In Northern Seas

by Philip K Allan

  ‘What is the state of the rigging, Mr Taylor?’ he asked.

  ‘The men have brushed much of the snow away, but some of the yards are frozen solid, sir,’ reported the first lieutenant. ‘So are a few ill-greased blocks, and as for the sails, sheet tin would be easier to handle. Fortunately we were already carrying the right canvas for the conditions when it began.’ Clay next looked forwards. The ship ahead of him was shrouded with white, in spite of the best efforts of the crew to clear the snow away. The foremast was barely visible, while beyond it the ship vanished into a world of swirling flakes.

  ‘I cannot see beyond the forecastle,’ said Clay. ‘Can you?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Taylor. ‘I have stationed extra lookouts in the bow. Fortunately we are barely making a knot.’

  ‘How sure are you of our position, Mr Armstrong?’ Clay addressed the frigate’s sailing master, who came over and touched his hat, dislodging a little snow that had settled there.

  ‘As sure as dead-reckoning can make it, sir,’ said the American. ‘I took a fair sighting at noon yesterday, and we have made limited progress overnight. I mark us at least fifty miles from the coast of Jutland.’

  ‘Let us hope it clears a little before we are obliged to close with the land,’ said Clay.

  Were it not for the slight gurgle of water from over the side, Clay might have thought the Griffin was stationary. The ship was whispering onwards through a close, silent world of falling white. And then a flat boom sounded from somewhere in the blizzard.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ exclaimed Clay.

  ‘Sounded like a cannon firing, sir,’ said Armstrong. ‘There it is again. Off to larboard?’

  ‘No, I marked it from astern,’ said Taylor.

  ‘Mr Preston!’ called Clay. ‘You have the youngest ears. Where was that gunfire from?’

  ‘In truth I thought it was ahead of us, sir,’ said the officer of the watch.

  ‘Deck there!’ yelled the lookout from somewhere above. ‘Firing a point off the bow!’

  ‘What can you make of the ship?’ yelled Clay, cupping his gloved hands around his mouth and bellowing.

  ‘Can’t see no ship, sir, begging your pardon,’ replied the unseen voice. ‘Only the flash as she fires. There she goes ag’in!’ Another series of flat booms echoed off the sea. Staring ahead Clay thought he could see a little orange glow amongst all the white.

  ‘Have the watch below turned up and the guns manned, if you please, Mr Taylor.’

  Chapter 4

  Fire

  The Griffin sailed on across an ever-renewing circle of dark water, through a world of falling white. Somewhere towards the south, the pale winter sun would be continuing to climb above the horizon, but no trace of its warmth could be felt on the deck of the frigate. Now all her guns had been manned and run out. Glancing over the side, Clay could see the wide, black barrels and raised gun ports providing new surfaces for the snow to accumulate on. The quarterdeck snow had been swept from around the big carronades, and trampled down by their crews. Red-coated marines lined the bulwarks between each gun, and stared out into the blizzard, searching for an enemy. Another cannon boomed out, closer now, the glow of orange ahead more intense.

  ‘It may be lifting a touch, sir,’ said Preston. ‘I fancy I can see a little of our headsails now.’

  ‘I believe that may be so, Mr Preston,’ said Taylor, shielding his eyes with the flat of his hand. ‘The light grows brighter, too.’

  ‘Still pretty thick, mind,’ grumbled Clay. ‘I would dearly love to know what lies ahead of us.’

  ‘Firing must mean at least one friend and one foe, sir,’ said the first lieutenant. ‘Perhaps more will be visible from the masthead.’

  ‘I dare say it will,’ said the captain, staring ahead through his telescope. ‘Mr Preston, would you kindly take a glass aloft and tell us what you see?’

  It was only the length of pause before Preston acknowledged the order that made Clay realised what he had just asked.

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ said the young officer, touching his hat.

  ‘My dear sir,’ exclaimed Clay. ‘What can I have been thinking of? Forgive me, but of course you cannot go. Let Mr Russell take your place.’

  ‘With respect, sir, but I must go,’ said Preston. ‘If I might be accompanied by one of the top men to carry the spy glass, I will manage well enough.’

