The Blast That Tears the Skies (2012)

by Davies, J. D

  Scobey brought me another jug of small beer, and I drank it greedily. I rubbed sweat and grime from my eyes and looked again upon the dreadful fight between the two great flagships. Was it my imagination, or was the fire from the Royal Charles weakening? What if the Duke and Penn were dead?

  The hull of the Eendracht broke apart in front of me. I saw it consumed by a vast ball of flame, a sudden and dreadful eruption of reds, whites and yellows followed at once by the greys and blacks of a great smoke cloud. The hull simply disintegrated, huge shards of wood flying in all directions. Great cannon were tossed into the air like children’s toys. In the midst of the fireball were the men of the ship. They seemed to swim upon the air, flailing frantically for some refuge that their hands would never find. Many were in pieces, arms, legs and heads all flying off in different directions. Others were ablaze, the flesh melting from their bones as I watched.

  A moment later, I heard the explosion. The loudest broadside of the largest fleet was as but a pop-gun compared to it. The blast silenced the battle. Every man’s eyes turned to that space where the two flagships had duelled.

  But no more. For as the smoke cleared, only the Royal Charles floated upon the waters. Her larboard side, the side that had been obscured by the presence of the Eendracht, was clear to the view.

  Then the truth came to me, all in one with the stench of blood and death.

  The Eendracht was gone. The Dutch flagship had blown up.

  Obdam sails in, plac’d in his naval throne,

  Assuming courage greater than his own,

  Makes to the Duke and threatens him from far,

  To nail himself to ’s board like a petar,

  But in the vain attempt takes fire too soon,

  And flies up in his ship to catch the moon.

  Monsieurs like rockets mount aloft and crack,

  In thousand sparks, then dancingly fall back.

  ~ Marvell, Second Advice to a Painter

  They say that the blast which destroyed the Eendracht shattered windows in The Hague. I cannot speak for that, but Cherry Cheeks Russell, aboard the Royal Charles, claimed his hearing was not truly right until weeks after the battle. He also told me that the Duke and Penn knew, some time before the explosion, that Lord Obdam was already dead, killed during the cannonade. Penn had just sighted that which I had taken to be galley smoke, and commented to the Duke that there seemed to be some sort of accidental blaze aboard the Dutch flagship, barely moments before that same blaze must have ignited the magazine and blown the Eendracht apart.

  The sound of the blast brought Francis Gale to the quarterdeck from his station below, where, as was his wont, he divided his time between ministering to the immortal souls of the dying and using his cutlass to upbraid the backsliders among the living. He surveyed the scene, registered what had happened, and made the sign of the cross in the direction of the lost Dutch ship. Then he led those of us upon the quarterdeck in the Lord’s Prayer, probably the only words appropriate to the occasion. The Royal Charles already had her boats rushing across the water to where the Eendracht had been, for even such a conclusive disaster as this had survivors. Five survivors, we later learned. Five from a crew of four hundred. In the moment itself, though, it was impossible to judge the scale of the slaughter. I could see only that we were too far away to be of use, otherwise I would certainly have despatched our own boats to assist. For at the end, when all is said and done, when the kings and the admirals have blustered as they please, we are after all but men cast adrift upon that most unnatural and perilous plane, the sea, and thus united in the common cause of survival.

  The loss of Obdam and the Eendracht proved the last straw for many of the Dutch, already weakening under the relentless bombardment of our more powerful gunnery. From the quarterdeck of the Merhonour, I could see only the clear proofs of victory and defeat. Heartened by the mighty blast, our ships fell about the enemy in furious pell-mell fighting. Broken by the horror that had befallen the Eendracht, individual Dutch ships, or small groups of them, turned out of the battle. They cut the lines that secured their boats behind them, hoisted studding sails and every other inch of canvas they possessed, and ran for Holland upon the wind.

  ‘Strange,’ said Kit Farrell, who was scanning the scene continuously with his telescope. ‘Their dead Obdam appears to have spawned three successors. Look, sir. There – then over to northward, there – and there, fleeing ahead of Rear-Admiral Berkeley’s division. Three command flags.’

