The French Admiral

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Aye, sir,” Alan agreed with a humorless laugh. “Too true.”

  “That is why we attacked those transports last night,” Railsford said unexpectedly.

  “Sir?”

  Railsford went on, mopping his brow with a colored handkerchief against the late-summer heat. “There were larger transports, further up the James River, along with some frigates, as we were later informed. We did, in fact, burn a ship to the waterline. But, more to the point, we did something, an act of retribution to put heart back into the crew so they could feel we could still strike back on an even basis against our enemies. That is why Commander Treghues took the risk. Not for glory-hunting, and not because he is out of his wits, as you believe. A captain must keep his men in their best fettle, not just in victuals or discipline, but in spirit as well, and you had best remember that if you ever hope to gain a commission.”

  “I see, sir,” Alan replied, crestfallen at the implied rebuke.

  “A crew that doubts its own abilities is a crew ready to strike the colors at the first broadside, or when they are hard pressed,” Railsford said solemnly.

  “But what does one do when recent events are so disheartening?” Alan asked. “When there is no way to put a good face on things?”

  “Then hope that discipline and pride will be enough,” the first lieutenant said with a smile. “We drill their little minds into rote behavior so they respond without thought, calm or tempest, day or night, peace or war. And we appeal to their pride in themselves as Englishmen and as sailors. We appeal to their pride in their own ship, in their Service. Nothing else much matters outside the bulwarks. All this talk of King and Country is so much moonshine when you get right down to it. People facing death or dismemberment don’t care much for the so-called ‘patriotic’ reasons. They die for their shipmates, to go game before their peers.”

  “So what must we do to keep the men inspired, sir?” Alan asked, seeing what was necessary over the next few days until they could get out to sea once more.

  “Hard work will take their minds off things, for one,” Railsford told him as they reached the porch of the house in question. “If we did not have serious hurts to mend in Desperate, we would invent some form of labor to keep them busy. Idle hands and idle minds begin to conjure up the worst in the human spirit. Straighten your hat.”

  They entered the house and conferred briefly with an aide to Captain Symonds. Railsford was given a letter to take to the army headquarters for draft animals and an escort for the next day so they could go beyond the newly dug perimeter fortifications for their timbers. Then they had to walk out into the country beyond the town to seek out the army before dark. They spoke with a major of light infantry, got passed to a colonel named Yorke, finally to a senior officer from the Brigade of Guards named O’Hara, and got their request approved. They would be allotted the use of two horse teams for only two days, the needs of the army for the placing of artillery coming first, and would get some provincials for an escort, all to meet them at the docks at an appointed time the next morning.

  “Warm work, sir,” Alan said as they made their way back towards town and their waiting boat. “Think we could—”

  “No, we cannot,” Railsford intoned solemnly. “Did you not get into enough trouble the last time you were ashore?”

  “Not of my own making, sir,” Alan protested.

  “Trouble is your boon companion, Lewrie. You do not have to seek it out; it always finds you. Were we to stop into what passes for a public house around these parts for a pint, you’d have a brawl going within half an hour.”

  “Sir!” Alan said, much aggrieved by the accusation, but thinking that the first lieutenant was correct; he had gotten into enough trouble in the past with the most innocent of beginnings. Still, it was pleasing to be thought a bellicose sort of rake-hell by his first officer, for the reputation held no malice from Railsford; rather the opposite in fact.

  First light found them once more at the main landing in the town, with two boats full of men and tools, men eager to step ashore, no matter what the reason, after months aboard one ship. They were looking forward to a new face or two, new tales to hear, the possibility of actually touching something green. The work would be no harder than anything required of them aboard the Desperate, perhaps a lot less with horses to do the major hauling once they had felled their choice of trees and stripped them of bark and limbs. It was almost like a picnic outing, complete with rations and drink prepared for later consumption.

