The Invasion Year (49 page)

“I think Captain Speaks does not intend
that
sort of accuracy, sirs,” Lt. Clough quickly interjected. “It’s more a matter of ending up
somewhere
alongside those long, anchored rows, instead of drifting a whole mile wide.”

“Drogues,” Lewrie said. “Sea-anchors t’pull ’em in quicker and straighter.”

“Though, whatever variations in the direction of the tides, the eddys and such, might not a drogue pull them off course even faster?” Clough wondered aloud, his thick brow as furrowed as a wheat field.

“We’ll never know ’til we try,” Lewrie said.

“Rudders, too, sir,” Lt. Merriman stuck in, looking eager again after the general gloomy tone of the gathering. “I dare say our Carpenter and the Bosun could whip something up in short order.”

“Sir?” Lewrie said, turning to Speaks.

Poor old fart don’t have a ship command, and now it looks as if his project’s a dead-bust, too,
Lewrie thought as Captain Speaks hemmed and hawed and wiped his hand over his mouth.

Lewrie felt certain that the catamaran torpedoes in their current form would
sort of
work, if the yards built enough of them and the eventual attack on the main French marshalling port of Boulogne used hundreds of the damned things at one go. That might be enough success for Admiralty, and Speaks’s career. But, if the old fellow was seen to use his wits and made improvements which worked even better…!
There
was a feather in his cap, a pat on the back from Admiralty, and a promotion into a ship of his own.

Will ye mention
me
in your report, when Merriman’s modifications solve the problem? Assumin’ they do, o’ course! I could use some new credit in London, too. Get that Henry Legge and court-martial off my back!
Lewrie speculated.

“I suppose it would not hurt to try fitting the last two with drogues, and perhaps one of them with a fixed rudder,” Speaks grudgingly allowed, after a long think. “We’ve what left, Mister Clough?”

“One set for fifteen minutes, sir, one for half an hour,” that stout worthy replied.

“Excellent!” Speaks enthused, or pretended to; he looked as if he was driven to sham zeal, no matter what he really thought of torpedoes, or their reliability, or even the honourability of using them as weapons of war. Lewrie suspected that poor Speaks was in over his head in a project he didn’t have a clue about, and might even hold to be a ghastly, sneaking, and atrocious idea, but … the torpedoes were all he had, and he would prove them useful no matter his reservations. Even were they horrid wastes of matériel and money, he would persevere to the last sticking post to prove
himself
worthy.

“The after-end hoisting ring-bolts, sir,” Lt. Merriman babbled on, producing a lead pencil and a scrap of paper from his coat. “Do we bind the tiller to either of those, anchoring its end to the stand-pipe with a wood mast hoop from one of the barge’s lug-sails…”

“Um-hum, I see…,” Speaks gravely replied, leaning over to peer at the quick sketch. “Like a fixed sweep-oar rudder.”

“Exactly so, sir!” Merriman said, chuckling.

“But … would it not
wobble,
Mister Merriman?” Speaks asked.

“Well, hmm…” Merriman frowned, looking cock-eyed at his idea. “If we nailed some small baulks of scrap timber to the torpedo. They are wood chests, after all, yes! We could
nail
baulks through the tarred canvas and outer planking, say four inches thick and high, eight inches long, to make a restraining channel for the long tiller, which we’d
still
attach to the stand-pipe with a mast hoop…!”

Pettus came to the table and leaned over to whisper in Lewrie’s ear, then stood over to the side-board to gather wine glasses for all the company.

“You’ll stay aboard to dine, sir, Mister Clough?” Lewrie asked his guests. “I’m told my cook’s preparin’ bean soup, roasted rabbit, and a sea pie, with apple tarts to boot.”

“Delighted, Captain Lewrie!” Captain Speaks replied, turning to look at him very briefly, now intent upon Merriman’s sketch, to which he quickly returned. “Once in place, why not nail restraining boards over the brackets, so the tiller won’t hop out or slip free, sir?”

