by Tim Jeal
Tom’s memories caused him such pain that he wondered whether even war could be worse than this disease of love, which drained all courage from his heart; the mind might be as empty as a burnt church or a wasted town. His happiness seemed already to be part of some long lost world, from which he had somehow strayed into a region belonging to others, where for him there would be no present and no future.
PART FOUR
The War
37
Ordered perfection – a long dining table with polished silver on a spotless cloth; gold braid glinting against dark blue full-dress uniforms by the light of candelabra; scarlet-coated marines with immaculately pipe-clayed belts and cross-straps serving wine. A pleasant room with white panelled walls; only the sloping stern windows at one end and the heavy cross-beams overhead suggesting that it was the wardroom of a line-of-battle ship. No swearing here on any night, no talking shop or mentioning the names of ladies, except wives or sisters, and tonight an added sense of constraint since Admiral Crawford was dining in the wardroom of his flagship as the guest of his officers.
Two miles from the fleet’s anchorage, a world away from white decks and polished wood and metal, lay the Crimean coast and the stinking and polluted inlet of Balaclava, choked with scores of British supply ships and transports, their masts and spars forming a dense floating forest, hemmed in by tall black cliffs. Six miles inland, forty thousand French and British troops were encamped on the heights south of the town of Sebastopol – Russia’s great dockyard arsenal and home port of her Black Sea Fleet. Behind the town’s massive defences an unknown number of defenders were waiting, while, somewhere to the north, lurked a Russian field army already defeated by the French and British armies at the battle of the Alma, but not destroyed. In the minds of many officers on the allied side was the bitter rankling certainty that their commanders, Lord Raglan and Marshal St Arnaud, should have marched on Sebastopol immediately after their victory at the Alma, instead of waiting to land siege artillery and to establish supply ports. By doing so, they had given the enemy time to complete a system of defensive earthworks and entrenchments more formidable than anything previously encountered by British artillery officers and engineers. These men were not alone in suspecting that the allied forces would now have to mount a siege lasting through the intense cold of a Russian winter with no better shelter than their flimsy tents.
This possibility was rarely far from Sir James Crawford’s thoughts, but during dinner, he had been preoccupied with other matters. Since hoisting his flag in Retribution, he had from time to time been subjected to tactfully oblique questions about whether the new Lady Crawford might be induced to leave the British Embassy in Constantinople to visit the Crimea when Lord Stratford next came out. Helen’s youth he was sure would already have caused some ribald amusement; but when Commander Berners, the officer next to him at the after-end of the table, tentatively broached the subject of Lady Crawford’s plans, Sir James’s evasion had been good-humoured, although tonight this topic was particularly unwelcome.
In an hour’s time, Charles’s ship, Scylla, in company with two other vessels, would be steaming in under cover of darkness to attack the Russian shore batteries. On board, under Charles’s orders, would be four recently promoted midshipmen, among them Humphrey Grandison, Lord Goodchild. Sir James, who had himself devised the series of night attacks, of which tonight’s engagement was but a part, was very well aware of the high risks involved, in spite of his numerous precautions. The commanders of the attacking ships always knew their firing positions from bearings taken on a number of floating lights, unobtrusively laid down by a small paddle-sloop earlier in the day. None of the attacks ever took place on consecutive nights or at the same time. So that the flashes of continuous firing did not assist the enemy to calculate their range, ships were only permitted to fire broadsides. To prevent the illumination of one vessel’s broadside betraying the positions of the others, each ship was to attack singly, going in at spaced and irregular intervals. But effective engagement of stone forts had to be at dangerously close ranges, making it in part a matter of luck whether an individual ship were to be sunk, set on fire, or escape untouched. Surprise being crucial, the first vessel’s chances were better than those of the two ships following. Tonight the last ship, and therefore the one most likely to have her range found by the enemy, was H.M.S. Scylla. If the boy was hurt, Sir James did not suppose he would be much helped by explaining to Helen that an admiral could hardly be thought to be sending his own relatives into an attack in the least dangerous position. Whether conceding this or not, he knew that she would still reproach him for the rest of his life for having done so little to discourage Humphrey’s entry into the navy.