  It was true; it seemed that out of the death of Obdam, no fewer than three new commanders-in-chief had arisen, hydra-like. I learned only much later the cause of this extraordinary confusion. Obdam’s second-in-command should have been Evertsen, a Zeelander, so out of its hatred of all things Zeeland, the Admiralty of Holland insisted on installing one of their own, a certain Kortenaer, as Obdam’s deputy. But Kortenaer had his leg blown off in the very first pass and lay in his cabin, mortally wounded. His flag captain aboard the Groot Hollandia had either forgotten to haul down his flag or kept it flying, presumably on the grounds that if the admiral breathed, he was admiral still; but now the flag captain chose to turn and run, and many of the ships near him, assuming that Kortenaer lived and thus commanded in chief, followed in his wake. Seeing this, Evertsen hoisted the command flag too, thereby hoping to rally the fleet to him for a rearguard action against the oncoming British. But even now, in one of the direst crises ever to face their navy and their nation, the Dutch preferred to play out their little provincial spites. Tromp of Amsterdam, refusing to obey the orders of a Zeelander, hoisted the command flag aboard his own flagship, De Liefde. Three flags and three admirals, all claiming to be the legitimate commander-in-chief of the fleet of the United Provinces of the Netherlands: it would have been laughable but for the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of deaths that the confusion towed in its wake.

  One ship, and one ship alone, did not join the headlong flight. The Oranje, the same great ship that had earlier fought its way through our entire squadron, now veered resolutely into the path of the Royal Charles and began trading broadsides with the flagship. My good-brother Cornelis seemed quite determined upon single-handedly changing the outcome of the battle.

  The Oranje and the Royal Charles exchanged a shattering broadside, but Cornelis was clearly intent on more than that. The Oranje bore down relentlessly, finally ploughing into the larboard beam of the Charles with a resounding crash that visibly shook the hulls of both ships. Dutchmen rushed to their forecastle and climbed into the rigging. A few grabbed ropes and swung themselves across onto the deck of the British ship.

  ‘A brave spirit indeed,’ said Francis. ‘Refuses to acknowledge defeat. ’Tis easy to tell that he and your good lady are from the same pod, Matthew.’

  ‘He need not be defeated, Francis,’ I said in both admiration and trepidation. ‘He can win not just the battle but the entire war if he seizes the Charles – if he captures the heir to the throne! God in Heaven, can you imagine the sort of ransom the king would have to pay to free his brother from humiliation in a Dutch prison?’ The thought that had occurred to me during the Oranje’s very first attack upon the Red squadron returned to me, reinforced a hundredfold. ‘I think it is what he sought to do before, when he was to windward of both fleets. Run in upon the wind, board and capture the Charles, sowing confusion among our fleet. But our press of ships must have been too great for him then – he could not reach her. But now he can.’

  Just then, a great gap opened up ahead of us as several of the faster ships of the Red, our line abandoned and all divisions now mingled together, poured past in pursuit of the fleeing Dutch fleet. That left clear water between the Merhonour and the Oranje; between Matthew Quinton and his wife’s brother.

  My duty was clear. It was time to put behind me both grief for Roberts and the Bachelor’s Delight and shock at the horror that had befallen the Eendracht. ‘Mister Yardley!’ I cried. ‘A course to lay us alongside the Dutchman, yonder, if you please!’

/>   I took up a voice trumpet and rushed to the quarterdeck rail. ‘Men of the Merhonour! This is our moment, lads! We sail to save the Duke, for the glory of old England!’ I saw Polzeath, Tremar, Macferran and some of the Welsh scowling and hastily added, ‘Aye, for the honour of Britannia!’

  I was greeted by answering shouts of Kernow bys vyken! and Cymru am byth! Macferran seemed to be screaming something about a Wallace, or some such name.

