The Power and the Glory (39 page)

The helmsmen at the big double wheel coaxed
Constellation
off the wind until it came from dead astern. Sailors stationed aft and amidships brailed up her spanker and mainsail to allow the other sails on the main and mizzen to be all in the wind. With afteryards braced up sharp for the new tack and foreyards squared, headsheets were shifted over and foresails braced around to catch the wind and help turn the ship's stern through it, just as the mainsail was reset and the spanker hauled out. Within minutes,
Constellation
was turned about on a reciprocal course and sailing full and by, with her foreyards braced up and her weather bowlines hauled taut.

Approximately fifteen miles separated the two ships. Although
Constellation
was now on a course of interception, the other ship was following an oblique course relative to the American, which meant that several hours would pass before the other ship could be positively identified.
If
she maintained her present course for all that time.

Which she did not.

“Deck, there!” the lookout in the foremast cried down some time later.

“Deck, aye!” Harry Ayres, stationed at the base of the foremast, acknowledged. “What is it, Laird?”

“She's coming about, sir! She means to show us her heels!”

Ayres quick-stepped aft.

“Thank you, Mr. Ayres,” Thomas Truxtun said when the midshipman had made his report. Immediately he issued the order for
Constellation
to come off the wind in pursuit. “You may return to station.” He rubbed his chin. “What do you make of it, Mr. Cutler?”

Richard replied slowly, thoughtfully, as if seeking to convince himself as well as his captain. “She can't know our identity, sir, any better than we can know hers. By now she should have spotted the British recognition signal. If so, we may conclude she's not British. If she were, she would not turn and run once she realized we were giving chase. She would either maintain her course or turn to come straight at us. Were she a neutral ship, Dutch or Swedish, perhaps,
why
would she run? In any event, we know that this vessel is ship-rigged and of considerable size, a ship of war by anyone's bet. The Dutch and Swedes don't have vessels of such size in the Indies. And Spanish frigates are long gone from these waters. That leaves only one conclusion.”

“Mr. Sterrett?”

“I agree with Mr. Cutler, sir,” the second lieutenant replied. “She showed her colors the instant she came about.”

“We must assume, then, that she's French. And if she's French, she's
La Vengeance
. By God, gentlemen, I think we've found our quarry!”

“Yes, sir,” Richard said, the thrill of the chase upon him. “Her captain must have decided that since he can't outrun us, his best bet is to try to make it back to Guadeloupe. Perhaps he has important passengers on board who have no stomach for a fight.”

“That could very well be the case, Mr. Cutler. Now hear this: I want every inch of canvas clapped on, including stunsails. Have the yards slung with chains and the ship cleared for action.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

With the extra press of sails,
Constellation
surged ahead on a larboard tack heading south-southeast. The other ship pursued a course to the south-southwest, back toward the southern reaches of the Lesser Antilles. Guadeloupe lay perhaps twenty miles over the horizon. If reaching the safety of that island were her strategy, the tactical question, for those on board both ships, was whether or not the mathematics of pursuit would allow the pursuer to cut off the pursued.

As the chase continued through the morning and into the early afternoon, the distance between the two ships narrowed. Just as the hull of the other ship was rising up to the south, the wind shifted and turned fluky. The massive sails of the American frigate luffed, filled, and luffed again, as though living beings gasping for air. Helmsmen struggled to
keep
Constellation
on course in what was quickly becoming a game of catch-as-catch-can with the wind.

Truxtun remained undeterred. “We'll work this to our advantage,” he stated optimistically to his officers. “We're the lighter of the two vessels and we have a copper bottom. I doubt that ship does—most French ships do not—so in this light wind the growth on her bottom should slow her down. It may take longer to catch her, but catch her we will. It's just a matter of time.”

