by Chris Durbin
The Cursed Fortress
The Fifth Carlisle & Holbrooke Naval Adventure
Chris Durbin
To
Beth
our teacher
The Cursed Fortress Copyright © 2019 by Chris Durbin. All Rights Reserved.
Chris Durbin has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Editor: Lucia Durbin.
Cover Design: Book Beaver.
Cover Image: A Royal Navy Fourth Rate Off the South Coast. By Nicholas Pocock. Rountree Tryon Galleries.
This book is a work of fiction. Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, or to events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Chris Durbin
Visit my website at:
www.chris-durbin.com
First Edition: 2019
***
Contents
The Cursed Fortress
Dedication
Nautical Terms
Principal Characters: Fictional
Principal Characters: Historical
Chart: Western Atlantic
Chart: Nova Scotia & Île Royale
Chart: Cape Dauphin
Chart: Louisbourg & Gabarus Bay
Pitt's North American Strategy
Carlisle and Holbrooke
Prologue: Louisbourg Fog
1: Chiara’s Secret
2: A Curious Incident
3: Williamsburg
4: The Carlisle Family
5: Night Encounter
6: The Chase
7: Dawn Action
8: New England
9: The First Lieutenant
10: Halifax
11: Île Royale
12: The Mission
13: Gabarus Bay
14: Under Fire
15: The Chase
16: The Trap
17: The Siboux Islands
18: Poor Bloody Soldiers
19: Take or Burn
20: The Blockade
21: News of Ice
22: Boscawen
23: Wolfe’s Gamble
24: Lighthouse Point
25: Fire in the Harbour
26: Cutting Out
27: Louisbourg’s Fall
28: News from the South
29: Unfinished Business
30: A Happy Return
The Seven Years War in Late 1758
Where Fact Meets Fiction
Other Carlisle & Holbrooke Naval Adventures
Bibliography
The Author
Fun Fact
Feedback
Nautical Terms
Throughout the centuries, sailors have created their own language to describe the highly technical equipment and processes that they use to live and work at sea. This holds true in the twenty-first century.
When counting the number of nautical terms that I’ve used in this series of novels, it became evident that a printed book wasn’t the best place for them. I’ve therefore created a glossary of nautical terms on my website:
https://chris-durbin.com/glossary/
My glossary of nautical terms is limited to those that I’ve used in this series of novels, as they were used in the middle of the eighteenth century. It’s intended as a work of reference to accompany the Carlisle and Holbrooke series of naval adventure novels.
Some of the usages of these terms have changed over the years, so this glossary should be used with caution when referring to periods before 1740 or after 1780.
The glossary isn’t exhaustive. A more comprehensive list can be found in Falconer’s Universal Dictionary of the Marine, first published in 1769. I haven’t counted the number of terms that Falconer has defined, but he fills 328 pages with English language terms, followed by a further eighty-three pages of French translations. It is a monumental work.
An online version of the 1780 edition of The Universal Dictionary (which unfortunately does not include all the excellent diagrams that are in the print version) can be found on this website:
https://archive.org/details/universaldiction00falc/
***
Principal Characters: Fictional
Captain Edward Carlisle: Commanding Officer, Medina
Lady Chiara Angelini: Captain Carlisle’s wife
Joshua Carlisle: Captain Carlisle’s father
Charles Carlisle: Captain Carlisle’s brother
Barbara Dexter: Captain Carlisle’s cousin
Cranmer Dexter: Barbara’s husband
Patrick Moxon: First Lieutenant, Medina
John Hosking: Sailing Master, Medina
David Wishart: Master’s Mate, Medina
Enrico Angelini: Midshipman, Medina. Cousin to Lady Chiara
Able Seaman Whittle: A follower of Captain Carlisle’s from his home in Virginia
Black Rod: Chief-of-Household of the Angelini family, real name unknown
***
Principal Characters: Historical
Admiral Edward Boscawen: Naval Commander-in-Chief at the siege of Louisbourg
Rear Admiral Sir Charles Hardy: Commander of the Louisbourg blockade squadron
Commodore Alexander Colville (7th Viscount Colville of Culross): Commander of the squadron at Halifax
Major General Jefferey Amherst: Land Forces Commander at the siege of Louisbourg
Brigadier-General General James Wolfe: Commander of the assault force for the Louisbourg landings
Joannis-Galand D’Olabaratz: Port Captain Louisbourg
Jean D’Olabaratz: Son of Joannis-Galand, Commanding Officer L’Aigle
Augustin de Boschenry de Drucour: French Governor of Louisbourg
Marquis des Gouttes: French Naval Commander at Louisbourg
***
Chart: Western Atlantic
Chart: Nova Scotia & Île Royale
Chart: Cape Dauphin
Chart: Louisbourg & Gabarus Bay
‘It is more difficult to defend a coast than to invade it.’
