“Let’s go see what France has to offer, then,” Lewrie said, after a final chuckle.
* * *
From Santoña to Bilbao, then on to San Sebastian Donostia, in Basque country, the Spanish coast remained rocky and fir-treed, with the Picos de Europa a snow-capped backdrop, an introduction to the massive Pyrenees mountains. Military goods landed anywhere along the coast faced dauntingly steep and difficult road journeys to feed and arm the French armies further South and inland. Those mountains made Lewrie wonder how the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte ever thought to maintain his troops so far from France. To his mind, after looking at one of the few atlases which depicted Iberia, and measuring off the distances, the whole endeavour seemed vastly improbable.
Damn fool’s bitten off more than he can chew, Lewrie thought.
Yet the French strove to fulfill their Emperor’s wishes, and that meant even more “trade” plying the seas closer to France proper, where supply convoys had shorter voyages, and shorter exposure to any raiders. Chalmers and Blamey had always reaped the lion’s share of prizes because of their being assigned a richer hunting ground, which made Lewrie think of swapping Undaunted and Peregrine with Capt. Yearwood’s Sterling and Commander Teague’s Blaze, the next time they sortied from Lisbon, if they weren’t re-enforced by then, just to share the wealth.
Four prizes became six, then seven, the last taken a dowdy old brig which had been the slowest of a clutch of six that they had sighted off Zumaya; again, all of them returning to France empty.
“I’ll have that’un,” Lewrie declared. “We need the gunnery practice. Take her crew off, Mister Westcott, and make a signal to Peregrine to take her in tow.”
Her crew, now prisoners, were brought aboard Sapphire, well-guarded by Marines as Commander Blamey paid out a full cable’s length of tow line, regardless of what he thought of the whole thing. Once Peregrine and the prize were under way at a slow four knots, Lewrie ordered the ship to Quarters, and had the word passed that tobacco would reward the best shots.
“What’s that all about, Mister Westcott?” Lewrie snapped as he heard a commotion in the waist. There was some palaver with the French captives, and Midshipman Harvey reported to the quarterdeck.
“A couple of the prisoners, sir,” he said, beaming, “they say this is the second time we’ve taken them, and their Master, yonder, says he can’t guarantee their pay. They’d like to scrag him if we let them! They say it’s just too unfair!”
“Shouldn’t have signed on, if they can’t take a joke,” Lewrie quipped. “Thankee, and carry on, Mister Harvey.”
* * *
“The Commodore will amuse himself, I suppose,” Capt. Chalmers drawled as he watched the preparations. “Lord only knows that his gun crews hardly ever fire a single shot under anyone’s bows to make them strike, as slow as is Sapphire.”
“Must be a trial, sir,” Undaunted’s First Officer simpered in agreement, “commanding such a lumbering barge.”
“Spare us that fate, Mister Crosley, for as long as possible.” Chalmers sniggered. “Aha, she’s working up on the target, now. About two hundred yards … a wee short of a cable’s range?”
“About that, sir,” Lt. Crosley agreed once more, lifting his own telescope to one eye.
Boo-boom! as Sapphire’s forecastle chase guns, carronades, and her first pair of starboard 12-pounders and 24-pounders went off almost as one. The prize ship’s jib-boom was shot away, her crudely-carved figurehead was blasted to scrap, and overlapping holes were blasted into the brig’s forward larboard scantlings. Boo-Boom! and another pair of holes appeared further aft. Boo-Boom! and the brig’s foremast shrouds and channel platform got shattered.
On down Sapphire’s side the firing went in twin blasts as the upper and lower gun deck fired almost as one. There were some shots wider of the mark, striking closer to the target’s waterline, and one or two blasted through her thinner upper bulwarks, but the accuracy of Sapphire’s gunners was impressive, even to a sceptical Chalmers.
The last great-guns roared, along with the quarterdeck 6-pounders, and carronades tore through the target’s helm, took bites from its mainmast trunk, and shattered the larboard quarter gallery and the hull, right where the master’s cabins and the mates’ wardroom would be. The prize brig looked as if a horde of gigantic rats had been at her, and Sapphire wasn’t through.
