The Cursed Fortress

by Chris Durbin

  ‘Your name, sir?’ asked Carlisle, returning the pilot’s hostile stare.

  Carlisle’s recent visit to his home colony had brought out the Virginian accent that had been almost lost by his years of service. Now the long vowels came out loud and clear as he addressed the New Englander.

  ‘You’re a southerner,’ said the pilot. It was a statement, not a question and his face hardened as he said it. Then he turned and spat on the deck.

  Carlisle didn’t react for a moment, so astonished was he at this behaviour. The rivalry and mistrust between the New Englanders and the Southerners were as old as the founding of the colonies – Plymouth Rock versus Jamestown – but Carlisle had never seen it so openly expressed.

  ‘Sergeant Wilson!’

  ‘Sir!’ replied the sergeant, marching the few paces to Carlisle’s side.

  ‘Take this man into custody, the gun-deck will do for now. If he chooses to spit again, or if he transgresses any of the ship’s standing orders, you may use the bilboes.’

  The pilot’s attitude didn’t soften as he was led away between two marines, with Sergeant Wilson following. He shrugged off the hands that would have pinioned him.

  ‘You’ll pay for this, Carlisle, by God you will!’ he shouted over his shoulder.

  ‘Sergeant Wilson! The manacles and an armed guard,’ ordered Carlisle, his face showing no emotion.

  At that, the pilot tried to turn and run back up the ladder, but Sergeant Wilson was behind him and no prisoner had yet escaped his iron grip. The pilot was bundled below without further ceremony, and the last that the quarterdeck knew of him was a muffled curse abruptly cut off and a dull thud as though a body had hit a hard object. On deck, nobody moved. Nothing like this had been seen before on Medina.

  ‘Mister Hosking, you know the harbour well, I believe,’ said Carlisle in a formal, to-be-recorded-in-case-of-court-martial voice.

  ‘I do sir. I can bring the frigate to her berth,’ he replied in an equally clear voice. ‘That pilot is not fit for his duty, in my professional opinion,’ he added, just for the record.

  ‘Very well, carry on,’ replied Carlisle, ignoring the wooden faces of the officers gathered on the quarterdeck.

  Carlisle beckoned to his clerk, who had been a mute observer of the sordid drama.

  ‘Mister Simmonds, I’d be obliged if you’d make a verbatim note of that conversation.’

  Carlisle was aware of the enormity of his action, and he knew that he’d have to account for his decision to sail into Boston Harbour without a pilot, in defiance of both civil and naval rules. However, he had enough witnesses who would testify to the belligerent attitude of the pilot, and they were already between Deer Island and Long Island. He could argue that he was in no position to turn back against the easterly wind. In Hosking, he had a sailing master with a strong enough reputation to make the lack of a qualified pilot justifiable, perhaps.

  ***

  Medina approached her allotted berth between the Dorchester Flats and Long Wharf. Shark followed close behind, the sloop’s Boston pilot still blissfully unaware of the fate of his colleague. The berth was on the north-eastern edge of the man-of-war anchorage, with a host of merchant ships anchored further to the north and east, all waiting their turn to come alongside one of Boston’s many wharves.

  ‘There’s Royal William,’ said Moxon, pointing to a great three-decker that dominated the channel, ‘but she’s flying no flag.’

  ‘Are you sure, Mister Moxon?’ asked Carlisle, busy watching the small gap that Hosking was steering the frigate into. ‘I’d expected Admiral Hardy.’

  ‘I’m certain, sir. She’s just a private ship today.’

  ‘Then there’ll be no salute, Mister Gordon,’ he said to the master gunner as the anchor fell clear of the cathead. The best bower took the ground, and Medina lay back on her cable, the ebbing tide dominating as the furled sails offered no resistance to the easterly wind.

  The yawl was brought alongside, and the crew stepped carefully into their seats, anxiously wiping any hint of dirt from the thwarts and gunwales to keep their best rig clean.

  ‘You may hold the pilot onboard for another hour, Mister Moxon, then send him ashore in Sergeant Wilson’s custody, with a file of marines. I hope I’ll have seen the captain of the port by then.’

