by Dudley Pope
Paolo shrugged his shoulders with magnificent indiff-erence. ‘You might slip and fall from a topsail yard, you might get a hernia, a roundshot might knock your head off the next time we go into action…’
‘Agreed, sir,’ Jackson said amiably, ‘but that’s not to say I’m going to jump off a topsail yard deliberately, get a hernia, or stand and invite the enemy to knock my head off with a roundshot. When you play around with these mortars, though, you light the fuse in the shell, and if someone’s made a mistake in the length or anything, it makes a big bang you never hear!’
‘How heavy the shell?’ Rossi enquired.
Paolo ran his finger down the page of the notebook, turned over the page and then said: ‘The gunner says this is about the same as the British 10-inch. And…’ The tip of his tongue was protruding with the concentration. ‘…Ah, yes. “Weight of shell when fired” – Mama mia! It is ninety-three pounds – nearly a hundredweight! That’s the hollow cast-iron ball and the powder inside.’
‘How much powder in it?’
‘Only seven pounds.’
‘Seven?’ exclaimed Rossi. ‘Why, that is nothing!’
Jackson said: ‘It doesn’t need much to blast the shell casing into thousands of pieces. It’s these splinters that do the damage.’
‘’Ow far will it toss a shell, then?’ Stafford asked, peering down the bore like a farmer inspecting a horse’s teeth.
‘Wait,’ Paolo said, consulting the notebook. ‘It depends on the amount of powder in the charge. That’s obvious, but as far as I can see, it’s easier to use more or less powder than to change the elevation of the gun.’
Stafford slapped the side of the mortar. ‘I should fink so; must weigh a ton!’
‘One and a half,’ Paolo said, having just found some details in a neatly-written table. ‘Ah, here we are. First you must understand about the shell. It is round as you know, but it is cast so that it has the two carrying handles and the filling and fuse hole at the top.’ He read on a moment and said: ‘You might well ask why the shell falls the right way up – with the fuse at the top, because it might fall upside down and break off the fuse.’
‘We might well ask, sir,’ Rossi agreed politely. ‘Why does it fall with the fuse upside down?’
‘No, no,’ Paolo said patiently. ‘Why it falls with the fuse uppermost.’
‘Yes,’ Rossi said, having lost track of the conversation, ‘that is most interesting, sir. But how lights the fuse, then?’
Paolo looked up in surprise and lost his place in the notebook as Stafford and Jackson started laughing. ‘Why the laughing?’
‘We were waiting to hear why the shell falls the right way up after it’s been fired, sir,’ Jackson said.
‘Ah, yes. Well, although the shell casing looks like a circular ball from the outside, in fact the bottom is much thicker, and therefore heavier, so it drops first.’
‘Ah,’ Rossi said. ‘I was going to ask you about that, signor. But supposing you fire the shell and bang, it falls in the enemy fort with the fuse at the top and burning; what stops the enemy throwing a bucket of water at it and putting out the fuse?’
‘Wait,’ Paolo said, ‘let me read more. There must be a reason why that will not work.’
‘I can fink o’ one good reason,’ Stafford said emphatically. ‘‘Oo’d be daft enough to walk up to a smoking shell with a bucket o’ water? Not me! I’d duck down art of the way.’
There were two or three minutes’ silence while Paolo read through the pages, occasionally grunting to indicate an interesting point, but saying nothing, obviously absorbed by the mental picture of a shell lying in the castle courtyard with smoking fuse.
‘Here we are,’ he exclaimed triumphantly. ‘The fuse burns at the rate of an inch in four seconds and forty-eight parts.’
‘Forty-eight parts of what?’ Stafford asked.
Paolo looked appealingly at Jackson, who shrugged his shoulders. ‘Of a second, sir? Most likely a second is divided into a hundred parts. It’s the sort of thing they do,’ he added darkly, knowing the unreliability of the Board of Ordnance.
‘Well, it’s not very long, is it…about half a second. Anyway, you know how long the shell takes to land, so you cut the fuse to the…’
‘How do you know how long it takes?’ Rossi asked.
