‘Mr Madison, when I give you the word I would have you run aft and order the helmsman to put his helm swiftly up. Do you understand?’
‘Helm to starboard, sir.’
‘Yes.’
The ship rolled so that rain and seawater washed across the deck, pressing about his ankles and seeping into Hayden’s boots. Wind among the spars and shrouds ran down and up, then yet again up a minor scale. Rain, wind-driven and harsh, fell into the sea – a clatter like glass beads upon gravel. A long moment this persisted, began to relent, then recommenced. The men around him pulled in their necks and hunched shoulders, backs to the onslaught. A momentary lapse overtook them, and Hayden almost started. The French ship appeared out of the gloom, large and formidable.
‘Run to the helmsman!’ Hayden said to Madison over the din of the gale.
The stern of the two-decker rose up not twenty-five yards distant. Hayden could see the shapes of men gathered at the taffrail. On such a night he could not be certain of being heard, but cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted in French, ‘There is an English frigate out here in the darkness bearing no lights.’ But the ruse did not work this time. He could see officers pointing – most likely at the position of the bridle ports or perhaps the figurehead. A stern-chaser exploded with flame and smoke lobbing a ball among the rigging overhead to little effect.
‘Prepare to fire,’ Hayden said in English. He felt the Themis begin a ponderous turn to larboard, a sea from the north heeling them far over in the opposite direction. Hayden grabbed the barricade to stop himself from sliding down the deck. A swell from the sou’west found them, an inky wave-top lolloping over the rail to douse carronade and crew.
The Themis began to round up, wind pressing her down even as the wave rolled her heavily to starboard. The stern of the French ship of the line was abeam, but no guns could be brought to bear as the ship rolled. Before Hayden could call out, Barthe ordered sheets to be let fly, and the ship began to roll slowly back.
‘Come up. Come up – damn you!’ Hayden muttered. Barthe released the mizzen sheet, letting the sail flog, the gaff threatening to batter shrouds and any crew aloft within reach, but it allowed the helmsman to bring their bow a little to starboard and as the ship rolled up the gun captain of nearest carronade yanked his lanyard. No explosion followed, the lock too wet to fire. Guns did begin to fire then, raggedly, some from the gundeck below, others from the quarterdeck.
Shot struck the Frenchman’s stern. At such small distance – twenty-five yards – Hayden could hear iron crashing into wood. The French crew kept firing their stern chasers, and some men with muskets appeared at the rail. Hayden’s own marines returned fire but the Themis was quickly passing even as the French ship drew away.
‘She’s turning to larboard, sir,’ the gun captain declared. Hayden had just registered the same thing. ‘Run back and tell the helmsman to wear ship immediately.’
The man went off at a run.
Madison had returned from the quarterdeck, and Hayden called him over. ‘We will fire the larboard battery, Mr Madison. Go down to the gundeck and inform Mr Wickham.’ Hayden called to the bosun. ‘Mr Franks. We will fire the larboard battery as we cross the Frenchman’s stern.’
Barthe was on the gangway ordering headsail sheets hauled to bring the ship’s head around; the mizzen still luffed and would soon do itself damage if it hadn’t done so already but they could not sheet it in now or it would resist their turn to starboard.
The French two-decker and the British frigate turned slowly in opposite directions, the French to larboard. The distance between the two ships had somewhat increased, as the Frenchman had been flying downwind, but the ships were still too near.
Barthe came huffing up the gangway. ‘I’m not certain we can wear without tearing away our jib-boom,’ the sailing master observed, measuring the slow turn of their ship and the small distance between the tip of the jib-boom and the larboard quarter of the French ship.
‘The alternative is to take a full broadside from two decks of heavy guns,’ Hayden replied, all his attention fixed on the same sight. ‘I will risk our jib-boom.’
The frigate was handier than the seventy-four and brought the wind across her stern more quickly. A carronade on the enemy’s quarterdeck fired and the ball tore over Hayden’s head and down into their ship between the gangways. A gust pushed Hayden bodily off balance and he clutched the rail. Rain all but obliterated the French ship.
‘If we lose the jib-boom, Mr Barthe,’ Madison asked shakily, ‘will the foremast follow?’
