A Hard, Cruel Shore

by Dewey Lambdin

Would Blamey and Chalmers heed his warning? Were they too intent on prize-money to pay attention to his signals? He looked up as the hoist soared up the halliards to break open; the flags were flying directly down-wind, their flies pointing right at the other ships and only to be guessed at. And, at Sapphire’s distance from them, even a two-gun General Signal might go un-heard and un-seen!

  HMS Sapphire slowly wheeled to larboard as the first moans and keens of the rising winds arose in the rigging, alerting even the newest lubbers to the urgency, but she was coming about, slowing and taking those winds more abeam. Her t’gallants and royals were brailed up, and those yards were being lowered to their rests lower down the masts.

  “Steady on East by South, for now, sir,” Lt. Westcott reported, half-way up the larboard poop deck ladderway. “Damn my eyes if the wind hasn’t veered into the Nor’west quicker than you can say ‘knife’!”

  “Those greedy bastards yonder don’t seem to see our signals,” Lewrie griped, eye glued to his ocular. “Fire off two of the starboard six-pounders t’get their attention. Else, they’ll think that we gave the game up for no good reason.”

  “Aye, sir!”

  Lewrie looked for the first two prizes taken, and found that the British crews aboard them, thin as they were, had reduced sail to cope with the blow, pitching and rolling as the rising seas reached them, but they were coping, so far.

  “Come on, come on, come on!” Lewrie muttered under his breath, “look aft, damn yer eyes.”

  At least six miles separated Sapphire from her consorts, and they still seemed more intent on their captures than upon the rising weather. There! At last, Peregrine and Undaunted were coming about, presenting their larboard sides, and reducing sail, as were the two ships they had just taken. Lewrie let out a tentative sigh of great relief. The Spanish shore was in sight from the poop deck, by now, not just the mountains, but the lower coastal plains, towns, and rocks, and the other fleeing French ships.…! They were still thrashing off the winds to run into the dubious shelter of the coastal shallows, on a slant to try and reach Santander, perhaps Bilbao farther East.

  “Cuttin’ it damned fine, if ye are,” Lewrie grumbled, wondering if the French masters had even noticed that the pursuing warships had broken off the chase, or had given a thought to the sudden change in the weather. Without hot pursuit, they should be bearing up into the winds, to keep a wary distance from the dangers of that shore.

  Even as he peered hard at the French merchantmen, Lewrie felt Sapphire heeling to starboard a few more degrees, re-setting her shoulder to the wind and sea, pressed over.

  “Alter course, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered. “Harden up to Nor’east. We may have to claw our way seaward! And I’ll have one reef in the main course! Pipe Secure from Quarters, as well!”

  “Begging your pardon, sir,” the Sailing Master said, coming up the starboard ladderway to the poop deck, “but we may end up going ‘full and by’, and I’d suggest taking one reef in the tops’ls, too, and break out the middle and main top-mast stays’ls for more drive to windward, and steady her. Never saw the like, the weather on this bloody coast!”

  “Very well, Mister Yelland, let’s do so,” Lewrie agreed, and went down to the quarterdeck to speak with Westcott, with one hand on his head to save his oldest cocked hat from sailing off alee.

  With the guns’ tompions re-inserted and the carriages bowsed and lashed to the port sills, more hands were available to go aloft and take in those reefs, their clothing fluttering in the breeze, skittering out along the yards with their feet on the swaying foot-ropes and their arms locked over the yardarms. The courses and the tops’ls were heavy in their own right, made even heavier by the winds pressing against them, and it was slow, hard labour to haul them up and gather them in, foot at a time ’til the first reef lines were in hand. Sapphire by then was close-reaching off the coast, easing her angle of heel only a fraction, but widening the distance from the rocks and shoals. As the excess topmen descended the ratlines, Lewrie could spare some attention to what was transpiring with his other ships, their prizes, and the fleeing French.

  “What the bloody Hell are they playin’ at?” Lewrie yelled in astonishment. “Harden up, you idiots!”

  Two more captured prizes were rising and plunging, their sails shivering wind-full … wind-full and more, dipping their bows deep in showers of spray, their jib booms almost level with the sea, then rising so high above the water that the merchantmen looked as if they would launch themselves free of the ocean and soar off like rising terns as they fought their way up to windward, and away from that deadly shore, foot by agonising foot.

