Killigrew’s Run

by Jonathan Lunn

  Killigrew’s Run

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  Glossary

  Commander Christopher I. Killigrew

  The Killigrew Novels

  Copyright

  Killigrew’s Run

  Jonathan Lunn

  In memoriam

  James Hale

  1946–2003

  Agent, mentor and friend

  Prologue

  Friday 4 August 1854

  The channel was wide and deep enough to accommodate any vessel up to a third-rate ship of the line, or so Captain Sulivan of Her Majesty’s surveying ship Lightning claimed. If Commander Killigrew had heard it from anyone else’s lips he would not have believed it, but Sulivan was a wizard at surveying, and he had already sounded the channel, marking it using empty bottles painted white as buoys, and arrows and other markers whitewashed on the rocks on either side.

  Killigrew gazed the length of HMS Ramillies’ upper deck to where Petty Officer Molineaux sat astride the bowsprit, following the line of buoys by the light of the deck lamps. Standing next to Killigrew and Captain Crichton on the quarterdeck, the quartermaster watched Molineaux’s signals and relayed them to the two able seamen at the helm.

  ‘Come one point to starboard!’

  ‘One point to starboard it is!’ The helmsmen spun the wheel, and the big ship brought her bows round to port, nosing her ponderous way through the treacherous channel. In one of the smaller vessels Killigrew was more accustomed to serving on board, they would have gone up the channel like a rat up a drainpipe. HMS Ramillies, however, was no steam-sloop, but a former third-rate ship of the line converted into a blockship: 170 feet from stem to stern, with a burthen of 1,747 tons, 60 guns and an official complement of 660 men; although they had had difficulty getting experienced seamen to sign on board before sailing, and at present the total number in her crew was closer to 500. Of those, one-third were well past their prime, while another third had never sailed on a naval vessel before.

  ‘Right the helm!’ ordered the quartermaster, his eyes fixed firmly on Molineaux.

  The helmsmen spun the wheel back. ‘Helm amidships!’

  These occasional exchanges highlighted how unnaturally silent the Ramillies was, even for three bells in the first watch. The men of the larboard watch were below decks, in their hammocks, but they each had a good notion of how perilous the passage was, and Killigrew doubted that any of them would be sleeping. The men of the starboard watch were at their stations on deck, standing by, awaiting instructions – which were few and far between while the sails were furled and the Ramillies advanced under steam only – and speaking little, and then in hushed tones. Leading Seaman Endicott said something to Able Seaman Iles, prompting him to laugh uproariously; hysterically, even. He quickly cut the laugh short, but too late: the boatswain rounded on him furiously.

  ‘Keep silence, there!’ If any Russians in the vicinity had not heard Iles’ laugh, they had most certainly heard the boatswain’s bellow.

  In the silence that followed, Killigrew was all too conscious of the creaking of the ship’s rigging and timbers, the slapping of the water against the hull, and the chuntering of the engine. Under steam, the Ramillies had two speeds: ahead full, and ahead half. She had been built in 1813, which made her older than most of the men that served on her, but eight years ago she had been converted into a steamer by the installation of a Seaward and Capel 4-cylinder engine in her hold, driving a screw that enabled her to potter along under bare poles at just under six knots. At the moment she crawled along at half speed, but it was still far too fast for Killigrew’s liking. It was an hour after sunset and dusk had settled over the Åland Islands. A gibbous moon cast its silvery light over the scene, but visibility was still poor and if Molineaux missed one of the markers in the darkness he would barely have time to spot a half-submerged obstacle before they ran into it.

  Killigrew took out a cheroot case of polished tin and extracted one, plugging it in the corner of his mouth while patting his pockets down for his matches. There was only one left in the box, so he took care to cup his hands around it as he lit the cheroot; if it had blown out, he would have had to go without smoking until the Ramillies passed through the channel and emerged into Lumpar Bay at the far end of it. Only then would they be safe, and only then would Killigrew feel he could quit the quarterdeck to fetch another box of matches from his cabin. Crichton did not approve of his officers smoking on watch, but strictly speaking Killigrew was not on watch, and besides, he felt there were special circumstances given the tension of the moment. Crichton must have agreed, for he said nothing.

