The Blast That Tears the Skies (2012) (23 page)

Now commenced the overture to battle: the cacophony of drums and trumpets as each crew was whipped up into warlike spirit by music, which has accompanied warriors into battle since long before the days of Caesar and Alexander. And now the strangest event occurred. The
Merhonour
, the one ship to have had no song when we first sailed from the Gunfleet, suddenly became the only ship of the English fleet to have one. As our trumpeters and drummers paused briefly to take beer and refresh their throats, Ieuan Goch of Myddfai sprang onto the grating of the fore hatch and began a war song of his land. At once, the majority of the Welshmen joined in; I could hear an answering harmony from below decks. The Cornish evidently recognised the tune, too. Treninnick, up upon the main yard, waved his arms about joyfully as he sang along.

‘Ah, Matthew,’ said Roger d’Andelys, who had turned the crew of
Le Téméraire
into the finest choir upon the Atlantic, ‘bravo indeed! A company that can sing is a company that can fight, in all truth!’

He listened intently to the tune, hummed a few bars to get the note, and then burst into a fine rendition of the bass line, despite having to content himself with ‘fa-la-la’ for lyrics. None apart from the Welsh or the Cornish could sing any of the words; indeed, out of all that mighty and distinctly lengthy air, verse after verse of Celtic defiance, I recognised but one word. It was the name of the last castle in South Britain to have held out for King Charles the Martyr: Harlech.

The first firing began not long after dawn. We heard the thunderous blast of the guns from the van, Rupert’s white squadron, and within moments the smoke was across our deck, attacking our nostrils and silencing the war-song of the Welsh. It thinned momentarily, and there were the headmost Dutch ships, clearing Sansum’s rear division and starting to exchange fire with our leading ships, the
Bristol
and the
Gloucester
–

‘Too far off,’ observed Roger d’Andelys, who stood at my side; my lieutenants had gone to take up their stations on the gun decks. ‘There’ll be but little damage at this distance.’

Roger was right; there must have been six or seven hundred yards between the two lines.
The Royal Oak
opened fire on the headmost Dutchman – nearly our time –
nearly our time
–

There was a sudden roar of gunfire. The hull of the
Merhonour
shook as balls struck it. Several more passed through our rigging, and one tore a hole in the mainsail. In horror, I gazed not at the Dutch to larboard, for still their leading ships did not fire upon us, but away to starboard. There, some three hundred yards away and thus well out of her place behind us in the line, lay Abelson’s
Guinea
.

She had fired upon us.

The great marine rebellion had begun.

* * *

As the smoke cleared, I stared angrily across the water toward the
Guinea
, drew my sword and waved it defiantly at the traitors.

We had been betrayed – the poor manoeuvring into line was but a ruse, a means by which the defecting ships could get into position to windward of the loyal – within moments we would be in a pincer between the
Royal Oak
and the
Guinea
, with the Dutch van squadron barely a few hundred yards away and ready to join them –

I felt bile and anger rise in my throat. Once before I had been deceived by a captain and a ship that secretly remained true to the old cause of the republic; now I contended against twenty, with no hope of coming off alive. Angry, afraid and determined, I turned away from the starboard rail, ready to give the order to open fire on the
Guinea
and then to fight both sides of the ship at once. Ready to fight an inevitably hopeless battle to the death against Dutchmen and English traitors.

‘We are betrayed, My Lord!’ I informed the Comte d’Andelys.

Roger drew his sword and saluted me. ‘So we fight Englishmen, then, Matthew? So be it. I shall be neither the first Frenchman nor the first Gaillard-Herblay so to do.’

‘
Vive le roi, mon seigneur d’Andelys, et vive la Merhonour
!’ I cried, returning his salute. ‘Scobey, there! Orders to the Master Gunner – starboard battery to prepare to engage the
Guinea
upon my command, each gun as she bears –’

Hearing my order, the gun captains nearest me upon the upper deck readied their linstocks -

Hold, boy
.
Look again
. It might have been the breeze, or the incessant gunfire all along the forward half of our line of battle, or perhaps an almost forgotten voice in my head. But something made me turn back to the rail, to look out again at the
Guinea
.

