“Helm down, Mister Westcott, get us hard on the wind and get some speed on this barge. Signal Undaunted and Sterling to reduce sail, back and fill, and that Sapphire will take the lead.”
* * *
“He’s going to what?” Capt. Chalmers all but yelped in astonishment when he saw the signal, and saw the flagship turn up to windward. “He won’t make it, the enemy’s too close, and he’ll mask our fire, dam … by…!” he spluttered, cutting off a curse, and a blasphemy. “The lead ship is our pigeon, the point of honour!”
“She’s fourteen gun-ports showing, sir,” Lt. Crosley told him. “That makes her a fourty-gunner with eighteen-pounders, as I recall from what we know of the French navy. If we are second in line, we will be opposing their second in line, which is probably a thirty-six, mounting twelve-pounders. A more equal match, I dare say.”
“That man!” Chalmers fumed. “That dissolute, glory-hunting … reprobate! Just like he did at Corunna, taking on that French shore battery without orders. My … stars!” he spat, avoiding another more pleasing epithet.
* * *
HMS Sapphire was managing to surge abeam of Capt. Yearwood’s Sterling as both frigates brailed up their fore and main courses to slow down to let the flagship pass and take the lead, whether they wanted to or not.
“We might just make it, sir,” Lt. Westcott said, more in hope than certainty. He even winced and sucked his teeth. “The enemy’s nowhere in gun range, yet. I think.”
“Come on, you old barn,” Lewrie urged, pounding the windward cap-rails like flogging a horse to the finish line at Ascot. “Ye know ye want a fight. Come on, Sapphire, get a move on, for once!”
The Sterling frigate slowly fell astern, Sapphire’s taffrails just ahead of Sterling’s out-thrust bowsprit. Undaunted lay a cable ahead, and she would have to be overtaken and passed, then Sapphire would have to gain another cable ahead of her. Lewrie looked over at the enemy ships, noting that their gun-ports were still closed, and he fervently hoped they would stay closed for just a bit more.
“Gallop, for once in your bloody life, girl! Go it!” Lewrie whispered. “God, this could all go smash. What was I thinking?”
“Eight and three-quarter knots, sir!” one of Mr. Yelland’s Quartermaster’s Mates shouted from right astern. He sounded very surprised.
“That’s the way, darlin’!” Lewrie cheered.
Stern chases, small boat races, they always seem to take forever, hours and hours spent inching up on a fleeing enemy, or the leader in a harbour regatta, then, just of a sudden, one’s ship or boat was right astern of the goal, even surging past as if one’s own boat had sprouted wings.
There! There was Undaunted’s stern, almost even with the bowsprit and jib-boom. And there was Capt. Chalmers, glowering black wrath at Sapphire, gripping his windward rails so hard that Lewrie could imagine the sound of wood snapping.
Eat shit and die, you prig! Lewrie thought, feeling a giddy sense of triumph as his ship’s forecastle came even with Undaunted’s quarterdeck. They would make it, they would!
Lewrie looked at the enemy column, and it was a bit less than two miles off, not yet within gun range even at maximum elevation. One good broadside from them could have crippled Sapphire’s rigging, slowed her to a crawl, and left his column in shambles, but … that broadside didn’t come! His ships were heading West by North, whilst the French were closing almost Due West. They would converge, come to grips, but not quite yet.
He looked astern to see what his brig-sloops were doing, and was pleased to see that Peregrine and Blaze were lagging back, further astern, so when the French line altered course to lay themselves parallel to Lewrie’s, they would even be astern of the trailing enemy ship, that weaker 28-gunner, in prime position to take her on both beams at once, doubling on her.
“By God, we are going to make it!” Westcott marvelled.
“Aye, we are, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said, almost crowing with relief. “We finally stung the Frogs to sail out and take us on. So let’s give ’em one Hell of a drubbing for their pains.”
He let out a great sigh of relief as Sapphire’s quarterdeck slid past Undaunted’s anchor cat-heads and forecastle. Ships had souls, he’d always believed, gained them after a while under way. Sapphire had had a soul when he took command of her two years before, but she’d been accustomed to dull plodding, as if no one had ever asked her for better. As if no one had ever loved her enough, and had consigned her to pulling dray waggons or ploughs, and expecting nothing greater.
