The Spoils of Conquest

by Seth Hunter

  But then the Forte joined the fight and Nathan lost all interest in what was happening on shore.

  It was a raking shot, firing langridge and grape at about four hundred yards range, and a hail of lead and iron swept the Shiva’s decks and rigging from stem to stern.

  ‘Bring us to bear on the frigate,’ Nathan roared at Joyce, though he was barely a few feet away. They were moored on a spring cable and they brought the guns to bear neatly enough, but there were precious few to man them for that one raking broadside had caused havoc among the gun crews on the upper deck. The guns below were still firing, but to no apparent effect, and now the frigate’s bows were swinging towards them and she was coming out.

  Nathan snatched a quick glance back towards the fort, but the smoke from the Shiva’s last broadside still shrouded the ramparts, and he could just make out the red coats moving through it, and the occasional flashes of small arms fire. It was impossible to tell who was winning or losing – and there was nothing he could do about it either way. But the ship’s boats were on their way back from the Falcon with the rest of Wellesley’s assault force and Nathan thought he could see the colonel with them in the commodore’s barge from the Pondicherry.

  He turned back to his own immediate problem. The Forte was getting under way with staysails alone, goose-winging towards them, with her spritsail and both jibs at one angle to keep her head up, and the staysails at the other, driving her forward. It was a neat manoeuvre if it worked, but she was dangerously close to the shore and so close to the wind Nathan could see the sails feathering at the edges. He looked along his upper gun deck where Joyce had restored some semblance of order.

  ‘Load up with chain, Mr Joyce,’ he called out. ‘High into her rigging.’

  This was an unusual order on a British ship – it was usually the French who aimed high – but they had to stop her somehow. God help them in their present state, if she came alongside.

  Another ragged broadside, but the Forte came on. And there were others forming up in line behind her. They were all coming out. Nathan looked back at the Falcon. She was hove to with her bows facing down the channel. She had no idea what was heading her way. She was too far off for any voice to carry a warning, and there was no signal he could contrive, no boat left for him to send. Well, she would find out soon enough. Five against two, and neither of them Navy ships. There were times when Nathan thought he could do nothing right. This was one of them.

  The Forte was almost up with them now, steering for the narrow gap between the Shiva and the island so that she could rake them again. They would probably use grapeshot this time, which would sweep the decks of any living soul, himself included. He thought of praying, but the words would not come and he doubted Mr Harrison was listening. He was busy mending his clocks, far from the world of men.

  The Shiva fired another ragged broadside from her lower deck – and the miracle happened. A chainshot must have sheered through her jib halyards, for both jib and flying jib were carried away to windward, and instantly she fell off the wind and bore straight down upon the shore.

  The crew were struggling to trim the staysails when the Shiva fired a ragged broadside from her upper deck. There could not have been more than four or five guns firing, but they served their purpose. This time it was the spritsail that went, and with it the last remaining chance of sailing the Forte out of her present predicament. Her captain did what Nathan would have done in the circumstances and dropped anchor.

  And that gave Nathan the only chance he had.

  ‘Cut the cables,’ he shouted to Joyce, ‘and prepare to board.’

  They had over four hundred soldiers aboard the Shiva beside the regular crew, and though most of them were artillerymen, they knew how to fight. They grabbed whatever weapons were to hand – handspikes and gun rammers, belaying pins and axes, along with the more conventional pikes and cutlasses, while the seamen hauled on the braces to bring the wind once more on their starboard quarter. With her cables cut, the Shiva was moving forward again, bearing down on the frigate’s larboard bow, and the French were either too busy trying to keep her off the shore, or too blinded by smoke to see what was coming. Certainly no one fired upon her, and she smashed into the frigate’s larboard side just abaft the roundhouse, the bowsprit carrying right across the forecastle and ripping through the foremast shrouds. And the boarders went in after in a great, baying horde of red and blue, the seamen among them running right up the bowsprit and dropping down upon the defenders, lashing about them with their assorted weaponry. It was clear that their rapid change of allegiance had not affected their propensity to violence, or perhaps they thought they had something to prove.

