An Eye of the Fleet (28 page)

‘Anchor's ready, sir. I thought this fella would help allay any suspicions, sir. Shout to the enemy, sir, tell 'em the
ship's his . . .'

‘An excellent idea Drinkwater. Speaks English, eh? Must do with that polyglot rebel crew. Probably uses French with his commander. Prick him a little, sir,' said the captain.

The man jerked. Hope addressed him in English, his voice uncharacteristically sinister and brutal:

‘Now you dog. I have an old score to settle with your race. My brother and my sister's husband died in Canada and I've an unchristian hankering for revenge. You tell your commander that this ship is yours and you'll anchor under his lee. No tricks now, I've the best surgeon in the fleet and he'll see to you, you've my word on that but,' here Hope looked significantly at Drinkwater and paused, ‘but one false word and it's your last. D'ye understand,
canaille
?'

The man winced again. ‘
Oui
,' he nodded, breathing through clenched teeth. Drinkwater shoved him to the main chains. Hope turned away.

‘Pass the word to Mr Devaux to have the gun crews stand by. On the command I want the ports opened and the guns run straight out and fired.'

‘Aye, aye, sir,' a messenger ran off.

Cyclops
was less than one hundred yards off
La Creole
now, crossing her stern from starboard to larboard. A hail came from the big privateer.

‘Very well, Mr Drinkwater, prompt our friend.'

The Frenchman drew a breath.

‘
Ca va bien! Je suis blessé, mais la frégate est prise!
'

A voice replied across the diminishing gap between the two ships. ‘
Bravo mon ami! Mais votre blessure?
'

The French officer shot a glance at Drinkwater and took a deep breath.

‘
Affreuse! À la gorge!
' There was a moment's silence then a puzzled voice:

‘
La gorge? . . . Mon Dieu!
' A shout of realisation came from
La Creole
.

Hope swore and the Frenchman, his left hand to his chest where his punctured lung gave him great pain, turned triumphantly to Drinkwater. But the midshipman could not kill him in cold blood, indeed he only half comprehended what had transpired . . .

But events now moved in rapid succession so that Drinkwater's
dilemma was short lived. The French officer slumped to the deck in a faint as
La Creole
's people ran to their guns. A gust of wind filled
Cyclops
's topsails so that she accelerated a little and suddenly the privateer's stern was drawing abeam.

‘Now Devaux! Now by God!'

The ports opened, there was a terrible squealing rumble as the starboard battery of twelve-pounders were run out. Then the concussion of the broadside overwhelmed them all, rocking the frigate. In the darkness of the gundeck Keene and Devaux were leaping up and down with excitement and a fighting madness. They had double shotted the guns and topped off the charges with canister. The devastation thus inflicted upon
La Creole
almost destroyed her resistance at a blow. As the guns recoiled inboard
Cyclops
swung to starboard. Her impetus carried her alongside
La Creole
and a further broadside smashed into the ex-Indiaman's hull. A few bold souls aboard the American fired back and the engagement became general, though all the advantage lay with the British.

Drawing a little ahead
Cyclops
lost way. Her anchor was let go and her sails clewed up. Veering the cable
Cyclops
settled back and brought up on
La Creole
's larboard quarter.

For twenty dreadful minutes the British poured shot after shot into her. Aboard the American ship men died bravely. They got eight guns into action and inflicted some damage on their opponent but in the end, lying in his own gore, his ship and crew a shambles around him, the French commander ordered his ensign struck and an American officer complied.

The pale light of dawn revealed to Hope the limp bunting lying across the jagged remnants of what had once been a handsome carved taffrail and he ordered his cannon to cease fire . . .

Later in the morning Drinkwater accompanied his commander aboard the enemy ship. Captain Hope did not consider her worth taking as a prize. His depleted crew were barely enough to guard the prisoners and work
Cyclops
. The rebel ship had been old when the Americans commissioned her and the damage that she suffered at the hands of
Cyclops
's gun crews had been frightful.

Drinkwater gaped at the desolation caused by the frigate's broadsides. The planking of her decks was ripped up, furrowed by ball and canister into jagged lines of splinters reminiscent
of a field of petrified grass. Several beams sagged down into the spaces below and cannon were knocked clean off their carriages. Trunnions had been sheered and three had had their cascabels cut off as if with a knife. Scattered about all this destruction were petty items of personal gear. A man's stocking hat, a shoe, a crucifix and rosary beads, a clasp knife and a beautifully painted chest split to fragments . . .

Grimmer remains of what had once been men lay in unseemly attitudes and splashes of vivid colour. Dried blood was dark beside the ochreous pools of vomit, the stark white of exposed bone, the blue of bled flesh and the greens and browns of intestines. It was a vile sight and the hollow eyes of the surviving members of the crew regarded the British captain with a dull hatred as the author of their fate. But Hope, with the simple faith of the dedicated warrior, returned their gaze with scorn. For these men were nothing but legalised pirates, plundering for profit, destroying merchant ships for gain, and visiting upon innocent seamen a callous indifference to their fates.

The captain ordered out of her such stores as might serve the frigate and had combustibles prepared to fire her. Lieutenant Keene boarded
La Creole
at sunset to ignite her. As the off-shore
terral
began to blow seawards
Cyclops
weighed her anchor.
La Creole
burned furiously, a black pall rolling seawards away from the coast of that benighted land.

Cyclops
was standing well off shore when
La Creole
's magazine exploded. An hour later she altered course for Cape Hatteras and New York.