  They were met by two six-horse gun teams, decent sized horses rather than the usual runty animals found in the Colonies, which had made the huge beasts captured on the Ephegenie so valuable. There were teamsters dressed in the blue coats of the artillery, and a platoon of men in short red infantry jackets with dark blue facings, light infantry of some sort wearing wide-brimmed black hats adorned with a black silk ribbon, bow, and a clump of dark feathers for a plume on the left side of their hats. All of them looked as though they had seen rough service, for the original pristine condition of their uniforms was patched and resewn to orderliness, their white waistcoats and long trousers permanently marred with ground-in dirt, and their lower legs encased in muddy dark gaiters, known as “half spatterdashes.”

  “You would be from the Desperate? ” the young infantry officer asked of Railsford as they alighted on the dock.

  “I am, sir,” Railsford replied. “Lieutenant Railsford, at your service.”

  “Lieutenant Chiswick, sir, of the North Carolina Volunteers,” the lanky, harsh-looking officer said.

  “Midshipman Lewrie, my assistant,” Railsford said. “Our bosun, Mister Coke, and his mate, Mister Weems.”

  “Delighted, sirs.” The officer showed no sign of delight at all at that early hour. “This is my ensign, also a Chiswick. We are at your orders, sirs. What is needed?”

  “To go inland and find suitable trees to fell for repairs to our ship, Lieutenant,” Railsford said. “Pine trees, for our top-hamper.”

  “Whatever that is.” Lieutenant Chiswick yawned. “Not much left around the town. We shall have to go outside the defense line to find good stands of pine. I suppose a naval officer can ride, sir? I have a spare horse for you.”

  “Thank you very much. This naval officer was raised in hunting country in Dorset,” Railsford said, grinning.

  Railsford mounted expertly and the two parties fell into a rough column, with an advanced party under a corporal leading off, their weapons at high port, ready for anything, even in the midst of an English army encampment. Railsford and Chiswick followed, with the wagons in their wake, and the sailors in a clump behind. Almost without orders, one squad of infantry went to either side of the road, and the rest brought up the rear, as though the sailors were under arrest for some crime.

  Alan was galled that he had to walk instead of getting a horse to ride. He had worn his cotton stockings and his worst, cracked pair of shoes in case of mud and damp, and they were not the best fit he had ever ordered from a cobbler. He hoped they were not going far, or his feet would suffer. He fell in at the head of the rough grouping of men from the ship, alongside the young infantry ensign named Chiswick.

  “Whatever the devil is that?” Alan asked, seeing the weapon the young man carried.

  “A Ferguson rifle, sir,” the ensign replied. “Breechloader.”

  “How does it do that?” Alan enthused, all curiosity.

  “One rotates the screw-breech, which removes the rear estopment from the user’s end of the barrel, sir,” Chiswick explained, taking hold of a large lever behind the trigger and guard. The whole thing screwed down revealing the screw behind the breech. “One loads it muzzle down from the rear. One can fire four shots a minute, and it is accurate out to nearly two hundred and fifty yards.”

  Alan noted that the breech of this weapon was already loaded with a powder cartridge, supposedly also fitted with a ball in the chamber.

  “You people are most cautious, sir,” he observed, “to load
here.”

  “If you had fought in the back-country in the Carolinas, you also would be loaded and ready round the clock as well, sir,” the ensign said with stiff pride.

  “Ah, I see,” Alan replied, trying to ignore the two unloaded and useless pistols stuck into his pockets. “Seen much action, have you?”

  “Quite a bit,” Chiswick boasted. “We’re light infantry. The Lord Cornwallis uses us for scouting and skirmishing—first in and last out of a battle. We can keep up with Tarleton’s Legion when the line infantry would be worn out.”

  “Ah, Tarleton,” Alan said, “I have heard of him. Something of a hard man, I’m told.”

  “These are hard times,” the ensign said. “The Rebels in the Carolinas are not exactly gentle, either, I assure you.”

  “So a girl once said.”

  “And where was that, sir?”

  “A whorehouse in Charlestown.” Alan grinned.

  “Really? Which one?” Ensign Chiswick asked, with a first sign of humor lighting his face.

