Any Approaching Enemy: A Novel of the Napoleonic Wars

by Jay Worrall

  “What?” Bevan said, turning back. His face paled when he saw the twin rows of cannon waiting and ready.

  “Clear the goddamn decks,” Charles repeated. “Hurry, we are about to be fired upon.” “Fired upon,” he realized full well, was a grim understatement.

  “Sir, we can’t turn away,” Eliot protested. “It’s too shallow; we’ll run aground.”

  The master had not had time to grasp the significance of their situation, Charles thought. It was likely Louisa was going to find the seabed, and soon, no matter whether they bore away or not. It was preferable to do it in shallower water. “Do as you’re ordered,” Charles snapped. “Put the wheel over and lash it in place. Then get below.”

  “Aren’t we going to return their fire?” Bevan asked.

  Louisa’s momentum carried her inextricably forward. Her bow already ranged along the warship’s side. It would be another fifty yards before her rudder even began to bite. The Frenchman would wait until every gun bore before delivering her deadly broadside. Charles guessed that would not be long in coming.

  “You can’t be serious,” Charles said. “We are about to be destroyed. Firing off our popguns won’t change that in the slightest. We must save as many of the crew as possible. Send them belowdecks and go there yourself.”

  Bevan turned and began bellowing orders for everyone to abandon their guns and clear the decks. Some reluctantly, some eagerly, the crew began to make for the ladderways and below. Louisa continued forward, all her canvas still aloft, her head only just beginning to turn toward the too distant shore. At twenty-five yards, she came within full view of the French ship of the line’s guns.

  The deck had largely cleared. Charles noticed that Bevan stood unmoving beside him. “Get yourself below, Daniel,” he ordered.

  “I don’t think so,” Bevan answered. “It’s stuffy down there.”

  “For Christ’s sake,” Charles had begun when he clearly heard someone on the battleship shout, “Tirez!” Her cannon immediately exploded in the loudest sound Charles had ever heard in his life. The deck beneath him jumped so violently that he lost his footing and fell to his knees. All around, his ship erupted into shattered pieces of railing and smashed gun carriages, the cannon themselves hurling backward and across the deck like so many broken straws. The wheel and the binnacle vanished abruptly. All three masts collapsed in a rain of falling lines, cables, blocks, torn canvas, and shattered spars. Then there was an unnatural silence, filled by a ringing in his ears.

  Charles staggered to his feet. He saw Bevan on his hands and knees, reaching for his crutch. “Are you injured?” he said.

  “Possibly not,” Bevan answered shakily. He turned himself to a sitting position and began to run his hands over his arms and chest. “No,” he concluded.

  Charles looked around at the shattered remains of his command. Much of the railing was gone; cordage, splintered wood, dismounted cannon, and other useless debris lay strewn over the deeply gouged deck. The mizzenmast, with all its canvas, lay over the starboard side, the mainmast similarly to port, and the foremast tilted down into the sea at the bow. Only the bowsprit seemed to remain whole. The French ship, he noted, lay fifty yards to larboard. She had withdrawn her guns but hadn’t closed her ports.

  Charles helped Bevan to his feet. “Call the hands,” he said. “We’d best see what sort of state we’re in.” He guessed from the sluggish way she rolled under his feet that his ship was taking on water.

  Bevan picked his way around the obstacles on the littered deck toward the main hatchway. Already some of the men were beginning to emerge. Charles thought to cross to the starboard side and see if any of the ship’s boats had survived. When he managed to get there, climbing over and through a labyrinth of tangled cables and lines, he saw that the cutter and gig seemed undamaged, but the launch had been cut in two by a ball that must have passed through both of Louisa’s sides.

  Beechum found him still looking over the side near a wide gap in the railing. “Are you all right, sir?” he asked.

  “I’m whole,” Charles answered. “Do you know how the men fared?”

  “We lost a number, sir,” the young man said. “Some balls just went straight across belowdecks. I don’t know how many; not too bad, I think.”

