A Fine Retribution

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Our raids, sir,” Lewrie said, “go ashore with two canteens per man, eighty rounds of cartridge, a rucksack for sausage, cheese, and bisquit, get the job done then skip clear before the enemy can concentrate. We give the French bloody noses, but then dance back, like a skilled boxer, to avoid giving them a hope of hurting us. I’m told it is very bad for their morale.”

  “That’s the way of it,” Colonel Tarrant seconded. “Unless one is desirous of emulating the Battle of Maida.”

  Christ, I’ll bet that’s what he had in mind! Lewrie realised.

  “Sir Alan, and Colonel Tarrant, are correct, sir,” Admiral Charlton spoke up. “The principal aims of the expedition are to eliminate those coasting ships, and secondly, to burn and eliminate the arms and supply depots. The Fleet can support a limited operation, but anything more ambitious than that would keep my ships on the coast too long, and to no good end, should the French response be too swift or too powerful. Warships can only sit and watch a hurried evacuation, and if the lay of the land does not lend itself to line-of-sight gunnery support, we would be little aid to you, sir.”

  “Aye, let us allow Mister Quill time to gather as much information as he can,” Tarrant summed up as if it was his meeting, not that of the Brigadier, “and you can hunt up additional merchant ships for your troops, Brigadier.”

  Meanin’, get your head outta your arse and come up with a plan that’ll work, Lewrie thought, unable to hide a smug expression.

  “The need for updated information does require us to delay, for a time,” Brigadier Caruthers hissed, his jaw working and his teeth grinding in frustration and embarrassment. “Very well. Once Mister, ah … Quill is it?… reports back, we will meet again, to finalise the plans for the operation.”

  As maps were un-pinned and folded, as hats, gloves, and swords were gathered up, Lewrie could not help sticking another pin into Caruthers’s backside. “Your transports, sir … how many boats do they possess, and how many merchant sailors do you have to do the rowing? My transports have Navy crews, and nine or ten men per barge. A matter to look into, what?”

  “Uhmhmm,” Caruthers answered, more a feral growl of a cornered beast.

  *   *   *

  “Well, that was rather fun,” Colonel Tarrant remarked as they left the imposing Castello into bright sunlight.

  “Nothing against you, Colonel, but soldiers understand nothing of ships and the sea,” Lewrie told him, feeling glee to have deflated such a puffed-up coxcomb, “and that fellow’s plan had more holes in it than a colander. He’s bound and determined to do something grand and glorious but one hopes that reality hits him ’twixt the eyes.”

  “Amen to that, Captain Lewrie,” Tarrant enthusiastically agreed. “Especially if my poor old battalion seems a part of it.”

  “Lewrie!” Admiral Charlton called out as he and Quill caught up to them, after a long palaver between them. “Good fellow. You made some good points in there, as did you, Colonel Tarrant. Now, perhaps the Brigadier will trim his sails to a reasonable wind, and not emulate Wellesley’s large battles in Spain. For a minute there, I imagined that he’d camp out, guns, tent lines, and cooking cauldrons, waiting for a battle to make his name in the papers.”

  “Garrison duty can be boring in the extreme, sir,” Tarrant said with a moue of distaste. “Believe me, I know.”

  “We’ve bought you time, Lewrie,” Charlton said. “Let us hope, most earnestly, that Caruthers makes the best use of it.”

  “Back to your flagship, sir?” Lewrie asked.

  “For the nonce, aye,” Charlton allowed. “Once at sea, I’ll lurk close to Messina and Catania, waiting to hear what the final plan is to be. Close enough for a despatch boat to reach me easily. I will plan the naval part of the operation and pass them to all of my Captains, so they’ll be ready to sail for the coast at the same time as you and Caruthers’s transports sail from Sicily. Before I do so, hmm. Mister Quill, do you know of a particularly fine place to dine in the town?”

  “Not down in your neighbourhood, pray God, sir,” Lewrie japed.

  “Not today, no, Sir Alan,” Quill said, pointing towards the town centre and the grand public square. “There’s a lovely trattoria quite near the church, the Duomo. Norman and Romanesque, you know, built ages ago by King Roger the Second. Most impressive.”

  “My treat, gentlemen?” Charlton offered, to which they all were most eager to accept. “Let us go there, then. I wish I had the time to take a look at the Duomo, but, time and tide.”

