The Sea and the Sand

by Christopher Nicole

  And a war to fight. Their orders were to join the squadron commanded by John Rodgers off New York, where it was supposed the British might attempt to land troops, or certainly blockade the port in order to cut the American trade. This concept was alarming to Toby, as he envisaged redcoats being landed on Long Island to burn and pillage — the British might be prepared to respect another man’s property in time of peace, but this was war.

  Hull well understood his concern. ‘They’ll not risk a landing until they have settled with our squadron,’ he remarked, standing close by the wheel where he could speak in a low tone and not be overhead. No ordinary seamen were allowed aft of the mainmast except to carry out their duties or in action, and thus there was no one within earshot. ‘You’ll do your family more good fighting the British out here than waiting for them on the porch of your house, Toby.’

  ‘The thought does make the blood tingle,’ Toby agreed.

  ‘And a man can be given a brevet promotion after an action in which he has distinguished himself,’ Hull mused, apparently to himself. ‘You’ll remember that, Toby. I’d sooner have you conning this ship than anyone else in the world, even Tom McDonough. And he’s the best.’

  ‘I know it,’ Toby said. ‘And I am most grateful for those words, Isaac. I’ll not forget them.’ They were off the New Jersey coast when the masthead lookout called sail ho, and the telescopes were brought out.

  ‘Four ships at anchor,’ Hull commented. ‘Commodore Rodgers has four ships under his command.’ He looked up at the sails, which were flapping lazily against the spars as the wind dropped. ‘It’ll come up again by midnight. We’ll have joined the fleet at dawn, gentlemen. I will require all hands on deck at that time, and a salute to be fired.’

  There was indeed a flurry of breeze during the night, but it died again at dawn, when Toby was on the helm. Still, the Constitution, her bottom only recently scraped clean of barnacles and weed, ghosted through the darkness towards the distant signal lamps of the anchored squadron. The heart of the American Navy was over there, Toby thought. Rodgers and Bain-bridge, and Decatur, his old sailing companions. He wondered what Rodgers would say on discovering Toby McGann was serving on board Constitution? It had been in disobeying the new commodore’s orders that he had incurred his disgrace. Well, he thought, he certainly bore no grudge. But he could not forget that Rodgers, alone of his former shipmates, had never called at the McGann farm, which could of course mean nothing more than that an opportunity had never presented itself.

  It was quite light now, and although he could not see the ships themselves from his position on the helm, amidships behind the seven-foot high bulwarks, the masts were clearly visible, and the ensigns were just being run up their staffs. He frowned. ‘Mr Clements, sir,’ he said to the second lieutenant, who was on watch. ‘I will swear those ships are not wearing Old Glory.’

  Lieutenant Clements, walking sleepily to and fro, and obviously counting the minutes until he was relieved, jerked his head, then stepped on to the port horse block to use his telescope. ‘Great God in the morning,’ he gasped. ‘But you have keen eyes, McGann. Boy,’ he shouted at the midshipman of the watch. ‘Summon the captain. We’re sailing right slap into the middle of a British squadron.’

  ‘Shall I maintain course, sir?’ Toby asked.

  Clements chewed his lip in indecision; if the Constitution was certainly more powerful than any one of the British ships, and probably equal to fighting two of them at once, four was a different matter. He looked gratefully at the after companionway as Hull emerged, still wearing his nightshirt, although he had added his hat.

  The captain took in the situation at a glance. ‘Four,’ he said. ‘Long odds. Too long.’ He looked at the glum faces of his officers. ‘We do not have that many ships we can afford to hazard any of them, gentlemen. Our duty is to find our squadron, and then give battle to the enemy. Starboard your helm, McGann. Bo’sun, sound all hands on deck to trim sail.’

  Toby had already put the helm down, but the ship was responding only very slowly in the almost complete absence of wind. And now, across the water, he could hear the rattle of drums and the strains of ‘Heart of Oak,’ the traditional British summons to arms, as they in turn recognised the approaching vessel to be an enemy.

