by David Weber
The Captain From Kirkbean
(1998)*
David Weber
Captain Sir John Paul stood on the quarterdeck of His Majesty’s seventy-four gun ship-of-the-line Torbay, shading his eyes against the Caribbean’s brilliant August sunlight. Torbay, the seventy-four Triumph, and the sixty-four Prince William, were four days out of Antigua with a Jamaica-bound convoy, and he lowered his hand from his eyes to rub thoughtfully at the buttons on his blue coat’s lapel—twelve gold buttons, in groups of three, indicating a captain with more than three year’s seniority—as he watched the sloop Lark’s cutter pull strongly towards his ship.
The cutter swept around, coming up under Torbay’s lee as the seventy-four lay hove to. The bow man neatly speared the big ship’s main chains with his boathook, and the offers in the stern leapt for the battens on her tall side. A lazy swell licked up after him, soaking him to the waist, but he climbed quickly to the entry port, nodded to the lieutenant who raised his hat in salute, and the hurried aft.
“Well, Commander Westman,” Captain Paul said dryly. “I trust whatever brings you here was worth a soaking?”
“I believe so, sir.” Lark’s captain touched his hat—no junior dared omit any proper courtesy to Sir John—then reached inside his coat. “Lark sighted a drifting ship’s boat yesterday evening, sir. When I investigated, I discovered three Frenchmen—one dead officer and two seamen in but little better shape—from the naval brig Alecto. She foundered in a squall last week … but the officer had this on his person.”
He held out a thick packet of papers. Paul took it, glanced at it, then looked up quickly.
“I, ah, felt it best to deliver it to you as soon as possible, sir,” Westman said.
“You felt correctly, Commander,” Paul replied almost curtly, then beckoned to the officer of the watch. “Lieutenant Chessman, make a signal. All captains are to repair aboard Torbay immediately!”
It was sweltering in Sir John’s day cabin, despite the open windows, as Captain Forest was shown in. Prince William’s commander had had the furthest to come, and he was acutely aware that he was the last captain to arrive … and that Captain Paul did not tolerate tardiness. But Sir John said nothing. He didn’t even turn. He stood gazing out into the sun dazzle, hands clasped behind him and lost in memory, while his steward offered Forest wine. His fixed baze saw not the Caribbean’s eye-hurting brightness but the seething gray waste of the Channel and surt spouting white on a rocky shore as Sir Edward Hawke’s squadron pursued Admiral Conflans into Quiberon Bay.
By most officer’s standards, Hawke had been mad to follow an enemy into shoal water in a rising November gale when that enemy had local pilots and he did not. But Hawke had recognized his duty to keep the invasion army gathered round nearby Vannes in Brittany, not England. Confident of his captains and crews, he had driven Conflan’s more powerful squadron onto the rocks or up the Vilaine River in an action which had cost the French seven ships of the line and almost three thousand men in return for only two of his own ships.
Quiberon had been the final triumph of what was still called the “Year of Victories,” and Midshipman John Paul of Kirkbean, Scotland, serving in the very ship Captain Sir John Paul now commanded, had seen it all. Torbay had been the second ship in Hawke’s line, under Captain Augustus Keppel, and young Paul had watched—twelve years old and terrified for his very life—as broadsides roared and a sudden squall sent the sea crashing in through the lee gunports of the French seventy-four Théséé and drove her to the bottom in minutes.
Paul would never forget her crew’s screams, or his own ship’s desperate efforts to save even a few of them from drowning, but more even than that, he remembered the lesson Hawke had taught him that day as he turned to face the captains seated around his table with their wine. Every one of them was better born than he, but John Paul, the son of a Scottish gardener—the boy who’d found a midshipman’s berth only because his father had aided the wife of one of Keppel’s cousins after a coach accident—was senior to them all.
Which means, he though wryly, that it is I who have the honor of placing my entire career in jeopardy by whatever I do or do not decide this day.
It was ironic that twenty years of other officers’ reminders of their superior birth should bring him here. Under other circumstances, I might well have been on the other side, he mused. “Traitors or no, at least the rebels believe the measure of a man should be himself, not whom he chose as his father!
