The French Admiral

by Dewey Lambdin

  With twenty-four-pounder guns and heated shot, the big French battery on the enemy left on the York River had opened fire. Charon had been hit and turned into a heartbreaking torch, burned to the waterline. Guadeloupe had gotten under the town bluffs into safety, but several outlying small warships and transports had also been set on fire and abandoned. Their own ship Desperate had been hit twice with red-hot shot, and smoke had billowed from her, but there had been enough hands to put out the fire and work her up alongside Guadeloupe, where she would be safe.

  If Alan’s morale had finally given way, then he was not alone. He could not cross the camp without discovering drunken British, Hessian, or Loyalist soldiers who had broken into spirits stores and were deeply drunk for what they felt was the last time before death. Troops still held in better discipline by their officers served as field police to keep the vandalism and defeatism from turning ugly, but one could smell the fear on every hand, see the stricken expressions, the sense of loss in every eye. Cornwallis’s force was an army waiting to die.

  There were caves below the town bluffs and eastern entrenchments, where many well men sheltered from the continual firestorm without shame among the wounded. Even Lord Cornwallis and his staff had moved into a cavern, surrounded with their lavish creature comforts.

  Had there been any liquor left within reach, Alan would have happily gotten besotted as the lowest sailor or soldier. He had worried before about the possibility of capture and imprisonment; now that was a fond wish, preferable to being blasted into so many atoms by the impersonal shells that drenched the garrison round the clock. The money he had hidden in his sea-chest could not buy him a single moment of life more, and his sense of loss about it was nothing more than a pinprick. There would be no escape from this debacle, and all he could do was curse the fools in New York who had not yet come, who now looked to never arrive in time to save the army or the remaining ships.

  His men were not in much better condition. No amount of japery was going to put much spine back into them, and he knew it. They had that same haunted look he had seen in the soldiers and only went through the motions of duty, diving into the bottom of the trench and their new additional dugouts below the earthworks every time a shell came anywhere close and stayed there underground as long as possible, no longer even much interested in the rum issue, not if it had to be taken in the open.

  Alan himself was in the bottom of the trench, just at the edge of one of his gun platforms. So far, they had not suffered a strike so near that their guns had been dismounted, but that was not for want of trying on the part of the foe. They had been concentrating on the western wall and had reduced it to an anthill from which a stubborn flag still flew on a stub of pole, though its guns had been mostly dismounted and its continued usefulness was much in doubt.

  “Lewrie?” an older marine captain called. “This army officer has need of your remaining powder. Give it to him.”

  “But what shall I defend my guns with, sir?” Alan asked, his voice a harsh rasp. The fog of powder smoke that seemed much like a permanent weather condition did not help.

  “Doesn’t matter much.” The marine shrugged. “Keep back enough charges to fire a dozen canister shots to repel a landing. Let them have the rest.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Alan said, rising from the trench.

  The army officer mentioned was the same goose who had so blithely positioned them alone in the hills in their first days of the occupation, still a dandy prat in clean breeches and waistcoat, his red coat still unstained and his gorget and scarlet sash bright as the day they were made. Alan took a sudden and intense dislike to him.

  “I have to retain some charges premade for my swivels, sir,” Alan said wearily. “And my hand’s personal powder horns and cartouches. I can give you the rest.”

  “Hurry with it, will you?” the man snapped. “We’re running low on every wall and no one would attack this rampart.”

  “Knatchbull, open up the magazines and supply this gentleman with all our kegged powder.”

  “And your gun cartridges,” the officer added. “You have no need for them. There are no other nine-pounders still in action, so they will have to be emptied and resewn to proper size for our guns.”

  “Retain a dozen, Knatchbull.”

  “I ain’t no scholard, sir,” Knatchbull said. “Could ya count ’em out fer me, Mister Lewrie?”

  “My God, how did you become a gunner?” the artillery officer said. “I said I want them all.”