  ‘I am not sure that is prudent,’ said Taylor. ‘Some of the ropes are very icy.’

  ‘Then I shall take extra care, sir,’ said the young lieutenant. ‘I gave the captain my word that I should be able to carry out all my duties. I will not be found wanting on the first occasion it is put to the test.’

  He walked swiftly away down the weather-side gangway before he could be called back. When he reached the bottom of the main mast shrouds he looked upwards. The thick lines of black hemp rose above him, steep as a ladder, until they disappeared into the falling snow. The hum of sound from the main deck seemed to fade, and when he looked for the reason he became aware of the eyes of the gun crews beneath his feet, watching him.

  ‘What’s he about?’ muttered one sailor to his mate, unaware how far his voice carried. ‘Surely he ain’t going aloft with just the one fin, like?’ Preston breathed deep to try and slow the banging of his heart. Then he reached above his head, scrambled up into the main chains, and started to climb.

  ‘Easy there, sir, beggin’ your pardon like,’ said Trevan, jumping up beside him. ‘I were up there first thing to clear the yards, and it be proper treacherous in parts. Here, let me get a safety line around you. Ain’t no dishonour in that. All us top men be using them in this frost.’ Preston felt the Cornishman’s arms encircle his waist with the line, and the rope drawn tight as he knotted it. ‘There, that be better. Up you goes, now. I’ll follow astern, and I got your spyglass, like.’

  ‘Thank you, Trevan,’ he said, noting the concern in the sailor’s piercing blue eyes. Then he resumed his climb.

  At first it was hard to get into a rhythm. Before he would have run up with confidence, arms and legs moving in tandem, but with only one arm he found his progress strangely jerky. He had to pause every two ratlines while he threw his hand like a claw up above his head, aware that for a horrible instant, it was only the soles of his shoes on the snow-covered rope that was keeping him from a plunging fall. As he rose up the mast he felt the emptiness growing behind him. The ship-board sounds faded away, to be replaced by silence. The snow dropping past him seemed to want to draw him down with it. He was midway through circling his arm upwards again, when one of his feet slid free of its hold, and time froze as he lurched outwards from the shrouds. For a moment he hung in balance, motionless with fear. Then he felt a hand on the back of his leg, tipping him forward and away from the void.

  ‘Steady now, sir,’ said Trevan, once the officer’s flailing arm had grasped hold. ‘Let’s get you set ag’in.’ He felt his foot guided back onto the ratline, and he drew icy air deep into his lungs.

  ‘My thanks, Trevan,’ he gasped.

  ‘No call for thanks, sir, you be doing just fine,’ said the Cornish sailor. ‘Why, look’ee aloft! The maintop be just above us now. And what with all this snow, no one on deck will mark us if we use the lubber hole. Shall I go first, sir?’ Without waiting for an answer Trevan scampered ahead, up the last ten feet of the shrouds and disappeared from sight. Then Preston felt the safety line tighten, drawing him upwards. Trevan was right, he concluded. The futtock shrouds, which leant backwards at a steep angle, would be impossible for him. It was normally considered a disgrace for a sailor to use the convenient hole cut in the maintop that the shrouds passed through, but now Trevan had done so with the line, he was obliged to follow. He joined him on the main top, crawling onto the platform, his legs weak with the effort and his right shoulder aching.

  ‘Ain’t no race, sir,’ said the Cornishman, squatting down beside the officer. ‘Let’s catch our breath here afore we climbs the next bit.’ Preston se
t aside the temptation to rest a little longer and pushed himself back up to his feet. What sort of an example are you setting, he scolded himself. You’re a damned officer. Act like one.

  ‘I am quite recovered now,’ he lied. ‘Let us climb the last part.’

  If the main mast shrouds were pitched at the angle of a ladder, those of the main topmast were like the sides of a steeple. Trevan went first this time, keeping a gentle but constant pressure on the line to reassure the officer. Preston’s arm was trembling with the effort being asked of it, and the ratlines beneath his feet were now marbled with ice. A combination of fear and effort made Preston’s breath blow in clouds around him as he made his way up towards the crosstrees, where an anxious Trevan awaited his arrival. At last, with one final heave he was there, sitting on the tiny perch and clinging to the slim topgallant mast beside him. They were a hundred and thirty feet above the surface of the sea, and yet were lost in a private world. In every direction, lines of rigging curved away from them and vanished into the snow storm.

