“God, yes!” Lewrie enthused.
“Thick, sweet cocoa to start, sir,” Yeovill said, handing him a large china mug, “scrambled eggs, a rice pudding for later, and I whipped up a batch of hot water-drop cornmeal fritters. The Surgeon is of a mind that your victuals had best be soft and bland for a few days, sorry.”
“Damn his eyes,” Lewrie groused. “Aye, bring it on, even if it is pap. We’re fallin’ down to the Fourties, Mister Westcott?”
“Already about two hundred miles Sou’east of the Plate Estuary, sir, and I expect Noon Sights will place us near the Fourty-third Latitude. We’re bounding along quite nicely, bound for Cape Town. Then England,” Westcott added, looking pleased.
“God, at last!” Lewrie said with a gladsome sigh. “Commodore Popham released us?”
“With urgent despatches to General Baird at the Cape, requesting immediate re-enforcements, and his latest reports to Admiralty,” Westcott said, still grinning almost impishly as he added, “I might have given the Commodore the impression in my report that we had taken more damage than was the case, along with how long Reliant has been in commission, and was overdue paying off?”
“Happens even in the best of families,” Lewrie said, grinning in turn. “Even Nelson was prone to exaggeration.”
Pettus was fussing about, tucking a napkin into Lewrie’s shirt collar, and fluffing the pillows again. Lewrie tried to use his hands and elbows to scoot up higher in the bed to a half-way sitting position, but he could manage only an inch or so, and the leg wound awoke in fresh pain, making him suck air and wince.
“God, I’m weak as a kitten,” Lewrie said through gritted teeth, freezing in place to let the pain subside. Westcott, Pettus, and young Jessop took him by the armpits and dragged him up, making things even worse, bad enough for Lewrie to growl at them.
“Your cocoa, sir,” Yeovill announced, “a refill?”
“Aye,” Lewrie agreed, once his leg quit screaming and merely ached. “Whew! The Commodore wants more troops, instanter, does he? Any idea what’s happening up at Buenos Aires?”
“Only what Captain Downman told me, sir, and it doesn’t sound all that good,” Westcott said, frowning as he sat back down. “Troops from the Montevideo garrison and local volunteers are getting over to Buenos Aires at night in fishing boats, in the shallows where Popham can’t get at them. He’s only Encounter and her boats and crew, and she can’t swim that high up the estuary. They’re joining up with volunteers under Sobremonte, the Viceroy of La Plata, and a man by name of Pueyrredón. There’s a Frenchman, Liniers, commanding them, too, and the Commodore’s sure that it’s all a nasty Napoleonic plot. General Beresford beat about fifteen hundred of them, but that was on the defensive, and he’s unable to chase them down and drive them off.
“The city isn’t safe at night, so all Beresford can do is to patrol,” Westcott growled, “maybe dig some entrenchments, and wait for the shoe to drop. It sounds rather grim, in all.”
“Popham still has five transports,” Lewrie said, frowning at that news. “If it’s that bad, he should pull Beresford’s men out, fall down to Point Quilmes, take ’em off the Cuello’s banks, and sail back to Montevideo, before he loses the whole lot.”
“And admit defeat, sir?” Westcott snickered. “Fail, and admit rashness and bad judgement, more to the point? After his glowing reports, and that open letter to the London merchants, I can’t see him withdrawing.”
“Here’s breakfast, sir!” Yeovill sang out, placing a plank over Lewrie’s lap to span the bed-cot, upon which was a plate of eggs and a basket of fritters. “You’ll be happy to know, sir, that Mister Mainwaring said you could take as much red wine as you wished, as it’s grand for building up the blood and your strength.”
“Whisky?” Lewrie hopefully asked.
“With sugar and raw eggs, and medicine, only at bed-time, he said, sir,” Yeovill informed him.
“Damn his eyes a second time,” Lewrie grumbled, taking a first, delicious bite of eggs and a fritter that dripped fairly fresh butter.
“He saved the bullet for you, sir. Interested?” Yeovill asked.
“Christ, no!” Lewrie barked. “That’s … ghoulish!”
“Nothing to be done for your breeches. sir,” Pettus told him, “but, if you don’t mind that the tail of your silk shirt is shorter, it’s quite serviceable.”
