Flashman and the Seawolf

by Robert Brightwell

  “With respect sir” interrupted Abrantes “this man is a murderer and a spy that must stand trial and suffer the consequences of his actions.”

  “Quite possibly,” said the Admiral looking stern again. “But I will not have a grandson of Don Pedro languishing in chains aboard one of my ships without clear proof of his guilt. He is to remain at large on deck and when we put in to Cadiz I will send word to his family and ask them to satisfy themselves as to his guilt.”

  “Very good sir” said Abrantes stiffly. He walked forward and beckoned to the lieutenant holding me to follow.

  Once we were out of earshot of the Admiral, Abrantes turned to me. “Well Flashman you are full of surprises today.” His voice was as cold as ice. “I give you a few days extra life to see the folly of your actions and you try to embarrass me with the Admiral. No matter, we will deal with your Spanish family.”

  “You can’t just kill me now” I said sounding more confident than I felt. “They will want proof, they may speak to the people at Estepona and find out what really happened there.”

  “You think you are safe now do you?” Abrantes was mocking in his retort. He added in English “all you have done is add torture to a slow death. I remember the look of horror on your face when Guido put the knives in the brazier. Well there are lots more people with Guido’s skill in Madrid. By the time they have finished with you I promise you will be willing to sign confessions for all manner of crimes. You will confess not only to murder and spying but rape, buggery and piracy too, plus anything else I think of along the way. Your Spanish family will be too sickened to intervene and help some heretic relative they have never met.” He turned to the lieutenant. “Get him out of my sight, if he has to stay on deck, have him clean the latrines.”

  I struggled forward in the ship with my mind in a whirl, unsure if I had made my situation better or worse. It depended on how powerful my Spanish relatives were and whether Abrantes would dare torture me if they were likely to investigate. The Admiral clearly thought they would follow up on his message but Abrantes was equally confident that they could be distracted, and he was right about one thing, I would not be able to withstand torture. I felt sick just thinking about it but at least I felt I had a chance, whereas before there seemed no hope at all.

  The naval lieutenant obviously understood enough English to understand Abrantes’ threats and like his Admiral he clearly did not approve. He took me to the bows where the latrines, or ‘heads’ as they are known on ships were situated. They were a row of box like seats along either side of bowsprit overhanging the sea. When the ship was moving the wind would be behind or from the side blowing the smell away and in rough seas the heads would be washed by the waves. Unfortunately at anchor there was a powerful smell and with eight hundred men using them, a lot of traffic. The lieutenant had a long whispered conversation with a bosun called Fidel, which included several glances to the Admiral and Abrantes, now back on the quarter deck. Then the lieutenant introduced me to the bosun and walked off. Fidel gave me a long look and then gestured for me to follow him down to the heads. When we got there he gave me a bucket and a brush. “Sit there” he grunted, pointing at a corner out of the way. “If an officer comes, start scrubbing.”

