The Flag of Freedom

by Seth Hunter

  Nelson was no longer to be seen, but in his place stood another officer of Nathan’s acquaintance, a stout, ruddy-faced individual who had been appraising him with the amused air of a spectator at the monkey-house in the zoo. He, too, wore the uniform of a Post Captain, though rather more elegantly tailored than that of his associate.

  ‘You’re slowing down a bit,’ he observed, as Nathan joined him on the quarterdeck. ‘Quite the staid old gentleman. Thirty next month, is it not?’

  ‘Twenty-nine, as a matter of fact,’ Nathan replied, trying not to breathe too hard from his exertions. ‘How are you, Thomas? You look even fatter than when I last saw you. And even more pleased with yourself. Must be marriage.’

  ‘Cannot speak too highly of it,’ the Captain replied content edly. ‘You should try it yourself, Nat, if you can find someone who will have you. I’d change your tailor, though, if I were you. He ain’t doing you any favours, you know.’

  Thomas Fremantle was Nathan’s senior on the Post Captain’s list by several months and they had served together in the Gulf of Genoa under Nelson. Both had been involved in the evacuation of Leghorn in ’96 and Fremantle had profited from the experience by acquiring a wife – Betsey Wynne – the daughter of an Anglo-Venetian gentleman whose family he had evacuated to Corsica from under the guns of the French. He and Nathan were friends, of a sort; Nathan thought of them more as old protagonists. He would not trust Fremantle further than he could throw him – which was not very far, given his propensity for rich food and fine wines – but their shared experiences had bonded them somewhat and they both enjoyed being able to say pretty much what they liked to each other. Most of the time.

  Nathan flicked at the fibres of hemp adhering to his sleeve.

  ‘It’s one of Miller’s cast-offs,’ he said. ‘Lost mine. I expect you heard the Unicorn went down with all hands off Montecristo.’

  ‘I did. I did.’ Fremantle looked properly grave. ‘Fortunate you were not aboard at the time.’

  Though his tone was sympathetic the elevation of his brow added a questionmark.

  Nathan dropped his voice. ‘As you know, I had official business in Venice. The authorities decided to extend my stay with a spell in the Doge’s prison.’

  He had been advised by the Admiral not to discuss the circum stances of his absence from the Unicorn, but Fremantle was well aware of his mission to Venice. The two men had been serving together at the time of his despatch there and it would have been pointless, as well as pompous, to say nothing of it. However, Fremantle was notoriously indiscreet and Nathan had no intention of being drawn any further on the subject.

  ‘So, Thomas, what brings you aboard?’ he said. ‘You’ve missed dinner, I think.’

  ‘I am here for the same reason as you, I expect. To help push the boat out. See some fireworks.’ He flicked his head in the direction of the bomb vessel.

  ‘What – are you to lend a hand at the oars?’

  ‘Good God, no! I leave all that small-boat stuff to you younger fellows these days.’ Fremantle was all of three years older than Nathan. ‘No. My role is to give support with Inconstant, in case they send something bigger out – and you take fright at all the noise.’

  The Inconstant was one of the new, heavy, 36-gun frigates of the Perseverance class. Her name was as much a joke in the fleet as the irony of Fremantle’s commanding her, for he was known to be somewhat random in his attachments to the fairer sex. Or had been before his marriage.

  ‘Well, that is good to know,’ Nathan remarked vaguely. ‘I thought it was just the Theseus.’ He dropped his voice again. ‘Tell me, Thomas, what do you make of the scheme?’

  ‘What do I make of it?’ Fremantle looked more deliberately over towards the Thunder. ‘Well, it seems simple enough to me, m’dear. We lob a few firecrackers over the wall and wait to see what happens. Used to do it at school. Nothing to it. Get a hiding, of course, if you’re caught.’

  He spoke with the smug assurance of one who knows that he is a lot less likely to be caught than the object of his wit.

  ‘It don’t bother you, then, making war on women and children?’

  ‘I say, coming the Quaker a bit, are we not?’ Fremantle recoiled with mild indignation. ‘When did you go all sanctimonious on us?’

