Until the Colours Fade (42 page)

As Humphrey watched the loading going on, every movement
of these muscular slightly stooping men seemed firm and
deliberate
, in a way that impressed him more than the stories he had heard about individual acts of heroism. Here was a corporate calmness and obstinate resolution based on an absolute
confidence
that no man present would let down his fellow. When all the guns were loaded and primed the Lieutenants of the divisions gave the command: ‘Run out,’ the crews bent to the side-tackles and the wooden truck wheels rumbled thunderously across the enclosed decks. ‘Ready,’ came the repeated cry as the movement was completed from end to end of the deck. The locks were cocked and the lanyards ready in each No. 1’s hands. After the rush of activity came a profound silence as the men knelt or stood by their guns; only an occasional cough rose above the continual groaning of the timbers and the distant throbbing of the engine. The gentle rolling of the frigate was not enough to rattle the shot in the racks. For several seconds there was a tension and
expectancy
in the air, so powerful that Humphrey held his breath, as if the final word: ‘Fire!’ was imminent. Then, when the officers gave the order: ‘Stand to your guns,’ a low murmur broke out and the crews squatted and sat, preparing themselves with
good-humoured
resignation for a nerveracking wait. The sight
produced
an emotional choking sensation in Humphrey’s throat, tearful and yet exalted; a simultaneous feeling of fear, awe and pride, making him expand his chest and hold his head higher although his eyes were full and his heart was pounding.

He followed Colwell and Bowen through the waist where the wreck-clearing party were stationed with their saws, axes and tomahawks to be used to clear the decks if masts or spars were brought down during the action. When they reached the
quarter
-deck, the First Lieutenant was standing by the rails of the main-companion. While Bowen saluted and reported the orlop deck in order, Humphrey walked across to the port-side
carronades
to join the other midshipmen waiting to carry the officers’ orders to all parts of the ship during the engagement. Soon the Lieutenants were coming up from the gun-decks to declare their divisions ready for action. The only light on deck came from the binnacle compass, but by the stars Humphrey could see the officers’ swords and epaulettes and the strip of gold lace on the side of Charles’s cocked hat. Under their feet the deck was as fresh and white as a tree just stripped of its bark, the black lines between the planks as thin and delicate as threads.

While Humphrey had been below, the flagship had signalled to
Vengeance,
the first ship, to weigh, and already she was
moving in on the masked lights.
Vengeance,
an unconverted
sailing
two-decker went in with a steam tug lashed amidships to her port side, in which position the steamer would be protected from the Russian guns by her massive consort’s hull. Since only the ship’s starboard broadside would be fired, the frigate’s fighting efficiency would not be impaired. As
Vengeance
began her slow turn to port, gradually presenting her guns to the batteries, Charles and Mark Wilmot, his First Lieutenant, went up onto the poop and scanned the long low silhouette of Fort Constantine with their telescopes, looking for movements or lights. They were relieved to see no signs of any preparation. If the Russians were heating red hot shot, the smoke from the furnaces should be
visible
. Fort Constantine alone mounted almost a hundred guns, three times the number
Scylla
could bring to bear in a single broadside. Built on a spit, the fort jutted out from the north side of the harbour, commanding the sea approaches and the mouth. The guns were ranged in three tiers; the bottom two consisting of heavy 42 and 68-pounders in casemates, and above them, in a single row, 32-pounders,
en
barbette,
raised on platforms to fire over the parapet. From the south side of the harbour, the ships would face the sixty or so guns of Fort Alexander and the same number in the adjacent Quarantine Battery. Everything, as Charles and Wilmot were painfully aware, would depend upon whether the Russians were taken by surprise. Charles turned to Wilmot and smiled; they had known each other since serving as mids for several months in a brig on the China Station fifteen years before. Wilmot had a wife and two small children; Charles was godfather to the youngest. He wondered whether Wilmot was thinking about them. Charles himself felt impatient rather than afraid; there was nothing for him to do now and he could not bear inactivity.

