The Corvette

by Richard Woodman

  He knew now that word of Ellerby’s treachery would spread like wildfire and his men fight better for the knowledge. He smiled at his first lieutenant and sailing master. ‘Very well, gentlemen. Good luck. Now you may take post.’

  They bore down on the lugger which attempted to sheer away. Drinkwater had decided that the jury rudder would take such strains that their manoeuvring might throw upon it. If the enemy did not shoot it away Melusine might be relied upon to handle reasonably well, despite the leaky condition a few months in the ice had caused. Her superior height and the fury of her fire cleared the lugger’s deck and wounded her mainmast, but her doggedness worried Drinkwater. He was almost certain the officer commanding her had been trying to work round his stern, within range of his light carriage guns to attempt to hit the rudder. This intention to disable the British sloop argued that they knew all about her weak spot. Whatever their intent, the enemy’s first move had been thwarted, now he had to deal with the real threat. The Requin was on their starboard bow, close hauled on the larboard tack. In a few minutes she would cross their bow, rake them and then bear up astern, holding the weather gauge and assailing their vulnerable rudder.

  Drinkwater ordered the course altered to starboard, to bring Melusine’s guns to bear as the two ships passed.

  ‘For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly grateful.’

  A murmur of blasphemous ‘Amens’ responded to Hill’s facetious remark.

  Chapter Eighteen

  August 1803

  Ellerby

  ‘Fire!’

  The gun captains jumped back, jerking their lanyards and snapping the hammers on the gunlocks. Melusine’s larboard six-pounders recoiled inboard against their breechings and as their crews moved forward to sponge and reload them the storm of shot from Requin’s broadside hit them. Uncaring for himself Drinkwater watched its effect with anxiety, knowing his enemy possessed the greater weight of metal and the risk he had taken in turning back instead of running from his pursuers. But he knew any chase would ultimately lead to either damage to Melusine’s exposed jury rudder or capture due to her being overtaken under her cut-down rig. Besides, he had already determined that Ellerby should reap the just reward of his treachery and that duty compelled him to exercise justice.

  He therefore watched the smoke clear from the waist and saw, with a pang of conscience, that Bourne was down and perhaps eight or nine other men were either killed or badly wounded.

  ‘Mr Gorton! Take command of the batteries!’ Gorton crossed the deck and saw Bourne carried below as Drinkwater swung round to study Requin, already half a cable astern on the larboard quarter. The big privateer had been closed hauled on the wind and her gunnery had suffered from the angle to Melusine and the heel of her deck. Nevertheless it was a heavy price to pay for a single broadside. Drinkwater hoped the effects of his own shot, fired from the more level deck of a ship before the wind, had had greater effect. He could see Requin’s sails begin to shiver as her captain brought her through the wind to bear down on Melusine’s undefended stern. If her gunners were anything like competent they could catch the British sloop with a raking broadside.

  Drinkwater turned resolutely forward and raised his glass. They were already very close to Nimrod. Ellerby’s big figure jumped into the image lens with a startling clarity. Drinkwater closed the glass with a vicious snap.

  ‘Starboard battery, make ready!’ Quilhampton looked along the line of guns, his sword drawn. He nodded at Gorton.

  ‘All ready, canister and ball.’

  Drinkwater raised his speaking trumpet. ‘Sail trimmers to their posts,’ he turned to Hill. ‘Bear up under his stern, Mr Hill, I want that broadside into his starboard quarter.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  They raced down upon the approaching whaler. Her bulk and ponderous motion gave her an appearance of greater force than she possessed. Her gunwhales were only pierced for three carronades on each side, but they were of a heavy calibre.

  Drinkwater ran forward to the starboard cathead and raised the speaking trumpet again. The two ships were already level, bowsprit to bowsprit.

  ‘Captain Ellerby! Captain Ellerby! Surrender in the King’s name before you consign your men to the gallows!’

  Ellerby’s violent gesture was all that Drinkwater knew of a reply, although he saw Ellerby was yelling something. Whatever it was it was drowned in the roar of his guns, their wide muzzles venting red and orange flame at point-blank range.

