by Chris Durbin
He was leading a flotilla of ship’s boats. Five of them, including his own, had guns mounted in the bows and each carried two files of marines armed with muskets. They were deployed in a crescent formation ahead of the main body of the flotilla. The main body, the reason for this clandestine expedition, consisted of ten of Boscawen’s largest boats, all heavily laden to within inches of their freeboard. The two largest, borrowed from the two-deckers, carried a monstrous twenty-four pounder gun slung underneath the boat. The next two each carried an eight-inch mortar stowed in the bottom of the boat, followed by another two each carrying a royal, the smaller five-and-a-half-inch mortar, still mounted on its wooden baulk. The remaining boats carried the twenty-four pounder gun carriages, the baulks for the larger mortars, the equipment to disembark and re-mount the weapons, a small amount of shot, shell and powder and the myriad of implements required to service a battery.
Carlisle looked over the stern. His entire flotilla was visible even when the moon was obscured, and he wondered whether they would be seen from Battery Island at the entrance to the harbour.
After the euphoria of the initial landing at Cormorant Cove, the siege had slowed down. Amherst appeared to be in no hurry to move his guns within battering range of the fortress, and those who advocated an early assault, without the formality of a protracted siege, were disappointed. Amherst was immovable despite the entreaties of Wolfe, his vigorous subordinate. Having established himself ashore, he was determined to keep his casualties to the minimum, because his orders from the King and from Pitt still stated that he should attack Quebec in 1758, and for that, he needed an intact army.
In the first few days after the landing, the French had withdrawn inside the walls of Louisbourg, and within a week they’d abandoned their batteries on the north shore of the harbour and on Lighthouse Point, overlooking the entrance. They’d retained the guns on Battery Island and those in the Grave Battery, facing the sea across the rocky shore in front of the fortress walls. However, for Amherst and Boscawen, the lessons from the 1745 siege were clear; a British battery on Lighthouse Point could command the central part of the harbour and could silence the guns on Battery Island.
Amherst was a good judge of people and he knew his officers well: their strengths and their weaknesses, those who fretted at inaction and those who cherished an idle life. He had selected Wolfe to take a strong force north-about around the harbour to establish himself at Lighthouse Point. Wolfe had accomplished the task in thick fog on the twelfth of June, unmolested by the French men-of-war in the harbour, who suspected nothing, even though Wolfe’s men could hear the routine activity on the ships. When the fog lifted, the French saw that their abandoned positions on Lighthouse Point had new owners. A force of British infantry and irregulars were digging positions that the retreating French had filled in only days before. However, infantry and irregulars were all very well, but they couldn’t hurl shot and shell at Battery Island and the anchored ships; for that they needed guns, and, in this terrain, they could only be delivered by sea.
***
Carlisle was pleased to have been given this mission. It was a mark of the trust that Hardy had in him, it allowed Moxon to command Medina for a day, and it gave Carlisle some variety in this endless blockade and siege. And yet it was a complex task. He’d had to write the orders for the gathering of twenty boats off Big Lorraine harbour, three miles northeast of the entrance to Louisbourg. He’d visited the transports that carried the guns and mortars and confirmed the arrangements for slinging them into or under the boats. A day had been spent gathering together a crowd of carpenters and bosuns and agreeing on the equipment – and more importantly the highly-skilled people – that would be needed to disembark the guns at the cove. Then he’d personally briefed the officers in charge of each boat, ensuring that they understood the signal system that he’d devised, how they were to be formed for the passage and what they needed to do in the event of a French sortie. Finally, and this was a point that he won against Hardy’s reluctance, he’d rowed the distance from Big Lorraine to the cove the night before so that he’d be more able to recognise the land as he approached it at the head of his small flotilla.
This was only the first instalment of guns, ammunition and equipment for the battery on Lighthouse Point. Carlisle knew that over the next days and weeks, as the men under Lieutenant Colonel Hale sweated to prepare the gun emplacements and the revetments, further boat convoys would bring more and more guns until the battery would be capable of suppressing the French guns on the island only a thousand yards away across the harbour mouth.
