“Ain’t natural…’tis Devil’s work, them things!” a sailor whispered to his mate as they got both banks of oars working in unison and made their escape. Lewrie opened his pocket compass and held it close to his face but could not quite read it. On the way in, before they had left Fusee, the course had been Sou’-Sou’east, and the reciprocal to take them back near the converted bomb vessel should be Nor’-Nor’west, but … he looked astern to the lights of St. Valery and Le Crotoy. “Keep the towns on our starboard quarter, Desmond, and that’ll take us somewhere near Fusee.”
“Aye, sor,” Liam Desmond replied with a firm mutter and a nod. Now they were getting away from their infernal device, he sounded in much calmer takings. By the faint whispers and brief flashes of his sailors’ teeth, the cutter’s crew seemed much relieved, too, some even uttering very soft laughter.
Jesus, what a shitten mess! Lewrie thought, letting out a sigh, relaxing himself, falling into an exhausted lassitude. That happened to him, now and then, at the conclusion of battle aboard ship, or the end of a person-to-person fight with his sword; the intensely keen concentration at either left him so spent of a sudden that he sometimes needed a good sit-down to regain his strength, and his wits. Lewrie shook himself back to full awareness, and groped round the sole of the cutter for his hat. It was soaked, of course, and trampled into ruin, but he clapped it back on his head.
And what was the time when the damned clock began to run? he suddenly thought; You bloody fool, ye didn’t note it! How’ll I know if the bastard blows up on time? Shit, shit, shit!
* * *
“Coffee, sir?” Lt. Johns’s cabin steward offered.
“Aye, more than welcome,” Lewrie replied, accepting a battered pewter mug of scalding-hot black coffee, waving off the further offer of goat’s milk or sugar. They had found Fusee by steering blind ’til espying the long, irregular skirt of foam breaking round the anchored bomb’s waterline. MacTavish and Midshipman Frederick had come along a few minutes later, and lastly, Lt. Merriman’s cutter had approached, coming alongside to starboard, having steered too wide and to seaward for a time.
“Cup for you, too, sir?” the steward offered Merriman.
“God, yes!” the cheerful Merriman (so aptly named) answered.
“Four minutes by my reckoning, for mine, McCloud!” the inventor, MacTavish, said to his artificer in a loud whisper.
“Pardon, sir, but, did you have any trouble with yours?” Lieutenant Merriman softly asked Lewrie. “Mine was a total bastard.”
“A complete shambles, aye,” Lewrie muttered back, “gettin’ it alongside with all those bloody bayonets, gettin’ the tompion out, and fumblin’ in the dark, then gettin’ the bung back in? We got spiked to the damned thing for a bit, too.”
“Aye, sir. I can’t see how the torpedoes can be managed in the dark. And, if we launch them in daylight, it will have to be done so close inshore that the French shore guns and gunboats shoot us all to flinders,” Lt. Merriman told him, shaking his head. “I don’t know…”
“Launchin’ ’em by the dozens,” Lewrie muttered back. “I can’t picture our sailors gettin’ it done right, night or day. They’re too damned complicated t’set and prime.”
“About time, gentlemen! It’s about time!” MacTavish enthused, drawing all participants, officers and sailors, to the bulwarks to peer shoreward. That was anti-climactic, though, for at least three more minutes passed before the first explosion.
There was a distant and dull Boom! as a torpedo at last went off, shooting a geyser of spray and foam into the air, and sounding no louder than the slam of an iron oven door. And much further out to sea than the tide should have taken it, according to MacTavish’s last-minute estimations. It had not gone much more than half a mile.
“Hmmm, I’d have thought…,” MacTavish fretted, then drew out a sheaf of papers from his coat and tried to decypher them in the dark.
Even more long minutes passed before the second torpedo burst, and they almost missed that one, for though this one had drifted in to roughly the proper distance to reach a trot of caïques, the geyser of spray, foam, and gunpowder smoke looked little taller than the splash of a 32-pound shot dapping along from its First Graze, and the sound of its expected titanic explosion was little more than a fumph!
“Not all the charge went off?” Lt. Johns said, crushed. “How could that be?”
“Someone was remiss as to snugly replacing the tompion, and the sea got in,” Mr. MacTavish accused.