  ‘I imagine I took your lead, Thomas. When you were sound ing off about the French, do you remember? When they were lobbing “firecrackers” into Leghorn and the place swarming with refugees. “Typical Frogs,” you said. “Spineless Johnny Crapaud. Making war on women and children.” I must have thought you had a point. Or was it only because the future Mrs Fremantle was there?’

  ‘Well, if the Dons would only come out and fight, we would not be put to such an extreme, would we?’ But Fremantle had clearly been stung into a more reflective mood for, after a moment’s silence, he added: ‘It ain’t the most honourable course, I grant you, but then …’ He shrugged. ‘Nelson was talking about storming the place. Doing a Drake on it. Singeing the King of Spain’s beard and all that.’

  Francis Drake had led a raid on Cadiz in 1587 – the year before the Armada – and carried it off with his usual panache, looting and burning to his heart’s content and taking or destroying three dozen Spanish sail. But then the Spaniards had not known he was coming.

  ‘He asked my advice, as a matter of fact,’ Fremantle confided modestly.

  ‘Drake?’

  ‘No!’ An irritable frown. ‘Nelson. We had a look at the charts together. I reckoned if we landed a few men on the isthmus, we could hold off a small army.’

  ‘What about the men in the fort?’

  ‘Well, obviously, one would have to take care of them. But if we could storm San Sebastian, you would have the whole Spanish fleet at your mercy. They would come out then, all right – else we could take them at their moorings.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Oh, Jervis sent back to London for approval and their lordships took against the plan. Said it ain’t feasible. And Spencer came up with this instead – as you might expect.’

  He kept his voice low but there was no disguising the contempt in it. Earl Spencer was the First Lord of the Admiralty. A political appointment to buy off those Whigs who continued to support the war. Not a Navy man; nor even a soldier like his predecessor, the Earl of Chatham. He was not widely liked in the fleet, and not only because he was a Whig.

  ‘Even so, I’m surprised Jervis went along with it,’ Nathan observed. ‘And Nelson, too.’

  Fremantle eyed him doubtfully. ‘Thought they might share your scruples, did you?’

  ‘I did, as a matter of fact – certainly in Nelson’s case.’

  ‘Well, let me put your mind at rest, young man. Nelson sent to Mazarredo a few days ago to tell him what to expect.’

  Mazarredo was the Spanish Admiral.

  ‘He did what?’

  ‘Thought that would interest you. Told him we were preparing to burn Cadiz to ashes and that he might be advised to remove the civilian population to a place of safety.’

  ‘Dear God.’

  ‘I trust that restores your faith in the man? Of course, Mazarredo has done no such thing. But he cannot complain he was not forewarned.’

  ‘So the Dons know we are coming.’

  ‘They do indeed.’ Fremantle eyed him complacently. ‘I am told the harbour is full of gunboats. And they have armed every ship’s boat with carronades.’ He clapped Nathan on the shoulder. ‘So you need have no fear, my friend. Your Quaker scruples need not be troubled by the venture. You may greet your Maker with a clear conscience.’

  ‘Thank you, Thomas, I am touched by your concern. It is reassuring to know you will be in close support.’

  ‘I said nothing about close, Nat. Nothing at all. We shall be staying well out to sea. Lot of rocks about, I am told. No, you had better put your trust in God and hope He ain’t turned Papist. The Dons, I have heard, are not averse to shooting a sitting duck, especially when it is intent upon spreading murder
and mayhem among their own chicks. You had better pray for a dark night, m’dear. Plenty of cloud cover, and no moon.’

  Chapter Two

  Fireworks

  God had indeed turned Papist. Or asserted His privilege of remaining neutral and letting Nature take its course. It was a clear, moonlit night, the sky a sea of stars. So clear, Nathan could see every one of his little fleet of ships’ boats as they pulled gamely towards the shore. Almost as clearly, he supposed, as the Spaniards must be able to see them from the ramparts of the city wall or in the gunboats that lay in wait for them at the edge of the harbour.

  He tried not to take it personally, but for all the advantage it gave them, he considered they might have given the darkness a miss and attacked in broad daylight.

  But the sea was as calm as a lake, that was the main thing. Or so he had been assured by Lieutenant Gourly, the some what overbearing – bombastic? – commander of the Thunder, for in the slightest swell, he said, their bombs tended to go awry. They could land anywhere, he said. And they did not want that.

