Until the Sea Shall Give Up Her Dead

by Sean Thomas Russell

  ‘On deck! Two hundred and fifty yards, Captain.’

  Hayden cursed almost silently. He realized then that, if the smoke cleared, they would only be given a single, clear shot, and then new-made smoke would obscure the sea again. As it was, the boats would soon be too near to be fired upon, as the guns could be lowered only a small degree more before they would come up against the sills.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, the smoke began to clear, as though someone drew back a curtain, but an inch at a time. Gould ordered a gun traversed to its furthest degree. The gun captain sighted along it and shook his head.

  ‘Not yet, sir,’ he reported, then aimed his gun a little lower.

  As the curtain of smoke drew back, the flotilla to either side came into clear focus, the men sending the boats on with long, powerful strokes. A small star of flame appeared on one of the boats and the report reached the frigate a moment later, but the boats were not yet within musket range.

  Gould turned from his position at the rail and raised an eyebrow toward the gun captain, who dutifully sighted along his gun again.

  ‘Almost there, sir.’

  Hayden suspected the privateers were saying the same.

  The captain of the starboard chase gun stood tall suddenly. ‘We have a shot, Captain.’

  ‘I wish to keep the ship free of smoke until all the guns can be fired at once. Do not fire until I give you the order.’

  The man made a knuckle but was clearly disappointed. Left to their own devices, the hands would ever waste shot and powder.

  The small current pushed the ship, little by little, even as the boats drew nearer, a few feet to each thrust of the oars. Hayden envied the men in the boats, who drove toward the frigate under their own power while he was forced to wait upon the whims of a dilatory current.

  ‘Sir?’ the captain of the first gun said. ‘I believe we can risk a shot …’

  Hayden walked back to the next gun aft and sighted along it. Quickly, he went and called down to the gundeck. ‘Mr Wickham? Can your guns be brought to bear?’

  ‘Very nearly, sir.’

  ‘Inform me the moment they can.’

  Hayden could feel the tension on the ship, the men urgently wishing to fire their guns, the captain holding them in check. The silence on both decks was so complete that Hayden thought he could hear the ticking of his watch, even within its pocket. How slowly it measured time!

  ‘Captain Hayden …’ came the voice of Wickham, out of the darkness. ‘We have a shot, sir.’

  Hayden raised his voice only the smallest degree. ‘On my order … fire!’

  Both batteries exploded in flame and smoke, the blast assaulting the ears, disturbing the very air. It was not uncommon for gun crews to need more than one shot to find the range – powder was ever varied in its strength – so Hayden wondered if there was any chance they might get their shot near.

  The crews set to work immediately, reloading and running out the guns.

  He gazed up and called to the lookout, ‘Aloft, there! Did we hit a single boat?’

  ‘One to larboard, sir. Most of our shot went fifty yards long.’

  Hayden looked down on to the gundeck. ‘Did you hear, Mr Wickham? Fifty yards long and the boats draw nearer by the moment. Lower your guns and fire again.’ He gave the same order to the captains of the upper deck guns and in a moment the heat of a second volley swept up and over the ship, smoke so dense that Hayden could not see thirty yards.

  ‘On deck!’ the lookout sang out. ‘We struck two boats to starboard, Captain Hayden. One appears to be going down.’

  ‘Do they stop to aid that boat?’ Hayden called back.

  ‘They don’t ’ppear to be, sir.’

  ‘What is the range?’

  ‘Hundred yards, sir … a little less.’

  Guns were being run out at that instant.

  ‘A hundred yards, Mr Wickham … one last shot and then close gunports – let us fight them on one deck only.’

  Guns were lowered one last time, fired and Hayden heard the creak and slam of gunports being shut and sealed. Men came streaming up the companionway, armed with cutlasses, tomahawks and short pikes. Some of the older hands were given pistols, and marines and seamen bore muskets with bayonets fixed. Captain Serrano and Ransome soon had the men organized into larboard and starboard watches and spread along the rail.

  ‘There they are, sir!’ one of the hands shouted. He pointed out through the slowly clearing smoke.

