An Onshore Storm

by Dewey Lambdin

  He looked round the quarterdeck, and made out the Sailing Master and he had to laugh, for the man was fanning his arms to blow the gunsmoke away as if assailed by a plague of flies!

  Lt. Greenleaf was crying his un-ending litany; Stop vents, Swab, Charge your guns, Overhaul recoil tackle, Shot your guns, Prick cartridge, all smothered and anonymous like a town crier in a street near the Thames, lost in the night and fogs.

  “I think I can see…” Lt. Farley hesitantly said. “Yes, I can. The log redan looks shattered, sir. Strewn about like a handful of twigs, and one of their field pieces looks to be dis-mounted!”

  It was like peering through a haze, but Lewrie could make out the emplacement at last, and smiled at the sight. The logs had been little protection to the men serving those guns, and one of them had been dis-mounted, a wheel of the carriage shattered and the gun now canted over to one side and out of action. He looked for artillerymen to be serving the intact piece, but there was little movement or sign of the crews; a hint of a shako above the log piles where someone was sheltering, perhaps.

  What a horrid position! Lewrie thought, before his guns fired once more. The steep slope behind the road, the narrowness of that road, and the steep slope in front had forced the officer in charge of that battery to site his guns right on the road, and place all of his caissons and limbers practically steps away! His howitzers had been set up almost atop the trails of the field guns’ carriages!

  “We’re in range of the guns at the north end of the bridge,” Lt. Farley directed their attention as far-off explosions sounded. Through the smoke, Lewrie could see quick flashes of red and amber as that half-battery opened fire. There was a shell splash so close to the ship that a pillar of spray rose and pelted the quarterdeck like a brief summer shower. Through his boots, Lewrie could feel the shot thud into the hull with a faint sound.

  “Steer a point to larboard,” Lewrie ordered to expand the gun arcs to reach that half-battery, for the angle his guns could reach was limited by the narrowness of the gun-ports. “Pass word for the guns to aim for the new battery, once the smoke clears.”

  Vigilance’s guns crashed and boomed, and truck carriages lurched back from the ports in recoil, creating a rumble as loud as an avalanche of stones, some guns leaping inches off the deck as the barrels heated up.

  There was a sudden blast of fire leaping high into the sky amid the nigh impenetrable smoke pall, a livid flash of yellow that turned red in an eye blink as something substantial ashore blew up, forcing Lewrie to curse again that he couldn’t see what it was that instant, yet crewmen on the upper decks cheered and swirled their hats in the air, even if they couldn’t see what they’d accomplished.

  There was a sharp crack of an explosive shell going off, far beyond Vigilance’s un-engaged side, out to sea.

  “Check fire for a moment, Mister Farley!” Lewrie snapped, eager to see what was happening. “Let the smoke clear!”

  “Six fathoms!” a leadsman in the fore chains yelled aft, in a wail like a ghost. “Six fathoms t’this line!”

  “About as close as we should get, sir,” the Sailing Master cautioned, “with this total lack of visibility.”

  “Fine with me, Mister Wickersham,” Lewrie agreed.

  “Thus, Quartermasters, and nothing to loo’ard,” Wickersham told the helmsmen.

  “Nothin’ t’loo’ard aye,” was the response, and some firmer grips on the wheel spokes.

  “Look at that!” Lt. Farley crowed as the smoke finally began to thin. “I do believe we hit their powder supply!”

  Indeed, the whole south end of the bridge where the half-battery had sat was now a sea of billowing, boiling black smoke, shot through with red flames, the caisson waggons exploded, limbers turned to kindling and well alight, the log redan a game of pick-up-sticks strewn down the steep slope and both field pieces and the howitzer were dis-mounted, their wooden wheels and carriages burning. Of their crews there was no sign. The fire had even spread to the crane hoist which was also afire, and what progress the French had made to shore up the approach from the south end over the stump of the old stone span was burning.

  “You may open upon the other battery, Mister Farley!” Lewrie ordered with a note of triumph in his voice. He raised his glass to gloat over the ruin they had caused, noting how many deep divots had been blown from both the lower and the upper slopes round the guns.

  “May we have another half a point free, sir?” Farley suggested.

