A New War

by John G. Cragg

  The possibilities of the two vessels meeting in a short time had faded to the point where Giles felt confident in ordering the galley fire rekindled and a hot dinner provided to the crew. He himself stayed on deck with only a hunk of ship’s bread and a slice of cold beef for sustenance. The tender meat was a reward for his having sent Swan into Falmouth with their previous captures; otherwise he would have had to try to eat salt pork straight out of the barrel. He ordered the wardroom officers to have their dinners before the ship came up to the enemy and hoped that they also had some fresh supplies.

  By one bell of the afternoon watch, the wind began to fill in, still from the south east to Mr. Brooks’ surprise. Before long both vessels were bowling along and studding sails had to be taken in and then Royals. By five bells the ships were close enough that Giles had to think more seriously about his tactics. His position now was such that if he shortened sail or just spilled the wind, l’Hercule, for so the French frigate was named, would have to come up to him with less than a quarter of a cable separating the ships. A bit closer might be desirable, but that distance would be entirely satisfactory for them to exchange broadsides. If his rival wanted to avoid that confrontation he could tack, leaving himself vulnerable if Patroclus also tacked with him. Anyway, if he was going to take that step, he should have done it earlier, since then the consequence of missing stays would be less disastrous and he could equally hope that Patroclus would not come about smoothly. He could wear to cross Patroclus’s wake, possibly hoping to rake Patroclus as he passed. But Patroclus would wear as well and would arrive at as favorable a position, possibly even a better one, than if the French ship had maintained her course.

  The next subject that Giles needed to resolve was how to conduct the battle when he had the French ship in range. The usual procedure would be to exchange broadsides in the hope that the damage done by the guns would open up an advantage. Since British gunnery was usually faster than French, and more accurate, this tactic often yielded an advantage to the British combatant. In this case, Giles was skeptical. His adversary looked to have been at sea for some time, judging by the weather-beaten appearance of her sails and by the clearly foul nature of her bottom which Giles had glimpsed as she had crested waves. Her crew might well be as trained as his own, though he doubted that she had had much practice firing loaded and shotted guns.

  However, if several broadsides were exchanged, it was quite likely that l’Hercule could do very serious damage to Patroclus’s rigging. This might well give the Frenchman a chance to escape if her own rigging was not also seriously damaged. Furthermore, serious damage to Patroclus, even if she still was able to defeat l’Hercule, could quite possibly leave her unfit to meet the ship whose destruction was the purpose of her present cruise. In addition, if l’Hercule was coming from the West Indies, as Giles suspected, it was unlikely that she had a full complement of sailors. That was a luxury unusual in any ship, and a ship that had been in Martinique or Guadeloupe was likely to have suffered serious attrition through illness. Giles’ good fortune in having a full crew would give him an advantage if the fighting came to close quarters.

  In view of these considerations, Giles resolved to fire only an introductory broadside as the ships approached each other and then to pinch up to board l’Hercule. He ordered the guns to be double-shotted with cannon balls for the first broadside and immediately to be reloaded with grapeshot and canister. He instructed that the guns be aimed to sweep the Frenchman’s deck. Giles also told Mr. Brooks, who would have tactical control of Patroclus’s course, to close with the enemy for boarding as soon as the first salvo had fired. These orders given, he instructed his officers to be ready to board as soon as the ships could be grappled together, and then hid a fair portion of his boarding parties from view of the Frenchman, both to protect them from the initial French broadsides and to disguise as much as he could what were his intentions.

  The rails of the two ships should be at just about the same height so his boarders would be able to cross without trouble at midship as soon as the ships touched. Giles commanded Lieutenant Macauley to take his marines to secure the forecastle. Lieutenant Davis would try to secure the waist, while Giles himself would lead the attack on the quarterdeck. Only a minimal crew would be left on board Patroclus. Parties were chosen to grapple the two ships together as they met. Giles had the seamen crouch behind the hammock nettings for their own protection and in the hope that they might be overlooked as the ships approached each other.

  When these arrangements had been made, and the boarding parties armed suitably, there was nothing Giles could do but wait. Patroclus was maintaining little more than steerage way, most of her sails brailed up. The two ships slowly approached their meeting. Giles had done all he could in preparation. Now he could only walk calmly about the quarter deck trying to show no fear even as he was all too aware that he would be the prime target of the marksmen l’Hercule would have stationed in her fighting tops. Time crawled agonizingly for everyone as they waited in silence, interrupted only by muttered prayers from some of the men awaiting action.

  The angle of approach of the two ships meant that Patroclus’s guns came to bear on her opponent first, but Giles held his fire until the broadside would cover most of l’Hercule. By contrast, the later started firing the moment her foremost gun bore, and her rippling broadside sent cannon balls towards the stern third of Patroclus. As was standard for French ships, her broadside was aimed high, intending to shred Patroclus’ rigging and so render her helpless. While the guns caused few casualties directly, it did considerable damage aloft and blocks rained down into the nets spread to catch them. More seriously, one ball glanced off Patroclus mizzenmast, taking a large chunk from it and spreading lethal splinters everywhere.

