So Near So Far (25 page)

“Permit me to ask, sir, what you are doing here? How do you and your followers come to be within the castle? Explain your presence, sir, and understand, pray, that I shall call for the fullest investigation into the incident.”

“I regret, Lady Hester, that you have been disturbed. The French have landed here and two of your servants have been killed. We have captured most of the enemy and are hunting the rest.”

“Am I to understand, sir, that the Emperor Napoleon is leading his whole army ashore?”

“No, Lady Hester. There has been a raid, no more than that.”

“And what, may I ask, would have been the object of this extraordinary enterprise?”

“The French have not so far explained their plans in any detail, or not at least to me. I should myself surmise that they were attempting to capture the Prime Minister.”

“The man on whom all our efforts must centre! They could
do worse, I must allow. You say that two of our servants are dead. Do you know their names?”

“I understand that one was a footman called Thomas, the other a chambermaid called Dorothy. I should suppose that they were trying to warn you and call generally for help.”

“Dorothy? A nice child and quite a favourite of mine. And who, sir, are you?”

“I am Captain Delancey, commanding the frigate
Vengeance.
”

“And why had you to land with your seamen? Where were the Cinque Port Volunteers?”

“Still in their beds, Lady Hester. There has been no general alarm or there was none at least until the danger had passed.”

“I take a serious view of the affair, Captain Delancey. The navy should keep to the sea and leave the French soldiers to be opposed by the forces we have so painfully raised, accoutred, and exercised.”

“Very good, Lady Hester. Should Napoleon land here I shall point out the castle to him and will then respectfully withdraw.”

The lady glared at him for an instant. Then her expression abruptly changed and she laughed helplessly. Delancey now saw her as quite an attractive woman, high-spirited, blue-eyed, and evidently able to see the comic side of things.

“Very well, Captain,” she said finally, “I have been talking nonsense and you have told me not to be silly!”

“Far from it, Lady Hester. I have been telling you, in all but words, how much I admire your spirit.”

“Flattery seldom fails. So the affair is over and I can go back to bed?”

“Yes, indeed, unless you would wish to reassure the servants and tell them that they have nothing more to fear. I have spoken
to them myself but it is to you they look for guidance and protection.”

“I must write to Dorothy's mother, poor woman. How strange to think that a mere girl should fall victim to the enemy when all our armed menfolk are asleep.”

“It is often the innocent who suffer, Lady Hester, but not all the French escaped and a number were killed.”

“What sort of men were they?”

“Not men we should despise.”

“I should imagine not. When that French gunboat was taken I went with the Prime Minister, Lord Camden, and Mr Charles Stanhope to inspect her. There were thirty soldiers on board, with two cannon, and there were four sailors. They were well clothed, well supplied, and well fed. In my opinion they were all picked men.”

“I should not doubt it, Lady Hester. I hope that the Prime Minister is not more active than his physicians approve.”

“He is more active than I approve. He works harder than anyone living, with people coming to see him all day and papers to read all night. I could wish he were out of office but what then would be the fate of our country? He is killing himself and I know no way to save him. All this is, of course, between ourselves …”

“You can trust me, Lady Hester, and I shall never forget the privilege I have had to meet you.”

Parting with this great lady, Delancey took the opportunity to walk on the ramparts and see what happened to the
Corsican.
She was at anchor, he could see, in the position where last seen. There were boats alongside, evidently his own, and her deck was lit by lanterns. She had been taken by his officers and he could just glimpse the white ensign hoisted over the
tricolour. With nearly all her own men ashore, her two or three men on anchor watch would have made no resistance. Hurrying down to what had originally been the guard room, now evidently the steward's office, he found pen and paper and wrote a brief note to Mr Wetherall or Mr Seddon.

You are hereby required and directed to remove everything of value from the captured steam-vessel, together with any documents found, send your prisoners to the
Vengeance,
and then blow her up with a keg of gunpowder. Her loss will be described as accidental, so prevent your men knowing exactly how it came about.

