Dewey Lambdin - Sea of Grey
Lewrie nodded and pursed his lips, turned away and took another sip of coffee, pondering his options. He turned back to them at last.
"Mister Wyman… ah, Mister Langlie, there you are! Stow away the holystones, and 'vast scrubbing. We'll let the deck go hang, just this once. There's a problem ashore. Fetch the ship to, for now, and pipe the hands to their breakfast. Once they've eat, we'll short-tack our way inshore to the port."
Aye, sir. "Aspinall, just some toast for me," Lewrie bade.
The long inlet leading to Mole St. Nicholas was frustrating in the extreme. The first part ran roughly Sou'east, an easy sail across the wind for the first few miles… until the hills and the taller inland mountains, blocked the Trades and created one contrary zephyr after another, leaving Proteus chasing patches of sea that were still cat's-pawed by wind, and each weakly wafting from the opposite direction of the last one.
Then came the Nor'east leg, directly into the Trades, meaning a short board to either larboard or starboard, no closer to the wind than sixty degrees, the channel narrowing and shoaling, so that each attempt at making ground to the East'rd was measured in mere hundreds of yards to the good after each pair of tacks.
And the worst part were the sounds coming from shore; the faint, echoing sputter of musketry now and then, and the thin Crump! of field artillery that tolled like minute-guns at a steady pace. Someone needed them… soonest! But it took forever to get there. And as the day progressed, and the land and sea warmed, the thin skeins of smoke from ashore, drifting upwards through the jungley tree line went vertical, and the winds died away to nothing.
"Damme, we'll row her into range!" Lewrie snapped, pounding his fist on the cap-rails overlooking the waist. "Mister Langlie, do you lower the ship's boats and pay out towing cables!"
"Sir, there's a rowing boat coming offshore for us!" Midshipman Grace cried. "I can make out Army officers… I think!"
Through his glass, Lewrie could see at least two dozen rowboats already working 'round the few ships in harbour. There was a brig, and at least three large schooners, a small and dowdy three-master swinging at single anchors… hired ships, and lightly armed, thinly manned by civilian seamen with little experience-and even smaller will-to turn their pop-guns ashore. It was all they could do to stow supplies belowdecks, as fast as they could be stripped from the canvas-covered piles near the piers and the beaches.
"Topmen aloft! Hand all sail! We'll row her in, bare-poled!" Lewrie shouted to his crew.
"Uhm… the depth, sir," Mr. Winwood pointed out, coughing in his fist.
"How shoal does it get, sir?" Lewrie growled, turning on him.
"I'd not get closer than two cables from the docks, sir, else we run her into the mud. Mole Saint Nicholas can't dock deep-draught ships. They anchor out in the roads. I've hands in the chains, heaving the lead already, sir. Just wished you to keep it in mind, Captain."
"Damn!" Lewrie spat, making Winwood wince at the profanity. He was a sober hymn-singer. "Very well, Mister Winwood… two cables, no more. Our guns can range a mile inland. And, from the look of things, what targets we engage'll be a lot closer than that. Just beyond the town, more-like. Keep me apprised."
"I will, sir."
The rowboats were hoisted off the mid-ships tiers, then swayed out with the main-course yard as a crane, and slowly lowered into the water, with snub-lines to check the swing and sway. It took forever, it seemed! By the time even his own gig had been wetted, and the boat crews began to scramble over the side to man them, Bosun Pendarves had gone hoarse from shouts and curses.
"Pass the word for the Master Gunner, Mister Carling," Lewrie ordered. And once the Master Gunner had come up from the magazines to the rare privilege of the quarterdeck, Lewrie pressed him at once.
"We may have to fire over the heads of our own troops, Mister Carling."
"Dear Lord, sir," Carling said, grimacing and glancing ashore.
"I know," Lewrie said, in sympathy for the great risk of killing British soldiers with a graze or a short round. "Quoins full out, breeches resting on the carriages, for more loft. But with the foe so close to the town… what about reduced charges, perhaps saluting charges? So we don't throw iron half a mile beyond?"
"Could do that, sir, but… that'd be indirect fire, Captain," Mr. Carling countered, rubbing at his close-shorn scalp, "and no way to know the fall of shot. Could waste a deal of shot and powder and not ever hit a Godd-. A blessed thing, sir. Like firing mortars!"
He had stammered, noting that the prim Mr. Winwood was nearby.
"It worked for a Frenchman who sank my ship at Toulon, back in '93," Lewrie said with a snort, and his first real moment of humour of the morning. "Bastard spotted fire for his guns from a bluff. If the Army could signal us, were we long or short, on target or not…?"