  They weren’t of much concern to Lewrie; it was what his other warships were doing. Instead of hardening up to the rising gales to claw their own way to safety, both Peregrine and Undaunted had only altered course enough to sail parallel to the coast, taking the winds abeam, and reducing sail, as if they would not give up the pursuit of the remaining four French supply ships!

  Damn you, Chalmers, Lewrie furiously thought; you can’t be that greedy! Gone to his head, it has … a squadron of his own, too long sailin’ independent, with Blamey t’boss about. Is he waitin’ for the gale t’blow itself out, so he can still fall down on the French and take ’em?

  If he hoisted Discontinue the Action, he doubted if Chalmers, or Blamey, would obey him, so intent they seemed to be on their prey! They were acting like Nelson at Copenhagen, ignoring Hyde Parker’s signal to quit.

  “Sir! Captain, sir!” the Sailing Master shouted from the foot of the poop deck ladderway, “Another reef’s needed in the courses!”

  “Hands aloft, then,” Lewrie agreed.

  “What, sir?” Yelland cried, a hand to one ear.

  “I said…” Lewrie began, suddenly noticing how loud the wind had gotten, how his 1,100-ton ship was pressed over about twenty degrees from upright, and how hard it was to stand upright with his own clothing turning into madly fluttering sails, forcing him to stumble forward to the edge of the poop. “I said hands aloft to take in one more reef line!” he all but screamed in Yelland’s face.

  “Aye aye, sir! Topmen! Trice up, lay out, to reef!” Yelland howled forward, and he and Lt. Westcott waved both arms in lifting gestures to urge the Bosun and his Mate to get the men aloft.

  Where in Hell did such a gale come from? Lewrie wondered to himself, in awe, and a bit of fear, for he had never experienced the like in nigh thirty years at sea. Bracing himself against the iron hammock-filled stanchions at the fore end of the poop, he struggled to hold his telescope steady to see what was happening inshore.

  It could have been his own dreadful imagination, but the Spanish coast suddenly looked a lot closer than it had before, with even the smaller details standing out more starkly, even though Sapphire was slowly clearing the coast, or seemed to be. Lewrie had to scoff at the notion that any ship her size could make that much leeway so quickly. But, there were the rocky beaches and headlands with wind-driven waves beginning to break in great, crashing explosions of foam and spray. There were the great rollers, ranks of them, crested with white spume, marching ashore in steeper and steeper waves, and ’twixt his ships and the shore, the seas were clashing in grand, mounting confusion.

  Undaunted and Peregrine had reduced sail even more, but were still not coming about to point their bows seaward, still sailing on the same heading … no; Lewrie thought they appeared to be slowly edging shoreward. What the Devil? he thought, again: Oh!

  Beyond them, even closer to that maelstrom shore, the French supply ships were struggling, heeling far over and baring their verdigried copper bottoms as their sailors tried to reduce sail, having a hard time of it. British transports and supply ships hired on by the Transport Board were very thinly manned, to save money on wages, and it appeared that whatever agency of the French Ministry of Marine arranged these convoys were just as parsimonious. Add to the fact that Napoleon Bonaparte’s ever-expanding armies conscripted sailors from their own Navy and merchant mari
ne, and it was no wonder that those French merchantmen were struggling, with too few experienced hands aboard, and too few crew overall.

  “He’s herding them!” Lewrie howled down to the quarterdeck, grinning fit to bust. “They’re ’twixt the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea! Strike or die! Chalmers, you knacky bastard!”

  One of the trailing vessels, within a few miles of the coast, but astern of Undaunted, made a move to escape. Her helm was put down and her bows swung up into that gale of wind, jibs flogging madly, and her squares’ls swinging as her crew hauled on the braces to bring them round. Her bows met an oncoming wave that struck her so hard that Lewrie imagined that he could hear the wet, booming impact, and the three-master was staggered in spray as high as her tops.

  “She’s ‘in-irons’!” Lt. Westcott hooted, “She’s missed stays!”

  “Goner … whoo!” Mr. Yelland crowed.

