by Chris Durbin
Carlton came daily to update Carlisle on the physical condition of Medina’s people. Usually, there was not much to say. Once clear of the land and while fresh provisions lasted, there was little sickness in a well-ordered man-of-war. Off Île Royale in March, however, the story was bound to be different. Carlton held a written report, but he didn’t need to refer to it.
‘I’ve a full sickbay, sir, and I’ve had to turn away a few who shouldn’t rightly be back on the gundeck. Apart from the one broken arm who I’ll discharge to light duties tomorrow, the others all have fevers.’
‘Caused by the cold and wet, I imagine, Doctor?’
‘Yes, there are no putrid fevers, not yet, but a few more weeks in these conditions and I can’t say that they’ll be unexpected.’
‘No sign of scurvy, then?’
It was far too early for that dread disease, as Carlisle well knew, but then he’d never captained a ship in these waters.
‘No, but you know that these conditions will bring it on quickly,’ replied Carlton.
‘You’re persuaded that it’s a disease of the environment?’
‘Not exactly, sir, there are many factors: putrefying food in the gut, bad water, hard labour and this mortal damp and cold. It stops the men sweating, that’s why a turn before the galley fire is so useful.’
‘I’d heard that an experiment was carried out in the last war, and it partly pointed to the diet as being the cause.’
‘Certainly. I have a copy of Doctor Lind’s A Treatise of the Scurvy. He conducted a systematic inquiry, an experiment if you like, when he was the surgeon in Salisbury, in the Channel Fleet. It must have been eleven years ago now. The problem was that his conclusions merely suggested that the normal hazards of a sailor’s life tended to breed scurvy, and many more sicknesses besides. We already knew that. He suggested that oranges and lemons can relieve the disease, and he may be right. We rarely see it in the Mediterranean, even in winter, or the Caribbean. Oranges and lemons are plentiful in those places, but then the weather is much better than the Atlantic, and the cruises are generally shorter. It’s difficult to isolate the various factors.’
Carlisle pondered this for a moment.
‘What more can we do? I dread the ship being struck with disease; men dying as fast as sheep with the rot, and nothing that can be done about it once it takes hold.’
‘A facetious man would answer that it was necessary to return to Halifax before another week has passed…’
Carlisle looked at the doctor sharply.
‘…however, in practical terms,’ the doctor continued quickly, checking off the points on his fingers, ‘first, we must keep the galley fire burning day and night and have the petty officers check that the men dry their clothes, then I’ll purge any man whose bowels haven’t moved in a day; that includes the officers.’
Carlisle nodded in agreement.
‘Then we should ensure that the men most exposed to the elements, the steersmen, the topmen, the leadsmen, and so on, are relieved every glass…’
‘I’ve already given orders to that effect,’ Carlisle interrupted.
‘… and of course, we must look to our water. Is there any chance of refilling while we’re on station?’
‘None, I regret, or at least none that I know of. Our beer should last another two weeks and then we have at least two months of water. I asked Admiral Hardy to carry beer and water for us when he brings the squadron north, and I reinforced that in a letter that I sent back with Hawke. He should be here within a week or two, and let’s hope for some fine weather to transfer the water.’
‘Then we are doing all we can, sir,’ said Carlton, ‘and the rest is in the hands of the Almighty,’ he added piously.
***
The great cabin was crowded, with Carlisle and all the frigate’s principal officers gathered around the small table. They knew that this meeting was out of the ordinary. Not that a gathering of the ship’s officers was unusual, but they could see the captain’s servant guarding a brace of the best bottles of Madeira, corked and ready to be poured. They each took a glass and held themselves as steady as possible against the unruly motion of the frigate as the thick, reddish-brown liquid was poured. None had yet guessed the cause of this celebration – for celebration it must be – but one of the wardroom legends about Captain Carlisle was his jealous hoarding of the fine Madeira wine that he’d bought when Medina called at the island eighteen months before. In all other things, Carlisle was open-handed. He regularly produced sherry, claret and port when his officers visited him in his cabin, but rarely ever the precious Madeira.
