He spun to his feet. ‘We have him now, by God!’ But Melusine had ceased to turn to starboard. She was paying off before the wind.
‘She won’t answer, sir! She won’t answer!’
It was then that Drinkwater remembered the rudder.
Chapter Fifteen
28 July 1803
The Action with the ‘Requin’
Drinkwater did not know how much damage he had inflicted upon the enemy, only that his own ship was now effectively at the mercy of the other. It was true the loss of a bowsprit severely hampered the manoeuvrability of a ship, but by shortening down and balancing his loss of forward sail with a reduction aft, the enemy still had his vessel under command. And there was a good enough breeze to assist any manoeuvre carried out in such a condition.
As for themselves, he had no time to think of the loss of the rudder, beyond the fact that they were a sitting duck. But the enemy could not guess what damage had been inflicted by fortune upon the Melusine.
‘Heave the ship to under topsails, Mr Hill!’ Drinkwater hoped he might convey to his opponent the impression of being a cautious man. A man who would not throw away his honour entirely, but one who considered that, having inflicted a measure of damage upon his enemy, would then heave to and await the acceptance of his challenge without seeking out further punishment.
Despatching Hill to examine and report upon the damage to the rudder Drinkwater called Bourne aft.
‘Now, Mr Bourne, if I read yon fellow aright, he ain’t a man to refuse our provocation. It’s my guess that he will work up to windward of us then close and board. I want every man issued with small arms, cutlasses, pikes and tomahawks. The larboard guns you are to abandon, the gun crews doubling to starboard so that the fastest possible fire may be directed at his hull. Canister and ball into his waist. Mr Mount! Your men to pick off the officers, you may station them where you like, but I want six marines and twenty seamen below as reinforcements. You will command ’em, Mr Bourne, and I want ’em out of the stern windows and up over the taffrail. So muster them in my cabin and open the skylight. Either myself, Hill or Quilhampton will pass word to you. But you are not to appear unless I order it. Do you understand?’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
‘Oh, and Mr Bourne, blacken your faces at the galley range on your way below.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘And you had better warn Singleton what is about to take place. Tell him he’ll have some work to do. By the way who was hit by that first ball?’
‘Cawkwell, sir. He’s lost a leg, I believe.’
‘Poor devil.’
‘He was closing the cabin sashes, sir.’
‘Oh.’
Drinkwater turned away and watched the enemy. As he had guessed, the Frenchman was moving up to windward. They had perhaps a quarter of an hour to wait.
‘Mr Frey!’
‘Are your two carronades loaded?’
‘Aye, sir.’
‘I think you may have employment for them soon. Now you are to man the windward one first and you are not to fire until I pass you the express order to do so. When I order you to open fire you are to direct the discharge into the thickest mass of men which crowd the enemy waist. Do you understand?’
The boy nodded. ‘I need a cool head for the job, Mr Frey.’ He lowered his voice confidentially. ‘It’s a post of honour, Mr Frey, I beg you not to let me down.’ The boy’s eyes opened wide. He was likely to be dead or covered in glory in the next half-hour, Drinkwater thought.
‘I will not disappoint you, sir.’
‘Very good. Now, listen even more carefully. When you have discharged the windward carronade you are to cross to the other and train it inboard. If you see a number of black-faced savages come over the taffrail you are to sweep the waist ahead of them with shot, even, Mr Frey, even if you appear to be firing into our own men.’
The boy’s eyes opened wider. ‘Now that is a very difficult order to obey, Mr Frey. But that is your duty. D’you understand me now?’
The boy swallowed. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Very good.’ Drinkwater smiled again, as though he had just asked Frey to fetch him an apple, or some other similarly inconsequential task. He went to the forward end of the quarterdeck and called for silence in the waist, where the men were sorting out the small arms, joking at the prospect of a fight.
‘Silence there, my lads.’ He waited until he had their attention. ‘When I order you to fire I want you to pour in as much shot across his hammock nettings then hold him from boarding. If he presses us hard you will hear the bosun’s whistle. That is the signal to fall back. Seamen forward under Lieutenants Rispin and Gorton. Marines aft under Mr Mount. When Mr Bourne’s reserve party appears from aft you will resume the attack and reman your guns as we drive these impertinent Frenchmen into the sea. I shall then call for the fore course to be let fall in order that we may draw off.’
