The Blast That Tears the Skies (2012)

by Davies, J. D

  Giffard, Yardley and Kit Farrell, who had all taken their own independent observations, nodded in agreement, and the Merhonour duly had her noon position. This was one aspect of the sea-trade in which I felt increasingly confident, having practised it daily during my previous commands. After some early disasters, such as when lying in the harbour of Messina and establishing to my own short-lived satisfaction that we were several hundred leagues up the Amazon, I had reached a condition where my observations were rarely even a minute or two out from those of the most expert navigators.

  Prayers and the noonday observation ushered in a new ship’s day, and with it the crew’s main meal. But messes had barely begun queuing at the cook’s pot when our lookout cried out.

  My officers and I all lifted our eyepieces and looked out toward the east, where Prince Rupert’s White squadron formed the van.

  ‘The prince is hoisting and lowering the Ancient,’ said Giffard. ‘The enemy fleet’s in sight.’

  The intelligence was around our fleet in the blinking of an eye. It was almost possible to sense the new resolve that only the prospect of imminent battle can bring.

  I turned to my lieutenants. ‘Very well. Mister Giffard, Mister Farrell, I think it is time to clear the decks for action.’

  Kit grinned in return. ‘Time indeed, sir.’

  The distant sounds of trumpets and drums provided evidence that the process had already begun on other ships of the fleet. Now the Merhonour joined them, the off-duty larboard watch joining their brethren of the starboard in making the ship ready for action. I had given the same order several times aboard lesser ships, but had never before witnessed it aboard such a great man-of-war. I went below and took in the scene. My cabin was already vanishing before my eyes: the bulkhead that kept me private from the rest of the ship was coming down, the legs were being removed from my table, and my sea-chest was being manhandled into the hold. Roger d’Andelys seemed to have forgotten his lordly dignity and was cheerily assisting the men in demolishing every partition in their way; but perhaps tearing down the structures of the English fulfils some ancient, deep-rooted need within every Frenchman. The men were content and determined, all still in awe of the previous evening’s performance from Francis Gale, most convinced that the curse of the Merhonour was well and truly despatched to the infernal regions whence it had sprung.

  Forward, gunport after gunport snapped open in succession, admitting the bright daylight, and I saw the upper gundeck in all its splendour, to either side the nine bronze culverins that had so impressed my good-sister. Gun captains and their crews were vigorously polishing their weapons, competing with each other to achieve the brightest shine upon their barrels; a strange conceit, as a dull gun will kill as effectively as a shining one, but such things have ever mattered greatly to the English mariner.

  I returned to the quarterdeck and levelled my eyepiece once again upon the horizon, straining to spot what the van could already see, irritated beyond measure when some of our own ships passed in front of my lens and blocked my view. There was our scouting frigate, returning toward the fleet with her topgallants flying, the signal that the enemy was in sight. There, behind her – a speck – was that the top of a mast? Another speck, to northward? A moment later, there could be no mistake. Upon the horizon at east-north-east, bearing down upon us, borne upon the wind blowing from that direction, a tiny band of specks grew and merged into a broader band of wood and canvas. The headmost were now recognisable as ships; hulls and sails became distinguishable. Not long afterwards, it was possible to tell two-deckers and three-deckers apart, with reassuringly fewer of the latter than were present in our fleet. Another turn of the glass, and I could just glimpse the unmistakeable horizontal bars, red-white-blue, of the Dutch ensign. Only a little longer and I could confirm with my own eyes the word that had already come back from the scouts of the van: one hundred ships, more or less, almost identical to our strength.

  ‘Well, gentlemen,’ I said with as much levity as I could muster, ‘it seems Lord Obdam has us at a disadvantage. He has the wind.’

  Giffard and Kit nodded gravely. This was dire: Penn’s confident plan of battle had been founded on the assumption that we would have the weather gage, upwind of the enemy, and could thus choose the moment and the method of our attack. Yet we had lingered too long at the Gunfleet, in part thanks to the Duchess of York’s untimely sojourn, and a strong north-easterly had given the Dutch fleet the advantage. At any moment, the enemy would press down against us and we would have to attempt to form our line-of-battle defensively, into the teeth of the wind and the Dutch.

