Vendetta: The Dorset Boy - Book 6

by Christopher C Tubbs

  “Looks like a merchant ship, heading North making about five or six knots. He’s hull up now and we are catching him without setting more sail.”

  “Good, we don’t want to spook him too soon,” Marty replied, “please get the ship to quarters but don’t run out.”

  Over the next hour they gradually caught up with the snow and could see it was heavily laden.

  “He’s not going to be able to run, make all sail,” Marty ordered.

  With all sail set, they soon overhauled their prey, and a shot aimed to pass along their side and land just in front of their bows had her sails flapping as she hove to. Lieutenant Stamp was sent over with a boarding party and he reported she was heading to Rome and laden with olive oil from Calabria. Fair game then. A prize crew was put aboard under Midshipman Hart and she was dispatched to Palermo They would pick them up later when they called on the fleet.

  They resumed the trip North but saw nothing else of interest and ran into Salerno Bay the next morning. Apart from a few merchant ships there was nothing there, so they turned and sailed down the Amalfi coast to Capri. The French flag flew over the island that was fortified with batteries but still managed to give the impression it was half asleep.

  Marty sailed close to it and wasn’t challenged so he took his time and decided to make a record of all the fortifications and defences that they could see.

  “Mr. Ackermann I would be obliged if you would send two men who can draw with bring-em-nears to the top of the mainmast and have them sketch every fortification, battery and lookout they can see. Mr. Grey, I am sure you have sketches, maps and paintings of the island in that vast repository of yours. Please make copies so we can overlay what the lookouts come down with.”

  He also had men counting ships, or masts if that was all they could see, and took note of the depth, currents and tides as they progressed. He was surprised that they still weren’t challenged and took the whole morning to make detailed notes. When he was satisfied that they had seen all they could they made their way into the Bay of Naples.

  This time things looked a bit more interesting; there were two twenty-eight-gun French corvettes anchored in the bay and a thirty-eight-gun frigate being careened on a beach. He studied the corvettes, they appeared to only have harbour watches on board. He scanned the shore and saw that they were both under the protection of the guns of shore batteries.

  “Mr. Grey, what is the state of the moon tonight?” he asked.

  “No moon Sir, it sets at a half past eight.” The Master responded without looking in the almanac.

  Marty looked at his watch, it was a half past three in the afternoon.

  “I want those ships pinpointed on the chart then take us out to sea Mr. Ackermann, I’ve seen enough.”

  He called his lieutenants and midshipmen to his cabin. Once they were assembled, he began,

  “It is my intention to return to the bay tonight, cut out those two corvettes and burn the frigate. Mr. Trenchard and Mr. Stamp, you will lead the cutting out crews, with thirty men each. Mr. Stamp I want you to take the corvette that is furthest into the bay.”

  He had a chart of the bay laid out on the table and they all lent over it. The two corvettes and the frigate were marked along with all the shore batteries they had noted.

  “We will sail in to as close to this point here as we can,” Marty said and pointed to a point on the map some two cables from the corvettes. “I hope the corvettes will have harbour lights burning and we can position ourselves from them. If not, we will get as close as we can by dead reckoning. Once the boats are away, we will take the Formidiable back out to sea. Now we need to get those two corvettes before we fire the frigate, or we will just light up the bay and make ourselves targets. The team that will burn the frigate will leave fifteen minutes after the cutting out crews. That should give you enough time to get aboard, cut the anchor rope and get them underway.” He thought for a moment, frowning. “The problem is we only have four boats, which is enough for the cutting out crews but that leaves us short for the frigate.”

  He left the problem on the table for them to discuss and soon the suggestions were getting more fantastic by the minute. Then he heard the rumble of Sam laughing and looked over to see him pointing out of the transom window. He followed his gaze and saw a fleet of fishing boats making their way out to sea. He grinned back at him; problem solved.

