The Invasion Year l-17

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Good Lord, sir, do you imagine that the locals might think our torpedo was a…?” Lt. Johns gasped, aghast at the implications.

  “I’m going back aboard Reliant, Mister Johns,” Lewrie told him, wishing he could wash his hands of the entire endeavour, that minute. “I think the best action on our part would be to slink away… very quietly and quickly, and practice saying’, ‘Who, me?’ ”

  “And declare my torpedoes a failure, sir?” McTavish said with a snort; now that the brig had escaped all harm, he was back on his high horse.

  “It did work, sir,” Lewrie rejoined, “But I don’t think more trials on our coast are a good idea. You wish to try them in the conditions they’ll face if accepted? Better we go mystify and frighten the French, in a real Channel tide-race.”

  “Well, right, then… in the Channel, yes,” MacTavish relented. “Yes, it did work, didn’t it?” he declared, beginning to strut a bit in pride of his invention. “Boulogne, perhaps. The harbour where they’re marshalling their forces.”

  “Uhm, perhaps someplace less well-defended, first,” Lewrie said. “Let me think of something. For now, Mister Johns, get under way and follow me at two cables’ distance. We’re off for France.”

  “Aye aye, sir!” Lt. Johns enthused, all but licking his chops.

  And get as far away from the results of our handiwork as we can! Lewrie thought.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “Are you quite sure this is a good idea, sir?” Lt. Westcott had to ask one more time, just before Lewrie departed the ship. “I could go in your place.”

  “Our people are still leery of the damned things, sir,” Lewrie replied, patting himself down for essential items before going down to one of their cutters, where his Cox’n, Liam Desmond, and his boat crew awaited him. “I can’t ask any of them t’deal with ’em if someone does not lead the way. Don’t worry, Mister Westcott… do we launch enough of them, your turn will come.”

  “Very well, sir,” Westcott said with a resigned sigh. “Best of luck, sir.”

  “Thankee, Mister Westcott. Reliant is yours for the time being. Keep her off the mud,” Lewrie said, first formally, then with a laugh. He doffed his hat, then descended the man-ropes and battens to the boat, leaping the last few feet to stumble into the arms of his oarsmen, and then scrambling aft to its stern-sheets, by Desmond.

  “Shove off, bow man,” Desmond ordered, his voice muted in conspiratorial fashion. “Out oars, starboard, and make a bit o’ way… out oars, larboard, and pull t’gither! Set the stroke, Pat.”

  Reliant and Fusee had closed the French coast after full dark, creeping in with leadsmen in the fore chains sounding the depths to a distance of two miles offshore, where both had anchored to single bowers, both vessels completely darkened. Despite the mugginess of a warm Summer night, all the oarsmen had been ordered to wear their dark blue jackets and tarred black hats, just as Lewrie had donned his old plain coat and doubled it over his chest to hide the whiteness of his shirt. The night was so dark that the only way Desmond knew how to steer for Fusee was to make out the foam breaking round her waterline.

  The shore was much easier to see, even two miles off, for the towns of St. Valery sur Somme and Le Crotoy were lit up with street lanthorns or storefront lamps, one town to either side of the mouth of the Somme river and the deep bay axed into the shore between them. It was easier, too, to make out the many riding lights of an host of anchored peniches and caiques in the small harbours and up either bank of the river; so many wee riding lights that the flotillas resembled an extension of the towns that had flooded down the shoreline to fill the entire bay.

  “Mister Merriman still behind us, Desmond?” Lewrie asked, looking astern.

  “Seems t’be, sor,” Desmond replied after a quick peek for the splash of oars-darkened oars, not their usual natty white and gay blue. Even both cutters’ hulls had been smeared with galley soot.

  Lewrie patted himself down once more, seeking his small boat compass, the hilt of his hanger, and his pair of double-barrelled pistols, his powder flask and leather pouch for spare cartouches. How he could read his compass without a candle would be another matter.

  “Hoy, the boat!” someone called as they neared Fusee.

  “Reliant Number One!” Desmond called back.

  “Aye, come alongside to larboard!” the voice yelled back.

  Desmond put the tiller over to swing the cutter round Fusee’s stern. “Easy all,” he ordered, to ghost near her sides.

  “That you, Captain Lewrie?” Mr. MacTavish asked in an exaggerated whisper from one of the barges that sat rocking and wallowing by the converted bomb’s bows.

