by Smith, Skye
"Nay, Danny. She's just like us, hoping to make it around Spurn Head light before the storm catches her."
Two hulking great men leaped up onto the castle. The first of them, the sail master, called out "Danny, there's goin' to be hell to pay if we don't shorten sail, and now. We should rig the forw’d mast with a storm sail, and pack up the other. Cleff, can you put her into the wind while we do it, just in case the wind catches us half done."
"Warn the men, and have them run out five oars of the starboard bank" Cleff replied. "I want to come about sharply." He loved the Swift. She was a galliot, the mating of Portuguese style caravel with a Mediterranean rowing galley. They were lucky to have her, for she was well beyond the purse of most coastal traders. Not however, beyond the purses of smugglers and pirates. And a pirate ship she had once been, a Dunkirker pirate, before the defeat of the Imperial Armada at the Downs.
Daniel was ignoring them, trying to catch a first glimpse of Easington through his looker before they lost daylight. Not quite a year ago, his brother's ship and the entire crew were smashed by a storm onto Spurn Spit just south of Easington. No survivors. A third of his village's men gone, just gone, just like that. The village was still trying to recover. The women were still in mourning. Every time they passed Easington the crew would pray to the goddess that their brothers and cousins had all reached Valhalla. To Freyja, the moon goddess, the goddess of the tides of the sea and the cycle of life.
A hand grabbed his shoulder and held him steady as the entire ship was spun like a top by the combination of rudder and sweeps of oars. Suddenly he was facing the wrong way and felt foolish, so he put his looker away and got back to work. "Tie the main yards up good and proper,” he yelled down to the crew. "We won't be needing them any time soon. This could blow all night."
The lad had returned to the castle to claim his whittling. It was a model of a ship, the ship that sank. As they passed Easington he would set his latest project adrift with a prayer. He had lost both of his older brothers to the sands and reefs of Spurn. "Hopefully the light house keeper is not asleep again,” he said to Cleff.
"Lazy bugger. If he lets that fire die during a storm, then so should he die,” Cleff grumbled. His theory was that the fire on top of the two hundred-year-old tower at the Head had gone out during a storm, and that had cost their village dearly. "What else is he paid for, but to keep it lit? Before the lighthouse was built the Head was a graveyard of ships. Because of him it still is."
"Ha!" Daniel called back, "the bloody king probably hasn't paid him in a year. He has palaces of fancy courtiers to keep up, and armies to pay to fight his own people. May King Charlie soon be sunk with all hands." Everyone around him spat on the deck and then ground the spit into the planking to seal the curse.
The sails were already reset, because they had so many hands aboard. They had carried extra crew on this voyage first to train them in their new ship, but that had been a good thing because then they were tricked into delivering a secret cargo to the Scottish army. The good news was that was all done and over now. They had survived the delivery, and a battle, and now they owned this ship and six cannons.
"Make ready to come about!" Daniel ordered to save Cleff from having to shout. Cleff's lungs were getting old. Sixty years old at least. He listened to the men report back that everything was ready before he yelled, "Come about!" This time the start of the turn was slow because they were stalled in the water with the bow into the wind, but as soon as the sweeping oars pushed the bow off the wind, she spun around like a top. Despite the heavily-shortened sails, the Swift leaped forward to almost the same speed she had been making before they were shortened. It was a measure of how quickly the wind had strengthened.
"The collier must have shortened sail before the wind hit. She's been ploughing along the whole while, so we'll have to catch up to her again,” Cleff mentioned to all around him. "With the value of her cargo, she'll have a good pilot aboard so I'm going to follow him. He'll be making for the safety of the Humber and he'll know the best place to wait out the storm." Everyone ignored him. They were all looking towards the shore trying to see Easington.
"It should be right there,” Daniel said, scanning the shore with his looker. "It'll be too dark to see it in a few minutes. Where are the village lights?"
"They'll all be indoors with the shutters closed tight,” Cleff told them. "I just hope they light the fire at the tower soon. It's not just the Head itself, you know. It's the currents and the eddies. You've got to steer wide around." No one was listening to him anyway so he concentrated on keeping to a course that gave them the most speed.
