Hervey 09 - Man Of War (39 page)

‘Ay-ay, sir.’

‘The recall signal – yellow at the stern. Go to it. And good luck.’

Antrobus saluted, and bustled away.

There was a sudden welter of shots.

‘Shots at
Dartmouth
’s boats from the fireship, sir!’

The firing increased – an exchange of musketry for several minutes.

‘This may yet begin in a tuppenny-ha’penny fashion,’ said Peto. ‘Fellowes is showing admirable restraint, I would say.’

‘Indeed, sir,’ replied Lambe, his glass trained on Sphacteria, however. ‘And, most curious, still no sign of activity at the fort.’

Peto shook his head. ‘Why would the shore batteries stay idle while the fireships are primed ready? It reeks of a ploy.’

Lambe had no opportunity to answer: two cannon spoke – like the crack of doom.

‘Turk frigate firing a-weather, sir, hard inshore!’ screeched Simpson.

Cannon now roared a good deal closer.

‘
Dartmouth
answering, sir. And
Sirène
!’

Smoke and flame suddenly erupted from New Navarin, and a second later came the thunder of her guns.

‘Starboard batteries, open fire!’ snapped Peto.

Fountains of shot from New Navarin played ahead of
Trident
, before she was obscured by the smoke of
Rupert
’s broadside.

Sphacteria now belched into life. Shot whistled through
Rupert
’s rigging, carrying away a spar from the mizzen, and one of the topmen. The captain of the forecastle threw a float over the side, but the man was dead in the water, his neck broken.

‘Mr Lambe, larboard battery, if you please!’

Lambe raised his speaking-trumpet again. ‘Larboard battery,
Fire!
’

The upper-deck battery roared as one gun, the middle- and lower- a split second later. Pulverized stone thickened the smoke which already wreathed the walls of the fort.

Peto gave but one other order for the moment (the captains of the batteries knew their business, and their targets were obligingly immobile). ‘My compliments to Captain Antrobus, Mr Lambe, and bid him away to the shore.’

‘Ay-ay, sir.’

‘Turkish flagship firing on
Asia
, sir!’

Peto was strangely relieved:
Asia
was engaged at last. There could be no doubt about the issue now.

The action spread like a flame along a powder trail. Soon there was continuous cannonading, and smoke enough to fill the anchorage. A ball from Sphacteria struck
Rupert
by the break of the forecastle, scattering hammocks and showering the waist with splinters. Two marines fell, writhing terribly.

‘Sail, if you please, Mr Lambe. Let us give the Turks a harder mark still.’

The starboard watch hauled up the main-topsail by the clewlines rather than sending more men aloft to furl. In a minute or so, with no wind in the (backed) sail to counter the fore and mizzen,
Rupert
began to make headway.

‘Bring her up into the wind a point, Mr Veitch.’ It would mean putting half of each broadside off its line, Peto knew, but that should be of no matter now that each gun captain had the range.

The landing party was nearing the shore. He had a mind to recall them, for his guns would have the better of the fort soon enough if the Turks continued to fire so ill, one true hit in all of ten minutes.

Midshipman Simpson called again, even more hoarsely: ‘Two more fireships ablaze, sir!’

Peto made for the poop deck once more: with
Rupert
turning into the wind he ought to be able to see nearly as well as from the tops.

He felt the roundshot tear the air just above his head, saw it graze the flag lockers and carry away the stern lantern before plunging into the sea, aft. He raised an eyebrow: as well he had not taken the ladder a moment earlier. But it was the way of a fight at sea, and he did not dwell on near misses. ‘Stand up, Mr Hart,’ he said briskly to one of the midshipmen, flat on his back and with an expression of astonishment.

‘I’m sorry, sir. I—’

‘Nothing from the flag, Mr Pelham?’

‘No, sir,’ replied the signal midshipman, surveying the wreckage of his flag locker in dismay.

Peto took up his telescope to observe for himself. There was so much smoke it was a while before he could find the flagship. ‘Codrington has hot work of it, I see.’
Asia
was engaged at close quarters with one, perhaps two, of the Turkish Line. Peto shook his head: that decided it (their lordships did not send a three-decker to the Mediterranean to pound at shore batteries on the edge of a general action).

