Enemies at Every Turn

by David Donachie

  ‘A bad man then, boyo?’

  ‘Few worse.’

  ‘You do not see it, Taverner, as a mistake to insult me?’

  ‘Gherson, I would not know how to address you polite.’

  That did nothing to dent the man’s superior smile. ‘Perhaps I will send Devenow down to make reacquaintance, for I saw no O’Hagan on the watch lists.’

  ‘You might find, Gherson,’ Rufus spat, ‘an’ so might he, that we are not as green as we once was.’

  ‘Next you’ll be telling me you’re not afraid of him.’

  ‘I don’t know who you are, mate,’ Davy said, ‘but I will be telling you that we are men who like to eat in peace, an’ you are disturbing that.’

  ‘So sling your hook,’ said another of their mess.

  ‘Perhaps I will tell the captain that John Pearce’s arse-lickers are aboard and see how he likes it.’

  ‘I got a piece of advice for you, Gherson,’ Charlie growled. ‘You’d best stay behind the great cabin bulkheads, and should we clear for action proper, do what you always do as the coward you are and hide somewhere, for if I find you alone and there is smoke to cover me, I will do for you.’

  ‘Thank you for the warning,’ Gherson replied, with a grin that appeared forced, ‘it will render my making your life a misery so much more pleasant.’

  ‘Happen you’d best tell your mates what all that was about?’ Davy asked as Gherson walked away.

  Which Rufus and Charlie did, relating how he had arrived aboard Brilliant, what they knew of the man’s treacheries, which was only a fraction of the whole, a tale that did nothing to cheer anyone at their table, and they had not quite finished their damnation when the drumbeat to clear for action came before their allotted breakfast time was over, with Davy cursing.

  ‘Look you, there it is again, the drum! Does this man Barclay never give up?’

  ‘No, never,’ the Pelicans said simultaneously.

  Sitting in his cramped cabin and in need of a lantern to reread Lieutenant Rackham’s logs, he saw once more what caused the crew to hate him – the man was a martinet. He flogged with little excuse and exceeded the allotted dozen of the cat with impunity, not that anyone was going to have him up for that, it being common for captains to go beyond the permitted punishment.

  But Rackham liked stapling men to the deck as well, and for even a hint of vocal dissent he would happily shut them up with a clamp to the mouth and jaw. The stopping of grog was another of his punishments and that drove Pearce to the other ledgers, which listed the purser’s stores for which, as the sole officer, his predecessor had been responsible. There he found that whatever was supposed to have been consumed had indeed been used up, either by Rackham or sold to line his pockets.

  It took only a moment’s consideration to realise that even if such peculations and punishments were sufficient cause for a complaint to a higher authority, with such a small crew in a tiny vessel to lay a grievance was hard. They would rarely see an officer senior to their commander and anything written would likely pass through his hands before being sent on.

  John Pearce had strong opinions on the way to command men, by example and understanding rather than the use of the lash or arbitrary punishments, but he did have his own concerns of lack of experience, something an ill-disposed crew could exploit. Given what they had been through, he reckoned he could run them aground without a word of complaint.

  ‘Mr Dorling’s compliments, Your Honour, and there is a seventy-four in the offing bearing a commodore’s blue pennant, escorting an outward-bound convoy by the look, an’ he reckons a salute to acknowledge would be in order.’

  Pearce looked at the youngster, a fresh-faced lad with an open freckled countenance under a tousle of ginger hair. ‘A stupid and unnecessary waste of powder.’ That got him a grin, which was pleasing, but still, a blue pennant meant a senior post captain in command and very likely a proud fellow to boot. ‘Tell Mr Dorling to carry on.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  Pearce went on deck, a journey of some ten paces, and lifted a glass from the rack by the wheel to espy the ship of the line, lifting it and focusing as the signal gun was loaded, that revealing distant faces on the deck, eyes fixed on him. The smell of slow match drifted back to him, the brass popgun had no flint, and as it spoke he had to acknowledge that it made for a fine sight, with its light-brown sails set against the blue of the sea and the sky, now filled with daubs of white powder smoke.