The weather was once more against them. Off the dreaded Cape they met a gale of unbelievable ferocity which tried the gear severely. The main topgallant mast went by the board and took with it the fore and mizen topgallants. During this blow the wounded were, of course, confined below. The cockpit was a scene of utter degradation. The filth in the bilge was augmented by the water made by the straining frigate as she laboured in the seaway and the whole slopped about the bottom of the ship, driving the rodent population higher. The rats ran almost unchecked over the bodies of the dying who retched and urinated without relief. For die they did. Scarce a man who received anything more trivial than a scratch escaped gangrene or blood poisoning of one kind or another.

Drinkwater was one of the fortunate few. His cut, a superficial one, was disfiguring rather than dangerous. Appleby sutured it for him, an Appleby who had lost much rotundity and whose pitifully few medicines were exhausted as he fought disease and sepsis with his own diminishing energies. At last, utterly worn with fatigue and exasperation he wept angry and frustrated tears in the darkness of his hellish kingdom.

Hope buried the bundles in their hammocks. Six one day, nine another as the wind howled, the frigate bucked and the spray drove inboard in hissing sheets. The burial service became curtailed into the briefest formality.

Although the weather was poor it allowed
Cyclops
to limp north undetected. For she was in no condition to fight. In addition to the heavy losses incurred at the Galuda River the ship's company now had to subsist on rotten stores. Opening the last casks of salt provisions Copping, the purser, had discovered the usually tainted pork was uneatably putrid and the misery of
Cyclops
's company immeasurably increased.

At last she made her number to the guardship at Sandy Hook and, in company with the members of the North American Squadron, let go her anchor in the Hudson River.

For the last months of effective British rule in any part of her thirteen colonies, His Britannic Majesty's frigate
Cyclops
lay passive. Arriving at New York on the last day of April 1781 she lay in the mouth of the Hudson without positive orders beyond the general directive to effect repairs to her fabric.

Admiral Arbuthnot did not appear to take a great interest in her arrival as she was not on the establishment of the North American Station. Indeed he seemed rather offended that she should make her appearance anywhere in his command without his receiving prior notice, and visited his displeasure on Captain Hope whom he greeted with icy politeness.

Secretly angry that he had ended up between two stools, Hope claimed his mission had been confidential but, when challenged as to its success, was compelled to report failure. His explanation was received with disbelief, the admiral firmly maintaining the Carolinas were in British hands. Hope also wished to rid himself of the Continental currency but this was too much for Admiral Arbuthnot who studied the captain through rheumy eyes.

‘You arrive on my station, sir, occupy a British post without authority, fail in a mission you claim is secret yet was given you by the captain of a frigate and now you wish
me
to rid
you
of an embarrassing sum of rebel currency.' The admiral rose. ‘You may retain the stuff until you report to y're own flag officer, Admiral . . . Admiral . . .

‘Kempenfelt, sir'

‘Exactly.' Arbuthnot appeared to consider the matter closed.

‘But sir, I have to refit my to'gallants . . .'

‘Your topgallants, sir, are your topgallants and not mine . . . I suggest you contact Admiral Kempenfelt on the matter. Good day, sir.'

Hope left.

Eventually Arbuthnot's secretary received instructions from London to render such assistance as might be necessary to the frigate
Galatea
. A note was appended to the effect that due to political circumstances of the greatest importance,
Galatea
had been retained in home waters and her mission undertaken by
Cyclops
, Captain Henry Hope, R.N.

The secretary therefore prepared an order for her to come in and draw such stores as she required and refit her gear. Arbuthnot
signed the order without comment since he was at that time prone to sign almost anything, being nearly blind.

On receipt of these orders
Cyclops
moved to a berth at the Manhattan Dockyard to commence her repairs. On that evening Hope and Devaux dined together. Over their port, several cases of which had been removed from
La Creole
, Hope drew Devaux's attention to a decision that the weather and the frigate's cranky tophamper had deferred.

‘Assuming that we eventually receive definite orders, Devaux, we have to consider the matter of a replacement for Skelton. Cranston was a loss to us and the Service as a whole . . .'

‘Yes,' agreed Devaux nodding. His mind slid back to the dense forest and the sight of Cranston's mutilated body . . . He tore his mind away from the grisly memory.

‘D'ye have any opinions?' asked the Captain.

The first lieutenant recollected himself. ‘Well sir, the next senior is Morris. His journals are poorly kept, though he's served the six years . . . I consider him quite unsuitable and I would appreciate his removal from the ship . . . indeed I threatened him with it I seem to remember . . . I am of the opinion that young Drinkwater is a likely candidate for an acting lieutenancy.' He paused. ‘But surely, sir, there's a junior in the fleet hereabouts . . .' Devaux indicated the riding lights of several warships visible through the stern windows.

‘An Admiral's favourite d'ye mean, Mr Devaux?' asked Hope archly.

‘Just so, sir.'

‘But Admiral Arbuthnot informed me that the ship is under Kempenfelt's flag. Who am I to question his decision,' he enquired with mock humility, and then in a harder tone, ‘besides I am not disposed to question him on the matter of my midshipmen.' He sipped his port. ‘Furthermore I submitted a list of casualties that clearly indicated the state of our complement of officers. If he does not see fit to appoint someone he can go to the devil.' He paused. ‘Besides I rather suspect Kempenfelt would approve our choice . . .' Hope smiled benignly and tossed off the glass.

Devaux raised an eyebrow. ‘Old Blackmore will be pleased, he's had Drinkwater under his wing since we left Sheerness.' The two officers refilled their glasses.