Hervey 09 - Man Of War (16 page)

When he reached the upper deck the first of the gun captains were returning from the gunner’s storerooms with their cartouches and gunlocks, and the powder-boys were struggling up the ladders with their ‘salt-boxes’, the charges for the first broadside. Others were sprinkling wet sand on the decking, fetching buckets of drinking-water to each gun, and tubs of saltwater for the swabs. Above the waist and quarterdeck the netting was going up, if awkwardly, much to the consternation of the master’s mates; but aloft, Peto observed the topmen stopping the sheets and slinging the lower yards with chain as ably as ever he had seen it.

As he took the ladder to the quarterdeck he noted the reassuring red of the marines on the poop and forecastle. They were ever a steady and steadying sight – and some of them now armed with rifles, he was pleased to see (for practised as the marines were, the sea-pattern musket had as much windage as the land pattern, and was consequently no more accurate). He saw the fifers and drummers mustered in the waist, a dozen little fellows in oversize coats, younger even than the ship’s boys. They would keep the marines well supplied with cartridge during the fight – and cheer them with a merry tune as they closed for action. Peto felt an uncharacteristic lump in his throat at the sight of them – and the powder-monkeys – as he went to his place of command.

Lambe was already at his post as Peto took his sword from Flowerdew and buckled it on. He touched his hat to his captain, perhaps a shade anxiously, for he knew the clearing was too slow (not a single lieutenant had yet reported his part of ship ready, save the captain of marines), but he would make no excuse. They had held but two exercises with the guns – each ‘dry’, without powder – and this Peto knew already. It mattered not a jot, though, that heavy weather in the Channel and Biscay had kept the gunports closed, for the enemy made no concessions.

Peto touched his hat by return and took out his watch, rubbing salt into the soreness that was the lieutenant’s consternation. ‘It will not do, Mr Lambe. Fifteen minutes gone and not a battery ready.’

‘No indeed, sir.’

‘And the boats still inboard.’

‘Sir.’

The boats should by rights have been lowered – and with them the hen coops – but Peto had not wanted to risk breaking the tow and having to wear to recover them. All else he had ordered clear as for action. No, not quite all. In a line-of-battle ship they did not invariably cast the goats and the other livestock over the side, for the manger was a strong barricade and little likely to be destroyed. And in Peto’s experience an animal when it was dismembered made much less noise than did a seaman.

He looked up at the full course: he would not shorten sail for the practice, as he would in action (he wanted
Rupert
to maintain her fair sailing rate). A dove walked along the main yard, and, all about, wheeled hopeful gulls, for once silent. He smiled grimly: they would scream and scatter in a few minutes more.

A great spout of water arched across the lee side of the quarterdeck, sending Rebecca and her maid scurrying to the weather rail. Peto suppressed a smile. The pump evidently worked – strong and powerful. If it came to it, if flame reached sail, the hose could play on the courses well. Then he cursed himself. Miss Codrington was a deuced distraction, for he found his thoughts wandering as a consequence to Elizabeth, imagining what impression his ship’s industry would make on her. Good God, that it should come to this – at his age and seniority! He glowered at Rebecca, though at once thought meanly of himself for doing so.

‘You, sir! Yes, you!’

A startled midshipman by the lee companion ladder realized his captain meant him. He hurried to his side. ‘Sir?’

‘What is your name?’

‘Burgess, sir.’

‘And what do you do there?’ Peto knew well enough what he did.

‘Relay your orders below, sir.’

‘Very well. Have Mr Pelham come here at once.’

It took but seconds to accomplish.

‘Mr Pelham, I am surprised you are not at your station.’

It was a moot point. As signal midshipman, Pelham’s place was by the captain until such time as he had a signal to hoist, but the previous captain had preferred the elevation of the poop to the more limited observation, but closer control, near the wheel. Pelham would certainly not argue the point, of course, but his captain
had
asked him a question . . .

Lambe decided to see if Pelham had the composure to answer on his own account, though he could easily have answered for him (he was already sensing that he knew his new captain’s way).

‘I was making ready to signal
Archer
that we were about to fire, sir.’

