The Blast That Tears the Skies (2012) (26 page)

The veteran seamen looked upon the scene and retched. Brouncker, the one survivor of the courtiers, vomited long and hard over the larboard rail. Yet James Stuart and young Edward Russell somehow remained serene, looking steadily at each other. The Duke calmly pulled what appeared to be a shard of plate china from a deep cut on his left hand, then took a kerchief from his sleeve and wrapped it round the bleeding wound. It was only when James lifted the shard to inspect it that Russell, and presumably the duke too, realised it must have been part of the skull of one of the dead courtiers.

Russell glanced across at the Duke of Monmouth, standing unscathed on the other side of the quarterdeck. For a moment, just one moment, he could have sworn that the young man’s expression twisted into a scowl of disappointment. Then Monmouth rushed solicitously to his uncle’s side and assisted him with bandaging his wounded hand.

The Duke of York nodded grimly towards Monmouth and Russell in turn and said, ‘The Lord is truly my strength and my shield. Let us give thanks unto Him, for he has preserved us for greater work to come. He has preserved
me
.’

And so He had. The gun crew who fired the fatal shot from the
Eendracht
would never know that if they had aimed just a fraction of a degree differently, they would certainly have changed the entire course of British history: for by not dying that day aboard the
Royal Charles
, James, Duke of York, lived to become His Majesty King James the Second of England, the Seventh of Scots, only to be hounded out of his offended realms within a few dozen months. His son and little grandsons still fester in a palace in Rome, now but feeble pretenders praying every day to reassert the destiny that seemed to have triumphed so manifestly on that third day of June in the year sixty-five.

Perhaps James Stuart foresaw his eventual accession; after all, such dreams and nightmares form the lot of an heir, as I know full well. Perhaps he even daydreamed that one day, he and Monmouth might battle each other for the crowns of Britain, and that the one would order the beheading of the other. But James of York certainly could not have foreseen the consequences for him of God’s equally fortuitous decision to spare the lives of Harry Brouncker and Cherry Cheeks Russell.

* * *

The cumbersome old
Merhonour
had lost headway upon the
Royal Charles
as the great ships fell down into the battle. At last, though, we were bearing down upon our own target, a fifty-gun flagship of the Maas admiralty with her mizzen shot away and the mainyard in ruins.

‘Perfect,’ I said. ‘If we hold this course, we can come across his stern and rake him. A fine prize, gentlemen.’

Roger d’Andelys nodded happily, and even the gloomy Giffard grunted in approbation. But Kit Farrell’s telescope remained fixed on the Dutchman.

‘Bear away, Captain,’ he said urgently. ‘Bear away
now
.’

‘Why, in Heaven’s name? We have him, Lieutenant –’

Kit pointed toward the bow of a small ship, emerging from the lee side of the Dutchman that had sheltered her. ‘Fireship,’ he said simply.

I gave the orders, but sensed that I did not need to: men were already on their way up the shrouds and the helmsman below must have already put over the ship’s unresponsive whipstaff, for our bow began to turn away from the oncoming threat almost at once.

The fireship was a converted fly-boat, the only sign of her deadly function being the enlarged sally-port abaft that would allow her crew to escape into the boat secured beneath it. Apart from this, she appeared but an innocent merchantman; yet her main deck would have been converted into a fire-room filled to the brim with deadly combustibles. Through my telescope, I could see concealed grappling irons at the yards and the bowsprit, ready to be secured to our rigging if the deadly craft got close enough.

‘Damnation, Mister Giffard,’ I cried, ‘we need more leeway, sir!’

‘Helm’s answering fast as it can, Captain. Can’t do more, sir.’

In truth, our dash for the exposed stern of the Dutch flagship had literally given us too little room to manoeuvre, especially given the
Merhonour
’s propensity to manoeuvre like a heavily pregnant sow. Barring a miracle, the more nimble fireship would be upon us in minutes.

Calm, boy
. I suddenly recalled my grandfather’s journal of the Armada fight, and the eternal truth displayed when our own fireships were sent into Calais. Most of the fireship’s work is done for it by the dread that its very name and appearance inspires. It is a weapon of terror; thus the way to defeat it is to display no terror in the face of it.

‘Mister Webb!’ I bellowed at the gunner. ‘Larboard broadside to fire at will, as she aims! Mister Lanherne! Thirty men, as many with small arms as can be supplied, with me!’

With Roger at my side, I drew my sword and leapt down the ladder from the quarterdeck into the waist. As our larboard guns opened fire, we ran down the starboard side to the forecastle. Lanherne joined us with a somewhat mixed party that included Tremar, Treninnick, Macferran and a dozen or so of the Welshmen. Oakes, the armourer, had done them proud: they bristled with muskets, pikes, hatchets and
grenadoes
.

