1634: The Baltic War (68 page)

Now it remained to be seen how well those plans were going to succeed.

"Ship on the port quarter!"

Commander Mülbers whipped around, peering aft through the filthy, greasy smoke. For a second or two, all he could see was more smoke. Then the bows of a gun-armed galley came thrusting into visibility.

The galley's crew obviously hadn't seen
Ajax
until the moment they were spotted in return. Its eighteen-pounder couldn't be brought to bear, and the slender craft began turning sharply, trying to point its bows toward its larger enemy.

There was no need for Mülbers to issue any orders. Or, rather, all the necessary orders had been issued long since. As the galley started its turn, the after mitrailleuse in the port broadside pivoted slightly behind its heavy splinter shield, and the gunner turned the crank.

The staccato explosions sounded like someone dragging the world's biggest stick down a picket fence made of steel, Mülbers thought. The range was no more than forty or fifty yards, close enough that a shot from the galley's gun might well penetrate
Ajax
's stout timbers, or at least the thinner planking protecting the paddle wheel. But that was also a low enough range for the mitrailleuse's .50-caliber slugs to punch through the galley's thin hulls like sledgehammers.

The men clustered around the eighteen-pounder went down first as the heavy bullets ripped through them in a ghastly red fog. The same slugs, scarcely even slowed by their passage through the gunners' bodies, smashed into the rowers behind them. Men screamed, others simply died, and splinter-fringed holes perforated the galley as the mitrailleuse walked its fire aft down the centerline of the Danish vessel.

A single magazine more than sufficed to cripple the galley, but the mitrailleuse crew swung into polished action. The intensive training Admiral Simpson and their own officers had hammered into them went deep—so deep they never really had to think about it at all. The gunner released the expended magazine. One of his assistants snatched it from the mitrailleuse's breech, aligned it over the extractor's fingers, and shoved it down, punching out the empty cartridges. Even as the empties fell to the deck, the gunner's second assistant had slammed a second magazine into the weapon. The gunner threw the lever, locking the new magazine into place, and then turned the crank again, traversing his fire across the shattered slaughter pen of the galley, while his third assistant reloaded the first magazine.

Fresh thunder sounded from the direction of
Ajax
's bows as the forward mitrailleuse opened fire, and then number two port carronade bellowed. Mülbers had turned back forward when the second mitrailleuse opened up, but he still hadn't found the carronade's target when the eight-inch shell smashed into it.

Fortunately for the galley's crew, the shell punched clear through both sides of their vessel before the fuse could initiate detonation. Unfortunately, it did so at a sharp downward angle, exiting through the boat's bilge and giving birth to an instant geyser. And, even more unfortunately, water wasn't very compressible. When the shell
did
explode, the force of its detonation was directed upward, right into the bottom of the galley's hull, with devastating consequences. The vessel's back broke instantly and it capsized, spilling men into the icy water, and the Sound was cold enough even in May for hypothermia to be a very real danger.

The after mitrailleuse was thundering again, and in the brief pause as its crew reloaded, Mülbers heard
Achilles
firing astern of him.

"It would be nice," John Chandler Simpson said through clenched teeth, "to have some fucking idea who's fucking shooting at what."

The admiral's tone was remarkably level, under the circumstances, Franz Halberstat thought. His language was something else, of course, and the flag captain felt an ignoble temptation to flee to the other side of the conning tower. The actual physical separation wouldn't have meant much, but every little bit helped.

He waited for Simpson to say something else, but despite the profanity, the admiral obviously had himself under tight control, which said quite a lot about his self-discipline. One concept he'd hammered home again and again was the absolute necessity of situation reports. "Never assume that your senior officers see and know what
you
see and know," he'd said over and over. Now he and Halberstat could both hear the stuttering bursts of mitrailleuse fire and the occasional deeper, harder coughs of carronades. Unfortunately, what they could actually
see
was absolutely nothing, and no one was using the radio to enlighten them.

"Ship on the port bow, bearing three-four-niner!"