  Carlisle was certain that there were grounds for legal proceedings against the pilot under at least two specific articles of war – sedition and reproachful speech – not to mention the last article, the so-called captain’s cloak, that covered all other crimes not explicitly mentioned in the text. Moreover, it was no use the pilot claiming that he wasn’t subject to naval discipline. The law had recently been clarified: pilots were subject to the articles while on board a king’s ship. Nevertheless, it would be a nervous few days for Carlisle until he was sure that his actions were approved.

  Now here was a conundrum. With a three-decker at anchor just a few cables away with no flag flying, and a captain of the port of unknown rank ashore – Carlisle was aware that much would have changed since his first news of the naval establishment at Boston – who should he call upon? He’d just made up his mind that it should be the captain of the port, principally because he wanted to make his complaint about the pilot as quickly as possible before the news had time to leak out, when he saw a uniformed figure on the deck Royal William waving him alongside.

  His coxswain saw the signal at the same time and with a glance at his captain for confirmation, he pushed the tiller to starboard and brought the yawl in a tight turn towards Royal William’s entry port.

  ***

  The reason for his summons to Royal William had quickly become evident, because the captain of the port was on board, visiting Captain Evans, so both the senior sea officer and the senior Navy Board appointee were in one place. The matter of the pilot caused some discussion; he was a notoriously difficult man with some influence over the other pilots. In this case, though, he’d clearly outdone himself in his rudeness to a post-captain. The captain of the port – a very old and long superannuated post-captain by the name of Pegler, plucked from retirement to bring some order to this growing city’s maritime facilities – believed that the pilot could be suspended from his duties for six months without imperilling the co-operation of his fellows. The worst that could happen would be for the pilots as a body to refuse to offer their services to King’s ships. Pegler knew, however, that there were twice as many equally qualified pilots who had been excluded from the guild just waiting for the opportunity to break into this closed circle of lucrative employment. A hasty note sent ashore to Pegler’s deputy, who also held the post of chief pilot, would ensure that the errant pilot was held in the cells until he could return and issue his sentence.

  ‘Well, I hope that settles the question of the pilot, Captain Carlisle,’ said Pegler. ‘He has a certain reputation, little of it good. He was a pilot at Louisbourg you know, when we held it from forty-five to forty-eight, and I imagine that he’d hoped to find employment with Mister Boscawen. He may yet; who knows what view the admiral will take.’

  Carlisle showed no emotion. He knew there would be pressure to find knowledgeable pilots.

  ‘He’ll feel the pinch with no income for six months,’ continued Evans. ‘Perhaps he’ll throw up piloting for good, which would only be to the benefit of the profession. But be warned, he’s a man with friends in the port; I’d advise that you don’t go ashore alone.’

  ‘I’ve no need to go ashore at all. I’ll just be taking on wood and water and I’ll be away to Halifax,’ said Carlisle, ‘unless Sir Charles left any orders to the contrary.’

  ‘Nothing that I’ve seen,’ replied Pegler.

  ‘And I’ve a list of bosun’s stores, canvas and cordage, if you’d be so kind as to present that to the naval storekeeper,’ he said handing a document to Pegler.

  ‘Sir Charles left in Captain on the fourteenth,’ said Evans, referring to Rear Admiral Hardy. ‘He thought a sixty-four would be able to
operate off Louisbourg earlier in the season than a three-decker, so he shifted his flag and sailed as soon as he had a westerly wind. We’re to wait here until we get news of Boscawen, then we’re to meet him at Halifax.’

  ‘Do you know when Sir Charles intends to be off Louisbourg?’ asked Carlisle, eager to get early intelligence of his mission.

  ‘It all depends on the ice. There’s a sloop on station, with orders to report when the harbour looks like becoming ice-free. It could be any day now, but it’s been a hard winter in the north and the thaw will likely be late. He’s in a tearing hurry to establish a blockade to stop the French bringing in supplies, and even more important, to stop them reinforcing the fortress. You know that Colville spent the winter in Halifax?’

  ‘I’d heard something along those lines,’ replied Carlisle cautiously.

  What news he had was old and unreliable. If he’d commanded a ship-of-the-line his orders would have included a general summary of naval dispositions, but as a frigate captain, he’d been merely ordered to report to Halifax, in as few words as possible. He’d picked up local news and gossip in Williamsburg and Hampton, but he knew how far from the truth such sources could be.

  ‘I wouldn’t have wanted the job! The facilities at Halifax are basic, to say the least. It can’t have been easy, but Lord Colville appears to have his squadron ready for sea.’

