by Tim Jeal
He folded the paper slowly and sealed the envelope. During the voyage across the Sea of Azov he had also written to each of his children. Only in his letter to Charles had he admitted his strong premonition that he would die.
In an hour’s time a single blue light at Sampson’s fore would set in train the embarkation of the first party of marines. Though exhausted Sir James felt the strange lucidity often produced in him for a few hours after tiredness had passed a certain pitch. In the stillness the thump of the look-out’s footsteps on the poop overhead seemed very loud. He imagined the boats’ crews pulling silently for the shore; thrum mats round the looms of the oars to deaden the sound they made against the thole-pins.
And after the long quietness of the night, such unimaginable noise – the air screaming and hurtling in the straits.
*
Shortly after dawn the ships had steamed in and anchored less than a mile off-shore. Half an hour after the boats had landed the marine diversionary force, Magnus, and the officers crowded together on Curlew’s quarter-deck, heard the first splutter of musketry from the land; at first isolated shots and then a regular muted rattle. Just above the horizon a ridge of cloud was beginning to glow, its edges scalloped with gold. The sun was rising, but the western sky above Genichesk was still dark, and the low hills behind the town, black with touches of silver and grey. Soon came some deeper crashes – the field guns were going into action. Moments later the wind brought the thin notes of bugles, and more distinctly the clanging of church bells. The enemy was mustering his forces.
‘Deck there!’ Magnus heard a midshipman call from the main-top. ‘Flagship signalling.’
A string of black dots, like beads on a thread, raced up Sampson’s signal halyards. As the flags were broken out, telescopes were raised to read the signal before it was hauled down. Hoist followed hoist; twenty-two in all. Already ships were acknowledging, and within minutes launches were being slung out and lowered from the squadron’s largest ships. The second party of marines was embarking.
The sky was growing lighter by the minute and through his glass Magnus could clearly see the white cross-straps and scarlet coats of the marines mustering on the frigates’ upper decks. Next he noticed a gig being lowered from the davits over the flagship’s mizzen channel, and above the noise of the waves he could just catch the squealing of blocks as she went down fast and met the water with a flat splash. Men were now swarming down the rope netting on the steam-frigates’ leeward sides and clambering into the tossing launches and pinnaces. Looking again to see what had happened to the gig, he saw that she was now making for the six gunboats riding at anchor ten cables south of the main squadron.
Magnus was about to ask Commander Hislop whether any changes had been made to the written instructions, when the signals lieutenant shouted:
‘Flagship again, sir. Tugs and steamers to weigh at once.’ He paused waiting for the next hoist. ‘Our number, sir. Follow in steamers and pick up survivors if launches hit. That’s it, sir. Instruction seventeen.’
As the hands on Curlew’s forecastle leapt to the capstan bars to heave in the cable, Magnus saw the gig reach one of the gunboats. He asked her name.
‘Hesperus,’ replied the quartermaster who had been talking earnestly to the Master. Magnus recalled from the General Orders that Hesperus was the name of the ship detailed to lead through the straits.
Ten minutes later the gunboats were steaming in line astern of Hesperus bearing down on the entrance to the straits. The firing from the shore had become louder and almost continuous. Two rockets rose steeply into the sky from the direction of the fighting, and hung for a moment before falling earthwards. The marines were unable to hold their position and were being forced to retire. The diversion seemed to have failed. Magnus studied Hesperus again through his glass and saw a single black dot rise to her mizzen truck and break out there. The flag looked like a small St George’s Cross. Within minutes the gunboats would be in range of the shore-batteries.
‘What’s that signal?’ he asked Hislop, who was conning the helmsman as Curlew steamed to her new station.
‘I don’t see one,’ replied Hislop, studying Hesperus with his glass.
‘At the mizzen.’
Hislop lowered his telescope.
‘That sir, is your father’s flag.’
*
Sir James had gone forward to get a better view of the entrance, and already with the naked eye could make out the white line of surf where the waves were breaking against the southern spit. On the northern side he saw the first two batteries: one a substantial stone fort with a single row of casemates, the other an earthwork raised up on a tumulus-like mound – mounting between them he supposed a dozen guns. Above the tumulus a red flag was flying from a tall staff. Further inland was a windmill, its sails turning rapidly. The sun was shining now, casting long shadows from the rigging across the deck, but bringing no discernible warmth. The breeze still cut through the seams of his coat like a knife.
