The Invasion Year

“Thankee, Mister Westcott. Reliant is yours for the time being. Keep her off the mud,” Lewrie said, first formally, then with a laugh. He doffed his hat, then descended the man-ropes and battens to the boat, leaping the last few feet to stumble into the arms of his oarsmen, and then scrambling aft to its stern- sheets, by Desmond.

“Shove off, bow man,” Desmond ordered, his voice muted in conspiratorial fashion. “Out oars, starboard, and make a bit o’ way… out oars, larboard, and pull t’gither! Set the stroke, Pat.”

Reliant and Fusee had closed the French coast after full dark, creeping in with leadsmen in the fore chains sounding the depths to a distance of two miles offshore, where both had anchored to single bowers, both vessels completely darkened. Despite the mugginess of a warm Summer night, all the oarsmen had been ordered to wear their dark blue jackets and tarred black hats, just as Lewrie had donned his old plain coat and doubled it over his chest to hide the whiteness of his shirt. The night was so dark that the only way Desmond knew how to steer for Fusee was to make out the foam breaking round her waterline.

The shore was much easier to see, even two miles off, for the towns of St. Valery sur Somme and Le Crotoy were lit up with street lanthorns or storefront lamps, one town to either side of the mouth of the Somme river and the deep bay axed into the shore between them. It was easier, too, to make out the many riding lights of an host of anchored peniches and caiques in the small harbours and up either bank of the river; so many wee riding lights that the flotillas resembled an extension of the towns that had flooded down the shoreline to fill the entire bay.

“Mister Merriman still behind us, Desmond?” Lewrie asked, looking astern.

“Seems t’be, sor,” Desmond replied after a quick peek for the splash of oars-darkened oars, not their usual natty white and gay blue. Even both cutters’ hulls had been smeared with galley soot.

Lewrie patted himself down once more, seeking his small boat compass, the hilt of his hanger, and his pair of double-barrelled pistols, his powder flask and leather pouch for spare cartouches. How he could read his compass without a candle would be another matter.

“Hoy, the boat!” someone called as they neared Fusee.

“Reliant Number One!” Desmond called back.

“Aye, come alongside to larboard!” the voice yelled back.

Desmond put the tiller over to swing the cutter round Fusee’s stern. “Easy all,” he ordered, to ghost near her sides.

“That you, Captain Lewrie?” Mr. MacTavish asked in an exaggerated whisper from one of the barges that sat rocking and wallowing by the converted bomb’s bows.

“Here, sir!” Lewrie called back, forcing himself to sound eager.

“We’ve four torpedoes ready in the water, ready for towing as soon as you’re ready to receive them, sir,” MacTavish said, sounding gleeful.

“Christ!” Lewrie muttered, imagining four of the beasts primed and ready, their spikes and grapnels, affixed, bobbing close together!

“Hoy, the boat!” again from the quarterdeck.

“Reliant Number Two!” Lt. Merriman announced as his cutter came in sight, ghosting up behind Lewrie’s.

“I will see to one of them, Midshipman Frederick the second,” MacTavish continued as loud as he dared, as if a French guard boat was within hearing distance. “McCloud’s instructed him thoroughly in its operation, and it’s simple enough, after all.”

Says you! Lewrie sourly thought; Is that the lad’s name?

“Our two are ready for towing,” MacTavish went on. “Lieutenant Johns will pass you your tow-lines. Sure you have everything in hand, sir? Row in abreast, about one hundred yards apart, and release them as one?”

“If we can see to do that, aye,” Lewrie told him.

“Well, er…,” MacTavish flummoxed.

Didn’t think that quite through, did ye? Lewrie scoffed to himself.

“I’ve a small hooded lanthorn, and if I spark my flint tinder that may create a signal,” MacTavish extemporised quickly. “I will be the one to judge the heights of the masts, and the proper time to set them free. When I signal, set your timers for fourty-five minutes.”

“Bow man, hook on,” Desmond ordered, steering the cutter under Fusee’s larboard side just long enough for a towing line to be thrown down to them and secured to a stern cleat. “Ready, sor.”

“Make way, Desmond, and get us clear of the others. To starboard of Fusee’s barges.”

“Aye, sor.”

“Jaysus, Joseph, an’ Mary,” stroke-oar, Patrick Furfy, muttered as the tow-line paid out to the point that the massive torpedo put a strain on it, slowing the cutter to a crawl. He freed one hand long enough to make a sketchy cross over his chest.

As delightful as Reliant’s sailors had thought the idea of blowing Frenchmen to Kingdom Come, the explanation of how they would have to deal with the torpedoes’ inner workings had made many of them look queasy and “cutty-eyed.” Primed pistols to be cocked? Clocks set at the last moment, too, right alongside 120 pounds of gunpowder? Brr! If their officers or their senior Midshipmen did it, that was one thing, but if the time came for a massive attack with dozens of them, and it would possibly be their duty to set the clocks and prime the pistols and get away, that was quite another! Which was why Lewrie was here in Reliant’s lead cutter. Whether he cared to be, or not!

Lewrie could see two faint grey smears off to his left as the two barges slowly stroked away to form half of the line-abreast, white-painted hulls sooted to blend in with the sea and the night. He turned to look aft again, and made out Lt. Merriman’s cutter just beginning to stroke free of Fusee’s sides.

“Let’s be about it, then, Desmond,” Lewrie told his Cox’n. “We will form line-abreast with those two boats to larboard.”

“Aye, sor,” his usually cocky Irish Cox’n grimly replied.

The oars creaked in their canvas-wrapped tholes in unison, and the cutter surged to each long stroke, rocking and wallowing between to the chops and rolls of the sea, rising and dipping to the scend with a faint sound of surging water down its flanks. The hands dug in and uttered faint grunts to drive forward, the cask torpedo’s towing line raising a groan of its own, dragging against the rowers’ efforts as if the cutter was tethered to a stone landing stage. So slowly it seemed that the time went by, with the lights of Le Crotoy and St. Valery drawing no closer, the anchored trots of invasion boats remaining tiny and distant, with the threat of a cruising gunboat lying just beyond their sight ’til one might suddenly loom up, demanding identification, with its guns run out and ready for firing!

Then, in a twinkling, Lewrie thought them too close to the enemy boats, as if he’d managed to nod off for long minutes and was presented with being at close quarters, awakened by some Frenchman crying, “Qui va la?” or the bark of a gun! He could make out individual shops and houses ashore, spot waggons in the streets, espy people strolling about, and the peniches and caiques anchored in their dozens were so close that he could almost make out details in their rigging!

Close enough, dammit? he asked the aether, turning to peer out to larboard for MacTavish’s signal, for a spark from his flintlock and tinder lighter, or the covert flash from his hooded lanthorn, but there was nothing to pierce the darkness. He couldn’t even see either of Fusee’s barges. If it had been up to him, he’d have signalled for the torpedoes’ release five minutes before! Off to starboard, there was no sign of Lt. Merriman’s cutter any longer. So when…?

“Izzat a spark, sir?” an oarsman whispered.

Yes, and just thankee, Jesus! Lewrie crowed to himself, for he could see it, too, as MacTavish cocked and fired his igniter over and over.

“Easy all, Desmond,” Lewrie whispered to his Cox’n. “Furfy and Hartnett… haul on the tow-line and bring the thing alongside.”

“Aye, sor!” Furfy softly replied, crossing himself once more.