‘A heavy frigate,’ someone declared and cursed.
She was, indeed, a French thirty-six, her boats streaming aft like ducklings.
‘Mr Barthe! Make sail. We shall tack immediately.’
‘It is heavy wind to tack, sir,’ Barthe called out over the sound of cannon. ‘I fear we shall carry something away.’
‘We shall tack, Mr Barthe, and then give us the mainsail. Handsomely now. Mr Franks! Call all hands. We shall tack then return to the guns.’ Hayden hurried to the helm and took it from the surprised sergeant-at-arms. ‘The yards must be braced around with all speed.’
The moment the hands were at their stations, Hayden brought the ship through the wind, everyone aboard staring up apprehensively to see if spars would carry away. The finger-nails-on-slate screech of stretching cordage rose above the wind, lingered too long, but then the ship came through the wind with all spars standing.
The mainsail rippled down, filled in an instant, and the ship heeled, picked up her skirts, and surged forward, seas breaking against the larboard bow.
‘I’m not sure our gunports will be dry, Captain,’ Barthe shouted. The master grabbed the rail and clapped his hat down to his eyebrows.
‘There’s nothing for it, Mr Barthe. We will keep them closed until the last moment.’ Hayden turned to find Saint-Denis. The lieutenant stood by the capstan appearing undecided in his actions. Hayden gave the helm back to the sergeant-at-arms, crossed the few yards of deck and put his hand on the lieutenant’s arm, leaning close to speak over the crash of the guns. ‘Man the larboard guns, Lieutenant. Do not open the gunports until you have an order from me. Then we will run the guns out with all speed, rake the near frigate, pass by Pool’s stern, rake the French two-decker, wear ship and give them our starboard battery. Have three of the gun captains – Tull, Brown and Wind-field – aim for the seventy-four’s rudder. Is that understood?’
Saint-Denis nodded. Hayden watched him make his way to the companionway, but the man lost his balance and almost fell before reaching it, and then went awkwardly below. Hayden had come to believe the man’s character so false that he worried he would lose his nerve at the crucial moment. It was impossible to know. One could never judge a man’s courage before it had been tested.
Hayden stayed near the helmsman as they beat towards the firing ships, wanting to be certain they passed neither too close nor too near. All of his shot would have to tally if he wanted to preserve Pool from his present situation. Too far off and his carronades would be ineffective, too near and the Themis could pass the frigate on the wrong side of a sea and be unable to fire.
Smoke from the great guns blew down on them, sweeping, dark and ghostly, across their decks. A topmast tumbled on the Majestic, hung for an instant in the rigging, then toppled down into the sea.
As they drew nearer, rocking over the gathering waves, the pale faces of the officers came into focus. Hayden stood by the weather rail, grasping a mizzen shroud with his left hand, the cordage slippery wet and hard with tar. The distance between the Themis and her enemies seemed impossible to overcome, labour as she might. Hayden made his way forward onto the gangway, pausing by the hammock netting. Gould had been assigned as his runner, and the boy stood by, staring fixedly towards the battling ships, his face creased and ashen as though he aged before Hayden’s eyes.
Leaning near to the boy, Hayden said, ‘Run forward and tell Madison to fire his carronades into the frigate when he sees fit.’ Hayden patted the boy firmly on the shoulder. He well remembered his first action at sea and knew a little of what the boy was feeling. It was a sobering moment to realize one’s life could end within the hour.
‘Aye, sir,’ Gould replied, his voice thinned by apprehension. Hayden watched the boy hurry forward, frightened but overcoming his fears – a good sign.
Hawthorne ranged up alongside.
‘Mr Hawthorne… here we are again.’
‘Yes, and I thought convoy duty would be a bore. I should have known, with you in command, we would soon be in action.’
‘I am not sure how I should take that, sir,’ Hayden responded.
‘As a compliment, to be sure,’ Hawthorne assured him. ‘You seem to need to fight the French every other day, which I approve most heartily. It is Tuesday and here are the French right on cue.’
Hayden could not help but smile.
Hawthorne went on. ‘Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays we fight the French. Sunday rest and prayer. Mondays make and mend, and then Tuesdays it is the French again. Predictability is a virtue.’ Hawthorne was pensively silent a moment. ‘I must see to my men. Good luck to you, Captain.’