  And so they were, not fifty yards distant and coming straight at them.

  The privateers began firing muskets, and Hayden ordered the musketeers in the rigging to return fire. Lead balls began to hiss by and bury themselves in the bulwarks. Hayden had been blessed with an active and vivid imagination and at such times it was best to keep it well in check. To imagine being struck by one of these invisible balls was enough to give any man pause, and officers were expected and obliged to stand resolutely on the quarterdeck under the most concentrated fire and show not a sign of trepidation.

  A man not ten feet distant was struck in the eye by a ball and fell to the deck like a dropped doll, never to move again. Hayden tried to swallow, but there was no moisture in his mouth.

  Pulling back the cock on his pistol, Hayden raised it so that it pointed at the sky. The smoke was wafting away, finally, and the boats, loaded with armed men, could be made out clearly. They shouted and screamed threats as they came, but the Spaniards held their peace, standing in their places with what Hayden hoped was resolution. Their ship had been taken once by privateers, and that was not a comforting thought. His twenty-some steady British sailors would not be enough to fight off such numbers.

  Judging the boats near enough that even the worst marksmen could not miss, he ordered muskets fired from the deck, and all around him the crack of musket fire was followed by rapid reloading. He intended to wait until the boats were alongside before employing his pistol so that there was almost no chance of wasting a shot. His second pistol he would hold in reserve; it might save his life or the life of one of his crew.

  The first boat came neatly alongside amidships and, with a cry, the men began scrambling for the upper deck, where Hayden’s mixed crew of Spaniards and British sailors fired upon them and then set to work with pikes and cutlasses, attempting to throw them back.

  A boat came alongside the quarterdeck and Hayden chose the largest man he could see and shot him in the chest. He tossed the pistol down and drew his cutlass with one hand and his second pistol with the other. For a moment it seemed that the French would not gain the deck, but then they broke the Spanish line amidships and came pouring over the side. Instinctively fearing the enemy would get behind them, men turned away from the rail, and the French then broke the line in several places.

  Hayden was forced back, and it was parry and thrust and hot work all around. Having been schooled by a marine captain as a midshipman, Hayden never drew back his blade to slash, for whenever a man did, Hayden would put the tip of his blade into his chest. With the blade always pointed before him he could parry as needed and thrust when opportunity presented itself.

  Hayden threw himself to the side to avoid a pike, tripped on a body and went down hard on his back. Immediately, a man was upon him with a dagger and would have done for him, but Hayden managed to deflect his first blow and then shoot him through the chest. Pushing the man aside, he found his sword, which he had dropped to fend off the attacker, swept up the man’s dagger and staggered up, bleeding from his right arm somewhere.

  ‘Captain! Captain!’ a cry came from aloft. ‘The privateer … she is bearing down on us, sir.’

  For a few seconds, Hayden did not comprehend what the man meant, and then he saw it. The ship anchored nearest them had slipped her anchor and was bearing down on them on the current, broadside to the flow with all her gunports open.

  Hayden was along the deck and down the companionway in an instant. Here he found a few Spaniards, bearing wounded to their surgeon. ‘Le
ave them!’ he ordered in Spanish. ‘We must cut our bower cable – this very instant!’

  The men hesitated only a second and then gently set the men on the deck and hastened with Hayden. They were hewing the cable with axes in a moment, and then it let go with a sudden snap.

  Hayden gathered them all to him. ‘When the ship is broadside to the current, cut the spring. Do not take the chance of it fouling. Cut it right at the gunport.’

  The men hurried aft.

  Hayden went up the ladder to the deck, two steps at a time.

  He was allowed only a second to assess the battle, which was yet being contested all along the deck, and then two men were upon him with cutlasses. They had been properly tutored in the weapon’s use and neither drew back to slash, which might have given Hayden an opening. Instead, they trapped him against the break to the gundeck, one feinting while the other attempted to make the killing thrust. Twice, Hayden avoided being run through with a quick sidestep.

  ‘Again,’ one of them said in Breton. ‘But feint and then kill him.’

