by Tom Williams
And now, in Cape Town, his orders had arrived. The problem was that the instructions from the government (marked ‘Secret’ and sealed with copious quantities of wax) not only made no mention of de Liniers or any rebel plot but made it clear that Popham was expected to invade South America and claim the land for Britain. There was no suggestion that he would be liberating it on behalf of the inhabitants or that de Liniers and his rebels should be acknowledged in any way.
Popham blamed Pitt. The wretched man had no business dying like that. When there’s a war on, you do your duty – and the Prime Minister’s duty is to survive. Pitt was known to have been scheming with South American exiles for years. When England and Spain had been at peace, their ambassador in London was forever complaining that the city was swarming with Latin-American radicals. But now Pitt was gone and his successor, Lord Grenville, was desperately trying to reconstruct a foreign policy that had existed largely in the mind of his brilliant predecessor.
Finally, just to make confusion absolutely certain, there was a direct order from the Admiralty. Their lordships, it seemed, had not been made privy to Lord Grenville’s plans, such as they were, and had issued instructions that Popham’s squadron should stand by in South Africa ready to support a British invasion that was successfully completed even before the despatch had started on its way from London.
Another commander would have seen the confusion of different orders as a problem. But not Popham. For him, such confusion was an opportunity.
There was a knock at the cabin door.
‘Colonel Beresford is here to see you, sir.’
Popham beamed and rose to greet his guest.
‘Beresford, it’s good of you to come.’
Beresford entered the room gingerly. He was a tall man and, like many soldiers, he seemed uncomfortable with the navy’s low beams.
‘You said you had a request you needed to discuss?’
‘Can I offer you a drink? Some refreshment?’
Popham fussed over his guest until Beresford thought he would explode.
‘Please, Commodore, just tell me what you want.’
‘Well, I was wondering: as the army seems to have completed its task here, do you think I could borrow fifteen hundred men?’
*
Popham’s fleet entered the estuary of the Plate on June 11th 1806. It was the middle of winter and, though the weather was warmer than an English December, the Plate was shrouded in fog.
Popham and Beresford were seated at the chart table in the great cabin of the Narcissus, arguing about what they were to do now they had arrived in South America. It was an argument that had been occupying them, on and off, ever since they had left Cape Town but now, inevitably, it was reaching its climax.
‘You say you have intelligence that Monte Video is barely defended. You show me plans that demonstrate the exact position of their artillery. The town could be taken with the forces we have at our command and will provide a defensible base to fall back on should this venture not prove as successful as you assure me it will be.’
Popham scowled at the colonel. He found himself despising the army mentality that moved step by cautious step, losing the greater prize in its efforts to gain a foothold here or advance a line a league there. If it weren’t for him, Beresford would still be in South Africa, achieving nothing. And now, with the navy putting the capital of La Plata in his grasp, he would delay so that he might take Monte Video.
‘Colonel, we have clear intelligence that Buenos Aires will fall if we only march on the city. With Buenos Aires comes La Plata and with La Plata a foothold which will allow Britain to wrest the whole of South America from Spanish control.’
Beresford snorted with disgust.
‘Your “intelligence” comes down to a promise from some dago that the Spaniards will not fight. Which comes as no surprise. They will not fight in Monte Video and, once we have taken there, they will not fight in Buenos Aires. But we cannot mount a campaign on the basis that the enemy will never fight. There is always the possibility that, one day, they might.’
Popham kept his gaze firmly focussed on the maps unrolled before him and took a deep breath. God save us from a soldier who sees the chance to lead a heroic campaign, he thought. Was there to be no end to this argument? On sea, Popham was in command and he wanted to move against Buenos Aires. But the military dispositions on land rested with Beresford. At this rate, the fleet looked set to remain in the Plate estuary for months.
Before the two men could resume their eternal rambling, a midshipman presented himself at the cabin.
