He looked across at the one closest to him. The tall hull was partly obscured by a haze of gun smoke from the few cannon they had managed to get into action on the lower deck. Through a break in the smoke he saw someone moving on the deck. A seaman had made his way up a ladder and out onto the forecastle. A few moments later another figure followed him. Curious, thought the lookout to himself. He turned his attention to the quarterdeck. More sailors were coming up from below, in ones and twos. He could see the little foreshortened figures as they emerged from the hatchway below him. They seemed to be running with purpose, going this way and that. And then Leclerc started in surprise. As the man he was watching approached the ship’s side, he had vanished. Where could he have gone? Leclerc watched the flow of men more intently. Another man ran across the deck to join the first, and he disappeared too. It was almost as if they had gone behind something. He puzzled over what it might be. He could see the side of the East Indiaman plainly enough, a long double row of gun ports, most of them still closed, running the length of the hull and topped by a rail. Leclerc studied the ship’s side with care, and after a moment the lines of perspective seemed to move and resolve themselves into a quite different shape.
‘Sacre bleu!’ he exclaimed. He filled his lungs to hail the deck, but as he began to shout the Rhone fired yet another broadside, and his words were masked by the thunder of the guns.
Far beneath where Leclerc sat, his captain stood by the quarterdeck bulwark as the latest broadside roared out. A wall of gun smoke swept up from below him, making the two East Indiamen vanish and tainting the air with a smell of burnt sulfur. He turned from the cloud of smoke and waved his first lieutenant across from his position by the wheel.
‘Tell me, Jean-Claude,’ he asked, ‘what size of guns did the merchant ships we have captured so far carry?’ The younger man shrugged his shoulders.
‘It varied from one ship to another, mon capitaine,’ he explained. ‘Most had a strange mixture of pieces. Four-pounders, six-pounders, sometimes a nine-pounder. The last ship we took had three of those.’
‘But nothing bigger?’ queried Olivier. ‘That is curious, for I do not believe any nine-pound canon ball could have made a hole like that.’ He pointed with the toe of one shoe at where a large jagged gash had been torn in the ship’s side. ‘Six inches of best Vendee oak, and yet the enemy’s shot has gone clean through it.’
‘Perhaps there was a weakness in this section of timber, mon capitaine,’ suggested his lieutenant. Olivier was about to reply when he was distracted by a shout from above. He looked up to where the lookout waved at him from the masthead.
‘Deck there!’ roared Leclerc. ‘The enemy frigates! They are here!’
‘Where away?’ called his captain. ‘What direction are they coming from?’
‘No, mon Dieu, they are here!’ yelled the lookout. ‘The merchant ships...’ His last words were lost in a fresh broadside from the Echo, as she continued to harass the Rhone from astern. Olivier held his hands over his head as fragments of wood and rope peppered down.
‘What is he saying, Jean-Claude?’ he asked.
‘Something about the merchant ships,’ said his deputy, turning towards them. ‘But there is nothing to fear there. Look, they are surrendering to us.’ The officers watched as the red and white striped flags were hauled down on both ships. A moment later naval ensigns soared upwards to replace them. At the main mast peak of the leading East Indiamen, a commodore’s broad pennant then broke out, while across the narrow gap between the ships came the sound of a blast on a whistle. Captain Olivier’s mouth opened wide in astonishment as all the remaining lower deck port lids on the two ships swung open, and with a faint cheer full batteries of cannon were pushed smoothly out into the warm tropical sunlight. A moment later the view was masked by a billowing wall of fire and smoke, and the Rhone was struck by a whirlwind of hammer blows against the side of her hull. Splinters flew across her deck and men tumbled to the planking as they were scythed down. From farther forward came the ringing sound of a direct hit on the iron muzzle of a gun. The noise echoed through the ship like the mournful toll of a bell.