  ‘How many?’ asked Carlisle.

  ‘Seven of the line and a fifty, and he has two frigates.’

  Carlisle nodded appreciatively. That must have been a monumental effort to prevent that many ships rotting away through the long winter in Halifax.

  ‘We sent almost all of our shipwrights to him in January,’ added Pegler, ‘They grumbled, but they’ve been well paid, and the threat of being laid off in Boston persuaded them. Halifax isn’t a popular place in the winter.’

  ‘I’ve had little experience of ice,’ admitted Carlisle. ‘Most of my service has been in the West Indies, the Mediterranean or the southern colonies.’

  ‘Then you’ll learn quickly,’ replied Evans. ‘Don’t be surprised if your stay in Halifax is as short as your stay in Boston. Is Medina in good repair?’

  ‘Her timbers and planks are fine, but we had a brush with a French frigate off the Capes. My sails and rigging were badly cut up. Otherwise I’d have had him!’

  Pegler had been examining Carlisle’s shopping list while Evans had been talking.

  ‘Then that explains this list, Carlisle. There’s enough canvas here for a whole new suit of sails. You can carry out the work yourself?’

  ‘Yes, it’s just patching and splicing. No doubt a King’s yard would look askance at us, but we bent on a whole new suit of sails after the engagement – there wasn’t a bolt of canvas without a hole in the old ones – and all hands have been splicing day and night. We’ll reeve new braces, sheets and halyards in slower time and the sailmaker can work on the canvas.’

  ‘Don’t leave it too long, Carlisle,’ advised Evans. ‘I was off the mouth of the St. Lawrence this time last year and we needed every spare sail that we had.’

  ***

  Carlisle dined with Evans and Pegler in Royal William’s great cabin. It was a far cry from his cabin in Medina; grander, more spacious, but it lacked the feminine touches that Chiara had brought to the frigate for their passage from Jamaica. There was a masculine rigidity to the furnishings that reminded Carlisle of an obsessive bosun’s insistence on the exact squaring of yards for a harbour stow. He looked down at the carpet – a luxury of which his frigate was innocent – to see that the feet of the dining table were precisely aligned with the pattern. The velvet cushions on the seats looked as though no human body had ever crushed their pristine nap. He felt oppressed by the formal geometry.

  Through the windows he could see his boats pulling to and from the wharves, obedient to the note that he’d sent back to Moxon.

  It was a long dinner, and the bells of the afternoon watch came in their due succession. It wasn’t until six bells had been struck that they drank the loyal toast and the servants withdrew. Evans had drunk a little more than was wise and Pegler far more.

  ‘Well, what do you think of our chances against Louisbourg this year,’ asked Evans. ‘We’ll surely do better than last year.’

  ‘Aye, it was a shambles,’ replied Pegler. ‘I saw them all go. I felt the tempest even down here in Boston, and I saw the sad remnants limp back into the harbour.’

  ‘I beg your pardon gentlemen, but I was in Jamaica all last year, and all I’ve heard has been through the broadsheets. Can you tell me what went wrong?’

  ‘What went wrong?’ exclaimed Pegler with a vinous laugh that could probably be heard across the harbour. ‘Too few ships arrived, and they were too late in the season to prevent the French from getting a strong squadron into Louisbourg. Poor leadership by the army, disastrously so, and then the hurricane that scattered the fleet.’

  ‘It was a humiliation,’ added Evans. ‘Back in forty-five, a colonial militia army took Louisbourg as easy as you like, mostly New Englanders. Twelve years later, with a detailed knowledge of the defences, a whole regular British army was sent home! We should never have given it back at the peace.’

  ‘It’s a strange place,’ said Pegler thoughtfully. ‘Nobody in their right mind would want to spend a summer there, much less a winter, and yet it’s vital to the security of New France. It’s the gate across the St. Lawrence that can be shut at will.’

  ‘And yet not quite a gate,’ objected Evans. His few extra glasses – he’d called for another bottle of port only moments before – had loosened his tongue to the extent where he was close to being argumentative.

  ‘Not exactly a gate, I say. It’s a hundred and fifty miles of stormy seas to Saint-Pierre, and no fortress can hold that passage, it needs ships! The real value of Louisbourg is that it’ll threaten our fleet when we eventually move up the river to Quebec and Montreal. It’s a base for a French squadron that could prevent supplies and reinforcements reaching us. We can’t invade New France while Louisbourg sits across our supply lines, and the French can’t hold New France if we take the fortress.’

