The Cursed Fortress

by Chris Durbin

  ‘Aye-aye sir, and I’ll look out for a replacement for the yawl.’ Moxon smiled again; Carlisle couldn’t decide whether it was from nervousness or just his usual disposition. ‘Well, good luck, and we’ll be waiting for you just a mile offshore.’

  The two men shook hands, then Moxon swung over the gunwale and down into the longboat. Enrico was already there, and Souter, holding the tiller in one hand and the stern painter in the other. With a few words, the lugs’l yard was hoisted, the painters released, and a strong shove pushed the bows away from the frigate’s side. The sail caught the easterly wind and the longboat was quickly lost in the mist and darkness.

  ***

  Carlisle paced the deck for an hour, then went below to his darkened cabin. He lay down on the bench under the stern windows, realised he couldn’t sleep but was determined that he wouldn’t spend the night pacing the quarterdeck, advertising his unease to the whole ship’s company. He called for supper, cold meat and cheese with the very last of the bread from Halifax, now as hard as the ship’s biscuit. He found he couldn’t swallow it; this was the hardest kind of waiting. There was no diversion to make and no chance of seeing the longboat until it had completed its business, and that would be hours from now, at least into the middle watch and more probably the morning. He called again for his servant. If he sat in his sleeping cabin with the deadlight rigged, he could have a candle and could at least study the charts again; that would be a productive use of this otherwise frustrating and worrying night.

  Carlisle heard the soft sounds of the lookout being relieved and the steersmen ending their tricks at the wheel. The longboat had been gone two hours now. If all was well, Moxon should have reached the outlet to the lake and have started his return journey. The channel was less than a cable wide for its whole four-mile length, and that fact was essential to the plan. Any boats along its length would be clearly visible, even in the dark, and Moxon would have noted their positions for his destructive return trip. There was a village at each end of the inlet; that would be where most of the boats would be kept. At the inland end, it would be mostly smaller boats for use on the lake and to ferry people and goods from one side of the inlet to the other. It was that point that the French battalion would march for tomorrow, and that was the critical place to attack. How many boats would there be? It was hard to guess, but probably no more than half a dozen.

  The village at the seaward end was another matter. There’d be fishing boats there and perhaps a coasting vessel or two. They’d all have to be destroyed; Moxon had a busy night ahead of him.

  ***

  The change of the watch brought a shift in the wind. A breeze from the south dissipated the mist, blowing it away in tatters to reveal a starry night with a low, waning moon, six days past the full. Suddenly the land became apparent, the rocky tree-topped shore just over a mile to the southwest and startlingly close in this new, naked world. Carlisle sensed the change and went on deck.

  ‘Good morning sir,’ said Hosking. Clearly, the master hadn’t left the deck since the longboat had departed on its expedition. He’d been there all through the remaining hour of the last dog and the four hours of the first.

  ‘Good morning, Mister Hosking. This wind is a little fresher.’

  ‘Yes, sir, a prosperous wind for Mister Moxon too. He’ll be able to run down to us with no trouble.’

  Carlisle resisted the urge to ask if Hosking had seen or heard anything. The master would surely say if he had and asking the question would merely serve to display Carlisle’s unease.

  ‘Half an hour to run into the mouth of the inlet, say an hour on a broad reach to make the village on the bay, allow half an hour to investigate anything he sees, he should have been at the bay end of the inlet by three bells in the first,’ said Hosking conversationally.

  Carlisle didn’t respond. He’d made all these calculations himself, and there was no profit in chewing over them with the master.

  ‘He’d have rich picking at that village on the bay. Let’s say he’d spend an hour there burning anything he found. We’ve seen nothing, but there’s high land between here and the lake. In any case, he’d have started back two hours ago, if all is well.’

  This one-sided conversation wasn’t helping Carlisle’s nerves. If he lost his longboat, having already lost his yawl, he’d be obliged to return to Halifax to find at least one replacement. His remaining boat – a sixteen-foot gig – was no seaboat, and it was foolhardy to stay out without one. He didn’t want to return to Halifax, with nothing to show for his pains but a couple of lines of soundings, a tiny battery engaged – but with no evidence of its destruction – and the loss of his first lieutenant, a master’s mate, a midshipman, a boat’s crew and two boats. Captains had been replaced for less than that.