On both sides of the straits, strips of lighter coloured water, brown or yellowish grey, betrayed the positions of shoals. For ten minutes the leadsman had been swinging his line in the chains; Sir James listening tensely to his shouts.
‘By the mark two,’ came the next call.
Barely six cables back the depth had been five fathoms; if it shelved any more they would have to reduce speed; the thought of having to kedge off a shoal within enemy gun-shot was spine-chilling.
‘By the deep one and half one.’
Sir James turned to Hesperus’s captain, Commander Seymour.
‘Be ready to hoist “Reduce to five knots”, Mr Seymour.’
Seymour repeated the command to the quartermaster’s mate who ran aft with it. Another five minutes and they would be in action. With a bow pivot, two 68-pounders on metal slides amidships, and two truck 24-pounders astern, Gleaner Class gunboats mounted heavier ordnance than any other shallow-draught vessels in commission. Sir James doubted whether many of the batteries would contain pieces larger than 24-pounders. In the narrows, where the channel was no more than a hundred yards across, they would be engaging at point-blank range. If the gunboats were still afloat, no battery, earth or stone, would survive double-shotted 68-pounders at such proximity. But with magazines only partially protected by water tanks, and no more than a token forecastle above the shell room, Sir James was very doubtful that all six gunboats would reach the narrows. If a ship went down in the main channel it would be the end for those astern.
‘By the mark two,’ shouted the leadsman.
‘That’s better, sir,’ murmured Seymour, with obvious relief.
Sir James nodded. Seymour’s habit of raising his right hand to his cocked hat – an apparently nervous gesture – irritated the admiral terribly because of his own ragged nerves.
‘For God’s sake, man, take that thing off or leave it alone.’
Seymour tossed it away towards the rail and explained that he had been afraid it would blow off. Normally he wore one of the new flat peaked caps, but with his admiral aboard had borrowed his First Lieutenant’s full-dress hat; unfortunately the lieutenant’s head was smaller than his own. Sir James smiled and was glad of an excuse to do so.
Sir James was gazing aft at the five gunboats keeping perfect station a cable’s length apart in line astern, when the fort opened fire. He swung round his glass to count the puffs of smoke.
‘Five guns, sir,’ said Seymour.
The shots fell six cables wide, throwing up tall waterspouts.
‘Keep watching in case a gun fires late.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’ Seymour tried to remain silent, but failed. ‘Pretty jumpy I’d say to fire so early, sir.’
Seeing Seymour’s fresh and eager face, and remembering his own unlimited confidence before his gruesome blooding at Navarino, Sir James felt a wave of sadness.
‘Let’s hope so.’
‘Will you give the order to fire, sir?’
‘Your ship, Mr Seym
our.’
Seymour saluted with a smile and loped down the companion to the gun-deck, where he moved quickly from gun to gun having a word with each No. 1. A mile out to sea Sir James could see the tugs steaming in with the launches and pinnaces in tow; in each of these dozen boats would be thirty-five marines – only a handful would live if the gunboats did not destroy the majority of the batteries. The guns in the fort roared out again – their shots this time sending up plumes of green water fifty yards ahead of Hesperus.
In spite of his earlier determination to let Seymour have absolute control over the ship, Sir James was on the point of shouting to him not to fire until directly opposite the casemates, when the deck leapt under his feet and the air was filled with shrieking fragments of wood and metal. A shot had carried away Hesperus’s bowsprit like a match, snapping the bob-stay and chain guys as if they were threads, knocking out the port knighthead, and ripping up the forward deck planking like the staves of an old barrel. As the forestay parted with a whipping twang and the jib halyards and downhaul flew free, the foremast swayed but did not fall. The pivot gun had been tilted from its circular mountings and was now pointing drunkenly into the water. The next salvo ripped through the rigging, splintering the mizzen-gaff, and bringing the spanker-boom crashing to the deck a few feet from Sir James. In a daze he watched Seymour coolly wait another thirty seconds until every one of the starboard guns bore on the fort. Then at seventy-five yards he gave the order. As Hesperus’s 68-pounders hurtled back along their slides, the whole ship seemed flung over onto her beam as if capsizing. Being used to line-of-battle ships, the force of the recoil astounded Sir James. His eyes streaming with the fumes of burning saltpetre and sulphur, he could see nothing through the thick white smoke.
