Three rounds per gun every two minutes was Lewrie’s standard, and after much practice, Vigilance could do it, even with the heavy 24-pounders on the lower gun-deck, and broadsides could be concentrated within an imaginary ship’s length, with most shot striking the sea in a dense flurry of shot-splashes like a blast from a fowling piece.
Then, with the barge sailing much closer in, Lewrie got his gun crews familiar with those newfangled sights, one gun at a time ’til the towed keg was swamped by a close hit, or shattered and replaced, with tobacco or full measures at the twice-daily rum issues, with no deduction for “sippers” and “gulpers”, paid for out of Lewrie’s pocket, and once his Vigilances caught on, they became most proficient, and competitive with each other. They didn’t even mind when their ship sailed right past Gibraltar without putting in for liberty in such a fabled port for wine, women, and song.
It is a damned odd-lookin’ place, Lewrie thought as he had one last look about, then ambled down to the quarterdeck to join his officers. “Boats in the water, then, and we’ll see what Mister Blundell can scare up by way of fresh victuals from shore for supper tonight, right? Firewood and water today, then replacement shot and powder tomorrow,” he told his Lieutenants. “Mister Blundell? I’ll go ashore with you, if you don’t mind. Whoever commands round here doesn’t seem to be in port at the moment, so I’ll have to ask about to discover when we get our troops, and what sort they are. Carry on with the boats, and I’ll be aft ’til they’re in the water.”
And find if there’s a chief spy on Malta who might know what’s goin’ on round here, he told himself.
* * *
Malta seemed even more exotic and alien to his senses a few hours later when Lewrie stepped ashore, at last. Swarthy, Arabic-looking men and women in the cobbled streets babbled away in an unknown language that sounded like a mix of Italian, Spanish, and Arabic, with rare familiar words popping up. Most were garbed in long, flowing costumes that appeared practically Biblical, in sandals, shapeless hats, or head scarves. Street vendors’ stalls and carts gave off a variety of odd but tempting aromas, and, for a dry-appearing island, their vegetable and fruit bins overflowed with bounty.
Hardly anyone could understand him, of course, or direct him where to go, so it was a relief to enter the massive gates of one of the imposing fortresses to discover British Army sentries who could. He was directed to the headquarters offices of a Brigadier-General by the name of Geratty, who was pleasantry itself, giving Lewrie a warm welcome.
“Sit you down, sir, sit you down!” Geratty insisted, “Care for tea?” he asked, ringing a wee china bell to summon his orderly. “Now, I’ve orders from London round here somewhere concerning you, sir, if you’ll give me a moment … ah!” he said after digging through a pile of correspondence and finding the pertinent letter. “We’re to supply you with a battalion of troops, and … ten companies?”
“I’m only authorized three troopers, at present, sir,” Lewrie corrected him. “An experiment, really. I can only accommodate about six companies for now, no more than four hundred and fifty soldiers. I thought I would have to report to the General commanding on Sicily for…”
“Sicily, Lord no, sir,” Geratty said with a laugh. “The French have already staged one attempt to cross the Straits of Messina and gain a lodgement, a few years back. Nothing much came of it, a complete flub, but since then, the commanding General is loath to give up even a Corporal’s Guard detail, lest Murat over in Naples try it on again. It was thought that the French, and their Neapolitan allies, cannot stage an attempt on Malta. Admiral Cotton’s fleet at sea, the impregnability of Malta’s forts, the lack of good landing beaches, what? If they did try, they’d have to come in fishing smacks and little coasting boats, and it’s a long sea passage from fishing villages in Calabria or Basilicata in the Bay of Taranto to here, haw haw! A lot further than three miles from Scylla to Messina.”
“So, I came to the right place,” Lewrie agreed, relieved that the Army sounded prepared for his arrival.
“Indeed you did, sir,” Geratty said with a beamish grin. “Room for only four hundred fifty or so, is it? Hmm, I was ready to offer you the Second Battalion of the 65th, but … ah, Dindwiddy, please do fetch us a pot of tea. No fresh milk or cream, sir, sorry, but I find that lemon and honey go down well.”
“Sounds good,” Lewrie said, explaining how he kept a pitcher of cool tea with lots of lemon and sugar aboard ship.
