The Invasion Year (48 page)

“And nigh-daily mail service, Mister Spendlove,” Lewrie added, thinking of Lydia Stangbourne’s latest chatty letter.

Lewrie took a sip of his coffee, then wandered over to the larboard bulwarks for a bit, grimacing at the sight of the bow and stern anchor cables slanting away at noticeable angles from the bow hawse-hole and the taffrail hawse. The wind pressed upon
Reliant
’s hull, on her freeboard, and the tide-race shoved at her “quick-work” below the waterline, together. He’d posted a Midshipman at either cable to keep an eye on the angles, and their tautness, for the first sign of slippage, but was still worried. He looked up to the mast-heads where lookouts were posted to sing out at the first glimpse of French snoopers. They were alert, intent on their portion of the horizon, but silent so far.
So far so good,
he thought, with fingers covertly crossed.

“Mister Westcott and Mister Houghton are setting out from the collier, sir,” Lt. Merriman reported.

“Very good,” Lewrie said, returning to the starboard side. He got there just in time to espy the two barges standing out, clear of
Penarth,
lug-sails and jibs squeaking aloft and beginning to fill.

Much as Lewrie had loathed going too far aloft since his Midshipman days, he had to. With a telescope slung over his shoulder he mounted a carronade slide, then its barrel, to the cap-rails of the bulwarks and swung out into the main-mast stays and rat-lines, slowly and deliberately making his way almost to the cat-harpings below the fighting top. Boot heels snug on the rat-lines and one arm looped to a stout stay, he turned to face out-board and extended the telescope.

At first,
Penarth
’s masts were in the way before the two barges got a goodly way on and began to bound towards the island. Lewrie had to laugh out loud to spot both the “beef to the heel” Lt. Clough and the stocky older “gotch-gut” Captain Speaks high aloft in
her
rigging, their own telescopes extended!

Reliant
was rolling, making it difficult to keep the boats in his ocular; the urge to pull out his pocket-watch to check the time, and to keep his precarious hold aloft, and keep the telescope aimed at the same time, was a bit awkward, but …

Both barges were lowering their sails, at last, and hands began to haul the torpedoes in close alongside. The ant-sized Lt. Westcott and Midshipman Houghton clambered atop the torpedoes to remove those tompions, both clinging for dear life to the stand-pipe as the things rolled and wallowed, and the choppy sea broke over them.

In for a soakin’, and dry breeches, once back aboard,
Lewrie thought as he watched them scramble. Seconds later, and they were in a clumsy rush back aboard their boats, and in understandable haste to quickly get away from those now-primed fourty kegs of gunpowder! As they gained their boats’ safety, each man displayed a bright yellow signal flag, wig-wagging to beat the band for a few seconds, in sign that they were successful. Tow-lines were cast off, and sails began to sprout; tillers were put hard-over, and the boats began to ghost away from the freed torpedoes, rapidly gathering way and coming about to beat “full and by” back towards
Penarth
and
Reliant.

“What’s the rate of the tide, Mister Rossynton?” Lewrie called down to the Midshipman he had posted with the chip-log.

“Ehm … four and three-quarter knots, sir!”

Lewrie stayed in the shrouds long enough to make sure that the boats had made sufficient clearance from the torpedoes, even if they mal-functioned and blew up prematurely, then stowed away his telescope and carefully turned his body to face the shrouds and make his way to the deck.

“It will be a long slog back,” Lt. Merriman was telling Midshipman Entwhistle, “short-tacking home dead downwind of us.”

“Is someone keeping the time?” Lewrie asked, safely in-board and on solid oak planking once more.

“Aye, sir,” Merriman told him. “By pocket-watches and glasses. Though we don’t know which of our boats was in charge of the one set for a quarter-hour, or the half-hour.” Merriman had a watch with a second hand, as did Entwhistle, and a ship’s boy standing nearby had turned a set of sand-glasses as soon as the yellow signal flags had been displayed. The boy swiped his runny nose on his shirt sleeve, almost dancing a jig as he divided his attention between the timing glasses and the sea shoreward, impishly grinning in anticipation of a very big pair of bangs.

