Uncharted Territory (Look to the West Book 2)

by Tom Anderson

  So, based on the latest projections, they answered: “Low wind strength for at least three days, perhaps a week.” Information the British did not have, though their savvier captains might hazard a guess.

  Lisieux meditated on that for a moment. “Lepelley’s status?” he asked his third and final question.

  For that one, the Boulangerie had to send a runner to L’Aiguille, the Needle, the largest semaphore tower in the world. It stood in the centre of Lisieux’s remodelled Paris, at the centre of the radial street network he had cut through the old higgledy-piggledy mediaeval city, on the Île de la Cité where the cathedral of Notre Dame had once stood. It was the central locus of the French semaphore network and a symbol of Lisieux’s power looming over the city.

  The runner, whose name is not recorded, collected the latest report and returned it to his Administrateur. One might perhaps expect Lisieux to be impatient; instead, most accounts say that he was calm, emotionless. He repeated the question.

  The runner answered: seventy percent of Lepelley’s ships had arrived.

  Lisieux sat in silence for minutes more. Of all the men in France, only Pierre Boulanger would have dared interrupt his meditation, and Boulanger was away, leading the attack into Flanders, facing Charles Theodore’s armies with his patent steam-artillery tactics. If he had been there, if he had been consulted by semaphore even, things might have been different. But he was not.

  And Lisieux spoke:

  “Military conquest. It is a poor measure of the worth of a country, the purity and righteousness of its mode of governance, to my mind. Yet many disagree, and we cannot afford to ignore such things. What have we achieved in that field?”

  He ticked items off on his fingers. “We have conquered Spain. Louis XIV’s armies did that a century ago. We conquered most of Italy. So did Francis I. We have bogged down fighting wars in Germany, and I cannot name enough monarchs who managed that. Even the late and unlamented Louis XV managed to conquer the Low Countries, though he foolishly returned them at the peace, uncaring of the blood of the soldiers that had been shed to win them.

  “I ask you, are we not greater than those kings? Are we not more enlightened than those monarchical regimes, the same ones that we rose up in triumph to overthrow thirteen years ago? Yet we have not surpassed their martial triumphs, and that is something that the world watches.

  “There is one goal those kings never achieved. One that no Frenchman has ever achieved.[57] One which brought those kings’ dreams crashing down to earth perhaps even to a greater extent than their own corruption and hubris.

  “Perfidious Albion. The English sit on their island, protected by the Sleeve[58] and their navy, fat and content, knowing that no foe can ever harm them directly. They have the leisure to intervene in our affairs at will, and their goal is always to set us back, to maintain a balance of power, to prevent any country growing powerful enough to threaten them.

  “Well, they have failed. They just do not know it yet. England must be dealt with if France is to reign supreme as the Ultimate Purity. England must be put to fire and the sword.

  “We have the ships. We have the men. We have the weather. Fortes fortuna adiuvat![59] Let us seize the day, and end our problems forever! An end to Albion and her perfidy! An end! An end!”

  *

  From: “Ripublica Corsica” by Roland Bone, a fictionalised narrative account of Corsica in the Jacobin Wars, 1945—

  Admiral John Jervis frowned. Though under normal circumstances he did not think much of the local musicians, an unusually jaunty piece had just begun and he did not appreciate being interrupted. Furthermore, the blasted midshipman was impeding his view of the delightful and hopefully unattached Corsican lady in the third row. Jervis had been smiling a few moments before, reflecting that while he might not have a high opinion of the local talent when it came to music, the… other arts were a different matter entirely.

  Now, though, it seemed business had overtaken him. He sighed, climbed to his feet, excused himself. Doubtless his absence would cause comment. He was the highest-ranking British officer in the Mediterranean, the commander of the Mediterranean Fleet in fact, and by making Corte his major port of call – an important part of shoring up relations between Britain and the Corsican Republic now that Paoli had died and Pozzo had taken power – he had become a central figure of society there. People would talk, he knew. No matter what that lieutenant on the Aegyptus who was too clever by half might say, Jervis was convinced that semaphore was not, in fact, the fastest way information could travel. The gossip of society ladies could put at least a distorted rumour from London to Edinburgh within what seemed like five minutes. And he knew that by leaving now, he had just started one.

  Once he was out in the corridor with the pale midshipman, he was therefore all but ready to take it out on the boy. He restrained himself, though, reminding himself not to shoot the messenger. Now, if the lad had interrupted him on his own initiative and his message did not convey information of sufficient importance… Jervis let his face grow hard. He had never flinched from the use of harsh punishments such as flogging in order to maintain discipline. He did not enjoy ordering their use, as some sadistic captains might, but he believed that they had their place, and that place was separating the rigid, hierarchical civilised society of a Royal Navy ship from the anarchy of mutiny.

  The boy – he couldn’t be more than twelve years old – saluted nervously and handed him the sealed envelope with a mumbled ‘Admiral’.

