“I want to reassure those of you who are not in the Navy that you are not being pressed. The Special Operations Flotilla is a volunteer only organisation due to the special work it carries out,” the muttering lessened. “Nothing will change in the terms that you signed on by. However, if you want to sign on for the Navy, you can, and you will be more than welcome as I have worked with all of you and know you are all good men. If you want to leave, you can. You will be given your share of the prize money to date and you can go on your way.
But before you decide, I will tell you that we will be going after the Spanish treasure fleet out of Puerto la Cruz as our last mission before returning to England and the prize money will be substantial if we are successful.”
That caused a loud buzz of conversation to run around the ship, giving Ackermann time to approach Marty and ask,
“First lieutenant?”
“If you want it,” Mart replied, holding out his hand.
“Mein Gott, Ja,” Ackermann agreed, shaking it vigorously.
Marty turned back to the crew,
“Now, anybody want to leave? No one? Good! Now, anyone who wants to sign on for the Navy, please talk to Mr. Thompson.”
He turned away and breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn’t sure that would work at all.
A sailor asked to speak to him via Ryan, who reluctantly brought him into Martin’s cabin.
“Philby, isn’t it? Well, what is it you would like to say to me?”
Philby looked uncomfortable but gathered his courage.
“I been asked by some of me mates to ask you, sir. If we signs up for the Navy, will we stay with you or be shipped out to some other ship like.”
“I have to be honest and say that any of the men who have been with me even for a long time could be sent to other ships in the fleet. The only exceptions being my followers who stay with me wherever I go. However, we do try to keep the Special Operations Flotilla team together. They have special training to do the unusual jobs we get given.”
“If we volunteer, then can we be part of this Special thingamajig?”
“I don’t see why not; I have every intention of keeping the tempest or something bigger for the future.”
Philby looked happier.
“Anything else?”
“No, sir. Thankee, sir.”
Ryan took him out.
Samuel looked over at Martin.
“Will I be staying with you, boss?” he asked.
Martin clapped him on the shoulder and said, “what would I do without you? Of course you are staying.”
They started to hear of a large French fleet approaching Martinique. Duckworth sent out a screen of sloops and frigates to look for it and the reports were coming in thick and fast. What they didn’t know, because of the lag in the time it took reports to arrive, was that Villeneuve had arrived at Fort de France on the 14th of May. This was almost the same day that Marty and his flotilla left port to head down to Puerto de la Cruz.
Chapter 21: Treasure Hunt
Marty was tempted to have Caroline on the Tempest with him but realised that would be bad for his men’s moral. They were not used to having a woman on board and Caroline would drive some of them to distraction. No, she was better off staying on the Bethany. Hood could keep an eye on her, and she could amuse herself entertaining him for dinner. The crew over there was also used to seeing her. Yes, it was the right decision even if it did make his nutmegs ache.
He had examined the armament on the Bethany and was very surprised to see that she was still fitted out with four eighteen-pound longs amidships with two twelve-pound longs forward and another two aft per side. On top of that, she had a single massive sixty-four-pound carronade on a swivel mount on the fore deck that could be trained around to cover both sides and the bow and two thirty-six-pound carronades either side at the stern. All that iron plus the associated shot sat her as low in the water as if she were fully laden. He worried she was a bit top heavy, but Tarrant assured him she was ballasted to compensate.
Tarrant greeted him with a firm handshake and introduced him to Iain Forsythe, his first mate/first lieutenant. Forsythe was a veteran of the battle of the Saints, knew how to fight a ship, and was excited to be given the chance of taking the Bethany to war with her unusual armament.
He decided the order of sail should be the Eagle to the fore, followed by the Tempest, then the Bethany and last the Falcon. He could send the Eagle off to investigate any sail that was seen and had his heaviest guns concentrated in the middle. Hood merely nodded in approval when he explained it to the captains.
