The Invasion Year (57 page)

Reliant
’s guns fell silent for a moment as the aim was shifted. The smoke thinned, and Lewrie peered hard down the long line of barges outside the breakwater, looking intently for any sign of damage they might have inflicted, but spent powder smoke from the French batteries cloaked them, and the night was too dark, only fitfully and briefly illuminated by the passage of flaming carcase shells or rockets. He slammed the tubes of his telescope compact, shaking his head in mounting anger over how useless the assault seemed, so far. By the faint candlelight of the compass binnacle, he checked his pocket-watch, and nigh-groaned aloud to note that it was nearly 9
P.M.
!

The both of us, blazin’ away half the night, with nothing to show for it!
he thought, a feeble anger growing inside him, looking seaward towards
Monarch,
whose starboard side was lit up with stabbing flame from her guns.

“Deck, there! Fireships is goin’ in! Cutters, launches, an’ ships’ boats is goin’ in!” the lookout wailed, sounding cheerful.

“Mister Westcott’ll be having himself some fun,” Mr. Caldwell hooted with glee.

“One hopes,” Lt. Spendlove glumly replied. “At least fireships are conventional weapons.” Un-like rockets, was what he meant, or the lofting of explosive mortar shells into Boulogne itself.

Lewrie felt a faint stir of hope. It had been fireships that had panicked the Spanish Armada when sailed into their anchorage at Gravelines in 1588, driving them to cut their cables and flee to the open sea, never to re-assemble in strength. With any luck, hundreds of those anchored vessels would be set afire, and the few French sailors aboard each one would be unable to fend off, or extinguish the fire aboard their own, abandoning it and fleeing as the conflagration spread from theirs to the next and the next, and when the blazes reached the tons of gunpowder stored in the fireships’ holds went off, even more of them would be blasted to fiery kindling!

The French saw the threat, recognised it for what it was, and shifted their aim to counter the fireships, and the swarm of sailing launches and cutters escorting them, hoping to sink them before they reached those anchored lines. Their armed launches dared to come out further from shore in anticipation, their oars flashing in unison as they rowed out, and swung to point their guns at the British launches. Lewrie’s orders from Admiral Lord Keith had stated that some of those un-manned explosive boats would be employed as well, and Lewrie hoped that the French might concentrate on those, going in before
Reliant
’s torpedo-towing barges and cutters, and ignore his men, who would come to a stop, then turn about and flee seaward after letting their primed torpedoes free.

He found that he’d crossed the fingers of his right hand.

“Deck, there! Th’ fireships is
lit
!”

There was a fiendish science to how a fireship was re-built for maximum effect. Its gun-ports hinged down, not up, the lines to them fashioned to burn through so that long tongues of flame could dart out once the conflagration reached its height. Hatches were widened to let in more air to stoke the fires, slow-match was strung to fire the few old guns still aboard, and down to the holds and the tons of gunpowder. “Fire rooms” were packed with combustibles amidships and below, planned by skilled pyromaniacs to spread quickly to other points where barrels of tar and turpentine, lamp oil and opened bales of straw, waited for a single spark. If the mast-head lookout could spot the first winks of flame, then they had been ignited minutes before, and the last few men of the small crews had already lashed the helms, trimmed the braces and sheets, and scrambled into their boats to make their quick escape.

Two … three … four of them began to light up the approaches to Boulogne, almost turning night to a ruddy, flickering day as they surged shoreward, shot splashes bursting to life all round them, drawing the bulk of French fire from the shore batteries.

“Damned near apocalyptic, ain’t it, sir?” the Sailing Master said, quite pleased with the sight of burning ships, screaming fiery rocket trails, and the rush of burning incendiary shells from bomb vessels.
Something
was engulfed in flames on the far side of the arms of the breakwaters, to make the scene even more hellish. Mr. Caldwell leaned his head over to cock an ear in appreciation of the continual thunder, screech, or howl of guns and bowling roundshot; of the stench of spent powder and propellants and the sickly yellow-white clouds of powder smoke that reflected the fires, the Sailing Master sniffed deep and smiled in pleasure!

