Perilous Shore

by Chris Durbin

  ‘He saw your recommendation of a lieutenant for each division and it made him think. He’s an all-or-nothing man, you know, in this case it’s to be post-captains or nobody for him! That’ll make the army sit up and take notice,’ said Campbell. ‘Perhaps now they’ll take their own duties seriously.’

  He paused a moment.

  ‘The gang-boards won’t happen though; there’s not enough time and anyway that’s something the army should be asking for. Let ‘em learn the hard way! The commodore’s determined that the duke and his staff should take some responsibility for these new ways of doing things.’

  Holbrooke nodded. This new commodore was undoubtedly stirring things up. But it was a shame about the gang-boards.

  ◆◆◆

  6: Stone and Iron

  Friday, Second of June 1758.

  Kestrel, at Sea. Cézembre Island South one league.

  It had blown hard all night, one of those summer gales that had bedevilled seamen in the Channel for millennia. Now the wind had dropped, and the hard rain had passed through, leaving behind a low, damp, overcast sky that drizzled its displeasure over the sloop. The grey sky faded into the slate sea offering no hint of a horizon, just a featureless disputed region with indefinite boundaries. Only one point of land was visible in this first light of a new day, a small, rocky island three miles to the south that seemed to rise naturally from the sea, as though it were a part of it.

  ‘That’s it all right,’ said the sailing master, ‘Cézembre Island. It would be hard to mistake that north face, just look at it!’

  Josiah Fairview was an anomaly in an unrated sloop; a sailing master of considerable experience and a Channel Pilot to boot. By rights he should have been in a ship-of-the-line. The circumstances of him being sent to Kestrel were obscure, and Holbrooke had no wish to pry; he was too conscious of his own good fortune in having such a capable senior warrant officer.

  ‘This side is all rocks and narrow indents, there’s no chance of a landing; the south side is more sheltered. There’s a sandy shore and a good anchorage at high water, used by fishing boats and the like. But it’s shallow, you can almost walk to the island from Saint-Malo at low water springs.’

  Holbrooke studied the island through his telescope, intent on determining whether its batteries were operational. Sixty years ago, Louis XIV had commissioned his military engineer Vauban to fortify the place against English raids, but it had always been a half-hearted affair. There was a general feeling at the court that the privateers of Saint-Malo should pay for their own protection, but the men of commerce – the owners of the privateers – were not inclined to spend money on military fortifications. In any case, the obvious direction to attack Saint-Malo was from the north, and that approach was covered by the fort on Conchée Island. The best contribution that the burghers of the city had offered was to establish a quarantine hospital on Cézembre Island to guard against the plague being brought from the Mediterranean by sea. How that would help when the British arrived was unclear.

  Whether Cézembre was or was not fortified had, thus far, hardly been of great interest to the British navy. But now, with a force of five of the line, ten frigates, seven smaller men-of-war and over a hundred transports heading for Saint-Malo, the question had become urgent. A well-served battery on the island could close off the only passage into the port.

  ‘What do you think of this weather?’ Holbrooke asked, still studying the island through his telescope.

  Fairview looked thoughtfully to the west for a moment before answering. He held up a wetted finger to the listless breeze.

  ‘There’s no sign of it breaking yet, but it will, probably in the morning watch tomorrow.’ He looked right around the horizon. ‘When the wind starts to veer again you can reckon on an hour or two more of this clag,’ he declared. ‘It’s mostly a predictable pattern, the wind works itself up into a sou’westerly gale, then it veers into the west, the wind drops, and you get this God-awful miserable dampness for half a day. But then it veers again into the nor’west, and you can expect a fresh breeze and clear skies.’

  Holbrooke didn’t need this gratuitous lecture on the typical weather patterns around the British Isles; he was as familiar with it as any other sea officer. However, he’d come to accept that preaching on weather forecasting formed part of Fairview’s makeup. It came with his excellent ship handling and his intimate knowledge of every rock and shoal in the English Channel; you couldn’t have one without the other.