‘Gentlemen,’ Carlisle began once all the glasses were charged, ‘today is an important day for me. It’s the first anniversary of my marriage to Lady Chiara!’
His officers all looked from one to the other. Only his clerk looked smug. Simmonds knew – of course he knew – but he’d long ago learned that information was power, and it was not to be lightly given away. He’d seen no profit in telling the other officers and had held the secret close. He’d been present at the occasion in the church of St. John in Antigua, as had Hosking and some of the other warrant officers, but it was Simmonds’ job to remember the captain’s affairs and, in fact, it had been he who’d reminded Carlisle of the anniversary.
‘Please join me in toasting Lady Chiara,’ Carlisle said. He looked around his assembled officers, seeing the smiles of pleasure, and solemnly sipped from his glass. First Moxon, then the rest followed their captain’s lead.
‘I remember it well,’ said Hosking. ‘A beautiful day in a beautiful place. It seems like a different world from here.’
There were reminiscences and anecdotes from those who had been there, the old Medinas, the first commission officers. It came as a shock to Carlisle to see how few they were. Only half of the men around him had brought the frigate to the Leeward Islands, and it was not much more than a year ago.
‘Fill them up again, Walker,’ he said to his servant.
‘May I, sir?’ asked Moxon.
Carlisle inclined his head in agreement; Moxon evidently had something to say.
‘A toast, gentlemen,’ he said, turning to the other officers, ‘to Captain Carlisle and His Majesty’s frigate Medina!’
This second toast was quite rightly thrown back in one, they all knew the protocol, and Walker could be seen securing the bottles. There was perhaps a glass left for the captain’s supper.
When the lively chatter had died down, Carlisle rapped his knuckles on the table.
‘I didn’t ask you all here, gentlemen, just to toast Lady Chiara, much less to toast myself and the ship. There’s more important business. Mister Hosking, would you unroll the chart?’
It was a chart of Île Royale with a detailed plan of Louisbourg and the harbour in the top left corner; it lacked only soundings. Apparently, all the charts made during the brief British ownership of Louisbourg at the end of the last war had been drawn from surveys by soldiers, army engineers mostly, and they hadn’t concerned themselves with nautical matters.
‘We’re all becoming familiar with the area to seaward of Louisbourg. The captain has asked me to point out the features closer inshore.’
Hosking was a good subordinate; he was letting nothing slip about the mission, that was for his captain.
‘The area we’re interested in starts in the northeast, here at Cape Breton. It’s a rocky coastline for six or seven miles with nothing but a few fishing villages. I draw your attention to these two, the larger and smaller Lorraine, and this one, Baleine.’
He indicated the rocky inlets where the tiny communities sheltered from the Atlantic storms.
‘Then we come to the entrance to Louisbourg. You’ve all heard about its famous lighthouse on the north side of the passage. Well, what you won’t have seen, because we haven’t been close enough, is the three islands that guard the entrance. The passage is between this one here, Battery Island, and Lighthouse Point, and it’s less than a mile wide. There
are gun emplacements on either side, so it’s a perilous undertaking to enter there!’
Carlisle nodded. ‘That’s not our business today, gentlemen.’
‘Now here, to the southwest of the entrance, you can see the fortress.’
They all crowded around.
‘If you’ll excuse me, Mister Hosking,’ said Carlisle, as he took over the briefing.
‘The important point about the fortress, as far as we’re concerned, is that the guns are mostly sited to cover the western approach to Louisbourg across this plateau,’ he said, pointing to the apparently desolate area of stones and scrub that lay at the landward side of the fortress. ‘The face of the fortress that looks south and east to the Atlantic is only covered by secondary batteries. The reason’s obvious, it would hardly be possible to land a force on that rocky coast immediately below the walls.’
Carlisle paused to collect his thoughts.