‘And you, Mr Hawthorne.’
The French frigate was near, now. Hayden stood a moment more, judging their speed to a nicety, stepped quickly across the gangway, descended two steps and stood watching the approaching frigate. Bending low he looked down onto the gundeck. The men all stared back in awful silence.
To his first lieutenant Hayden called. ‘Open larboard gunports, if you please, Mr Saint-Denis.’
Hayden stood again, stepping up one tread so that he could more clearly perceive what transpired. The ship rolled to larboard and Hayden ducked and called out. ‘Cast free your guns.’
The ship rolled slowly back to starboard.
‘Run out your guns!’
Hayden stood again, watching the frigate’s stern draw near. The Frenchmen fired a stern-chaser at the Themis but Hayden did not take his eye away to see what damage it might have done. A second gun spoke.
A dull thud on the starboard side could only be the Frenchman’s trailing boats colliding with the Themis.
Forward, a carronade spat fire and smoke, and Hayden squinted as a cloud enveloped him hiding everything for an instant. The brisk wind carried the smoke away just as another forecastle gun fired, and then another.
Hayden ducked his head below. ‘Fire as she bears. Rake her, lads.’
Hayden went up onto the deck then, and watched the effect of his guns. One by one they fired, like the chiming of a massive clock. Boom!… Boom! He felt the power of them through the deck and the echo in his chest. The wind swirled smoke about the sails, and through it he would catch glimpses of the enemy frigate’s stern, the shuttered gallery shattered, splinters flying up from the rail. He could hear men crying out. The orders of officers carried to him on the wind – his mother’s tongue. Voices called upon God to aid them or to damn the English.
The wave of gunfire reached him, the gun beneath his feet shaking the deck, and Hayden turned his back for a moment, holding his breath and pressing his eyes closed, waiting for the wind to carry off the smoke. The next gun aft spoke, then the next. They were past.
Hayden had only a glimpse of the ruin they left behind as the stern of Majestic hid the French frigate. Above the crashing of guns he heard orders called to reload.
Majestic’s stern towered over the Themis, and Hayden looked up to see a hatless lieutenant, his face bleeding, gesturing wildly and calling out words that could not be understood above the din. Hayden did not even make an attempt to reply, but sailed by, his course of action not about to be changed by some lieutenant who in all likelihood understood the situation less well than he. Pool had made a terrible error. That was the undeniable truth. Where the French ships had come from Hayden did not know. Perhaps they had been waiting over the horizon.
Hayden climbed down a stair and crouched, looking into the dim gundeck. Men were past their apprehension, now, caught up in the drill of loading and firing.
‘The second ship is about to come abreast, Mr Saint-Denis. Fire as she bears. We made a ruin of that Frenchman and now we shall attempt to do the same to the seventy-four. Do not waste a shot.’
Saint-Denis’s ashen face was powder-stained but his manner, though still awkward and stiff, did not lack resolve, which Hayden realized disappointed him; it would be easier to dislike Saint-Denis if he were shy, as well.
He stood and climbed a step, seeing the stern of th
e French ship not far off the larboard bow. The Themis plunged into the growing sea, the wind making by the moment. High above, on the stern of the French ship, Hayden could see men bearing muskets gathering at the taffrail. Climbing quickly out onto the gangway, Hayden called for Hawthorne, but the marine lieutenant had not missed the meaning of this, and was already scrambling aloft with a company of red-coated marines, muskets slung over their backs.
Hayden hurried forward, finding Mr Barthe and Wickham on the forecastle. The crack of musket fire sounded, and lead balls rang off the guns and buried themselves in the deck. With the motion of the two ships it was almost impossible to stand without holding on so hitting any target would be a matter of luck, but the gun captain of the forward carronade collapsed to the deck and was borne away by two sailors.
To Hayden’s surprise, Wickham ordered Gould into the man’s place and the boy stepped up smartly and took the offered firing lanyard. Barthe was barking orders to Franks and to his mates, trying to repair the small damage done by the French frigate’s stern chasers.
One of the French musketeers plunged over the rail and down into the sea, brought down by Hawthorne’s marines. And then a horrible, muted thud on the deck ten feet off, and a marine lay in a shattered heap, killed by the fall from aloft if not enemy fire.
