by Hunter, Seth
“So it was you. I did wonder what put that idea into his head. Well, I must thank you, then; it appears to have worked wonders. And how did you know to find me here?”
“I confess your presence comes as a pleasant surprise. I came with Citizen Bouchard. The pilot. He was kind enough to inform me when he received the summons from the National Guard that his services were required. I was going to give this to Tully”—he indicated the letter he had been writing—“but you will save me the effort. Now you must listen to me very carefully, my friend, for what I am about to tell you is of the very greatest consequence. Are you acquainted with the commander of the English fleet, Lord Howe?”
Nathan raised a brow. “I would not say acquainted, though we have met once or twice. And my father served with him in America.”
“Then he would know you—and trust you.”
“Trust me—for what?”
“There is a great convoy sailing from America to France. Over one hundred ships laden with grain and other supplies vital to the war effort. It is said that French agents have purchased the entire surplus of the American harvest—a billion bushels of wheat. It will save the French from starvation. It will save the Revolution. It will save Robespierre. And it is on its way across the Atlantic.”
“But . . . surely this is known. It cannot have sailed in secret.”
“The British must certainly know that the convoy has left the Chesapeake. But they will not know where it is headed. And the Atlantic is a very big place. This is why you must find Lord Howe and tell him the French plan. The convoy is headed for Brest.”
“For Brest? Then it will sail straight into his lap. Brest is under blockade. Howe’s entire fleet—”
“Listen to me. Lord Howe wishes the French fleet to come out and fight. He has a few frigates keeping watch on Brest but he keeps the main battle fleet off Ushant or across the English Channel in Torbay.”
This was true. Nathan had read critical reports in sections of the English press. They had taken to calling him Lord Torbay because of his readiness to seek shelter there.
“This is what the French are counting on,” insisted Imlay. “Two days ago Robespierre sent orders to Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse in Brest. He is to sail out with his entire fleet—twenty-five ships of the line—and lure the English fleet after him into the Atlantic while the convoy slips past into Brest.”
“How do you know this?”
“My dear friend, it is my business to know these things. Why do you think I am in France?”
“But you are an American.”
“So?”
“America and France are allies, or at least friends.”
“Believe me the present regime in France is not composed of men the President would count as friends. As I have told you before they are an embarrassment to him. He would very much like to see them replaced by men who do not use terror as an instrument of policy.”
“Then why throw them a lifeline—and sell them a billion bushels of wheat?”
“How can he prevent it? He cannot prevent men from making a profit. But now that the money is jingling in their pockets . . .”
“So you want Howe to wait outside Brest?” Nathan shook his head. “He will not do it. As soon as he hears the French fleet is at sea he will follow them—to the ends of the earth if need be.”
“That is what I am afraid of. Lord Howe must be made to understand that the destruction of this convoy is far more important than taking a few ships of war—even the whole fleet. You know that. You have seen the bread queues outside the bakeries in Paris. You have heard the anger. Every change of government since ’89 has been started by bread riots. This is what Robespierre fears more than anything else. That is why he has fixed a maximum price. Ten sous for a four pound loaf. As if! When the same loaf can fetch sixty on the black market? The man is an innocent. But a billion bushels of American wheat will bring the price crashing down.”
Nathan had a sudden suspicion that Imlay had more than a political interest in the price of bread—but whatever his motives he was undoubtedly sincere.
“You must find Howe and tell him the French plan. If he insists on chasing the French fleet he must leave a sizeable force off Brest.”
He broke off. There were shouted commands from the quayside. They crossed to the starboard window. A file of National Guardsmen had arrived at the quayside led by an official in a Republican sash with red, white and blue ostrich plumes in his hat.
“That is Citizen Thierry,” said Imlay. “The local commissioner. With your escort to Le Havre.” He pulled a Breton sailor’s hat out of his pocket and crammed it on his head. “You must go on deck. If you see me, do not under any circumstances reveal that you know me. I will leave you at Petite-Rade.”
But Nathan had another question and it did not concern the movement of fleets.
“What of our friends in Paris?”
