‘Nay, Mr Leigh. You have told me the speed of the ship at the last glass, and I am content, until the bell sounds again.’
‘Very good, sir.’ Tucking away his notations in his coat. Lieutenant Leigh was always very correct in his dress when he had the deck, and never came on duty other than in frockcoat, waistcoat and breeches and cockaded hat, and his glass under his arm. He dismissed the mids for the moment.
Rennie stepped to the weather-rail, then aft to the tafferel. He observed the line of the ship’s wake a moment, then turned and walked forrard to the wheel. Lifting his head:
‘Aloft there! Mr Hayter! What ships in sight!’
In answer James slid down a backstay and came aft.
‘Any number of small merchant ships, sir, sailing north and south – most of them to the west of us.’
‘Any number?’
‘Twenty . . . twenty-three, sir.’ Consulting his own notes. ‘Twelve sailing north, and eleven south. No sign of the ship we seek.’
‘She has pressed on north in the night, as I feared at first light.’ Loud enough for the people nearby to hear him. ‘We will follow, and find her, right quick.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘You wear waistcoat and breeches today, I note, Mr Hayter. And a clean shirt. This is a miracle of dandyism, eh, Mr Leigh?’
‘I had not really noticed, sir. Mr Hayter has been aloft all the time I have been on duty, until now.’
‘Ah. Hm. Is it a celebration of some sort, I wonder? A saint’s day? A feast day?’ Turning again to James.
‘I am not a papist, sir, as I think you know. I am merely . . . I had thought that as Pursuit Officer, with very grave responsibility and obligation in the ship, I should best honour my position by being properly dressed.’
‘Ah. In course, there are saints’ days, and feast days too, in the Church of England. I should’ve thought ye’d’ve known that, Mr Hayter – you that read Divinity at Cambridge University.’
‘You were going to be a clergyman, Hayter?’ Mr Leigh, in surprise.
‘No. I was not.’ Discomfited. ‘Well, for a very short time, you know, I thought . . . and then I changed my mind.’
‘He changed his mind, Mr Leigh.’ Rennie, sagely, nodding.
‘I am just going forrard to speak to my fo’c’sle lookout – with your permission, sir.’ James, punctiliously.
‘Certainly, Mr Hayter, certainly. And then perhaps you will join me for breakfast, hey?’ Including his first lieutenant with a turn of his head. ‘You and Mr Leigh both, at the change of the watch?’
Seven bells and hammocks up, and James came aft through the bustle of the ship’s new day, the washed deck still damp under his feet. He stood talking to Mr Leigh abaft the skylight on the quarterdeck, and at eight bells, as the watch changed and the bulk of the people were piped to their breakfast, the two lieutenants went below to the great cabin, and eggs, toast and marmalade.
‘No doubt you are wondering, gentlemen . . .’ Rennie, motioning them to chairs at the table, ‘. . . why I have not displayed particular urgency this morning? Why I have not marched the deck shouting let-us-crack-on, and so forth, hm? I will tell you. – Pour yourself some coffee, Mr Leigh, and pass the pot to Mr Hayter. – Yes, the reason is that rushing about a ship very agitated, with anxious expression and fidgeting hands, don’t inspire confidence among your people. We will find the Terces today, I am entirely certain. And then we will settle to our task of quiet pursuit, just as we have been instructed.’
Less than half a glass after came the call, from high on the foremast:
‘De-e-e-e-ck! Sail of ship, three points on the starboard bow!’
James at once went aloft to have a look for himself, and was soon convinced that the small three-master better than two leagues ahead was indeed the Terces; she fitted the description in Mr Mappin’s dispatch:
‘Exact, sir.’ James to Rennie, on the quarterdeck, a few minutes after. Rennie finished his tea, wiped his lips and gave his cup and napkin to his steward, who had followed him on deck.
‘Thankee, Mr Hayter. If you are certain – this time, certain – that the ship is Terces . . . ?’
‘I am, sir.’
‘. . . then I am satisfied.’
‘Will you go aloft yourself, sir, and make your own—’
‘No.’ Abruptly, over James. ‘No no, I am satisfied entire. I will just . . . keep the deck a glass. Proceed with y’duties, Mr Hayter, if y’please.’