  Killigrew shook the match out and crossed to the side to toss it overboard; which, perhaps, had been his real reason for lighting the cheroot, for once there he swung himself up on to the bulwark. Holding on to the ratlines with one hand, he leaned out over the side, gazing down the length of the ship to where the buoys were barely visible in the water up ahead.

  He gazed across at the shore to port. At the mouth of the Gulf of Bothnia, midway between Sweden and Finland – an autonomous constitutional grand duchy within the Russian Empire – the Åland Islands were low-lying and thickly forested with pine trees. As the Ramillies rounded the next headland, a gap opened in the trees to reveal a Russian fort standing in a clearing, perhaps two hundred yards from the shore. It was not unlike a Martello tower, but broader and taller – nearly fifty feet high – built of brick faced with pink granite. Two tiers of embrasures looked out from the masonry like so many gaps in the toothy grin of a bleached skull. The fort perfectly dominated this stretch of the channel, but fortunately the Russians had abandoned it, withdrawing to rejoin the garrison at Bomarsund, otherwise the other Allied ships that had already passed this way would never have made it.

  In his mid-sixties, Captain Graham ‘Nose-Biter’ Crichton was a tall man of imposing build, with wild white hair and watery eyes that bulged from his fish-like face. The young gentlemen of the gunroom had dismissed him as a genial but mildly dotty old man, until Killigrew had explained that he had earned his nickname on the desk of a frigate in the Great War with France by biting the nose off a French officer in hand-to-hand combat.

  ‘I hope your man Molineaux knows what he’s doing, Killigrew,’ Crichton remarked, the mildness of his voice belying the strength of the feeling behind it.

  ‘Your man Molineaux’: never mind that responsibility for the crew ultimately lay with Crichton as captain of the ship; the black petty officer was one of the five men whom Killigrew had particularly recommended to Crichton, fellow survivors of HMS Venturer’s disastrous voyage of the Arctic in search of Sir John Franklin’s expedition, and as such he would always be ‘your man Molineaux’ whenever the captain discussed him with Killigrew.

  ‘I wouldn’t be so bold as to say that I’ve never known Molineaux make a mistake,’ he told Crichton. ‘But I cannot think of any particular instance off the top of my head.’

  ‘The problem with speaking off the top of one’s h
ead is that one is bound thereby to talk through one’s hat,’ Crichton retorted genially.

  Killigrew smiled. ‘There are worse parts of one’s anatomy to speak out of.’

  ‘How long d’ye say you’ve known him?’

  ‘Seven years, on and off. More on than off, come to thi—’

  Seeing Molineaux gesturing frantically, Killigrew broke off and turned to the quartermaster.

  The quartermaster had already seen the gestures for himself. ‘Hard a-port!’ he snapped at the helmsmen. ‘Look lively!’

  The helmsmen spun the wheel furiously, and the Ramillies’ head began to come round, but too slowly. A moment later Killigrew felt the copper sheathing on the keel scrape over the shingle bottom, and then the ship juddered to a halt. The men on deck staggered under the sudden impact.

  ‘Stop engines!’ Crichton barked, even before he had righted his stagger across the quarterdeck.

  The midshipman stationed by the binnacle unclipped the speaking tube for communicating with the engine room and blew into it to sound the whistle at the other end. ‘Stop engines!’ The engine stopped so soon after that the chief engineer must have realised they had run aground long before he received Crichton’s order.

  Killigrew glanced forward anxiously to make sure Molineaux was all right, and saw the petty officer dangling by his arms from the bowsprit. Even as Killigrew watched, Molineaux pulled himself up and swung to safety. Killigrew cursed himself for wasting time worrying about the petty officer when he should have known from experience that Molineaux was perfectly capable of looking after himself.

