wooden guns did fire, yes?”

  I stared at the man, puzzled. I knew he was not stupid so why was he asking about firing a solid log? Then I noticed that there were two other marines nearby listening in on our conversation and looking very pleased with themselves. “What on earth are you talking about?” I asked.

  “We are getting good at fighting with wooden weapons,” Mallee grinned as he turned to the two young marines. “Show the captain what you have done,” he said. One of them was holding a piece of burning slow match that we used to fire the real guns. He led the way down the slope and behind the false wall that shielded the wooden guns. I followed, intrigued, and was even more puzzled when he stopped at the first ‘cannon’. For a moment I thought that they had somehow replaced it with another real gun, but it was still a tree trunk wedged into some rocks and pointing out over the battlements. The marine blew on the slow match until there was a glowing ember and then put it down where the touch hole on a real cannon would be. To my astonishment there was a fizz of burning powder. When I studied the log more closely I saw that a groove had been chiselled along the top of the barrel. This was filled with a trail of gunpowder that the flame was now burning along until it reached the muzzle. I saw now that someone had chiselled around the end of the barrel too to make a shallow bowl that was full of powder. As the flame reached the bowl there was a louder ‘pfft’ sound and a sizeable plume of gun smoke emerged from the end of the barrel.

  “If the false guns are fired at the same time as the real ones above,” explained Mallee, “the Portuguese will not notice that there is no loud noise or shot from these guns.”

  I turned to the two young men who had come up with this idea. “That is excellent,” I told them. It was a clever trick, although I hoped that things would never get desperate enough for us to have to use it. I granted a double rum ration that night and began to feel that I was making real progress with my command. Alas, it was a feeling that was to last just one day.

  According to Cochrane’s log books, which I referred to when writing this account, the following day was Monday the twenty-sixth of May. It started much like any other on that wretched rock, but just after midday one of the marines ran down the hillside to report that they could see sails to the north. Cochrane climbed up to the battery for the first time, taking with him the powerful signal telescope. He inspected the guns and the false battlement and congratulated the marines on their ingenuity. He seemed calm and unconcerned about the growing crowd of sails that could be seen on the horizon.

  “The Portuguese seem to have found us,” he announced at last after studying them through the glass. “Now we will see what they are made of.”

  “Do you think they will attack?” I asked. “Even with the Carolina added to our fleet, they outnumber us thirteen ships to five, excluding the fireships.”

  Cochrane looked down at the pennant flying from the top of his flagsh
ip. “The wind is still coming strongly from the east. We will anchor our ships so that their broadsides face out to sea. If the Portuguese do sail in towards us they will encounter all the guns we can bring to bear. If they are damaged they will struggle to escape quickly against the wind.” The rest of the day was spent kedging the ships around to face in the right direction. Meanwhile the fire ships were towed further into the river mouth out of sight and to avoid premature damage from enemy bombardment.

  It was early evening when Mallee came to see me again. Before he had been proud and not a little pleased with what his fellow marines had come up with. But this time there was a bitter anger to him.

  “You lied to us,” he accused me. Not for the first time I regretted the fact that I did not have a capable British sergeant to hand who would have kept the men in their place and forced them to show the proper respect.

  “Yes, you have permission to speak and it’s, ‘You lied to us, sir’,” I corrected. “Now tell me, Mallee, how have I misled you?”

  “You told me that the admiral was going to change this country and that is why we should fight for him.” He waved at the battery and continued. “We have fought for him and we have worked for him, but he is not going to change anything. Our ships were beaten at sea and now we are trapped against this rock. Do you know what the Portuguese do to escaped slaves that have taken up arms against their masters?

  “No I don’t,” I admitted. “But we are not beaten yet.” I explained to him Cochrane’s thoughts about the enemy being reluctant to attack our massed guns. “We have fewer ships but the ones in our line have more guns than most of those in the Portuguese fleet. They will pound the first ships to approach us. If the Portuguese ships are damaged, they will get in the way of those that follow and they will struggle to escape against the wind blowing them onto the shore.