  The bow of the ancient ship came around into an almost perfect line with the mainmast of the Oranje. Cornelis must have realised at once that his design upon the Royal Charles was doomed; he veered away and bore down directly toward us upon the other tack, the Dutch red lion figurehead rampant in defiance.

  Now the Merhonour’s sluggishness was no longer an issue. I could see a grim determination in the eyes of the gun crews on the upper deck, for this would be a duel to the finish, ship against ship, gun against gun. Kit Farrell saluted me and went to his station below, upon the middle gun deck.

  ‘Let us pray,’ cried Francis Gale. ‘Thou, Oh Lord, art just and powerful: oh defend our cause against the face of the enemy. Oh God, thou art a strong power of defence to all that flee unto thee. Oh suffer us not to sink under the weight of our sins, or the violence of the enemy. Oh Lord, arise, help us, and deliver us for thy name’s sake. Amen.’

  Solemn amens echoed from all upon the quarterdeck, even from the papist Roger d’Andelys.

  As the Oranje came alongside, the two ships fired almost as one. Our ancient hull shuddered from the force of our broadside, but almost simultaneously, I felt the blows as the answering fire struck us. I heard screams from our deck and felt the impact of balls striking our hull. The smoke cleared a little, and I saw a terrible scene ahead of me. The Oranje was higher out of the water than the squat old Merhonour, and Cornelis must have loaded his upper deck guns with chain- and bar-shot, as the Dutch were ever wont to do. The shrouds and stays of our mainmast were in shreds, and the carpenter’s crew were already attending to the trunk of the mast; if Oranje could bring it down, we would be doomed. The protective fights over the deck were in ribbons. At least a dozen men lay dead or wounded upon the deck, their blood spreading across the planking. I recognised John Tremar, the formidably strong little Cornishman, lying on his back grasping his stomach. He was alive and muttering urgently to the giant Polzeath, who kneeled over him solicitously. I saw the head and trunk belonging to young Castle, my servant. As his remains were thrown unceremoniously over the side, I wondered how, in God’s name, I would be able to tell his widowed mother, whose last living child this had been. If I survived to tell her, that was.

  Francis Gale ran down into the waist to help with the wounded and to say prayers over the dead. Roger d’Andelys waved his sword at the great Dutch ship in impotent defiance. My warrant and petty officers bellowed orders through voice trumpets, striving to make themselves heard above the roaring of the guns, the pitiful screams of dying men and the rumble of gun-carriage wheels upon the decks as recoiled and reloaded cannon were run back out again.

  On the downroll, Merhonour fired again, and I saw several of our balls smash clean through the side of the Oranje. A merchant’s hull, Kit Farrell had said, so thinner than that of any purpose-built man-of-war…

  But on the uproll, the Oranje fired again.

  I heard a scream close to me, and turned to see Roger, staring in stupefaction at the bleeding stump where his left hand had been. ‘Ah, mon dieu,’ he cried in agonised gasps, ‘to die will be bad enough, but to die for England? No Frenchman deserves that.’

  With that he fainted away. Carvell and a couple of the Bristol lads were up to him in a moment, carrying him down to the surgeon’s cockpit on the orlop. Perhaps the magic of Ieuan Goch would preserve my friend’s life, for I had no faith in our dullard of a surgeon. I fought back the tears. This was living hell, and now it was set to claim the life of one of my dearest friends. I had no doubt that in but a very little time, it would claim my own.

  Wind and tide pushed the two ships closer together. The mainyards even touched momentarily, like swordsmen at prise-de-fer. Now the musket fire from the tops and upper deck of the Oranje began in earnest. Our canvas fights were already horribly torn, the Dutch ship had a much larger crew, and many of her men were soldiers; thus her marksmanship was deadly. I could see plainly the faces of individual Dutchmen as they levelled their muskets.

  Yet we were giving almost as good as we got: Macferran and one of the Welshmen, manning a swivel-gun on the rail near me, got off a round of canister shot that scattered its deadly contents of nails and musket balls on impact, decimating a whole swathe of the enemy.

