by Jay Worrall
Billy Bowles nodded slowly, never taking his eyes off the Spanish fleet.
“Get back to your station. There’s no more time for gawking,” Charles said, leading the boy back down to the gundeck.
“Are the portside guns loaded and primed?” he yelled out to the captains of the gun crews. “Report by number. Two?”
“Ready, sir,” was the immediate reply.
“Four?”
“Loaded and primed, sir.”
“Six?” And so it went to number twenty-eight, odd-numbered guns to starboard, even to port.
“Port side, loose your guns.” The hands at each gun slipped the knots that bound the guns to ringbolts on the bulwark and deck.
“Out tompkins.” The wooden plugs that kept sea spray out of the muzzles were removed.
“Run out your guns.” The crews heaved on the side tackles, dragging the heavy beasts, trucks rumbling and squealing in protest, up snug against the ship’s outer planking. The Spanish fleet, bows on and clouds of sail at their masts, could clearly be seen through the weather gunports. Charles counted four large ships of the line nearly abreast at the front of the mass.
“How d’we know which to aim for?” the captain of a nearby gun crew asked.
“Any one you like,” Charles answered tersely. He felt a lump rise in his throat and jammed his hands in his pockets to keep them from fidgeting. He needed to do something to show his men that he was unconcerned.
“Mr. Bowles,” he yelled.
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Get below to the magazine and tell the gunner that we shall probably need more powder cartridges. All he can make.”
“A-aye aye, sir.”
“And, Mr. Bowles, on your way down please convey my respects to Lieutenant Bevan and say that I expect him to do better than last time, during practice, when he very nearly sank the ship’s jolly boat.”
Bowles looked at him and grinned. “He won’t like that, sir.”
“Sod him,” Charles said cheerfully. “You can tell him that I said that, too.” Daniel Bevan, a Welshman, the third lieutenant and Charles’s closest friend on the Argonaut, commanded the lower gundeck. The two men were much the same age and Charles Edgemont was the senior officer by a matter of only one and a half weeks.
As soon as Bowles had gone, he bent and looked through a gunport. The Spaniards were nearly in range, head-on, their bow waves bright curls of white against dark bows. Two of the leading ships were three-deckers, one of over a hundred guns. The others were seventy-fours at least, and all of them had their guns run out on both sides. Typical of the Spanish, he thought. They could only use one broadside. Didn’t they know which one?
At that moment another midshipman, with fine, almost delicate features and attired in a perfectly tailored uniform, appeared at Charles’s elbow. Charles knew him but not well and had taken something of a dislike to him from the day they were introduced. His name was Winchester something. He was eighteen or nineteen and, it was said, soon to stand for lieutenant. He was also said to be the son of a well-connected and wealthy barrister from York. Charles thought him excessively and unjustifiably confident, lacking in discipline and the rudiments of politeness to his betters, or at least those who outranked him. Winchester something was assigned to the quarterdeck, he knew, and acted as the captain’s messenger. Well, Charles thought with some satisfaction, he was going to get more than he bargained for today.
“Captain’s compliments, Lieutenant Edgemont,” the midshipman announced coolly. “Hold your fire until captain’s orders. He wants the first broadside to make a statement.”
“Thank you,” Charles answered. After touching his hat the young man left to carry his message to the lower gundeck.
A series of bangs broke the silence. Several of the Spanish warships had opened with their bow chasers as they rushed onward. He watched a ball skip across the waves in a series of diminishing splashes until, its energy nearly spent, it hit with a dull thunk against the Argonaut’s side and sank to the bottom of the sea.
“Beg pardon, sir,” Bowles’s voice said breathlessly beside him, “but Lieutenant Bevan sends his compliments and says you can shove…”
“Fire!” came the order from above, shouted so loud it made Charles jump.