Imlay looked at him in surprise.
“You mean Danton? My God, you don’t know?” He put his hand on Nathan’s shoulder. “Oh my friend, Danton is dead. I thought him indestructible but they took off his head. And poor Camille . . .” His distress seemed genuine. “Robespierre has triumphed—for the moment. But it is not yet over. There will be others and—”
“I heard about Danton,” Nathan interrupted him. “Robespierre himself told me. I meant Mary—and Sara.”
A blank look came over Imlay’s face. Did Nathan have to remind him? But then he nodded. “Mary is in Le Havre. Her confinement is due any day now. Sara, I suppose, is still in Paris.”
There was a clump of boots on the gangplank. Imlay gripped his arm. “You must go. Find Howe—and that convoy. The outcome of the war may depend upon it.”
Chapter 35
Close Action
Sunday, the first of June: morning. The first clear morning in days with not a trace of the persistent fog that had hounded and haunted the British fleet for the best part of a week now, hiding their ships from one another as effectively as it had shielded the enemy. But at six bells in the morning watch Nathan came up on to the quarterdeck of the admiral’s flagship the Queen Charlotte to find clear skies and a fresh breeze from the south-southwest and the entire French fleet strung out across several miles of ocean on the northern horizon. He was even able to count them. Twenty-six sail of the line and in fairly good order as far as he could tell.
“Sorry you came?” said a voice at his elbow and he turned to find the Charlotte’s master, James Bowen, at his side, nursing a cup of coffee and gazing out at the distant sails.
“I will let you know,” said Nathan, “at the end of the day.”
The master gave a grim chuckle. “Well, I hope you are satisfied,” he said, “for it is you who have brought us to this.”
“I?” Nathan protested indignantly. “It was not my idea to chase halfway across the Atlantic so you can all cover yourselves with glory.”
Nathan had found the British fleet off Ushant with the benefit of a brisk southwesterly the second day after leaving Le Havre and delivered his report to Lord Howe who had bent his black brow and sent a sloop to look into Brest. She had returned with the news that the roads were empty. The French fleet had put to sea just as Imlay had said it would. And just as he had feared the English admiral went charging after it into the wide wastes of the Atlantic Ocean.
“Thankee for the advice,” he had told Nathan briskly, when he ventured to repeat Imlay’s warning about the convoy, “but my duty is clear. I must seek out the French fleet and bring ’em to battle.”
His one concession to Imlay’s concerns was to detach Rear Admiral Montagu with six ships of the line to find the grain ships—but even Montagu would not wait outside Brest for them.
“For even if your information is correct and that is where they are bound, what is to stop them changing their minds,” the
admiral argued, “especially if they learn of our intent? They have the entire French Atlantic seaboard at their disposal.”
This was true. And besides, a mere commander did not challenge the decision of an admiral of the fleet.
“At least permit me to accompany you, my lord,” Nathan petitioned him, “for I could not bear to return to England and not know the outcome.”
And so Nathan was a supernumerary aboard the admiral’s flagship while the Speedwell tagged along with the support vessels in the rear.
They had found the French five days ago and been playing hide and seek with them ever since in a dense mid-Atlantic fog. But now the two fleets were sailing in clear view of each other in two parallel lines about five miles apart and it seemed inevitable that there would be a general action before the end of the day. The only question was whether it would come sooner or later.
Nathan looked up to the poop deck where they could see the admiral conferring with the captain of the fleet, Sir Roger Curtis, and his flag captain, Sir Andrew Douglas. Near seventy, Howe was one of the oldest officers in the service—known throughout the fleet as “Black Dick” as much from his morose and taciturn nature as his dark complexion. He had little time for the Earl of Chatham whom he considered an ignorant upstart and he had never forgiven his brother William for cutting the naval estimates on the grounds of economy. He could be a fierce enemy, yet he and Nathan’s father had served together in Rodney’s fleet during the American wars and been good friends.
“He is shy with strangers,” Nathan’s father had told him once, “but a kindly man at heart, when you get to know him.”