‘The French defend the entrance to the harbour with the batteries at Lighthouse Point and Battery Island. Then there are guns to cover the anchorages; Grave Battery on the edge of the fortress and Grand Battery, on the north shore. When they can, they anchor a squadron of men-of-war under the eastern walls. That’s what they did in ‘57, and it’s to prevent that happening again that Hardy’s squadron is sailing so early in the year.’
He nodded to Hosking to proceed.
‘As luck would have it, Louisbourg is neatly in the centre of our area between Cape Breton and Anse de la Cormorandière, or Cormorant Cove as we call it. Now we’ll turn our attention to the southwestern part.’
From his vantage position, Carlisle was well placed to watch the officers’ reactions. He hadn’t invited the carpenter or the purser; they would have added nothing to the gathering and would have taken nothing useful away. Carlton was there, the ever-inquisitive doctor, interested in everything and taking nothing at face value. The two master’s mates, Wishart and Gilbert, were there also because one way or another he had important roles for them. Carlisle had paused before inviting Enrico. He was nothing more than a midshipman, and a relatively inexperienced one at that, and if he invited him then he should in fairness have included all the young gentlemen in the invitation. It was Enrico’s knowledge of soldiering that had swung the argument. Medina still had no marine officer even though the new sixth rate establishment included one and Enrico, as a sometime ensign in his Sicilian Majesty’s army, had at least some claim to an understanding of military matters.
The bosun and the gunner were showing polite interest, but neither man really believed that they had anything to do besides their specialist tasks. The two master’s mates were on the edge of their seats, wishing with all their hearts that whatever plan was to be unfolded, they would play a part. Enrico showed the studied disinterest of the Sardinian nobility, though Carlisle knew him well enough to know that it was just a front. He yearned for the recognition that would come from a successful action in which he had a leading role, just as much as Wishart and Gilbert.
‘The shore continues rocky right past the fortress. There’s a promontory here, White Point, and then the coast runs away westward into Gabarus Bay. We’ll discount the western end of the bay; as far as we’re concerned our interest ends here, at Cormorant Cove.’
They could all see the deep gulf that pushed westward into the land, and the chart seemed to show that the shoreline was less rocky than that to the north of the harbour.
‘Thank you, Mister Hosking. Now, if I may?’
Hosking took a step back, checking that the chart was securely anchored to the table. All his charts were stored in a roll, and without being forcibly restrained, they’d recoil immediately.
‘This is the area we’re interested in,’ Carlisle said, pointing to the northeastern shore of Gabarus Bay, ‘from White Point in the east to Cormorant Cove in the west. Flat Point breaks the area naturally into two.’
‘Isn’t that where the New Englanders landed in forty-five?’ asked Carlton, ‘at Cormorant Cove?’
‘They did, Mister Carlton. In the western part of our area. I call it our area because, as you may have already guessed,’ he said looking at his officers, ‘we have a specific directive to determine the state of the French defences to the west of Louisbourg as far as the limit of Cormorant Cove. That’s the second part of my orders’
The faces around the table were more sober now. They all understood the weather patterns off Louisbourg: if the wind was in the east, they had fog and a dangerous lee shore; if it was in the west or almost any other point of the compass, they would often have hard gales. Neither offered hope of an easy task in the close confines of Gabarus Bay.
It was the gunner who spoke first.
‘That sounds like a tall order this side of summer, sir.’
‘It would be, Mister Gordon, it certainly would be, if I had any intention of taking Medina into Gabarus Bay. This will be a boat operation.’
What Carlisle didn’t say was that he was perfectly prepared to take Medina inshore to carry out soundings if that became necessary.
He could see serious faces now. He’d already briefed Moxon and Hosking, so they were impassive, but his warrant officers looked grave indeed. They could see the danger inherent in this enterprise. The fog and the gales would be just as bad for the boats as they would for the frigate. Worse, in fact. Wishart and Gilbert, in contrast, looked keenly interested. They had missed the first flush of promotions at the start of this new war, and until recently they’d both been so obviously less than twenty years of age that it would have stretched the patience of the board to present them with forged credentials. Their best chance now was to distinguish themselves in some desperate enterprise that relied upon their own initiative. This scheme of the captain’s had definite potential.