‘Mr Jameson’s compliments, sir, and there’s a boat making directly for us. Do we sink it, sir?’
*
James had almost given up hope of the invasion fleet ever arriving when a rumour started around the docks that British warships had been seen off Monte Video. A fisherman had claimed to see the men o’ war riding at anchor in the mists, sails furled, waiting for he knew not what. This was not the first rumour of invasion and most people dismissed the talk out of hand. Gomez was known as a drinker: only last year he had claimed that his boat had nearly been taken by a giant squid. Even so, the story spread around the community of the sea front.
James laughed with the others and called Gomez a fool but, in his heart, he was sure that the story was true. He had been waiting months for this day: he could not bring himself to believe that the ships were not there.
That night, Burke sought out the fisherman. His boat was beached on the shore just west of the city and there, like most of his kind, Gomez spent his time ashore living in the shelter of its hull. Burke found him sitting beside a fire of driftwood. He had come armed with a bottle of wine and found Gomez more than happy to talk about the ships he had seen louring in the fog. From the description he gave, there clearly was a flotilla out there, though he had never got close enough to identify them positively as English. On the other hand, if the Spanish navy was in the area, there was no reason why they should lurk in the fog without sending a boat to announce their arrival. Certainly they were not expected in Buenos Aires, where the workers on the wharves would know about it even before the Viceroy.
‘Can you find these ships again, Gomez?’
‘Of course I can.’ The fisherman took a hefty swig from the bottle. ‘Gomez can find anything out there.’
‘Even in the fog?’
Gomez laughed.
‘I don’t need to see. I can smell where I am on the Plate.’ And he demonstrated with an enormous noisy sniff that reduced him to a coughing fit which, in turn, called for another libation from the bottle.
‘Will you take me?’
The fisherman looked suspiciously at James.
‘Why should I?’
James shrugged.
‘It’s no matter. I don’t think the ships exist.’
‘They exist.’
‘Yes, old man. They exist in that bottle and all the bottles like it. They sail a sea of wine with the giant squid that nearly sank your boat the day you were so drunk you couldn’t manage the sail.’
‘The ships are there!’
‘Prove it.’
Gomez squinted across the fire at James, a glint of cunning in his eye.
‘I’ll bet you five pesos that I can find those ships.’
Despite himself, James was amused by the fisherman’s nerve. Five pesos was probably more money than he had ever held in his hand – and more money than any stevedore would have to gamble. Admittedly, James had secreted a hundred pesos when he returned to Buenos Aires. (He had buried it beneath the filth of one of the latrines. Things hidden in shit, he had discovered, are invariably safe from casual thieves.) Manuel Vincenza, though, had only five reals in the world, so now the haggling started.
In the end, Gomez agreed to show Manuel the ships for one peso. No matter that Manuel didn’t have the money – James had no intention of allowing Gomez to return to Buenos Aires if a British squadron was, indeed, in the river.
Manuel
returned to the hovel he shared with five other men and left Gomez to finish the wine, but the next morning he was back, prodding the fisherman awake with his naked foot.
Gomez, having slept on the bargain, had awakened with a dreadful suspicion that Manuel did not have the money and now insisted that he be shown this peso. Manuel retaliated by insisting that the fisherman produce his stake. As neither man had a peso, this produced an impasse that was resolved when Manuel offered to show Gomez two reals as evidence of good faith, if the fisherman would reciprocate. Grudgingly, Gomez produced two reals from the sand beneath his boat, Manuel showed the money hidden in his trousers and, honour satisfied, Gomez and Manuel pushed the boat out into the water.
Once in the current, Gomez hung out his nets.
‘We’ll be all day getting there,’ he said. ‘We might as well do some fishing while we’re at it.’
As the hours passed, they drifted further toward the sea and the heap of fish in the boat grew steadily bigger. The morning fog cleared but there was no sign of any ships, British or otherwise.
By late afternoon, Burke was beginning to give up hope. Gomez, though, was still confident.