But no sign of that thought showed on his face, and his voice was crisp, with no trace of the lowland brogue he’d spent two decades eradicating, as he tapped the papers Westman had brought him and spoke briskly.
“Gentlemen, thanks to Commander Westman”—he nodded to Lark’s captain—“we have intercepted copies of correspondence from De Grasse to Washington.” The others stiffened, and he smiled thinly. “This copy is numbered ‘2’ and addressed to Commodore de Barras at Newport for his information, and I believe it to be genuine. Which means, gentlemen, that I’ve decided to revise our present orders somewhat.”
“Toss oars!” the coxswain barked, and Captain Paul watched with carefully hidden approval as the dripping blades rose in perfect unison and the bow man hooked onto Torbay’s chains. The captain stood, brushing at the dirt stains on his breeches, and then climbed briskly up his ship’s side. Pipes wailed, pipeclay drifted from white crossbelts as Marines slapped their muskets, and his first lieutenant removed his hat in salute.
Paul acknowledged the greeting curtly. In point of fact, he approved of Mathias Gaither, Torbay’s senior lieutenant, but he had no intention of telling Gaither so. He knew he was widely regarded as a tyrant—a man whose prickly disposition and insatiable desire for glory more than made up for his small stature. And, he admitted, there was justice in that view of him.
The motley human material which crewed any King’s ship demanded stern discipline, yet unlike many captains, Paul’s discipline was absolutely impartial, and he loathed bullies and officers who played favorites. He was also sparing with the lash, given his belief that flogging could not make a bad man into a good one but could certainly perform the reverse transformation. Yet he had no mercy on anyone, officer or seaman, who failed to meet hisqqq harshly demanding standards, for he knew the sea and the enemy were even less forgiving than he. And if he sought glory, what of it? For a man of neither birth nor wealth, success in battle was not simply a duty but the only path of advancement, and Paul had seized renown by the throat two years before, off Flamborough Head in HMS Serapis, when he sank the American “frigate” Bonhomme Richard. The old, converted East Indiaman had fought gallantly, but her ancient guns, rotten hull, and wretched maneuverability had been no match for his own well-found vessel. Her consort, the thrity-six gun Alliance, could have been much more dangerous, but Alliance’s captain—a Frenchman named Landais—had been an outright Bedlamite, and Paul had entered port with Alliance under British colors.
His knighthood—and Torbay—had been his reward for that … and now he was risking it all.
He grimaced at the thought and headed aft to pace his scorching quarterdeck. If anything befell the convoy, his decision to order it back to Antigua escorted by a single sloop would ruin him, and he knew it. Worse, the orders he had elected to ignore had come from Sir George Rodney, who was even less noted for tolerating disobedience than Paul himself. But at least he also understood the value of initiative. If events justified Paul’s decision, Rodney would forgive him; if they didn’t, the admiral would destroy him.
He paused in his pacing and beckoned Gaither to his side.
“Yes, sir?”
“Lieutenant Jansen needs more men. General Cornwallis has supplied ample labor and a battal
ion to picket each battery, but Jansen needs more gunners. Instruct the Gunner to select a half-dozen gun captains—men with experience using heated shot.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll see to it at once.”
“Thank you.” Paul nodded brusquely and resumed his pacing as Gaither summoned a midshipman. He heard the lieutenant giving the lad quiet instructions, but his mind was back on the scene he’d just left ashore.
It was August 25, 1781. His squadron had taken the better part of nine days to reach Chesapeake Bay, but he’d picked up two more of the line along the way, having met the old sixty-gun Panther in the Caicos Passage, and the seventy-four Russel, bound for New York after repairing damages at Antigua, off the Georgia coast. Jasper Somers, Russel’s captain, was barely two months junior to Paul, and he had been less than pleased by the latter’s peremptory order to join Torbay. Paul hadn’t blamed Somers, though that hadn’t prevented him from commandeering Russel with profound relief. But welcome as her guns were, the ship accompanying her to New York had been even more welcome. HMS Serapis had brought him luck once before; perhaps she would do so again.