“You’re a bloody thoroughbred,” he said in praise, stroking the cap-rails like he would his favourite saddle horse back home in Anglesgreen. He took a last, satisfied look about as Sapphire continued to surge ahead of Undaunted, opening the gap to the proper one-cable’s spacing. In a minute or two she would be there, and the main course could be brailed up, slowing her down, and reducing the chance of that vast sail catching fire from the discharge of her own guns. She would be ready for battle.
“Mister Westcott, I wish two more signals to be hoisted. The first’d be Number Sixteen, for Engage the Enemy More Closely,” Lewrie said. “The second, as I recall, requires only two more flags.”
“Which’d be, sir?” Lt. Westcott asked.
“Send, England … Expects,” Lewrie said, feeling a fey shiver.
“Combine them into one, perhaps?” Westcott suggested.
“Ah, no. One on the main, one on the mizen halliards,” Lewrie decided, going back to the windward bulwarks with his telecope to eye the enemy.
Two words.
The first two words of the signal sent to the fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar. Admiral Lord Nelson’s signal.
CHAPTER FORTY
The leading French frigate churned onward, slowly closing the range and converging. She and her consorts had yet to brail up their main courses, so they still had frothing mustachios of foam under their bows, making them look fast, and dangerous.
The French naval architects had always designed and built ships that were faster, heavier, and they armed them with more guns than British practise, crammed them bung-full with more sailors to fight and work them, too. Many a British warship was drawn along the lines of French vessels. Oh, there were some who carped that French ships were too fine in their entries, preferring fuller bows that would ride over a heavy sea, that French ships would dip their bows too deep and ship too much water, that they made for unsteady gun platforms when they were engaged in a battle in rough weather.
Still, the British designers and dockyards copied them, for there were so many of them brought in as prizes, re-armed, re-named in most cases, and made part of the Royal Navy.
No, it wasn’t French ships that were at fault, it was the men who manned those beautiful creations of the shipbuilders’ art. Once, before the French Revolution lopped the heads off most of the “aristo” officer corps, and ran the rest to service in other nations’ navies, the ships and the men had been a match for each other. After, though, un-titled officers, jumped-up Bosun’s Mates, loud radicals loyal to “The Sovereign People”, and the former “Blue Officers” drawn from the merchant service had commanded those ships, dominated by lubberly “No Sailors” placed aboard to keep radical revolutionary enthusiasm high, and suspicious people in line, exceeding their authority over tactical matters because they were the voice of the Directory of Public Safety, the classic consular rulers of the Directory of Five, and even after Napoleon Bonaparte had emerged as the sole Consul, then crowned himself Emperor of the French, that once-grand navy continued to suffer.
Too many defeats, too many over-complicated strategic schemes unraveled, too little time at sea, and a British blockade that was relentlessly enforced kept those fine ships in harbour far too long.
Since 1793, the Royal Navy had, in the main, developed a tradition of victory, and it would be easy for its people, from Admirals to tar-stained Jacks belowdecks, to belittle the French when they did dare head out to sea. A couple of broadsides fired for hon
our, and they would strike; a half-hour’s hammering, and the French sailors and officers would crumble, throw down their weapons and cry for mercy. And when the “butcher’s bill” was tallied up, it was British sailors who suffered the least, and the French who paid the highest price in blood, corpses, and piles of amputated limbs.
Victory, gloriously bloody victory, was what people safe and snug at home in England had come to expect, for the newspapers were full of stirring accounts, and even the mildest of men sought out the latest issue of The Naval Chronicle for a vicarious patriotic thrill.
Capt. Alan Lewrie had his own tradition of victory, but he could not disparage the French so easily, even though the state of the French navy, and its limitations, were firm in his mind. As the range closed to less than a mile, he felt, despite his seeming bravado, and his “sham posing” as a stoic Sea Officer of the King, that he and his squadron were in for one hell of a fight.
That can’t all be lubbers and simpletons, he told himself as he raised his telescope one more time; they might’ve been selected specially t’sweep us away and keep the provisions flowin’. They may have sent their very best, sent by Bonaparte himself!