  No, they did not want that.

  Looking astern, Nathan could see the bomb vessel making its slow but steady progress towards the port, towed by half a dozen boats from the fleet, for there was not a breath of wind, a circumstance that added somewhat to Lieutenant Gourly’s satisfaction. ‘Steady’ was his favourite word. In the half-hour or so of their acquaintance, Nathan had heard him say it many times.

  The Thunder was a platform for the delivery of Death and Destruction, and Lieutenant Gourly’s job was to deliver it to the right place at the right time. Steadiness was all. Though a lack of imagination probably helped.

  About a cable’s length to starboard was the gun brig Urchin, also under tow. And behind them, a good way behind for fear of the shoals, were the Goliath, 74, and the frigate Inconstant – as insurance against a sortie by some of the larger elements of the Spanish fleet moored in the Diamond.

  But in the event – the almost certain event – of an attack by gunboats in the shallower waters off the peninsula, the task of protecting the bomb vessel belonged to Nathan and his fleet of auxiliaries. His sitting ducks.

  He had eight ships’ launches under his command and two barges. Also a cutter, the Fox, which he had made his flagship. Each boat was commanded by a lieutenant or midshipman, and Nathan had a young sailing master, Prebble, as his Flag Captain. Most of the boats had 24-pounder carronades mounted in the bows, and the cutter had a pair of swivel guns besides. And every boat was packed with men – seamen, not Marines – armed with the usual assortment of weaponry. Nathan had issued no particular instructions on the matter but he noted with grim satisfaction that they had followed their brute instincts and favoured the simple over the sophisticated. Pistols and cutlasses, tomahawks and bludgeons, even a sledge hammer: weapons ideally suited to murderous, close-quarter encounters in the dark. Though drawn to the tomahawks – he briefly saw himself ducking and diving and slashing out like an Indian, with one in each hand – Nathan had pitched for a pair of pistols and a cutlass, on the rather depressing grounds that they were more appropriate to his rank. He had placed them in the scuppers beneath his feet where they rested more com fortably than in his belt, which he reserved for a dirk he had borrowed from one of the midshipmen, but he touched them from time to time for reassurance.

  He was missing his own men – the men who had gone down with the Unicorn. On occasions such as these he normally had three self-appointed bodyguards: a giant Irishman called Michael Connor, an equally impressive African called George Banjo, and, most of all, his man-servant, the former highwayman Gilbert Gabriel – known ironically as the Angel Gabriel – who had been his father’s servant before him and who had been looking out for him, more or less, since Nathan was a boy. Gabriel had accompanied him to Venice and there was a chance – a faint chance – that he had avoided the fate of the rest of the crew, though it was as likely he had been strung up as a spy by the agents of the Serene Republic, shortly before it was overrun by the French. Connor had died in a fight very much like the one promised for tonight, watching Nathan’s back as they boarded a French corvette in the dark. Banjo was the most likely survivor of the three, for he had deserted, with Nathan’s connivance, off the island of Corfu. It was unlikely, however, that Nathan would ever see him again and if he did, he would probably be obliged to hang him.

  Nathan dragged his mind back to present realities. The night air was humid; the rowers already gleaming with sweat in the moonlight. Nathan sweltered in his tight uniform coat, but he had found a pair of loose canvas ducks in the slops store which made him more comfortable below the waist, at least, and a pair of seamen’s pumps, the better to keep his footing in the close-quarter encounters he anticipated before the night was much older.

  It was already a little after ten o’clock and the sky did not seem to be getting any darker. From where he sat in the stern of the cutter, he could see along the entire length of the peninsula, which extended in a long, straight line for five miles into the Bay of Cadiz – rather like the needle of a compass, he had reflected earlier when he had studied it on the charts. It pointed exactly NNW, except that at the very end it turned itself into a phallus and swelled impressively before falling away to westward, as if too heavy for its slender stem. At the very tip of this engorgement was the lighthouse of San Sebastian – their main reference-point for the attack.