“Cool tea, ah,” Garatty mused, “sure to be most refreshing here, when Summer rolls round. Sell my soul for a cellar full of ice to make it even better! Stop at Gibraltar on the way, did you, Captain Lewrie?”
“Ah, no sir,” Lewrie replied, wondering when Geratty would get down to business.
“Then you haven’t heard about the Spanish Lines!” Geratty hooted in mirth. “Saw it myself, when my ship put in there on the way here. When the French marched South into Andalusia and laid siege to Cádiz, the Spanish, and our Army engineers, blew them up so the French couldn’t use them. Terrific, titanic explosions, loud enough to be heard as far away as Madrid, and not one block of stone left standing atop another, haw haw! Simply magnificent show! The Spanish armies just melted away, of course, and our General Blayney got himself caught by the French by mistake, so all we hold in Andalusia at present is Cádiz, but…,” he concluded with a large shrug.
That don’t sound too promising, Lewrie thought; but at least The Rock still holds, and will, and all the Spanish gunboats at Algeciras are guardin’ the bay, and Gibraltar’s harbour.
They got their pot of tea and went through the social motions for a bit before Geratty finally set his empty cup and saucer aside and picked up his orders once more.
“Ah, troops, Captain Lewrie,” Geratty said. “There is one battalion available which does not require splitting it in half, one raised by a patriotic committee of gentry and wealthy merchants round Peterborough about five years ago when Napoleon looked likely to invade us cross the Channel. I believe they only had about six hundred men back then. A one-battalion regiment, do you see, is the 94th, and, once the danger of invasion passed, the enthusiasm of its founders dwindled, as did recruiting, or plans to become a proper two-battalion regiment with a home barracks. Horse Guards didn’t know quite what to do with them after that, but I believe they took part in the Walcheren Expedition a few years back, some guard duties round Dover Castle, then they shipped them out here two years ago. Diseases, desertions, well … they only muster about, ah … three hundred and thirty, rank and file, as of the last month. In six companies, since a fair number of their officers lost their enthusiasm, too, and quit the service, and damned lucky they were to get the cost of their commissions back and use it to purchase a commission in a proper regiment, or simply call it quits.”
“That sounds, ah…,” Lewrie tried to say, dumbfounded and with his mouth hanging open, wondering if his enemies extended into the Army, too. “Christ, General Geratty! Christ!”
“Quite,” the Brigadier agreed with a grim look. “Sorry about it, but … there it is. It’s the 94th or nothing, I’m afraid, about all I can spare from the Malta garrison.”
“Hate t’look a gift horse in the mouth, sir, but … mine arse on a band-box!” Lewrie gloomed. “An experienced battalion, are they? Decent morale? Well-trained? Full o’ piss and vinegar?”
“As much as one might expect after two years of doing ‘sentry-go’ on the ramparts, Captain Lewrie,” Geratty said. “They do well on musketry, and ‘square-bash’ smartly. And, I would expect that did one offer them a shot at active duties, they’d be eager enough.”
“Right, then,” Lewrie said, surrendering all hopes that his experiment had a ghost of a chance to succeed. “Where do I find ’em?”
“The 94th, quite by chance, is garrisoned right here in this fortress, Captain Lewrie,” Geratty told him, “and I do believe that it is about time for their officers to take their mid-day dinner in their mess. Shall I introduce you to them?”
“If you have to, sir,” Lewrie wryly replied, setting aside his tea cup and getting to his feet. “Beggars can’t be choosers, what?”
* * *
Across the vast quadrangle, past drilling soldiers and snarling Sergeants, then up innumerable flights of stone stairways, and arched stone galleries that led off to artillery batteries, barracks, kitchens, and armories, and the immensity of the place, the yards’ thick construction, and the gloom, put Lewrie in mind of vast caverns deep under the earth, like the natural caves and tunneled-out gun galleries that he’d toured in the mountain that brooded over Gibraltar.
At last they reached an upper level near the ramparts with real windows and sunlight overlooking the expanse of the quadrangle, though the windows were rather small, and at the end of deep, arched recesses large enough for a decent front parlour, there was a vestibule with a wood side-board, Turkey carpets, and some hanging flags, and an incongruous oil painting of the Lake Country that Lewrie could have sworn was a copy of a Turner. On the side-board sat rows of stiff felt infantry officer shakoes, and two fore-and-aft bicornes, one featuring an egret feather plume.
