Paul Jones, both hands on the rail, could see the officer’s mouth working, arm urging boarders forward. With only enough contact between the two ships for one plank, the English were waiting. Before he had taken three steps, the American was cut down. His pistol and sword dropped into the abyss between the hulls as he crumpled off the plank. His place was filled immediately, marine following marine. Support was given by the men in the mast tops who pouring down small arms fire on the English. A swivel gun crashed, spraying death onto Serapis’s deck, but where the dead and injured fell, their places were taken as though by sorcery. The French marines were shot off the plank as fast as they put feet on the wood. The odd man who succeeded in reaching the English deck was hacked to pieces. Paul Jones could almost hear the English officers laughing at him. When twenty men’s lives had been wasted he saw it was futile.
“Belay the assault! We’ll sheer off!”
***
As Bonhomme Richard fell away, Captain Pearson took the initiative. From his position on the quarterdeck of HMS Serapis, he had personally directed his crew as they repelled boarders, content to leave the gangplank in place as long as necessary. While the Americans kept coming, his men could shoot them off with little risk. But as soon as the enemy abandoned their attempt, Pearson saw his chance.
“Helm hard a-port!” he shouted, Serapis eating her fill of the meager wind. She swung but could not muster enough headway to overhaul and cross Richard’s bows. He cursed, all too aware the American had seen his intention, the old East Indiaman dogging his stern. His marines lined the taffrail, loosing ripples of musket fire toward Richard’s nearing jibboom.
“He’s going to ram us,” Lt. Wright said in astonishment, aiming and firing his own pistol. The report was followed by the crash of twin swivels mounted by the lanterns. Seconds later, Serapis still swinging to starboard, Richard’s bowsprit plowed into their bulwarks like a raging bull, bodily lifting cannon from their trucks and tossing them across the deck. Captain Pearson lost sight of the Stars and Stripes in the confusion, thinking Paul Jones had hauled his colors down, the universal signal of surrender. Squinting through the smoke, he pushed forward to the rail, two marines moving aside. He held up his speaking trumpet and called through a lull in the musket fire.
“Paul Jones! Has your ship struck!”
On the quarterdeck Paul Jones laughed heartily, boosting the morale of the marines who stood in a protective circle about him.
“Struck?” he shouted back. “I have not yet begun to fight!”
While the men on the weather deck cheered his courage, the commodore considered his next move. He had to get Richard clear before the swivel gunners in the enemy’s stern could inflict more damage. With his own ship pointing directly at the Englishman, swivels in the mast tops were unable to bear because of Richard’s rigging and sails.
“Back topsails,” he ordered, speculating on the Englishman’s next move when Richard eased off. The answer came soon. As the bowsprit wrenched free, Serapis began to wear to port, turning on her heel to run westerly.
“Pardon, sir?” Midshipman Mayrant asked.
Jones frowned. “What, boy? No, I didn’t say anything. You see what he wants me to do? He wants me to wear ship so he can use his broadsides on me again. Very well, I shall. Pass the order.”
It was Mayrant’s turn to frown. “Sir?”
“Don’t question me! Pass the order!”
Bonhomme Richard wore, swinging parallel to Serapis, but moving much slower than the agile English frigate. Paul Jones knew Pearson would have to back his sails to allow Richard to draw level, and it was for that moment he waited, watching the enemy rigging. It was as he foresaw. Serapis backed her topsails, checking her headway. The commodore smiled.
“We have him. Let her run!”
Richard gathered way. When she drew level, her sails stole the Englishman’s wind, Pearson’s ship almost at a standstill. The American surged ahead. A staccato broadside chased them, but the commodore was grinning as they moved out of range.
“Helm hard a-weather!” he ordered. The quartermaster spun the wheel, Bonhomme Richard cutting across Serapis’s bows. “Trim the braces!” he shouted, realizing they were not going to weather with enough sea room to rake the Englishman. He glanced at the rigging and saw some of the yards’ braces had been shot away. He knew then the two ships would collide again. He had wanted it close, but not like this.