James touched his hat, and went forrard. He had forgotten Rennie’s fear of heights, until the captain had reminded him with that brisk rejection of the invitation to go aloft. He hid his fear well, but on the rare occasions when his going aloft became an absolute necessity, Rennie did so trembling in every limb, half-blinded by nausea and the dystopian sense that if he looked down even for one second, he would plunge instantly to his death. As a midshipman he had lived in an agony of terror when his fellows leapt aloft to skylark, and had had to invent an extraordinary array of excuses to avoid these more or less imperative games. Fortunately he had been in every other way an admirable student of seamanship, and had duly passed his board, and subsequently been made post, without his superiors ever becoming aware of this fundamental impediment to a sea officer’s career.
At six bells of the forenoon watch, Rennie was still on deck, and:
‘Mr Tangible!’
‘Sir?’ The boatswain, attending.
‘We will pipe to divisions.’
The command repeated, the boatswain’s mate lifted his call, and the high-pitched summons echoed along the deck. Rennie duly inspected the ship by assembled divisions, inspected between decks, and dealt with the list of defaulters. A brief lull, then at midday the half-hour glass was turned, the duty marine on the fo’c’sle struck eight bells, and the official ship’s day was about to begin.
Expedient at 53 degrees and 22 minutes north, 2 degrees and 59 minutes east, lying on the larboard tack in a sou’-westerly breeze at a steady six knots.
‘Noon, sir.’ Mr Tindall, standing very straight, the mid assisting standing at his side with the sextant.
‘Noon declared. Thankee, Mr Tindall. Y’may pipe the hands to their dinner.’
Throughout these rituals – divisions, defaulters, the declaration – James’s lookouts had kept a close eye on the ship ahead, which seen from the deck lay hull down, a point off the starboard bow; at intervals they hailed the deck to confirm that no change had occurred to her course. When the hands had gone below to their messes Rennie stood with James on the fo’c’sle, both with their glasses trained ahead. Presently Rennie:
‘We will hold station just as we are, well astern of her, and match her speed, but no more.’
‘Should we beat to quarters, sir?’
Rennie lowered his glass and looked at James. ‘Beat to . . . ? Good heaven, no. I am minded to exercise the great guns during the afternoon watch, but not before. Five bells, say to Mr Storey. Or, no, wait – that had better come from Mr Leigh, I think.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘Erm . . . who is your mess president, by the by? You have elected your president in the gunroom, I assume?’
‘Mr Leigh, sir.’
‘Well well, that is fitting. The first should in usual be made president, or secretary, or whichever term ye prefer. I was wondering . . .’
‘Sir?’
‘In course I will like to give dinners myself, in due time. However, I was wondering if it might be possible for the gunroom to invite me to dine, to begin?’
‘Certainly, sir. I will say a word to Mr Leigh.’
‘I have a particular reason for this request, James. I want to get to know my junior officers, and I fear that asking them to dine in the great cabin may perhaps be intimidating to them, all at once. They would not likely be at their ease. I was a little down on young Mr Tindall, at first. I thought him unprepossessing as a sea officer.’
‘Unprepossessing, sir?’
‘Lazy and fat,
in little.’
‘Oh.’
‘That was unjust in me. I no longer think it of him – that he is indolent. He is a conscientious and intelligent young fellow, and I will like to drink a glass of wine with him – if you find it acceptable among you to invite me to dine.’
‘I will say a word to Mr Leigh. I am sure it can be arranged at your earliest convenience.’
‘That is kind in you.’
Captain Rennie was finishing a late dinner alone in the great cabin at four bells of the afternoon watch when one of the lookouts hailed the deck from the mainmast crosstrees:
‘Ship ahead has altered course! Beating south toward us!’
Rennie pushed aside his cheese, shrugged hastily into his coat, and ran on deck. James met him as he reached the wheel.
‘May I have the deck, sir, with your permission?’
‘Nay, nay, Mr Hayter, Mr Trembath has the deck, and there is no reason to relieve him of that duty.’
James leaned closer to the captain, lowering his voice and speaking urgently in his ear: ‘Sir, the pursuit ship is coming directly at us. As Pursuit Officer I see inherent danger to us in that, and I suggest we alter course at once, and beat to quarters.’