  ‘Damage report, Mr McGurk!’ commanded Crichton.

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Although barely fourteen, Midshipman McGurk knew what to do: he hurried down the main hatch to where the carpenter and his team were at their stations on the orlop deck, ready to look for leaks and plug holes in the event of the ship being breached below the waterline.

  ‘Anyone hurt?’ called Killigrew. Apparently, no one was, or at least not sufficiently to justify bothering the ship’s surgeon. He took stock of the situation: it felt as though the ship was firmly grounded, heeled over at ten degrees with her keel on the bottom. He did not think the hull had been breached by the sound of it: the Ramillies might be old, but she was tough.

  Molineaux was back on the upper deck, making his way aft. He was not a tall man, but shoulders broadened by years at sea gave an impression of strength and solidity that was by no means misleading. The bonnet on his shaven skull – like a tam-o’shanter, with a red pom-pom – was tipped forward so that it almost touched his eyebrows, and a gold ring through one earlobe gave him a piratical look.

  Crichton rounded on him furiously. ‘Damn your eyes, man! You were supposed to be following the buoys!’

  ‘I was, sir,’ the petty officer replied, politely but firmly. In spite of his African physiognomy, he spoke English with the accent of the back streets of London where he had grown up. ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but I reckon that’s where I went adrift.’

  ‘Where you went adrift? What the blazes are you blethering about?’

  ‘Reckon some bugger must’ve moved the buoys, sir. Didn’t see the shoal water until it was too late.’ If Molineaux was telling the truth, then it was a miracle he had noticed the shoal water at all, and that he had done so too late was hardly his fault.

  ‘Moved the buoys? Who on earth would do such a thing?’

  Killigrew glanced towards the fort ashore, and the realisation was like a kick in the stomach from a mule.

  Crichton must have realised it too, for he forgot all about berating Molineaux to order: ‘Beat to quarters! ’

  Even as the ship’s musician beat his drum and the larboard watch tumbled out of their hammocks to emerge on deck, four of the cannon in the fort boomed – the only four that could be brought to bear on the ship from their embrasures – and spewed forth fists of flame. Was it Killigrew’s imagination, or did he actually glimpse one of the cannonballs skipping across the greensward between the fort and the channel, glowing a dark shade of red in the gloom? The only one that came near to the Ramillies crashed over the rocks on the shore to land in the water between shore and ship with a plop.

  The Russian gunners in the fort – Killigrew knew at once they were enemies intent on destroying the Ramillies rather than allies who had mistaken her in the darkness, because if they had been British or French they would have destroyed her at that range with the first salvo – had used an insufficient charge, and their aim was wildly off. But the Ramillies was a sitting duck while she was lodged in the shoals, and sooner or later the gunners would get the range and the direction right. They were not using shell, thank God, but from the way the water bubbled over the round shot that had fallen short of the Ramillies they were using red-hot shot, which would do the job just as effectively if it became lodged in the ship’s timbers and set them alight.

  The Russians must have reoccupied the fort after it had been checked by the landing party from the Lightning, and some damned fool had not thought to empty the place of powder and shot. Their gunnery might have left a lot to be desired – from the Russian point of view, at any rate – but whoever had planned this ambush had been no fool: where and how the Ramillies was aground, she could bring none of her guns to bear on the fort, only the bow chaser on the forecastle, a ten-inch long gun, and already the ship’s gunner was having it loaded and brought to bear through one of the four gunports in the Ramillies’ prow.

  Crichton did not waste time relaying his order through the midshipman standing at the binnacle, but snatched up the speaking tube himself. ‘Set on, full astern!’ he ordered, and a moment later the deck throbbed beneath their feet once more as the chief engineer threw the engine into reverse to try to draw off the shoal. But the Ramillies was caught fast.

