by Scott Cook
Jenkins let the log line go, allowing the pin to pay out to the right distance before ordering: “Turn!”
Willis turned the thirty-second glass over, watching the grains run out with deadly earnest. The log bit and the line began to peel off the reel that Jenkins held above his head at the taffrail.
“Nip!” Willis piped up in his shrill boyish voice when the last few grains had dropped.
Jenkins stopped the line between his thumb and forefinger and gave it a yank, releasing the pin from the drag acting on it by the movement of the ship through the water. He began to reel the line in and turn to his captain.
“Four knots and seven fathoms, sir, if you please!” The young man reported.
“Christ…” Kent grumbled. “Little better than four and a half knots in this blow… and I’m damned if I can think of anything that’ll help, sir.”
Woodbine sighed. He knew the problem all too well. While the brig could certainly spread more canvas, each yard of sail set before the wind meant even more leeway. He had to stay as close hauled as he could in order to avoid the inevitable and potentially disastrous meeting with that unseen but not unfelt shore. His only option was to crack on and speed up, hoping the weather would abate or the wind would shift before they were wrecked or embayed… or before something vital carried away as well.
He could come about and try to head north past the oncoming Frenchman.
Neither of these options would answer, the captain knew. Unless the schooner carried something vital away herself or unless Whitby Castle turned to fight and could knock away a spar or two, the Frog captain would have his prize before sundown.
Fighting was not a comforting prospect. The small brig mounted only a dozen great guns, six to a side and pitiful six pounders at that. Yes, she did have a pair of eighteen pounder carronades on her quarterdeck and another pair on her fo’c’s’le, but they were only good in a close action. The trouble was that while the schooner probably couldn’t mount more than eight four or six pounders herself, she could run circles around the heavier and more sluggish brig. That vessel, even poorly handled, could easily put herself on Whitby’s quarter or bows, playing Old Harry with long bowls at the brig’s rigging until enough was shot away and allow the French to board them easy as kiss my hand. That was, after all, the Frog way. They preferred shooting at spars and rigging and thus disabling an enemy. That was especially true for privateers, who were in the business of taking intact prizes for profit, after all. To that end, they were usually crammed with men. Large crews whose job it was to swarm aboard a lightly crewed merchantman and take her by storm rather than by battering her into a hulk. This was far more profitable. For it was profit that was a privateer’s chief aim after all.
Yet what choice did he have?
John Woodbine couldn’t have struck the nail more squarely on the head if he’d been using a top maul. For Pierre Meraux, the master of the recently acquired Baltimore clipper was in fact no seaman at all. So poor was his understanding of the ways of the sea and the ships that sailed upon its surface in fact, that even after three months aboard his ship, he still had to use his left hand to remind himself of which side was the larboard, or port, and which was the starboard .
He was no fool, to be sure. He was a lean man of medium height, thoughtful and cautious. He had a good head for business and the value of things, a good trait for a privateer. He also knew how to pick men who could help to compensate for his shortcomings.
It was only because of the savviness of his first mate, a grizzled sea dog of nearly sixty that Meraux had been able to stay on the heels of his prey for nearly three straight days, chasing the English brig from the waters between Bermuda and the South Carolina Coast all the way down toward the lower end of the long Florida peninsula. It was true, to be sure, that the ship’s master wouldn’t even know these places or where to find them on a map… a chart… without old Guillaum Fournier to point them out. Fortunately for both men, Fournier was a humble sort, a man who’s considerable knowledge he gave out freely and without conceit. Fortunate also because Meraux was not a man for whom personal humility held a great deal of virtue.
The young captain bordered on arrogance, the kind of aristocratic arrogance that had fallen so very far out of favor in France since the revolution had begun. He did, at least, check his more blue-blooded tendencies, choosing instead to treat his officers and men as the equal citizens that the maniacs in Paris declared them all to be.
Besides which, Pierre knew in his heart that without Fournier’s expertise, he’d never have gotten out of the Bay of Biscay… hell, he’d never have gotten out of Brest Harbor for that matter.