‘Your orders, Captain?’ Lanherne asked.

‘We do the thing he least expects. He expects us to be afraid of him. Let’s make him afraid of us instead!’

With that I jumped up onto the larboard rail and claimed a few rungs of the foremast shrouds. It was obvious that the Dutchman was heading for our bows, for that was ever the fireship’s tactic of choice. The profusion of stays, shrouds and gammoning made it the ideal place to secure his grappling hooks before the crew lit the fuse and made their escape.

Our larboard guns fired again, and at least three balls struck home into the hull of the fireship. Now Lanherne’s men joined me at the rail, firing musket-shot and lobbing
grenadoes
at the few Dutchmen visible on deck.

‘Come on then, you butterbox bastards!’ I shouted, hoping that Cornelia would forgive me. ‘You need more of your courage inside you before you tackle the
Merhonour
! Cheese-farters! Hogen-mogen whoremasters!’

Encouraged by their captain, the Merhonours unleashed a torrent of vitriol against the Dutchman, waving their fists, prodding their pikes and firing their muskets at the oncoming vessel. Our defiance must have unsettled the enemy crew. Many great ships had been lost because their men panicked at the very approach of a fireship. The Dutchman must have expected to encounter a similar reaction aboard the
Merhonour
, especially because the element of surprise seemed to have weighed the odds so heavily in his favour. Instead he found our battery intent on hammering him before he could get close, and a gang of raucous, latrine-mouthed, heavily armed men waiting for him at the very point of attack. A couple of the Dutch moved out tentatively onto their bowsprit and made ready their grappling hooks, but Macferran, who had learned shooting by stalking deer and clan feudsmen on the Scottish moors, levelled his musket calmly, fired, and saw his target’s torso explode in a fountain of blood, tissue and bone before the Dutchman fell forward into the sea.

That was enough for the Dutch crew. They began to clamber out off the sally-port near the stern just as flames erupted from the chimneys set into the deck. They had fired their deadly cargo without securing to us, hoping that the momentum of wind and tide alone would bring their hull crashing into the side of ours. The updraft from the chimneys carried the flames into the rigging, and within moments almost the whole of the upper deck was alight.

Only one Dutchman had reached the longboat secured alongside his ship before our battery fired again on the downroll. A lucky shot smashed into the longboat, which disintegrated. We were close enough to see the looks of horror on the faces of the other crewmen. The flames were already licking about the foot of the quarterdeck and the mizzen; they knew they were about to be burned alive by their own weapon. A few jumped, but only two heads came back to the surface and struck out for the increasingly distant Maas flagship. We watched in horror as one man ran back up onto the quarterdeck, as though believing the very stern of the ship would be somehow immune from the flames. He caught fire, and ran, all in flames, to the ship’s side, throwing himself off into oblivion.

But the danger to the
Merhonour
was still not past. The fireship was still coming on, barely musket range from us now, and would surely strike us amidships –

The
Bachelor’s Delight
cut under our stern, turned smartly along our quarter and made directly for our fiery foe. Roberts raised his hand to me in a friendly wave, seemingly without a care in the world. The ketch gathered speed and rammed the fireship forward.

‘Magnificent,’ said Roger d’Andelys in admiration. ‘Now
that
man fights like a Frenchman.’

I did not reply, for I could only stare in horror at the spectacle unfolding before me. To this day, I do not know what Roberts originally intended: whether he somehow hoped that a glancing blow would be enough to deflect the fireship, or whether he hoped to secure a towrope and pull her out of harm’s way before she ignited properly. But now fate took a hand. The bowsprit of the
Bachelor’s Delight
became entangled in the rigging of her opponent. Flames danced along the ropes. A spit of fire caught the ketch’s foresail. Within moments, the
Delight
was ablaze from stem to stern.

I thought I caught one final glimpse of the valiant Roberts. I fancied he remained at the helm, the flames consuming him at his post. I felt a sudden and guilty realisation: I had never known the man’s Christian name.

* * *

We were well clear of the terrible conflagration. I took a long, welcome draught of bitter Suffolk beer, silently saluting the memory of poor Roberts and the men of the
Bachelor’s Delight
. My other officers knew better than to interrupt their captain’s anguished contemplation of the sacrifice that had been made to save the
Merhonour
and, with it, the life of Matthew Quinton.