  I turned my glass upon Lawson’s Royal Oak, alert to any sign of an untoward movement by her, and then upon the other ships commanded by former Commonwealths-men: Jordan’s St George, Smith’s Mary and in the distance the likes of Myngs’ Triumph. Nothing: no unexpected movement out of the sailing order, no putting on or slackening of sail. Nothing. The navy of England remained united.

  The glass turned and the ship’s bell rang. No doubt like every other captain in the fleet, I stood rooted to my quarterdeck, the telescope at my eye until the socket hurt. Another turn of the glass, another ring of the bell, and still the Dutch stood upon the horizon. Still no English ship made an unexpected move.

  ‘What in the name of Heaven is Obdam waiting for?’ I complained in the middle of the afternoon. ‘He has the advantage. Why does he not attack?’ I did not utter my still darker thought: that any treachery within our own fleet was not likely to reveal itself until, or if, the Dutch admiral made his move.

  Roger d’Andelys had come on deck. ‘Cowardice,’ he said. ‘A French fleet holding the wind would be engaged by now. Perhaps the Dutch seek courage in the only way they know, and even now their decks are awash with gin.’

  Kit Farrell shook his head. ‘Madness more like, My Lord. The longer Obdam delays, the greater the likelihood of the wind changing, or of our fleet regaining the weather gage.’

  And indeed, that was precisely what we were endeavouring to do: all through the afternoon, our fleet edged slowly southward and eastward, seeking to restore the advantage to ourselves. The Dutch must have known what we were about, and yet they made no attempt to stop us. Still they refused to engage.

  Understanding, when it came to me, was a kind of epiphany. I lowered my telescope, looked at Roger and Kit, and said calmly, ‘Not quite cowardice and not quite madness, but perhaps a little of both. He does not trust his fleet.’ I thought back to our first council-of-war, to the intelligence that had been presented to us, and felt increasingly confident in my assessment. ‘They’ve had almost no sea-time compared to us, he has a hierarchy beneath him that not even a madman would conceive, and enough jealousies between them to make the House of Commons resemble a harmonious congregation of saints. Obdam has to give himself time to ensure that his fleet obeys his will – and though an east wind gives him the advantage now, it will also cut off his retreat if he loses. So he waits for a still more favourable wind – and to convince himself that his fleet will obey him.’

  All of my concern, and perhaps that of the Duke of York too, had been with the possibility of disloyalty in our own fleet; we had forgotten that Obdam had perhaps even greater cause to suspect it in his.

  Confident now that no battle was imminent, I went below for a meal of herrings, salt-beef stew and bread.

  * * *

  Through the evening and night, and then through the whole of the next day, the picture remained the same. The Dutch stood off to the east, some three leagues away, and came no nearer. For our part, we continued to edge further to eastward, especially in the afternoon when the wind came round more to the south-east. At noon we were some four leagues south-east of Lowestoft, eight hours later some seven leagues due east of it. I slept through a fair part of the afternoon on that second day of June, albeit on a blanket upon the deck where my cabin had been, anticipating that I would soon need every waking hour I could muster. Yet sleep was elusive. A man-of-war is always
a place of noise and bustle, and when battle threatens, it is doubly so. What seemed to be a herd of stampeding bulls upon the deck above my head turned out to be men rigging the protective canvas ‘fights’ upon our bulwarks: the feeble barriers that were intended to give the men on the upper deck (the captain included) some protection from small shot if it came to close fighting.

  At about midnight I was summoned to the quarterdeck, bathed in the light of our vast stern lanterns and by a sharp moon. Kit pointed triumphantly to our swallow-tail pennant at the maintop.

  ‘Wind’s changed, Captain. South-south-west. We have gained the weather gage, sir. And look yonder. One of the Dutchmen is ablaze – probably a fireship that’s taken light accidentally.’

  Off to the north-east, bright flames lit the horizon. Through my eyepiece I could see a black hull and masts, all alight. Occasionally the hull of another Dutch ship passed in front of the burning wreck, seeming for all the world like a ghost ship upon the fiery ocean of Hell.

  ‘Perhaps they’ll do our work for us, Kit,’ I said lightly. ‘We need only another hundred or so to do the like!’