He cursed as Serapis’s jibboom and bowsprit plunged into Richard’s mizzen shrouds. For a moment he thought the rigging would be torn away and the mizzenmast would fall. It held, but Richard’s momentum, spiked by the enemy’s bowsprit, swung her so the two ships lay flank to flank, bows to stern. Still moving but unable to shake free, Richard’s topsides crashed into the English man-o’-war, American cannon muzzles jammed tight against the still unopened gun ports of the Englishman’s starboard battery.
As Paul Jones registered the fact Captain Pearson would now be unable to use his broadsides, Mayrant came back to his side from the head of the companion.
“Sir! She’s hooked us on a fluke of her starboard anchor! We’re held fast!”
Jones grinned. His mistake had turned to advantage. “Well done, lads! We’ve got her now! Throw on the grappling irons and stand by for boarding!” He strode to where one of the enemy’s forestays had fallen across the quarterdeck during the collision. He grabbed and tied it to Richard’s mizzenmast. “Make her fast, lads! She’ll not run away now!” The men cheered him. He waved in acknowledgement, then turned to Stacey, the officer who had taken over duties as sailing master. Stacey grinned, dropping the line he had brought to lash the forestay.
“We’ll show the English bastards now, eh sir?”
The commodore’s smile froze, but amusement danced in his eyes. “Mr. Stacey, it’s no time to be swearing. You may be in eternity within the next few minutes, and have to answer for it. Let us do our duty!”
***
Captain Pearson strode Serapis’s quarterdeck in a fury. That accursed American in a decrepit old merchantman had outmaneuvered his brand new frigate. His rage was such he was oblivious of the musket balls hammering into the deck about him, fired from the foremast crosstrees of Bonhomme Richard. His own marines knelt by the rail, loading and firing through a pall of powder smoke.
“Wright!” Pearson bellowed, hands clasped behind his back, head hunched bulldog-like between his shoulders.
“Sir?” First Lieutenant Wright answered, matching the captain pace for pace.
“What’s happening down there?” He jerked his head at the weather deck, obscured by fallen rigging and smoke.
“They’re throwing grapples, sir.”
“Cut them free and order the starboard battery to open fire. Hah, point-blank range. We’ll blow that old wreck out of the water. And her insolent upstart of a commander with her.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but the gun ports on the starboard side are blocked by the American cannon.”
“Blow them off from the inside.”
Wright looked horrified. “But sir…”
Pearson ignored him. “When the guns are ready, order the crews clear but for the cannoneer. It’s been done before, it can be done again. Well? Get on with it, man!”
As the English sailors rushed forward with axes to chop away the grapples, sharpshooters in Richard’s mast-tops shot them down. It was revenge for the massacre during the earlier boarding attempt. When Lt. Wright returned with news that the gunners were preparing to blow the ports and that attempts to sever the grappling lines were failing, Captain Pearson changed tactics.
“Let go the forward port anchor. The wind and tide should pull the pirate clear. And when the guns come to bear he’ll soon strike his colors.” He estimated they stood about three miles southeast of Flamborough Head, the white cliffs faint in the moonlight, and the tide was running strongly. If Serapis’s anchor held fast to the seabed, the plan should work.
***
Paul Jones was
unable to stand still, adrenaline racing through his bloodstream as he paced about the quarterdeck. His eyes raked the various scenes of battle unfolding before him. The nearly full moon had climbed above a bank of heavy cloud on the eastern horizon to throw its ghostly grin across Bonhomme Richard as she swung with the tide, clinging to HMS Serapis like a limpet to a rock. Muzzle flashes, bright orange in the dark, drew a latticework of the entangled rigging. Richard’s yards overhung the Englishman so far he could see his men sidling across on the safety ropes to fight hand to hand with the English sailors in the mast-tops.
He grinned when he saw his men win their skirmish, tossing their opponents out over the side before pouring down gunfire onto the deck below. They threw grenades, thunderous explosions littering the English deck with those too slow to flee. Fire flickered in a dozen places, powder igniting with dull whumphs and clouds of murky smoke.
Within minutes, Serapis’s battery of ten-pounders on the weather deck was abandoned, murderous grapeshot flung by Richard’s swivel guns at any English tar who thought to regain the deck. Sparks and smoke blossomed against the gray sails of both warships accompanied by the bark of muskets as sharpshooters beaded on selected targets.
