‘Damn this, Cracraft,’ Harvey groaned to his first, as darkness crawled across the water, ‘we’ll not have a night action. Howe will want a full day to pound `em,’ he sighed. ‘Why can we not get amongst `em?’
‘Sir, why not take some rest? You have walked the deck all day and look exhausted, if I may be so bold. It is plain we will not be in action this day, sir.’
Cracraft was a considerate man, fond of his captain who had given him his step and who, if he survived the coming battle, would again sponsor his advancement and perhaps even his own command. Cracraft’s mind drifted momentarily. He stretched his arms and rocked slowly on his heels. Four years since his commission as lieutenant. If he survived the coming battle, he could hope for a step to master and commander.
‘I believe I will do so, William. It has been a long and largely thankless day. Call me immediately should the situation alter in any way.’
* * * * *
The pre-dawn found Harvey back on his deck wrapped in a boat cloak, sitting behind the helmsman, drinking hot tea from a pewter mug, as the routine of the ship continued around him. The ship’s carpenter was growling at two of his mates, repairing a damaged companionway, a bosun’s mate was teaching a pair of young boys some of the intricacies of tying knots, chuckling at their kack-handedness. The officer on watch, mindful of the captain’s presence, ensured Brunswick’s station keeping attracted no adverse criticism.
The wind was south by west and the stiff breeze and cloudy skies found the two fleets still on the larboard tack, about seven miles distant. A heavy swell from the westward caused Brunswick and the other line of battle ships to roll and pitch. Howe had been watching and waiting for the light. By seven of the clock, the British fleet was bearing down on their enemy, when they hauled wind together and lay abreast the French. Captain Harvey could see the position of each fleet. As the fleet’s van came abreast of the enemy’s centre Howe signalled his fleet to tack in succession once more and shortly, Signal 34 broke out from his masthead; he meant to cut the French line in echelon and gain the wind.
Harvey watched the developing panorama from the elevated position on his poop deck. He saw the leading British ships tack and then lay up a little to windward of the enemy’s rear. The French, evidently fearing their rear squadron might be cut off, began to wear ship in succession from the van and run down their line, hauling onto the wind on the larboard tack in a line parallel to the British line. ‘Oh prettily done,’ said Harvey to a passing gull screeching overhead, depositing on the side-rail a mere foot from where Harvey stood, glass extended. ‘Very prettily done. They are not as lubberly as all we might believe.’ He muttered in appreciation.
Another signal from Howe on Queen Charlotte; Harvey could decipher it without aid. Number 36; all captains were to steer for their opposing enemy and engage independently. Upward of fifty line of battle ships eyed each other warily.
Some sporadic fire startled Harvey as the van passed the enemy’s rear. Lieutenant Cracraft ran up the companionway, paused in front of the captain and reported, ‘The enemy have opened fire, sir.’
‘I have ears of my own, Mister Cracraft,’ Harvey snapped, instantly regretting his unaccustomed terseness. ‘My apologies, William. My remark was uncalled for and quite unforgivable in me.’ He smiled at his premier, who waved away the apology.
‘Think no more of it, sir. We all become tense in circumstances such as these.’ Cracraft stood to his captain’s left and pulled his telescope from under his left arm and opened it fully, watching the great ships pitch and roll toward their enemy. ‘Tis akin to waiting in line for one’s executioner, is it not, sir?’
‘An apt but unfortunately accurate commentary on our situation, William.’ Harvey shuddered as a premonition caught his mind and refused to leave. ‘I find the waiting intolerable, I don’t mind saying, William. The last few days of playing hide and seek have been wearing to us all. However, once action is joined and shot is flying it seems easier to bear, if it ain’t perverse in me.’
‘Not perverse in any respect, sir,’ said Cracraft. One is far too busy to indulge one’s fear, I imagine.’ William Cracraft was facing his first action. He was fearful, naturally enough, but more concerned he should perform his duty efficiently and with courage. He knew, should he survive the imminent battle, he might receive promotion. And promotion to Master and Commander meant a ship and command of his own.
