Reefs and Shoals

pounders on her starboard side raised great splashes all round the barge, scoring at least one hit that tore her transom open; the range was not one hundred yards from mid-channel to the marshes. Two or three sailors on the barge had been going over her bows to wade through the clinging mud and silt, but two of them whirled and fell, likely splintered by the shards from the shattered transom. The barge began to sink.

A minute later and Firefly was at the bend of the river, with Lizard striding up to join her, passing both gunboats, much to the frustration of Lewrie, Spendlove, and, obviously Westcott, who held up a fist and shook it at the sloops, shouting something best not heard by gentlemen.

Firefly quickly went about, her sails luffing and re-filling on a new course, with Lizard nipping at her heels.

“Should we continue, sir?” Spendlove asked, sounding weary.

“As long as we can, sir,” Lewrie told him. “I want t’see how it ends. Be in at the kill, even if we can’t contribute much to it.”

Two minutes more and their gunboat was at the bend, too, and going about. Lewrie consulted the hand-drawn chart once more, noting how short this leg was to the South, just over half a mile, with the best channel nearest the Spanish bank, and a long, narrow, and shallow shoal in mid-channel that widened and shoaled further where the river made a turn to the Nor’west for a bit, then bent again to the West. Lewrie saw what they might be driving for; on the North bank there was dry and neutral ground on the American side of the St. Mary’s, right down to the river, with over twenty feet of depth! They hoped to ground there!

“Whoa, that’s a close’un!” One of the gunboat’s sailors cried, snapping Lewrie’s attention ahead once more.

The privateer was nearest to them, still firing, slowly overlapping her prize brig, stealing her wind. It looked as if the two of them were abreast, and close enough to scrape hull paint!

“She’s run t’other’un aground!” the sailor exclaimed a moment later.

“There’s no room for both in the channel!” Lewrie crowed. “It’s not an hundred feet wide! We’ve got the prize, at least!”

“We will board her, sir?” Spendlove asked.

“No, she’s a dead’un. Leave it,” Lewrie laughed aloud. “We’re after the privateer.”

Lovett and Bury were ahead of their gunboat, by then, and when they came level with the prize, they veered East of her. Lovett could not resist the urge to hear loud bangs, it appeared, for he fired his starboard battery into her to make sure that she would not be worked off the shoal. The range was almost hull-to-hull, and the brig flung parts of herself into the air when struck. A minute later and damned if the phlegmatic Lt. Bury didn’t do the same thing!

First Firefly, then Lizard, reached the deep channel that led round to the Nor’west in pursuit of the privateer, slewing far to the South to follow the deep channel, then wearing to take the wind on the other quarter and hardening up a bit to claw over to the North shore to follow the channel to the American side. As each wore, they fired a full broadside at the privateer, which was stern-on to them.

“Got ’er, they did! They ’it ’er ’twixt wind an’ warter!” the garrulous sailor cheered. “Huzzah, Firefly, huzzah Lizard, ha ha!”

The privateer’s main tops’l’s yard was shattered, and her top-mast swung a full 180 degrees to hang inverted. Across the marshes all could see her stern chewed up, with gouts of old paint, dirt, and shattered planking flung out in clouds.

“I don’t think she’s turning,” Lewrie said, quickly looking at the chart on his lap, excitement rising. “There’s over fourty feet o’ water yonder, then one foot or less, right by the bank of the-”

“She’s aground!” Spendlove shouted, waving his hat in joy.

“We’ve got her,” Lewrie said in delight. “A clean sweep!”

“Do you think we could put up a broom at the main top, like the Dutch did ages ago, sir?” Spendlove chortled.

“Hoy, there’s boats puttin’ out from the grounded brig,” the gun-captain of the carronade pointed out. “Can I try my eye on ’em, Cap’m?”

“Blaze away,” Lewrie was happy to allow. The boats had been towed astern of the brig before she grounded, and people had tumbled into them on her larboard side as soon as they were hauled up by the towing lines.

