As soon as I left Procter’s headquarters instead of heading to the barracks to prepare my men for their voyage, I headed out to the Indian village to find Black Eagle. I knew the garrison was down to its last few barrels of flour: it was time to slide out.
To my surprise Morag was there and already helping the big warrior pack for a journey. “Black Eagle,” I called as I walked briskly towards them. “It is time we left.”
“I am prepared, Little Father. The Father with the One Arm has already found me in the town and told me about the battle he is planning.”
“What? No, we are not joining the battle; we need to leave to go north.” I looked around to check we could not be overheard. “The Father with the One Arm will lose the battle at sea and the garrison here is running out of food and supplies. If we do not want to starve, we need to head north now and live off the land while we travel towards safety.”
Black Eagle looked puzzled but it was Morag who replied. “Black Eagle will receive one pound sixteen shillings in silver to join the Father with the One Arm. How much will he receive if he runs away?”
“He can’t receive it or spend it if he is lying dead at the bottom of the lake,” I retorted. “And anyway we are not running away,” I added. “We are picking our fight, which is part of the Iroquois tradition.”
“What do you know of Iroquois tradition?” she spat back at me. “The Father with the One Arm is the chief of the big canoes. He has fought in many of their battles and he says that he can win. He wants Black Eagle to join him and he will pay him much silver.”
“I want to fight in the big canoes, confirmed Black Eagle truculently. “I want to fly over the water high in the branches of the ship and watch the Father with the One Arm beat the Americans.”
For the next ten minutes I did my utmost to persuade them that this was just sheer folly, but they could not be moved. Black Eagle had always been fascinated by the ships and Morag seemed equally obsessed with the prospect of having money. I realised that I was trapped. I could not travel north on my own; with my hunting and foraging skills I would soon starve. But when I returned to town I would have no choice but to join Barclay’s damn ship. I inwardly cursed the stubborn Indian and started to wonder if there were any real grounds for Barclay’s hope of victory.
The next morning, along with the thirty fit men left in my company, Black Eagle and I were rowed out to the Detroit. To a landsmen she might have looked a sound ship, but close inspection showed that she had been built in a hurry. With a shortage of rope, there was a bare minimum of rigging. The ratline rope ladders up the shrouds seemed to have been made with scraps of cord and did not run across all the shrouds as normal. As we were rowed close to the hull, carpenters could still be heard banging away as they made final alterations.
Black Eagle was impressed, though, gazing up in wonder at what was the largest ship in the meagre British fleet. “Is it the biggest canoe you have seen?” he asked.
“No,” I laughed. “When I was in Spain many years ago I sailed on a huge ship with over a hundred guns arrayed over four decks.”
“A hundred guns,” repeated Black Eagle in wonder. “You could capture the world with such a ship.”
“Well not that one,” I told him. “It lies in pieces at the bottom of the ocean now. Let’s get aboard and see how many guns are on this ship.” The answer turned out to be nineteen and serving them were many of the gunners I had last seen at Fort Meigs. Lieutenant Davis of the Royal Artillery made a point of giving me a warm welcome, probably still mindful of the insults at our first acquaintance.
“They are good pieces,” he said gesturing to several iron barrels that currently rested on the deck. “Once the carpenters have made the gun trucks to hold them in we should be ready.” The carpenters were busy making the small wheeled gun carriages that were used on board ship to help absorb the recoil of the gun. “Barclay is down below checking on stores,” Davis continued. “He tells me that you have some naval experience. I don’t suppose you have ever aimed a gun on board a ship before, have you?”
A memory came back of my time with Cochrane. I had wanted a chance at firing the six-pounder cannon and he had let me have a go at some Spanish merchant ships that had beached themselves to escape capture. One had been carrying oil, which having been set ablaze, had turned the whole ship into a huge lamp that could be seen for miles. Ultimately the inferno had attracted the enemy ships that had sunk us. “I did once,” I told him, “but it did not end well.”