  The ship’s fore course and fore tops’l were flat aback, with her bows dead-on into the gale, slammed to a stop and quickly gaining sternway, before falling off the wind and rolling heavily onto her starboard side. Then, as the French ship rolled back upright for a moment, her foremast parted, taking the tops’l and its yard down in ruin, and her upper masts bent over to hang loose. She was a goner, and there was nothing her crew could do to save her from being driven ashore to be smashed to kindling.

  Lewrie went down to the quarterdeck for a moment to confer with the Sailing Master, and to get out of that cheek-fluttering wind.

  “The coast, Mister Yelland,” he yelled almost in the man’s ear, “it shoulders out Nor’east, from Santillana del Mar to the peninsula and the headland where Santander sits, am I right?”

  “As I readily recall, sir,” Mr. Yelland assured him.

  “If they can’t claw off, with our ships pressin’ ’em closer to shore, they may all take the ground,” Lewrie said, looking wolfish.

  “Aye, they may very well all be wrecked, sir,” Yelland said back, “but Chalmers and Blamey’d best be looking to their own safety, and that damned soon. You will recall them, sir?”

  Lewrie gave that a long thought, then shook his head.

  “I think not, Mister Yelland,” he said, instead. “Chalmers is clever enough t’weigh his moment, and I will trust his judgement. In any case, it’s a very economical way to destroy enemy shipping, with nought expended in shot and powder. That’ll please the Admiralty!”

  “Kinder, though, sir,” the Sailing Master objected, “for them to strike and live as prisoners. It cuts rough to watch sailors of any nation drive ashore and drown, poor Devils.”

  “If they won’t, they won’t,” Lewrie said with a shrug, then returned to the poop deck with his telescope. With Sapphire sailing away from the coast, his best vantage point was the larboard corner of the poop deck, by the taffrail lanthorn.

  He looked for the crippled three-master; she was drifting onto the shore, not a mile off the rocks by then, and doomed. Far out in the lead, beyond Peregrine, two of the leading French brigs looked as if they had managed to come up onto the winds high enough to gain sea-room to avoid the coast as it shouldered out to the Nor’east, beyond any British ship’s gun range. The others … a three-masted ship was trying to come up into the wind far enough to emulate the leaders, but she was in Undaunted’s extreme gun range, and was being fired upon.

  Oh, you ruthless bastard! Lewrie thought.

  Chalmers must have drawn his roundshot from his guns, and was firing high with star-shot and bar-shot to rip through her sails and yards, to part running rigging and cripple her. It was not just the gale that made that ship’s sails pucker and quiver, or for her main tops’l to suddenly split right down the middle, then fly free of all control, wrapping itself round the mast.

  She did not strike her colours, though. Almost meekly, she fell off the wind to her original course, with men aloft frantically clearing away the damage and hoping for the best when she got past Santillana so she could skirt the edges of the shoals and survive to enter harbour.

  Inshore of her, and with her master despairing that she had been so quick in the lead to run alee before the winds had risen, one of the French brigs suddenly lurched, her bows shooting skyward for a moment as she ploughed onto an out-stretching rocky shoal. Both of her masts came crashing down forward in a twinkling. With Sapphire secured from Quarters, many of her crew not strictly on-watch or tending to the sails, lined the rails and gangways, roaring out great, mocking cheers to see her wreck, and lay wagers on which one would be next.

  “Merciful God, is there nought we can do to save those poor men?” Midshipman Chenery wailed.

  “Not without wrecking ourselves, Mister Chenery,” Liam Desmond told him, putting a steadying arm round his shoulders for a moment. “Aye, ’tis a great pity, lad,” Desmond went on, looking the lad in the eyes, “Frenchmen they may be, our greatest enemies, but sailors like us, for all that. All we can do is have a prayer for ’em.”

  The jeers and whoops of glee became more muted when yet another French ship ran aground only two or three hundred yards shy of a sandy beach. If she had made it onto the sands, her crew might have been able to scramble out her jib-boom and bowsprit, then jump down to solid ground. But, between the ship and the beach there was a churning, roaring, smashing maelstrom through which no hatch grating, keg, or jury-rigged flotation device could pass safely. Great, towering waves smashed into that unfortunate ship, lifting her stern, driving her further onto the rocks or shoals, and heeling her far over to one side.

