by Chris Durbin
‘I expected to see you this morning inside Borkum, Captain Holbrooke,’ said Holmes, his face severe. ‘However, Mister Fairview has told me of your reasons, and you acted, in this case, correctly. I wouldn’t want you to imagine that you should make a habit of disobedience, though. I hope we understand each other.’
‘I do, sir,’ said Holbrooke, looking suitably solemn. He was sure that the commodore was merely re-asserting his authority. It wasn’t serious. The orders hadn’t been given in writing and in any case, he’d done just what the commodore had asked when they met in Harwich; he’d put intense pressure on the French garrison. Nevertheless, Holmes’ irritation was real enough.
‘Good,’ said Holmes, his face brightening now that he was satisfied that this young commander wasn’t toying with his superior’s orders. ‘Now, what’s the latest situation?’
There was a chart on the table, one of Fairview’s. ‘I sent my boats to buoy the channel and the western part of the Emden Road last night,’ said Holbrooke, pointing at the chart. ‘The buoys are on the four-fathom line at low water, five cables apart. They’re small, but visible when you know that they’re there.’
‘Then the squadron can move up to the city,’ mused Holmes. ‘Did you encounter any resistance?’ asked the commodore before Holbrooke could continue.
‘I gave orders that the longboat should fire on the walls with the boat-gun, to keep up the pressure. The French replied with musketry, proving that all their guns have been embarked in their boats. We had one marine wounded, but he’ll survive.’
‘Then to the best of your knowledge, the French are still in the city, but preparing to move out.’
‘Yes, sir, to the best of my knowledge.’ Holbrooke was temporising. He was sure that he knew what had happened overnight in the west of the city, but he hadn’t put a boat into the eastern channel since Acrias had arrived yesterday. He was blind to the east; they could have all marched out soon after the bombardment, and those boats could be towing up the Ems now. Did the commodore care if the garrison had escaped? It was impossible to know. It just seemed so unlikely that the French would have been able to move those heavily-laden boats at night.
‘I gather that nobody has looked to the east since yesterday, is that correct?’
The commodore was no fool; he’d spotted the tone in Holbrooke’s voice and recognised the flaw in the plan.
‘That’s correct, sir.’
‘Then we should do so immediately. Your first lieutenant seems to know those waters. Let’s get your longboat over there to find out what the French are doing. When he returns with some more information, I’ll be able to plan the next step.’
◆◆◆
Holbrooke came away from the interview feeling as though he’d been chastised.
‘Don’t worry about Mister Holmes,’ said Taylor as they walked back towards the waist. ‘He’s lost one of his frigates – a foolish error in navigation – and he’s worried about what their Lordships will have to say. I must say that he rather likes your sailing master; he believes that it would never have happened if Fairview had been on board the flagship. I’ve never seen such charts! We came up the estuary without a care in the world, never seeing a hint of troubled water.’
Nevertheless, Holbrooke had a foreboding about what Lynton would find. The wait for the longboat to return was interminable. It was noon before she was seen coming around Nessa Island under sail, hurrying back to the squadron. The longboat was ordered to report directly to Holmes, but Lynton contrived to edge away and pass Kestrel close on the side that was away from the frigate.
‘They’ve gone, sir,’ shouted Lynton as the longboat sped past. ‘The boats must have left in the night. I could just see them half a mile up the Ems, made fast to the eastern bank. The French are marching out of the Upper Gate, the head of the column is abreast the island.’
‘Any sign of the Austrians?’ called Holbrooke, but the longboat was gone out of earshot, rounding-to under the stern of the flagship and kissing the ship’s side so that Lynton could step aboard with the minimum of discomfort.
‘Away yawl,’ shouted Holbrooke. ‘My coat, Serviteur. I’m going to the flagship.’
◆◆◆
‘They’re away, Holbrooke,’ said the commodore, clearly irritated. ‘Well, you couldn’t have known, and I wouldn’t have prevented it if I had known. Perhaps it’s for the best, although I’d dearly have liked to have those guns. The soldiers place such emphasis on capturing the enemy’s guns.’