  This time Nathan did not go with them. Someone, he thought, had to keep a clear head, and his head had already taken all the battering it would bear. He could see another frigate coming up through the smoke on the Forte’s larboard quarter – the Braave, presumably, and he had fewer than a hundred men left to work the ship and fight the guns. Not that there was any working to be done for her bows were firmly locked into the Forte’s rigging and if it had not been for the frigate’s anchor both ships would have run aground. He called out instructions to the men in the tops, causing them to take in sail, and directed the soldiers that were still up there to fire upon the incoming frigate, though there was little they could do with small arms and swivel guns. He was almost sure that the Braave would board them – there was little point in firing into them now – and he was determined to defend the colours with the few men at his disposal.

  He looked back towards the fort. The smoke had cleared and there were red figures swarming all over the ramparts with more climbing up to join them. The Falcon had finally seen the danger from the French squadron and turned into the wind to sweep the channel with her broadside.

  But even better, wondrously better – out of the haze to the west – just entering the mouth of the harbour, was the Pondicherry, with the Bombay and the rest of the squadron behind her.

  The Braave had seen them, too. She promptly fell off from the wind to bring her broadside to bear. It was the only thing she could do in the position she was in, and not without hope of success, for unless the Cherry did the same, she was restricted to firing back with her two bow-chasers. But in the confines of the narrow channel it was a delicate manoeuvre, and the first of the big brigs was coming up fast behind her. Quite what the brig intended was difficult to tell. Possibly she was heading for the slight gap between the frigate and the island, but the frigate was still turning, the wind filling her sails from the north-east. The bowsprits crossed like two long lances and then the brig’s bows smashed into the Braave’s. Hopelessly inter-locked, the two vessels drifted together onto the mud and rocks at the end of the island, and it was all over, bar the shouting.

  The boarders from the Shiva had swept the frigate’s decks and even as he watched, Nathan saw one of the artillery officers hauling down her colours at the stern and fighting to tie his own regimental flag in its place. It was almost certainly the first time a French ship had been taken by men of the 1st Bengal Artillery. He looked back towards the Braave, lying helplessly on the mud with the Pondicherry bearing down on her, preparing to rake her with her whole broadside. The Dutch frigate was still flying the flag of the Batavian Republic – very like Britannia with an attendant lion – but even as Nathan looked, someone cut the halyard and it came fluttering down into the sea.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  The Mighty Admiral of the World

  It was a great day for the hauling down of colours. The last to go was the tricolour on the fort, and one of the Highlanders wailed happily away on the pipes as they raised the Union flag in its place. Nathan found Wellesley watching from the jetty and looking even more pleased with himself than usual.

  ‘Well done,’ Nathan congratulated him. ‘I give you joy of your victory, sir. May it be the first of many.’

  ‘Yours, too,’ replied the colonel, with the ghost of a smile. ‘I hope you enj
oyed yourself half as much as I did.’

  ‘Must be the Irish in you,’ Nathan told him. He never wanted to experience again what he had felt on the quarterdeck of the Shiva, when he had seen the Forte goose-winging towards them, and the rest of the French squadron coming up behind.

  It was the wrong thing to say. The smile froze and the colonel gazed down his long nose. ‘Just because a fellow is born in a stable,’ he snapped, ‘does not mean he is a horse.’

  But even a Wellesley could not put Nathan in his place. Not today.

  They had found the silver in the holds of the Pearl, in fifty stout oak chests, the company seal still stamped in wax upon the locks, save for the two that had been opened, presumably at Leloup’s order, to check the contents.

