The Flying Squadron

by Richard Woodman

  ‘Tell Captain Thorowgood to rejoin the convoy with Sprite and his prize,’ Drinkwater called down to the boat, ‘I’m going in pursuit.’

  Ashby and Sundercombe had ably covered the convoy’s rear. Discovering the force against them, the remaining privateers had not pressed their attack. They were making off in the darkness to windward as fast as they could with Icarus in lagging pursuit and Sprite hard on their heels, white blurs in the gathering night. Drinkwater waved the boat off and rounded on Wyatt.

  ‘Set the stuns’ls, Mr Wyatt, and lay me a course to the eastward.’

  ‘The eastward, sir?’ Wyatt stared at the dull gleam of Icarus’s battle lantern to the southward.

  ‘Yes, damn you, the eastward. Mr Gordon, make to Icarus and Sprite: discontinue the chase. The night signal, if you please.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  Quilhampton hauled himself wearily up the quarterdeck ladder. He was aware he had misjudged Drinkwater.

  ‘Well, James,’ Drinkwater said briskly, ‘I’m setting the kites.’

  ‘You’re going in pursuit, sir?’ Quilhampton threw a bewildered look at the disparate heading of the schooners and Patrician. Wyatt gave a mighty shrug. Drinkwater laughed. His spirits were soaring. ‘I’m after bigger fish than those minnows, James . . .’

  ‘Tucker’s frigate?’

  ‘Tucker’s frigate.’

  ‘You’re certain of her being there?’

  ‘As certain of anything in this perilous life, James.’

  ‘Sometime, sir, you might oblige me with an explanation.’

  Drinkwater laughed again. ‘The moment I’m proved right.’ Tiredness and then the exhilaration of the last hours had raised Drinkwater’s morale to a pitch of almost unbearable anticipation. ‘Is Tucker being attended to?’ he asked, in an attempt to recapture the dignity consonant with his rank.

  ‘He’s under Pym’s knife at the moment, sir.’

  ‘Pym’s a good surgeon and Tucker looked to have the constitution of an ox.’

  ‘Very well.’

  The formal, non-commital response might have described them all. They had done very well. He was ridiculously pleased he had harangued his captains. It was perhaps fortunate that their gunnery had not been tested, that they had confronted nothing more than privateers, but they had manoeuvred like veterans and he must remember to say so in his report to their Lordships. The escaping schooners were unlikely to return to harry the convoy; they had been thoroughly frightened. Guile and skilful ship-handling had brought the British a local ascendancy. Now, Drinkwater mused, they must hold the advantage surprise had conferred.

  ‘Mr Wyatt!’ Drinkwater beckoned to the master and he crossed the deck, expecting a rebuke. ‘You did very well, Mr Wyatt. The ship was handled with perfect precision.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Wyatt said smugly.

  ‘I may need your skill again before dawn, Mr Wyatt. I am in quest of a frigate . . .’

  ‘A frigate . . . ?’ Wyatt’s tone was incredulous in the dark.

  ‘Not an American frigate, you’ll be pleased to hear,’ Drinkwater said ironically, ‘at least, I hope not . . .’ He was interrupted by a hail from the maintop:

  ‘Deck there! I can see fire, fire on the larboard bow!’

  ‘Ah,’ sighed Drinkwater, ‘ease the helm a half-point, Mr Wyatt. James, pipe up spirits, and then send the men back to their stations.’

  An hour later they were approaching the source of the fire with every man at his station, and under fighting sails.

  ‘Ease the helm another point, Mr Wyatt. Let us drop a little to loo’ard and cut off their retreat.’ The dull glow of the fire opened on the starboard bow, allowing a better view from the quarterdeck. Their approach, concealed by darkness, was slow enough for Drinkwater, studying the dispositions of a number of vessels clustered about and illuminated by the burning Indiaman, to deduce the gist of what was happening.

  ‘They have very likely spent the day transhipping what they wanted out of the Indiaman they have fired,’ he explained to Quilhampton, as both men stood side by side, their telescopes braced against the mizen rigging. ‘You can see the schooner which was mauled by sparrow-hawk . . .’

  ‘She’s lying alongside another East India Company ship,’ observed Quilhampton.

  ‘It looks as though they used her mainyard as mast-sheers, they’ve got what looks like two handy spars back in that schooner already,’ he said admiringly.

  ‘There’s another ship, looks like an Indiaman, though she could be your frigate, just to the left; d’you see?’