The lad was running towards the bow with his latest model under his arm. The bow watch was lighting a candle lantern and he wanted the old stub to put in his model. Prayer boats were an ancient custom, and part of the legend was that if the candle stayed lit until you could no longer see your prayer boat, then the prayer would certainly come true. He ran back keeping the flaming stub safe from the wind, not just for his boat, but to light the stern lantern.
"You're too late,” Cleff told him as he climbed up to the castle. "You've missed Easington. We are passed it already. Look, you can see the light at the Head. We are almost on it." The lad looked at the tower light, and back at Cleff, and then at the light, and down at his boat, and he was close to tears. It may be a year before he sailed this coast again. He walked in silence to the gunnels and for a long time he stared in silence at the shore, casting silent prayers and remembrances to brothers and cousins as were all the others.
"That's not the Head light!" the lad suddenly yelled. "It's not, it's not, it's not!" He ran down to the main deck to the lowest decking above the water line where his filled sea bucket was waiting for him. He floated the prayer boat in the bucket of water and then carefully lowered the it over the side by its line. Ever so patiently he waited for the next rise of a wave and then he sunk the bucket and the little model floated its candle away on the wave. Cleff handed the wheel over to Daniel and then went down to stand with the lad.
"Aye, lad. It was best to launch her even though it was too late. If nothing else it will be swept into the Humber and some little boy will find it on the banks and treasure it."
"It wasn't too late,” the lad objected and pushed his ealder's comforting hand away. "See, look at the horizon line. There is the big tree that I use to mark Easington."
Cleff stared through the darkness to where the lad was pointing. "How do you know it is the same tree?"
"Silly, there are no trees on the spit. The only thing that stands up is the tower."
Cleff stared again, and then roared, "What? Come back to the castle with me, lad, and tell this to Danny." After another telling the whole crew began scanning the horizon line. South of that one big tree there were no others, and more important, there seemed to be no tower where the Head light was blazing.
"Ignore that fire,” Daniel told the crew. Search for another light, or any outline of the tower. Bloody hell, this could cost us the ship. Are we lost, Cleff? Are you sure we are nearing the Humber, or is it still far ahead, or far behind us?"
Cleff couldn't speak for a moment while he swallowed his anger at yet again having his judgement questioned. "Mr. Vanderus, I have been sailing this coast since before your mother was born. It was daylight when we passed the church tower at Hornsea, and dusk when we passed the church tower at Withernsea. The mouth of the Humber is just ahead of us, and so is the Head light." Everyone was ignoring him and staring forward. He felt like screaming at them until he saw why.
"That collier ahead of us is changing course towards the shore,” the bow watch called out.
"The pilot must think he has cleared the Head." Cleff stared in awe. It wouldn't be many minutes before the collier ran aground on the spit. In this wind and these seas it would be the end of her. He pushed Daniel off the wheel and corrected the course slightly. "Danny, the pilot is going to drown her. He thinks that other fire was the Head light. He thinks he has open
water in front of him all the way into the Humber. Do something, Danny! Hail him, anything, just do something!"
"Can't hail him in this storm. He would never hear for the wind."
"Would he hear a pistol shot, a blunderbuss, our swivel gun? If nothing else, a cannon shot."
"We are probably the reason she was so eager to turn into the Humber. We look like a Dunkirker pirate. Do you know what her cargo would be worth in Dunkirk right now? If we fire on her she will cram on sail and we will have hurried her doom."
"What about those two sky lighty things that Alex Leslie gave you?" Cleff asked. "They are in the canister chest by the swivel gun."
"The battlefield flares? But I was keeping those safe so I could take them apart and copy them."
"You only need one to copy. Danny, it's only minutes before she won't have time to turn. It's a ship and a crew, Danny, like your brother."
"Like my brother," Danny repeated suddenly feeling sick. "Wreckers. Do you think the missing light and the false light are on purpose? Wreckers who let the storm do the work for them. Do you think..."
