“She’ll turn away,” the Sailing Master speculated.
“She’ll press on, even if the others engage us,” Lewrie countered. “She’s too close to the end of her passage t’do else. Mister Westcott, shake the reefs from the main course and drive her, hard. Helmsmen . . . helm up, and steer West, Nor’west.”
Just pray Jesus that Blanding sees what I intend, and don’t interfere! Lewrie thought, peeking astern in dread of anxious bunting.
“One can see them from the deck, sir!” Midshipman Grainger cried from the starboard mizen shrouds and a perch most of the way up them. Lewrie raised his telescope, focussed, then . . . By God, there they are! he exulted in silence. They were real, not Will-O’-The-Wisps, and not more than six or seven miles off.
I was right! Lewrie felt like shouting; this Frog did hide his arse behind the Chandeleurs, or gave himself the option of landing his troops up North. Damme . . . I was right? What’s the world comin’ to?
Inside that pearly mist, there were four complete sets of sails, rustling like spooks on the scant winds; there were darker smudges of hulls below them, and the mast-heads! They were above the mist and clear as day . . . now only five miles off, he reckoned!
“Deck, there!” a new voice called. Midshipman Rossyngton had gone aloft to join the lookouts, and it was his thin piping that they heard. “Lead two-decker stands on! The trailing ships haul their wind! One point off the starboard bows! Avast! Moving to two points off!”
Lewrie could see the hair-thin mast-heads pivotting, aligning themselves atop each other, as the three French warships came about to point roughly bows-on to their own line of battle.
They’re lasking! Lewrie realised; sailin’ a bow-and-quarter line . . . oblique to us! Clever devil, yonder.
The French would close them, with a frigate nearest to them and their two-decker 74 perhaps a cable further away, off the frigate’s larboard quarters, and the trailing frigate even further away, off the 74’s larboard quarter, like the last three fingers of Lewrie’s left hand.
“Worn to larboard tack, sir?” Mr. Caldwell said, scratching his scalp with a pencil stub, up under his hat. “They’ll have to come off the wind ’fore they can cross our bows and rake us.”
“A clever way to close the range quickly,” Lt. Westcott mused.
“No, sirs . . . not clever at all!” Lewrie suddenly whooped, all but startling his First Officer and Sailing Master. “A new signal for Modeste, Mister Grainger . . . ‘Submit . . . New Course . . . West by North. Enemy Is Lasking on Larboard Tack’!”
“Aye, sir!” Grainger replied, hustling back to his duties by the flag lockers, perplexed by the term.
“He should’ve changed course no more than two points, in line-of-succession, not all at once,” Lewrie pointed out. “That would’ve placed him cross our bows, but no . . . he had ’em all wheel as one and wear to larboard tack. We turn more Westerly, he’ll barge up to us with all of our guns directed at the nearest frigate, and the two-decker’s fire is masked . . . as is the trailin’ frigate’s!
“They stay as they are and think t’sail down our starboard beam for broadsides on opposin’ tacks, they’re stacked on top of each other, ’less the followin’ ships luff up in order t’fall in trail of the lead ship!” Lewrie urgently explained, arms swinging and his hands clapping before him, almost skipping about the deck in glee.
“And, do they come back to their original course, they’ll end up bows-on to our line, and under raking fire from all four of ours!” Lt. Westcott quickly grasped. “Just too clever by half, the poor bastard.”
“Now, let’s all pray Captain Blanding sees what we see,” Lewrie replied, turning to peer intently at Modeste’s signals halliards. “The troop ship might escape us whilst we’re engaged with these three, but I s’pose it can’t be helped. Better for us, had Cockerel or Pylades led our line.”
If Captain Blanding sent one of his lighter 32-gunned frigates off in chase that instant, from the rear of their line, it would take hours for one of them to fetch the two-decker transport into even long gun-range . . . perhaps only a few miles off Pass a La Loutre, or have to chase her right up to Fort Balise and the Head of Passes in what, at the moment, was still officially Spanish territory!
“Signal, sir!” Midshipman Grainger crisply reported. “ ‘Form Line of Battle . . . Course West by North . . . With All Despatch’!”
“We’ve got ’em, Mister Westcott!” Lewrie exulted with a growl. “By God, we’ve got ’em!”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
They’re coming back to line-ahead, sir!” Midshipman Rossyngton shouted down from the main-mast royal yard, a perch even more precarious than the cross-trees.