  Hayden had no time to bless his Breton family: the first man feinted again and as Hayden parried he threw the dagger, left-handed, at the man’s face, parried the second man’s thrust and ran his blade three inches into his chest then drew it out in time to parry a thrust from the first. It was now one on one and Hayden began to force the man back, parrying and retreating. He ran the edge of his blade up the man’s forearm, cutting arteries and tendons. The man dropped his sword and went down on one knee, clutching his wounded arm.

  Hayden hovered the point of his blade at the man’s neck. ‘Ask for quarter,’ he said in Breton, surprising the man overly, and, without hesitation, the man did.

  Snatching up the man’s blade, Hayden turned back to the fighting, which, he realized, was over everywhere but on the quarterdeck. Spanish and British sailors corralled the privateers, while all around the still lay upon the deck, and the wounded moaned and cried out. Wickham passed, leading a company of English and Spanish to the quarterdeck. Hayden went to the rail, and leaned out. The spring had been cut and the frigate was drifting with the current. At that instant, guns fired from the nearby privateer, shot hissing through the rigging.

  Hayden climbed up on to the rail and turned back to the deck. ‘Where is Captain Serrano?’ he shouted in the brief silence after the guns fired.

  There was muttering and whispering and then Serrano appeared, his coat gone and his right arm bound in a bloody dressing.

  Hopping down from the rail, Hayden went to him. ‘You are injured, Captain …’

  ‘It is nothing,’ Serrano insisted. ‘Shall we man the larboard guns, Captain Hayden?’

  ‘Immediately, if you please.’

  Serrano began calling out orders in Spanish. Men hastened to the guns in an orderly manner, which Hayden approved heartily. Gunports creaked open and the rumble of wooden wheels rolling over the deck planks came to him. Ransome appeared, looking rather done in, but intact, as far as his captain could tell.

  ‘Are you hurt, Mr Ransome?’

  ‘No, sir. I seemed to be in the thick of it, though, and if the French had not surrendered I might have fallen to the deck from exhaustion.’

  ‘It was bravely fought, all around. I want you to take charge of the gundeck. This is our ship and I don’t want the Spanish losing sight of that.’

  ‘Aye, sir.’ Ransome reached up to touch the hat which he had not, until that moment, realized was gone. He crossed to the ladder, his gait a little wandering, as though he had received a blow to the head and was not quite recovered.

  Hayden sent a man below to carry up his nightglass but, before it arrived, the privateer fired a second broadside and this one did considerable damage to their rig and sent four or five men plummeting to the deck.

  ‘Give me a whisper of wind,’ Hayden muttered, to no one in particular.

  Hawthorne and a Spanish lieutenant had taken charge of rounding up prisoners, and the wounded Spanish and English were being borne down to the surgeon before the wounded privateers had their turn.

  The frigate’s guns all fired at an order from Ransome, which was repeated by Gould on the upper deck. Whether they did any damage to the privateer, Hayden could not tell through the darkness and smoke. With no wind, the cloud of smoke remained stationary, hanging over the water in a thick mass as the current carried the ship slowly away. The cloud obscured the enemy vessel, which, carried on the same current, was travelling at precisely the same speed, the distance between the two ships neither growing nor becoming less.

  Hayden’s nightglass arrived and he quizzed the darkness with it, but the mass of smoke hanging over the water hid her quite effectively.

  ‘Aloft there …’ he called out. ‘Did we do any damage to that privateer?’

  A second of silence, and then an English voice, ‘Sir … Much of our shot fell short.’

  ‘By what distance?’ Hayden called up.

  ‘A cable length, sir.’

  Hayden went to the waist and called down into the darkness of the gundeck.

  ‘Did you hear, Mr Ransome?’

  ‘A cable length shy, sir. We are elevating guns, Captain.’

  ‘Fire when you are ready, Mr Ransome.’ Hayden stared up into the rigging. ‘Aloft … Have you a nightglass?’

  ‘We do not, Captain.’

  ‘I will have mine carried up.’

  Gould sent a man scurrying Hayden’s way and he swiftly bore the valuable glass up to the lookout. Hayden wished to go aloft himself, so he could assess what the enemy was doing, but did not want to cede the deck to Serrano.