By the time dessert was served, Sir James had spoken very little to the officers seated next to him. Feeling a little guilty about this, he turned to Berners who was delicately peeling a banana with a silver fruit knife, and told him how he had first tasted this particular fruit on the West African coast.
‘Of course in the thirties bananas were very rare. Couldn’t be bought for love or money in England. Hard to believe today. Fifteen years and now everybody’s eating them.’ Berners smiled politely while Sir James went on to describe the condition of ship’s biscuit on the same station. ‘Had to break it up on deck and mix in raw fish to tempt the weevils out. When we got fresh turtle from Ascension, we were damned glad of it, I can tell you.’
Sir James could see that Berners was finding it hard not to grin. He did not blame him. To dine sitting next to the second-in-command of the fleet and to learn nothing about the conduct of the war or anything at all except the food eaten on the West African Station twenty years before, would be distinctly unnerving. He was sure he saw relief on Berners’ face when the cloth was removed and glasses charged for the Loyal Toast. The president of the mess rose at the head of the table and brought down his silver mallet.
‘Mr Vice, the Queen,’ that officer said, addressing the vice-president at the opposite end of the table.
‘Gentlemen, the Queen,’ came the reply and then everybody, still seated, raised glasses to a general murmur of: ‘The Queen, God bless her.’
Ten minutes later, Sir James was on the poop staring through his glass at the dark silhouettes of three two-deckers and a steam-tug a mile further inshore. At four bells he was joined by his flag-captain, Captain Broughton, his signals officer and the officer of the watch. By now numerous glasses and telescopes on the three blacked-out vessels would be directed towards Retribution’s main-top for the appearance of the signal by lanterns: ‘Weigh and proceed.’ Sir James moved away to the port rail to be on his own. Two weeks before, the combined British and French squadrons had attacked Sebastopol’s sea defences by day and had inflicted little damage at a cost of over a hundred dead and three line-of-battle ships towed out of action on fire. Sir James had been certain that failure had been because his own commander-in-chief, Dundas, and the French Admirals Bruat and Hamelin had been too cautious to engage at decisive ranges. Since the outnumbered Russian fleet was most unlikely to leave harbour, the navy’s only remaining role was to destroy the sea forts. Sir James’s fervent hope was that these small-scale night attacks would prove to the other admirals what damage could be done to stone fortifications at ranges of less than half-a-mile. If they failed, he knew that there would be no more general bombardments by day and the Russians would be left free to move guns from their sea defences to strengthen their land batteries facing the allied armies.
As anxious minutes passed and the time for the signal approached, Sir James grew increasingly apprehensive and often had to remind himself that actions like the one about to begin might be critical in shortening the war. If Charles and Humphrey were to die, they would not do so for an insignificant reason.
Gazing out across the smooth water towards the dark rugged cliffs of the Crimean coast, Sir James thought of a very different shore: the quiet water’s edge at a small resort on the Bosphorus – Therapia with it
s fountains and secluded gardens, its olive groves and vineyards, crowned by the dome and twin minarets of a tiny hillside mosque among cypresses and white flowering strawberry trees. There, before joining the fleet, he had spent several weeks with Helen: a time uninterrupted by anxiety and confusion. Warm hazy days: Helen, in a blue silk dress and broad-brimmed straw hat, sitting on cushions in the stern of a gilded caïque, trailing a hand in the water; Helen, bareheaded in the sun, sketching under the ivy-covered walls of the ruined Genoese castle near Buyukdere; at the Embassy at Pera, charming Lady Stratford and even making Lord Stratford laugh: a feat Sir James himself had never achieved.
Sir James shivered and pulled his coat round him. If any harm came to Humphrey, what would she say? What would she do? Fear hit him with a sudden wave of nausea; a feeling of helplessness worse than anything he had ever felt on his own account – far worse even than the chill anxiety he had suffered over the boy’s safety when there had been a bad outbreak of cholera in the fleet a month before. At times on the Bosphorus he had been troubled by Helen’s occasional depressions and her air of remoteness at such times. Dear God if anything happened to Humphrey … would she ever recover from it? Still five minutes till the signal, and Scylla would not reach her firing position for a further twenty after that. He moved away from the rail and called over the officer of the watch.