  Charles saw that Bevan had already begun organizing work parties to cut the masts free and clear the wreckage. “Would you please speak with the surgeon and the carpenter. Tell them I will expect their reports at their earliest convenience. After that, you may look to Mr. Bevan for your duties as he directs.”

  “Yes, sir,” Beechum said, and began making his way back through the tangled rigging.

  Charles saw that they had drifted farther from the warship that had fired into them, now something like a half cable’s length away. He also noticed that Louisa seemed to be making no further progress through the water. The crash of broadsides caused him to look at the battle beginning along the French line. Goliath, he saw, had already passed Guerrier on the near side. She clouded herself in gun smoke with a tremendous roar as she reached the second in line, the Frenchman responding half a heartbeat later. Zealous was stationary beside Guerrier, firing methodically into her. Poor Guerrier’s remaining masts quickly went by the board as Audacious, Theseus, and Orion each crossed her bow, loosing their guns with deadly raking fire at point-blank range. It must be all hell on her decks, Charles thought. He saw Vanguard, closely followed by most of the remainder of the squadron, start along the French line on the seaward side. He felt some sympathy for the badly mauled Guerrier. She had, after all, allowed Louisa to sail past her unmolested.

  Davey Howell, the ship’s carpenter, moved toward Charles, pushing his way through the clusters of seamen hacking with axes at the shrouds to free the broken masts.

  “How much water is in the well?” Charles asked without preamble.

  “About six feet, sir,” Howell answered. He looked both harried and genuinely unhappy.

  “Are the pumps holding, or are we losing ground?” Now that he thought of it, Charles couldn’t remember hearing the normally unmistakable sound of the chain pumps as they clanked away. They were certainly quiet at the moment.

  Howell rubbed a hand across his forehead. “It don’t matter about the pumps,” he said. “They were smashed. You might say we are holding our own. We’re resting on the bottom. We’re sunk, sir. As far as we can sink, that is.”

  “We’re sunk?” Charles said stupidly.

  “Aye,” Howell said with some distress. “There are holes beneath the waterline you could crawl through. Ol’ Louisa will never swim again.”

  Charles looked over the side. He could see that his ship was low in the water, but now he knew she would get no lower. His Louisa had been transformed in the blink of an eye from a graceful, swift sailing vessel to a battered, mastless island. He looked around in dismay, not wanting to believe that she had been destroyed. “Thank you, Mr. Howell,” he said after a moment. “I am sure you have done all that is possible.”

  The surgeon found him soon afterward. Lincoln reported a dozen and a half killed outright, and a score and two injured, mostly with lacerations from flying splinters. All considered, the crew had gotten off lightly, for which Charles was grateful.

  He found himself with little requiring his immediate attention. There wasn’t that much he could do, commanding a ship that couldn’t sail. The decks were soon freed of the fallen masts, which drifted lazily in the sea alongside. The tangles of rope, broken timbers, and dismounted guns were rapidly being cleared away. The sun sat low on the horizon, a large red-orange ball that tinted the sails of the British warships a pinkish color.

  The thundering clash of cannon along the lower end of the line had become more or less continuous. Charles saw that the squadron had worked its way up to the fifth French ship. Guerrier, brutally battered by several of the British warships and still being systematically pummeled by Zealous, valiantly refused to yield. Only a few of her cannon seemed to be still functioning.
The second warship, the one that had loosed her broadside on Louisa, had hauled her colors as soon as ships her own size had begun to fire on her. He thought there was no justice in this. The gallant Guerrier was being subjected to the most brutal kind of torture, while the honorless second French seventy-four had surrendered before receiving serious damage. Goliath and Theseus were anchored next to the third and were pounding away furiously at her. Orion, he noted, was moving up the inside, searching for the next unengaged ship in the line. He could tell from their masts that others of the British had taken positions on the far side. He could not identify them through the cloud of smoke that shrouded the third, fourth, and fifth. Only two ships beyond, Charles counted, lay the huge L’Orient, waiting for the battle to reach her. It wouldn’t be long; he could make out several British seventy-fours crossing the bay to attack. He didn’t relish the odds of whichever drew the flagship.

