by Jay Worrall
“Wind’s increasing. I thought it best we reduce sail, sir,” Talmage shouted above the gale.
“I should have thought it best to do it before now,” Charles replied crisply. He cast a glance at Eliot and received an irritated shrug in response. He guessed that there had been a disagreement between the two men, and wished that his lieutenant would have just followed the sailing master’s advice.
“Didn’t want to disturb you before it was necessary,” Talmage explained.
“Better sooner than too late,” Charles answered. “Call the hands.”
While Talmage turned to call the orders through his speaking trumpet, Charles made his way up the deck toward Eliot. “What do you think?” he shouted next to the master’s ear.
“The wind keeps picking up. We should have taken the topsails off this quarter hour past. Something’s bound to carry away.”
“Yes,” Charles said. “We’ll heave to and put her under a storm jib and the maintop staysail.
“Mr. Beechum!” he yelled, gesturing at the young midshipman.
“Yes, sir?” Beechum said as he arrived skidding down the deck.
“Get below and inquire as to the cook’s plans for supper. Ask him how much prepared food he has on hand and how long it will last.” The galley fires would have been extinguished as soon as the storm hit, for fear of the embers spilling out, so dinner would have to consist of cold boiled beef and whatever else the cook had the foresight to have on hand.
“Aye-aye, sir,” the boy said, and turned to leave.
“Beechum,” Charles called him back.
“Yes, sir?”
“Has anyone seen anything of the rest of the squadron?”
“We saw one, sir,” Beechum answered. “About one bell ago, maybe two miles awindward during a clearing in the squall. Can’t be sure, but Eliot thinks it was Emerald. Looked like she’d lost her foremast. Don’t know where she is now, though.”
“And Pylades?” Charles asked carefully.
“No, sir, not a thing. Not since it began to blow.”
“Thank you,” Charles said. “Now, report back to me what the cook says.”
Charles stayed at his place by the lee rail for several hours, through the first dog watch and into the second. While it was light enough to see them, he anxiously watched the few sails the ship carried, and studied the relentless procession of ever growing waves, blown white at their crests, passing angrily under Louisa’s bow quarter. He felt the heave and tremble of his ship’s frame through the deck as she fought the elements. Beechum relieved one worry by reporting that the cook had enough prepared beef and pork on hand to last “two, maybe two and a half days if we go easy.” Charles sent back an order that the portions be cut to three in four.
He could feel through his shoes the rattle of the chain pumps as the hundreds of gallons of water that had seeped in through the hatches, decks, and hull were laboriously forced up out of the bilge and back into the sea. Mostly, he tried to guess where the wind and current were taking them. How much leeway was Louisa making? With the weather off the starboard bow, she was pointed more or less westerly, but her actual course could be anything from true south to south-by-east. He knew that the island of Sardinia was the biggest worry. Cape Falcone, the northern tip of the island, lay under 150 miles to the southeast when the storm had hit; Cape Sperone, near the southern extremity, bore perhaps 225 miles south-by-southeast. He could do the sums in his head. If they were making three knots leeway, it might take between two and three days to come up with the mountainous shores of Sardinia immediately under his lee. A storm such as this could easily last three days. In any event, he told himself, it hardly mattered, except to make their course as southerly as possible in hopes of missing the island entirely. The coast of Africa was at least another 150 miles farther to the south. Few storms lasted that long.
He also wondered about Admiral Nelson and the remainder of the squadron. The relatively small frigates and Bevan’s tiny brig would be scattered widely and blown to who knew where, should they survive at all. The three seventy-fours had been more tightly grouped when the wind hit them. With their greater size and weight, they would be able to ride out the weather more easily and might even be able to stay within sight of one another. Whatever their situation, it would be days, weeks possibly, before all of them would be able to reassemble and continue with their mission.
