Perilous Shore

by Chris Durbin

  ‘A whiff of canister from a boat gun would clear them, sir,’ muttered Dawson.

  Holbrooke could smile at that. He remembered just such a blow against a mass of French infantry on the Ems river in Germany, was it only six weeks ago? They’d recovered the last of the marines, led by an insouciant Treganoc, and Dawson had expertly manoeuvred this very same boat so that the two-pounder covered the jetty they’d just left. The single shot had been but seconds ahead of what would have been a deadly volley from the Frenchmen, but after the canister had done its lethal business, not a musket was fired at them. By the time the surviving Frenchmen had recovered, the longboat had followed the rest of the flotilla and vanished downstream into the night.

  ‘I think perhaps we should treat our own countrymen a little better than that, Dawson. However trying they may be, they are, in fact, friendly civilians.’

  Dawson knuckled his forehead. ‘Treat with respect. Friendly civilians. Aye-aye sir,’ he replied impassively, staring ahead.

  The longboat’s crew were all grinning. With only one exception, they’d all been there on that night. It was a story that had been told and re-told in the inns and bawdy houses of Portsmouth Point and many a free mug of ale or tot of rum had been obtained on the strength of it. To a man, they were proud to be in Holbrooke’s boat crew.

  Holbrooke returned his attention to the flatboats. Fitzalan and Johnstone had evidently profited from the abortive first run. They had a better understanding now of handling the strange craft when they were at their full stretch, so different from their behaviour on the slow passage up the creek. Now they had their boats under better control. They’d learned that each wave and each breath of wind had more effect than they would on an ordinary ship’s boat. These flatboats hardly drew anything at all, they had no keel to speak of and no forefoot to grip the water. Both mates, he could see, were standing up now, the better to read the water ahead of them and feel the breeze. Whether they would choose to do so under fire was another matter.

  As they reached a point four boat-lengths from the shore, there was a splash from the stern of each, and the kedge anchors dropped away carrying the cables that had been flaked onto the transoms and held by a slipknot. The operation of letting go the kedges didn’t interrupt by even a second the business of making the shore.

  The instructions for sand, shingle or mud had been to go at the shore as fast as the oarsmen could propel the boats. And that was just what they were doing. They reached the shingle almost simultaneously, and their squared, cut-away bows tilted upwards as their momentum thrust them half a dozen yards past the point where they first took the ground. It was comical to see the seated soldiers lurch sideways in their benches with the muzzles of their muskets, still equally spaced, swaying with them. So closely were they packed that none moved as much as an inch in their seats.

  The four oarsmen in the bows swivelled their oars under those astern of them and left them trailing by the grommets that held them to the ash thole pins. They dropped over the side into a few inches of water and ran forward and held the bows with a shoulder ready for the grenadiers and musketeers to grab hold of. There was a breathless pause while Fitzalan and Johnstone checked that all was secure. They nodded to Overton and Draper.

  The sound of a single whistle blast pierced the silence. Two files of grenadiers leapt from each boat with a splash of boots in the shallow water and ran forward. They were the skirmishers establishing a perimeter to allow the main body to form up into tactical units. The grenadiers stopped ten yards short of the trees and dropped to their knees, fixing their bayonets and levelling their muskets at the shocked crowd. It was gratifying to see the most forward of the civilians shrinking back from this menace.

  Three blasts of the whistle and the remainder of the soldiers filed between the rowers and dropped over the bows onto the hard shingle. Only one soldier lost his footing but was saved by one of the oarsmen who pushed him firmly back into place. The sergeants shoved the duller ones into place and in no more time than it would have taken on the Fort Cumberland parade ground, they were in their fighting formation, ready to deliver that devastating mass of musket fire that won battles.

  The marvellous thing about these flat-bottom boats, Holbrooke was learning, was their carrying capacity. The logistic elements would have to follow separately, of course, but there before his eyes was an infantry fighting unit, delivered ashore in just two boats. The boats were stationary, the forward four oars trailing and the other sixteen tossed. The seamen were still on their rowing thwarts, although nothing could keep them as immobile as the soldiers. They saw no wrong in waving to the girls in the crowd and passing comment on the proceedings, but that was the way British seamen were, and Holbrooke wouldn’t have it any other way.

