A King's Commander

by Dewey Lambdin

  “I’m going aloft, again. Mister Knolles, might you lend me your glass?”

  Forward this time, to scale the foremast, right up to the crosstrees to join the lookout, a spry young topman named Rushing.

  “Mine arse on a bandbox!” Lewrie muttered, once he’d had his long look. “That’s no grain convoy.”

  “Nossir, it ain’t,” Rushing agreed breezily.

  “’Bout twelve miles off, would you say, Rushing?”

  “Aye, Cap’um. ’Bout that.”

  “Be up to them . . .” He pulled out his new watch. It was nearly gone eleven of the forenoon. An hour-and-a-half . . . two hours, and they would be up within spitting distance. Or shooting distance.

  Without another word, Lewrie took hold of a standing backstay and clambered down it, legs locked and going hand-over-hand, like any topman. Hating every nutmeg-shrinking moment of it, of course, with nothing but oak to stop his fall from nearly one hundred feet above the deck, should he slide too fast and burn his hands, or swing away and dangle by his fists alone.

  Once on the quarterdeck again, he gathered his breath by taking another peek at the French frigate off to the east. Their closest pursuer was about five miles off, hull-up now, and driving hard. She had slowly gained on Jester, closing the distance between them, and, more importantly, crabbed up a’weather a touch, so she would still hold the wind gauge when they finally met.

  “Hard on the wind, Mister Knolles,” Lewrie ordered. “Lay her as close as she’ll bear. Hoist every scrap of canvas, ’cept for stuns’ls. We’ve a race to win.”

  “Aye, sir,” Knolles replied, before turning to issue orders. “Sorry to disabuse you, Mister Buchanon,” Lewrie told him with another forced grin, “but we haven’t discovered their grain convoy, no. ’Tis their entire Biscay fleet, yonder. And ours. Having at each the other. That’s the thunder we’ve been chasing all morning!”

  “Wull, stap me, sir.” Buchanon sighed, blanching a bit. “

  Another hour or so, and we’ll hear all the ‘thunder’ a man’d ever wish.” Lewrie chuckled, genuinely amused this time. “Pass the word for Mister Giles!”

  “Aye, sir?” the purser inquired from the midships hatchway.

  “Mister Giles, I’d admire should you issue the midday meal as soon as we’ve completed bracing in and making more sail,” Lewrie told him. “The rum issue, too. Today is a Banyan Day, is it not, sir?”

  “Well, aye, sir . . .” Giles frowned.

  “Little need for the galley fires, then.”

  On Banyan Days, the issue was cold victuals: small-beer, cheese, and biscuit, perhaps with the eternal pea soup, but no meat to be simmered in the steep-tubs.

  “On the wind, sir,” Knolles reported.

  “Very good, Mister Knolles. Once the hands have eat, and drunk their cheer, we’ll beat to quarters. Say, ’bout . . . half-past noon, or so. We’ve a sea battle before us. From a point off the larboard bow to two points to starboard, and we’re going to have to tack around the short end, if the fleet that lies alee turns out to be hostile. Let us hope the Frogs are on the far side, holding the weather gauge. But, be ready for the worst,” Lewrie explained to them all. “And, must we tack around to get inside the protection of our own liners, we’re going to have to deal with this bastard frigate.”

  “Aye, sir.” Knolles nodded grimly, plucking at his clean silk. “Thunder, by Jesus!” Alan snorted. “Mine arse on a bandbox, Mister Buchanon. Mine arse on a bandbox!”

  And laughed out loud as he strolled aft to study the frigate in his glass, leaving them all perplexed by such good cheer.

  C H A P T E R 5

  Hands at quarters, standing by their charged, shotted and now-primed artillery pieces, swaying as Jester rocked and rolled over the sea. Gun captains would fire them with modern flint-lock strikers in lieu of ancient slow-match linstocks; but slow-match sizzled slowly, wound ’round the mid-deck water tubs, just in case.

  The French fleet, unfortunately for Lewrie, were the fighting ships that lay to leeward, those closest to him. There had to be at least thirty of them, it appeared, a ragged procession of proud line-of-battle ships—seventy-fours, eighties, and larger, right up to massive three-decker flagships of one hundred-twenty guns—in a tormented, shot-racked in-line-ahead formation that headed due west, stretching east-to-west across Jester ’s track for nearly three miles, like an oak and iron reef. It was no longer the tidy arrangement it had seemed as they’d approached; there were gaps between ships greater than the rigorously ordained half-a-cable separation. There were gaps aloft, too, where ships had lost topmasts and yards. Still, they doggedly plodded west, barring Jester a path as she beat close-hauled to weather, west-by-south.

