by Jay Worrall
The captain of the foretop grinned, his white teeth reflecting the lantern light. “Aye, zur, we wouldn’t miss it for all the world. There’s eight of us—Dickie Johnson, Mick Connley, and the rest of the foretop. We all volunteered when we heared you wuz going across. Dickie, he’s especially partial to fires. He was a sheriff’s quotaman, do you know. Done at the assizes for arson.”
Charles thought them a good selection. They were all young, muscular men and adept at climbing. He did wonder about Johnson’s fondness for fire. At least he would be useful. “That’s very commendable of you,” he said.
“It ain’t nothing, zur. It’s our duty, you might say,” Saunders explained. “Don’t you remember? We promised Missus Edgemont to look out for you.”
“Yes, I remember,” Charles said. “I appreciate it.” He began to wonder who was the real captain of his ship, he or his wife.
Soon the materials were stored in the cutter, and the men went down into her. Charles stood by Bevan for a moment at the side ladder. “You don’t have to do this, Charlie,” the lieutenant said. “You’ve done enough already.”
“Yes, I do. It’s my responsibility; I have to do something.”
“Do you have everything you need?” Bevan said in a resigned tone.
“I think so, Daniel.” With a quick handshake, Charles started down over the side.
“Good luck, Charlie. I’ll see that there’s a light by the bow so you can find your way back.”
The effort of climbing down the battens brought a protest from Charles’s injured side, a painful but manageable annoyance. Hands reached for him as he stepped on the cutter’s gunwale, and after a moment he was seated in the stern sheets. “We’re making for their flagship,” he said to Williams, but loud enough for everyone to hear. “She’s bow on to us, so I want to give her a wide berth, then swing around and come up under her stern. We’ll go aboard from there.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” the coxswain said, then, “Let go all. Smartly now, but dip yer blades quiet.”
The cutter shoved off Louisa’s side, then started forward at a rapid clip with eight men pulling at the oars. The pounding explosions of the heavy guns reverberated incessantly across the ink-black waters of the bay. Charles saw the outlines of the French line of battleships by the light of the muzzle flashes, which also reflected off the low chop like transient dancing flames. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could see obstacles on the sea surface: timbers, broken mast sections and yards, barrels, a hatch cover, and the bobbing lumps of human bodies, many bodies. Once he saw an agitation in the water to his left and heard a thrashing sound. The form of the dead seaman that had been floating there vanished. There was a flash of a dorsal fin, then nothing. Charles took a deep breath.
L’Orient was easy to make out, the largest silhouette in the line, as she roared back at two English seventy-fours on her far side. In the flickering light, he could see that her masts all stood, and from what he could hear, her rate of fire seemed undiminished. The cutter moved even with her stern, a hundred yards to port.
“Just a little more, Williams,” Charles said, “then we’ll angle back toward her counter.”
After a few moments, the coxswain pushed on the tiller. “Larboard side, lift yer oars,” he said. The cutter turned in the water, then started toward the towering black form that was the French flagship’s stern.
Charles strained his eyes to see if anyone on the ship’s decks might be on watch for approaching boats on her unengaged side. He could make out nothing against the dark sky, but he doubted anyone was there. The battle had been in progress for several hours, and there would be more pressing needs for idle hands.
“Make for her rudder,” Charles said in a subdued voice, as if someone on the warship might hear them over the crashing carronade. The cutter slipped quickly and relatively silently toward the deep shadow under L’Orient’s stern galleries.
“Boat your oars,” he ordered even more softly when they were twenty yards off, and allowed the craft to glide the remainder of the way under its own momentum. “Fend off,” he said, and they came to a stop beside the foot-thick trailing fin of the flagship’s rudder.
Charles looked up at the railing of the lowermost of the three galleries—narrow balconies that projected out from the stern—ten feet above. The uppermost, just below the poop deck, was for the captain’s use. The middle extended off the admiral of the fleet’s cabin. The one just above would adjoin the wardroom and served the lieutenants and other officers. Charles’s great hope was that the wardroom would be empty while the battle was in progress.