Mine, most-like? Lewrie sheepishly thought, but would not allow that to stand.
“If seawater got to the pistol’s priming or powder charge, it wouldn’t have gone off at all, Mister MacTavish,” Lewrie told him. “I expect it was the main charge below that got soaked, somehow, and went off like a squib.”
“Th’ casks’re tighter’n a drum, an’ tested fair leaks, sair!” McCloud the artificer bristled back, twitching his jaws so hard that his scraggly beard rustled. “Paid ower weet tar an’ bound in tarred canvas. They canna leak!”
“Evidently that’un did, Mister McCloud,” Lewrie rejoined. “Or, being stored at sea for a week or so, the damp got to the gunpowder.”
“Two to go, though, gentlemen. All’s not lost, yet!” MacTavish insisted.
But the trial evidently was over, for after a full hour waiting for the other two to explode, long past the time when they had been set to go off, there were no more geysers or bangs.
“I don’t understand,” MacTavish said, bewildered. “According to my calculations…! I am certain that I prepared mine properly, if no one else managed to follow such simple instructions…!”
“Let’s get under way, Mister Johns,” Lewrie ordered, yawning. “I’m amazed the French haven’t found us, yet, and we must be clear of the coast by dawn.”
“Aye, sir,” a crest-fallen Lt. Johns agreed.
“There’s still two to go, I must point out to you, sir!” Mister MacTavish peevishly demanded. “There’s still darkness!”
“Ain’t in the cards, Mister MacTavish, not tonight it ain’t,” Lewrie told him. “I’m charged with keeping you two, your torpedoes, and anyone involved with ’em, out of French hands, and we’ve pressed our luck as far as I think it seemly t’go, tonight. We’re off.”
And I need some bloody sleep! Lewrie told himself.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The morning after their assault on the mouth of the Somme river, Reliant and Fusee were forced to return to Sheerness. Lt. Johns had made an inspection of the remaining torpedoes and found that their clockwork timer’s inner workings were so corroded by salt-air damp that they would not run; likewise for the fire-locks of the igniting pistols. A lack of mineral oil to protect them from rusting would have guaranteed a failure. In private, Lt. Johns had also confided to Lewrie that both the clocks and the pistols were of the cheapest manufacture, cast-offs or rejects of such low quality that they appeared to be the first failed efforts of new apprentices. “Trust Scots to pinch and bemoan a groat, sir, a penny bedamned,” Johns had muttered, most sadly disappointed.
MacTavish and McCloud, he’d also reported, had gone off on each other, each blaming the other for the failures, and the artificer sent off in a huff, sacked from his position. MacTavish would have to see to the construction of new torpedoes himself, find a new artificer to oversee the work, and most definitely not spare HM Government’s money this time on the timers or pistols!
Lewrie had begun his report to Admiralty the morning after the trials off the Somme, and completed it just before Reliant had come to anchor in the Great Nore. He dis-passionately described the complicated method of priming and activating, the difficulty with the tompion and the use of them in the total dark, along with the risks involved if deployed during the day; the shoddy materials used in the first place, and the great risk of damp getting to the powder no matter how snugly the torpedoes were sealed, due to being stored above-decks exposed to weather, then slung over the side and towed long distances
all but submerged. It was no way to treat gunpowder, if one wished it to stay dry and go Bang!
His clerk and one of his Mids with a good copper-plate writing had made copies, one for MacTavish. Lewrie expected he would hear the fellow’s screeches all the way down-river from Woolwich once he read his copy!
In the meantime, though …
* * *
“Excuse me, sir, but I wonder if I might have a word?”
“Aye, Mister Merriman?” Lewrie said, looking up from his stroll of Reliant’s quarterdeck to savour the Summer sunshine.
“It’s about the torpedoes, sir,” Lt. Merriman began.
“Those bastards!” Lewrie said with a dismissive snort.
“Indeed, sir,” Merriman said with a wry grin of agreement. “I and Mister Westcott were talking things over last night, and we were wondering if there would be any more trials with them. If so, we think we’ve come up with a way to improve them. Sea-anchors, sir!”
“Sea-anchors?”