“Thankee, Mister Rossyngton!” Lewrie shouted back. “Now come to the deck and take your station at Quarters! Hellish-odd,” he said in a much softer voice to Westcott as he lifted his glass to peer out for a sign of the foe. “They see our mast-trucks and commissioning pendants, we see theirs, and all else is damn-all squiffy.”
“Aha, sir!” Lt. Westcott said, pointing with his telescope. “I can just make out the lead frigate . . . there, sir! She’ll be directly bows-on to us, square on our starboard beam, does she not alter course!”
Lewrie swivelled, found a ghostly bow sprit and jib-boom, about a mile to windward; found jibs and a foretopmast stays’l, then the tan-in-white square shapes of the leading frigate’s forecourse and fore topsail. “To windward of us . . . now they’re silhouetted ’gainst the dawn, the damned fools. French!” he sniff ed. “They just can’t keep it simple. All that elegant jeune école bumf they came up with two wars ago, back in the Seventeen Sixties. What odds’d ye give me, Mister Westcott, do they load with star-shot and chain-shot, and try t’dismast us, as their doctrine demands?”
“I doubt they’ll have time to turn a whole battery upon us for that practise, sir,” Lt. Westcott replied. He was smiling, not one of his brief, tooth-baring flash-grins, but a gladsome, widespread mouth. “There’s her main-mast, a hint of her mizen, and . . .”
Lewrie looked up at the commissioning pendant; their line was on starboard tack, with the light winds from the Nor’east by East, and the French, after their last manoeuvre into line-ahead formation, were now sailing with those winds fine on their larboard quarters.
“And there’s their seventy-four, just emerging astern of her,” Westcott added as the ponderous behemoth loomed up more solid from the mists, about a cable astern of the frigate.
“Stand by, Mister Spendlove!” Lewrie alerted the Second Officer, in charge of the main guns in the waist. “You will make sure that all pieces fire as they bear, and bow-rake her!”
“Not quite yet . . . not quite . . . ,” Lt. Westcott was muttering to himself, flexing his knees to ride the easy scend and roll of the ship as he peered intently at the lead ship, judging the range.
“Here it comes,” Lewrie said with a grunt as the Frenchman’s two chase guns exploded from her forecastle at last. Those projectiles did not sound like round-shot; there was a whole, thin chorus of light shot that went soaring high above the decks; expanding bar-shot, chain-shot, and star-shot. “Should’ve laid a wager, Mister Westcott,” he said with another pleased grunt as sails aloft were pierced, a few lines parted, and some splinters were torn from the top-masts.
“I make the range a bit over a quarter-mile, sir,” Lt. Westcott informed him.
“Good enough for me, sir,” Lewrie told him, then lifted a brass speaking-trumpet. “Mister Spendlove! As you bear, you may open upon her!”
“Aye aye, sir! As you bear! Fire!” Spendlove shouted.
As if paced by a metronome atop a parlour piano forte, the guns began to bellow, from the 12-pounder chase gun forrud, then down the long battery of fourteen 18-pounders, gushing great clouds of powder smoke and amber sparks that merged into a single thunderhead along the starboard side, then lingered and was blown back into the gunners’ faces by the light winds, and only slowly thinned and trailed away to the un-engaged
larboard side, blotting away their view of the foe for a long minute or so. Aft, HMS Modeste began her first broadside, as well, a greater, louder roaring from her heavier 18-pounders and 24-pounders, spewing out an even denser cloud of spent powder smoke.
“Deck, there!” a lookout high aloft, above the mists and powder smoke, shouted. “ ’Er foremast’s by th’ board! Sprit an’ boom timbers be shot away!”
Lewrie had a dimmer view from the quarterdeck; even so, he could make out the French frigate’s foremast crashing down in ruin, the light royal and t’gallant top-masts above her cross-trees collapsing zig-zag, and yards and sails swirling like a broken kite. The stouter timber of the mast above the foremast’s fighting top was leaning forward like a new-felled tree, to drape over her forecastle, roundhouse, beakheads, and the shattered jib-boom and bow sprit!