Lewrie crooked a finger to Pettus.

“Sir?” Pettus said in a whisper, leaning close again.

“Best see that the cats eat very separate tonight,” Lewrie said, with a slight incline of his head towards their senior officer.

“I’ll see to it, sir.”

He’s in a good mood, for once,
Lewrie thought;
Pray God nothin’ spoils it!

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Drogues, or sea-anchors, were easily cobbled together from the iron hoops of depleted ration butts or kegs, which the Ship’s Cooper had dis-assembled and stored below, one small hoop from a five-gallon barrico for the small end, and a larger one for the main opening. The canvas and the sewing work to bind the canvas cones to the hoops was done by the Sailmaker and his Mate, and the Bosun provided the one-inch manila for the tow-lines.

The Ship’s Carpenter, with the Bosun and his Mate, created the stabilising rudder device. It looked damned odd, for it had to mate to the flat top of a torpedo, then curve to match the slope of taper along the after-end, nailed in place in its brackets, with a wood ring at the end that fit round the stand-pipe, then doubled to hold a cut-down rudder off
Reliant
’s jolly-boat, so it would not wobble.

The modifications were finished by mid-afternoon of the next day, then borne over to
Penarth
for fitting, and the trials would come on the next morning tide.

*   *   *

“Flags, Mister Merriman?” Lewrie asked as he stood by the entry-port to watch his boat crews board their barges.

“Mister Clough’s idea, sir,” Merriman told him, impatient to be about the trials with his improvements. “We’ll tie them to the stand-pipe to show what time we pulled the priming lines,
and
be able to see where they go … at least for the experiment, sir.”

“Good thinkin’,” Lewrie agreed. “Once set free, I hadn’t the slightest clue where they were ’til they went ‘bang.’ Away with you, Mister Merriman, Mister Entwhistle. Have fun!” he wished them.

Don’t blow yourselves up!
Lewrie wished to himself.

“If they work better this time, sir,” Lt. Westcott said, coming to his side as Lewrie paced back to the centre of the quarterdeck, “we may have to buy more colliers into the Navy. Else it will take better than three or four hours to hoist all eight out of the holds and ready them all for launching.”

“Hmm. Hadn’t thought about that part of it,” Lewrie confessed. “Come t’think on it, I doubt if anyone else has, either. If we
do
end up launchin’ ’em by the hundred, it’d take a whole flotilla of colliers and ship’s boats. And, they’d have to anchor two miles off the French coast
hours
before the tide begins to make.”

“
Sacre bleu, mort de ma vie,
vottever are zose Anglais doing?” Westcott scoffed quite cheerfully. “Henri, do you z’ink we should tell someone of zis, or open ze fire wiz ze cannon on z’ese pests?”

“If there’s a makin’ tide in darkness, perhaps,” Lewrie speculated, with a leery grimace. “Oh, all this is nonsense and moonshine! Even if they work somewhat as desired, it’s
deployin’
’em that’ll be the rub. It makes more sense that we just barge up to Range-To-Random Shot and fire away ’til the powder magazine’s empty.”

The last torpedo was slung overside into the sea, and the barges took them in tow. Today, the trials were done under reduced sail, not anchored, so
Penarth
did not block their view.

The barges sailed in towards Guernsey ’til they were within an estimated mile, and handed their sails for a minute or two. Through their telescopes, Lewrie and Westcott could see people scrambling onto the torpedoes, which were floating awash with the chop breaking over them. Tiny triangular red pendants sprouted a foot or so above the sea as Lt. Merriman and Midshipman Entwhistle jerked the priming lines and replaced the tompions, then the barges rowed out ahead of the torpedoes to deploy the drogues and tow them for a bit, before letting go the drogues’ lines and rapidly turning away to re-hoist sail and leave the immediate area, soonest.

