1637: No Peace Beyond the Line

by Eric Flint

  He shifted his view to the other, central ship. It was not clear where Mount One’s shell had struck her, but there was frenzied activity amidships, and a small, persistent telltale of smoke. No decrease in speed, no sign of major structural damage. She might take more than one explosive shell to finish off: she was the leviathan of the fleet, with over fifty guns. Resolve was still almost twice as long as she was, and sturdier, but the Spaniard was heavy-timbered and built to absorb punishment. Against Tromp’s own largest ships, and with the weather gauge, she would have been an extremely dangerous opponent.

  Tromp stole a moment to check after the northern squadron of his “largest ships,” sweeping the binoculars around to port. The bulk of his fleet swam into view: the northern part his plan designated as the “Anvil.”

  With its lighter hulls in the lead, those thirteen warships were moving northeast as briskly as a close reach would allow. They were significantly better at sailing close to the wind than their Spanish adversaries, but under these conditions, their movement could not be described as swift. However, it was also clearly unanticipated. The Spanish would logically have expected them to engage or flee, but their current course suggested neither. If the eleven war galleons that had formed up as La Flota’s van were perturbed by this development, they gave no sign of it. Indeed, it was quite probable that many of them were still not aware: unlike Tromp’s ships, which had all been retrofitted with the clever up-time innovation known as Aldis lamps, the Spanish ability to send signals to each other was slow and uncertain.

  The three Dutch men-of-war with forty or more guns—Prins Willem, Amsterdam, and Gelderland—were actually keeping pace with the smaller, faster hulls, thanks to the three small steam tugs, powered by down-time-manufactured steam plants from Germany. Not particularly powerful, they still provided an extra knot or so of speed no matter the wind or seas, which was enabling Tromp’s Anvil to maneuver steadily north of La Flota’s main body.

  Tromp lowered the glasses as cries from both gun mounts announced that the loaders were finished and clear.

  Sehested sounded like a man forcing himself to maintain an admirably calm demeanor while only seven hundred yards from three of the most dreaded ships upon the waves of any sea. “Lieutenant Bjelke, is there still time to—succeed?”

  “Lord Sehested, I—”

  “This is the last explanation you shall provide to Lord Sehested,” Tromp interrupted. “I mean no disrespect to our visitor, but until we resolve matters with the enemy’s van, I will not tolerate further digressions from the task at hand.”

  Bjelke nodded, might have looked relieved. “Lord Sehested, our revised estimates are that, at the worst, we should strike our enemies with seven of the twenty rounds we fire. Nine is a more likely number, given the decreasing range.”

  “And is that enough to disable . . . no, er . . . what is that up-time term . . . ?”

  “To achieve three ‘mission kills’?”

  Sehested nodded uncertainly. “Yes: that.”

  “It is possible. We can increase the odds if—”

  “Don’t get lost in your math, schoolboy,” Simonszoon muttered as he watched the gunners hunch over their sights. “If we’ve hit them twice by the time they come within two hundred and fifty yards the carronades of the first portside battery will be able to bear. That’s about two more minutes, and three more rounds each time they fire.”

  Tromp tried to keep his tone level. “And three more rounds we will not have for later in this engagement.”

  Kees nodded. “If necessary, you could order Salamander and Amelia to—”

  “No, it is imperative that they remain unengaged, lest we become embroiled here. We must retain freedom of movement. Our entire battle plan depends upon it.”

  Dirck smiled darkly. “Which is to say, our entire battle plan depends upon this hull.”

  Tromp shrugged. “As if that was ever in question,” he said—just before the two naval rifles fired, nearly in unison.

  The effect upon the already-listing galleon was so obvious that Tromp did not need his binoculars. The shell struck the ship just aft of its waist and the resulting explosion vomited out strakes, bulkheads, guns, and men.

