Beneath the Aurora

by Richard Woodman

  ‘We’ll have the t’gallants off her and the courses clewed up. There’s enough wind to handle her under the topsails.’

  Huke and Birkbeck nodded their understanding. With the ship heeled and moving fast, the gunnery would be inaccurate and wild, and Drinkwater had given specific orders that he wanted little damage done to the enemies’ fabric.

  ‘Take ’em quickly by surprise, with as little damage as possible,’ he had said. The thought of rich prizes gained this policy a ready co-operation and the word passed along the gun decks. A short and lucrative cruise would be dandy!

  The bay beyond the bluff was just beginning to open now. They could see the two ships with boats about them, see too the stars and bars of their hostile nationality.

  There was a sudden sound as of rending silk. Aloft three holes appeared in the main topsail and the twanging of parted rigging came to the astonished knot of officers on the quarterdeck. To starboard half a dozen columns of water sprung into the air.

  ‘What the devil . . . ?’

  The boom of a battery’s fire rolled over the water towards them. Drinkwater saw the little clouds of smoke swiftly torn to shreds by the wind from the gun embrasures that lined the cliff-top of the bluff. Above the half-hidden but unmistakable grey line of a stone parapet, another swallowtail ensign rose upon a flagstaff.

  ‘There’s a fort there!’ Birkbeck cried in sudden comprehension, with the outraged tone of a cheat outsmarted.

  ‘Aye,’ Huke retorted, ‘and he knows us for what we are.’

  ‘He certainly ain’t fooled by our colours!’

  Confronted by this sudden revelation, Drinkwater had to think swiftly. He was reluctant to give up the attempt on the American ships, but the next salvo from the fort hit home, tumbling men from a forecastle gun like rag dolls. Their sudden cries rent the air, as an explosion of splinters erupted from the bulwark. Another shot ploughed up the deck and crashed through the opposite bulwark to fall, spent, into the sea alongside the starbord main-chains.

  ‘Let fall the courses, there! Set the t’gallants!’

  He must run on, then work up to windward and return under the lee of the opposite, southern shore, past the fort but out of range of the guns hidden behind those high ramparts. It was the only way he could reconnoitre the enemy position.

  The discovery of the fort transformed the situation. The matter would be more difficult than he had at first anticipated, no mere tip-and-run raid, but it could be managed if he kept his head. He felt the hull shudder as more shot struck them. How far did those damned guns in the fort traverse?

  Then, with the added momentum of the extra sails and without firing a shot in return, they swept out of range and Drinkwater forced himself to concentrate his attention on the two ships anchored in the bay. Both were frigate-built, large privateers, or possibly worse: perhaps naval frigates.

  It was essential, then, that Drinkwater should turn Andromeda and move her back to seaward of the enemy ships. At least he could cut them off from escape. Moreover, it was imperative that he find an anchorage, for they could not beat out through the gorge with the wind funnelling through it. The lower appearance of the southern shore suggested the sea-bed extended into the fiord at a similar gradient, affording him the shallow water he sought. He only hoped that whatever bottom the anchor flukes might strike, it would prove soft enough to hold them.

  ‘Full and bye, Mr Birkbeck. Brace the yards sharp up. I want to claw offshore, tack ship and seek an anchorage under the lee of the farther side.’ He turned to the first lieutenant. ‘Secure the guns, Mr Huke.’

  A buzz of disappointment greeted this order. On the gun deck Lieutenant Mosse, commanding the starboard battery, sheathed his sword and addressed his colleague in charge of the port cannon.

  ‘He who turns and runs away, lives to fight another day, eh, Jameson?’

  ‘A flea flees,’ returned Jameson.

  ‘You possess a shining wit, Jameson.’

  ‘I’d sooner that than a wicked tongue.’

  Andromeda came up into the wind with a clatter as the helm was put over. Her sails bellied aback as she came round and the bead-blocks aloft rattled as she bucked up into the wind.

  ‘Mainsail haul!’ The main and mizen yards were trimmed to the new course as the foreyards continued to thrust her head round on to the larboard tack.

  ‘Let go and haul!’

