The French Admiral

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Jesus Christ!” A gun captain yelped in alarm as he was almost beheaded by a heavy halyard block that crashed to the deck beside him. Rope snaked down to droop over the guns as braces, stays and sail-tending lines were torn loose.

  “Look out below amidships!”

  The main tops’l yard came swinging down like a scythe to smash into the larboard gangway, scattering the brace tenders and sheetmen, who had to dive for their lives.

  “As you bear . . . fire!” Gwynn yelled. “Lewrie, take three men and cut that raffle away. Save the yard if ya can. We’ll not see its like in the Chesapeake.”

  “Aye, sir.” Leaving a party from the gangway to anchor the free end, he went aloft to see what was holding it and found it resting on the edge of the maintop, snagged by its starboard rigging into the shrouds. The topmast and topgallant mast above it were leaning drunkenly over the starboard side, ready to let go themselves.

  “Yeoman,” he called down, “work the butt end forrard by the shrouds and begin lashing down.” He turned to the bosun’s mate, Weems, who had come aloft with him. “We’ll have to get a gantline on this end and just lash her to the shrouds. She’ll lean there alright for now, do you not think?”

  “Aye, sir,” Weems replied, sending a man further aloft to haul in a surviving parrel and preventer backstay to secure the upper end of the yard. “But, that up there . . .”

  “Topmast is shattered halfway up, looks like,” Alan agreed.

  “Might save it an’ fish it. Topgallant mast, though. Don’t know what’s keepin’ it aloft as it is. ’Bout ready ta let go.”

  There was another broadside from Desperate, and a ragged cheer which made them turn to look. They had the French sloop of war at roughly musket shot now, half a cable away, and had just punched some holes into her, making her stagger in the water as though she had run aground on an uncharted reef. Her foremast leaned over drunkenly and she began to slow down, now unable to keep up with Desperate even on a parallel course.

  “We’ll need more men,” Alan said, removing his baldric and cutlass, unloading his pockets of the weight of the pistols, which were still at half cock. He eased the hammers forward for safety, laid everything in the top platform and gritted his teeth to make the ascent to the topmast to see how bad the damage was. It was expected of him, God help him.

  There was a great groan of tortured pine, and the damaged masts leaned over to starboard even more, the topmast beginning to split down its length as the weight of the topgallant mast tore loose from whatever last shred had been holding it.

  “’Ware below!” Weems boomed.

  Alan had no choice but to slide back down the topmast he had been scaling until he fetched up at the lower mast cap and the trestletrees, clinging for dear life to avoid being pitched out of the rigging or torn asunder if the mast split off at the cap. With a final shriek, the entire topgallant mast and half the topmast split off and went over the side to raise a great splash of water alongside, and Alan exclaimed in terror as standing rigging and trailing rigging slashed about him like coach whips.

  “I’m sorry, I quit!” he shouted, not caring who heard him. “I’ve done just about bloody enough tonight, thank you! If you want to kill me, you’ll find me in my hammock below decks!”

  “Damme, we’ve lost it!” Weems cried, in anguish at the hurt to his precious rigging and masts. He scrambled up to the cap with Lewrie and surveyed what little he could see in the night. “Not a shred left of it. Ripped every stay, every shroud right out. We’ll be the next week makin’ repairs, an’ where’ll we get spare spars enough, I’m wonderin’.”

  “I am well,” Alan told him, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Thank you very much for asking, Mister Weems!”

  “Goddamn French bastards, the poxy snail-eatin’ sons-abitches!” Weems continued to lament the scarred perfection of his masts, shaking an angry fist at the French sloop of war that was, as Alan finally noted, being pounded to pieces by Desperate’s heavier fire. Her own damaged foremast went by the board over the farther side, and must have still been attached, for she stewed about as though snagged by an anchor cable, which threw such a shock to her remaining rigging that Lewrie saw for the first time a ship slung about so violently that she indeed had all “the sticks” ripped right out of her, her other mast crashing down in ruin to cover her decks in timber, rope, and canvas.

  “Serves ya right, ya duck-fuckers!” Weems howled.

  “May I go down to the deck now, Mister Weems?” Alan asked, picking a rather large splinter out of his palm from the shattered topmast.