  The bow chaser boomed, shooting back on its brass racers, and the shell shrieked through the night to where the fort stood, still wreathed in the smoke of its first salvo. The roar of the shell did not last long – fort and ship were exchanging shots at almost point-blank range – before it was cut off by the thunderclap of its explosion, and a great burst of flame filled the night, obscuring the fort from Killigrew’s sight with a cloud of dust and smoke. The men at the bow chaser were already reloading while Crichton and Killigrew waited for the cloud to disseminate so they could see what damage had been done.

  And then the dust sheeted down and the smoke drifted off to reveal the fort fully intact… in appearance, at any rate, and in function as well, as the gunners proved by firing a fifth shot that slammed into the rocks on the far side of the channel, perhaps two dozen yards ahead of the Ramillies. A sixth shot followed, then a seventh and an eighth in rapid succession, all three missing but coming closer than before. The Russian gunners were firing independently now, as fast as they could load, aim and shoot.

  ‘This is a fine to-do, eh?’ Crichton might have been remarking on a piece of luggage gone astray somewhere between Paddington and Temple Meads. ‘We’ll have to try to kedge her off, before those damned Russkis make a bonfire of us! Summon the gig’s crew, bosun!’

  ‘Sir, if instead of making a cable fast astern we anchor it to those rocks off the port quarter, we might be able to kedge off and bridge our broadside to bear on the fort at the same time.’

  ‘Good thinking, Mr Killigrew. You heard the man, Mr Masterson. See to it.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  The bow chaser roared again, and this time one of the guns in the Russian fort belched flame before the smoke and dust had had a chance to clear. Now they had got the direction right, if not the range, and the shot screeched through the air overhead to part one of the backstays supporting the mainmast.

  Crichton took the telescope from the binnacle to study the fort as the smoke cleared once more. ‘Hardly a scratch on it, rot it! We might as well throw stones for all the damage we’re doing.’

  ‘It’ll be a different story when we start pounding that fort with round shot.’ Kill
igrew tried to sound breezy.

  ‘Yes, but that will take time; and time is one commodity we do not possess in abundance.’ Crichton handed him the telescope and Killigrew studied the fort for himself.

  ‘There may be another way, sir.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘A shore party. I’ll take the pinnace with a dozen bluejackets and twenty jollies and see if we can’t take that fort by storm.’

  ‘Muskets against granite, Killigrew?’

  ‘Muskets and grenades, sir. We have some on board. If we could get close enough we could toss a couple through two of those embrasures, then go in through the back door.’

  ‘The back door will be locked.’

  ‘If love laughs at locksmiths, sir, that’s nothing compared to the howls of derision they provoke in Molineaux.’

  ‘Very well. But keep an eye on the Ramillies: don’t get caught in front of the fort when I’m ready to fire a broadside.’

  ‘I’ll take a couple of blue lights. When one goes up, you’ll know the fort is ours and you can belay the broadside.’

  ‘Smart thinking. Carry on, Mr Killigrew.’

  The commander turned to Molineaux. ‘Summon the pinnace’s crew.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Petty Officer Wes Molineaux was one of the Ramillies’ boatswain’s mates, and as such he wore a boatswain’s call around his neck. Now he used it to pipe the pinnace’s crew to the davits while Killigrew ordered the ship’s armourer to issue them with muskets and cutlasses, and Crichton ordered Marine Lieutenant Neville to summon a squad of nineteen men.

  Satisfied that everything had been set in motion, Killigrew descended the after hatch and made his way to his cabin where he buckled his gun belt around his hips. A tall man with the athletic build and graceful movements of a dancer, he wore a pea jacket over his waistcoat and shirt – the arrival of summer had finally brought temperate weather to the Baltic – and his peaked cap sat on his thick, dark hair at a jaunty, insouciant angle. The ordeal he had suffered in the Arctic had left its cruel mark on his saturnine features, and he looked older than his nine-and-twenty years.