‘If you please, sir,’ said Holbrooke, ‘we can still annoy them. Their barges won’t move fast up the river with all that ice coming down, and as they’ve no sails to take advantage of this nor’easter they’ll have difficulty even keeping pace with the marching column. They’ll believe they’re safe now that they’re out of the salt water.’ He watched the commodore carefully. ‘We could cut them out tonight.’
‘Could we, by God? Let’s have a look at the chart. Is Mister Lynton still here? Pass the word for him.’
Holbrooke spread out the chart on the commodore’s dining table.
‘Mister Lynton, where exactly did you see the barges?’ asked Holmes.
‘Here, sir.’ Lynton pointed to where a small stream or a large sluice entered the Ems from the north. The chart showed a wide expanse of marshland that occupied about half the width of the river. The stream cut through the marsh and there was a wooden bridge and a jetty on the far side of the stream. The jetty was accessible by navigating up the stream for perhaps a quarter of a mile from the river with the marshland on either side. ‘The river here is less than a mile wide, and half of it on the north shore is marshland. They’ll need sweeps to get up the river, although there may be a towpath further up.’
‘They won’t try that at night, sir,’ said Holbrooke, ‘and they won’t get past the marsh in what’s left of today. They must wait for daylight tomorrow. We have a chance to take or burn those barges, and to capture the guns.’
Holbrooke realised that he was almost pleading with the commodore. This campaign of the Ems estuary had become personal for him. It looked certain that they’d be able to sail unopposed into the Emden Road tomorrow and take the city, but it would be a diminished victory if the French got clean away without being harassed.
Holmes stared at the chart. He took up a pair of dividers and measured the distance from their anchorage to the mouth of the Ems, then he measured the distance from the mouth to the point where the course of the river turned to the south. Four and five miles respectively. What the commodore knew, and the French colonel did not, was that the river up to the bend belonged to King George, by courtesy of the small squadron now anchored off Emden. The French army thought of rivers as being terrestrial arteries, but the British navy knew that for a certain distance they could be dominated by sea-power. That bend in the river, some five miles beyond where the barges appeared to have berthed for the night, was the limit of the commodore’s influence. When the barges passed that point and turned south, nothing more could be done without support from land forces. The question now was, would the French stay at the jetty until the next morning? Holmes stared into space. If they sent boats in tonight, and they found the jetty empty, then no harm would be done. If they discovered the barges still there, and if they weren’t well guarded, then there was a chance to turn this passive occupation into a minor naval victory.
‘How do you know about this stream and jetty, Mister Lynton?’ asked the commodore, not yet convinced.
‘We looked into the mouth of the Ems yesterday before we started sounding, sir. We could see the wooden bridge clear as day, showing over the reeds, and the piles of the jetty were also showing, just as they’re marked on the chart, sir,’ he said pointing to the symbols that some unknown hand had sketched, never guessing how this information would be used. ‘The stream appeared to be in spate, perhaps the ice is melting in the lake to the nor’east of Emden. In any case, there is a lot of water flowing into the Ems.’
; There was silence in the cabin. Holmes continued to gaze at the chart. Holbrooke guessed that he was weighing up the potential gain against the probable loss of life. After all, there would be a couple of thousand French soldiers in the vicinity, their exact location unknown.
‘Then here’s what we’ll do,’ said the commodore, his mind made up. ‘Pass the word for Captain Taylor, he needs to hear this also.’
◆◆◆
25: The Pursuit
Sunday, Nineteenth of March 1758.
Kestrel, at Anchor. The Dollart.
The equinox was fast approaching. The daylight was lasting well into the evening, but the days were still cold as winter lingered long in this flat, windswept land. After the sun had set over Groningen, Holbrooke sat in the stern sheets of Kestrel’s longboat with Dawson beside him at the tiller. In the very last of the light, he saw a flight of oystercatchers hurrying overhead looking for their overnight roost. He was reminded irresistibly of the tidal mill at the head of Fareham Creek, and the Christmas Day when Dawson had steered him into a different kind of adventure.