“I do believe they are opening their gun-ports,” Lt. Westcott said from behind his shoulder, his own glass lifted.
“Good luck to ’em,” Lewrie said, “it’ll be hard to take down our rigging if they wish to fire high. They hold the wind gage, and they can’t elevate their guns as far as they need.”
The ports were open on all four French frigates, and cannon muzzles, black as Satan’s soul, were trundled up to the port sills, emerging in threat. Yet, the French held their fire, and those gun muzzles did not appear to be pointed skyward, with the elevating quoin blocks removed, and the breeches resting on the truck carriages.
“Something new for a change,” Lewrie muttered, more to himself than to his First Officer. It had long been a French practise to aim high and fire chain shot, bar shot, and expanding star shot to open an action, hoping to smash top-masts, tear sails to ragpickers’ bargains, weaken stays, and bring down masts to cripple a foe which could then be manoeuvred round and boarded with those over-sized crews that they carried.
“Half a mile, I make it, sir,” Mr. Yelland, the Sailing Master, commented in a bland voice. Lewrie took a quick glance at him; the Sailing Master was playing “stoic” quite well, Lewrie reckoned.
“Gonna skin th’ bastards, gonna send ’em all t’Hell,” someone was almost chanting at one of the nearest 24-pounder carronades.
“Silence, now, lad,” the gun-captain chid him. “Stop yer gob an’ save it fer later, Jessop. We’ll cheer when we’re done.”
Long minutes passed as the range closed to a quarter-mile, and decent gun range even for the inexperienced, yet the French still held their fire. Lewrie began to feel that it was almost uncanny, and the silence, broken only by the sounds of the wind, the creaks and groans of the hull and masts, and the swashing of the sea along Sapphire’s sides, was ominous.
“Mister Westcott, you may open the ports and run out,” Lewrie snapped, fed up with the waiting.
“Aye, sir!” Westcott replied, then bellowed down to the waist, “Starb’d battery, open ports, run out, aim small, and stand ready!”
The sight of Sapphire’s gun-ports hinging up to form a red chequer along her buff gunwales prompted the French, at last, and the lead frigate’s larboard side erupted in a sudden cloud of gunpowder smoke, reddish-yellow stabbing flames and a shower of sparks swirling from the cloth powder cartridges.
“Let the smoke clear, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said in rising excitement, “and you may open upon her, by broadside!” Even as he said so, Sapphire shuddered, shook, and groaned as French roundshot hammered her starboard side. One ball struck amidships along the sail-tending gangway, blasting a hole in the bulwarks, scattering the taut-rolled hammocks in the metal stanchion racks like so many snakes, and flinging three Marines down into the waist, dead or quilled with wood splinters, and the cry of “Loblolly boys, here, now!” arose.
“By broadside, on the up-roll,” officers, Mids, and experienced Quarter-Gunners in charge of several pieces shouted, “Fire!”
Sapphire shook and groaned again as all the long guns in the starboard battery lit off pretty-much as one, then recoiled to the limits of the breeching ropes, making the ring-bolts anchored in the stout timbers of her hull cry out.
“Beautiful!” Lewrie cheered. “Hit the bitch again!”
All that gunnery practise, and the crude notched sights along the barrels, proved their worth, for Sapphire’s broadside was concentrated ’twixt wind and water with no splashes of wayward rounds, and almost all roundshot smashed into the French fourty-gunner, staggering her. With her initial broadside’s smoke blown clear, Lewrie could see ragged-edged star-shaped holes punched into her along her gunwales and bulwarks.
“Swab your guns … serve with powder … shot your guns … overhaul train tackle and run out!” voices urgently roared belowdecks. “Prime! Stand by … on the up-roll … fire!”
French guns were barely re-emerging in their ports as Sapphire served her another, one which made Lewrie feel like leaping in blood-thirsty joy, smashing into the French frigate, making her hull scream in those peculiar parrot Rawrks as 12- and 24-pounder shot blasted clean through stout oak timbers and scantlings.