  Safety, unfortunately, lay on the other side of that bellowing reef of warships. Howe’s thirty or so liners had gained the wind gauge and followed a parallel course to the French, lost in the foggy towers of gun smoke that rose from every ship.

  Worse yet, there were even more French frigates to leeward of their battle line, to serve as aides to the combatants—as rescuers for those forced to break away, as occupiers aboard any British ship that was forced to strike and be towed away as prize; and as signal repeaters, down in clear air, to relay their admiral’s wishes.

  And some of those repeating frigates toward the rear of that battle line had begun to show interest in the strange ship approaching them with no flag flying. The one that appeared to be pursued by one of their sisters!

  And the pursuing frigate . . .

  Lewrie turned to have another look, no longer needing the telescope. She was up to them, within a mile or less, well within range-to-random shot. It had taken her awhile to recognize that Jester had hardened up to windward. She’d soldiered on, still sailing a point-free for about a quarter-hour, before going close-hauled to keep the wind gauge, herself. She’d lost some windward advantage, but . . .

  There she lay, off the larboard side, nicely framed behind the mizzen stays, almost on a parallel course of west-by-south as a mate to Jester ’s. Another ten minutes and Lewrie would face a hard choice of standing-on within range of the repeating frigates, perhaps the disengaged broadside guns of the French battle line, or fighting a larger, heavier-armed frigate that blocked her only chance to come about to starboard tack and jink around the stern of the French liners!

  “A tack’d lay our head sou’east-by-east, Mister Buchanon?” Lewrie speculated aloud.

  “Aye, sir. ’Bout that.” Buchanon grunted. “Excuse me, Cap’um, but I’d not stand on five minutes more, on this tack, else we fetch too near th’ Frog liners, an’ have no wind alee of ’em, e’en for a reach to th’ east t’sail around the last in line. A close shave e’en now, sir.”

  “Quite so, Mister Buchanon.” Lewrie nodded, unconsciously rubbing his own raspy and unshaven chin at the mention. There’d been more to worry about this morning than his toilet. “Mister Hyde? Dig into the flag lockers, aft. I b’lieve Our Lords Commissioners issued some false flags? Find the Frog Tricolor.”

  “Aye aye, sir!” The lad yelped, dashing off to search.

  “A legitimate ruse de guerre. ” Lewrie shrugged to his officers. “Give a few minutes’ confusion, perhaps.”

  “Aye, sir! Found it!” Hyde shrilled forward.

  “Bend it on, Mister Hyde, and hoist it aloft,” he ordered.

  He was hoping that the French line-of-battle ships had just a tad too much on their plate, at the moment, to care one way or another, and the repeating frigates that could come about and intercept him would lose interest; just another corvette arriving with orders from Brest—some silly civilian nonsense from the land-lubbers of the revolutionary Directory, or however they now styled themselves.

  He raised his glass, as the French Tricolor was two-blocked high on the mizzenmast. What would that pursuing frigate do, now? he wondered. Wasted a whole morning, chasing some idiot who ignored his signals to fetch-to . . .

  Come to think on’t, Lewrie grinned, he never sent me a sign
al! Saw me as a chase, right from the start. And if we’re both galloping for his fleet flagship like John Gilpin on a good horse . . . I have to be French, same as him. A body’d be daft as bats to get this close, else!

  Three-quarters of a mile separation now, between Jester and her pursuer. Good gun range. Damned good gun range!

  “Ah sir . . . ?” Buchanon prompted uneasily.

  “Aye, Mister Buchanon. Mister Knolles, stations for stays, sir! We will put the ship about on the starboard tack. And anyone who puts her in irons . . . I’ll have his nutmegs off with a damn’ dull knife!”

  “Bosun Porter, hands to the braces! Hands to the sheets!” Lieutenant Knolles bellowed. “Ready to come about?”

  A breathless minute of preparation, hands tailing on braces and sheets, laying paws on tacks, easing all but the last over-under turn around belaying pins and bitts.

  “No more than half-a-point free to ease her around, Quartermaster!” Lewrie snapped. “’Tis all the leeway we may spare.” Ships were usually eased a full point off the wind, to gather an extra surge in speed to assure a clean tack.

