A Hard, Cruel Shore Read online

  “Ah, some of the cigarros, too, sir?” Westcott hopefully asked.

  “Aye, some of the cigarros, too, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie allowed with a false frown, “so you may indulge your beastly habit, and corrupt the rest of the wardroom with the damned things.”

  “I’ll see to it directly, sir,” Westcott vowed, then sent one of the Mids scrambling below to summon the Purser.

  “And the Bosun, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie added of a sudden. “We’ll be needin’ some of his paint store.”

  * * *

  With the cargoes shifted aboard Sapphire, and into the other prize, the ship’s crew was ordered to a series of mystifying tasks; a towing bridle was afitted from the Arabelle to the Cheval Rouge, long enough for a full cable’s separation; the French crews off both prizes were ordered into their own lifeboats with their scant personal possessions, and set free to sail or row ashore on the rocky coast of Spain; and lastly, squares were painted along the sides of the Cheval Rouge that vaguely resembled gun-ports, using whatever hue that Bosun Terrell had in stock—white, red, black, and blue, which looked rather comical, in all.

  Finally, Lewrie ordered that All Hands be piped, and he took his place at the filled hammock stanchions at the forward edge of the quarterdeck as Sapphire’s sailors and Marines gathered along the gangways and in the waist, some spryer sorts even sitting on the massive cross-deck boat-tier beams above the waist.

  “Lads, we’re going t’have ourselves a contest,” Lewrie began, looking down on his crew. “Since I took command at the Nore, you’ve proven to me that you just may be the best gunners in the Fleet … now, we’re goin’ t’find out just how good you are.

  “See those blotches of paint on that prize yonder?” he asked, pointing to the Cheval Rouge, she of the shot-through foremast. “Let us call ’em gun-ports, and let’s see how close you can come to hittin’ ’em.”

  He explained that one prize would tow another, and that their own ship would come up alongside the trailing prize brig at about one cable’s range, at first, and each gun crew would take careful aim and fire as they bore, one at a time, with the results noted, first with the upper gun deck 12-pounders, then with the lower gun deck 24-pounders.

  “Those gun crews that come closest, or score direct hits, get free tobacco, and full measures at the afternoon rum issue,” Lewrie told them, “with no ‘sippers’ or ‘gulpers’ owing. Are you game to try? Penny a pitch?”

  Hell, it’s captured tobacco, and didn’t cost me more than ten shillings, he thought; and damn Mister Cadrick’s pinch-penny soul he charged me that much!

  Sapphire’s sailors had gotten used to the idea that some prize money had to be thrown away for the lack of hands to man them, though it did cut rough, but—the idea of firing their guns in practise, and making a contest of it like a game at a fair, roused them to raise a great, agreeable cheer. Besides, shooting things to match-wood was always lively, if noisy, fun!

  “Right, then,” Lewrie shouted, “let’s be at it. Sound the Beat to Quarters! Mister Westcott, signal Arabelle t’get a way on.”

  * * *

  The lead prize could only tow her consort slowly, not much over four knots, and without a helmsman aboard the target brig to “steer for the bollard”, Cheval Rouge wallowed and strayed to either beam like a willful pig on the way to market. HMS Sapphire, under much-reduced sail, crept up on the target brig only one knot faster. At last, the first 12-pounder’s crew, after much fiddling with the crow levers and quoin blocks, fired.

  “A miss … over!” Midshipman Hillhouse shouted down from his perch on the starboard gangway. “Number Two, try your eye!”

  That shot was short, but the ball did skip up from First Graze to smack into the target just above the waterline.

  And so it went, all down the upper deck, with only one of the 12-pounders scoring a hit within a few feet of the after-most “gun-ports”.

  “Check fire!” Lewrie ordered, “We’ll fall astern then sail up to her again before the lower deck guns have a go.”

  Christ, and I thought they could shoot! he thought, grimacing.

  At one cable’s range, the lower-deck 24-pounders did no better, certainly scoring hits but nowhere near the painted squares. Lewrie had the ship fall astern of the towed target once more, ordering the range to be halved to half a cable, and gave the upper deck 12-pounders another chance.

  “Hmm, rather disappointing, sir,” Lt. Westcott said, close to Lewrie’s shoulder to make his comments private. “Was it Commander Teague who told you that he’d had notches filed in his guns so his men could actually aim after a fashion?”