Something had better do so. He had five of the line, counting Panther (which was considerably older than he was), plus Serapis, the forty-four Charon (which he’d found anchored off Yorktown with the small frigates Guadalupe and Fowey and the tiny sloop Bonetta), and Westman’s Lark. That was all, whereas de Grasse must have at least twenty sail of the line. That force could small Paul’s cobbled up command in an hour, and he knew it.
But he also knew General Rochambeau and the rebel Washington were headed south with far more men and artillery than Cornwallis could muster. If de Grasse could command the bay long enough for the Franco-American army to crush Yorktown, the consequences would be catastrophic. Efforts against the rebellion had been botched again and again, and support back home had weakened with each failure. Personally, Paul suspected the colonies were lost whatever happened, and the sooner the Crown admitted it, the better. America wasn’t Ireland. There was an entire ocean between Britain and her rebellious colonists, and they couldn’t be disarmed with the wilderness pressing so close upon them. Besides, England couldn’t possibly field a large enough army to hold them down by force forever.
But personal doubt didn’t change the duty of a King’s officer. And even if it could have, the war was no longer solely about America. It might have started there, but England now faced the French, the Dutch, the Spanish … The entire world had taken up arms against Paul’s country. One more major defeat might seal not only the fate of North America but of England herself, and Washington, at least, grasped that point thoroughly. He’d wanted the French fleet to support an attack on the main British base at New York, but de Grasses’ letters made it clear he could come no further north than the Chesapeake. Apparently Louis XVI’s willingness to aid his American “allies” did not extend to uncovering his own Caribbean possessions or convoy’s.
None of which would make a successful combination against Cornwallis any less of a calamity, and Paul’s jaw clenched. He respected Rodney deeply, but the last year had not been Sir George’s finest. True, his health was atrocious, but his absorption in the capture of St. Eustatius from the Dutch and his inexplicable refusal to force an engagement in June following de Grasse’s capture of Tobago, had set the stage for the present danger.
Without control of American waters, we can’t possibly wear the rebels down, Paul thought grimly, and if the Frogs can win sea control here, they may take control of the Channel, as well. Holding it would be another matter, but they only require control long enough to land an army. And the only way to ensure that they can’t is to smash their fleet—which means fighting them at every possible opportunity even at unfavorable odds. Those who will not risk, can not win. Hawke understood that, and so should Rodney!
He shook himself. Rodney did understand, but he was a sick man who had been given reason to belief de Grasse was bound back to Europe, escorting a major French convoy. That was why he’d elected to return to England himself and sent Sir Samuel Hood to assume command at New York after Admiral Graves’ unexpected death, with only fourteen of the line as reinforcements. But Rodney’s intelligence sources had been wrong … and Sir John Paul was the senior officer who knew it.
That made it his responsibility to act. He could have taken his captured letters to New York, but Hood had strongly endorsed Rodney’s estimate of de Grasse’s intentions, and he was renowned for his stubbornness. Changing his mind could require days England might no longer have, and so Paul had taken matters into his own hands. He would compel Hood to sail for the Chesapeake by taking his own small force there and sending dispatches to announce what he’d done.
Samuel Hood was arrogant, stiff-necked, and contentious, but he was also a fighter who would have no choice but to sail south once he learned Paul had committed a mere five of the line to a fight to the death against an entire fleet. If Paul’s estimate of de Grasse’s intentions proved wrong, he could always be punished later. If it proved correct, Hood’s failure to relieve him would be an ineradicable blot on not only his personal honor but that of the Navy itself.
Paul drew a deep breath and walked to the side, looking out at his command. To a landsman, his ships must look small and fragile, isolated from one another as each lay to a pair of anchors, but he saw with a seaman’s eye. The mouth of the Chesapeake was ten miles wide, and no squadron this small could cover it all. Yet for all its size, the shallow bay was a dangerous place for deep-draft ships-of-the-line. Paul didn’t have to block its entire entrance: only the parts of it de Grasse’s heavy ships could use.