Time they had, and plenty of it during the long hours of sluggish pursuit, to weigh the consequences of actually running down their quarry. Every officer on board
Constellation
was keenly aware that
La Vengeance
was a heavily armed ship; 18-pounders on her gun deck, 12-pounders on her weather deck: fifty-four guns total. By comparison,
Constellation
carried twenty-eight 18-pounders on her gun deck and ten 24-pounder carronades on her weather deck. Richard had done the math, as had even the lowest-ranking petty officer. A full broadside from
La Vengeance
carried 582 pounds of hot metal; a broadside from
Constellation
only 372 pounds. In other words, the French had a 50 percent advantage in weight of broadside. And if
La Vengeance
did manage to come within sight of the naval base at Basse-Terre, the French corvette, were she still there, would surely sail out to add her twenty-eight guns to the balance.

In early evening, as the breeze freshened and the distance between the two ships continued to narrow, Truxtun ordered the British ensign hauled down, the American ensign hauled up, and battle lanterns lit. “And you may run out the guns, Mr. Cutler,” he said. “Both sides.”

“Shall we reduce sail, sir?”

“Not until it's absolutely necessary. Have the men stand by to brail up the courses.”

Richard relayed the order to Midn. David Porter, acting as aide-de-camp, who relayed it below to Lieutenant Sterrett and the gun captains.

Night was settling over a black sea framed by a bright starlit sky and a half-moon lying low to the west. On board
Constellation
there was no need to beat to quarters. Men had been at battle stations for nearly twelve hours, had eaten an early supper next to the guns, and had taken rest in rotation on the gun deck. Three hundred yards ahead,
La Vengeance
—her name encrypted in gilt lettering beneath the tinted glass of her heavily decorated stern gallery—sailed on toward Guadeloupe
as though oblivious to the American frigate creeping up on her from astern.

At nine o'clock, as the quartermaster of the watch sounded two bells and
Constellation
approached to within hailing distance, Truxtun strode forward to the forecastle and brought a speaking trumpet to his mouth. “Ahoy,
La Vengeance
!” he shouted out. “This is USS
Constellation.
I order you to haul down your colors and surrender to the United States of America!”

Every man on the American frigate stood by at attention, ears primed for a response that was not forthcoming. Save for creaks in her block and tackle and the whisper of wind ghosting through her top-hamper, silence reigned on
Constellation
.

“Ahoy,
La Vengeance
!” Truxtun tried a second time. “Surrender or I shall fire into you!”

When his demands were once again met with silence, Truxtun walked aft to the helm. “Let the log reflect that I gave her fair warning,” he said blithely. “Have the courses brailed up, Mr. Cutler. Mr. Waverly, bring her up a point.”

Before Truxtun finished speaking, two tongues of orange lashed out from the stern ports of the French frigate. Balls of hot iron howled through the air, screaming ever louder as they approached until the air above was rent by the rip of canvas not far from the maintop where James Carter had stationed his Marines. Their trajectories expended, the two balls plunged into the dark ocean astern.

“Bring her up another point,” Truxtun said calmly to Waverly. “Starboard guns may fire when ready.”

Midshipman Porter relayed the order to the gun deck. Sterrett acknowledged and passed word to Lieutenant Dent stationed aft
. Constellation
edged up closer to
La Vengeance
, her bowsprit now drawing even with the Frenchman's larboard quarter, her aft guns handspiked as far forward as possible.

“
Fire!
” Sterrett's order was repeated down the line. Fourteen guns erupted at five-second intervals. Most were aimed level at the hull of the French ship, visible a hundred yards distant beyond the close-quarter flashes of yellow, white, and orange. Round shot and double shot smashed into the Frenchman's bulwarks, splintering them. Spears of jagged wood rocketed through the air and across her deck, impaling flesh and tearing into vital organs. From above, in
Constellation
's fighting tops, Marines at the swivel guns rained canisters of grape onto the
Frenchman's deck. The barrage was reinforced by a rain of musketry fired from the tops and from behind walls of hammocks stuffed into netting along the weather railing.

Not every long gun was aimed level. Some were aimed high. One shot scored a direct hit on the enemy main-topmast, which shattered and toppled over like a twig in a child's hand, taking with it a jumble of topsail, royal, and mizzen staysails.