  Jervis broke the seal, took out the letter and scanned it quickly. The handwriting he recognised: Jonathan Scott’s, the master and commander of the Neptune.

  A prickle ran up his spine even before he digested the words. The Neptune, an inappropriately grand name for a glorified sloop, was acting as part of his spy network across the Med. Specifically, she was a base for the fishing boats – some disguised members of the Unnumbered, some genuine locals paid off for their information – whose job was to spy on the ports for any movements of ships.

  He read the letter twice, three times, unable to believe what he was reading. It was simply impossible.

  “Gone,” he said out loud, letting the letter drop to the ground, too flabbergasted to think about operational security, to remember that the boy was still there. “Admiral Lepelley’s force. The whole Toulon-Marseilles fleet. No one saw them leave… but they’re all gone.”

  *

  Farewell and adieu to you fine Spanish Ladies –

  Farewell and adieu to you Ladies of Spain –

  For we've received orders to sail for Old England

  And perhaps we shall nevermore see you again.

  - “Spanish Ladies”, British sea shanty

  *

  From: “Blade to the Heart” by Michael Robertson (1967)—

  The attack came without warning. No declaration of war. Nothing that would give Britain any chance to prepare. If she could possibly recall any of her fleets, the attempt would become impossible. Everything had to be risked, all gambled on one roll of the dice. If the plan, so new it lacked a name, succeeded, then any rancour from lack of following the rules of war would become moot. And if it failed, the reverse was also true…

  Admiral Parker was not, as he has often been painted, an incompetent. While his ships were laid up in the South Kentish Downs, he sent out patrols to ensure the Channel was clear. He lacked steamcraft; the British had sent half their experimental fleet to Jervis in the Mediterranean as a counter to Lepelley’s steamfleet in harbour at Toulon, and the other half remained in harbour in Lowestoft. Besides, the British had yet to produce a really effective steam warship, unlike the French Surcouf-class steam-galleys. Instead their efforts had focused on building tugs capable of towing their conventional ships into battle, which given the sheer number of British sail warships made sense as a strategy.

  So instead Parker sent sloops and brigs, small ships that could be rowed effectively when there was barely a ripple on the surface of the Channel, a
mill-pond, a peace that so rarely came to those troubled waters.

  It was not a peace that would last for long.

  *

  So we'll rant and we'll roar like true British Sailors,

  We'll range and we'll roam over all the salt seas,

  Until we strike soundings in the Channel of Old England –

  From Ushant to Scilly ’tis thirty-five leagues.

  - “Spanish Ladies”, British sea shanty

  *

  From: “Blade to the Heart” by Michael Robertson (1967)—

  The 23rd of March, 1807. Three o’clock. Six bells of the afternoon watch, in ship’s time. Approximately, of course; Britain had not yet implemented standardised time, lacking a huge semaphore network like France’s. There was only a cursory line of towers stretching across the south coast from Penzance to Dover. Supposedly there as a counter to a French invasion, but no-one believed that would ever come. The Navy instead used it for sending orders between Portsmouth and lesser naval bases, and many of the conniving deskbound admirals used it to shave many hours off sending messages to London and receiving them. Quite a lot of money had been made on the stock market and the races before the financiers cottoned on. At present, sailors had a bad odour among them, to the extent that the admirals had backed off for a while, and that one proposal of theirs – to shave even more time off a message by extending the network to London itself – had been shelved…

  *

  We hove our ship to when the wind was sou'west, boys,

  We hove our ship to for to strike soundings clear,

  Then we filled our main-tops'l and bore right away, boys,

  And right up the Channel our course we did steer.

  - “Spanish Ladies”, British sea shanty

  *

  From: “Blade to the Heart” by Michael Robertson (1967)—

  HM Sloop Sparrowhawk raced back to the Downs, almost colliding with North Foreland as she did so. Her commander, Martin Booth, carried what might be the most important message in British history. Admiral Parker received it with the same sense of helpless dread that Harold Godwinson might have done seven centuries before.

  The French are coming.

  Doubtless, the fleet of Admiral Surcouf was sailing up the Channel to reinforce Villeneuve’s fleet, of course. It must be part of the French operation against the Dutch Republic. Obviously.

  But there were so many of them…

  Booth, like most British sailors, had never actually seen French steam warships in action, and spoke frankly to Parker about the unsettling and unnatural way that the red-and-black-chequered galleys could move against the tide without wind or oars, their single chimney belching a plume of dark smoke that half-hid the ships behind. Only half-hid them, though. He counted dozens, along with three ships of the line and an unknown number of frigates. There might be other sail ships behind, but he wasn’t sure.

  Parker stared at the written message, resisting the urge to put his head in his hands. He had to shadow this fleet. It was too big a risk. But with the Channel the way it was…

  There was no choice. He ordered his ships to be towed down-Channel by their barges and longboats, an unpopular task. The French fleet must be met and its objectives ascertained.

  *

  The first land we make it is known as the Deadman,

  Next Ram Head near Plymouth, Start, Portland and Wight;

  We sailéd past Beachy, past Fairley and Dungeness,

  And then bore away for the South Foreland Light.