A cheer greeted the end of this highly optimistic speech. He did not say he had no intention of following the enemy and taking their ship. He did not know how many men knew the rudder was damaged, but some things had to be left to chance.
‘Very well. Now you may lie down while he approaches.’
Like an irreverent church congregation they shuffled down and stretched out along the deck, excepting himself and Mount who kept watch from the quarterdeck nettings.
The enemy ship was almost directly to windward of them now and also heaving to. As Drinkwater watched, the side erupted in flame, and shot filled the air, whistling low overhead, like the ripping of a hundred silk shirts.
The second broadside was lower. There were screams from amidships and the ominous clang as one of the guns was hit on the muzzle and a section of bulwark was driven in. A marine grunted and fell dead. Drinkwater nudged Mount. It was Polesworth. Drinkwater felt his coat-tails being tugged. Mr Comley, the bosun, was reporting.
‘I brought my pipe aft, sir.’
‘Very good, Mr Comley. You had better remain with me and Mr Mount.’
‘Aye, sir.’
‘Have you served in many actions, Mr Comley?’ asked Drinkwater conversationally.
‘With Black Dick in the Queen Charlotte at the Glorious First, sir, with Cap’n Rose in the Jamaicky at Copenhagen, when you was in the Virago, sir, an’ a score o’ boat actions and cuttin’ outs and what not . . .’
A third broadside thudded home. Aloft rigging parted and the main top gallant mast dangled downwards.
‘You were with the gun brigs then, on the 2nd April?’
‘Aye, sir. An’ a precious waste of time they were, an’ all. I says to Cap’n Rose that by the time we’d towed ’em damned things across to Denmark and then half the little barky’s got washed ashore here an’ there . . .’
But Drinkwater never knew what advice Mr Comley had given Captain Rose in the battle with the Danish fleet. He knew that the Melusine could stand little more of the pounding she was taking without fighting back.
‘Open fire!’ He yelled and immediately the starboard guns roared out. For perhaps ten whole minutes as the larger ship drove down upon the smaller, the world became a shambles of sights and sounds through which the senses peered dimly, assaulted from every direction by destructive forces. The shot that whistled and ricochetted; the canister that swept a storm of iron balls across the Melusine’s deck; the musket balls that pinged off iron-work and whined away into the air; the screams; the smoke; the splinters that crackled about, made it seem impossible that a man could live upon the upperdeck and breathe with anything like normality. Even more astonishing was the sudden silence that befell the two ships’ companies as they prepared, the one to attack, the other to defend. It lasted perhaps no more than ten seconds, yet the peace seemed somehow endless. Until that is, it too dissolved into a bedlam of shouting and cursing, of whooping and grunting, of killing and dying. Blades and arms jarred together and the deck became slippery with blood. Drinkwater had lost his hat and his single epaulette had been shot from
his left shoulder. It was he who had ended the silence, ordering Frey’s brass carronade to sweep the enemy waist from its commanding position at the hance. He had pushed the boy roughly aside as he placed his foot on the slide to repel the first Frenchman, a young officer whose zeal placed himself neatly upon the point of Drinkwater’s sword.
Simultaneously Drinkwater discharged his pistol into the face of another Frenchman then, disengaging his hanger, cut right, at the cheek of a man lowering a pike at Mount.
‘Obliged, sir,’ yelled Mount as he half-turned and shrugged a man off his shoulder who had tried leaping down from the enemy’s mizen rigging. The smoke began to clear and Drinkwater was suddenly face to face with a man he knew instinctively was the enemy commander. Drinkwater fell back a step as the small dark bearded figure leapt through the smoke to Melusine’s deck. It was a stupid, quixotic thing to do. The man did not square up with a sword. He levelled a pistol and Drinkwater half-shielded his face as Tregembo hacked sideways with a tomahawk. The Frenchman was too quick. The pistol jerked round and was fired at Tregembo. Drinkwater saw blood on the old Cornishman’s face and lunged savagely. The French captain jumped back, turned and leapt on the rail. Drinkwater’s hanger caught him in the thigh. A marine’s bayonet appeared and the French Commander leapt back to his own deck. Drinkwater lost sight of him. He found himself suddenly assailed from the left and looked down into the waist. The defenders were bowed back as a press of Frenchmen poured across.