***
The rocky coastline of Lorembec slipped by to starboard. Carlisle had impressed on the escorting boats that they must not pull ahead of the cargo boats. It would be all too easy in the darkness for the force to lose its cohesion, and Carlisle knew well how quickly a French sloop-of-war could decimate his fragile command. He couldn’t see them, but Hawke and Halifax were patrolling off the harbour, hidden in the darkness so that the French weren’t alerted. Then also there was a danger from Battery Island itself. It was long range for the French twenty-four pounders, but their gunners had been preparing for just this test ever since Britain had returned Louisbourg to the French in 1749. They would know the range, and they would have established training marks so that they could bombard the approach to the cove even in the dark. Hale’s men had already endured days of harassing bombardment from that battery, and they knew well how accurate the French artillerymen were.
Carlisle looked astern. He couldn’t count the boats – they were too indistinct even when the moon peeped through the clouds – but he could see that a good number were following obediently. He could see nothing of the escorting boats; they were disposed on the wings of the convoy and the rear, while Carlisle’s boat led from the front.
‘Rest on your oars, Souter,’ said Carlisle. ‘When that boat,’ he pointed to the leading gun-carrier, ‘is abeam, place your bow on his stern and I’ll jump across. You know what to do Mister Johnson?’
‘Aye-aye sir,’ replied the lieutenant from Namur who’d been appointed his deputy. ‘I’ll station the gunboats in an arc around the cove and wait for your signal to come and take you off.’
‘Very well. I hope the task will be completed before dawn.’
Embarking the guns had, of course, taken longer than Carlisle had anticipated, and had caused an hour’s delay in setting off. Now he ran the risk of dawn finding the ship’s boats still clustered in the cove and vulnerable to French bombardment. Usually a few ship’s boats wouldn’t be of any great consequence in a grand operation such as this, but Hardy had pointed out that the fleet he’d lost a hundred already in landing the army at Gabarus Bay. Every man-of-war was short of at least one boat. The loss of these fifteen of the squadron’s heaviest workboats would be felt severely over the coming days when the navy would be required to carry more and more guns and mortars to Lighthouse Point and to resupply the powder and shot and the provisions for the soldiers.
The black shape of the heavily laden longboat pulled steadily past them. It was interesting to see how slowly the boat moved even though the exertions of the rowers were evident. That vast bulk of a mortar was a ponderous weight to be moved by mere muscles. Yet move it did, and Souter had to be careful in nosing up to its stern with the vulnerable rudder hanging off the transom.
Carlisle made the jump and found his shoulder clasped by the master’s mate in charge of the boat. The coxswain barely flinched as he fell forward against him, all his concentration was on keeping his boat moving steadily across the darkened sea.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ said Carlisle. He’d forgotten the man’s name; he wasn’t prepared to admit it, and this was no time for formal introductions.
Medina’s longboat sheered off to larboard to take its station to seaward of the cargo-carrying boats and was soon lost in the gloom.
Carlisle peered into the blackness on the starboard bow. They were heading for a tiny cove just o
ver a thousand yards to the northeast of Lighthouse Point. It was at the extreme range of the French guns on Battery Island, and it provided a sandy beach for unloading.
‘Hand me the lantern,’ he said tersely to the master’s mate. Those were the only lights that he’d permitted in the flotilla. Each boat carried a shaded lantern that, when shuttered, couldn’t be seen at ten yards. He withdrew the brass shutter just enough to allow a sliver of light to escape. It was the smallest of lights imaginable, but on this dark night, its intensity was shocking. Carlisle checked his watch and replaced the shutter. He’d worked the winds and tides and the likely speeds of the boats to determine an approximate passage time. If all the calculations had been correct, then the cove should be half a mile on their starboard bow. Too soon to show the signal yet.
The boat rowed on in silence while Carlisle counted the seconds for ten minutes.
‘You may show the signal now,’ he said.