  I sat there for most of the afternoon, you quickly got used to the smell. This was the closest thing to freedom I had experienced for nearly a fortnight. I spent my time considering my limited options and decided that if the British fleet were to attack the allied fleet I would take my chances and jump overboard. There would be wreckage to float on and usually after a battle they sent boats for survivors. I just had to hope that the boats looking for survivors were British which would normally mean that a British ship had been damaged or sunk. That seemed likely if one of them was foolish enough to take on the huge armament of the Real Carlos. I just had to pick the right moment.

  ~~~~~~

  Chapter 21

  Preparations for sea took most of the afternoon. I saw the Admiral go off in his barge from the Real Carlos to take his flag to a smaller but faster frigate. Of Abrantes I saw no sign, not that I was looking. Eventually in late afternoon the armada of ships finally got underway. The ships formed two parallel columns with the French at the front and the two mighty 112 gun ships bringing up the rear. It was soon obvious why the two most powerful ships were at the back of the formation, ships could be seen moving on the other side of the bay. The British were setting off in pursuit. The British had eight ships in their fleet but this included a tiny armed brig and only five of them were ships of the line. In contrast the combined allied fleet had nine ships of the line and three powerful forty gun frigates.

  The line of the allied fleet soon stretched out over two miles as the French ships seemed to be faster than the Spanish. This did not really matter though as the British ships seemed equally sluggish, with their bottoms fouled with weed from long blockade duty. Only one British ship seemed to be gaining on the fleet, I later discovered it was the 74 gun Superb which had not been on blockade. Every half hour I would move from the heads to a position where I could look astern. Each time the Superb looked a bit closer but at the rate it was going it would be nightfall before it could overhaul us. My jumping overboard plan seemed like suicide in the dark, I would never be seen. The two big 112 gun ships were staying resolutely together and parallel, meaning that the Superb would have to tackle them together. By dusk the Superb was well within range and I wondered if it would turn and rake the stern of one of the big ships with its broadside or if one of the Spanish monsters would turn and fire a shattering salvo at the Superb. The Spanish captains were clearly under orders to maintain station for they showed no sign of starting an attack. They must have been worried about getting tangled in a battle with the Superb that would allow the rest of the British fleet to catch them up.

  I was surprised that the British ship had not tried to slow the Spanish ships down, it seemed the obvious thing to do. Instead it just kept on getting closer and closer, until I realised with astonishment that it planned to sail directly between the two huge Spanish ships. It was a desperate gamble as the rest of the British fleet was still some two miles back and unable to offer any support. The Superb would be able to fire both broadsides totalling seventy guns at the two Spanish ships but they would get one hundred cannons fired at them in reply. The Spanish realised the Superb’s intentions at roughly the same moment I did and suddenly trumpet calls and drum beats rent the air and soon there was a rumbling sound like thunder as over two hundred cannons were loaded and rolled out of gunports on both sides of the two giant ships.

  What happened in the next few minutes has remained a vivid memory all of my life. Slowly but surely the Superb gradually began to overhaul the sterns of the two Spanish ships. Captain Keats on the Superb had clearly given orders to his gunners to fire as soon as their guns found a target. He was hoping that his well trained gunners could re-load quicker than the Spanish to even out the shortfall in his guns. As one of the few people on the ship with nothing to do, I watched from the foc’sle as the battle unfolded. One by one the British guns fired, with me safely out of the way of the damage being inflicted on the stern of the ship. I saw a stern rail splinter and heard glass smash and then screams from below as one of the balls mush have smashed through an open gun port. Smoke from the British guns blew slowly forward obscuring their ship from my view but despite the growing darkness you could make out the mast heads in the night sky and still gauge where it was. It slowly crept further forward between the two ships and when the Spanish judged that the whole ship was between them a signal was given and their two massive broadsides crashed out. I have never heard such destructive power in one blast before or since.

  For a moment I was deaf, the ship healed over in the combined recoil and I lost my footing. When I got up to look again there was a massive wall of gun smoke that hid both the British ship and the Spanish one beyond. Blocks and rigging were falling down from our foremast and it seemed as though some of the S