‘Soon we’ll hit the mists. Then the ships. You’ll see.’
Not twenty minutes later, the fishing boat, as Gomez had predicted, slipped into a bank of fog hanging where the warm air from Monte Video hit the cold of the river and, half an hour after that, Burke saw the shapes of the warships looming toward them.
‘There they are,’ whispered Gomez. ‘You owe me a peso.’
‘They might not be British. Take us closer.’
Gomez looked at his companion as if he were clearly mad.
‘If we go closer, they’ll see us.’
Burke drew the knife from his belts and held it to Gomez’s throat.
‘Do it. Do it or I’ll slit your throat and take the boat to them myself.’
The fisherman looked at the knife and then at Burke’s face.
The little boat swung toward the nearest ship and started to close on it.
*
Popham headed for the quarterdeck, where the officer of the watch handed him his own telescope.
It was difficult to be certain in this infernal fog, but the vessel seemed innocent enough.
‘It looks like a fishing boat. Just two men aboard.’
Popham glanced at the officer who had spoken.
‘I can’t see any place where men might be concealed. Can you?’
‘No, sir. Unless they’re under the fish.’
Popham looked through the telescope again. It seemed unlikely that the pile of fish in the boat could conceal a body of Spanish marines.
The officer of the watch looked troubled.
‘But why are they running toward us? Any Spaniard should be fleeing for his life.’
And that, thought Popham, must be the explanation. The man in the boat must be their agent.
‘Hail them. Get them alongside and get a ladder down to take them off.’
Five minutes later a jubilant Burke and a terrified Gomez were aboard the Narcissus and Popham was wringing Burke’s hand with almost manic enthusiasm.
‘I’ve heard about your work, sir. Sterling service! An honour to meet you.’ He turned and looked quizzically at Gomez. ‘Is this a colleague?’
Burke smiled. ‘Hardly, Commodore. But he has performed a valuable service. He should be detained but have your men treat him well. And I owe him a peso.’
Gomez was hustled below while Popham led Burke to the great cabin, where Beresford, ignoring the general clamour on deck, still sat.
‘Colonel Beresford, allow me to introduce Lieutenant James Burke.’
Beresford did not stand, but acknowledged Burke with a brisk nod.
Popham smiled. This was his moment.
‘Lieutenant, can you show us how to take Buenos Aires?’
For two years, Burke had worked toward this. Now his hour had come. He looked at the maps on the chart table before him and at the two officers waiting for his exposition. He had lied and murdered and betrayed to get to this point.
He stabbed his finger at the map.
‘We need to make our initial landing here . . .’
*
Popham wanted to start toward Buenos Aires the next morning but they woke to find the estuary still shrouded in fog. Even with charts based on the information Burke had gathered when he made the journey two years earlier, they dared not move further up the river with its treacherous shoals.
Popham invited Burke to join him for breakfast, where he did his best to give himself indigestion by staring at the opaque whiteness outside the stern window and cursing the weather.
‘The longer we are here, the more chance of the Spanish blundering across us and scotching our plan. Or suppose that they send ships? We’re trapped in the river if a few ships of the line were to turn up. Damn this weather!’
Burke helped himself to another slice of bacon.
‘Why not get Gomez to pilot you up?’
The effect of his comment was electric. Breakfast was forgotten as Popham stormed from the room, calling for Gomez to be brought to him immediately.
Gomez’s first reaction on being brought before Popham was fear. Then, when it was explained that his famous nose was to lead the British squadron through the fog, it was incredulity. This was rapidly followed by cunning as he saw the opportunity for pecuniary benefit presented in this situation.
‘Ten pesos,’ he said.
Popham reached in his pocket and withdrew a gold sovereign.
Gomez looked at it, weighed it in his hand, and carefully bit it. Satisfied, he moved to stand beside the helmsman and pointed westward into the fog.
‘There!’