“It’ll be a while before I’ll need either, but thankee kindly, Pettus,” Lewrie said with a smile.
“We’ve still some of those fresh-casked Argentine beef steaks, sir,” Yeovill happily babbled on. “You’ll be ready for some of them in a week or so.”
“And, once we anchor at Cape Town, there’ll be all manner of fresh wild game meat,” Westcott added, sounding wistful.
“I hope I’m able t’totter, by then,” Lewrie said, “and not end up a gimp.”
“Well, time heals all wounds, sir,” Westcott teased, “both the physical and the wounds of the heart. Mister Mainwaring is sure that you’ll recover fully. He took great care, he said, to extract every thread of cloth, and a few wee slivers that the bullet nicked off your thigh bone. You just rest easy and take your time, sir, and we’ll have you dancing by the time we get to Table Bay!”
“Well, if Mister Mainwaring insists on bed-rest!” Lewrie said with another wide grin. “After all, the ship is in the best of hands.”
“Thank you for saying that, sir,” Westcott said, bowing his head for a moment. “Long naps, catch up on your reading, amuse your cat, and enjoy a sea voyage, sir, with nought to do but plan what you will do when we get back to England. At any rate, our part in Commodore Popham’s fiasco is over and done, and we’re well shot of all that.”
Lewrie’s jaw dropped as he peered owlishly at Westcott.
“Geoffrey … did you have t’say ‘well shot’?” he asked.
“Oh Lord, my pardons, sir, I—!”
Lewrie could keep his stern expression for only so long, then began to laugh out loud. “Well shot, mine arse! Hah!” which set Westcott to relieved nervous laughter, and amused the others, too.
Damme, but it hurts t’laugh so hard! Lewrie thought, wincing and yet unable to stop or calm his cackling.
“Yeovill, ye say I’m allowed red wine?” he asked. “Well, pour me a mug. I have it on the best authority that I’m well-shot, and prescribed it! I might even have earned it. Well-shot, my God!”
AFTERWORD
If there had been shrinks around in 1805–1806, they could have diagnosed the British people as schizophrenic, swinging from elation to despair in mere months, with nary a bottle of Valium in sight.
Since the end of the brief Peace of Amiens in the spring of 1803, they had lived in dread of a gigantic army which Napoleon Bonaparte, now the self-crowned Emperor of France, had assembled along the Channel coast, and the thousands of landing craft and gunboats he had ordered built to carry it the seemingly short distance across the “Narrow Sea” and invade England, bringing down Napoleon’s principal opposition to his ruling of all Europe, and perhaps a goodly chunk of the world. He did dream big!
When Lewrie is still in the Bahamas, he had no way of knowing that the presence of Admiral Villeneuve’s massive fleet was not there to conquer anything in the Caribbean, but to lure off the Royal Navy so that that massive army and invasion fleet would meet little opposition during that “six hours of mastery of the English Channel, and I will be master of the world” boast. Nelson, of the “Immortal Memory”, of course, put paid to that scheme by defeating the combined French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar, dying in the process.
There was great elation at first, followed by woe that Nelson was gone, and there were no other senior naval officers of his fame and stature in the wings to take his place.
Since that climactic defeat, Napoleon Bonaparte might have been in need of some Xanax or Valium, too, after spending so much money on his invasion forces, and seeing his grand scheme dashed to pieces. It was rumoured that Bonaparte groused tha
t Villeneuve had lost because “I cannot be expected to be everywhere”, as if had he been at Trafalgar, the result would have been a different kettle of fish! At one time, before he had attended a military academy in France and had become an artillery officer, Bonaparte had expressed a notion to go into the French Navy; it may be an apocryphal tale, something that he dreamed up in his less-than-truthful, self-serving memoirs.
At any rate, what is a tyrant and conqueror to do after such a setback? Why, go bash his enemies in Europe, on the ground!