Chapter 16 Battle
‘This is more like it, sir!’ exclaimed Tom Macpherson, buttoning up the scarlet tunic that his sergeant had handed him. He followed the lines of his sharpshooters as they made their way up into the tops, each man festooned with swinging pouches of extra cartridges. Nearer at hand, other marines crowded along the rail of the ship, bashing holes in the canvas screen with the butts of their muskets to give them a sight of the enemy. He turned in a full circle, arms outstretched, as he exulted in the roar of firing cannon and the smoke that billowed over the deck. All along the side of the frigate tongues of flame stabbed out towards the big Frenchman towering up next to them. The concussion of the guns had caused sections of the canvas screen to fall down, while what remained trembled and shook to the roar of the battle. The strip that had masked the quarterdeck from the French had been blasted into tatters by the big carronades firing through it. The Scot stooped to peered through one of the rents towards the Rhone. ‘Hard to tell with all this smoke hereabouts, but we look to be firing a good deal faster than she is. Ah, and here comes Mr Sutton in that wee ship of his, joining in from their far side to close the jaws of the trap. Splendid! Why we have barely taken a casualty.’
As if to give the lie to his words, a number of crashes sounded from beneath them, one accompanied by the cries of wounded men.
‘We caught them unawares, Tom,’ said Clay, ‘but they still seem game enough. Mr Taylor, kindly get the afterguard to clear all this canvas away so I can damn well see what the enemy is about.’ He watched as the men set to with boarding axes, hacking at the last of Blake’s masterpiece and tossing the fragments down into the sea. A last wooden upright broke with a crack, the final line was cut, and with a rush of falling screens Clay had an uninterrupted view.
The two French frigates were sailing along one behind the other on a parallel course to their British opponents, perhaps a hundred yards away. Their long hulls and huge mass of rigging filled his view. When he looked forward he could see the Black Prince locked in what seemed an evenly matched fight with her opponent. Neither ship’s captain trusted their crew to fire independently, and instead they were trading broadsides. Each colossal roar filled the space between the hulls with a billowing mass of smoke, which slowly rolled away before being renewed by the opponent’s cannon all firing as one. Clay found it hard to judge who was winning that battle. The commodore’s ship had lost its mizzen topmast, but then the French ship no longer had a fore topgallant mast. On the far side of the fight he could see the masts of the Echo, as she closed in to attack the lead French frigate on her disengaged side. Good, he thought. Between the two of them, they should have the beating of their opponent. He could ignore that fight for now, and concentrate on his own battle.
Like the other two frigates, the Rhone was also firing in broadsides, walking the crew through the steps of reloading together and delivering her shot in a single blast. He watched as the row of cannon emerged through the ship’s side, every one of them seeming to point at him. He could see that she had been hit hard. Already there were three barrels missing. One he could see; jammed in its gun port and pointing uselessly upwards towards the sky, but the others were as obvious as missing teeth in an otherwise perfect smile. A wall of orange light stabbed out from the side of the Rhone, and she disappeared behind a blanket of smoke.
A fan of splinters flashed across the deck as a cannon ball ploughed along the planking, leaving a long scar in the wood. Two of the crew men from the aft-most carronade tumbled down, one clutching an injured arm, the other with a long barb of wood in his thigh.
‘Afterguard!’ roared Clay. ‘Take these two down to the surgeon.’
‘I just needs a rag, sir,’ said the sailor with the wounded arm as he struggled to his feet. ‘No need to trouble Mr Corbett any.’ Clay looked at the sailor. Blood flowed freely down onto
the deck, and the man’s tanned face was growing pale before his eyes.
‘Take him below,’ ordered Clay, turning away to concentrate on the battle. From behind him the man continued to protest as he was led away.
‘Not the sawbones, Joe,’ he pleaded. ‘I can’t go losing me arm!’
Spectacular as the Rhone’s broadsides were, Clay was content with how the battle was going. The Frenchman was firing solidly, with no mistakes, but only at the speed of her slowest gun crew. By contrast his own men had been drilled over the years to a pitch where each crew could be trusted to fire independently. Continuous gunfire ran backwards and forwards, up and down the side of the Titan, her guns shooting in and out of the hull below him like the stops on an organ. He could hear the crash of each ball as it struck its mark in the fog of smoke that hung around the enemy ship. A gust of wind tore a hole in the murk, and he saw sprays of splinters fly up from the Frenchman’s hull. One shot produced a tall column of water, hard up against her side.