  Drinkwater shifted his glass. ‘Yes. They’re waiting for the schooners to come back with another prize, I think. One of those two will be the Kenilworth Castle. She’s carrying specie.’

  ‘Didn’t that Company Johnnie indicate the Lennox was similarly loaded?’ Quilhampton asked, catching something of his commander’s excitement.

  ‘Indeed he did,’ Drinkwater said with a sudden, tense deliberation which made Quilhampton lower his glass, look at Drinkwater and then smartly raise it again.

  There was no mistaking the ship that now came into view. Hidden from them at first by the glow of the burning Indiaman, her lower hull was concealed, her tall masts indistinguishable behind the mass of the Indiaman’s top-hamper up which the flames were now racing as the fire took a hold. The sudden flaring of the gigantic torch lit up all within its illuminating circle.

  Quilhampton gave a low whistle. ‘There’s your French frigate, sir.’

  Patrician was directly downwind of the group now, and a wave of warm air drifted towards them. A dull crackling roar could be heard, borne on the trade wind. The French frigate was hove to, like the Indiamen, under a backed main topsail, drifting slowly past the burning ship from which a cloud of sparks suddenly shot upwards. Concealed from the American and French allies busy at their mid-ocean rendezvous by the utter darkness beyond the range of their bonfire, Patrician slipped past unobserved, a mile to the north of them.

  ‘I’m going about in a moment or two, gentlemen,’ Drinkwater announced to the officers assembled on the quarterdeck. ‘When I have done so we will engage the Frenchman from windward. Starboard battery to open fire. We shall have to watch that burning Indiaman, but his windage is being fast consumed and the others are making greater leeway, increasing the distance between them. I will then attempt to rake . . .’

  ‘Sir!’ Gordon was pointing; a moment later the concussion of cannon-fire rolled over the water.

  ‘They’ve seen us . . .’ someone said.

  ‘No they haven’t,’ shouted Moncrieff, ‘they’re firing away from us . . .’

  ‘What the devil . . . ?’

  ‘It isn’t them firing, it’s Icarus!’

  ‘Hands to tack ship!’ Drinkwater roared, ‘By God we’ve got ’em! Take post, gentlemen, upon the instant if you please!’

  There was a bustling aboard the Patrician, as the officers dispersed to their stations. The men, watching the conflagration in ordered silence, suddenly tensed. They were no longer observers, now they were to participate.

  ‘Mainsail haul!’ Wyatt shouted, ‘Leggo and haul . . . haul aft the lee sheets, stretch those bowlines forrard now! Keep your eyes inboard and attend to your business!’

  ‘Icarus must have mistaken your signal, sir.’

  ‘Aye, we never thought to look astern in our conceit, did we?’

  ‘I doubt we’d have seen her . . . there she is . . . she’s got Sprite under her lee bow. Ashby must have assumed he was to follow us.’

  ‘Perhaps it was no bad assumption and, damn it, I bet it fooled the buggers – the two of ’em look like a Yankee clipper and a captured Indiaman!’

  Icarus could be seen clearly now looming on the edge of the firelit circle, hauling up her fore and mainsail, shortening down to fighting sail as she came up with less caution than Drinkwater’s Patrician. A broadside rippled along her side, the brilliance of the gun’s discharges bright points in the night, though they co
uld see nothing of the fall of the shot.

  ‘Bring her round a little more to starboard, Mr Wyatt. Let us see if we can add to the confusion.’

  Slowly Patrician swung and gathered way as she came off the wind. With the burning Indiaman, now almost reduced to a hulk, the other ships were drifting away fast. At any moment Patrician herself would come between them and the blaze, revealing her presence.

  Midshipman Porter bobbed close to Drinkwater, his red face ruddier in the glow. ‘Mr Gordon’s compliments and the starboard chase guns will bear.’

  ‘Very well, Mr Porter, you may tell Mr Gordon to fire at will, but to have every gun-captain lay his piece carefully. I want no noisy, ineffectual broadsides.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  ‘The frog’s making sail, sir.’ They were too late for complete surprise. Someone aboard the French frigate had seen Patrician and she was hauling her backed main yards and letting fall her lower canvas. Just then the first of Gordon’s 24-pounders roared, followed by a second and a third. A cheer went up from the waist and Quilhampton bellowed for silence.

  ‘He’s going to rake Ashby, by God!’ Moncrieff called, but Drinkwater had already seen Ashby’s dilemma and watched as he threw his helm over, attempting to swing round on to a parallel course to the Frenchman and trade broadside for broadside.