  “Aye, it was,” Lewrie answered in a low voice. “Damme, should have thought o’ that. No time, now. We’ll just have t’carry on the way we are, and hope for the best. In my enthusiasm, I put the cart before the horse,” he said with a groan, almost feeling an urge to slap his forehead.

  By Six Bells of the Forenoon Watch, round eleven A.M., the range was cut down to a quarter-cable, sixty yards, or only 180 feet, and Sapphire surged up from astern for yet another attempt.

  “Number One, fire as you bear!” Midshipman Hillhouse, now most thoroughly bored with the whole endeavour, shouted down to the upper gun deck. A long minute passed as that gun’s captain made his last-minute adjustments, then … Blam!

  “Hit!” Hillhouse shouted, sounding more surprised than congratulatory. “Top left edge of the white square! Number Two, stand ready!”

  Boom! and that gun’s shot smashed into the top of the bulwark a few feet above its intended target. Number Three gun quickly followed, and people cheered when a red-painted “gun-port” was hit fair and square, leaving a ragged star-shaped hole, dead-centre! Four more of the eleven 12-pounders managed to score direct hits, or hits that nibbled at the edges of the painted squares.

  The lower gun deck 24-pounders tried their eyes at that range, and five of eleven guns managed to score hits worth their tobacco and rum.

  “More, sir!” Midshipman Chenery cried as he came to the base of the ladderway to the quarterdeck. “The men want to keep at it, now they have their eyes in!”

  “No, that’s enough for now,” Lewrie decided. “We’ve winners enough. Pass word to Arabelle t’let go her towing bridle. Mister Westcott … serve her a full broadside, six-pounders, carronades, the whole lot, and finish her off.”

  “Aye, sir. All guns, by broadside, this time!” Lt. Westcott shouted, shooing Chenery back below to his post at Quarters.

  With the towing bridle cast free, Arabelle almost shot away ahead, now she was free of her burden, and Cheval Rouge wallowed to a crawl, quickly shedding way, beginning to yaw.

  “Guns ready … by broadside … fire!” Westcott shouted.

  After the slow pace of single shots half the morning, the roar of every piece of artillery going off at once was staggering, wreathing Sapphire in a great, stinking cloudbank of spent powder smoke. Beyond that sudden blanketing cloud, the sound of a ship being riddled and smashed with iron roundshot was almost as loud as the roars of the guns. As the smoke drifted down onto the mangled prize, then beyond her, the Cheval Rouge was revealed as a wreck, her main mast gone, her hull punched in in myriad places, with several holes shot into her waterline, but she was still on the surface.

  “Hell, serve her another!” Lewrie snapped.

  That second massive broadside did the trick. The target brig had taken more damage along her waterline, and she was slowly heeling over to larboard, showing details of her ravaged decks. Slowly, she filled with seawater, the air in her holds and belowdecks steaming out, and the many shot-holes along her waterline foaming with the in-rush, heeling and groaning her death-cries as she rolled onto her beam-ends, then began to settle lower and lower, foot by agonising foot, ’til suddenly she was gone, leaving loose gear and shattered bits of her as flotsam amid the last white-foaming gouts of trapped air wheezing upwards.

  “Secure from Quarters,” Lewrie ordered, “and I’ll have our successful gun crews muster
ed under the quarterdeck edge once they have seen to their pieces. Ah, Mister Hillhouse, you’ve your list of ‘marksmen’? Good. And I’d admire did you have a box of tobacco fetched from my cabins.”

  And once the hands were gathered, Mr. Cadrick the Purser and his Jack-in-the-Breadroom, Irby, saw to the distribution. There was some joshing and boasting, some longer faces among the gun crews that had not quite hit the mark, but the free tobacco was welcome.

  “Lads, you did rather well, for a first stab at close aiming,” Lewrie told them, “and with any luck we’ll find another target for you t’practice on. The idea is to be able to aim and fire at any part of an enemy ship that’ll kill Frenchmen quicker, and surer than just blazin’ away by broadsides. Smash in their ports, dis-mount their guns, and kill Frogs … take down the people on their quarterdecks, the helmsmen and the wheels, even have three or four guns aim at the base of their masts and bring ’em down early on. It’ll be at close quarters, since it looks as if it only works at long musket shot, but … when we do find a Frog that’ll fight us, we’ll give him such a drubbin’ that he’ll yell ‘Mon Dieu’ and wish he’d never tangled with Sapphire, right?”