Sand trickled through the quarter-hour and half-hour glasses, pocket-watches were consulted almost every two minutes, and everyone who had access to a telescope peered intently from the starboard-side shrouds or bulwarks. The tiny red pendants shrank smaller and smaller as the minutes ticked by, with some of the more enthusiastic boasting that the torpedoes seemed to be drifting faster this time, and seemed not to be drifting too far off the section of the shore that had been chosen as a “target.”

“Can barely spot ’em, now, sir,” Lt. Westcott muttered.

“Any time now, on the first one,” Mr. Caldwell, the Sailing Master, said, squinting at his watch. “Yes! There it goes!”

B’whoom!
followed the sudden eruption of flame-shot gunpowder smoke and a great sprouting pillar of sea by a second or so.

“Mister Spendlove?” Lewrie asked, turning to the Second Officer.

“By my reckoning, sir, it went off on time, yet still a half-mile short,” Spendlove said, after some quick figuring on his slate. “And, do we take that stretch of shoreline from the white church and steeple on the left, and the grove of trees marking the right end of a mile-long target representing a line of French barges, it seemed to trend larboard, closer to the steeple-end, sir, when it should have ended up closer to the centre.”

“We released from roughly the same place as the earlier trials, on the same strength of tide-race, over the same bottom influences we experienced before, so … there’s no explaining it, sir,” Westcott said, frowning in puzzlement for a moment, but he perked up at last. “It seems, though, that the drogue pulled it closer ashore, and kept it within the margins!” he said, extending both arms to encompass the outer ends of that mile of shore. “Now, if the half-hour torpedo with the rudder behaves the same, that one might come close to succeeding.”

More long minutes passed, then …

“There, sir!” Midshipman Rossyngton crowed, leaping in glee.

The sea boiled of a sudden in a wide, shallow hump that burst like a pus-filled boil, spurting smoke and spray an hundred feet into the air, yellow-grey powder smoke and white foam mingling. A second later came the
Ba’whoom!
from the gigantic explosion.

“In the shallows, I think,” Westcott deemed it. “Almost ashore.”

“And very close to the mid-point of the mile, sir,” Lt. Spendlove said in a flat voice, as if the torpedo’s seeming success had awakened his initial mis-givings again. “A fluke, most-like?”

“Damme, the bloody things might work, after all,” Lewrie grudgingly allowed.

If they do, maybe they’ll free us for other duties, just thankee, Jesus!
he thought;
They work, our part’s done, and someone
else
can go
use
’em! I
still
don’t quite trust ’em.

*   *   *

They recovered their barges, and Lt. Merriman and Midshipman Entwhistle came tumbling back aboard in such glad takings that they could almost be said to dance jigs, babbling away like mag-pies. And, before the barges could be led astern for towing,
Penarth
came slowly surging alongside within hailing distance, with Captain Speaks at her larboard railings.

“Hoy,
Reliant
!” Speaks shouted, hands cupped by his face, with no need of a speaking-trumpet. “That did the trick! I will sail for Portsmouth at once, with the design drawings your First Officer made! Congratulations to you and your Mister Merriman, Lewrie! Rest assured my report will be complimentary to you all!”

“Thank you, sir!” Lewrie shouted back.

“Remain on station ’til I return with fresh torpedoes!” Speaks ordered. “Look for me off the Nor’east tip of Guernsey in about ten days to a fortnight!”

Makin’ sure he gets
all
the bloody credit, first!
Lewrie sarcastically realised.

“ ’Til then, cruise independent, and make a nuisance of yourself with the French!” Speaks added.

Hmm, maybe not so bad, at that,
Lewrie thought more kindly.

“You’ll not need escort back to Portsmouth, sir?” Lewrie asked.

“With no torpedoes aboard, there’s nought the French may learn, sir!” Speaks shouted over, sounding very pleased and amused. “
Adieu,
and good hunting,
Reliant
!”