‘Any activity ashore, Mr Gaussen? Nothing reported by the look-outs?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Very good, Mr Gaussen.’
Any sign of movement in the enemy batteries and Sir James knew he would be justified in calling off the action. He felt horribly disappointed. He imagined Charles waiting on his quarter-deck surrounded by his ship’s officers and envied him. How much easier to go into action, than to stand and watch others do so, in the full knowledge that, if they met with disaster, he, as their admiral, would feel himself personally responsible.
*
Half-an-hour before the signal from the flagship was expected, the drum had summoned Scylla’s crew to quarters with the additional roll to clear for action. The major preparations had been made several hours before: internal bulkheads taken down, splinter netting set up, royal yards and top-gallant masts struck, and the lower yards slung securely in chains, to prevent them crashing down should chain-shot severely damage the standing rigging. Now only the finishing touches were needed, but these would be enough to occupy the men for at least a part of the remaining period of suspense.
While the hands were running up or down the deck-ladders to their respective stations, Humphrey and Colwell, a junior mate, followed the third Lieutenant, Mr Bowen, on his inspection of the airless orlop deck and ‘cable tiers’, below the waterline, checking that all was thoroughly cleared and adequately lit with battle lanterns; that the amputation tables were in place in the cockpit, and platforms and cots placed to receive the wounded. The surgeon and his assistant were getting out their instruments, watched by the loblolly boys – young seamen deputed to heave the maimed and screaming men onto the tables and hold them there until the chloroform took effect. Humphrey swallowed hard as his stomach churned. Scylla had not taken part in the general bombardment and the coming engagement would be his first experience of being under fire. Earlier in the day the mates and other midshipmen had placed jocular bets in the gunroom about who would be killed and he had been laughed at for not participating. His connection with the Captain had not made him popular, since, though Charles was respected, he was not much liked by the junior officers, having outlawed traditional gunroom punishments like cobbing – beating cadets and midshipmen with the flat of a scabbard – and reducing to seven shillings a week the amount members of the gunroom mess might spend on wines and spirits. There was however, as all admitted, a certain humour in Captain Crawford’s punishments; any midshipman seen with his hands in his pockets would instantly be sent to the tailor to have them sewn up; a man caught spitting would have to do his work for that week with a spittoon tied round his neck. Humphrey’s pockets had already suffered, and it was generally conceded that Crawford showed his step-brother no favours of any sort, rarely inviting him to dine with him and never excusing him any duty. Humphrey had understood this public impartiality but was wounded that Charles had never spoken to him privately since they had sailed; and this, in spite of the fact that Sir James had often asked him to breakfast with him alone in his quarters. Humphrey’s unhappiness about Charles’s coldness was made worse by his admiration for him and his certainty that he was one of the most capable captains in the fleet.
Passing on from the cockpit, the low deck-beams and supporting pillars throbbed and vibrated more intensely with the slow pulse of the ship’s iron heart: her massive steam engines. Level with the boiler-room the heat from the fires made the all-pervading smell of oil and bilge-water seem thicker and more nauseating than ever. The fires had been alight for several hours, damped down so that steam could be raised at command. Bowen led the way up the fore-companion to the main gun-deck where final preparations were going ahead with a minimum of noise and without the usual trill of the boatswain’s mate’s whistle.
Large tubs of water were being filled from the pumps in case of fire, and Humphrey noticed that the deck had already been wetted and sanded to prevent men slipping in pools of blood. Dripping fire screens had been hung round the magazine hatchways and the armourer was going round making a final inspection of gun-locks. Powdermen were hard at work bringing up boxes of friction tubes and cartridges. The racks at the hatchways contained enough shot for ten rounds more than the expected four broadsides. All along the two-hundred-foot deck the gun crews were loading the gleaming ebony 32-pounders to the orders of their No. 1s; the elevation for six hundred yards being fixed with ‘marked coin’ or graduated wedges, inserted under the breech. Cartridges were placed in muzzles and forced home with two smart blows of the rammer; then shot and wads were rammed down firmly on top, and the cartridge pricked to check that it was properly bedded at the bottom of the bore. Between the guns were small stacks of shell boxes with their looped rope handles. The first two broadsides would be with shot, the second two with shell.