  He regretted not being able to participate in the battle, even in some small way. The decks were very nearly cleared, and the few guns that were still serviceable had been put back in place. He decided to see about supper for the crew, assuming they still had a galley stove. He saw Beechum hurrying toward the quarterdeck, gesturing frantically at him.

  “Sir,” the young lieutenant shouted, pointing with his arm over the bow quarter. “Look there!”

  Charles immediately saw that the French corvette previously anchored farther up the bay had slipped her cable and was bearing down on them. “Christ,” he swore. Capitaine Baptiste would see this as an opportunity for his own personal revenge. Louisa could offer little more than target practice. Supposing she had all of her guns, they could not be transited far enough around to even frighten the corvette. “Goddammit all to hell,” he swore again.

  “May I be of assistance, sir?” he heard a distant voice call from across the water.

  Charles turned to look over the larboard railing, had there been one, and saw the seventy-four-gun Orion just passing his beam fifty yards away. The tall, erect figure of her captain, Sir James Saumarez, stood on the quarterdeck with a speaking trumpet in his hand. Charles had no trumpet, so he cupped his hands to his mouth. “That corvette forward,” he bellowed out. “I would be grateful, sir.”

  “Consider it my pleasure,” Saumarez answered, and lifted his hat in salute.

  Charles lifted his own hat and bowed.

  Orion shifted a point to starboard and soon turned hard to port, presenting her broadside to the much smaller Frenchman, then hesitated, offering an opportunity for her to strike. Incredibly, the corvette brought her own guns to bear on the seventy-four and fired, covering herself in smoke. Orion immediately replied in a roar. The frail French ship, as Louisa had before her, dissolved under the onslaught, her masts falling as one. She immediately began to sink in deeper water than Louisa had managed to find. Orion sailed on to anchor beside the fifth ship in the French line, with whom she began to exchange broadsides.

  Charles found himself appalled at Baptiste’s decision and its consequences for the crew. Charles had never considered exchanging broadsides with one of the enemy line of battleships. It was an act akin to suicide. He decided that he should do something to assist the corvette’s crew.

  “Mr. Beechum,” he called to the lieutenant, who was standing in the waist.

  “Sir?”

  “The cutter and the gig are still alongside. Please organize a party to go over to the corvette and take off any survivors you may find. Sykes may command the gig. You’d better see that at least some of the boat crews are armed.”

  “Yes, sir,” Beechum answered.

  The sky grew rapidly darker, although a dull band of orange lingered on the western horizon. Charles found Bevan, who informed him that the galley had been relit and supper would be available before long. Charles turned his attention once again to the battle raging a hundred yards to port. It became harder to identify individual ships in the dimming, smoke-filled air. He could see the crackling flashes of exploding cannon and clearly hear their nearly incessant thunder. He determined that the first five of the French line had surrendered, or at least ceased firing. The most intense part of the action had shifted up to the center, including L’Orient. From what Charles could tell, she was giving a good account of herself. One British ship that had attacked her was already drifting mastless into the bay.

  He knew that the 124-gun French flagship would be a costly objective for the relatively small seventy-fours to overcome. Any number could be battered until useless under her heavy cannon. If too many of the squadron were disabled, the tide of the battle might well turn, the still-untouched half of the French fleet at the rear of the line descending to take up the offensive against the few remaining British. None of the squadron that had followed him to the inside of the French had as yet moved that far up. He wondered if there was something, some weakness that could be exploited, that might distract the flagship, force her to divide her energies or in some way impair her abilities. He soon decided it was a fanciful notion.

  “The boats are returning, Charlie,” Bevan announced on the darkened quarterdeck. “They’ll be alongside in a minute. Where do you want to put the prisoners?”

  Charles thought for a moment. “We’ll put them in the after part of the mess deck,” he said. “Lincoln can deal with any wounded there, and they’ll be relatively easy to guard.” An idea crept into his head: an insubstantial, unformed idea. “I want to be present when they come aboard,” he said.