‘We shall face the battle as faithful servants of our King, William. The people will look to us for example and leadership. We must not fail them.’
Harvey coughed as a layer of smoke drifted across the deck and shrouded the quarterdeck turning the crew into spectral apparitions. The crack of small arms fire grew louder contrasting with the deeper cannonade of heavier guns delivering death and destruction with their thunder.
* * * * *
Brunswick’s guns remained silent; the men however, did not.
‘When are we getting to grips with the bastards, sarge? Michael O’Farrell said. This pussy-footing is doin’ moi nerves no good. Got any grog?’
‘Just shut your bone box, Paddy. You’ll have all the fightin’ you want just as soon as M’lord Howe can arrange things. Then you’ll end up sick of it, man.’ Sergeant Packer passed a dark bottle across the bench to the wiry Irishman. ‘Don’t you guzzle it all at once, you bugger. When the time comes I want you sober enough to fire at the bastards an’ not our lot.’
‘What will it be like? I mean, have you been in a sea fight before, sarge?’ Tom Clutterbuck asked.
Sergeant Packer drank from the bottle and looked at the men gathering around in the gloom of the lower deck. He wondered how many would be there after the imminent battle. Then, in an unbidden moment he became the frightened sixteen-year old recruit, who had run away from a brutal father, his mother worn out from producing another child each year, worried beyond reason at the lack of food to sustain the expanding family.
In months he had been sent to the fleet and aboard Howe’s then flagship, Victory, with a convoy of supplies and reinforcements for the garrison at Gibraltar. He had been sick with fear and sick from the storm off Cape Trafalgar and sick during the subsequent indecisive battle with the Spanish fleet.
‘If you survive, young Tom, you’ll never be the same again,’ he grunted, haunted by the unwelcome images of carnage that slipped unbidden into his head. ‘It ain’t a pretty thing to witness.’
Then he remembered the lieutenant commanding the detachment the day nearly a dozen years past, cowering behind one of the giant guns, moments before it was blown aside, transforming the officer into a pile of oozing blood and shattered bones and tissue. He remembered too, the horror of splintering timber skewering the marine standing next in line to him, pinning the man to the deck like a child’s rag doll with the stuffing spilling out. He remembered the blood slapping around the deck as the great ship rolled and pitched, flowing over his boots like a crimson tide. He remembered the noise and the smoke and being near deaf for days, while his eyes stung with tears, not all of them from the spent powder. He remembered emptying the contents of his belly on the deck, mixing with the blood and entrails of men he had spoken to only minutes before. He remembered his lungs choking with smoke, coughing until he felt he would die from the poisonous fumes. He remembered pissing his breeches at the horror. He remembered the screams of men as limbs were torn from bodies. He remembered the crying of the ships’ boys as they ran from the magazine to the great guns. He remembered the expressions of shock and disbelief on the men as they died. He remembered his own sergeant, on his knees crying as blood poured from his mouth. He remembered one of the great guns exploding, scattering its crew in dismembered parts about the crowded deck. Joe Packer remembered it all; then drank hard and long from the bottle.
‘Now don’t worry lads,’ he grinned, ‘we’re here to do our duty to King and country and think on it boys; think of the fortunes to be made when we capture the French fleet and haul `em all into Pompey!’
‘Here’s to that, sergeant!’ said Tom, emulating his mentor.
* * * * *
‘We have the honour of escorting the flagship, William,’ announced Captain Harvey. ‘Look, he begins his turn. Be ready with your orders now.’
Queen Charlotte was carrying all the sail she could but even so it appeared to Harvey the French were slipping slowly ahead.
‘Hah’, shouted Harvey, ‘now is the time, William.’
The First Lieutenant shouted three rapid orders and the men on deck responded, bringing the great yards around as Brunswick turned sweetly towards the French line, stretched before them as a line of cornered beasts, spitting fire directed at Queen Charlotte and Brunswick alone.
Chain shot and ball whistled into Captain Harvey’s beautiful ship, tearing and ripping sails and making men duck down from the invisible, but audible, shrieking hail of death.