  Dawn broke at four. At once, it was clear to every man in our fleet that the Dutch had awoken from their torpor: Obdam had ordered his ships to tack, and they were bearing down upon us, stemming westward. The signal to form line-of-battle broke out upon the Royal Charles, and I prayed that this time, the Merhonour would not be disgraced. I strode impatiently from starboard to larboard and back again, then down to the forecastle and back again, watching as Yardley and Giffard conned us toward the stern of the Royal Oak in the van division of the Red Squadron, with Prince Rupert’s White ahead of us and the remainder of the Red, followed by the Blue, stretching away astern. This time, I had no cause for fear. We fell in immaculately, half a cable astern of Lawson, who stood at his stern rail and nodded appreciatively.

  But in truth, it was the mirror image of the practice manoeuvre. The Merhonour was in her allotted place, but faced with a real enemy, many of our other ships had luffed up too far to windward. Rather than an immaculate line, we had little bunches of three or four ships almost abreast, obstructing each other’s lines of fire. And all the while, the Dutch approached us on the opposite tack.

  It was the first time I ever saw the approach of an enemy fleet, and I marvelled at the sight. I had seen one battle of great armies, that on the dunes before Dunkirk seven years before, and although the approach of the enemy on land is a terrible prospect, it is as nothing to his approach by sea. Soldiers are but men, and thus an army is only as tall as men, with horses, flags and pikes alone giving it greater height. Yet a great fleet fills sea and sky alike with timber and canvas, each of the larger ships carrying more cannon than many an army. Young Barcock and Castle brought me my martial paraphernalia – my grandfather’s sword, my father’s breastplate, Cornelia’s kerchief tied to my scabbard – and as I put on the garb of a warrior, I prayed both that I would be equal to the task ahead, and that the Will stored safely in my sea-chest would not need to be read for many a day.

  Now commenced the overture to battle: the cacophony of drums and trumpets as each crew was whipped up into warlike spirit by music, which has accompanied warriors into battle since long before the days of Caesar and Alexander. And now the strangest event occurred. The Merhonour, the one ship to have had no song when we first sailed from the Gunfleet, suddenly became the only ship of the English fleet to have one. As our trumpeters and drummers paused briefly to take beer and refresh their throats, Ieuan Goch of Myddfai sprang onto the grating of the fore hatch and began a war song of his land. At once, the majority of the Welshmen joined in; I could hear an answering harmony from below decks. The Cornish evidently recognised the tune, too. Treninnick, up upon the main yard, waved his arms about joyfully as he sang along.

  ‘Ah, Matthew,’ said Roger d’Andelys, who had turned the crew of Le Téméraire into the finest choir upon the Atlantic, ‘bravo indeed! A company that can sing is a company that can fight, in all truth!’

  He listened intently to the tune, hummed a few bars to get the note, and then burst into a fine rendition of the bass line, despite having to content himself with ‘fa-la-la’ for lyrics. None apart from the Welsh or the Cornish could sing any of the words; indeed, out of all that mighty and distinctly lengthy air, verse after verse of Celtic defiance, I recognised but one word. It was the name of the last castle in South Britain to have held out for King Charles the Martyr: Harlech.

  The first firing began not long after dawn. We heard the thunderous blast of the guns from the van, Rupert’s white squadron, and within moments the smoke was across our deck, attacking our nostrils and silencing the war-song of the Welsh. It thinned momentarily, and there were the headmost Dutch ships, clearing Sansum’s rear division and starting to exchange fire with our leading ships, the Bristol and the Gloucester –

  ‘Too far off,’ observed Roger d’Andelys, who stood at my side; my lieutenants had gone to take up their stations on the gun decks. ‘There’ll be but little damage at this distance.’

  Roger was right; there must have been six or seven hundred yards between the two lines. The Royal Oak opened fire on the headmost Dutchman – nearly our time – nearly our time –

  There was a sudden roar of gunfire. The hull of the Merhonour shook as balls struck it. Several more passed through our rigging, and one tore a hole in the mainsail. In horror, I gazed not at the Dutch to larboard, for still their leading ships did not fire upon us, but away to starboard. There, some three hundred yards away and thus well out of her place behind us in the line, lay Abelson’s Guinea.

  She had fired upon us.

  The great marine rebellion had begun.

  * * *

  As the smoke cleared, I stared angrily across the water toward the Guinea, drew my sword and waved it defiantly at the traitors.