The two-decker weaved away, off to larboard for a bit, then crossed the target’s stern to allow her larboard guns to have a go. Once more, the stuttering. Boo-Boo-Booms rang out, bringing down the foremast, punching roundshot into the brig’s hull, sending planking soaring, shivering the weakened main mast, and once again sweeping the quarterdeck clean. The target shook like a rat in a terrier’s jaws as the last roundshot took the upper stock of her rudder away, and she began to yaw to either beam. Down came the main mast, and Sapphire hoisted a signal for Peregrine to slip her towline and leave the brig to sink or wander on her own.
“Oh my,” Lt. Crosley said as he espied a broom making its way up one of Sapphire’s larboard signal halliards.
“It does appear as if there’s a method to his madness,” Capt. Chalmers said with a taut grin on his face, wondering if Lewrie was jibing his earlier boastful broom hoist. “That was … impressive.”
“Against an un-armed, lightly built merchantman, sir, which cannot shoot back,” Lt. Crosley commented. “Heavy twenty-four pound shot against two-inch thick oak, perhaps cheaper pine?”
“But he wasn’t firing just to hit anywhere, was he?” Chalmers countered, rubbing his chin in thought. “Gun-ports, masts, the helm and quarterdeck … where officers would stand. Hmm. There may be something to it. Don’t know if we’ll be cutting sights on our guns, yet, but … it’s a thought.”
* * *
Further East, and the sight of snow-capped mountains became a memory, beyond the Western-most shoulders and foothills of the Pyrenees and the Picos de Europa. The coast became a plain, as the three-ship squadron approached France. Biarritz, mainly a whaling port, hove into view along the low, featureless shore that consisted mostly of beaches, dunes, scrub pine forests stretching far inland, un-inhabited and forever shifting low barrier islands fronting lagoons populated only by myriads of sea birds. The vista was even bleaker than Lewrie recalled from when he’d had the Savage frigate off Royan and the mouth of the Gironde River which ran to Bordeaux.
North of Biarritz and Bayonne, the coast ran as straight as a knife blade to Cap Ferret and the Bay of Arcachon, unbroken by even one wee fishing port worthy of the name, a dour and dangerous lee shore down which all the French supply ships would have to run, as risky as the Spanish coast, in its own way.
“There’s some astoundingly good wines back behind all this, somewhere,” Lt. Westcott commented. “Aquitaine’s famous for them. If only we could get at them.”
“We’ll send Mister Cadrick up the Gironde with money,” Lewrie quipped. “Who knows? As ‘skint’ as this part of France appears, the locals might not mind havin’ some silver shillings in their pockets!”
Six prizes worth keeping became nine, and on their short cruise they set alight at least seven more, but, try as they might to man the prizes with as few spare hands as possible, it became impossible after a time. If they encountered French warships escorting the convoys, or an enemy squadron out to protect their supply lines, all ships would be too short of sailors to fight.
We’ve had our fun, Lewrie gloomily thought as he was forced to the admission that they would have to quit the coasts, both the French and the Spanish, and return to Lisbon. Christ, if I only had more ships! Pray Jesus, there’s good news from Admiralty when we get back.
BOOK FOUR
Ye gentlemen of England
That live at home in ease,
Ah! little do you think upon
The dangers of the seas.
—MARTIN PARKER (1600–56)
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
HMS Sapphire and her consorts came to a stop in the same anchorage
under the towering Alfama hills, dragging in a total of fourteen prizes. Sails were taken in and brailed up, lashed snug to the yards in harbour gaskets, and the yards lowered to rests. Bosuns from all ships rowed about to see that all yards were square, and that all rigging was snugged to geometric precision.
Once that was done, boats from all ships stroked to the quays to fetch fresh provisions; firewood and water casks, first, and fresh bread next.
Pursers from all five warships chafed at the delay, eager for first shot at the chandleries and the store ship, and Bosuns and their Mates checked and re-checked their lists of supplies with which to keep their ships ready for sea. Captains and officers had their own wants, but would have to wait ’til the basic necessities were seen to before they could go ashore. And, there was a steady stream of boats rowing prize crews from their captures back to their own ships, and men from the Prize-Court rowing out to replace them and take the prizes into custody. At last, as a sop to impatience, ships’ boats fetched the mail sacks from the store ship to be distributed to all who could read.