  “After dinner, we must collect my boat crew and sail back to Milazzo,” Lewrie said, none too eager for a tour of a cathedral, either.

  “Boats, again?” Tarrant groaned. “You’re right, Lewrie, soldiers know nothing of the sea. By preference, hah!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Let’s see what we have, then, Lewrie thought, opening a hefty packet that had come from Mr. Quill, a fortnight after the first meeting in Messina; Aha! Those scoundrels’ve done us proud!

  Don Julio and his compatriots had sailed over to Locri, Siderno, and Marina di Gioiosi with cargoes of wines, pastas, fruit from citrus groves on Sicily, olive oil, bolts of cloth, and various and sundry goods chosen to tempt the poverty-stricken locals, already limited to short commons by the presence of French occupiers, to come and haggle fair prices. Quill’s notes that accompanied the packet amusedly told of how off-duty enemy soldiers, Genoese this time, had also come down to the quays in search of bargains, and had been engaged in conversations which had unthinkingly yielded a wealth of information. Officers had taken a couple of Don Julio’s leaders aside and grilled them on British doings on Sicily, on troop strengths, and what they might have heard about future plans! Those smugglers had lied like blazes, or claimed that they knew little, or could care less what the Inglese were up to, as long as they did not interfere with business!

  The local townspeople, in their tavernae over wine, cheese, and sardines, had revealed a lot, too. The depots were there, under canvas at all four corners of the roads cross the mountains where they met the coast road. The garrisons of the towns from Bovalino Marina to Monasterace Marina were from the same Genoese regiment, no more than eighty to one hundred in each town, and half of those would stand guard over the depots, whilst the other half, less a small cadre to police the towns, would be out in the country, inland, foraging, stealing, and looting whatever took their fancy at any given time.

  Quill’s spies learned that the Genoese were utterly despised; they talked too fast, they were arrogant and dismissive of how poor Southern Italy was compared to their own lush province of Liguria.

  There were rough maps of the coast and beaches, the hinterland behind, and rough layouts of the towns. The heights of the quays had been estimated at high and low tide as the smugglers’ boats had lain alongside, and the depth of the water in the harbours had been sounded, on the sly. Idle strolls along the shore had revealed the softness of the sands and had been noted. Don Julio’s men had even managed to sound the coastal waters, updating old charts to show how close ashore the transports could anchor, no more than half a mile off. There were rough drawings from seaward indicating how open the farmland round the towns was before encountering a series of rising ridges further inland, giving Lewrie the impression that if Vigilance came to anchor half a mile offshore, her guns could cover the first ridge easily and protect the soldiers ashore, if they stayed below the crests, among the olive groves and wood lots.

  All in all, it was a Godsend, a cornucopia of information that laid the coast as bare as a baby’s bottom. Of course, there would have to be another meeting with Brigadier Caruthers in Messina, whilst the information went off in another packet to Admiral Charlton, whether he actually could attend or not. All he would need to know would be the day upon which Caruthers planned to strike, so he could have his ships in place to support him.

  Lewrie leaned back from his desk after an hour or more poring over every scrap of paper in the packet, called for Deavers to
bring him some of his cool, lemoned and sugared tea. Should he summon his officers in, officers from the transports, right away, and call for Tarrant and Gittings to join them? Or, should he put that off ’til he’d met with Caruthers?

  Time enough for that, later, he decided. One matter did need immediate attention, though.

  “Turnbow, go on deck and pass word for Mister Severance and the Bosun, Mister Gore,” Lewrie said. “I need to speak with them.”

  Those worthies showed up at his door minutes later and he bade them enter.

  “Mister Severance, you’re aware that there’s going t’be a landing soon, over on the mainland?” Lewrie began.

  “Aye, sir,” Severance said with a faint grin. “The ship’s been laying wagers on what day it will be.”

  “Of course they did,” Lewrie said with a shake of his head in wry amusement. “Nothing stays secret for long aboard any ship. When we do, I’ll need some way to know what’s happening ashore, and can’t wait for word of it to come by boat from the beaches. Do you know of how semaphore stations work?”

  “Ehm, I’ve read about them, sir, and I vaguely recall what the positions of the arms mean, letter by letter. But I would not swear to a working knowledge, no sir.”