  “My immediate superior said to retain a dozen, and that is what I must do, sir,” Alan told him, almost too weary and too lost in a really good case of the Blue Devils to argue. He just wanted the man to go away so he could silently contemplate his chances of survival ’til the morning meal and perhaps perform his litany of revenge on his father who had put him into the Navy so he could end up in such a mess.

  “Goddamme, you’ll give me all or I’ll have you put under close arrest,” the officer threatened. He motioned to his gunners to aid him.

  “With the best will in the world, I could not, sir. How could I destroy my guns without charges when the time comes?”

  Not that they’ve been worth a groat the past few weeks, Alan thought. He had dragged them from pillar to post and done nothing of value with them since; never fired a round in anger—for lack of opportunity at first and then for lack of powder and shot in the second instance. Might be satisfying to burn the fuckers and unbush them at that.

  “When what time comes, sir?” the artilleryman shouted over the sound of the barrage. “What do you mean by that sort of croakum?”

  “When the Rebels and the French have pounded us to bits, sir, and come over the walls,” Alan calmly said.

  “Never heard such insufferable nonsense. Now order your man to give me all your powder, all of it, mind, and be quick about it.”

  “Will you also give me a signed order to destroy my guns at the same time, sir?” Alan demanded.

  “Who is your captain, you puppy? What ship?”

  “Treghues . . . the Desperate, sir,” Alan replied, thinking fast. “If you take all our powder and cartridges, then there is no point in keeping two valuable naval guns ashore. Would you object to our taking the pieces back aboard without powder?”

  Go on, Alan thought, give me an excuse to get out of this before it all falls apart.

  “Damn you, and damn your insolence!” the officer raged, his hands straying near his pistols. “Sergeant, take everything in the magazines to the carts. I’ll thank you not to hinder us, if you won’t help.”

  “Take what you like, then, sir,” Alan said.

  The army officer’s party made quick work of scavenging everything in the magazines—all the small kegs of loose powder, all but a handful of firing quills, most of the tin canisters of musket balls for antipersonnel shot, and all the bundles of grapeshot, leaving only three charges per gun with the useless round shot. They trotted away with it in their small carts, dodging the shell bursts.

  “And may you be blown to Perdition!” Alan called after them, once they were almost out of earshot and he was finally able to vent his true feelings.

  “Thort he wuz gonna shoot ya, so I did, Mister Lewrie,” Knatchbull finally said after he had regained his normal breathing.

  “Not his kind,” Alan sneered, very relieved that the man had not done that or had him dragged off to a summary court, which would have resulted in the same thing. “Who do we have who’s a good runner?”

  “Runner, sir?” Knatchbull cogitated. “Well, Tuckett’s not bad, sir.”

  “Have him come up here while I write a note to our captain,” Alan said. He sat down next to his small jute bag and dug into it for some scrap paper and a stub of pencil. “How would you like to get back to our ship, Knatchbull?”

  “God, that’d be grand, Mister Lewrie!” The man beamed. “Kin we do it?”

  “We serve no useful purpose here any longer, not without powder. We can’t help the marines, except
to leave them the swivels. There’s a chance we may be ordered to take these two guns of ours back into Desperate. And us with ’em.”

  “Right away, Mister Lewrie!”

  Cornwallis’s harried staff saw no sense in two useless guns left ashore to be captured, so they spent the rest of the day knocking the extemporized field carriages apart and taking the guns and the remaining round shot back aboard.

  Desperate still was shy her two carronades and the four 9-pounders on the Gloucester side, but she had fourteen guns back in place should she be called upon to fight her way out, with enough reserve gunpowder from the bottom-tier kegs to make a short but spirited engagement of it.

  Everyone from Lewrie’s party, and Alan most of all, was greatly relieved to be back aboard. The men were once more in the bosom of their mates in relatively more comfortable surroundings; though the rations had deteriorated in quantity and quality there was still enough rum. They felt oddly safe in the understandable world of the Navy, instead of in the dubious clutches of the army, eager to embrace the rigid discipline of a ship-of-war, especially one that was not being fired at. Under the bluffs and free of direct observation by French or Rebel batteries, they could sit out the bombardment without fear for the first time in days.