***
Sir Walter Raleigh when confronted with pessimism and delay in the planning of an attack on Fayal in the Azores, 1597.
From: Lives of the British Admirals Volume IV, Robert Southey.
***
Pitt's North American Strategy
Pitt’s strategy for the new year was to unleash a three-pronged attack on the French possessions in North America that would last through 1758 and 1759 and culminate in the surrender of New France. A naval squadron would carry an army up the St. Lawrence River to Quebec and Montreal while two further armies would march up the Ohio Valley and across the wilderness to Lake Ontario.
The path to the St. Lawrence, however, was guarded by the French fortress of Louisbourg on Île Royale. A poorly planned expedition in 1757 had been defeated by a combination of the weather and a buildup of French naval forces. Pitt was determined that the 1758 attempt would be successful, and he planned that Louisbourg should fall early enough in the season to allow the fleet and army to move on up the St. Lawrence before the autumn weather could set in.
Hawke with the Channel Fleet and Osborn in the Mediterranean were tasked with preventing the French navy and French supply ships from crossing the Atlantic. Pitt and Anson knew that it was impossible to effectively blockade the whole of the European Atlantic coast, from Brest to Gibraltar, and they needed to have a substantial naval squadron
cruising off Louisbourg as soon as the ice should melt in the Spring. That required the ships to be over-wintered as close to Louisbourg as possible. Halifax was selected for this grand gamble, even though it had been established as a naval yard only a few years before and the facilities were rudimentary. No squadron had ever before been maintained under such conditions.
***
Carlisle and Holbrooke
The start of the year of 1758 brought new horizons for our two heroes. They had served together in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, first in the small frigate Fury and then in the larger Medina, but that was all about to change.
Holbrooke was promoted to commander and given the sloop Kestrel with orders were to report to the Admiralty in London. Holbrooke’s story in the first half of 1758 is told in Holbrooke’s Tide, the fourth of this series of naval adventures.
Carlisle resumed command of Medina, having recovered from his injuries received in a fight with a Dutch pirate. He’d been expecting to stay on the Jamaica Station, but orders to escort a convoy to Hampton, Virginia and then to join the Louisbourg blockading squadron threw his plans – and those of his wife, Chiara – into disarray.
The story continues …
***
Prologue: Louisbourg Fog
Saturday, Fourteenth of January 1758.
L’Aigle, at Sea. Off Louisbourg, Île Royale.
The Île Royale fogs were notoriously impenetrable; thick as pea soup and horribly persistent. Jean d’Olabaratz had given up trying to stare through this one, and now he confined himself to watching the compass and the luff of the main tops’l that could just about be discerned through the murk. He was looking and listening with the utmost concentration, for all their lives depended upon his skill. After all, he’d mostly grown up at Louisbourg, his father was the Port Captain, and he’d lived half of his life on that wild and inhospitable shore.
‘A point to larboard,’ he ordered the maître de manoeuvre, ‘and let there be silence on the upper deck so that we can hear the surf on Goat Island or White Point.’
The quartermaster nodded to the steersman, who eased the wheel a few spokes, watching the compass to avoid overshooting his mark. All hands were on deck and at their sail handling stations; the tension was as thick as the fog.
L’Aigle had left Rochefort at the end of November escorting four merchant ships with supplies for Louisbourg. She had been built as a fifty-gun two-decker but now, armed en flute, she carried almost eight hundred tons of food, clothing and infantry weapons. The merchant ships carried a further seven hundred tons. It represented a timely relief for the isolated and beleaguered town and fortress.
Things had started to go wrong as soon as L’Aigle and her charges were at sea. Shortly after they left Rochefort, they’d been sighted by British privateers who’d haunted them through the night, looking for an opportunity to pounce. They didn’t know that all but four of L’Aigle’s guns were struck down into the bottom of the hold and D’Olabaratz had been careful to avoid opening any of the blind gunports. If the privateers had known, they’d have pounced immediately. The uneasy night passed, and somehow the dawn found d’Olabaratz with all four of his merchantmen still under his lee. However, as the cold winter sun rose, it revealed a horizon to windward broken by the topmasts of three ships, men-of-war. His worst fears were confirmed; it was a British squadron, cruising for just this kind of opportunity. All that he could do was to run to the south and leave the merchantmen to their fates.
D’Olabaratz swore at the wind and muttered his disdain for King Louis and his cursed fortress. He knew what an easterly wind meant at this time of year, days or weeks of fog. The cold current that ran south from the frozen lands of the Labrador country met the warmer water of the Atlantic stream over the Grand Banks two hundred miles to the east of Louisbourg. The warm air that attended the Atlantic stream was cooled by the Labrador current and condensed, forming a fog that this easterly wind carried undiminished to Île Royale. It meant misery for the French garrison and extreme danger for any ship approaching the coast.