  “Lady Jane’s, just off the Cooper River.”

  “I am not familiar with that one.”

  “Well, Maude’s had moved to Wilmington and t’other had been shut down for brawling,” Alan said.

  “I am familiar with Maude’s, however.” Chiswick grinned broadly. “Too bad she and her girls could not accompany us, but Lord Cornwallis had us strip to the bone for this march into Virginia, and we had to leave most of the camp followers behind. Damned shame, really.”

  “So there is no sport to be had hereabouts?” Alan asked.

  “No, more’s the pity,” Chiswick spat. “You may get your laundry done but that’s about all, and Yorktown is nothing much.”

  “Speaking of laundry,” Alan said, reminded of the letter he still bore in the tail pocket of his short uniform jacket. “Do you know of some woman named Rodgers? Her daughter Bess bade me carry a letter to her. I believe she associates with a Sergeant Tompkin in Tarleton’s Legion.”

  “I know both of them,” Chiswick said. “They are across the river on the Gloucester side. No need for cavalry over here yet. Simcoe’s Queen’s Rangers and the Legion are both over there. Look here, where does a midshipman stand in the scheme of things?”

  “Damned low,” Alan had to confess with a rueful expression. “Petty-officer level, an officer-in-training. I have been in two years almost.”

  “An ensign is the most junior officer one can be,” Chiswick said, offering his hand. “My name is Burgess, by the way, Burgess Chiswick.”

  “Alan Lewrie.”

  They established that Burgess was a year older, nineteen, and had been with the colors for a year with the North Carolina Volunteers. By a fortunate fluke, he had not been at King’s Mountain with Major Ferguson, the inventor of the superlative firearm he bore, but he had been at Cowpens attached to Tarleton’s Legion and the light infantry that accompanied that body.

  “And what happened at Cowpens . . . lord, what a name for a town?”

  “Wasn’t a town,” Burgess informed him. “Just a big meadow, a clearing used for cattle feeding and selling. And they beat our arses there.”

  “Who, the Rebels?”

  “Of course, the Rebels,” Burgess said. “They’re good as informal fighters, sniping from ambush and all of that, but we mostly had beaten them in more formal battles. The hardest part was catching up with them and bringing them to action, or pursuing them once they were beat. But lately, they’ve been beating us. Wiped out Major Ferguson and his command at King’s Mountain in the Piedmont, mostly Loyalist troops with him, but good ones. And then at Cowpens. Took our charge like regulars and then charged us. Governour and I were happy to see the light of day next morning.”

  “Governour?” Alan wondered.

  “My brother, our lieutenant,” Burgess said proudly. “He joined up three years ago, being the oldest. I had to stay home until . . . well, when we lost our lands, there didn’t seem to be much point of me not taking the colors any longer.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Damned Rebels burned us out!” Burgess glared angrily. “Shot all our livestock or drove it off, fired our crops or trampled them flat. Set fire to our barns and stables, torched the house, ran most of the slaves off except for a few house servants. My family had to flee to Wilmington with nothing much more than the clothes they stood up in. Thirty years of work, all gone.”

  “Where was this?”

  “Below Campbelltown, in the lower Cape Fear country.”

  That did not tell Alan much more, since he was not familiar with anything in the Carolinas beyond the harbors, though he had a rough idea from the description that it was in North Carolina, behind Wilmington.

  “Perhaps you can regain your lands when we have beaten the French and the Rebels,” Alan offered, trying to think of something hopeful.

  Burgess turned to stare at him as though he was the featured act in some traveling raree show. “Where the devil have you been lately? We shall never get our lands back, nor do I have any hopes for victory any longer, not with a French army over on the other side of the James from us at this moment and God knows who else gathering on this place. What did you fellows in our wonderful Navy do with them?”

  “They beat us.” Alan frowned, dropping his voice to a whisper to avoid sharing his thoughts with his crew, which was still trudging along in his rear. He sketched out the progress of the battle which had taken place a few days before, expressing his own distaste for the way it had transpired.