As Sapphire wreathed herself in a dense, impenetrable cloud of gun smoke, the ship was shaken by a massive strike, a shot that ripped through the starboard side of his cabins aft of the quarterdeck, sending clouds of splinters winging about, taking down one of the helmsmen. A moment later there was a second great shaking up forward, and Sapphire screamed as her hull was breached.
The smoke pall cleared, revealing the big French frigate, now free of her own smoke for a moment. “Carronades, sir!” Mr. Yelland shouted, pointing at the enemy’s quarterdeck. “They’ve got carronades. One forrud, and one aft!”
“Big’uns, by the looks of them,” Westcott excitedly said.
“Two can play that game,” Lewrie snapped. “Carronades to load with roundshot and grapeshot, and direct their fire on those French guns!”
Powder monkeys dashed up from below with their wood or leather cases, bearing fresh serge cartridge bags from the magazine, handing the charges over to loaders, then dashing back below. Roundshot was hefted off the piles bound in from rolling about by rope shot garlands, rammed down atop the cartridges, then wooden stands which held plum-sized grapeshot were rammed down. The carronades’ slide carriages wheeled about on bulkhead pivots, elevating screws beneath the guns’ breeches were adjusted, and the flintlock strikers primed.
“Stand clear!” gun-captains roared, stepping back with trigger lines in their hands, drawn taut, waiting for the moment.
“On the up-roll … fire!”
The French frigate had only two large carronades on each side, one near her forecastle, the other on her quarterdeck. Sapphire had ten, four on her forecastle and six on the quarterdeck, five on each beam. Hot gases spurted from the stubby carronades’ muzzles and the barrels shot backwards on the greased compression slides with loud squeals of wood on wood, and the 24-pound roundshot and a cloud of grapeshot spewed out at the enemy with a noise almost as loud as a full broadside from both gun decks. And the so-called “Smashers” lived up to their name.
The range had closed to a bit less than three hundred yards, perfect for the short-ranged carronades, the three quarterdeck guns aimed at the enemy’s aft mount, and the stout bulwarks either side of the French gun seemed to dissolve, to shoot skyward in jagged pieces, with a cloud of lesser splinters flying in all directions like a covey of startled quail or grouse. There was a very loud bell-like bong! as the enemy carronade’s barrel was struck, slewing the entire mount and recoil slide almost fore-and-aft, torn from its anchoring pivot, and un-usable. As for the men who’d manned it, and some of the people on the quarterdeck, the cloud of splinters, and the sleet-storm of grapeshot, swept them all off their
feet in a bloody mangle.
“On the up-roll … fire!” And Sapphire’s great-guns lit off almost together, the discharges becoming more of a stutter all along her sides, the results of their fire seen immediately before the gush of powder smoke blotted the enemy from sight once more. More holes punched into the Frenchman’s hull along her gunwale and line of gun-ports, more sections of upper bulwarks smashed clean through.
“Damn the bloody guns!” Mr. Yelland exclaimed, looking up at the sails and commissioning pendant which was no longer standing out, but was limply curling like a weary snake. “We’re shooting the wind to nothing. Always happens.”
Lewrie took a moment to glance aloft, and silently agreed with the Sailing Master’s opinion; when ships traded fire, the concussions of the guns seemed to still the wind, after a time, blanketing the sea, and the opposing ships, in a fog of gun smoke that would not disperse.
The Frenchman’s responding broadside tore his attention back, not quite as organised as the initial ones, but his ship quaked to many hits. At such close range, the French guns could not miss such a big target, even smothered in a reeking fog of powder smoke!
There was a particularly heavy strike up forward, again, and Sapphire’s wood screamed in agony as a heavy roundshot penetrated her vitals. The masking smoke did not clear away, it merely thinned, just enough to see that the enemy’s forward carronade was still being served.
As the echoes of the broadsides faded, Lewrie noted the sounds of musketry. Marines in the fighting tops were volleying at enemy naval infantry and sailors in their own tops, swivel guns were barking as fast as they could be re-loaded, and Lewrie saw a burly sailor in Sapphire’s maintop bracing a Henry Nock volley gun against the main mast as if firing from the hip. All seven barrels went off as one with a sheet of flame spewing from those barrels, and the volley gun, even braced, almost leapt from the sailor’s startled hands.
A Hard, Cruel Shore Page 37