He walked back to the fort, where the flag still flew. The harbor was a sudden cauldron of noise as more guns filled the shallow basin with smoke and, as Moore reached the fort’s entrance, he saw why. Three enemy ships were under foresails and topsails, and they were sailing straight for the harbor.
They were coming to finish the job.
Commodore Saltonstall had promised to engage the enemy shipping with gunfire and so had cleared the Warren for action. Fog had prevented an engagement at first light and once that fog lifted there was a further delay because the Charming Sally, one of the privateers that would support the Warren, had a fouled anchor, but at last Captain Holmes solved the problem by buoying the anchor cable and casting it overboard, and so the three ships sailed slowly eastwards on the light wind. The commodore planned to sail into the harbor mouth and there use the frigate’s powerful broadside to batter the three enemy sloops. The heaviest British guns on those sloops were nine-pounders, while the Warren had twelve- and eighteen-pounders, guns that would mangle British timber and British flesh. The commodore would have liked nothing more than to have used those big guns on the thirty-two impudent men who had dared send him a letter which, though expressed in the politest words, implicitly accused him of cowardice. How dare they! He shook with suppressed anger as he recalled the letter. There were times, the commodore thought, when the notion that all men were created equal led to nothing but insolence.
He turned to see that the Black Prince and Charming Sally were following his frigate. The battery on Cross Island was already firing at the three British sloops which now barricaded the harbor’s center. There was water at either end of the British line, but the larger transport ships had been moored to block those shallow channels. Not that Saltonstall had any intention of piercing or flanking Mowat’s ships; he simply wanted to keep the Royal Marines on board the enemy sloops while Lovell assaulted the fort.
The wind was slight. Saltonstall had ordered battle-sails, which meant his two big courses, the mainsail and foresail, were furled onto their yards so that their canvas would not block the view forrard. He had kept the staysail furled for the same reason, so the Warren was being driven by flying jib, jib, and topsails. She went slowly, creeping ever closer to the narrow entrance between Cross Island and Dyce’s Head, which was now in American hands. Saltonstall could see the green coats of his marines on that height. They were watching the Warren and evidently cheering because they waved their hats towards the frigate.
The three British sloops had been shooting towards the rebel battery on Cross Island until they saw the topsails loosed on the enemy ships, when they had immediately ceased fire so that their guns could be levered round to point at the harbor mouth. Every cannon was double-shotted so that two round shots would be fired by each gun in the first broadside. The Warren, by far the largest warship in the Penobscot River, looked huge as she loomed in the entrance narrows. Captain Mowat, standing on the Albany’s afterdeck, was surprised that only three ships were approaching, though he was more than sensible that three ships were sufficient. Still, he reckoned, if he had commanded the rebel fleet he would have sent every available vessel in an irresistible and overwhelming attack. He trained his glass on the Warren, noting that there were no marines on her forecastle, which suggested the frigate was not planning to try and board his sloops. Maybe the marines were hiding? The frigate’s cutwater appeared huge in his glass. He collapsed the tubes and nodded to his first lieutenant. “You may open fire,” Mowat said.
Mowat’s three sloops had twenty-eight guns in their combined broadsides, a mix of nine- and six-pounders, and all of them shot two balls at the Warren. The noise of the guns filled the wide basin of Penobscot Bay while the Half Moon Battery, which had been dug into the harbor slope west of the fort, added her four twelve-pounders. All of those round shot were aimed at the Warren’s bows, and the frigate shuddered under their massive blows. “You will return the fire, Mister Fenwick!” Saltonstall shouted at his first lieutenant, and Fenwick gave the order, but the only guns that the Warren could use were its two nine-pounder bow-chasers, which fired together to shroud the rearing bowsprit with smoke. The Warren’s bows were being splintered by round shot, the impacts sending shock waves through the hull. A man was screaming in the fo’c’sle, a sound that irritated Saltonstall.