The master’s mate stood and held the lantern high. He deliberately opened the shutter for two seconds, closed it for another two then opened it again. Three flashes of two seconds each. That was the signal that Hale was waiting to see.
Nothing, no response from the shore.
‘Make the signal again, if you please,’ said Carlisle tensely.
The master's mate rose and repeated the signal, three exposures of the light for two seconds each. No response.
‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ said the coxswain. ‘I just saw a light on the larboard beam, but it’s gone now.’
‘Are you sure?’ asked Carlisle. The coxswain nodded in reply.
Carlisle paused and looked covertly at the coxswain. He appeared a steady man, not one to be taken by flights of fancy. Assuming he was correct, then the light could be nothing to do with them. It could be a party of soldiers on the foreshore between Lighthouse Cove and their own cove. Or it could be that he and Hosking had overestimated the speed that these laden boats could row, or they’d miscalculated the tide. He knew that he had to get this right. If he took these boats into the wrong cove or, heaven forbid, if he led them onto the rocks that guarded this coast, the mission could end in disaster. Fifteen boats lost, the guns and mortars on the bottom of the sea, and at least another few days before it could be attempted again.
‘Sir!’ said the master’s mate urgently. ‘I can see breakers on the starboard bow, not more than a couple of hundred yards away. You can hear them, just about.’
Carlisle looked across the coxswain’s shoulder. Yes, he could see breakers. There were breakers all along this iron-bound coast, but unless his navigation was wildly in error, they could only be caused by the outcrop immediately to the east of the cove that they were searching for. He’d turned his flotilla towards the shore too soon!
‘Hard a-larboard, coxswain.’
He thrust the lantern at the master’s mate. ‘Shine it lantern astern now and hold it there.’
The lumbering longboat turned ponderously to larboard. Carlisle looked anxiously behind but could see nothing. The light from his pre-arranged signal had destroyed his night vision. For a few seconds he was effectively blind. However, he knew he must continue to shine that light to indicate to the following boats that he’d turned. Hopefully, they would all see the signal – it could hardly be missed – and follow obediently.
‘Close the lantern now,’ he snapped after two minutes. That should have been enough time for the other boats to have seen the signal.
‘I can see that light again, sir,’ said the coxswain. ‘Just where it was before, if we hadn’t turned.’
Was the coxswain mocking him? Probably, Carlisle thought, but he knew very well that he was safe. Remarks thrown around in the stress of a mission such as this could hardly be followed up with any dignity.
Carlisle could see the light too.
‘Make the signal again,’ he said in a level voice. There was quite enough excitement in this boat without adding to it. ‘Keep making it. If the French are awake, they’ll have seen us by now.’
‘T’other boats be following us now,’ said the stroke oar in a west country burr.
Carlisle was on the cusp of telling the man to mind his own damned business, but it would have been crass; he was offering some useful information.
‘Eyes in the boat, stroke, stow it!’ said the coxswain mildly, without any real conviction. The west countryman just grinned and kept up his stroke, steady as a metronome.
Carlisle could see the signal now, and as the moon appeared through a fleeting gap in the cloud, the enormity of his error became apparent. If he’d persisted on his course, they’d soon have been in the surf of a rock-bound bay to the north of their destination. Even in this unusually calm weather it would have been a miracle if all the boats had escaped. He’d most certainly have lost some of the guns and probably some of the men. He could feel the sweat trickling down his back at the thought.
‘Belay the signal now,’ Carlisle said. ‘Watch for the cliffs on either side of the cove.’
Carlisle took the lantern from the master’s mate and shone a beam of light on the boat compass that had been secured to the stroke oar’s thwart. The signal on shore was bearing west-northwest. When it came a point further on their beam, at northwest-by-west, he’d turn and steer the boat’s bow at the signal.
‘I can see the cliffs to the left of the signal now,’ said the master’s mate. ‘They’re low, and there’s a surf breaking on them.’