"Danny, the flares. Danny, snap out of it. Shoot the fuckin' flares!"
As Daniel ran towards the canister chest he yelled at the men who were standing beside the starboard swivel gun to uncover it and make sure it was clean. By the time he reached it carrying one of his precious flares and a powder canister, the gun was ready and waiting. It was an unusual swivel gun, for England anyway, because it had been forged by Malays in the East Indies and purchased by him in Rotterdam. It was a breech loader, and the only other one he had ever seen was its twin over on his port gunnels. The crew were already holding the breech in their hands. It looked like a heavy metal beer mug with a big square handle. They held it steady while Daniel loaded it.
First he put in one of the socks of measured powder that he had made for this gun. "Please fit," he mumbled as he unwrapped the protective waxed paper from the ball he was holding. Underneath the ball looked like a ball of wool except that the wool was a wound fuse. Alex had given him the book because it contained the instructions on how to make this strange and soft ball. He dropped it into the iron mug on top of the powder. It fit. Well, sort of. A bit loose, but it would still launch. The crew shoved the breech into its gate, and turned it to lock it in place.
The other unique thing about this Malay design was that it didn't take a fuse or a match. He took the fusing pin from its hook and pushed it through the vent hole to one side of the handle. With a push and a twist the spike broke through into the powder sock and pulled some of the powder out through the vent as he pulled it out again. The gun had a sprung flint dog and once it was cocked it was ready to fire.
"Where should I aim it? At the ship, or across her bows, or towards the shore? Where?"
"The shore, Danny!" Cleff yelled. He had watched the loading in awe. From a covered gun to loaded and ready to fire in less than two minutes. Amazing. "In front of him but high above the shore. The best chance she has is if the pilot himself sees the white water breaking on the beach."
Daniel aimed the swivel gun with the long wooden handle that allowed the shooter to stand well back from it, and then he pulled the string that released the dog. The powder fizzled with sparks, disappeared for a second, and then the kick of the gun stunned his hand on the handle. There was a lot of noise, but luckily the acrid smoke was whipped away from them by the wind. The entire crew watched the slight glow that was rising in the sky.
"Awe, is that all?" the lad said, dismayed. "I was expecting something special." He shut up suddenly, because there was now a brilliant shooting star in the sky crossing over the masts of the collier. It reached the top of its arch and seemed to just hang there in the sky, all bright and glowing, very bright, and then brighter and brighter as it began to fall towards .... towards ..... the tower. It was lighting up the dark tower at the end of the Head.
"Is he turning?" Daniel asked hopefully.
"Nope."
"Shit!" Daniel yelled as he crossed back to the canister trunk to fetch the other flare. "I've only the one left." Behind him he could hear two of the crew cursing at the heat of the breech mug as they knocked the locking pin out of the way so they could remove it from the breech for reloading. "Spit on any sparks in it but don't get it too wet,” he called to them. The swivel gun was supposed to be used for shooting grape shot to mow down pirates as they tried to board. He didn't know what shooting flares might do to it. It could already be overheated. He looked down at his last flare and sighed.
"She's turning Danny, you beauty! We've done it! He's been warned off, or maybe he saw the tower like we did."
Daniel gently put his last flare back in its special place in the powder chest. By the time he made it back to the wheel, the entire crew were cheering. Because the collier was so much slower than the Swift, and she had lost speed while changing course in such a hurry, the Swift was now running up alongside her with not three hundred yards between their paths through the boiling waters. "Lad, hoist our flag. Let her know for sure that we are not pirates."
By the time the flag was being ripped by the wind, they were running abreast of her, and now the collier's crew was cheering. Probably out of relief that the hoisted flag was not that of Dunkirk. Ten minutes later, the Swift was in the lead and they stayed in the lead until the collier turned again, this time wide of the Head and into the immediately calmer waters of the Humber.
