For King or Commonwealth (6 page)

He made his preparations with care, briefing his officers and men with that tone of confidence and conviction that swiftly won their enthusiastic support, giving to individuals especially crucial parts to play and to which occasion they could only rise with enthusiasm.

Having made his plan, which obliged John Matthews, a former seaman promoted to gunner, to spend some hours of meticulous preparation in the magazine and drew from Mr White the coarse observation that he hoped Matthews could properly charge a shell carcass since ‘he could not shit a sailor's turd', Faulkner took the con. The masts and spars of the large convoy, which, he had learned from the fishermen, lay awaiting its naval escort, showed clear above the low fog that rose like the smoke that gave it its name. From the anchored ships and vessels he hoped the
Phoenix
, herself similarly shrouded, would look like a late arrival, delayed by the contrary wind that had blown itself out two days ago. Closer-to he hoped to convince them she was one of the very escort for which they waited and, to this end, she wore again the new ensign of the Commonwealth. Only at the last moment would he break out the red flag at the fore masthead and substitute the King's for the Commons' colours.

As the
Phoenix
crept up on the flood tide, her longboat was hoisted out and, after three men – all volunteers – had climbed down into her, several packages were carefully passed to them by those on deck. The boat was then streamed astern on a long painter and the remaining men were sent to their battle stations.

‘Time, Mr Lazenby, to see what sort of an artilleryman you might make with that coehorn.'

Acknowledging Faulkner's order, Lazenby bent to his task over the small mortar which was secured in the larboard waist, behind the main guns which, ready loaded, lay behind closed ports. Lazenby had tried several shots on their way along the edge of the Gunfleet Sand and judged he had the amount of powder exactly correct for the purpose Faulkner had briefed him.

‘I hope you don't foul yourself with these bombs of yours,' the taciturn White remarked as he readied his gunners and sharpshooters, himself hefting a matchlock. ‘I should hate you to be hoisted by your own petard!'

To preserve his deception, Faulkner sailed serenely past the first three ships, hailing each through his speaking trumpet and, standing beneath the listlessly flaunting cross-and-harp, affecting the tone of naval command, called out to each, ‘Pray tell your master to prepare to weigh; the signal will be a red flag and three guns!' No one aboard any of the three vessels noticed the boat towing far astern of the passing ‘frigate' – as they supposed – lost as it was in the sea-smoke.

Faulkner was again imbued with that strange quasi-religious exaltation that he had experienced when conning the
Phoenix
through the reefs west of Guernsey, months earlier. Under its influence his agonizing over Katherine had faded entirely from his mind which, or so it seemed to him through the long hours of that intense forenoon, was serenely calculating, as though elevated beyond the plateau of fearful anticipation that he guessed many of his men were enduring as they held their fire, as instructed. He had first experienced the sensation earlier that morning, when he first realized the extent to which the conditions favoured him. The north-easterly breeze he had foretold without much trouble from the omens in the sky off the Smith's Knoll, but its temperature he could not have guessed, nor the dense sea-smoke that was its consequence.

As he lowered his speaking trumpet after hailing the third merchantman he called softly down to White and Lazenby in the waist, ‘Make ready, gentlemen. The next is ours to gull.' And then, walking quickly aft to the taffrail he simply called out to the coxswain in the boat hidden astern in the low sea-smoke, ‘What sounding?'

The coxswain responded as he had been coached. ‘By the mark five, sir.'

‘Cast well to starboard!' Faulkner called, maintaining the fiction of sounding to test the depth of water, but instead of taking a cast with the lead, the man put the boat's tiller to port and the longboat sheered out on the
Phoenix
's starboard quarter while her crew blew on their slow-matches.

Faulkner nodded to the man at the wheel, and he too did as he was told without an order that might have carried the deceit to their quarry now only yards away, downwind. The
Phoenix
veered in her course, as though sloppily handled and prompting a hail from the merchantman next in line.

‘Mind your helm there!' Faulkner roared in the mock admonition that was the signal for the boy to prepare the ensign halliards. Faulkner watched the lad until he was ready, with the King's ensign bent on the same line that held the cross-and-harp aloft. Satisfied, he watched the anchored merchant ship that was suddenly very close as the light breeze and the strong tide swept them past.