‘For God’s sake, sir, let us fire before we all are slaughtered.’ A gun captain called out.
‘Lie flat you men,’ shouted Cracraft. ‘I’ll tell you when to fire!’
‘Well said, William. We must endure for some minutes, I fear, and I’ll not waste powder and ball until we are in close to our enemy. There, see how handsomely Black Dick takes Queen Charlotte in amongst `em! Ain’t it a noble sight! Hah, look, William, her main and mizzen shrouds have taken the French flagship’s flagstaff. My word what a carronade she is giving them,’ he shouted above the noise. ‘We’ll be there in a minute or two.’
‘Sir, there is a gap in their line! Mister Stewart’, Cracraft shouted across to the Brunswick’s master, ‘there’s a gap for us.’ He pointed with his speaking trumpet needlessly as the master, Mister Stewart, his big hands on the ship’s wheel, was intent on reaching the space first, willing his ship to sail faster into the French line.
The great ship pulled forward but simultaneously a French 74, seeing Harvey’s intention, trimmed sails to capture more wind and surged forward to deny him the space.
‘We’ll ram him, the rascal,’ shouted Cracraft. ‘Steady men,’ Cracraft shouted through his trumpet. Musket fire from the French warship sang overhead and pulled splinters from the rail in front of him. Above him on the poop, the ship’s band of fifes and drums, with men from the 29th Regiment, struck up a ragged rendition of ‘Hearts of Oak’. The men below heard the strains of the march and loud and lusty cheers rose up through the decks, adding to the clamour swirling about the decks.
With a violent and crashing impact the two ships came together to begin a dance with death. The three starboard anchors of the Brunswick caught the larboard fore-channels and fore-shrouds of the French vessel, now identified by Midshipman Lucas as Venguer du Peuple. ‘Avenger of the People, is she?’ said Harvey when informed of the name of his enemy, ‘well let us see what my Brunswick can do with her!’
‘Sir,’ shouted the master, Mister Stewart, ‘I can have some men cut us free. We can cut the anchor cables.’ He stood calmly as musket fire peppered the main deck, causing the guns’ crews to cower.
‘No, we have got her and we will keep her!’ Harvey replied with defiance.
At the same moment Venguer released a full broadside with her main lower battery of 36-pounder and upper battery of 18-pounder cannon. Brunswick, her starboard side badly wounded, reeled under the punch, bleeding like a tortured bull she roared out her pain into the French ship, a section of the lower gun deck firing through the closed gun-ports, her enemy too close to permit them to open fully, emitting a shower of lethal splinters into the French.
‘Pass the word quickly to the main gun-deck, William, to expect another broadside.’ Captain Harvey paced nervously across the deck.
It never came.
* * * * *
The men on the lower deck screamed defiance, abuse and profanity at their enemies, across a divide of only a few feet, then laughed as they realised the difficulty faced by the French who could not reload quickly enough; their ramrods could not be used because of the proximity of the Brunswick.
‘Look at `em, Caldy. They can’t work their guns; see mate’, said Jim Shadbolt, gun captain, to his loader. ‘French tools are too long for this work, the dozy Frogs!’
The ten-man crew of number four gun, starboard side on the upper gun deck, were working hard, sweat running down bare chests and backs, muscles bulging with tension kerchiefs tied around heads and ears. They were a typical mix of trained men. Sailors all, with the gun’s loader, Caldwell a young Gloucestershire lad who had been at sea for five years. He happened to glance through the open port and spied a Frenchman sitting astride an open port, working with a rammer. With a poacher’s instinct, he grabbed a round shot and with the strength of a man fighting for his life, hurled it across the short gap and struck the Frenchman’s head. The man fell from his perch to certain death as the swell pushed the two ships together, the great wooden hulls grinding him to pulp.
‘Hey,’ he yelled. ‘Did ya see that, Jim?’ he shouted to his mate, ‘I got me a bulls-eye then!’
‘Never mind that, Caldy, we need to keep pounding the bastards,’ said Jim, pressing down on the quoin. ‘Now load you bugger, and be fast about it.’