La Vengeance
answered. True to her name, she came up on a starboard tack and launched a broadside of her own, concentrating fire on her enemy's top-hamper.
Constellation
's lower mainmast took a glancing blow that nonetheless punched out a sizable chunk of wood, exposing an ugly gash of white Virginia pine. On her lower mainmast shrouds, a breast backstay parted beneath its outrigger. Nearby, a sailor climbing to the crosstrees cried out. For what must have been a terrifying wisp of time, he gaped down at his left leg blown clean off before letting go the shrouds and ratlines and tumbling below to the deck. Blood spurted from the red jelly mass of the stump like some gruesome water pump before a quick-thinking waister rushed out to seize the deformed body and drag it against the larboard bulwarks.

“Fire as they bear!” Truxtun shouted out. “Mr. Waverly, maintain a parallel course! Range up on her quarter!”

For another hour, and an hour after that, the two great frigates battled it out, strength of broadside against strength of broadside, lighting up and roiling the short span of Atlantic separating them. It was as though two great armies had come together on the field to pound each other unmercifully until one side had taken all it could take and was forced to stand down. The French boasted superiority of guns, the Americans superiority of drill. For every broadside
La Vengeance
managed to get off,
Constellation
answered with two, evening the odds, then with three, giving her the edge, over time, in shipboard structures and skeletal frames and gun mounts ravaged, dismantled, or blown apart.

La Vengeance
was suffering terrible damage to her planking,
Constellation
to her rigging. The American ship's mainmast had taken multiple hits. Shrouds and stays on all three masts had been shot away. Dead Marines and sailors littered her weather deck. Others, badly wounded, moaned and struggled to pull themselves up, their pitiful cries for succor ignored because no man could be spared to carry them below to the surgeon. Not three feet from where Richard stood as stoically as an inhuman blend of terror and discipline allowed, a Marine private, felled from the mizzen top, splattered supine onto the deck. His hollow eyes
rolled over to Richard, his mouth opening and closing in silent supplication, his body shivering and shaking as though from freezing cold, until the lifeblood drained out of him and he lay still, his glazed eyes, even in death, locked on the first lieutenant.

“They mean to board us, Captain!” Richard warned, forcing himself free of the Marine's dead gaze when
La Vengeance
suddenly shifted course and came at them bow on. In the ghastly glow of sporadic cannon fire they could see French Marines and sailors assembling on the foredeck brandishing a lethal assortment of muskets, pistols, boarding pikes, tomahawks, cutlasses, and belaying pins. It was
L'Insurgente
all over again.

“Bring her off, Mr. Waverly,” Truxtun commanded. “Down helm!”

“It's no good, sir!” the ship's master yelled back, a rare hint of panic in his voice. “She won't answer! She's too shot up!”

“Mr. Cutler! The carronades!”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

“Mr. Porter, pass word to Mr. Sterrett to load with double shot and hold fire until he hears the carronades. Then, by God, tell him to give them everything he has, aimed at her foredeck!”

“Aye, aye, Captain!”

The two ships closed to within seventy yards, sixty, fifty yards—every yard bringing the snub-nosed devil guns within a more deadly range. Loaded with 24-pound shot in two of them, langrage and grape and case shot in three, they were swung on their casters to bear directly on the Frenchman's bow.

“Steady, men,” Richard encouraged the five three-man gun crews.

Forty-five yards.

“You see your target. Wait for my command.”

Forty yards.

On board
La Vengeance
, the men in the bow held up weapons and shouted heated words of defiance. A bow-chaser barked, then another. The Americans ducked low, but the round shot merely bounced off
Constellation
's hull and dropped into the ocean.

Thirty-five yards.

“Steady . . . steady . . .”

The long guns on both ships fell silent. French Marines held the Americans in the foretops at bay with a steady stream of musketry.
La Vengeance
loomed, a giant black silhouette against a slightly lighter backdrop of gloom, gliding closer and closer, until the distance separating
the two ships was a mere twenty-five yards. On board
Constellation
, sailors on the starboard side armed with pistols and pikes clutched long wooden poles to fend off and prevent the enemy from grappling hold, pulling the American frigate in close, and unleashing her legions of hell.