“All together, fire!” he yelled quickly, and both main and lower gundecks exploded instantaneously with a deafening noise that made his ears ring. Billows of smoke swept back in through the open ports but were soon cleared away by the wind. One of the leading seventy-fours had her foremast and bowsprit dragging over her side and her mainmast from the tops up swaying as to soon follow. “Reload fast as you can. Fire at will,” he yelled. The second salvo was slightly ragged, as some crews were quicker than others at sponging out, ramming in cartridge and ball, priming, hauling the guns out by brute force, and sparking the powder.
Through a break in the smoke he saw the smaller of the three-deckers, the San Nicolás, he thought, an eighty-four, heave to and present her broadside. Almost at once she spoke in a bellowing roar and the ship was lost in a cloud of her own making with orderly rows of orange tongues stabbing through. The Argonaut shuddered from numerous impacts the length of her hull. The bulwark between the number four and six guns imploded in a horrific spray of splintered wood, upsetting the six gun and killing or wounding most of its crew. “Right that gun and put it back into action,” Charles found himself shouting. “And find someone to get the wounded below.” The Argonaut fired her increasingly drawn out broadside again.
A second salvo from the three-decker was slow in coming by English standards, but equally determined. Several balls passed straight through the gundeck with terrifying crashes, hurling swarms of jagged shards of oak. Charles barely noticed when a twelve-year-old powder boy passing in front of him whispered, “Oh, mother,” and sank to the deck with a splinter the size of a sword through his chest.
The Spanish roundshot smashing through the Argonaut’s timbers were unbelievable in their power, their destructiveness, and the randomness of their violence. One man of a cannon’s crew, or two or three if they happened to be aligned one behind the other, would be scythed into pieces while another standing a foot to the side would only be stupefied into insensibility by the percussion of the passing ball. Arms, legs, heads were abruptly ripped away or left dangling by thin strips of flesh. The unceasing, deafening roar of the great guns as they belched flame and lurched inward, the shriek of enemy shot passing through the deck unseen in the thickening smoke and crashing against frame and timber or clanging against guns, and the screams of the injured and moans of the dying numbed all sensibility.
Charles stood rooted in place on the edge of panic, stunned by the din and violence clearly heard but only dimly seen in the choking, swirling smoke. His mind shut out all but the most elemental thought, flinching at every crash, struggling to resist the urge to flee when there was nowhere to flee to, struggling to fight back against the enemy without and the horror within. Over and over he bellowed, “Keep firing! Hit ’em hard! Keep firing!” at the gun crews struggling at their weapons, as if the words would give him courage while men and boys died all around.
Another gun overturned with a sound like a ringing bell. One exploded while being loaded, with terrible effect. Dead and dying lay sprawled here and there, but mostly along the center of the deck, where they had been dragged. Others had already been dumped overboard. Great ragged holes in the sides of the ship admitted smoke and additional daylight. Streams of bright-red blood ran in zigzag patterns across the deck as the ship rolled from side to side. Charles lost all sense of time as the gun crews loaded, ran out, and fired their cannon as quickly as they could, over and over again. The powder boys hurried across the deck with fresh cartridges and returned without pause to the magazine for more. Repetitive and frenetic, the great guns bellowed again and again and again. All the while Spanish balls crashed through the Argonaut’s hull or existing fractures, destroying anything in their path. Time lost meaning, as did l
ife or death. There remained only the absorbing moment of firing the guns and being fired upon, destroying and being destroyed. Even the death and destruction around him lost meaning, and only the mechanical and repetitive act of reloading and firing the fewer and fewer serviceable cannon retained any coherence.
“By your leave, sir,” a nearby voice insisted. The speaker had to repeat himself at least twice to get Charles’s attention. It was Winchester, his perfect blue-and-white uniform torn across the front and stained with black powder and red blood.
“What do you want?” Charles snapped, unreasonably irritated at the intrusion.
“You’re needed on the quarterdeck.”
For a moment Charles thought the midshipman was smirking at him, but then saw that the boy was badly shaken and struggling to control himself. He had to stop to let the words penetrate. He started to say that it would be inconvenient just now, he was busy. “All right, I’ll be there in a moment,” he managed.
“Please, it’s urgent, sir,” Winchester insisted. “Captain Wood and the first are dead. You’re in command now.”