His ship palpably slowed under the constant blows. Dudley Saltonstall, standing next to the impassive helmsman, could hear timbers splintering. He was not an imaginative man, but it suddenly struck him that this vicious, concentrated gunfire was an expression of British anger against the rebels who had captured the high ground of their peninsula. Defeated on land they were revenging themselves with cannon-fire, well-aimed, brisk and efficient cannon-fire, and Saltonstall seethed with anger that his fine ship should be its victim. A twelve-pounder ball, fired from the harbor shore, struck a forrard nine-pounder, shearing its breech lines, shattering a trunnion, and slaughtering two crewmen whose blood spattered twenty feet across the deck. A spew of intestines lay like an untidy rope in the ugly bloodstain. The nine-pounder sagged in its carriage. One man had lost half his head, the other had been eviscerated by the ball, which had lost its volition and come to rest by the starboard gangway.
“Swab the deck!” Saltonstall shouted. “Be lively!” A lieutenant called for seamen to fetch buckets of water, but before they could wash the sprawling blood from the scrubbed planks, the commodore shouted again. “Belay that order!”
Mister Fenwick, the first lieutenant, stared at Saltonstall. The commodore was famous for keeping a spanking clean ship, yet he had reversed the order to swab the deck? “Sir?” Fenwick called uncertainly.
“Leave it be,” Saltonstall insisted. He half-smiled to himself. An idea had occurred to him and he liked it. “Throw that offal overboard,” he gestured to the spilled intestines, “but leave the blood.”
A twelve-pounder ball struck the mainmast with enough force to make the canvas of the big maintopsail quiver. Saltonstall watched the mast, wondering if it would fall, but the great spar held. “Summon the carpenter, Mister Coningsby,” he ordered.
“Aye aye, sir,” Midshipman Fanning, resigned to being called Coningsby, answered.
“I want a report on the mainmast. Don’t just stand there! Look lively!”
Fanning ran to a companionway to find the ship’s carpenter who, he suspected, would be somewhere forrard surveying the damage that was being done to the Warren’s bows where most of the enemy shots were slamming into the frigate. A nine-pounder ball slashed the shrouds of the spritsail yard so that it dangled into the water, though luckily the spritsail itself was not bent onto the spar and so the canvas could not drag in the water to slow the Warren even more. The jibboom was cut through and the remnant of the bowsprit was being held by only one shroud, and still the cannon-balls crashed home. Lieutenant Fenwick had six men retrieving the spritsail yard and one of them suddenly turned with an astonished expression and no left arm, just a ragged bloody stump that was gushing blood. The wind of the ball buffeted Fenwick and spattered him with blood. “Put a tourniquet on that,” he ordered, marveling that he sounded so calm, but the wounded man, before anyone could help him, fell sideways into the water and another six-pounder ball gouged along the gunwale to plow out long, sharp splinters that flickered across the deck. The ship shuddered again and blood oozed along the seams between the deck planking. A shot struck the waterline, spraying the forecastle with cold seawater, and then Fenwick was aware that the Warren was turning, turning so slowly, lumbering around to starboard so her larboard broadside could be brought to bear on the enemy. Marines were cheering the frigate from Dyce’s Head, but that was small consolation as two more shots ripped into her hull. One of the big elm pumps was working now, its crew working the long levers so that water gushed rhythmically over the Warren’s side. A man was whimpering somewhere, but Fenwick could not see him. “Throw that overboard,” he snapped, pointing to the severed arm.
The frigate was turning wit
h agonizing slowness, but her bows were at last pointed at the harbor’s southern side and her powerful broadside could return the British cannonade. The commodore ordered the frigate’s big guns to open fire as soon as the slow turn brought the Half Moon Battery abreast of his broadside, and the noise of those cannons drowned the universe as they roared at the British emplacement. Smoke billowed as high as the furled mainyard. The guns recoiled, their trucks momentarily leaving the deck until the breech ropes took the strain. Water hissed into steam as gunners swabbed barrels. A twelve-pounder shot slashed across the poop deck, miraculously doing no damage except to a bucket that was shattered into a thousand pieces. “Fire as you bear!” Saltonstall called, meaning that his gunners should fire as soon as the ship had turned sufficiently to bring the guns to bear on the enemy sloops, though the gunners were so obstructed by their own smoke that they could scarcely see the enemy, who, in turn, were smothered by their own powder smoke, which constantly renewed itself as the flames spat through the cloud to punch more shots at the frigate.
