The Admirals' Game

Being towed on a choppy sea made progress very slow, leaving Lieutenant John Pearce to wonder if the two pontoons would ever get into the desired position. Not that he was keen they should do so, it being highly probable that the flimsy platform on which he stood, designed for harbour work, loading livestock and the like on to anchored vessels, would be extremely vulnerable. Adapted for action, towed by boats and mounted with a pair of long-barrelled 24-pounder cannon, the platforms had been diverted to take part in an operation to subdue a newly constructed French artillery position, which had made vulnerable the extreme western section of the inner roads of the port of Toulon, known as the Petite Rade.

At maximum range the longest French gun, a 44-pounder culverin, was able to lay fire upon the main bastions defending the inner harbour, Fort Mulgrave,
at the very south of the defensive perimeter, and the central redoubt Fort Malbousquet. Left in peace, this new battery would serve as a stepping stone to push forward yet another artillery position, which would increase the threat to the whole anchorage. In time, such leapfrogging would render the situation of the Allied fleet untenable and the defence of the port depended on those ships. The aim was, if possible, to destroy it; failing that, to so discourage the gunners of the French Revolution that they would think long and hard about any further advance.

In front of the pontoons, hardly visible in the grey morning light, lay the long, low, sandy shore of the bay of La Seyne, with the protective works of the French battery raising the profile of the land by several metres; hastily constructed earth and stone walls with cannon embrasures, and behind them an ancient stone building called la Chapelle de Brégaillon. Even to an untrained eye like that of John Pearce – a naval officer by default rather than proper entitlement – the problem seemed obvious. The pontoon cannon would be firing from sea level at a target not much above that, when what was needed was plunging fire, mortars firing shells high enough to carry the breastworks and impact on the French guns, the men who worked them, as well as the powder stores needed to sustain their fire.

‘Here they come, thank God!'

That heartfelt exclamation came from the man who had command of Pearce's pontoon, though he refused
to talk of it in those terms, as if it were a rated ship. Lieutenant Henry Digby was engaged in a duty and a damned unpleasant one, of the kind that made a serving naval officer wonder who, in King George's Navy, he had upset. John Pearce, well aware of Digby's feelings on the matter, had not bothered to enlighten him; he guessed being posted on this undertaking, given from where the orders had originated, was a chastisement aimed squarely at him.

Digby had spotted that the two capital ships designated to lead the attack had weighed and were slowly inching under topsails towards the eastern shore of the huge sweeping outer bay known as the Grande Rade. HMS
St George
, a line-of-battle ship bearing ninety-eight guns, was the principal in this affair, flying aloft the flag of Rear Admiral Gell.
Aurore
, a 74-gun French vessel of shallow draught, now manned by British sailors, was in support.

‘Have they shifted any guns, sir?' asked Pearce.

‘None that I can see. The gun ports look pristine.'

They had discussed the possibility of such an act not long after receiving their orders. Lacking mortars, it made sense for Gell to shift his heavy lower deck cannon to the upper deck, a hard and messy business for sure, which would require the carpenter to fashion some adjustments to the bulwarks, but one that would increase their range and elevate their effect. Digby had concluded that it was unlikely to happen, given it required imagination; he reckoned the higher most
men rose in the service, the less given they were to innovation.

‘Time to fix our position, Mr Pearce,' Digby said.

As always, when John Pearce picked up any instrument of nautical measurement, he felt a knot grip his stomach. The men who shared his rank had served a long apprenticeship of several years as midshipmen; some, indeed, never rose above that station. In that time, they learnt their trade under supervision, in an atmosphere in which allowance was made for trial and error. He had been taken from the rank of midshipman to lieutenant overnight by the personal order of King George, and it was at times like these he felt most keenly his lack of nautical experience, not least because the present requirement, the measurement of triangulation at sea, was damned tricky.

His uncertainty was eased by the lieutenant commanding the other pontoon: over the water came the shouted orders from him to prepare the anchors that would hold his gun platform in position, and since the one on which Pearce stood was to be placed in relation to that, he was able to say with some confidence they should do the same.

‘Make it so, Mr Pearce.'

A shouted command to the towing boats had them ship their oars, then dip them again to hold the tow steady once what little way they had was moderated. Pearce watched the action of their consort closely, mirroring each act as it was executed; the four small anchors got
ready, then the two rearmost dropped as the boats, under experienced coxswains working shoreside, once more took up the tow. When those had grounded, one boat held them in place while the second came close to take on one anchor at a time, the rope paying out as they rowed the required distance. Then it was dropped into the water, and after allowing time for it to sink to the seabed the cable was attached to a small windlass and hauled in till it found firm ground and was taut.

Once all four anchors were in position, each was adjusted to swing the pontoon into the required position vis à vis the enemy battery. Then the guns, lashed down to prevent them rolling around on the swell, were released, loaded, and hauled up upon their hastily constructed restraining tackles, a series of thick ropes threaded through heavy ringbolts fixed in the decking. Once the gunner had fitted the flints, their weapons were ready to fire. By that time the capital ships were also in position, the sun was up and shining into the faces of their opponents, with both pontoon commanders eying the mainmast halyards on
St George
for the flags that would give the signal to open fire. At their own masthead a stanchion, set amidships for the purpose, flew the plain red pennant that told Admiral Gell they were ready to oblige.