Peto was content. He was doubly content, for his signal midshipman was clearly not one to be cowed in the excitement of action. And his lieutenant, indeed, plainly had the capacity to think beyond the commotion on deck by ordering the signal.

‘Very well. Signal
Archer
and then escort Miss Codrington to the poop and explain to her what we are about.’

‘Ay-ay, sir!’

Peto could not tell what Pelham made of the order (neither was he in the least concerned). For all he knew, it might be as delightful to him to have the ear of the admiral’s daughter as manifestly it had been to receive his captain’s invitation to dinner. He could only think how mortified he himself would have been as a sixteen-year-old midshipman obliged to entertain a female aboard a man-of-war at such a moment. He smiled to himself almost mischievously.

The lieutenant of the middle-deck starboard battery reported ready, followed a few moments later by both of the upper deck’s. In another two minutes all the batteries were accounted ready, and the carronades. Lambe held each officer on the quarterdeck until the last had come, and then formally reported to Peto that the ship was ready for action.

Peto, looking black, snapped closed his hunter with some force. ‘Gentlemen, I have never before been aboard a ship of any rate that took so long to clear for action! I perfectly understand that
Prince Rupert
was re-commissioned but a month ago, but in that month I should have expected more of you.’

Lambe felt the rebuke keenly, for the discipline and working of the crew was essentially his business, no matter what the inclination of the captain or how foul the weather.

‘You let down Mr Lambe, you let down your men, you let down yourselves.’

It was carefully calculated: the guilt was proven, the lieutenant’s dignity was maintained – perhaps even enhanced – duty invoked, and the captain’s assumption of confidence in his officers rehearsed.

The little assemblage of officers looked whipped.

There was another card yet to play, however, and Peto did not flinch from the clean sweep. ‘And, gentlemen – how it grieves me to say it – you let down your King! It will not do, I say.’ He waited until the silence was all but intolerable. ‘I trust I shall not have occasion to say so again.’

‘Ay-ay, sir,’ came the unison response as Peto searched for eyes that preferred the deck to his.

‘Gentlemen, only let me have your best. It will be good enough, I am sure of it . . . Very well, to your duties!’

He turned to his lieutenant as the others cut to their posts. ‘I compliment you on the work of the topmen, Mr Lambe. Admirable; quite admirable.’

‘I will tell the captains of the tops, sir,’ replied Lambe, modestly but cheered.

Peto cleared his throat, as if to be done with what had gone before. ‘Very well, Mr Lambe,’ he began, in a voice intended to carry to each side of the quarterdeck. ‘We shall exercise the batteries. Carry on if you please.’

He had conferred with Lambe the evening before.
Rupert
would fire two broadsides, starboard first, and then by deck, gun by gun, as they were ready. This way he would gain a better impression of her gunnery since he would otherwise not know by how much the slowest crew impeded the rest. And they would fire full-charge with the quoins out so that he could see the reach of shot.

Lambe put the speaking-trumpet to his mouth. ‘Sile-e-ence!’

The midshipmen at each of the hatches relayed the cautionary order.

‘Starboard battery, stand-by . . . Ready . . .
Fire!
’

Even running in a calm sea at nine knots,
Rupert
shuddered like a tautened rope with the explosion of three hundredweight of black powder – and four hundred tons of iron jumping like crazed roughs. Smoke billowed through the hatches in the following wind, masking the waist, but Peto knew well enough the scene below, the guns at full recoil, muzzles inboard, worms scouring out the cartridge remnants, sponges dowsing the embers before the loaders ladled in the new cartridges, driving home the wads of rope yarn on to the charge with the rammer; then the roundshot and its containing wad; and the captain of the gun plunging his corkscrew into the touch hole to prick the cartridge, pushing in the quill primer-tube with its fine-mealed powder, and the rest of the crew heaving on the breeching tackle to run out the gun, lashing it secure, heaving with the handspikes so it was properly trained – until at last the gun captain could hold up his hand to show ready to the lieutenant.

