by Tom Grundner
He snapped an order to his afterguard and the square-rigged main topsail started to swivel around the mast so that it’s face pointed directly into the wind. This mashed the sail directly against the mast, which was the opposite of its usual configuration of pushing the sail from behind. The wind was coming in off the port quarter, an oblique angle to the ship so Finch could not hope that it would push the ship straight back. But maybe… just maybe… it would exert enough side pressure to break the bow loose.
By now the Trojan had disappeared, which made Finch even more frantic. Two minutes, three minutes, five minutes went by and the Cardinal was still hard aground. He could only stare at the men who were cutting away the useless fore topsail and wish he could bring it into play.
Another set of commands and the boom for the fore mainsail was swung to port; and the sail hoisted so that it’s face, too, was facing the wind. Three minutes, five minutes, no luck; but Finch had one more trick to play with the sails.
He gave a series of commands that ran up the mainsail and swung the main mast boom out to the starboard side. By cajoling his crew to pull ever harder, he got the boom past 90 degrees so that it too was catching some of the eastern wind.
Nothing happened. Three minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes, still nothing.
“Bosun, prepare one of the small boats to take the anchor. We’re going to have to kedge this damn thing off. I want you to also…”
“Sir, she’s coming off,” came a cry from the fo’c’sle.
Finch ran to the bow. About half way, he almost tripped as the ship slipped back another foot or two. Just after arriving on the fo’c’sle the ship gave an abrupt lurch, then another, and then he could feel it sliding clear. He looked over the side and saw swirling brown water as further evidence he was off.
“Furl all sails except the fore topsail,” he yelled. Then turning to the bosun, “I want two men up here with sounding leads. We’re going to tiptoe out of here and if we go on to another sandbar, we’re going to kedge off using your body as the anchor. Is that clear?”
* * *
Activity on the Trojan was no less frantic.
“We’re clear,” exclaimed Susan who was standing at the taffrail watching the Cardinal disappear behind Cape Charles. “He’s still on the sandbar. We’re free. Let’s make a run for it.”
“He won’t be on that sandbar forever, so we are not free, and we are making a run for it,” replied Hayes. “This is as fast as this barkey will go. The problem is that he’ll eventually catch us; he’s much faster then we are. No matter how much of a lead we have, somewhere between here and New York, he’ll get us.”
“So, what do we do?”
Hayes was now addressing the group. “He saw us round the cape with Fisherman’s Island to larboard, so he thinks we’re headed for open ocean. But see that spit of land over there off our port bow? That’s the southern tip of Smith Island. We’re going to cut inside that, and take the inside passage which will eventually put us in Hog Island Bay. If we can get that far by nightfall without him seeing us, we can hole-up until morning. I am hoping he’ll come flying around the cape, assume we headed north to New York, further assume we’re just on the other side of the horizon and come after us.”
“What if he doesn’t?” asked Walker. “It seems to me he has two choices: either we are somewhere on the inside passage or we are hull down on the other side of the horizon.”
“Then, he has a 50/50 chance of being right.”
“And what happens of he guesses right?”
“Then we are well and truly bunged.”
With that, Hayes altered course a few degrees, ducked in behind Smith Island and slowed to a crawl. The islands provided a nice visual barrier to hide behind as they made their way north, but the track was a torturous one. Hayes did not have a chart of the inside passage, after all he was a Chesapeake sailor, so he had no idea of the water depth. He would have to go slow, sling the lead, and be patient.
They picked their way inside Smith Island, Myrtle Island, Ship Shoal, Wreak Island, and Cobb Island. Just as night was falling, they entered Hog Island Bay, dropped their anchor, furled their sails, took a deep breath, looked up—and there was the Cardinal, guns run out, anchored inside the mouth of the Great Machipongo Inlet, the only way out of the Bay.
Finch had guessed right.
* * *
The Council of War was finally called at midnight and it would be hard to find a more dejected group. They gathered on the quarterdeck, Walker and Smith were leaning against the taffrail, Hayes and Hanover were sitting on empty kegs, and Susan was sitting Indian-style on the deck. Everyone was silent.
Hayes finally opened the proceedings. “All right, folks, here’s the situation.” he said.
“Hogs Island Bay has only one way out of it and that’s through the Machipongo Inlet. I know, you can see some other exits to the north, but they’re too shallow—little more than creeks, really.
“Finch is anchored at the mouth of the bay. He’s laying out there just waiting until dawn to take us; and, unless someone has some other ideas, I think we’re about done.”
“Why can’t we fight past him?” Smith asked.
“With what? He’s got six guns; we’ve got none.
“What about that swivel gun forward?” Susan asked.
“Doesn’t work. Never has. We got a keg o’ gunpowder below but we’re just shippin’ it. I’d certainly never try using it in that old swivel.”
