The Invasion Year

“Driven,” Lewrie glumly agreed, cautious to not be heard making unfavourable comments about a senior officer; it just wasn’t done!

“One hopes they go boom as advertised, sir, on time and all that…,” Westcott went on in a guarded mutter, heaving a leery shrug. “If they don’t, one also hopes Admiralty allows modifications. If not, I fear that Captain Speaks takes the project too seriously, sir?”

“Privately, Mister Westcott, we may think what we wish, but for the hands, we’ll just to have to ‘soldier on,’ ” Lewrie told him, tapping a finger on his own lips. “Make the best of it without quibbles?”

“ ‘Growl we may, but go we must,’ aye, sir,” Westcott said with a resigned sigh.

“It’d be best did we not even growl, sir,” Lewrie japed.

“Aye, sir, aye, sir, two bags full!” Westcott quipped back, and clicked his heels together as he raised two fingers to his hat.

If they don’t work… and I’m pretty sure they won’t, Lewrie thought as Westcott and the others made their way below to take their ease for an hour or so; there’ll be Hell t’pay. And do we raise our suggestions again, will Speaks be desperate enough t’listen, or will he snap all our heads off?

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

“I suppose this beats convoying, sir,” Lt. Westcott said before he departed the anchored frigate for his first taste of picking up one of the catamaran torpedoes to tow it in, prime it, and release it.

“We may look back on those days as idyllic, aye,” Lewrie said. “Off ye go, then. Don’t get yourself ‘hoist by your own petard.’ ”

“By God I’ll try, sir! Ready, Mister Houghton?”

“Eager to go, sir!” their eldest Midshipman perkily replied.

“Ah, the enthusiasm of the young!” Westcott laughed.

The afternoon before they sailed from Portsmouth, they had seen Captain Blanding once again, as Modeste had departed for The Downs to gather a fresh West Indies-bound trade. Their old comrades-in-arms of last year, Parham in Pylades and Lt. Hyde in Cockerel, had sailed with him, re-enforced by a brace of brig-sloops. Blanding’s two- decker 64 flew a red broad pendant, a solid red pendant marking Blanding as a substantive Commodore, no longer a senior Post-Captain, so that might have been a good-enough sop to his ego, along with his knighthood and baronetcy… even if the duty assigned him would be sheer drudgery and frustration. Bound for the West Indies in late Summer, too… he’d sail into the start of hurricane season, by the time he arrived, and most-like would have to winter over, or risk a late-Autumn departure at the very height of the storm season!

Dreadful as all that would be, Lewrie almost envied him!

“Coffee, sir?” Pettus asked once he’d gained permission to come up to the quarterdeck. He held Lewrie’s battered old black-iron pot by the bail and one towelled hand underneath it, with a string of pewter mugs clanking together from his elbow.

“Aye, Pettus, thankee,” Lewrie answered, taking a mug.

“I’d take a cup, Pettus,” Lt. Spendlove cajoled.

“Then here you go, Mister Spendlove,” Pettus cheerfully agreed. “Black only… what the French call noir.”

Lewrie went over to the starboard bulwarks to watch Westcott’s and Houghton’s thirty-two-foot barges row over to Penarth, which was anchored about two cables off. One torpedo was already in the water, and the second to be tried this morning was being hoisted out, its grapnels at either end-Lewrie could not quite deem them bow or stern!-attached as soon as it emerged from the deep hold and rested on deck for a bit.

Both ships lay West-Sou’west of Guernsey, and St. Peter Port, about two miles offshore, anchored by best bowers and stern kedges to keep them beam-on to the island, though the holding ground was “iffy,” and the strong Channel tides were already in full flood, making thigh-thick anchor cables groan in the hawse-holes. If a French warship did appear, they would have to cut their cables and lose their anchors in a rush so that Penarth and her secret torpedoes could escape, and the frigate to engage the foe to save her. Lewrie would have liked them to have remained under way for the first trials, or at the least come to the wind fetched-to, but Captain Speaks had insisted, fearful, perhaps, that the tide would carry both ships into too-shallow water and take the ground, right behind their own torpedoes, or almost atop them when they exploded! If they exploded.

The second torpedo swayed high over Penarth’s bulwarks, inching upwards and outwards in fits and starts as her crew grunted and heaved on capstan and windlass bars. There was a goodly sea running, and for a time it looked as if the collier’s rolling would swing the torpedo so far out-board that the weight would over-set her, and God help the men tailing on the steadying lines to check those swings!

At last, though, the jib-arms and fore-course yard dipped far enough to lower the torpedo out of Reliant’s sight, below her starb’d bulwarks, and Lewrie let out a sigh of relief. If the torpedo slammed against Penarth’s hull hard enough, would that set the pistol off?

He heard a long “whew!” nearby, and turned to see Lieutenant Clarence Spendlove, still with a wince on his face and his eyes wide.

“Perhaps they’d do better towed by the collier from the outset, sir… if they are as water-tight as they claim them to be,” Spendlove said with a dubious shake of his head. “Anything but a flat calm…?”

“Then the sight of ’em’d let the secret out of the bag, Mister Spendlove,” Lewrie said, “and scare the Hell out of everyone in Portsmouth! And with good bloody reason!”

“There is that, sir,” Spendlove agreed, chuckling a little. He sobred quickly, though. “If they prove successful, and we launch them by the dozens against the French, though, sir… by the hundreds, what will the world make of them, sir? What will they say of us, of Great Britain, for using them? That we’re clever, or that the torpedoes are infernal engines?”

“Frankly, Mister Spendlove, novel ways t’blow Frogs t’Hell are fine with me,” Lewrie told him with a wry grin and a shrug expressing dis-interest in the world’s opinion. “The onliest problem I have with ’em is that none of the devices we’ve seen or heard described to us are worth a tinker’s dam, and if we do launch ’em by the hundreds, we’ll look hellish-desperate, and the failure’d give us a black eye. Mark my words, sir, fail they will. The duty assigned us… well, at least it keeps us from more convoy work, and it does keep us close to port. Almost like day-sailin’, or yachtin’ like the royal family!”

“Fresher victuals, aye, sir,” Spendlove said, perking up a bit, relieved to know that his captain somewhat shared his distaste for the devices… if not for the same reasons as he held.

“And nigh-daily mail service, Mister Spendlove,” Lewrie added, thinking of Lydia Stangbourne’s latest chatty letter.

Lewrie took a sip of his coffee, then wandered over to the larboard bulwarks for a bit, grimacing at the sight of the bow and stern anchor cables slanting away at noticeable angles from the bow hawse-hole and the taffrail hawse. The wind pressed upon Reliant’s hull, on her freeboard, and the tide-race shoved at her “quick-work” below the waterline, together. He’d posted a Midshipman at either cable to keep an eye on the angles, and their tautness, for the first sign of slippage, but was still worried. He looked up to the mast-heads where lookouts were posted to sing out at the first glimpse of French snoopers. They were alert, intent on their portion of the horizon, but silent so far. So far so good, he thought, with fingers covertly crossed.

“Mister Westcott and Mister Houghton are setting out from the collier, sir,” Lt. Merriman reported.

“Very good,” Lewrie said, returning to the starboard side. He got there just in time to espy the two barges standing out, clear of Penarth, lug-sails and jibs squeaking aloft and beginning to fill.

Much as Lewrie had loathed going too far aloft since his Midshipman days, he had to. With a telescope slung