  Marty bought a boat off one of the fishermen, it was the oldest and shabbiest in the small fleet and he paid at least the price of a new boat for it after an extended haggle. The old fisherman was happy and neither he nor his fellow fishermen would go running to the authorities.

  They chose the cutting out crews and allocated them to the boats. It would be crowded with up to fifteen men in each, but they would also row, so it was doable.

  It was fully dark by nine o’clock and Marty wanted to be into the bay at ten, so they started their approach as soon as the sun set. The residents of Naples were very obliging, and several large houses had lamps outside that they could steer a course by and there was the dull red glow from Vesuvius. It was a nervous approach in the pitch black of the night even so and they felt their way cautiously in. The corvettes had harbour lights burning much to his relief.

  Multiple bearings on the corvettes, Vesuvius and harbour lights got them on station and hove to, the boats pulled around and the blacked-up men loaded.

  There were so many variables he was convinced something had to go drastically wrong and his nerves were jangling. Damn but I would rather be in the cutting out crew, he admitted to himself. He made a decision.

  “Mr. Ackermann I will command the fishing boat,” he announced to the First Lieutenant and was aware as soon as he said it, he sounded faintly ridiculous.

  Ackermann was obviously holding back a grin as he gave the orders for the cutting out crews to get on their way. Once they were gone, he called up the fishing boat. Marty climbed down and was immediately assailed with the smell of rotting fish and seaweed that was ingrained into the wood. They spent the next fifteen minutes piling combustibles into the centre of the boat and a pair of shuttered lanterns were hung from the mast with the doors closed.

  He looked around at the crew and knew that most of his followers were present. John Smith was at the tiller; the Basques manned the oars and he could faintly see someone in the bow?

  He checked his watch and saw that the boats had been gone for fifteen minutes. They needed to go.

  Phillip Trenchard steered the barge towards the bow of the nearest of the corvettes, the second boat in his team was heading for the stern.

  Damn but it’s dark! He thought as he steered the boat by the harbour light of their target. They had twenty yards to go and his men were preparing to climb on board as fast as they could. He had a combination of agile sailors and less agile marines; all were armed with either boarding pikes or cutlasses. Two men in the bow had crossbows in case a sentry revealed himself as they approached. Every man carried a billy club or blackjack to deal silently with the harbour watch.

  They hooked onto the bow with the faintest of bumps and the sailors shot up the side. A few seconds later ropes were dropped over and the marines went up followed by Phillip.

  The men moved down the deck silently, on bare feet or soft soled shoes. The occasional thud indicating they had found a sentry and put them to sleep. Then, as they met the men from the second boat they split into two groups. One to go below and take care of any crew that were still aboard and the other to get the ship under way.

  The first thing they did was to step a mast in the corvette’s boat and moor it to the anchor cable. Then they mounted a hooded lantern on the mast. They had to extinguish the harbour light on the corvette’s mast and uncover the lantern in the boat at the same time so that from shore it would look like the corvette was still there.

  From below came the sounds of a struggle and then a stifled scream. He waited until someone appeared beside him and whispered that all was secure.

&
nbsp; “Raise the foresail and courses, cut the anchor cable,” he ordered sotto voice.

  Marty, meanwhile, was navigating by compass towards the frigate on the careenage beach. Every twenty seconds or so he cracked the shutter on one of the lanterns just enough to see their heading, but then he realised that there was a light from a house just to the right of where he wanted to be and could steer by that. He looked back at the frigate but couldn’t see it and then across to where the corvettes were. The lights didn’t look as if they had moved but he was sure they were lower now.

  The beach suddenly appeared as a line of phosphorescence as the small waves broke on the sand and he heard the gentle swoosh of moving pebbles.

  “Ship oars,” he whispered, “prepare to land.”

  The oars came silently inboard and the two men in the bow got ready to jump over as soon as the bow grounded.