A perfect accident of the sea occurred then; the Themis was thrown up on a freak wave as the French ship plunged into a deep trough. Hayden found himself staring along the enemy ship’s upper deck, the surprised musket men not thirty feet away at eye level. Gould yanked the firing lanyard before Hayden could speak, and the party of French gunners were torn from the rail, bodies rent and strewn over the quarterdeck as though they had been cut down by a scythe. The gun had been loaded with grape.
The Themis plunged into the trough. The next gun did not fire as it should, for the men all stood, gaping in horror. Hayden forced himself to the next carronade, took hold of the lanyard and yanked it as the ship rolled up. He made his way quickly aft, down the stair onto the gundeck where cold water washed around his ankles.
Archer looked over to him, grim and worried. ‘I’m not sure we can keep the gunports open, Mr Hayden.’
‘Fire this broadside and then close them all. We will call hands to wear ship and chase the frigate again.’
Guns fired, one after the other, the ports slammed shut as they did so, muzzles neatly elevated and lashed in place. The ship rolled again and green water spilled over the port sills, and ran across the deck. It was a dangerous, dangerous thing they did, but Hayden felt he had no choice. Ships had run under doing just this and every sailor aboard knew it. If a gun broke loose with so many men at hand there would be injuries, even deaths.
The last carronade fired on the quarterdeck and Hayden hurried aft, watching the ships bear away south, guns still firing. Barthe came down the starboard gangway and met him on the quarterdeck.
‘Shall I port my helm, sir?’ the helmsman asked.
‘Not yet,’ Hayden answered. ‘I want to rake the seventy-four once more and we shall need room to make our way to windward. Hold your course.’
Hands were called to wear ship and Hayden asked for his glass. Gould appeared at his side then, his face fish-belly white.
‘How fare you, Mr Gould?’
‘Did you see what I… what I did, Captain?’ The boy’s voice was raw with awe and horror. ‘A dozen men torn limb from limb. It was like a slaughterhouse, sir, a slaughter—’
The boy slumped a little and Hayden caught him beneath the arm, Mr Barthe grasping the other. They stepped a little behind Gould to bear him up and shield him from the eyes of others. The men at the near carronades looked away.
‘You’ll be right in a moment,’ Barthe said, his voice kindly. ‘Breathe. Lean over the rail if you must be ill.’
The boy nodded, gasping for air. Hayden felt him take a little weight on his legs, then a little more. His hands, limp a moment before, reached out and grasped the rail.
‘I am recovered, sir,’ Gould said faintly.
‘We will hold you a moment more,’ Hayden replied.
But then he felt the boy take his own weight, and he released him, turning away and crossing to the helm.
‘We will wear ship, Mr Barthe.’
‘All hands to wear ship!’ Barthe called into his speaking trumpet.
The rising wind was brought across the stern, the yards braced quickly around, for a moment the ship wallowed, then steadied, heeled and began to make way. The embattled ships were some distance off but under her press of sail the Themis closed on them quickly.
The shattered gallery windows and stern of the French seventy-four became clearer as they neared. Their eighteen-pounders had inflicted more damage then Hayden had hoped. Beyond the Frenchman, Hayden could see Majestic, her rigging and sails in ruin, her topmasts shot away.
The French seventy-four had the much vaunted weather gauge, but could not open the ports on her lower gundeck because she was heeled overly by the rising wind. Pool’s marines were shooting any men sent aloft to reduce sail, thus keeping her adversary at a disadvantage. In response, the French skipper let sheets fly and some of his sails began flogging themselves to ruins.
Upon Pool’s lee side, however, the French frigate was timing her broadsides to the crests, catching the British ship in a trough and causing slaughter across her decks.
‘Mr Gould,’ Hayden called.
The boy jogged over, doing his manly best to appear untouched by what went on.
‘Go down to Saint-Denis and inform him we will go straight for the French frigate and leave the seventy-four to Pool. I want to rake her once, then range up alongside and give her our starboard broadside.’
The boy touched his hat. ‘Aye, sir. Straight at the French frigate, sir.’ He lumbered across the deck and down the companionway.