Bonhomme Richard winced and shuddered. If Serapis had temporarily lost her main deck battery, then the gun deck battery bore no loss lightly. The cannoneers had blown away the blocked ports and now loaded and fired as fast as shot could be rammed down the muzzles of the eighteen-pounders. Ball after ball smashed into Richard’s shivering topsides, crunching the heavy timbers into wicked splinters that flew about ’tween decks like a rain of Zulu spears.
Paul Jones was almost deaf under the roaring of the English cannon. He wondered how either ship could withstand the crippling broadsides and fires which had broken out everywhere. It seemed Richard’s guts would be wrenched and twisted until she gave up and went to pieces. Eyes running from smoke he turned away, searching the dark sea for the rest of his squadron. Spying gunfire he used his telescope, studying until he was sure of what he saw. The other English vessel, the sloop-of-war Countess of Scarborough was being engaged. But by whom? As the squabbling ships maneuvered, blasting broadsides, he had to wait until a French ship was silhouetted against the night sky. Pallas! So Cottineau had not deserted him after all. Originally built as a privateer, Pallas fought like one now, dodging and weaving, salvos rippling from her ten-pounders.
Someone touched his arm. He lowered his glass to see Richard Dale’s dirt-streaked face. Hatless, his hair was singed and tacky with blood, and through rips in his uniform jacket his smoke blackened shirt could be seen. His white knee breeches and stockings were spotted by sprayed blood.
“Sir, we’ve lost the main battery. Two of the eighteen-pounders exploded during the second broadside, and the rest have been destroyed since. Not that there are any men left below to man guns if I had them. They’re all dead.” His right eye jerked with a nervous tic, mouth contorted into a humorless grin. “All dead. They’re all dead…” He shook his head as though to disperse the horrors he had witnessed.
The commodore nodded. “Damage control? I want you…”
Dale waved a tired hand. “I’ve got fire parties working without rest. They no sooner douse one fire before another breaks out…” He covered his ears as a ragged salvo thundered from the English guns. Bonhomme Richard protested beneath their feet while a spar fell from aloft, trailing a tangle of rigging.
Screams broke out from the starboard rail. Both officers craned necks. A man lay howling on the deck by the wreckage of a nine-pounder. A ball had demolished the gun carriage and taken the cannoneer’s legs with it. He sat stunned, staring wide-eyed at two ragged stumps where his legs had been. Nearby, an officer rocked back and forth, clutching his face where a huge splinter had torn away his cheek. Blood poured from the gaping hole, a full side of yellowed teeth exposed above the brilliant white of his jawbone. It was Purser Mease who had been in charge of the quarterdeck battery.
“Give me a hand!” Paul Jones barked, moving to the rail. He prodded a finger at two marines occupied reloading muskets. “Get these wounded men below! You and you! Get this debris cleared!” He gestured to the shattered gun carriage. When they stepped forward to carry out his orders he turned away, grabbing Lt. Dale’s sleeve to pull him over to the port rail where an unmanned nine-pounder stood silent, miraculously intact, aimed uselessly at the open sea. Without waiting for help, the two officers began to drag the cannon across the deck. When a marine joined them the commodore nodded his thanks, but when a second came up he waved him away. “Get back to your station! And use that musket!” When the soldier frowned Paul Jones remembered and repeated the order in French.
Explosions ripped across the weather deck. Sweating, the commodore straightened up in time to see the devastation of his battery of twelve-pounders. His position on the quarterdeck gave him an aerial view as cannon bucked loose from carriages, rope falls flailing the smoke-heavy air like whips. As powder kegs exploded one after another, it was hard to believe it was night, so clearly could he see the systematic destruction. It appeared the only armament he had left was the three nine-pounders on the quarterdeck where he stood. With only two trained gun crews, the third cannon was left to himself and Mr. Dale.
He was no stranger to cannon. He had worked them often enough as a junior officer, the routine never forgotten, only dulled. He glanced down at the main deck again. Who could be sure who was winning in all this chaos?
“Sir?”