  They were heading for a spot about 2,500 yards south of this marker, and the same distance west of the peninsula. This, it had been determined, was a blind spot for the batteries defending the city wall. How this had been determined, Nathan had yet to discover. However, he was not overly concerned by the shore batteries. He could do nothing about them – they were not his responsibility – and even on a night as clear as this he doubted if they would hit the smaller boats, except by accident. His sole concern was the fleet of Spanish gunboats waiting for him in the shallows and creeks of the peninsula.

  There was, at present, neither sight nor sound of them. But there were no lights on in the port – no streetlights, no lights in the windows of the houses or taverns: a uniform darkness which could only have been ordained by the Spanish authorities, who clearly knew what was coming. Nathan suspected that most of the gunboats were lurking in the even darker patches below the city walls and the brooding fortress of San Sebastian. He could almost feel the eyes of their crews staring out at him from their invisible vantage as they waited for the order to attack.

  He twisted in his seat again to look back at the Thunder. Lieutenant Gourly had conducted him on a tour of the vessel before they set out and had indicated its salient features with a paternal pride. These, essentially, were the two guns: the 12.5-inch mortar, up forward, and the 10-inch howitzer amidships.

  Normally, the lieutenant had explained, they would carry a pair of mortars. The howitzer was a recent innovation. Something in his tone suggested to Nathan that he did not consider it an improvement.

  ‘But ours is not to reason why,’ he observed coolly.

  The remaining mortar was his particular delight. It was the only naval weapon designed to fire an explosive shell, rather than solid shot, he informed Nathan impressively. This was detonated by a smouldering fuse which could be cut to length depending upon the range required. The maximum range was about a mile and a half, about the same as the 24-pounder long guns of a ship of the line, but unlike these more conventional pieces, the mortar fired in a high trajectory, so high it could clear the most formidable of defences and carry the shell into the heart of the enemy camp – or in this case, city.

  Nathan privately recalled that an earlier term for a mortar was a ‘murtherer’, or murderer.

  ‘So you will be firing at maximum range,’ he had mused in a neutral tone that disguised his earnest wish that every one of the lieutenant’s murdering shells would drop well short of its target. He entertained the insubstantial hope that the mere sound and fury of the attack would succeed in its stated ambition of encourag
ing the Spanish fleet to put to sea without the loss of a single civilian life.

  But the range was not a problem, the lieutenant had assured him – not in a flat calm. At 2,500 yards they should be able to fire every shot into the heart of the city. No, his main concern was the length of the fuse. Exact precision was required to ensure that the shell exploded when it landed, he explained, and not in mid-air. If it exploded in mid-air, the shattered pieces of casing would fall harmlessly into the sea, or onto the rooftops and towers of the port. And if you made the fuse too long, it might be put out by a bucket of water or even by the rubble as it smashed through the roof or walls of a building.

  And we did not want that.

  Ideally it should explode on impact, or within a second or two afterward, distributing the full force of the explosion and a lethal hail of shrapnel into the immediate vicinity.

  This was why bombardment was a highly specialised art of war, he told Nathan. It required a team of trained artillerymen, supplied by the Army, who had the necessary expertise to aim and fire the weapons. The Navy’s job was simply to sail or tow the bomb vessel into position.

  The mortar itself was a short, round weapon, not unlike a carronade but with a much wider bore. It was mounted in a pit on a revolving platform that enabled it to fire in any direction not obscured by the rigging, which was made of chain to withstand the blast of the muzzle. But because it fired at such an acute angle, there was no cabling to harness the recoil. Instead the entire force of the explosion was absorbed by a stout framework of timbers extending deep into the hull.

  The howitzer was more like an ordinary gun, firing solid shot, save that it was designed to fire at a much higher trajectory than a normal gun – though not as high as a mortar and not at so great a distance.

  Nathan had nodded gravely when these details were expounded to him, while disguising his personal disquiet. He knew his feelings were irrational, even hypocritical. Every weapon of war was designed to kill. But somehow, it seemed to him, it was more acceptable to kill someone who was trying to kill you. Raining death and destruction down upon unarmed civilians at a safe distance smacked more of massacre than of honest conflict. But then he supposed its proponents would argue that it was the swiftest way of bringing a conflict to a successful conclusion – and thus saving life in the long run.