Dead Man's Island

by David McDine

  If Clay and his mate could not break the chains quickly there was no prospect whatsoever of cutting the brig out and towing her away.

  Nor, he cursed, did they have the means to set the vessel on fire.

  Worse, French boats were bringing more soldiers from the inner harbour and they were about to board the vessel’s shore side.

  Hoover’s shout made the decision for him. ‘The other boats are pulling away!’

  Anson realised that there was no choice: they had to withdraw – and rejoin their own boats immediately or risk certain death or capture.

  He had no idea what was happening elsewhere. His world was now the few yards he could see on the deck of the French ship.

  He shouted above the din: ‘Back to the boats, men!’ and, with Hoover at his side, began prodding a small group of prisoners towards the large hole in the boarding nets.

  Musket balls from the ship astern were screaming across the deck, and Anson knew that if they did not leave immediately the rest of his boarding party would be wiped out – dead meat.

  He crouched low and dashed for the side. Hoover was leading the way, prodding the French prisoners with his bayonet. They would be required back in England for intelligence.

  As the marine forced the Frenchmen down into the boat, Anson looked around to check that he was the last to leave. But as he prepared to jump he saw a French officer rise from behind a mast and aim a pistol at him. Something struck his shoulder, spun him round and he staggered and fell into the boat, striking his head on the thwarts as he landed.

  The coxswain was desperately trying to man the oars, but there were gaps where rowers had disobeyed their orders and followed the boarders attacking the lugger – or had been hit by musket fire where they sat.

  Hoover shouted: ‘Hobbs! Put these Frogs to the oars. They’ll row if the men behind ’em show them a cutlass!’

  The coxswain grabbed the nearest prisoner and shoved him towards an abandoned oar, shouting ‘Allez, allez!’ Two more were pressed into service but he motioned the fourth, who was clutching an ugly head wound, to crouch in the thwarts.

  Anson was on his back there, bleeding profusely and near fainting from the pain.

  Hoover shouted to the coxswain: ‘Let’s get the hell out of here or we’re all dead men!’

  41

  “Row Like Hell!”

  Joe Hobbs had needed no encouragement. He and the nearest rowers cast off the grappling irons and pushed against the side of the French vessel to free the gunboat from its embrace.

  Once clear, he yelled: ‘Dip oars and row like hell!’

  After a few chaotic moments, with the prisoners all awry, the rowers achieved some sort of rhythm and pulled slowly and awkwardly away from the cordon of French ships.

  As they did, a curtain of mortar fire from the British flotilla came arching overhead and found targets all along the enemy line.

  Hoover crouched over Anson and put his mouth to the officer’s ear. ‘Are you hurt bad, sir?’ But Anson could only shake his head weakly. ‘What about our boys?’

  ‘Dunno yet. Two or three have been hit at their oars—’

  ‘The boarders?’

  ‘I saw several marines and one or two of our men fall but some got back wounded.’

  ‘Mister Shrubb?’

  ‘He’s already working on them. I’ll get him to take a look at you.’

  Anson shook his head. ‘No need. I’ll be fine—’

  ‘I gotta disagree with you there. Just look at all the blood …’ He unbuttoned the officer’s jacket but when he tried to take it off Anson winced at the pain and fainted.

  When he came to he was still lying in the thwarts but his head was now pillowed on his own bloodied jacket, his left shoulder swathed in bandages and Phineas Shrubb was kneeling beside him.

  The intensity of gunfire and counter-fire had slackened and musketry had ceased. At least they had made it out of small arms’ range.

  ‘Mister Shrubb,’ he croaked, ‘how long have I been out?’

  ‘A good while. It’s the loss of so much blood, you see? Sergeant Hoover saved you. He used his own shirt to plug the wound and stop the worst of the bleeding.’

  ‘I’ll make a note to buy him a new one—’

  ‘You’ll be making no notes for a while, and I’m afraid we had to cut your jacket off …

  ‘No matter, it was only my second best.’

  ‘But the good news is that I’ve fished the pistol ball out along with a bit of splintered bone. You’ve also acquired a nasty cut alongside your mouth. It’ll require stitching but that’s best left to my daughter to work on once we’re on dry land.’