I looked away to the east. We were perhaps a quarter of a mile away from the duelling flagships
Eendracht
and
Royal Charles
, upon their larboard quarters. We could not see what was happening away to the west or east, where the Blue and the White would still be fighting their own battles, but here, at the centre, something of an amphitheatre had formed around the flagships. Individual British and Dutch ships, or small groups of them, were engaged all around, and I had just given the order to go to the assistance of the
Diamond
, to the north, which seemed to be weakening under the onslaught of a large Amsterdammer. Between
Merhonour
and the flagships lay open water, upon which floated broken spars and yards; and, perchance, a few score bobbing, twisted shapes that could only be bodies, or parts of bodies. Oared boats and small craft occasionally braved the murderous crossfire, scudding desperately in search of safe water.

The thunder of gunfire was incessant. Every few minutes, the
Eendracht
would fire a broadside into the
Royal Charles
; and just as surely, the
Charles
would respond in kind. I could see only smoke from the starboard battery of
Eendracht
as she fired, but the Dutch flagship was smaller and lower, so the larboard battery of the Duke’s ship was partly visible from our position and I saw the flash of some of her guns as they fired in their turn. The sails and rigging of both ships were torn to pieces. Canvas hung in shreds from yards, broken ropes danced crazily in the breeze. The ensigns of both ships were almost unrecognisable, so many were the shot-holes in them. The Lord High Admiral’s flag at the fore of the
Royal Charles
, and the royal standard at her main, were but tattered fragments of their former glory. And yet men were still upon the yards, and through my telescope I could make out other men upon the decks. There seemed to be smoke rising from the galley chimney of the
Eendracht
; perhaps the Dutch were so confident of victory that they intended to take their dinner as they fought.

Scobey brought me another jug of small beer, and I drank it greedily. I rubbed sweat and grime from my eyes and looked again upon the dreadful fight between the two great flagships. Was it my imagination, or was the fire from the
Royal Charles
weakening? What if the Duke and Penn were dead?

The hull of the
Eendracht
broke apart in front of me. I saw it consumed by a vast ball of flame, a sudden and dreadful eruption of reds, whites and yellows followed at once by the greys and blacks of a great smoke cloud. The hull simply disintegrated, huge shards of wood flying in all directions. Great cannon were tossed into the air like children’s toys. In the midst of the fireball were the men of the ship. They seemed to swim upon the air, flailing frantically for some refuge that their hands would never find. Many were in pieces, arms, legs and heads all flying off in different directions. Others were ablaze, the flesh melting from their bones as I watched.

A moment later, I heard the explosion. The loudest broadside of the largest fleet was as but a pop-gun compared to it. The blast silenced the battle. Every man’s eyes turned to that space where the two flagships had duelled.

But no more. For as the smoke cleared, only the
Royal Charles
floated upon the waters. Her larboard side, the side that had been obscured by the presence of the
Eendracht
, was clear to the view.

Then the truth came to me, all in one with the stench of blood and death.

The
Eendracht
was gone. The Dutch flagship had blown up.

 

 

 

They say that the blast which destroyed the
Eendracht
shattered windows in The Hague. I cannot speak for that, but Cherry Cheeks Russell, aboard the
Royal Charles
, claimed his hearing was not truly right until weeks after the battle. He also told me that the Duke and Penn knew, some time before the explosion, that Lord Obdam was already dead, killed during the cannonade. Penn had just sighted that which I had taken to be galley smoke, and commented to the Duke that there seemed to be some sort of accidental blaze aboard the Dutch flagship, barely moments before that same blaze must have ignited the magazine and blown the
Eendracht
apart.

The sound of the blast brought Francis Gale to the quarterdeck from his station below, where, as was his wont, he divided his time between ministering to the immortal souls of the dying and using his cutlass to upbraid the backsliders among the living. He surveyed the scene, registered what had happened, and made the sign of the cross in the direction of the lost Dutch ship. Then he led those of us upon the quarterdeck in the Lord’s Prayer, probably the only words appropriate to the occasion. The
Royal Charles
already had her boats rushing across the water to where the
Eendracht
had been, for even such a conclusive disaster as this had survivors. Five survivors, we later learned. Five from a crew of four hundred. In the moment itself, though, it was impossible to judge the scale of the slaughter. I could see only that we were too far away to be of use, otherwise I would certainly have despatched our own boats to assist. For at the end, when all is said and done, when the kings and the admirals have blustered as they please, we are after all but men cast adrift upon that most unnatural and perilous plane, the sea, and thus united in the common cause of survival.