  Just after the mizzenmast was damaged, Giles bellowed the order to open fire. Now Patroclus’s broadside roared out, aimed at L’Hercule’s bulwarks. As soon as the guns had recoiled, their crews worked feverishly to reload them and haul them out. The loads of grapeshot and canister that followed swept the decks just as the ships met and the grapnels were thrown. L’Hercule’s second broadside roared out moments after Patroclus’s, but again it was high, though the closeness of the range meant that it did much more damage than had the previous one. Patroclus’s grapnels were heaved, the ships pulled together, and Giles’ order of “Away Boarders” sent a hoard of vengeful fighters onto l’Hercule’s deck, all screaming like unoiled hinges as they released the tensions that had built up while they waited. Their onslaught would have done their Viking ancestors proud.

  Giles did not lead the hoard; his need to keep the quarter deck until the last minute prevented that, but he was close behind, unsheathed sword in hand. He was quickly at the front of the attackers, joining the other in his yells, while trying to make sure that his contingent fought their way toward the quarterdeck ladders. Time seemed now to stand still as each separate step of the fight froze in his memory. He countered a slash from a cutlass and then stabbed the man holding it in the belly. A twist of his wrist, and his sword was free, just as he had to duck a roundhouse swing of a club by a giant Frenchman. His opponent’s miss had swung the attacker around and Giles dispatched him with a thrust in his neck and a boot in his behind to clear the way. A man filling the gap left by the giant had his wrist severed by a slash from Humphry’s sabre while Giles completed the destruction by landing the pommel of his sword on the man’s head. Kicking the body aside, he perceived a path had opened up to the ladder to the quarter deck and pushed ahead, his flanks luckily being guarded by Humphries on his left and someone to his right whom Giles had not had time to recognize in the heat of the struggle. An opponent trying to hold the ladder with slashes of a cutlass, striking down viciously at Giles whose own momentum was halted by the need to parry the slashes and the thrusts from above, suddenly toppled forward with a thrown knife lodged in his throat. Only a desperate step to his left saved Giles from going down under the man, and the bulk of Humphries to his left kept
him from being toppled over.

  Giles sprang up the ladder and a thrust and a slash from his sword carried him to the top. He was confronted by a group of officers with drawn swords. Seeing Giles emerge and hearing the bloodthirsty shouts of the men following him, the leading French officer stepped back, lowered his blade and bellowed some order that Giles did not understand. But the substance of the order was clear as the other officers lowered their weapons and bellowed to their crewmen.

  “We surrender. We surrender.” Shouted a junior officer at the rear of the group of French officers. “We ‘aul down hour couleurs.”

  Giles in turn shouted to his men that the French had yielded and that they should cease fighting. He stood leaning on his sword breathing heavily as the hub-bub died down. Then he stepped forward to accept the sword of the man whose uniform, more elaborate that the other ones, marked him as the enemy captain. Giles reversed the sword and gave it back to the captain with the words, “You fought well, Captain. I will be happy to accept your parole and those of your officers so that you need not suffer the indignity of being bound until we can straighten things out.” The French officer with a smattering of English translated the remarks

  Lieutenant Macauley showed up at this point, followed by Mr. Davies. They were instructed to secure the ship and its crew and did so with the aid of translations by the French officer who understood English. With the enemy ship secured, Giles went down the ladder from the quarter deck. He was horrified by the number of dead bodies littering the deck, some the result of Patroclus’s second broadside, others of the hand-to-hand combat. Crossing to Patroclus, there were few dead bodies, the ones that were lying on the deck probably the result of the splinters that showered the decks when l’Hercule’s second broadside fired. Mr. Brooks already had men aloft splicing rigging that had been severed in the fight. The carpenter and boatswain with their mates were examining the mizzenmast. Giles went to them.

  “How does it look?”

  “It’s badly weakened, sir. Almost broken. We can fish timber around it, probably using some of our spare yards, but it will not be able to carry a full set of sails in any type of a blow. Setting the rigging up tighter and doubling it would help, but she still will not be able to take the full load, nor will she bear much tension coming from the mainmast.”

  “Do the best you can, Mr. Hendricks.”

  “Aye, aye, sir. I’ve had a quick look at l’Hercule, sir. Her larboard side will need to be rebuilt, but she can sail as she is, pretty much. But what we can do out here will not avoid the need for a shipyard.”

  “Can she make it to Falmouth the way she is?”

  “Certainly sir. And fight, sir, if she had to. I just would be cautious about anything that might swamp the larboard side.”

  “Carry on, then. I hope to get both ships under way before dark.”

  Dr. Maclean was waiting to get Giles’s attention.

  “Have you been across to l’Hercule, Doctor?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “What’s the butcher’s bill?”

  “We lost ten, sir. Three on board here and seven on the other ship. There are another fifteen injured. Two of them may not make it. The French lost far more. Their doctor is looking after their wounded, but since I am finished here, I will go back and help him.”