  ‘So I’ll live?’

  ‘I see from your other scars that it’s not the first time you’ve been wounded. Yes, you’ll live, God willing …’

  ‘What about the men?’

  ‘Two of our fencibles and a marine dead in the boat, a dozen with wounds of some sort, several serious. One will most likely lose a leg and another an arm, but the butchery will have to wait until we’re ashore. Oh, and one of the captured Frenchmen has a very serious head wound. I fear he won’t make it.’

  ‘Thank you, Mister Shrubb. You’d best attend to them, but can you send Sergeant Hoover to me?’

  The American appeared at his side. ‘Back in the land of the living, sir?’

  ‘Barely. I feel very light-headed and the pain seems to come over me in waves, but Shrubb tells me I’ll live. Can you put me back in the picture?’

  ‘The firing seems to be tailing off and one of our ships, a frigate I think, has just taken us in tow. I reckon we’re already heading for the Kent coast. But the boys say they’ll row back and have another go if you want.’

  ‘How many have we lost?’

  Hoover hesitated as if he was unwilling to impart bad news to someone in Anson’s weakened condition. ‘I make it eight or nine from our two boats missing from the boarding parties, most of them marines we’d embarked. Several of ’em were killed, I saw, but at least some might just have been wounded and taken prisoner. We’ve got four of theirs, by the by.’

  ‘And Shrubb tells me we’ve three dead in the boat – and a good many wounded?’

  ‘Correct. We didn’t put the dead men over the side. Phineas reckoned you’d want to take ’em home for a proper burial.’

  Anson nodded. It was what he wanted. ‘How many of them are our own boys?’

  ‘Fencibles? Most of ’em did as they were told and stayed at their oars, but no-one knows what happened to Rogers. He’s not here now, that’s for sure.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Hogben’s dead, hit in the head by a musket ball I reckon, and Brooke lost an arm and has just snuffed it – bled to death.’

  Wincing from the pain of his wounds as well as this sad news, Anson muttered hoarsely: ‘I’m sorry to lose them – all good men. I’ll take a look at the wounded when I’ve caught my breath.’

  ‘No, sir. Mister Shrubb says you’re to stay still.’

  Anson tried to sit up but a wave of pain engulfed him and he sank back, eyes closed and teeth gritted.

  When the pain subsided he whispered: ‘We didn’t do very well, Tom. The raid, I mean, and there’s not much glory in defeat.’

  It was the first time the American could remember the officer calling him by his first name and he was touched. He shook his head slowly. ‘The boys were brave enough and we went for it, but it appears the currents sent the other boats every which way. I reckon some of them didn’t get anywhere near the French ships, and, like us, those that did couldn’t break those damn chains.’

  ‘Clay broke one before he was wounded, but maybe the other boats didn’t have blacksmiths’ tools—’

  ‘And there’s no way you can bust a chain with an axe.’

  ‘My eyes are stinging, Tom. Can you …?’

  ‘Sure.’ Hoover found a clean remnant of his discarded shirt, dipped it over the side and wiped the blood, sweat and burnt cork from around Anson’s
eyes.

  ‘Thank you, Tom. I just hope Hoare did warn Nelson about the chains and it wasn’t that that caused this disaster. Hurel and I risked our lives getting that information. If Hoare’s to blame for this fiasco I swear I’ll kill him.’

  Hoover made to respond but then noticed that Anson had drifted off once more.

  *

  The return to the Downs anchorage was a blur to Anson and it was Hoover who saw to all the arrangements – sending the wounded to the naval hospital at Deal, and handing over the surviving French prisoners.

  He also prepared the returns of casualties and details required by the admiral’s staff to enable them to piece together the full picture of the action.

  The American handled it all with the help of Boxer, who had come over from Seagate with Sarah Shrubb in anticipation.

  There was conveyance of bodies to arrange, too – Boxer, the undertaker’s daily business. And he excelled at it.