Abelson’s hands were raised in supplication. His ship was turning, endeavouring to fall into her proper place in the line directly astern of us. And at once I knew: there was no treachery here. In his eagerness to fight the Dutch, Abelson had given the order to fire even though his vision was obscured by the gunsmoke ruling back from the
Royal Oak
’s broadside. His gun crews had fired into the
Merhonour
by accident. The relief flooded over me like the waves of a spring tide.

I snatched a voice trumpet from Turner, one of the master’s mates, and shouted a belaying order to Scobey. A breathless and clearly exhilarated Cherry Cheeks Russell ran onto the quarterdeck at that moment. ‘Captain, sir! Mister Webb requests the order to open fire!’

‘Are the lower deck ports safe, Mister Russell?’

‘Mister Webb swears they are so, sir!’

The consequence of Penn’s belief in the line-of-battle, and thus in sheer weight of shot, was that the heaviest guns possible had been crammed into every ship in the fleet, the
Merhonour
included, so that in even a moderate swell opening the lowest range of leeward gunports threatened to swamp the ship. But if Webb swore we had enough freeboard – very well, then –

I looked out to larboard again. The headmost Dutch ships had attempted to concentrate fire on the
Royal Oak
, attracted by her Vice-Admiral’s flag at the foretopmast head, but now their stems were cutting through clear water again. In a moment, they would be abreast of us.

‘Very well, Mister Russell! Orders to Mister Webb! Larboard guns to fire an entire broadside upon the headmost of the enemy as they bear, then sequential fire by the battery upon the downroll, lower deck first!’

Russell ran off to Webb, and within moments the larboard battery of the
Merhonour
blazed out in defiance, as it had done against the Invincible Armada all those years before. Flame and smoke spouted ferociously from the larboard broadside. The great ship shook from the recoils, the ancient timbers groaning in protest. I felt the timbers strain and quiver beneath my feet, sending shock waves through my entire body. The
Merhonour
was beginning her last battle; and thanks be to God, it seemed it would not be fought against fellow Englishmen.

That first pass of the fleets was my first experience of a fleet battle, and it seemed hellish beyond all measure: the endless roar of broadsides, our own among them; the ever-increasing clouds of acrid gunsmoke; the scream of shot flying overhead, or into the rigging, or into the sea. Our guns blazed away, the crews working almost as automatons: fire, recoil, secure, swab, reload, ram home, turn outward again, aim, linstock,
give fire
! Boys ran to and from each gun as though their lives depended on it, bringing up fresh powder cartridges and more shot from the magazine below. Upon my watch, I calculated that each gun was firing perhaps every seven or eight minutes, and few ships in the fleet would be able to match that. I made several expeditions along the upper deck to encourage the sweating, determined gun crews, nearly dancing between the recoils of the great guns, stabbing my sword at the distant enemy and roaring like an actor declaiming Macbeth.

‘Strike home, my lads! Steady your aim, Pascoe! Let the Dutch dogs shit your chainshot, boys! A hit, by God! Fine shooting, Penhaligon’s crew! Now, my brave Welsh boys, you’ll not let the Cornish outmatch you?
Give fire!
’

Through the smoke I could sometimes spy the hulls and masts of the Dutch ships as their fleet passed along our line. Occasional glimpses of the flags at their jackstaffs and ensigns bore witness to the complexity of the Dutch state: here a ship of Flushing, there one of Hoorn or Harlingen; here a tricolour, there a nine-barred triple-prince ensign. All were intermingled, suggesting that their squadrons were in even greater disarray than ours. Many ships were past us before our gunners were able to lay in a bearing and open fire; when the smoke rolling along the line was particularly dense, some ships were by us before we even knew they were there. For one brief moment we exchanged broadsides with the
Eendracht
herself, Obdam’s flagship, but then she was gone into the smoke, her place taken by another. And so it went on for an hour or more, the captain of the
Merhonour
pacing his deck, waving his sword and shouting defiance and encouragement, until at last the entire Dutch fleet was past us.