  ‘Happen you might command one o’ them one day,’ said O’Hagan softly enough not to be overheard.

  ‘God forbid, Michael, I am in danger of running this under the first big wave we meet.’

  ‘Sure,’ came the response, accompanied by a twinkle in the eye, ‘I wish you had told me that afore I agreed to serve.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Even with a very favourable wind it took John Pearce four days sailing to weather Ushant and get to a point south and west of the great naval port of Brest, safe enough in distance to change course and close with the shore. The last information he had, delivered with the chest of money, told him Earl Howe was at sea seeking battle, as were, very likely, major elements of the French navy.

  This increased the risk to him, not necessarily from enemy ships of the line but the frigates they might have acting as a screen to warn them of danger, albeit their Royal Navy counterparts of the inshore squadron would shadow them if they were still active in these waters.

  Nothing showed on the horizon, friend or foe – hardly surprising on such a vast area of an ocean that stretched west a distance of three thousand miles and many times more than that to the south – and it was only many weeks later that it was discovered that the enemy he feared to encounter was far to the west, out in the deep Atlantic, as was the Channel Fleet.

  Dundas had also provided in his package of papers a list of names of those thought to be leading the revolt and, in addition, what constituted the latest information from the area to which he was heading, as well as what was known of the original uprising. Examining the list of names and the remarks appended to them, it was clear that the notion of who he might profitably contact was more than confused; it bordered on speculation.

  Contact with the insurgent royalists was clearly patchy at best and quite possibly utterly misleading, and then there was the very nature of what they were trying to achieve – a return of the Bourbon monarchy, as well as the reconstitution of the venal church which had supported it.

  John Pearce could imagine the look his father Adam would have produced to see his son engaged in such an enterprise, for if there were two things the Edinburgh Ranter hated, it was the overweening power of absolute monarchy and the greed of high-church prelates, be they Anglican or the agents of Rome. Yet he had come to hate equally the blood-soaked partisans of the Revolution for their hypocrisy, and it was they who had ended his life, so putting aside the thoughts of parental disapproval he turned to the latest intelligence.

  First he had to seek to separate official revolutionary boasting in the pages of the Moniteur from that which came in from more reliable sources, often those same inshore frigates who now seemed so scarce. These ships regularly had contact with the local fishermen, a tribe whose loyalty tended towards foreign naval officers who paid well to take their fresh catch, always a higher price than it would fetch when landed to be picked and argued over by parsimonious housewives.

  Much of what was in the documents Pearce did not need to read; he had been in the region the previous year when the war seemed to be going well for the insurgents and had kept his interest alive by reading what was reported in the British press. In the beginning they had either held off or defeated most of the forces sent against them, actually winning several important victories against more than one revolutionary rabble.

  Yet to sustain such success against a more powerful and numerous foe over the long term had proved impossible, not aided by a lack of cohesion in their structure – those who wished to consolidate wha
t they had against the more zealous who desired to bring down the tyrants of Paris, first of all by taking the major port of Nantes, which would thus exert a stranglehold on the interior.

  Paris had responded by sending to Nantes not only strong forces, but also a General Jean-Baptiste Carrier. What that man had inflicted on the population he did not have to peruse at all, having heard the bloody stories from the lips of those who had been physical witnesses: the priests and nuns of a religious order he and men from HMS Grampus had helped to rescue in a ship they lacked the ability to sail.

  Not that he thought of them with sympathy now, for they had sought to claim that same vessel as their property and were in dispute with his declaration that it should be awarded to him and the sailors he led as a prize. Yet what they had imparted, for sheer barbarity, had been hard to stomach; more importantly, as far as the Revolution was concerned, the siege had failed and Nantes had been secured.