  ‘Now, sir, I been doing some reckoning, begin’ your pardon like,’ said Trevan. ‘There be no way you can hold the mast and your glass with the same arm, so I thought if I was to make you fast with this here line, you would be free to see what was what.’

  Preston sat unresisting as a child, while Trevan worked away, passing the safety line around the officer and knotting it to the mast. He looked down, beyond his feet as they dangled in the air, but the frigate was lost in the falling snow beneath them. And then, slowly, the shape of the hull began to emerge.

  ‘I reckon it be clearing a bit, sir,’ said Trevan, as he finished the last knot, and then passed across the telescope. Preston hesitated for a moment, then released his grip on the wooden spar beside him and took the instrument. He swayed a little against the ropes, testing their hold, and then caught the cold brass eye piece under his chin and extended the tube. The snow storm ahead was lit by an inner flame, close to the water, and a rumble of sound echoed up to them.

  ‘Deck there!’ called the lookout at the top of the foremast. ‘More firing, dead on the bow!’

  Preston focussed on the point where the firing had come from. All he could see were swirling motes of white. His eye latched onto the mesmerising points, as they filled his view through the telescope. Come on, he urged, what else is there? He forced his eye to slide a little out of focus, and then he saw it. There was something behind the snow, like the faint stroke of a pencil on a sheet of paper. He concentrated on that line, and as the frigate sailed closer he realised it was the mast of a ship. Now he had something solid to focus on, other details appeared around it. A second mast behind the first, yards and sails, the web of black tarred rigging. Beneath that was the loom of a low hull, next to a much larger shape. A square of bright red flashed and went, appearing and vanishing like the beating wing of a bird. It took Preston a moment to register that it was the fly of a big flag, the rest of the colours lost from view. A line of fire erupted down the side of the smaller ship, illuminating the blank hull, close alongside. A single tongue of flame answered.

  ‘Deck there!’ he yelled. ‘Two ships five cables ahead. One looks to be a small warship, a sloop perhaps. I believe she may be showing French colours. The other is a large trading brig, armed with a single cannon.’

  Clay’s reply was distorted by a speaking trumpet. ‘Do you suppose the brig to be a merchantman with a carronade, Mr Preston?’

  ‘Like enough, sir, but I cannot be certain,’ replied the lieutenant.

  ‘What course should I follow to come up on the disengaged side of the Frenchman?’

  ‘A half point to starboard should do it, sir,’ bellowed Preston. ‘But I only glimpsed a red fly through the snow. It could just as readily be the ensign of a Danish ship.’

  ‘Then she has no business attacking a merchantman,’ replied his captain. ‘Very good, Mr Preston. You may come down now.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ replied the lieutenant, passing the telescope across to Trevan.

  ‘Ah, getting down,’ muttered the Cornishman, pulling off his hat and scratching at his blond hair. ‘In truth, I hadn’t thought that far ahead, sir. I daresay sliding down the backstay one-handed will not answer, which do leave us with a bit of a poser.’

  ******

  The Griffin swung onto her new course and sailed towards an ever-retreating veil of snow. From the quarterdeck there was still no clear sight of the ships ahead. Clay stood by the rail, leaning out over the side and staring into the curtain of flakes, when a hail came from the bow.

  ‘Ship ahoy! Ship off the larboard bow!’ Clay crossed to the front rail and looked down into the body of the ship.

  ‘Ready the larboard guns, Mr Blake,’ he called, although he could see that the big eighteen-pounder cannon were already run out and manned. The gun crews crouched a little lower around their weapons, while those on the opposite side of the deck stood up and relaxed. The frigate’s second lieutenant turned and touched his hat towards him.

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ he replied, and then, ‘Stand by, larboard side!’ Each gun captain took up the slack of the firing lanyards, checked all was as it should be, and raised an arm to show his piece was ready.

  ‘Where the hell is this damned ship of Preston’s?’ queried Taylor, from beside Clay.