  “Flag signals?” Lewrie asked.

  “Of course, sir!” Severance brightened. “Not to brag, sir, but I can roughly make out a signal hoist without referring to the code book, most of them time.”

  “Better and better,” Lewrie perked up. “Mister Gore, we need to rig a spare royal yard with a cross-piece, two blocks, and halliards on which to hang signal flags, so our people ashore can speak to me, and can reply to any signals we make to them.”

  “Matter of an hour, no more, Cap’m,” Gore assured him.

  “Excellent!” Lewrie praised. “Glad to hear it! Now, as to how many signal flags you should take ashore, Mister Severance.”

  “I will be going ashore, sir?” Severance eagerly replied.

  “You will, indeed, sir,” Lewrie assured him. “I can’t waste a good man on my ledgers and letter copying all the time. I’m thinking that some Midshipmen should accompany you, as well. One to read the signals to Brigadier Caruthers, one to assist you making up hoists, and one to Colonel Tarrant and his staff. I fear there will be some ink smudges and finger cramp ’twixt now and then, making up several code books pared to the necessities. Can’t risk the real code books or the private signals falling into enemy hands, should things turn ugly. I’ll leave it up to you who you think best from among our Mids to accompany you.”

  “Ehm, I’ll get started on the spar, sir?” Gore asked.

  “Aye, Mister Gore, have at it,” Lewrie said, standing to see him out. “Care for some cool tea, Mister Severance? We’ll be at it for some time. Now, which flags from our spare set do you imagine might prove useful?”

  “A suggestion, sir?” Severance posed. “If there is no wind on shore, the flags may just hang there, un-readable. I think that we’d need to find some thin slats to hold them out horizontally, top and bottom.”

  “Hmm, good idea,” Lewrie agreed. “There must be something like that available in Milazzo … though I don’t know what, right now.”

  Severance opened a copy of the Popham Code book. “Obviously, sir, we’ll need Number Ten … Enemy in Sight.”

  *   *   *

  The second meeting in Messina’s Castello was much more muted than the first, and Brigadier Caruthers did not enter the offices with a bounce of over-confidence. His highly polished boots still creaked, though, as he paced before his map, which was now marked over with coloured pencil of various hues, the result of Mr. Quill’s flood of information from his paid agents. Quill was not present, this time, evidently still thought too outré, too un-gentlemanly and tainted by his association with the lower sorts, and spies, and … as Lewrie suspected … Quill had filled in too many blank spaces in Caruthers’s preconceptions, making him appear an ill-prepared fool.

  “Right, then!” Caruthers began as he had at the first meeting, slapping his wood pointer in a palm, “After conferring with our commanding General, this operation has been scaled back a bit. We shall emulate the 94th Foot, in that all troops will go ashore with muskets, bayonets, hangers, two canteens of water, and eighty rounds of cartridge. Rucksacks with one day’s dry rations will replace the heavier field packs. And, given the absence of any artillery, as noted by ah, local informants, we will dispense with the two batteries of ‘flying artillery’ twelve-pounders. It will be land, rampage, burn anything of value to the French, then retire to the boats to be extracted, an operation that may take no more than twelve hours on the outside.”

  “Still wish the enemy was there in strength,” one of the brigade’s regimental commanders gruffly said. “We’d’ve shown them a thing or two.”

  “Later landings upon Catanzaro and Crotone, where there surely are larger French garrisons, may fulfill our wishes,” Caruthers said. “Sir Alan, Colonel Tarrant, if you would be so good as to land there,” he went on, tapping at a long, wide beach just East of Locri, almost within the town’s outskirts. “One of my regiments will land just West of Siderno, the second just East of the town.”

  He envisoned a rapid pincer movement to swarm over the defenders of Siderno, clear it, then meet at the depots just inland beyond the road junction. The third regiment of the brigade would sail right up to the quays and dis-embark over gangways. All troops, at Locri and Siderno, would gather flammables and advance on the depots to set them alight.

  Caruthers wished that the 94th and Vigilance’s Marines and armed sailors would throw out piquets to the North and West to watch for any French troops drawn to the noises and conflagrations, as would the troops of the third regiment once they’d marched off the quays.

