“One might as well try to direct a sheep to graze northwards,” Lt. Spendlove baldly stated, though he did so in a calm voice without too much sarcasm. “Do the French anchor row after long row of péniches and barges along their harbour moles and breakwaters, a torpedo might end up alongside one of them, sir, but which one would be asking far too much of them, in their present form. I doubt even Merriman’s idea for explosive boats could choose a target, any more than a fireship set loose to sail in on its own.”
“I think Captain Speaks does not intend that sort of accuracy, sirs,” Lt. Clough quickly interjected. “It’s more a matter of ending up somewhere alongside those long, anchored rows, instead of drifting a whole mile wide.”
“Drogues,” Lewrie said. “Sea-anchors t’pull ’em in quicker and straighter.”
“Though, whatever variations in the direction of the tides, the eddys and such, might not a drogue pull them off course even faster?” Clough wondered aloud, his thick brow as furrowed as a wheat field.
“We’ll never know ’til we try,” Lewrie said.
“Rudders, too, sir,” Lt. Merriman stuck in, looking eager again after the general gloomy tone of the gathering. “I dare say our Carpenter and the Bosun could whip something up in short order.”
“Sir?” Lewrie said, turning to Speaks.
Poor old fart don’t have a ship command, and now it looks as if his project’s a dead-bust, too, Lewrie thought as Captain Speaks hemmed and hawed and wiped his hand over his mouth.
Lewrie felt certain that the catamaran torpedoes in their current form would sort of work, if the yards built enough of them and the eventual attack on the main French marshalling port of Boulogne used hundreds of the damned things at one go. That might be enough success for Admiralty, and Speaks’s career. But, if the old fellow was seen to use his wits and made improvements which worked even better…! There was a feather in his cap, a pat on the back from Admiralty, and a promotion into a ship of his own.
Will ye mention me in your report, when Merriman’s modifications solve the problem? Assumin’ they do, o’ course! I could use some new credit in London, too. Get that Henry Legge and court-martial off my back! Lewrie speculated.
“I suppose it would not hurt to try fitting the last two with drogues, and perhaps one of them with a fixed rudder,” Speaks grudgingly allowed, after a long think. “We’ve what left, Mister Clough?”
“One set for fifteen minutes, sir, one for half an hour,” that stout worthy replied.
“Excellent!” Speaks enthused, or pretended to; he looked as if he was driven to sham zeal, no matter what he really thought of torpedoes, or their reliability, or even the honourability of using them as weapons of war. Lewrie suspected that poor Speaks was in over his head in a project he didn’t have a clue about, and might even hold to be a ghastly, sneaking, and atrocious idea, but … the torpedoes were all he had, and he would prove them useful no matter his reservations. Even were they horrid wastes of matériel and money, he would persevere to the last sticking post to prove himself worthy.
“The after-end hoisting ring-bolts, sir,” Lt. Merriman babbled on, producing a lead pencil and a scrap of paper from his coat. “Do we bind the tiller to either of those, anchoring its end to the stand-pipe with a wood mast hoop from one of the barge’s lug-sails…”
“Um-hum, I see…,” Speaks gravely replied, leaning over to peer at the quick sketch. “Like a fixed sweep-oar rudder.”
“Exactly so, sir!” Merriman said, chuckling.
“But … would it not wobble, Mister Merriman?” Speaks asked.
“Well, hmm…” Merriman frowned, looking cock-eyed at his idea. “If we nailed some small baulks of scrap timber to the torpedo. They are wood chests, after all, yes! We could nail baulks through the tarred canvas and outer planking, say four inches thick and high, eight inches long, to make a restraining channel for the long tiller, which we’d still attach to the stand-pipe with a mast hoop…!”
Pettus came to the table and leaned over to whisper in Lewrie’s ear, then stood over to the side-board to gather wine glasses for all the company.
“You’ll stay aboard to dine, sir, Mister Clough?” Lewrie asked his guests. “I’m told my cook’s preparin’ bean soup, roasted rabbit, and a sea pie, with apple tarts to boot.”
“Delighted, Captain Lewrie!” Captain Speaks replied, turning to look at him very briefly, now intent upon Merriman’s sketch, to which he quickly returned. “Once in place, why not nail restraining boards over the brackets, so the tiller won’t hop out or slip free, sir?”
