The Invasion Year (6 page)

A British rowing boat, one waiting to take possession of a prize, was wheeling about and stroking hard towards the French frigate, now to render what assistance she could. Another, the flagship’s barge that had borne Lewrie and the others to the Cap François quays the day before, was approaching her, too, now displaying a long signal flag held up by her Midshipman; “Assistance.”

“Now,
he’s
come prepared for anything,” Lewrie japed.

“Is there any aid we might give them, sir?” Lt. Spendlove, ever a generous soul, asked.

“Hmm,” was Lewrie’s reply as he mulled the matter.

The Frogs could row their anchors out, and warp
themselves
off,
he reckoned in his head;
Or, we could rig tow-lines of the stern anchor cables, but … that’d put
us
on a lee shore, in those rocks.

“Mister Caldwell, how close could we anchor to her?” Lewrie asked the Sailing Master. “Near enough to pass her towin’ cables?”

“Sadly, no, sir,” Caldwell told him. “None of our cables are as long as would be needed … less the warps taken round the mizen mast or capstan.”

One hundred twenty fathoms was the length of the fleet and the bower anchor cables; 720 feet, and
Reliant
would put herself in that French frigate’s predicament did they try to get that close.

Lewrie took another long look with his telescope, pondering and measuring. “She might need a
lateral
haulin’ off, in addition to what forward haul they might get with their own anchors. We enter the harbour, tack round, then come to anchor
abreast
of her…,” he schemed aloud. “No,” he decided, lowering his glass. Did he sail
Reliant
in, it was good odds that Dessalines and Christophe would mis-interpret it as a bloody
raid,
and fire all that waiting heated shot at
them.
Even if they could dash in, swing wide, and tack round, to try and anchor in the entrance channel by the second, starboard, bower, would leave their stern swinging Sou’west, driven by the Nor’east Trade Wind, and no good for the French would result from that.

“Signal from the flag, sir!” Midshipman Grainger called from the taffrails, right aft. “Our number, sir, and it’s ‘Render Assistance.’ ”

Oh, fuck me!
Lewrie groaned;
We
would
be nearest! Loring won’t give up better than fifteen thousand pounds o’ prize-money
that
easily!

“Very well, Mister Grainger,” Lewrie replied with a false air of enthusiasm. “Hoist a positive reply. Mister Westcott, Mister Caldwell … haul our wind and shape a course for the main channel. I wish to come to anchor a
safe
distance from the frigate, but within decent rowing distance. Mister Spendlove, ready the second bower for dropping, once we’ve come about. Mister Merriman, see that all our ship’s boats are brought up from towin’ astern, and ready t’be manned.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Bosun Sprague!” Lt. Westcott called out. “I’ll see two hands on the fore channel platforms, with sounding leads!”

Why couldn’t Commodore Loring call on somebody “tarry-handed,” ’stead o’
me? Lewrie gloomed;
I’ve never done this in me life!

CHAPTER FIVE

HMS
Reliant
obeyed the flagship’s order, but cautiously, feeling her way shoreward under reduced sail, with Lewrie fretting over a chart pinned to the traverse hoard by the compass binnacle cabinet, a ruler and a pair of brass dividers handy.

“Do we come about here, Mister Caldwell,” Lewrie posed, “about two cables off the breakwater, in the middle of the channel … then, clew ev’rything up quick in Spanish reefs…”

“Uhm-hmm, sir,” Caldwell replied, already sounding dubious.

“… we’d glide forrud for a bit, perhaps half a cable more, as the sails are taken in, still in six fathoms o’ water,” Lewrie went on. “Let go the second bower and lay out but a four-to-one scope, we’d be … about
here
?” he said, tapping a tiny circled X in the middle of the entrance channel, just outside the breakwaters.

“In my professional opinion, Captain, I’d not risk it,” Caldwell said with a quick shake of his head. “Does the anchor not get purchase at once, we’ll drag astern God knows how far. And,
does
it get a firm grip, it would be the
departure
just as bad … streaming bows onto the Trades, our stern a’slant the channel without a kedge anchor laid out to keep her head Due North or Nor’west, sir? Soon as we broke the bower loose, we’d drift aground on the
western
breakwater shallows. I’d not recommend it, sir. Strongly.”

“Then there’s not much we can do to aid them, is there, Mister Caldwell?” Lewrie gravelled, standing fully erect and looking forward over the dipping jib-boom and bow-sprit at the stranded frigate, that was now only a mile off. “Come about and fetch-to, in
ten
fathoms of water, a mile off, and launch our boats, is all.”

“Sadly, that would be best, sir,” Caldwell grimly allowed.

“Very well, then. Relate that to Mister Westcott, and advise him to when you wish us to put the helm over,” Lewrie directed.

Damme, if the Frogs can’t get themselves warped off, do
I
end up with all her people crowded aboard
my
ship?
Lewrie thought. If all else failed, the French refugees
had
to be saved, even if the valuable frigate was lost to the rebel slaves … and what the Commodore would make of that didn’t bear thinking about!

I’m deep enough in the “quag” already, over refugees,
Lewrie lamented to himself;
French refugees, in particular.

“Almost there, Mister Caldwell?” Westcott enquired, rocking on the balls of his feet, and his eyes dashing to take in everything that could affect their ship at once.

“Uhmm … about half a minute more, sir,” Caldwell told him.

“Once we’re fetched-to, Mister Westcott, you will have the ship ’til I return,” Lewrie announced of a sudden, just after the idea came to his mind. “I’ll take my gig over t’see what needs doin’.”

“Ah … aye aye, sir!”

“Ahem!” from Caldwell.