At the second bell in the second dog watch, Attwater appeared out of the fading daylight to urge him to come below for his supper. “It ain’t right for you to not have nothing in you,” he insisted. “Wouldn’t young Mrs. Edgemont not be ’appy if she knew.” Charles relented and went below. As his steward helped him out of his bulky covering and set him at the table, his mind turned irresistibly toward “young Mrs. Edgemont.” Penny, her face, expressions, laughter, her tenderness were never far from his mind or heart. They had been married these four months now. It seemed only yesterday that they had celebrated their wedding day at his home in Cheshire. That had been the one day they were together as man and wife before he was ordered back to sea.
While Attwater placed a plate of cold boiled pork, cold pease porridge, ship’s biscuit, cheese, and a tankard of porter beer in front of him, he reasoned, as he had a hundred times, that Penny would be well cared for in the large house on his estates. His elder brother, John, had agreed to oversee Charles’s properties. There were several letters back and forth, of course. Two had arrived together shortly before the squadron had left Cádiz three weeks before. From what he could tell in between her expressions of affection and the news of his sister Ellie’s (and Winchester’s) impending expectancy, she was in good health and occupying her time looking after the welfare of their tenants. There had been no mention that she herself might be in a family way, and Charles had felt it too indelicate to ask directly.
He pushed his food around with a fork, nibbled at a few pieces of the pork, sipped at his beer, and decided that he’d had enough. Before Attwater could return, Charles donned his oilskins and crept out of the cabin to go back on deck. The sky had turned pitch dark. The force of the wind and the heaving ship made mounting the ladderway to the quarterdeck an arduous struggle, requiring him to hold on to the railing with both hands. The wind came in powerful gusts that he judged to be stronger than when he had gone below. He could feel Louisa labor as she took each crest, filling the air with spray. He saw Eliot standing by the wheel, lit by the dim glow of a single storm lantern on the binnacle, and crossed to speak with him.
“I was about to call for you,” the master shouted.
Charles nodded. The unearthly shrieking of the wind through the shrouds made any attempt at normal conversation impossible.
Eliot cupped his hands around Charles’s ear. “The breeze is freshening. Should take in jib.”
That would leave the foremast staysail as the only scrap of canvas flying. Charles thought of asking Eliot if it was sufficient, but decided the sailing master had probably already thought of that. Communicating the question would be too difficult anyway. “See to it, if you please,” he shouted back.
Charles continued across the deck to the lee railing, where Winchester stood watch. Another midshipman—Sykes, he thought it was—sat in a bundle of sou’wester on the deck beneath the railing, huddled against the wind and wet. Charles nodded by way of greeting to his brother-in-law, who silently touched his hat in return, and settled against the railing to brace himself. The ship’s stern swooped upward, then fell precipitously as it proceeded rhythmically from wave crest to trough.
He tried to warp his mind to the endless calculations of course, windage, currents, drift, and the eventual perils of the Sardinian coast but realized that it was all supposition leading nowhere very definite. It would be a miracle if their actual progress were in any direction other than backward and sideways. He didn’t even know where they were, except in the broadest terms: some distance south of Toulon and presumably still to the west of Sardinia; hopefully well to the west o
f the island.
A rendezvous off the coast of France was specified in his orders, to be used if the squadron was dispersed. The seventy-fours would probably arrive first, since they would have been the least affected by the storm. There was also the possibility that the French fleet in Toulon would use the favorable northerly wind to up their anchors and set off for whatever purpose they had in mind. Admiral Nelson would know this, and Charles suspected that he would be in a state of high agitation while he waited for the smaller ships to rejoin him one by one before he could look into the port.
When Winchester went below, he was replaced by Talmage, who took up his station by the weather rail, a respectable distance away. Charles stayed where he was, too tired to climb the inclined deck. There was nothing the first lieutenant could tell him that he didn’t already know. Alone, huddled in his rain gear with his back turned to the wind, he found his mind turning back to Penny. What would she think if she knew that Louisa was struggling for her life against surging seas and a howling gale, possibly to be driven against a rocky, reef-strewn lee shore? Actually, she probably wouldn’t be as troubled by his current situation as she had been after learning of the Louisa’s battles with the Santa Brigida. Even then, she hadn’t been concerned solely for his safety. One of her peculiarities was that she was of a Quaker family and held strong pacifist views. She had told him several times that she did not approve of his profession and had initially refused to marry him because of it. Charles sighed. That would work itself out in time, he told himself. She would adjust. Wives always adjusted to their husbands’ ways. He knew it to be true, everyone said so.