  Then with a start, he remembered. This wasn’t just a matter of lost men and material; one of the crew was Enrico, his cousin by marriage. He’d so carelessly acquiesced to his request to join the expedition without thinking of the effect it would have on his wife if her cousin were lost. And then there was Moxon. A few weeks ago, there’d been no personal contact between Carlisle and his new first lieutenant; he’d have taken the news of his loss with a shrug, but not now. Moxon had insinuated himself into Carlisle’s esteem. He’d proved himself an able – no, more than able – second-in-command and, just as importantly, he’d become a friend. Carlisle realised that he most desperately didn’t want to lose either Moxon or Enrico.

  ***

  ‘Deck Ho!’ The cry from the lookout pierced through Carlisle’s reverie. ‘There’s a fire ashore, sir, three points on the starboard bow. It looks like it’s just behind those hills.’

  Hosking shook his head as he lowered his telescope; there was nothing visible from the deck. Yet Carlisle desperately needed to see for himself. A fire so near to the coast could mean that Moxon had completed his work at the lake and was creating havoc at the coastal village that was hidden behind a fold of the hills where the inlet wound its way inland. It could also be the longboat burning, trapped by an alerted village as it tried to make its escape to the open sea.

  Carlisle slung the lanyard of his telescope over his shoulder and picked his way for’rard, across the train tackles of the guns that were still cleared for action. He made the long climb up the maintop. God, it was too long since he’d last made that ascent, he thought. He resolved to climb each mast once a week in future, a resolution that he knew, even as he made it, he was unlikely to fulfil.

  Carlisle settled himself in the top. The lookout was even higher, at the main topmast crosstree, and that was where he’d have to go himself if nothing was visible from the main top. At first, he could see nothing against the illumination of the moon and stars, but gradually he perceived a dull orange glow to the southwest. It was just as the lookout had said, low down, its source hidden by the small coastal hills.

  ‘Mister Hosking,’ he called down to the quarterdeck, ‘what should be the bearing of that village now?’

  There was a short pause.

  ‘Four points on the starboard bow,’ came the reply. ‘It’s hidden by a point of land to the east.’

  That would be the glow that the lookout had reported, and Carlisle had seen. An error of a point in reporting was nothing, particularly at night.

  ‘Make sail to the northwest, Mister Hosking. I want to see into the entrance of the inlet.’

  There was a rush of hands to the sheets and tacks, the yards were braced around, the mizzen set and Medina reluctantly put her bow through the wind and moved off on a broad reach.

  Carlisle watched the shore intently. The orange glow had increased, and it was casting the outline of the hills into silhouette. Gradually the entrance, or the point where Carlisle imagined it should be, started to open. Suddenly the source of the glow came into view, in all its sublime beauty. That wasn’t a boat on fire, it was much larger than that. A whole village, or a harbour at least, was on fire.

  It was a fascinating sight. No details could
be seen, but there was a massive blaze, the light from which showed the entrance to the inlet and the small jetty on the western side. There were buildings alight, and the occasional flare as some sort of oil or tar took fire.

  ‘Captain, sir,’ called the lookout in a conversational tone, ‘I can see a sail leaving the inlet.’

  ‘Is it the longboat?’ asked Carlisle and immediately regretted it. Again, the lookout would say if he thought it was Medina’s returning expedition, but he was quite rightly reserving his judgement until it should be clear.

  ‘It could be, sir, I’ll call when I can see it better.’

  Carlisle accepted the implied rebuke. He could see the boat himself now, black hull and black sail against the burning shore. There was no need to stay in the maintop now, so he swung himself into the futtock shrouds and down onto the deck.

  ‘Should I bring her to, sir?’ asked Hosking.

  Carlisle nodded, not trusting himself to speak in his present state of tension. He was convinced that everyone on deck has noticed his anxiety, not making allowance for the simple fact that everyone else was keyed-up watching the drama unfold.