  “Here, sir!” Lewrie called back, forcing himself to sound eager.

  “We’ve four torpedoes ready in the water, ready for towing as soon as you’re ready to receive them, sir,” MacTavish said, sounding gleeful.

  “Christ!” Lewrie muttered, imagining four of the beasts primed and ready, their spikes and grapnels, affixed, bobbing close together!

  “Hoy, the boat!” again from the quarterdeck.

  “Reliant Number Two!” Lt. Merriman announced as his cutter came in sight, ghosting up behind Lewrie’s.

  “I will see to one of them, Midshipman Frederick the second,” MacTavish continued as loud as he dared, as if a French guard boat was within hearing distance. “McCloud’s instructed him thoroughly in its operation, and it’s simple enough, after all.”

  Says you! Lewrie sourly thought; Is that the lad’s name?

  “Our two are ready for towing,” MacTavish went on. “Lieutenant Johns will pass you your tow-lines. Sure you have everything in hand, sir? Row in abreast, about one hundred yards apart, and release them as one?”

  “If we can see to do that, aye,” Lewrie told him.

  “Well, er…,” MacTavish flummoxed.

  Didn’t think that quite through, did ye? Lewrie scoffed to himself.

  “I’ve a small hooded lanthorn, and if I spark my flint tinder that may create a signal,” MacTavish extemporised quickly. “I will be the one to judge the heights of the masts, and the proper time to set them free. When I signal, set your timers for fourty-five minutes.”

  “Bow man, hook on,” Desmond ordered, steering the cutter under Fusee’s larboard side just long enough for a towing line to be thrown down to them and secured to a stern cleat. “Ready, sor.”

  “Make way, Desmond, and get us clear of the others. To starboard of Fusee’s barges.”

  “Aye, sor.”

  “Jaysus, Joseph, an’ Mary,” stroke-oar, Patrick Furfy, muttered as the tow-line paid out to the point that the massive torpedo put a strain on it, slowing the cutter to a crawl. He freed one hand long enough to make a sketchy cross over his chest.

  As delightful as Reliant’s sailors had thought the idea of blowing Frenchmen to Kingdom Come, the explanation of how they would have to deal with the torpedoes’ inner workings had made many of them look queasy and “cutty-eyed.” Primed pistols to be cocked? Clocks set at the last moment, too, right alongside 120 pounds of gunpowder? Brr! If their officers or their senior Midshipmen did it, that was one thing, but if the time came for a massive attack with dozens of them, and it would possibly be their duty to set the clocks and prime the pistols and get away, that was quite another! Which was why Lewrie was here in Reliant’s lead cutter. Whether he cared to be, or not!

  Lewrie could see two faint grey smears off to his left as the two barges slowly stroked away to form half of the line-abreast, white-painted hulls sooted to blend in with the sea and the night. He turned to look aft again, and made out Lt. Merriman’s cutter just beginning to stroke free of Fusee’s sides.

  “Let’s be about it, then, Desmond,” Lewrie told his Cox’n. “We will form line-abreast with those two boats to larboard.”

  “Aye, sor,” his usually cocky Irish Cox’n grimly replied.

  The oars creaked in their canvas-wrapped tholes in unison, and the cutter surged to each long stroke, rocking and wall
owing between to the chops and rolls of the sea, rising and dipping to the scend with a faint sound of surging water down its flanks. The hands dug in and uttered faint grunts to drive forward, the cask torpedo’s towing line raising a groan of its own, dragging against the rowers’ efforts as if the cutter was tethered to a stone landing stage. So slowly it seemed that the time went by, with the lights of Le Crotoy and St. Valery drawing no closer, the anchored trots of invasion boats remaining tiny and distant, with the threat of a cruising gunboat lying just beyond their sight ’til one might suddenly loom up, demanding identification, with its guns run out and ready for firing!

  Then, in a twinkling, Lewrie thought them too close to the enemy boats, as if he’d managed to nod off for long minutes and was presented with being at close quarters, awakened by some Frenchman crying, “Qui va la?” or the bark of a gun! He could make out individual shops and houses ashore, spot waggons in the streets, espy people strolling about, and the peniches and caiques anchored in their dozens were so close that he could almost make out details in their rigging!