Lewrie crooked a finger to Pettus.
“Sir?” Pettus said in a whisper, leaning close again.
“Best see that the cats eat very separate tonight,” Lewrie said, with a slight incline of his head towards their senior officer.
“I’ll see to it, sir.”
He’s in a good mood, for once, Lewrie thought; Pray God nothin’ spoils it!
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Drogues, or sea-anchors, were easily cobbled together from the iron hoops of depleted ration butts or kegs, which the Ship’s Cooper had dis-assembled and stored below, one small hoop from a five-gallon barrico for the small end, and a larger one for the main opening. The canvas and the sewing work to bind the canvas cones to the hoops was done by the Sailmaker and his Mate, and the Bosun provided the one-inch manila for the tow-lines.
The Ship’s Carpenter, with the Bosun and his Mate, created the stabilising rudder device. It looked damned odd, for it had to mate to the flat top of a torpedo, then curve to match the slope of taper along the after-end, nailed in place in its brackets, with a wood ring at the end that fit round the stand-pipe, then doubled to hold a cut-down rudder off Reliant’s jolly-boat, so it would not wobble.
The modifications were finished by mid-afternoon of the next day, then borne over to Penarth for fitting, and the trials would come on the next morning tide.
* * *
“Flags, Mister Merriman?” Lewrie asked as he stood by the entry-port to watch his boat crews board their barges.
“Mister Clough’s idea, sir,” Merriman told him, impatient to be about the trials with his improvements. “We’ll tie them to the stand-pipe to show what time we pulled the priming lines, and be able to see where they go … at least for the experiment, sir.”
“Good thinkin’,” Lewrie agreed. “Once set free, I hadn’t the slightest clue where they were ’til they went ‘bang.’ Away with you, Mister Merriman, Mister Entwhistle. Have fun!” he wished them.
Don’t blow yourselves up! Lewrie wished to himself.
“If they work better this time, sir,” Lt. Westcott said, coming to his side as Lewrie paced back to the centre of the quarterdeck, “we may have to buy more colliers into the Navy. Else it will take better than three or four hours to hoist all eight out of the holds and ready them all for launching.”
“Hmm. Hadn’t thought about that part of it,” Lewrie confessed. “Come t’think on it, I doubt if anyone else has, either. If we do end up launchin’ ’em by the hundred, it’d take a whole flotilla of colliers and ship’s boats. And, they’d have to anchor two miles off the French coast hours before the tide begins to make.”
“Sacre bleu, mort de ma vie, vottever are zose Anglais doing?” Westcott scoffed quite cheerfully. “Henri, do you z’ink we should tell someone of zis, or open ze fire wiz ze cannon on z’ese pests?”
“If there’s a makin’ tide in darkness, perhaps,” Lewrie speculated, with a leery grimace. “Oh, all this is nonsense and moonshine! Even if they work somewhat as desired, it’s deployin’ ’em that’ll be the rub. It makes more sense that we just barge up to Range-To-Random Shot and fire away ’til the powder magazine’s empty.”
The last torpedo was slung overside into the sea, and the barges took them in tow. Today, the trials were done under reduced sail, not anchored, so Penarth did not block their view.
The barges sailed in towards Guernsey ’til they were within an estimated mi
le, and handed their sails for a minute or two. Through their telescopes, Lewrie and Westcott could see people scrambling onto the torpedoes, which were floating awash with the chop breaking over them. Tiny triangular red pendants sprouted a foot or so above the sea as Lt. Merriman and Midshipman Entwhistle jerked the priming lines and replaced the tompions, then the barges rowed out ahead of the torpedoes to deploy the drogues and tow them for a bit, before letting go the drogues’ lines and rapidly turning away to re-hoist sail and leave the immediate area, soonest.
Sand trickled through the quarter-hour and half-hour glasses, pocket-watches were consulted almost every two minutes, and everyone who had access to a telescope peered intently from the starboard-side shrouds or bulwarks. The tiny red pendants shrank smaller and smaller as the minutes ticked by, with some of the more enthusiastic boasting that the torpedoes seemed to be drifting faster this time, and seemed not to be drifting too far off the section of the shore that had been chosen as a “target.”