  “Aye, nothin’ left doin’ aloft, not on this mast. Hurt yeself, did ya? Best let the surgeon see ta that. Might get a tot of rum outen it if ya talks sweet to him,” Weems said.

  That’s the best offer I’ve had all day, Alan decided.

  CHAPTER 5

  Until dawn Desperate made her way painfully to the anchorage at the mouth of the York River. There had been few men injured in the fight with the French sloop of war, even fewer in the abortive attempt to take the merchantman; even so, Mr. Dorne and his surgeon’s mates had been busy until that time sewing up cuts and scrapes, taking off an arm here that had been shattered, amputating a leg above the knee on a young gunner who had had the bone smashed into permanent ruin by a musket ball. The low tide slacked and the sea breeze died just before first light, so that the frigate was for a time becalmed, drifting for a piece slowly sternward out to sea once more before she anchored. Once the land breeze sprang up, she could find enough steerageway to work close-hauled up the York to join her sister ships already in the bay.

  “Now, damme, will you look at that,” Railsford muttered as he stood by the taffrail, peering into Lynnhaven Bay with a telescope.

  Alan was swaying by the binnacle and compass, ready to pass out with fatigue. He had been up all night, like all the hands, tending to what hurts to the ship could be put right immediately, and at that moment could have cheerfully murdered someone for hot tea or coffee. Railsford’s words brought him out of his stupor enough to join him at the rail.

  “There’s that Frog transport we burned out last night. And look you at what the others were,” Railsford spat, almost beside himself.

  Alan took the heavy tube in both hands and applied it to his right eye, the weight of the instrument making his weary limbs shudder.

  “Coasters!” Alan exclaimed. “Potty little oyster boats and such!”

  “And not a full dozen of ’em,” Railsford moaned. “We were tricked.”

  “They looked like ships last night, sir. All lit up and chiming the watch bells.”

  “At the least, we burned out the only decent ship they had and put the fear of God into a French sloop of war.” Railsford shrugged, taking the telescope back. “They must have carried all those troops in the line-of-battle ships and larger frigates, crammed ’em in any old how. God, if we could have just caught ’em at sea before they landed, we could have done ’em into fried mutton. So many men aboard, in each other’s way . . .”

  “So, except for that sloop of war and a cutter or two, there are no French present as of yet, sir,” Alan said, wondering in his fogged mind what that might mean, if anything. The effort was almost beyond his power to reason any longer.

  “If we had but known, we could have had all of those scows!”

  “And I almost got killed for nothing,” Alan grumbled half aloud, a sentiment that Railsford either pretended to ignore at that ungodly early hour or actually did not hear from sheer exhaustion. The first lieutenant scratched his chin and Alan could hear his fingers rasping in his stubbly beard.

  “Mister Monk, would you be so good, sir, to take charge of the deck for a moment while I apprise the captain of something urgent?” Railsford asked.

  “Aye, sir,” Monk drawled, his face drawn with fatigue and looking a lot older than his 35-odd years.

  Railsford left Alan the telescope, which he rested on the taffrail for a while, reminding himself that he must remember to
stay awake enough to not drop it over the side from nerveless fingers.

  The last time I was this exhausted, he thought, I’d walked ten miles before dawn, ridden cross-country with those damned county boys all day, partied and played balumrancum with a pack of whores all that night, and had to ride back home the next morning. And that was a whole lot more fun than last night!

  He went to stand by Monk and used the telescope to check out the anchorage up the York. There was the frigate Charon, the sloop of war Guadeloupe, a smaller sloop of war—little more than a ketch, really—the Bonetta, and a small gaggle of gunboats. They looked as peaceful as Portsmouth Harbor on a Sunday morning, and he bitterly wondered what they had been doing while the French had been landing their armament.

  The York peninsula between the York and the James was pretty low country, much of a piece with most of the American seaboard that he had seen in his few trips to the continent. The land was higher towards the narrows of the York, up where the little town was reputed to be, and the bluffs ended up being quite steep, but not particularly high. There was some high ground of much the same sort on the Gloucester side, which rapidly tapered off into salt marshes and low ground the further east one could go past the narrows.