Peto observed the face of his Prior hunter with the utmost concentration. It had been the best that money could buy (short of having one encrusted with precious stones) – the best time-keeping, the most reliable, the most able to withstand the rigours of the service. He had bought it with the prize-money from Lissa, and many had been the time he had watched intently its second hand, though never perhaps quite so fretfully as now. A frigate’s gunnery was one thing – life or death when it came to action, as any man-of-war, but action was not the primary business of a frigate: in frigate work navigation preceded gunnery. In a line-of-battle ship gunnery was everything. Her
raison d’être
was gunnery. She was nothing but a floating fortress – arsenal and battery combined; more weight of cannon than even Bonaparte had been able to mass at Waterloo. It was why their lordships had brought
Rupert
out of the Ordinary. Her gunnery would overawe the Turk; or if it did not, it would
overpower
him.

The second hand passed twelve for the second time, and then five . . .

The lead gun of the lower-deck battery fired, and then her others in a thunderous drum roll, the upper deck’s beginning three seconds later, and the middle deck’s a fraction after them. Peto shook his head. Every gun had fired: the gun-crews were doing their job faithfully at least; but so slowly that against another three-decker – or even a well-served 74 – half the guns might be put out of action by the return broadside. Even the French, in the late war, for all their time blockaded in Toulon or Cadiz, could fire a second broadside in two minutes! If this had been the
Nisus
’s gunnery he would have been laying into the crews from the top of the quarterdeck companion, and his voice would have carried to the forecastle even against the wind.

‘Larboard battery, sir?’

Peto braced. ‘Very well, Mr Lambe; larboard battery.’

‘Larboard battery, stand-by . . . Ready . . .
Fire!
’

Rupert
shook once more. Peto glanced at his hunter again and watched for the fall of shot – a good mile and a half (it might have been more; it was not easy to judge in open sea), great fountains of water, the thirty-two-pounders’ reaching just beyond the upper deck’s eighteens’, but all in a satisfyingly regular fashion. Not that he would expect to engage a ship at such a range, unless it were trying to run from him, but it was well to know just how far he might stand off a shore battery, say.

Smoke billowed as before, so that once again the waist was soon hid, and he began pacing, fretfully again, until just as the second hand touched twelve the upper-deck battery thundered back into life, and the lower decks’ seconds after. For a moment he contemplated summoning the lieutenants and midshipmen, but that he had done already, and he could scarcely add to what he had said. He could assemble all the gun captains – or get Lambe to berate them . . .

No, it was not the way. They knew what he wanted – what the service required: a full broadside in a minute and a half. At her best,
Nisus
managed a minute and fifteen, and it made no difference that her guns weren’t as heavy, for a line-of-battle ship had extra men. No, he would repeat the exercises until they fired as they should. He had enough powder and shot to risk twenty broadsides at practice, and if they couldn’t manage it by the end of that . . .

‘Mr Lambe, have them fire by batteries. I’ll see who is the first to ninety seconds –
and
who is last!’

‘Ay-ay, sir!’

Lambe gave the order, and Peto’s admonishment. When all the batteries reported ready, he glanced at his captain for the word.

Peto took out his hunter again, and nodded.

‘Fire!’

Half an hour of smoke, flame, thunder and backbreaking work – both broadsides heaving as if they were in a general action: only the absence of the enemy’s shot eased their labour. Peto fancied he could hear the officers’ hoarse encouragement, and the mates’; until after ten minutes he could hear next to nothing unless it were bellowed in his ear. It was always the same: the whole of the crew would be shouting at each other for the rest of the day.

It was long past the dinner hour when the last battery – larboard upper deck – managed to reload and fire within the ninety seconds; and with only two rounds left for each gun. The lieutenants reported to the quarter-deck one by one as their batteries fell silent, and from each it was the same: the worm- and spongemen had gone about their work too gingerly to begin with, the loaders even more so, fearful of premature discharge; and the rest had been plain lubberly with the tackle. But they had warmed to it. They had all most definitely warmed to it.

Peto nodded: he had thought as much. They would get sharper with the tackle by daily practice, though the gun-workers would only get more confident if they used powder, and he could not afford to give them much of that. Once there was the enemy firing at their backs, too, they might be a deal less eager to sponge and ram and load. Perhaps he thought too meanly of them, but he had seen it all before. And there were but a couple of weeks only to get
Rupert
into the sort of trim that Admiral Codrington had a right to expect.