Rennie took James by the elbow and led him abruptly aft toward the tafferel, out of earshot of the group at the wheel – helmsman, quartermaster, lieutenant.
‘James, you must not make these precipitate judgements and assumptions. This is not a chase. It is a pursuit, over long days, to discover one fact, and then report it to Mr Mappin – and Their Lordships. We are to find out Captain Broadman’s ultimate design, his destination. That is the whole of our duty.’
‘Sir, you said that you would value my instincts as Pursuit Officer. I beg you to listen to me, now. Captain Broadman clearly knows our intent, or has guessed it. By running at us he probably means us harm, and I most earnestly—’
‘We will proceed upon our present course.’ Rennie, over him firmly, still with his hand at James’s elbow. ‘If Terces approaches us, we are one of His Majesty’s ships cruising in the North Sea, an entirely usual duty. It is not for us to alter course and dash hither and thither in anticipation of – what, exact?’
‘An attack. I feel a twinge in my bladder.’
‘Then ye’d better find your pisspot, and make use of it, Mr Hayter.’ And Rennie left him, walked forrard to the wheel as Bernard Loftus joined the knot of men there, and nodded to his sailing master. Mr Trembath touched and lifted his hat, and:
‘She is one league off, sir, beating directly toward us. Shall we hold our present heading, sir, or—’
‘Certainly, Mr Trembath, certainly. So far as that ship is concerned, we are not in pursuit of her, not at all. We are minding our own business.’
But as the minutes passed, Expedient keeping steady to her course and the Terces rapidly closing from the opposite direction, something about the smaller ship began to make him uneasy. The heeling of her masts, and the speed of her approach under a stiff spread of canvas, lent an insistence to her actions which could mean only one of two things: an urgent desire to speak, or the intention to attack.
Rennie had asked his Pursuit Officer to follow his instincts, and had then rejected them – because he hated to be told his duties by a subordinate officer. But was not that bloody damned foolishness, with a well-armed ship running straight at Expedient? Was it not pure bravado?
‘Can he be right, by God?’ Not aloud. ‘Or does she wish to speak?’
The Terces closer and closer. Five bells struck. Now she was nearly within range.
‘She is coming off the wind, and going about, sir!’ Lieutenant Trembath, lowering his glass and pointing.
Rennie had seen it. The little ship sloop was now cutting across Expedient’s path at an angle, her larboard side exposed.
A bright orange flash. Then a whole series of flashes along her black port strakes.
BOOM BOOM-BOOM-BOOM BOOM-BOOM
At the same instant as the thudding wave of sound reached them a storm of iron struck, and Expedient shuddered from stem to stern.
The broadside had been aimed at her mainmast, but the mast was not hit. Two of Expedient’s boats, resting on skid beams over the waist, were torn out of their gripes in a whirling eruption of shattered timbers. The breast-rail disintegrated in a spasm of lethal splinters, sending sand-vomiting buckets tumbling into the sea. A midshipman was cut in half on the gangway in a smacking spray of blood. Halyards, jeers and shrouds were cut, snapped, shredded. Torn courses billowed and lifted, cut loose from sheets and tacks. A whole section of hammocks was torn from the netting and hung trailing down over the side. Seven waisters were killed outright, and three fo’c’slemen cut down with frightful injuries. Two died within moments, the other a moment after, retching blood and staring. Captain Rennie was flung to the deck, knocked unconscious by the shockwave of a twenty-four-pound roundshot that hit nothing and nobody aboard, droned away to larboard and struck a lifting sea in a thump of spray.
Groans, shrieks and screams the length of Expedient’s deck. The sea riffled and whitened by splinters and other debris – fragments of iron hammock cranes, chains, port cill hinges. Three of Expedient’s starboard eighteen-pounder guns had been smashed off their carriages, and a fourth shattered from the muzzle to the reinforcing rings.
Terces continued on her short lateral run, smoke boiling and drifting all round and away from her on the wind, and floating in shadows over the sea.
James had been struck by a length of planking a glancing blow to the back of the skull, had fallen half-stunned, then stumbled up on his legs. Mr Trembath he could not see, nor Mr Loftus. He could see the captain lying still, one arm flung out. Blood ran all over the deck, amid bloody bits of men.