“Bow-raked for certain, by God, sir!” Lt. Westcott was enthusing. Reliant’s guns, or Modeste’s heavier ones, no matter; the curved plankings of any ship’s bluff bows were not as stout as a ship’s sides, with their heavy, closer-spaced frames and thicker scantling. Bows, like the delicate squared-off stern transoms, could be holed, and when they were, the round-shot, all that broken lumber, and clouds of whirling, jagged wood splinters got funnelled down the length of the gun-deck, shattering deck planking, overhead beams, frame timbers, and dis-mounting massive guns, turning truck-carriages into more splinters, snapping the carline support posts . . . and slaughtering enemy sailors by the dozens!
“Lamb t’the slaughter, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie growled, utterly delighted with the mental image of that murderous chaos, the terror, dismemberments, and wounds they had just inflicted yonder. “I don’t see why their flag officer’s comin’ at us this way, but . . . more fool, him! Mister Spendlove . . . serve her another! Skin the bastards!”
If the plan had been to get up to gun-range to the British, then wear in-succession and lay the French squadron broadside-to-broadside, that hope was unravelling, fast. With her foremast gone, and all of her fore-and-aft headsails lost with it, the leading frigate was crippled in a twinkling, unable to turn quickly to parallel Reliant. She wallowed and sloughed, trying to wear about Northerly, but she’d been gut-shot from an agile gazelle to a sluggish snail, pressed on by the light winds and slow to wear across them, with her vulnerable, already ravaged bows still offered up for slaughter.
“Ready, lads . . . as you bear! Fire!” Lt. Spendlove roared.
The starboard foc’s’le 12-pounder bow chaser erupted once more, followed by all the starboard beam 18-pounders, joined this time by the stubby 32-pounder carronades—the “Smashers”—and the quarterdeck 9-pounders. The range was even closer, and they could not miss! Over the deafening bellows of their own artillery, Reliant’s people could hear the parroty Rrawks! of solid iron shot slamming into her, a loud Rawk-Crack, then the screech of something substantial giving way.
The smoke slowly cleared from their second deliberately aimed broadside, revealing the French frigate’s new hurts. She had managed to come about at 45-degree angles, baring her larboard side as if trying to bring her guns to bear, but . . . her main-mast had been decapitated a few feet above the fighting top, perhaps by a lucky hit from one of the 32-pounder carronades, and the press of wind had brought all above it down onto her larboard bulwarks, the cross-deck boat-tier beams, and her waist. Her reefed main course sail lay like a funeral shroud over it all. If she tried to fire back, there were good odds she’d set herself on fire from the sparks scattered among all that wreckage! Only her mizen mast still stood, flying t’gallant, tops’l, and her spanker. Now she was completely unable to manoeuvre or maintain steerage way! Her Tricolour flag was missing, yet . . . after a minute or so, someone over there took a small harbour jack Tricolour up the mizen shrouds to the fighting top, and nailed it to the mast.
“Zut alors, monsewer!” Lewrie cried through a speaking-trumpet to them, thumping a fist on the cap-rails. “Mort de ma vie, what’re ye goin’ t’do now, hey? Sacre-fuckin’-bleu?” he sneered as Reliant swept on past the frigate, putting her on her starboard quarters to subside slowly into the thinning mists.
Yet in those thinning mists, now they were clear of the frigate, Lewrie had a much clearer view of that hulking French 74-gunner! She had been about a cable astern of her consort when the first broadside had been fired. She had yet to be engaged.
“And what are you goin’ t’do, sir?” Lewrie asked aloud, as if he could speak with the French senior officer aboard the 74. Modeste was firing as his own guns were being overhauled, swabbed out, and re-loaded. “Decide quick, monsewer, if ye care for yer paint-work!” he added as Modeste’s shot began to pummel their flagship.
The lead frigate was now an immobile hulk, unable to sail and making no discernible way except for a painfully slow wheel to the North, laying herself almost at right angles to her flagship’s course as that two-decker came on under a full press of sail on the light winds and her captain suddenly faced a horrid choice: wear cross the wind and turn Northerly to avoid ramming into his crippled frigate, and continue the engagement in more traditional line-against-line, or put up his helm and pivot Sou’west to avoid “going aboard” the frigate, and meet Modeste starboard-to-starboard with her massive guns on opposing tacks.
