The Invasion Year

over his shoulder he mounted a carronade slide, then its barrel, to the cap-rails of the bulwarks and swung out into the main-mast stays and rat-lines, slowly and deliberately making his way almost to the cat-harpings below the fighting top. Boot heels snug on the rat-lines and one arm looped to a stout stay, he turned to face out-board and extended the telescope.

At first, Penarth’s masts were in the way before the two barges got a goodly way on and began to bound towards the island. Lewrie had to laugh out loud to spot both the “beef to the heel” Lt. Clough and the stocky older “gotch-gut” Captain Speaks high aloft in her rigging, their own telescopes extended!

Reliant was rolling, making it difficult to keep the boats in his ocular; the urge to pull out his pocket-watch to check the time, and to keep his precarious hold aloft, and keep the telescope aimed at the same time, was a bit awkward, but…

Both barges were lowering their sails, at last, and hands began to haul the torpedoes in close alongside. The ant-sized Lt. Westcott and Midshipman Houghton clambered atop the torpedoes to remove those tompions, both clinging for dear life to the stand-pipe as the things rolled and wallowed, and the choppy sea broke over them.

In for a soakin’, and dry breeches, once back aboard, Lewrie thought as he watched them scramble. Seconds later, and they were in a clumsy rush back aboard their boats, and in understandable haste to quickly get away from those now-primed fourty kegs of gunpowder! As they gained their boats’ safety, each man displayed a bright yellow signal flag, wig-wagging to beat the band for a few seconds, in sign that they were successful. Tow-lines were cast off, and sails began to sprout; tillers were put hard-over, and the boats began to ghost away from the freed torpedoes, rapidly gathering way and coming about to beat “full and by” back towards Penarth and Reliant.

“What’s the rate of the tide, Mister Rossynton?” Lewrie called down to the Midshipman he had posted with the chip-log.

“Ehm… four and three-quarter knots, sir!”

Lewrie stayed in the shrouds long enough to make sure that the boats had made sufficient clearance from the torpedoes, even if they mal-functioned and blew up prematurely, then stowed away his telescope and carefully turned his body to face the shrouds and make his way to the deck.

“It will be a long slog back,” Lt. Merriman was telling Midshipman Entwhistle, “short-tacking home dead downwind of us.”

“Is someone keeping the time?” Lewrie asked, safely in-board and on solid oak planking once more.

“Aye, sir,” Merriman told him. “By pocket-watches and glasses. Though we don’t know which of our boats was in charge of the one set for a quarter-hour, or the half-hour.” Merriman had a watch with a second hand, as did Entwhistle, and a ship’s boy standing nearby had turned a set of sand-glasses as soon as the yellow signal flags had been displayed. The boy swiped his runny nose on his shirt sleeve, almost dancing a jig as he divided his attention between the timing glasses and the sea shoreward, impishly grinning in anticipation of a very big pair of bangs.

Lewrie put his hands in the small of his back and paced along the starboard bulwarks to the taffrails and back, chiding himself to act “captainly” and stoic, for a rare once. He tried humming a tune for a bit, but thought that a bit too much a sham, and left off. He resisted looking at his watch again as long as he could, then…

As soon as he pulled it from his breeches pocket, there came a stupendous roar, and he looked up to see what looked to be a mountain of seawater and smoke jut skyward!

“Huzzah!” the ship’s boy squealed, hopping up and down in glee.

And, “Huzzah!” from Reliant’s crew, most of whom were standing by the starboard rails, or in the rigging like so many starlings on a bare tree’s limbs.

“That’s the quarter-hour one, to the minute, ha ha!” Lieutenant Merriman gloated. “Tremendous! Simply tremendous, hey, Clarence?” he asked Spendlove. “God, look how tall and big a blast it is!”

“Rather big, aye, George,” Lt. Spendlove agreed rather glumly. “However… it was released about a mile from shore, as I adjudged by sextant, and even with nigh a five-knot tide to drive it, it still only made half a mile, by my reckoning.” Spendlove had a slate covered with trigonometric equations (he was a dab-hand navigator and mathematician), which he showed to one and all. “It appears that even this strong making tide is not enough to carry the things within range to do much real damage.”

“There’s still the half-hour one,” Merriman pooh-poohed, too taken with the seeming success of the first torpedo. “If it travels twice as far as the first, we could see clouds of mud in the explosion, in shoal water, which would represent the depths of water in which the French barges and such are reputed to be anchored outside their ports.”

And, as Lt. Westcott’s and Midshipman Houghton’s barges came alongside a quarter-hour later, the second torpedo exploded just like the first, on time but roughly half a mile to starboard of where they expected it to drift. It was impressively loud and tall, but no one could espy any of Merriman’s expected mud.

“Some vagary in the tide, perhaps,” Lt. Merriman puzzled.

“Wide of the mark, yes, George, but… far short of where one would expect it to drift. Still too far offshore, even released within a mile of the island,” Lt. Spendlove patiently countered. “And in full view and gun range of the French batteries, had we tried it out against them.”

“Well, perhaps Captain Speaks will let us try my drogues on the next batch,” Merriman rejoined, shrugging it off. “They’d be easy to rig up.”

“Signal from Penarth, sir,” Midshipman Grainger reported. “It is ‘To Weigh Anchor,’ sir.”

“Very well, Mister Grainger. Ah! Mister Westcott! And how was your little jaunt?” Lewrie asked his First Officer as he came back to quarterdeck. “Ye look a tad moist,” he teased him.

“ ’Tis a soggy duty, sir, having to ride the back of the damned thing like a boy on an ox,” Lt. Westcott wryly told him, flashing one of his brief white-teethed grins. “Out of the boat, into the boat… I missed my leap and got soaked from the waist down.”

“Ye’ll have to let the wind dry ye off, Mister Westcott. No goin’ below for a change of clothing,” Lewrie grinned as he told him. “For now, let’s get our anchors up and get the ship under way.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Westcott ruefully replied. “I expect that my breeches’ll drain, do I undo the knee buttons.”

* * *

There were no more trials that day, or for the next two, for the winds and seas got up, making the hoisting-out of more torpedoes too dangerous. The two ships stood off-and-on Guernsey, out to mid-Channel, and back again in shifting winds, rolling grey seas, and now-and-then showers of rain. It was only on the third day that the sky cleared and the seas abated, allowing a full day of trials with four catamaran torpedoes, two in the morning and two in the afternoon. All four reliably blew up on time, but nowhere near enough to shore, nor anywhere near where they were expected to drift from the points at which they were released.

They stood back out to sea for the evening, and Penarth put up a hoist that Lewrie was sure Speaks detested; he requested permission to come aboard Reliant, instead of ordering Lewrie and all of his officers and Mids to come aboard Penarth for a conference.

“We’ll have all but the officer and Mids of the watch to dine, Yeovill,” Lewrie warned his talented cook. “Maybe a good feed’ll make the fellow feel a tad better. Do your best.”

Not ten minutes later, one of Penarth’s boats made the crossing to Reliant, and both Captain Speaks and Lieutenant Clough were piped aboard.

“Sorry for the intrusion, Captain Lewrie,” Speaks began as soon as he gained the quarterdeck, “but we’ve too much to go over with your people who’ve handled the damned things. Take too many of them away from their duties, what?” Speaks added, puffing from his clamber up the side, and looking mortified that he’d had to ask.

“I’ll summon everyone but the Sailing Master, sir,” Lewrie said. “And welcome aboard.”