Austria was still a threat, itching to avenge itself upon the French for earlier embarrassments in the field since 1792, and could not abide that Napoleon had gone down to Italy and crowned himself the king of that patchwork land, where the Austrians thought that they ruled the roost. The young Alexander, Tsar of All the Russias, despised Napoleon, feared his ambitions, and personally wished Napoleon punished for the murder of the Duc de Angoulême, and when the British offered lashings of silver for every hundred thousand troops, he took the deal eagerly. Along with Austria and Russia, the Prussians—well, they were Prussians, of the same sort that brought the delights of World Wars One and Two, almost as militaristic and despotic as the French had become, and the money sounded sweet to them, too.
When it appeared that a fresh grand coalition of European powers had arisen against poor little much-put-upon “Boney”, encouraged by Nelson’s victory, and Prime Minister William Pitt’s cash stash, he had to act, and was surely more than happy to go bash the stuffings out of somebody to make up for it, and make him feel better.
The Austrians had improved their army and its tactics since the last time they’d been slobber-knockered by the French, but they still weren’t quite up to snuff, and they just got reamed at the battles of Ulm, then the joint battle with their new Russian allies which happened at Austerlitz, Napoleon’s most complete and crushing victories of his long career. To add insult to injury, he later went on to rip the Prussians a new one at Jena and Auerstädt, and add Prussia as part of Metropolitan France!
It’s possible that the news of all those defeats were the cause of William Pitt’s demise, which so stunned Commodore Popham when he learned of it. The people of Great Britain took all that bad news, and Pitt’s death, pretty hard, too, and a great war-weariness set in once more. (“Doc, I just feel so depressed!”)
The quick and easy conquest of the Cape Colony early in 1806 really didn’t do much to lift their spirits, either, though the news that Popham sent back to London made it sound a lot grander than it really was.
No wonder, then, that in the middle of gloom and doom, news of Popham’s conquest of Buenos Aires, and all the money appropriated in the process, set the London papers and the government aflame with praise. Patriotic Funds ordered presentation swords and complete sets of silver plate in his honour, and grand resolutions were announced in Parliament. When Popham’s open letter to the merchants of London, in which he boasted of the immense profits that could be made there, was published, Commodore Popham was acclaimed as the New Nelson, which I suspect was his aim all along.
Admiralty, though, even with Popham’s friend Earl Grey in charge as First Lord, was appalled that the Commodore had abandoned his post at the Cape and gone gallivanting off on a “Mad As A Hatter” escapade, profits be damned. Cape Town was left almost defenceless. There was talk of court-martial, despite the loud public accolades and fresh joy.
Commodore Sir Home Riggs Popham, inventor of the flag signals code, an endless font of ideas for aggressive action against the King’s enemies (and his own advancement!), found that he had bitten off a bit more than he could chew when he took Buenos Aires. He’d been sold a thrilling bill of goods by that Colonel Miranda, a lecherous gad-fly who’d traipsed the Continent promoting his grand vision of a South America free of Spanish rule, united into a great republic of native peoples—meaning Spanish-descended criollos, not the real indigenous natives or the slaves—which could take its place on the world stage, in emulation of the American Revolution, and the relatively new United States. In the process, Miranda’s assurances of people yearning to breathe free, and revolutionaries just champing at the bit to arise and open their markets to anyone who’d aid them, had grown grander and bigger over the years. In truth, though, except for some idle talkers in intellectual circles and wealthy salon society, it was all a fraud.
Resistance arose quickly, under the leadership of Sobremonte and Pueyrredón, as mentioned. In addition, there was a former French naval officer under the old Bourbon regime, Liniers, in Spanish service, who styled himself Don Santiago de Liniers, who took part; his name and presence utterly convinced Popham that it was all a French plot!
Liniers rode into Buenos Aires, claiming that he wanted to see to his family’s needs, then was allowed to ride out, again, after he had scouted Brigadier Beresford’s positions, the strength of patrols, and how few British troops were actually present. Liniers also had no trouble crossing the estuary to Montevideo and meeting with his fellow rebels, and the reconquista was on!
Barely a month after taking the place, by mid-July Brigadier Beresford knew that he was “in the quag” right up to his neck. Enemy forces were gathering rapidly from the ranches in the hinterland, and from the garrison and volunteers from Montevideo. Popham had very few boats to row guard to prevent the movement of troops, and his only warship, Encounter, could not sail up into the shallows where enemy fishing boats were ferrying men over in the night. Diadem, Diomede, and Reliant drew too much water to even get close to helping. Indeed, Captain Donnelly’s Narcissus had spent her first day in the Plate Estuary aground on the Chico Bank, far from Buenos Aires!