  Drinkwater nodded at Quilhampton and as Hill put the helm down and Melusine began to lean over as she turned, the starboard guns poured ball and canister into the whaler’s quarter. Drinkwater fought his way aft, through the sweating gun crews and the badly maimed who had been hit by the langridge from Ellerby’s cannon. A man bumped into him. He was holding his head and moaning surprisingly softly seeing that several assorted pieces of iron rubbish protruded from his skull. Drinkwater regained the quarterdeck and looked astern. Nimrod continued apparently unscathed on an easterly course.

  ‘Put her on the wind, Mr Hill, and then lay her on the starboard tack!’

  Hill began to give orders as the waist was cleared of the dead and wounded, the guns reloaded and run out again. The days of practice began to pay off. Each man attending to his allotted task, each midshipman and mate supervising his half-division or special party, each acting-lieutenant, marking his subordinates, attending to the readiness of his battery while Hill, quietly professional on the quarterdeck, directed the trimming of the yards and sheets to get the best out of the ship.

  Melusine turned into the wind, then swung her bowsprit back towards the Nimrod, gathering speed as she paid off on the starboard tack. Beyond the whaler, Drinkwater could see the Requin and was seized by a sudden feeling of intense excitement. He might, just might, be able to pull off a neat manoeuvre as Requin and Nimrod passed each other on opposite courses. He pointed the opening out to Hill.

  ‘She’ll do it, sir,’ Hill said, after a moment’s assessment.

  ‘Let’s hope so, Mr Hill.’

  ‘Never a doubt, sir.’

  Drinkwater grinned, aware that Melusine with her jury rudder and ice-scuffed hull was no longer the yacht-like ‘corvette’ that had danced down the Humber in the early summer.

  They crossed Nimrod’s stern at a distance of four cables. Not close enough for the six-pounder balls to have much effect on the whaler’s massive scantlings. But there was no response from the Nimrod’s carronades and Drinkwater transferred his attention to the Requin, whose bearing was opening up on the sloop’s starboard bow.

  ‘He’s not going to let us do it, Mr Hill . . .’ They had hoped to cross the Requin’s stern too, and pour the starboard broadside into her but the privateer captain was no fool and was already turning his ship, to pass the British sloop on a reciprocal course. They would exchange broadsides as before . . .

  ‘Up helm! Up helm!’ Drinkwater shouted. ‘Starbowlines, hold your fire!’

  ‘Stand by the lee braces, there!’ Hill bawled at his sail-trimmers, suddenly grasping Drinkwater’s intention.

  ‘Pick off the officers!’ Drinkwater yelled at the midshipmen and marines in the tops. Melusine was already turning, an ominous creaking coming from the rudimentary steering gear as a terrific load came on it. Requin’s guns roared as the Melusine’s stern swung away from the arc of her fire, and although a shower of splinters flew from the taffrail the rudder stock and supporting timbers and spars were untouched.

  ‘Steady her and then bring her round onto the larboard tack. So far so good.’

  Drinkwater felt the exhilaration of having called the tune during the last half hour, despite the losses Melusine incurred. He was aware of a mood of high elation along the deck where the men joked and relived the last few moments with an outbreak of skylarking equally uncaring in the heady excitement for those below undergoing the agonies of Singleton’s knife.

  Melusine clawed back to windward while her two enemies came roun
d in pursuit again. Already they were a mile away to the north-west and Drinkwater thought he could keep them tacking in his wake for an hour or two yet while he sought a new opening.

  ‘That lugger’s out of the running, sir,’ offered Hill, pointing to the chassé marée half a mile away. Her crew had sweeps out and were pulling her desperately out of the path of the approaching British sloop which seemed to be bearing down upon them with the intention of administering the coup de grace. In fact Drinkwater had long since forgotten about the lugger, although it had been no more than forty or fifty minutes since they had fired into her.

  He nodded at Gorton with the good-natured condescension of a school-master allowing his pupils an indulgent catapult shot at sparrows. The larboard guns fired as they passed and several balls struck home, causing evident panic among the lugger’s crew.