A Colonel, a Major, Captains, and subalterns, he told himself, noting that there were no stiff, upright white plumes that would have denoted officers from a Grenadier Company, and that two shakoes had the silver hunting horn emblems denoting a Light Company.
There was a pleasant hubbub coming from a room beyond and Brigadier Geratty led him into it, where Army officers of the 94th Regiment of Foot stood about with pre-prandial drinks in their hands, waiting for dinner to be announced. They all perked up and looked to the door as Geratty cleared his throat.
“Ah, Brigadier,” a tall, lean man with salt-and-pepper hair said in surprise. “Welcome to you, sir, though…”
Maybe senior officers showin’ up in a regimental mess just ain’t done without an invitation, Lewrie thought; like me turnin’ up in the wardroom and askin’ for a plate and a drink.
“Colonel Tarrant, Major Gittings, gentlemen,” Geratty replied.
“Will you be dining with us, sir?” Colonel Tarrant asked with a brow up in question, as if it was an imposition.
“Sorry, no, sir,” Geratty brushed off with a smile, “but I have a fellow with me whom you might make welcome. Allow me to name to you naval Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet,” and he went on to introduce the regimental officers to Lewrie. “Captain Lewrie is in need of soldiers to conduct an experiment that London has approved.”
“And you thought of us, Brigadier?” Colonel Tarrant asked with a weary, and leery tone, as if Geratty could not rid himself of the 94th faster.
“Only if you wish to get out in the fresh air, spend a week or so at a time at sea,” Lewrie interrupted, “and make landings and raids against the French below Naples, Colonel Tarrant,”
“Oh, I say!” that worthy replied, looking startled, nigh gasping.
“Would we be coming back here, Captain ah … Louis?” the Major, Gittings, asked, sounding too cynical to be hopeful.
“To rest up between raids, I’d imagine,” Lewrie told him, “while we plan the next, enjoy your bragging rights, and make the rest of the garrison envious. And it’s Lewrie,” he added, spelling his name.
“Out of here, sir?” a Captain with the wings of the Light Company on his shoulders, queried, looking ready to whoop in glee. “Get to do some real soldiering? Hallelujah!”
“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” Brigadier Geratty said, dismissing himself. “Captain Lewrie, gentlemen.”
“Do please dine with us, Captain Lewrie,” Colonel Tarrant grandly offered, “and allow me to name to you my officers.”
A glass of Rhenish was shoved into Lewrie’s hands and a flurry of names were shared before dinner was announced, and they all went into a dining hall beyond to take seats. Lewrie’s guess was right, the 94th didn’t have a Grenadier Company any longer, only five Battalion Companies, and one Light Company, though Colonel Tarrant declared that he had been playing with the idea of forming a second Light Company from the most agile of his unit, and post them on the right of the line, if there ever would be a call for the 94th to take the field.
The dinner was un-remarkable; a rice-and-barley soup that barely tasted like beef stock, a stringy and tough roast beef, but the salads and vegetables were a welcome marvel, for their like back home would not be seen ’til much later in the Spring. No one really took time to savour it, though, for, against the tradition of never talking business in the mess, Lewrie was eagerly pumped for explanations. Towards the end of the meal, before the port, nuts, and sweets, he ended up standing over his end of the table, with a glass butter dish for a transport ship and a half-dozen walnuts for rowing barges.
“My sailors protect the boats and the beach,” he said, “you go in, with my seventy Marines as re-enforcements, raise merry Hell, then come back to be picked up and returned to the ships. No packs, cooking pots, or camp gear. Rucksacks with sausage, cheese, and bisquit, your spare flints, gun tools, and another fourty rounds of ammunition, All else remains on the ships. Oh, two canteens of water per man.”
“We get to practice this, don’t we, Captain Lewrie?” a Captain Sydenham from one of the Battalion Companies asked.
“Oh, indeed we do, sir!” Lewrie assured him. “In the dark, in the light of day, ’til you and your soldiers are sick of it. We won’t launch the first raid ’til it’s second nature.”
“Well, I daresay we won’t be emulating the Battle of Maida, but it sounds the very thing to get us out of this garrison drudgery,” Major Gittings said with a laugh. “Sounds delightful!”