‘Accidente! You have it here in the tables!’ Paolo said crossly. ‘Now just listen. Just suppose your target is 680 yards away. You elevate the mortar to forty-five degrees. Then you put in a charge, of one pound of powder; then you cut the fuse to burst ten seconds after you fire the mortar.’
‘Why ten seconds?’ Rossi persisted.
‘Mama mia, Rossi! Because it takes ten seconds for the shell to fly through the air and land on a target 680 yards away. That means it’s no good having a bucket of water.’
‘Who cuts the fuse?’ Jackson asked.
Paolo had just reached the page giving details of the fuse. ‘The fuse,’ he said, like a priest reading a liturgy, ‘is a conical tube made of beech, willow or some other dry wood. It is open at the top and at the pointed end. So it is filled with a mixture of sulphur, saltpetre and mealed powder – yes,’ he said quickly, anticipating Rossi’s question, ‘obviously you keep a finger over the hole in the pointed end while you’re doing it. Then each end – each hole, in other words – is covered with a composition of tallow and beeswax or pitch, to keep out the damp. When the fuse is put into the shell, the little end is cut off or opened, but the big end is left closed until just before firing.
‘So, starting at the beginning, the shell itself is loaded with powder through the fuse hole in the casing. Then the fuse is inserted so that an inch and a half comes out beyond the fuse hole. Protrudes, it means,’ he explained, proud of his English. ‘You must make sure there is nothing to prevent the fire from the fuse exploding the powder in the shell – make sure the little end is clear, in other words.
‘So there you are,’ he said proudly, closing the notebook.
‘Is all right if the enemy is 680 yards away,’ Rossi grumbled. ‘But suppose he is più distante? And the mortar, she is not even loaded yet.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Paolo said cheerfully, turning back to the middle pages of the notebook. ‘Now, we know about the shell and the fuse. Now we have to hurl it at the enemy so that it bursts at his feet.’ He waved a hand dramatically and slapped the wooden bed.
‘Their feet,’ Jackson said.
‘Yes, their feet. First we put in the charge. Now,’ he said hurriedly, to forestall Rossi, ‘we will work on an elevation of forty-five degrees. Note that, forty-five degrees. Then we vary the charge to suit the range. The amount of powder can be critical – for example, one pound four ounces of powder gives us 892 yards and yet only another eight ounces gives us an extra 300 yards. I’ll choose a straightforward one,’ he said with a sharp look at Rossi. ‘Here we are: three pounds of powder gives us a range of 1,945 yards and the time of flight – the time it takes the shell to land after it’s been fired, Rossi – is twenty-one seconds and ten parts.’
‘The fuse in the shell,’ Rossi said casually, hoping he had now caught out the young midshipman, for a Genovese should always be able to get the better of a Tuscan. ‘How long should that be so we burst at the enemy’s feet?’
Paulo ran his finger across the table. ‘Four inches and seventy parts.’
‘Parts of what?’
‘Seventy parts of a hundred parts of an inch,’ Paolo said triumphantly.
‘What is the maximum range?’ Jackson asked.
‘Well, the maximum given in another table for a 10-inch mortar with a different elevation is 3,821 yards, using a twelve-pound charge. The shell takes exactly half a minute to land…’
‘I wonder if this bed–’ Jackson pointed to the one on which the mortar was mounted ‘–would take the recoil from a twelve-pound charge?’
‘We do not have to worry about that,’ Paolo said firmly. ‘We are learning about mortars in general. So we have th
e shell filled and the fuse filled. Now we must load the mortar. First we put in the powder charge after carefully measuring it, and then a wad. We beat that down hard with the rammer – that is most important: it is underlined here. Then we put in the shell, holding it with the two handles at the top – which of course means the fuse is uppermost.
‘Now we are ready to fire. An officer points the mortar or gives the inclination. That means it is first trained and then elevated, using bandspikes to lift it. The bed bolster is then slid in to keep the barrel at the correct angle. The top of the fuse is cut open – you remember it has a cover of beeswax and tallow – and the mortar is primed with the finest powder.
‘Two seamen each take a slow match – these have been burning while hanging over water in the match tub, of course – and wind it round a linstock and stand ready. At the order, one seaman lights the fuse in the shell, and quickly gets clear while the other fires the mortar.’
