Sea of Grey

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Well, uhm …”

  “Damme, sir, you wish help? I didn’t short-tack in here, six hours’ worth o’ hard labour, then put my people rowin’ so hard they’d herniate, just t’watch a raree-show. You refuse, I’ll put about and stand back out to sea, and bedamned to ya!”

  And naval captains outrank Army majors, Lewrie told himself: I am almost sure of it!

  “On your head be it, Captain Lewrie,” Major James demurred.

  “No … on some over-educated Woolwich graduate be it,” Lewrie countered, knowing how Redcoat officers demeaned the blue-coated artillery corps, “tradesmen,” who could not buy a commission, but had to learn, work and think, before the Woolwich Arsenal passed them for field duty.

  Sure enough, Major James treated Lewrie to an smirk of sudden understanding, and began to bow himself away.

  Now, who do I send ashore? Lewrie wondered, after doffing his hat to the soldiers, and turning away to see to his ship’s snail-like progress. Midshipmen Sevier and Nicholas were the oldest and smartest, the rest aboard too young, too impressionable, and not yet challenged by independent command away from the ship; none of them were, really.

  And who do I stand to lose? Who dies … at my command?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “I think we’re ready for a try, sir,” the scruffy, and worried, Royal Artillery officer, a Captain Wandsworth, announced at last, after several minutes of arcane scribbling and muttering over a slate with his assistant, a younger lieutenant; arcs, windage, elevation, range, charge to be used et al had been figured and refigured.

  “Very well, Captain Wandsworth. Carry on, if you please, and Devil take the hindmost,” Lewrie said, hands in the small of his back and his fingers crossed for luck; hands well clear of actual responsibility! Then Lewrie nodded to Mr. Carling on the forecastle; the man stiffened and winced so openly that Lewrie could almost feel the fellow’s lips stretch as he stepped clear of a 6-pounder chase-gun and yanked the trigger lanyard.

  The 6-pounder yapped, spewing a great cloud of smoke from a barrel elevated higher than normal, and rolled back on its truck-carriage, slewing a bit out of true as it recoiled. The solid shot soared into the sky, visible for a split-second as it slowed at its peak of apogee and dashed downward.

  “May work, after all,” Captain Wandsworth muttered, taking off his cocked hat and running his fingers through his sweaty hair. “Did we fire direct, well … your decks are only twenty feet above the sea, and our trenches are about fifty. At ten degrees elevation, as high as one’d risk an iron barrel with a full charge without bursting … hope no one’s standing up, over there, else he’ll have his head took off.”

  Lewrie wasn’t quite sure that Wandsworth had addressed him directly, so he raised one eyebrow and said “Hmmm?”

  “Not to mind, just nattering,” Wandsworth said, waving him off. “Ah! There! Fifty yards beyond our lines … no effect. Still …”

  “Shame we don’t have Colonel Shrapnel’s bursting case-shot, sir,” the lieutenant told his superior. “Timed fuses … spread some grief?”.

  “No way to graze solid shot, true,” Wandsworth responded, lost in his arcane work, whilst he scribbled some more on a slate. “Can’t lay ‘em waste like a game o’ bowls, this way. What guns we have on the line’ll have to see to that. Droppin’ heavy things on their heads … wheee … plop. Cow-pats. Won’t even bounce, I’ll warrant.”

  “This won’t do any good, after all?” Lewrie asked.

  “Put the wind up ‘em, Captain Lewrie, t’be sure,” Wandsworth replied with a fiendish little grin. “Who knows? You hammer away at a wall for days, before you effect a breach. I’m thinking grape-shot or cannister might get a rise out of ‘em. Saturate an area, ’stead of an aimed shot at high angle, where a miss is as good as a mile. Try one of your carronades?”

  “Lovely things,” the lieutenant said in praise and envy. “We never get to play with such. Now, do we increase the charge by a dram or two, sit … stand of grape on its wooden wad base … uhm, that’s eighteen and one-half pounds total shot, with one cannister atop … ?”

  Lewrie shared a look with his lieutenants, Langlie and Wyman.

  Like watchin’ witches stir their pot, Lewrie thought; one more eye o’ newt, or no? Two wolf teeth, or was it three?

  “No no, four drams, at the least, but … !” Wandsworth quibbled.

  They fussed with one of the quarterdeck carronades, pushing the regular crew out of the way, whose members looked to Lewrie for a clue as to whether they should submit or not. All he could do was toss them a shrug and let the Army piddle.