  ‘There, sir!’ said Armstrong from his other side, pointing. Something tall and dark was emerging from the white, like a sea cliff through fog, a little to the left of the frigate’s bowsprit. Then a broadside was fired ahead and in that flash of brilliance, a whole scene appeared. Two ships were locked in combat. One was a low, sleek privateer, with a big French tricolour at her mizzen. She was a sloop, with a half dozen small cannon per side, and was trying to close with and board a larger trading brig beside her. One of the merchantman’s twin masts was down, and the sloop was sliding closer to her victim. In the moment before the image vanished, Clay saw boarders massing in the Frenchman’s rigging, the flame of the guns twinkling off polished steel. Then the light was gone, and he was looking at shadows in the snow once more.

  Almost immediately Clay heard a hail from the Frenchman’s masthead, the words unclear but the tone piercing and urgent. A series of alarmed orders followed.

  ‘I believe we may have been noticed, sir,’ said Armstrong.

  ‘I believe you are right,’ smiled Clay, imagining the panic aboard the privateer at the sudden apparition of a large frigate a few hundred yards off their stern. As the Griffin swept on, the grey mass ahead resolved into a complete ship. He could see her stern, outlined in settled snow, with a line of dark windows staring back at him. Below was her name, Hirondelle, in thick white letters across her counter. Above that her rigging was alive with crew swarming aloft to set sail. The angle was changing quickly as the frigate overlapped the sloop. He could see open gun ports along her black hull, each with a little six-pounder in it. He turned back towards the wheel. ‘Bring her up into the wind and hold her thus. Back the topsails, if you please, Mr Taylor! Mr Blake! Open fire as the guns bear.’

  A moment of calm, as the Griffin drifted to a halt amongst the falling snow, and then a sharp order from Blake followed by the roar of her broadside. Fire and smoke filled the space between the ships, and Clay heard a long series of crashes as eighteen-pounder balls struck home. Beneath his feet the gun crews flew through the stages of reloading, while from across the water he heard cries of panic mixed with the screams of the wounded. The privateer started to inch forward as her first sail was sheeted home, but she would still be comfortably within his frigate’s broadside when the guns were reloaded. One more hail of fire like that should induce her to strike, he concluded. Then he became aware of Taylor, trying to attract his attention.

  ‘Sir! Look at the merchantman! She has taken fire!’

  Against the white of the snow, there were flames of red and yellow now. The wreckage of the brig’s fallen mast had flared up like a torch. Tongues of red had spread onto the hull of the ship, flickering ac
ross the wood. As Clay looked a stream of flaming balls raced up the tarred rigging of the one remaining mast. Several of her crewmen were waving a union flag to attract his attention. For a moment Clay was back on the Brittany coast, watching his last ship being consumed by fire. He was frozen to the spot, unable to decide what to do. Sweat beading on his forehead, in spite of the cold. He wrenched his gaze away from the burning ship and back to the privateer, at his mercy but starting to move away through the water. What to do? he asked himself, for once unsure. He felt numb at his lack of decision. Then he looked back at the merchant ship. The volume of fire had doubled in moments, and beneath the coiling black smoke the flag was being waved with increased desperation.

  ‘Damnation!’ exclaimed Clay. Then he took a deep breath and forced himself to decide.

  ‘Cease firing, Mr Blake,’ he ordered. ‘Secure the guns, if you please.’ Then he turned away from the privateer and towards the stricken brig. Behind him came the sound of orders on the French sloop, growing fainter as she gathered way. From the stricken trading brig he could hear the crackle and bang of burning wood. He could feel the heat of the flames as the forepart of the merchantman swelled into a volcano of fire.

  ‘Upon my soul!’ exclaimed Taylor, who was looking at the blaze through his telescope. ‘I do believe there is a woman onboard!’

  ‘Mr Armstrong, bear down on that merchant ship,’ he yelled. ‘Swiftly now!’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ replied the American, turning away to issue orders.

  ‘Mr Hutchinson!’ called Clay towards the forecastle. ‘Have the pumps manned and the fire hoses rigged. And I want the red cutter in the water to take off the crew. They will have to do so by the stern.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ came the boatswain’s deep bass as he hurried down onto the main deck.