‘Not with the wind aft and our topmast housed… At least, it’s unlikely.’
‘Sail!’ a man called from the waist. ‘To starboard! Upon us…!’
Hayden almost fell he spun so quickly. A dark mass issued out of the tangled rain, so near that spray from its plunging bow slapped over the Themis’s rail, soaking hands standing mesmerized by their guns.
‘Helm hard to starboard!’ Hayden shouted, the words nearly tearing out his throat from sheer volume.
The Themis continued her turn, her jib-boom almost scraping the French ship. Aboard the ghost ship, looming out of the darkness but yards away, men shouted… in English.
‘It’s Cole, sir,’ Barthe said turning to Hayden in astonishment.
Both British frigates lifted on the same sea, and began to surge forward, the Themis sheering to larboard, the Syren running straight. The French seventy-four wallowed in the trough for an instant, and as the Themis continued to turn away, Hayden watched the jib-boom of the Syren shatter the stern gallery of the Frenchman then tear away as the bow of the frigate slammed into the settling stern with a tremendous rending of timbers.
The two ships stuck fast as the sea passed beneath them, buckling them upward and then they tore apart with a splintering, wrenching sound. Although the French ship turned abruptly to larboard the Themis was miraculously spared her broadside.
‘She is stove in, sir…’ Barthe said breathlessly, ‘the Frenchman.’
‘And the Syren is down by the head.’
Hayden turned and made his way back along the swaying deck. ‘Mr Archer! Haul in the boats. You will have command of the ship. Keep us as near as you can to the Syren, but distant enough to be free of her spars should she roll toward us.’ Hayden stopped on the gangway and called down into the gundeck. ‘I need twenty-four men to man the boats, Mr Wickham – no, twenty-eight; I shall employ the jolly-boat as well. There are two hundred men to be rescued so the crews must be small. You shall have command of a cutter. Madison another. Hobson the launch. Childers the jolly-boat. Mr Hawthorne! Two armed marines to each boat and one to accompany Childers. We cannot have boats overset by panicked men.’
The boats were hauled quickly alongside, the crews mustered and sent down the heaving ladder. Hayden took his place in the largest boat – the barge – and grasped the tiller himself.
‘Away boats.’
‘Pull, lads,’ Hayden called over the wind, ‘the Syren is down by the head and will not swim long. We have two hundred souls to take away in this bloody gale. Let men say we broke our backs but none were lost.’
The boats set out over the confused sea, the dark shape of the Syren not too distant but slightly upwind. Although rain slashed down on them, as Hayden quartered the waves, the moon appeared between racing clouds offering a cool, thin illumination of dark seas. The Syren was unquestionably down by the bow; Hayden could see her sails flogging as she turned beam-on to the wind. Steerage-way had been lost. She was going to go down more quickly than he had hoped.
‘Good God, sir,’ one of the oarsman swore, ‘is that the Frenchman?’
Hayden twisted around to look aft. In a pool of moonlight the French two-decker lay down by her stern, her bow rising unnaturally, spars strangely angled. She had begun a slow roll to starboard, and the ants teeming in the rigging were men trying to stay above the surface of the winter sea. For a moment Hayden could not look away, the sight so nightmarish, so preternatura
lly horrifying. And then he turned back to his business. He had his father’s people to rescue. But for the few who might be preserved in the boats, his mother’s would go down into the sea.
It seemed a long pull to the Syren. Hayden had kept the boat crews minimal so that they might have room to carry away as many as possible, but it meant they were undermanned for rowing to windward. He wondered what might await him as he neared the Syren. A scene of panic, or one of desperate order. In his short career in the Navy he had been witness to both. Good officers could make a difference, preserving both order and life. The Syren had lost her captain and Cole was untested. If there was a scene of panic he would have to restore order before they could begin to take away the men. In his belt Hayden bore a brace of pistols that he hoped he would not be forced to use.
As they drew near the Syren, Hayden could see her bow was now just beneath the surface, her stern high. Men were clambering down into the boats from a gathering at the rail, someone calling out orders. No signs of disorder or mutiny could be seen.
