The Battle of All the Ages (7 page)

‘My
wardrobe
, Musk?’

‘Think on it this way, Sir Matthew – Lady Quinton will greatly enjoy dressing you in new clothes.’

And so she would. But my ambivalent feelings about Musk’s quick thinking were overtaken at once. A ragged cheer broke out from the men along the larboard rail, and at the gunports on the deck below. I ran to the rail, peered over, and saw the fireship falling away from us, carried past our stern by the very wind that had threatened to hold her to our hull. Kit and his men had done their work well: thankfully, the Dutch had secured this second vessel with fewer grapples than the first, relying principally on the wind and tide to keep her tight to our hull.

Without thinking upon my honour or dignity, I, too, joined in the men’s cheering at our deliverance. Truly, God was an Englishmen; God was a Sceptre.

Finally, I returned to the quarterdeck. There were no hulls around us in the midnight darkness. I could just make out the distant lights of many stern lanterns: the enemy fleet, moving away to the
south-east
. The Dutch must have seen the fireships secure to our hull, seen the flames spreading, and assumed, entirely reasonably, that we were doomed.

But we were not. We were safe.

Fate is a strange business.

I have lived long enough to be able to say that with some authority. Indeed, the very fact that I am alive to say it is proof of the dictum. Why has fate preserved me for so very many years, when it decided that Lancelot Parks should go insane and throw himself into the sea? Why did fate preserve the
Royal Sceptre
, surrounded by the entire Dutch fleet and attacked by two fireships?

But I did not learn the most fateful consequence of that
dreadful
first day of the battle until many months later, when my dour good-brother Cornelis and I were together for the first time since the war. We were in the austere library of the van der Eide house in the
Zeeland port of Veere, a library that contained precisely one book: an enormous, well-thumbed and copiously annotated edition of the Bible in Dutch. We talked of what we did during that great fight, and of where our ships were in each hour of each day. Naturally, we talked of that first night, and of how the Zeeland squadron had fallen upon the
Royal Sceptre
as we tried to fight our way back to our own fleet. Unknown to either of us, Cornelis’s
Adelaar
was one of those that attacked us during the night.

‘That was
your
ship?’ he said, more than a little incredulous.

I rarely saw Cornelis astonished; Calvinism does not look
favourably
upon astonishment. But now, he was.

‘Yes, indeed. It was a miracle we managed to escape.’

Cornelis shook his head.

‘More than a miracle, brother. Do you know what you did?’

‘We fought off two fireships –’

‘No. You did much more than that. When our flagship, the
Walcheren
, parted from you after Evertsen’s offer of quarter, you fired off a random broadside, did you not?’

‘We did. No more than a warning shot in the dark, to let Evertsen know that we still had teeth.’

‘Oh, you did much more than that, Matthias. You killed him. You killed Evertsen, one of my country’s greatest seamen.’

I knew that Admiral Cornelis Evertsen had fallen in the battle, but not when or how. It had been a chance shot as the ships parted by night, no more. Some men will call that the will of God, but I prefer to call it the working of fate. For if that was not fate, what is?

I know what resurrection feels like: namely, like being raised from the dead.

The preachers will say I should burn in hell for this presumption, but a man nearing his ninetieth year cares not a fart for preachers or their cant. But no man’s sleep can ever have been more like death than the three hours I snatched under a tarpaulin on the
quarterdeck
of the
Royal Sceptre
. It was a dreamless void, from which I was awakened rudely by that most unlikely archangel of rebirth, Phineas Musk.

‘Fleet’s getting under way,’ said Musk. ‘Half past five in the
morning
. Or three bells of the morning watch, as Mister Farrell insists I should call it. You seamen keep cursedly foul hours, and call them cursedly stupid names.’

I was about to damn Musk with every obscenity in my vocabulary for stirring me: my body was demanding another hour or ten of sleep. But a captain has to set an example, so I rose slowly and looked about me.

It was a glorious morning, the rising sun having been up for some forty minutes already. The wind had fallen off even more during the night, so we had a breeze of very nearly ideal strength from the
south-west
. And all around us, the fleet was re-forming for battle. All pretence at preserving the original order was gone now, and ships fell in where they could. We had finally rejoined the fleet at one in the morning, meaning we were the last ship into the anchorage and thus were on the very edge of it. But now, with the fleet moving off to the south, we were in the van, and duly fell in behind the new leader of the line, the mighty
Prince
, flagship of the Admiral of the White Squadron, Sir George Ayscue. There, away to the south-east, stood the myriad sails and ensigns of the Dutch, under sail toward us on the opposite tack. To the south-west, the sea was empty. There was no sign of Prince Rupert’s fleet, returning from its mission to the west. But by the same token, there was no sign of the enemy that he had been sent to intercept: the French, coming to the aid of their allies, the Dutch. A French fleet containing my old friend and shipmate, Roger, Comte d’Andelys, who commanded the powerful new ship-of-the-line
Foudroyant
.