  Hull was himself on the blocks, staring at the British; there was not sufficient breeze even to flutter his nightshirt, and yet the anchored ships were steadily coming closer. ‘What is the tide doing?’ he snapped.

  ‘It is setting us down on them, sir,’ Toby answered without thinking. ‘Begging your pardon.’

  ‘McGann is right, sir,’ McDonough agreed.

  ‘So they can afford to wait at anchor,’ Clements remarked, ‘for us to drift right up to them.’

  ‘And if we also anchor, we stand the chance of the breeze reaching them first,’ Hull mused, pulling his nose. ‘Break out the boats, Mr McDonough. We’ll have to try to tow ourselves clear.’

  McDonough frowned. The Constitution was a very large ship to be towed by her boats, and if he put down all eight, he’d not have sufficient men left to man the yards, much less fight the guns.

  ‘We could kedge her,’ Toby suggested. ‘It’s shallow enough for several miles out to sea, and we’d only need two boats for that.’

  Hull turned to look at him. ‘Kedge her,’ he said. ‘By God, but you’re right. And you shall do it, Toby McGann. Hand over the helm. Mr McDonough, put down the cutters.’

  ‘Aye-aye,’ McDonough cried with enthusiasm and hurried forward, Toby behind him. ‘What of the bottom?’ he asked over his shoulder.

  ‘Good holding ground here.’ Toby promised him. ‘It’ll do, if you man the capstan with a will.’

  McDonough grinned and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘I’ll do that, Mr McGann.’

  The two thirty-foot-long cutters were swung out, each manned by twenty men. Toby took his place in the stern of the first, and the seven hundred pound kedge anchor was carefully lowered into the boat, together with several hundred feet of stout manila cable. The second kedge, somewhat lighter, was lowered into the other boat, and a midshipman took the tiller.

  ‘Give way, lads,’ Toby commanded. ‘We don’t have much time.’

  If the sailors wondered at being under the orders of one of their own instead of an officer they were the more enthusiastic for that fact. They bent their backs and pulled away from the ship, obliquely out to sea, as it was Hull’s intention to get past the British if he could. The cable slowly uncoiled, splashing into the sea, while on board Constitution the drums beat and ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ was piped for the guns to be run out and loaded, while men also swarmed aloft to take in the sails.

  Toby looked over his shoulder at the British, who were hastily raising their own anchors and launching their own boats to tow them out to sea. It was going to be a near thing, he knew. All depended on the holding quality of the bottom; he could only pray he had been right in his estimation, which had been based on memory.

  The cables were almost spent. ‘Rest oars,’ he commanded, and went forward, exerting his own huge strength, with the assistance of three other men, to heave the anchor over the side. Down it sank into the dark water, while he took the flag from the jackstaff and raised it above his head. The second cutter had also dropped her anchor, and once both were well down, Toby waved the flag. That was the signal for the cables to be taken in. The men on the boats could not hear what was happening, but they could imagine the men sweating at the capstan bars as they marched round and round the huge drum amidships on the lower deck, the cable snaking up over the bows and thence down the hawsepipe to coil itself, dripping water, in the cable locker. And after several agonising moments when nothing appeared to be happening, the big ship began to move toward them: the anchors had bitten into the sand.

  Slowly, but faster than the British ships could be towed, the Constitution inched over the ground, moving steadily out to sea.

  ‘But look there, Mr McGann,’ said one of the oarsmen,
and Toby turned his head to see another sail approaching from the north, although well inshore. ‘One of ours, do you reckon?’

  Toby lacked a glass through which to inspect the distant vessel. If she could be an American, perhaps in advance of Rodgers’s squadron, it would mean a complete reversal of the situation in their favour. And her appearance at all indicated that there was some wind, up there. But as he stared at her, he had no doubt she was British; he knew most of the American ships by sight.

  ‘No,’ he told the eager men. ‘We’ll just have to keep at it, lads.’