  At a word from Captain Overton, the company moved forward ten paces, the skirmishers rejoined the ranks and the whole formation froze. It was a tableau, a scene from a demonstration at Hyde Park for the amusement of the King. The crowd of onlookers burst spontaneously into applause while Treganoc’s sergeant and his two files of soldiers kept them back.

  ‘Put me alongside Mister Fitzalan’s boat, Dawson,’ said Holbrooke. He didn’t want to get his own feet wet, even though all the soldiers had the prospect of a day with soaked boots.

  Overton saluted with an elaborate wave of his hat as Holbrooke walked up to inspect the company.

  ‘That went well, Mister Overton,’ said Holbrooke.

  ‘It did, sir. As a demonstration of how to land when we’re not under direct fire it was very creditable. Of course, we still must re-embark, and I hope we’ll do that in good order also. We have another trial at this site, and with your permission I’d like to assume that we are under musket fire from the tree-line, just where those yokels are gawping from.’

  ‘Very well. I’ll stay ashore this time. You may start when you see the red flag dip from that rise in the ground over towards the mill.’

  Holbrooke turned away, then stopped abruptly.

  ‘Captain Overton.’

  ‘Sir?’ he responded.

  ‘There are to be no civilian casualties.’

  Overton merely grinned in response and raised his hat in salute.

  ◆◆◆

  The second assault was quite different and had a much more dangerous quality about it. The boats came crashing onto the shore as before, but this time, the grenadiers were leaping into the shallow water over the shoulders of the rowers before the boats had taken the ground. There were wild yells and now one-in-four of the soldiers ran forward as skirmishers while the remainder formed a much hastier double line on the beach. As soon as the line was formed Overton gave the order to fire, and Holbrooke could hear the clicks of the flintlocks as the hammers descended upon the empty pans. The next order was to fix bayonets and then to charge. This time the civilians fled as the soldiers gave a cheer and a line of bayonets rushed towards them, stopping just a few yards short. It was an impressive display with only one man left back at the boats nursing a twisted ankle, a casualty of the rapid disembarkation.

  This time when Holbrooke inspected them, they were breathing hard and a few had a wild look in their eyes. It was as well that they were under firm discipline, because some of them may otherwise have continued into the crowd of civilians, such was the realism of the exercise and the excitement of the men.

  ◆◆◆

  While the soldiers rested, Holbrooke walked over to the flatboats.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ he asked them, ‘how do they handle?’

  The two master’s mates glanced at each other before Fitzalan answered.

  ‘It’s fine at slow or moderate speed, sir, but it has a will of its own when the men put their backs into it. Any sort of wind just takes the bows away in a flash and any waves do the same. There’s nothing in the bows to dig into the water, and naturally when the men are pulling hard, they’re less in time, one side with the other. The steering’s all over the place when we rush into the shore. It’s muc
h simpler when the men are pulling easy.’

  That was much as Holbrooke had thought. A square bow with a forefoot that cut sharply away to a fundamentally flat bottom would always be challenging to steer. But that was an essential part of the design.

  ‘If we had a deeper rudder it would help, sir,’ said Johnstone.

  ‘Let’s see it then,’ Holbrooke replied. ‘Unship the rudder and bring it into the boat.’

  It was a big, heavy rudder, suited to a boat of that ponderous size. Holbrooke could see that it was cut flat at the bottom at about the same depth as the lowest part of the keel. That was a typical arrangement to protect the rudder in groundings. However, in most boats the keel was deep enough to allow a bigger rudder; not so in these flatboats.

  ‘How easy would it be to unship the rudder in the last few yards? That way it could be made deeper.’

  The two men looked at each other.

  ‘No go, sir. It takes two of us to shift it and you saw how long it took. We’d need to start a hundred yards before the beach, then without any steering we’d broach, for sure.’

