His Magesty's Brig Alert: A Tim Phillips Novel

by Richard Testrake

  Off Dunkirk they had their first sighting of a profitable target. The masthead reported four sails to starboard, close in to the land. Master’s Mate Wilcox had his chart laid on the binnacle when Phillips approached. By now the lookout had reported the vessels were coming toward them.

  Wilcox opined, “Sir, they won’t know who we are. They might think we are only a small trading brig and thing it un-necessary to evade us. When we close though, if they become concerned, they could duck into this little bay just ahead. The chart shows it is defended by a small battery.”

  “If we can get a bit closer before they smoke us, we will be able to cut them off from the port.

  As the strangers approached, two ship-rigged vessels became evident, then a bilander and a barquentine. One of the ships was definitely a trader and soon decided she wanted no part of that brig on her port bow. Followed by the bilander, she headed for the defended port to larboard. The other ship was identified as either a large corvette or a small frigate. She put herself before the barquentine and ran out her guns.

  Mister Prescott was agitated when he approached Phillips on the quarterdeck. “Sir, that frigate has eleven guns on a side. Do we want to take her on?”

  “What would you guess their caliber, Mister Prescott? Perhaps eight pounders?”

  “In my opinion Captain, I would guess eights, also. I wonder if that barquentine is armed also?”

  “I doubt it, Mister Prescott. You will notice the frigate is signaling her, probably giving her instructions. I think he hopes we will believe she is armed.”

  The frigate took that moment to run up her colors, followed by firing a gun.

  There was commotion on the barquentine’s deck and a tricolor rose up her mast. Phillips noted, “I think that fox is trying to fool us. There are not nearly enough men on her deck to be a French national ship and she took too long to show her colors. I think she is following instructions from the frigate. Perhaps it is time to encourage this fellow, sir. Please run up the colors and show her our six pounders. Let us leave the carronades ‘till later.”

  The six pounder long guns at bow and stern were run out. Phillips had most of the crew lie on the decks where they would be out of sight of the enemy.

  It was now too late for any action against the trader or the bilander as both were entering the approaches to the port. The barquentine, perhaps still nervous about this brig with two guns protruding from her hull, reefed some canvas and dropped away from the frigate a bit.

  The frigate had turned to port a bit and if the brig did nothing else, would soon be in a position to cross her bow and rake her. Before it came to that, Alert turned to port herself and was then coming into long gun range of the frigate.

  Both fired about the same time. Two six pounders from Alert against eleven eight pounders from the enemy. It was really too far for good shooting, but one of the balls from Alert struck the enemy just under her fore chains. In turn, two balls struck Alert. One punched a hole in her hull mid-ships, causing no injuries. The other hit the starboard bulwarks behind which many of the crew were lying. Splinters cause a few significant wounds and the men designated carried the injured below for the surgeon to practice his magic upon.

  The combatants continued their approach, by now on slightly converging courses. The barquentine by now seemed to have given up her part in the play. She no longer answered signals from the frigate and her ports had never opened.

  Both fired again. Closer now, the two shots from Alert impacted the frigate, doing no obvious damage. Four of the balls from the enemy struck the brig. One ball made a notch on the bowsprit, for which the bosun’s mate and a party of men rushed to make repairs. Another put a hole in the fore tops’l. The other two while striking the hull, did no important damage.

  The first officer had his sextant in his hand and periodically read off the angle to the enemy’s main masthead. It was possible to convert that angle to the range if one knew the height of the masthead.

  Mister Prescott read off his last estimate of the range and Phillips decided they were close enough. He ordered the men behind the guns to stand up and the ports to be opened. Probably, Phillips considered, the enemy had decided the brig was a simple trader, armed only by a few guns at her bow and stern.

  The frigate had just fired her broadside which managed to destroy one of the six pounders and kill or wound half of the gun’s crew.