“Who’s the best climber?” he asked.
“Connley, zur,” Saunders answered. Charles thought this likely. Connley was a short, wiry man with thick forearms, one with a tattoo of a mermaid sitting on an anchor.
“Do you think we can get a line on that railing for him to shinny up?” Charles had to repeat the sentence as a broadside from L’Orient’s three decks of guns obliterated all other sound.
“Begging yer pardon, we’ll just hoist him up like,” Saunders said.
“Can you do that?”
“Oh, yes, zur. Dickey, come here.” Two men bent down side by side over the thwarts. The nimble Connley hopped on their backs, and the men straightened. Connley climbed up on their shoulders, then stood, reaching above him. “I got it,” Charles heard him say, and he disappeared up into the night.
There was a thunderous crash of cannon fire from a British warship fifty yards away. Then L’Orient’s own broadside exploded outward in a deafening roar. The heavy, acrid smell of burnt gunpowder stuck in his throat. In the relative silence that followed, Charles spoke upward: “Connley, what do you see?”
A head appeared over the railing. “Nothing, sir. There’s nobody here.”
“Pass the line up,” Charles ordered. “Tie off the ladder on it.”
Saunders stood in the bow of the cutter and tossed the looped line to Connley. The rope ladder was hitched to the line’s end. The line and then the dangling ladder snaked upward. After a moment, Connley reported that it was secured.
“I’ll go first,” Charles said. “Jones and Williams, you are to remain with the cutter. The rest of you men bring up those tubs of paint and the other things when you come.” He stood, grabbed the inch-thick hemp strands that formed the sides of the ladder, and placed his foot on a rung. Pulling himself up from rung to rung was more difficult than he had expected. After the third or fourth, the muscles on his left side protested loudly. By the time he managed to breathlessly hook his right arm over the top of the railing, they were screaming at him. “Give me a hand, will you, Connley?” he said. The seaman obliged by pulling him bodily over and onto the gallery.
“Are you all right, sir?” Connley asked.
“Thank you, I’ll be fine,” Charles answered between gasps for air. He could barely move the arm on his injured side.
Saunders soon clambered up with an armful of kindling. Charles got to his feet and began to examine the gallery windows running the full width of the stern. The officers’ wardroom behind them was darkened, the lamps that would have illuminated it extinguished in case one of them should be damaged and start a fire. By testing the windows, he soon found one that was unlatched.
“Do we have a lantern?” he asked Saunders.
“There’s one in the cutter, zur.”
“Send the line down for it,” Charles said. “Then have the paint and powder and the rest of it placed outside this window.” As Saunders left, Charles pushed the window open and climbed through. No challenge came from inside, but he could hear the rumbling of the gun carriages and the loud cries of the crews working them from beyond a bulkhead forward.
A form came in through the window to stand beside him. Saunders held out the lantern. “Here, zur. I thought it best not to light it outside.”
“Thank you,” Charles said, “you may do so now.”
The light revealed a long table set athwartships, with chairs linin
g either side. He could feel his heart racing. Only a few undisturbed minutes, he thought, and he would have done what he came to do. “Johnson”—he beckoned to a figure by the window—“come in here and start passing the kindling and the rest of the combustibles through.”
The flagship fired its tremendous broadside. The noise in the enclosed room seemed overwhelming. Charles felt the deck reverberate from the recoil of the cannon as they were brought up by their breechings. “Lay the starters and the kindling under the table. We’ll set the fire there,” he said, anxious to get the thing done quickly. “Pour the paint and pitch over that and then sprinkle the gunpowder on top.” As Saunders and Johnson worked, Charles moved along the line of windows, unlatching and opening each with his one arm, for air to feed the fire.
“We’re done, zur,” Saunders reported.
“Light it,” Charles said.
Johnson opened the lantern and stuck a long sliver of wood inside. As soon as it caught, he knelt and put the flame to the tinder under the kindling and blew gently on it. A small, gratifying trail of smoke started upward.