  “Aye, do so. Helmsmen, half a point to windward,” Lewrie said.

  Gun-captains serving the upper deck 18-pounders bent to peer down their guns’ barrels, knelt to wiggle the quoin blocks an inch or so to shift elevation, to place the sight notches in line with their targets, finally stepping back and aside from recoil, with flintlock strikers cocked and the trigger lines drawn taut in their hands.

  “As you bear … fire!”

  The French had already fired, and Lewrie heard a roundshot soar over the deck, and felt the air disturbed by its passage. There was a second roundshot that struck the ship somewhere up forward, and the keen of a falling howitzer shell, which made Lewrie shrug into his coat in dread. Boom! as a pillar of seawater shot skyward about one hundred yards short, the shell laid and fused almost perfectly. One more like that, and Vigilance might take real damage! But, she was serving out much worse upon the French, and before her gunsmoke laid a curtain cross the scene, Lewrie could see roundshot striking close to the half-battery, flinging clouds of dirt, rock, and gravel high in the air, causing part of the lower slope to slide down to the beach.

  The ship sailed on, slower now that the massive concussions of her guns had shot the wind to zephyrs, as the guns always seemed to do, and the smoke pall took even longer to waft shoreward and dissipate.

  “One more broadside, and we’ll be past the battery,” Lt. Farley opined, coughing a bit on the thick smoke. “It’s a bit aft of abeam, now, sir, the last I could see of it.”

  “I know, Mister Farley,” Lewrie agreed. “We’ll have to stand out to sea and come back to finish the work.”

  And that’ll be no fun, he told himself; with our starboard guns unable to engage, and havin’ t’take what the French serve us in the meantime.

  “Now what the Devil?” Mr. Wickersham exclaimed as the smoke began to thin enough for him to raise his telescope and examine what they had accomplished. “I do believe they’re running away, sir!”

  Lewrie eagerly put his own telescope to his eye and began to chuckle under his breath, for the ground and the stone verge of the road round the enemy battery was chewed up as if a myriad of rabbits had been digging, the log redan in front of the guns knocked aside and no taller than the bottom log. The field pieces and the howitzer lay fully exposed, still upright on their carriages, wheels intact, and surrounded by their ancillary waggons full of shot, powder, and explosive shells and un-set fuses. But the surviving gunners were pelting up the road away from their charges as fast as their legs could carry them, sure that they would suffer the same fate as their compatriots in the other half-battery.

  “Cease fire, Mister Farley!” Lewrie cried in delight. “Let the gunners take a rest, and a turn at the scuttlebutts. It appears as if the French have chosen discretion over valour.”

  “Might not even be French, sir,” Mr. Wickersham hooted. “Sure to be some of their Italian allies. Poor, unwilling conscripts.”

  “Let’s get a way on the ship, gentlemen, and stand out to come round and finish the job,” Lewrie said.

  And, as HMS Vigilance swung up onto the wind to gain speed for a tack which would carry her back to the bridge for another run, Lewrie went up to the poop deck for a better look at the structure that the French engineers had cobbled together to support road traffic along that stretch of coastal road.

  “What in the Devil’s that?” Lewrie said aloud.

  “Damned loud, but most entertaining, I must say!” someone on the quarterdeck below him was crowing.

  Lewrie looked do
wn and spotted Captain Bromhead of the 94th. He had not seen him since breakfast, and had completely forgotten that he was aboard!

  “Loud, was it, Captain Bromhead?” Lewrie asked him, making the Army officer look up.

  “I was standing with Captain Whitehead of your Marines along the rails,” Bromhead replied with a laugh and a shake of his head as if he was trying to clear his ears. “Right above the middle of all of your cannon, sir. I wish someone would have suggested candle wax in my ears beforehand, hah hah!”

  “Know anything about construction, sir?” Lewrie asked him. “If you do, please come up and help me make sense of what I’m seeing.”

  “Well, gladly, Captain Lewrie, though I know little of engineering,” Captain Bromhead said. “My math skills were hopeless for entry into Woolwich. Artillery, engineering, whoo!”