  ‘Good work, Macferran, Prydderch!’ I cried.

  I drew my own two pistols from my belt and prepared them. I raised a pistol in my right hand and took aim at a tight group of soldiers towards the rear of the Oranje’s waist. At that range, I could not fail to hit one of them –

  I fired. My arm pulled up with the recoil and the smoke from my shot shrouded me, but cleared quickly enough to see a Dutchman clutch the side of his head, where once his ear had been. His body contorted, and he fell from the rail of the Oranje into the sea between the ships. I passed the emptied pistol to young Scobey for reloading, then took aim at once with my left hand and fired again.

  I do not know if I hit another of the enemy. In that moment I heard Lieutenant Giffard’s shout from further forward. I turned and looked at him, but before he could speak to me a fountain of blood spat from the top of his head and he fell dead to the deck. Almost in the same moment, I felt a sudden sharp pain in my foot, looked down and saw blood seeping over my shoe from a round wound in my instep. I do not know if I cried out or not. Master Yardley dragged me down behind one of the larboard demi-culverins, tore off my shoe, pulled Cornelia’s kerchief from my scabbard and wrapped it around the bleeding foot. Poor Cornelia: what torment of mind she would be in if she knew how earnestly her brother and her husband were endeavouring to kill each other, and what far greater torment would overwhelm her if one of us succeeded.

  ‘Lucky, Captain,’ he said soothingly. ‘A hit from one of the marksmen in their tops. A few inches’ difference in his aim and the ball would have gone through the top of your skull.’

  Round shot from the Oranje’s middle deck smashed through the starboard rail, taking away several feet of the deck where I had just been standing and sending a huge splinter of oak straight through Yardley’s stomach. The master looked at me with what seemed to be mild disappointment, his hands gripping the great wooden shard that protruded bloodily through his jerkin.

  Scobey and Barcock ran to attend me. My two young servants were still visibly pale from witnessing the death of their companion Castle and the indiscriminate slaughter all around them; now they saw their captain bathed in the blood of Yardley, and momentarily must have thought that I, too, had perished.

  ‘I need reports,’ I hissed at them through my pain. ‘Reports from all quarters. Order to Lieutenant Farrell. Unman the larboard guns on the middle and lower gundecks and send the spare men up here to replace our losses. Above all, maintain fire on the downroll!’

  It took another two or three broadsides for the reports to be brought to me, and it was only Scobey who bore them; Barcock had fallen on the middle gundeck, taken away by a vast splinter that impaled him against a bulkhead. I thought of his father and mother, so well known to me from Ravensden, but now just another set of parents who did not yet know that they ought to don their mourning weeds. Such is war: a time of black drapery.

  Our position was evidently desperate. A hundred men, over a quarter of the ship’s company, lay dead or dying. Giffard, Yardley and most of the standing officers were gone. That good, honest soul Roger, Comte d’Andelys, straddled the border between life and death. The sails and rigging were in shreds; God alone knew how our masts still stood, but Thurston, our ancient carpenter, seemed to have made it a matter of personal pride that the enemy would not fell our mainmast. He st
ood by it, oblivious to the carnage all around him, ordering his rapidly diminishing crew to shore up here and hammer some treenails into place there. Through my pain, I tried desperately to conceive of a way in which the captain of the Merhonour could extricate the ship and his remaining men from this bloody horror. There was one only that I could envisage: surrender. If Merhonour yielded, this would end, and good men would live. My foot screamed at me to haul down the flag; my head, swimming in pain and appalled by the carnage around me, joined it in alliance; but at the last, my heart held out. In a voice all its own, not that of my grandfather or any other of my ancestors, it said simply, ‘A Quinton does not surrender.’

  But still the guns of the Oranje thundered.

  It was obvious what Cornelis was about. It was the classic Dutch tactic: weaken the enemy, clear his decks, then close for the boarding. And if it came to that, my good-brother had far more men available to him. Men who would have calculated exactly how much coin the States-General would pay them for taking such a great prize as the Merhonour.