“What?” The commodore snapped, irritated.
“Look! Can you see?” Dale pointed astern into the night.
Paul Jones squinted. His eyes did not lie. A vessel was bearing down on them, bellying sails ghostly gray, towering over the unmistakable lines of a frigate.
“Well, well,” he said. “Now we shall see.”
CHAPTER 5
Midshipman Fanning crouched uncomfortably on his haunches in the foremast-top. Fumbling with his powder horn he tried to reload his pistol. His hands were trembling with excitement while his body shook, chest heaving. He had never felt so alive, every nerve end tingling, every sense magnified as the battle raged around him. He had never felt so close to death either. Time had no meaning. He did not know whether they had been fighting for minutes or hours or forever.
When he had climbed the ratlines to his station in the fore-top with fourteen marines, the men had been apprehensive while trying to appear cheerful. Each was fully equipped and knew what he had to do. There was a professionalism and orderliness about it all. Now, equipment littered the blood-slippy planking and half were dead, stripped of powder and shot then pushed over into the nothingness of night to make more room for the living.
The remaining men fought consistently. Some lived up to his expectations of how professional soldiers should perform. They fought grim faced, almost deliberately slow as they loaded and carefully aimed before shooting. Others screamed their hate like cornered animals, almost climbing over the rail, eager to inflict pain and death. They reloaded with frantic speed, cartridge-ball-wad-ram-prime, almost one fluid movement fueled by anger. Others were silent, legs jerking uncontrollably as they shot or threw grenades down onto the English warship. He wasn’t sure whether they trembled with rage or terror.
Ears numb from the battering of cannon fire below and crashes of muskets in the mast-top, the midshipman glanced around the half circle of marines. However they fought, and whatever their feelings, they fought well. He tried to still his shaking hands long enough to prime the pistol. Powder scattered over the dirty knees of his white breeches. Suddenly his hand was wet with blood. He stared at the great splash of crimson, too shocked to scream or move. He hadn’t felt anything. Nothing at all. Now he knew what it was like to be wounded. God, you didn’t even feel it! He choked back a hysterical laugh. There was nothing to fear but fear. Eyes wet with tears of relief, he rocked back on his heels.
Shadows moved. Fanning glanced up as a figure lurched above him, keeling over
. A musket clattered unheard on the planking. Automatically, he lifted his arms to protect himself and caught the crumpling soldier. The French marine was already dead, eye socket empty where a ball had screamed into his brain. Fanning fended off the deadweight corpse. It fell at his side. Covered in the dead man’s gushing blood, he wiped both hands on the tail of his uniform jacket. When he looked down gore was smeared across his hands but there was no wound. With the knowledge he had not been hit after all, the fear returned. Grimacing and sobbing, he completed reloading then hauled himself to his feet. He brandished the pistol and yelled.
“Dead man here! Clear the deck!”
A marine who had fallen back to reload rested his smoking musket on the deck then bent to hoist his dead comrade over the rail. The action was complicated by the cramped confines of the mast-top. Dancing shadows from below confused a man’s eyes. Gun smoke provoked coughing fits. Each explosion nearby made nerves already raw jangle, expecting to take a hit at any moment. Clumsy, he was unable to get a firm grip on the body.
“Here man,” said Midshipman Fanning in a commanding voice he did not recognize as his own. He tucked his pistol into his belt before bending to lend a hand. They dragged the corpse to the seaward side, hoping it wouldn’t land on any of their own men fighting below. Sweating and cursing, they hauled him up until his chest was balanced on the rail, arms hanging over the side. The officer and the marine paused in their efforts, eyes locked for a long second. Fanning wondered at what he saw in the other man’s eyes. Pity, shame, resignation, hatred of himself, and hatred of an officer for ordering a man to be thrown casually overboard as though loss of life meant not a thing. Most of all he divined fear. Fear of the living man’s own death and that he too would be unceremoniously dumped over the side to rot at the bottom of the sea. Not even a patch of ground. Only bottomless, always shifting water where a man’s hopes and dreams would be rinsed from his dead mind and dissipated with the tide, lost without trace among the fishes.
Scarborough Fair Page 17