  So the governor-general might have his war, and Nathan his reward. Not that he was counting on it. In any case, he had enough rewards for one day. Five French ships taken and their two prizes recaptured. And the Wolf was dead. Leloup had been killed by the Shiva’s first broadside, according to the surviving French officers, and Naudé had died in the fierce hand-to-hand fighting aboard the Forte. They had kedged the Braave and the Iphigenie off the mud, and all the French ships were now back at their moorings in Navy Bay, each with a prize crew aboard, and the Union flag flying above the tricolour, as proudly as it did on the fort. There had been some nonsense from Picket about flying the company flag, but Nathan would have none of it. He could fly it on the fort if he wished, he told him, but he would have to fight the colonel first.

  Nathan’s squadron was moored in the harbour mouth, preparing for the journey back to Madras. Port Blair had never seen so many ships and probably never would again. Thirteen in all. And all under Nathan’s command – the mighty admiral of the world, Joyce had called him, and he was too happy to deliver even the mildest of rebukes.

  It was Joyce who came to him, towards the end of the long day, and told him about the opium.

  ‘The godowns are packed full of it,’ he said. ‘Must be the entire Bengal harvest, ready for the run to Canton.’

  He wanted to know if he should have it loaded aboard the Falcon.

  ‘No,’ said Nathan. ‘Burn it.’

  ‘Burn it?’ Joyce looked startled. ‘Is that an order?’

  ‘Let us call it a suggestion,’ said Nathan. ‘But if you do not care to light the pyre, then I will.’

  ‘No.’ Joyce grinned at him. ‘I will do it. But I will need a bit of help.’

  ‘Take a few of the Lascars from the Pearl,’ Nathan told him, ‘but do not tell them what they are burning. And in your report, blame the French.’

  So they sailed for Madras, with the sun sinking down onto the horizon ahead, and a great black pall of smoke darkening the eastern sky before it was properly night. And even Jonah and his whale, and St Thomas and all his doubts, could not take the shine off Nathan’s satisfaction, for he was the mighty admiral of the world and he had done something right at last.

  Epilogue

  The Spoils of Conquest

  In April, 1799, the British troops finally marched on Seringapatam. Nathan was not there to see them go. He was with his squadron in the Arabian Sea, guarding against intervention by the French. His prizes were bought into the service and he moved his flag into the Forte, leaving Tully with the Pondicherry. Lieutenant Joyce was given command of the Iphigenie. He was, to Nathan’s knowledge, the first Zoroastrian ever to command a ship of His Britannic Majesty’s Navy.

  At the end of May, he heard that Seringapatam had fallen to the British. The Highlanders had led the assault, fortified, it was reported, with an issue of whisky and biscuits. Tipu’s body was found among the dead. He had been killed while firing on the attackers with a series of hunting rifles, passed to him by his servants. The former rajahs were restored to the throne of Mysore, under the protection of the British East India Company. Colonel Wellesley, Nathan heard, had been made governor of the new province.

  Nathan continued his patrol in the Arabian Sea. But the French never came. Not by sea and not by land. At the end of the year, came news that Bonaparte had abandoned his army, sailed back to France in a frigate, and seized power by military coup. Nathan was not wonderfully surprised.

  There was also news from England at last. His father wrote that their old servant, Gilbert Gabriel, had finally been discovered in Venice. He had been imprisoned by the French but released by the Austrians and was now living with a former nun of the convent of San Paolo di Mare and working as a gondolier. He sent his best wishes.

  Nathan’s father made no mention of Fanny Wyndham, or of his proposed divorce. Nathan hoped he had dropped the idea.

  His mother penned a short note to say that she was sorry not to write at any length but she was very busy organising opposition to the Seditious Meetings Act. She sent her love. In a postscript she mentioned that she had been burned in effigy on a bonfire in Lewes. ‘What a hoot!’

  He also had a letter from Sara. She said that she had left the employment of William Godwin and had moved to Sussex, where Nathan’s father had been kind enough to provide her with a cottage and a small stipend. She had taken up painting again and was very much in love with the sea. His father was a frequent visitor.