His attention shifted as a master’s mate paused by the binnacle, clutched it for support, then bent and turned the half-hour glass. Charles saw that the man pulled the lanyard to ring the ship’s bell eight times. The ringing sound, if there was one, was instantly carried away on the wind. Eight bells, it must be the beginning of the middle watch: midnight. Charles realized that his limbs were cold and stiff from the long hours on deck, and he was almost stupid with fatigue. The wind may have abated a trifle; at least the song through the stays seemed a fraction of an octave lower.
His joints complained as he pushed himself off the railing and made his way toward Eliot at his place beside the helm. Too tired to attempt communication, Charles took up a slate used for navigational computations and chalked on it:
AM GOING BELOW. CALL IF WEATHER CHANGE.
The master read it and nodded in acknowledgment. Charles shuffled across the deck and down the ladderway to his cabin. Careful not to wake his steward, he sloughed his oilskins and his uniform coat, slipped off his shoes, and climbed into his bed otherwise fully clothed. By ten minutes after twelve, he was fast asleep.
At one o’clock he sat bolt upright. He could hear that the wind had risen to an eerie high-pitched whistle, and he could actually feel the vibration of the rigging through the deck. Louisa plunged raggedly and seemed to stagger each time the bow dropped before rising again. More seriously, something had come badly adrift, its banging sending rhythmic jolts the length of the ship. Attwater pushed his way through the curtain to the sleeping cabin with a small lantern. Charles was already frantically searching in the darkness for his shoes.
“You’re wanted on deck. The weather’s up,” Attwater announced.
On the ladderway to the quarterdeck, an insane wind grabbed at his flapping overcoat, filling it like a sail. He clutched tightly at the rail to keep from being blown overboard. He pulled his coat together with his fists and struggled onto the deck. Talmage came across to him immediately. “Mizzen topmast … carried away,” he yelled, and gestured upward. Charles could see the mass of loose halyards and stays snapping in the wind, the topmast section entangled below, swinging with the roll of the ship and hammering furiously against the still-standing lower mast. Why hasn’t Talmage dealt with it before now?
Angry but unable to express it, he yelled, “Cut—it—loose—over— side!”
Louisa was being pounded mercilessly by the sea, burying her bow with each oncoming wave. She could not withstand this kind of punishment long. Eliot stood at his usual place by the wheel, and Charles started toward him. A vicious gust swept the ship, laying her over nearly on her beam ends. Charles clutched at the binnacle to keep from sliding down the sharply canted deck. For a moment he hung from the box with no purchase for his feet. He found Eliot’s sturdy form beside him, his hand clutching the back of Charles’s coat, the way a mother cat picks up a kitten by the scruff of its neck, and pulling him to his feet.
Charles took a speaking trumpet from its place in the binnacle, put the horn directly over the master’s ear, and shouted into the mouthpiece, “We will bear away and run before the wind.”
Eliot nodded vigorously.
Charles knew too well that turning the ship from lying to, with the bow taking the wind and waves head-on, and swinging to present her stern to the elements presented two significant perils. First, as she fell off with the wind, her vulnerable side would be exposed to the seas, where she would be in danger of being rolled over or swamped, either an ordeal from which she might not recover. Further, once she was around, she would immediately require sufficient speed to prevent the onrushing waves from sweeping over her from behind and driving her under, stern first. He saw that Winchester had arrived on deck and beckoned him to approach. Using the speaking trumpet as he had with Eliot, he found that he could speak almost normally. “We will wear ship and put her before the wind,” he said. “The instant she is around, set the main topsail, close-reefed, then haul down the staysail.”
“Aye-aye,” Winchester shouted and started forward.