The British now realised they had an immediate advantage, which they used to full effect. The Royal Navy had introduced flexible handles to their guns’ tools; rammers, worms and sponges no longer had rigid handles, so a gun’s crew did not have to expose themselves at the port, sometimes even climbing out in order to service the gun.
‘Run out!’ yelled the gun captains, almost in unison, sweat now glistening on backs and running down faces. ‘Stand clear and… fire!’ The noise became deafening and unbearable. Smoke, stinking and thick, rolled back from the muzzles, spreading along the low deck space, filling the deck and men’s lungs and choking them. The Venguer du Peuple was being murderously attacked and badly wounded; blood already weeping from the seams. Screams came from within the hull as brave men and cowards died together.
Again and again the crews worked through the familiar routine; washing out, sponging, ladling the cartridge down the barrel, twisting the ladle over to drop the cartridge into position; ramming the shot and wad down the bore, before the gun captain aimed and fired the weapon. Little was called for to aim the gun at point-blank range, but today Captain Harvey had given orders for the guns to be alternately depressed and elevated, so as to inflict maximum damage to the hull and to the French crew within, and upwards into the rigging and sails to disable the enemy vessel.
Lieutenant Cracraft toured the gun-decks, instructing the junior officers, who were often young midshipmen, arranging replacements as casualties slowly mounted. He was horrified at the carnage developing; body parts on the deck and stuck to beams, a head rolling in the scuppers, wide-eyed boys struggling along the slippery deck with the weight of baskets about their necks laden with 8-pound cartridges, relieved as they delivered their loads to the crews.
‘Take men from the larboard side as you need `em,’ he shouted into the ear of another middie, struggling to make his voice heard above the cacophony of noise that made one’s mortal body shake and tremble from the feet upwards. ‘Keep `em at it youngster,’ he shouted, slapping the boy on the back. ‘You know what to do.’ The boy nodded, his eyes mere slits against the heat and the burning, choking smoke,
Cracraft noted the damage to the ship, increasing every minute, memorizing the detail. The starboard gun ports from the first to the tenth were shot and blown away by their own gunners, the sooner to attack the French. Two half beams carried away as splinters, to wound and maim and kill.
He noted a similar scene on the upper gun deck as he made his way back to his station. Shot holes and spirketting holed and splintered; slings, beams and knees badly wounded. Skids and gang-boards cut to pieces, iron stations shot away. Cracraft noted the damage for his report to Captain Harvey. He watched and stood aside as two seamen appeared, coughing through the smoke carrying a shipmate along the deck to the companionway leading to the hell of the orlop
, the blood pumping from a gaping wound in the man’s side. ‘Thankee, sir,’ one of them said as the trio crept along the deck. Cracraft nodded, thinking the man would be dead before he reached the surgeon.
* * * * *
‘Vizzard, I need some more of your men in the foretop,’ shouted Captain Saunders. ‘I have lost half a dozen good men already and fear more will follow. This is hot work for certain.’
They were on the main deck just below the quarterdeck where Captain Harvey was still pacing across the quarterdeck. Small arms fire from the French had lessened during the last hour, but men were still being wounded. Jack Vizzard felt the wind of a ball as it passed by his right ear and struck a bucket hanging from the rail, punching a neat hole in the leather, between the letters G and R.
‘I would rather take the entire complement across the gap and take the damned Frenchman, Saunders,’ growled Jack. ‘However, I agree we need to kill their sharpshooters; they are a greater danger to our company than their damned gunners are.’
Jack took but ten seconds to quickly reload his sea-pattern musket and aimed at a prominent target in the Vengeur’s mizzen top. Drifting smoke obscured his aim and he paused, holding his breath then fired. He noted, with great satisfaction, a spray of crimson against the grey smoke as a body fell from the top. ‘One less to trouble us, Saunders.’
THE GLORIOUS FIRST: The first fleet action of the French Revolutionary War (The Jack Vizzard Chronicles Book 2) Page 20