“Ready about!” from Lt. Westcott in a quarterdeck bellow, with the aid of a speaking-trumpet.

“I’ll save you a
jeune fille,
” Lewrie told Westcott with a smirk.

“Ready all? Ready all? Helm’s
alee
!”

And round
Reliant
swept, even under reduced sail, rapidly going about. “
Rise,
tacks and sheets!” And she kept on swinging, cross the eyes of the Trade Wind, sails rustling and slatting like musket fire, her jibs and stays and spanker whooshing over to larboard, and quickly hauled taut to keep forward drive on her on the starboard tack, whilst the square sails were wheeled about, pivotting on their rope-and-ball parrels about the masts, most clewed up into untidy bag shapes, “Spanish reefed,” and the fore-course and fore tops’l braced flat a’back to keep her from driving forward under the jibs’ pressure. She ghosted on for a bit, slowing, slowing, then …

“Do the Trades pipe up, Mister Westcott, use the second bower, if you think it truly necessary, and we’ll use our boats to haul her bows off-wind enough to get way back on her,” Lewrie said, readying himself to debark. “If we can’t get that Frog frigate off, then … well, we may end up with a horde o’ guests aboard, ’til we parcel ’em out to the rest of the squadron.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Lt. Westcott said, nodding in surprise, teeth bared in a “news to me” grin.

“That way, you can choose your
own
young lady, without trustin’
my
taste,” Lewrie said, leaning close to mutter.

*   *   *

Lewrie took all four of
Reliant
’s boats, his gig, the cutter, the launch, and the jolly-boat, each with a Midshipman aboard: Mister Houghton, his competent but dull twenty-one-year-old; Mister Entwhistle, “the honourable” nineteen-year-old; Mister Warburton, their cheeky sixteen-year-old; and lastly, Mister Munsell, only thirteen, but shaping main-well as a tarry-handed tarpaulin lad, all his most experienced.

The French frigate,
Chlorinde,
Lewrie noted from her name-board,
seemed
to be in decent shape … so far. She sat fully upright on an even keel, and did not seem to have taken the ground so jarringly that her masts had sprung; her upper masts and yards still stood, her lower mast trunks were picture-perfect vertical. She just wasn’t
going
anywhere, and, though she was solidly aground and seemingly at rest, her hull gave off alarming groans of timbers and thumping, strained scantling planking as her outer hull rose and thudded on the rocky bottom.

“Hoy, the ship!” Lewrie called as his gig came alongside of her larboard entry-port. Irritatingly, no one paid him any mind. Instead, he could hear rhythmic chanting of French “pulley-hauley,” then noted that
Chlorinde
’s main course yard was being used as a crane. Slowly, a 12-pounder or 18-pounder gun was hoisted clear above her starboard bulwarks, even more slowly swung clear of the hull, and lowered. They were lightening ship by jettisoning all her artillery overside, to the shallow side.

There were more
basso
grunts as more of her crew laboured on the capstan. Her best bower anchor had been rowed out towards the channel depths, and the cable was now bar-taut, in an effort to drag her bows free. No matter how strongly her people breasted to the capstan bars, though, dug their shoes or bare toes into the deck and pressed forward with all their strength, that didn’t seem to be of any avail so far.

“Bugger their side-party,” Lewrie muttered. His bow man had a good grip with a gaff on the frigate’s main chain platform, and his gig was close alongside. Lewrie stood and made his way through his oarsmen, stepped onto the boat’s gunn’l, and hopped onto the platform. “With me, Desmond, Furfy.”

“Aye, sor!” his Irish Cox’n replied.

The battens were not sanded, and the man-ropes strung loose on either hand of the battens were old and grey, but they held. Lewrie made his way upwards, step at a time, thinking that stringing the man-ropes through the battens to make taut hand-rails, as his own Navy did, made a lot more sense.

“Anybody home?” Lewrie asked once he’d gained the larboard gangway. “Anybody bloody
care
?” As he’d judged the day before, there
were
at least a thousand people aboard the
Chlorinde,
sailors, soldiers of Infantrie de Marine, survivors of infantry regiments from shore, and civilians everywhere, all intent on heaving things overside on the far side of the ship.

“Qui vive, m’sieur?”
a French Midshipman asked him, eyes wide in surprise. “Uhm,
M’sieur le Capitaine
?”

“Lewrie … Royal Navy … here to …
pourvoir assistance
? Or,
secours
?” he answered, pointing out towards his fetched-to frigate.

“Ah,
mais oui
! Lieutenant Veeloughby?
M’sieur?
” the Midshipman said with a relieved smile, then turned to bellow.

“What the bloody…! Aha!” a Royal Navy officer, his hat off and his waist-coat undone, barked, crossing the quarterdeck through a throng of furiously labouring people to Lewrie. “Josiah Willoughby, sir, of the
Hercule,
seventy-four.”

“Alan Lewrie, the
Reliant
frigate,” Lewrie replied. “Sorry we can’t get her close aboard you, but … we’d end up in the same predicament. I’ve four boat crews and some spare hands with me, so … what needs doing, first, Mister Willoughby?”

“Just about everything, sir!” Lt. Willoughby quickly replied with a disarming grin. “Cast her guns and carriages overboard, and may the rebels have joy of them … all her roundshot. We’ve started her water butts, gotten a bower out. No joy there, yet, but we’re trying, and the French sailors are doing their best.”

“My cutter could take her kedge out to mid-channel, to wrench her stern free, if there’s something that could serve as a capstan, or a purchase,” Lewrie offered.

“That’d be grand, sir … though, she’s already beat off her rudder, so, do we manage to get her off before the rebels open fire on her, there’s no telling of how she’ll handle.”