Charles heard the words, but his mind refused to accept them. They didn’t make sense. Nothing made any sense except that most of his men on the shattered gundeck were dead or bleeding their lives away and screaming in agony. Two cannon nearby went off almost together, causing him to start.
“The captain’s dead?” he said stupidly.
“Yes, sir, and the first,” Winchester insisted desperately. “You’re in command.”
Charles looked at the carnage around him. Six of the port-side cannon were still manned by some remnants of their crews. “Do you know how to manage these guns?” he asked, desperately trying to clear his mind.
“Yes, sir,” Winchester replied without hesitation. Charles doubted it but he had no choice.
A flood of questions began to penetrate. What was the state of the ship? Bad, he knew, but how bad? How many Spanish warships were still firing into the Argonaut? What condition were they in? Where was the rest of the British battle fleet? And if the captain and the first, and God knows how many others, were dead, he would have to reorganize the remaining officers and warrants. How many were left, how many of the crew? Only two things were certain: He had to do something quickly, and he would need help.
“Get word to Lieutenant Bevan below,” he ordered Winchester, “and have him meet me on the quarterdeck. You’ll have to keep both gundecks working until I say otherwise.” As soon as the midshipman started toward the partly shattered ladderway, Charles saw young Billy Bowles crouched in a corner, staring at him with terror-filled eyes. He couldn’t leave him there; the boy could be court-martialed and hanged for cowardice if some other officer saw him.
“Come on, Billy,” he said softly. “I need your help on the quarterdeck.” The child meekly rose and followed him.
The first thing Charles saw when he reached the deck was an unnatural expanse of sky. Both the mainmast and foremast and all their yards and sails were gone. The mainmast, he saw, had been shot off about three feet above the deck; its huge trunk lay half over the starboard side in a tangle of rope and tackle. The foremast had snapped about eight feet up and its stump stood like some obscene heathen monument. Of the foremast itself, its sails and rigging, there was no sign. The mizzen seemed more or less intact, although a number of its stays and braces had been shot away. In the waist a disorganized collection of seamen with axes swarmed over the wreckage of the mainmast, hacking at the rigging and struggling to free the ship from its drag. The quarterdeck itself was a shambles and nearly empty. The decking, holystoned pristine smooth and white earlier that morning, was gouged by long furrows and lay covered with broken and splintered wood, a profusion of tangled snakes of rope and loose tackle, pieces of dislodged hammocks and clothing, blood, bodies, and pieces of bodies. There were gaping sections where the railing and hammock netting had been shot away; all the quarterdeck carronades were dismounted, damaged, or missing. The ship’s wheel and compass housing were smashed to rubble, with the master and all four of his mates lying dead nearby. Charles recognized the body of Captain Wood on his back near the port-side rail, one leg bent unnaturally underneath. Blood covered his shirt where a Spanish musket ball had found him. Hudgins, the first lieutenant, lay partly on and partly off one of the gratings he had been standing on when a ball cut him in half. Charles heard Bowles sob and turned in time to see the boy throw up on the deck. He took the boy’s arm, led him to an overturned bucket, and sat him down on it.
A dozen marines in their red coats and pipe-clayed belts stood behind what remained of the port railing, firing their muskets under the command of a young marine lieutenant who mechanically called out their orders: “Load cartridge…load ball…ram home…rammers out…cock your arms…shoulder arms…aim…fire…load cartridge…” as if it were a parade drill. A greater number of redcoats lay writhing or still on the deck in an untidy line behind them.
Looking over the railing, he saw that the Argonaut had exacted a heavy toll in exchange for the damage she’d suffered. The two leading Spanish seventy-fours were both dismasted and badly battered, drifting helplessly leeward. The San Nicolás, her foremast and bowsprit hanging in a tangled ruin half in the sea, lay broadside-on opposite them. She still fired sporadically from this gun or that, but there were numerous and large holes in her side and several upward-pointing cannon muzzles indicating dismounted guns. A better-organized broadside from the Argonaut’s gundecks sounded. Charles watched as the San Nicolás’s mainmast shuddered and fell in a slow graceful arc, snapping stays and braces as it descended. It crossed Charles’s mind that perhaps Midshipman Winchester did know something about how to manage the guns.