‘Furl the courses, we’ll stand in under tops’ls and the jib,’ he said to the sailing-master. There was a silent rush as the topmen swarmed up the shrouds. Everyone knew the danger of approaching a lee shore in thick weather.
It wasn’t just the weather that concerned d’Olabaratz – poor weather was taken for granted off Louisbourg in January – it was the British navy. Halifax was only a day’s sailing southwest along the coast, if the wind was fair, perhaps no more three days even in this easterly wind. He knew that a squadron had over-wintered in the harbour and although he didn’t fear any of the ships-of-the-line getting out this early in the season, it was quite likely that a frigate or sloop would be waiting off Louisbourg to snap up just such a prize as L’Aigle. He was confident that he knew this coast better than any English sea-officer, but he’d still prefer not to meet one with his guns stowed below.
The meagre light of dawn seeped reluctantly through the moisture-heavy air, offering no real illumination; if anything, it intensified the fog. Nevertheless, D’Olabaratz was confident of his position. The sailing master had positively established their latitude the previous day from a noon sight before the visibility had deteriorated, and they had been casting the lead throughout the night. He knew the soundings and the nature of the seabed in these waters as well as he knew the steps to his childhood bedroom. L’Aigle was a league southeast of the harbour entrance. If he was wrong, they would have the devil’s own job to make an offing when his error became obvious, when instead of the tall lighthouse on their bow they would see an uninterrupted wall of surf-beaten rocks. He knew the light would be lit, his father wouldn’t omit such a basic navigational aid when he and the few thousand soldiers and civilians depended upon ships from France to keep them alive through the winter.
***
D’Olabaratz opened his mouth to make a remark, but the sailing master held up his hand, his ear cocked to starboard.
‘I hear something to windward,’ he whispered, ‘a bell!’
The decks of L’Aigle were deathly silent. The light wind hardly raised a murmur in the rigging, and the noise of the sea was muted with the wind so far abaft the beam. D’Olabaratz strained to hear what the master had reported, but he heard nothing. He looked quizzically at the older man.
‘I heard it, sir,’ a midshipman said in a low voice. ‘Eight bells in four groups of two.’
The steersman nodded. He’d heard it too.
Eight bells, the change of the watch in an English ship! They were careless to make so much noise in the fog a league off Louisbourg.
D’Olabaratz motioned to the midshipman to come closer. ‘Go quietly over the deck and remind everyone to keep absolute silence, their lives and liberty depend upon it. Go now. Quickly, but quietly!’
Somewhere to windward was a British man-of-war. In L’Aigle’s present state of disarmament, it hardly mattered what size of vessel it was, anything bigger than a schooner could batter them into submission before they could reach safety under the guns of Battery Island.
‘There she is!’ said the master, pointing to the ghostly outline of a vessel crossing their stern. It was very close, only a cable or so on their starboard quarter.
***
Robert Hathorn, master and commander of the brig-sloop Hawke had called all hands to put the sloop about twenty minutes before the turn of the watch. He’d completed his mission to look into Spanish Bay a week ago and had decided to watch the approaches to Louisbourg for a few days before returning to Halifax. Only a few days, because this was no weather to be tacking backwards and forwards off an enemy port, and his men were already starting to show the first signs of sickness. It was unlikely that the watch would be resumed until February, the wear on the ships and the men was just too much to justify it. His presence here was over and above his orders, and now that this fog had set in, he’d decided that he’d done all that an excess of zeal for his duty demanded.
Eight bells had just been struck, and the sloop was settled on its new course of south-southwest to make its offing, and with this quartering wind he’d be back in Halifax by tomorrow afternoon.
‘Sail! Sail on the starboard beam!’
Hathorn glanced quickly to starboard. Nothing. Then he saw it, a darker patch in the fog, a ship! He knew instantly that it must be French. Whether a man-of-war or merchantman he couldn’t yet tell, but she was making for Louisbourg.
‘Beat to Quarters,’ he shouted and almost instantly heard the drum roll.
‘Stand by to veer ship, up helm,’ he ordered.
These brig-sloops with their gaff mains’l veered quickly and Hawke put her stern through the wind without any fuss. They were now on the same tack as the chase, astern and to leeward.
The sloop was already cleared for action and the people were all on deck, so it was a matter of moments before his first lieutenant was reporting the starboard guns loaded and run out.
Hathorn was prepared to have a go at anything less than a ship-of-the-line. He knew that the garrison at Louisbourg was so short of stores that the French navy was forced to convert its frigates to store ships, with only a few guns left to protect themselves. It was worth the risk.