‘Captain Cole,’ Hayden called. ‘We have come with all our boats. We must get you off, sir.’
‘God bless you, Hayden,’ Cole said with some emotion. ‘We can put but a few more into our own boats.’
‘Get them clear and have them pull for the Themis.’ Hayden looked around and for a desperate moment could not find his ship. And then there she was, a nebulous glow of red from her flares. Archer had put her about and was working his way back up towards the sinking Syren, but Hayden was distressed to see how distant she was.
The Syren’s boats, overburdened for the weather, pushed off, and Hayden ordered his own boats alongside. Cole leaned over the rail; he held a pistol pointed at the sky. ‘Mr Hayden,’ he hissed. ‘I am not sure we can maintain order here. This ship will not be long afloat.’
‘Then let us get men into the boats and send them away.’ Hayden turned to his marine lieutenant. ‘Mr Hawthorne, come with me, if you please, and bring a marine from each boat.’
Hayden clambered up the side, the redcoats in his wake. ‘I have twenty armed marines, Captain Cole,’ he lied loudly, ‘but I see we do not need them.’
Cole looked uncertain and frightened, and Hayden did not have time to raise his spirits.
‘Are there any ship’s boys or sick left aboard?’ Hayden called out. To his utter surprise, some boys and other men came out of the agitated mass of crew. Hayden ordered them down into the boats, a few of the sick requiring aid. He knew no names but he began touching men on the shoulder and sending them down as fast as the boats could receive them. To call for a number of men into the boats would have set off a rush leading to men being hurt or drowned, boats overset.
He could feel the men swallowing down their panic, like choking bile. But they were not faint-hearted, he could see that. Hayden went to the rail to be certain he had all the men the boats could bear and no more. ‘The best oarsmen must take up the spare sweeps. Pull like your lives depend on it.’
‘Captain Hayden, are you not going?’ Cole asked, surprised.
‘There will be time yet,’ Hayden said loud enough for all to hear, ‘we will all get off when the boats return.’
The ship did not lurch; nor did it seem to rise or fall much with the passing seas. A sluggish, unrelenting drift down into the winter sea was its only motion. There was barely any conversation among the officers or men who remained, though several stared at the water as it inched up the slanting deck from the bow towards the stern. The passing waves washed aboard forward and sluiced across the deck, higher each time. Finally one ran up the forecastle planks and sloshed down onto the gundeck through the great opening in the waist. The following sea did the same and then water from below rose up to meet it. Even Hayden regarded this with growing horror.
He turned and gazed out to sea, wondering if the first boats had intercepted the Themis and how quickly they would return. Even a strong swimmer would in all likelihood perish before he was found on this foul night for the winter sea drew the heat from a man’s body and left him helpless in but a few moments. Once in the water they would be lost.
Hayden turned back to the gathered crew, now muttering among themselves, the mass of them creeping back up towards the taffrail like a multi-legged creature.
‘Cole,’ Hayden said leaning close to the acting captain, ‘we should send the men up the mizzen.’
Cole nodded then leaned even closer to Hayden. ‘Will the boats return in time?’
‘Let us keep up our spirits,’ Hayden replied, ‘for the sake of the men.’ He said this with confidence but the entire scene seemed dark, a dream vision, the men all gathered silently aboard the sinking ship, the black, gale-driven seas rolling past. Hayden felt light-headed and wondered if he would wake.
Cole turned to the remaining crew, and said, in a voice only slightly shaky, ‘We will go up the mizzen mast in an orderly fashion. There is no need to rush. Laughlin, take those dozen closest you and proceed. Get out on the yards and make room for as many as we can.’
Hayden was trying to estimate the number of men – counting in the dark was impossible – and guessed there were perhaps sixty and fewer than a dozen officers and warrant officers – more than he’d hoped. The men began to climb, and Hayden was impressed by their nerve, gathering at the shrouds on either side of the quarterdeck and going up, quickly but without any pushing or shouldering aside. Bradley had a good, steady crew, Hayden could see.
Cole and Hayden went up last, each bearing a lantern, climbing awkwardly one-handed. A small box with the ship’s papers was passed up ahead of them, man to man, and the carpenter had the sense to send up axes to cut away the yards, in case it came to that; the men would have something to cling to in the sea while they perished of cold.