‘Stop your vents,’ he heard Seymour roaring, and, as the smoke billowed away to port, saw the gun crews labouring with their sponges and the powdermen handing fresh charges to the loaders. Two shots crashed back from the fort, one smashing into the hull just aft of the boiler room, the other tearing through the fore-mast back-stays. Forward, three men were hacking at the wrecked bowsprit, now trailing alongside. The smoke cleared very slowly from the fort, but when it did, Sir James saw that three casemates had become a single cavernous hole. Hesperus had surely knocked out three of the five guns. No sooner had Sir James congratulated the gun crews than he felt the deck tilting under his feet. All available hands were ordered to the pumps and the carpenter and his mate ran below to try to plug the hole. The list was only improved by moving one of the 24-pounders to port and heaving the damaged pivot gun overboard.
Her starboard broadside now reduced to three guns, Hesperus steamed on. Looking astern, Sir James watched Recruit, the next gunboat in the line, open fire on the fort and clearly saw large lumps of masonry flying as the shots slammed home. Highly satisfied with events, he was turning his attention to the next battery, three hundred yards ahead, when he heard a muted blast, and then, after several staccato detonations, a deep prolonged roar. Where seconds before Recruit had been steaming purposefully forward was an orange-white inferno of flames crowned by a black mushroom of smoke filled with fragments of timber; forward of the main-mast she had simply ceased to exist. Her stern, with the mizzen still somehow standing, remained upright for a moment, and then tilting sharply, sank with a boiling hiss. The disaster had been so sudden, and the silence so complete after the explosion of the ship’s magazine and shell room, that Sir James could not take it in for several seconds. By then Hesperus’s gig was being slung out to pick up any survivors from the stern.
‘Mr Seymour,’ he shouted, ‘reduce to four knots until Sphinx is in station astern.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
Altering course to avoid the floating wreckage, Sphinx came on steadily, and opened fire on the fort, bringing down a dust-laden avalanche of stones and dirt. No answering shots were fired.
The next batteries were a half-moon shaped earthwork on a low cliff, easily visible since the grass had not grown over the recently thrown-up parapet, and a far more formidable stone fort on a slight promontory. From its size, Sir James thought it would mount at least a dozen guns.
Approaching the half-moon work, Hesperus was hulled again, this time more seriously and just below the waterline. Immediately after firing her broadside, she began to list so dangerously that it was obvious she was sinking.
‘Hard a port,’ yelled Seymour, running up onto the poop, and then, through his speaking-trumpet to the men still cranking the pumps: ‘Belay that nonsense and hoist out the cutter.’ He looked around him at the remains of the spanker-boom. ‘And get this rubbish overboard. Quartermaster, make to Sphinx “Admiral coming aboard”.’
Hesperus grounded hard twenty yards from the shore, and, as she hit the shelving bottom, steaming at five knots, every man on her not holding fast to something was flung to the deck. Seymour and Sir James fell side by side, and the younger man helped his admiral to his feet.
‘This won’t be your last ship, Mr Seymour.’
‘I hope not, sir.’
Sir James glanced up at the wrecked mizzen-gaff and the empty halyards streaming out above it.
‘No need to strike my flag.’
As the cutter pulled away from the stricken gunboat, Sphinx came level with the half-moon battery and discharged her broadside. Fountains of earth sprung up all along the parapet as the shells exploded. When the smoke cleared, nothing, but the bleeding bodies of the gunners and the debris of shattered carriages and overturned cannons, remained of what moments ago had been an ordered battery. Never having seen 68-pounders in action against an earthwork at such short range, Sir James was stunned by what he saw.
Only the last and largest stone fort remained.