  Holbrooke nodded. They were right, of course. In those last crucial yards as the boat followed the surf onto the beach the rudder was essential. If the boats had to make only one run inshore, then a deeper rudder wouldn’t matter as the damage could be repaired at leisure. But Holbrooke knew the scale of the forthcoming raids and calculated that each boat would need to make twenty round trips just to put the fighting units and their logistics tail ashore, and then another twenty to bring them back.

  If there was time, perhaps something could be done to fit two rudders to each boat; that would give a greater surface area for more positive steering.

  ‘What do you think, Mister Jenkins? Two rudders joined by a yoke with a single tiller, could it be done?’

  Jenkins scratched his head.

  ‘The boats are being delivered a couple every day. My boys could do the work, but we’d need drawings, and agreement from our masters at Seething Lane. Maybe a month and we could have the first one ready for trials. A month, perhaps six weeks,’ he added doubtfully.

  Holbrooke knew there was no time for that kind of process. The boats would start bringing the battalions from their camps on the Isle of Wight tomorrow and they’d be hoisted into the transports in less than a week. They’d go into action as they were.

  ‘And a gang-board, Mister Jenkins. How would you go about building that?’

  Jenkins was not a man to be rushed. He ambled to the bows of the nearest flatboat uncoiling a knotted cord that he drew from some inner pocket.

  ‘Is this perhaps a typical sort of beach, sir?’ he asked tentatively. ‘Not wanting to pry about your destination of course.’

  Holbrooke exchanged glances with Overton. ‘You may take it as typical, Mister Jenkins.’

  The shipwright measured the height of the bows off the sand and their width to the turn of the gunwale. He looked dubiously at the protruding stem-post with its iron bracket for the swivel-gun. He had Fitzalan hold the string at the stem head while he stretched it to a point on the shingle four paces from the bow. Pulling a thin piece of wood from another pocket he made cryptic marks with the stub of a pencil.

  ‘That old stem-post is in the way, of course,’ he said at length. ‘Could it be sawn flush? You’d lose the swivel gun though.’

  Holbrooke remembered the Ems river and the French infantry preparing to fire into the boat. He looked over at Treganoc who slowly and unequivocally shook his head.

  ‘The swivel and the stem-head must stay,’ he replied, ‘can’t the gang-board be made to fit over it?’

  ‘It’ll be a weakness, sir, and you’d still have the problem of the swivel when it was shipped.’

  ‘Why not two gang-boards?’ asked Fitzalan. ‘The bows are wide enough, and they could clamp handily over the capping. There’s no breast-hook to get in the way.’

  It was true; the peculiar design of the flatboats did away with the need for a breast-hook. In fact, the run of the bow either side of the stem-post was almost perpendicular to the fore-and-aft line.

  ‘Two gang-boards would mean faster disembarkation,’ added Fitzalan. ‘They can be stowed either side of the keelson, between the soldiers’ knees.’

  Holbrooke looked expectantly at Jenkins.

  ‘Three deals and four foot of elm board, sir, an’ a pound o’ tenpenny nails,’ he announced, referring to his scribe-board. ‘That’ll make you one gang-board twelve feet long and near three feet wide, with treads so the soldiers don’t slip and clamps for the gunwale capping. Any longer and the boards will bounce when the soldiers march on them, any shorter and they’ll be too steep. You can double those quantities for the two. Naturally they’ll have to be built specifically for each boat so that they’re a good fit.’

  He paused as though considering.

  ‘It’s a yard job,’ he declared finally, triumphantly.

  Holbrooke smiled; Jenkins was still trying to drum up work for his yard. Well, the yard would be disappointed, there was no time for that. He’d recommend to Howe that the job be given to the carpenters of the ships that were carrying the flatboats and that they draw the materials from the storeships. Howe needed no delays at this point.