  “Helm alee!” Knolles screeched, at last.

  Around she came, driving back up on the wind with a quarter-knot more speed, jib boom and bowsprit sweeping like a pointer across the embattled warships before her bows. Jibs and stays’ls fluttering and canvas popping like gunshots as Jester neared the eye of the wind, as sails lost their luffs—yards creaking and wood-ball parrels crying as they were swung around. For a heart-stopping moment, she slowed to a crawl, everything aloft aback and banging, before the fore-and-aft stays’ls and jibs whooshed across the deck to larboard as she took the wind fine on her starboard bows. The spanker over the quarterdeck and the royals and t’gallants rustled, flagged, then filled, with the hard crack of laundry airing on a line.

  “Sou’east-by-east, Quartermaster!” Lewrie cried. “Meet her!”

  The wheel spun, spokes blurring as they tried to catch up with her momentum, as she paid off half-a-point to the new lee in spite of their best efforts, as the hands braced hard on the gangways to make a proper spiral set aloft, royals more sharply angled to the wind than t’gallants, t’gallants more than tops’ls.

  From his position at the new windward, starboard, rails, Lewrie espied their pursuing frigate, which now lay just a touch to the right of Jester ’s bows. It would be a damned close-run thing, but sou’east-by-east would take her clear of the last struggling behemoth line-of-battle ship in the French line. And cross the frigate’s stern, if she didn’t alter course.

  “Shit,” he muttered, though, as the frigate opened fire!

  It would be a bow-rake on Jester as the frigate crossed her T, employing every available gun in her starboard battery, while Jester ’s two shorter-ranged carronades on the forecastle would be the only guns that could respond! Round-shot tearing through the curving bow timbers, frailer than her sides, rebounding and tearing down the complete length of her gun deck, and down her gangways!

  He winced into his wool broadcloth coat, as if it might be some protection, flinching from the avalanche of screaming iron, the jagged metal shards, whirlwind cloud of wood splinters, and the sagging ruin of masts to come. Though feeling an urgent desire to fling himself to the deck, like a sensible person!

  The air trembled and moaned above the general cannonade between the fleets, a very personally directed moaning and fluting, as fifteen or more twelve-pounder balls bored their way toward Jester. Before their Revolution, France had possessed the finest guns, the finest school of naval gunnery in the world, with a dedicated corps of lifelong professional artillerists. And frail little Jester was about to receive . . . !

  Nothing, pretty much.

  A ragged line of feathers erupted from the sea, to either side of her bows, as irregularly spaced as a London urchin’s teeth. Great, and rather pretty, pillars of spray and foam leapt up where the round-shot struck the sea at first graze. More feathers abeam, or astern, as cannon balls caromed and bounded over the wave tops like a young lad’s stone might skip across a duck pond. Lewrie was sure he heard one or two howl overhead like extremely fat and fatal bumblebees . . . but so high above the royals they didn’t even spill an ounce of wind from frail canvas, or sever a single stay in passing!

  “Well, damme!” he cried in befuddled exaltation. “Those poor buggers couldn’t hit the ground, if they dropped stone-cold dead! ”

  A first broadside, usually the best-laid and pointed, at less than three-quarters of a mile . . . and they’d missed completely? Lewrie jeered. Now stand for mine, you poxy clown!

  “Mister Knolles, give us a point free! Mister Bittfield, the starboard battery . . . fire as you bear!” he shouted.

  Up the fairly steep slant of the deck to windward, nine-pounders on their heavy truck carriages rumbled and growled, foot at a time, as the hands ran their pieces up to the ports and beyond, to point deadly black-painted hog muzzles at the foe. A tug on the side-tackles, or a lever with a crow iron for aiming. Fists raised in the air, from the foc’s’le to far aft in the great-cabins beneath his feet, as the gun captains drew their flintlock lanyards taut and stood clear of their charges’ recoil.

  “On the uproll . . . Fire! ” Lewrie howled, primed for vengeance.

  The foc’s’le eighteen-pounder carronade began it, with a deep bark of displeasure. Then, a stuttering series of roars rippled down the starboard side. Lewrie looked aft to Andrews, serving as captain to a quarterdeck carronade. He jerked his lanyard and the piece erupted a short, stabbing flame, and a corona of muzzle smoke. It snubbed to the rear on its slide-carriage, greased wood compressors smoking, too.