  Close enough, dammit? he asked the aether, turning to peer out to larboard for MacTavish’s signal, for a spark from his flintlock and tinder lighter, or the covert flash from his hooded lanthorn, but there was nothing to pierce the darkness. He couldn’t even see either of Fusee’s barges. If it had been up to him, he’d have signalled for the torpedoes’ release five minutes before! Off to starboard, there was no sign of Lt. Merriman’s cutter any longer. So when…?

  “Izzat a spark, sir?” an oarsman whispered.

  Yes, and just thankee, Jesus! Lewrie crowed to himself, for he could see it, too, as MacTavish cocked and fired his igniter over and over.

  “Easy all, Desmond,” Lewrie whispered to his Cox’n. “Furfy and Hartnett… haul on the tow-line and bring the thing alongside.”

  “Aye, sor!” Furfy softly replied, crossing himself once more.

  Without forward motion, the cutter wallowed and rolled fitfully as the great cask was pulled up astern, right to the cutter’s transom. Lewrie laid his hat aside and leaned out as far as he could reach to take hold of it, but those spike bayonets and the grapnels fended the torpedo off like an aroused porcupine. It butted against the cutter’s rudder with loud thuds, keeping it even further away!

  Well, this is hellish-awkward, Lewrie silently fumed.

  “Let’s haul it round alongside the larboard quarter,” Lewrie ordered. That spared the rudder, but the bayonets still kept it too far away; the only way that he could see to remove the large bung-like tompion from the torpedo’s hemispherical top and reach down inside to set and activate its mechanism would be to leave the boat altogether and clamber on top of it… and if he fell off, he would surely drown, for Lewrie could not swim a single stroke! The last time he had been forced into the sea was at Toulon in 1794 when his mortar ship exploded, flinging him sky-high, and his cabin steward, Will Cony, had buoyed him up and towed him to the nearby beach!

  “See if you can turn it halfway round, Furfy,” Lewrie snapped in frustration. “Spin it so the grapnels lay fore-and-aft, and take off two or three of the bayonets.”

  “Touch it, sor?” Furfy yelped, wiping his big hands down both thighs of his slop-trousers. “Me, sor?”

  “Aye, you, sir!” Lewrie insisted. “The bayonets fit over the barrel stubs like they do on yer own muskets. Furfy… the bloody thing can’t go off ’til I’ve set it!”

  “Bear a hand, Pat,” Liam Desmond snapped, leaning over the side. “You too, Hartnett. Pass the gaff back here. Thomas, hook onto one o’ the liftin’ ring-bolts t’steady th’ bastard.”

  They got the torpedo turned and removed three of the bayonets, which allowed the massive bulk to thud right against the cutter’s hull, sounding like a large wooden bell despite the need for silence. Lewrie turned his head to see that the larboard-side oarsmen not involved with the torpedo’s turning and steadying shrank back to starboard.

  “Let’s see, now,” he muttered, leaning far out despite how close they had hauled it, grasping one of the ring-bolts with his left hand, and groping at the tompion with his right. “Damme, that’s snug!”

  The tompion which kept the inner works dry was a flush fit into the low-domed wooden top, with only a small brass ring-bolt in the centre, only large enough to pass a thin rope through it, or one finger! Lewrie clawed the tompion’s edges with his fingernails, but that was of no avail. There was nothing for it but to lean out even further from the dubious safety of the cutter, chest pressed against the torpedo’s top and his legs from the knees down inside the boat so he could take hold of the ring-bolt and try to pull upwards. “Well, shit, finally! Here, Furfy.”

  He handed the tompion back to Furfy, the nearest seaman, who acted as if Lewrie had just offered him a lit grenado bomb!

  He still couldn’t reach inside, though.

  “Hold it close alongside, lads, and very bloody steady, hey?” Lewrie whispered harshly to his sailors as he groped for the far edge of the torpedo to haul himself out half on top of the bobbing, rolling beast. “Hold my legs, Desmond.”

  Even though he had managed to reach inside, the night was nigh as black as a boot, and even a tiny glim candle was right out of the question; too much gunpowder, and too many damned French patrols! He stuck one arm down inside, fumbled about, and found the clockwork mechanism. The only hand, the minute hand, was straight up at “midnight.” Lewrie gently pushed it down to what felt like a quarter past. Oops! As the cutter and torpedo bobbed opposed to each other, he had to fiddle some more to make sure that he hadn’t pushed the hand down too far! Now, where were the two trigger lines? He found them, drew them to their full lengths, and pulled his arm clear.