‘I am the one officer left alive . . .’ James, to himself. A breath, he glanced fore and aft and saw the extent of the destruction, and aloud:
‘Beat to quarters! Clear the decks for action! Cheerly now, lads!’
Groans and screams.
‘Come on, now, we must man our guns and fight! You there, corporal of marines!’ To a red-coated marine, who staggered to his feet, leaning on his musket. The man clearly could not hear. His eyes were glazed, and blood ran down his cheek from a wound on his scalp. James ran aft to the wheel. The helmsman had not been hit, and now clung to the spokes in white-faced fear, certain only of the fact that his wheel was not destroyed, and thus his world was still intact. A lookout, from far aloft:
‘She is tacking away! She is escaping to the north!’
Later, as his people attempted to recover from the devastation all about them, and his ship limped half crippled across the sea, Rennie castigated himself, having recovered consciousness after being carried below. Bitterly:
‘You should have beat to quarters. You should have listened to James Hayter, your most loyal and tactically experienced officer, and you did not. You behaved acutely irresponsible, lackadaisical, and foolish, you bloody wretched buffoon you! You don’t deserve command of a ship of war, you don’t deserve command of a fucking harbour hoy! And ye’ll pay for this, by God. Ye’ll suffer, you mump!’
His new surgeon, a bald, bespectacled, thin man of thirty called Elias Empson, came to the door of the great cabin to make his report. Rennie had been assigned this man by the Sick & Hurt when Dr Wing was unable to rejoin the ship. Rennie knew nothing untoward about him, but the very fact of his not being Thomas Wing counted against him in Rennie’s eyes. The captain rose on his legs and:
‘I will go below with you, Doctor, and see for myself.’ Staggering a little.
As they went, the surgeon: ‘Eleven killed, sir. And eighteen wounded severe enough to require continued attention.’
‘Amputations? Head wounds?’ They went down the ladder.
‘I fear there may be two men that I must cut, yes. Else gangrene will result. As to injuries to the skull – one man has lost an eye, and another has a very disfiguring wound to his lower jaw, but likely will live.’<
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‘Thank you, Doctor.’ As they moved among the groaning patients in the confined space the surgeon had utilised forrard in the lower deck. And to himself, in terrible dismay and shame, Rennie: ‘It is all my fault, my fault, my fault.’
Later still he conferred with his officers in the great cabin, all excepting Lieutenant Trembath, who lay with an injured leg below. He asked each in turn for reports of damage, and an assessment of the position. Mr Leigh confined his remarks to the bare facts: damage to the boats, upperworks, masts, rigging and guns. Mr Tindall added his own observations. Mr Loftus gave his, as to trim, seaworthiness, &c. And James, as Pursuit Officer:
‘Terces has made good her escape entirely undamaged, since we did not fire upon her, not even a pistol shot, sir. In my opinion Expedient is not in a condition to resume nor maintain the pursuit.’
‘Not in a condition, Mr Hayter?’ Rennie turned to look at him.
‘No, sir. The damage is very extensive, as Mr Leigh has—’
‘I will not like to hear that we are powerless. I will not like to hear that we are beat. What does the boatswain say, Mr Leigh? And the carpenter?’
Merriman Leigh cleared his wind, and: ‘We would – we will require very considerable repairs before we could proceed at all, sir. We are merely limping at present, with the wind behind us, and—’
‘Limping? We are making headway.’ Curtly. ‘No great damage was done below the starboard port strakes, since the broadside we took was aimed at our mainmast, and did not strike home.’
‘Well, yes, that is so, sir . . . but we sustained very great damage elsewhere in the ship, and we are making headway only in so far as the wind—’
‘Am I surrounded by fainthearts, good God? The ship swims, and we are not all dead, we are alive and able. We will proceed as ordered.’
‘To what purpose?’ James, flatly.
‘What did y’say?’ Rennie, turning again to James.
‘What purpose is served by our proceeding, sir? When we—’
‘What purpose! Overhauling that bloody villain Broadman, and teaching him that he cannot attack one of His Majesty’s frigates with impunity, by God!’
The Pursuit Page 9