Humphrey was staring out at the forts through the darkness at the moment when a brilliant flash lit up the white stonework clearly showing the rows of embrasures; during the second it took for the roar of
Vengeance
’s first broadside to reach
Scylla,
the sky was once more plunged into darkness; it was as if, he thought, the sun had been snuffed out without warning on a bright day. Never could Humphrey remember minutes longer than the two or three which now passed. The question in his and every other mind was whether Fort Constantine would open with isolated guns, at full strength, or not at all. The flash of the next broadside came and still no answer. Then seconds later, Humphrey saw a sight far more disturbing than the fiery smoke
of guns in the casemates would have been; the sky was ablaze with light balls and rockets fired from the parapets of the forts. Figures were distinctly visible moving on
Vengeance
’s decks, now and then obscured by the white smoke of her last broadside. The light balls were bursting at great height, hanging, as though suspended for a moment, and then, still incandescent, falling steeply into the sea.

Charles leapt down the poop steps onto the quarter-deck, and, seizing the master’s speaking trumpet, yelled to the signals
quartermaster
in the main-top.

‘Make to flagship: “May I commence?”’

Before the lanterns had been displayed,
Vengeance
fired again, and a split-second later the Russian batteries opened with a beautifully compact flight of shell from the 32-pounders, the fuses describing glowing red fiery arcs in the black sky. Without waiting for the answer to his signal, Charles was yelling:

‘Hands up anchor. Man the capstan.’

The reasons for silence now being gone, the boatswain’s pipe repeated the command, and the men on the forecastle leapt to their bars, spinning the capstan round like an enormous top, their feet pounding on the deck. The cable had already been hove in, and the chain was at once grinding and clashing in at the hawse pipe. Light balls were still going up in high lazy parabolas, climbing rapidly, hanging and then falling slowly. Tall plumes of water, tossed up by the Russian shells, could be seen spouting in line twenty yards short of
Vengeance.
As Charles gave the order to raise steam, the flagship signalled: ‘
Leander
and
Scylla
proceed
in line abreast.’

Vengeance
was moving across the face of the batteries at an agonisingly slow speed of four or five knots, the best the tug could manage when towing alongside. The spaced broadsides had been abandoned and her gunners were firing independently at their best speeds. Every second or so, a well-placed shell burst against the walls of Fort Constantine with a violet and orange flash, illuminating the whole structure. The Russians were
replying
with shell in co-ordinated salvos, punctuated by random discharges of hot shot from Fort Alexander and the Quarantine Battery on the other side of the harbour. On account of the very close range, the gunners on both sides were using short 1¼-inch fuses, which often detonated the explosive in mid-air, throwing out shrieking fragments of metal and showers of glowing red sparks. Sometimes after a momentary lull, a sharp explosion shook the air; then came more muted sounds, merging into each
other, like a rapid roll on a gigantic drum, rising in pitch and crescendoing into simultaneous crashes like thunder directly overhead.

As
Vengeance
began her turn out to sea she was hit amidships by two large mortar shells, which instantly started a fire. Humphrey gasped as he saw the flames catching the ratlines and shooting up them as though following fast-burning fuses. Every man on
Scylla
’s quarter-deck was gazing in silent horror,
expecting
a magazine to go up, but after the initial blaze, the flames began to die down as the ship was shrouded in a dense pall of black smoke. No efforts were being made to launch boats, and so Humphrey assumed that the conflagration had looked worse from a distance than it had actually been.

The boatswain’s pipe proclaimed that the anchor was at the bows and a moment later an assistant engineer came running with the news that the steam was up. Within seconds the screw had engaged, and as the vibrations intensified, the master’s calm voice was heard: ‘Turn ahead easy,’ then: ‘Half ahead.’ Humphrey had always liked the master, a bald pot-bellied man with red cheeks and small twinkling eyes; unlike the other
officers
he was wearing a plain faded surtout without a sword belt. His phlegmatic expression and folded arms comforted Humphrey. Charles sent the midshipman nearest to him forward with orders for the 68-pounder pivot on the forecastle to open up at fifteen hundred yards. Astern of
Scylla
two deep folds of water fanned out, their crests creaming and foaming with
phosphorescence
. On a parallel course, half-a-mile to starboard,
Leander
was steaming in on Fort Alexander, a long ribbon of dark smoke arching from her tall ungainly stack.

