HMS Falcon: A Charles Mullins novel, Sea Command 7

by Richard Testrake

  Then, it was time for the ship to make her presence felt. With her portside guns charged with grape, the first broadside brought crushing casualties to the enemy column. After that, no more broadsides were ordered. With the near annihilation of the formation, individual guns were told off to fire whenever a cluster of enemy merged to form a worthy target.

  Soon, the enemy troops were standing in the road with their arms raised or scrambling up the hills hoping to evade the waiting Riflemen. Mullins, carrying his long rifle, stepped into his jolly boat and was pulled toward the ambush site. His intention was to coordinate the defenses in the area, but before landing, the boat came under fire from a group of musket men halfway up a nearly sheer cliff.

  Mullins knew if he continued his approach, some of his boat crew were apt to become casualties. A whiff of grape from the ship would put ‘paid’ to this band, but at the moment they were in a position out of sight of the ship’s gun crews. A pair of large rocks protruding from the water gave him an idea. Ordering his crew to pull behind one of them, his people were sheltered from the enemy fire. He could clamber up the side of one of the rocks to its top, where he had a good view of the enemy.

  He judged the distance to the enemy as being close to two hundred yards, a very long distance for a musket, but perfectly feasible for his long rifle. Deciding he needed some assistance, he called for the midshipman commanding his boat to come to him, bringing his glass. Once the wary fourteen-year old had come up beside him, he explained his plan.

  “Mister Drew, I plan to fire on those enemy with my rifle. It is very long range, but I think I can cause a little harm. The smoke from my discharge may interfere with my seeing where the ball strikes, so I would like you to station yourself to windward and use the glass to see where my balls go. Stay low so you do not present a target to the enemy.”

  The long rifle was already charged, so all that needed to be done was check the priming powder in the pan and insure the flint was tight in the cock. The enemy soldats were firing from a narrow ledge halfway up the cliff. As he watched, one readied his weapon and fired at his position. The ball struck nowhere near the pair.

  A stiff land breeze was blowing down the bay, which he thought might affect his own shot. Resting his long rifle on his rolled-up coat on the top of the rock, he aimed to windward of his target and squeezed off his shot. There was the usual miniscule delay while the powder in the pan flared and ignited the main charge.

  A second later, Midshipman Drew, peering through his glass, announced the ball had struck the cliff a half yard to leeward. The targeted soldat, stung by flying rock fragments, dove for the floor of the ledge. With nowhere else to seek cover, the other members of the party stepped back against the face of the cliff.

  Mullins extracted a paper cartridge from his pouch and tore off the tail. Opening the frizzen of his weapon, he deposited a pinch of powder in the pan, then closed it. The remainder of the powder was dumped down the bore, followed by the elongated projectile. The bullet was driven down the bore, followed by the remnants of the paper cartridge.

  By this time, the enemy had prepared their own weapons and attempted a volley. The results of this were no better than the previous trial. Mullins replied to their fire while the enemy were still watching for evidence of a hit. This time, he held further into the wind and was rewarded to see his target drop his weapon and sag to the ground.

  This enemy was hard to convince and continued to fire. Mullins was having trouble judging the gusting wind and was sure some of his balls were blown off their course. After missing with his next two shots, his next shot struck his target in the torso. The surviving enemy threw their weapons off the cliff and stood back against the cliff.

  Mullins ordered Midshipman Drew to take him to the ambush site, then return with his boat crew to collect these prisoners.

  The nervous youth wondered what he should do if the soldats refused to come down from their perch.

  “You have my permissison, Mister Drew, to go back to the ship and explain the situation to the first officer. You may tell him that I would recommend moving the ship so that one or more guns will bear on the target. See if a charge or two of grape will change their mind.”

  Chapter Nine

  With the battery secure, Mullins ordered a signal sent to HMS Falcon, confirming the seizure of their objective and requesting the ships boats be sent to the landing. The rest of the day was spent taking stock of their capture. Unusually, the battery’s’ guns were not of the expected French military issue, but instead, British eighteen-pounders on naval carriages of a pattern from the last century, probable prizes taken from a captured or wrecked British warship.

  Little shot and bagged powder was present in the battery’s magazine, but Mister Welks, Falcon’s gunner, had a small supply of the necessary ammunition in his stores. With this augment to the former French stocks, Mullins thought the battery could withstand a prolonged siege, if necessary.

  By sunset, a proper complement of gunners had been assigned to man the guns and the ambush point on the coast road had been strengthened by a pair of boat guns. At dusk, a grimy peasant leading a mule wandered into the position. Luckily, the fellow appeared harmless enough and nobody fired at him.

  When Lieutenant Harrison tried to question him, the peasant answered in upper class English, demanding to speak to the commanding officer. This person, it developed, was the agent they had come to take back home. Mister Dooley spent most of the evening questioning the exhausted agent, learning as much as possible about the local situation. Dooley decided to use his previous identity as a Prussian grain merchant in his effort to infiltrate into local society. He hoped to secure a contract to supply the local military forces with provisions. He would take the previous agent’s mule and join some group of locals fleeing the British raiders.