“Well any experience is better than none. I don’t have men to captain all the guns and the rest of the crews are soldiers only familiar with muskets. I would be most obliged, sir, if you could captain that twelve-pounder,” he asked pointing to one of the barrels resting on the deck. I reluctantly agreed. If I had to spend time on the wretched ship then crouching down behind the substantial bulwarks with a huge lump of cast iron in front of me was a lot safer than prancing around the exposed quarter deck with the other officers. It would also give me something to do, and if Barclay was right, then well-aimed gunnery could make all the difference.
Once aboard, we sat on the ship without moving for over a week. The gun trucks were all completed and the crew divided into gun crews. There was not enough powder and shot to practice the gunnery but all the crews went through their paces, running out the gun, pretending to fire, bracing after the recoil, sponging out and ramming home the charges. After his enthusiasm to fight in the big canoes, I thought Black Eagle would jump at the chance to join my gun crew. But instead he preferred to spend his time aloft, particularly with the two naval seamen on board, listening to their tales of life on the high seas.
Several times Procter was rowed out to the ship. He was clearly anxious for the fleet to set sail as soon as possible, but Barclay was adamant that his strategy would only work if he had the wind advantage. Often during their discussions the two men could be seen staring aloft, where Barclay’s commodore’s pennant flag hung limply or flapped gently in a breeze from the wrong direction. Then on the morning of the 9th of September Barclay’s luck finally changed: the wind slowly edged around to come from the west.
Black Eagle shook me awake in my bunk. “The sailors say that we will weigh anchor this morning. The wind is blowing us towards the east.” He grinned, “Soon this ship will move across the water faster than a horse can run. Come on, are you going to sleep all day?”
I hurriedly dressed and went up on deck to find it a hive of activity and boats rowing to and from the shore like water beetles. Barclay stood on his quarter deck giving orders and beamed in delight when he saw me. “Captain Flashman, come and join me. At last the wind has turned in our favour.”
“It is not a strong wind,” I pointed out as I stood beside him.
Barclay glanced up at the flag flapping feebly above us and then checked we could not be overheard. “No, it is weak, but it is in the right direction.” He lowered his voice. “Between ourselves there is not a day’s flour left in the ship’s stores. We cannot afford to wait for anything stronger. This wind, God willing, will blow us towards the enemy and more importantly stop the enemy closing with us too quickly.”
“Do you know where the enemy is?”
“The last I heard it was at Put-in-Bay, this end of the lake near the mouth of the Sandusky, about forty miles away. Unless the wind strengthens it will take us a day to get there.” He patted me on the back. “Sailing with Cochrane you must be well used to taking on excessive odds and winning. I know I can rely on you to help keep the men steady.”
If you only knew, I thought, remembering the times that Cochrane’s antics had left me quaking with terror. But aloud I said, “Of course, and it might be a good idea to have some more gun drills once we are out on the lake to keep the men occupied.”
“Yes, an excellent suggestion,” agreed Barclay happily, little realising that I would welcome the distraction of something to do myself.
We finally set sail at eleven that morning and the breeze
wafted us gently south-east towards the American fleet. Much of the day was filled with the rumble of gun trucks as they were pushed in or out of the gun ports. Despite the fact that not a single gun had actually been fired due to the shortage of powder, I thought that the crews were shaping up pretty well. My men all knew their job and jumped to it automatically now without any orders from me. As night fell Barclay calculated that we were still only halfway across the lake. Lanterns were raised to keep the fleet together and lookouts posted in case the Americans planned any surprise attack of their own.
I did not get much sleep that night and I doubt anyone else aboard did either. Barclay had roamed the ship during the day talking to everyone and trying to instil confidence that we could beat the larger American fleet. Most seemed convinced that it was possible, but they knew that it was a huge gamble – with their lives as the stake. But they also knew just how desperate the situation was at Amherstburg; we had been on shortened rations and everyone knew that supplies were drying up. Without control of the lake the few carts that could travel overland would never be able to supply food and ammunition in the quantities needed.