  The larger one was also hit, but in something of a freak of gunnery, the shell impacted the foremast dead center, just beneath the foreyard. Whereas most crippled masts tip and fall, this one, being bisected by the explosion, half jumped out of its stays and crashed forward in a rush. The men on the foc’sle who had not been riven by splinters or other fragments from the blast disappeared under the ruin of wood and rigging, the twisting canvas pulled after like a phantom being sucked down to hell.

  Sehested cut off his satisfied grunt when he realized he was the only one enthused by the result.

  Simonszoon growled in Bjelke’s direction. “Tell Mount One to lower its aim or I will lower the rank of every man on that crew.” He glanced at Tromp. “Admiral—”

  “I know, Dirck. They will still be able to fight that hull.”

  “Can’t catch us, though,” Kees offered.

  “No, but . . . ” Tromp turned to look aft, measuring the distance between Resolve and the ships of the balloon detachment he’d labeled “Tower.” Three and a half nautical miles astern, and the only actual warship was the one being used as the balloon’s platform: Provintie van Utrecht. Besides a jacht and a steam pinnace that was lashed to her to provide extra speed and maneuverability, the only other ships were two fluyts and the USE cargo ship Serendipity. He frowned.

  Simonszoon’s voice echoed his thoughts from over his shoulder. “Ja, when that Spanish leviathan realizes she can’t catch us, she’ll go after those pigeons. Won’t catch ’em, but that’s because they’ll have to run or be torn to matchsticks. And when they do, there goes our ‘Tower.’”

  Tromp nodded. “Mr. Bjelke,” he said loudly.

  “Admiral?”

  “Instruct Mount One to use explosive shells until its target is destroyed.”

  “Destroyed, sir? Or do you mean disab—?”

  “I said, and mean, destroyed.” He turned back forward as Simonzsoon was instructing Mount Two to shift to the third war galleon, now barely six hundred yards away and still untouched. It turned out they were already tracking it.

  Kees mumbled. “So the biggest ship is going to be made the example for the rest of La Flota. Expensive, but probably worth the rounds.”

  Tromp shook his head bitterly. “Nee, it’s a waste. But we’ve no choice, after that shot. We have to stop her, and she’s taken no significant hull damage that we know of. We have to assume she could absorb at least two explosive shells before she begins to burn badly enough that they cannot save her.”

  The rifles fired again. Predictably, Mount Two missed her new target, but only by ten yards in front of her bowsprit. However, Mount One’s fourth round finally found its proper mark: the starboard waist, down on the lowest gundeck. The explosion seemed to go off from within the ship; possibly the shell had gone through a gunport. Although it did not leave a vast hole in the leviathan’s hull, the blast propelled two guns halfway through their ports, flames licking the rims, and black smoke leaking out.

  Tromp leaned toward Kees. “Alert the other ships of ‘Hammer’: raise anchors all haste. Course and instructions as per Plan Alpha on our signal. Mr. Bjelke, inform engineering and deck crew: prepare to get underway.”

  The two young officers sent the orders, which raised urgent shouts and replies from the bowels, and along the length, of Resolve.

  The after mount fired again. The solid shell hit the third galleon, sent timbers spinning out from its hull and leaving a ragged scar just behind her foc’sle. But Tromp’s focus returned immediately to the largest of the three. He raised his binoculars—

  —just in time to hear and feel the faint backdraft from Mount One’s fifth shot.

  Maarten knew, an instant before the shell exploded, where it was ultimately going to hit; for no apparent reason, half of the big galleon�
�s mainsail’s starboard ratlines flew asunder in a confused spasm of rope and rigging, like a nest of furious, beheaded snakes. The shell had torn through the shrouds just before it plunged into the lower margin of where the quarterdeck rose up from the maindeck.

  An explosion shook the stern of the ship, followed quickly by an even more ferocious and fiery detonation which blew open almost every hatch, door, and gunport lid abaft the beam. Black smoke began pouring out of half of them. Flames were visible in several. She veered away from her course, but not dramatically.

  “Steering ropes are gone,” Simonszoon speculated as a tongue of flame licked up along the mizzenmast, just high enough to be seen above the gunwale. “She’s done.”