“One uses a sea-anchor to keep a ship’s head to wind in stormy weather, but … was a sea-anchor used in a strong tideway, would not a drogue pull the torpedo shoreward faster? Just bobbing about like they did, we had to get within a mile, with the timer set for fourty-five minutes, but … if we could launch from farther out, we could almost do it in daylight, and be out of range of most shore guns,” Lt. Merriman said, bubbling over with enthusiasm.
“Might as well put a mast and a lugs’l on ’em, sir,” Lewrie rejoined, feeling gloomy of a sudden to imagine that there would be one more round of trials with the damned things! “Or, just shove tons of powder into a fireship and let it sail itself in.”
“The First Lieutenant brought the idea up, too, sir,” Merriman replied, falling alongside of Lewrie’s in-board side as he paced aft to the taffrails. “If the drogues won’t improve the torpedoes, then perhaps a small fireship, a fire-boat, might serve the purpose.”
“There’s the problem of damp, though,” Lewrie pointed out.
“Aye, sir, and on that head we asked Mister Mainwaring the Surgeon if he knew of any earth or element that would absorb damp,” Lieutenant Merriman rushed on, all eagerness. “He cited sodium chloride, sir … whatever that is.”
“Fire-boats … as in ship’s boats, Mister Merriman?” Lewrie asked, pausing in mid-stride.
“Exactly so, sir! Every dockyard’s full of them, or they can be readily bought,” Lt. Merriman continued. “One could place a floor above the ribs and keels, a bulkhead forward in the bows, and deck it all over, with just a cuddy to allow for setting the timer and priming the pistol igniter just before the crew abandons it. Perhaps even construct interior beam partitions to form a box cabin which would secure the powder charge, sir? Fill the voids between the hull and partitions with this sodium chloride whatever to soak up the damp, perhaps even line the entire box with tin, or lead, or … something … to keep it all dry, and a cheaply purchased fire-boat could sail in under its own power. Why, they might not even have to be set alight, and could sail in in the night with the French none the wiser ’til they explode … and a cutter or barge could carry a lot more gunpowder than one of the cask torpedoes, sir!”
“You’ve sketches, Mister Merriman?” Lewrie asked, beginning to be intrigued. Anything would beat MacTavish’s casks all hollow!
“Uhm, Mister Westcott said he would essay a sketch or two, sir,” Merriman explained. “He did not wish to present them to you ’til he and I were perfectly satisfied, but he also said that I should speak to you about the possibility.”
“Hidin’ his light under a bushel basket, is he?” Lewrie japed.
“Well, sir, if our idea seems plausible, Mister Westcott thought that the fire-boats should be deemed as secret as the torpedoes, hence we should show them to no one else but you, for now, sir,” Lieutenant Merriman said in a more guarded way.
“When you and the First Officer deem ’em ready, bring ’em aft to the great-cabins, Mister Merriman,” Lewrie told him. “And mum’s the word ’til then. Carry on.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Merriman said, doffing his hat in salute.
Gawd, another daft idea! Lewrie thought once Merriman had gone; Even more gunpowder … a ton or so? Brr! Still … an explosive boat doesn’t depend on the tide alone. Lash the tiller and it’ll steer itself. I wonder …
He heaved a sigh, realising that if Admiralty found Westcott’s and Merriman’s concept practical, both officers might be sent off to develop the boats, costing him two damned competent men. If he wrote too enthusiastically, Admiralty might even think him clever enough to oversee the project and take Reliant away from him and give him a shore post at some dockyard!
Admiralty thinkin’ me clever? Lewrie scoffed, though; That’ll be a cold day in Hell! I’d fight that, even did “all night in” with Lydia come attached!
* * *
It was mid-afternoon before Lewrie heard back from Lieutenants Westcott and Merriman, and he was, in point of fact, writing a letter to Lydia Stangbourne and looking forward to a good nap once that was done and sent ashore to be posted—in emulation of his cats—when his Marine sentry loudly announced their arrival. “Come!” he bade, and Westcott and Merriman trooped in, cocked hats under their arms and a packet of drawings in their hands, carefully rolled up and bound with twine to guard against their contents being revealed prematurely.
“Tea for all, Pettus, and then take yourself a long idle hour or so on deck,” Lewrie called out. Pettus poured them all tumblers of Lewrie’s patented cool tea from a pitcher, set out lemon slices and a sugar bowl, then departed, taking wee Jessop with him.