  ‘The Old Bank’s four miles to the west-southwest, sir. There are some nasty rocks at the southwestern end, all covered at high water but still shallow enough to rip out our bottom. We should give it a wide berth. Otherwise we’re in the clear here, about thirty fathoms of water I would guess, but I’d like to heave the lead, if you please, sir.’

  ‘Very well, Mister Fairview. Heave the lead and take us in closer to the island. Let’s see if we can tempt the batteries to reveal themselves.’

  ‘Beat to quarters, sir?’ asked the first lieutenant.

  ‘Let’s not make a drama out of it, Mister Lynton. Have the bosun call the men to quarters, dowse the galley fires but don’t clear for action. I have no intention of engaging any batteries that may or may not be on the island.’

  ‘Aye-aye sir,’ he replied, ‘I’ll just clear away the great guns. The swivels and muskets won’t be of any use to us.’ Holbrooke and Lynton had served together since the old days in the Mediterranean in Fury; they’d joined the frigate together in September ’55 at Port Mahon. Holbrooke had been a master’s mate then, and Lynton a midshipman. They’d both come a long way.

  The bosun called to a short seaman with arms almost longer than his legs, who hurried away for the deep-sea lead. Jackson had heard Fairview’s estimate of the depth, so he knew that he didn’t need all the elaborate arrangements that usually went with a cast in very deep water. With an expectation of only thirty fathoms, and the sloop making less than three knots, a man with a strong arm could treat it as a cast of the normal hand lead, albeit with the longer deep-sea line. No need for the gang of seamen calling watch as each let go their bight of the line in sequence.

  Kestrel ghosted towards Cézembre under easy sail.

  ‘And a half, twenty-eight,’ called the leadsman from the main chains. He hauled the line in so that Jackson could examine the tallow-filled indent in the bottom of the lead.

  ‘It’s gravel, with maybe a little broken coral,’ said the bosun, studying the sample of the seabed that had been brought up.

  Fairview nodded complacently to Holbrooke.

  ‘Just so, sir. It’ll shallow steadily from here. I wouldn’t want to take her past the ten-fathom line without some good purpose, there are hidden rocks and shoals all along this coast.’

  ‘What depth do you expect a mile to the north of the island?’

  ‘It wants an hour of the ebb and we’re four days before springs,’ he looked thoughtful for a moment, ‘perhaps twenty fathoms, sir.’

  Holbrooke remembered catching a glimpse of the quarter moon during the middle watch, in a break in the clouds, four days before spring tides sounded about right.

  ‘It’s deep water right up to the north coast of the island, but there are a few outlying rocks.’

  ‘Hands are at their quarters sir,’ reported Lynton.

  On a flush-decked sloop like Kestrel, the captain had an uninterrupted view of the main armament. All sixteen six-pounders were in his sight and from his vantage position on the new grating covering the tiller he had a slightly elevated view. The dockyard had done an excellent job on the wheel. It was placed just forward of the numbers fifteen and sixteen guns and abaft the mizzen. The tiller to which it was connected was hidden below the grating that Holbrooke was standing on. The wheel ropes had been carefully led below the gunwales and close into the scuppers so that the guns could be run out without fouling them. A new taffrail completed the illusion of a tiny poop deck. The sloop wasn’t quite so flush-decked anymore.

>   Kestrel was barely heeling with the westerly wind, and the waves from last night’s gale were flattening out with every mile that they penetrated deeper into the bay. The land forty miles to the west trended north until it ended at the Bréhat Isles. With the Cotentin Peninsula to the east and the Channel Islands to the north, this out-of-the-way corner of the channel where Normandy met Brittany – The Gulf of Saint-Malo – was open only to weather from the northwest. However, it had its own navigational problems and its brutal tides and treacherous shallows demanded a high degree of navigational expertise.

  ‘You can just see the Conchée Fort now sir, on the larboard bow.’

  Holbrooke trained his telescope to follow Fairview’s extended arm. He knew about the Conchée Fort, another of Vauban’s creations. The master engineer had taken over the whole of a small, rocky island to build this defensive work. Sixty-five years ago, while it was still being constructed, Benbow had captured it briefly. But now, with the work completed and the batteries manned, there was little chance of a fleet once again lying to the north of St Malo, as Benbow’s bomb vessels had done. It would be hard to bombard Saint-Malo from the sea without forcing a passage past Cézambre or Conchée.