  The frigate settled down to claw her way across the fiord. The wind was strong now, augmented by cold katabatic gusts that slid down from the distant high ground. Drinkwater regarded the enemy fort over the starboard quarter.

  ‘The ruse with the ensign didn’t pay off then, sir,’ Huke said, after reporting the guns secure.

  ‘I think, Tom,’ Drinkwater replied, without taking the glass from his eye, ‘that as we carried off most of the Danish fleet, what few ships they retain are well known to any Danish officer worth his salt.’

  ‘Even one commanding a remote fort in Norway?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think it is any coincidence,’ Drinkwater said, counting the embrasures in the distant fort, ‘that the Yankee ships are anchored under those guns, do you?’

  ‘No. It’s a damnably perfect rendezvous for them.’

  ‘I think, sir,’ put in Birkbeck sharply, ‘they were expecting something larger!’

  An urgency in Birkbeck’s voice made Drinkwater lower the glass and look round. ‘What the devil . . . ?’

  He swung to where Birkbeck pointed. Far down the fiord, her white sails full of the following wind which had so lately wafted Andromeda through the narrows and which now mewed her up in the fiord, a large man-of-war was running clear of the gorge.

  ‘Now there’, said Drinkwater grimly, raising his glass, ‘is a bird of exceeding ill-omen.’

  CHAPTER 9

  October 1813

  The Wings of Nemesis

  Captain Drinkwater felt the cold grip of irresolution seize his palpitating heart. Here was the spectre of defeat, of dishonour. Retreat, he knew, merely postponed the inevitable and spawned greater reluctance; honour demanded he fight, if only to defend that of his flag. The white ensign now flew in place of the swallowtail ruse de guerre. He considered striking it after a few broadsides in permissible, if disreputable capitulation.

  These thoughts coursed through his mind while it was yet clouding with other, more demanding preoccupations, for he saw the approaching enemy not merely as a hostile ship-of-war, but as the manifestation of something more sinister, an agent of fate itself. Here came the punishment for all his self-conceit. Sommer had served not simply his own ends, but also a greater purpose, to accomplish the destruction of Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater and his overweening pride in the obscurity of a remote Norwegian fiord.

  How foolish he had been, he thought, to believe in providence as some benign deity which had taken a fancy to himself and which would cosset him personally. Blind faith proved only a blind alley, a trap.

  Oh, it had sustained him, to be sure, given him a measure of protection which he, during his brief strutting moment, had transmuted into a gallant confidence, but he had outrun his alloted span, a fact which he now knew with a chilling certainty. He was old and careworn, a dog who had had his day and was masquerading in a young man’s post, seduced by what . . . ?

  He found, in a wave of mounting panic, that he did not know. The vaguest notion of duty swept through his perception, to be dismissed as cynical nonsense and replaced by damning self-interest. What did he hope to achieve? This enemy ship approaching them had come, undoubtedly, to transfer the arms and munitions to the waiting Yankees, as Bardolini had foretold. And if providence had, in its cosmic wisdom, decided that Canada should, like America itself, be free of King George’s government, it would surely engineer the defeat of so petty a player as Nathaniel Drinkwater.

  He silently cursed himself. He could have, should have, been at home on his Suffolk acres with Elizabeth, expiating his many sins and wickednesses. His great conceit had been to thi
nk that fate had delivered Bardolini into his hands for him to accomplish some grandiloquent design and keep Canada as a dominion of the British kingdom. If fate had wanted that, it would never have condoned the revolt of the Thirteen Colonies.

  This simplistic and overwrought, though logical conclusion terminated Drinkwater’s nervously self-centred train of thought. Huke, Birkbeck, Mosse and Jameson were looking at him expectantly. The hands, many belonging to the watch below, just stood down from their action stations, milled curiously in the waist. They too stared expectantly aft.

  Drinkwater raised his Dollond glass again, a charade he enforced upon himself to compel his wits to return to reality. With slow deliberation he lowered the telescope.

  ‘We will attempt to break out to seaward,’ he said with what he hoped was a quiet authority. ‘Send the hands back to their quarters. Starboard battery to load bar-shot and elevate high. We will exchange broadsides as we pass and do our best to cripple that fellow. Mr Birkbeck, lay me a course to pass, say, seven cables distant from him . . .’

