The French Admiral

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Going back to London and raising merry hell,” Alan said, laughing, “and letting some other person fight the damn thing.”

  “Well, had I the choice to make, I would have preferred the navy to the army,” Burgess said. “Like that wardroom where your officers live and dine—it looked damned comfortable.”

  “Burgess, all the partitions are deal or canvas and come down when the ship is piped to quarters,” Alan explained. “There normally would be artillery in the wardroom, and when the iron begins to fly there is no safe place aboard a ship. They shovel the dead—what’s left of ’em—and the hopelessly wounded over the side to make space in which to keep the guns firing. Trust me, there is nothing desirable about being aboard ship then. There’s more safety ashore where one may dig.”

  “We do not dig,” Burgess replied. “We are light infantry.”

  “Then we both stand an equal chance when it comes to getting our deaths,” Alan said. “Not much to choose between them.”

  “You speak from experience, sounds like.” Burgess sobered suddenly. “Tell me of it.”

  Alan did not mind bragging on himself, so the rest of the ride passed on the way back to their position in the hills as he related his successes in Ariadne, Parro and Desperate, even touching on the duel with the infantry lieutenant on Antigua over Lucy Beauman’s honor. By the time they dismounted and turned their horses over to an orderly before seeing to their own supper, Burgess Chiswick was mightily impressed with his new companion as a fighting man who had seen more action than Burgess, or even his older brother Governour, who had been with the colors longer. But then Alan was, by that time, pretty impressed with his own prowess as well. And after a filling game pie and a mug or two of Burgess’s corn whiskey, he was absolutely convinced of the fact that he was a devil of a fellow!

  CHAPTER 9

  “They are still there,” Alan said, borrowing Burgess’s telescope to stare downriver. They had gone for a morning ride over to the river bluffs near the Star Redoubt to survey the work of the fireships. Cornwallis had filled four schooners entrapped in the anchorage with all the straw and flammables he could find, and had placed them under the command of a Loyalist privateer captain. The fireships had gone down-river and had frightened the hell out of the French for a time, driving them away from the mouth of the York, but the privateer captain’s schooner had been set alight much too soon, and all the others lit themselves off at the same time as though it were the correct signal. One had blown up, one had gone aground in the shallows after being abandoned by her very well-singed crew of volunteers, and the total effect was nil.

  “Well, a brave effort, damme if it wasn’t,” Burgess said.

  “We might try it again in a few days, though I doubt if they’ll stand for it a second time,” Alan said, closing the telescope with a heavy click of collapsing tubes and handing it back to Ensign Chiswick. “Wouldn’t have done us much good, anyway. No one had called us to fetch back the artillery or prepare to evacuate with the fleet.”

  “The bulk of the army would have gotten away to the eastern shore, but we could have still crossed over to the Gloucester side in barges and joined Tarleton to cut our way out,” Burgess informed him. “Lauzun’s Legion is perhaps six hundred men. Mayhap eight hundred French marines landed from the ships, and the Virginia Militia surely can’t be much. Our troops used them like so many bears back in the spring. Still, I don’t see what’s stopping us from going downriver. There are only three enemy ships.”

  “A third-rate 74, and two large frigates,” Alan told him. “They’re anchored so they can sweep all the main channel. And what you see as open water is really shallow. Even at high tide, it’s not enough to float a ship of any size. You can see where the schooner went aground, and she didn’t draw a full fathom, loaded as she was. We try to force them, make them cut their cables, they’ll fire off signal fusees, and we’d never make it to the far shore before the main fleet near Cape Henry caught up with us.”

  “But they cannot come up the river.”

  “Thank Providence for small favors. I’d not attempt it without an experienced pilot, and then only in the smallest craft.”

  “Then there is nothing for it but to put all our trust in Clinton and your Admiral Graves to get back here and rescue us,” Burgess said.

  “Whenever that may be,” Alan spat, tugging at the reins of his mare to turn her about to face inland once more.

  “Any guesses on that?” Burgess asked. “I heard Colonel Hamilton say General Clinton had assured Lord Cornwallis that over four thousand men were ready to embark from New York, now there’s no threat to the city.”

