Death's Bright Angel

by Death's Bright Angel (retail) (epub)

  I had not the heart to tell him it was a foul abomination, a glassful of Satan’s piss masquerading as claret. For all I knew, his mother had supplied it, and the notion that she might have fleeced her own son would only have discontented him on the eve of battle.

  The bad judge of wine was, however, an excellent judge of the movement of ships through water, as was clear that next morning, as our squadron moved steadily through the Dutch shoals.

  ‘There goes the first marker buoy from the Tyger,’ said Kit. ‘So far, the Dane is proving his worth.’

  ‘Lucky for van Heemskerck that he is,’ I said. ‘But our Dutch friend will still have much explaining to do if this expedition miscarries after all.’

  The captured ship-master was piloting the flagship unerringly through the narrow deep water channel between the low, featureless islands, leaving buoys on either side to mark it for the return voyage. Our excellent Blaeu charts showed the buoys that should have been there, but the Dutch had cut them in haste in an attempt to deter our attack; a vain hope, with Sir Robert Holmes in command. The rest of the squadron followed the Tyger: first the Dragon, then ourselves, the Fifth Rates Sweepstakes, Pembroke and Garland, two more Fourths in the Hampshire and Advice, with the ketches and fireships interspersed between us, the longboats being towed, five or six behind each frigate. Once we were through, and into the open water behind the islands, the Hampshire and Advice came to an anchor, to guard the buoys in case the Dutch attempted to take them up in order to hinder our escape.

  In that moment, however, there seemed very little prospect of the Dutch doing anything so aggressive. Indeed, there was no sight nor sound of the Dutch at all. We could now make out windmills and church towers on the two islands, Vlieland to our west and Terschelling to our east, but there were no signs of alarm: no warning beacons being lit, for instance, nor church bells rung.

  ‘Perhaps the butterboxes are sleeping late,’ said Kit.

  ‘Or perhaps they think we’re one of their own squadrons,’ I replied. ‘After all, who would imagine the English daring to sail into their own private lake like this?’

  But sailing into it we were, moving out into the calm waters of the Wadden Sea. And a sight to behold lay before our eyes as the Tyger and Dragon, ahead of us, turned slightly to the north-east, opening up the prospect dead ahead.

  Kit and I peered through our telescopes, counting masts.

  ‘One hundred and fifty at least,’ I said.

  ‘One hundred and seventy, I’d say, Sir Matthew.’

  ‘I defer to your opinion, Captain Farrell – your eyesight was ever superior to mine. But such a number, moored so tightly together… not even a blind man could fail to hit such a target.’

  And our admiral was no blind man, that was certain. Robin Holmes had a name as the most violent and aggressive sea-captain in England, if not the whole of Europe. Many blamed him for starting the entire war, due to his ferocious depredations of Dutch colonies on the coast of Africa, and Holmes did nothing to disabuse them. Indeed, he seemed inordinately proud of the label. So putting Sir Robert Holmes into the Wadden Sea on that morning, with such a vast fleet of rich and nearly defenceless hulls before him, was very much a case of putting a hungry fox into a crowded chicken coop.

  * * *

  The hungry fox was, indeed, in the mood for a hearty Dutch dinner. I joined him on the tiny quarterdeck of Prince Rupert’s yacht, the Fanfan, having been rowed across from the Black Prince. In truth, it was not a quarterdeck at all, simply the space at the stern of the one upper deck; but naval tradition decreed that a man-of-war should have a quarterdeck, and that was doubly the case when she embarked such an eminence as the Rear-Admiral of the Red, whose banner of distinction flew from the masthead. Regardless of such niceties, though, a splendid and very busy sight was going on all around us. The squadron had lain to just inside the channel between the two islands, and men were disembarking from the frigates into longboats and ketches. Holmes had transferred his flag to this nimble little craft, specially loaned to him by the Prince, so that he could take part in close action in shallow waters. He was in high spirits, insisting that his company commanders join him in a toast to the success of the expedition.

  ‘Well, Sir Matthew,’ he said, ‘how do you fancy a little fiery sport today?’

  I smiled. ‘I am at your command, Sir Robert.’

  The other commanders vigorously nodded their agreement.

  ‘Excellent. Then let’s to it! Gentlemen, to the boats! Let’s light a fire here that’ll singe Meinheer de Witt’s warty republican arse!’