  ‘The army will thank you if you manage to get those made, sir,’ said Overton, clearly impressed by the speed that Holbrooke was making decisions. ‘Lord knows how we would ever gather this much expertise in one place to come up with specifications at this speed. And the wrangling…

  ◆◆◆

  The commodore was expecting a pencilled report within the hour, even before Holbrooke returned to Kestrel, and he needed to make a few important points in his account of the trial. He smoothed out the sheet of paper on the thwart in front of him. For a start, despite the success of the trial landings, he needed to make clear the limitations of the design of the boats and how badly they handled at speed and in disturbed water.

  Then there was the training. The master’s mates and midshipmen who commanded these boats needed guidance and rehearsal before any landing, they couldn’t treat the flatboats as just another type of ship’s boat. They needed to be exercised not only in handling them at different speeds and in different conditions, but also in the command arrangements and the signals. It would be a tall order for such junior officers, and possibly he should recommend that every fourth boat or so was commanded by a lieutenant. Or perhaps that was going too far.

  Holbrooke was sketching out in his mind the substance of his report. The gang-boards would need to be mentioned of course, and the bill of materials to fabricate them. That would mean a mention of Jenkins’ name. He reflected that there really was no end to the subjects that a sea officer was required to master, writing a confident report about the design of gang-boards was just the latest.

  ◆◆◆

  The longboat led the two flatboats down the creek and back into Portsmouth Harbour. They’d carried out the last trial at the top of the tide when they ran the boats into the reed beds on the western side of the creek. Overton held his whistle to his lips and his soldiers paused on their thwarts waiting for the order to disembark. Holbrooke could see that the boats could only run so far into the reeds and that the soldiers would have to wade through two feet of water and a foot of stinking mud to reach the shore. He deliberately raised the red flag to see it answered by both flatboats. There was nothing to be gained in sending the already exhausted soldiers into that quagmire. They’d be cleaning their kit until late tonight in any case, but at least it was mostly water and not mud.

  Holbrooke watched the two flatboats over his shoulder as they left the shelter of the creek. The light breeze had whipped up a series of shallow waves that hit the flatboats’ starboard bows, knocking them off course each time. The coxswains were obviously struggling, even though the wind was not strong, and the waves were much smaller than they could expect in the open sea. Once again, the similarity to a great stately bird came to him as he watched the banks of
oars rise and fall and the boats yaw jerkily a point or two either side of their course.

  ‘There’s an old heron, sir,’ said Dawson, looking over the starboard bow, ‘he’s following the ebb. He’ll be after a fish or a frog that didn’t reckon the tides right.’

  Holbrooke nodded and half smiled. He could afford to allow this kind of familiarity after a long day in a boat.

  Then it came to him. A heron, of course! The flatboats were just like the grey heron in flight; slow and lumbering with the wind catching their broad wings and giving them a randomly undulating flight. He smiled covertly, pleased to have identified the simile. He just hoped the flatboats were as adept at surviving persecution as the trout-stealing herons that made their living on the little Meon stream beside his father’s cottage. Neither gun nor hawk had any effect on their numbers and the dog wasn’t yet bred that could take those master fishermen unawares.

  ◆◆◆

  Captain Campbell ran down into Holbrooke’s longboat as it lay alongside, waiting for the commodore to dismiss it. His officers had no time to react, he was over the gunwale, scorning the entry port, before they knew what was happening.

  ‘First things first, Holbrooke; orders,’ he said handing over a package. ‘The commodore wants you to look at Cancale Bay from the shore. It’s up to you how you do it, but you’re not to be caught!’

  Holbrooke took the package gingerly. He’d heard of such things but never thought he’d be personally involved in espionage.

  ‘You can read the orders at your leisure; they tell you what the commodore wants to know. Meanwhile, he’s scanned your report,’ he said moving on hastily. ‘He wants me to tell you that each division of four boats will be under a post-captain.’

  Holbrooke was reeling from this rapid change of subject. He looked sharply at Campbell to make sure he wasn’t jesting. A post-captain in command of boats? And yet, it made a sort of sense. These boats carried a highly valuable cargo that must be delivered intact at the right place. And the weight of the rank would be useful to counter the colonels, majors and captains of the army.