  ‘The wind will be foul in the narrows, sir.’

  ‘When the wind comes ahead we will tow through. He is heavier than we are. That is a small advantage, but an advantage, none the less. You have your orders, gentlemen. We have a chance, let us exploit it!’

  Drinkwater raised the glass again. Concentrating on the enemy’s image occluded the closer world, left him to master himself, conspicuous upon his quarterdeck but mercifully hidden from all.

  She was a big ship, a heavy frigate such as had long ago superseded the class to which Andromeda belonged, equal to the large American frigates which had so shocked the Royal Navy by a series of brilliant victories over British cruisers at the outbreak of the present war with the United States.

  To counter this, the British had reacted by cutting down some smaller line-of-battle ships, producing razées, such as the Patrician, which Drinkwater himself had lately commanded. Had he had her at his disposal now, he would have been confident of taking on this powerful enemy, for with her he had shot to pieces the Russian seventy-four Suvorov. That, he reproached himself bitterly, was a past conceit, and it was for past conceits and victories that he was now to receive due retribution.

  The Danish frigate, for he could tell she was such by her ensign, bore down towards them as they in turn, yards braced up, racing through the comparatively still waters of the fiord, rapidly closed the distance. Doubtless the Dane would seek to cripple Andromeda and, as the leeward ship, her guns would be pointing much higher. Drinkwater considered edging downwind, to give himself that advantage, but he dismissed the thought. It was just possible that the Danish commander did not know who, or what, they were, that their own ensign was masked by the mizen topsail, and he would think they were one of the American ships bearing down in welcome. No, the sooner they rushed past, the better.

  At all events, the Dane stood stolidly on.

  Huke came aft, his face grim. ‘All ready, sir.’

  ‘Very well.’

  The first lieutenant contemplated the Danish ship. ‘She’s a heavy bugger.’

  ‘Yes. Must be a new ship. I thought we’d destroyed all their power.’

  ‘They’ve had time to build new. We left them numerous gun-vessels for their islands, I suppose they’ve built this fellow to defend the coast of Norway.’

  ‘In which case he’s doing a damnably good job. You know, once we work ourselves past him, we could blockade those narrows . . .’

  ‘Let us get out first,’ Huke cautioned. ‘Hullo, he’s shortening down; the cat’s fairly out of the bag now!’

  Critically they watched the topgallant yards lowered and the black dots of topmen running aloft. Andromeda had been eight or nine miles from the Dane when they first sighted the enemy. Now less than four miles separated the two frigates as they closed at a combined speed of sixteen or seventeen knots. They would be abeam of each other in a quarter of an hour. It seemed an age.

  Mr Templeton was as confused about what was happening as he was about his own, private emotions. The ship’s company had run to their battle stations and the internal appearance of Andromeda had been transformed; bulkheads were folded up under the deckhead, and the officers’ quarters on the gun deck seemed suddenly to vanish. It had all been explained to him, but he still found the reality disquieting. Then, on passing the anchorage where, it was plain even to Templeton’s untutored eye, two American ships lay, they had turned away and the men had been stood easy. After what seemed to Templeton so long a voyage, with their objective at last in sight, Captain Drinkwater’s present action was incomprehensible. Templeton felt a certain relief that the air was not about to be filled with cannon-balls. Some days previously, Greer had picked one out of the garlands and thrown it to him. The sudden dead weight had almost broken his wrists and Greer had explained the crude technicalities of their brutal artillery with a morbid delight.

  The very obvious reversal of orders, with the men chattering excitedly as they resumed their positions, now puzzled him and he ventured to ask Lieutenant Mosse what was going on.

  ‘There’s an enemy frigate approaching,’ said Mosse obliquely, drawing his hanger with a wicked rasp. ‘I suggest you might go on deck and watch.’ Templeton hesitated and Mosse added, ‘Much safer than staying here.’

  Only half-believing this lie, Templeton reluctantly made for the forward companionway. Mosse winked at Jameson.

  Thus Mr Templeton made to ascend the ladder normally reserved for the crew.

  ‘Steady there, as she goes, Mr Birkbeck.’