an Hermenegildo’s shots had hit us. My hearing slowly started to come back and I heard more screams from further back in the ship. I wondered if anything could have survived that awesome firepower but no sooner had I thought it than there was a fiery flash in the dark smoke and boom of a cannon shot and a ball slammed into the side of the Real Carlos, worryingly close to me. The first gunners to fire from the front of the Superb had evidently now reloaded and were firing again. The irregular spatter of shots from the invisible British ship continued crack and creating more flashes in the smoke between the two Spanish ships. Two more balls smashed into the foc’sle. I was dammed if I was going to be killed by my own side and so I moved back into cover near the heads where I could hide behind some solid beams that supported the bowsprit. As I was moving I heard the now familiar thunder as the Spanish guns were rolled out. They were more haphazard now, not firing in unison but as soon as they were reloaded. The San Hermenegildo must have been doing the same for now there was a steady stream of flashes in the smoke and more flashes from the Superb so that it was impossible to judge from which ship the flash had come.

  More cannon balls smashed into the Real Carlos and from up above me I heard the sound of splintering timber. Looking up I saw that the top section of our foremast was coming down and that it was going to fall down the length of the ship. It seemed to move slowly at first, but then as the weight of the spars and cordage it carried snapped other lines and spars on the mainmast it gathered speed and crashed down on the deck with terrible force. I moved to escape the snapping ropes that whipped through the air near where I was hiding and risked another look down the deck. There were screams of trapped men and the crew set to with axes to try and clear the wreckage away. In the gloom I could see frantic activity on the main deck as the gunners continued to fire while other crewmen went about chopping ropes and trying to control the huge flapping foresails that were now spread across much of the deck. Two more cannon balls tore through the air above my head and I ducked back down to the heads again for cover. A few moments later I heard the shout that every sailor fears: “Fire!” Curiosity battled fear for a second and then curiosity won and I started to climb back up over the foc’sle again for another look. As I started something made me glance over my shoulder to the sea just in front of the ship and then for a few seconds I was transfixed. The wind powering the ships was also pushing the bank of gun smoke forward. As I watched the top of a masthead appeared through a tiny gap in the smoke, and then another. From the distance and speed it could only be the Superb which had evidently continued to sail through the gap between the Spanish ships and was now pressing on to the next ships in the allied column. I looked around, I was the only person in the heads during the battle and no one else was this far forward in the ship. Nobody else had noticed. The guns of the Real Carlos were still firing, creating more gun smoke and through it I could see the flashes from other gun muzzles in reply. Incredible as it seemed, the massive Spanish battleships were now mistakenly fighting each other.

  Looking down the length of the ship with the smoke and the darkness it was hard to see what was happening. When the guns fired there was a muzzle flash revealing a nightmare scene of crushed bodies, wrecked gun carriages and people scrambling about. The firing had slowed on the main top deck of the Real Carlos but the three decks below were firing without interruption. Initially the fire looked quite small, but then a fallen sail from the foremast caught light and it flared up. Flames were soon shooting up the tarred rigging ropes, and setting light to other sails. In less than a minute a small fire on the deck had turned the mainmast into a blazing beacon. Tarred ropes burn quickly and fiercely and they were holding up aloft the massive yard arms that were bigger than the main masts of smaller ships. Cracks were heard as burning ropes snapped and soon the mainsail yard was hanging at a crazy angle. I looked around astonished at how fast the flames had spread. Above me they had now reached the remaining lower section of the foremast. The air around me was now hot from the flames above and the heat from the fire from the mainmast was being blown straight towards me. Then there was another series of cracks from aloft and the maintop sail yard was swinging in the rigging until it was hanging directly down like a spear to towards the deck, with its burning sail attached. With a final snap the last rope burned through and it plunged straight down smashing through the main deck and carrying the fire to the decks below.

  The blazing rigging was all the San Hermenegildo needed to improve their gunnery. Thinking that they were destroying the Superb they smashed even more balls into their sister ship and those trying to save it. Three men were working together near me to try and cut through some wreckage to get it over the side but a cannon ball shrieked out of the darkness to turn them instantly to a bloody pulp. I was covered in a spray of their blood and gore. The heat from the flames was now getting intense around me. The pitch between the planks on the deck was melting now and sticking to my shoes, it was only a matter of time before that started to burn too. The massive ship seemed doomed and I could not do anything to save it even if I wanted to. I moved back down to the heads again which was sheltered from the flames and the heat by the foc’sle and prayed that the British fleet would soon arrive to offer a chance of rescue. I must have been down there for around five minutes listening to the screams and shouts of those fighting the fire and continued shooting from the lower decks of the Real Carlos. It seemed incredible that we were still firing cannon but the lower decks were. It must have been a scene from hell down there with flames and shattered timbers mixed with gun smoke and the crash of cannon while brave men kept the flames away from the powder. But our guns still flashed out and balls slammed into our hull in return. One ball had crashed into the beam I was crouching behind but mercifully it stood firm. Suddenly I felt a jolt to the ship as though we had run aground and stood up again to take another look.