The loss of Obdam and the
Eendracht
proved the last straw for many of the Dutch, already weakening under the relentless bombardment of our more powerful gunnery. From the quarterdeck of the
Merhonour
, I could see only the clear proofs of victory and defeat. Heartened by the mighty blast, our ships fell about the enemy in furious pell-mell fighting. Broken by the horror that had befallen the
Eendracht
, individual Dutch ships, or small groups of them, turned out of the battle. They cut the lines that secured their boats behind them, hoisted studding sails and every other inch of canvas they possessed, and ran for Holland upon the wind.

‘Strange,’ said Kit Farrell, who was scanning the scene continuously with his telescope. ‘Their dead Obdam appears to have spawned three successors. Look, sir. There – then over to northward, there – and there, fleeing ahead of Rear-Admiral Berkeley’s division. Three command flags.’

It was true; it seemed that out of the death of Obdam, no fewer than three new commanders-in-chief had arisen, hydra-like. I learned only much later the cause of this extraordinary confusion. Obdam’s second-in-command should have been Evertsen, a Zeelander, so out of its hatred of all things Zeeland, the Admiralty of Holland insisted on installing one of their own, a certain Kortenaer, as Obdam’s deputy. But Kortenaer had his leg blown off in the very first pass and lay in his cabin, mortally wounded. His flag captain aboard the
Groot Hollandia
had either forgotten to haul down his flag or kept it flying, presumably on the grounds that if the admiral breathed, he was admiral still; but now the flag captain chose to turn and run, and many of the ships near him, assuming that Kortenaer lived and thus commanded in chief, followed in his wake. Seeing this, Evertsen hoisted the command flag too, thereby hoping to rally the fleet to him for a rearguard action against the oncoming British. But even now, in one of the direst crises ever to face their navy and their nation, the Dutch preferred to play out their little provincial spites. Tromp of Amsterdam, refusing to obey the orders of a Zeelander, hoisted the command flag aboard his own flagship,
De Liefde
. Three flags and three admirals, all claiming to be the legitimate commander-in-chief of the fleet of the United Provinces of the Netherlands: it would have been laughable but for the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of deaths that the confusion towed in its wake.

One ship, and one ship alone, did not join the headlong flight. The
Oranje
, the same great ship that had earlier fought its way through our entire squadron, now veered resolutely into the path of the
Royal Charles
and began trading broadsides with the flagship. My good-brother Cornelis seemed quite determined upon single-handedly changing the outcome of the battle.

The
Oranje
and the
Royal Charles
exchanged a shattering broadside, but Cornelis was clearly intent on more than that. The
Oranje
bore down relentlessly, finally ploughing into the larboard beam of the
Charles
with a resounding crash that visibly shook the hulls of both ships. Dutchmen rushed to their forecastle and climbed into the rigging. A few grabbed ropes and swung themselves across onto the deck of the British ship.

‘A brave spirit indeed,’ said Francis. ‘Refuses to acknowledge defeat. ’Tis easy to tell that he and your good lady are from the same pod, Matthew.’

‘He need not be defeated, Francis,’ I said in both admiration and trepidation. ‘He can win not just the battle but the entire war if he seizes the
Charles
– if he captures the heir to the throne! God in Heaven, can you imagine the sort of ransom the king would have to pay to free his brother from humiliation in a Dutch prison?’ The thought that had occurred to me during the
Oranje
’s very first attack upon the Red squadron returned to me, reinforced a hundredfold. ‘I think it is what he sought to do before, when he was to windward of both fleets. Run in upon the wind, board and capture the
Charles
, sowing confusion among our fleet. But our press of ships must have been too great for him then – he could not reach her. But now he can.’

Just then, a great gap opened up ahead of us as several of the faster ships of the Red, our line abandoned and all divisions now mingled together, poured past in pursuit of the fleeing Dutch fleet. That left clear water between the
Merhonour
and the
Oranje
; between Matthew Quinton and his wife’s brother.

My duty was clear. It was time to put behind me both grief for Roberts and the
Bachelor’s Delight
and shock at the horror that had befallen the
Eendracht
. ‘Mister Yardley!’ I cried. ‘A course to lay us alongside the Dutchman, yonder, if you please!’

I took up a voice trumpet and rushed to the quarterdeck rail. ‘Men of the
Merhonour
! This is our moment, lads! We sail to save the Duke, for the glory of old England!’ I saw Polzeath, Tremar, Macferran and some of the Welsh scowling and hastily added, ‘Aye, for the honour of Britannia!’

I was greeted by answering shouts of
Kernow bys vyken!
and
Cymru am byth
! Macferran seemed to be screaming something about a Wallace, or some such name.