No one needed help getting up next morning. Long before dawn everyone was waiting on deck. As the sun slowly crept over the eastern horizon we were all craning our necks up to the lookout at the top of the mainmast as he squinted against the light. Then came the cry we had all been waiting for: “Sail ho!”
Chapter 18
On sighting our foe Barclay immediately ordered a reduction in sail so that we were just crawling along. The Americans had been anchored behind a headland, but as the morning sun rose we saw their fleet labouring their way around it and tacking backwards and forwards to slowly close the distance with us. Barclay affected to be calm and relaxed, but from the way the fingers of his remaining hand kept drumming on the quarterdeck rail, I could see that he was as tense as a drum skin. If the wind stayed from the west then his plan would work; he would be able to pound the bigger ships in the American fleet long before their more numerous short range guns could be brought to bear. But the pennant at the top of the mast showed that the light breeze was fickle and to me it seemed to be edging south.
It had gone ten o’clock before the Americans had finally tacked their way around the headland and by then it was clear the wind was indeed shifting south. Barclay’s gamble appeared to have failed. The more numerous American ships would soon have the wind behind them and then could press on towards us to make the best use of their guns.
“The breeze is still light,” said Barclay staring aloft. “It will still take a while for them to close.” He squinted at the opposing fleet through the powerful watch-keeping telescope and then passed the instrument to me. “They seem well spaced out. What do you think?” The British ships were arrayed in a line roughly east to west with the biggest ships such as the Detroit the middle. The Americans were coming from the south in a line of their own. Two small schooners were out in front but then was the first of two big ships, flying a commodore’s pennant. There was a small brig behind the flagship and then a sizeable gap before the second of the larger vessels.
“The big one in front is the Lawrence,” Barclay told me. “That is Perry’s flagship. He comes from a naval family and seems to know what he is doing. The second big ship further back is the Niagara. They are the only two ships we really need to worry about. They are five times the size of any of the others. They both have twenty guns, but nearly all of them are thirty-two-pounder carronades. Short range, but murderous if they get close.”
“Well the Lawrence will come into our range a long time before the Niagara,” I pointed out. More in hope than expectation I added, “With luck we will be able to deal with them one at a time.”
With a sense of trepidation I made my way down to the gun deck. My cannon was on the port side of the ship which would see action first. Gunnery at sea is a complicated matter: it is easy to line your gun on the target, especially in a calm sea; the tricky part is getting the range. I crouched for a while squinting down the barrel of the gun, timing how quickly the muzzle moved in the slow swell. The guns did not have a proper firing mechanism; I would have to spark the flint of an empty pistol over the touch hole. There would then be a split second delay before the main charge fired, and in that time the muzzle would rise several inches. To make matters harder you obviously could not look along the barrel as you set off the charge as the gun would slam back with the recoil as it fired. I gave the gun maximum elevation using wedges on the gun truck and then calculated that I had to wait two seconds from the bottom of the down roll of the boat before firing and then the ball would leave the barrel two and a half seconds from the bottom of the down roll.
There was no powder for practice shots and so we carefully loaded the gun and found the roundest of cannon balls for the truest line. The two schooners crept closer but we took no notice of them; it was the Lawrence we were focussing on. One of the American schooners opened fire with a large gun in her bows, but they had overloaded it and the gun exploded. We saw a flash and heard the thud of an explosion as its crew rushed forward to deal with the injured and put out a small fire. It seemed a good omen somehow for the battle to come. With what seemed like infinite slowness the Lawrence crept forward. Several times, requests were made to open fire but each time Barclay turned them down. We did not have ammunition to waste, but equally we had to make the most of the time when our guns were in range and the Lawrence’s were not. My eyes ached from staring at the ship through my telescope but eventually Barclay gave the order.