In the midst of all that, a small moliciero, one of the oddly shaped boats used to harvest seaweed, came alongside Sapphire, and a Portuguese messenger managed to convey the fact that he had a letter for “El Capitão Loonie”, to the great amusement of all on deck who heard it.
“Captain ‘Loonie’, mine arse,” Lewrie growled as a Midshipman scrambled down to collect the letter and fetch it to the quarterdeck. “I swear, I doubt there’s a single foreigner who ever gets my name right! Ah, thankee, Mister Chenery.”
“Aye, sir,” the cheeky young’un replied, trying to keep his face set, and not titter.
It was from Thomas Mountjoy, and Lewrie eyed it warily before breaking the seal and opening it.
“Yes, by God!” he shouted after a quick scan. “Wellesley’s got Oporto. That French Marshal, Soult, has been beaten like a rug, and General Sir John Moore’s been avenged!”
“That’s grand, sir,” Lt. Westcott cheered, “welcome news. Did he say how it was done?”
“No details, no, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie told him, “though I’m promised all the juicy bits over a shore supper. Mister Chenery, is that seaweed barge still alongside?”
“Aye, sir.”
“Can the messenger speak any English?” Lewrie demanded.
“Ehm, hard to say, sir,” Chenery said, shrugging.
“Hola, senhor!” Lewrie cried, going to the larboard entry port to shout down to the boat. “Falar Inglese? Damn! Of course not. Do you tell Senhor Mountjoy sim, I will be happy to dine with him at the appointed hour.”
“Senhor Montahna?” the messenger said, scratching his scalp in confusion. “Não comprender, Capitão.”
“Carregar um carta to Senhor Mount-Joy?” Lewrie pressed.
“Ah, sim, Senhor Capitão!”
Lewrie dashed into the chart room, scribbled a quick note, and handed it to Chenery, who bore it down the battens to the messenger.
Christ on a crutch, Lewrie fumed; why can’t foreigners speak even a little English?
* * *
“No sense in trusting the newspaper accounts,” Thomas Mountjoy told Lewrie as soon as they met that evening. “They always get things wrong. Do take those back numbers, though, for other news.”
“And who’s responsible for that, hmm?” Lewrie pointedly said, raising a brow. “War by print and ink, hey. Isn’t that what you call it?”
“Well, I have my moments,” Mountjoy replied, buffing his nails on his coat lapel. “There’s a lovely little wine bar near here, in the Rua de Prata. Pretty girls, fados and entertainment, and simply luscious appetisers.”
“Far uphill, is it?” Lewrie asked, casting a glance up from the lowest level of the Baixa district to the towering city above.
“Just a wee stroll,” Mountjoy confidently assured him, so they set off uphill from Mountjoy’s “false front” offices. The wine bar was on a wider major street, not tucked away in one of the many cobblestoned narrow side streets, a very inviting place with an outdoor seating area under a gay striped canvas awning, already busy with diners, drinkers, and music aficianados. It was just dark enough for the bar’s many candles and smaller lanthorns to make it seem a lot more enticing than it might appear in daylight. They were led to a table just inside the wide, glazed double doors, and quickly supplied glasses and a bottle of espumante.
“Ah, that’s lovely,” Mountjoy said with an appreciative sigh after his first sip. “Must have a cellar, where they keep it cool. I must say, Portuguese espumante is growing on me.”
“Anything other than French champagne, which is un-patriotic to drink, I s’pose, “Lewrie agreed. “Now, Oporto. When, and how?”
“Middle of May,” Mountjoy said, squirming on his rickety chair with delight in the telling, “Wellesley kept flanking Soult’s troops South of the Douro River … not very many of them, it appears, since Marshal Soult trusted the river as an impassable barrier, and French soldiers out in small packets are dead meat. The Portuguese partisans, you see,” he said with a shrug.
“Mid-May?” Lewrie said, scowling. “Mean t’say, nigh a month ago? I wish somebody’d told me!”
“Well, I did leave a letter at the Post Office for you…”
“Which I didn’t get ’til today, dammit,” Lewrie groused.
“Anyway, Soult pulled all his troops back to the North bank of the Douro on May twelfth,” Mountjoy went on, un-fazed, “burned the new bridge of boats, pulled anything that would float to the North shore, and figured that with the river in spate from all the snow melt in the mountains, he had all the time in the world to watch a British army diddle. Been to Oporto, have you?”