  ‘You know what the French call it?’ asked Pegler. He looked questioningly at the two captains. Carlisle had a childish urge to respond, Louisbourg? but he restrained himself.

  ‘They call it La Forteresse Maudite; the Cursed Fortress,’ he said in a portentous tone, ‘and you can see why. The Boston winters are hard, yet the Halifax winters are harder, much crueller, near unbearable in fact. But the Louisbourg winters! There’s that cold current coming down from the north bringing almost constant fogs, hail, rain, frost and snow; every disagreeable circumstance of bad weather that can be imagined. There’s little chance of supply until the spring and even on shore, the men are ruined by scurvy and fevers. The Cursed Fortress indeed! Who’ll want to garrison it when we take it, I wonder? Not me, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Nevertheless, take it we must if we’re to send a fleet up the St. Lawrence,’ said Evans. ‘Anson’s agreed that we besiege Louisbourg as soon as it’s ice-free, then Quebec in the summer. Montreal must fall when they’re cut off from the Atlantic then we can clear the French out of all of Upper Canada before the winter.’

  ‘A fine plan,’ said Pegler. ‘Yet, if there’s no squadron blockading Louisbourg before the end of the month, the French will be running supplies and men into the harbour, and men-of-war with them. That’s what will break up a siege, a boldly-handled French squadron operating from the security of the harbour under the guns of the fortress.’

  ‘Then I must make all speed to join Sir Charles at Halifax,’ said Carlisle, rising to his feet and finding that he wasn’t quite as steady as he’d hoped. ‘May I beg one of your boats, Captain Evans?’

  ***

  9: The First Lieutenant

  Thursday, Sixteenth of March 1758.

  Medina, at Sea. Cape Cod Southwest 20 leagues.

  Medina and Shark spent a single night in Bos
ton and sailed the next morning with a friendly south-westerly wind and an ebbing tide. Carlisle, free at last from the desperate headache that Captain Evans’ port had given him, and with the self-satisfied glow that came from surviving yet another afternoon of over-indulgence, was abstractedly watching the sailmaker and his party patching the old fore tops’l.

  ‘Aye that’s a job and a half,’ said the bosun, seeing his captain in a mellow mood.

  ‘Did you get enough canvas out of the Boston yard, Mister Swinton?’ he asked.

  ‘I did, sir. Not that I really needed it, but now we have enough to patch up after another fight,’ he replied, rubbing his hands. ‘They were short of number four canvas but were very free with everything else, although neither the canvas nor cordage is as good as I could wish. More Chatham than Portsmouth, in my opinion.’

  Carlisle smiled. He was used to these prejudices. The bosun’s home was in Portsmouth, and nothing would convince him that anything good came out of any other yard, certainly not Chatham.

  ‘Eight holes there are in that fore tops’l, sir,’ he continued remorselessly, ‘and the starboard leech-rope shot through just under the earing-cringle. I’ll have the sailmaker replace the whole starboard cloth, or it’ll never hold in a blow. I’ll be using the best number three canvas from my store, not that stuff from Boston.’

  It was strictly true that the sailmaker came within the bosun’s empire, being an inferior warrant officer, but most bosuns wouldn’t have so emphasised their ownership. Not Swinton, he was a decent bosun, but jealous of his responsibilities and privilege. Anything that belonged to the sailmaker or the yeoman of the sheets naturally belonged to him and let nobody forget it!

  Down in the waist, Carlisle could see the first lieutenant apparently being taken on a tour of the main batteries by the gunner. Each group of six nine-pounders had its own quarter gunner, petty officers who were subordinate to the gunner. There was another quarter gunner responsible for the quarterdeck three-pounders and the swivels and yet another who kept the magazine. It was interesting to see that all six quarter gunners were present for this inspection, each looking alternately nervous and pleased as their weapons were inspected. At each gun, Moxon went down on his knees, as though in supplication. But he held a shielded lantern in his hand and was really peering down the barrel to check for rust or signs of the dreaded honeycombing of the barrel, caused by the acidic gasses from the explosion of the black powder; it was the eventual doom of any well-used cast-iron gun. Rammers and sponges, powder horns and linstocks, handspikes and buckets; all were checked by the first lieutenant with the gunner looking on approvingly.