  Even the less-successful gun crews roared agreement loudly.

  “Dismiss, and get ready for ‘Clear Decks and Up Spirits’,” he concluded, and the crew raised another cheer for the morning’s rum issue.

  “Ah, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said to the First Lieutenant as the hands dispersed. “Pass word for the Master Gunner, his Mate, and Mister Turley, the Armourer.”

  “An afternoon of filing, is it, sir?” Westcott asked with one brow up. “You wish the guns notched?”

  “Aye,” Lewrie replied with a sheepish smile and a shrug of his shoulders. “Something I should have ordered done beforehand.”

  “I’ll explain it to them, sir,” Westcott promised, “and set them to it.”

  “Deep V notches, muzzle swells, and in line with the top-most of the breech rings,” Lewrie agreed. “I’ll be aft.”

  “Aye, sir.” Westcott said, touching the brim of his hat in salute as Lewrie entered his cabins, where he found things tidy and being prepared for his mid-day meal. Pettus was back from the orlop, where he usually went with Chalky and Bisquit, laying a table setting, and Jessop was there, opening a bottle of Portuguese white wine.

  “Ah, there’s my lads,” Lewrie cooed as he hung up his hat and coat, kneeling to cosset the cat and the dog, who were still upset by the loud noises. “Yes, Chalky, you’re alright now. And there’ll be no more loud bangs today, Bisquit, there’s a brave dog.”

  “Weren’t fair, sir,” Jessop sulkily said as he brought Lewrie a glass of wine.

  “What wasn’t fair, Jessop?” Lewrie asked.

  “Ya never let us on the ‘smashers’ have a go, nor the lads on the six-pounders, neither,” Jessop carped. After a time in Lewrie’s service as a cabin servant, the lad had eagerly volunteered to learn more of a seaman’s trade, learning his knots, boxing the compass, going aloft with the topmen of his own age, and serving in a crew manning one of the 24-pounder carronades in action. He’d also gotten a desire to be more a sailor than a servant.

  “We’re seein’ to that, me lad,” Lewrie told him as he got to his feet. “Cuttin’ aimin’ notches in all the guns, like the sights on a musket or pistol. The next spare prize we take, I’ll expect you t’pick your target and hit it bang on the nose.”

  “Oh, well then!” Jessop perked up. “Here’s yer wine, sir!”

  “Thankee, and I think I’ve earned it this morning!” Lewrie said with a laugh.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  For several days after the first experiment with aimed gunnery fire, the weather along the Costa Verde and the Costa de Cantabria turned foul, with heaving seas, continual rain squalls, and limited visibility, forcing HMS Sapphire to quit her close prowls along the coast and seek deeper water, many miles offshore, for her own safety.

  The notch-sights were filed onto all her guns, from the puny 6-pounders to the carronades and Iower deck 24-pounders, and Lewrie delighted in inspecting all of them, squatting down behind the cascabels and breeching ropes and squinting down the sights at imaginary foes, assuring himself that every filed notch was cut into the metal at absolute top-dead-centre, and in perfect alignment.

  He was both enthused yet frustrated at the same time, eager to give his gunners another chance, and more practice, but in this weather, there was little to do in that regard. Sapphire trundled along with her topmasts struck down, heaving, rolling, and pitching, so slowly that Lewrie could conjure that the ship could not pursue a migrating sea turtle with any hope of success.

  Then … wonder of all wonders, a lone French merchant ship, separated from her convoy by the weather, and seeking safety from wrecking onshore, had swum up out of the swirling, misty rain, suddenly just there, at two cables’ range! A quick hoist of the Union Jack, a single discharge from a 6-pounder—remarkably accurate by the way!—and she was forced to strike her colours, fetch-to, and accept a boarding party.

  For a time, Lewrie hoped that once the weather cleared, she could serve as the next target for his gunners, but, once Lt. Elmes reported back with her manifest, Lewrie had felt so frustrated that he could have kicked furniture. Food, clothing, muskets and ammunition, tentage, blankets, boots and shoes, winter greatcoats, and kegs of gunpowder by the hundreds. She was just too valuable to shoot to pieces!

