by David Weber
"Beat to quarters, Master Ahlbair!" Stywyrt's voice sounded muffled through the cotton, but the order was clear enough, and the traditional deep-voiced drums began to boom.
Once again, bare feet pattered over wooden decks as the crew scurried to their stations. It wasn't necessary actually to clear for action—Stywyrt had seen to that long since—but the galleon's decks offered a seething flood of humanity in what seemed like utter chaos.
Gray Harbor's experienced eye saw through the apparent chaos to the intense, disciplined order underneath it. Where a landsman would have seen only confusion, he saw the precise choreography of a formal ball, and the fact that so much of what Typhoon's crew was doing was completely new only made that precision even more impressive.
"Load starboard, Master Ahlbair," Stywyrt said.
"Starboard batteries, run in and load!" Lieutenant Ahlbair shouted, and Gray Harbor stepped closer to the quarterdeck rail to gaze down and watch the gundeck gun crews casting off the breeching ropes which secured the newfangled gun carriages to the ship's side. Men tailed onto the side tackles, grunting with effort as they heaved, and their massive charges moved backward in a thunderous squeal of wooden gun trucks across deck planks which had been sanded to improve the gun crews' traction. The guns on Typhoon's main deck were krakens which had been rebored by Ehdwyrd Howsmyn. They weighed two and a half tons each, and they moved heavily, reluctantly, despite their carriages' wheels.
"Avast heaving!" gun captains shouted, announcing their satisfaction as their ponderous charges moved far enough inboard. The Number Three from each gun crew removed the wooden tampion which normally sealed the bore against spray, and the Number Two removed the sheet-lead "apron" which protected the secured gun's vent so Number One could attach the gunlock.
Powder monkeys—boys, some of them as young as seven or eight—dashed up to each gun with their wooden cartridge buckets. Each bucket contained a single flannel bag, filled with gunpowder and then stitched shut, and each monkey dumped his cartridge on deck at his assigned gun, then went racing back for another.
The gun's Number Five picked up the cartridge and passed it to Number Three, who slid it down the muzzle of the gun. Number Six had already selected a round shot from the garland along the bulwark. He passed it to Number Three while Number Four rammed the powder charge home. The gleaming round shot—just under six and a half inches in diameter and weighing over thirty-eight pounds—went down the bore next, followed by a fat, round wad of rope yarn to keep it from rolling around inside the gun as the ship moved, and Number Four tamped everything down with another stroke of his rammer.
Gun trucks squealed again as the cannon were run back into firing position. They snouted out of their gunports all down the galleon's starboard side as Typhoon bared her claws, and the Number Eight and Number Nine of each crew slid stout wooden handspikes under the gun tube. The gun carriage had been designed with "steps" cut out of the brackets—the heavy side timbers which supported the main weight of the gun—and the crewmen used those steps as purchase points, grunting with effort as they levered the breech of the gun upward.
The trunnions were placed so that the gun was slightly breech-heavy, and as the handspikes heaved the breech to the desired elevation, the gun captain inserted the elevation wedge—a simple wooden shim, designed to fit under the breech and hold it there. More work with handspikes levered the guns around, training them as far forward as possible, and then the gun captains drove priming irons—small iron skewers—down the guns' touchholes, piercing the cartridges, and reached for the primer boxes each wore at his belt.
That, too, was a new innovation. Before Merlin's intervention, each gun had been primed with loose powder from the gun captain's powderhorn and, when the moment came, it had been touched off with a red-hot iron rod or a length of slow match. But burning matches and glowing irons had never been the safest things to have around loose gunpowder, especially on a narrow, pitching deck filled with moving men, so still more changes had been made.