  On Phineas Shrubb’s instructions, his daughter stitched Anson’s torn face as neatly as if she were embroidering a sampler. ‘You will have a slightly lop-sided smile,’ she told him, ‘but otherwise you will be as handsome as ever.’

  For the first time in many an hour he exercised that smile, lop-sided or not, although the pain from stretching the stitches discouraged him from repeating the exercise.

  42

  Aftermath

  A young, fresh-faced marine came seeking the Seagate boats and Hoover quizzed him: ‘What d’you want, son?’

  ‘There’s a gent asking after a Lieutenant Anson. He’s got a young lady in tow, sergeant.’

  Hoover assumed this could be Anson’s father and perhaps one of his sisters. ‘Bring ’em along, lad. You’ll probably get sixpence for your trouble.’

  ‘Thanks, sergeant.’ And indicating Anson, he asked: ‘That’s him is it? Wounded is he?’

  ‘That’s him – and as you can see for yourself he’s been in the wars.’

  ‘Right, only the old gent asked if I could find out if he’s dead or alive, so I’ll tell him he’s just half dead, shall I?’

  Hoover raised an eyebrow. ‘Make that half alive, son. Don’t want to upset his next of skin, do we?’

  But it was not the Reverend Anson and one of his daughters, but Josiah Parkin and his niece Cassandra who returned with the young marine.

  They were horrified to see the state Anson was in, lying on the shingle by the beached boat, his head pillowed on his bloodied jacket and blood seeping through the bandages around his shoulder.

  His face was still smeared with blood and cork-black, and he was deathly pale. The stitches in his face wound had pulled one side of his mouth into a clownish grin.

  Parkin could not help exclaiming: ‘Dear God! What on earth’s happened to you, my dear fellow?’

  Cassandra fell to her knees beside him, tears in her eyes, and put her ear close to his mouth to hear him murmur: ‘I had a bit of a set-to with some Frenchmen – and they came off best.’

  She took his hand, but quickly dropped it, concerned that any movement might cause him pain, and resorted instead to gently wiping cork-blacking and dried blood from his face.

  Hoover told the old gentleman: ‘We heard someone was looking for the lieutenant, sir. Thought it might be his father.’

  ‘The Reverend Anson? No, no. I am acquainted with him, but, no, I don’t believe he is here. I am an old friend of poor Oliver. We heard some action was afoot and that the Sea Fencibles were involved. The whole county is awash with talk of Nelson and his exploits. So we came to Deal to discover what had become of Oliver, here.’

  Hoover nodded. ‘We’re waiting right now for the surgeons to tell us where they’re going to take him – probably the hospital if it’s not already full.’

  ‘So he has just been left here – on the beach without medical attention?’

  ‘Our surgeon’s mate, Mister Shrubb, and his daughter have been looking after him, but there’s a good many dead and wounded so they’ve had to move on to help others.’

  Parkin was beside himself. ‘Look, sergeant …?’

  ‘Hoover, sir, master-at-arms of the Seagate Sea Fencibles.’

  ‘Ah, Hoover! I thought I recognised the trace of a New England accent. Lieutenant Anson has spoken of you as his most trusted man. Look, Sergeant Hoover, my niece and I have taken rooms near where the admiral has had some of his wounded officers taken. Please help me to take Lieutenant Anson there where he can be looked after properly.’

  Cassandra looked up, her tear-filled eyes pleading, and Hoover turned to a group of the Seagate men who were listening in.

  ‘You heard, men, this gentleman’s a friend of our officer and he’s got somewhere better’n the beach to take him. Double away and find a stretcher and if you can’t find one get hold of a sail and we’ll carry him on that. Be quick about it now!’

  A sail it was. They folded it to stretcher length and Hoover supervised as they lifted Anson on it with great care.

  ‘Now, when I give the word, lift away together and follow this gentleman and lady to their accommodation. Ready? Gently now – lift!’

  Once in the sail, Anson whispered to Hoover: ‘Tom, you’ll look after Ebony for me?’

  ‘Sure I will.’

  Parkin, who had been watching anxiously, shook the American’s hand. ‘Thank you, sergeant, I am greatly obliged to you, as I’m sure Lieutenant Anson will be.’