‘And away she goes,’ Stafford commented. ‘Our shell goes up high in the hair like a lark or a smokin’ cabbage with the fuse fizzing away, and then it lands wiv a thump at the enemy’s feet. A thump which puts out the fuse, sir!’ he added as an afterthought.
‘Oh no it doesn’t,’ Paolo said sternly. ‘There’s a note here about that. The fuse burns in air, water or in the earth. No thump is going to put it out.’
‘Supposing you don’t want to fire an explosive shell?’ Jackson said. ‘Supposing you were on land and being attacked by a great mass of men? I’ve heard something about using shot.’
Paolo read through three more pages and then said triumphantly: ‘Here it is, pound shot. Each shot weighs – well, of course, a pound. You use a two-and-a-half-pound charge of powder, and on top of that you put a wooden base. Then you put in one hundred of the pound shot. They’re in a bag, I suppose – it doesn’t say. Nor does it give maximum ranges. But just think, if the range was 2,000 yards. Imagine being hit with a shot weighing one pound which has just spent the last twenty seconds being hurled through the air. And for the last half,’ he added with an authoritative note in his voice, ‘with the force of gravity added…’
‘Yes, there wouldn’t be much velocity left from the charge,’ Jackson said. ‘In fact I should think it would be like being hit with a one-pound shot dropped on your head from a cliff a thousand yards high. Less, because you have to allow for the curve.’
‘The parabola,’ Paolo said. ‘“Amplitude of the parabola” – that’s what they call the range in these notes.’
‘They would,’ said Stafford sourly. ‘Makes gunners sound more important and a mortar sound more dangerous to the enemy. But it still sounds to me like trying to kill your neighbour by ’eaving bricks over ’is wall – an’ you don’t even know if ’e’s at ’ome.’
Rossi suddenly pointed up at the Calypso’s masts. ‘They’re hoisting a signal.’
CHAPTER FIVE
Ramage watched through the glass as the men in the Calypso’s red cutter heaved a cask overboard and half a dozen of them leapt into the surf to roll it up the beach. The big cask bobbed and spun in the waves, occasionally knocking a man over as it was pushed towards the line of surf where the sand started. The sun was glaring now, sparkling off the waves and almost blinding along the sand, which was nearly white along this stretch of the coast.
Fifty yards inland the juniper bushes began, then came the umbrella pines, a band of dark green, mushroom-topped trees forming a small elevated plateau. Even out here he could hear the whirring of the cicadas above the lapping of water against the hull, the faint whine of the wind in the rigging, and the slapping of the waves breaking on the beach. The smell of the pines was sharp and clean, the distant buzz of the cicadas continuous and punctuated by the occasional agitated squawking of the terns and the chattering of sandpipers striding along the water’s edge like self-important midship-men. He was once again back in Tuscany with Jackson and Stafford because charcoal was being made nearby, a heavier smell competing with the astringent pines. The pinetas, the charcoal smoke, the wash and gurgle of waves sluicing the sand…
He jerked back from his memories and looked through the telescope. The men from the red cutter had rolled their cask up the slope of the sand on to the level section beyond, halfway to the pines. Now they were levering it upright. He swung the telescope round to look beyond the Fructidor, where men from the green cutter were still struggling to get their cask up the sloping beach.
Each cask was exactly fifteen hundred yards away from its nearest ketch – or would be once it was set upright. Kenton had stood on the beach ahead of one ketch and paced out fifteen hundred yards, putting a marker in the sand, then he had done the same for the other. Now each ketch had a target 1,500 yards away, the one for the Brutus to larboard, the one for the Fructidor (he refused to use the whole name) to starboard. Fifteen hundred yards plus the extra two hundred yards or so distance from the ketches to the beach. Pythagoras.