It was not for nothing that in later years, once the nations of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay had been carved out of the larger Spanish possessions, that the deep-water Canal Punta Indio was dug out from the docks of Buenos Aires to deeper water South of Montevideo!
Popham could give the unfortunate Beresford no help, and the weather did not cooperate, either. There were heavy rains, gusty gales, and heavy fogs. Popham could not even manage to get his ships to the wee port of Ensenada to take off Beresford’s wounded, or evacuate the army. They might have saved themselves by marching down to Point Quilmes, where they’d landed, and been taken off by boats from the five transports that remained in the Estuary, from the mouth of the Cuello River, but Beresford stood his ground, and on the night of August 11th, 1806, his troops stood to-arms all night. On the morning of August 12th, he was attacked by overwhelming numbers, and, after suffering 48 dead, 107 wounded, and 10 missing, he was forced to surrender. The terms were fairly generous, but Brigadier Beresford and his remaining men were marched inland.
By now, Lewrie’s part in the Buenos Aires fiasco was long done, but if you thought that Commodore Popham would tuck his tail beneath his legs and slink off like a frustrated fox, you’ve another think coming; the comedy of errors was only just starting!
Even though there were no Spanish merchant ships or warships in a thousand miles of the Estuary, Popham used his remaining squadron to “blockade” Buenos Aires (I’m sure that looked good in reports!) until he received a few re-enforcements from General Baird at the Cape of Good Hope. By this time, Admiralty had sent orders for his recall to London, and a replacement had been sent out.
With his re-enforcements, Popham tried to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear (perhaps to salvage his arse!) by making a stab at taking Montevideo! His few ships couldn’t get close enough for their guns to make an impression, so he settled for going up the coast and taking the port of Maldonado and the island of Gorrete, where his troops could set up winter camps, on the 30th of October.
This defeat was considered an insult to the honour of British arms. Popham’s replacement, Rear-Admiral Charles Stirling, arrived with a fresh army, and hopes expressed in London that not only would Buenos Aires and Montevideo be re-taken, but an expedition would also sail round the Horn and take the city of Valparaiso in Chile, then build a string of fort
resses right cross the entire continent! London would make a virtue of necessity.
Stirling and his army commanders, General Samuel Auchmuty and Lieutenant-General John Whitelocke, had a second go at Montevideo in February of 1807, and took the place, being “gallantly carried”.
From there, another go at Buenos Aires was launched, an army of twelve thousand men to do the job proper, this time.
Unfortunately, it was entrusted to Lieutenant-General Whitelocke, who was no brighter than Beresford had been. He led them cross the swampy lands near Quilmes and cross the Cuello, and right into utter disaster! Nearly 2,500 British soldiers were killed and Whitelocke’s army was also forced to surrender, with Whitelocke meekly agreeing that all British forces would evacuate the Plate within two months.
Whitelocke was subsequently court-martialled, cashiered, and deemed “totally unfit and unworthy to serve His Majesty in any military capacity whatsoever.”
“Wasn’t the Navy’s fault, Yer Honour, sir! Wasn’t any of our doing!”
When Popham got back to England, he was also called before a court-martial board aboard HMS Gladiator at Portsmouth from March 6th to the 11th, and the sentence was as follows:
The court has agreed that the charges have been proved against the said Captain Sir Home Popham; that the withdrawing, without orders so to do, the whole of any naval force from where it is directed to be employed, and the employing it in distant operations against the enemy, more especially if the success of such operations should be likely to prevent its speedy return, may be attended with the most serious inconvenience to the public service, as the success of any plan formed by His Majesty’s ministers for operations against the enemy, in which such naval force might be included, may by such removal, be entirely prevented. And the court has further agreed that the conduct of the said Captain Sir Home Popham, in the withdrawing the whole of the naval force under his command from the Cape of Good Hope, and the proceeding with it to Rio de la Plata, is highly censurable; but, in consideration of circumstances, doth adjudge him to be only severely reprimanded; and he is hereby severely reprimanded accordingly.
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