Now the gun captains took goose quills packed with fine-grained gunpowder from the cases at their waists, and inserted them into the vents. They stripped away the wax-covered paper seals to expose the powder filling, and metal clicked as their Number Twos cocked the gunlocks. The firing mechanism was an adaptation of Merlin's "flintlock," which was essentially identical to the lock used on the new muskets, but without a priming pan. Instead, when the striker came forward, the flint struck a milled steel surface and showered sparks over the powder-charged quill.
The entire evolution of running in, loading, and running back out took less than two minutes. Intellectually, Gray Harbor had already known it could be done that quickly with the new guns and carriages, but actually seeing it drove home the enormity of the changes about to transform naval warfare. Bringing a kraken into action on an old-style wheelless carriage, without cartridges, and with powderhorn priming, would have taken at least four times that long.
The earl stepped across to the bulwark, careful to keep well clear of the recoil paths of the lighter "carronades" which Seamount had cast specifically for the quarterdecks and fore decks of ships like Typhoon. They threw the same weight of shot as the rebored krakens, but they weighed less than half as much, they were less than half as long, and they required only half the crew. They also used a much lighter charge and were shorter ranged, although the care Seamount had taken in boring them out meant they—like the refurbished krakens—had substantially smaller windages than any previous artillery piece and were correspondingly more accurate across the range they did have.
Gray Harbor looked forward. The old galley Prince Wyllym and three equally old, worn out merchantmen had been anchored at two hundred-yard intervals in the relatively shallow water just off the Trhumahn Bank. The extensive sandbank lay far enough off the normal shipping routes to allow the Navy to train unobserved, and the water shoaled enough in its vicinity to make it practical to anchor the target vessels. Now Commodore Staynair's flagship led the other four ships of his squadron in line-ahead towards his targets under topsails, jibs, and spankers alone.
Compared to Gray Harbor's old galley command, Typhoon seemed to crawl under so little sail, and, in fact, despite the breeze, she was making good no more than two knots, at best, with barely a fifth of her total canvas set. But those sails were what Merlin and Seamount had designated "fighting sail"—yet another change from Gray Harbor's day, when galleys had struck their yards and canvas completely below before engaging.
Even at their slow, dragging pace, the ships of the meticulously dressed line were covering almost seventy yards every minute, and the waiting targets drew closer and closer. Gray Harbor was almost as impressed by the station-keeping displayed by Staynair's captains as he was by any of Merlin's innovations. In his experience, even galleys found it difficult to maintain precise formation, and sailing ships were still less prone to staying where they were supposed to be. On the other hand, by the time fleets of galleys smashed into each other for the hull-to-hull melee which resolved their battles, formation-keeping was seldom an issue any longer. That wasn't going to be the case for gun-armed galleons, and Seamount and Staynair had drilled their crews mercilessly with that in mind.
There!
Gale drew even with Prince Wyllym and the early afternoon was filled with a sudden bellow of smoky thunder. Even at this range—two hundred yards astern of the flagship—the abrupt, simultaneous detonation of eighteen heavy guns was like a hammer blow across the top of Gray Harbor's head. The flagship disappeared into a sudden, dense cloud of powder smoke, and Gray Harbor's eyes widened as a hurricane of shot slammed into the anchored galley.
Splinters and broken bits of timber flew. The galley shuddered visibly as the tempest of iron blasted into it, and something deep inside Gray Harbor cringed as he visualized—or tried to—what it would have been like for Prince Wyllym's crew, had she had one aboard.
He knew he'd failed. He'd seen battles enough during his own Navy days, but even
the heaviest galley carried no more than ten or twelve guns, of which no more than four or five could normally be brought to bear upon a single target. And broadside weapons were seldom much bigger than the three-inch piece called a "falcon," which threw only an eight-and-a-half-pound ball. He'd seen what single heavy cannon balls could do, as they demolished hulls and smashed through the fragile bodies of human beings in hideous sprays of blood, torn tissue, and flying limbs. But he'd never seen what the next best thing to twenty of them could do in a single one of Seamount's new "broadsides."