  Drinkwater was seized by a sudden feeling that things had been too easy and recalled the dead and wounded. He turned and called sharply to the midshipman who was in attendance to the quarterdeck and whose obvious pleasure at still being alive had induced a certain foolish garrulousness with the adjacent gun crews.

  ‘Mr Frey!’

  ‘S . . . Sir?’

  ‘Pray direct your attention to the surgeon, present him with my compliments and ascertain the extent of our losses. I am particularly concerned about Mr Bourne.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  After Frey had departed Drinkwater called for reports of damage and the carpenter informed him that they had a shot between wind and water, but that otherwise most of the enemy’s fire had been levelled at personnel on the upper deck.

  Pacing up and down Drinkwater tried to assess the state of his enemies. He had not succeeded in forcing Nimrod to surrender and his chances of annihilating the Requin were slight. But the whaler had failed to take advantage of a clear shot at Melusine’s stern. Did that argue her untrained crew had simply missed an opportunity or that, having fired into a King’s ship they might have taken heed of Drinkwater’s earlier hail?

  Discipline was not so tight on a merchantman and a crew might be seduced from its nominal allegiance to their master by the threat of the gallows. Drinkwater considered the point. Did it also signify that Requin’s fire had been at Melusine’s deck, not at her rigging? In the place of the privateer Captain Drinkwater thought he might have wanted the naval vessel disabled from a distance, without material damage to the Requin herself.

  Unless, argued Drinkwater, Requin’s superiority was overestimated. Perhaps her crew were less numerous than he supposed and therefore to decimate the British had become a priority with Requin’s commander.

  ‘Wind’s veering, sir.’ Hill interrupted his train of thought.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Hauling southerly, sir.’

  It was true. The wind had dropped abruptly and was chopping three, no, four points and freshening from the south-east. Drinkwater stared to the south, there was a further shift coming. In ten minutes or so the wind would be blowing directly off the mountain peaks to the southward. All the ships in the fiord would be able to reach with equal facility. It altered everything.

  ‘That puts a different complexion on things, Mr Hill.’

  Hill turned from directing a trimming of the yards and nodded his agreement. For a few moments Drinkwater continued pacing up and down. Then he came to a decision.

  ‘Put the ship on an easterly course, Mr Hill. I want her laid alongside the Nimrod without further delay.’

  It was a decision that spoke more of honour than commonsense, yet Drinkwater was put in an invidious position by his orders. It was doubtful if St Vincent could have foreseen the extent of the French presence in the Arctic, or of the treachery of Ellerby and, presumably, Waller. Yet Drinkwater’s orders were explicit in terms of preventing any French ascendancy in the area. The red rag of honour was raised in encouragement; not to use his utmost endeavour was to court a firing squad as Byng had done fifty years before.

  Requin’s shot stove in the gunwhale amidships, dismounted a gun and wiped out two gun crews. The maintopmast was shot through and went by the board and the big privateer bore up under Melusine’s stern. The single report of a specially laid gun appeared to annihilate the four men steering by the clumsy tiller.

  Then Drinkwater realised that the rudder stock had been shot to pieces and the tiller merely fallen to the deck, taking the men with it. They picked themselves up unhurt, but Drinkwater’s eyes met those of Hill and both men knew Melusine was immobilised. Two minutes later she bore off before the wind and with a jarring crash that made her entire fabric judder she struck Nimrod amidships.

  ‘Boarders awa-a-ay!’ Mad with frustration and anger Drinkwater lugged out his borrowed sword and grabbed a pistol from his waistband and ran forward. Men left the guns and grabbed pikes from the racks by the masts and cutlasses gleamed in the sunshine that beat hot upon their backs as they crowded over the fo’c’s’le and scrambled down onto the whaler’s deck.

  Quilhampton was ahead of Drinkwater and had reached the Nimrod’s poop where Ellerby stood aiming his great brass harpoon gun into the Nimrod’s waist as Drinkwater led his boarders aft. A cluster of men had gathered round him but the majority of his crew, over twenty men, were dodging backwards into whatever shelter the deck of the whaler offered, making gestures of surrender and calling for quarter.