  The carronades, now uncovered, were already loaded and the gunners’ blood was hot, over the damage done to their brig and its crew. Mister Prescott ordered all the gun captains to take proper aim and the midshipmen responsible for each gun section ran to each gun checking to ensure the order was followed.

  These guns had sights the long guns did not and it was possible to take greater care in aiming. Each carronade also had an adjusting screw to allow the gun captain to take particular care in the elevation adjustment.

  Each gun captain had been warned, when the firing order came; that was not the signal to just jerk the firing lanyard. Instead, the gun captain was to determine the gun was aligned on the target and was to take note of the state of the sea. Only when he was certain the ball would hit was he to fire.

  The five starboard carronades erupted a few seconds after the order was given. The remaining six pounder long gun fired at the same time, with no obvious effect. Not so the carronades. The thirty two pound balls of iron smashed into the timbers of the enemy frigate with deadly effect. One smashed the ship’s wheel and her helmsmen were left lying on the deck.

  The frigate, out of control until auxiliary steering might be rigged, began drifting stern first toward Alert. The light carronades were reloaded like lightning, with grape this time and another broadside hammered home. Unable to respond with her stern presented right on Alert’s beam, she was now nothing more than a target. Most of her officers were down and her crew was not well worked up. The guns kept firing until the frigate crashed into Alert’s quarter.

  Phillips called for boarders and the crew snatched half pikes, pistols, cutlasses and tomahawks from the arms chests. The fifty men delivered by the Impress Service back in Portsmouth, now proved their worth. Few were seamen, but many were familiar with rough and tumble conflicts on the waterfront. Even a peaceful solicitor’s clerk could push a pike into an enemy’s belly.

  The frigate, touching the brig stern first, swung around until she was lying beam to beam alongside Alert. A gun crew aboard her decided to fire one more shot for the ‘Honor of the Flag’.

  The ball smashed into the crowd of boarders on Alert, felling three of them instantly. Alert’s men went out of control with rage and poured over onto the deck of the frigate, slaughtering indiscriminately, even when her colors were dropped.

  Phillips and Prescott had to go about knocking cutlasses aside with his own sword. One crazed landsman actually took a swipe at Phillips with a cutlass. Only the intervention of one of the Marines prevented the loss of the brig’s captain.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  The frigate had suffered terrible losses and the fight was now out of her crew. There was little resistance as they were herded below. Wilcox was left aboard the frigate with a crew of twenty seamen and told to do his best to get the ship ready to sail. If Alert was not back by morning, he should try to make a British port.

  Alert had some quick repairs done to her sails and rigging and set sail to see what could be done about the barquentine that was now nearly hull down to the north. Before the action, the enemy vessel was probably faster. Now, with the damage done to Alert’s rigging, she certainly was. Phillips only pursued her in the hopes of meeting a ship of the Channel Fleet that might be patrolling in this area.

  This was not to be though and by morning there was no sign of her. They were now close to the shore of the new ‘Kingdom of Holland’, ruled by Napoleon’s brother, Louis. Phillips missed his sailing master that he had left in command of the prize. The waters in this area were treacherous, with shoals and sand bars. Phillips did not consider h
imself a pilot of this region’s waters.

  Alert began encountering fishing craft of all sizes. He did not regard them as prey and left them alone. A sailing barge though, navigating from one sheltered bay to another, he brought to heel. This vessel was loaded to capacity with beef in barrels and sacks of biscuit, clearly provisions for Bonaparte’s armies.

  Alert was brought alongside and a few casks of beef were swayed over using tackle from the main yard. Some of the bags of biscuit were also loaded. Phillips considered this would give them a few days extra to patrol before it became necessary to re-supply. The extra hands he had aboard were rapidly consuming the rations loaded back at Portsmouth. When the supplies had been taken from the barge, she was cut loose and two carronades were fired at her waterline at close range.