That was why Russell and Charon were anchored between the shoals known as the Middle Ground and the Inner Middle Ground, blocking the channel there, while Triumph, Panther, Serapis, Prince Willian, and Torbay blocked the wide channel between the Inner Middle Ground and the shoal called the Tail of the Horseshoe. And because they had anchored on springs—heavy hawsers led from each ship’s capstan out an after gunport and thence to her anchor cable, so that tightening or loosening them pivoted her in place—they could turn to fire full broadsides at any Frenchmen attempting to force the channels.
Unfortunately, there were two other ways into the bay. One, the North Channel, between the Middle Ground and Fisherman’s Island at the north side of the entrance, was no great threat. Landing parties and detachments from Cornwallis’ army had emplaced twelve of Prince William’s twenty-four-pounders—and furnaces to heat shot for them—on the island, and the channel was narrow enough for them to command easily.
The southern side of the Bay’s entrance was more dangerous. Lynnhaven Roads, inside Cape Henry, was shallow, but it would suffice. Indeed, it was in most ways an ideal anchorage; sheltered by the cape, yet close enough to open water for a fleet to sortie quickly if an enemy approached. But Paul’s ships were stretched as thinly as he dared blocking the channels; he couldn’t possibly bar Lynnhaven Roads as well.
What he could do was place a second battery on the western side of Cape Henry, although Lieutenant Jansen was finding it difficult to mount his guns. Simply ferrying them ashore was hard enough, for the battery consisted of thirty-two-pounders from the seventy-fours. Each gun weighed over two and a half tons, but only their three-thousand-yard range could hope to cover the water between the cape and Torbay, and at least Jansen had finally found a place to site them.
I’ve done all I can, Paul told himself, gazing out at the boats pulling back and forth across the water. Something must be left to chance in a fight … and simply finding us waiting for him should at least make de Grasse cautious. I hope.
He shook himself as the ship’s bell chimed eight times to announce the turn of the forenoon watch. His stomach growled as the bell reminded it he’d missed breakfast yet again, and he grinned wryly and took himself below in search of a meal.
“It would appear you were correct, Sir John,” Captain Somers said quietly, five days later.
He and Paul stood gazing a
t a chart of the Chesapeake while Torbay creaked softly around them, and Commander Westman stood to one side. Fitting that Westman should be the one to sight de Grasse’s approach, a corner of Paul’s brain mused, but it was a distant thought beside the strength estimate Lark had brought him.
Twenty-eight of the line. Six times his strength, and no sign of Hood. It was one thing to know his duty, he found; it was quite another to know a desperately unequal battle which had been only a probability that morning had become a certainty by evening.
“What d’you expect them to do?” Somers asked, and Paul rubbed his chin, eyes fixed on the chart in the candlelight.
“They’ll scout first,” he said. “For all de Grasse knows, we’re the entire New York squadron. But he won’t need long to determine our actual strength, and` I expect he’ll try a quick attack then. He’ll have the flood only until the end of the morning watch; after that, the ebb will make the channels even shallower.”
“Um.” It was Somer’s turn to rub his chin, then nod. “I think you’re right,” he said, and grinned suddenly. “I was none too pleased when you pressed my ship, Sir John. Now—”
He shrugged, grinning more broadly, and held out his hand.
The morning was cool but carried promise of yet another scorching afternoon as Paul came on deck. Although the ship had cleared for action before dawn, he’d taken time for a leisurely breakfast. It hadn’t been easy to sit and eat with obvious calm, but this would be a long day, and he would need all his energy. Even more importantly, Torbay’s crew must know he was so confident he’d seen no reason to skip a meal.
If only they knew the truth, he mused, and glanced at the masthead commission pendant to check the wind. Still from the west-southwest. Good. That would make it more difficult for any Frenchman to creep around Cape Henry into Lynnhaven Roads.
He lowered his eyes to the guard boats pulling for their mother ships. The French were scarcely noted for initiative in such matters, but in de Grasse’s shoes Paul would certainly have attempted a boat attack, for the French squadron had more than enough men and small craft to swamp his vessels. However unlikely Frenchmen were to make such an attempt, he’d had not option but to guard against the possibility, and he hoped de Grasse would delay long enough for those boat crews to get some rest.