Halberstat was out of the conning tower's protection and onto the port bridge wing in a flash. The need to see as clearly as possible dwarfed any consideration of the conning tower's armored protection, and he strained his eyes against the smoke.

The centerline mitrailleuse mounted on the foredeck in front of the main armored casement began to spit streaks of fire into the smoke. Halberstat followed their direction and finally found the galley the lookout had spotted. How that young man had managed to pick it out of this infernal fog was more than Halberstat was prepared to guess. He couldn't see it very clearly himself even now, but it looked as if it had actually been crossing ahead of the flagship when it was sighted. And even under these miserable visibility conditions, it was clear that the mitrailleuse's gunner had found his mark.

The galley slewed sideways, and an instant later at least one of the mitrailleuse's heavy bullets must have hit the spar standing upright in its bows. The torpedo mounted on the spar pitched over the side as the spar itself shattered. It plunged into the water, vanishing in a flash of white foam . . . then exploded with ear-stunning violence as its sinking weight jerked the firing lanyard taut.

The galley—and its entire crew—disappeared in a volcano of white water and splintered timbers.

"New ship, port quarter, two-seven-five!" another lookout shouted, and the after mitrailleuse began to fire.

Ulrik heard the rapid-sequence firing of what had to be the USE's "mitrailleuses," and the interspersed thunder of their cannon. He couldn't see a thing, and the tension in his own torpedo-armed galley twisted tighter and tighter as the crew continued to row straight ahead into the impenetrable smoke.

The gunfire seemed to be coming from every direction
but
directly ahead of them, he reflected bitterly, while his heart hammered at the base of his throat. Apparently everybody but him and the other two galleys somehow managing to stay in formation with him had made contact. It took all his willpower to keep from ordering his own galley to turn sharply, hunting back the way it had come for the prey it had obviously somehow missed.

"That was a torpedo!" someone unidentifiable through the smoke half-shouted as a deeper, somehow
longer
explosion roared.

Ulrik had no doubt that whoever had shouted was absolutely correct. The question was whether or not the explosion had accomplished anything. And, if it had, what—

"Ship dead ahead!" someone screamed.

Captain Markus Bollendorf's lookouts weren't as fortunate as
Constitution
's had been. They picked up all three of the attackers, but not until the galleys were almost on top of SSIM
Monitor
.

The after mitrailleuse opened fire almost instantly, and the carronade crews started frantically training their guns toward the threat, but the forward mitrailleuse wouldn't bear at all, and there wasn't enough time to coordinate the ironclad's defensive fire power properly. The after mitrailleuse crew ripped one of the attacking gunboats into a splintered charnel house, and the forward carronade managed to get off a single shot which struck its target with devastating force. It hit just to one side of the galley's stem and punched directly aft until it exploded halfway down the vessel's length, killing virtually its entire crew.

The second carronade, unfortunately for
Monitor
, had been training around to engage the same target. When the first gun's shell exploded, the second gun captain instantly started slewing his weapon around to engage the remaining galley, but there simply wasn't enough time.

A corner of Ulrik's brain cringed.

Despite everything, his efforts to envision the effectiveness of the USE warships' weapons had come up short. The stabbing, staccato thunderbolts streaming from the mitrailleuse came faster and more accurately than he had ever anticipated. They had heaped the crew of one of his accompanying galleys in mounds of dead and wounded, and the shockwave from the volcanic eruption as the carronade shell disemboweled his second galley seemed to punch his entire body like some huge, immaterial fist.

But despite the carnage that had enveloped and devoured the other two galleys, his own swept forward, as if protected by some magic spell.

Norddahl manned the tiller, arrowing straight toward the fire-spitting behemoth of their target, and Ulrik's heart thundered louder than the enemy's guns as he lowered the spar. It dropped, angling sharply into the water, and drove straight toward the ironclad's flank. It was like a knight's lance driving into a dragon's side, and every ounce of Ulrik's being focused down to the firing lanyard in his fist.

The tip of his lance drove in under the ironclad's bilge. Despite the potentially lethal consequences if the spar shattered and drove back into his own body, Ulrik kept his free hand on the thick shaft, feeling for any telltale vibrations.