  Dammit, I want t’smash something! he growled to himself.

  “All more than welcome to our army and our Portuguese allies,” he said, instead, as calmly and deliberately as he could sham such. “Do place her crew below, well secured and guarded, ’til we can set ’em ashore once the weather clears, Mister Elmes.”

  “Very good, sir,” Lt. Elmes replied, and departed the great cabins.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” Lewrie fumed once he was gone.

  * * *

  Thankfully, the weather did clear, and Sapphire, with her two prizes in trail, could close the coast once more near Aviles, send the latest captives ashore in one of their own boats, and take up her prowling once more, just about ten miles seaward, and Lewrie’s hopeful mood returned. In point of fact, he was much like a boy who’d gotten a set of bow and arrows for Christmas; there would be no pleasing him ’til he had a chance to play with them!

  To that end, he summoned Mr. Boling, the Master Gunner.

  “Aye, sir?” that worthy, a thick-set fellow in his fourties with greying hair, and a paunch over which a red waistcoat was stretched, said as he doffed his hat.

  “French gunpowder, Mister Boling,” Lewrie began, “is it worth a damn? There’s rather a lot of it aboard the latest prize, and we could use it in lieu of ours, for practice shooting.”

  “Hmm, well, sir,” Boling replied, scratching at several days’ worth of stubble on his cheek, “that’d depend on how long it’s been in cask, in storage, and in what conditions. Damp, d’ye see, Cap’um. There’s no way of knowing unless we could test it in a prouviette.”

  That they did not have. At Woolwich, the quality of powder was tested in what looked like a mortar mounted on a wooden block, a prouviette, with a fixed amount of powder flinging a fixed weight of shot—usually a twelve-pound roundshot—at 45 degrees, to march off and measure how far the shot was thrown down range. The better the gunpowder, the farther the shot would end up.

  “Hmm, if we loaded one of the forecastle six-pounders with British powder,” Lewrie contemplated with his head laid over to one side, “and the second with French powder … both guns set at the maximum elevation with the quoin blocks fully out, would that do for a proper test?”

  “Well, it might, at that, sir,” Boling replied, though he did look squinty over the idea.

  “Excellent!” Lewrie cried, all but clapping his hands, then turned to the officer of the watch, Lt. Harcourt. “Mister Harcourt, I’d admire did you summon a boat crew, send the launch over to the latest prize, the … what the Devil is she called?”

>   “The Mouette, I believe, sir,” Harcourt supplied, “the Seagull.”

  “Right, have ’em fetch us, say, ten kegs o’ French gunpowder t’practise with,” Lewrie finished. “We’ll test it alongside our own and see if it’s up to snuff.”

  “At once, sir,” Harcourt replied, then bawled for the former Cox’n, Crawley, and his gang.

  * * *

  Lewrie paced the poop deck in rising excitement, and more frustration over how long it took for the launch to be led up alongside, manned, and rowed over to the Mouette, secured alongside her, the kegs hoisted out of the prize’s holds into a cargo net, hauled up by brute force with the prize crew and Crawley’s people, using the foremast main course yard as a crane, lowered into the boat, secured, and the launch stroked back to Sapphire so the whole hoisting aboard of the kegs, with the net affixed to a line from the ship’s mainmast course yard, could be repeated. Finally, with the boat secured, Mr. Boling saw the kegs taken below to the magazine, where he would fill 6-pounder cartridge bags with the proper amount of French powder, mark them with a dash of paint to distinguish them from pre-loaded English powder cartridges, then whistled up some ship’s boys who served as powder monkeys on the forecastle guns, and announced that the test could begin.

  All this activity attracted the attention of the on-watch seamen, and a fair number of off-watch hands who came up to watch the show. Lewrie fetched his telescope and left the quarterdeck to go forward to amidships of the larboard sail-tending gangway. Lt. Westcott, who was off-watch with nothing better to do, ambled up to join him.

  “All ready?” Lewrie shouted to the forecastle gunners and the Master Gunner. “You may begin!”

  “Think the damned stuff will squib, or go pfft?” Westcott japed.

  “If it does, I may have t’end up buyin’ powder with my own funds,” Lewrie growled. “The Navy’d say I’m wastin’ our stock.”