  Alan found his sea-chest and clean clothes, a hammock man ready to tend his needs and wash up the clothes off his back, a bucket of hot river water in which to scrub up, and a peaceable sit-down supper with Carey and Avery, with the last of their personal wine stock to drink in relative quiet. The barrage continued through supper, petering out for a while as he rolled into his hammock and bedding and discovered all over how easy it was to sleep snug and warm, free of the ground.

  Almost before his head touched the roll of sailcloth that was his pillow, he was dead to the world. So he slept through the assault by the French Royal Deux-Ponts Regiment and an American regiment under the ambitious Colonel Alexander Hamilton that took Redoubts number Nine and number Ten, the last bastions before the smashed ramparts on the southeast end of Yorktown. He slept through the counter-battery fire from the British lines, snoring so loudly that Carey tried to wake him to make him stop, but Alan was too far gone to even respond to vigorous shaking.

  It was only at 4:00 A.M., when all hands were piped on deck to begin the ship’s day and scrub down her decks, that he awoke, and the barrage was so loud that he did not hear the British sally to try and retake the redoubts, for drums and musketry could not carry over the roar of the cannon-ade. Events on shore, even unsuccessful ones, touched him no more.

  I should hate this bloody ship like the plague, Alan thought as dawn painted the decks with faint light, revealing the sameness of a warship that held no surprises after long service on those very decks. But damme if this don’t feel hellish good.

  “Good mornin’ ta ya, Mister Lewrie,” Monk said.

  “And a good morning to you, Mister Monk,” he replied cheerfully, even glad to see Monk’s ugly physiognomy and ungainly bulk.

  Treghues was pacing the weather side of the quarterdeck deep in thought, as he usually did, speaking to no one until he had had his coffee and breakfast. He seemed much leaner than before, but Alan put that down to the plain commons everyone had been reduced to lately. He met Alan’s eyes only once and nodded a silent greeting, which Alan returned with a doffed hat, but there was no malice in those haunted eyes for once.

  Temporary the respite might be; the army was on the very last dregs of endurance, and the best defenses had been ripped away during the night. The enemy guns still did terrible duty on the bluffs above their heads, and it was hard to determine if any British guns were still firing in response. Another day or two might see the end of everything, and Desperate was still trapped in the river, and in the bay. Yet she still seemed safe and womblike. Over one hundred guns were in action, but she drifted in a sour haze of powder smoke and flung dirt as though nothing could ever touch her, or hers.

  Around ten in the morning, Lieutenant Railsford came aboard from his post on the Gloucester side, bringing some of his gunners with him. There were only two 9-pounders left in operation now with Tarleton and his dismounted cavalry troopers in their fortifications, and the other two had been smashed. Railsford conferred with Treghues, and then they both went over to the shore to talk to Symonds.

  “Something is up, I fear,” Avery said softly by Alan’s side.

  “Surrender,” Alan surmised. “There’s nothing left of the fortifications that a lazy cripple couldn’t scale.”

  “Is it that bad ashore?”

  “Yes, by Heaven, it is,” Alan told him, wondering where the hell David had been the last few days. “I wonder how anyone still lives at all.”

  “That will mean our surrender as well.” Avery shuddered.

  “Most-like,” Lewrie cold-bloodedly replied.

  “This has changed you terribly, Alan, I swear. You are so cold and hard now, I hardly know you any longer.”

  “I believe it has, too,” Alan said, thinking back on his behavior of the last week or so. “Well, you cannot be a child forever. I hope it’s merely something that will wear off when I get enough sleep and some decent food. Perhaps a few weeks in a prison before being paroled will do it.”

  Treghues and Railsford were rowed back to the ship just before midday and went aft immediately, passing the word for Mister Monk and his charts of the York River. Shortly after, all senior warrants and midshipmen were summoned aft to the captain’s cabins.

  They found their officers peering at a chart, and were bade to draw near and look at it carefully.