  “We’ll bury our dead as soon as we’ve made the most urgent repairs. Can you tell Mr. Davies that the French can give their dead a proper burial if they wish and not just throw the corpses overboard?”

  “Aye, aye, Captain, but you yourself are bleeding. Your left arm.”

  Giles looked at his arm. He had been feeling some discomfort from it, but had just presumed that it had been bruised. Now he saw that his sleeve had been slashed above the elbow and that blood was oozing out of the hole in the cloth.

  “I’ll have it looked to when everything else is complete.”

  “No, you won’t, sir. That is the way the putrification sets in. Take off your coat and shirt, please.”

  Giles complied, finding that the pain increased markedly when he had to pull his sleeve away from the wound.

  “Just as I thought,” said the Doctor. “I’ll clean it and sew it up and you’ll be right as rain.”

  Dr. Maclean was none too gentle as he cleaned the wound, making sure that no foreign matter still remained in it. He finished by pouring rum onto the injury. His sewing needle felt as if it was in need of sharpening. When the doctor completed his procedure by having Giles raise his arm so that more rum could be poured over the wound before bandaging it, Giles felt much more injured than when Dr. Maclean’s ministrations had started. He realized again the high price that even those who were mildly wounded paid as a result of his decision to chase and engage the enemy.

  By three bells of the first dog watch, the ships had both been readied to sail again. Giles had held a service for the burial of those whom Patroclus had lost and he had allowed the French officers to attend a similar service on board l’Hercule, a service that was closely overseen by Patroclus‘s marines and many of her crew members also heavily armed. He had decided to send l’Hercule into Falmouth accompanied by Swan, but with one important difference. Commander Stevens would act as captain of l’Hercule while his own lieutenant would assume temporary command of Swan. The arrangement had been made to prevent Davis from being absent from Patroclus since Giles was so short of lieutenants. Another reason for the appointment was the hope that it might help Stevens to be posted. The man had already done handsomely in prize money from his voyage with Patroclus, but his role would have done little to advance his career. Even temporary command of a frigate might catch the eye of someone involved in raising commanders to captains.

  Giles had decided to keep Patroclus on station. His ability to chase enemy ships had been compromised by the damage to the mizzenmast. However, Patroclus was still a swift ship. Except in very rough weather, she could outrun any French 64. The vessel he sought had in the past clearly not shied away from British frigates. If Patroclus could find her, Giles was confident that she would be as keen as he was to engage.

  The only difficulty in executing Giles’ plan was that Patroclus was still unable to find the enemy ship. Five days passed without sighting anything hopeful. Swan returned with Patroclus’s prize crew. She also brought a dozen more volunteers who had approached Commander Stevens, indicating that they would volunteer for the navy, but only if they were to serve with Giles. When Stevens came aboard, he was full of amazement at Giles’s ability to attract crew. Such a quality was unheard of.

  At Dawn on the sixth morning after the capture of l’Hercule a call from the masthead announced that four sails were in sight one point off the larboard bow, with just topsails showing so far. Patroclus was scudding along on a broad reach driven by a northwest wind. She was carrying all plain sail to the topsails, with the exception that the mizzen topsail was furled to ease the strain on the weakened mast. Giles knew that Patroclus could safely carry more sail, and ordered the main and foremast royals unfurled. They appeared to be catching up with the group when the ship closest to them, which had been recognized as a frigate, tacked and headed toward Patroclus. She was certainly French built, and she looked surprisingly like Patroclus.

  Giles ordered a change of course that should bring Patroclus as directly as possible to the distant group. Minutes later, the distant frigate came onto a course heading to intercept Patroclus. Each ship was on a reach and they were closing rapidly. Giles gave the command to clear for action and ordered Swan to come within hailing distance so that he could order her to stay clear of the approaching enemy, and to try to determine where the other vessels were going. Swan shook out a couple of reefs that had held her off Patroclus’s quarter and surged well to windward of the approaching frigate. With the two vessels so equal, each making the same leeway, it appeared that they were destined to crash into each other, bow to bow. The powerful bow chasers that each mounted meant that if either flinched, the other could pound her with cannon
fire that could not be returned immediately. That would also happen if either ship’s bow chasers damaged the other’s rigging in such a way that the victim slewed aside. If that didn’t happen, a battle of broadsides might ensue, to be continued until one ship or the other was unable to continue or until both were reduced to helpless hulks. The alternative to engaging in this battle, if the exchanges of broadsides had still not given one or the other an overwhelming advantage, was to grapple and take one’s chances boarding. Giles could not presume that his opponent was short of crew members. If she were a privateer rather than a naval vessel, she might indeed have a larger crew than Patroclus. If it came to hand-to hand combat, should Patroclus actually board the enemy, or should she play the defensive role? Taking into account his damaged foremast, Giles decided that the grappling objective must be pursued, and he felt that the violence, more suitable to berserkers than to ordinary sailors, which his crew had shown in taking l’Hercule, warranted his taking the attacker’s role.