  He trotted up, though, and pulled out a smaller, silver-chased pocket telescope and trained it on the bridge, now astern of the ship. The smoke from Vigilance’s broadsides had thinned to a fine mist, by then, and the bridge lay stark and almost clear.

  “They building a chimney?” Bromhead puzzled after a long study. “A long, tall box most chimney-like, I’d say. Logs?”

  “Stout oak tree trunks, perhaps,” Lewrie said, just as puzzled. “They look as if they’ve been milled square, somewhere nearby. Interlocking at the ends, like cabins I saw in the Americas. They must be twelve feet long or better, and thick. Foot and a half thick, do you think?”

  “Hard to tell at this distance, sir,” Bromhead said, shrugging. “Very thick and stout, to bear as much weight as heavily-laden waggons crossing the bridge. Bless me! Is that a forge down in the ravine? That smoke there, sir.”

  “Aye, I noticed that before we opened fire,” Lewrie agreed.

  “Well, they can’t just stack them up without some sort of nails or heavy spikes,” Captain Bromhead enthused over the idea. “I’d wager their engineers have used the artillery battery forge waggon to make long and stout iron spikes to keep them from shifting under the weight whenever a waggon goes across!”

  “And there’s still a good fire in it,” Lewrie said, getting an idea. “Lots of hot coals, bellows to stoke with … hmm.”

  “We can go ashore and set it all alight, sir!” Bromhead urged. “We’ve driven off any opposition!”

  “We can, indeed, sir!” Lewrie said with a laugh. “Mister Farley! Mister Wickersham! We will anchor, this time, and complete the destruction of their artillery. We will also land the Marines to go start a huge fire! Pass word for Captain Whitehead.”

  “Aye aye, sir!” the First Officer called back, eager for more action, but he had other duties to see to, first. “All hands, ready to tack! Hands to sheets and braces!”

  Vigilance had stood out to sea at least three miles, hard on the winds, and gathering sufficient speed with which to complete a tack cross the eyes of the wind, and not get caught “in irons,” missing stays, and brought fully aback to drift down onto a lee shore before making a second try.

  “They’re getting their courage back, sir!” the Sailing Master said in an idle moment allowed from stern concentration on the tack.

  Sure enough, the French workers and engineers, the artillerymen from that second half-battery, supposed that the Anglais Devil ship was done with them for the day, and was sailing away. They were cautiously drifting, skulking, back closer to the bridge to repair what damage had been done. Lewrie smirked as he watched them once Vigilance crossed the eyes of the wind and hauled her wind to run a beam reach down the coast as if bound South, then began to fall off the wind to make another run, setting off a new stampede to safety.

  Scurry, mice! he thought gleefully; The cat ain’t done yet!

  * * *

  Once anchored by bower and kedge, close to where she had come to anchor the first time they’d attacked the bridge, a quarter-mile offshore, the upper deck 18-pounder guns began to roar, from bow to stern in carefully laid shots at the abandoned half-battery on the north end of the bridge approaches, with idle hands, ship’s boys, and gun crews whooping and cheering over the accuracy of each shot, or jeering a poor one.

  Captain Whitehead and his Lieutenants, with an eager Captain Bromhead along, took all the Marines and the armed boats crews ashore, onto the gritty beach at the foot of the ravine. Muskets, bayonets, and cartridge boxes were laid aside, and coats and hats stripped off so they could pump the leather bellows to stoke the forge fires into bright, yellow-hot coals, while others opened ten-pound kegs of gunpowder to strew round the chimney-like bridge timbers. Fine-mealed coal was fed to the forge to make even more sizzling hot chunks which were shovelled over the vast piles of broken timbers from other raids, onto the milled timbers waiting to be hoisted into place, and tossed high up onto the timbers already erected, which were smeared with some sort of preservative. Great, sputtering flashes erupted round the base of the centre pillar as the loose gunpowder took light and spewed enormous clouds of yellow-white smoke reeking of sulphur and rotten eggs.

  Slowly, the erected timbers began to burn on the outside, and the piles of milled timbers began to flare ’til the whole ravine was belching dense grey and black clouds of smoke and flame, fires and smoke so thick that the Marines were driven back to their boats on the beach.