‘Now, gentlemen, now!'

From the waist rose a rolling concussion as each gun was fired into its hapless victim. The noise was punctuated by the heavier thud of the charge in the coehorn as the smoke of the guns' discharges hung almost motionless above them, partly obscuring Faulkner's view of the merchantman. Only her upper masts and yards rose clear into the bright blue sky and then the shell, lifted by no more than a few pinches of black powder, burst in a vivid, blinding flash. The crash of the detonation was followed by a series of unidentifiable noises as shell fragments indiscriminately struck rope, wood, iron and human flesh, not all of it aboard their quarry. Faulkner himself felt the sharp, searing slash of an iron splinter as it scythed across his cheek so that he felt the heat of it as it gashed him, followed by the warm trickle of blood. Of this he took little notice, eager to see whether their last stratagem had taken effect.

Delayed some seconds after their own passing, as the air was filled with the screams of the wounded and the cries of horror at the outrage being perpetrated against them, the towed longboat swept alongside the anchored vessel. Into a porthole, opened as Faulkner had anticipated, to air the ship, the longboat's crew tossed one of their fused packages. Another was lodged on the ship's starboard main chains so that, as they drew past, Faulkner saw the combustibles burst into flame and the fires take hold.

Faulkner had a clear view of the stern now and saw where a man, probably the ship's master engaged in the very act of opening his bowels, thrust a pistol muzzle through the glass of the privy to take a potshot at him. He ducked the ill-aimed ball and waved.

‘Damn you!' came the furious response. ‘Who the devil are you?'

‘The
Phoenix
of the King's navy!'

‘We have no King you malignant bastard!'

‘Ready, sir!' Lazenby was calling up from the waist where the guns and coehorn had been reloaded. Faulkner abandoned the fulminating ship-master to his fire and his soiled small clothes, turning his attention to the next ship in the anchorage.

Before the sun had gained sufficient heat and altitude to begin to burn off the sea-smoke so that all possibility of subterfuge had vanished, they had struck four more vessels, two of such substantial size that Faulkner thought them Indiamen. The timing, circumstances and ruthlessness of the attack caused confusion and alarm so that Faulkner boldly stood on, ordering an increase in the charge of the coehorn so that it bombarded another four ships at a range of several hundred yards, supplemented by the broadside guns which, if they did little real harm, shot up rigging and swept the waists clear of opposition. Only one of the Indiamen got a gun into action before the
Phoenix
had passed out of range. As he looked astern coils of thick black smoke rose from three of their targets, thinner wisps ascended from two more and in one little ketch so fierce a fire was consuming her that her small crew had already taken to their boat.

By the time they were off the Nore the tide was on the turn and Faulkner ordered the longboat's painter shortened, so that her crew could scramble aboard, and the ship's yards hauled. Hard on the light wind, her yards braced sharp-up, the
Phoenix
stood boldly out to sea, this time following the South Channel. Lazenby went forward to look out for the buoy of the Spile. A mile or two to the north and soon moving astern, a pall of smoke hung over the anchorage off Shoeburyness, while not half a mile away to the south-west a small man-of-war was making sail as she weighed her anchor in hot pursuit.

‘He'll not catch us,' White remarked contemptuously as the outgoing tide, already ebbing steadily in the South Channel, carried the
Phoenix
eastwards.

Faulkner was less confident, but held his peace and in the event White proved correct; by noon the pursuing frigate had hauled up and was returning to the Nore. Faulkner stared through his glass at the retreating man-of-war and then shifted his glass. The ships he had attacked that morning were indistinct under their pall of smoke; the small coehorn, a Dutch invention, had been a wise investment.

‘You are wounded, Captain Faulkner,' White remarked and Faulkner put his hand to his cheek and felt the dried crust of blood.

‘'Tis nothing; a scratch.'

‘It'll scar though,' White said in that terse way he had, as though his statements were incontrovertible.

‘Hm,' Faulkner grunted. ‘What of our own butcher's bill?'

‘Three men hurt, one badly from that damned Dutch spitfire of yours,' White reported with evident disapproval. ‘But they'll all live.'