“Quite refreshing, sir, thank you,” Westcott said after a sip.
“What have you come up with, then?” Lewrie pressed, shifting with some eagerness in his chair as they sat round his dining table. “If it ain’t torpedoes, it’s welcome.”
“Oh, aye, sir!” Lt. Westcott laughed, baring, his teeth in a wide grin. He un-did the knots in the twine and un-rolled a short stack of folio-sized sheets. “The first, sir, is the overall outer design with ends, overhead, and beam views. Mister Merriman and I reckon that we’d need at least a twenty-five-foot cutter to get the job done, though a thirty-two-foot barge could carry more sail on its two masts, and more gunpowder, depending…”
“On how big a bang you wish, sir!” Merriman finished for his companion, with a laugh. “You’ll note, sir, that the decking-over to keep the powder charge safe from spray and slop is slightly arched. To channel a heavy sea off like water off a duck’s back.”
“How’d the sailors hoist sail, then, if it’s arched?” Lewrie puzzled, frowning over the drawing, which was as fine and detailed as any he’d seen in a dockyard office. “Wouldn’t they slide over the side, with the water?”
“Ah, you’ll note that the decking ends just inside the gunn’ls, and two inches below them, sir,” Lt. Westcott explained with another grin. “So the cap-rail of the gunn’l forms a low rail to brace their feet as they tend the sheets and halliards.”
“Uh-hum!” was Lewrie’s comment to that thoughtful provision. It appeared that his two Lieutenants had given the matter more thought than the recently departed and un-lamented Mr. MacTavish had his casks.
“The decking-over extends right aft, almost to the stern-sheets, sir,” Merriman said, taking up the explanation of the plans. “There’s the cuddy-like hatch to allow access to the box cabin, through which the powder kegs will be loaded, and the clockworks and pistol can be set.” He used a pencil to tap the pertinent parts.
“That way, sir, the kegs could be kept dry and safe from accidental discharge in the tender’s magazines ’til needed,” Lt. Westcott added. “Now, the next sheet, sir, depicts the interior appointments, and the lining and beam partitions to hold the dessicant.”
“Dessicant?” Lewrie puzzled.
“That’s Mister Mainwaring’s ‘break-teeth’ word for blocks, bags, of sodium chloride … salt, sir!” Merriman said, chuckling. “Very scientific, that,
for stuff that’ll soak up humidity and any leaks.”
“There’s another … humidity,” Westcott stuck in, winking.
“See how much we’re learnin’?” Lewrie japed right back.
Damned if the interior sketches were not merely fine builders’ plans, but they had done three-quarter-view drawings, too, shaded in varying tones of light and dark, as meticulous as a wood-cut illustration printed in a reference book, or a serious newspaper article!
“I did not know that you two were such talented artists,” Lewrie praised them, leaning far over the table to admire their work.
“Well, sir, the rough preliminary sketches were my work, but Mister Westcott is the real draughtsman,” Merriman confessed.
“Indeed he is!” Lewrie exclaimed, leaning back. “I once asked if he was musical, and when he said ‘no’ I assumed his true talent lay in seafaring.”
And women, Lewrie reminded himself; most definitely women!
“But, I s’pose we all have our side-lines t’keep us occupied in our off-watch hours,” Lewrie went on.
“Thank you, sir,” Lt. Westcott said, grinning and bowing at the waist whilst seated. “George here, though, wrote the proposal, and I dare say that you will find it equally meritorious, Captain. Merriman has a way with words.”
“It’s included, sir,” Merriman said, almost shyly.
“I look forward t’readin’ it,” Lewrie said. “But, once cocked and all, what happens to the boat’s crew … and how many men?”
“As to the second sir, if I may, we estimate that only one Midshipman would be required to command and steer the boat in, sir,” Lt. Merriman replied, shifting in his chair to scoot closer. “Each of the boats would need two hands to tend the sails, then spell the Mid for as long as it would take for him to start the timer and cock the pistol, then … as to the first matter, sir, we envision that each explosive boat would need a gig or jolly-boat to trail it in, then take off the crew … once the tiller is lashed and the sails trimmed for the last time,” Lt. Merriman explained. “Though it is possible that if a flotilla of boats are launched, only three or four oared and masted barges could recover all the hands from a round dozen.”
The Invasion Year Page 29