  “Hmm, if Graves departed the coast on the tenth or so,” Alan said as they walked their mounts down from the bluffs to the Williamsburg road. “With favorable winds, he would have gotten to New York on the fifteenth, even beating into a nor’east breeze. Ten days to refit and embark those troops . . . if he can work back across the bar off New York with all his ships. He could have departed yesterday on the twenty-fifth, and could be here by at least the thirtieth. Say the second of October on the outside. But he would still have to fight his way into the bay against the French as he should have the first time.”

  “So by the second, we shall have four thousand more troops, more artillery and supplies and might succeed in forcing the French fleet to take shelter up the James River, reversing the odds against us.”

  “Bide a minute, Burgess,” Alan said, pulling his mount to a stop. “What did you mean about New York no longer being threatened. De Barras and his troops in Newport never threatened New York directly.”

  “Oh, I am sorry, I thought you had already heard,” Burgess apologized. “Washington and Rochambeau have abandoned their positions around New York and are reputed to be on the march for Yorktown.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Alan shrieked, startling both mounts, who jumped about for a few minutes before they could calm them back down, tittuping and side-paddling and farting in alarm.

  “I wish you would not frighten the horses so, Alan. This plug is skittish—not my usual mount,” Burgess complained.

  “Fuck the horses. You just frightened the devil out of me! ” Alan shot back. “Is there anything else on the way you have not told me about? No expeditionary force from the Grand Moghul of India with fifty war elephants? No Mameluke cavalry from the Ottoman Empire?”

  “From Clinton’s letters, which were passed on to the colonel for his information, we should be about even in numbers and much stronger in cavalry should we needs break out,” Burgess said.

  “Jesus Christ,” Alan repeated, though much more softly than before. “We’re going to get our arses knackered. We’re going to lose this damned war if we keep this up. This is the last army of note in the Americas.”

  “And the last Parliament would raise, most like,” Burgess agreed, so stoically calm about their future chances that Alan felt like hitting him. “So there is no way that Graves or Clinton would leave us hanging in the balance for very long, is there?” Burgess reasoned. “We can hold until relieved and sooner or later the hurricane season will force the French to sail away, and all this affair will be just another campaign that almost achieved something but didn’t. Washington will have to go back north to the New York area, eventually, or stand still for General Clinton to rampage all over the upper Colonies and destroy all their work.”

  “That sounds . . . logical, at any rate,” Alan had to admit, though he remembered his talk with Lieutenant Railsford in Desperate on their way to New York, and Treghues’s rant about fleet strategy before the Battle of the Chesapeake. That had sounded eminently logical, too, and look where that had gotten them.

  Regardless of the circumstances, there was still duty to be done. The half-battery had to be manned, patrols had to go out to forage or to scout, their position had to be constantly improved, and watches had to be stood much as at sea, with some of the gunners by their pieces at all times. Knatchbull was not an imaginative man, but he was
a competent one and practically ran the battery for Lewrie, presenting a going concern to his midshipman each morning with all the care of a first lieutenant doing the same for his captain. Sighting shots were fired with round shot out across the fields to let the gun captains find how far they could reach and improve their chances when a real foe presented himself. Gun drill was carried out every morning, just as aboard ship, and the midday rum ration was doled out at eleven-thirty in the morning, corresponding to the seven bells of the forenoon watch, followed by dinner. Alan led cutlass drill himself to keep the hands sharp and out of trouble with so much idle time. A corporal from the North Carolina Volunteers led the musket practice, and the men, with nothing other to bet on, began to improve at targets, being forced to load and fire faster than they ever had before.

  Alan kept the men working on his gun carriages. Using the trucks as the base, he found enough seasoned wood to form axles and trails, and the more creative gunners did the rest. There was little that an English seaman could not make with his hands, if properly stimulated to the work, and soon he had spokes and greenwood wheels abuilding. The wheels would not have iron rims—they could not aspire to that with limited materials—but he could shift his guns more easily once the labor was finished.