‘Good. Is that your opinion, Mr White?'

‘Yes, but the surgeon shares it.'

Inwardly Faulkner grinned to himself. ‘I didn't think you had a very high opinion of our surgeon,' Faulkner remarked.

‘His barbering is excellent, Captain,' White replied, his eyes twinkling.

Faulkner hove-to during the hours of darkness and was in the cabin breaking his fast with White when Lazenby, who had the deck-watch, burst through the door.

‘Cap'n Faulkner,' he said excitedly, ‘there are Commonwealth ships off Goeree!'

‘You're certain?'

‘Aye, sir. The cross-and-harp at the fore-truck on one and he's standing towards us . . .'

‘Warwick!' exclaimed Faulkner, immediately correcting himself. ‘No, that will be the new vice-admiral, Moulton. Very well,' he said sharply to Lazenby. ‘Hoist Dutch colours.'

‘Aye, aye, sir.' Lazenby hesitated, then added, ‘There's something else, sir . . .'

‘And what might that be?'

‘I think I recognized one of our ships in the squadron . . .'

‘The Dutch fleet are at sea and Moulton's crop-heads have been suborning our men,' White concluded with his usual conviction. Faulkner, however, had no doubt but that he was right. ‘See to those colours, Mr,' he snapped, rising from the table.

Lazenby was gone. White followed his commander to his feet. ‘Clear for action,' Faulkner said. ‘Hold the men out of sight behind closed ports. I'll try and bluff it out.'

‘If they've taken any of our ships we'll certainly be recognized.'

‘We'll try, nevertheless.'

‘I hope our men won't fail us,' White remarked as they left the cabin.

‘Load your pistols, just in case.'

Faulkner approached Lazenby who handed him his glass and indicated the ships. Ahead lay the low coast, grey-green above its golden strand of sand, and spiked with the spires of distant churches and crossed with the slowly turning sails of windmills. But lying on the grey sea between, many with their main topsails to their masts, were some twenty vessels, mostly men-of-war. Faulkner could see the Commonwealth ensigns and, just as Lazenby had reported, the adapted flag that marked a flag officer flying from the nearest, just herself heaving-to in the grain of the approaching
Phoenix
: Moulton.

Faulkner looked aloft at the horizontal stripes of the Dutch ensign, then ordered a slight alteration of course that would cross Moulton's stern. They were closing fast and the Parliamentary admiral, having brought his vessel to a standstill, would now be hoping that Faulkner would not rake him if he opened fire.

‘The first round is mine,' Faulkner murmured to himself, though with little confidence in the outcome of the bout.

‘Ahoy there! What ship?'

Faulkner ignored the hail. They would see the ship's name soon enough when they read it across the stern but until then . . . He went to the larboard rail and raised his hat as they made to pass across the flagship's stern. Already the men were labouring in the waist, hauling the yards for fear the approaching vessel would open fire into her almost defenceless stern.

‘
Goedmorgen, Meneer
,' he shouted. ‘
Ik ben na een lange zeereis op mijn weg terug van Batavia,
' explaining they had had a long passage from Batavia in the East Indies.

Faulkner's Dutch was crude and rudimentary but good enough to buy him the respite to pass under the flagship's stern and head towards the other ships lying between the
Phoenix
and the shore where the entrance of the Haringvliet lay open to the north of Goeree. Then the shout of recognition as their name was seen was quickly followed by the boom of a gun and the skipping splash of the ricocheting ball passing along their larboard side. But Moulton had left the firing of a broadside too late. Already his ship's yards were swinging her head as she came round in pursuit.

Faulkner kept the Dutch colours hoisted and boldly held his course. It was clear the other ships were uncertain as to what was going on. The firing of a single gun from a flagship could mean anything, usually signifying a signal from the admiral was not being attended to and setting every quarterdeck abuzz with introspection. All they would see was Moulton's flagship swinging in the wake of an incoming Dutchman and, although the
Phoenix
was unmistakably not a Dutch-built ship, the fact that she was carrying full sail and heading confidently for the entrance to the Haringvliet flying Dutch colours was sufficient to inhibit any captain in the Commonwealth ships from using too much initiative.