  He turned and led the way with the temporary stretcher-bearers following behind and Cassandra trailing, clearly distressed, alongside the wounded man.

  *

  That night, as the British ships lay anchored off Deal, the rest of the wounded were sent ashore to hospital, the less serious cases to lodging houses. Nelson rented rooms in Middle Street for his particular friends Parker and Lieutenant Frederick Langford.

  And as the fog of war began to clear, fuller details of what had occurred emerged.

  Captain Somerville’s scattered division had managed to reform and launched a ferocious attack on La Surprise which was resisted just as fiercely.

  Captain Cotgrave’s division had attacked a brig but as his own boat bumped alongside, French sailors heaved a cannonball over the side crushing some of his men and smashing through the bottom.

  A third division was swept past Boulogne by the tide and could not attack for another three hours – then took a brig, found that she was unmovable and, when daylight came, the boats were driven off by gunfire from other French ships and from shore.

  The last division was carried so far past its objective that it never went into action.

  It had been a decisive defeat. Nothing had been accomplished and the cost was heavy with 18 officers and 172 seamen and marines killed or wounded in the boats.

  The admiral sat in his cabin beside the curved row of windows across the stern of Medusa and wrote to the First Lord of the Admiralty:

  “I am sorry to tell you that I have not succeeded in bringing out or destroying the enemy’s flotilla moored in the mouth of the harbour of Boulogne. The most astonishing bravery was evinced by many of our officers and men …

  We have lost upwards of 100 killed and wounded …

  Dear little Parker, his thigh very much shattered; I have fears for his life.”

  *

  Funerals of the other young officers were held in Deal and crowds gathered to watch Nelson following the coffins with tears on his lined cheeks.

  The admiral was unfairly criticised for not accompanying the boats himself and a pensioner was quoted as saying: “Tho’ I daresay everything was done that could be done without him – had he gone in, the boats, the chains and all would have come out along with him.”

  The Naval Chronicle printed a single verse:

  “Exult not, France, that NELSON’s vengeful blow,

  Has not, as usual, thy destruction gain’d;

  Say what you will, this truth the world must know,

  Altho’ unconquer’d, you were left enchained.”

 
; It was true, as Anson was later able to console himself – that despite fighting off the attack the French remained well and truly bottled up in Boulogne, prisoners there of their own making.

  Captain Parker was to linger on for more than a month. At his funeral six captains bore his coffin through the streets of Deal and Nelson followed, weeping.

  *

  The room was familiar. It was where Anson had first stayed while convalescing at Ludden Hall from a fever during the mutiny and again when he had brought Hurel here just a few weeks ago. Weeks that seemed like months.

  But now there was something different about the room.

  Two large coloured prints of naval battles graced the walls alongside the antiquarian pictures that were there before, and there were two pretty vases of wild flowers, one on the washstand and another on the window sill. Cassandra’s work, he guessed.

  He dozed and when he awoke again she was sitting by his bed, a book on her lap.

  ‘Mister Anson – Oliver. So you are awake at last?’ It was the first time she had addressed him by his first name.

  He was conscious of a throbbing pain in his shoulder and when he tried to speak one side of his mouth wouldn’t function as normal.

  She noticed his puzzled look and said softly: ‘You have stitches in your face. When they’re taken out you will be able to speak normally – and without pain.’

  He managed to croak: ‘You brought me here from Deal?’

  ‘Uncle Josiah arranged it. You lay there mostly unconscious for two days, but then we thought it best to bring you home. The navy know where you are and so does your family.’

  ‘And my fencibles?’

  ‘Yes, and your fencibles. Now, the doctor is in the study with my uncle and left strict instructions that he is to be called the minute you awake.’

  The doctor examined him thoroughly and appeared satisfied with Anson’s condition.

  ‘It is plain that you have been through the wars, young man, but your shoulder wound shows no signs of mortification. I daresay it will exhibit some stiffness for years to come, but so be it. I suppose this is the kind of thing you must expect if you insist on continuing to put yourself in mortal danger.’