  The vessel was already low in the water and it did not take long for her to go down. Alert came to the wind and resumed her patrol. Two of the barge’s former crewmen approached the bosun’s mate who was about to stow them below as prisoners and volunteered to serve in the Royal Navy. Mister Prescott gladly accepted the new recruits. They were already seamen and both spoke rudimentary English.

  Sailing northward off the Frisian coast, another sail was seen coming toward them. This was a brig, much the same size as Alert. A privateer, rather than a National ship, she also had lighter armament. It was not unknown for some of these local craft to combine trading with privateering, doing a little of each. Often sailing with a light cargo, the craft would endeavor to snap up an unarmed trader when possible.

  Of course, with a cargo, it was not possible to have many guns aboard. It would have been impossible to carry the numbers of men required to man them. Suspicious from the beginning, the private warship decided early on to stay away from this brig. Accordingly, she sheered away and made for the shoals along the shore.

  Not wishing to trust his command to his knowledge of this coast, Phillips was ready to order his brig to come about and proceed out to sea.

  Before the order left his mouth though, the chase slowed and came to a stop, her foremast going over the side. She had grounded on a sand bar. The situation now being altered, Alert’s captain ordered the launch and cutter put in the water. With a sounding lead and pole in each boat, they pulled ahead of Alert surveying the bottom. Alert slowly crept her way through the twisting path the boats discovered for her.

  The crew of the privateer, in a frenzy to get their brig afloat again, knocked a port in her stern and rigged a gun to fire from it. Seeing what was afoot, when he judged the brig to be in six pounder range, Phillips backed his fore topsail and slowed to a halt, with his larboard forward six pounder threatening the enemy. At the first shot from the brig, he got in the brig’s sails and dropped first his kedge anchor from the stern, then the bower.

  The men at the brig’s windlass wound in the excess slack and the gun crew prepared to fire. The enemy was making poor practice with its stern mounted gun, but the crew knew it was a matter of time before a lucky shot connected.

  Alert’s gunner’s mate got behind the gun and sighted down the barrel. The brig was almost stationary here in these coastal shallows, with no wind to speak of to stir up a chop. On Phillips quiet order, the gunner took one more sighting and pulled the lanyard.

  From his location of the quarterdeck, Phillips ignored the explosion and the recoil of several tons of the six pounder. For just the fleetest of moments he thought he saw the racing speck of the ball as it sped toward its target. The splash as it fell a few fathoms distance from the targets starboard beam was anticlimactic.

  The gun crew immediately began its reload drill, as the enemy fired another round, this again was another miss. Alert’s gun was levered over just the tiniest part of an inch and again the gunner took deliberate aim. This time the splash was just ahead of the enemy. The ball had apparently flown above her deck without actually hitting anything.

  Mister Prescott spoke to the gunner and then came back to the quarterdeck. “Sir, Hendricks does not want to disturb the elevation quoin, since the gun appears to be firing right over the target’s deck. He proposes he open the powder bag and take out a small amount of powder. I told him to do just that.”

  “That may be just the remedy, Mister Prescott. We will try another few shots to see what may be accomplished.”

  At the next shot, there was no splash evident, but one of the mids, peering through his glass, reported a hit. “Right beside the rudder sir. Port side.”

  Through his own glass, Phillips saw the ragged hole in the stern, just above the waterline. Another shot missed to port, but the next one again sailed over the brigs deck, this time severing her main back stay. Since the enemy had earlier hoisted her main tops’l to try to lever herself from the sand, the mast with the cut stay slowly fell forward in a tangle.

  With both masts down, the enemy’s crew began going over the side into her boats and pulling toward shore. Alert pulled up her anchors and resumed her slow approach towards the target brig. As she neared, a trace of smoke appeared from a forward hatch.

  Determined to make some profit from their labors of the day, Phillips collected a crew of volunteers and loaded into Alert’s jolly boat. Leaving a vehemently protesting Lieutenant Prescott in command of Alert, Phillips set out for the target brig.