‘Good shooting, that!’ exclaimed Taylor from next to him. ‘A hit, right between wind and water! There is nothing quite like the sea flooding in to distress a crew in battle, I find.’
Clay didn’t reply. He was too busy studying the Rhone, trying to reach through the gun smoke, across a hundred yards of water, to feel the morale of his opponent. Like a prize fighter, he looked for the first trace of fear, deep in his enemy’s eyes. That moment when the fight started to swing his way. All appeared well on board the Rhone, but his senses told him that his enemy was starting to wilt under the remorseless barrage. Perhaps it was a slight lengthening in the time between her broadsides that hinted at a growing reluctance on her gun deck. Or the patter of small arms fire from the marines along her sides that was not quite as intense as it had been. Another rent in the smoke gave him a glimpse of the run of the sea as it rushed along her side, and he saw that her helmsman was edging away from him.
‘Bring me closer in towards her, Mr Armstrong’ ordered Clay. ‘Half pistol shot, if you please.’
‘Aye, aye sir,’ said the sailing master. ‘Closer in it is.’ Now the hull of the French frigate seemed to stretch even farther across the water, her battered masts towered ever higher above them as their courses converged. The impact of her next broadside seemed to slam the Titan back, so close were the ships, and Clay heard a fresh chorus of screams from below his feet, accompanied by calls for help to take the wounded away.
‘There goes her main mast,’ exclaimed Taylor. Clay looked back at the French ship. The top of the mast was swinging forwards, while the base seemed to be falling towards him, broken half way up its length. He could see the tiny figure of her lookout as he clung to a spar that had started to fall away beneath him. He had just time to recognise the terrified man as the sailor he had studied earlier in the red waistcoat, before the man vanished from sight. The whole mass of spars seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then some shrouds parted in a series of whip cracks, the released lines snaking through the air. With a rush of broken wreckage and flapping canvas the colossal mast came down, dragging in the sea alongside the Rhone and masking many of her guns.
‘Now is our time,’ said Clay, thumping the rail with his fist. ‘Mr Russell, run down to Mr Blake as quick as quick. Tell him to arm his men for boarding, and load the guns with canister. He is to fire on my command, secure the cannon and then bring his men up. Mr Taylor, see that the upper deck carronades are loaded with canister too.’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ replied the first lieutenant.
‘Back the foretopsail!’ yelled Armstrong from beside the wheel. Their opponent was almost stationary in the water now, and they were in danger of overshooting her. Closer and closer the two ships came. Next to where Clay stood, the foremost of the quarterdeck carronades was being loaded with canister. The big copper cylinder needed two men to lift it up to the muzzle.
‘Must be hundreds of them musket balls in that their box,’ muttered one sailor to the other. ‘That’ll learn the bastards.’ The Titan had stopped firing altogether now, as her crew completed the loading of the guns. From under his feet he felt the vibration of cannon being run out, and then silence. A pair of guns from close to the bow of the Frenchman banged out, but most of her crew were fighting to clear their helpless ship from the dead grip of the fallen mast. They were so close he could hear her captain as he bellowed orders through a speaking trumpet. He was a large, grey-haired man who had lost his hat at some stage of the fight. In response to his urging, his men worked away with axes and knives on the mass of wreckage draped across the frigate. It was only when the shadow of the Titan’s sails fell across his ship that he looked around. His eyes were drawn to the gold braid on Clay’s coat and the bright medal at his throat. He raised a hand to his brow, and Clay returned the salute.
Sixty yards. The detail of their opponent was becoming clearer all the time as the last of the gun smoke cleared. Her black and white sides were heavily stained with powder burns, and punched full of holes like a colander. Her huge main topsail lay draped over her side, covering at least a third of her cannon. He could see the last of her gun crews pouring up from below, grabbing pikes and cutlasses from the racks before they came to the side to help repel boarders.