  “We fired under the French flag, sir!” Knolles cautioned. It was a grave breach of etiquette, that. A ruse de guerre was accepted practice, right up to the moment of initiating combat.

  “Get that Frog rag down, Mister Spendlove, and hoist our true colors!” Lewrie yelled, not caring much beyond witnessing the strike of his shot. “Swab out, and give ’em another, Mister Bittfield!”

  Glorious!

  Feathers of spray, close-aboard the French frigate; short, some of them, but grazing along at reduced speed for a solid hit on timber. The sort of low-velocity hits that smashed more hulls in than faster strikes, which might punch clean through. The frigate’s sails, yards and masts quivering and twitching as guns fired from leeward, up that slant of the deck even with their quoins full-in, went high. Spanker holed dead-center, mizzen tops’l winging out free of its weather brace, and the main course ripped in half!

  The frigate stood on, stolid in spite of her hurts. Cannon appeared in her ports again, and a second ragged, ill-spaced broadside erupted from her. With little more success than the last one! And then, she was forced to tack. She could stand-on on the larboard tack, sail up to her fellows, or she must come about to continue the fight.

  Tack, or wear, Lewrie mused, even as his guns spoke again. To wear would put her even with Jester, well-astern after completing the twenty-four-point circle. No, she must tack, he decided, or throw her hand in as valueless. And that’ll silence her guns, for a bit.

  “Our ensign’s aloft, now, sir,” Spendlove told him.

  “Very good, Mister Spendlove. One hopes the Frogs’ll take our error as a minor slip in punctilio. ”

  “It appears they’ve worse things to worry about, at the moment, sir!” Midshipman Spendlove japed, pointing to the French battle line. Close as Jester had come to the fighting, they could now take gleeful note of British men-o’-war through the thick banks of powder fog, up almost yardarm to yardarm with the French, blazing away at pistol-shot range. “Oh, there she goes, sir . . . coming about!”

  The frigate was presenting her stern to them, swinging up onto the eye of the wind, yards all a’cock-bill and canvas slatting.

  “ Took ’em long enough,” Lewrie sneered. Jester ’s gunfire was splattering all about her as she slowed and turned. Sails caved in on themselves as they were punctured, to refill lank and disheveled, a
nd Alan frowned as he thought he saw a round-shot strike her foremast’s tops’l yard, spilling a wiggling speck or two loose. Two topmen who’d just fallen to their deaths on the hard oak below, or into the waters alongside, where they’d plunge deep before surfacing, to watch their ship sail on, uncaring, just before they drowned.

  “Mister Knolles, harden up! Full-and-by!” Lewrie ordered, to put Jester back onto the wind, and wring out every foot of advantage above the frigate, which was visibly struggling to get around to her tack. The last French seventy-four-gunned 3rd Rate at the tail of the enemy battle line was off Jester ’s starboard bows by then. Still with her offside gun ports closed, thank God! A minute or two more, and she would be too acutely angled to take Jester under fire—out of her gun arcs in the narrow ports. And that seventy-four was punch-drunk and reeling, her lower masts sprung and shivering to every new blow, ready to go by the board, any moment.

  “Mister Spendlove, perhaps you might oblige me?” Alan inquired casually, in a moderate voice, as the gunners swabbed and loaded anew.

  “Aye, sir?”

  “Go aft and bend on this month’s private signal to identify us,” he suggested with a wink. “Once we get around to the British side of this battle, I’d not like to be shot to ribbons in error by some overeager repeating frigate.”

  “Aye, sir!” Spendlove chuckled.

  The wind was dying away to nothing. Massive broadsides usually blasted air to stillness. And they were witness to one of the greatest sustained exchanges of massive firepower, even greater than any battle known so far in history. Jester was flagging once more, coasting along on her built-up momentum more than she was driving ahead close-hauled, hazed and half-concealed in the sulphurous reeking mists that blew alee from that cannonading. The French frigate had come about to the starboard tack at last, but she was half-a-mile astern by then, though well up Jester ’s starboard quarter.

  “Mmm . . .Mister Ss . . . Spendlove’s respects, sir,” Boy First-Class Josephs almost hiccupped below Lewrie’s waist. And shivering frightful, as if he’d quiver every bone from his body. Five days at sea—less than a month in the Navy, and he was already under fire, wondering what had ever possessed him to go a gentleman volunteer, or wish a naval career! And still half terrified of his own captain!