I wiped my eyes. Kellett brought me a jug of breakfast ale and a piece of bread.

‘Joy of the morning, Sir Matthew,’ said Kit Farrell, who was always unconscionably merry around dawn.

‘And joy to you, Lieutenant. We are fit for battle, then?’

‘As fit as we can be, Sir Matthew. The carpenter and his men have worked miracles on the larboard quarter-gallery. But –’

A cursory glance around the deck told me what Kit was so reluctant to say aloud. Men were scrambling along the yards, loosing our sails. Others were at the capstan, hauling in the anchor. But unaccustomed faces were at some of the stations, and others had fewer men than they should have done.

‘How many?’

‘Mister Musk mustered them at two bells, Sir Matthew. Eleven men killed yesterday, another twelve too badly wounded to man their stations. And thirty-four –’

‘Thirty-four jumped to their deaths during the fireship attack. So we have lost nearly an eighth of the crew, Kit.’ My friend nodded. ‘Well, then – let us hope we beat the Dutch today, Lieutenant.’

I have a good memory for a man of my years. Indeed, it is usually
significantly
better than the memories of those who are barely a quarter of my age: in these days when almost the whole of England is awash on a sea of gin, even young men seem incapable by dinner of
remembering
what they had for breakfast. But when it comes to the precise order of events on that second day of the battle, I can chiefly recall only fragments of memories, and they come above all from flashes of the senses, from sight, smell and sound.

The little ships of both fleets – the yachts, galliots and the like – dashing hither and thither between the great hulls, fighting their own vicious miniature battles.

The sea carpeted with fallen masts and sails, interspersed with the bloated bodies of dead men.

The stench of gunsmoke, which hung over the battle like a shroud, the winds too light to disperse it: so thick at times that we could barely identify the nationality of the ship we were firing at, or see our own forecastle from the quarterdeck.

The men at the guns, stripped to the waists, sweat pouring down their bodies as the muzzles got ever hotter. The sun beating down relentlessly, its shafts sometimes piercing the smoke to cast a strange, ghostly light upon our decks.

The roaring of the great guns. The shock of their blast, striking one as hard as a punch in the chest. The sounds of the different types of shot as
they sped through the air. The firing of muskets, with the pop of
matchlocks
contrasting with the sharper sound of the newer flintlocks. The shrill blast of officers’ whistles. The cracking of timber as masts, yards and hulls splintered. The screams of men in their death throes, and of the wounded being carried down to the surgeon’s cockpit. My own voice, hoarse from shouting orders and exhortations all day long. My swordarm, painful from having the heavy weapon in hand for hours on end.

Pass the Dutch on opposite but parallel courses, fire three or four mighty broadsides, try to break through their line and prevent them breaking through ours, tack, rest and repair in the interval, pass each other again, repeated over and over throughout the day, God knows how many times – even soon after the battle, some men were prepared to swear on their mothers’ graves that we and they had passed five times, others said seven, others nine.

At one point, we thought we had won. Tromp and his squadron
somehow
became detached from the rest of the Dutch fleet and were lying to leeward, in the east, with our Red Squadron pouring down onto them. Fresh Holles, the charming rogue who later became a friend of sorts, once told me of it, as we sat drinking wine in the Southwark George:

‘We had them, Matt. I’d taken the
Spiegel
with my
Antelope
– we’d set the
Liefde
on fire – two of their biggest ships, and we were pressing Tromp himself. We’d have won the war there and then, that afternoon, if you and the White had come to our aid. We saw the
Prince
coming up, the rest of you behind her. But did that old woman Ayscue come down to support us? No, he and the rest of you sailed merrily by –’

‘Hardly fair, Fresh. There was another Dutch squadron to
windward
of us. If we’d moved to support you, they’d have split our fleet in two, isolating the Blue.’

‘Stuff, Matt Quinton. Stuff, I say. A bold admiral would have been able to overwhelm Tromp before their other ships could move. As it was – well, you know what happened. The great De Ruyter himself smashes through our line and rescues Tromp. Now
he
knows what
boldness means, that man. Not that I witnessed it, of course, because that was just after they blew my fucking arm off.’

Holles raised his glass to his lips with his right, and sole remaining, hand.

‘You got a knighthood out of it, Sir Frescheville. And old Lely’s painting of you and Rob Holmes wouldn’t have been as fetching if you still had the other arm.’

‘Fetching? You think it’s fetching, with Holmes wearing that
ludicrous
turban? You have damned strange tastes in art, Matt Quinton.’

In one sense, though, Fresh Holles was right. That moment when we could have overwhelmed Tromp before De Ruyter rescued him was a glorious but missed opportunity to secure a decisive victory. For as the afternoon wore on, every inconclusive pass weakened the smaller fleet. Although we had taken on some fresh powder, shot and beer from a victualling hoy before dawn, we were running short of all three once more. But that was not the worst of it.