  Medina lay-to on the larboard tack. Everyone was staring at the approaching boat, now half a mile away and running fast towards them.

  ‘There are two boats, sir,’ said Wishart, ‘the second boat isn’t under sail, it’s close behind the first.’

  ‘Beat to quarters,’ Carlisle snapped.

  Two boats could mean many things; it could be the longboat towing a prize, or it could be a determined attack on Medina. Moxon and Enrico could be dead or captured, the whole longboat crew with them, and this could be an audacious attempt by a bold enemy to turn the tables on this British frigate.

  The drum rolled and the watch below poured on deck, pulling on coats and hats against the cold night. The ship was already cleared for action and it was only minutes before Wishart reported the ship at quarters.

  ‘She’s dipping her lug,’ said Hosking, ‘she’s trying to tell us she’s friendly. It’s the longboat with a capture, for sure.’

  ‘That’s to be seen, Mister Hosking.’

  Carlisle wasn’t lowering his guard at this late point.

  ***

  The longboat – for that is what she was – rounded-to under Medina’s larboard waist and with relief Carlisle saw Moxon and Enrico sitting in the stern sheets. She was towing another boat, nearly the same length as the longboat but narrower and less sturdily built. It looked a little like their lost yawl, but with a higher freeboard and she was stepped for two masts.

  Carlisle rubbed his hands with pleasure at the sight of such a prize.

  ‘Bosun, sway that boat inboard and put the longboat on a painter, once the crew is on board.’

  ‘Aye-aye sir,’ replied Swinton. ‘She’s a fine-looking craft, locally built by the look of her, but sturdy, as you’d expect off this coast. I’ll bet she weighs near enough the same as the longboat.’

  ‘Mister Hosking, once the boats are dealt with, you may make your offing then set a course for East Point.’

  He turned to Moxon

  ‘Unless there is anything more that we can do here, Mister Moxon?’

  ‘No sir. There are no boats left on that inlet and the population is stirred up now. As we left, I heard drums and bugles off to the west; I suspect the battalion heard of us and is on the march. It’ll do them little good unless they’re all swimmers.’

  ***

  ‘Well, Mister Moxon, I see you had a successful night,’ said Carlisle as they settled into his newly restored cabin. The carpenter had wasted no time in replacing the bulkheads and his servant was busy replacing his furniture.

  Moxon and Enrico looked strangely sprightly after a day of chasing a French frigate and troop transports, followed by a night of fire-raising on a hostile river.

  ‘We proceeded as directed, sir,’ started Moxon, then he realised that formality was out of place in the middle watch in a frigate’s great cabin. ‘There was no problem in sailing the length of the river, sir,’ he continued. ‘The village at the seaward end is, or was,’ he grinned ‘substantial. We noticed only one boat in the water, but six laid up on the shore, presumably for the winter.’

  ‘Were you seen as you passed the village on your way in?’ asked Carlisle.

  ‘I don’t believe so, sir. If we were, they must have assumed we were coasting traffic on passage for Labrador Lake, because we heard no alarm.’

  Carlisle nodded. That was just what he’d hoped. He’d privately told Moxon that he was to return to Medina if the alarm was raised on their way into the inlet.

  ‘We reached up the river, sir. The current was less than a knot and it took only just over an hour, I estimate, to arrive at the lake.’

  ‘Were there any boats along the way?’

  ‘Just the one, sir. It looked like a regular ferry berthed under a two-storey house on the eastern shore. Otherwise, the banks were quiet, just the odd cottage, but no substantial boats.’

  ‘It’s not there any longer, sir,’ interjected Enrico. ‘We burned it on the way back.’

  ‘Just so,’ said Moxon, grinning at his impetuous second. ‘However, the village on the bay was another matter. We burned seven boats there. It was seven, wasn’t it, Mister Angelini?’

  ‘Seven, sir,’ Enrico confirmed. ‘We didn’t stove in their bottoms in case they sank before they burned, but they were all well alight and drifting into the lake when we left.’

  Carlisle nodded. With no light in the longboat, it would have been challenging to keep an accurate count on that busy night; it was as well that there were two officers in the boat.