Behind and just to the north of the San Nicolás seemed to be the main body of the Spanish fleet. It was hard to tell—all Charles could see were masts and sails and smoke. A number of them had apparently become entangled behind the leading men of war when they were confronted and slowed by the Argonaut. Others, he could see, were working their way around the obstruction in order to flee, and some had already done so. The smaller Spanish lee squadron was hull down to the east with all sail set and disappearing fast. Of the British he could see little but two ships of the line, probably Barfleur and Britannia, both some way off. He guessed from the sound of cannon fire that some had finally gotten in behind and were engaging the Spanish rear.
Lieutenant Bevan appeared from the ladderway, his familiar stocky form and face dark with burnt gunpowder. “Oh, my God, Charlie,” he said, surveying the wreck of the ship.
“Collect that party midships,” Charles said quickly, “and finish clearing the mainmast away. Then scab on some sort of spar for a foremast. We’ve got to get steerageway.”
“Aye aye,” Bevan said. As he turned to leave, he noticed Bowles sitting on his bucket with his face in his hands, sobbing in great heaves. Bevan looked at Charles quizzically.
“You never saw that, Daniel,” Charles said. “If anybody asks I’m going to say that he did his job as well as he could. It was just more than he was able to deal with, is all.”
Bevan nodded wordlessly and left.
A Spanish frigate, small among the men of war but deadly with a broadside of twenty guns, crept around the bow of the San Nicolás under topgallants and jibs close enough that Charles could see her captain, a short, wiry man in a brilliant red-and-blue uniform, shouting orders. He watched with a helpless feeling as she crossed the Argonaut’s undefended stern, her gunports open and her cannon waiting. “No, please don’t,” Charles breathed. The Spaniard’s broadside came in a tearing crescendo, sending ball after ball screaming the length of Argonaut’s decks. Without the time or wit to flinch, Charles felt the concussion of a passing shot and saw Billy Bowles, struggling to stand, dissolve into a mist of gore. He swore savagely as the black-hulled ship backed her mainsail, methodically ran out her guns, and fired again. The Argonaut shuddered as iron shot smashed timbers, upset the few remaining gun carriages, killed, a
nd maimed. Charles’s fear turned to rage at the gratuitous slaughter. It was pointless, cruel, uncalled for. The ship was already crippled. She had no way to defend herself. After a third murderous salvo, the frigate smartly filled her sails and fled to the east. Her name, etched in gold leaf across her stern, was Santa Brigida.
“I’ll sink you, you son of a bitch! I’ll see you in hell,” he screamed at the departing form, but the words rang hollow, even in his own ears. He was powerless to do anything, impotent.
After a moment he tried to calm himself. He had to think. The Argonaut had to gain control of her rudder if she was to have any hope of survival. He made his way as quickly as he could over the littered deck to the lieutenant of the marines with his sharpshooters. “My compliments, sir,” he said, trying to steady himself. “I want you to take your men belowdecks to the tiller ropes. When I send an order down to turn to starboard, for example, I want you all to pull the tiller over the right, if you were facing forward, that is.”
The lieutenant drew himself up to his full height. “Cease fire,” he snapped at his men. To Charles he said disdainfully, “I know port from starboard, sir. But the tiller and its ropes ain’t my responsibility. Shooting dagos is.”
“I’m making it your responsibility, Lieutenant,” Charles growled. “At present I command this ship. I am giving you a lawful order that you disobey at your peril.”
The lieutenant hesitated. “I don’t know. It ain’t my—”
Charles cut him off. “If you don’t like it, you can bloody well complain to the Admiralty. In the meantime, if we don’t get some goddamned steerage soon, none of us will live to see England again. Take your men to the fucking tiller room.” The lieutenant stared at him wide-eyed for an instant, then nodded, collected his men, and marched them off in the direction of the aft ladderway.