Lewrie put his hands in the small of his back and paced along the starboard bulwarks to the taffrails and back, chiding himself to act “captainly” and stoic, for a rare once. He tried humming a tune for a bit, but thought that a bit
too
much a sham, and left off. He resisted looking at his watch again as long as he could, then …

As soon as he pulled it from his breeches pocket, there came a
stupendous
roar, and he looked up to see what looked to be a
mountain
of seawater and smoke jut skyward!

“Huzzah!” the ship’s boy squealed, hopping up and down in glee.

And, “Huzzah!” from
Reliant
’s crew, most of whom were standing by the starboard rails, or in the rigging like so many starlings on a bare tree’s limbs.

“That’s the quarter-hour one, to the minute, ha ha!” Lieutenant Merriman gloated. “Tremendous! Simply tremendous, hey, Clarence?” he asked Spendlove. “God, look how tall and big a blast it is!”

“Rather big, aye, George,” Lt. Spendlove agreed rather glumly. “However … it was released about a mile from shore, as I adjudged by sextant, and even with nigh a five-knot tide to drive it, it still only made half a mile, by my reckoning.” Spendlove had a slate covered with trigonometric equations (he was a dab-hand navigator and mathematician), which he showed to one and all. “It appears that even this strong making tide is not enough to carry the things within range to do much real damage.”

“There’s still the half-hour one,” Merriman pooh-poohed, too taken with the seeming success of the first torpedo. “If it travels twice as far as the first, we could see clouds of mud in the explosion, in shoal water, which would represent the depths of water in which the French barges and such are reputed to be anchored outside their ports.”

And, as Lt. Westcott’s and Midshipman Houghton’s barges came alongside a quarter-hour later, the second torpedo exploded just like the first, on time but roughly half a mile to starboard of where they
expected
it to drift. It was impressively loud and tall, but no one could espy any of Merriman’s expected mud.

“Some vagary in the tide, perhaps,” Lt. Merriman puzzled.

“Wide of the mark, yes, George, but … far short of where one would expect it to drift. Still too far offshore, even released within a mile of the island,” Lt. Spendlove patiently countered. “And in full view and gun range of the French batteries, had we tried it out against them.”

“Well, perhaps Captain Speaks will let us try my drogues on the next batch,” Merriman rejoined, shrugging it off. “They’d be easy to rig up.”

“Signal from
Penarth,
sir,” Midshipman Grainger reported. “It is ‘To Weigh Anchor,’ sir.”

“Very well, Mister Grainger. Ah! Mister Westcott! And how was your little jaunt?” Lewrie asked his First Officer as he came back to quarterdeck. “Ye look a tad
moist,
” he teased him.

“ ’Tis a soggy duty, sir, having to ride the back of the damned thing like a boy on an ox,” Lt. Westcott wryly told him, flashing one of his brief white-teethed grins. “Out of the boat, into the boat … I missed my leap and got soaked from the waist down.”

“Ye’ll have to let the wind dry ye off, Mister Westcott. No goin’ below for a change of clothing,” Lewrie grinned as he told him. “For now, let’s get our anchors up and get the ship under way.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Westcott ruefully replied. “I expect that my breeches’ll drain, do I undo the knee buttons.”

*   *   *

There were no more trials that day, or for the next two, for the winds and seas got up, making the hoisting-out of more torpedoes too dangerous. The two ships stood off-and-on Guernsey, out to mid-Channel, and back again in shifting winds, rolling grey seas, and now-and-then showers of rain. It was only on the third day that the sky cleared and the seas abated, allowing a full day of trials with four catamaran torpedoes, two in the morning and two in the afternoon. All four reliably blew up on time, but nowhere near enough to shore, nor anywhere near where they were expected to drift from the points at which they were released.