  Barely a turn of the glass later, the Fanfan, five fireships, and a dozen longboats were moving relentlessly across the calm waters of the Wadden Sea, directly for the great mass of merchant ships lying dead ahead of us. The flooding tide was with us, carrying us into the serried ranks while making it very difficult for any of the merchantmen to attempt to escape the anchorage. The men on the ships had evidently realised this, together with the imminence and scale of the threat they now faced. Crews were taking to their boats, rowing for the isle of Vlie or the mainland as though their lives depended upon it – which, of course, they did. And ashore, scores of men were moving hither and thither on the Vlie island, many carrying spades, which they were using to dig what would evidently become makeshift ditches and ramparts. I could even see some small cannon, presumably taken from some of the merchantmen, being moved into position. Much good it will do them, I thought.

  I stood in the bow of my boat, sword drawn, as did all my fellow company commanders. I looked behind me, toward my men. This was a small but able crew, composed overwhelmingly of sailors from the Tyger. The business we were now about was a seaman’s affair; the soldiers would play their parts later. In the bottom of the boat, our principal weapons lay upon a canvas tarpaulin, waiting to be brought into action. We carried several dozen grenadoes, and an equal number of the rather cruder fireballs, simply balls of cotton cloth enclosing a mixture of gunpowder, saltpetre, sulphur and resin. The men’s eyes were eager, full of anticipation. After the summer’s two hard fought and bloody battles, this would be a very different business.

  ‘Sir Matthew!’ cried the man on the tiller, pointing behind me, back toward the ranks of merchant ships.

  Finally, it seemed, the Dutch were rallying to mount some sort of a defence. Two small frigates, of perhaps twenty-six or twenty-eight guns apiece, were moving out from behind the mass of hulls, bearing towards our little fleet.

  ‘Steady as she goes!’ I commanded.

  The men behind me began to shout defiance at the oncoming frigates. They knew, as I did, that they posed little threat to us. True, if they somehow got in among our longboats, they would smash us to pieces in short order. But they would never do that: if needs be, we could simply turn to the west and outrun them by rowing for the shallow waters of the Vlie island, where they could not follow us, or retire to the north-east and the protection of our own, vastly more powerful, frigates. Above all, though, the Dutchmen had to contend with what lay between us and them. Our fireships.

  The men in my boat cheered as the Richard and Bryar adjusted sail, put over their helms, and made directly for the two frigates. In that confined and crowded anchorage, there was almost no room for the Dutch ships to manoeuvre. In effect, they had committed themselves to what they knew to be a suicidal charge, and now their bluff was well and truly called.

  The Richard struck home first, closing the nearer of the Dutchmen. A few desultory shots rang out from muskets in the frigate’s forecastle, but the Richard’s crew knew what they were about. They grappled onto the bowsprit and the beakhead shrouds, pulling the two ships tightly together. The Dutch crew, knowing the game was up, abandoned ship by their boats. We cheered as we watched our men row away from the Richard, from which the first wisps of smoke were already rising. Within minutes, the fireship was ablaze, the flames licking over onto the bows of the Dutch frigate. As the fire spread onto the main deck, gunpowder cartridges bega
n to explode, and loaded cannon fired themselves into empty air. The flames fired the sails, pieces of burning canvas breaking away to float upon the breeze before landing in the sea. Fire climbed the masts and licked out along the yards, turning them into giant blazing crucifixes. And still we cheered.

  At first, the Bryar’s attack seemed to miscarry disastrously. The bow suddenly rose before falling again, and even from a fair distance across the water, I could plainly hear the loud shuddering that unmistakeably betrayed a ship running aground. But the crew of the Dutch frigate, having witnessed the fate that had befallen their consort, were already in their boats, rowing hard for safety. The Bryar’s captain needed no orders from the likes of Holmes or myself: his duty was clear. The fireship’s longboat cast off, taking the great majority of the Bryar’s crew in her, steering a course directly for the Dutchman.

  Nothing could have been simpler. They secured alongside the deserted Dutch frigate and went about their business briskly. From the prow of my boat, I could see clearly the fuses being laid to barrels of pitch and tar, and knew that other men would be doing the same with any flammable material they discovered between decks. In what seemed no more than a matter of moments, the second Dutch ship was ablaze, and the Bryar’s men were rowing back toward their own ship so that they could tow her off the sandbank.

  ‘Well, my lads,’ I cried to my men, ‘the example’s been given to us! What say you we light a few fires of our own, to warm the hearts of every man and woman in England?’