  “See that house yonder?” Monk said. “Moore’s House. Rather fine landmark.”

  “Where is the town?” Alan asked.

  “Around the bend from us, right at the narrows. Not much of a place, by my reckonin’, ner anybody else’s,” Monk added. “Deep water just offshore, mayhap thirty-five ta forty fathom, ’bout a cable out. Closer in, ya got only six fathom, but that’s right under the bluffs an’ at low tide, too. Lotta tobacco comes outa here. Even outa the Gloucester side. Virginia’s famous fer it. If the army ain’t burned it fer spite, I’ll get me some ta chew.”

  “Looks pretty low over there, sir,” Alan noted on the north shore.

  “Aye, once past Gaines Point goin’ back ta sea, ya get inta some salt marshes and swamps an’ bottom land—Guinea Neck, they calls it. They’s farms in there, even so. Corn, tobacco, an’ such like. Some pines fer pitch an’ tar an’ board.”

  “So the scour of the tide, and the current of the river, lay to the suthr’d, sir, below the bluffs and runs sou’-west along the shoals,” Alan said. “With Moore’s House on your larboard bow . . .”

  “Aye, so it does. Keep the House ta yer larboard, ’bout five points an’ no closer, ya’ll not tangle with the shoals, an’ you’ll have smooth sailin’ right inta the York and firm anchor. ’Til the tide turns, o’course.”

  Treghues emerged on deck, lips pressed tight together in obvious dislike for the bad news Railsford had given him about their wasted effort of the night and how badly they had been fooled. That ended the lesson from Mister Monk on how to get into the York.

  “I have the deck, Mister Monk,” Railsford said, coming to stand by him to leeward of the wheel, giving the windward, now the landward, side of the deck to the captain. “Stations for anchoring, Mister Coke. We shall require the captain’s gig led round to the entry port as soon as the hook is on the bottom, Mister Weems.”

  “Passin’ the word fer the captain’s cox’n!”

  In contrast to everyone else’s appearance, Treghues was freshly shaved and washed, his linen clean and white and his coat brushed free of lint and dust.

  You’re hating it, Alan thought. You’re going to have to tell the bad news about the battle to Symonds and Cornwallis. And admit you failed last night. I must be awesomely tired— I almost feel sorry for the poor bastard!

  Still, Alan felt that it was a lesson. A landed army obviously meant large transports, so that was what Treghues wished to see and that was what he thought he had seen. He had risked the ship for nothing, and if they had succeeded in getting into the anchorage and burning all those coasters and local scows, they would have been trapped by the guard ships, including the one frigate they had seen just at dawn up the James, and Desperate would have been destroyed for an exchange that would not have made a decent stake at The Cocoa Tree on a throw of the dice. Not only was Treghues mistaken about the transports, he was mistaken in wanting to attack them at all. Their primary duty had been to deliver despatches, and they had almost lost the chance to do that as well.

  Maybe he feels like he has to prove something, to make up for a bad admiral or a lost battle, Alan thought. By God, it’s one thing to make the best of what Providence drops in your lap, but quite another to try and force the issue and make your own luck.

  “Stations for wearing ship!” Treghues called. “Prepare to anchor!”

  Desperate plodded on into the tiny fleet gathering and rounded up into the wind, backing her tops’ls to bring her to a complete halt, at which point the best bower splashed into the bottom and she began to stream back from her mooring. The side boys and officers assembled as Treghues went over the side, saluting amid the squeal of bosun’s pipes until their captain’s head had dropped below the level of the upper deck.

  “Not much to the place, is there?” Avery said, walking over to Lewrie by the entry port which now faced the small town of York. “I hear it aspires to be called York Town, but York Village is more like it.”

  “I’ve seen better villages back home, even on Sunday.” Lewrie smiled. “Looks half deserted.”

  “You’d leave, too, if you were about to be stuck into the middle of an army encampment surrounded by the French,” David said. “By God, we shall get shore leave here, see if we don’t. It looks so damned dull that an entire troop of devils couldn’t raise enough mischief to wake a country parson.”