  The Constitution rode up to them, the anchors were broken out and retrieved by the boats’ crews, and the manoeuvre was resumed, the cutters again rowing out to the limits of their cables before dropping the anchors. Still the wind remained calm, and the approaching warship, which was identified from the masthead of the Constitution as HMS Guerrière, a British thirty-eight-gun frigate, soon had to resort to launching its boats as well.

  Indeed, realising that they were beginning to fall behind, the British squadron eventually abandoned towing and began to kedge like the Americans, repeating the procedure time and again. But the Constitution continued to hold her own, although the tortoiselike race lasted for nothing less than forty-eight-hours, and at one stage she and the Guerrière, which from her angle of approach was almost able to cut her off, even exchanged fire — but the range was too great for any damage to be done to either ship. The boats’ crews were changed regularly, as the men became exhausted, but Toby never left his post on the first cutter, using his strength at the end of each leg to retrieve the kedge and once again resume rowing.

  It was on the third morning that the British gave up, and took in their boats. Then the American cutters were also recalled, and that night a breeze came up, enabling them to set sail and slip away into the darkness.

  ‘The course will be north,’ Hull commanded. ‘Our squadron must be up there somewhere.’ He then received Toby on the quarterdeck. ‘That was fine work, Toby,’ he said, and shook hands. ‘As of this moment I am promoting you to the rank of warrant officer, and I intend to submit a report to Congress on these recent events as soon as we are safe to port; if they do not reinstate your rank I’ll eat my hat.’

  *

  The American squadron was not to be found, either off New York, off Long Island — how Toby gazed at the shore as they sailed by, his heart aching at the thought of the happiness only a few miles away — or off Rhode Island. So the Constitution put into her home port of Boston, seeking news. There they learned that Rodgers’s squadron had been driven off the coast by superior British numbers, and had, it was thought, sailed even farther north, to demonstrate off the Canadian coast. Thus they remained in port only long enough to provision. Hull still being determined to join the commodore just as soon as he could. The ship therefore sailed long before any replies were received from Washington, whence Hull had sent his dispatches, including, as he had promised, his recommendation for Toby to be restored to commissioned rank.

  Toby was happy enough, however. He had been able to mail a letter to Felicity, apprising her of what had happened and of his high hopes for the future, while as a warrant officer he was excused all the tiresome daily duties, from holystoning the decks to manning the masthead watch, which rotated amongst the ordinary seamen. And with Hull’s support, the future had never looked so bright.

  They had been at sea just over a fortnight, and were south-east of the Gulf of St Lawrence, ploughing through the heavy seas thrown up by a summer’s gale, and still vainly searching for Rodgers’s squadron, when a sail was sighted.

  ‘At last,’ Hull said, scanning the eastern horizon. And then frowned. ‘A single ship,’ he muttered. ‘And … she’s a Britisher, by God.’ McDonough had joined him, staring through his glass. ‘I would say she’s the Guerrière, our old friend from New Jersey. And she’s recognised us, that’s certain; she’s putting on more sail, to escape us.’

  ‘Thirty-eight guns,’ Hull said with satisfaction. ‘Now, we might say it’s a pity she’s not a fifty-gun ship, to enable us to show our true worth. But this situation is exactly that for which we were designed, Mr McDonough.’ He stepped down, and smiled at his officers. ‘Gentlemen, we are about to reduce the numbers of our enemies. Make no mistake, I want that vessel. Now to your posts. Mr McDonough, have McGann sent aft to the helm, and beat to quarters.’

  The drums beat and the fifes whistled, the powder and shot were brought up, the nettings were spread and the sawdust scattered across the decks. Toby closed his hands on the spokes of the wheel, and waited for his orders from Second Lieutenant Clements, as all canvas was spread, despite the brisk wind and lumpy sea.

  ‘Course is due east, McGann,’ Clements said. ‘We’ll chase that fellow all the way into the English Channel, if we have to.’

  ‘Aye-aye,’ Toby acknowledged. He could see nothing but the sails and the sky from his position, and steered entirely by compass. But he could tell from the whistle of the wind and the way the ship rolled and from time to time gathered speed as she raced downwind that these were not the best conditions for accurate shooting. He could also tell, however, by the exclamations of pleasure from the officers, that the Constitution was hauling down the enemy. And soon enough there came the distant roar of cannon, and he could see water pluming into the air to either side.