“Quickly,” Charles said, “slide those chairs closer. Put a few on top of the table.” A wavering orange tongue appeared among the shavings and quickly grew. As soon as it touched the corns of powder, the flame sparked and popped, spreading rapidly over the pile in a blaze of light.
“That should serve,” Johnson said with an almost ecstatic smile.
“Back to the boat, all of you,” Charles ordered. “You can admire your work from afar.” He waited for an instant, staring at the growing flame already licking at the underside of the table. Saunders and Johnson had gone. He had turned toward the window and bent to pass through when a door opened at the room’s far side. A startled man stood framed in the entryway.
“Feu,” he shouted. “Le feu!” Then he saw Charles and screamed, “Les Anglais!”
Charles jerked one of the pistols from his belt, pulled the hammer back, pointed it at the figure, and fired. The ball struck the jamb beside him. The man jumped back, slamming the door shut. Charles scrambled through the window, where he saw four of his men. “Give me your pistols,” he said quickly. “Then get down into the cutter.”
“But zur—” Saunders began.
“Do as you’re told,” Charles ordered. The men surrendered their weapons. Charles laid the pistols on the windowsill. “When these are empty, I’ll jump from the railing. Be ready to pull me out.” The men went to the ladder and down.
Charles cocked his collection of weapons and knelt behind the sill. The fire continued to grow, having engulfed the table and some of the chairs. It gave off a foul-smelling black smoke as the paint and pitch took hold. The door flew open again, with three soldiers and their muskets in its frame. Charles snatched up one of his guns and squeezed the trigger. The middle soldier staggered back with his hand to his breast. The others shouldered their weapons. Clouds of gray smoke mushroomed from both, and Charles felt one ball pass close beside his ear. He picked up another pistol and fired without aiming, then another. That was enough, he decided. Even now the flames were licking the deck beams above. He threw the remaining pistols into the fire—where they would go off on their own— stepped back, and forced himself over the gallery railing with a gasp of pain. As the water closed over him, he remembered about the sharks.
“It’s all right, zur, we got you,” Saunders’s voice said as four hands grabbed him, hauling his body out of the water and over the side. Charles lay in the bottom of the boat, spitting out seawater and taking deep gulps of air.
“Away, all. Put your fucking backs to it,” Williams said loudly. The cutter started from the hulking flagship, rapidly picking up speed. Looking upward, Charles could see the bright orange glow from her lower stern windows, and a dimmer glow from the deck above.
“AHOY, WHAT BOAT?” Bevan’s voice carried across the water.
“Louisa,” the coxswain answered. “We’ve your captain for you.”
“Thank God,” Bevan said.
Standing naked on Louisa’s quarterdeck, Charles watched almost unbelieving as L’Orient’s stern slowly blossomed into flame. He rubbed his hair with the towel Attwater had brought him before accepting a dry pair of breeches. The fire illuminated the other warships around the French flagship. Swiftsure had taken a position off her stern quarter and trained her guns so as to discourage anyone from fighting the conflagration. Alexander, Orion, and a number of others also fired into her from different angles like a pack of dogs harrying a bear. L’Orient’s mainmast shivered, then toppled sideways into the sea. The blaze swelled to an inferno, consuming the afterdecks, its tongues reaching high into the sky through an acrid yellow cloud.
“Sweet Jesus,” Bevan muttered from beside him.
Charles stared in silent awe. The flames had reached the waist. The mizzenmast became a tall fiery spire. There would be no diverting men to extinguish the blaze. It was beyond that now. He could feel the heat against his skin. The figures of men, hundreds of men, began pouring over the doomed flagship’s side into the water. The other warships closest to L’Orient, English and French together, began to cut their anchor cables to gain some distance.
“She’s going to blow up,” Bevan said. “It’ll reach the magazine soon.”
“Yes,” Charles said.
