The Fort (41 page)

“Because we can’t hurt him?”

“Because he’s double-shotted his guns to welcome our ships. That’s all he’s worried about, sir, the ships.”

“He can’t know they’re planning to attack him,” Wadsworth pointed out.

“If they saw our fo’c’sle’s being strengthened,” Downs said, “they’ll have guessed.”

And suppose the ships did not come? Saltonstall had very reluctantly agreed to make an attack, and suppose he changed his mind? Wadsworth’s men were now in line with the ships, meaning they were between Mowat and McLean, and Wadsworth could see the red uniforms of the Royal Marines on the deck of HMS
North
. The fog was thickening and a first slow spatter of rain fell.

Then a fair-haired girl came running from a house to throw her arms round James Fletcher’s neck, and Wadsworth knew they had arrived. He ordered the two guns to face the harbor, their job to open fire if any Royal Marines came from the ships. The rest of his men crouched in yards and orchards. They were a quarter mile from the fort’s southeastern bastion and hidden from it by a large cornfield. They were in place. They were ready. If McLean could see them he took no apparent heed because none of the fort’s guns fired, while the sloops’ broadsides were now facing well away from the rebels. We go uphill from here, Wadsworth thought. Through the cornfield and across the open ground and over the ditch and up the wall and so to victory, and that sounded easy, but there would be round shot and grapeshot, screams and blood, smoke and volleys, death squirming in agony, men shrieking, steel slithering in guts, shit-soiled breeches, and the devil laughing as he rattled his dice.

“They know we’re here,” Solomon Lovell had not spoken since they left the high ground, but now, looking up at the flag flying above the fort, he sounded nervous.

“They know,” Wadsworth said. “Captain Burke!” William Burke, the skipper of the privateer
Sky Rocket
, had come with the soldiers and his duty now was to return and tell Commodore Saltonstall that the assault force was in position. Saltonstall had insisted that a seaman carry him that news, an insistence that amused Wadsworth because it suggested the naval officer did not trust the army. “Are you satisfied we’re in position, Mister Burke?” Wadsworth asked.

“I’m well satisfied, General.”

“Then pray tell the commodore we shall attack as soon as he opens fire.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Burke said, and set off westwards, escorted by four militiamen. A longboat waited for him beneath Dyce’s Head. It would take an hour, Wadsworth thought, for the message to be delivered. It began to rain harder. Fog and rain on Friday the thirteenth, but at least Wadsworth was confident that, at long last, the ships would come.

And the fort, with God’s good help, would fall.

“We do nothing, of course,” McLean said.

“Nothing?” John Moore asked.

“We could have a late luncheon, I suppose? I’m told there’s oxtail soup.”

Moore gazed down from the fort’s southeastern bastion. The rebels, at least four hundred of them, were hidden somewhere close to the Fletcher house. “We could send two companies to rout them, sir,” the lieutenant suggested.

“They have a company of marines,” McLean said, “you saw that.”

“Then four companies, sir.”

“Which is exactly what they want us to do,” McLean said. Rainwater dripped from the peaks of his cocked hat. “They want us to weaken the garrison.”

“Because then they’ll attack from the heights?”

“I must assume so,” McLean said. “I do like an oxtail soup, especially seasoned with a little sherry wine.” McLean went cautiously down the short flight of steps from the bastion, helping himself with the blackthorn stick. “You’ll serve with Captain Caffrae,” he told Moore, “but do remember your other duty if the rebels should break through.”

“To destroy the oaths, sir?”

“Exactly that,” McLean said, “but I assure you they won’t break through.”

“No?” Moore asked with a smile.

“Our enemies have made a mistake,” McLean said, “and divided their force, and I dare believe that neither of their contingents has the strength to break through our defense.” He shook his head. “I do like it when the enemy does my work. They’re not soldiers, John, they’re not soldiers, but that doesn’t mean the fight will be easy. They have a cause, and they’re ready to die for it. We’ll win, but it will be hard work.”