Gale was a hundred and fifty yards from her target. That was long range by most naval gunnery standards, although her krakens had a theoretical maximum range of three thousand yards. The chances of actually hitting something from a moving ship's deck at anything over a quarter-mile or so were remote, to say the least, however. Indeed, most captains reserved the single salvo they were likely to have time to fire before closing for the melee until the very last moment, when they could hardly have missed if they'd tried and might hope to sweep their opponents' decks with grapeshot and wreak carnage among the other ship's boarders. The number of guns Typhoon and her consorts carried, coupled with their rate of fire, changed that calculation, however.
Even at the squadron's slow rate of advance, and even given its rate of fire, there was just time at this range for each gun in Gale's broadside to fire twice before her own movement carried her beyond the zone in which it could be trained far enough aft to bear on Prince Wyllym.
The second "broadside" was a much more ragged affair as the guns fired independently, each going off as quickly as its own crew could reload and run out again. The first broadside's billowing smoke, rolling downwind towards the anchored targets, more than half-obscured the crews' line of vision, as well, yet both of those broadsides smashed home with devastating effect. The actual holes the round shot punched in the galley's hull weren't all that large, but Gray Harbor knew exactly what was happening inside that hull. Splinters—some of them four and five feet in length, and as much as six inches across at the base—were being blasted loose. They were scything across the ship like screaming demons which would have clawed down any unfortunate seaman in their paths.
Other shots went home higher up the galley's side, smashing down entire sections of her stout bulwarks, sending yet more lethal clouds of splinters howling across her upper deck. Commodore Staynair had thoughtfully placed straw-stuffed mannequins here and there about the target ships' decks, and Gray Harbor saw huge clouds of straw flying in the sunlight, like a golden fog bank which would have been a ghastly red under other circumstances, as splinters and round shot tore them apart.
Then Gale was past Prince Wyllym, ready to fire upon the first of the anchored merchantships, while Typhoon, following in the flagship's wake, approached the battered galley.
"Stand ready, Master Ahlbair. We'll fire by sections, I believe," Captain Stywyrt said conversationally through the rumbling crash of Gale's last few shots.
"Stand ready to fire by sections!" Ahlbair shouted through his speaking trumpet in turn, and Typhoon's captain stepped up beside Gray Harbor at the bulwark as the gun captains took tension on the lanyards attached to the gunlocks. Stywyrt gazed thoughtfully at his approaching target, shoulders relaxed, eyes intent. This might be the first time Gray Harbor had actually seen the new weapons in action, but Stywyrt and the other members of the Experimental Squadron had been drilling with them for five-days now. The captain clearly knew what he was about, and his left hand rose slowly. He held it level with his left ear for several seconds, then brought it slashing down.
"By sections, fire as you bear!" Ahlbair bellowed, and the forward guns thundered almost as he spoke.
Gale had fired every gun which would bear in a single, massive broadside. Typhoon's guns fired in pairs, gundeck and upper deck together, as soon as the gun captains could see their target in front of their muzzles, and she mounted nineteen broadside weapons to Gale's eighteen. It was a long, drawn out, rumbling roll of thunder, not a single brazen bellow, and the ship's fire was even more accurate than Gale's had been. So far as Gray Harbor could tell, not a single shot missed, despite the range, and Prince Wyllym shuddered in agony as round shot after round shot smashed into her splintering timbers.
The guns themselves lurched back, wooden trucks thundering across the planking, muzzles streaming smoke and embers. The stink of burning powder clawed at Gray Harbor's nose and lungs, and he coughed, more than half-deafened despite the cotton stuffed into his ears. The deck seemed to leap up underfoot, battering the soles of his feet, and Typhoon twitched as each pair of guns recoiled and the breeching tackle transmitted the force of three and a half tons of recoiling bronze directly to her timbers. The thick, choking clouds of smoke turned the deck into twilight before they went rolling slowly away from the ship on the breeze.