  “Well, perhaps there is hope your admiral can get back to grips with this Frenchman de Grasse,” Burgess said, mellowing a little. “We could do nothing to stop the landing. They had put four ships in the mouth of the York to keep our ships in while they were landing their troops and guns.”

  “So that is why no one interfered with the transports. I thought Captain Symonds was shirking or something to not try for them.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Senior naval officer present, in command of the frigate Charon. ”

  “Then he could not have done anything in any case,” Burgess said. “They landed all his artillery for the fortifications, all eighteen-pounders. We only have field artillery with the army. You’ll be fortunate to get out of this as soon as your ship is repaired. We could be hard-pressed for a few weeks as long as the French are present.”

  “Well, if there is no sport to be had in this Yorktown, I shall indeed be grateful to put back to sea,” Alan said as their senior officers called a halt.

  They had left town on the main Williamsburg road to the west and had crossed the line of fortifications and entrenchments before what Burgess had informed Alan was the Star Redoubt, and had crossed Yorktown Creek, a sluggish body of water indeed. Burgess gave him the further information that it had not rained in weeks and all the creeks were low, which was limiting the efficiency of the mills in the area, where they had hoped to grind the corn they had confiscated on their march up the James River. Many of the cavalry and draft animals were grain fed, and were already suffering from the long march from Wilmington and the peregrinations of the army in the Virginias so far attempted. The troops had also been forced to eat their corn green—which had not done their digestions any good—soaking it and frying it in their mess kits instead of baking it to make a more palatable bread.

  Once cleared through the lines, men from the North Carolina Volunteers spread out into ragged skirmish order, ahead and to either side of the road as they continued their search for wood. After about another mile of travel, they reached a fork in the road, the fork bending back to the south-east and the main road continuing onward inland to the west. Another halt was called for while the officers consulted.

  “Most of this is second growth an’ damned scrawny, sir,” Coke said, peering about them. “Whatcha think of it, Chips?”

  “Trash,” the carpenter replied. “Musta been cut over a long time ago.”

  “If we take the fork, we shall end up in mo
stly cleared land,” Lieutenant Chiswick pointed out, gesturing with his riding crop. “And the army most likely has cut over the area before the outlying parallels for materials to stiffen the entrenchments and clear lanes of fire.”

  “What about out that way?” Railsford asked, shifting his sore behind in the saddle. It had been years since he had spent any time mounted, no matter how rural his upbringing.

  “The Williamsburg road?” Chiswick frowned. “We did not come that way on either of our marches in this area, so I am not familiar with it. Though there are some steep hills in there, as we can observe. I am told there is a creek thereabouts.”

  “Aye, a creek, sor.” The carpenter brightened. “They’d be timber as thick as cat’s fur along a creek, and in them little hills. Ye can see pine from here, sor.”

  “That sounds like our best prospect, then,” Railsford decided.

  “Your men are armed, sir?” Lieutenant Chiswick asked.

  “We brought cutlasses and a few muskets, yes, sir.”

  “Then if it is your intention that we proceed into those hills by the creek, off the main road, I would strongly suggest you load your muskets and tell off a portion of your party for protection, sir.”

  “There may be Rebels this close?” Railsford asked, reining his mare closer to the army officer to converse more softly.

  “There are Virginia Militia and some few regulars about, sir, under a Frenchman named Lafayette,” Chiswick told him, not without a wolfish grin of delight to have the much-vaunted Navy at his mercy in their ignorance of land fighting. “Were I a Rebel officer, God forbid, I should be at the business of scouting the whereabouts of my foe, this very instant.”

  “An’ wild Indians, too, sir?” Coke asked, peering about with new fear.

  “I should not be a bit surprised, sir,” Lieutenant Chiswick said, hiding his glee at the stupidity of his fellow man. Every newcomer from England expected to be scalped or skewered by painted savages as soon as he or she alighted from the ship, right in the middle of a major town. As a lowly Colonial, Chiswick was only too happy to play the game of scaring the bejeezus out of superior home-raised Englishmen.