Fifty yards.
‘Out quoins, larboard guns!’ ordered the voice of Blake from his place beside the base of the main mast. Clay watched the line of cannon beneath him all tilt upwards as the range shrank.
‘Marines will fix bayonets,’ ordered Macpherson, somewhere behind him at the head of his men. He heard the rasp of steel being drawn from scabbards, followed by the double click as they were locked into place, then a clatter of something falling to the deck.
‘Conway, you useless turd,’ growled the voice of Corporal Edwards. ‘Pick it up, then, before I’m minded to shove it up your bleeding arse.’
Forty yards, and his coxswain appeared by his side, pressing something cold and heavy into his hand.
‘Fresh loaded just now, sir,’ he reported. ‘I have the other one here if you need it.’ Clay glanced down at the pistol, checked it was uncocked, and then thrust it into his waist band.
‘My thanks, Sedgwick,’ he said, looking around. His barge crew were all massed at his back, armed with cutlasses and pistols, while the marines stood in a block of scarlet behind them. He looked over at Macpherson, who swept out the claymore he always carried in action and held the heavy blade up to his face in salute. Clay touched the brim of his hat to the Scot before returning his attention to the Rhone.
Thirty yards. Faces were clear now as they lined up opposite him, their petty officers pushing and cajoling them into position. Angry faces, and scared faces. Nervous faces, and empty faces. Old and young, moustached and baby-faced. All of them seeming to stare back at him. He could see the other captain as he yelled at his men, his drawn sword flashing as he brandished it in the sun. Now some of the soldiers mixed in with the crew were firing. Little puffs of smoke appeared as the muskets banged out. One levelled his weapon at Clay, and he forced himself to stand still. The old musket wound in his shoulder seemed to throb as he waited for the shot to come. The man’s face disappeared behind a puff of dirty white cloud, and he heard the ball whistle past him. There was a cry of pain from one of the barge crew, and the sound of a body falling.
Twenty yards. A cannon onboard the Frenchmen barked out, sending a blast of canister fire towards the Titan. It swept away the entire crew of one of the quarterdeck carronades, tumbling them to the deck, most killed outright but one shrieking in pain. Musket balls howled off the metal of the barrel, leaving it peppered with smears of silver.
‘See that gun will be fired, Mr Taylor,’ ordered Clay, steeling himself not to react to the carnage. Then he strode over to bellow down to the main deck. ‘Now is the time, Mr Blake!’ A moment later the deafening roar of the Titan’s broadside boomed in the narrow space between the ships. The Rhone disappeared once more into a thick fog. A stunned silence followed, and then a mass of
screams echoed in the smoke.
Ten yards. The side of the frigate was resolving itself in the gloom. From the ladder way came the thunder of feet as Blake sent the gun crews running up from below. Clay looked round to see the huge figure of Evans pulling out a cutlass and dropping the sheath on the deck, and then he too was stepping forward to the ship’s side and sweeping out the blue steel of the sword the King had given him.
Five yards, and there was the sound of splintering wreckage as the Titan forced her way through the remains of the Frenchman’s fallen mast. Muskets and pistols popped away on both sides. Then four, three, two, and with a shuddering crunch the two hulls came together.
‘Titans away!’ yelled Clay, as he pulled himself up using the mizzen shrouds. He leapt across the small gap between the ships, and with a roar the men of the frigate followed him.
*****
After the main mast fell, Captain Olivier found himself surrounded by officers, all of who needed him urgently.
‘The water level has already risen over one metre in the well, mon capitaine, and I only have the starboard pump still in action,’ moaned the carpenter from one side. ‘I need ten more men to help plug the holes in the hull, or I cannot guarantee we will still be afloat in an hour.’
‘An hour!’ scoffed the boatswain, from Olivier’s other side. ‘We do not have ten minutes, unless I can free the ship of all this wreckage. The butt of the main mast is wedged solid, mon capitaine. I can rig up a block and tackle, but I need twenty more men to man it.’
The Distant Ocean Page 27