“The carpenter says he’ll look at the mainmast as soon as he can, sir!” Midshipman Fanning had to shout to make himself heard over the gunfire.
“As soon as he can?” Saltonstall repeated angrily.
“The bows are holed, sir, he says he’s plugging it.”
Saltonstall grunted and a six-pounder shot, fired from HMS Albany, hit Fanning in the groin. He screamed and fell. Bone was showing ivory-white in the mangled remnants of his hip. He was staring up at Saltonstall, teeth bared, screaming, and his blood was sticky on the ship’s wheel. “Mother,” Fanning whimpered, “Mother!”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Saltonstall muttered.
“You two!” the helmsman called to two crewmen crouching by the portside rail. “Take the boy below.”
“Mother,” Fanning was crying. “Mother.” He reached out a hand and gripped the lower wheel. “Oh, Mother!”
“Fire!” Saltonstall shouted at his gun crews, not because they needed the order, but because he did not want to listen to the boy’s pathetic crying, which, thankfully and abruptly, faded to nothing.
“He’s dead,” one of the crewmen said, “poor little bastard.”
“Watch your tongue!” Saltonstall snarled, “and take Mister Coningsby away.”
“Take him away.” The helmsman pointed at Fanning, realizing that the seamen had been confused by the commodore’s order. He stooped and prised the dead boy’s grasp from the wheel.
The Warren’s guns were firing at the enemy sloops now, but the frigate’s crew was raw. Few of the men were regular sailors, most had been pressed from the wharves of Boston and they served the guns much more slowly than the British sailors. The frigate’s fire did more damage because her guns were heavier, but for every shot the Warren fired she received six. Another ball hit the bowsprit, almost splintering it into two long shards, then a twelve-pounder hit the mainmast again and the long spar wavered dangerously before being held by the shrouds. “Furl the maintopsail!” Saltonstall called to the second lieutenant. He needed to take the pressure off the damaged mast or else it would go overboard and he would be a floating wreck under the pounding of the British guns. He saw smoke jet from the fort on the skyline and saw a rent appear in his foretopgallant sail. “Take in the foresails! Mister Fenwick!” Saltonstall called through a speaking trumpet. The jibs and staysail would pull the damaged bowsprit to pieces unless they were furled. A round shot from the Half Moon Battery thumped hard into the hull, shaking the shrouds.
The two privateers had not followed the Warren into the harbor’s mouth, but instead stood just outside the entrance and fired past the frigate at the distant sloops. So the Warren was taking almost all of the British cannon-fire and Saltonstall knew he could not just stay and be shot to splinters. “Mister Fenwick! Launch two longboats! Tow the bows round!”
“Aye aye, sir!”
“We kept their marines busy,” Saltonstall muttered. That had been the arrangement, that his ships would threaten the British line and so keep the Royal Marines away from the fort, which, he assumed, General Lovell was even now attacking. It should all be over by midday, he reckoned, and there was small point in taking any more casualties and so he would retreat. He needed to turn the frigate in the narrow space and because the wind was fitful he had men tow the Warren’s head around. British cannon-balls exploded great spouts of water about the heaving oarsmen, but none of the shots struck the longboats, which at last succeeded in turning the Warren westwards. Saltonstall dared not set the jib, flying jib, or staysail because even this small wind would exert enough pressure on those sails to pull his damaged bowsprit to pieces, and so he relied on the longboats to tow the frigate to safety. The men hauled on their oars and slowly, persistently hammered by British round shot, the Warren edged her way back into the wider bay.
Saltonstall heard a cheer from the three British sloops. The commodore sneered at the sound. The fools thought they had beaten his powerful frigate, but he had never planned to engage them closely, merely to keep their marines aboard while Lovell assaulted the fort. A last shot slashed into the water to spray the quarterdeck, then the Warren was towed north under the lee of Dyce’s Head and so out of sight of the impudent enemy. The two forrard anchors were let go, the oarsmen in the longboats rested, and the guns were housed. It was time to make repairs.