Carlisle nodded but said nothing. He was concentrating on the right moment to order the boat to turn towards the signal. It wasn’t an exact science. The longboat was rising and falling to the constant Atlantic swell and in the past few minutes had started to pitch as the surge met the shallower water. His compass was also a very approximate instrument, not damped as well as the ship’s instruments that were mounted in their sturdy binnacles, and there was no way of sighting towards the mark.
Ten more strokes, Carlisle thought to himself, then I’ll order the turn.
The coxswain could feel Carlisle’s tension, and he too watched the signal intently. Some blessed soldier understood the importance of his task. Since he’d first seen the boat’s light, he’d kept his own lantern flashing as regularly as a Trinity House light.
‘Bring her to starboard, coxswain,’ said Carlisle. ‘Make the signal to the boats.’
The cliffs to the right of the cove were visible now, lower than those to the left and with their own rim of breaking waves. Carlisle could feel the longboat pitching as the surf ran under her keel. God, this looks dangerous, he thought. The hundred-yard entrance to the cove appeared much smaller at night, and the space of relatively smooth water between the two bands of surf looked ridiculously narrow. His orders to the boats were for them to enter the cove one-at-a-time, and he was glad he’d insisted upon it. There really was no room for error and two heavily laden longboats making for that entrance together could easily result in one or both being wrecked on the rocks.
There was dead silence in the boat as it entered the cove; even the stroke oar looked impressed at the gravity of the situation. For the first time in several minutes Carlisle looked astern. He didn’t really know what he expected to see, but another fortuitous break in the cloud showed a spectacle that any navigator could be proud of. There was a string of longboats, not in a straight line, but at least all heading for the same point, neither too close to the one in front nor lagging. On either wing he could see his gunboats, resting on their oars, guarding the precious convoy from seaborne attack. Of Hawke and Halifax, nothing could be seen. They were obeying their orders and keeping out of sight to avoid alerting the French defences.
Carlisle relaxed and smiled to himself in the darkness. He could leave it to the master’s mate and the facetious coxswain to run the boat onto the sand at the head of the cove. The other boats with internal cargos would undoubtedly follow. The last two, with their under-slung twenty-four pounders, would be more difficult. However, Carlisle was comforted by the knowledge
that the navy had been taking guns ashore in this fashion for generations. On a sandy beach, they became awkward monsters that required a lot of brute force to shift from their fathom deep resting place up the beach and onto a carriage, but the squadron had been scoured for the right expertise, and it was all there in the boats following behind him. Two of the boats were carrying an array of spars and baulks of timber of a size and shape agreed by a team of carpenters and bosuns. They would be rigged into sheers to manhandle the ponderous loads, but none of that required the direct intervention of a post-captain.
The longboat ran up the beach and willing hands dragged it higher, using its momentum and the surf to best effect so that it rested far up the debatable territory between saltwater and dry sand.
The stroke had jumped out of the boat as soon as his oar became redundant. Carlisle looked at his face for the first time. He was an old man, old by naval standards, in any case; he must have been in his sixties at least.
‘That was a good job, sir,’ he said, smiling confidentially and knuckling his brow as he offered his arm to help Carlisle out of the boat. ‘It’ll be a good yarn to tell one day, and the telling of it’ll earn me a tot or two.’
***
25: Fire in the Harbour
Monday, Twenty-Fourth of July 1758.
Namur, at Anchor. Gabarus Bay, Île Royale.
Louisbourg’s short spring turned to full summer and the soldiers sweated in their woollen uniforms. Sailors volunteered for the siege works in their hundreds, and a strong contingent of Cornishmen, miners all, bolstered the ranks of the army’s engineers. To the west of the fortress the sappers crept forward, digging their parallels closer and closer to the walls. Their batteries were now placed so near the defenders’ positions that there was no question of missing.
To the east, Wolfe’s guns on Lighthouse Point had silenced Battery Island, and under its merciless bombardment, the French navy had shifted its remaining ships to the shallow water to the north of the fortress. The governor of Louisbourg had already rejected one demand for capitulation, preferring to wait until the conventions of military honour had been satisfied, and a practicable breach had been made in his walls.