  By now, smoke was billowing from the fore hatch. Phillips went aboard with his cox’n, ordering the rest of the crew to stand off. Seeing a few filled fire buckets near the privateer’s abandoned guns, both he and Bates grabbed a pair and tossed the contents down the open hatch. They heard hissing as the seawater extinguished a bit of the fire. By the time the pair had emptied most of the available buckets, they had made obvious headway on the fire.

  Calling the jolly boat over, he allowed most of the boat’s crew on board and instructed the remaining oarsmen to return to Alert and bring over more people.

  The smoke had thinned below deck on the prize and Phillips and Bates went below with their buckets. The cargo in this section of the hull was sawn compass timber that had been splashed with a little oil and set afire. Fortunately, little oil had been used and the timber, freshly sawn, was still green and not dry. Even with the accelerant, it had burned grudgingly and the multiple buckets of water had slowed its spread.

  As the additional people were brought aboard, more hands were put to extinguishing the remaining embers and once the wash deck engine was found, the last of the fire was soon put out. The question now was, what to do with the vessel?

  Phillips original thought had been to destroy her where she lay stranded, but that would be difficult. The flammable part of her cargo had already been drenched so it would be difficult to burn her. Aground, she could hardly be sunk. Examining her further, the hands found she had a secondary cargo of bulk wheat, still in good condition.

  Much of her timber cargo had not been damaged and the compass timber, in demand for ship building purposes, would be of good value back home. This was wood that had grown into curved shapes while in the tree. It was needed for various parts of the ship that needed timber that had grown with the proper curves while still in the tree.

  Discussing the problem of the masts and rigging, his bosun’s mate was sure he could get some spars erected to get her under sail. As far as the grounding was concerned, high tide would occur in a matter of a few hours and it would be strange if they could not either float her off the bar, or at the least, kedge her off by setting an anchor in the channel and using the windlass to wind her off.

  Alert had anchored close by the prize and Phillips heard her lookout reporting the privateer’s crew had landed on an offshore island and were setting up camp.

  Since the bosun’s mate had matters under control aboard the prize, Phillips went back to Alert. He wondered why the privateer’s crew had not continued on to the mainland. A glance at the chart showed the reason. Shoal waters extended for miles along the coast, making it difficult to travel even by small boat. The shore also was covered in extensive marsh. The only road wa
s far inland.

  It looked as though the fugitives might have to remain where they were until Alert left. As the captain meditated over his next action, he heard two crewman at work splicing some standing rigging injured in the recent action arguing. One man was certain they would never float the prize and she would need to be abandoned, a pure loss of their prize money.

  The other thought their ‘young captain’ might just be able to save the prize. The men had not realized Phillips was within earshot and were shocked when he replied to their grousing. “Well, at least we can still collect some head money”, he muttered.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  Phillips called for his Sergeant of Marines and the first officer. Explaining his plan to them, he ordered Mister Prescott to take charge of Alert and oversee the repairs of the prize, while he and some crewmen would take the boats and go see what could be done about gathering up the privateer crewmen on the offshore island. Loading the boat gun in to the launch, it and the cutter were pulled toward the island. After all, each enemy crewman was worth five pounds head money when surrendered at the dock.

  It was necessary to back water once to avoid a section of shoal that neared the surface. At long musket shot range, the fugitives on the island tried a ranging shot with one of their Charleville muskets. This shot missed, but not the reply from the boat gun.

  Port side oarsmen backing water, the boat turned in almost its own length. The gunner bent over the little twelve pounder carronade, rechecking the sights and tugged the lanyard. The gun belched smoke, fire and a cloud of musket balls at the people on shore. The boat had risen on a wavelet as the gun fired and much of the charge went high, but not all. Two of the privateersmen were struck by the balls and felled there on the beach.

  Deciding a retreat was in order, the remainder took to their heels and fled over a rise to the other side of the tiny islet. Alert’s men waded on shore confiscating supplies and equipment the others had brought. Many of their individual weapons had been left behind and these were piled into the boats.