The Invasion Year

Lewrie went to the binnacle cabinet to fetch his telescope… just in time for Chalky to be the pursued, and take bottled-up refuge atop the cabinet. Toulon, always the less-agile since he was a kitten, could only stand on his hind legs with his front paws on the woodwork and make moaning sounds, whilst Chalky hissed back and spat.

“Ever’body’s celebratin’, seems like,” Quartermaster Hook, at the helm, chuckled.

“Many a slip, ’twixt the crouch and the leap, though,” Lewrie said with a grin. “Keep yer fingers crossed,” he cautioned as he went to the bulwarks for a better view.

“Yes, by God!” Lewrie crowed, once he’d had a look-see. Faded, patched, and sun-worn parchment-tan canvas was sprouting aboard every remaining vessel in harbour. Closer to shore, several British barges or cutters were loafing with idled oars or furled lug-sails, waiting with small boarding parties from various ships to go aboard them once their “honourable” broadsides were fired, and their colours struck, to oversee their disarming. Lewrie lowered his telescope a trifle, just in time to see one of the boats hold up a single signal flag from the new Popham Code… “To Weigh”!

“Excuse me, sir, but, should we Beat to Quarters?” Lt. Westcott asked, close by Lewrie’s side, with a telescope of his own.

“In case they mean t’make a fight of it?” Lewrie asked back with a grin. “Ye didn’t see how many people they’ve taken aboard, Mister Westcott. They’re beyond over-crowded, without enough room to swing a cat, much less serve their guns.”

Dear as I’d desire it, Lewrie told himself; if it was just us and their sailors and such… without the civilians, I’d love to lay into them, the murderin’ bastards!

“Deck, there!” Midshipman Rossyngton called down, again. “The French… are… under way! A seventy-four… is… leading!”

“Took their own sweet time,” Lewrie said with a snort, now he was satisfied that they would come out.

“The tide will help fetch them out, but they have waited a bit too late, sir… the land-breeze won’t last long,” Westcott said.

“With just the tide, aye… they’ll be boxin’ the compass in an hour,” Lewrie agreed. “Un-manageable.”

“Perhaps the smaller of them could employ sweeps?” Lt. Westcott posed, tongue-in-cheek.

“Were it me, I’d paddle a log with my hands, to get out of port,” their Third Officer, Lt. George Merriman, added with a guffaw.

* * *

The leading ship, the two-decker, came on as ponderously, and as slowly, as treacle poured on porridge on a winter’s day. Even under all her course sails and tops’ls, and with her jibs and staysails loosely sheeted and bellied out, she barely was making steerage way. A vessel so heavy and deep-draughted found it hard to overcome her own inertia, even on a good day, with a following or beam wind. Lewrie pulled out his pocket-watch, stuck an upright thumb against her to measure with, and growled under his breath as he realised that the two-decker was not making much more than two or three knots, and was still no larger than his thumb- nail, after a full half-hour under sail! It would take her another half-hour just to pass the breakwater to the open sea… with her potentially swifter and lighter consorts bunched up astern of her, and their own sails trapping and stealing the wind of the land-breeze… which was slowly fading.

Should’ve let the wee’uns sail, first, Lewrie thought; but, hey, they’re French, and they will do it orderly, t’look proud.

“At long, bloody last!” Lt. Westcott muttered as the flagship of the French squadron passed through the breakwater and reached open waters… as a weak gust of wind arose, and soughed cross their frigate’s decks. The Nor’east Trades were coming back to life, and over yonder, the French two-decker’s sails shivered and rustled in gross disorder for a moment before being sheeted home and braced round to adapt to it, slowly bearing up roughly West-Nor’west, presenting her larboard side to Reliant and finally showing a tiny mustachio of foam under her forefoot as she put on another knot or two.

And, when she was about a mile offshore, still two miles short of Reliant, her guns began to roar down her larboard side; first the spewing of gunpowder smoke, then seconds later the flat thuds of the explosions.

“A full broadside, I say!” Lt. Clarence Spendlove, the Second Officer, exclaimed. “Her pair of bow chase guns would have sufficed.”

“Showy,” Marine Lt. Simcock commented.

“And to Hell with you perfidious Britons,” Lt. Westcott added with a laugh. “Ve show vous ’ow to surrender vis panache!”

And, once the last after guns of her upper and lower batteries had shot their bolts, and the immense pall of spent powder smoke was drifting leeward enough to see the two-decker again, the blue-white-red Tricolour of France was hauled down to drape over her taffrails and transom. A lug-sailed cutter flying a British Jack quickly made its way alongside her to take possession.

Next came the Indiamen, large merchant ships or former ships of the line employed as troop transports; they mounted many fewer guns than the warship that had preceded them, so they fired off only a half-dozen for their “honourable broadsides,” perhaps only bow-chasers and some light quarterdeck pieces, before striking their colours, as well. One of those impressively big frigates passed through the breakwater, after, and found her wind, rapidly gathering an impressive turn of speed before firing her final broadside, and striking her colours… followed by a gaggle of brigs, snows, or locally-built schooners, all overloaded and clumsy on the ebbing tide and the scant wind, but making decent progress to freedom and safety. The second frigate, however…

“Damn my eyes, but, has she taken the ground, yonder?” Lieutenant Spendlove declared, a telescope to his eye. “She doesn’t seem to be moving. There, sir!”

“Yawing all over Creation before that, aye, Clarence,” Lieutenant Merriman was quick to agree with him. “Good God, it appears that she has… just past the breakwater!”

“The land-breeze failed her before she got much way upon her, it appears, sir,” Lt. Westcott said, turning to Lewrie. “She looks aground on the eastern breakwater… must have been crowded onto the shallows.”

“Or, carried there by the tide, with no steerage way,” Lewrie supposed aloud. “Mister Caldwell?”

“Uhm, there’s a rocky shoal, upon which they built the breakwater, sir,” the Sailing Master quickly supplied, with no need to refer to his harbour chart. “And a wide field of spoil rock and sand either side of it, and, if not dredged properly, has encroached on the entrance channel. Do the Trades turn brisk, she’ll pound herself open. Poor devils.”

A British rowing boat, one waiting to take possession of a prize, was wheeling about and stroking hard towards the French frigate, now to render what assistance she could. Another, the flagship’s barge that had borne Lewrie and the others to the Cap Francois quays the day before, was approaching her, too, now displaying a long signal flag held up by her Midshipman; “Assistance.”

“Now, he’s come prepared for anything,” Lewrie japed.

“Is there any aid we might give them, sir?” Lt. Spendlove, ever a generous soul, asked.

“Hmm,” was Lewrie’s reply as he mulled the matter.

The Frogs could row their anchors out, and warp themselves off, he reckoned in his head; Or, we could rig tow-lines of the stern anchor cables, but… that’d put us on a lee shore, in those rocks.

“Mister Caldwell, how close could we anchor to her?” Lewrie asked the Sailing Master. “Near enough to pass her towin’ cables?”

“Sadly, no, sir,” Caldwell told him. “None of our cables are as long as would be needed… less the warps taken round the mizen mast or capstan.”

One hundred twenty fathoms was the length of the fleet and the bower anchor cables; 720 feet, and Reliant would put herself in that French frigate’s predicament did they try to get that close.

Lewrie took another long look with his telescope, pondering and measuring. “She might need a lateral haulin’ off, in addition to what forward haul they might get with their own anchors.