  The San Hermenegildo had evidently tried to rake the stern of what it thought was the enemy ship. Probably at the same moment it discovered that it had been shooting at its sister ship the crew also discovered that they had also miscalculated the manoeuvre and crashed into our stern instead. The flames from our rigging illuminated the scene and showed that our stern mast which was now also on fire was entwined with the main mast of the San Hermenegildo. Even as I watched, flames spread across to the second ship.

  You might imagine that I was delighted to see the two Spanish ships burn, but I wasn’t and not just because I still stood on one of them. The continual flames now illuminated a scene from Dante’s Inferno. I saw an officer shoot one man trapped across the thighs under a yardarm who was screaming as flames licked around his trapped legs. Powder charges for the guns exploded killing anyone standing near them. Two men ran around the deck with their clothes ablaze, one eventually sinking to the deck but the other managing to get over the rail and drop into the sea. That was the first time I smelt burning human flesh, but sadly not the last. The guns had stopped firing now and more men appeared on deck to try and fight the flames but it was already far too late.

  Even the heads were no longer offering the refuge that they had. The wind had been blowing sparks and burning cinders and now the big foresails were ablaze above and in front of me, smoke was pouring out of the foc’sle hatch behind me and the pitch between the planks on the deck underneath me was now burning in a couple of places. I was surrounded by flames. Several other Spanish sailors had now sought shelter in the heads too. One had even managed to climb out to the tip of the bowsprit, underneath the burning sails. I had burning cinders on my coat and the smoke and heat was making it hard to breathe. I reasoned that the British fleet must be closing in on this inferno which would be lighting the darkness for miles around, it was time to leave the ship. I am not a strong swimmer and so I took off my coat and boots first and then stood on the edge ready to jump.

  I hesitated as I stood on the rail, jumping into the sea from four storeys up is no easy thing. If a gout of flame had not burst out of the forward hatch startling me and
causing me to lose my balance I might not have made it. Suddenly I was falling and spinning in the air, remembering just in time to take a deep breath and hold my nose before I hit the water with a hell of a jolt. I hit the water head and shoulder first which literally knocked some of the wind out of me and went in deep. The only time I had dived before it had been from a few feet in daylight so the surface was easy to see. When I opened my eyes this time all I could see was black. I had no idea which way was up. I started to panic and then something incredible happened. Simultaneously I felt several impacts through the water in my chest and the blackness to my right turned gold. A huge sheet of flame rolled over the surface of the ocean illuminating me and two startled fish. I knew now which way was up and swam towards it with my last gasping breath burning in my lungs. Still a yard or two from the surface the light was already diminishing but I saw something splash above me and fall quickly to the deep. Glancing across I saw that it was a cannon barrel that had been blown off its gun carriage. More splashes appeared, some things stayed on the surface others went down past me. I realised that there must have been an explosion on one of the ships but nothing prepared me for the sight I saw as I was finally able to gasp for air.

  The surface of the sea was covered in wreckage, some of it still burning which provided the light to show that the two mighty ships had simply disappeared. The fire on one of them must have found the magazine which had then blown both of them to smithereens. I was surrounded by floating spars and pieces of planking, and bodies, and bits of bodies. I heard the odd groan from other survivors but did not see any in the dark. I swam forward and bumped into two badly burned corpses, one still smoking, but pushed them away. Then I found four big timbers that were still attached together. They formed a kind of raft and after a bit of a struggle when I got tangled in a rope I managed to climb on. I looked around for a sign of rescue, surely the British fleet had to be nearby, but apart from some smouldering wreckage all I could see was blackness. It was a summer night and not too cold but suddenly I found I was shivering, from shock. I tried to convince myself that after all I had been through I would be safe now. Surely they couldn’t leave me to die on some floating planks. Someone must come looking for survivors, I was floating in the straights of Gibraltar, one of the busiest sea lanes, a ship must see me in daylight. After a few minutes of trying to convince myself of my own survival I saw more flashes in the darkness and then a moment later heard the dull rumble of more gun fire. Whether it came from the British fleet that had been behind us or the Allied fleet in front I was not sure. I just hoped that whoever came looking for survivors in the morning was British. Exhausted I lay back on my planks and waited for the dawn.