Charles could neither see the seas nor gauge when to begin the turn except through the deck as Louisa’s bow began to rise. There was no point in waiting. “Hard aport!” he screamed at Eliot, too far away to hear; he windmilled his arm to signal his intent. He watched closely as the helm came over. Immediately, the ship’s head began to fall off, the turn accelerating as the wind caught the fore staysail sideways and pushed her around like a weather vane. The force came broadside on, heeling the ship more sharply. Pray God we aren’t swamped. They were in the trough between the waves, the next racing down on them. Louisa was turning, still turning, the wind beginning to come around to the stern quarter.
“Ease the helm,” he shouted at Eliot, “midships!” Knowing that his words could not be heard, he signaled with his arms. He squinted forward into the dark and made out the men on the mainmast yard sheeting home the reefed topsail. Turning aft, he could see the black menace of the next wave irresistibly rising. Charles held his breath. He thought he could feel the pull of the topsail as it began to fill. The wave closed on them, still closer, until it seemed to loom overhead and must crash down on them. He clutched reflexively at the railing. Louisa’s stern began to rise with the swell. A quantity of water burst over the taffrail, but in no great force.
Charles let out an explosive burst of breath. He breathed in again. She had gained enough way to mitigate the blow, and the crisis had passed; at least this crisis had passed. They were now running directly before the wind and still gathering speed, so that she slid back down into the trough, seemed to pause there, and then began to rise onto the back of the wave ahead. She would be safe for the moment, so long as they kept up just enough way over the sea to allow the rudder to bite and keep her from yawing. A glance at the compass told him that they were now steering directly south-by-east, with a following sea at what must be a prodigious speed, straight toward the unwelcome coast of Sardinia.
The howling scream from the wind became marginally less, as they were sailing with it on their backs rather than clawing into its teeth. Charles crossed the deck to the sailing master and shouted, “Put her head south-by-west.” Allowing for leeway, he calculated that this should put their true course at something close to due south, which would mean that if they hadn’t run aboard Sardinia already, they probably never would.
Charle
s’s legs ached from the constant struggle against the force of the wind, and from keeping his balance on the heaving deck. He leaned against the binnacle to rest for a moment and noticed Winchester and a number of the foremast topmen descending the shrouds. It must have been a fearsome ordeal with the wind threatening to tear them from the wildly gyrating yardarm, but the task had to be done, and their timely execution of it might have made the difference between safety and sinking. He pushed himself upright and started toward the ladderway to the waist of the ship. He met up with Winchester, returning at the break of the aftercastle, where they were sheltered a little from the wind.
“That was nicely done, Stephen,” he said.
Winchester nodded, looking worn. “Thank you,” he said. “The men deserve the credit. I tried yelling out the orders, but no one could hear anything up there.”
“You have my thanks all the same,” Charles insisted. “I will mention your name in my report.”
Winchester’s face cracked into a small smile. “You mention my name in every report. The Admiralty will become suspicious.”
“I’m doing my best,” Charles asserted. “The father of my nephews and nieces should be an admiral, at least. You need to pick up the pace if you want to get their lordships’ attention.”
“I’ll get to it presently,” Winchester answered. Then, as if to change the subject, he asked, “Are you going to turn in?”
“No, I thought I’d go below and speak to your topmen.”
“Why?” Winchester asked.
“I owe them my thanks for what they’ve done. We all do.”
Winchester raised his eyebrows. “I’m sure they’ll be grateful,” he observed doubtfully.
Charles continued across the waist, down through the main hatchway, and into the bowels of the ship. The wind ceased as soon as his head dropped below the level of the deck, a welcome change. This was the ship’s heart, he reflected as he made his way forward, where the crew lived, slept, and ate. The space was damp, scarcely ventilated, and dimly lit. He could make out dozens of hammocks, one almost touching another, suspended from the deck beams and swaying in unison with the ship’s movement. The powerful smell of unwashed bodies met his nostrils, competing with other, more noxious odors from the bilge farther below. The sounds of waves washing past Louisa ’s hull and the groaning of her timbers reverberated loudly. He heard muted laughter and conversation coming from a more brightly lighted area near the bow.