During the lull that followed I slumped against the starboard rail of the quarterdeck, greedily imbibed a bottle of small beer that young Barcock brought me, and rested a voice made hoarse by ceaseless shouting. Kit Farrell came on deck with Francis Gale, saluted, and reported the situation below decks. One man killed by a great splinter through his stomach – this on the starboard side, and so a consequence of the
Guinea
’s error – and three more wounded, with one more ruptured when he misjudged his grip on the rope he was hauling. I nodded; it was a minimal butcher’s bill, although it would not seem so to a newly and as yet unknowingly widowed young woman of Shadwell. Roger d’Andelys had been right, and the two fleets had been too far apart to inflict serious damage on each other. But there was surely worse to come. For now they were nearly clear of Lord Sandwich’s squadron in the rear, the Dutch would be able to tack back and thus regain the weather gage.

Kit lifted his telescope to study the scene of battle. ‘Captain,’ he said suddenly, ‘look there, sir. The
House of Nassau
– I can barely believe it…’

I took up my own eyepiece. There, just visible through occasional gaps in the swirling gunsmoke, was our old ship, now Beau Harris’s command. There was no apparent fault with the
Nassau
; her masts and rigging all stood, although there were a few shots through her sails, and she appeared to be answering her rudder. But there was something terribly, terribly wrong with Harris’s ship, and it must have been immediately apparent to every man in the English navy.

Put simply, the
House of Nassau
was sailing in precisely the opposite direction to the rest of our fleet. She was sailing directly into the middle of the Dutch.

‘Why in Hell’s fires as he done that?’ cried Kit. ‘He must have ordered –’

‘Harris must have ordered the ship to tack,’ I said hoarsely, my voice still fragile. ‘Whether because he seeks a glorious immortality or because he does not actually know what a tack is, we might now never know.’

And there
, I thought,
would have gone Matthew Quinton, but for the grace of God and the patience of Kit Farrell, so few years before
.

Kit was almost in tears. ‘He is a good man – Captain Harris. No seaman, and wilfully ignorant of the ways of a ship, but a good, decent soul.’

‘Aye,’ I said with a heavy heart, ‘a good man, and a good friend.’ I put my hand on my lieutenant’s shoulder. ‘Let us pray that even if he does not have the sense to steer the correct course, he has the sense to surrender before they blow him to oblivion.’

The Dutch fleet swallowed the
House of Nassau
like a great seabeast devouring small fry. I saw the clouds of smoke and heard the blast of broadsides as she met her fate. As one, Kit, Roger and I raised our swords to attention in salute to Beaudesert Harris, captain of His Majesty’s Navy Royal; Francis Gale intoned a prayer; and I felt that emptiness which only the death of a friend before his time can bring.

Roger d’Andelys, who if truth be told was even less of a seaman than Beau, suddenly pointed ahead. ‘Look, Matthew – your German prince is turning to starboard. What is he about, I wonder?’

A confirmatory cry from our lookout reached me, and I took up my telescope. Rupert’s flagship, the
Royal James
, and the ships ahead of her, had evidently withdrawn their men from the guns and now had them about the yards, putting on more sail as though the devil pursued them. I swung around and trained my piece on the masts of the
Royal Charles
. There was no union flag at the mizzen; no order for the fleet to tack from the rear. And yet that, surely, was precisely what Rupert was doing.

I looked toward the
Royal Oak
to see how Lawson would respond. But the Vice-Admiral remained resolutely set in his course, east by south. Rupert’s ships were now starting to come up on the opposite tack, all out of order and in no line of any sort.

In desperation, I turned to Kit Farrell. ‘Kit, what in God’s name is happening?’

My friend’s brow was furrowed. ‘Lawson has the right of it, since there is no signal,’ he said slowly. ‘But the prince has the right of it, too. Tacking from the rear is our only chance of preventing the Dutch weathering us.’

The
Royal James
ploughed by us, a few hundred yards to starboard, the great plain white flag billowing out from her maintop. I could plainly see Rupert, Prince Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Cumberland and Bavaria, upon her quarterdeck, talking animatedly to his flagcaptain Kempthorne. Rupert the bold, whose impetuosity had killed my father. Rupert the truest cavalier, ever unconcerned with the orders – or absence of orders – from his superiors. Once again the prince had taken matters into his own hands and acted upon his initiative, just as he had so disastrously at Naseby.