In the meagre moonlight, and the irregular smudge of illumination from smoke-stained lamps, Hayden could see the deck below contracting. It also angled a little more, forcing the men to cling to the tilting mast. The sailors did not speak, but clutched the rigging and each other, the stronger men aiding the weak, pulling them back to safety when they slipped or their grip gave way. Cole glanced at Hayden, his mouth a harsh line.
‘Sir…’ one of the men said. ‘Is that a ship?’
This caused a little hum of excitement among the men.
Hayden clambered up to the next ratline to look over the man nearest, and there, by moonlight, saw a dark hull and sails silhouetted against a moonlit cloud. The ship’s stern-lamps glowed unmistakeably.
‘The French frigate,’ another pronounced, and Hayden agreed.
The men began to shift about as though they would protect themselves from musket fire or the great guns but Cole and Hayden shouted over the noise assuring the men that the French captain would not fire. Not, Hayden thought, upon men who were so soon to be dead.
Hayden could make out men at the rail as the ship went ghosting by – silent men, staring in horrified fascination. Who had ever seen the like? – six dozen men clinging to the rigging of a mast that appeared to jut out of the sea – all slipping inescapably away.
‘Will they not save us?’ someone asked in a tone of lamentation.
‘No,’ an old sailor answered, his voice burdened with the sorrow of resignation. ‘No, they will rescue their own first, of whom there are so many more.’
Air began bubbling up audibly from the sinking ship. Only the aft ten feet of the stern remained dry, the foot of the mizzen already submerged. The ship began to go down more quickly now, as the air boiled out of the hull. Men began pressing themselves higher, doubling up, but still no one was forced off as they were looking out for one another. Hayden felt oddly proud of them, sticking together under the most desperate circumstances. Most of the men could not swim.
‘Who has the axes?’ Hayden called out. ‘Prepare to cut away the cross-jack yard. I don’t want yards falling on the men below, so await my order.’
Hayden stared down into the dark waters, the seas rolling past. Already the
rail was under and the water approaching the futtock staves. Like all the men, he searched the seas towards the Themis but could see no sign of boats.
The men had crept up so that most were astride the cross-jack yard or above on the tops or in the rigging of the top-gallant mast, which had not been housed. Hayden and Cole were the lowest men, perched on the ratlines just below the yard. Two men with small axes sat astride the mast just above them, looking, anxiously, from the rising water to Hayden. A sea rolled by beneath them and the water seemed to have risen half a dozen feet.
‘By God, we’re going down quickly now,’ Cole whispered to him.
‘Can you swim?’ Hayden leaned close and asked.
‘A little,’ Cole answered after the briefest hesitation.
‘We will have to get clear of this yard so it can be cut away. Pass up your lamp.’
The two lamps were sent up and Hayden and Cole climbed over the men above so that they might cling to the mizzen-top platform.
Hayden spoke loudly so that all the men might hear. ‘When the yard is afloat it will not support all of you if you try to mount it. Remain in the water and put your arms around it only.’ The water reached Hayden’s feet, even before it ran into his boots he could feel the cold of it through the leather, which was pressed around his foot and ankle by the pressure. Immediately his foot began to ache.
‘Cut away the jeers,’ Hayden said to the axemen, ‘and the lifts below the blocks so that we have some rope to hold on to.’
The axes began to rise and fall with urgency.
The few strokes required to severe the ropes were only just completed a moment before the water reached the yard, so that the spar, with all of its riders, plunged fewer than three feet, but spilled all of the men aboard into the frigid sea. A wave broke upon the last men clinging to the sinking mast and Hayden was torn from his precarious perch and flung into the icy sea. The cold knifed into his flesh, cramping muscles, and prying apart his joints. He broke the surface gasping, looked around and saw a boy astride the mast, balanced precariously and holding aloft a lamp – their only hope of discovery and salvation. Grabbing a flailing sailor by the scruff of his jacket Hayden swam the few strokes to the yard, just awash from all the bodies clinging to it.
A Battle Won Page 19