“Seen it from the sea,” Lewrie told him, between sips of wine.
“Just like Lisbon, steep,” Mountjoy said, “but, unlike Lisbon, it’s steep on both banks, and the Douro might as well be at the bottom of a canyon. Now, earlier on, a General Hill had gathered up some of those seaweed harvesting boats, the molicieros, and had used them to flank the French through some lagoons, and Soult must have known that we still had them, so he moved most of his army down near the mouth of the river to prevent a crossing there … the damned fool.”
“Pesticos, senhors?” a waiter asked, and the tale had to wait while they ordered grilled sardines, shrimp, cheese, and thin toast points.
“So there sat Soult, smug as only a Frenchman can be, cocking his nose at Wellesley and daring him to try anything,” Mountjoy said with delight, “but he didn’t keep any troops in the city proper, or on the Eastern side, upriver … God only knows why. Wellesley’s men found one half-sunk boat, bailed it out, and ferried a brigade over to an un-guarded convent or seminary on the outskirts of town, only thirty or fourty men at a time, if you can imagine it, got a lodgement, and then they found some bigger wine barges further inland, and moved even more men across. By the time the French noticed, it was mid-day, and we beat off three attacks on the seminary, and Wellesley’s guns on the South bank just swamped them with shrapnel shell.
“Soult got winkled out of town, retreating so fast that he left over fifteen hundred sick soldiers behind in the hospitals, and a retreat turned into a rout,” Mountjoy told Lewrie, almost cackling with glee. “The French under Soult, another pack of them under a General Loison, had to flee Northeast, into the rough country of the Minho. They left seventy pieces of artillery behind at Oporto, and along the way out of Portugal, they lost all their wheeled transport, baggage, artillery, and most of their cavalry and draught animals. Our men found a lot of them ham-strung so we couldn’t use them. Hah, some of our soldiers made themselves rich from the pickings they found at the bottom of a ravine and bridge over the Calvado River. Portuguese silver coins, belts of gold coins, silver plate … all looted from Oporto. The ravine was just piled with dead horses and soldiers. Their retreat was as ghastly as Sir John Moore’s retreat to Corunna in December … less all the ice and snow, of course.”
“So, Wellesley’s avenged Si
r John,” Lewrie said. “Good! Just bloody, bloody good!”
“Pity the Portuguese who got in the way, though,” Mountjoy sobred, “farms and villages along the retreat route pillaged, churches despoiled and burned … the French really go out of their way when it comes to churches. Townspeople and peasants massacred just for the fun of it, young and old, and the women raped then murdered? It was as bad as anything we invented at Gibraltar when the French invaded Spain.”
Lt. Westcott and Midshipman Fywell had provided drawings for Mountjoy’s spurious newspaper accounts of French depravity which had gone a long way towards rousing the Spanish people, and their turning from a supine French ally to a fierce British ally, the year before.
“To Sir John Moore,” Lewrie proposed, raising his full glass, “May he take joy in Heaven of a French … humiliation.”
“And to General Wellesley, and Oporto,” Mountjoy seconded, which caught the notice of the Lisboêtas in the wine bar, who raised their glasses and voices in celebration, as well.
“Anything developing after Oporto?” Lewrie asked.
“Oh, there’s a report I just saw that yet another French army under a Marshal Victor has crossed the frontier round Castelo Branco, making a try at Lisbon,” Mountjoy related, “but nothing much came of it. After getting fresh supplies, Wellesley crossed the border into Spain to keep them on the hop, and off-balance. I’ve heard that he’s to join up with the Spanish, under some twit named Cuesta.”
“Good God, that’ll be a disaster,” Lewrie growled. “Ye can’t rely on the Spanish for a slice of bloody bread!”
“Well, we’ll just have to see,” Mountjoy said with a deep sigh. “Hope for the best … all that? Wellesley’s the best we’ve got, and has some nasty surprises up his sleeve for the Frogs. And, frankly, Lewrie?” He leaned forward to impart with a grin. “Even if Bonaparte comes back to Spain to save his Marshals’ bacon, I have the feeling that General Wellesley could beat the stuffing out of him, too!”
A Hard, Cruel Shore Page 30