‘Mr Comley, your whistle!’ Drinkwater roared.
He had no idea where Comley was but the whistle’s piercing blast cut through the air above the yelling mob and Drinkwater was pleased to see the Melusines give way; he skipped to the skylight.
‘Now, Bourne, now, by God!’
A retreating marine knocked into him. The man’s eyes were dulled with madness. Drinkwater looked at Frey. The boy had the larboard carronade lanyard in his hand.
‘Fire, Mr Frey!’ The boy obeyed.
Drinkwater saw at least one Melusine taken in the back, but there seemed a hiatus in the waist. Most of his men had disengaged and skipped back two or three paces. The marines were drawn up in a rough line through which Bourne’s black-faced party suddenly appeared, passing through the intervals, each armed with pike or tomahawk. Bourne at their head held a boarding axe and a pistol. The hiatus was over. The bewildered Frenchmen were suddenly hard-pressed. Drinkwater turned to Comley.
‘Let fall the fore course, Mr Comley!’
The bosun staggered forward. ‘Mr Frey!’
‘Sir?’
‘Reload that thing and get a shot into the enemy waist from there.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
Slowly the Melusines were recovering their guns. There were dead and wounded men everywhere and the decks were red with their blood. Drinkwater followed Bourne down into the waist, joining Mount’s marines as they bayoneted retreating Frenchmen. The quarterdeck was naked. If the French took advantage of that they might yet lose the ship. Drinkwater turned back. Two or three of the enemy were preparing to leap across. He shot one with his second pistol and the other two were suddenly confronting him. They looked like officers and both had drawn swords. They attacked at once.
Drinkwater parried crudely and felt a prick in his right leg. He felt that his hour had come but smote hard upon the blade that threatened his life. Both his and his assailant’s blades snapped in the cold air and they stood, suddenly foolish. Drinkwater’s second attacker had been beaten back by a whooping Quilhampton who had shipped his hook, caught the man’s sword with it and twisted it from his grip. With his right he was hacking down at the man’s raised arm as he endeavoured to protect his head. The tomahawk bit repeatedly into the officer’s elbow.
‘Quarter, give quarter, Mr Q!’
Drinkwater’s own opponent was proffering his broken sword, hilt first as Tregembo, his cheek, hanging down like a bloody spaniel’s ear, the teeth in his lower jaw bared to the molars, pinned him against the rail.
Drinkwater was aware of the hull of the enemy drawing slowly astern as the foresail pulled Melusine clear. The French began to retreat to orders screamed from her deck and the two ships drifted apart. As they did so the enemy swung her stern towards the retiring Melusine. Drinkwater could see his opponent’s name: Requin, he read.
Drinkwater bent over the table and pointed at the sketch he had drawn. The cabin was crowded. With the exception of Mr Rispin, who had been wounded, and Mr Gorton, who had the deck, every officer, commissioned and warrant, was in the room, listening to Drinkwater’s intentions, offering advice on technical points and assisting in the planning of the rigging of a jury rudder.
For eight hours Melusine had run dead before the wind under a squared fore course which was occasionally clewed up to avoid too heavy a crash as she drove helplessly through the ice. There was no way they could avoid this treatment to the ship. His own cuts and scratches he had dressed himself, the wound in his thigh no more than an ugly gash. Since the action Drinkwater had had Singleton question Meetuck. It had been a long process which Singleton, exhausted after four hours of surgery, appalled by the carnage after the fighting and strongly disapproving of the whole profession of arms, had accomplished only with difficulty. But he had turned at last to Drinkwater with the information he wanted.
‘Yes, he says there are places from which the ice has departed at this season and which our big kayak can come close to.’
But Drinkwater could not hope to close a strange coast without a rudder. In order to refit his ship with a rudder capable of standing the strain of a passage back to Britain he had to have one capable of allowing him to close the coast of Greenland. It was this paradox that he was engaged in resolving.
He straightened up from the table. ‘Very well, gentlemen. If there are no further questions we will begin. Mr Hill, would you have the fore course taken in and we will unrig the mizen topmast without delay.’