  In the summer he had word from Caterina. She had given up on the idea of a convent but had founded an orphanage at the foot of Saint Thomas’s Mount. If he was ever in Madras, she wrote, he should drop by. There would always be a bed for him.

  And, finally, there was a letter from Spiridion Foresti. He had returned to his native Zante and had been placed under house arrest by the French. He had made friends with the governor, however, and was pretty much given the freedom of the island. When Nathan had done with conquering the East, he should come and stay. There was a house he might like to buy, with an orange orchard, overlooking the sea. It would make a fine home for a retired seaman. And even Ulysses, he wrote, had come home in the end.

  Acknowledgements

  With thanks to Martin Fletcher, who had the original idea for this series, for his continued support, advice and direction as publisher during its progress from the English Channel to the Andaman Sea; to Emily Griffin at Headline Review for guiding me through the editing process; to the staff at the British Library who helped me search through the extensive archives of the British East India Company and found me many contemporary charts, maps and illustrations; to the staff of the Caird Library at the British Maritime Museum in Greenwich and the creators of the brilliant new East India Company exhibition there; to the geographer Dr George Adamson for sharing the results of his comprehensive work on the effects of the south-west monsoon in the Indian Ocean, including many personal records and journals of eighteenth-century colonial administrators and navigators; and to Emma Donald at Winchester University for assisting with my research into 1790s Madras and the Andaman Isles including the explorations of Lieutenant Blair and Captain Moorsom 1788–1790, and the nautical papers on the Bay of Bengal made by the 18th century explorer and geographer Alexander Dalrymple – all of which helped me chart my own course through the troubled waters of the period.

  Additionally, for their help and encouragement over the whole Nathan Peake series, my thanks to the English Arts Council for their initial award and funding, which helped begin the journey; to Square Sail in Charlestown and the captain and crew of the Earl of Pembroke, who provided much of the nautical expertise and hands-on experience of sailing a square-rigger; to Brian Lavery and the staff of the Caird Library at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich; to Richard Gott and the staff of the National Archives of Cuba; to Cate Olsen and Nash Robbins of Much Ado Books in Alfriston, who came up with so many of the books I needed for my research; Michael and Kitty Ann, my sailing companions and co-owners of the Papagena; Ian Tullett of Rye who shared his extensive knowledge of sailing generally and the English Channel in particular; my father, former Leading Signalman Stan Bryers who helped me in many practical ways with his knowledge of the intricate world of naval communications; my chi
ldren Dermot and Elesa Bryers; Liz Molinari and her uncle Marcello for helping to make my stay in Venice so entertaining and informed; to Bibi Baskin and my hosts at the Raheem Residency in Alleppey, to the owners and staff of La Riserva di Castel d’Appio in Liguria, to Michael Raeburn in Paris, Larry Lamb in Normandy and John and Jackie Fisher in Indre, for providing me with rather more pleasurable places to write than my attic in Balham; and especially to Sharon Goulds for taking leave from her own work for the international aid charity PLAN to join me in my more erratic explorations of the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and the Arabian Sea, and learn more than she needed to know about wearing under staysails in a moderate gale.

  Fact and Fiction

  The Australian writer Thomas Keneally said in a recent interview that all fiction is lies.

  Well, yes, up to a point …

  Fiction is by definition ‘invention or fabrication; stories about imaginary events and people’. That is, lies. But of course not all fiction is lies – fiction can and often does contain some truth, and sometimes quite a lot of truth. However, when a writer or filmmaker says a book or film is based on a true story, I think it’s important to say what is true and what is not. Obviously, you can’t label it as you go along; that would spoil a good story. But you can include a footnote.

  So here it is.

  The Spoils of Conquest is based on a true story. After winning the Battle of the Nile, Admiral Nelson sent one of his officers to Bombay to warn the British authorities there that Napoleon was in Egypt with 40,000 French troops and that he planned to march on India.