  “Lord Cornwallis has ordered Captain Symonds to gather boat crews, to transfer the army to the Gloucester shore tonight,” the captain began, tapping on the chart with a brass ruler. “We’re going to evacuate Yorktown before the enemy overcomes our defenses. We’re to start embarking troops here, on the beaches and the docks, at ten o’clock. The artillery has to be abandoned, along with the remaining stores, but we can save the troops and their personal weapons. With so little resistance facing Tarleton and Simcoe there’s hope we can break out into Maryland or Delaware, and make a quick march away, before the French or the Rebels can begin pursuit. Carry on, Mister Railsford.”

  “Here, on the right of our positions,” Railsford lectured, gesturing at the map, “there are French marines there, with artillery enough to break up any landings, so you had better not venture into this inlet or risk being shot to pieces. Steer west of north for the point, or the cove just to the west of the point. You’ll want to be careful of the boats; it’s a rocky shore thereabouts. At ten o’clock there will be a making tide, but the York flows swift enough to almost cancel it out. Once out from behind the bluffs at the tip of the town, remember to put a little starboard helm on, even if it takes you farther west than you think proper. The Virginia Militia is on the left of the lines, not far past the entrance to the cove, so don’t bear too far north. There is to be a small light at the back of the cove to mark the entrance for you. Look for it, for your lives.”

  “What about the ship, sir?” Coke the bosun asked.

  “We have Captain Symonds’s permission to try and break out after most of the troops are across,” Treghues said. “So don’t be late in getting back here once you have ferried your last load. I doubt if any of you want to spend any more time with our army than you have in the last few days, so if you do not want to march right out of your shoe leather or end up eating bark and berries, return to Desperate on time.”

  Treghues was in fine spirits once more, making his little jokes and exercising the use of his voice, which he had always been most fond of hearing during his briefings and lectures and Sunday services.

  “But, if we cannot break out past the French ships at the mouth of the river, we shall have to burn her to keep her from capture,” he said soberly. “The ship’s boats are not big enough, for the most part, to take as many troops as necessary, so we will be using those recently constructed barges.”

  There was
a groan at that. A few weeks in the water had not done anything to improve their watertight integrity, or their handling. They were heavy, ungainly, hard to steer and row, even with a dozen oarsmen aboard, and they leaked like a sieve. What was worse, they were fairly flat-bottomed compared to a boat built with love and care, and made leeway as fast as they could be propelled forward on a windy day.

  “I would admire that Midshipman Forrester be called off-shore to help with the barges,” Treghues said, making sure that his cater-cousin would be close to him at the end, whatever transpired. “He will take one boat. Mister Lewrie, you take another. Avery takes a third, and Carey will supervise a fourth. Mister Coke, the cutter and the launch from Desperate’s complement shall be employed as well. Give one to my coxswain, Weems the other. Mister Monk, it would be best if your master’s mates stay aboard ready for departure, but the midshipmen could use the quartermaster’s mates to assist in pilotage.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “No outward preparations until after dark, which shall be before seven this evening. No sign of what we are attempting must come to the attention of the enemy, or there is no point in trying. The army is counting on us to save them.” Treghues concluded, saying, “I do not intend to let them down for the last time as . . .”

  Treghues choked off his possible comments about Graves and the other leaders who had never even shown a royal yard over the horizon in all that time and had muffed the battle at sea that had led to this hopeless condition.

  “We’ll get ’em safe across, sir,” Railsford promised.

  “We must,” Treghues said vehemently, his eyes clouding up with emotion. “We must!”

  “The night seems perfect,” Railsford said, sniffing at the wind by the entry port soon after the hands had been fed an early supper. “Be as dark as a cow’s arse.”

  “Just as long as we can see where we’re going, sir,” Alan said. “If we cannot show a light, even to peek at a boat compass . . .”

  “Steer for the shelling and you’ll come right,” Railsford told him, clapping him on the shoulder. “Off with you now, and pray God for our success.”