  In the new year the insurgents were defeated and their forces split; what followed led to the suspicion that they had either deluded themselves or been misled by their émigré friends who had previously fled abroad, or perhaps even by the British Government itself. One part of their army, as well as dependants, had headed for the north Brittany coast, expecting to be met by ships that would take them to safety in England.

  None appeared and, lacking an alternative, they had been forced to retreat back south of the Loire in a forced march that took a heavy toll on women and children as well as the fighting men. Worse was to come; the Committee of Public Safety sent against them a much larger and better-equipped army and that part of the weakened Vendéeans were smashed as a fighting force.

  His task was to seek to find what was left and how strong it could be in the face of relentless pressure from the Revolution. It was clear there was still fighting – no great battles, but endless skirmishing, which, by all accounts, was extremely bloody; it was a war of no quarter on either side.

  ‘Mr Dorling’s compliments, sir, he has raised the Noirmoutier.’

  ‘Thank you, Jack,’ Pearce replied, which got a smile, one that appeared every time this new captain used his given name. ‘Tell him I will be on deck presently.’

  Which he was, with a telescope to his eye seeking to read from what little he could see of the low shoreline if there was any need for caution. Conscious of his lack of nautical skills, Pearce had studied the charts for several hours on more than one day seeking to formulate a plan that would provide access to a safe landing with minimum risk at sea, in a place where HMS Larcher could anchor while he went ashore.

  He had also wanted to approach the French coast along a simple line of latitude to avoid exhibiting a lack of confidence in his own abilities, aware that anything near Nantes and the mouth of the River Loire had to be avoided, that being the main route for French imports as well as slavers, and thus bound to be both busy and well patrolled.

  Yet to the south of that lay an exposed shore consisting of long sandy beaches and little in the way of shelter, barring the odd saltwater inlet of questionable depth. Quite apart from the enemy he needed somewhere that would provide the ship with some protection against an Atlantic storm, which could whip up in no time and be deadly in the Bay of Biscay, a fact he knew from personal experience.

  To seek a harbour was out of the question, given he had no idea of the state of affairs on land, so the long low peninsula of Noirmoutier, jutting out to the north-west, forming a deep bay that became a cut-off island at high tide, would allow him to anchor in some safety and also provide for the possibility, given the wind was not dead foul, of a wide escape route in case of trouble.

  An added advantage lay in the shallows that lined the inner shore: HMS Larcher drew little water under her keel and could steer close to the shoreline, so if anything in the nature of a frigate threatened danger, he could manoeuvre to avoid them in an area where they risked running aground. The tide was low at the moment, though making, which carried her in with little in the way of sail, which was just as well, for unusually in this part of the world, the wind was near to absent.

  Requesting his master to tend north to clear the outer rocks and ordering Larcher’s cannon to be loosed for action, John Pearce crawled deeper and deeper into the great bight on both the tide and those light westerly airs, sure he had thought of everything, his only concern, quickly set to rest, being that he might sight a sail or the poles of an equivalent or larger warship, a worry that proved unfounded, allowing him a degree of satisfaction that was soon turned to hubris.

  ‘Gunboats.’

  ‘Where away?’ Pearce cried, looking aloft to where a lookout was pointing.

  He had the sinking feeling of having misjudged the obvious in his mind as he followed the line of the lookout’s outstretched hand and saw, setting out from the low inland shore of the Noirmoutier spur, four well-manned boats, low in the water but each with a set of four oars a side, as well as the black snout of a cannon in their bows. Added to that was a trail of smoke rising and drifting towards him that told him, as if his own slack canvas was not enough, that he was short of enough puff to easily avoid them.

  Shallow water would not aid him now; if anything they had the advantage, and on a near-windless day and unbroken water they could close with him and pick their spot from which to attack, which would be athwart the bows and dead astern, and with ample time to do so. To get up enough speed to get clear was made more of a problem by the fact that both the light breeze and the leeway were coming from the west, which would oblige him, if he wanted to get out to deep water, to slowly back and fill.