So it's their responsibility, not mine! Lewrie could not help but conjure.
"Towing cables are ready, sir, and we're prepared to haul away." "Thankee, Mister Langlie, carry on. Smartly, now. So if they could signal us… would it work, Mister Carling?"
"Aye, sir… I s'pose, but…" Carling answered, rubbing his scalp more vigourously. "The six-pounders on the forecastle and here on the quarterdeck. Main battery twelves'd not be able to elevate in the ports high enough."
"The carronades!" Lewrie insisted. "They'd elevate. Even with a full charge, they don't throw much more than four hundred yards. If we loaded with reduced charges, but with star-shot, bar-shot, and chain-shot… grape or cannister atop those…!"
"Excuse me, sir, but the rowing boat with those Army officers is now close-aboard," Lt. Wyman interrupted.
"Very well, Mister Wyman!" Lewrie snapped, exasperated with all the demands upon him. "Pipe 'em aboard! Dust 'em off, and trot out a tot o' rum for 'em, I don't bloody care!"
"Uhm… aye, sir!"
Proteus began to move as the pair of Army officers appeared at the larboard entry-port, and took the hastily gathered salute from a much-reduced side-party. Lewrie hoped that they were unfamiliar with proper naval custom, and wouldn't know that they'd been slighted. He was more concerned with the helm, and the gelatinously slow creeping pace that the towing boats could generate. A fiddler and fifer atop the roundhouse overlooking the beak-head began to give them a tune to slave by, as the hands dipped their oars and strained red-faced for a yard-by-yard advance.
"Captain Lewrie," Lewrie said, announcing himself.
"Major James, sir… Captain Ward," the older officer replied, doffing his hat. "Damn' fortunate you were bound here, sir. We need a bit of help."
"Wasn't bound here, just saw your signalling in passing. Once in range, I intend to swing abeam the town and anchor with springs on the cables, so I can throw shot."
"That'd be most welcome, Captain Lewrie, most welcome, indeed. Though…'tis a hellish risk, d'ye see," Major James told him. "We are now entrenched not an hundred paces beyond the farthest houses on shore, and the Blacks are perhaps one or two hundred paces beyond."
Now that Proteus did not make her usual noises under way, nor had the wind-rush to mask sounds, Lewrie could hear the boom-boom-boom-b-boom of voudoun drums, far back in the forests. Much louder and closer than any he'd heard at Port-Au-Prince.
"Do your artillerists signal me, it could be done," Lewrie said.
"Well now, sir… I doubt my brigadier'd wish to risk our men in such a way," Major James objected.
"I'm to wait 'til the Cuffies are running down the piers, then? To keep them off you as you row away?" Lewrie said with a snort. "You say you need my support, but… how bad are things ashore?"
"Lord, sir!" Major James said with a sigh, fanning himself with his hat. "Two days ago, we held a perimeter nigh a mile inland. Only have the three regiments, d'ye see, and we thought most of the Blacks were off near Cape Francois, or down south near Port-Au-Prince, so we had no worries. But, they hit us at dawn, just popped up in front of the trench works…"
"Spent all night, crawling up to us in the grass, sir," Captain Ward supplied, looking as shaken as if it had happened this morning. "Quiet and slow as mice, they were."
"Drove us back… damn' near overran us," Major James admitted, casting a leery scowl at his junior officer for sounding as if he "had the wind up."
"Lost nigh on two whole companies, sir," Capt. Ward continued, despite his superior's look of distaste. But he was one of those boy captains, not a day over sixteen, whose parents had bought him a set of colours early enough in life so he could live long enough to make a full colonelcy, if not become a general, before retirement, or inheriting some share of the estate back home in England.
"Field pieces overrun as well, I suppose," Lewrie commented.
"We are short of artillery, yes, but…" Major James objected some more.
"You wish my help or not, sir?" Lewrie snapped. "Then let's be about it. An artillery officer aboard Proteus here, another ashore to relay the fall-of-shot… using your signal flags, or whatever it is that you do, so there's no errors in communication. Perhaps a chain of signallers from your trenchworks right back to the docks."
"I suppose we could, Captain Lewrie," Major James said, frowning. "Don't know much about artillery myself, all that Woolwich bang-bangin'? I'm infantry, d'ye see."
He drew himself up with a touch of pride; wounded pride, Lewrie suspected, that he was forced to reveal himself as just another drone who knew how to shout, square-bash on parade, and look good in scarlet, and hadn't learned a thing in his climb from subaltern rank outside of his own narrow interests. And his promotions bought, not earned!
"But you could arrange…?" Lewrie prompted, flexing his fingers on his sword hilt in frustration.