As before, they avoided getting into the worst of the Caribbean current by staying close to the Windward Islands, following them down to Trinidad and Tobago then turning West. If the ships were in port, they would leave the Eagle to watch them and make their way to Bonaire where they would wait until they left. They all agreed the Spanish would follow the current West past the Leeward Islands then swing up to Cuba once they reached Mexico. If they left, however, they would be in for a stern chase. However, all four of their ships were fast so he was confident they would catch them.
They steered a course wide of Guadeloupe and Martinique to avoid any contact with the French. Marty wondered how Lieutenant Maurice was holding out on HMS Diamond. He wouldn’t swap places with him for anything.
As they got to St. Vincent, Marty signalled the Eagle to go ahead and have a look into Puerto La Cruz. James immediately set all the sail he could and fairly shot off. They were at sea for just over two weeks and the calendar was clicking over into June. Marty hoped they would be on time.
Just as they started to make the turn West, a storm came up out of the Atlantic, forcing them to take shelter in St. Georges in the Grenadines and wait for it to blow out or be pushed out into the middle of the Caribbean.
James, meanwhile, was tucked into the lee of the Isla de Margarita, a scant fifty-seven miles from Puerto La Cruz. He knew the Spanish would never sail in those conditions, so he was happy to just sit and wait it out.
He made a similar speech to his crew that Marty had and gotten much the same result, apart from one man who left in such a hurry that he knew he must have run from some ship or other or be wanted for a hanging offence. Now, he sat in his cabin listening to the sounds of his men relaxing. A fiddle was being played and a drum kept the rhythm. The men would sing along to the tunes they knew, and a few would dance a jig or a hornpipe. Sometimes men would sit and tell stories of battles or daring deeds they were in.
It all went quiet, and James wondered what was going on. Cautious as ever, he pocketed a loaded and primed pistol and went out and down to the deck where the men were gathered away from the storm. What he found surprised him. Wilson was just starting to tell a story in a voice loud enough to be heard above the howling wind.
“Now, this tale was told me by Cap’n Stockley’s own men. You know ‘em, John Smith and Tom Savage. It were back in 1793 and the Cap’n were but a cabin boy on the Falcon, a thirty-gun Frigate, and they were at Toulon as part of Admiral Hood’s fleet that were holdin’ it for the royalists. Little Marty, as he were known then, was the captain’s under steward but had already proven himself as a young bull by savin’ the life o’ the cap’n and later the purser, a fat bugger called Evans. That’s where he got his first big knife as a reward!”
Wilson went on to tell an enlarged tale of the rescue of the Count de Marchets and his beautiful daughter, who was almost as beautiful as the captain’s wife, the Lady Caroline. James let him as he hadn’t heard the story in full before and the bit about Martin walking calmly out in front of the massed ranks of the revolutionaries to retrieve the count’s bag of valuables was new.
At the end of the tale, there was a general buzz of chatter- most in admiration of their leader and then one man asked.
“Where did he get that dog of his? One of the Falcon’s swore it be a Dutch sheepdog or summit.”
Wilson was about to answer that when he spotted James leaning
on the bulkhead. James just smiled and waved for him to carry on. Wilson gave an edited version of their adventure in Holland and how they had brought back not only the Dutch crown jewels but Blaez as well.
At the end of that story, James called lights out; the men needed their rest as he would set sail for Puerto La Cruz at first light.
It took five hours to cover the fifty odd miles to the entrance to the port, and they arrived just before midday in time to see four large ships on the horizon heading West. He looked in anyway and the port was empty, so he knew it was probably the treasure fleet.
Setting all sail, he set of in pursuit, he wanted to tell Marty what they were up against. Four hours saw the ships hull up and he got what he needed. He reversed course and beat back against the wind and current to rendezvous with the rest of the flotilla.
The next morning, he was heaving to off Puerto La Cruz again when the lookout called that sails were in sight to the Northeast. He waited and an hour later, the lookout announced that “it be the Tempest and t’other two!”