As Humphrey watched the loading going on, every movement of these muscular slightly stooping men seemed firm and deliberate, in a way that impressed him more than the stories he had heard about individual acts of heroism. Here was a corporate calmness and obstinate resolution based on an absolute confidence that no man present would let down his fellow. When all the guns were loaded and primed the Lieutenants of the divisions gave the command: ‘Run out,’ the crews bent to the side-tackles and the wooden truck wheels rumbled thunderously across the enclosed decks. ‘Ready,’ came the repeated cry as the movement was completed from end to end of the deck. The locks were cocked and the lanyards ready in each No. 1’s hands. After the rush of activity came a profound silence as the men knelt or stood by their guns; only an occasional cough rose above the continual groaning of the timbers and the distant throbbing of the engine. The gentle rolling of the frigate was not enough to rattle the shot in the racks. For several seconds there was a tension and expectancy in the air, so powerful that Humphrey held his breath, as if the final word: ‘Fire!’ was imminent. Then, when the officers gave the order: ‘Stand to your guns,’ a low murmur broke out and the crews squatted and sat, preparing themselves with good-humoured resignation for a nerveracking wait. The sight produced an emotional choking sensation in Humphrey’s throat, tearful and yet exalted; a simultaneous feeling of fear, awe and pride, making him expand his chest and hold his head higher although his eyes were full and his heart was pounding.
He followed Colwell and Bowen through the waist where the wreck-clearing party were stationed with their saws, axes and tomahawks to be used to clear the decks if masts or spars were brought down during the action. When they reached the quarter-deck, the First Lieutenant was standing by the rails of the main-companion. While Bowen saluted and reported the orlop deck in order, Humphrey walked across to the port-side car
ronades to join the other midshipmen waiting to carry the officers’ orders to all parts of the ship during the engagement. Soon the Lieutenants were coming up from the gun-decks to declare their divisions ready for action. The only light on deck came from the binnacle compass, but by the stars Humphrey could see the officers’ swords and epaulettes and the strip of gold lace on the side of Charles’s cocked hat. Under their feet the deck was as fresh and white as a tree just stripped of its bark, the black lines between the planks as thin and delicate as threads.
While Humphrey had been below, the flagship had signalled to Vengeance, the first ship, to weigh, and already she was moving in on the masked lights. Vengeance, an unconverted sailing two-decker went in with a steam tug lashed amidships to her port side, in which position the steamer would be protected from the Russian guns by her massive consort’s hull. Since only the ship’s starboard broadside would be fired, the frigate’s fighting efficiency would not be impaired. As Vengeance began her slow turn to port, gradually presenting her guns to the batteries, Charles and Mark Wilmot, his First Lieutenant, went up onto the poop and scanned the long low silhouette of Fort Constantine with their telescopes, looking for movements or lights. They were relieved to see no signs of any preparation. If the Russians were heating red hot shot, the smoke from the furnaces should be visible. Fort Constantine alone mounted almost a hundred guns, three times the number Scylla could bring to bear in a single broadside. Built on a spit, the fort jutted out from the north side of the harbour, commanding the sea approaches and the mouth. The guns were ranged in three tiers; the bottom two consisting of heavy 42 and 68-pounders in casemates, and above them, in a single row, 32-pounders, en barbette, raised on platforms to fire over the parapet. From the south side of the harbour, the ships would face the sixty or so guns of Fort Alexander and the same number in the adjacent Quarantine Battery. Everything, as Charles and Wilmot were painfully aware, would depend upon whether the Russians were taken by surprise. Charles turned to Wilmot and smiled; they had known each other since serving as mids for several months in a brig on the China Station fifteen years before. Wilmot had a wife and two small children; Charles was godfather to the youngest. He wondered whether Wilmot was thinking about them. Charles himself felt impatient rather than afraid; there was nothing for him to do now and he could not bear inactivity.
