The Invasion Year (55 page)

“They’re
my
torpedoes, Lewrie, my collier from which you’ll fetch them,” Speaks had briskly rattled off, a calculating little smile upon his face, “and I’m damned well going to see them handled properly.”

A kindly and charitable man might have deemed Captain Speaks’s zeal admirable … the sort of fellow Captain Alan Lewrie definitely was
not,
even before the bastard had come aboard. No, what the fellow wanted the most, Lewrie suspected, was a chance to be at sea aboard a proper frigate, not a hired-in collier that mounted only pop-guns, and damned few of those.
Reliant
was a warship very much like Speaks’s last command of 1801, which, had he not come down with pneumonia and had had to be replaced, he might have sailed into the Baltic as a lone ship to scout the Danish, Swedish, and Russian fleets, then returned in time to take part in the glorious battle with Nelson at Copenhagen, and felt robbed of the opportunity.

Lewrie was dead-certain that Speaks
had
no orders; his brief had been to
test
the catamaran torpedoes, then turn them over to some other officer to be employed. He might have felt a
trifle
sorry for the old fellow—had he not been as bristly as a currying brush, nowhere
near
the “firm but fair” and well-liked officer of old! And if he wished to be close to his charges, and take part in a battle, at long last, more power to him, Lewrie thought—so long as he did so anywhere else but aboard
his
ship!

“Signal, sir!” Midshipman Munsell, high aloft, called down in a thin and shrill voice, reading off a string of number flags. “General to all ships, with two guns!”

“It is … ‘Come to Anchor,’ sir,” Midshipman Rossyngton said, after a quick scan through his code book.

“Anchor?” Captain Speaks barked. “We’re still five miles off!”

“Have the signal repeated, Mister Rossyngton,” Lewrie told his Mid, “but I’d admire did we fetch-to, Mister Westcott, not anchor, as ordered. Do the French come out, we’d be immobile too long for my liking …
and
caught tryin’ t’go to Quarters and heave up the best bower and the entire length of a cable at the same time.”

HMS
Reliant
was put up into wind, fore-and-aft sails still drawing to drive her forward, but with tops’ls aback to act as brakes, and let her make just a bit of stern and lee-way, practically immobilised, but still able to pay off and get back to speed in a mere minute, avoiding getting caught by a French sortie “with her pants down.”

“It
was
an order,” Captain Speaks muttered half to himself, just loud enough to irk. “Ahem,” he covered, loudly clearing his throat.

“Interpreted by all but the two-deckers and the flagship according to captains’ best judgement, sir,” Lewrie pointed out through gritted teeth, in a rictus of an outwardly pleasant smile. “The rest have fetched-to, the other frigates and such. As you can see,” he added as he swept an arm towards the lighter ships, which stood a little closer to the coast. “I doubt the cutters have anchor cables
long
enough.”

“Now what, sir?” Lt. Westcott said, after coughing into a fist to change the subject.

“We sit here long enough, Mister Westcott, we might heave up the rum keg, then serve the mid-day meal,” Lewrie cynically replied with a grimace. “I thought we’d just barge up to gun range and blaze away at once. But, that’s up to Admiral Lord Keith. Mister Rossyngton? Pass word for my steward, and he’s t’bring my collapsible chair up.”

Captain Speaks, no fan of Lewrie already, goggled at the order, utterly convinced that Lewrie was the idlest lubber he’d ever met.

“And my penny-whistle, too, Mister Rossyngton,” Lewrie added, sure that that would dismay the fellow even further; far enough, perhaps, to leave the quarterdeck and leave them all in peace? “What’d ye like t’hear, Mister Westcott? ‘Spanish Ladies’?”

To Lewrie’s wicked delight, Captain Speaks produced a gargling sound, belched up a muffled, “Pah!” and took himself a brisk stroll up the larboard sail-tending gangway, swinging his arms like a man working up an appetite.