  “I don’t know, David,” Alan replied, feeling that odd dread come over him once more whenever he was in close proximity to the place. “I think there will be some fine mischief raised before we see the last of it.”

  Three more British frigates came in from seaward during the day; Medea, Iris, and Richmond, bearing despatches both from Graves still far out to sea and from Clinton in New York. They had been sent in just a few hours after Desperate; evidently Graves had had more to say, or had forgotten some important items in the first place.

  Their arrival brought no cheer to the small flotilla anchored in the York; when they had left the fleet, the wind and sea had been getting up, and Terrible was taking so much water in her bilges that Admiral Graves had been considering taking her people off and sinking her. They still had not caught up with the French fleet under de Grasse and showed little sign of really wanting to, with their own ships so badly cut up in their top-hamper. The last bit of bad news was that none of the newly arrived frigates had any spare spars for Desperate. Nor did any of the few ships of worth in the anchorage, so repairs would take longer than they hoped, unless they could find some decent timber ashore and cut it down themselves.

  “Take a good tree ta make a new topmast, sir,” Coke the bosun told Treghues that afternoon. “Trestletrees on the main-mast top were sprung an’ need new timber, crosstrees gone ta kindlin’, tops’l yard is saved but needs fishin’ with a lighter piece er some flat iron. New royal an’ topgallant yard as well, sir, not ta mention a new topgallant mast.”

  “But the shore fairly bristles with good pine, does it not, Mister Coke?” Treghues said, once more seemingly in good cheer and normal state of his faculties. “We could send a working party ashore to hew what we need.”

  “Aye, sir,” Coke agreed. “But where we’d get the horse teams ta do the draggin’, I don’t know. Army might have some ta spare.”

  “Artillery beasts, aye,” Treghues said. “Mister Railsford, I would admire if you would go ashore with the bosun and a working party. See Captain Symonds and discover who in the army we need to talk to about getting some help in felling trees with which to make repairs.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Railsford said. “How many men, Mister Coke?”

  “Carpenter an’ his crew, sir, mayhap a dozen more hands ta do the strippin’ an haulin’, some what knows horses,” Coke speculated. “Maybe twenty all told, sir, at b
est.”

  “We shall take the barge and cutter,” Railsford decided. “You and I, Weems and . . . Lewrie in the other.”

  Alan had been standing near enough to hear and Rails-ford’s eye had fallen on him first. Treghues was in another of his more complaisant moods and made no objection.

  “Perhaps I should go ashore now, sir, to liaise with the ‘lobsters’ first,” Railsford said. “It is late in the day to organize any aid from shore and select proper trees before dark.”

  “Aye, my compliments to Captain Symonds,” Treghues said. “See him first, and then talk to the army. We shall put the working party to their labors after breakfast.”

  “Lewrie, get a crew together for the jolly boat and we shall go ashore now.”

  “Aye, Mister Railsford, sir,” Alan said. He hustled up Weems, who quickly got him a boat’s crew and led the towed jolly boat around to the entry port.

  They put in at one of the town docks, leaving the boat’s crew at the landing under a petty officer, a quarter-gunner with strict instructions to avoid trouble, and walked down the dirt street toward the house that had been indicated as the naval shore party’s office. The town teemed with troops in various uniforms of green, red, and blue of the various regiments in Cornwallis’s army, even the tartans and kilts of either British or Loyalist Highlanders, Carolina Volunteer units, German mercenaries, and regular line units.

  “Quite a muddle, sir,” Alan observed, pointing at all the men and horses active around the town. “One hopes Lord Cornwallis knows what he is about.”

  “Our role is not to question, Mister Lewrie,” Railsford said, almost rolling drunkenly after spending months on an unstable deck and foxed by the steadiness of the land. “We must obey and . . . and hang the larger issues.”

  “Aye, sir,” Alan said.

  “There is still time to win a victory over the French and the Rebels, Lewrie,” Railsford told him. “Were I you, I would try to put the best face on it before the hands and not let them see their officers looking distressed. You shall get in a lot less trouble with the captain if you do. At this moment he needs all the enthusiasm and cheerfulness he can get from his people. He would be most cross with anyone that showed any signs of worry or defeatism. You are already in trouble enough with him.”