He slid back down the ladder without a word (he had no time for signals now), before thinking better of leaving Pelham with nothing but carpentry. He turned and hailed him in a voice that would carry above the gunfire yet conveyed indifference to it. ‘Mr Pelham. I may have need of you on the quarterdeck!’

He was surprised by how agreeable he found the young man’s ‘ay-ay, sir!’.

‘Make straight for the flagship, Mr Durcan!’ The third lieutenant had resumed the watch as soon as the captain had turned for the ladder.

‘Straight for her, sir!’

The last of Admiral de Rigny’s frigates was nearing. Peto took Lambe’s speaking-trumpet to the starboard side. ‘Ahoy, monsieur!’ It ought to have felt strange: the only time he had ever hailed a Frenchman was to invite him to strike his colours.

The reply came at once, and heartily. ‘
Je suis l
’Armide,
capitaine! C’est une vraie battaille, n’est-ce pas?
’

‘
Oui, capitaine, c’est ça.
’ Peto was confident of his French, though he knew his accent to be that of an Englishman: ‘I have put ashore a party of marines to take the fort. They will have need of support but I must join the action. Will you take my place here?’ He prayed the Frenchman would not choose
la gloire
rather than the course of military reason.

He need have had no concern. ‘
Oui, capitaine, bien sûr
 . . .’

The detail was dealt with briskly, so that Peto could thank his (to his mind still) unlikely
allié
with true gratitude, and assurance, before turning back to the helm.

A ball crashed into the main mast just above the netting, and ricocheted into the waist. He closed his ears to the screaming of the wounded, as he had too often before.

‘More sail, Mr Lambe!’

Another ball from Sphacteria crashed into
Rupert
’s hull – impenetrable save by one path. It struck the edge of a gunport aft on the middle deck just as its huge thirty-two-pounder fired, carrying away the retarder tackle, sending splinters the width of the ship. The gun itself reared up and over, killing outright a midshipman and two hands, and rendering eleven more for the orlop.

An arching, heated shot from New Navarin plunged to the quarterdeck, taking off the head of a corporal of marines, which followed the hissy ball into the sea. Several men threw up as two older hands heaved what remained of the NCO over the side.

Another ball from Sphacteria carried away the main-topmast cap, which flew half-way to
Armide
. A man fell headlong from the yard into the
sauve-tête
. Blood trickled to the quarterdeck like water from a faulty tap as hands tried to get the lifeless body to the side, and thence to its watery grave.

Meanwhile the afterguard and marines were straining every muscle to extend the mainsail (all they wanted to do was get back to the contest of broadsides), while the topmen calmly overhauled the clewlines along the yard – those not trying to cut loose the now useless topgallant.

But the fire from Sphacteria had slackened, even if its accuracy had increased. A three-decker might be an easy mark, but there was no doubting that three decks wrought heavy damage on the fort, and faster than any 74 could have done it. Peto reckoned that
Armide
with her single deck of eighteen-pounders would keep the Turks occupied until Captain Antrobus and his party decided the matter with the bayonet. As for New Navarin, the battery there was already under cannonade from the French
Magicienne
, who had found herself with otherwise little to do, since the fireships masked her allotted station at the eastern point of the horseshoe.

He checked his instinct to see for himself the damage in the waist.
Rupert
was not a frigate: if the entire upper deck were out of action, there were two more. He fixed his gaze instead – as best he could in all the smoke – on
Asia
.

Rupert
made good headway. Peto thought to steer between
Asia
and the Turkish two-decker to her starboard, firing as they bore. If that did not silence her he would at least have bought
Asia
’s starboard battery a little respite. He would then turn hard across her bow to rake the other Turk from astern with the larboard battery. ‘Damage report, if you please, Mr Lambe,’ he barked as they left the traverse of Sphacteria’s remaining guns.

A boy was swilling the quarterdeck, but no one spoke. They had been blooded, just as had the deck, and it was a powerful concoction, at once sobering and yet invigorating. The antidote was rum or more blood.

Not long and he had his damage report: the main-topsail was gone, but sail and rigging were otherwise intact; two guns of the middle-deck batteries, one each side, were disabled. And – it had never been the practice in the French wars to report the human damage – one midshipman and six seamen dead, seventeen taken below.