  God, forgive a sinner! he prayed, then jerked them both, hard.

  Both mechanisms sounded off together, making him gasp in fright; there was a hellish clank! as the fire-lock on the pistol drew back to full cock, and a bladder-emptying whirr-tick! as the snugly wound clock began to function. After a few panting breaths to calm himself-and realise that he hadn’t been blown to atoms!-Lewrie coiled up those lines and dropped them to a far corner of the torpedo’s interior.

  “Right, Furfy. Hand me the bung, again,” he bade. Sliding just a bit more into the cutter, he carefully placed it atop the torpedo’s top, rattled it round into the hole, and tried to push it back down.

  “Christ on a crutch! Mine arse on a bloody band-box, it won’t seat!” Lewrie spat. Had it swelled in the few minutes it had been out? The tompion was only halfway home, and the priming and the powder in the pistol barrel which fired the larger charge would be soaked as the torpedo bobbed its way inshore, with the chop sloshing over it!

  “Hand me an oar, somebody. I’ll have t’hammer it home!”

  Every sailor in the boat croaked, taking in great gasps of air! Someone-it might have been the bow man-let out a wee whimper!

  But they passed him an oar, which he shortened up on as he slid back into the cutter, feeling an immense sense of relief, it must here be noted! He turned the loom of the oar flat to the tompion, lifted it, then gave it a couple of hard whacks.

  “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be…!”

  “Does it look flush yet, Desmond?” Lewrie asked.

  “Oh, flush’z yer dinin’ table, sor, aye!” Desmond whinnied, seconded by a chorus of hearty agreement from the rest.

  “I don’t know…,” Lewrie speculated, using the loom of the oar to prod the rim of the tompion; if it slid smooth, that was fine, but… he reckoned there might be an inch to go for sure water-tightness.

  Well, it ain’t gone bang yet, so…, he thought, rising to stand in the boat, with Furfy clinging to his legs to steady him; or cringe in terror. Lewrie slammed the oar down on the tompion one more time, much harder, causing a deep empty-barrel thud from the torpedo, a thud that sounded very much like Doom! Several sailors stuck fingers in their ears and squinted their eyes tight shut!

  “Look flush now, Desmond?” he asked aga
in.

  “I, ah… wouldn’t know, sor,” Desmond croaked.

  “Wouldn’t want water gettin’ in and ruinin’ it, right?”

  “Perish th’ fackin’ thought, sor!” Desmond assured him.

  “That should do it, I think,” Lewrie decided, passing the borrowed oar back forward. “Let’s free the gaff and the tow-line and get away from it. Bugger the bayonets. Just toss ’em over and get a way on.”

  Only the forward-most larboard oarsmen could get their oars in the water, whilst the starboard-side rowers were free to work. The tow-line was tossed free, and the cutter began to move again.

  “It’s followin’ us!” someone cried.

  With only the full bank of starboard oars at work, the cutter was circling round to its left despite Desmond holding the tiller hard over to larboard to steer away; they were circling the torpedo, and it was still right alongside!

  “We’re spiked to it!” Furfy pointed out, most anxiously.

  “Must’ve spun about and stuck a bayonet into the hull,” Lewrie said, hoping that MacTavish had spent a goodly sum on his clocks! “Get us free. Gaff, here! Shove the bastard off!”

  “Un-screw the bayonet from the barrel stub!” another suggested.

  “Won’t come free! Th’ bitch’s rollin’ too much t’get a grip!”

  “Arms and legs, over the side and push, lads!” Lewrie snapped. “Heave, heave, heave!”

  “ ’At done it, sir!”

  The torpedo at last drifted a few more feet away, bobbing like a gigantic cork, the lights from the town and anchored invasion boats glinting off its painted top and steel grapnels and bayonet blades.

  “Ain’t natural…’tis Devil’s work, them things!” a sailor whispered to his mate as they got both banks of oars working in unison and made their escape. Lewrie opened his pocket compass and held it close to his face but could not quite read it. On the way in, before they had left Fusee, the course had been Sou’-Sou’east, and the reciprocal to take them back near the converted bomb vessel should be Nor’-Nor’west, but… he looked astern to the lights of St. Valery and Le Crotoy. “Keep the towns on our starboard quarter, Desmond, and that’ll take us somewhere near Fusee.”