  ‘Mr Q! Stand aside, damn it!’ Drinkwater called, his voice icy with suppressed fury. He saw Ellerby raise the huge gun, saw its barrel foreshorten as the piece was aimed at his own breast and heard the big Yorkshireman yell:

  ‘Stand fast, Cap’n Drinkwater! D’you hear me! Stand fast!’

  But Drinkwater was moving aft and saw the smoke from the gun. He felt the rush of air past his cheek as the harpoon narrowly missed him and a second later he was shoving Quilhampton aside.

  Somebody had passed Ellerby a whale-lance and its long shaft kept Drinkwater at a distance. ‘You traitorous bastard, Ellerby. Put that thing down, or by God, I’ll see you swing . . .’

  Drinkwater was forced backwards, stumbled and fell over as Ellerby, his face a mask of hatred, stabbed forward with the razor-sharp lance. Suddenly Ellerby had descended the short ladder from Nimrod’s poop and stood over Drinkwater.

  Aware of the quivering lance and the fanatical light in Ellerby’s pale blue eyes Drinkwater could think only of the pistol he had half fallen on. Even as Ellerby stabbed downwards Drinkwater rolled over, his thumb pulling the hammer back to full cock and his finger squeezing the trigger.

  He felt the lance head cut him, felt the cleanness of the keen edge with a kind of detachment that told him that it was not fatal, that the lance had merely skidded round his abdomen, through the thin layer of muscles over his right ribs. He stood up, bleeding through the rent in his coat.

  Ellerby was leaning drunkenly on the lance that, having wounded Drinkwater, had stuck in the deck. The beginnings of a roar of pain were welling up from him and streaming through his beard in a shower of spittle. Drinkwater could not see where the ball had entered Ellerby’s body, but as he crashed forward onto the deck its point of egress was bloodily conspicuous. His spine was shattered in the small of his back and the roar of impotence and pain faded to a wheezing respiration.

  Drinkwater pressed his hand to his own flank and looked down into his fallen foe. Ellerby’s wound was mortal and, as the realisation spread men began to move again. The whale-ship crew threw down their weapons and James Quilhampton, casting a single look at Drinkwater, gave orders to take possession of the Nimrod.

  Drinkwater turned, aware of blood warm on his hand. Before him little Mr Frey was trying to attract attention.

  ‘Yes, Mr Frey? What is it?’

  Frey pointed back across Melusine’s deck to where the Requin could be seen looming out of the smoke.

  ‘B . . . beg pardon, sir, but Mr Hill’s compliments and the Requin is bearing up to windward.’

  As if to lend emphasis to the urgency of Frey’s message the multi
ple concussion of Requin’s broadside filled the air, while at Drinkwater’s feet Ellerby gave up the ghost.

  Chapter Nineteen

  August 1803

  The Plagues of Egypt

  Drinkwater felt the relief of the broad bandage securing the thick pledget to his side. He stared through the smoke trying to ignore Skeete who was tugging his shirt down after completing the dressing.

  ‘That’ll do, damn it!’ he shouted above the noise of the guns.

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Skeete grinned maliciously through his rotten teeth and Drinkwater tucked his shirt tails impatiently into his waistband still trying to divine the intentions of Requin’s commander.

  Leaving Lord Walmsley in command of Nimrod Drinkwater and the boarding party had returned to Melusine although the whaler and sloop still lay locked together. Requin lay just to windward, firing into the British ship with her heavier guns. At every discharge of her cannon they were swept by an iron storm. There were dead and dying men lying on the gratings where their mates had dragged them to be clear of the guns and from where the surgeon’s party selected those worthy to be carried below to undergo the horrors of amputation, curettage or probing. The superficially wounded dressed themselves from the bandage boxes slotted into the bar-holes in the ship’s capstans, and held against such an eventuality. Drinkwater saw that stained bandages had sprouted everywhere, that the larboard six-pounders were being served by men from both batteries and that Gorton was wounded.

  The noise was deafening as the Melusines fired their cannon as fast as each gun could be sponged, charged and laid. Ropes and splinters rained down from aloft and below the mainmast three bodies lay where they had fallen from the top. Only the foremast stood intact, the foretopsail still filled with wind.