"Follow her in,” Danny said. It was redundant. Cleff was already hauling on the wheel. Now with every passing moment the ship was straining less. Less against the wind, less against the waves. The tide was flooding and the Head current was helping them to reach the safety of calmer waters.
They caught the collier again just as she reached what seemed to be a deep channel in the shifting sands of Spurn Bight. There were already two other ships anchored there with their bows facing north east into the wind. They circled while the clumsy fat hulk dropped and set her anchors, and then they did the same. They had no sooner anchored than the collier dropped a jolly boat and it began to row towards them.
* * * * *
"So this is the man who saved my ship,” Commander Peterson of the collier said as he clasped the hand of a young lad. "I thank you sir, with all my heart." Before the lad had arrived in the Swift's top cabin, Peterson had done the same and said the same to almost everyone he had met.
"Not just your ship, but the Swift too,” Daniel explained. "You see he lost, we all lost a sister ship on that same stretch of beach, not a year ago, and he has marked the place in his mind so he can say his prayers to his lost brothers. It was he who was so sure of his bearings that he warned us that the Head light was out."
"But there was a light. I saw it. Though your sky light warned me that the fire I saw was not from the tower."
"Commander, I fear there is treachery in the wind," Daniel continued, "what are the chances that during a sudden storm, not only does the tower not light its fire, but that someone braves the weather to accidentally light a bright fire on the spit. It'll be wreckers. I'm almost sure of it."
"There are wreckers all along the coast from Edinburgh to London,” Peterson replied. "A ship that founders is picked to pieces within two days by the locals. Could you manage another dram of that whisky? I mean, if you are pouring."
"Aye, but this lot is not picking away at accidents. They are tricking pilots and causing the ships to founder. It's as close a thing to outright piracy as I can think of." Daniel poured more whisky all around. It was a smoky peat whisky that his village had discovered how to create out of the foul malted mud that the Scots dared to call whisky.
It was a good source of profit for Wellenhay which was why their hold was filled with barrels of the foul stuff. They had sold their strained and purified aquavitae as far away as Bristol. To get top price, all they did was forge the name 'Bushmills' on the casks. Personally he thought it tastier and smoother than that finest of Bushmills Irish Whiskies.
"And there
are pirates all along these coasts, too,” Peterson replied. "Every fishing boat is a pirate of convenience if a ship is left unguarded or is in trouble."
"They almost sank you, commander. Every cottage at this end of Holderness would have been warm all winter if they had." The commander's attitude annoyed him. His own crew had been unanimous that they should put an armed party ashore to seek out that ghost fire. Of course, all of them had lost kin on that beach. "I invite you and some of your men to accompany me and a shore party to go and investigate that fire. We have to do it now, because if they are wreckers, they will only try this trickery during wild storms in the night."
"I, uh, I, well, I am not crewed with soldiers, you know. My men are seamen and nothing more."
"My men are more. Oh, so much more. Take me, for instance. Those are my horse leathers hanging on the wall. See the pistols, the carbine, the axe? For years I rode in the Dutch militia as a pistoleer defending against the Imperial armies. Some of my men have similar histories. If there is fighting to be done, we will do it. What we need from you is a set of witnesses. Witnesses whose words will bear weight in a court of law. You, for instance, command a ship that is important enough to warrant a Navy ship-of-the-line as an escort.
Where is your escort by the way? Where is the rest of your convoy of colliers? Colliers do not usually sail alone. Your cargo is risky enough even with other ships within hailing distance. Don't colliers tend to catch fire and explode?"
"You are absolutely right,” Peterson slapped his leg in agreement. "The coal can self-ignite. The coal dust can explode like gunpowder. Everyone tries to steal it, from the barrow boys to the pirates. The ship is a half-sunken hulk when fully loaded. They left me behind, you know. The convoy and the escorts all left me behind.
When they heard that the Scottish army had crossed into Northumbria, well they just upped anchors and set sail. I was the last to be loaded, and the keelsmen in Tynemouth were hurrying the loading when the rest of the convoy left. This, though my hulk is the oldest and the slowest so there was no chance of me catching up to them. The bastards."