  Lewrie explained the signals staff his men would bring ashore, which would have to be attached to Caruthers’s staff, but had to ask of messages from his men to Caruthers, and from Caruthers to his third regiment, and what the Recall signal would be.

  “Once ashore, be prepared to send runners, Sir Alan,” Caruthers told him. “Perhaps we could commandeer some donkeys for gallopers, hey?”

  “You might have to wait for the third regiment to land, sir,” Lewrie told him. “The Navy’s going to be very busy towing out or burning ships in Siderno’s harbour, so it’s goin’ t’get smoky and chaotic.”

  “I think we’ll cope,” Caruthers replied, back to being confident. “Speed will be of the essence, gentlemen.”

  Our army? Lewrie scoffed to himself: ‘Quick’ ain’t in their vocabulary. Like as not, they’ll brew up once the fires are set!

  Caruthers set a date five days hence, with time enough for word to reach Admiral Charlton, and for him to alert his frigates and sloops and be off the towns by dawn of that day.

  “Perhaps, sir,” Lewrie said as a last caution, “it would be best did the Navy have its go at the shipping, first, and clear the harbour at Siderno before you send your transports to the quays.”

  “Sit back and watch the bombardment for an hour or so, hey?” Caruthers said, frowning at yet another objection to his thinking. “I suppose that would so frighten the French present that our landings would go in mostly un-opposed. And, as we discussed previously, the Navy’s attacks at many towns all along the coast will confuse and discomfit them. Very well, Sir Alan, we shall do as you suggest.”

  *   *   *

  “I still don’t trust the gleam in his eye,” Colonel Tarrant said as they dossed down in borrowed lodgings that night in the Castello. “An assault all up and down the coast just might draw enemy forces down to respond, and save their depots. Then, Caruthers could get his battle that he’s wanted from the outset.”

  “Don Julio’s cut-throats placed the bulk of their forces up at Catanzaro, or cross the peninsula at Reggio di Calabria,” Lewrie said, “Several hours’ march away. If we’re back aboard the ships by Six in the afternoon, we should be hull-down by the time they arrive.”
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br />   “Hope you’re right, Lewrie,” Tarrant said, frowning over the thinness of his mattress as he sat to pull his boots off.

  “Someone senior sat on him,” Lewrie said, yawning as he pulled a thin linen sheet up to his chest, and plumped the lumps that passed for pillows, “and told him to aim smaller. He’s a Brevet Brigadier, only in charge ’cause he’s senior to the regimental Colonels, probably for the first time they’ve let him off the Army’s leash. Most-like, it’s been stressed that his future prospects’d be rosier if he did a good job, with few casualties, not over-reach and get his, and the Army’s nose, bloodied. Don’t be a Sir John Moore, don’t re-enact a Walcheren campaign, and don’t suffer a defeat.”

  “Where’s the damned chamber pot?” Tarrant groused, peering round their room as he undid his breech’s flap.

  “Under the wash-hand stand, I think,” Lewrie said, yawning once more. “Ehm, you don’t snore, do you, Colonel?”

  “Most horribly, sir,” Tarrant exclaimed as he found the chamber pot and began to piss. “Most horribly, I assure you!”

  “Oh, Christ,” Lewrie groaned.

  “That’s my revenge for having to gad about with you in that bloody barge,” Tarrant laughed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  So damned nice t’be back with the Fleet, Lewrie thought as he raised his telescope to admire the sight of Charlton’s squadron as it loomed up from the Sou’east at the appointed “rondy”. Column after column of frigates and brig-sloops, already sorted out into smaller groups which would break off and proceed to the seaports they were assigned to bombard and raid. There were at least three Third Rate 64s, and a 74-gun ship of the line, Charlton’s, flying the Blue Ensign, and a command pendant. He lowered his telescope to look round at his own clutch of transports strung out astern of Vigilance in line-ahead, and a proper one-cable’s separation. Further off, and seaward, stood the fifteen vessels that Brigadier Caruthers had managed to round up, also separated into packets of five which carried the ten full companies of each regiment of the brigade. They were not manned by naval crews or officers, only merchant masters and seamen hired on by the Transport Board, or dragooned into the expedition locally. They made a distinctly un-tidy showing, especially the smaller cargo ships not fitted as troop transports, continually making or taking in sail to maintain a safe separation from the one ahead.