“Lieutenant Davis, I think you can try some ranging shots now.” There was a cheer from those on deck as the tension felt immediately eased.
“Very good, sir,” called Davis and then he turned to his row of guns and their crews. “Right, gentlemen, we will fire the guns on my order one at a time so that we can gauge the fall of shot for each gun.”
The two big twenty-four-pounders went first. One shot fell well short, but the second probably went over the top of the big ship, although the gunner claimed a hit to jeers from the other gun crews. Two more guns fired and then it was my turn. I checked for the thousandth time the flint in the unloaded pistol I would use to fire the charge, took a final squint down the barrel and then stood to one side. I waited for the bottom of the down roll, counted two seconds, pulled the pistol trigger and stood smartly back. The gun crashed back on its ropes but I was already busy staring over the side, looking for the fall of shot. The cloud of gun smoke obscured my view, but those further down the deck shouted that a plume of white water had appeared just off the port bow of the Lawrence, the closest shot yet.
“Well done, Captain Flashman,” called Barclay. “We will make a gunner of you yet.”
I did not do so well with my second shot – the powder in the cannon’s touch hole sputtered too long and by the time the charge actually fired the ship was rolling down again and the ball ploughed into the water a few hundred yards away. But as the Lawrence crept ever closer I did much better with my third. According to Barclay, my ball punched a neat hole in their foretop sail. “Good work, Flashman, that will help slow them down.
We had been ordered to ‘fire at will’ by that stage, although Davis kept emphasising that accuracy was much more important than the rate of fire. Gradually the range got shorter and soon I was knocking back one of the wedges in the gun truck to lower the elevation. I peered around the edge of the gun port searching for the Niagara, but strangely she had dropped even further back. Instead of forcing us to divide our fire between the two main threats to our fleet, the captain of the Niagara seemed content to let Perry and the crew of the Lawrence face the combined might of the British fleet alone. I could hear the Queen Charlotte opening fire now. She had been detailed to cover the Niagara, but as her foe seemed disinclined to engage, she moved forward to pour her fire into the Lawrence as well.
“A guinea each to the gun crew that gets the first good hit on her hull,” called out Barclay. Moments
later he announced that the prize had been won as one of the twenty-four-pound balls smashed into the Lawrence’s fo’c’sle. If my fifth ball did not hit the Lawrence it must have gone damn close and now all the guns seemed to have the range and the line. White spouts from falling balls appeared all around her and more holes appeared in her sails. Soon several guns were claiming hits to the hull and all the while she could offer nothing in reply.
At one point the gun smoke got so thick I struggled to see the target at all and took a few steps down the deck to squint through a gap in the haze. “I think she is three quarters of a mile off,” said Davis peering over my shoulder. “We don’t need to worry about her guns until it is half a mile.” He grinned. “Plenty of time to knock holes in her yet, what?”
I got back to work, yelling at my men to haul on the ropes and tackles to get the gun muzzle back through the port. I could see the ship again and once more I went through my new ritual of alignment and calculation. Then I held the pistol lock over the touch hole and counted. I felt somehow that it was a good shot and ran a few paces up the deck to see around my own gun smoke while the crew started to sponge out and reload the gun. I was just in time to see the Lawrence’s sails quiver and back as the fore topmast was hit. With infinite slowness the mast began to slowly lean over the port side of the ship, the rate of fall increasing as various stays holding the mast up snapped. It smashed its way down through the rigging until half of the mast was in the sea. I could imagine men scurrying about the deck to cut the wreckage free as it was already dragging the ship around. Gradually the side of the Lawrence was exposed as the broken mast and sails acted like a giant rudder. Its guns stared impotently from the gun ports, but now there was a much larger target to aim at.
Naval warfare can be a brutal business, but when you are in the happy position of firing at an enemy that cannot shoot back, well it can be quite enjoyable. As I watched several balls smashed into the side of the ship and then my gun crew were yelling for me to get back and lay my own gun again.
Flashman and Madison's War Page 17