He did not look kindly now, Nathan thought as he watched him talking with the two captains. He looked exhausted after the long chase across the Atlantic and four days of constant manoeuvring to win the weather gage, mostly in conditions where he did not know whether he was among his own fleet or the enemy.
“So what will he do, do you think?” Nathan inquired of the master. “Bring us in close or pound them at a distance?”
If the wind stayed in the present quarter the British fleet could slowly converge on the enemy until they were within firing range. Then every ship would engage her opposite number until they struck or were dismasted. That would be the conventional approach and with the British advantage in gunnery it might be the most effective. For the eighteen months or so they had been locked up in Brest, the French had been unable to practise with their big guns—at least not with live ammunition—and in single ship encounters they had been far inferior to the British gunners. But it could take several hours to bring the two lines together, particularly if the French veered away. The alternative was to bear down on them in line abreast and bring them to action at once and at close quarters. But that would mean sailing directly into the enemy broadside for anything up to half an hour without being able to fire back with anything but their bow chasers.
“He will bring us in close if they do not talk him out of it,” growled Bowen, a bluff Devonian who had been in the merchant marine before he joined the service and was known to have little time for some of Howe’s captains. Though he was only a warrant officer he was rated Master of the Fleet and had a reputation for plain speaking. He treated most men, whatever their rank, as equals and some did not love him for it. But he appeared to have taken a shine to Nathan and was often indiscreet in his conversation.
“He wanted to attack last night but thought better on it.” He leaned close to Nathan’s ear and dropped his voice, for the quarterdeck was crowded with officers including a detachment from the Queen’s Regiment of Foot serving aboard the flagship. “ ‘I cannot rely on them, Bowen,’ he says to me, ‘I require daylight to see how they conduct themselves.’ ”
Nathan frowned. “Meaning?”
Bowen lowered his voice even further, for this was plainer speaking than even he considered prudent.
“Meaning he thinks they might hold back in the dark.”
“He thinks them shy?”
Nathan was aware that the admiral had misgivings about some of his captains but he had assumed it was on account of their low intelligence and high opinion of themselves rather than their lack of courage.
But Bowen merely sniffed by way of reply and continued to gaze at the distant fleet.
“His lordship’s compliments, sir, and would you report to him at your earliest convenience?”
With a significant glance at Nathan, Bowen tossed the dregs of his coffee over the rail and followed the midshipman aft. Nathan watched him join the huddle of senior officers and then crossed to the weather rail and sought out the Speedwell among the dozen or so frigates and sloops and support vessels. He wondered, not for the first time, whether he should have stayed with her but he had been compelled by a primitive need to put himself to the test: the ultimate test of a sea battle between two powerful fleets. To discover if he had the nerve to stand unflinching in the face of a thousand heavy guns; to go about his duties in a lethal hail of shot and not curl himself into a shaking ball upon the deck.
I will let you know at the end of the day.
He might live to regret that glib response. Or not.
He picked out the barque easily enough but she was too distant for him to make out any of the figures on her deck even through the glass. They should be safe enough, though: well out of the line of fire with their only task that of repeating the signals from the flagship so other ships could see them in the smoke of battle. The admiral set great store by signals and was constantly testing his junior officers in their knowledge. He had devised and written the Signal Book for Ships of War currently in use throughout the fleet—a system of numbered flags that could be used in different combinations to deliver a range of complex orders—but they were too complex for some of his captains in Bowen’s view—and possibly the admiral’s for he had sent many of his brighter officers from the flagship to help their understanding.
There was a string of flags going up now at the mizzen. Nathan approached the midshipman who had summoned Bowen—Codrington, a man of his own age almost, which was to say old for a midshipman, who appeared to serve the admiral as aide-de-camp. He was standing at the rail gazing through his glass towards the French fleet.
“What is the signal?” Nathan asked him.
“Number thirty-four,” said he, without taking his eye from the glass.
“Which is to say?”
“ ‘Having the wind of the enemy, the admiral means to pass between the ships in the line and engage them to leeward.’ ” Still without bothering to look at Nathan and in a bored voice that hovered on the edge of contempt.