In going over the loading, aiming and firing of mortars with Wagstaffe and Kenton, he had not reminded them of the two hundred yards. Both lieutenants had been given the gunner’s notebook to make whatever notes they wanted from the range tables. Both had been told to use up to twelve shells, each charged with four pounds of powder. Ramage had emphasized that they were not to rush; the winner would be the ketch that smashed the cask with the fewest shells, not in the shortest time. From time to time Wagstaffe and Kenton were to go down below and inspect the underdeck stanchions and bracing supporting the mortar beds: he wanted no accidents. The French obviously had confidence in the way they had converted these galliots but…Still, Renouf had handed over his own list of ranges and charges which corresponded to those in the gunner’s notes, and Renouf had been given the impression that he would be back on board his ketch, probably in irons, when the mortar was fired, so he would have been vociferous in expressing doubts if he had had them.
Ramage had, in effect, arranged a competition between Wagstaffe and Kenton in which each had an assistant and team: Wagstaffe had the new fourth-lieutenant, William Martin, and his prize crew; Kenton would have Paolo, Jackson, Stafford, Rossi and three more seamen. Wagstaffe had gone over to the Brutus confident that he and Martin would easily beat Kenton – and an apprehensive Kenton had gone off to the Fructidor without realizing what allies he had waiting for him. Only Ramage knew that Paolo had been studying the gunner’s notebook for a couple of hours that morning out of sheer curiosity, long before Ramage had decided on the shooting contest.
Predictably, there had been a great deal of grumbling among the rest of the men in the Calypso when they heard about the contest: they wanted Ramage to call for volunteers or, better still, put the opened pages of the muster book in front of a blindfolded man and let him use a sail needle to pick names – a modern version of the old ‘pricking’ as a way of choosing at random. Each mortar needed six men, so trying to choose a dozen from the Calypso’s two hundred was more unfair than saying arbitrarily that the two prize crews would also be the mortar crews.
Aitken had wanted to use both mortars in each ketch, but Ramage viewed the aftermost one with suspicion: if anything went wrong with the shell there was the risk that it would carry away the mainmast or mizenmast, whereas there was little chance of anything being carried away if a shell fired by the forward mortar ran wild like a winged partridge.
The green cutter’s men had their cask at the mark left by Kenton and were levering it upright. They stood back to look at it as they slapped their hands against their thighs to get rid of the sand. Now they were running back into the sea and struggling out to the green cutter, whose crew were backing water as the coxswain shouted impatiently. One after another the cask men climbed on board and while the last one was being hauled up, the cutter started making its way back to Fructidor. Each ketch would have a cutter lying astern on a long painter, just in case of accidents.
Southwick came to join him, mopping his face with a large red handkerchief. ‘Damned hot,’ he grumbled. ‘The tem
per-ature may be lower than the West Indies, but there’s no trade wind to keep us cool.’
Ramage closed the telescope and turned to the master. ‘You make the same complaint at the same time every day,’ he said unsympathetically. ‘You’ll just have to remember you’re back in the Mediterranean now. It has its compensations: there isn’t a British admiral within a thousand miles, and we increase the distance every day. Nearly every day, anyway.’
The master grinned and waved vaguely towards the distant hills and mountains. ‘I’m not complaining, sir. The nights are cooler, we’ll dodge this year’s hurricane season, and we’ve a better chance of seeing some action.’
‘But we might face a Mediterranean winter – or even the Channel,’ Ramage reminded him.
Southwick nodded and then looked first at one ketch and then the other. ‘Which are you betting on, sir?’
‘Neither,’ Ramage said. ‘I’m just putting up the prize guinea for the winning team.’
‘I’m putting my money on the Brutus. Wagstaffe’s a smart fellow, and this young Martin seems wide awake. I’m afraid Orsini’s mathematics are so bad he won’t be much help to Kenton, who’s a long way from being a mathematical genius himself.’
‘After the first shell, I should have thought a good eye for distance was more important,’ Ramage said mildly.
Southwick shrugged his shoulders. ‘Blessed if I know, sir,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve never served in a bomb ketch; never even seen one fire a round.’
‘Nor me,’ Ramage admitted. ‘I spent three months in one as a midshipman, but we never fired the mortars. That’s one of the reasons why I want to see what happens.’
Southwick looked at him knowingly from beneath bushy eyebrows. ‘Aye,’ he said enthusiastically, ‘it’s the kind of information that might come in useful one day.’
‘One never knows,’ Ramage said as he turned to the bosun and ordered: ‘Hoist that signal now.’