  - “Spanish Ladies”, British sea shanty

  *

  From: “Blade to the Heart” by Michael Robertson (1967)—

  Of course, Parker’s feet made very slow progress under human power, while the French steam engines, now perfected from years of experiments, drove them forward at a rate that almost overtook the Sparrowhawk. For that reason, Parker’s flagship Mirabilis[60] was only rounding the head of Dungeness when the lead ships of the French fleet, already passing Fairlight Cove, were spotted. Surcouf’s own flagship, the steam-galley L’Otarie, was still as far back as Beachy Head. The French fleet had become strung-out due to the varying performance of the steam engines and their coaling crews, but Surcouf had been careful with his orders beforehand to minimise this issue. Furthermore, the French steamships had improved their signal flag system using the mathematical breakthroughs in coding that had been developed for the Chappe semaphore network. Surcouf knew that the British had been sighted long before he could see them with his own spyglass.

  There was the possibility that the fleet could simply bypass the British without firing, of course, but that would make the second part of the plan problematic, and Lisieux had been very clear. Parker’s fleet must be neutralised. Still, Surcouf hesitated. He told the lead ships to slow their engines and the fleet began to become more of a cohesive mass again. Parker’s fleet turned around, awkwardly, as French ships passed on either side and the British rowers groaned and looked enviously upon the French’s steam engines. The strange procession reached the cape of Dungeness again. Then it happened.

  Sources are divided on what exactly occurred. Some argue that Parker finally spotted or identified Hoche’s troopships towards the back of the visible French formation and realised that this could only be an invasion aimed at England. Others, with perhaps more justification, believe that one of the French captains panicked or misinterpreted his orders. In any case, the first shot was soon eclipsed by the next fifty; all the crews on both sides were tense. The peace between Britain and France, over six years old, was finally shattered. Parker began roaring orders. Not without difficulty, the British rowboats turned their ships yet again and a line of battle began to form up. Mirabilis, however, stood aloof and let fly with her broadside at the approaching column of French ships.

  That ship had the most powerful broadside of any British ship, and as British gunnery tended to be of a higher calibre than other navies’ due to the fact that the Royal Navy budgeted to train the crews with real shot and powder, arguably the most powerful in the world. Her fifty portside guns of various weights fired almost as one, the recoil making even the massive Mirabilis visibly sway and yaw as the cannons’ noses shot back through their gunports. Adding up the various thirty-two-pound, twenty-four-pound and twelve-pound shot she fired, it came to an incredible total of over one ton of screaming iron being hurled at her target.

  And it was at this point that Parker, and the Royal Navy, revealed that they had not entirely been conservative curmudgeons dismissing the way steam had changed naval war. Lessons had been learned from the confrontations between French steamcraft and the Spanish navy, in particular the way that tall ships of the line had trouble hitting the lower-slung steam galleys at close range. A bright young engineer named Cripps, a type which the Royal Navy had no shortage of, had developed a new kind of gun carriage that allowed not only gun elevation while permitting recoil, but also depression. Mirabilis, of course, as the flagship, was fully equipped with them and her crews were well drilled.

  So it was that when Mirabilis fired, three French steamships practically disappeared, disintegrating as each was hit by a dozen huge cannonballs directed at a suitable angle. Their steam boilers were punctured and spilled gouts of blinding white steam that both scalded half their crew to death and hid the battlefield as readily as powder smoke. La Vengeur du Peuple, just behind the three ships, sustained lesser damage, knocking down her auxiliary mast, while L’Enfant de Tonnerre, a little further behind, took just one cannonball, a small twelve-pounder. But, by one of those strange coincidences of war, that cannonball just happened to remove her captain’s head. His first officer, Philippe Desaix, quickly took over.

  The other British ships, not all of which had the new gun carriages, met with less success. However, HMS Orion and HMS Sunderland successfully trapped the Vaisseau de la Revanche, one of Surcouf’s few sail ships of the line (being towed into battle by a steam tug) and battered her with broadsides between them.


  Nonetheless, the new steamcraft rapidly began to take a toll. Most were equipped with a few large forward cannon, like row-galleys in the Mediterranean, and once lined up on a target could put a forty-eight pound cannonball through any of the British ships below the waterline. Within a few minutes, two of Parker’s ships, Lancaster and Cerebus, were slowly sinking beneath the unnaturally still waters of the Channel.

  It was becoming obvious that the British were outnumbered, outmanoeuvred, and outmatched. Nonetheless Parker fought on, grimly realising that he could at least do as much damage to this terrifying French fleet as possible. Their numbers could not be too great… but what was this now? He clapped his telescope to his eye and swore. It was impossible! That many ships… Sir Sidney Smith was technically a naval man, and so his Unnumbered made sure their intelligence reports reached admirals more swiftly than anyone. He knew there could not have been that many ships in Le Havre. It was simply impossible, the harbour space did not exist…