In the mist and rain beyond Majestic, Hayden found Bradley, who had worn ship and was running from the French frigate, his twenty-six twelve-pounders no match for thirty-six eighteens. The French captain was wearing ship to give chase. Beyond the smoke and chaos, Hayden could barely make out the nearest ships of the convoy, labouring heavily in the gathering seas.
The Themis passed the French two-decker at a distance, Hayden saving his shot. His gunners’ attempts to disable the Frenchman’s rudder shattered much planking in the transom, but the rudder head was intact – a nearly impossible shot in the best conditions.
A moment, and they were by the two battling ships. The stern of the French frigate came into view.
‘Well, I’ll be a god-damned French papist,’ Barthe said. ‘She’s afire!’
Smoke streamed from the shattered gallery windows, and Hayden could see men running about her deck and, as she had no boats, climbing madly aloft to escape the flames. Her guns were silent.
‘Shall we order the gunports opened?’ Wickham asked as he came up. He fumbled his glass at that moment, and bent to retrieve it from the deck.
‘No,’ Hayden replied, shaken from his moment of surprise. ‘We may be forced to come to their aid. Let the French captain signa—’
A sun of laval flame erupted through the enemy frigate’s deck, and then a thunderous crash. Hayden felt himself hurled back onto hard planks. A moment of stunned silence as he tried to comprehend what had just occurred, and then splinters rained down all around, some aflame. He staggered up, found no one at the helm, and made his way there, taking hold of the wheel, relieved to have anything to help him stand. Men lay strewn about the deck, moaning.
Glancing up, Hayden realized his topsails were gone, only a few bits of rag snapping and fluttering in the wind. A twitching, red-sleeved hand hung down from the tops, the fallen marine’s shoulder barely visible. Of the rest of the company, none could be seen.
‘Good God!’ Hayden muttered. ‘Mr Hawthorne!’ he called, searching about the deck. ‘Mr Hawthorne!’
A red coat stirred beneath a pile of faintly writhing men, and then a confused Hawthorne sat up, holding a
hand to his face. Hayden could not leave the wheel but Wickham had regained his feet, looking utterly disoriented but whole. ‘Go to Mr Hawthorne’s aid, Mr Wickham, if you please – there away, forward.’ Hayden pointed.
The boy nodded dumbly and staggered drunkenly across the deck. Hawthorne was helped to his feet but collapsed against the rail, almost sinking down. Around Hayden others had propped themselves up and were sitting awkwardly; here and there men stooped or stood, hands on knees. Barthe was only a few feet away, his eyes open and blinking but he made no move and lay with his limbs thrown out oddly.
Some men came running up from below, into a sudden awful silence, fragments of burning wood and tar lying on the deck and strewn across the sea. Floating among them, the dead, all of them naked, pale bodies rocking and lifting on the crests.
Griffiths and his assistant, Ariss, appeared, and on their heels Mr Smosh.
‘Doctor!’ Hayden called, ‘see to Mr Barthe, there.’
Griffiths hurried over, a quick penetrating gaze in Hayden’s direction. ‘What in God’s name happened?’ he asked.
‘The French frigate exploded – her magazine…’ Hayden could not finish, words drying up in his mouth.
Archer appeared on deck, a party of men on his heels. He sent Dryden to relieve Hayden and began giving orders to clear the burning debris. Relieved of the helm, Hayden still stood there in a daze.
‘Are you injured, Captain,’ Dryden asked, and Hayden realized it was most likely for the second time, and spoken rather loudly.
‘My… my ears ring terribly.’
‘You have blood, sir!’ Dryden said loudly. ‘It appears to be coming from your ear. The other one, sir.’
Hayden reached up and found liquid on the lobe. Withdrawing his hand he saw his fingertips were crimson. But it seemed as though it had happened to some other. Blood coming from his ear worried him not in the least.
Hayden went to the weather rail, and took hold of the shrouds. Gazing about at the rising sea. Wind blew hard in his face but made almost no sound.
At that moment, Pool and the French seventy-four wore almost together, passed beneath the Themis’s stern, and resumed their firing, which had been briefly interrupted by the exploding frigate. For a moment Hayden watched them go, and then the rain and cloud swallowed them. Only the garish flashes of their guns could be seen, flaring in the murk.
A Battle Won Page 9