“She turns to face Modeste, she lays herself open to a raking, sir,” Lt. Westcott pointed out, shaking his head in wonder at how anyone could put himself in such a predicament.
“Not completely bows-on, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie countered, in calmer takings. “One good, sharp broadside into Modeste, and he’s the lighter frigates t’deal with, after.”
Oh, shit, she’s wheelin’ t’starboard! Lewrie told himself as he saw her bows begin to swing Northerly; she’ll be blowin’ us t’flinders next!
“If she clears the frigate, sir,” Westcott said, taking a deep breath as the two-decker barrelled down on the crippled frigate, wheeling with her helm hard down and her tall sides heeling so far over her lower gun-deck ports were only a foot or so above the sea.
“Lay us Due North, sir!” Lewrie snapped to his First Lieutenant. “Mister Spendlove! We will engage the two-decker!”
“Aye, sir!” Lt. Spendlove answered, though Lewrie was sure that he had to gulp in alarm first; in great sea battles, the fighting was left to the line-of-battle ships, and frigates stood by to aid any who needed assistance or to repeat signals down the smoky line. They most-certainly did not trade fire with warships that bore three or four times their weight of metal! “That’ll open his gun-arcs to nigh abeam,” he told Westcott.
“A collision would be nice about now,” Lt. Westcott said with a hopeful note to his voice after passing orders to the helmsmen and the brace-tending hands.
“It could get int’restin’ in a minute or two, either way, sir,” Lewrie agreed. “But, does he get past the frigate, he’ll use her for a shield against Modeste’s fire. Beats the bow-rake he’d have taken, had he swung Sutherly.”
Modeste’s guns were hammering the French flagship, hulling her “ ’twixt wind and water,” and raising great bursts of paint, splinters, and engrained dirt from her sides. Heeled over as she was, some shot shattered gangway bulwarks, sending rolled up and stowed hammocks and bedding flying like disturbed nests of snakes. But some of Modeste’s broadside was striking the immoble frigate, not the two-decker as she ducked behind her consort in her frantic turn.
Come on! Ram the bitch! Lewrie prayed in silence, and it did look as if the 74’s jib-boom and bow sprit would spear into the starboard mizen shrouds of the frigate, but . . . she slid on past, scraping her larboard bows down the frigate’s starboard side. She lost her cat-head timber and larboard bower anchor, and visibly staggered, rolling almost upright for a moment, but . . . she sailed clear with little more damage to show for it.
“By broadside, Mister Spendlove! Open upon her!” Lewrie cried. “Now, while she’s unable to respond!”
Reliant had come up to nearly a close reach to the North, with the wrec
ked frigate almost dead astern and the French two-decker only two points astern of lying abeam, and she was still turning, as if to fall in trail of Reliant or cut through between Modeste and Lewrie’s vessel and re-join her fleeing transport. There was a scramble on the gun-deck to shift the aim of the artillery as far aft as possible, but if they did fire at such acute angles, when the guns recoiled there would be no controlling their backward lurches. Lt. Spendlove looked up at the quarterdeck with a shrug and a lifting of both arms.
Modeste, clear of the wrecked French frigate, was firing again at the two-decker. The two-decker’s larboard side erupted in a reply. The range was only about a cable, and everyone on Reliant’s quarterdeck who could look aft let out a groan to see the avalanche of shot that struck Modeste’s sides, punched through her sails, and raised feathery plumes of shot-splashes all round her engaged side.
“Cockerel and Pylades are engaging the trailing Frenchman, sir!” Midshipman Grainger called forward. With no signals to send at that moment, he could use his telescope for his own amusements.
“Sorry, sir,” Lt. Spendlove said from the foot of the starboard companionway ladder. “The guns won’t bear unless we alter course.”
“Both batteries, Mister Spendlove,” Lewrie answered, leaning to smile at him. “If she’s almost dead astern of us, we’ll weave about from tack to tack, and rake her bows ’til she takes notice.”
“Aye, sir!”
That’ll take some of her attention from Modeste, at any rate, Lewrie told himself as he went back to the helm to re-join Westcott and explain what he wished.
“May I suggest we haul our wind to larboard for the first shots, sir,” Lt. Westcott posed with a brief grin. “Give her the larboard guns, then come back Due North. Else, our East’rd turn would put us dead into the eye of the wind, and in irons if we’re not quick about it.”
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