“ ‘Fa-are-well, and
adieu,
to you
fine
Spanish ladies … fa-are-well, and
adieu,
to you ladies of
Spain
 … fo-or
we’ve
received
orders
to-o sail for old England…,’ ” Lewrie sang out.

Damn my eyes, but I
do
know how t’rile ’em!
he gaily thought.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

It was late afternoon before the squadron got under way, again, with Lord Keith’s flagship,
Monarch,
leading all three frigates, bomb vessels, fireships, the
Penarth
collier, and all the brig-sloops and cutters closer to Boulogne.

“Now, we’ll see something!” Speaks enthused, pacing the quarterdeck with jaunty steps and clapping his hands in eagerness for action.

But no, they didn’t, for
Monarch
signalled for all ships to anchor again, this time just outside of the maximum reach of French cannon! In much shallower water, even the cutters could put down an anchor and find good holding ground without paying out too much scope of cable.

“A word, sir?” Lt. Westcott whispered, near Lewrie’s shoulder.

“Aye,” Lewrie allowed, just as guarded.

“This doesn’t make any sense, sir,” Westcott grumbled, his face set in a beetle-browed frown. “We haven’t even been ordered to clear for action, and here we are, sitting ducks should the French come out, as you feared round Noon, when we fetched-to instead of anchoring.”

“Well, it doesn’t make any sense t’me, either, if there’s comfort in
mutual
perplexity,” Lewrie gravelled back, shaking his head. “I would’ve thought we’d bring the other four ‘liners’ along. If
Monarch
can anchor this closely, so could the sixty-fours and the fifties.”

“One hates to question the judgement of superior officers, but … surely, sir, were
Nelson
here, one would think we’d have been hot at it, hours ago,” Westcott said.

“Second-guessin’ superior officers?” Lewrie said with a cackle. “Damme, Mister Westcott, that’s the Navy meat and drink! Hmm,” he went on after a long moment of pursing his lips and staring shoreward. “Perhaps Lord Keith’s of a mind t’launch the attack tonight, when fireships’d cause even more panic than they would in daylight. You may be in the boats and right under the French guns by midnight!”

“One can only hope, sir,” Westcott eagerly agreed.

“Mister Spendlove?” Lewrie called out to the officer of the watch. “You have the deck. I’m goin’ aloft for a look-see.”

Since his first days as a raw and callow Midshipman in 1780, he had always been pluperfect-terrified of going aloft, hundreds of feet from the sane safety of solid decks, “yo-ho-hoing” out the futtock shrouds to hang like a spider nigh upside-down instead of using the “lubber’s hole” to the fighting top platform, scrambling higher up the narrowing shrouds and rat-lines to the cross-trees, or the fearful mast caps … going out to the tip of a tops’l, t’gallant, or royal yardarm to fist canvas, with upper arms locked over the yard and his feet teetering on a foot-rope that shimmied like a circus performer’s high wire, with a bare second of clumsiness dooming him to plunge overside to drown, or go
Splat!
on the upper deck!

He slung his telescope over his shoulder and went up the starboard shrouds of the mizen mast. Damn what Captain Speaks thought of him, he eschewed the futtock shrouds and transferred to the counter-bracing cat-harpings to reach the top through the lubber’s hole.

I ain’t a twenty-year-old topman,
he grimly told himself;
nor a twenty-year-old anything any longer!

“Uh, evenin’, sir!” a spry young sailor bade him as Lewrie took a deep breath to steady his twanging nerves before extending his telescope.

“Evenin’, Grimes,” Lewrie replied, sparing a moment to grin back, recalling that Grimes was one of the two-dozen or so that his old Bosun, Will Cony, now the owner of The Olde Ploughman public house in Anglesgreen, had recruited as volunteers when
Reliant
had been fitting out.

“Ehm … d’ye think we might see a bit of a fight tonight, sir?” Grimes asked with a wolfish expression.