Then there was another call,
“Sail ho! Unknown, due North!”
Marty’s lookouts spotted the Eagle and the strange sail to the North. It was an hour later that they identified it as a schooner.
“De Faux, running to tell the Spanish we are after them no doubt. I bet a certain doxy in Jamaica has been telling tales to both sides,” Marty spat out in annoyance.
“Schooner has veered to the West, Eagle is signalling,” the lookout called down.
“Well, Mr. Hart, what is Mr. Campbell telling us?” Marty asked his newly anointed midshipman.
“Enemy in sight! And the number four, sir,” Stanley Hart reported after examining the signal with a telescope.
“That means our prey is at sea and there are four of them. Five, if de Faux gets there first,” Marty concluded. “Let’s see how fast this old girl can go, Mr. Ackermann! We seem to be in a race.”
Ackermann gave orders and every sail she could carry in the fresh wind was piled on and the sails wetted.
“Thirteen Knots and two fathoms!” was reported from the bow chains as the knot line fairly tore off the reel.
“Bethany signalling, sir,” Hart cried then had to write down the message as it was laboriously spelled out. “Can you go faster, darling,” he reported red faced.
Marty laughed.
“It’s from my wife,” he explained, “the Bethany can do a couple of knots more than this!”
They soon overtook the Eagle, and James resumed his position at the head of the pack. The good thing was the Clipper wasn’t getting ahead of them. Ryan stepped up to the stern and looked back at the Bethany through his telescope.
“Oh my!” he said, loud enough for Marty to overhear.
“What is it?” Marty asked and stepped up beside him.
Ryan said nothing, just handed him the glass and pointed.
“Oh my God, she is magnificent!” Marty said with a definite tightening of his loins. Caroline stood on the fore deck of the Bethany dressed in knee length boots, tight tan riding trousers, a white blouse, open to show a more than adequate amount of cleavage, bound with a leather bodice that showed off her figure to a tee. She had a belt around her slim waist, from which hung a rapier style sword with an ornate basket hilt and two pistols clipped so she could cross draw them. Her hair was tied about mid forehead by a leather thong. Wilson was explaining something about their monster carronade.
“She looks like a warrior goddess,” Ryan fairly sighed.
“Aye, that she does,” Martin had to agree, thankful she was over there and not over here.
“Back to work, Mr. Thompson,” he said, suddenly realising the effect the sight of his wife was having on the young man.
“Aye aye, sir,” Ryan replied but couldn’t resist just one more look.
The old adage of a stern chase is a long chase was true. They fairly hared along the rest of the day and didn’t see hide nor hair of the Spanish. That night, they reduced sail as they didn’t want to overtake them in the dark. The next morning, Marty ordered them into line abreast, spread out horizon to horizon to minimise the risk of sailing past them. They were South of the Dutch Antilles now and racing past Aruba.
Marty began to have doubts. He couldn’t show them, of course, as he was supposed to be omnipotent or something, but in his mind, he kept hearing a little demon telling him that he had missed them and had made a mistake. The longer the chase went without seeing the Spanish, the louder it got.
“Signal from the Bethany!” The lookout cried.
“Mr. Hart, I would be obliged if you would nip up to the tops and tell me what they are saying.”
Young Hart started for the rat lines then stopped, grabbed a telescope, and started again.
“Enemy in sight and the number one,” he reported.
“Acknowledge,” Marty replied.
“De Faux,” Ackermann stated.
Marty smiled, mentally punched his demon on the nose, and thought, Lead on my friend, lead on.
Mid-afternoon saw a signal from the Falcon, which was on the Southern end of the line. “Enemy in sight, Four.”
Mart gave the signal for them to close up on the Falcon. The Spanish were keeping closer to the coast than he expected. It was a lee shore and Marty wouldn’t want to get driven on to it if he were their commander. He could only think the Spanish commander must want to be able to dive into a port if they were attacked. They were just passing the most Northern point of Columbia and if they were , they would catch the Spanish in the open sea Northeast of Panama where he couldn’t run into shelter.
