Reefs and Shoals

Lewrie turned to see Eldridge and the signalmen just then bending on the last code flag to the halliard. They were slow, or Eldridge was not yet familiar with the duty, but he could not goad him to haste… yet. Eldridge seemed to blush, and sped his men to hoist away. Lewrie lifted his gaze to watch the signal soar aloft, then took a few steps aft to tell Eldridge, “Once Thorn shows the ‘Affirmative,’ or the ‘Repeat,’ strike that’un, and the second signal will be to Firefly and Lizard. Their numbers, ‘General Chase,’ and ‘Engage The Enemy More Closely’… on the starboard halliards, if ye please.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Eldridge replied very formally, as if expecting criticism.

“Damme, we’ve finally something t’shoot at!” Lewrie chortled, putting Eldridge at ease, and raising a smile.

The light winds were just abaft of abeam, so the string of code flags to Thorn stood out a bit limply to larboard; legible, if the sky brightened a bit more. After a long moment’s wait…

“From Thorn, sir!” Warburton shouted. “The ‘Affirmative’!”

“Strike larboard for the ‘Execute’,” Eldridge ordered his signalmen. “New hoist ready to starboard… Ready? Hoist away, smartly!”

Lt. Bury in Lizard, and Lt. Lovett in Firefly, must have been expecting such an order, perhaps longing for one, for each rapidly put up the single flag for “Affirmative” and began to spread more sail, angling off to starboard to close the suspicious anchored ships almost before Reliant ’s hoist had been two-blocked.

“We’ll fall in trail position aft of Firefly, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie snapped. “Mister Spendlove?” he called down to the waist.

“Aye, sir?”

“Open the starboard gun-ports and run out!” Lewrie gleefully told him. “And stand by to engage at close range!”

The gun crews gave out a loud, inarticulate growl of approval as the port lids were raised, and the gun-captains summoned the boy powder monkeys from amidships with the first charges of propellant.

A minute or two later, the sun burst above the Eastern horizon, and all that had been murky and ill-defined stood out starkly. Forests and beach-trimmed shores, the meagre clutch of shacks and large canvas tents ashore near the mouth of the river, and the anchored ships now could be seen in detail.

“No flags showing on the anchored ships, yet, sir,” Lt. Westcott noted.

Both of them were two-masted, either topsail schooners or Bermudan or Jamaican sloops, neither much longer than Lizard or Firefly, with their jib-booms and bow-sprits steeved closer to the horizontal than was the usual fashion in merchant ships or purpose-built warships. Their hulls were so dark that they were almost black, with narrow hull stripes; on the nearest was a dark blue stripe, and on the furthest an odd blue-grey. Their masts were raked aft a bit more than usual, as if they followed the American shipbuilding fashion.

“Aha! Wakey-wakey!” Lewrie snickered after he lifted his telescope, and spotted men popping up on their decks, dashing about in confusion, as if ordered to man their guns, make sail, and cut their anchor cables, all at the same time. But they had no time.

Just bloody beautiful! Lewrie exulted; Them, the bay, everything! The bay was an artist’s palette of dark greens, aquas, and jade, sparkling in the dawn light like a field of gems. And the trap he’d sprung…!

“Note in the log, Mister Caldwell,” Lewrie called over to the Sailing Master, “that Lizard and Firefly opened upon the near vessel at… a quarter ’til six A.M.,”

Damme, that’s well done, Lewrie appreciatively thought as Lizard, the slightly stronger ship in weight of metal, stood up to the nearest sloop and wheeled to lay abeam of her at a range of a single cable before she opened fire off the sloop’s starboard bows, sails reduced and making a slow steerage way so Lt. Bury’s gunners might be able to get off a second or third broadside in passing. Firefly followed in her wake, wheeling abeam in succession to add her four starboard 6-pounders a bit later.

At such close range, it was almost impossible to miss. Shot-splashes rose close-aboard the sloop’s waterline, and roundshot punched holes below the sloop’s row of gun-ports, and smashed chunks from her bulwarks, staggering her masts.

A few of the first sloop’s gun-ports swung up, and stubby gun muzzles appeared as some were run out, but only two fired, aimlessly, before a scramble began to her un-engaged side as her crew abandoned the fight, leaping over the larboard rails for their boats, or a long swim to the beach.

“Carry on, Bury, carry on!” Lewrie yelled as if his voice would reach that far, hoping that the little two-ship column could engage the second sloop before she could prepare herself for battle.

“We’re almost at a cable’s range of the first, sir,” Westcott judged aloud.

“My compliments to Mister Spendlove, and he’s to open upon her the instant he deems it feasible, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered, quite looking forward to the thunder and clouds of powder smoke.

“Aye aye, sir!” Westcott replied. “Hoy, Mister Spendlove!”

The second sloop had managed to cut her single anchor cable and was paying off leeward as her crew got up a jib, and her main fore-and-aft gaff sail, very slowly sagging and swinging her bows towards the leading British ship, Lizard. Bad luck for her, for all that was doing was presenting her weak bow scantlings to a rake, and closing the range to her own mauling.

“ As you bear… by broadside… fire!” Lt. Spendlove shouted, waiting for the decks to pause on the faint scend and the up-roll, when it was level and still.

The range was about a quarter-mile to the first sloop when the first of Reliant ’s broadsides lit off, 12-pounder bow chase gun, all the starboard 18-pounders, the quarterdeck 9-pounders, even the 32-pounder carronades with their elevating screws fully down and their muzzles lifted to the fullest safe elevation.

The 6-pounders of the smaller ships had nipped and bitten the anchored sloop, but Reliant ’s broadside was an iron avalanche. Just before the thick bank of spent powder smoke blotted out their view, Lewrie got a quick glimpse of bulwarks and upper planking shattering in dusty clouds of splinters and chunks, of large, irregular holes blossoming in her sides, and of both masts and tops’l yards coming apart in darting zig-zags of jagged ruin.

As the guns were swabbed, and the recoil and run-out tackle overhauled, the light winds wafted the reeking powder smoke alee to larboard, giving Lewrie a clearer view with his day-glass.

“I don’t think she’ll be needin’ another broadside,” Lewrie said, chuckling. The target was dis-masted, almost level with where the tops of her bulwarks had been, if they hadn’t been blown to kindling. There were several holes in her upper and lower hull planking, and a large one just by her waterline. If anyone was still aboard her, they were out of sight.

Lizard and Firefly were engaging the further sloop, which by then was helplessly bows-on to their fire. Bury and Lovett had closed the range to the point that even their swivel guns were yapping like terriers. That sloop was being sieved with shot!

What’s Thorn doing? Lewrie wondered, stepping over to the lee rails to get a better look. The smoke from his ship’s guns, and the guns of the smaller ships, had mingled and accumulated rapidly, held together, perhaps, by the early-morning humidity, making a thick and drifting haze ahead and to larboard, but he could make out Thorn as she stood in close to the shore and the river mouth, and that encampment, beam onto Reliant. She was wreathed in smoke from her stubby but powerful carronades. Beyond her, trees and bushes writhed, the large tents and shelters were being whipped away, and Thorn must have hit something explosive, for there was a burst of flame and a thick cloud of dark smoke, and a shower of hot sparks that set even more of the camp afire.

“Ehm, captain, sir,” Mr. Caldwell cautioned. “It’s getting a tad shallow for us. Perhaps…”

“Aye, Mister Caldwell,” Lewrie replied. “Mister Westcott, lay us two points alee, into the deeper water to loo’rd.