  The camp rang with hammering and sawing and the rasp of carpenters’ planes and files. The naves began to sprout spokes as new platforms were nailed to the bottom of the trucks, and the trails were bolted on.

  “Lookin’ proper, Mister Lewrie,” Knatchbull informed him. “I’d still use the breechin’ ropes an’ the side tackles an sich, just in case. That’s greenwood an’ pine at that. Takes good oak or ash ta do it right.”

  “Still, it eases the work of running out to the gunports in this redan.” Alan was pleased with the handiwork of the first piece to be converted and emplaced. “We could cut down two men from each gun crew and send them back aboard ship.”

  “Aye, sir, but iffen we had ta get outa here in a hurry, I’d not be sendin’ ’em back ta the ship anytime soon,” Knatchbull replied.

  “I shall write the captain a letter about it, anyway,” Alan decided. If Treghues was in a better mental state, it didn’t hurt to piss down his superior’s back and let him know that at least one of his midshipmen was being diligent and creative in adversity—one he could not quite remember clearly since his trephination, but one whom he should get to know once more on much better terms.

  “Guess we better test-fire the bugger, Mister Lewrie,” Knatchbull said. “Full cartridge an’ round shot.”

  “There is nothing at present to our front. No scouts out this morning this late. Let’s do.”

  A gun crew came forward, while the rest of the men and some of the Hessian Jagers and North Carolina troops who were free of duties came to gawk; at a reasonably safe distance, Alan noted. Since it was his idea, there was nothing for it but to stand beside the gun crew as the piece was loaded.

  “Charge yer gun,” Knatchbull intoned. “Shot yer gun. Prime yer gun. Quoin in. Don’t wanna hit no poor bastard off in them woods.”

  “Aim for that clump of shrubbery three cables off,” Alan ordered. “Excess crew take cover. I’ll touch her off.”

  The side-tackle men and the powder boy scuttled to the rear, and the rammer man, shot man, and gun captain headed out to the flanks in the trench on either side of the gun platform.

  Alan lowered the smouldering length of slowmatch gripped in the claws at the end of the linstock to the priming quill and took a deep breath. He touched the quill and there was a flash of powder smoke and a sharp hissing sound as the fine-mealed powder in the quill took light. Then there was a sharp bang, and the piece recoiled to the back of the platform right smartly, snubbing at the extent of the breeching ropes and slewing a bit on the new high wheels. It reared a bit on its trail, then thumped back down heavily, but after the smoke cleared Alan could detect no cracks or splintering of the new carriage.

  “Check her over, Knatchbull,” Alan said, letting out his breath. Still got my nutmegs intact, he exulted.

  A ragged cheer rose from the hands and the onlookers, and Alan took a theatrical bow to his audience while Knatchbull and several of the men closely involved in the carriage’s construction looked it over.

  “Sound as a fifty-guinea horse, so ’tis,” Knatchbull judged.

  “Musta skeered that fella ta death, Mister Lewrie,” the gun captain laughed, pointing off into the fields where a rider could be seen at full gallop, heading their way.

  “We didn’t put a ball near him, did we?” Alan worried.

  “Nah, didn’ come nowhere close, sir,” the gun captain told him. “Put the ball dead square in that clump, mebbe a furlong shy, anyways.”

  Alan unslung the telescope by the gun and took a look at the approaching stranger. He was wearing the uniform of a British officer, but that was about all that could be discovered until he had reined in his mount by the outlying sentries and shouted his news, panting dramatically as though the world hung on his next word.

  “Washington’s army,” he gasped. “On the Williamsburg road. On their way here, about ten miles off. They’ll be up to these positions by nightfall! Have you a fresh mount? Mine’s done in.”

  “Good God a-mighty, Mister Lewrie,” Knatchbull muttered, his craggy face dark with concern at this new development.

  “Yes, Knatchbull,” Alan replied calmly, having been apprised of the possibility days before. “Now, even more reason to continue work on the new gun carriages, is it not? Rum ration at the usual time.”

  He took out his pocket watch and opened the face as though the question of rum was really more important.