The bow of the ancient ship came around into an almost perfect line with the mainmast of the
Oranje
. Cornelis must have realised at once that his design upon the
Royal Charles
was doomed; he veered away and bore down directly toward us upon the other tack, the Dutch red lion figurehead rampant in defiance.

Now the
Merhonour
’s sluggishness was no longer an issue. I could see a grim determination in the eyes of the gun crews on the upper deck, for this would be a duel to the finish, ship against ship, gun against gun. Kit Farrell saluted me and went to his station below, upon the middle gun deck.

‘Let us pray,’ cried Francis Gale. ‘Thou, Oh Lord, art just and powerful: oh defend our cause against the face of the enemy. Oh God, thou art a strong power of defence to all that flee unto thee. Oh suffer us not to sink under the weight of our sins, or the violence of the enemy. Oh Lord, arise, help us, and deliver us for thy name’s sake. Amen.’

Solemn amens echoed from all upon the quarterdeck, even from the papist Roger d’Andelys.

As the
Oranje
came alongside, the two ships fired almost as one. Our ancient hull shuddered from the force of our broadside, but almost simultaneously, I felt the blows as the answering fire struck us. I heard screams from our deck and felt the impact of balls striking our hull. The smoke cleared a little, and I saw a terrible scene ahead of me. The
Oranje
was higher out of the water than the squat old
Merhonour
, and Cornelis must have loaded his upper deck guns with chain- and bar-shot, as the Dutch were ever wont to do. The shrouds and stays of our mainmast were in shreds, and the carpenter’s crew were already attending to the trunk of the mast; if
Oranje
could bring it down, we would be doomed. The protective fights over the deck were in ribbons. At least a dozen men lay dead or wounded upon the deck, their blood spreading across the planking. I recognised John Tremar, the formidably strong little Cornishman, lying on his back grasping his stomach. He was alive and muttering urgently to the giant Polzeath, who kneeled over him solicitously. I saw the head and trunk belonging to young Castle, my servant. As his remains were thrown unceremoniously over the side, I wondered how, in God’s name, I would be able to tell his widowed mother, whose last living child this had been. If I survived to tell her, that was.

Francis Gale ran down into the waist to help with the wounded and to say prayers over the dead. Roger d’Andelys waved his sword at the great Dutch ship in impotent defiance. My warrant and petty officers bellowed orders through voice trumpets, striving to make themselves heard above the roaring of the guns, the pitiful screams of dying men and the rumble of gun-carriage wheels upon the decks as recoiled and reloaded cannon were run back out again.

On the downroll,
Merhonour
fired again, and I saw several of our balls smash clean through the side of the
Oranje
. A merchant’s hull, Kit Farrell had said, so thinner than that of any purpose-built man-of-war…

But on the uproll, the
Oranje
fired again.

I heard a scream close to me, and turned to see Roger, staring in stupefaction at the bleeding stump where his left hand had been. ‘Ah,
mon dieu
,’ he cried in agonised gasps, ‘to die will be bad enough, but to die for
England
? No Frenchman deserves that.’

With that he fainted away. Carvell and a couple of the Bristol lads were up to him in a moment, carrying him down to the surgeon’s cockpit on the orlop. Perhaps the magic of Ieuan Goch would preserve my friend’s life, for I had no faith in our dullard of a surgeon. I fought back the tears. This was living hell, and now it was set to claim the life of one of my dearest friends. I had no doubt that in but a very little time, it would claim my own.

Wind and tide pushed the two ships closer together. The mainyards even touched momentarily, like swordsmen at
prise-de-fer
. Now the musket fire from the tops and upper deck of the
Oranje
began in earnest. Our canvas fights were already horribly torn, the Dutch ship had a much larger crew, and many of her men were soldiers; thus her marksmanship was deadly. I could see plainly the faces of individual Dutchmen as they levelled their muskets.

Yet we were giving almost as good as we got: Macferran and one of the Welshmen, manning a swivel-gun on the rail near me, got off a round of canister shot that scattered its deadly contents of nails and musket balls on impact, decimating a whole swathe of the enemy.

‘Good work, Macferran, Prydderch!’ I cried.

I drew my own two pistols from my belt and prepared them. I raised a pistol in my right hand and took aim at a tight group of soldiers towards the rear of the
Oranje
’s waist. At that range, I could not fail to hit one of them –

I fired. My arm pulled up with the recoil and the smoke from my shot shrouded me, but cleared quickly enough to see a Dutchman clutch the side of his head, where once his ear had been. His body contorted, and he fell from the rail of the
Oranje
into the sea between the ships. I passed the emptied pistol to young Scobey for reloading, then took aim at once with my left hand and fired again.