A blinding flash lit the sky and everything under it. A huge orange-yellow ball of flame rose up out of L’Orient’s bowels into the heavens, followed immediately by a thunderous explosion that pushed the air against him with physical force. The noise echoed into infinity, then ceased. Near-total silence followed. There was no cannon fire, no shouts or screams, no sound of any kind. After a moment, a rain of burning wood, fittings, canvas, and flesh began to descend, hitting the water with a splash or a hiss. Some fell on Louisa’s scarred deck. As his eyes readjusted to the darkness, Charles saw that the three-decked French flagship, with her crew of one thousand, had vanished as if she had never been. My God, what have I done? he thought.
“Get fresh boat crews for the cutter and gig, Daniel,” he said. “We must save as many of her men as we can.”
As Bevan moved away, Charles stood staring mutely at where L’Orient had been. What did it mean? Not the battle, the contest between nations and their fleets and armies, he thought. What did it mean: the deaths, the spilled blood, the loss of human futures? Penny had said they were all somebody’s brother, husband, son, father. How do you balance those lives against victory? Penny knew. It was an easy equation for her. But what was the calculus? How did you decide that this many was enough, that many too much? Charles was sure that he didn’t know. He looked up and saw a blood-red moon rising over the sand dunes to the east.
IN THE FIRST rays of the morning sun, Charles sat alone in a chair brought up for him from the wardroom and placed on Louisa’s unmoving deck. He had spent the long night watching the progress of the battle, or at least the changing patterns of the sparkling cannon flashes. After L’Orient had exploded, there was a lull of ten or fifteen minutes before the gunfire resumed. Slowly, methodically, the British had worked their way up the line, he knew; but exactly how far, at what cost, and with what results he could not tell in the smoke-filled darkness.
Beechum had the morning watch. There was little for him to do besides greeting the two ship’s boats as they returned with sailors pulled from the sea, providing an escort to take them below, and arranging for fresh crews. From what Beechum reported after each new batch, Charles surmised that there had been few survivors from the French flagship.
As the light strengthened, he saw a thick haze of cannon smoke clinging to the sea surface. Battered, mastless ships lay still in the water from one side of the bay almost to the other. Two French warships were hard aground well to the south of him. One or two toward the rear of the once powerful line still held out, firing their cannon in a desultory way against an ever increasing number of British. In the far distance, toward the southern limit of the bay, he thought he could see three
warships yet to be engaged. But the battle had been concluded in an overwhelming victory for Admiral Nelson, with his squadron of undersized seventy-fours against a superior enemy force with every defensive advantage. Charles could not think of any naval battle in the last century in which one side had so completely vanquished the other.
“Sir,” Beechum said from close behind him.
“Yes?” Charles said. “Good morning, Mr. Beechum.”
“Good morning, sir. The cutter’s just returned. They’ve got two this time. The gig’s still searching.”
“Thank you,” Charles said. The cutter and gig had been out for over an hour on this last search, and two souls were all they’d found.
“Sir,” Beechum continued, “Williams, he says he doesn’t think there are any more—living, that is. He says there are sharks everywhere, thousands of them. Anyone still in the water is—”
“Thank you,” Charles interrupted. He didn’t want the young man to have to complete the sentence. “You may recall the boats and stand their crews down for now. Thank you for everything you’ve done.”
“Yes, sir.” Beechum wearily touched his hat and went forward. Within two minutes, he was back. “Sir, there’s a boat approaching to larboard. She’s from Orion, I think.”
Charles looked out and saw a ship’s launch coming toward them. He pushed himself to his feet, which transformed the dull ache in his side to a sharp stab of pain. “We shall go to the side and greet them.”
A young lieutenant in his mid-twenties climbed smartly up Louisa ’s broken side. “Captain Saumarez’s warmest respects, sir,” he said, coming to a halt and saluting smartly. “I am to inquire as to the status of your frigate and whether you require any immediate assistance.”
“Your name, lieutenant?” Charles said.
“John Chatterton, sir.”
“Mr. Chatterton, His Majesty’s frigate Louisa has sunk to what passes for the bottom of the sea in these parts. I am informed by my carpenter that she is irreparable. If you would be so kind as to return Captain Saumarez’s respects, you may inform him that we are in no immediate peril. We will, however, require to be taken off to another vessel at some point.”