It was also fortunate for them all that while Pierre was the first captain and Guillaum the second, it was the older man who truly guided the ship. Since more than half the hands, the sailors at least, were picked by Pierre and thus were barely qualified to haul on a rope’s end, it was up to Guillaum to mold them into something at least marginally resembling seamen. The hands he’d picked, the truly seasoned ones, helped of course. And the remainder of the men, several dozen who served only to reinforce the boarding parties were barely able to heave on a line or serve a gun when called upon. They practically had to be led to it and that’s if they weren’t prostrated by seasickness.
However, with sixty men crammed into a ship that was barely forty yards long, and fifteen of those precious yards were accounted for by the schooner’s enormous bowsprit, they learned to work together. They had to. It was fortunate that they’d purchased such a fine ship, although even old Fournier was still learning her true ways. One consolation for this was that if the idiot American who’d sold Pierre the ship in the first place had any inkling of what he planned to do with it… well, Pierre Meraux was a lover of irony.
“How many men do you think she’s carrying, Guillaum?” Pierre asked his first mate, who stood by the big tiller along with the two men tasked with manhandling the vessel through the storm.
Pierre himself had his left arm wrapped around the larboard rail virtually clinging for dear life. How could the helmsman and even that old seadog stand there and sway so easily as if the schooner were gliding across a placid lake rather than swooping and rolling over seas that must be fifteen feet or more.
“A merchantman of that size?” Guillaum pondered, “No more than thirty in her crew. Possibly as many passengers again, depending on what’s in her hold…”
“Then they can’t possibly fight and sail that ship!” Pierre exalted. “What’s she armed with, do you think?”
Guillaum once again curtailed his impulse to correct the young captain. If he hadn’t gotten it into his head by now that the vessel before them was not a ship, not in the technical sense, at least, then why bother? The upstart would only resent it.
“Eight guns, perhaps as many as a dozen,” Guillaum replied with an elaborate Gaelic shrug. “No more than six pounders, I’d imagine… perhaps a few heavier carronades.”
“It would take more than half the crew to man all the guns on a side, would it not?” Pierre asked.
Guillaum nodded, “Oui. With men to handle the wheel and at the very least the braces and heads’l sheets… and in this weather… très difficile, Monsieur.”
“Excellent!” Pierre enthused, ignoring the uneasy way his stomach lurched whenever the vessel would pitch up onto the face of a wave and then swoop over the crest, the send of the ship as she lunged forward making the deck feel less like planks of oak then something writhing beneath his boots. In spite of his lack of sea knowledge, his fortitude at least had proven to be seaworthy… but every man had his limits.
“At this speed we shall be up with him in less than two hours,” Guillaum assured his captain.
“Can we not… set more sail and increase our speed?” Pierre asked.
Guillaum frowned, “Possibly, but I’d prefer not to carry anything away so far from a friendly port. A little patience will do what’s necessary. For this captain, our foe, has proven to be
a good seaman. However, he knows he’s outmatched in everything but firepower. He may do something rash and make our jobs that much easier.”
Pierre’s handsome face, slashed by a pair of thin dark mustachios and shining with spray split into a grin. He felt the urgent need for battle, something he was good at, yet he trusted old Fournier when it came to ship handling. His victory would come soon enough. He’d waited all this time for his first prize, he could wait another hour.
As if stage-managed by God himself, a brilliant flash of lightning lit up the sky and cast the chase in momentary brilliance… and revealed that the situation had abruptly and dramatically altered.
“Merde alors!” Guillaum exclaimed. “He’s waring!”
At first, Pierre didn’t know what his first officer meant. Wearing? Wearing what? Then he understood. He clapped his achromatic spy glass to his eye and gazed at his quarry.