  ‘Aye, Sir Matthew!’ came the reply. ‘Aye, by God!’

  With that, we entered the serried ranks of the Dutch merchant fleet.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Make for the furthest line of ships!’ I ordered.

  ‘Aye, aye, Sir Matthew!’

  We were passing between row after row of hulls, sometimes four or five deep, some lashed together, most at individual moorings. But I knew two things. First, there was no point starting with the nearest ships; the wind was south-westerly, so we needed to start setting fires at the far end of the fleet, then work back, so that the breeze would do much of our work for us. Second, the ships furthest away for us were the ones most likely to try and make a run for the open sea; and so it proved. We emerged from between two rows of flyboats to see Holmes signalling from the Fanfan, while beyond, what looked to be a Guineaman, three privateers, and five more flyboats, were putting on sail and starting to move away toward the south-east, into a narrow channel between the Vlie island itself and some small inlets that lay between it and the mainland.

  I looked across toward the Fanfan. Holmes was pacing the deck, jumping up onto the wale, shaking his fist and screaming inaudible obscenities at the fleeing Dutchmen. But he was a good enough seaman to know the reality of the situation. Finally, he went back to the stern of the yacht, waved across to the water to me, raised his hands as if to say ‘it matters not a jot’, and pointed back towards the hulls behind us. Nine had got away, but that still left over one hundred and fifty ships to burn. And in one sense, it was good that some of the Dutch had escaped. They would carry the news to Amsterdam of what the English had done at the Vlie, and God willing, that news would bring the consequences we all hoped for. So we left the fleeing Dutchmen to their own devices, put over the helms of our boats, and made for the ranks of ships in the Vlie anchorage.

  * * *

  ‘Every ship to be fired!’ I ordered, as I climbed aboard a Baltic flyboat laden with grain from Poland.

  In truth, my order was nearly as redundant as the fireballs. Every seaman knew how to fire a ship, and how to extinguish such a fire: countless vessels were lost to accidental blazes, so fire was one of the most feared of all the many hazards of the sea-business. Thus it was simply a case of men doing what they were always specifically ordered not to do, such as igniting straw below decks, laying a powder fuse to a tar barrel, and so forth.

  As we pushed off from the flyboat and the oarsmen took up their strokes, I saw the first flames spit from the upper deck of the ship. It is remarkable how quickly a hull burns; soon, the whole vessel was ablaze from stem to stern. The breeze carried the flames into the rigging and upperworks of the ship secured alongside it, and in short order, that, too, was a roaring conflagration. So onward, through the entire fleet. It was slow work, but with no resistance at all, it was easy work, too. My men moved from hull to hull, methodically setting fires wherever they would cause the most damage. I looked across to the other groups of ships in my view. On all of them, Englishmen were engaged in the same work, firing their fuses and fireballs, getting back into their longboats, and rowing to the next batch of vessels. We cut the cables of many of the Dutch ships – in some cases, their own crews had already done so – so that burning hulls drifted against others, firing them in turn. Some ships burned more readily and fulsomely than others, depending on the nature of the cargoes they carried, but burn they all did, sooner or later. By the early evening, the entire Vlie anchorage was a carpet of flame, the smells of burning wood and scores of cargoes, from spices to pinewood to saltfish, putting me in mind of a vast kitchen. Guinea ships, Turkey Company ships from Smyrna and Scanderoon, Russia traders from Archangel, Balticmen from Danzig and Riga, flyboats laden with French wines from La Rochelle or Bordeaux, timber cargoes from Norway – all of them blazed away, sending a vast pall of smoke into the air. Even on the quarterdeck of the Black Prince, at anchor in Schelling Road some considerable distance from seat of the fire, the heat warmed the faces of Kit Farrell and I as we watched the great merchant fleet perish. Against the setting sun, it looked like Hell itself.

  ‘A fine day’s work, Sir Matthew,’ said Kit.

  ‘Indeed, Captain Farrell. The Dutch hit in the only place where they truly feel pain – their pockets.’

  ‘And would you say that in the hearing of your wife?’

  I laughed. Until only very recently, Kit would never have dared to make such a quip at my expense. But in many respects, we were equals now, and he, who knew Cornelia very well, was finally starting to come to terms with the fact.

  ‘’Sakes no, Kit. Even if she were on the point of giving birth, she would beat me black and blue for insulting her countrymen so.’