  “Aye, sir.”

  “And I want the second gun mounted by nightfall at the latest. So work ’em hard after dinner.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Knatchbull nodded, calmed by the sangfroid of his immediate superior, and went off to do Lewrie’s bidding without another thought.

  There, that’ll show the bastards I can be as cool as a post-captain, Alan thought grimly. Mister Railsford, wherever you are over there on the Gloucester side, thanks for the warning about showing calm.

  After dark, Alan could hear the enemy army on its approach march. He was certain that the army could be heard as far back as Yorktown itself. Chains jangled from artillery caissons, axles squealed and screamed as heavy guns and supply wagons made their way over the poor roads. Even the grunting and neighing of horses could be heard, and the bawl of oxen in their yokes being goaded forward and, now and again when the wind was just right, the solid tramp of many marching feet. There was nothing to be seen to the front, even with a fairly full moon; only the silent hills and the silvered forests that brooded in their alienness.

  “Think they’ll attack tonight, Mister Lewrie?” Knatchbull asked.

  “They’ve covered at least ten miles today, maybe twenty,” Alan told him, repeating what little he could pick up from the talk at supper with the Chiswick brothers, their captain, and the Jager officers in a pavilion back near the end of the draw. “We would know if they had attempted to scout us, so it’s sure they don’t know where our fortifications are, for now. They’ll scout tomorrow, but we’ve nothing to fear for this evening. Still, make sure the guns are loaded with round shot and canister to boot, run out ready to fire with tompions in to protect the charges against the night damp until time to fire. Post two men from each gun crew as sentries with muskets. They are not to fire at anything unless strictly ordered, or I’ll have the man who did it tied to a tree and flogged, if a grating can’t be found.”

  “Four-hour watches, Mister Lewrie?”

  “Aye. You can use a watch?”

  “Ah, I ain’t no scholard, Mister Lewrie,” Knatchbull admitted in the darkness. “But I got the hour glass.”

  “Good enough, then,” Alan said, making a production of yawning for Knatchbull’s and his men’s benefit. “I’ll turn in. Send a man to wake me if there is an alarm, and without fail at the end of the middle watch
.”

  Alan wandered back from the ramparts of their new post and found his small tent tucked away under a grove of trees snuggled up on the right side of the draw. Cony had a small fire going that was barely flaming to see by as he stripped off his coat and waistcoat, loosened his neckcloth, and slid off his shoes.

  “You turn in, Cony,” Alan told him. “Knatchbull will send someone to wake you for lookout before dawn.”

  “Aye, Mister Lewrie,” Cony replied, spreading a hammock for ground cloth by the fire and arranging his blankets.

  Alan crawled into the tent and found his own bedding. He stretched out and flung a rough blanket over his body so he could lie in the dark and watch the tiny flickers of the fire on the wall of the tent, wide awake and staring up at the faint shadows of the boughs over his head as they swayed in the faint wind and moonlight.

  “Sir?” Cony said softly from beyond the tent flap.

  “Aye, Cony.”

  “They’s a flask o’ rum by yer head, sir, ta help ya caulk the better,” Cony told him, already rolled into his own blankets against the damp night chill.

  Thank God, Alan thought, fumbling about until his hand fell on a small leather bottle and withdrew the stopper. Neat rum was not something he normally preferred, but tonight it was welcome. He took a small sip and winced at the bite of the rum and its sharp odor.

  The bedding rustled as he lifted the bottle to his lips once more, and Alan could swear he could already feel the tiny movements of the many bugs drawn to him by his warmth, his scent, and the hope for blood. That was one of the worst parts of serving on land—being awakened by the bite of something too small to be fought, or finding the welts in the morning and feeling the fleas begin to shift about in his clothing. He had already had several ticks withdrawn from his skin; each time he was filled with loathing at the brutes and the way they had swelled by feeding on him. At least the Navy did not have to put up with the bastards and could fumigate and rid a ship of most lice, fleas, and other insects. Roaches were the main worry on a ship, along with the occasional brave rat that ventured out of the orlop and bilges.