  Tromp spoke from instinct as much as experience. “She’s more than done. Ahead one half, and give her a wide berth.”

  “At last,” the captain grumbled. “Port Battery One! Prepare to acquire target: third galleon!”

  Resolve began creeping forward . . . but suddenly, was not creeping at all. Her speed built so rapidly that it still surprised Tromp. “Kees,” he muttered, “have your lads update the tactical plot. From here on, our primary focus is on moving, not shooting.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  As Simonszoon kept a firm leash on the overeager gun crews of Port Battery One, Bjelke was already calling new targets for Mounts One and Two: the closest of the next eight war galleons. Telegraph chatter from the Tower drove Kees’ instructions for drawing updates on the tactical plot’s clear, gridded overlay. And the chief engineer’s voice was a dim, hoarse shout emerging from the dedicated speaking tube; the boilers were at temperature. He could give full steam.

  Tromp let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Finally, they were no longer measuring seconds and yards and rounds, no longer acting like bookkeepers rather than naval officers. Finally, they were doing what every fleet and every admiral since the beginning of time had been built and bred to do:

  To close with the enemy and defeat him.

  Chapter 7

  East of Dominica

  “Do we need to hit her again, Captain?” Rik Bjelke asked, looking at the smoke rising up from the side of the third war galleon.

  Simonszoon squinted at the devastation wrought by the two hits that had been scored by the three guns in Port Battery One as they had crossed her bows. “Nee, she’s fighting a fire even as she’s taking water. And that mainmast won’t bear the pull of canvas in a strong wind anymore. It will be hours before she’s underway, and she’d be lucky to make two knots. We’ll be back before she gets as far as Dominica.”

  Tromp nodded. “Time to lead the rest of their van on a short chase. Engine to three quarters, please, Captain. Time to catch up with the rest of Hammer.”

  “At three quarters, we’ll be past them in eight minutes.”

  Tromp put his nose into the wind. “Ten. The wind has shifted a point. They’ll have it full over their beam as they head southeast. But we’ll be turning again before then.” He pointed to the eight remaining war galleons, which were less heavily built than the first three: fitted for war, but not built specifically for it. Like most galleons.

  Kees followed Tromp’s finger and smiled. “Already steering more southward to come after us. They’re confident, I will give them that.”

  “And brave,” Maarten added without any enthusiasm or rancor. “They’re falling under three knots as the wind starts coming more over their beam than their stern, and they are falling out of the current in the barga—”

  A bright flash, followed by a biblical-scale thunderclap, silenced Tromp mid-word. Simonszoon was the only one who did not start, did not even bother to look around. “And there’s the example you wanted to make, Maarten.”

  Tromp turned, scanning for the large war galleon they had last seen drifting, its crew fighting fires breaking out at numerous points abaft her waist. In that location there was now a still-expanding ash-gray cloud, planks and spars beginning into a down-arc as the debris that had once been the immense galleon started falling, some of it stippling the water four hundred yards from the site of its self-annihilation.

  “Fire reached the magazine,” Kees whispered. “Did she put down any boats, beforehand?”

  Sehested’s voice was sober. “I did not see any. And I was watching.”

  Tromp shrugged. It was a terrible loss of life and a terrible waste of a ship that would have proven very useful. But he had seen the same happen to his own ships at the hands of his current opponents.

  In the pilothouse below, there was a staccato rush of chattering from the higher-pitched telegraph clapper dedicated to relaying the balloon reports being radioed by Provintie van Utrecht. The precise coordinates, speeds, and bearings for the remaining war galleons matched what Tromp’s long-practiced eye had already discerned. Rather than wheeling as a whole formation, they were all turning individually. In short, their uneven line was rapidly becoming a still more uneven column.

  “How long do we lead the bull by the nose?” Dirck asked.

  Tromp checked the changes being made to the tactical plot, the anemometer, the compass, the speed at which they were cutting through the water. “Fifteen minutes. They’ll be heading due south by then. The wind and current will be fully on their beam, rather than astern.”