  And when a third ship, this one a full-rigged three-master, slewed to a sudden stop with her masts toppling in a flash, there were only mutters and groans from Sapphire’s crew, and some tears brushed aside with horny, calloused hands here and there. It could have been them yonder, praying to be saved yet knowing how impossible survival would be.

  * * *

  In the end, only two of the ten French ships managed to get round Santander’s headland, covered at last by cannon fire from the old Spanish forts, now manned and occupied by French artillerists. Their shot came nowhere close to Peregrine or Undaunted, who stood on for a bit before altering course seaward, at long last, showing the enemy their sterns, with two miles to spare.

  As they came off the coast, Undaunted broke out a signal hoist, a long one spelled out letter for letter, for the Popham Code didn’t cover impromptu messages outside the scope of duty.

  Clean Sweep, Lewrie slowly read with his telescope.

  To make his point even further, Capt. Chalmers had a broom hung from the ear-ring at the larboard tip of Undaunted’s main course yardarm.

  Who knew that Chalmers had a sense of humour? Lewrie mused to himself: I thought he was too high-minded for it. And for a prude, he’s a blood-thirsty sort o’ prude!

  He grimaced as he contemplated whether he would have to sport Chalmers and Blamey to a celebratory supper!

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  It was two more days before the fierce clear-air gales ebbed, forcing the squadron to stand well out to sea, rolling and pitching under storm try-sails for their own preservation, with their four prizes wallowing in their wakes, and it was a constant dread of what might go wrong aboard any one of them when so thinly-manned by their overworked, sleepless prize crews. Unladen vessels would make leeway like toy boats made of paper, would roll from beam to beam furiously, threatening to dis-mast themselves. If anything disastrous happened aboard one of them, there would be little the ships of the squadron could do to aid them, or even manage a successful rescue if one of them foundered. All that Sapphire, Undaunted, and Peregrine might do was keep an eye on them, hope for the best, and pray that their fellow sailors and Marines would live long enough for the winds to die, and the uncertain life of sailors might return to normal.

  Lewrie spent a lot of time on deck, without sleep, and like his crew, going without hot meals with the galley fires cold, concerned for the safety of his own ship, first and foremost, but with a fear that his son, Hugh, might have been sent aboard one of
the prizes that Undaunted had taken, and was now “on his own bottom”, responsible for his own life or death. Capt. Chalmers seemed to favour the lad for such tasks, and Lewrie hoped that Hugh would prove up to the task, but he still fretted, continuously eyeing the prizes in the moments that he could spare, for any sign of pending disaster.

  Would one of the captured French crews scheme to rise up and re-take their ship, murder their captors, or heave them over the side then dash back towards the coast? Was Hugh keeping a chary eye on his prisoners? Had he taken enough Marines to guard against that, or was it necessary to put the “lobsterbacks” to pulley-hauley to save their ship, leaving the French un-watched belowdecks?

  “Sir? Captain, sir?” someone was saying.

  Lewrie roused from a bleary cat-nap, sprawled in his collapsible wood-and-canvas deck chair, swaddled in his foul weather gear and his boat cloak. For a moment he had trouble recalling how he had gotten to the shelter of the poop deck overhang, or how long ago it had been since he had closed his eyes.

  “Aye,” he grumbled, swabbing his stubbled face and gritty eyes with his hands. “Mister Harcourt?”

  “Permission to make sail, sir?” the Second Officer asked. “The winds have greatly moderated.”

  “Uhm … aye, do so, Mister Harcourt,” Lewrie allowed, rising and stretching, stifling audible groans as his body protested. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Perhaps half an hour at best, sir,” Lt. Harcourt told him just before turning forward to bawl orders to send topmen and sail-tenders aloft. The door to Mr. Yelland’s sea cabin opened and the Sailing Master stepped out, looking mussed and untidy.

  “Ah, you’re awake, sir,” Yelland commented. “Not much of a nap. Just long enough for me to change shirts and have a nip of my ginger beer.”

  The mention of that beverage made Lewrie aware of the dryness of his own mouth, and the musty taste of long sleeplessness.

  “Care for a bit, sir?” Mr. Yelland offered, and Lewrie was quick to take him up on it, swizzling his first deep sip round to cleanse his mouth, then drinking the rest of the tangy mug right down.