They waited another twenty minutes for the tide and then the Narcissus started to move, the other vessels in line behind her.
When they finally emerged from the fog, they were just two hours from Buenos Aires.
*
The first that Thomas O’Gorman knew about the invasion was when the alarm cannon roared out late on the afternoon of Wednesday June 25th, 1806.
He was at his office at the time and his first thought was for Ana. She might, he reasoned, not always have been as faithful as she promised at her wedding, but she was his wife. So, from a sense of duty and propriety as much as for any other reason, O’Gorman found himself hurrying home.
He was but one of hundreds of men who seemed to be rushing around the town with no clear purpose. At the fort, he saw Colonel Calzada Castanio mustering the garrison but, rather than taking up their posts for the defence of the town, they were preparing to depart. The Viceroy was evacuating his palace and a baggage train of his effects was forming up in the Plaza Victoria. As O’Gorman watched, he even saw a piano being manhandled onto a cart while chefs, still in their kitchen whites, oversaw the packing of casserole dishes and frying pans.
While the professional Spanish soldiers prepared to leave, civilians were hurrying into the fort to be issued with crude pikes and assigned to militia companies. Those who had their pikes joined the crowds filling the streets as they tried to find the muster points of their various units.
The bells of the town’s churches were by now ringing the alarm, so everywhere there was noise: bells, the crash of pikes, the screams (for no reason he could see) of women, the anxious questions and answers of passing friends, the shouts of militia officers looking for their men.
O’Gorman was still chuckling over the undignified flight of the Viceroy when he got home to find Ana in great excitement. As he entered the door, she ran from the drawing room with her news.
‘The Viceroy’s left Buenos Aires.’
‘I know. I’ve seen the wagons. But what’s that to you? The British are on their way – we’ll be all right.’
‘It’s Santiago.’
O’Gorman felt his good humour evaporating at the sound of de Liniers’ name.
‘What about him?’
‘The Vicer
oy’s put him in charge of the defence of the city.’
O’Gorman scowled but had, reluctantly, to admit that the appointment made sense. As the man in charge of shore defences, de Liniers was the obvious man to protect them against an attack from the sea.
‘He knows a bit about artillery, I suppose,’ he told his wife. ‘But it’s hardly a concern of yours.’
The main concern in O’Gorman’s head at that moment was that de Liniers might know enough about artillery to drive the British off. Not that he cared that much either way: he had lived under the Spanish and he would live equally well under the British. It was uncertainty that was bad for trade, and de Liniers’ appointment had introduced a considerable uncertainty into the equation.
It wasn’t as if de Liniers hadn’t introduced enough disquiet into his life already. O’Gorman watched as his wife fluttered ineffectually around the house, clearly torn between pride that de Liniers had been appointed as a war leader and fear that his position might lead to his being injured in the fighting. When he tried to calm her, she told him that he was a useless waste of space and insisted that that he sally out to bring news of what was happening in the town. Glad of any excuse to escape the house, O’Gorman wrapped himself in a cloak and ventured into the streets.
Evening was drawing in but the bustle was, if anything, more frantic than it had been in the afternoon. Militia men still roamed about uncertain of what to do or where to report, while those who had mustered were drilling in an amateurish way with much shouting of commands and clattering of weapons.
On the shore, where the fishermen kept their boats, men were dragging cannon into position, facing the British ships which could be seen standing a mile or so out. De Liniers himself was there, urging the struggling militia to more effort and O’Gorman was able to report to Ana that he looked suitably martial and in no immediate danger from enemy action.
Aboard the Narcissus, James watched the same scene through Popham’s telescope.
‘He’s a cunning old fox, de Liniers,’ he remarked. ‘No one will be able to say that he didn’t attempt to defend the town but those cannon are positioned on soft ground with no proper platforms. By tomorrow, they’ll have sunk in enough to mean they’re bedded where they are until the fighting’s over.’