  ‘Seems we are in a spot here, Capt’n.’

  It took a second to realise it was Michael who had spoken, as ever careful of his rank on deck if others could hear and even, in so small a vessel, sometimes when they were alone in his cabin. Never had his Irish friend spoken a more obvious truth, for in thinking about the difficulties he might face between Noirmoutier and the mainland shore, Pearce had only calculated on a ship under canvas and one, thanks to its high masts, he would see well in time to avoid.

  What he now faced made perfect sense for the forces seeking to contain people they saw as rebels, while at the same time securing the integrity of such a shoreline should any form of rescue be attempted. To acknowledge such a truth, however, did little to aid him in finding a way to counter it. Nor, because of the position he occupied, could he bring himself to seek an answer from all the eyes now upon him and waiting for instructions.

  In the end, what came to his rescue was something he normally disdained, if in fact he did not go out of his way to avoid. He recalled a conversation he had shared with Lieutenant Henry Digby, one of the few naval officers whom he esteemed enough to afford a hearing when on the subject of ships and how to sail and fight them.

  It had not been, as it so often was in a naval wardroom, an oft-repeated tale of some historical action – every battle was constantly relived by those presently serving, all the way back to antiquity. Digby proposed a proposition in anticipation of what they might encounter in the circumstances they were about to face in the delivery of some French revolutionary sailors.

  These were men who had been taken out of Toulon, where they were a threat, and shifted to La Rochelle in warships stripped of cannon. It was an enterprise to which they had been assigned to get anyone honest who had served on HMS Brilliant out of the way of Barclay’s farce of a court martial, and the possibility of gunboats coming out from La Rochelle had been discussed, as well as the means to counter them, which involved the ability to swing the ship.

  ‘Drop anchor.’

  Time was taken before anyone reacted and Pearce had to yell a repeat at what seemed like madness to even the most dim-witted brain on board and would probably look like that to his opponents.

  ‘Mr Dorling, once the anchor is secure I want a spring on the cable from dead aft and enough hands on the windlass to move the ship on my command.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ Dorling replied, rus
hing to obey.

  The youthful master had got it if others had not: for all his guns were mere three-pounders, they were numerous in comparison to a single weapon in the bow of a rowing boat, which could be not much greater in calibre given the size and the weight of the cannon. Also, he could reload his battery close to twice in a minute, while to do the same in what he faced had to be slow and very laborious, which gave him time to counter each threat individually.

  ‘Mr Kempshall,’ he called to the carpenter, whose given name was Sam. ‘I will need you to have a party to hand with plugs and canvas for emergency repairs, for I cannot see us coming out of this without we are holed close to the waterline. And I need a message to your brother, Brad, to say I want strong cartridges in the coming action, for just wounding the enemy will not do, we need to blow these buggers out of the water.’

  ‘Are we sound?’ Michael whispered, as men ran to obey, leaving them enough room to converse in private.

  ‘We are humbugged, but I doubt lacking a wind we can outrun these boats. Added to that, with the crew numbers we have there would be too few on the guns and too many aloft to fight properly. I am, I admit, doing what those sods least expect, which I hope will give them pause.’

  ‘Sure, that is a long shot, is it not?’

  Pearce grinned. ‘When was our life ever different, Michael?’

  ‘Where do you want me?’

  ‘On a gun and aiming with care, for anchored we will be at the mercy of the swell, small as it is, which will make accuracy hard to achieve.’ Reaching into his coat, he passed the Irishman a set of keys. ‘But of this moment I would be obliged if you would open the rack of muskets and also the locker with powder and balls.’

  The mere act of one of his enemies standing in his boat, obviously peering at what was happening on the deck of HMS Larcher, was, in itself, reassuring to a man who was thinking on the wing, for it hinted at confusion. Informed the anchor was ready, Pearce gave the order to proceed.