“Can barely spot ’em, now, sir,” Lt. Westcott muttered.
“Any time now, on the first one,” Mr. Caldwell, the Sailing Master, said, squinting at his watch. “Yes! There it goes!”
B’whoom! followed the sudden eruption of flame-shot gunpowder smoke and a great sprouting pillar of sea by a second or so.
“Mister Spendlove?” Lewrie asked, turning to the Second Officer.
“By my reckoning, sir, it went off on time, yet still a half-mile short,” Spendlove said, after some quick figuring on his slate. “And, do we take that stretch of shoreline from the white church and steeple on the left, and the grove of trees marking the right end of a mile-long target representing a line of French barges, it seemed to trend larboard, closer to the steeple-end, sir, when it should have ended up closer to the centre.”
“We released from roughly the same place as the earlier trials, on the same strength of tide-race, over the same bottom influences we experienced before, so … there’s no explaining it, sir,” Westcott said, frowning in puzzlement for a moment, but he perked up at last. “It seems, though, that the drogue pulled it closer ashore, and kept it within the margins!” he said, extending both arms to encompass the outer ends of that mile of shore. “Now, if the half-hour torpedo with the rudder behaves the same, that one might come close to succeeding.”
More long minutes passed, then …
“There, sir!” Midshipman Rossyngton crowed, leaping in glee.
The sea boiled of a sudden in a wide, shallow hump that burst like a pus-filled boil, spurting smoke and spray an hundred feet into the air, yellow-grey powder smoke and white foam mingling. A second later came the Ba’whoom! from the gigantic explosion.
“In the shallows, I think,” Westcott deemed it. “Almost ashore.”
“And very close to the mid-point of the mile, sir,” Lt. Spendlove said in a flat voice, as if the torpedo’s seeming success had awakened his initial mis-givings again. “A fluke, most-like?”
“Damme, the bloody things might work, after all,” Lewrie grudgingly allowed.
If they do, maybe they’ll free us for other duties, just thankee, Jesus! he thought; They work, our part’s done, and someone else can go use ’em! I still don’t quite trust ’em.
* * *
They recovered their barges, and Lt. Merriman and Midshipman Entwhistle came tumbling back aboard in such glad takings that they could almost be said to dance jigs, babbling away like mag-pies. And, before the barges could be led astern for towing, Penarth came slowly surging alongside within hailing distance, with Captain Speaks at her larboard railings.
“Hoy, Reliant!” Speaks shouted, hands cupped by his face, with no need of a speaking-trumpet. “That did the trick! I will sail for Portsmouth at once, with the design drawings your First Officer made! Congratulations to you and your Mister Merriman, Lewrie! Rest assured my report will be complimentary to you all!”
“Thank you, sir!” Lewrie shouted back.
“Remain on station ’til I return with fresh torpedoes!” Speaks ordered. “Look for me off the Nor’east tip of Guernsey in about ten days to a fortnight!”
Makin’ sure he gets all the bloody credit, first! Lewrie sarcastically realised.
“ ’Til then, cruise independent, and make a nuisance of yourself with the French!” Speaks added.
Hmm, maybe not so bad, at that, Lewrie thought more kindly.
“You’ll not need escort back to Portsmouth, sir?” Lewrie asked.
“With no torpedoes aboard, there’s nought the French may learn, sir!” Speaks shouted over, sounding very pleased and amused. “Adieu, and good hunting, Reliant!”
“Thank you, sir! See you in a fortnight at the latest!”
Penarth sheeted home her fore-course and slowly began to draw away. Lewrie turned to his officers and Mids.
“Well, sirs? He said we should make a nuisance of ourselves, so let’s be about it. Mister Westcott, Mister Caldwell, we can be into the Gulf of Saint Malo by early afternoon. Shape a course,” he said. “Captain Speaks has let us off his leash for a few days. Let us make the most of it.”
“Aye aye, sir!” Westcott wolfishly agreed.
“And get back to proper duties, sir?” Lt. Spendlove asked.
“Doin’ what a frigates’s s’posed t’do, aye,” Lewrie said with a laugh, feeling immense relief. And feeling rather wolfish, himself!