  ‘You’ll hold your fire, Mr McDonough,’ Hull ordered. ‘In these conditions we’ll not harm him, save at point blank range. All the rest were noise and air.’

  The big ship continued on its way. The bustle of preparing for battle was over now, and the Constitution was almost silent as she breasted the waves, the only sounds the whine of the wind in the rigging and the hissing of the seas as they passed the hull. The gun crews on the quarterdeck shuffled their feet and attempted to peer through the ports, but of course could see nothing as the British ship was dead ahead. Then the Constitution herself trembled as one of the British shots struck home, and all heads turned to look aft, at the captain.

  But Hull continued to gaze at the enemy vessel, and gave no order to return fire. ‘Bring me a damage report, Mr McDonough,’ was his only comment.

  ‘Hardly a mark, sir,’ was the reply a few minutes later.

  Slowly a ripple of sound began to spread down the deck from forward, and Toby, arms growing weary now as he had been on the helm for some hours, realised that the Guerrière was coming in sight even from abeam. The British ship continued firing, and the Constitution was struck several times, but without apparent result. So much so that as the two ships finally came abeam, and scarcely more than fifty yards apart, one of the British seamen in the rigging shouted, ‘Damn you, you Yankees; are your sides made of iron?’

  Isaac Hull gave a grim smile. ‘More than our sides,’ he muttered. ‘More than our sides. Now, boys,’ he bellowed. ‘Pour it into them.’

  The ship exploded in flame and smoke, the entire hull reeling away from the recoil of the port broadside, so that Toby needed the assistance of the second coxswain to bring her back to course.

  ‘Keep her abeam, Toby,’ Hull shouted. ‘Keep her abeam. Reload those guns, haste now.’

  Toby could see the masts of the Guerrière begin to drop astern as the larger vessel surged past her, and he could hear, too, the screams and shouts from across the water; he turned his head to watch the British mizzen mast tremble and then collapse.

  ‘Now,’ Hull shouted, measuring the distance between the two ships by eye. ‘Port your helm, Toby. Port your helm.’

  They were very close, but Toby never hesitated. The wheel swung to the left, as both coxswains strained on the spokes, and the Constitution turned across the bows of the crippled Guerrière. The port-side guns had been reloaded in record time, and now the broadside again exploded, the heavy shot raking the length of the British frigate, sending men and wood and iron flying in every direction.

  But so sharp had been the Constitution’s turn that she was unable to clear the oncoming vessel.
Toby looked up and saw the foremast of the Guerrière seem to rise above his head, even as it trembled in turn, and a moment later went crashing over the side.

  ‘Stand by for collision,’ he shouted, and before he could draw another breath the British ship smashed into the stern quarter of the American, the bowsprit charging across the quarterdeck like a lance and missing Toby’s head by inches.

  The impact threw most of the men on the quarterdeck from their feet, but they scrambled up quickly enough, staring at the Britisher, still locked against them, and at the marines assembling on her foredeck, red jackets gleaming in the sun, as they made ready to board.

  ‘Boarders!’ Hull shouted, drawing his own sword. ‘Marines aft.’

  The blue-coated American marines came hurrying along the deck, followed by a counter boarding party of sailors, led by Mr Clements — although as the two ships rose and fell on the swell, bumping and grinding against each other, it was obvious that getting from one to the other was going to be a perilous business. And before it could be attempted, all the guns on the Guerrière which could possibly be brought to bear were fired; the Constitution seemed almost to leap from the sea as the iron balls smashed into the captain’s cabin immediately beneath the quarterdeck.

  ‘Fire!’ someone screamed. ‘She’s on fire aft.’

  Hull, already attempting to swing himself on to the enemy by the ropes trailing from the British bowsprit, dropped back to the deck, and stared at the smoke issuing from the after companion. ‘By God!’ he said, as he envisaged his victory being snatched from his grasp by sheer ill fortune.