  To give credence to this rumor, Mullins decided to send a force to destroy the frigate now building in the local shipyard.

  Leaving the battery manned and provisioned, the Riflemen, with a few seamen accompanying, set out on the coast road for the village a few miles away. The force reached their objective during the night, but elected to postpone the actual attack until dawn, to have an idea of what might be awaiting them. Dooley and his mule followed along behind, remaining well in the rear, to avoid giving suspicion he might be associated with these invaders.

  Riflemen scouting ahead of the column reported a gaggle of disorganized troops about the village, with many of the populace already preparing to flee. Believing the troops present were merely survivors of the force defeated the previous day, Mister Harrison elected to commence his attack at first light.

  The French troops, perhaps alerted to their presence, began to assemble when a drummer began to belabor his instrument. They were beginning to fall into ranks when the Riflemen began their sniping from the cover of a hedge. As their casualties mounted, the ranks broke and the few enemy soldiers remaining began to join the rest of the populace fleeing into the countryside.

  Captain Mullins saw Dooley, mounted on his mule, waiting in the rear for the issue to be decided. Approaching him, he asked if his mission might not be cancelled, suggesting the likelihood he might be taken up as a spy. Dooley dismissed the idea, reminding his friend he had survived for several years already, in the midst of the enemy, with no suspicion of his true identity.

  Just then, a crowd of villagers escaping from the conflict broke clear of the combatants and began running across the fields. Dooley mounted his mule and drummed his heels against the animal’s ribs, urging the beast to follow. A few of the refugees were also mounted, and the agent did not look out of place following the crowd. When a frightened urchin stumbled, and fell, Dooley bent down, scooping him up and holding the lad in front of himself.

  As the refugees disappeared into the bushland, Mullins shifted his attention to the battle before him. The fighting was nearly over, with most of the enemy either down or fleeing. Some few villagers were still present, mostly those elderly o
r disabled, unable to run.

  The Riflemen had done much of their work from a distance, firing at a range the French muskets could not reach. Few Riflemen had been lost, but the crowd of seamen who had charged the enemy with cutlasses and pistols had lost many of their own.

  With the enemy defeated, Mullins ordered the Rifle commander to secure the shipyard, just out of town, on the shore of the bay. Any workmen there had dropped their tools and escaped with the rest of the populace. A watchfire was burning and a pot of tar nearby had been in the process of being readied to caulk some seams in the ship in the stocks. This ship was near its launch date, still standing tall in the stocks, but almost ready to be launched. A large quantity of timber was piled in the yard and Mullins ordered his people to begin stacking this material under and around the ship.

  One of his men found a loggerhead near the fire and began using the large iron ball with its protruding handle to break up some of the timber to use as kindling. Mullins stopped the man and ordered him to place the iron ball of the tool into the fire. By the time a quantity of wood had been piled against the sides of the ship, the iron was hot. One of his petty officers plunged the hot iron into the container of tar. The solid tar melted readily and the viscous substance was poured over the stack of fuel.

  More tar was found and similarly prepared, some of it being applied to the deck and interior of the ship. At length, the timber was fired and soon an inferno engulfed the ship. As the tired invaders made their way back down the coast road, the smoke behind them rose like a beacon, announcing the destruction they had caused.

  When they arrived at the ambush emplacements, Mullins ordered his people there to abandon the site, loading the carronades back into the boats to be carried back to the ship. At the battery, his men were told to prepare the site for demolition, and the signal party used the site’s flag staff to signal Falcon to approach the battery to embark the landing party. These activities were in progress when an alert sentry reported a ship at sea sailing toward the bay.

  With his glass, Mullins could determine this was a lethal French frigate, of forty guns or more, rather more dangerous than anything he wished Falcon to face in combat. The smoke column from the burning frigate still climbed into the sky and he knew this was the likely reason for this intruder to approach.

  With Falcon nearing the landing, he saw no opportunity for her to escape without a probably disastrous engagement with the enemy frigate, so he decided he would have Falcon anchor near the battery where they could support each other mutually. He could use his own ground troops to ward off any landing party from the enemy frigate.

  HMS Falcon had been stripped of many of her hands to support the landing, so some people must be moved back to her. To add a little confusion to the enemy captain’s mind, Mister Morison, presently commanding Falcon, ran up French colors, as did the shore battery.

  This subterfuge served for only a few minutes as the approaching frigate ran up a series of flag hoists. Having no idea of the French code, these went unanswered, and the enemy was seen to run out her guns.

  Mullins had a few good gun captains on shore and some of the Riflemen had previous experience with guns, although not ones of this size. Every gun had shot piled up beside it, and men had been told off to bring up fresh powder cartridges to every gun as it fired.

  The enemy ship was now well within range and it had already launched boats filled with people. As they began to pull their way to shore, the enemy began firing over the heads of the boatmen. The solid shot was well directed but did little damage to the defenders behind the stone walls. With a limited amount of shot for his eighteen-pounders, Mullins did not wish to expend this on small boats, but Mister Morison on Falcon did not have these qualms. Anchored fore and aft, as close to the shore as he could reach, he opened fire as the boats approached and disabled a pair, before the others could make it to land to disgorge their troops.