Walker was silent, thinking hard.
“Look, I am the one Finch wants,” Hanover said. “I really appreciate everything you each have done for me. Really, I do. But, the game is over. If I give up, he’ll let you go. I am sure of it.”
“I am sorry, Your Highness, but you don’t have a vote,” Smith said.
Hanover snapped back. “First of all, it’s ‘Bill’ not ‘Your Highness.’ I thought we had that settled. And second, what the hell do you mean I have no vote?”
“Not anymore. As you said, the game is up. We are not discussing the fate of Midshipman Bill Hanover here; we’re discussing the fate of Prince William Henry. God only knows the implications to the crown, the empire, and even the world if you were to be captured. You would become the world’s greatest bargaining chip and there’s no way of knowing where that might lead.
“No, we have to get you out. That’s all there is to it.”
“Hugh, if you had a few guns, could you get us out then?” Smith asked.
“I can’t guarantee anything but, yeah, it would increase our odds considerable. I could use our speed in sailing against the wind to try to blow past him. A couple of guns, even small ones, might keep him at bay long enough to do that. After that, assuming neither ship is badly damaged in the exchange of gunfire, it would be a race and I would make sure it’s a race to windward. It’s not much of a chance, but it would be a chance.”
“But we don’t have any guns,” Susan pointed out.
“Precisely,” Hayes added.
“I don’t care. There must be a way to fight them. We can’t just give up the prince,” Smith said, and as far as he was concerned, that was that. “There must be a way.”
The wind could be heard slapping various lines and cables against the mast. The water could be heard lapping up against the side of the hull. A heron could be heard registering a complaint from across the water; but no human voice was answering Smith’s challenge.
After a painfully long pause, Walker finally muttered, “There’s a way.” And he immediately put everyone to work.
* * *
He started by taking a three-inch diameter auxiliary spar and cutting off pieces like he was slicing sausage. He cut 12 that were about two inches and 12 that were about 1 inch thick and set Smith to work drilling small holes through the center of each. When he was done, Smith was to take the two-inch slices, fill the holes with carpenter’s glue, and slide a hull nail through each so that a six-inch spike stood out from the end.
Susan was tas
ked with cutting 12 poles each about 6 feet long from some railing materials that were in the hold, and then drill four holes, in pairs of two, about 12 inches apart, at one end. Turning to Hanover, Walker put him to work as well.
“Bill, I want you to find a hammer and pound some charcoal.”
“Pardon?”
“I said, find a hammer somewhere. Then go down to the galley and get that sack of charcoal the cook uses to supplement his wood supply. Pound the charcoal until it’s as fine as you can make it.”
Hanover looked at him like he was crazy, but started work anyway. Seeing everyone busy with his or her tasks, Walker mysteriously disappeared below.
About an hour later, the various tasks were done. Walker re-appeared and, with the help of several crewmen, was carrying the crate of silver candleholders, a keg of gunpowder, some light line and some fuses. Without a word to anyone he opened the crate, took out each of the 12 wooden tubes and began throwing the candleholders over the side, putting the wooden tube lovingly back into it’s pigeon hole.
Hayes went nuts! “Are you crazy? Those candle holders are almost pure silver!”
“Oh, sorry.” And he shifted his aim, throwing the candleholders into the scuppers as if they were trash and treating the foot and a half long protective wooden tubes like they were gold.
“All right, folks. It’s time for you to begin assembling these things.”
“Sidney and Bill grab a tube and a spike-plug. I want you to put some carpenter’s glue around the side of the wooden plug then slide it into one end of your tube with the spike sticking out. When we have all 12, let them dry for a bit and give them to Susan and me.”
About an hour later, Susan and Walker began attaching the poles by sliding nails through the holes Susan had made and pressing them through the soft wood of the tubes. Thus anchored, Hayes and one of his crewmen began tightly tying the poles to the tubes to give them extra support. They then put the tubes, spike down and pole up, into their pigeonholes in the crate.
“All right, we’re almost there. Now, Bill and Sidney, I want you to take this measure and pour exactly two scoops of gunpowder into each of the tubes. Place a length of fuse through the hole so there are a couple inches running out each side. Then, put some more carpenter’s glue around the edges of the plug and shove it down on top of the gunpowder.
“Oh, yeah, one more thing. Do your best to not blow us up.”
When they had finished there were twelve devices sitting, face down, in the packing crate. Each had a steel spike glued into a wooden plug, gunpowder in the middle and another plug, with a fuse, behind the gunpowder. There was still several inches of space, however, between the gunpowder plug and the end of the tube.
“Here’s where we put in the final touch,” Walker announced.
He put a measure of gunpowder into a bowl, added a quarter measure of the charcoal powder Hanover had produced and thoroughly mixed them together. As a last step, he dampened the compound with a small amount of rum, kneaded it into a kind of damp putty and packed the result, along with a short fuse, into the back end of the first tube. He repeated the procedure with each of the remaining tubes.