  Drinkwater watched the approaching ship. Both frigates ran on almost exactly reciprocal courses. Birkbeck and Ashley stood beside the binnacle where three helmsmen and a quartermaster held Andromeda to her track. Along the bulwarks the stubby barrelled carronades of the quarterdeck battery were surrounded by their crews, the gun-captains holding the taut lanyards to the cocked flintlocks. On the forecastle a lesser number of carronades supported the long bow-chasers. Below them, a similar scene was enacted, with the larger gun-crews gathered round the heavy 12-pounders of the main batteries. At key points aboard Andromeda the lesser and petty officers mustered groups of men ready to board or repel the enemy, bring ammunition or fire hoses, or work the ship if she was to be manoeuvred. Other groups clustered in the tops, marines among them, to act as sharpshooters, man the light swivel guns or lay out along the yards to shorten sail.

  Upon the quarterdeck Huke, the first lieutenant, assisted the captain. A trio of midshipmen waited to act as messengers or attend to signals with the yeoman and his party. Lieutenant Walsh commanded the main detachment of marines who, interspersed with the carronades, laid their long muskets on the hammocks in the nettings and drew beads on the dark heads of the approaching enemy officers.

  ‘You may fire when your guns bear!’ Drinkwater’s voice rang out, clear and crisp. The moment of fearful anticipation had passed and he was as cold and as purposeful as a sword-blade. Matters would fall out as they would, come what may.

  ‘Pass word to the lieutenants on the gun deck, Mr Fisher,’ Huke said, relaying Drinkwater’s instruction. The boy ran off unobserved as every man concentrated upon the enemy ship. She was much closer than the seven cables Drinkwater had intended, but Mosse had drawn all the quoins and was sanguine that his guns would elevate. Periodically Drinkwater would quiz the gun-captain at the nearest carronade whose breech-screw fulfilled the same function.

  ‘How is she now?’

  ‘She’ll do, sir . . .’

  There was a last expectant hiatus which all knew would be broken by the eruption of the first gun, the starboard bow-chaser whose position commanded a field of fire closer aligned to the Andromeda’s line of advance than any other. The air was filled with the subdued hiss of the sea as it curled back from Andromeda’s apple-bow, the steady thrum of wind in the rigging, the creak of the ship, of her hemp and canvas, of the long tiller ropes, the straining sheets and tacks, the lifts, halliards and braces that co
nverted the energy of the wind into the advance of the frigate and her iron armament.

  Then came the report of the bow-chaser, the bright flash from its muzzle and the puff of cloudy smoke which hung for a second under the lee bow before being shredded by the wind. A second report, that of the enemy’s reply, coincided with the flat echo, followed by the general reverberations of a furious exchange of shots. Drinkwater marked the quickening succession of flashes rolling aft towards him as each gun bore.

  Then something went terribly awry. Instead of the bearing of the enemy opening with inexorable precision as the two frigates passed each other on reciprocal courses, there was a sudden, inexplicable acceleration. The Danish ship drew aft with miraculous speed and the British guns threw their shot not at the enemy, but at the empty sea on their own starboard beam.

  ‘What in the devil’s name . . . ?’

  ‘What the hell . . . ?’

  A dozen fouler exclamatory questions stabbed the air. Drinkwater spun round, momentarily confounded and utterly confused. All he knew was that from passing the beam, the enemy was now, against all reason, crossing their stern.

  ‘Oh, my God!’

  ‘For what we are about to receive . . .’

  Inexplicably, Andromeda lay in the ideal position to be raked.

  Mr Templeton saw exactly what happened, though he did not understand it at the time. He was, however, aware that the sudden movement of a group of seamen a few moments earlier had nothing to do with the business in hand, for he had heard no orders to stimulate men who, throughout the ship, were so manifestly poised but immobile with expectation. He was ascending the forward companionway as the two ships made their final approach and before the sudden and disorientating event which so perplexed all but a few on the upper deck, when he was abruptly shoved aside. As he spun round, expecting some jibe from Mosse, he caught sight of both lieutenants bent and staring out of gun-ports at the enemy, as were most of the men clustered about the guns, oblivious to this sudden rush of others to the upper deck.