The brigadier knew that the crisis had come and was just grateful that it had taken so long to arrive. Captain Mowat’s message had said that the rebel ships were at last determined to enter the harbor, and McLean now knew that the naval assault would be accompanied by a land attack. He expected the main body of the rebels to come from the heights, and so he had posted the majority of his men on the western side of the fort, while three companies of the 82nd were placed to defend against the attack by the men who had worked their way along the shore to conceal themselves in the low ground. Those three companies were reinforced by naval cannon already loaded with grapeshot that could turn the ditch beyond the low eastern wall into a trench slopping with blood. And it would be bloody. In another hour or two McLean knew that Majabigwaduce would be besieged by noise, by the smoke of cannon and by the spite of musket-fire. Mowat’s sloops would put up a stalwart defense, but they would surely be destroyed or taken, and that was sad, yet their loss would not mean defeat. The important thing was to hold the fort and that McLean was determined to do, and so, though his officers yearned to make a sally and attack the concealed rebels, he would keep his redcoats inside Fort George’s walls and let the rebels come to die on his guns and bayonets.

Because that was why he had built Fort George, to kill the king’s enemies, and now those enemies were obliging him. And so he waited.

It began to rain harder, a steady rain, pelting down almost vertically because the wind was so light. The fog moved in bands, thick sometimes, then thinning, and at times whole swathes of the river were clear of the fog to reveal a sullen gray water being dimpled by rain. The rainwater dripped from yards and rigging to darken the warships’ decks.

“You trust the army, Mister Burke?” Saltonstall asked.

“They’re in position, Commodore, and ready to go. Yes, sir, I trust them.”

“Then I suppose we must indulge them.”

Five rebel ships would sail into Majabigwaduce Harbor. The
General Putnam
would lead the attack, closely followed by the
Warren
and the New Hampshire ship,
Hampden
. The
Charming Sally
and the
Black Prince
would come behind those three leading vessels.

It had been Saltonstall’s idea to send the
General Putnam
first. She was a large, well-built ship that carried a score of nine-pounder cannons, and her orders were to sail directly at Mowat’s line and then turn upwind to anchor opposite the southernmost sloop, the
Nautilus
. Once anchored, the
General Putnam
would hammer the
Nautilus
with her broadside while the
Warren
, with her much larger guns, came into line opposite the British flagship, the
Albany
. The
Hampden
, with her mix of nine-pounder and six-pounder cannon, would then take on the
North
while the two remaining ships would use their broadsides to pound the fort.

“He wants us dead,” Thomas Reardon, first lieutenant of the
General Putnam
, commented.

“But it makes sense to send us in first,” Daniel Waters, the skipper, said bleakly.

“To kill us?”

“The
Warren
’s our most powerful ship. No point in having her half-beaten to death before she opens fire.”

“So we’re to be half-beaten to death instead?”

“Yes,” Waters said, “because that’s our duty. Hands to the capstan.”

“He’s saving his skin, that’s the only sense it makes.”

“That’s enough! Capstan!”

Capstans creaked as the anchors were hauled. The topgallantsails were released first, showering water onto the decks, which had been scattered with sand to give the gunners firm footing on planks that would become slippery with blood. The guns were double-shotted. The three leading vessels all carried marines whose muskets would harry the enemy gunners.

The crews of the other ships cheered as the five attacking vessels got under way. Commodore Saltonstall watched approvingly as his flying jib was raised and backed to turn the
Warren
away from the wind, then as the jib and foretopmast staysail were hoisted and sheeted hard home. The topgallants caught the small wind, and Lieutenant Fenwick ordered the other topsails released. Men slid down rigging, ran along yards, and fought with rain-tightened bindings to loose the big sails that scattered more gallons of rainwater that had been trapped within the canvas folds. “Sheet them hard!” Fenwick called.

And the
Warren
was moving. She even heeled slightly to the fitful wind. At her stern the snake ensign flew from the mizzen gaff, while the Stars and Stripes were unfurled at her maintop, the proud colors bright in the drab rain and drifts of fog. Israel Trask, the boy fifer, played on the frigate’s forecastle. He began with the “Rogue’s March” because it was a jaunty tune, a melody to make men dance or fight. The gunners had scarves tied about their ears to dull the sound of the cannon and most, even though it was a chill day, were stripped to the waist. If they were wounded they did not want a musket-ball or timber splinter to drive cloth into the flesh, for every man knew that invited gangrene. The cannon were black in the rain. Saltonstall liked a spick-and-span ship, but he had nevertheless permitted the gunners to chalk the guns’ barrels. “Death to Kings,” one said, “Liberty forever” was written on another, while a third, somewhat mysteriously, just said “Damn the Pope,” a sentiment which seemed irrelevant to the day’s business, but which so accorded with the commodore’s own prejudices that he had allowed the slogan to stay.