  Charles made his way into the waist, to where the entryport had been before the bulwarks were blown away. Louisa’s six remaining marines and a number of the crew were already assembled to make sure there would be no difficulties with the French survivors. Charles heard the rhythmic dipping of the boats’ oars before he saw them in the reflected starlight. First the cutter and then the gig tossed their oars and came against the side with muffled thumps. Soon a score of men from the corvette stood dripping on the deck.

  “Is this all there are?” Charles asked Beechum as he clambered aboard. Sykes followed a moment afterward.

  “Yes, sir,” Beechum said in a shaken voice. “She sank in waters deep enough to cover her. We found these clinging to bits of flotsam. There’s sharks about, lots of them. We lost one man just as we reached for him. It was gruesome.”

  “I see,” Charles said. He found the whole idea of sharks unsettling. “Did you have any other trouble?”

  “No, sir,” Beechum said. “None of their battleships paid any attention to us. The Frenchies here came willing enough.”

  Charles’s unformed idea began to grow. “No one paid any attention to you?” he said.

  “We passed within a stone’s throw of one of them,” Beechum related. “It was light enough that they must have seen what we was up to. No one even challenged us.”

  Suddenly, Charles knew what he could do. “Of course, it’s darker now,” he said, more to himself than his lieutenant.

  “I beg your pardon, sir?” Beechum said, not seeing the connection.

  “That’s all right,” Charles replied, his mind moving too fast to explain. “Find the boatswain. Tell him I require a rope ladder about twelve feet long, twenty feet of small line, and a stock of combustibles.”

  “Combustibles, sir?”

  “Yes, anything that will burn: paint, pitch, paper, kindling, bits of wood, things like that.” He turned to Sykes. “Run to the gunner. Bring me a small keg of gunpowder.”

  Charles went back to the quarterdeck to inform Bevan of his intention.

  “You’re going to do what?” his friend demanded.

  Charles tested his injured side and flexed his arm. He thought he could manage. “I am going to see if I can’t set a fire in the French flagship,” he answered. “If you would, please find a half-dozen topmen and Williams, my coxswain. Have them armed with pistols and report to me here.”

  “You’re going to go? Yourself? You’re sure? You can’t even dress yourself,” Bevan said. Apparently, he thought this ill adv
ised.

  “Yes,” Charles said. “You can’t go, and I’m not sending Beechum. I want no argument about it, Daniel. You will be in command until I return. Every man with me must be a volunteer and know what we’re about. My intention is to board L’Orient through her stern windows and start a fire. At the very least, she’ll have to take some of the men away from her guns to deal with it.”

  Charles went down to his cabin, or what had once been his cabin. He found his steward standing amid a shambles of broken beams, smashed windows, and several holes in the starboard hull that he could see through. His desk had been put back in its place, although there were no chairs and no table.

  “Oh, there you are, sir,” Attwater said. “I was just coming to see if you wanted your supper.” He looked around him. “I’m afraid it ain’t much. Most of your furnishings got damaged.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Charles said. “I don’t want to eat now. I’ve come for my pistols.” He unbuckled the belt holding his sword and placed the weapon on his desk. The thing would only hamper him.

  “Your pistols, what do you need them for?” Attwater said, eyeing him suspiciously.

  Charles knew he was going to get an argument, and he could guess why. “Just get them,” he said.

  Attwater stood firm in the middle of the room, actually folding his arms across his chest like a disapproving father. “You’re figuring to go on board one of those Frenchie ships, ain’t you?” he said. “Well, you can’t. Mrs. Edgemont, didn’t she not speak to me very strict about this. You’re not to endanger yourself till you’re better ’ealed, and not even then.”

  Charles sighed. “I will fix things with Penny,” he said firmly. “Get me my pistols, or I’ll get them myself.”

  When Charles emerged on deck, his pistols tucked in the band of his breeches, he saw the dim light of a lantern at the entryport where a group of his crew were passing objects down into the cutter below. He recognized several of them as he approached. “Hello, Saunders,” he said to the nearest. “You’re coming along?”