  There was the faintest of scrapes, Matai and Garai dropped over the side to steady the boat and Franco jumped over the bow onto the sand to run the mooring line up the beach to secure it.

  The rest of the men unloaded the combustibles and piled them on the beach. Marty got ashore and looked for the Frigate that appeared as a dark lump against the lights of the houses, they had landed one hundred yards too far to the East!

  He immediately sent Antton and Matai to check for watchmen and got the rest of the men organised to move the flammables. Paul la Pierre appeared beside him, picking up and carrying with the rest of them

  The ship was lying on its starboard side and secured with ropes, so it was a simple matter to access the deck and make a bonfire.

  Marty made one last check of his watch then opened a lantern and lit the fuse chord that they had laid to a pile of powder in the middle of the heap. He had thirty seconds to get to the boat before it went up. He was about halfway there when there was a challenge!

  “Ehi, che ci fai lì?” Aa gruff voice shouted. Marty stopped and turned to see a lantern approaching him. He held his hands out to the side’s palms down.

  “Non sai che questa è una spiaggia riservata?” the man said as he walked towards him. He held the lantern high and a pike in his right hand.

  Marty stepped towards him with a smile. His right hand hung loosely at his side and then whipped forward. The watchman’s chest sprouted a throwing knife handle just to the left of centre and he folded to the ground with a groan. Marty turned and ran.

  They pushed off and turned the fishing boat to seaward when they heard the muffled sound of the powder igniting.

  Marty watched the frigate intently. There! A dull glow gradually getting brighter as the fire took hold. It took another ten minutes for the fire to really get going and start spreading. He heard an alarm and shouting from the shore, then an explosion. He could see by the flash that it was between the ship and the sea wall.

  “That will discourage them!” laughed Paul.

  He had planted one of the timed bombs near the steps to the beach.

  “Wait for it!” Paul crowed.

  Another bomb went off around the stern of the ship, in the light of the flames they could see men running back up the steps to the road.

  In another few minutes the fire had spread throughout the ship, flames were leaping into the air and up the bone-dry rigging illuminating the bay.

  Marty could see the corvettes were gone, there was no sign of them or the Formidiable. That was expected as Ackermann had strict instructions to get the ship out of the bay and out of range of the shore batteries before they torched the frigate. He got John to steer them due South, they would find the others in the morning.

  A vengeful soul manning the battery on the Castell dell’Ovo fired on them with a pair of twenty-four-pound cannon. Probably on the assumption that any boat in the bay had to be guilty of theft, if not arson. Luckily their shooting was off and didn’t even get them wet.

  Six days after dropping off Ryan and his team the Formidiable was again hove to a half mile off the Amato estuary and the barge was pulled up on the sand. They waited an hour then rowed back to the ship.

  Marty was not overly worried. Scouting missions rarely went to schedule as any number of things could delay the men’s return. As soon as his men were back aboard, they slipped back out to sea and rendezvoused with the two prizes. He had decided that the corvettes should stay with them rather than sail down to Palermo and they formed up in line astern to loiter over the horizon until they went back into the bay the next day. Marty gave the crew a make and mend day so they could relax.

  Dawn the next morning saw the barge approaching the beach again and, once again, it was devoid of life. They waited the requisite hour and were starting back when there was a shot from the tree line. One of their marines was stood on the beach waving his arms frantically. They turned back.

  Marty was watching from the quarterdeck and was aghast when he saw the party come from the trees and down the beach. They looked to have been in quite a fight and three of the men, including Ryan Thompson, were being helped by their mates. There was no sign of Francesco.

  As soon as the barge landed the men were at the side and the boat crew helped their shipmates aboard. They were almost all on when a line of blue uniforms emerged from the tree line and started firing.

  The Formidiable was at quarters as a matter of routine and Marty quickly ordered the main guns to support the shore party by laying down a broadside on the treeline. That would involve some accurate shooting as they didn’t want the shot to fall short onto the barge.