“A point to starboard,” Saltonstall said to the helmsman.

“Aye aye, sir, point to starboard it is,” the helmsman said, and made no correction. He knew what he was doing, and he knew too that the commodore was nervous, and nervous officers were prone to give unnecessary orders. The helmsman would keep the
Warren
behind the
General Putnam
, close behind, so close that the frigate’s jib-boom almost touched the smaller ship’s ensign. The harbor entrance was now a quarter mile away. Men were waving from the top of Dyce’s Head. Other men watched from Cross Island where the American flag flew. No guns fired. A rift of fog drifted across the harbor center, half-shrouding the British ships. The fort was not visible yet. There was a whisper of wind, just enough so that the ships picked up speed and the sea at the
Warren
’s cutwater made a small splashing noise. Two knots, maybe two and a half, Saltonstall thought, and one nautical mile to go before the wheel spun to lay the frigate’s broadside opposite the
Albany
. The forecastle of the
Warren
looked ugly because the marines had erected barricades of logs to protect themselves against the enemy’s fire. And that fire would begin as soon as the frigate passed Dyce’s Head, but most of it would be aimed at the
General Putnam
and for half a nautical mile the
General Putnam
must endure that fire without being able to answer it. At two knots that half nautical mile would be covered in fifteen minutes. Each British gun would fire six or seven shots in that time. So at least three hundred shots would beat the
General Putnam
’s bows, which Captain Waters had reinforced with heavy timbers. Saltonstall knew that some men despised him for letting the
General Putnam
take that beating, but what sense did it make to sacrifice the largest ship in the fleet? The
Warren
was the monarch of this bay, the only frigate and the only ship with eighteen-pounder cannons, and it would be foolish to let the enemy cripple her with three hundred round shot before she was capable of unleashing her terrifying broadside.

And what good would this attack do anyway? Saltonstall felt a pulse of anger that he was being asked to do this thing. Lovell should have attacked and taken the fort days ago! The Continental Navy was having to do the Massachusetts Militia’s job, and Lovell, damn him, must have complained to his masters in Boston who had persuaded the Navy Board there to send Saltonstall a reprimand. What did they know? They were not here! The task was to capture the fort, not sink three sloops, which, once the fort was taken, were doomed anyway. So good marines and fine sailors must die because Lovell was a nervous idiot. “He’s not fitted to be elected town Hog Reeve,” Saltonstall sneered.

“Sir?” the helmsman asked.

“Nothing,” the commodore snapped.

“By the mark three!” a seaman called from the beakhead, casting a lead-weighted line to discover the depth.

“We’ve plenty of water, sir,” the helmsman said encouragingly. “I remember from the last time we poked our nose in.”

“Quiet, damn your eyes,” Saltonstall snapped

“Quiet it is, sir.”

The
General Putnam
was almost abreast of Dyce Head now. The wind faltered, though the ships kept their way. On board the British ships the gunners would be crouching behind their barrels to make sure their aim was true.

“Commodore, sir!” Midshipman Ferraby shouted from the taffrail.

“What is it?”

“Signal from the
Diligent
, sir. Strange sail in sight.”

Saltonstall turned. There, far to the south, just emerging from a band of fog which half-obscured Long Island, was his guard ship, the
Diligent
, with signal flags bright at a yardarm. “Ask how many sail,” he ordered.

“It says three ships, sir.”

“Why the hell didn’t you say so the first time, you damned fool? What ships are they?”

“He doesn’t know, sir.”

“Then send an order telling him to find out!” Saltonstall barked, then took the speaking trumpet from its hook on the binnacle. He put the trumpet to his mouth. “Wear ship!” he bellowed, then turned back to the signal midshipman. “Mister Ferraby, you damned fool, make a signal to the other attack ships that they are to return to the anchorage!”