“Ghastly,” was Lt. Clarence Spendlove’s dour opinion.

“Sir!” Midshipman Warburton cried as he came to the quarterdeck. “Mister Merriman’s duty, sir, and he says that the guns can’t elevate enough to shoot over the heads of our small boats yonder. He requests that we cease fire ’til our boats are clear.”

“Very well, Mister Warburton, my compliments to him and pass the word to cease fire,” Lewrie ordered, wondering just how much shot and powder they had expended the last few hours. He looked over the full hammock stanchions to the waist and saw that many of the loaders had powder ladles in their hands, as if they had fired away all of the pre-made flannel powder cartridges, and had run short of flannel bags, too. In the dull red glows of the battle lanthorns between the guns, his gun crews, bare to the waists and heads swaddled with neckerchiefs to protect their hearing, were so begrimed with powder smoke that they resembled weary junior demons who stoked the fires of Hell.

The rest of the squadron,
Monarch
and the two other frigates, had ceased fire, too, and the loudest sounds of firing came from shore, the duller oven-door slams punctuated by sharp barks and cracks from lighter boat guns as the French launches and British boats fired upon each other. He could almost hear the rushing crackle of the fireships as they burned, well alight and turned into floating braziers that illuminated the night. By then, sails and tarred rigging were afire, too, with mouse-tiny fires scampering up the shrouds, finding sources for combustion in the cooking fat slush that kept the running rigging supple, too. They were
close
to the French barges, but … would they make it all the way before their sails vanished, or the slow-matches reached the explosives?

There was a titanic blast near the anchored French boats, with a great sheet of flame and smoke and a mountainous pillar of seawater.

“One of the un-manned explosive boats, I think, sir,” Caldwell speculated, pursing his lips and frowning in disappointment. “Perhaps the others will get closer.”

“Deck, there! Ship’s boats comin’ out!” a lookout shouted.

Not just ours, but everybody’s,
Lewrie thought after an intense look through his glass. The single-masted cutters and armed launches that had gone in with the fireships were retiring. Emboldened by their seeming retreat, French launches and
péniches
were warily edging further from the protection of their shore batteries, as well.

“Mister Merriman!” Lewrie shouted down to the ship’s waist. “I wish you to open upon the French launches once our own boats are clear!”

“Aye, sir!” Lt. Merriman replied, sounding a touch weary as he took off his hat to bind a neckerchief over his ears once more. Tired gun crews slouched back to their pieces, after a last sip of water from the scuttle-butts, like over-burdened miners returning to a coal face, making Lewrie fear that with no sure signs of success, his crew was becoming dispirited. The long, inexplicable delay after anchoring just out of gun range, the sitting idle all day,
might
have made good sense to them, and the excitement of action, the novel sight of rockets and mortar boats, might have enthused them at first, but …

Lewrie had to admit that he felt dispirited, too, for the lack of urgency and daring, and for the seeming lack of success, so far. He wavered between anger that the expedition looked like a failure, and a sense of futility that, as a captain, he took so little part in it!

His people tending the guns had been doing something active and necessary, as had the hundreds more officers and sailors away in those launches and boats, while he stood about like a useless fart in a trance.

Seniority could take all the joy of battle away, all the frenetic, neck-or-nothing intensity of a boarding action, a cutting-out raid, or amphibious landing, all the duties Lewrie had been given as a young Midshipman or junior officer. He looked over to Admiral Lord Keith’s flagship and wondered if that worthy had had a single thing to do once his guns had begun to roar and the fireships had gone in. The fellow had a Flag-Captain to run his ship, a Captain of The Fleet to handle the day-to-day mundane matters, so what was left for him to do? Tend to the supper menu? For all the good that Lewrie was doing, for all the good that Lord Keith was doing, they both might as well have gone aft to their cabins for a pot of tea!