‘This evening, the longboat and the yawl will proceed in company to coast along the shoreline looking for signs of defences.’
‘Will they be able to see anything, it being dark?’ asked the bosun.
‘Don’t concern yourself on that score, Mister Swinton. There was never a soldier yet who didn’t light a fire on a cold evening. There are acres of fuel in those scrubby hills, and any post will be shown up by a roaring blaze. What do you say, Mister Angelini?’
Enrico looked startled to be addressed and for a moment, Carlisle regretted involving him. His grasp of spoken English was still not perfect, and it was entirely possible that he hadn’t understood a word of the briefing. Carlisle breathed a sigh of relief when his young cousin replied confidently.
‘Certainly, sir. Any soldier on that bare hillside will be brewing coffee and drinking his wine around a campfire. Even in Sardinia, which is just a little warmer than this…’
That raised a laugh of sympathy.
‘… even in Sardinia, there would be fires.’
‘And soldiers are the same the world over,’ added Carlisle. ‘There’s one other task for the boats. I want to know how far offshore the six-fathom line lies. There’s no question of a proper survey, not in the dark with no points to take bearings from, but it should be possible to estimate the distance offshore to the nearest cable.’
The significance of six fathoms was evident to all; it was a safe anchoring depth for a frigate. If naval bombardment was needed to support an opposed landing, then the closer they could get, the better, and an anchored ship with a spring to the cable was a far more stable platform for gunnery than a ship underway.
‘I have some ideas for a more detailed survey if we get the weather. That’ll be your responsibility, Master.’
Hosking nodded. It would be interesting to hear how Carlisle thought that an accurate survey could be made within the range of enemy guns.
‘Now Mister Hosking, what do you think of the weather for this evening?’
Hosking was prepared for the question. Carlisle had been merciless in interrogating him about his weather forecast. He’d have liked to respond with a Gallic shrug of the shoulders, but he knew that wouldn’t do.
‘It’s nor’westerly now, sir, blowing a moderate gale. At some point the wind will veer into the east and drop, then we’ll have the fog. But my guess is that won’t happen until later in the night. For the last dog and the first, I reckon we may have a northerly tops’l breeze.’
‘That will do for us. We’ll launch the boats here, a mile or so south of White Point, as soon as it gets dark.’
He looked questioningly at Hosking.
‘Sunset’s at six twenty, sir, twilight at seven twenty-six.’
‘And the moon, master?’
‘It’s two days after the full, sir. It’ll rise just after eight, and it’ll set at six bells in the morning. I doubt whether we’ll see it though, not with this cloud.’
‘Then we’ll stand in with the last of the twilight and launch before moonrise, at half-past seven.’
Carlisle studied the faces of his officers again. The warrant officers knew that it would be most unusual for them to be sent on an expedition such as this. The carpenter and the gunner, as standing officers, were far too valuable for the long-term maintenance of the ship. The master and the doctor were equally irreplaceable in the short term. That left the first lieutenant, who already knew the plan, two master’s mates and a Sardinian midshipman.
Carlisle didn’t intend that Enrico should be sent on the expedition. For one thing, he wasn’t at all sure of the status of Sardinia: was King Charles Emanuel still neutral, or had he sided with King Louis? Anything could have happened, and here in the Americas, they wouldn’t know for months. For another thing, Enrico was Chiara’s first cousin, and Carlisle dreaded having to tell his wife that the young man had been killed, wounded or captured. He’d decided that Enrico would fill the place of a master’s mate on the quarterdeck, while Wishart and Gilbert went in the boats. Yes, he’d decided. Then he glanced at his cousin and saw the look of longing in his face. Just for a few moments, the aristocratic mask had slipped, revealing the young man thirsting for adventure; for adventure and for recognition.
‘Mister Moxon, would you do me the honour of commanding the expedition?’