The lookout reported that he could see the sails and just before dark, they were hull up.
“Two frigates and two galleons,” Marty told his men over dinner. He raised the ‘Captains Repair Aboard’ signal at dusk, and they heaved to temporarily to transfer to the Tempest.
“We will use plan one. The Tempest and Bethany will engage the Frigates supported by the Falcon. The Eagle will take on the Galleons and attempt to bring down their rigging. The Tempest will go head to head with whichever is the bigger of the frigates and the Bethany will support us by harassing them from bow and stern, that big bastard of a carronade will get their attention. The Falcon will harass the second Frigate and try and keep her away from the Eagle. As soon as we can disable or destroy the first of the Frigates, we will concentrate on the other.
The Spanish will expect us to fight like the Navy would, but we will surprise them. Have your men ready for sudden course and speed changes. We are going to harry them into striking.”
The next dawn, they were just five miles behind. The Belle Epoch was keeping her distance and Marty expected he would try and swoop in to support their prey when it was least dangerous for him.
They had the weather gauge in as much as the prevailing wind was on their stern quarter and they increased sail to close the gap. As they got closer, Marty used a bring ‘em near to study the formation more closely. The two Galleons were in line astern and had ports for ten guns to a side, which told him they were probably civilian ships drafted in by the Navy. They had three masts with a lateen rig on the mizzen and square sails on the main and fore. They were carrying as much sail as they could and making about ten knots even though they were obviously heavily laden.
One of the frigates had dropped back behind the galleons and the other had moved out to the side to have the weather gauge on them. Marty studied the after one.
“Damn me, its El Formidiable!” he cried. “You are mine, you bastard!” he shouted, shaking his fist. Blaez agreed with the sentiment entirely and barked then howled, which set off the Basques.
“AYEE, AYE, AYE, AYE, AYE, AYE AYEE,” came the war cry, echoed by another howl from Blaez.
“Fore chasers! Fire as soon as you’re in range,” Marty ordered forcing his anger into a ball of energy inside him.
The Formidiable’s captain was well aware of the Tempest’s armament and didn’t like the i
dea of them coming up behind him at all, but he was between a rock and a hard place. If he turned to take them on, there would be nothing between the other three ships and the galleons. If he stayed in place, they would just shoot at him from behind with those twenty-four-pound cannons. He decided he had to take them on.
“Frigate is wearing to starboard,” the lookout called.
Marty stepped to the starboard side and looked for himself.
“John, turn to keep our bows pointing just ahead of her,” Marty ordered his quartermaster.
“How’s your bits, John?” he joked
“All healed and raring to go, sir!” John replied, causing a laugh to ripple around the ship as the question and response were passed around.
The Frigate was broadside on when the fore chasers spoke for the first time at a range of about a mile and a half. Marty didn’t see where the shot landed and there were no cheers, so he assumed a miss. The frigate let off a broadside, but the range was long, and all the shot splashed harmlessly into the sea. By the time they reloaded, the Spaniard was passing through the wind and the range was less than a mile. The guns spoke again, and Marty watched the black dots of the balls arch away one skipping down his starboard side the other hit about half-way up her hull on the exposed starboard fore quarter just in front of the foremost gun port.
El Formidiable shuddered as the big twenty-four-pound ball smashed home and there was a clang like the ringing of a bell as it hit the tail end of the foremost starboard cannon spinning it around as the ropes were torn loose. The ricocheting ball continued up through the deck leaving a gaping hole. The man who stood above it vanishing in a spray of blood. Inside the gun deck, the spinning gun caused havoc, killing all but one of its gun crew outright and smashing into the next gun in line killing three of its crew as well.
The Tempest: The Dorset Boy Book 5 Page 17