  ‘He’s no fool,’ Drinkwater muttered admiringly of the French commander. The broadside itself was hidden from them, but they saw the impact clearly on the Icarus, even in the dark, for she rolled in the swell as she turned and the pale rectangle of her fore topsail became first a triangle, then ceased to exist as her foremast crashed to the deck.

  ‘Firing high, by God, he’s goin’ to run!’

  Bright pin-points, like two blinking cat’s eyes, sparked from the Frenchman’s stern. A column of water rose up close to Patrician’s starboard bow and a crash from forward, followed by the murderous whirr of flying splinters, told where a shot had struck home.

  ‘He’s firing his stern chasers, sir.’

  ‘I can see that, Mr Q. Mr Wyatt, lay me a course to pass close to Icarus, I wish to speak to Ashby and it will at least give us a chance to get a broadside in at that fellow.’

  The blazing Indiaman was broad on their larboard beam and dropping astern. The French frigate was making off to the north, leaving the remaining Indiaman and the schooner to their fate. Sprite had worn round under Icarus’s stern and was engaging the jury-rigged schooner.

  ‘Good man, Sundercombe,’ Drinkwater muttered, seizing the speaking trumpet as they bore down on the Icarus. Men were swarming on her forecastle and he could see the glimmer of lanterns as they sought to clear away the tangle of fallen gear. Drinkwater leapt up on the rail, clasping the mizen rigging with one hand and the speaking trumpet with the other.

  ‘Icarus ahoy Captain Ashby . . .’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Secure what you can here. Those are two captured Indiamen, by the way, with prize-crews aboard. Then rejoin the convoy. Keep Sprite under your orders. I’m going in pursuit of that frigate.’

  ‘He’s a Frenchman, Captain Drinkwater, did you know?’

  ‘Yes. Are you manageable?’

  ‘Aye, I’ve a forecourse, I think . . .’

  ‘Good luck.’

  ‘And you.’

  They waved, their ships rolling in the swell, and Wyatt brought Patrician on to a course parallel with the retiring French frigate. She was ahead and to starboard of the British ship and both had the fresh trade wind blowing on their starboard quarters.

  ‘It’s going to be a long night, James,’ Drinkwater remarked.

  ‘It’s already nearly ten,’ Quilhampton said after consulting his watch.

  ‘Moonrise in three hours.’

  They set every stitch of canvas the spars could stand, started the mast wedges and ran preventer stays up to the topmast caps, setting them up with luff tackles. Never had the Patrician’s crew been so hard driven since, those who remembered it afterwards claimed, they had been in the Pacific. There was, Drinkwater knew, little doubt of the outcome if the masts and spars and canvas and cordage stood the strain. The French frigate was a fast ship, but slightly smaller than the British, of a lighter build and, though well handled, unable to match the hardiness of her pursuer. Patrician was a razée, a cut-down sixty-four gun line-of-battle ship, heavy, but able to stand punishment and, in a strengthening wind, in her element with a quartering sea. Moonrise found the distance between the two ships significantly lessened. Patches of cloud came and went across the face of the full moon, adding to the drama and excitement of the night, and periodically Lieutenant Gordon, pointing the guns himself, tried a shot at the enemy’s top-hamper, seeking to cripple him as he fled.

  And periodically too, the enemy fired back, though both commanders knew the issue would not be so easily settled, that their scudding ships, heeling and scending under their press of sail, were uncertain gun-platforms, that the angle between them was too fine for more than a lucky shot to tell, and that either luck on the part of one, or disaster for the other, would bring the matter to a conclusion before daylight.

  Luck, it seemed, first favoured the French. A shot from a quarter gun struck Patrician’s waist, felling an entire gun’s crew with a burst of lacerating splinters, sending men screaming like lunatics in antic dances of pain and killing three men outright. A second shot struck Patrician just below the starboard fore chains, carrying away a stay-rod. But for the preventer rigged an hour earlier, the shroud above might have parted and the entire foremast gone by the board. As it was the carpenter was able to effect repairs of a kind. Half an hour later a third shot hulled the pursuing British frigate and she began taking water. Once again the carpenter and his mates were summoned. They plugged the shot hole and the pumps were manned, but it shook the Patricians’ confidence and the men murmured at their inability to hit back.

  ‘I wonder if Metcalfe would have managed anything?’ Moncrieff superciliously asked no one in particular. ‘He was a damned good shot . . .’