“That’s it. We’re done.”
“Wonderful,” Smith announced. “Now, would you care to tell us what it is we are done with?”
Walker’s Rocket
“It’s simple,” Walker explained. “Tomorrow morning when the Cardinal moves in for the kill, we’ll have a little surprise for them.” And he picked up a device to illustrate, pointing as he went.
“It’s called a rocket. A friend of mine back in my Harvard days was experimenting with them. We light the fuse in the back end. The gunpowder/charcoal mixture will do a controlled burn—not explode because of the extra carbon I mixed in—and go off. We’ll launch each one at the Cardinal and, when it gets there, it will stick in the side of the ship via the spike. At that point the ‘engine’ powder will have burned to the bottom and ignited the fuse coming out of the gunpowder compartment, which ignites the gunpowder and… BOOM!”
The group was quiet for a moment, lost in embarrassed silence, not knowing how to break the news to Walker. Finally, Smith piped up.
“Lucas, people in the Royal Navy have been talking about rockets for years. The Fire Master at the Royal Laboratory in Woolwich, General Desaguliers, has actually experimented with them and William Congreve—the son, not the father—will talk your ear off about them. But I’ve seen them tested, Lucas; and they don’t work. They’re a bust; everyone knows that.
“Sure, in theory, they sound great, but they’re uncontrollable. They fly all over the place and no one, but no one knows where they’re going to land. I’ve personally seen rockets actually double back and attack the people that fired them. What’s going to keep your rockets from doing the same thing?” Smith finally asked.
“Nothing,” Walker replied to the now silent group. After a pause he continued. “My friend thought that the mistake was that the stabilizing poles were not long enough. He calculated that they needed to be at least four times the length of the rocket body. Well, that’s what I’ve done. I made the poles four times the length of the body.”
“Did he ever try out his calculations?” Susan asked.
“No. Not that I know of; but come on... what else have we got?”
The group fell silent again, until Susan again spoke up. “All right then, what the ‘ell. Let’s give it a go.”
Sidney, entering into the spirit of things agreed. “Absolutely. We’ll show them what a little ingenuity can do. But, Lucas... ah... how do you fire the bloody things?
Walker held on to his sample rocket. “Step over here, my friends, and all shall be made known.”
He took the group to the ancient swivel gun that was mounted on the fo’c’sle. Tied to the top of it were the results of Walker’s activities below decks while the others were building the rockets. It was an extremely simple mechanism consisting of a sheet of copper hull plating about six inches wide and curved along its length into a “U” shape. It looked like a long pipe that had been cut in half along its long axis.
“We’ll have three people manning this launcher. One person places the rocket into this copper tray, like so. You have to make sure that the pole is on top and not obstructed. That person then steps back to get another rocket.
“The second person points the swivel gun just as if he were going to fire a ball at the other ship. When he…”
“Or she,” Susan chimed in.
“Or she,” Walker continued without missing a beat, “is happy with the aim he… or she… will lock the gun’s barrel by putting this shim in the swivel, and get out of the way. The third man will quickly light the short engine fuse with a slow match.
“Any questions?”
The group was silent for a moment, and then Hanover spoke up.
“Will it work?”
Sir Sidney Smith
Two 32-gun Royal Navy frigates, similar to the
HMS Richmond
The Battle of the Capes - UK
(Battle of the Chesapeake - US)
Swan Taven - Where Smith and Walker first met
Prince William
Moore House - Where the team of Smith, Walker
and Whitney first formed
Admiral Thomas Graves
Admiral Samuel Hood
Count François de Grasse
Captain James Saumarez
Admiral George Rodney
Captain Sir Charles Douglas
The Battle of Frigate Bay
The Battle of the Saintes
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE sun came up over Hog Island in a most unusual way. Because it was low in the sky, it was a large, brilliant, orange ball; but off in the distance some high thin clouds bisected the sun making it look like it had rings, like Saturn.
Hayes used the traditional nautical definition of “dawn”; namely, it’s dawn when you can “tell a gray feather from a white feather held at arms length.”
By that definition, or any other, it was now dawn and orders were being given to get the Trojan underway.
Hayes set the topsail and jib, started the ship slowly running toward the Cardinal, and called the four refugees together.
“All right, here’s what we’re going to do,” Hayes began. “We have one card I want to play before we resort to those… whatever they are… things you made. We’re gonna approach the Cardinal slowly, like we’re giving up. Then, at the last minute, I am going to drop the Mainsail and sheer off on a starboard tack. The wind is easterly again so I am hoping I can get by him and into the wind before he can react. By the time he comes around to chase us, we’ll have a lead—one that I hope I can significantly increase.”