“Thank you,” said Nathan, wishing he could kick him, but then he caught the admiral’s eye upon him. He had sunk into an armchair on the quarterdeck next to the wheel with his greatcoat buttoned up to the chin and a cheap woollen hat upon his head.
“Well, sir,” he called out to Nathan. “You see what you have brought us to?”
This could become history. Nathan wondered how he could respectfully point out that it was the convoy he had wished to bring them to, not the fleet.
“I trust they are to your liking, my lord,” he said, touching his hat.
Howe looked up at the flags fluttering above his head.
“What think you of the signal?”
Nathan thanked his stars he had taken the trouble of asking the snotty for the meaning.
“A bold move, my lord, and I wish you joy of it but what do you desire the rest of us to do?”
This might have passed for wit in his mother’s salon but not on the quarterdeck of the Queen Charlotte. The admiral’s face grew blacker.
“I desire you to hold your tongue, sir, if all you can do with it is play the fool.”
But then he saw that Bowen was chuckling to himself and several of his officers had turned away to hide their grins. His own
lips began to twitch.
“Well, well, what do you think of that then, Sir Roger? Impudent young pup. But let us have number thirty-six so there can be no misunderstanding.” He turned back to Nathan and frowned fiercely: “ ‘Each ship independently to steer for and engage her opponent in the enemy line.’ Is that good enough for you, sir?”
“Very good, my lord. Thank you.” Nathan bowed low, infinitely relieved.
There were cheers from the crew as the heavy three-decker came ponderously round until its bow was pointing directly towards the enemy line. Climbing a little way up the shrouds Nathan saw a sight that would stay with him, he knew, for the rest of his days, or the few hours he had to live, as the entire fleet turned to face the enemy in line abreast. The great beasts of the fleet: mighty three-deckers of 100 guns like the Royal Sovereign and the Royal George; the 80-gun Caesar leading the distant van with the Bellerophon close behind her: the Billy Ruffian that had saved the Speedwell from the French privateer almost a year ago with her captain, Pasley, now a rear-admiral in command of the flying squadron. More 74s: the Leviathan and the Invincible and the Thunderer, the Brunswick and the Culloden, the gilded figureheads lining up like giant chess pieces for the charge. Twenty-five ships of the line. The black hulls and the chequered bands of white or buff or red. Over two thousand heavy guns and fifteen thousand men charging across five miles of ocean towards their ancient enemy. And now the bands and the fiddles were starting up. The strains of “Rule, Britannia!” drifting across the water from the Gibraltar, “The Roast Beef of Old England” from the Brunswick and from their own decks, “Heart of Oak”:
Heart of oak are our ships,
Jolly tars are our men,
We always are ready;
Steady, boys, steady!
Nathan looked to his own guns for he had been given command of the eight pieces on the quarterdeck: six 12-pounders and two 32-pounder carronades. He had never fired the latter even in practice for they were a relatively new weapon developed by the Carron Company in the eighties and none had been fitted to any of the ships on which he had served. They were peculiarly short in the barrel but with a large bore rather like a mortar. Their main advantage seemed to be that they were extremely light and manoeuvrable but fired a very heavy shot. Their disadvantage was they didn’t fire it very far—two hundred yards was about the maximum, the gunner informed him, a young Cornishman called Dowling, though “they are regular smashers at short range, sir.” They appeared to be loaded and fired in much the same way as regular cannon, the only puzzling feature to Nathan being a large screw which pierced the ring at the end of the breech and was used for elevating and depressing the barrel instead of wedges or quoins. Nathan decided to leave the carronades to Dowling while he concentrated on the 12-pounders, though it seemed likely, if they were to pass through the enemy line, that he would have to fire both sides simultaneously, which meant spreading his crews more thinly than he would have liked. His instructions were to load up with round shot at least for the first broadside and change to grape when they were at close quarters but thus far he had not heard if they were to aim high or low. Doubtless someone would tell him in plenty of time to make the adjustments.