“Ye never can tell, Grimes,” Lewrie told him. “If we don’t get ordered in, I don’t see the Frogs comin’ out to us. What’s your station, do we go to Quarters?”

“Well, I would be here, sir, t’tend sail and see to damage, but if we get t’launch those torpeder things, I’m down for Mister Houghton in his boat, and handle the swivel gun.”

“You’d have more fun in Houghton’s boat,” Lewrie assured him as he turned his attention to the shore. “We might blow some French boats to Hell … and some Frogs with ’em.”

“There’s a lot of ’em, sir,” Grimes commented.

God, ain’t there, just!
Lewrie thought as he levelled his telescope on the top-mast shrouds and rat-lines and got a good view. Even as dusk began to fall, there was still enough light for him to make out
hundreds
of vessels in Boulogne harbour, everything from
prames,
First Rate gunboats, to the smallest single-masted
caïques
. They were lined up against the inner harbour piers several rows deep, along the minor jetties where small fishing boats would tie up, in row after row round the harbour in deeper water, and all alongside the inner side of the stone breakwaters with only their masts showing … a deep
forest
of masts! Boulogne was so full of invasion shipping that any vessel attempting to sail out would have to pick a tortuous way without ramming into something.

Closer to, the outside of the breakwaters was lined with long rows of every sort of barge and
caïque,
arrayed two-deep, and there seemed to be at least two hundred of them, as Lewrie tried to keep a running count. Wee lanthorns were winking to light aboard them, among the vessels he could still see inside the harbour, and he began counting them instead of masts or hulls, but gave it up after a moment; it was as futile as trying to count all the stars in a clear West Indies night! Warehouses along the piers, houses, taverns, and shops began to blossom wee glims, too, and they all blended together. And beyond the harbour town, thousands of points of light emerged as the evening drew on, until every clifftop, every open field, every overlook above the sea, was transformed to a faeryland of winking lights, and Boulogne became a city as great as London, as well-lit as Paris when he had been there during the Peace of Amiens … the campfires and lanthorns and candles of a vast
army
encamped for miles and miles about in tents and huts!

And the French were ready for them. Long before their revolution, in the time of French kings, Boulogne had been fortified, guarded by stone forts well-armed with good artillery, and with the ascendancy of Napoleon Bonaparte—an artilleryman!—the defences had gotten even stronger, with batteries erected on the breakwaters and flanking high ground in stout stone redans, or in thick earthen batteries every three miles along the French coast, the entire length of the Channel, from Ushant to Dunkerque. Smoke, not from cook-fires, arose from some of the stouter emplacements … furnaces and forges for heated shot?

Near the harbour entrance between the enveloping arms of the breakwaters, Lewrie could barely make out some three-masted gunboats, swinging at single anchors to the wind and tide, where they could sortie if Lord Keith launched his attack. Out beyond them and the lines of boats along the outer breakwater faces, large armed launches were rowing, keeping a wary eye on the British squadron.

“This could turn hopeless, fast,” Lewrie whispered to himself.

“Say somethin’, sir?” Grimes asked.

“Enjoy the view,” Lewrie said, louder, then turned to begin his descent to the safety of the deck.

*   *   *

“The tide’s beginning to run well, sir,” the Sailing Master, Mr. Caldwell, pointed out just after Lewrie stowed his telescope in the compass binnacle cabinet, “though the wind’s both perverse and scant for an assault.”

“Perhaps we won’t be going in, after all, Mister Caldwell,” Lewrie replied with an impatient shrug, and a peek aloft to the commissioning pendant, which was streaming the wrong way. “If we send in the fireships, there’s a chance they’d just drift back onto
us
.”

“We’ve the bomb vessels in place, the rocket ships anchored and in good range,” Captain Speaks grumbled. “If the wind won’t serve, at least we could begin to shell them, tonight. Stap me, this delay and dithering is maddening!”