It quivered suddenly, jerking, flexing madly, and the prince visualized the torpedo on its other end. It was as if his eyes could pierce the blinding smoke, actually see down into the water. He
knew
the torpedo had gone exactly where it was supposed to go, under the turn of the bilge, grating along under the "roof" of the ship's flat bottom.

He jerked the lanyard.

Monitor
heaved indescribably.

Bollendorf went to his knees as the entire ship bounced and
twisted
underfoot. Wooden planking shattered, framing members snapped, water poured in through a ten-by-ten-foot breach, and the ship began listing sharply to port.

Any other vessel of
Monitor
's size would have sunk quickly. But
Monitor
had been designed by John Chandler Simpson with exactly this sort of situation in mind, and Bollendorf used the voice pipes to drag himself back upright.

"Pump the port trim tanks!" he shouted down the voice pipes to Engineering. "Shut down the port drive pump!"

"Aye, aye, sir!"

The disembodied reply coming back up out of the voice pipe was distorted, high-pitched with excitement and perfectly reasonable fear. It was also recognizable as that of Lieutenant Johannes Verlacht,
Monitor
's senior engineer. Even better, Bollendorf heard the steady, pounding roar of the ironclad's big diesel still thundering along in the background. As long as they had power for the pumps, they had a chance.

The first thing Prince Ulrik was aware of as he recovered a rather groggy consciousness, was the steel bar clamped across his chest. He blinked as he set his oddly drifting mind the task of figuring out what was happening.

He was in the water—
cold
water. Water so cold his extremities were already beginning to feel numb. Was that one of the reasons his brain seemed to be working so slowly, as well?

He blinked again, then coughed harshly. The top of his skull seemed to separate from the rest of him, and his throat burned as the saltwater came up. It was thoroughly unpleasant, but it also seemed to joggle his mind back to awareness.

He rolled his head. The steel bar across his chest, he discovered, was Baldur Norddahl's left forearm. The Norwegian was towing him through the water with a powerful sidestroke.

For a moment, Ulrik wondered what had happened to the galley. Then he remembered. The explosion had seemed muffled, almost silent. He couldn't really remember it as a
sound
at all, he realized. But he
did
remember the sudden, incredible
lifting
sensation—a sensation much like a stone hurled out of a catapult might have felt—as the galley's bows reared upward.

That was all he remembered, but as he looked back, he saw the shattered galley lying on its side, sinking rapidly. There was no sign of most of the crew. A handful of swimmers were struggling through the water in Norddahl's wake—that was all.

Ulrik gave himself a mental shake, then reached up and patted Norddahl's forearm with his right hand. The Norwegian stopped swimming for a moment, looking back at the prince, and his craggy face blossomed into a huge grin.

"Good!" he said. He released his grip, although it was obvious he was prepared to take Ulrik in tow again if the prince proved less recovered than he thought he was. Ulrik appreciated that, but he shook his head again and began treading water beside Norddahl.

"Good!" the Norwegian repeated, then turned and pointed. "And now, we go there, I think," he said.

Ulrik followed the pointing finger's direction and felt a sudden, undeniable flare of satisfaction as he saw the sharply listing ironclad. The ship was still afloat, and from the looks of things, it might well stay that way. A part of Ulrik was disappointed by that, but only a part. Whether it sank or not, the ship clearly wasn't going to be participating in any bombardments of Copenhagen this afternoon. And, on a more selfish level, if it managed to stay afloat, Prince Ulrik of Denmark might just survive the day, after all.

"Captain Bollendorf is on the radio, Admiral."

"Good."

Simpson dropped quickly down the internal ladder to the radio room. The radioman looked up at him, then handed him the microphone.

"Markus?"

"Yes, Admiral." The voice coming back over the speaker was hoarse and rasping, but if there was any hint of despair in it, Simpson couldn't hear it.

"What's your situation?"