In the magnified view, the dark shape of the brig, a charcoal gray against the dull gray of the rainy sky and the leaden gray of the heaving sea, began to turn to starboard. Her spanker was brailed up, the scrap of her outer jib suddenly flared out and filled and with remarkable speed, the ponderous butter box of a ship had completely turned herself around. Her inner jib flashed out, her fore tops’l was set with a close-reef and in what seemed like an instant, the brig was racing down upon the schooner with shocking rapidity.
“Is he mad!?” Pierre gauped. “What does he think he’s doing?”
“Starboard battery!” Guillaum roared into the wind, calling to their third officer, a youngish ex-Naval -Lieutenant whose job it was to oversee the great guns. “Disable only, LeMotre!”
“Oui, Monsieur!” Rober LeMotre replied gleefully. “Chain shot loaded in all guns!”
The slightly heavyset man in his early thirties walked along the waist, or what passed for one on a flush-decked schooner. He inspected each gun and its crew of three. The schooner was somewhat over-gunned, with ten six pounders in all. The guns were new, with flintlock firing mechanisms that were purported to be more effective in heavy weather because the priming stayed dry.
Pierre hoped that was true. He had no doubt that Guillaum was right in assuming that the brig had them outgunned. Probably a dozen guns and possibly six or even nine pounders. It was imperative that LeMotre made certain that each shot went home.
Now that the brig had worn round and had set more sail to run before the wind, her speed was increasing. The two ships were now closing the few miles between them at a combined rate of thirteen or fourteen knots. Although a small vessel, the brig still outweighed the relatively frail schooner by as much as twice her berthen, and the sight of the bulkier ship barreling across the storm-tossed sea at him made Pierre’s scrotum tighten.
“Cock your locks!” LeMotre bellowed into the gail. “Stand ready!”
“Ready Mr. Kent!?” Woodbine roared forward, his powerful voice carrying all the way to the focs’l with ease now that the wind was off the starboard quarter.
“Ready, aye, ready, sir!” The first mate called from his station by the starboard battery. “Loaded with round shot and grape!”
With the move to turn the ship around, Woodbine had had to move the men from the chain pump to either go aloft or man the guns. It took more than half the crew to handle the six guns just on one side, leaving very few left to tend the sails, but it had been enough.
Double shotting the guns with standard round shot topped with grape would, the master hoped, do as much damage as possible both to the men on deck as well as to the upper works. They may not get another chance, so this one had to count. He thought of saying as much to David, but Woodbine knew that would just be a foolish waste of breath. Kent knew what o’clock it was and could be depended upon without question.
With so many men on the main deck of the schooner, the grape would be devastating. Made of several one-pound balls packed into a canvas bag, the grape shot acted very much like a shotgun blast when fired. The balls spread out and could mow down a considerable number of men while still being large enough to damage rigging and even spars. Behind this, his six pound round shot would do heavier damage on deck, and with a bit of luck, dismount a gun or two.
Of course, the enemy could do the same. Not having such a large crew, there was no need to pipe hammocks up each morning. Therefore, unlike a Navy ship, the Whitby Castle had no hammock netting to serve as a barrier during a battle. Splinter netting had been rigged overhead, however, and Woodbine felt that would be more useful anyway. If he knew the Frogs, their first shots would be aloft, at his rigging and spars.
With the brig sailing large, her speed had increased admirably. Woodbine guessed something close to eight knots, just about her maximum rate of sail. He watched with a tightened jaw as the beautiful Yankee built fore and aft rigged schooner loomed ever larger and ever closer. He had enough time to admire the design. Sharp bowed, long narrow entry and that enormous spar jutting out from her bows like an immense spear…
“Wait for it, lads!” Kent roared to his gun crews. “Remember, our first broadside is our best broadside, so don’t let it go for naught, now!”
Amen to that, Woodbine thought.
The ships were now something less than two miles apart. Perhaps seven or eight minutes to go. The absolute worst time for one of the passengers to come on deck. Which, of course, was exactly when the most irksome among them chose to do so.
“Captain!” The peevish and haughty voice of Mr. Perceval Bentley broke into Woodbine’s contemplations. “I demand to know what’s going on.”