They stood back out to sea for the evening, and
Penarth
put up a hoist that Lewrie was sure Speaks detested; he
requested
permission to come aboard
Reliant,
instead of ordering Lewrie and all of his officers and Mids to come aboard
Penarth
for a conference.

“We’ll have all but the officer and Mids of the watch to dine, Yeovill,” Lewrie warned his talented cook. “Maybe a good feed’ll make the fellow feel a tad better. Do your best.”

Not ten minutes later, one of
Penarth
’s boats made the crossing to
Reliant,
and both Captain Speaks and Lieutenant Clough were piped aboard.

“Sorry for the intrusion, Captain Lewrie,” Speaks began as soon as he gained the quarterdeck, “but we’ve too much to go over with your people who’ve handled the damned things. Take too many of them away from their duties, what?” Speaks added, puffing from his clamber up the side, and looking mortified that he’d had to
ask
.

“I’ll summon everyone but the Sailing Master, sir,” Lewrie said. “And welcome aboard.”

It made the great-cabins cramped, but Westcott, Merriman, and even the reluctant Spendlove, who had gone off with one of the afternoon torpedoes in strict rotation, were there, as were the Midshipmen who had tried them out: Houghton, Entwhistle, and Warburton. Eight of them sat round Lewrie’s dining table whilst he jammed himself in at the head next to Speaks, using the chair from his desk from the day-cabin. There was tea and two bottles of claret on the side-board.

“We’ve proved that they work,” Captain Speaks began, clearing his throat and speaking in a gruff voice full of seeming confidence. “Everyone agreed on that point?”

“In terms of reliability of their timing and ignition mechanisms, aye, sir,” Lewrie agreed; sort of.

“They do go
off
most impressively, sir,” Lt. Westcott added.

“Right, then, we’re halfway there.” Speaks beamed, rubbing his hands together. “Now, about why they don’t seem to go in as quick as we’d like, or … end up anywhere near where we’d wish, well,” Speaks tossed off as if that was a mere quibble. “Perhaps the reasons for that lie more in our imperfect hydrographic charts of the area, with a lack of knowledge of what varies the expected straight run-in of the tide, than with the torpedoes themselves. The Admiralty is desperately in need of a proper office of hydrography, after all. All those captains’ journals, sailing masters’ journals and observations, stacked to the rafters in the basements, ignored for years and years, Those that survive the annual floods of the Thames that rise in the basements, ha!”

“Perhaps we should send ashore to Guernsey for experienced fishermen to aid us, sir?” Lt. Westcott dared to suggest.

“And let out the torpedoes’ secrecy to one and all? No, sir!” Captain Speaks said with a growl, one brow up and leaning far back in his chair, making it squeak alarmingly.

“Hardly a secret by now, sir,” Lewrie pointed out, nigh tongue-in-cheek. “I expect Guernsey’s whole population brings their dinners to the shore to watch, like a royal fireworks show.”

“Now, had we done the trials off Land’s End, The Lizard, or the Scillies, there would be fewer spectators,” Lt. Clough contributed.

“The Channel Isles were Admiralty’s choice, sir,” Captain Speaks gruffly rejoined, “not mine, or ours. Better than launching torpedoes off the mouth of the Somme, hey, Captain Lewrie? Or was that their designer’s choice, to which you demurred?”

“Admiralty orders, sir,” Lewrie told him, stung by the gibe over the location of the first trials with MacTavish’s casks. “I still have them, do you wish to see them, sir.”

“Hmm!” Speaks uttered, twisting his mouth to a grimace. “It is of no matter. Now, sirs! What may we do to increase the range and the accuracy of our torpedoes?
That’s
the matter at hand.”

“One might as well try to direct a sheep to graze northwards,” Lt. Spendlove baldly stated, though he did so in a calm voice without
too
much sarcasm. “Do the French anchor row after long row of
péniches
and barges along their harbour moles and breakwaters, a torpedo
might
end up alongside one of them, sir, but
which
one would be asking far too much of them, in their present form. I doubt even Merriman’s idea for explosive boats could choose a target, any more than a fireship set loose to sail in on its own.”