I sat upon the deck, sweating profusely, breathing hard and drinking a tankard of ale. The afternoon heat was as bad as any I had known in the Mediterranean, or on the west coast of Africa, but this was made worse by the all-pervasive gun smoke, forever clawing away in the throat and the nostrils, making the eyes stream. Down in the waist, men were slumped against gun carriages. Macferran, as stout and fit a man as I ever knew, seemed dazed, not really knowing where he was. On the quarterdeck, Musk was asleep on the deck, curled up against a pile of roundshot. Only Kit seemed fully aware, barking orders hoarsely through his voice trumpet to the helmsman at the whipstaff and those adjusting the yards and sails. We had just come through another tack and were heading north-west again. Off to the north were the Dutch, making their own turn. We had perhaps a half-hour at most before the next pass would begin: before men who had already endured more than any man should be asked to endure would have to do it all yet again. It was the same story throughout the fleet. In truth, we were very nearly
not a fleet any longer, but a disordered mass of hulks with a profusion of fallen masts, shredded rigging, torn sails and ensigns. All around us, exhausted crews were erecting jury rigs on men-of-war that had been battered beyond their limits. We had lost ships like the
Swiftsure
, and others were so badly damaged that they had been forced out of the fight. We had a little over forty ships left that were serviceable, and they only barely. England’s pride, its Navy Royal, was in ruins.

‘God be with you, Sir Matthew,’ said Francis Gale, lowering his heavy frame awkwardly onto the deck to sit beside me.

During the passes, Francis was as ferocious as our toughest men, firing his musket repeatedly at our opponents and exhorting
backsliders
. But during the intervals, he was the shepherd of his flock, moving from gun crew to gun crew and man to man, giving whatever words of comfort he could.

‘And with you, Francis,’ I croaked.

‘Do you wish to pray, Matthew?’

‘For victory. For the return of Rupert’s ships. For Will Berkeley to be still alive. For deliverance from this hell. To see Cornelia again. For more beer. Those are my prayers, Reverend Gale.’

Francis nodded. ‘Not dissimilar to those of nearly every man in your crew. Nor my own, in truth –’

There was a shout from the maintop lookout. I got to my feet, wearily and unsteadily, then walked heavily to the stern rail. Denton brought my telescope, and I looked away to the south-eastern horizon.

‘It seems the Dutch have been praying too,’ I said to Francis, ‘only with rather more efficacy. A dozen sail. Reinforcements. Fresh ships, fresh crews. And no sign of Rupert with our own. We have lost,
Francis
. We have lost the battle. We have lost the war.’

The Dutch reinforcements were too far away to participate in the next pass, which took the form of all the others: in this case we were sailing
north-west with the weather-gage, the Dutch south-east. The enemy gunfire seemed to have acquired a new ferocity, no doubt born of the Dutchmen’s excitement and new-found resolve at seeing fresh ships about to come to their aid. Once again, though, the exhausted gun crews of the
Royal Sceptre
and the other ships of the fleet put up a stout resistance, although our fire was now markedly more ragged than it had been earlier in the day. At one point, we were engaged with a particularly persistent Rotterdammer, which came in closer than the rest. This fellow had many more musketeers in his tops than any other ship we had yet encountered. God alone knows how he fitted them all up there; perhaps the Dutch had recruited a Marine Regiment of dwarves. For some time, though, the enemy kept up a withering rate of fire onto our upper deck. No man could move in the open, and we of the quarterdeck took cover as best we could beneath remnants of the canvas fights, or in the steerage below. The Earl of Rochester alone seemed positively to enjoy the experience. As the musket-balls peppered the deck planking like hailstones, the noble lord laughed hysterically and recited one of his poems:

His monkey, which seemed to have become accustomed to battle and evidently approved of his master’s verse, applauded enthusiastically.

Just then, I saw a movement over by the forecastle. Stride, the ship’s purser, peeked out. A corpulent landman from one of the middle counties of Ireland, more accustomed to ledgers than the heat of battle, he could have had no grasp of the danger he was in. A shot struck him in the shoulder and span him round. He fell forward onto the deck, writhing in agony.

The upper deck was a killing ground. Lying out in the open, Stride would surely be hit and killed by more musket-shot. No man dared venture out into the open to retrieve him.

No man except one.

Lord Rochester ran forward, still reciting his poem:

He sprinted across the deck, head bowed as though guarding his eyes from a sudden rain shower. The Dutch kept up their fire, but the noble lord seemed invulnerable; and as he ran, his monkey shrieked incessantly. Rochester reached Stride, pulled the purser to his feet by his good arm, and dragged him into the shelter of the forecastle.

‘Brave,’ said Kit Farrell.

‘Brave and lucky,’ I said.

‘Madman,’ said Musk. ‘And now he’ll live to write yet more poems about cocks, cunnies and whoring wenches. Like the world needs poets.’