"Not good, sir, but a lot better than it could have been. We've been badly holed. The torpedo detonated underneath the left tunnel pod and the blast punched up through the bottom of the hull. The breach has to be at least ten feet across, and it's almost directly under the bulkhead between number two and number three trim tanks. They're both completely flooded, and so are three of the compartments inboard of the tanks. We've pumped out the other two trim tanks and all the ballast tanks, but we've still got a heavy list—Lieutenant Verlacht estimates it at around fifteen to twenty degrees. Some of the bulkheads around the flooded compartments have lost integrity, as well, but the pumps seem to be keeping up with any water we're taking on there. I don't think she's in any immediate danger of sinking, but we've definitely lost the port pump, and we're going to need major repairs."

"Casualties?" Simpson's flat, over-controlled tone shouted his own emotions.

"So far, we have three dead and eight wounded," Bollendorf replied. He paused for a moment, then added, almost gently, "It could have been worse, Admiral. A lot worse."

"Understood," Simpson replied. He stood thinking for a moment, rubbing one eyebrow with a forefinger, then nodded to himself.

"Head for Saltholm Island," he said. "Beach her in the shallowest water you can. We'll see about pulling her out of the mud after we finish dealing with Copenhagen."

"Aye, aye, sir," Bollendorf replied. Then he seemed to hesitate for a moment before he continued. "Admiral, we've recovered the survivors of the galley which damaged us. There aren't many; the blast from their own torpedo sank them. But one of them says that he's King Christian's son, Prince Ulrik."

"You've got
Prince Ulrik
over there?" Simpson said very carefully.

"Yes, sir. We do."

"I see. Hang on for a minute, Markus, while I find out what sort of shape Mülbers' bass boat is in now."

"Welcome aboard, Your Highness."

It wasn't the first time Ulrik had ever seen Admiral Simpson, but it was the first time they'd actually been introduced. The American officer's grip was firm, and his eyes examined Ulrik's face intensely.

"Thank you, Admiral," Ulrik replied. "I'm very grateful to Captain Bollendorf for rescuing my men."

Simpson's free hand made a small waving-off gesture, and Ulrik smiled wryly. The journey from
Monitor
aboard the "bass boat" from one of the timberclads had been . . . lively. The wind had freshened further, dispersing the remnants of his smokescreen as the combustibles on the rafts finally burned out. The flat-bottomed boat had bounced across the steeper swell like a skipping stone from a child's hand. The fact that only three of his galleys were still afloat—and that two of those were clearly foundering—had tightened his mouth with pain. He doubted that very many of those galley crews had been as fortunate as he had.

Still,
Monitor
was a worthwhile prize. True, he hadn't managed to
sink
her, which would have been worth the entire cost of his galley squadron twice over, but he'd certainly demonstrated that not even the ironclads were truly invincible.

"I wish I could have welcomed you aboard under better circumstances, Your Highness," Simpson continued. "Unfortunately, just as you, I have orders to carry out. Would you come this way please?"

"Of course," Ulrik replied, and followed the American up the ladder on
Constitution
's steep-sided casement to the open bridge wing. As he climbed, he was conscious of how much he missed Norddahl's solid, reassuring bulk at his back, but the Norwegian was still back on the
Monitor.

They reached the bridge, and Simpson introduced Ulrik to
Constitution
's captain and executive officer. It was the first time Ulrik had actually been aboard one of the USE's American-designed ships, and he was deeply impressed by the interior of the conning tower with its up-timer lighting and carefully thought-out and arranged control stations.

"Very well, Captain," the admiral said to Captain Halberstat. "Let's get the squadron back underway."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Halberstat passed a quick sequence of orders, and the squadron resumed the steady advance Ulrik's attack had managed to at least delay.

The prince stood silently on the bridge, watching alertly. Everything he saw only impressed him more, and felt a deep temptation to chatter away to his captors about their marvelous equipment, but he suppressed it sternly. No doubt a lot of it was shock, and the result of sheer jubilation at finding himself still alive.

That wasn't the reason he made himself keep his mouth shut, however. He and Baldur had planned their defense of Copenhagen carefully, and they still had one last string to their bow, so to speak. So, Ulrik forced his expression to remain only interested and fascinated by his surroundings as the gunboats forged ahead once more.