Peto nodded – no damage to trouble them, though a considerable surgeon’s bill for the opening of an action. ‘Thank you, Mr Lambe. Guns double-shotted again, if you please.’ He looked at his watch: a little after three o’clock. He had not thought it so late.

Rupert
bore down silently on
Asia
’s besiegers like some giant predator. She might use her bowchasers to some effect, but Peto reckoned on the greater shock of the broadsides. Whether the Turks saw or not, they made no move. It was the mark of the novice to be mesmerized by the fight at hand, when the mortal danger lay often in what threatened. Peto intended teaching a lesson that those who survived it would never forget.

‘Larboard batteries to hold their fire, Mr Lambe. Remind them that it is the flagship they see. Starboard batteries will fire as they bear.’

Lambe had his midshipmen-repeaters relay the order to the larboard lower deck, and then back up again to be sure, before giving the discretionary order for the starboard guns to fire as they bore.

‘Mr Shand, we shall go about across
Asia
’s bows. Be ready if you please.’

‘Ay-ay, sir.’

There was resolution in the master’s voice: tacking with so little sail would be the very devil;
Rupert
might be pushed a good way astern before gathering headway.

Peto looked at his watch again: a quarter after three, and a hundred yards to run.
Asia
’s fire was slackening. He prayed she had not been too severely mauled.

He clasped his hands behind his back. It was time for kind words. ‘An admirable course, Mr Veitch.’

‘Thankee, sir.’

‘Capital trim, Mr Lambe.’

‘Sir.’

The smoke thinned a little. Peto peered disbelievingly, then raised his telescope. ‘That deuced cutter is alongside the flagship!’

‘Sir?’

‘Robb – the deuced fool has put his boat between the flag and yon Turk. I do believe he’s firing! He must be sorely in want of promotion!’

Lambe lifted his own glass. ‘He’ll be raised up one way or another,’ he said drily.

Peto growled.
Hind
would likely catch a good deal of metal when they began raking the Turk. But it could not be helped.

Rupert
’s marines fired first as they ran in – sharpshooters and the fore carronade, sweeping the Turk’s quarterdeck, though half blind with the smoke, breaking every piece of glass in the stern. And then the starboard battery, gun by gun, simultaneously on each deck, regular enough to sound like the mechanism of a monstrous clock. The Turk – the
Souriya
– fired but two guns in reply, neither doing the slightest damage. Carronades swept her upperworks so completely that Peto thought there was not a man left standing to strike the colours. Below, the work of
Rupert
’s gun-decks had made of her nothing but a bloody mangle. The Asias cheered the Ruperts heartily. The larboard gunners returned the cheer, leaning out of the ports for three lusty ‘hoorahs’ before bracing for their own action.

‘Hard a-starboard, Mr Veitch!’ snapped Peto as the aftmost gun fired.

The mates heaved mightily to put the rudder full to larboard.

With her mainsail filling the more,
Rupert
answered well, rounding
Asia
’s bows with a graceful ease indeed – and to the great dismay of the second Turk, whose crew only now realized their fate.

Rupert
’s leading guns fired. At fifty yards, aim was nothing and the effect devastating. By the time the fourth bank fired, the Turk’s stern was shot right away above the counter. But Peto could not have checked
Rupert
’s firing even if he had wanted to. Shot upon shot tore the length of the dying ship, turning over her guns as if they were balsa. Flames were soon lighting the smoky darkness of her gun-decks, and she fell silent but for the agonies of her shattered crew, whose cries the Ruperts could now hear quite clearly.

‘Let go!’ The master’s speaking-trumpet recalled the topmen to their work – stretching the weather braces ready, hauling the lee tacks, weather sheets and bowlines through the slack . . . ‘Off tacks and sheets!’

Rupert
came into the wind. Peto gasped as he saw the Turk’s starboard guns were not run out. She had not had the crew to man both sides at once; and now she had not the crew to man a single gun. He had thought to sink her, but it was not worth the effort. The Ruperts began cheering again as flames took hold and the mizzen toppled. ‘Cease firing!’