Standing next to the cannon he would aim and control, Pearce was very close to men he saw as his closest companions, Michael O'Hagan, Charlie Taverner and Rufus Dommet, three of the eight men needed to
serve the 24-pounder. Added to those friends were a couple of hands who had served with him before, had known him as both a common seaman and midshipman, and since they were out of earshot of Digby, or those manning the other cannon, it was possible to talk quietly and without the usual rigorous attendance to strict naval discipline.

‘Our friends on yonder shore seemed in no hurry to disturb us,' said Latimer, a sailor old for his occupation, with a well-lined, dark-skinned and leathery face to prove it. Long in the tooth, he had seen a great deal of sea service, and was generally held, not least by John Pearce, to be a wise old owl, worth listening to. ‘Might have been worth a ball or two while we was fussing to get into place.'

‘Why alarm us when we are a better target anchored?'

‘Happen you have the right of it, Mr Pearce, but mark my words, I look on it to get warm afore long.'

‘Would that be smoke I see, John-boy?' asked Michael O'Hagan.

Even squatting, the Irishman was tall and muscular enough to dwarf those around him, including men strangers to both he and John Pearce, one or two of whom looked at Michael askance, that being no way for an ordinary tar to address an officer. They did not, of course, know the history, did not know that Michael, Charlie, Rufus, and John Pearce along with them, had been brutally pressed into the king's service in an act of blatant illegality by a certain Captain Ralph Barclay.
Pearce had coined the term Pelicans to cover them, for that was the Thames-side tavern in which they had first met, and through such an association they had a bond that transcended rank.

It was Charlie who responded to the question. ‘It might just be our friends cooking their breakfast, Michael.'

‘Happen if we send a boat in they'll spare us some,' said Blubber Booth who, as his nickname implied, was a man fond of his grub.

‘All mates together, eh! Sharing our victuals an' tall tales?'

Charlie Taverner's response was rendered unfunny by the sharpness with which he said the words, but that was in the nature of the man. Charlie liked to think of himself as a light-hearted cove, yet he was anything but when life was not going as he thought it should. Rufus, the youngest of the trio, employed his habitual silly grin to break up his freckles. He never saw the vinegar in Charlie's comments, only the humour.

‘I'll take one of the boats in and ask. I'm thinking I can smell chitterlings.'

‘Sure,' O'Hagan hooted, ‘you're daft enough, Rufus. But I doubt you'd like what they served you, for it will not be parts of fowl. That smoke'll be a fire for heating round shot.'

‘I doubt they'll waste it on us,' Pearce said, more in hope than certainty. ‘The ships are bigger targets.'

‘Why bother?' Charlie added, his voice rising. ‘One decent 
aim with common shot will smash this thing to bits.'

‘Belay that, Charlie,' Pearce insisted, seeing the worried frowns on other faces, men who had obviously harboured the same thought. ‘The task is bad enough.'

‘If we ain't in the frying pan when you'se with us, John Pearce, we's in the fire,' cawed Latimer. ‘Can't quite work out if you seek trouble, or it finds you.'

There were thirty-odd sailors aboard this pontoon, drawn from several ships in the fleet, probably being the souls least loved by the premier or their captain, and Pearce had to feel for them. There was no glory in this assignment, only danger, and no prospect of a prize and some coin to make the notion of risk worthwhile. As well as that, what they were about bore no relation to that for which they had been trained to varying degrees of ability: rapid fire at point-blank range. Engaging a shore battery required slow and measured gunnery, with slight changes in elevation, increases and decreases in powder charges, and subtle movements on the anchors, which made the gunner the most important man aboard.

Nothing happened for what seemed an age; no doubt there was much discussion taking place aboard HMS
St George
, which allowed Pearce to look about him at a landscape still parched in late autumn. Various forts were set around the shores of the Grande Rade, while others covered the narrower fortified entrance to the Petite Rade, making the most of what was a fortress designed by nature. There was no fleet in the world big
enough to crowd the outer anchorage, and with two promontories to protect it from the vagaries of both sea and weather, the inner roads provided a secure space for the largest warships, while right inshore lay a protected harbour, containing slips for shipbuilding, massive timber stores and a fully functioning dockyard and arsenal.

Toulon had been home to the French Mediterranean Fleet since the time of Louis the Sun King and the masts of that Navy filled the port, all flying the
pavillon royal
, the French king's ensign of fleur de lys, not the tricolour of the France of 1789. Behind the town and the Vauban-designed fortress that formed the heart of the defence, the hills rose in steep steps to the wooded crest of Mont Faron – an observation point that made the place invulnerable to a surprise assault from the sea – the flatter sections dotted with more redoubts, both those of the defenders as well as the enemy.

British marines and sailors, as well as Neapolitan, Piedmontese and Spanish troops, manned these positions. There was a unit of French royalists, but not of the number there should be, a worry given the population of Toulon. Too many of the locals were waiting to see which way the wind blew; the rest in the crowded town were refugees from the terror, and its mistress the guillotine, which had been unleashed on the southern coast of France by the revolutionary armies, not least in the great port of Marseilles, where the blood price
for insurrection against the madmen of Paris was said to run into the thousands.

‘Flag signalling, your honour,' shouted the man detailed to watch.

‘As soon as the flagship fires, let us test the range,' called Digby.