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Making a nuisance of themselves in the Gulf of St. Malo was not as easy as it sounded, however. Reliant’s draught of almost eighteen feet limited where she could go, or dare go for only a few hours, due to the dramatic rise and fall of the tides, forcing her to venture no closer than two miles of the French coast, far beyond the Range-To-Random Shot of her 18-pounder guns.
Besides, other Royal Navy vessels were already in the Gulf and quite successfully making nuisances of themselves, vessels which drew much less water than she; the bulk of them were small and light single-masted cutters, backed up by brig-sloops or the rare three-masted full-rigged sloops, mostly lieutenants’ commands, with half-squadrons or flotillas led by commanders in their Sixth Rates. If Reliant did meet with a larger warship commanded by a Post-Captain, an offer of help was turned down, for the most part, since all the aid the Fifth Rate 38-gun ship could provide was more moral than substantial, too far offshore to back up the blockading patrols or operations unless a French frigate of her own weight of metal emerged … and so far none had. What opposition the French had sent out had been chasse-marées, prames, and chaloupes, the gunboats purpose-built to defend the armada of invasion vessels, and those not too often, either.
Some people were having fun, though, swarming over the convoys of péniches and caïques trying to make their way to join the immense gathering at Boulogne, hugging the coast as close as the shoals, sand-bars, and rocks allowed, sneaking from port to port in short and breathless stages. More enterprising young officers were leading their men ashore at night to cut out barges, or set fire to them, and the very bravest would row up the creeks or rivers to block the many canals or raid the small riverside shipyards where the invasion fleet was being built. And Reliant could take no part in that.
After a few days of fruitless prowling, all Lewrie could do was shake his head, take a squint at Point de Grouin east of St. Malo, and order Reliant turned North for a return to Guernsey and the open waters of the Channel, wishing his more-active compatriots well, though he did in point of fact envy the Hell out of their shallower draughts, their opportunities, and even their lower ranks which could justify their active participation in such harum-scarums. If he could pinch Reliant into high-tide reach of the Normandy coast, he might find a chance for action off Granville, Coutances, Lessay, or Barneville-Carteret or some other inlet or fishing port along the way.
If someone did not beat him to it, first!
* * *
He did not know what awakened him, the coolness of the night or his cats. Lewrie had rolled into his hanging-bed-cot round midnight
in all his clothes but his boots and coat, more for a long nap than anything else, too fretted by the wind and sea conditions to imagine that he would drop off so soundly or quickly. Just after Lights Out at 9 P.M. the winds had nigh-died on them, and the sea had turned to nearly a flat calm, slowing the frigate to a bare three knots.
The air in the great-cabins was clammy and cool, and his first thought was to pull up the coverlet, or rise and close the upper halves of the sash-windows in the transom, as well as the propped-open windows in the overhead coach-top. Lewrie never left the lower halves open at night; did Toulon and Chalky prowl and play-fight in the dark, it was good odds that one, or both of them, would tumble out some dark night.
They were both with him in the bed-cot. Toulon, the older black-and-white, was puddinged up atop his hip, working his front paws and loudly purring. Chalky, the younger mostly white ram-cat, was in his face. When Lewrie opened one gritted eye, all he could see was warm fur, though he could feel Chalky’s pink nose and whiskers brushing at his own nose and eyes.
“What?” Lewrie grumbled in irritation to be wakened so early in the wee hours. “Can’t I have the last hour? We have t’play now?”
Far forward, a ship’s boy began to strike the watch-bells, and Lewrie let out a groan. It was Seven Bells of the Middle Watch, which ran from Midnight to 4 A.M. While he usually wished to be awakened a few minutes before the change of watch, this was a bit too premature!
“Right, then,” Lewrie mumbled, gingerly shifting position and reaching out to pet both cats, yawning heavily and stretching to ease stiffness. With a frown, he became aware of how still the motion of the ship felt, of how faintly Reliant’s timbers groaned as they worked, almost as if she was securely moored in harbour. His ears caught the creaks, the squeaks of slack blocks, and the slatting of sails as if there was no wind, and he sat up quickly, worried that his frigate was becalmed off a hostile shore, possible prey to oared gunboats with those rumoured 24-pounders in their bows!
The Invasion Year Page 33