By allowing his gunners to fire independently, as soon as they bore upon the target, Captain Stywyrt had bought them a few precious moments of extra time to reload. As in Gale's case, each gun crew was responsible for reloading and firing as rapidly as it could, and Gray Harbor watched them as they launched into yet another choreographed burst of chaos.
The Number Four on each gun drove home the soaking wet sponge on one end of his rammer. It slid down the bore, hissing as it quenched any lingering embers from the previous charge. The gun captain stopped the vent, pressing his thumb—protected from the heat by a thick leather thumbstall—over the vent hole to prevent air from entering the bore and fanning any embers the sponge might have missed as a fresh cartridge was rammed home, followed by another round shot and wad. Gun trucks squealed as the gun was run back out. Handspikes clattered as it was trained farther aft, priming quills went down vent holes, gunlocks cocked, the gun captains drew the firing lanyards taut, looked to be certain every member of their crews were clear of the recoil, and yanked. The flint strikers snapped down, sparks showered over the priming quills, and the guns bellowed yet again.
It was ear-stunning, a bedlam which had to be experienced to be believed, and Prince Wyllym's battered side began to literally cave in.
Ahead of Typhoon, Gale's broadside thundered again as she took the first of the anchored merchantmen under fire. The merchant vessel was more lightly built than the galley, and the effect of the flagship's concentrated fire was even more horrific. Gray Harbor could make out few details, thanks to the obscuring gun smoke, but he saw the target's mainmast suddenly quiver, then topple slowly over the side. Even as it toppled, he heard a crashing rumble from HMS Tempest, Typhoon's next astern, as her forwardmost guns came to bear on Prince Wyllym, and he shook his head.
Thank God Merlin is on our side, he thought.
II
King's Harbor Citadel,
Helen Island
"I'm impressed," Earl Gray Harbor said.
He, Cayleb, and Merlin stood atop the King's Harbor Citadel, looking down at the anchored ships of the Experimental Squadron in the basin below. Ahrnahld Falkhan and the rest of Cayleb's Marine bodyguards waited for them on the uppermost floor of the stone keep. It was much cooler there, for the summer sun was hot overhead, and it gave the crown prince and his companions privacy as they stood under a canvas awning that popped quietly in the breeze blowing over the fortress.
"Sir Ahlfryd told you you would be, Rayjhis," Cayleb replied now, and Gray Harbor chuckled.
"Baron Seamount told me I would, true," he acknowledged, and glanced at Merlin. "He also told me I shouldn't pay much attention to your efforts to give him the credit for it, Merlin."
"I suppose there's some truth to that," Merlin acknowledged, turning to face the earl fully. His relationship with Gray Harbor was very different from what it had been, and the first councillor raised a sardonic eyebrow.
"I did provide the original impetus," Merlin said in response. "And I suppose many of the underlying concepts came from me, too. But I would never have had the practical knowledge and experience to put those concepts into effect without Sir Ah
lfryd and Sir Dustyn. And the work on tactical formations has been almost entirely Sir Domynyk's and Sir Ahlfryd."
Which, he reflected, was truly the case. The Royal Charisian Navy had developed a sophisticated tactical doctrine for its galleys, along with standard formations and an entire conceptual framework. As Baron Seamount had noted that very first day, however, none of those formations or tactics had been built around broadside armaments. But his navy was accustomed to thinking in terms of developed doctrine, not the sort of free-for-all brawl most other navies seemed prepared to settle for, and he and Staynair had sat down and essentially reinvented the line-of-battle tactics of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries before the first conversion had been completed for the Experimental Squadron. They'd been practicing and refining them ever since, and Merlin was frankly awed by their accomplishments.
"As I say," he went on, "we really needed that experience. And Cayleb's had more than a little to do with making things work, for that matter."
"That much, I can believe," Gray Harbor said, and smiled approvingly at his crown prince. "Cayleb's always been mad about the Navy."