‘Captain Holbrooke will command the expedition,’ the commodore had said decisively after the plan of attack had been sketched out. The disappointment was written plain on Smith’s face. This expedition of four boats, one each from the sloops and two from the frigate, was too big for a lieutenant to command, and yet a post-captain was of too lofty a rank. It had to be Smith or Holbrooke, and Smith was the senior, so it came as a surprise when the commodore had chosen Holbrooke. He’d softened the blow to Smith by pointing out that Holbrooke had spent the past two months in the Ems Estuary; he knew the water well and would need no reconnaissance. But still, the decision was a disappointment to Smith; it was opportunities such as this that elevated commanders to post-captains.
The anchored squadron was quickly lost to sight under the gloom of a partly overcast sky. Once the last glow of sunset had faded, the western sky was as black as pitch. Over to the east, the moon was starting to show through the clouds, it’s light yet too dim and diffuse to provide illumination of anything other than the general outline of the land. Holbrooke could see well enough to make out the mouth of the river, but it was highly unlikely that the boats, with their masts struck and stowed between the rowers, could be seen from the shore.
An hour ago, the barges were still at the jetty; Holbrooke’s own yawl with Lynton in command had confirmed their presence. It was so unlikely that the French would move after nightfall that the possibility could be dismissed from his plans.
Kestrel’s longboat was in the lead, Seahorse’s longboat and yawl followed, and Strombolo’s longboat brought up the rear. Each boat carried its crew of oarsman and a contingent of marines, thirty in total, commanded by Captain Barton from the flagship. The boats were heavily loaded with men and then overloaded with combustibles; it would be a long, hard row for the oarsmen, even with the flooding tide to counteract the force of the river. The smooth progress of the boats was interrupted as their bows pushed aside the ice-floes that came down from the frozen higher reaches of the Ems.
‘Keep her head at east-by-south,’ said Holbrooke to the coxswain, ‘and watch your next astern. If he starts lagging, then ease the stroke.’
‘Aye-aye sir,’ replied Dawson. He could see the mouth of the river, but it was as well to have a course to steer on this dark night when shapes came and went as the moon’s fitful rays were interrupted by the clouds.
The eastern approach to Emden slid by on the larboard side as the small, unnamed island that stood on the southern side of the mouth of the Ems came into view. By peering into the dark, Holbrooke could see both river banks now, which gave him an idea of the visibility. The boats would still be invisible, and the sounds of the night were loud enough to mask the creak of the oars. Now they were in the river itself, and the bump and grind of the ice floes was more frequent. Just a mile to go to the mouth of the little stream. On the larboard bow pinpricks of light started to show, the bivouac fires of two-thousand five-hundred Frenchmen. Then the column had proceeded no further than the stream. Night had overtaken the French soldiers before they had caught up with the boats. It would have been better if they had camped beyond the boats – further up the Ems – but at least they had the stream to cross before they could interfere with Holbrooke’s plans. And that gave Holbrooke an idea.
‘Captain Barton,’ he called softly, cupping his mouth into the centre of the boat.
‘Sir,’ he replied.
‘Make your way back here, if you please, Captain,’ said Holbrooke.
There was barely room to move between the seated marines, and it took a few moments for Barton to reach the stern, leaving trampled fingers and toes behind him.
‘You see the French fires. Would you say that was the bivouac of two-thousand five-hundred men?’
Barton squinted into the night. ‘I would, sir, more-or-less. They’re not very regular, but if they had to make camp in the near-dark, then that’s probably the best that can be expected.’
‘Very well. Now, do you see those dim lights to the right? Those, I believe, are our barges. It looks very much as though the French have allowed their forces to be split by a small stream with only a wooden bridge as a means of crossing.’
Barton looked more closely. ‘I see what you’re thinking, Mister Holbrooke. If I throw twenty of my men forward to the bridge, we should be able to hold it against any number of French infantrymen.’
‘And if I was to send my gunner forward with you, and a couple of kegs of powder?’