  “Now, then!” Wandsworth announced. “Would you be so good as to let fly, my man? What’s your name? Harper? Blaze away, Gun-Captain Harper, blaze away!”

  The 24-pounder carronade, never meant to be fired at such high elevation, lurched backwards on its slide-carriage, wood rails groaning and smoking despite the grease and slush slathered on to prevent too much friction, and slammed into the cross-timber at the rear that stopped the recoil.

  “You know, sir,” the Royal Artillery Lieutenant said, “was it up to me, I’d come up with some sort of snubbers, some screw-jack compressors to increase friction, and reduce recoil.”

  “Well, it’s a thought … ah!” Wandsworth mused, before raising his telescope to peer shoreward for the signalmen. “Well, damme! One hundred paces beyond our troops, and roughly on target! Well, well! I make out … saturation. Twenty … yards … wide, oh how wondrous!”

  “Did it do any good?” Lewrie asked once more.

  “A fall of hail, twenty yards wide and perhaps twenty deep, sir? Grape and cannister shot?” Wandsworth crowed. “I should imagine that’d take down young trees, Captain Lewrie. Knock more than a few heads to flinders. Here, let’s load up all your carronades, and give it a go!”

  “Half a dram more, loose poured atop the bagged charges, and a single cannister atop a stand of grape to each barrel,” the lieutenant pointed out. “Spread of two degrees ’twixt guns?”

  “Yes, that’d share the grief about. Direct the aim of the guns back there, whilst I see to these two,” Wandsworth ordered.

  “Aft,” Lewrie stuck in, feeling he had to contribute something.

  “I’ve my pocket compass,” the lieutenant told his senior.

  “But of course you do, dear boy.” Wandsworth chuckled. “With a bit of luck, and two-and-one-quarter pounds of powder per barrel, we could duplicate these results with the six-pounders, hmm …”

  “Once you find the proper angle, I’ll send a man forrud to the forecastle and he may lay those guns, as well,” Lewrie offered.

  “Oh no, sir!” Wandsworth countered. “Once we’ve found our pace way back here …”

  “Aft,” Lewrie supplied again, feeling more than useless now.

  “I’ll send Scaiff to deal with those,” Wandsworth bulled on. “That’s his name, d’ye know. Now, let’s see … hmmm.”

  This time, all four 24-pounder carronades on the quarterdeck lit off, almost as one, the heavier charges punching the air with an earthquake of sound, and a mountain of roiling smoke, making the ship reel and shiver. For long minutes, with so little wind in the harbour, the gun smoke lingered, only slowly drifting away to let them see the flags waving from the end of the longest pier.

  “Think we caused a stir, that time,” Wandsworth said. “Thought I heard screamin’ … could’ve been the shot fallin’. Oh, well. Now … dear me, what hath we wrought?”

  They had stirred up something. Suddenly, there came a crackle of musketry, brisk and urgent; volley fire, followed by a rolling platoon fire up and down the central lines, punctuated by the louder barks of field guns. Piles of smoke began to build in the forests like the thunderheads of a sea-squall, hanging thick and greasy-grey.

  “Under assault, dammit,” Wandsworth spat. “Stirred ‘em to rise up and charge. Stung ’em to move or die, I’m hoping. Half dram less, and the same loads, if ya please!” he shouted to the gunners. “Ready?
Stand clear … by battery … fire!”

  This time, they could hear faint and thin screaming! A moment before, there had come the chanting, that chilling “Canga, bafio té!” shout. Then the screaming. The musketry and cannonfire went on for a minute or two, before fading away to a last few sputtered shots.

  “Damn this smoke,” Wandsworth said, coughing and fanning the air with his hat, as if that would disperse such a gigantic pall. Proteus was almost completely wreathed with it. “Ah, here’s something … well, I’m damned! Charge … broken! Shift … right. Range … same.”

  “Easier do we haul in on the springs, Mister Wandsworth,” Lewrie reminded him. “How far?”

  “Oh, ‘bout ten or fifteen degrees, I s’pose,” Wandsworth mused, conjuring on his slate, and squinting at it and the shore.

  “Mister Langlie? Haul in the stern spring-line.”

  “Aye aye, sir!”

  “Deck, there!” a lookout called down. “Ships off the larboard beam … workin’ into harbour! Five sail … full-rigged ships! First is a seventy-four!”