“Damme, is it him?” Lewrie muttered as he saw a tall man with white hair making his way down the battens to the second boat with a musket slung over his shoulder and a red-leather pouch on his hip.

Their gunboat was less than a quarter-mile off the brig’s stern. It was possible that both rowboats might get away. The first got away from the brig’s side and headed for the deep channel. The gun-captain swivelled his carronade round trying to aim at it, but the jib was in the way, its foot less than a foot from the carronade’s muzzle. If he fired, he might set it afire.

“Hand the jib for a while!” Spendlove ordered. “Give the gun a clear shot!”

The second rowboat was now clear of the brig, hands aboard it hastily hoisting a lugs’l and jib. Others were aiming their muskets astern. Some of them fired, and rounds sang past, one thunk ing into the gunboat’s hull. Far beyond the range of a musket, that!

Lewrie saw two of them standing up to re-load, placing a ball in the muzzles and shoving them down with their ramrods… shoving hard!

“They have rifles, not muskets,” Lewrie warned the boat’s crew. He reached for his Ferguson rifle, stowed aft near Spendlove and the tiller. The morning had been so damp and muggy that he had not loaded it, depending on his pistols and sword for fighting.

He turned the long, sweeping trigger guard around one full turn, lowering the thick vertical screw behind the breech. From his rifle pouch he drew out a paper cartridge and shoved it up into the breech. A turn of the screw in the opposite direction sealed the breech once more and ripped the paper cartridge end to expose the propellant charge. Drawing the lock to half-cock, he opened the pan and sprinkled fine-mealed powder in, then closed the pan and pulled the lock to full cock, then turned to sit across the thwart and take aim. Thunk! came another rifle ball from the rowboat which was now under full sail. “Ow, God ’elp me!” an idle oarsman cried as a second shot hit him in his upper arm.

Bang! went the carronade as the gunner finally got a clear bead on the first boat which was still under oars. Lewrie waited for the smoke from the carronade to clear, wondering why he had not practiced with his rifled musket more often, thinking that if there had only been something worth hunting at Bermuda, in the Bahamas…

There! The white-haired man was standing to re-load, placing a thin leather patch and a ball atop the muzzle of his Pennsylvania rifle. He began to push down as Lewrie took careful aim, holding a bit above the man’s head so the drop of the round would strike somewhere in mid-chest. He took a deep breath, let it out, and gently stroked the trigger with the tip of his forefinger.

The powder in the pan flashed off in a cloud of sparks, then an eye-blink later the powder in the barrel took light and the rifle shoved him in the shoulder. He blinked, waited for the smoke from the muzzle to clear.

“Praise th’ Lord, Cap’m, ye got him!” a Marine whooshed in dis-belief. “At nigh-on a hundred an’ fifty yards, is it a foot!”

Held too low, or my aim shifted, Lewrie thought, but all in all he could be quite pleased with his marksmanship. The white-haired fellow wore a shiny white satin waist-coat and a pair of buff trousers. There was a splotch of blood between the bottom of his waist-coat and his groin. Right into the guts, and a death wound for sure! Not right away, of course. That might take several agonising days. The fellow collapsed into the arms of his compatriots, who showed no more interest in shooting back.

Bang! went the carronade once more, and the boat’s crew whooped in joy to see the first boat shot clean through and begin to take on water at once. The men aboard went over the side, a rare few of them swimming to the shallows of the American side, and safety. Most of them, though, were like British sailors, who could not swim a lick. They floundered, kicked, and wailed to keep their heads above water, but the St. Mary’s had them, and by the time the gunboat reached the spot where only the up-turned bow of the rowboat remained afloat on a pocket of trapped air, there was only one survivor to pluck from death.

The other boat from the brig, the one that had been under sail, made the turn to the Nor’west at the end of that stretch of river, wore, and rounded the last of the shoal on the North bank. When in the shallows where it