  The remark provoked in Drinkwater’s mind’s eye an image of Thurston falling from the rigging, which was so vivid he started and became aware he had been half-asleep on his feet. ‘Metcalfe . . . ?’ he said, stupidly and shaken, ‘Oh, yes, he was, wasn’t he . . .’

  ‘He’s done it!’ Quilhampton’s cry was echoed round the ship. Gordon had fired his foremost gun, loaded with bar shot, as the Patrician’s stern had fallen into a trough. The rising bow had thrown the shot high, almost too high. But the crazy, eccentric hemispheres had, with the aid of centrifugal force, extended the sliding bars and the spinning projectile had struck the enemy’s fore topgallant mast. For a moment the pallid oblongs of its two sails leaned, suspended in a web of rigging, flogging as the wind caught their underbellies, and then they sagged slowly downwards.

  Patrician closed on her quarry; after hours of seeming inactivity her quarterdeck was again seething with officers bawling orders.

  ‘Lay her alongside, Mr Wyatt, and shorten sail. Don’t overshoot.’

  They were too late for such precise niceties of manoeuvring, the night had grown too wild and they were too tired for fine judgement. Patrician overran the French ship, loosing off a rolling broadside and receiving fire in return. The British gunners, so long inactive, with news of the fallen topgallant to cheer them, poured more fire into the enemy. On board the Frenchman, the gunners served their cannon gallantly, but the chaos of fallen spars which just then broke free of the restraints of the upper rigging and crashed down through the boat booms, caused their rate of response to slacken as they confronted blazing gun-muzzles forty yards from their ports.

  ‘Let fly sheets! Let her head fall to starboard! Stand by, boarders!’

  The two ships closed, the Patrician slightly ahead. Between them the water ran black and silver where the moonlight caught it. The slop and hiss as the outward curling bow waves met and intermingled threw spray upwards to reflect the stabbing glare of the gunfire. T
he night was full of noise, of wind in rigging, of rushing water, of the cheers and shrieks and shouts of four hundred men, the concussions of their brutal cannon and the stutter of Moncrieff’s marines as their muskets cleared the way for the mustering boarders.

  ‘He shows no inclination to edge away,’ Quilhampton called, drawing his sword, and then the night was split by a man’s voice, a bull-roar of defiance:

  ‘What ship is that?’

  ‘That’s no frog . . .’ Quilhampton began.

  ‘No, I know,’ Drinkwater moved to the rail and leaned over the hammock netting.

  ‘His Britannic Majesty’s frigate Patrician, Nathaniel Drinkwater commanding. Is that you, Captain Stewart?’

  ‘Aye . . . how in hell’s name . . . ?’

  Stewart’s voice was drowned in the discharge of Gordon’s starboard battery. ‘Fate,’ Drinkwater muttered as he turned. ‘Pass word to Frey to have his larbowlines ready to board. Now, Mr Wyatt, lay us alongside.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir!’

  ‘Come, James, death or glory, eh?’ Drinkwater said, sensing the puzzlement in Quilhampton by the odd stance of the one-armed officer. He drew his sword. The gap between the two ships closed and then they collided. Drinkwater clambered up on the rail, fighting to get his legs over the hammock nettings and gauge when to leap. He dropped into the mizen chains. Below him the bulging topsides of the ships ground together, their rails separated only by the extent of the rounded tumblehome. A quarterdeck 18-pounder went off beside him. He was deafened and the heat seared his stockings. He remembered he had forgotten to change his clothes before going into action, as was customary. If he was wounded, his dirty linen might infect him.

  The two ships rolled inwards, the gap narrowed and he flung himself across. A hemp shroud struck him, he grabbed it with his left hand, felt his right foot land on something solid and he steadied. Momentarily he paused, balancing, then gathered himself and leapt down on to the enemy’s deck. Off balance he stumbled, a lunging pike missed him and he recovered his footing in time to parry a cutlass slash. He seemed surrounded by figures menacing him in a terrible surreal silence. The moonlight gleamed on naked steel, a pistol flashed noiselessly, then another and he was surrounded by struggling men. Slowly his hearing returned as he hacked and slithered, hardly knowing friend from foe. A sword blade struck his right epaulette and sent half a dozen heavy gold threads past his ear. He cut savagely at his assailant and felt his sword blade bite. A cry, distinct now, struck his ears. He heard again shouts and whoops, the bitter supplications of the dying and the raving of men engaged in murder. He felt the weight of his anonymous attacker roll against his legs. In a split-second of detachment he thought: ‘Christ, this is a sin mightier than lying with Mistress Shaw,’ and then he heard the bull-roar again.