Woodbine, long inured to the ways of passengers managed to contain his anger at this untimely interruption. Bentley was a fairly well-to-do gentleman from the south of England who was chiefly responsible for the cargo the brig was carrying to South Carolina. His idea was to make a profitable trade and take home some innovative farming techniques developed in what had been the colony only a few years ago. Bentley had people there, apparently, loyalists who had stayed and decided to side with the colonists at the last moment in order to save their land and possessions.
The man was one of those types that Woodbine loathed. A modestly wealthy sort who fancied himself as being far above his station and thus far above the peons with whom he must associate.
Woodbine could at least take solace in watching the lubberly scrub cling to the companion rail for dear life, his snuff colored coat billowing out behind him and his pale face paler still.
“We’re about to engage a French privateer,” Woodbine said. “In an attempt to save your cargo and our other guests, Mr. Bentley. It’s liable to get a bit warm on deck. I strongly suggest that you go below, sir!”
“This is intolerable!” Bentley squeaked. “Surely we can come to some reasonable accommodation with those gentlemen! Rather than running from them all this time? Can we not parlay?”
“Mr. Bentley,” Woodbine said in a voice as hard as a stout oaken brace. “They’re privateers. They make their living by capturing heavily laden merchant vessels… like ours… they’re not interested in talking. A handful of chink isn’t going to satisfy them. Now please go below and see to your fellow passengers.”
“Here now!” Bentley bristled. “Don’t you—“
“Horris!” Woodbine shouted to a burly middle aged seaman who was assigned to one of the quarterdeck carronades. “Escort Mr. Bentley below to his cabin and see to it he stays there, do you hear me now?”
“Aye-aye!” The bear-like sailor replied.
Horris stepped easily from his position, took the smaller passenger by the arm and virtually propelled him down the companion ladder without even a misstep.
“Wade, put your helm down a point,” Woodbine ordered. “I want to fire at close pistol shot.”
The brig turned slightly to starboard. Pistol shot was something in the range of fifty yards, and the brig’s master wanted the gap far shorter than that. That first broadside was vitally important in a battle. Carefully loaded with the most carefully picked over shot
and laid precisely, it was done when the gun crews were as fresh as they were likely to be and had as much time as they were likely to get. In a continuous cannonade, each consecutive shot would be done hastily, as fast as the gun could be swabbed, loaded and run out. It was often the first carefully laid broadside that would be the key to the whole shooting match…
“Brail up the fore course!” Woodbine roared. The big fore sail was quickly hauled up and secured so that it’s foot wouldn’t accidentally catch fire when the guns began to roar.
The two ships were now nearly upon one another, starboard side to starboard side. First the two ends of the bowsprits passed… then the forepeaks… now the waists…
“Steady!” Kent roared. “Steady! By broadside… on the up roll… FIRE!”
Another brilliant flash of lightning overhead and nature’s roar was joined by thirteen guns as the universe seemed to explode in sound and fury. Whitby Castle’s two eighteen pound smashers, her six pound great guns and five six pounders from the schooner. Men cheered, gun trucks rumbled and squealed as they flew back, brought up short by their breechings… and then the screaming began.
1
November, 2020
“I don’t like the look of em’!”
“No…” I agreed, studying our enemy. “He’s fore reaching on us and trying to weather on us, too. He wants to come up to windward and eat our wind, the bastid’!”
“Not on my goddamned watch he ain’t! Not this ship!” The captain growled from the cockpit. “Haul the sheets, get er’ as close as she’ll bear!”
From my position near the main mast, I couldn’t reach the mizzen, main or jib sheets, but I didn’t have to. At least not all of them. The two remaining members of our crew both took up the main and mizzen sheets and heaved on them until both booms were virtually parallel to the ship’s centerline. I strode aft, cast off the looward heads’l sheet and hauled it in, bracing my feet and putting my back into it. We rattled them down and the skipper pinched up on his helm and put us a good point closer to the wind.