  “And then?” Sehested asked quietly.

  “And then,” Tromp answered, assessing the line of luffing enemy sails that started one thousand yards away and stretched to almost two thousand five hundred, “we shall turn north to intercept and teach them the consequences of their current actions.”

  * * *

  This time, Sehested watched the tactics unfold quietly. Possibly because he had begun to understand the profound differences between Resolve and her opponents, or possibly because these maneuvers seemed even more bold.

  By the time Resolve heeled hard to port to head north toward her foes, their speed had dropped under two knots. Spanish galleons were ill-designed and ill-rigged to make use of a reaching wind coming straight over their beam. Worse still, Tromp’s course made it clear that he meant to approach them along their eastern side: the same side as the wind was coming from. So to block him meant turning even more into the wind, and ultimately, would put their prows staring straight into the eye of it.

  They responded as would any competent captain: to luff up and trim the mainsails to reduce drag and catch the breeze with any canvas that could use a reaching wind to advantage. Their intent was obvious: to maneuver so as to make a close pass on Resolve’s western side, staying on a southerly heading and thereby avoid putting their bows into the wind.

  A reasonable plan, Tromp allowed, if they’d had the speed to carry it out. But with Resolve moving almost six times as fast as the galleons, that was simply not possible. It might have been, had they been in a well-distributed pack, closing in from all sides as the steam cruiser approached them. But having turned so as to form a column, it was Resolve versus each galleon individually. Time and conditions had made their maneuver inevitable, and they had no doubt seen a benefit to it: as Resolve passed along each one, that side’s batteries would have the opportunity to fire a broadside at the infernal warship.

  The first of the galleons discovered the outcome of that stratagem only ten minutes after Tromp turned to the north to engage. With his screws turning slowly, just enough to give him added ability to outmaneuver and frustrate his opponents, he unveiled his plans only five hundred yards away from the target: he bore suddenly away from it, turning two points to starboard.

  Resolve’s speed dropped a bit and the canvas luffed fitfully. But in order to keep alive any hope of eventually unleashing a broadside at the steamship, the galleon now had to turn toward her. If the Spaniard did not do so, the Resolve would race past by moving outside the range of the broadside which had seemed imminent given the convergence of their courses. But of course, as the galleon made that turn, she put herself in a close reach and her speed dropped further.

  At
which point, Tromp, now possessing the weather gauge, swung back to port, and closed to cross her bows. At two hundred yards, several of the Spaniard’s forward broadside guns spoke, but the shells landed almost a hundred yards short and even further behind Resolve. The Spaniard’s guns could neither be turned far enough to bear and the range was too great; half a pistol shot—or one hundred yards—was deemed the outer limit of a conventional cannon’s effective range at sea. Firing at two hundred yards was a sign of complete incompetence, wild optimism, or utter desperation—the latter being the case on this occasion.

  Conversely, Resolve’s speed now had her cutting through the low swells that had made aiming problematical when she had been station keeping. The vastly reduced chop meant she was now a far more stable platform, and her side batteries, now trained upon targets at less than three hundred yards range, boasted impressive first-shot accuracy.

  Still, Simonszoon waited until Resolve was at a hundred fifty yards range and with a sixty-degree angle of approach to the galleon before he signaled for Bjelke to call down to Port Battery One to confirm it had sufficient elevation. When the answer came back in the affirmative, Simonszoon gave the order for its guns to fire when ready. The three carronades—short-barreled guns which had shorter range, but also shorter recoil and heavier projectiles than regular cannons—were still for a few long moments, and then barked in a ragged chorus.

  But instead of three balls arcing toward the war galleon, three full sabots flew forth. Their casing fell apart and chain shot uncoiled into a wind-cutting moan. Although slow enough to track with the eye, the whirling lengths arced high and two of the three cut a path through the stays, shrouds, and sails of the fore- and mainmast both. The enemy’s already poor speed dropped precipitously and the foretopmast appeared to be tilting from the point where one of the chain ends—a subcaliber ball—had cracked into it.