  ‘All the boats were in the water, none on the shore,’ continued Moxon. ‘They looked like lake boats rather than seaboats; they would have easily carried a hundred soldiers between them.’

  ‘Well done,’ said Carlisle. ‘That battalion would have been over the river in a couple of hours in the boats you burned. They’ll have to look further afield now.’

  ‘Well, the country was well and truly disturbed by the time we finished. We had to row back down the river through the mist. We burned the ferry on the way, then this southerly breeze picked up and the mist lifted. We set the sail and ran fast down to the village by the sea. They must have seen the fires because there were people all over the shore. We dispersed them with musket fire over their heads and I set a guard around the boats on the shore. Then we stove in the bottoms and set our incendiaries.’

  ‘Where did you take your prize, Mister Moxon?’

  ‘Oh, that was the only boat in the water at the village. There were some better ones on shore, but we had no time to launch them, so I took that one. Her masts and sails are in the bottom; she looks a good replacement for the yawl.’

  ‘So, what’s your tally of boats?’ asked Carlisle. He’d have to state the numbers in his report to Admiral Hardy.

  ‘Fourteen burned and one taken,’ replied Enrico. ‘Seven lake boats, one large ferry, six coastal fishermen and the yawl.’

  Strange, thought Carlisle, the prize had already been rated yawl, and he knew that nothing he could say would change that now.

  ***

  20: The Blockade

  Saturday, First of April 1758.

  Medina, at Sea. Off Louisbourg, Île Royale.

  Looking back, Carlisle could pinpoint the start of Medina’s decline as a fighting unit. There’d been a real sense of purpose in their first week on station. They’d been the only British man-of-war off Louisbourg, and all the frigate’s people felt that the success of the coming expedition rested on their shoulders. The reconnaissance in Gabarus Bay had provided action, the chase of the frigate and the transports had been exhilarating and the raid into the Little Labrador Inlet had shown what they could do even against the much-vaunted French army. The let-down, when they returned to the Louisbourg approaches, had been correspondingly severe.

  No longer were they the sole watchers of the French fortress. They returned to
find Sutherland, a fifty-gun fourth rate commanded by the vastly senior Edward Falkingham, and Boreas, a twenty-eight-gun frigate. These were the first fruits of Lord Colville’s long winter in Halifax. When Admiral Hardy had arrived, it had taken only days to prepare these two for sea, and now he had a substantial force off Louisbourg before the ice had broken at the harbour mouth. This was vindication for Pitt’s insistence that a squadron should over-winter at Halifax, in defiance of the sea-officers’ advice. Such a feat had never been attempted before in a navy yard that was embryonic at best. Eight ships-of-the-line Colville maintained through that frozen winter, giving Britain that supreme advantage of an early blockade.

  ***

  Carlisle’s interview with Falkingham had been brief. He received a letter from Admiral Hardy informing him that he was under Falkingham’s command until Hardy himself should arrive off Louisbourg. Any action that he contemplated now had to have the approval of his senior officer.

  Falkingham looked to be about fifty years of age, but perhaps the Halifax winter had aged him; it can’t have been comfortable living on board a ship at anchor in an ice-bound harbour with few facilities. When Carlisle described his activities over the previous week, Falkingham made no comment; but by his very silence, it was clear that he saw no value in the harassment of the French battalion at the Labrador inlets. He again had nothing to say when Carlisle proposed to interdict the boats that would inevitably be sent from Spanish Bay to ferry the French battalion across the water obstacles between them and Louisbourg.

  Falkingham would no doubt have approved if Medina had taken the French frigate, that was a tangible naval success that would have been noticed in Whitehall. However, in his opinion a battalion delayed for a few days was not worth leaving Louisbourg unguarded. Worse still, in Medina’s absence a French seventy-four, Magnifique, had attempted to force through the blockade but had turned back for Brest in the face of the fourth rate and the frigate, and the sight of ice still encumbering the harbour approaches. It was likely that Falkingham would use the excuse of Medina’s absence for not engaging the much larger ship more resolutely.