Two minutes after the admiral had gone aboard Sphinx, a shell burst on her gun-deck instantly killing twelve of her forty-strong crew, and knocking one of her 68-pounders clean off its slide mountings. Only two guns were left in action. Sir James had only just exchanged courtesies with Sphinx’s commander, and now, along with the boatswain, the master’s mate and the quartermaster, the man was dead. If he had not gone aft seconds before, Crawford realised that he would have shared the same fate. After the sheeting flash of the explosion, yellow and black spots were dancing in front of his eyes. As if waking from a dream, he saw a hideously maimed man dragging himself to one of the guns. The deck was running with blood. Grabbing the First Lieutenant by the arm, he shouted:
‘Cease firing…. Engines full ahead.’
Astern, Amphion silenced two guns with her first broadside, before she was holed and started to list sickeningly to starboard. Just clearing the channel she went aground immediately under the battery. Sir James screwed up his eyes in anguish as her decks were raked from stem to stern with canister and grape, dashing men to the deck like paper figures in a wind. Simoon, the next in line, engaged the fort seconds too late to prevent a second murderous volley mowing down the few men left alive on Amphion’s gun-deck.
Sir James was not looking at the precise moment when Simoon’s second broadside roared out, bringing down a long section of the fort’s wall, and sending up the magazine – not a large one to judge by the explosion, but large enough. The terrible slaughter caused by shells bursting in the confined space behind the casemates was better not imagined. No shots troubled Leopard, the last gunboat, as she lowered boats to take the wounded off the sinking Amphion.
Under ten minutes after Hesperus had fired her first broadside, the straits lay open for the marines. The cost had been three gunboats and just over a hundred lives. As the rockets soared upwards requesting the steamers to come in, Sir James looked around him in astonishment; the coastline just the same, the sails of the windmill still turning, no smoke, no gun-fire, a clear sky, some men killed. Everything he had expected and yet as always quite different. He felt numbed rather than elated. The losses had been trivial in comparison with those of any large land battle, but the small size of the ships had reduced them to a comprehensibl
e scale. Certain sights in the past had left scars in his mind, which had closed but never quite healed. The simultaneous death of Recruit’s entire crew at the centre of that glowing ball of fire would leave just such a mark.
Leaving Leopard in the straits to pick up men from Amphion and Hesperus, and to stop the enemy righting guns in the ruined batteries, Sphinx and Simoon steamed on towards the bridge, their crews still standing to the undamaged guns and the leadsman calling out the depth.
Beyond the next point the straits widened rapidly, forming a long tongue of sparkling water a mile across, stretching almost out of sight. With his telescope Sir James could see a distant mass of shimmering whiteness – the ice over the shallower water – and even further away, where two low headlands almost met, the thin black horizontal line of the bridge and beneath it, no thicker than match-sticks, the supporting uprights. To the left were flat salt marshes, to the right of the ships, two miles of low-lying agricultural land rising gently to a chain of grey-green hills. A thousand yards from the water’s edge a dyke, running parallel with the shore as far as the eye could see, aroused Sir James’s interest; looking back in the direction of the town, he saw on its surface what at first looked like long dark patches of vegetation. Keeping the telescope on them he waited and within thirty seconds was sure that they were two dense columns of marching infantry. The sunshine and the crisp clearness of the air had brought no warmth but a far greater blessing: a perfect field of vision. Besides protecting the farms from flooding during easterly gales, the dyke was also the principal road linking Genichesk with the Tchongar Bridge. A moment later some shouts from the look-out in the mainmast shrouds confirmed Sir James’s discovery. The enemy was marching to protect the bridge. Let them march, he thought, imagining how harmless and small the gunboats would look to these men on the road. Few soldiers had any conception of the range of ships’ guns, their own heaviest field-pieces being mere pop-guns in comparison with 68-pounders. Even if they were coming on at the double, they would still not be a good target for another twenty minutes, but then the survivors would be left a good deal wiser about the effects of a well-directed broadside fired at a range of just over half a mile. Sir James hoped to kill a number of them, but his principal concern was to get them off the road. Marching across fields they would be enormously delayed and would have no hope of bringing any field guns up in time to oppose the landings. Having shelled the advancing troops, the road itself could be reduced to rubble at its nearest point to the shore. Ideally it would be best to wait till the infantrymen reached that point, but Sir James did not like that idea. Time was still important. The tugs and steamers with their string of boats would get through, but he also had to guarantee that they would get out once the bridge had been destroyed.