"Might be best, did you have your people do the signalling and use your own system, Captain Lewrie," Major James said at last. "Your guns… your fall-of-shot?" He tossed off a helpless shrug.
"Don't have a system for such as this!" Lewrie quickly growled. "I can send a midshipman or two ashore, but only to aid your people."
"Well, uhm…"
"Damme, sir, you wish help? I didn't short-tack in here, six hours' worth o' hard labour, then put my people rowin' so hard they'd herniate, just t'watch a raree-show. You refuse, I'll put about and stand back out to sea, and bedamned to ya!"
And naval captains outrank Army majors, Lewrie told himself: I am almost sure of it!
"On your head be it, Captain Lewrie," Major James demurred.
"No… on some over-educated Woolwich graduate be it," Lewrie countered, knowing how Redcoat officers demeaned the blue-coated artillery corps, "tradesmen," who could not buy a commission, but had to learn, work and think, before the Woolwich Arsenal passed them for field duty.
Sure enough, Major James treated Lewrie to an smirk of sudden understanding, and began to bow himself away.
Now, who do I send ashore? Lewrie wondered, after doffing his hat to the soldiers, and turning away to see to his ship's snail-like progress. Midshipmen Sevier and Nicholas were the oldest and smartest, the rest aboard too young, too impressionable, and not yet challenged by independent command away from the ship; none of them were, really.
And who do I stand to lose? Who dies… at my command?
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I think we're ready for a try, sir," the scruffy, and worried, Royal Artillery officer, a Captain Wandsworth, announced at last, after several minutes of arcane scribbling and muttering over a slate with his assistant, a younger lieutenant; arcs, windage, elevation, range, charge to be used et al had been figured and refigured.
"Very well, Captain Wandsworth. Carry on, if you please, and Devil take the hindmost," Lewrie said, hands in the small of his back and his fingers crossed for luck; hands well clear of actual responsibility! Then Lewrie nodded to Mr. Carling on the forecastle; the man stiffened and winced so openly that Lewrie could almost feel the fellow's lips stretch as he stepped clear of a 6-pounder chase-gun and yanked the trigger lanyard.
The 6-pounder yapped, spewing a great cloud of smoke from a barrel elevated higher than normal, and rolled back on its truck-carriage, slewing a bit out of true as it recoiled. The solid shot soared into the sky, visible for a split-second as it slowed at its peak of apogee and dashed downward.
"May work, after all," Captain Wandsworth muttered, taking off his cocked hat and running his fingers through his sweaty hair. "Did we fire direct, well… your decks are only twenty feet above the sea, and our trenches are about fifty. At ten degrees elevation, as high as one'd risk an iron barrel with a full charge without bursting… hope no one's standing up, over there, else he'll have his head took off."
Lewrie wasn't quite sure that Wandsworth had addressed him directly, so he raised one eyebrow and said "Hmmm?"
"Not to mind, just nattering," Wandsworth said, waving him off. "Ah! There! Fifty yards beyond our lines… no effect. Still…"
"Shame we don't have Colonel Shrapnel's bursting case-shot, sir," the lieutenant told his superior. "Timed fuses… spread some grief?"
"No way to graze solid shot, true," Wandsworth responded, lost in his arcane work, whilst he scribbled some more on a slate. "Can't lay 'em waste like a game o' bowls, this way. What guns we have on the line'll have to see to that. Droppin' heavy things on their heads… wheee… plop. Cow-pats. Won't even bounce, I'll warrant." "This won't do any good, after all?" Lewrie asked. "Put the wind up 'em, Captain Lewrie, t'be sure," Wandsworth replied with a fiendish little grin. "Who knows? You hammer away at a wall for days, before you effect a breach. I'm thinking grape-shot or cannister might get a rise out of 'em. Saturate an area, 'stead of an aimed shot at high angle, where a miss is as good as a mile. Try one of your carronades?"
"Lovely things," the lieutenant said in praise and envy. "We never get to play with such. Now, do we increase the charge by a dram or two, sir… stand of grape on its wooden wad base… uhm, that's eighteen and one-half pounds total shot, with one cannister atop…?" Lewrie shared a look with his lieutenants, Langlie and Wyman. Like watchin ' witches stir their pot, Lewrie thought; one more eye o ' newt, or no? Two wolf teeth, or was it three?
"No no, four drams, at the least, but…!" Wandsworth quibbled. They fussed with one of the quarterdeck carronades, pushing the regular crew out of the way, whose members looked to Lewrie for a clue as to whether they should submit or not. All he could do was toss them a shrug and let the Army piddle.