Signed,

Richard Delancey,

Captain, Royal Navy

Having scribbled this note and given it to a petty officer for delivery to Mr Northmore, who would send it out to the schooner, he went out into the courtyard where he found Mr Xenophon in conversation with a young army officer who had just ridden over from Deal to ask what was happening.

“There has been a French raid on Walmer Castle,” he was explaining, “but we shall probably decide against making the fact public. We shall make it known locally that it was an exercise.”

When the young officer had gone Delancey asked Mr Xenophon what had happened to the Prime Minister. “He can't be asleep, surely, after all this noise?”

“Mr Pitt? He is not here but went to London yesterday afternoon. Dear me, didn't I tell you? How remiss of me. I can only offer my sincere apologies. I do hope you will forgive me.”

”But how astonishing that the Prime Minister should leave so unexpectedly at the very time we had reason to want him out of the way!”

“Well, not exactly astonishing. He received a royal command to come to Windsor immediately.”

“How very fortunate!”

“It was not a coincidence. I have reason to believe, you see, that the King's letter was a forgery and that His Majesty knows nothing about it.”

“But how can you be sure of that?”

“I forged the letter myself.”

T
HE PUBLIC never knew anything about the raid on Walmer Castle—as was agreed, indeed, on both sides, for the French were just as reticent about the affair. As for their lordships of the Admiralty, they did not want it to be known that the enemy could set foot in England even in small numbers and by outlandish means. For people in Deal who had heard the firing, the explanation was that there had been a naval exercise, of which the garrison, by some mischance, had received no prior warning. Taken as a whole, the defensive measures had been highly successful.

Thinking of the affair afterwards, Delancey doubted whether the elimination of William Pitt, had it happened, would have been any serious loss to the war effort. Pitt was resolute, indeed. He had not thought of making peace on the enemy's terms. As against that, it was a question whether he really understood the art of war. His reputation rested upon his knowledge of finance as revealed in time of peace. That he or Dundas, his previous mentor, had any grasp of strategy might seem more than doubtful. It would seem, moreover, that Pitt was now a sick man, and one addicted to playing soldiers. As against that, had Pitt been taken by the enemy—his amateur soldiering having the chief result of exposing him to capture—the morale effect would have been tremendous. What encouragement it would have given the French and what alarm it would have spread in
Britain! How could our soldiers dream of attacking Napoleon when our forces could not even defend Walmer Castle? It had been a desperate attempt, Fabius being the mastermind who had devised it, and Delancey was glad to think that he himself had played a significant part in parrying the threat. He wondered whether Fabius would be blamed for the failure and discredited. On further consideration he concluded that Fabius would be given some other task but at lower level. Had it been a British failure the officer responsible would have been sent to some colony or other, to Jamaica, perhaps, or New South Wales. The French had less scope for this sort of promotion but there were places to which their less outstanding men could be sent. There was Mauritius, for example, where Decaen had been sent as penalty for being a follower of Moreau who had been Napoleon's rival at one time. Were there to be any revived plan for the invasion of England, Fabius, he concluded, was unlikely to have any hand in it.

Unfortunately, members of the Cabinet, accepting Delancey's word for it that
Corsican
was a suicidal vessel (the boiler of which had blown up) and that
Nautilus II
was quite unseaworthy, were greatly impressed by the effectiveness of the catamaran. Here was a British frigate destroyed in the Downs. Could not the same device be used against the invasion flotillas? Delancey, had he been consulted, would have pointed out that
Lizard
was sunk in very unusual circumstances. She had been a sitting duck in a dead calm. She had been deceived by the American flag. Such a situation might never exist again. Nor did the French landing craft present the same sort of target. Above all, the fact that the catamaran had been used successfully by a steam-vessel did not mean that a sailing ship could do the same thing. Delancey had dire misgivings about
the catamaran which he thought useless as a weapon and highly dangerous to those who might be ordered to handle it. Were any of them entrusted to him he resolved to sink them in deep water and report that they had proved ineffective. He would accept risks where the object was worthwhile. He would not sacrifice lives in pursuit of mere nonsense.