  Little did I realise how prescient both Kit’s question and my mocking response to it would prove to be.

  At length, with the flames still raging all across the Wadden Sea, we went below for a supper of salt beef and execrable claret. Kit then climbed back on deck to take the middle watch, while I retired to my pallet in his cabin. It would be an early start on the next morning, when we were to execute the second part of the attack.

  * * *

  I was aware of rain during the night, and unexpected motions of the Black Prince’s hull. I went back on deck just after dawn, to find Kit still at the quarterdeck rail and a vast pall of smoke hanging over the blackened and, in some cases, still burning hulls in the Vlie anchorage.

  ‘Joy of the morning, Sir Matthew,’ he said, ‘although a night of precious little joy, I fear.’

  ‘There was a squall?’

  He nodded. ‘Sir Robert has sent fresh orders. The attack on Vlieland is cancelled – the rain ruined much of the arms and powder in the boats and ketches. So the entire attack is to be on Schelling alone.’

  I frowned, but said nothing. The two small towns on Vlieland had grown rich from the countless ships that used their anchorage, and had warehouses and substantial merchants’ houses galore. According to van Heemskerck, the VOC, the Dutch East India Company itself, stored enormous quantities of goods there, and the company’s wealth was a byword throughout Europe. These were fit and proper targets for attack; but as Holmes well knew, that meant they were likely to be better defended, and he could not risk a humiliating retreat if we ran out of ammunition. But Schelling Island was a very different matter.

  I still had those same doubts in my mind when I stood on the beach of that low, featureless island some three hours later. All around me, our eleven companies of soldiers an
d sailors were disembarking from their ketches and longboats, roughly two-thirds armed with muskets, one third with pikes.

  ‘Well, Matt,’ said Holmes, striding toward me from his own longboat, ‘a fine day after all, eh, for invading Hogen-Mogen-land?’

  ‘Fine enough, Sir Robert. But what is there to attack here, exactly?’

  ‘What is there to attack?’ He looked over his shoulder toward the squat church tower to the west, and the huddle of houses around it. ‘Yonder is a Dutch town, on a Dutch island, with Dutch people in it. What better for Englishmen to attack?’

  I bowed my head. ‘As you say, Sir Robert.’

  And with that, he nodded toward the other company commanders, who were forming into a little group further up the beach. We went over and joined them. Philip Howard eyed me suspiciously, no doubt resenting the fact that I, and not he, was second-in-command of this expedition, but I found warm smiles and greetings elsewhere in the group, who were mainly fellow sea-captains not then holding actual commands, like myself: the likes of Holmes’ brother John, Tom Guy, and Dick Haddock, who would live so very long that he served every English ruler from Cromwell to the first George. Kit had not said a word when we parted on the Black Prince, but I knew he was frustrated, perhaps even discontented, at missing the attack. Yet we had to guard against the sudden arrival of a Dutch squadron, which meant that the frigates needed their captains, who needed to be ready for battle if necessary.

  ‘So, gentlemen,’ said Holmes, ‘one company to remain here to secure our boats. Captain Hellyn, if you will.’

  Hellyn, an old soldier, was crestfallen: there was no honour in acting as a mere sentry on a beach.

  ‘Five companies with me, including my own. Then Jack –’ he nodded at his brother, who smiled – ‘Bellasyse, Hammond, Haddock. Five companies with Sir Matthew – your own, Sir Philip’s, Captains Guy, Willshaw and Butler. My own force to surround the town in case any defenders attempt to surprise us. Sir Matthew, your force to go into the town and burn it. Any booty worth carrying is to be brought off, else it is to be destroyed. The same with cattle. No violence to be done to women, children or the lower sort of people, unless they resist, as stated in my orders from the Prince and the Duke. If we seize any of the better sort of inhabitants, they are to be taken aboard the ships, to be disposed of as we see fit. But, gentlemen, time forces our hands in all of this. I intend us to sail at or just after high water, praying the wind is still favourable. With the channel being so narrow, we dare not risk being trapped here by a contrary gale – the Dutch fleet down at Texel will know we are here by now, and I have no doubt they’ll be sending a force against us. But, God willing, they won’t get out of their sea-gate before we’ve done our business here. Questions?’ I had many, but this was not the time to ask them, even if Holmes’ tone had been more receptive to a response. ‘Good. Well then, gentlemen, to the heads of your companies! God for England, Saint George and King Charles!’