Barton’s smile pierced the darkness. The original plan was to hold a line twenty yards from the base of the jetty, which in the blackness would provide some protection from musketry as the seamen cut out the boats that they could and burned the rest. But a plan is only a basis for change, and this was a very useful improvement. The stream was no real military obstacle, it could probably be waded with little trouble, but for a retreating regiment, at night and not expecting to have to assault a disciplined force on the other side, it could well hold them long enough to carry away more of the boats than they had planned.
‘Pass the word for’rard for the gunner,’ whispered Holbrooke. He blessed his insistence that the most important members of the command of this expedition should all be in his boat.
‘Mister Matross. Can you bring down a wooden bridge with the powder you have?’
Matross wasn’t a man to be rushed. He pondered for a moment.
‘How big a bridge, sir?’
‘I don’t know, man,’ replied Holbrooke in exasperation. ‘A moderate country bridge for coaches and farm carts and suchlike, I expect. Can you bring it down?
‘I can destroy the road surface, sir. As for bringing down the bridge, that’s much more difficult. There’s nothing solid for the explosion to work on, not like a stone bridge.’
‘We only need to make it impossible for soldiers to charge across. The marines will do the rest.’
Matross pondered again. ‘Aye, I can do that,’ he said slowly. ‘I’ll just need five minutes to sling the charges under the bridge and lay the fuse. I’ll get on with making a rope cradle for the barrels now, sir.’
◆◆◆
‘I’ll come a little to starboard now, sir,’ said Dawson. ‘I can see the reed beds close to larboard.’
Holbrooke had been so taken up with re-planning that he hadn’t noticed how far the boat had come. The swampy area that started on the north side of the mouth of the river was clearly visible. In a few minutes, they’d see the stream.
‘When we turn into the stream the men will need to pull hard,’ replied Holbrooke. But he’d already told all four coxswains that part of the plan. It was what would happen when the marines got ashore that worried him. Was Captain Barton up to the challenge of executing this change of plan?
The lights of the bivouacs were behind them now, abaft the larboard quarter, so the soldiers hadn’t crossed the stream. The isolated lights that marked the jetty were on the
larboard bow.
‘The stream’s visible now, sir,’ said Dawson.
Holbrooke peered into the gloom ahead. He could just see the gap in the reeds, about half a cable wide. He reached behind to uncover the lantern, just for a few seconds the light shone astern, warning the following boats that he was about to turn.
Dawson pushed the tiller gently to starboard, and the longboat turned smoothly into the gap between the reeds. There was a tall stake on either side, presumably to mark the channel, and Dawson steered between them. The stream here was strong, much stronger than the sluggish Ems.
‘Now, Nobby, pull with all your heart,’ Dawson said to the stroke oar, just a few feet in front of him. The stroke increased both his speed and his length, and each of the oarsmen followed his timing. The longboat sped up the tiny channel despite the force of the current, it’s bow-wave bending the reeds on either side.
The lights of the jetty were coming closer now. Holbrooke could see the outline of the wooden structure, the tall piles that Lynton had reported, and the dark shapes of the barges were starting to be visible.
‘I can see the bridge,’ said Captain Barton. ‘Aye, if your gunner can blow the centre of it, we can hold the bank, at least long enough for you to get those barges away.’
A shout, a French challenge, ‘Qui va là?’ Then a pause, more cries. Warnings now.
‘Pull!’ shouted Dawson, ‘Pull you sluggards!’
The longboat covered the last hundred yards in a matter of seconds. Dawson was almost caught by surprise at the speed and he only just managed to order the oars to be tossed before the longboat crashed against one of the barges. Barton leapt over the gunwale, followed by his marines. He ran straight over the heavily-laden barges, kicking an incautious face that appeared from behind a barrel, and stepped ashore, waving his sword. Behind him, Holbrooke could hear the other boats as they likewise threw themselves against the barges and disgorged their marines. In what seemed like seconds, but must have been a few minutes, the marines were formed into two ranks, faced to the left and moved off up the jetty in double-time. He could see Treganoc bringing up the rear, second in command of the marine force.