The Walmer Castle affair took place in June 1804. By July, it was obvious from their troop movements that the French attack on Britain was to take place in the immediate future. The Army of England, said to be over 160,000 strong, was now deployed between Etaples and Ostend and was organised into the several corps under the command, respectively, of Marshals Ney, Soult, Lannes, and Davoust. Signal for the invasion would be the appearance at Boulogne of the Emperor himself, an event which would be known in Deal within 48 hours. Rear-Admiral Knight, being joined by another frigate, the
Sparrowhawk,
as replacement for the
Lizard,
sent for his captains—less the captain of the
Gannet,
which was off Boulogne—and told them that the crisis was impending.

“Our defence against the invasion flotilla rests, in the first instance, upon this squadron, which may well be sacrificed at the outset. If and when the flotilla sails I shall attack it immediately without counting the cost or making plans for withdrawal. In the meanwhile it is the government's policy to discourage the attempt, showing the enemy that it must end in disaster. Movement of enemy landing craft must increase as the chosen date becomes more imminent, partly as the vessels concentrate and partly as the crews are exercised. We shall take every opportunity to press home our attacks, knowing that the resolute handling of our ships might well be witnessed by Napoleon himself. Even a mere skirmish may have its effect on
Napoleon's mind, illustrating on a small scale what confusion and defeat might result from a later attempt on a larger scale. Ours will be a task of the very greatest importance.”

The Admiral paused at this point, anxious to judge the effect of his words. The officers were unhelpfully silent and he went on:

“Some members of the Cabinet are anxious for us to make full use of a recent invention to which its supporters have given the inappropriate name of catamaran. I need hardly tell you that a catamaran is, properly speaking, a native craft with an outrigger used on the Coromandel coast of India. This is, however, the official name for this device, which is no more than a floating box of explosives, triggered off by the jerk of a lanyard. We have all expressed our doubts about the utility of this contrivance but ministers are aware that the frigate
Lizard
was destroyed by a catamaran and they can see no reason why the French flotilla should not be destroyed in the same way. We know, as others do not, that the device which destroyed the
Lizard,
tragically ending the distinguished career of Captain Harding and causing the death of so many of his men, was towed by a steam-vessel, able to move in any direction against wind and current. Ministers do not appreciate that a steam-vessel was essential to the success of the French attack. So we are ordered to see what the catamaran can achieve.”

“Might I ask, Admiral,” asked Flag Captain Saunders of the
Antelope,
“whether we are to make similar use of steam-vessels?”

“No, they have been ruled out. Remember also that the steam-vessel which sank the
Lizard
blew up soon afterwards. This is not generally known but ministers are aware of it and
realise that the steam engine is unreliable at any time and would be hazardous in battle. May I ask, gentlemen, whether any of you have experience in using the catamaran?”

At this point the newcomer to the squadron, Captain Moffat of the
Sparrowhawk,
spoke up for the first time. He was a thin-faced man with a rather pedantic manner, eager to show his expertise.

“Yes, Admiral, I am familiar with the catamaran and believe that it can be used with great effect. It is true that results have been disappointing, but I attribute past failures to the ignorance and obstinacy of the officers concerned. Some of them began with a prejudice against this mode of warfare and were resolved to discourage it. The catamaran is useless—more, it is dangerous—when handled by men who are nervous and inept.”

“May I ask, Admiral,” inquired Delancey, “how these catamarans are to reach the enemy? What form of propulsion are we to use?”

It was Captain Moffat who replied:

“They are propelled by the tide. Having towed them by boat to a distance just out of range of the enemy's gunfire, we cut them loose, jerk the lanyard, and withdraw. The explosion takes place after half an hour, the catamaran having been carried by the tide into the midst of the enemy's flotilla.”