  “I do believe that thing is beginning to act like a chimney, sir!” Lt. Farley cheered.

  Their joy was interrupted by a massive explosion as an 18-pounder shot hit one of the caissons of the half-battery on the north end of the bridge, and that explosion transmitted itself to the rest, one so strong that a French 12-pounder artillery piece was driven over the low stone verge of the coast road to tumble down the steep cliff to smash itself to kindling on the rocks below.

  “Hoist the Recall signal,” Lewrie ordered. “Let’s get our people back aboard. Once the boats are secure, we’ll turn the lower deck twenty-four-pounders loose on what’s left of the bridge.”

  “Aye aye, sir!” Lt. Farley replied, then coughed into his fist.

  “Aye, it is gettin’ a tad thick,” Lewrie said, as the smoke off the fires ashore began to cover the entire area, the raw, oily stink of it even reaching the ship despite the onshore breeze.

  He could, however, make out Captain Whitehead of the Marines waving his arms widely in acknowledgement of the Recall signal, and summoning his men into the waiting barges. With muskets and accoutrements re-slung, the Marines helped the armed sailors push the barges off the gravelly beach and leap aboard, arms, legs, and oarsmen all entangled as the boats drifted into slightly deeper water.

  “Secure the upper deck guns, sir?” Lt. Farley asked him.

  “No,” Lewrie told him. “They’re to hold their fire ’til all of our people are back aboard, and then we’ll haul up the boarding nets and re-open upon what’s left of the bridge with all guns.”

  “Aye, sir,” Farley said.

  It was a joyous pack of sailors and Marines who clambered up the boarding nets minutes later, joshing and laughing with each other, and taking long looks at their handiwork once they’d gained the decks before drifting off in small groups to stow away their arms and queue up at the scuttlebutts for a welcome drink of water.

  “Nets secured, sir,” Lt. Farley reported, “and all boats aft and ready for towing.”

  “Very well, Mister Farley, you may open on the bridge,” Lewrie ordered, before trotting up to the poop deck with his telescope.

  “All guns! Stand to and make ready! Individual fire on the chimney-looking thing!” Lt. Greenleaf bellowed on the upper gun-deck.

  One at a time, much like the tolling of a doleful church bell, the guns on both decks erupted, spearing gushes of powder smoke shot through with embers from the flannel powder cartridges and long tongues of red and amber fire. Errant iron roundshot made spanging and bonging noises as they struck rock in the dry ravine, whilst other rounds created parroty squawks when they struck wood. One roundshot smashed the forge, creating a cloud of fireflies spreading outwards like the burst of a
fireworks rocket as hot coals flew about.

  Slowly, the upper reaches of the construction got shaken apart, scattering long, thick milled timbers far aside, some to tumble over and over before crashing down into the morass of bright flames, and the interlocking beams of the pillar were shortened, the whole thing shaken and loosened, beginning to come apart with groans. At last, there was nothing left to shoot at but a jumbled pyre little taller than the mast of a sailing lugger, with the fierce wind that the fire created revealing hints of the original Roman stone pillar inside, and it, too, looked shorter than the last time they had seen it, as the heat of the fires ate the ancient mortar, allowing the weight of the dirt and rubble-filled centre to push outwards and collapse that, too.

  “Cease fire, Mister Farley,” Lewrie called down to the deafened men on the quarterdeck below him. “I think we’ve done enough.”

  “Aye, sir,” Farley agreed, plucking candle wax from his ears.

  “And I’ll have reports from both gun-decks about the accuracy of individual crews, for tobacco and rum rewards,” Lewrie added.

  “Aye, sir!”

  “Swab ’em down good, lads!” Lt. Greenleaf roared, full of good cheer. “Not a speck of powder smut on your guns, from muzzles to the cascabels before the tompions go back in! Good shooting, damned fine shooting! We’ve done a grand day’s work today!”

  After a last, triumphant look at the carnage they had created, Lewrie collapsed the tubes of his telescope and sauntered down the ladderway to the quarterdeck to stow it in the rack on the compass binnacle cabinet. Captain Bromhead of the 94th, with nothing to do but stand round as a spectator, came aft from his vantage point by the starboard entry-port, wiggling fingers in his ears.