  Lewrie walked over to the larboard side and raised his telescope, but it was hopeless; Proteus was so swathed in spent powder that everything beyond fifty yards from the deck was lost in a bellicose haze.

  “What flag?” Lewrie shouted upwards.

  “Ours, sir! Leadin’ seventy-four is Halifax! Know her tops’l patches!” the lookout confirmed.

  “Did your brigadier send a small boat for aid?” he asked of the Royal Artillery man.

  “Might’ve, but there hasn’t been enough time, surely,” Wandsworth replied, acting irritated that his work on his slate was interrupted.

  “Perhaps not,” Lewrie had to agree, thinking that a small boat would barely have had time to reach Port-Au-Prince, and certainly could not have stirred up a rescue force that quickly.

  “Just this set of guns, at first,” Wandsworth decided, “’til we are shot in, and then we’ll use those up yonder.”

  “The quarterdeck carronades … then the forecastle guns,” Lewrie prompted.

  “Whatever you say,” Wandsworth muttered, bending over a carronade barrel with a triangular piece of metal; graduated in arcane marks and bearing a plumb-bob. “Challenging, this. No dispart sights, and no elevation screws on your long guns … just the carronades. Do it by guess and by God … oh, well. Ready? By battery … fire!”

  It went on for hours under a blazing hot noonday sun, and well into a sultry, airless afternoon. The guns hammered and bellowed and spewed, ’til even the officers bound kerchiefs over their ears to protect their hearing. Proteus reeked of sulfur and rotten-egg fumes, and trickled tendrils of spent powder gases at her planking and seams as if being smoked belowdecks to drive out the rats and insect pests. The swab-buckets and fire-buckets were filled at least twice with water, and the carronade and 6-pounder crews were rotated every half-hour with re-enforcements from the main-battery men, so those relieved could search for a patch of shade and sluice down a tot of water, panting for a single breath of clean air.

  Shift left, shift right on the spring-lines; reduce the charges and loft murder shorter; add a dram or dram-and-a-half, and spew grape and cannisters of musket balls, sometimes solid roundshot in conjunction with a slightly greater range, all around the perimeter of the town. Wherever there was an upsurge of enemy activity, the guns were there, shot sleeting into the dense forest and undergrowth to the point that, whenever the smoke cleared a bit, they could see whole new clearings, whole new glades, that their guns had made.

  “By God, Captain Lewrie, d‘ye know, there just might be something in this indirect fire twaddle!” Wandsworth chortled, clapping his hands together over and over in glee. “There’s an article in it, for certain. Some mathematics to be worked out, so others could copy what we’ve done, but … hmmm. Dare I imagine it could someday be termed the Wandsworth System, hey? Usin’ naval guns as mortars, and usin’ flag signals t’mask one’s own batteries? Woolwich Arsenal, t’be sure, but … ! Perhaps the Royal Academy, too, for the science of it?”

  “’Scuse me, Cap’um,” Foster, the Yeoman of the Powder, said as he scampered past the First Officer, after receiving permission to be on the quarterdeck. “We’ve run clean outta made-up cartridge bags for the carronades an’ six-pounders, and fired off almost three whole kegs o’ powder. Haveta break out another, Cap’um … outta the second tier.”

  “How long?” Lewrie asked, nigh deaf and having to lean close to hear what the fellow was saying.

  “Quarter hour, Mister Bess the Gunner’s Mate says, sir.”

  “Very well, thankee, Foster. Captain Wandsworth?”

  “Hey?”

  “Captain Wandsworth?” Lewrie repeated, louder and nearer.

  “Heard ye the first time, no need t‘shout, d’ye know, Captain Lewrie,” Wandsworth said, cupping a hand to his ear, even so.

  “We have to cease fire! Out of made bags, and low on powder!”

  “Uhm, sir …” Foster added, still on the quarterdeck, most likely for a breath of air himself, Lewrie didn’t wonder. “We’re low on grape and cannister, too. Mighty low. We can make up stands from the twelve-pounder supply, but it’ll take some time, Cap’um.”

  “Low on grape and cannister, too!” Lewrie shouted to Wandsworth.

  “Yes, I could use a glass!” Wandsworth shouted back, beaming.

  Exasperated at the bobbing, grinning fool, Lewrie took hold of Wandsworth’s slate and wrote his message down.

  “Oh! Silly me!” Wandsworth barked. “Yes, we’ll cease fire!”