  Commodore Howe had told Holbrooke his plan for the attack on Saint-Malo, or at least as much as he’d been able to decide upon before he’d heard the results of Kestrel’s reconnaissance. And it was, of course, subject to discussions with the Duke of Marlborough. If Cézembre was toothless then there was a possibility of sailing brazenly into the town, although the twin forts before the city and the guns on Herbou Island across the channel would suggest that it would be a bloody business. The part of his orders that Holbrooke hadn’t yet divulged, even to his first lieutenant, suggested an alternative. Having probed Cézembre, Kestrel was to sail around Pointe du Grouin and look at Cancale Bay. From there it was a march of only seven miles over easy country to the walls of Saint-Malo.

  ‘What’s the range to the island now, Mister Fairview?’ asked Holbrooke, more to stop the master fussing with the sails and the ship’s course than anything else; he could estimate the distance as well as the master could.

  ‘Let’s say a mile and a half, it’s not less than that and we’re safe for another five cables.’

  Holbrooke studied the high, indented north coast of the island. If there were active batteries they’d surely be at the western end where they could overlook the main passage into Saint-Malo. Conchée Fort lay to the east with a maze of rocks and shallows between the two islands. Any batteries that didn’t cover the channel to the west would be a waste of effort.

  Was there something far over on the western side of the island? Holbrooke lowered his telescope and rubbed his eye. There was just a hint of a straight vertical line, a suggestion of geometrical order among the riot of rocks and dull green scrub. Before he could replace the glass, he heard a hail from the maintop.

  ‘Deck there! I can see a flagpole at the windward end of that island, sir. There’s no flag flying but I can just make out some walls below it. Maybe a battery, sir.’

  Now, wasn’t that just typical. Holbrooke had the best telescope that the shops of Portsmouth could offer, bought against the almost unlimited credit that the proprietors were falling over themselves to extend to successful cruiser captains. It was by a new maker, John Dolland, and had the clearest, least distorted lenses he’d ever seen. Fairview coveted it most irreligiously. Yet his lookout could see the tiny flagstaff better than he could. Some allowance could be made for the height of the mainmast and the thickening of the atmosphere near the surface, but still…

  ‘Mister Edney,’ he said to the signal midshipman. ‘Take a glass up to the main masthead and tell me what you see.’

  Holbrooke could see the flagstaff quite clearly now, and there certainly was masonry below it, regular stonework that might be the walls of a battery. It could be an abandoned position, or one just temporarily unmanned. Or it could harbour half a dozen forty-two pounders loaded and primed, their gunners blowing on the slow match, waiting for this obviously British sloop to come within range.

  ‘Mister Fairview, haul your wind, I believe we’ve come close enough.’

  There was a flurry of activity as Kestrel’s bows moved closer to the wind that had already veered a point. Sheets were hauled, bowlines shifted, and the sloop settled on a course parallel to the north coast of the island. They were still drawing closer to the battery, for Holbrooke was now sure that there was a gun emplacement there although not yet satisfied that it was manned. They were closing the battery, but they were doing so obliquely.

  ‘Captain sir!’

  That was Edney from the maintop.

  ‘There’s definite activity under the flagstaff. There’s a cloud of dust… Ah! there’s a flag, sir.’

  The Bourbon white of France!

  No sooner had the flag soared up the mast than a single puff of smoke erupted from a point below it, quickly followed by the flat boom of a heavy artillery piece. A column of water appeared two cables to starboard of Kestrel and a cable to seaward.

  ‘Poor practice,’ said Lynton. ‘They should know their ranges with nothing better to do all day but prepare for this moment.’

  Holbrooke looked thoughtfully at the point where the plume had shown itself.

  ‘Bring us about, Master. Set a course a league clear of Conchée then to round Cancale Point.’

  Kestrel came sweetly through the wind and had barely settled on her new course when there was another hail from the masthead.