  The big guns of the battery now opened on the enemy frigate. Still learning their unfamiliar weapons, most of the early shots missed, but the gunners soon mastered their weapons. Ten minutes into the action, all in the battery cheered as the enemy’s foremast was seen to totter and fall, taking the bowsprit with it.

  Up until this moment, the enemy frigate had mostly ignored Falcon, as if she was not worth notice. Now though, with her enemy badly damaged, Falcon cut her anchor cables and made her way out to the crippled ship. With the French ship unable to maneuver, Falcon came up on her bow and began pounding her with raking fire.

  In the meantime, the survivors from the enemy landing party had reached shore and were making their attempt on the rear gate of the battery. The Riflemen saved the day here, sniping at the attackers, preferably selecting officers and sergeants. With their accurate weapons, only a few enemy sailors entered the gate, where they were met by gunners wielding cutlasses and pikes.

  Mullins had felt rather left out in this battle, as Lieutenant Harrison needed no advice on how to repel this attack. Unable to reach his ship, he occupied himself in picking off those few French seamen still trying to get into his battery.

  During this interlude, the enemy frigate had been under fire from both the shore battery as well as Falcon’s deadly fire. It was all too much for the enemy ship and her diminished crew had not initially noticed the blaze that began burning in her wardroom. Probably ignited from a shattered lamp in one of the officer’s cabins, the fire spread without notice until it was too late. Her fire decreased rapidly as her people had to evacuate the stern area of the ship and then the flames reached her magazine. Although a few of her people could leap over the side, most of her crew perished when the magazine exploded in a shattering eruption.

  Some burning material fell on Falcon and fires were started in her rigging, but quick action from her crew extinguished the trouble spots without great damage.

  Captured enemy troops and seamen were confined within the battery’s walls but when everything salvageable on shore had been recovered into the ship, all enemy weapons and kit was destroyed and the prisoners set free to make their way to the local village.

  Mullins agonized over this decision since he knew many of these people would soon be under arms again, firing at Britons, but he had no means of transporting them back home. By the time he embarked his people, as well as the Riflemen, there would hardly be a spare foot to stow a captured enemy.

  Before leaving, all the guns in the battery were permanently disabled by shooting off their trunnions and the magazine was fired as the last boat was leaving. All in all, Mullins surmised, as the ship pulled out of the bay, it had been a successful mission. They had brought back the agent they had gone for, inserted another into the enemy ranks, destroyed two frigates and caused terrible casualties in the Emperors’ ranks. It was time to go home.

  Chapter Ten

  Charles Mullins woke in his own quarters on the ship in despair. On his return from the mission to the mainland of France the previous month, he had been elated. Seemingly at the apex of his profession, he seriously considered whether this might not be the proper time to retire. He had plenty of funds conservatively invested and a prominent individual often seen at Court had suggested to him last week a property he might purchase which would surely return his investment many times over.

  To acquire this rare find however, it wasnecessary to sign the papers promptly. Investors from all over Britain were flocking to examine this windfall and he was told he must act promptly or the opportunity would be lost forever. It seemed the present owner had a vast number of sheep on the property which were producing enormous profits from the sale of wool and mutton. However, spending the greater portion of his funds on property he had never even seen was repugnant to him and he was reluctant at handing over his funds without further advice.

  Normally he would have conferred with his father, the Baron Yarley, but Pater was ill, suffering what some of his doctors thought to be consumption. Having gone to sea himself at a very young age, Mullins realized his own understan
ding of property values might not be quite enough, so on a whim, enlisted the aid of Mister Reynolds, formerly the second officer of HMS Falcon, and now the first lieutenant. Mister Morison had been drafted away to another ship, after their return and now Reynolds was managing the ship in Mullins’ absence ashore.

  Much of the ship’s crew had been sent to the receiving ship and the dockyard was busy with repairing the damage suffered in the action with the enemy frigate. It was agreed Mister Reynolds could be spared for a week, so the coach was prepared and Mullin’s hostler took the reins. Mullins had tried to convince his wife to bring their child and accompany him on the trip, but she pled numerous social obligations and declined.

  It took them two days to reach the property and even Mullins with his indifferent knowledge of agrarian affairs, knew immediately this was not the property that had been described to him. The paddocks had been overgrazed by the numerous sheep, and Reynolds explained it would take years for the pastures to recover. The animals themselves were worth little. Starving as they were, it would be necessary to purchase vast amounts of fodder to keep them alive. Regretfully, this attempt to build his estate must be abandoned.

  Relieved that he had found the shortcomings before handing over his funds, Mullins was in good spirits when he arrived home, several days earlier than expected. His wife was not there and their housekeeper said she had gone to visit a cousin, leaving their son Alfred for the housekeeper and nanny to care for in her absence. Mullins was not quite sure about her leaving the child behind, but he could hardly complain since he had done the same often enough.