  And the silence, after so long, was almost painful.

  Lewrie took out his watch and opened the face, shocked that it was nearly 5 P.M., an hour into the First Dog. He looked forward and saw a ship’s boy, smeared with powder stains from serving as a monkey to a forecastle gun, peering into a sandglass and ready to ring the ship’s bell to mark the hour. Someone may have done that for all the time they’d been firing, for all Lewrie knew; to his senses, everything rang, by then.

  “Mister Coote?” Lewrie called down to the waist to the purser. “How is the scuttle butt?”

  “Bone dry, sir. I’ve sent hands to break out another cask. And the rum issue was cancelled, as well. Should I … ?”

  “Aye. Fetch it up. Bosun? Be ready to pipe ‘Clear Decks And Up Spirits,’ soon as the water and rum are on deck,” Lewrie bade. “Make it a full measure, Mister Coote. No ‘sippers’ or ‘gulpers.’”

  “How long, sir?” Wandsworth asked, licking dry lips.

  “At least a half hour, sorry t’say,” Lewrie told him. “We are not supplied with grape and cannister the way your Army guns are. You have what … half your caissons full of that, half of roundshot?”

  “About that, yessir,” Wandsworth agreed.

  “We carry about one-in-five loads. We’re almost depleted.”

  “Hmmm … perhaps, once yon two-decked ship of the line comes into harbour, I should go aboard her, then,” Wandsworth decided, gesturing with his chin towards Halifax and her small convoy, that had yet to get within three miles of an anchorage. The wind, as it always did under a long cannonading, had been shot to a funereal stillness, and 3rd Rates were nowhere near as agile or as weatherly in light airs as a frigate. It might be sundown before Halifax hauled up within hailing distance, much less gun-range.

  “She may not be able to anchor as close inshore as us,” Lewrie speculated. “Might be better, did we borrow grape and cannister from her. She mounts twenty-four pounders, those should fit into our carronades. But once the six-pounder stands and bags are gone …”

  “Ah, I see,” Wandsworth seemed to agree. “And, did Scaiff and I ‘shift our flags,’ as it were, we’d have to recalculate our figures for the height of her gundecks, distance from shore, and all. I agree. Better we borrow than let that ship supercede us, Captain Lewrie.”

  “Uhm … sorry I have to ask, Captain Wandsworth, but … once it’s dark, what do we do?” Lewrie wondered aloud.

&nbs
p; “Ah, well … hmmm!” Wandsworth said, tugging at an ear, as if trying to get it to work properly once more. “Now that’s a poser, if I do say so. Can’t see signals from my men or yours, after dark. We could fire blind, since we know we’re striking beyond our trenchworks. But, do the Samboes pull back to rest, we’d be wasting our shot in harassing fire. Might keep ’em awake, might not.”

  “And then once they come at our troops in the morning, we would really be low on effective shot,” Lewrie grimly concluded.

  “Well, it may be moot, after all, sir,” Wandsworth said with a weary grin. “Surely, those ships coming into port are here to take us off. Another day of this, and we’ll have everything loaded aboard the little ships, and won’t leave the Samboes a torn shoe or dirty sock.”

  “One may pray,” Lewrie said, nodding with hopeful agreement. He was weary, too, even from mostly standing and pacing about, on his feet for hours. He strode over to the larboard side, hands pressed against his kidneys to ease the kink in his back, arching it, and lifting his feet high and shaking his calves to spur life back into them and ease the slow burn in his soles.

  “Signal, sir!” Midshipman Grace yelped. “From Halifax … our number. ‘Up Anchor’ and … ‘Make Way’ sir. She’s spelling out …”

  There was a much longer string of code flags to interpret.

  “’Clear … Way … To Quays,’ sir!” Grace puzzled out slowly.

  “Damme, do we move, Mister Wandsworth’s calculations’ll be off, and he’d have to start from scratch,” Lewrie muttered. “Mister Grace? Hoist ‘Unable,’ followed by ‘Am Engaged.’ And we can only hope all of this gun smoke’ll tell ’em what we’ve been up to.”

  A new cask of water was fetched to the main deck; the Marines, with muskets and fixed bayonets, and fife and drum, ceremoniously got the gay red-and-gilt rum keg to the forecastle belfry, and the people began to queue up for their tots, chattering and laughing along as the merry tinkle of the string of copper measuring/drinking cups jangled.