  ‘They’ve fired again, sir! A whole battery, maybe four pieces.’

  Edney’s shout was only fractionally ahead of sound of the guns, then the sea off the larboard quarter erupted as a close grouping of balls plunged into the waves just a hundred yards from the sloop.

  ‘Thirty-six pounders,’ commented Lynton casually, as though nothing untoward was happening, as though they hadn’t cheated death by only a minute or two.

  Fairview avoided Holbrooke’s eyes. That was where Kestrel would have been if they hadn’t tacked – if Holbrooke hadn’t ordered the ship about. The battery commander must have carefully adjusted his guns after the first round, but he’d reckoned without Kestrel’s handiness in stays. Having seen Kestrel’s turn, he’d probably ordered his guns to fire in exasperation, knowing that they must miss but unwilling to waste time in moving their point of aim. He’d made a mistake. Kestrel was bowling along at six knots, so every five minutes – the probable time it would take to reload and point the guns – took the sloop five cables further to sea. Kestrel would have to endure another salvo, but it would be at maximum range this time.

  Holbrooke felt a slight twinge, not of fear, more of nervousness as he waited for the next salvo. He looked furtively at his watch. Four minutes, five, six. He smiled, not even the slowest gun crew would take more than six minutes to load and fire again, and certainly not the superb Royal Artillery of France, the monarchs of a hundred battlefields.

  Lynton looked at his captain and grinned. ‘Any moment now,’ he said, almost as though he was looking forward to the iron balls plunging down upon the frail timbers of his ship.

  Another minute passed, and the hypothesis that Holbrooke had been working on became a certainty.

  ‘I believe that’s the last we’ll hear of the battery on Cézembre Island, gentlemen,’ he said complacently. ‘Those guns are sited to cover the passage into Saint-Malo, so they’re pointing west. We just sailed nor’east out of their firing arcs. That’s why the battery commander wasted his only salvo, he knew that was all he’d get.’

  His officers were looking at him strangely, and he realised that it was admiration. None of them had thought it through, they were all too carried away by the moment.

  ‘Mister Fairview. Plot the line from that battery where he fired the salvo. It’ll be useful information for the future.’ He paused for effect. ‘You may label it Fairview’s Arc of Safety on the chart, if you please.’

  Everyone on the deck hea
rd the captain’s joke, and at quarters that meant most of the ship’s company. There was a murmur of laughter across the gun crews. What they didn’t know, but Holbrooke did, was that Fairview saw it as no joke at all. Holbrooke was morally certain that at some point he’d be asked to initial a notation on a carefully copied version of the chart, stating to the officials at the navy board that the line of safety off Cézembre Island bore the name of Sailing Master Fairview. The master had a streak of vanity and self-promotion that would surprise many of his friends.

  ‘A ring of stone and iron, sir,’ said Fairview, already planning how he would render the lines on his draft chart. ‘With batteries on Cézembre and Conchée, not to mention Herbou and Fort Royal and the bay forts when you get closer, there’s no approaching Saint-Malo from the sea, not without the whole Channel Fleet behind us.’

  ◆◆◆

  7: Cancale Bay

  Friday, Second of June 1758.

  Kestrel, at Sea. Off Cancale Bay.

  The wind was fair to round the dangerous reefs that thrust northeastwards from Cancale Point. With the breeze on her quarter and stuns’ls set, Kestrel ran down the ten miles before the men had been called to their dinner. The visibility hadn’t increased, and the land was only a hazy line to starboard.

  ‘When can we veer, Mister Fairview?’ asked Holbrooke. He was anxious to fulfil the second part of the orders that had come to him under Howe’s signature. The orders that he’d shared with nobody.

  ‘I don’t have a good fix, sir, and the tides can be all over the place in a little corner like this. I’d prefer to be safe and stand on for another glass, if it doesn’t interfere with your needs.’

  Holbrooke recognised that Fairview was fishing for information, and he couldn’t blame him for doing so. Lynton had done the same over a late breakfast, and Midshipman Edney was loitering within earshot now, just in case his captain should let anything slip.