Lewrie almost had to shake himself to get rid of his bad mood, becoming aware of the reduction of noise and of lights. The rocket vessels must have run out of their horridly inaccurate contraptions, for they no longer soared off in shoals but went aloft—and far off course!—in irregular singletons. The mortars in the bomb vessels had fallen silent, too, so there were no more spectacular air-bursts or swooshing fiery incendiary carcases. It was the fires ashore, and the drifting fireships, that threw great angry glares cross the waters.

“There, sirs!” Midshipman Rossyngton cried, pointing overside to starboard. “Small boats approaching!”

From eye-searing glare and the inkiest shadows, a ragged line of boats slowly appeared. Two were under lug-sails. A third loomed up under oars, trailing the first two. A fourth appeared at last, in tow of the third.

“Mister Rossyngton, do you go below and warn the Surgeon that we may have wounded men returning,” Lewrie ordered.

“Aye, sir!”

The first two boats, both of them thirty-two-foot barges, passed across
Reliant
’s bows, lowering sails and fitting oars into the tholes. Midshipman Houghton stood and waved, looking immensely pleased and excited. The second barge was Lt. Westcott’s.

“Any hurt?” Lewrie called to him as the barges rounded up near the larboard side, slowly stroking to hook onto the main-mast channel platform.

“Not a man, sir!” Lt. Westcott shouted back. “Not for lack of trying on the French’s part!” he added with a triumphant laugh and a brief flash of a smile. Mr. Houghton’s boat was hooking on, the man in the bows with the gaff young Grimes. His swivel gun still stood in its bracket, muzzle to the sky, and he looked pleased with himself, too. And, thankfully, there was Liam Desmond, his “Black Irish” Cox’n, at the tiller of Westcott’s barge, and Patrick Furfy ploughing forward to the bows with a gaff pole in his hand to serve as bow man, staggering over his mates as clumsily as ever.

“Welcome back, lads, good bit o’ work!” Lewrie called as his men came up the battens and man-ropes to gather on the larboard gangway. “Mister Houghton, I’d admire did ye see to leadin’ the barges’ towing lines aft, for later.”

“Aye, sir. Ehm … have any of our torpedoes gone off yet?” Houghton asked.

“None of ours, no,” Lewrie had to tell him. “Ah, glad t’see ye in one piece, Mister Westcott. How did it go?”

“Wet, wild, and woolly for a time, sir,” Westcott told him with another laugh. “Shot splashes all round, and I got soaked to my chest when I mis-judged my leap back into the boat from our torpedo’s back. The tide was still running fairly strong when we let them go, so…,” he said with a shrug.

“You were closer to those anchored boats,” Lewrie said. “Did you note any damage?”

“Not all that much, sir, no. Sorry,” Lt. Westcott said, more softly. “Like in
Macbeth,
‘sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ ”

Monarch
and the other frigates began firing, again; their boats were back alongside, and no friendly craft lay between them and their new targets, the French launches and gunboats.

“Resume fire, Mister Merriman!” Lewrie took time to order. “Do you take those Frog launches under fire!”

Now it was Midshipman Entwhistle’s boat crew coming back aboard to be congratulated, then … Captain Speaks and his crew.

“Must apologise to your young gentleman for supplanting him, Lewrie, but … I wished to see our torpedoes delivered properly,” the older fellow briskly said, stone-faced, as if to fend off any criticism of his actions.

“Excuse me, sir,” Surgeon Mr. Mainwaring intruded as he came to the base of the larboard gangway ladder. “Are there any wounded?” He had his shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows and wore his usual long bib apron of leather; both, thankfully, were still pristine and bloodless.

“Don’t think so, Mister Mainwaring,” Lt. Westcott told him.

“Well, sor…,” Patrick Furfy piped up, holding up his bloodied left hand, “ ’Tis nought a glass o’ neat rum won’t cure.”

“The lummox caught it on one o’ th’ torpedo grapnel hooks, sor,” Liam Desmond related. “Thought he’d git towed ashore t’France before he got free!”

“We must see to that … sew it up,” Mainwaring determined after a quick inspection.