Scylla
’s forecastle Lancaster had fired two rounds when the Russians found the ship’s range with 42-pound round-shot. As Humphrey heard the low vibrant whoosh of these balls passing through the rigging, and then the sharper whistle of the first shells fired at them, he felt an icy tingling down his back, as if after sweating he had suddenly been subjected to a chilling breeze. His mouth felt numb and stiff and he was afraid in case if he was asked something he would not be able to answer. The softness of his hand against the hilt of his useless little sword made him shudder. He raised a hand to his neck and felt the soft downy skin which he had never needed to shave. If I were hit here, or in the stomach. Nobody lives after a stomach wound. Was it possible that other human beings less than a thousand yards away wanted to kill
him
? He thought of his mother and the
servants at Hanley Park, and could hardly remember a word of anger being spoken to him by any of them. He saw his father dying, the blood bubbling at the corners of his mouth.
Remembered
the men dying ten a day during the worst of the cholera, and how on boat duty he had been sent out with a bayonet or sharpened boarding pike to puncture the bloated sewn-up hammocks, which had raised the 32-pound shot used to sink bodies buried at sea. He recalled the precise slow hiss of escaping gas and the sickening smell as he or another man stabbed at one of these inflated shrouds, sending it down at once, emitting a decreasing stream of bubbles. But few of the officers had died of cholera, and those that did had had time to know their fate; a privilege not accorded by these lumps of metal tearing the air. A soldier might fire his rifle and move his position, urging men on, working out what enemy movements meant, but for naval
officers
there was nothing but this endless waiting and nowhere to hide. Without moving his head or hands to betray himself, he said a silent prayer. Before he had finished, a round-shot smashed down onto the poop, ploughing up the planks as though they were paper thin, striking the mizzen mast, leaving the bitts a useless mess of matchwood and going overboard, carrying with it twenty feet of the taffrail. A second shot landed in the waist,
killing
two men instantly and pitching over a gun, splintering the truck and crushing a gunner’s legs. The man’s screaming rose above the firing: a shrill scarcely human sound. Humphrey stared at Charles, as though he could do something to stop this terrible sound, but Crawford gazed ahead of him apparently deaf to pain and suffering. Next to him, Wilmot said a few words and they both smiled grimly. Humphrey dug his nails into the palms of his hands.

In truth Charles was angry. The first casualties should be moved at once, especially if badly wounded; less for their own sake than for general morale. He found himself imagining why there was a delay. Mangled and shattered limbs caught under a fallen gun or spar? A deck-ladder carried away? Something
fluttered
down to the deck just to his left; he bent down and with a tremor of irrational rage picked up the ensign. The shot which had crashed through the taffrail had severed the stern halliards.

‘Secure this to the mizzen truck,’ he shouted to a member of the nearest carronade’s gun-crew. Without halliards, no power on earth could restore it to the mizzen peak. Round and chain shot were now slicing through the rigging almost continuously. Charles turned his telescope on
Vengeance
and realised with a
shock that her fore-mast had been brought down. Shells were raining down around her, and although she was still moving, her withdrawal was not fast enough to prevent the gunners
registering
hit after hit on her upper decks. He had no doubt that the only reason why
Scylla
and
Leander
had not been recalled was the absolute necessity for dividing the Russians’ fire as much as possible to save
Vengeance.
Charles knew the terrible dilemma his father would be in; how by trying to spare
Vengeance,
he might well lose one of the other two ships, and if he did, Dundas and the French admirals would not be slow to point out the absurdity of attempting any further attacks on the forts. Charles was determined that come what might
Vengeance
should not be lost; his father would not be let down by him, so long as
Scylla
answered her helm. As another shell burst on the crippled
frigate
’s forecastle, Charles strode to the wheel.