  We had been betrayed – the poor manoeuvring into line was but a ruse, a means by which the defecting ships could get into position to windward of the loyal – within moments we would be in a pincer between the Royal Oak and the Guinea, with the Dutch van squadron barely a few hundred yards away and ready to join them –

  I felt bile and anger rise in my throat. Once before I had been deceived by a captain and a ship that secretly remained true to the old cause of the republic; now I contended against twenty, with no hope of coming off alive. Angry, afraid and determined, I turned away from the starboard rail, ready to give the order to open fire on the Guinea and then to fight both sides of the ship at once. Ready to fight an inevitably hopeless battle to the death against Dutchmen and English traitors.

  ‘We are betrayed, My Lord!’ I informed the Comte d’Andelys.

  Roger drew his sword and saluted me. ‘So we fight Englishmen, then, Matthew? So be it. I shall be neither the first Frenchman nor the first Gaillard-Herblay so to do.’

  ‘Vive le roi, mon seigneur d’Andelys, et vive la Merhonour!’ I cried, returning his salute. ‘Scobey, there! Orders to the Master Gunner – starboard battery to prepare to engage the Guinea upon my command, each gun as she bears –’

  Hearing my order, the gun captains nearest me upon the upper deck readied their linstocks -

  Hold, boy. Look again. It might have been the breeze, or the incessant gunfire all along the forward half of our line of battle, or perhaps an almost forgotten voice in my head. But something made me turn back to the rail, to look out again at the Guinea.

  Abelson’s hands were raised in supplication. His ship was turning, endeavouring to fall into her proper place in the line directly astern of us. And at once I knew: there was no treachery here. In his eagerness to fight the Dutch, Abelson had given the order to fire even though his vision was obscured by the gunsmoke ruling back from the Royal Oak’s broadside. His gun crews had fired into the Merhonour by accident. The relief flooded over me like the waves of a spring tide.

  I snatched a voice trumpet from Turner, one of the master’s mates, and shouted a belaying order to Scobey. A brea
thless and clearly exhilarated Cherry Cheeks Russell ran onto the quarterdeck at that moment. ‘Captain, sir! Mister Webb requests the order to open fire!’

  ‘Are the lower deck ports safe, Mister Russell?’

  ‘Mister Webb swears they are so, sir!’

  The consequence of Penn’s belief in the line-of-battle, and thus in sheer weight of shot, was that the heaviest guns possible had been crammed into every ship in the fleet, the Merhonour included, so that in even a moderate swell opening the lowest range of leeward gunports threatened to swamp the ship. But if Webb swore we had enough freeboard – very well, then –

  I looked out to larboard again. The headmost Dutch ships had attempted to concentrate fire on the Royal Oak, attracted by her Vice-Admiral’s flag at the foretopmast head, but now their stems were cutting through clear water again. In a moment, they would be abreast of us.

  ‘Very well, Mister Russell! Orders to Mister Webb! Larboard guns to fire an entire broadside upon the headmost of the enemy as they bear, then sequential fire by the battery upon the downroll, lower deck first!’

  Russell ran off to Webb, and within moments the larboard battery of the Merhonour blazed out in defiance, as it had done against the Invincible Armada all those years before. Flame and smoke spouted ferociously from the larboard broadside. The great ship shook from the recoils, the ancient timbers groaning in protest. I felt the timbers strain and quiver beneath my feet, sending shock waves through my entire body. The Merhonour was beginning her last battle; and thanks be to God, it seemed it would not be fought against fellow Englishmen.

  That first pass of the fleets was my first experience of a fleet battle, and it seemed hellish beyond all measure: the endless roar of broadsides, our own among them; the ever-increasing clouds of acrid gunsmoke; the scream of shot flying overhead, or into the rigging, or into the sea. Our guns blazed away, the crews working almost as automatons: fire, recoil, secure, swab, reload, ram home, turn outward again, aim, linstock, give fire! Boys ran to and from each gun as though their lives depended on it, bringing up fresh powder cartridges and more shot from the magazine below. Upon my watch, I calculated that each gun was firing perhaps every seven or eight minutes, and few ships in the fleet would be able to match that. I made several expeditions along the upper deck to encourage the sweating, determined gun crews, nearly dancing between the recoils of the great guns, stabbing my sword at the distant enemy and roaring like an actor declaiming Macbeth.