Peleg Wadsworth crouched opposite the captured highlander who was sitting with his back against a bullet-scarred beech tree. The prisoner had been found hiding in a thick stand of brush, perhaps hoping to sneak his way back to Fort George, but he would have found any escape difficult because he had been struck in his calf by a musket-ball. The ball had mangled his flesh, but it had missed the bone and the doctor with the Lincoln County militia had reckoned the man would live if the wound did not turn gangrenous. “You’re to keep the wound bandaged,” Wadsworth said, “and keep the bandage damp. You understand that?”
The man nodded. He was a tall youngster, perhaps eighteen or nineteen years old, with raven-black hair, pale skin, dark eyes, and an expression of befuddlement, as if he had no comprehension of what fate had just done to him. He kept looking from Wadsworth to James Fletcher, then back to Wadsworth again. He had been stripped of his red coat and wore nothing but shirt and kilt. “Where are you from, soldier?” Wadsworth asked.
The man answered, but his accent was so strong that even when he repeated the name Wadsworth did not understand. “You’ll be properly looked after,” Wadsworth said. “In time you’ll go to Boston.” The man spoke again, though what he said was impossible to tell. “When the war is over,” Wadsworth said slowly, as if he was talking to someone who did not speak English. He assumed the Scotsman did, but he was not sure. “When the war is over you will go home. Unless, of course, you choose to stay here. America welcomes good men.”
James Fletcher offered the prisoner a canteen of water which the man took and drank greedily. His lips were stained by the powder from the cartridges he had bitten during the fight, and tearing the cartridges open with the teeth left a man’s mouth dry as dust. He handed back the canteen and asked a question that neither Fletcher nor Wadsworth could understand or answer. “Can you stand?” Wadsworth asked.
The man answered by standing up, though he winced when he put any weight on his injured left leg. “Help him down to the beach,” Wadsworth ordered Fletcher, “then find me up here again.”
It was midday. Smoke rose all along the height of the bluff where men had made campfires to brew tea. The British cannon still fired from the fort, but their rate of fire was much slower now. Wadsworth reckoned there were at least ten minutes between each shot, and none did any damage because the rebels were staying out of sight among the trees, which meant the enemy had nothing to aim at and their fire, Wadsworth supposed, was a mere message of defiance.
He walked southwards to where the marines held Dyce’s Head. The gunfire in the harbor had died, leaving long skeins of smoke drifting slowly across the sun-ri
ppled water. The Warren, her bows scarred by round shot, was seeking shelter west of the bluff where the three captured British cannon were now pointing at the fort under the guard of Lieutenant William Dennis.
Dennis smiled when his old schoolmaster appeared. “I’m delighted to see you unscathed, sir,” he greeted Wadsworth.
“As I am you, Lieutenant,” Wadsworth said. “Are you thinking of using these cannon?”
“I wish we could,” Dennis said, and pointed to a fire-scarred pit. “They exploded their ready magazine, sir. They should have spiked the guns, but they didn’t. So we’ve sent for more powder bags.”
“I’m sorry about Captain Welch,” Wadsworth said.
“It’s almost too hard to believe,” Dennis said in a puzzled tone.
“I didn’t know him well. Hardly at all! But he inspired confidence.”
“We thought him indestructible,” Dennis said, then made an uncertain gesture towards the west. “The men want to bury him up here, sir, where he led the fight.”
Wadsworth looked to where Dennis pointed and saw a body shrouded by two blankets. He realized it had to be Welch’s corpse. “That seems fitting,” he said.
“When we take the fort, sir,” Dennis said, “it should be called Fort Welch.”
“I have a suspicion,” Wadsworth replied drily, “that we must call it Fort Lovell instead.”
Dennis smiled at Wadsworth’s tone, then reached into his tailcoat pocket. “The book I was going to give you, sir,” he said, holding out the volume by Cesare Beccaria.
Wadsworth was about to express his thanks, then saw that the book’s cover had been ripped and the pages churned into a mangled mess. “Good Lord!” he said. “A bullet?” The book was unreadable, nothing but torn paper now.
The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War Page 24