  Ransome called out again, and the larboard battery hurled fire and smoke into the night. The smoke hung so thick about the deck that Hayden could hear men coughing from all points. For a moment an unnatural silence overspread the ship and then the lookout called down.

  ‘On deck! Our fire struck home, Captain.’

  Hayden called down to the gundeck. ‘Well done, Mr Ransome. Let us pour in as many broadsides as we can.’

  He stood at the rail while the gunners plied their trade. It was soon obvious that the Spanish gun crews were not nearly so efficient as the British, whose rate of fire was almost double that of the Spanish and never less than three for two.

  It was a strange battle, the two ships drifting down-current, firing, through dense clouds of smoke that hung in the air, at an enemy who could barely be glimpsed.

  With direction from aloft, Hayden was able to concentrate his fire so that much, if not most, of it found its mark, while the fire from the privateer was far less effective, much of it passing overhead, some landing in the water, short.

  Using numerous 18-pound balls, Hayden made up two ‘anchors’ and deployed them, one at the stern and one at the bow. When the frigate exhibited a tendency for either her head or her stern to get a little ahead, the ‘anchor’ was deployed long enough to slow that part of the ship and keep the frigate square to her enemy. All the while Hayden glanced aloft and watched for the smallest signs of wind.

  Scrivener appeared with a Spaniard bearing a rolled chart.

  ‘You appear terribly grave, Mr Scrivener,’ Hayden observed, beckoning the two men forward.

  ‘I have been consulting with the frigate’s master, sir.’ He nodded to the man and introduced him. ‘My Spanish is less than perfect and his English is not up to my Spanish, but the charts and a pointing finger are the same in all languages. The sailing master believes we might very well be swept up on to shoals within the hour, sir.’

  Hayden had ordered all deck lamps extinguished, so the three repaired below, where they unrolled the chart in the dim light of a lamp.

  The Spanish sailing master tapped the chart, ‘We anchored here, Captain Hayden. The current in this channel can vary from one to as many as four knots, though at this time of year I would estimate it to be two knots.’ He put his finger on a conspicuous reef. ‘Therefore, we must not be too distant from the reefs that lie off this island.’
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  Hayden gazed at the chart only a moment. ‘We cannot go aground. Given a little wind, the enemy would be upon us of an instant.’

  He looked quickly along the gundeck, where the crews went about their business. The guns had been traversed a little aft at the directions of the lookouts.

  ‘How certain are you of our position?’ Hayden asked.

  The two men glanced at each other. ‘Quite certain.’

  ‘How near to the reef do you dare to take us?’

  The Spaniard blew air through his lips in a small explosion. ‘Well, Captain, I should not like to risk going too near. It is dark, the speed of the current not precisely known …’

  ‘I understand,’ Hayden said. He looked around. ‘Find Captain Serrano and bring him to me, if you please.’

  Hayden went back up on to the deck, where the gun crews were also hard at work. Again he looked for signs of wind, but found none.

  A moment later the sailing master appeared with Captain Serrano, the two deep in conversation. Before Hayden could speak, Serrano began.

  ‘I do not think it wise to risk going near these reefs, Captain Hayden.’

  ‘It is not my intention to go any nearer, Captain Serrano. But here is what I intend to do. I will fire every gun on the ship at once and create an impenetrable cloud of smoke. Immediately thereafter, we will drop anchor and swing head to wind.’

  ‘But they will rake us, Captain, three times, perhaps.’

  ‘Only if they see us. Either they will pass close by to starboard, whereupon we will rake them, or they will tangle in our bow sprit, swing alongside and we will board. How many men do you think this privateer carries?’

  ‘Not so many as we, I should think,’ Serrano replied, ‘but I am not even certain which ship it might be, nor was I ever aboard her.’

  ‘But do you believe their numbers greater?’

  ‘I very much doubt it.’

  ‘Then we will board if we have the chance. If not, we will weigh and drift down on them. If they strike the shoals we will anchor and fire on them until they strike or we inflict so much damage to their ship it can never float free.’