There was a buzz of conversation as the officers filed out of the cabin. Drinkwater watched them go then leaned again over the plan. How long would it take them? Six hours? Ten? Twelve? And still the masthead lookout reported the Requin in sight to the east-north-east. He wondered what damage they had really inflicted on her. How seriously had her commander been wounded? Would his wound deter him, or goad him to resume the pursuit? The action had ceased by a kind of mutual consent. Each party had inflicted upon the other a measure of damage. He was certain the Requin was a letter-of-marque. It would be an enormous feather in the cap of a corsair captain to bring in a sloop of the Royal Navy, particularly one that was a former French corvette. First Consul Bonaparte might be expected to find high praise and honours for so successful a practitioner of la guerre de course. But his owners might not be pleased if it was at the expense of extensive damage to their ship, or too heavy a loss amongst their men. Privateering was essentially a profit-making enterprise. The Requin had clearly been built on frigate lines intended to deceive unwary merchantmen entering the Soundings. Certainly, ruminated Drinkwater, it argued that her owners had not spared expense in her fitting-out.
He sighed, hearing overhead the first thumps and shouts where the men began the task of rigging the jury rudder.
Sending down the mizen topmast was a matter of comparative simplicity. A standard task which the men might be relied upon to carry out in a routine manner. Melusine lay stationary, rolling easily upon a sea dotted with floes, but comparatively open. After an hour’s labour the topmast lay fore and aft on the quarterdeck and was being stripped of its unwanted fittings. The topgallant mast was removed from it, but the cross-trees were left and the upper end of the topmast itself was rested on the taffrail. It was lashed there until the carpenter’s mate had adzed a notch in the handsome carving. Meanwhile the carpenter had begun to build up a rudder blade by raising a vertical plane on the after side of the mast, coach-bolting each baulk of timber to its neighbour. In the waist the forge was hoisted up and a number of boarding pikes heated up to be beaten int
o bars with which to bind the rudder blade.
Fabricating the jury rudder and stock was comparatively easy. What exercised Drinkwater’s ingenuity was the manner of shipping it so that it could be used to steer the ship. After some consultation with the warrant officers, particularly regarding the materials available, it was decided that an iron ring to encircle the masthead could be fabricated from the head-iron at the top of the mizen lower mast. This was of a sufficient diameter to encompass the heel of the mizen topmast so, by fitting it to the lesser diameter of the topmast’s other end, there was sufficient play to allow the mast to rotate. The head-iron also had the advantage of having a second ring, a squared section band, which capped the mizen lower masthead. To this could be secured two chains, made from the yard slings from the main yard and elongated by those from the foreyard. These could then be led as far forward as was practical and bowsed taught at the fore-chains. This head-iron would thus become the new heel-iron for the rudder stock, a kind of stirrup.
The first part of the work went well. Some considerable delay was experienced in driving the head-iron off the mizen lower mast, but while Bourne and the bosun were aloft struggling with wedges, two stout timbers were prepared to be lashed either side of the vertical mizen topmast when it was lowered upside down, over the stern. A large pudding-fender was also slung over the side and lashed against the taffrail. The jury rudder stock would then turn against this well-slushed fender, restrained from moving to left or right by the side timbers.
There remained two problems. The first was to keep tension on the heel arrangement which it would be impossible to attend to once the thing was hoisted over the side. And the other would be to fabricate a method of actually turning the rudder.
Drinkwater estimated that Melusine’s forward speed would contribute greatly to the first as long as her alterations of direction were small, such as would occur while steering a course. Terrific strain would be imposed if large rudder angles were necessary, as would be the case with tacking or wearing or, God help them, if they had to fight another action with the Requin. To this end Drinkwater had the mizen topgallant yard slung over the stern and lashed below the level of his quarter galleries. From here tackles were led to the mizen topmast-head which would, of course, be the heel of the rudder stock when rigged. The cross-jack yard was similarly readied across the upper taffrail from quarter to quarter and lashed to the stern davits. From here two tackles could be rigged to the upper end of the topmast which would extend some feet above the rail and give good leverage to steady the spar.
The Corvette Page 21