  Wolverton himself commanded the guns and Marty watched with a certain amount of pride as the broadside crashed into the trees sending the French running for cover.

  Back in Marty’s cabin, Shelby was checking Ryan over.

  “Well, young man, apart from the musket ball I’ve just extracted from your buttock, which I might say you were lucky was almost spent, you seem to be fine,” the physician told him.

  “How are the other two?” Ryan asked through gritted teeth as he pulled his trousers up.

  “One will be fine after a couple of weeks rest. The other, I’m afraid, will take much longer if he recovers at all. The musket ball hit him in the abdomen, and I had to stitch his intestine back together. The prognosis is never good for those type of injuries.”

  Marty knew the man was lucky as Shelby was skilled in his art not like most of the butchers acting as surgeons in the fleet. He would stand the best possible chance of not dying of the stinking rot of anybody in the Navy.

  Ryan lay face down on Marty’s sofa as he gave his report.

  “It all started rather well, we followed the river inland, mapping as we went, until, after three days, we came to the foothills. Maida is off to the south of the river on the top of a line of hills. It seems, the people around here have a thing about building their towns on the top of hills not in valleys. We didn’t encounter any French patrols, but we did see signs of their passing, mainly burnt out farmhouses and fresh graves. They are stealing all the food, leaving the locals with nothing. The poor bastards are starving. We had a hard time finding food.

  I decided we needed to establish the strength of the French force for ourselves, so we got Francesco to guide us to their camp. We found an olive grove on a hill that overlooked it and settled down to count tents and the like. While we were there, we were joined by some of the Partisans. They hate the French with a passion and are ready to send the country up in flames.

  That is, all but one of them. We were betrayed but we spotted the patrol being led right to us by one of the men we had met the night before. After that it was a running fight to get back to the bay and get picked up. I copped a ball in the arse as we were just entering a big olive grove about a mile inland and the other two got hit covering my retreat. It was all a bit of a mess really.”

  “You did well,” Marty reassured him, “not many would have been able to lead their men out of that situation. What happened to Francesco?”

  “He went back to find our betrayer. I wouldn’t w
ant to be in his shoes when Francesco finds him. He was very angry, and those Sicilians take revenge very seriously.”

  They sailed into Palermo to find the harbour full of British warships and transports. The flagship, Pompée flew a signal with their number and ‘captain repair aboard.’ He took Ryan with him and was rowed over.

  The two came to attention as they came aboard and saluted the quarterdeck, they were immediately taken down to the Admiral’s cabin.

  Sir Sidney Smith and Major General Stuart were sat at the table waiting for them.

  “Captain Stockley. Welcome,” Sir Sidney greeted him. “is your lieutenant wounded?” He asked as Ryan limped over from the door.

  “Shot in the course of performing the reconnaissance Sir,” Marty replied. “He caught a musket ball in a rather awkward place.”

  Smith called for his steward and had several cushions brought to ease Ryan’s discomfort and when they were all settled asked Marty to introduce himself and their mission to Stuart.

  “I command a specialist flotilla under the command of Naval Intelligence, and it is our job to reconnoitre, infiltrate, disrupt and otherwise inconvenience the enemy at every opportunity,” Marty told him. “Lieutenant Thompson commanded a small team who have spent a week in the Gulf of Eufemia scouting the lands around the Lamato river up to the town of Maida, where the incumbent French Army are camped.”

  They now had Stuart’s full attention and Marty bade Ryan make his report, which he did, explaining the maps they had made, the temper of the people and the numbers and types of troops they had seen before being chased out.

  At the end Stuart sat back with a satisfied gleam in his eye, but Smith looked at Marty and asked,

  “While all that was happening, I think I can be safe in assuming you didn’t just sit around and wait for the good lieutenant and his men to return?”

  “No sir, in accordance with our standing orders we made a nuisance of our selves taking one cargo vessel, two corvettes and burnt a frigate.”