The Invasion Year

Peel gave him a cock-browed look, and a head-jerk at Pettus.

“Pettus… one of those ‘take the air on deck’ moments,” Lewrie told his cabin steward. “And take Jessop with you for a bit.”

“You are aware of the types?” Peel asked in a low voice once he was sure they were alone.

“There’s guilots, to transport horses and artillery batteries,” Lewrie ticked off on his fingers, “there’s some three-masted hundred-footer gunboats, what they call prames…”

“With twelve twenty-four-pounders,” Peel stuck in. “Though they build them so quickly, and of such light materials, that prames can’t stand against a frigate. Go on,” Peel urged with a sage nod.

“They showed me brig-rigged chaloupes,” Lewrie said, waiting.

“Three twenty-four-pounders and an eight-inch mortar,” Peel said.

“I’m told there are some lesser gunboats, two- or three-masted luggers, even cutter-rigged small ones?” Lewrie asked, pausing again for information.

“Might face only one twenty-four-pounder and an army field piece in the smallest Dutch-built ones, perhaps some older naval guns of lesser calibres in the French-built,” Peel enlightened him. He was picking his teeth as he did so.

“Then there’s all those damned penishes and caiques, all of ’em luggers, to carry troops and supplies,” Lewrie continued. “Admiralty said there were hundreds of ’em.”

“About seven hundred gunboats and escorts of various types, and their plans are for over two thousand transports,” Peel told him with a grave look. “I’m told, though, that both Admiral Cornwallis and Admiral Lord Keith estimate that it would take two or three tides to get all of them to England, and with Channel Fleet, our North Sea Fleet, and The Downs combined against them, given enough warning when they at last decide to try it on, we could massacre them. The French just don’t have that many experienced sailors, and most of their guns will be manned by soldiers with little knowledge of naval gunnery.”

“ ’Less it’s a dead-flat calm, when they come, their artillerists will find floatin’, bobbin’, and wallowin’ boats just won’t sit still as solid ground, where they learned their trade, aye,” Lewrie determined, almost ready to whoop with glee, and a wish that the French would try. “And, they can’t send ’em out to the slaughter without the support of their Navy, and we have their proper warships bottled up in Brest and Rochefort, or in The Texel in Holland.”

“They might get out, yes… but I doubt they will enjoy it!” Peel said with a snicker, topping up his own wine from the side-board. “After all, the Frogs must man those squadrons’ guns and retain enough sailors to handle the ships… and reserve even more skilled artillery men for the harbour and coastal batteries that ‘Boney’ has had erected all along the Channel coast, to boot. Is God just, the French may plan to have their infantry aboard the gunboats work their own guns to defend themselves! Perhaps they work to a tight budget?”

“Two for the price of one?” Lewrie snickered back, reaching to refill his glass, too.

“There is another matter, though,” Peel admitted at last; Lewrie became wary in an eyeblink, for this was the way that Mr. Twigg had begun to introduce his previous schemes. “There are, according to one of our… sources in Paris… several hundred more invasion craft to figure with.”

“You’ve still agents in Paris?” Lewrie asked, stunned.

“One or two,” Mr. Peel confessed most slyly. “Once the war began last May, Bonaparte clapped a total embargo on correspondence going in or coming out of France… almost every book, newspaper, or letter’s read… but we’ve managed. We have our ways, after all. So far, we only have vague descriptions, no sketches, of this other type of craft, but everyone would dearly love to lay hands on one. You’ll be working along the French coast? Good. Do you ever come across what looks like a water-beetle with sails, you snap it right up.”

“A water-beetle,” Lewrie said with a dubious frown.

“There’s a M’sieur Forfait, been made inspector-general of the invasion fleet. One of Bonaparte’s pet mathematicians and scientists? Forfait earned his spurs designing and building shallow draught barges and such for use on the Seine. Some people in London think the entire idea’s as daft as bats, but… he is a skilled mathematician, so we can’t dismiss his work out-of-hand.”

Mister MacTavish is a skilled engineer, too, and look what he’s come up with! Lewrie sourly thought.

“There are two types described,” Peel went on, leaning closer. “One’s about thirty-six feet by fourteen or fifteen feet, and will only draw about three feet of water. The second’s about fourty-six feet in length and sixteen or eighteen feet in breadth. That one is said to draw a little less than four feet of water, when fully laden. Eighty or an hundred soldiers aboard… a twenty-four-pounder gun mounted in the bows, and, from the description may resemble two serving platters joined together, the top one inverted, and very flat- bottomed. There are slanted berths for the soldiers in the rims of the lower platter, and they’re supposed to be rigged like a Schweling fishing boat… whatever the Devil that’s supposed to look like. Any clue?”

“Never seen one in my life,” Lewrie told him with a shrug.

“Anyway, the most intriguing part of the written description is that there’s a long box atop the upper platter that runs the length of the boat, tall enough to allow the soldiers aboard to sit below it and be sheltered from fire,” Peel said, grimacing with mock dis-belief. “Four or five abreast, and twenty or so deep, so they can sit there in the same formations they’d form in the field… Napoleon Bonaparte is very fond of the column when attacking opposing lines. Not keen on it, myself, but it’s seemed to have served him well, so far. Now, what we are worried about is whether that protective box, and the wide slope of the upper hull from the waterline up, might be armoured somehow. If the French have re-enforced these boats, they might be the principal craft to drive themselves right onto the beaches, and be proof against shot from any of our field guns or horse artillery batteries. Our fellow in Paris describes the damned things as three-fifths of their length flat, with a rise of eight feet at the ends. They could come ashore like so many walruses!”

“Armoured? With iron plate, d’ye mean?” Lewrie gawped. “That’d make ’em top-heavy as Hell. Centre of gravity, metacentric height… all that?”

“You’ve been reading technical books?” Peel teased.

“Ye listen to others long enough, well…,” Lewrie shrugged off. “If they’re armoured, they’d be drawin’ a lot more water than three or four feet, Jemmy. I’ll allow that the breadth of their hulls’d buoy ’em up a good deal, but not that much. And if they’re that heavy, it would take a lot more sail area than a fishing boat’s t’drive ’em.”

“The report says that they only require a crew of five or six seamen,” Peel said, dredging half a roll through the juices and gravy on his plate for a last bite. “And some sort of paddle arrangement to propel them if the wind fails. What sort? The work done by soldiers? Really, Alan… if you see one, go after it, MacTavish’s experiments bedamned.”

“I’ll try and do my best.” Lewrie grinned back. “Anything else? Pick up the Golden Fleece? Slay Medusa while I’m at it?”

“What’s for dessert?” Peel asked, laughing heartily.

“I think my cook said there’s a bread pudding. Are we done on confidential topics, I’ll have my steward return,” Lewrie said, rising to go to the forward door to his cabins to speak with the Marine guard so he could pass word for Pettus and Jessop.

“Rather humble fare for a knight and baronet,” Peel mused once he’d returned to the dining-coach. Lewrie opened a covered dish.

“It comes with caramel sauce,” Lewrie said, after sticking one finger into the dish and licking it. “And don’t you start! It’s all a sham, anyway. Awarded for sympathy, not anything I did. The closest I ever got to something of note was years ago in the South Atlantic when we took the L’Uranie frigate. And the baronetcy… hmpf! King George was havin’ an off day, let’s leave it at that. Unless ye wish to hear the whole story.”

“Is it amusing?” Peel asked.

“Completely,” Lewrie assured him.

“Then do tell!”