Lewrie vaguely recalled accounts of Maida that he’d read once back in England to heal up after Reliant had paid off. In 1806, the French over-ran the Kingdom of Naples and the Two Sicilies, isolating the last remnants of the Neapolitan army in the fortress town of Gaeta. To relieve the siege and extricate them, Admiral Sir Sydney Smith and General Sir John Stuart put about fifty-two hundred British troops ashore in Calabria, with some Corsican Rangers, Sicilian Volunteers, and man-hauled foot artillery. He met a much larger force under the French General Reynier, caught them at a clumsy dis-advantage, shot them to pieces with overwhelming musketry volleys, left their wounded and dead strewn in windrows, and drove them from the field, resulting in the first victory of British soldiers against the nearly invincible French.
“Do we prove the concept, there are plans for more transports, and full regimental landings,” Lewrie hinted to encourage them more.
“Ah, but then they’ll whistle up a proper regiment and turn the game over to them, and the poor old 94th ends back on the ramparts of this stone cess-pit,” a Captain Bromhead griped.
“Unless the fame you gain results in fresh companies recruited back home, sir,” Lewrie pointed out, “Nothing draws more friends than a winner. With ten full companies, again, you’d be the pioneers.”
“Haw, it might even make the value of our commissions go up,” a Captain Meacham said with a cynical laugh.
Lewrie could see the sense in that comment. A Lieutenancy in a famous regiment might go for upwards of £1,500, a Captaincy £2,500. What had they paid to join the 94th, £500 or so?
“Brigadier Geratty said you’d been in the Walcheren Expedition?” Lewrie asked, referring to the disastrous landings in Holland in 1807.
“Nothing but rain, mud, snow, and Walcheren Fever,” Colonel Tarrant gravelled. “Wet boots, foot rot, and disease that took a quarter of the regiment. We ended as camp guards, and hospital tenders, with never a real shot fired. I was Captain of the Light Company, then, and Major Gittings was a Lieutenant of a Line Company.”
“Bags of promotion available after that, yes,” Gittings spat. “If one could afford to buy a dead man’s post.”
This is gettin’ too damned gloomy, Lewrie thought; Best I leave ’em on a happy note.
“I’ll speak with the Brigadier to take your battalion out of the rotation on the ramparts,” Lewrie said,
finishing his last half-glass of port and wadding up his napkin preparing to depart. “Let’s say that we begin boarding practice in the harbour on Monday. We’ll row you out to the ships from the main quays, let you get used to boarding nets, and settle into your cabins. Tuesday, we’ll begin practicing the embarkation into the boats and back, row to the quays, land you, then do it all over ’til we’re ready for landing on a real beach.”
“Oh, good luck with that, Captain Lewrie,” Captain Meacham said with a snicker, “for I doubt there’s a real beach wider than a sidewalk on the whole damned island.”
“Ehm, the outer islands, then?” Lewrie asked,
“Gozo?” a Captain Fewkes scoffed. “Comino, Cominotto, or Filfa? Saint Paul? Most of them are un-inhabited, with no harbours, no landing places, and certainly no beaches.”
Shit! So much for a happy note! Lewrie fumed.
“We’ll find a place to practice,” Lewrie assured them, “even if we have to sail over to Sicily. And get you your sea legs on the way, hey?”
* * *
No bloody beaches? he furiously thought as he tried to find his way back to ground level through the maze of passages, galleries, and stairways; Mine arse on a band-box! Should’o’ thought of that beforehand, ye damned idiot!
He considered going back to Brigadier Geratty’s offices, if he could find them, that is, and ask if he knew where they could practice landings. And find out if Foreign Office’s Secret Branch had an office on Malta, where he could trade thoughts with the local senior agent, and learn all he could from him about conditions in Calabria and other provinces round the toe, arch, and boot of the Italian peninsula. It would speed his operations to no end if the Neapolitans had anything like the irregular partisan bands in Portugal and Spain that gave the French so much gory grief.
At last, he found a stairway that led down to a promising patch of sunlight on a stone slab floor, and a massive doorway out to the quadrangle which was already shimmering in Springtime Mediterranean light and warmth. On his way to what he took for an exit to the quays, he found himself crossing paths with a Colonel in stainless white stockings, breeches, under a plumed bicorne that bent down to his nose and the nape of his head. The fellow was puffing lazily on a cigaro as he ambled about. Lewrie doffed his hat in salute, and the Colonel put his hand to his hat, palm out, in a return salute.
A Fine Retribution Page 27