The Invasion Year

“The fog’s thinning to seaward, sir, and there’s a bit of wind from the West,” Houghton informed him as his capture solidified from the fog; she could be made out nearly two hundred yards off, about the range of Lewrie’s breech-loading Ferguson rifle-musket. With any luck, the sea-breeze would spring to life and would be strong enough for towing both prizes out on larboard tack, one bound to Reliant’s stern and the second bound to the stern of the first barge!

And alter course, at last, a bit more Nor’westerly, and clear the French coast before the fog burns completely off, Lewrie schemed.

“Listen, sir,” Westcott pointed out. “It seems we’ve upset the French.”

The mournful baying of fog horns had turned urgent and rapid, more like a pack of hounds that had run a fox to its earth. Added to that baying were a couple of trumpets.

“I didn’t know the French were much fond of fox-hunting, sir,” Lt. Westcott said with a laugh. “Hear that? ’Ta- tara-tara!! Yoicks, tally-ho! There must be one sporting fellow out there.”

“It does sound like a fox-hunt, doesn’t it?” Lewrie mused. “Are you a hunter, Mister Westcott?”

“We’re small-holders, sir… just fifty-odd acres,” Lt. Westcott said with a dismissive shrug, “so we only get invited the once each year, and I never saw the point. Steeplechasing at the gallop’s more to my liking, and I could do that any time. In fact, I’ve always felt sorry for the fox. Tried to make a pet of one when I was little, and you can imagine how that played out,” he added, chuckling.

“Fox kits and otter cubs… my son Hugh was mad for either, or both,” Lewrie rejoined with a laugh.

“Damn my eyes, is that a breeze, sir?” Westcott said, turning to look seaward, then aloft.

“Not much of one, but it’s from the West,” Lewrie replied as he looked aloft to the sails, which were, rustling uncertainly, trimmed to cup the land-breeze and now presented with one from the opposite tack. “Hands to the braces and sheets, Mister Westcott. Let’s make the most of it and get a goodly way on her. Mister Merriman?”

“Here, sir!”

“Rig towing lines from the stern to one boat, and another to the second,” Lewrie ordered. “And have the prize parties take in those paddle things, with an experienced helmsman in each.”

“Aye aye, sir!”

“Once we’re trimmed to the wind, Mister Caldwell, shape course Nor’-Nor’west, so we pass between Jersey and Alderney,” Lewrie told the Sailing Master. “Once we’re out in the Channel, we’ll take a bee-line for Portsmouth!”

BOOK V

Ye true honest Britons who love your own land

Whose sires were so brave, so victorious, so free,

Who always beat France when they took her in hand

Come join honest Britons in chorus with me.

Should the French dare invade us, thus armed with our poles,

We’ll bang their bare ribs, make their lantern jaws ring;

For your beef-eating, beer-drinking Britons are souls

Who will shed their last blood for their Country and King!

~POPULAR TAVERN SONG

CIRCA 1757 CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Anyone who was anyone in the Navy wished to see the odd French contraptions once Reliant towed them into Portsmouth harbour. The Surveyor of the Navy, Sir William Rule, and the Deputy Controller of the Navy, Captain Henry Duncan, came down from London to gawk and wonder, in company with the Port Admiral, Lord Gardner, and the Commissioner of HM Dockyards at Portsmouth, Captain Sir Charles Saxton, Bart. The Foreign Office sent down a functionary, and there were some “redcoat” Army types rather high in rank who evinced great curiosity about what sort of threat the landing barges might make. There were representatives from the Pitt government, along with a select group of Navy captains charged with patrolling the Channel, so they could recognise the damned things should they run across them in future.

Lieutenants Westcott and Merriman prepared detailed sketches of the things, several sets done by hand, for no one wanted to trust the drawings to even a government printer. And, Lewrie was “on show” for each curious visitor to explain their capture, and how they handled in the open sea, but, if he had imagined a hero’s welcome, he was greatly disappointed. There was no celebration dinner, no presentation sword or set of silver plate, no band, no parade through the streets with a cheering crowd, or several dozen sailors replacing the horse team to draw him in an open carriage, either. And a fireworks show and a Te Deum mass at St. Thomas A’Becket’s Church were right out, too.

The pair of boats that Reliant had captured were hurriedly covered with great swaths of sailcloth and towed into an empty graving dock, then placed under armed Marine guard.

“Well, damme, Captain Lewrie, but ye do keep popping up with one surprise after another,” Admiral Lord Gardner commented after making a clumsy, arthritic way aboard one of them in company with his Flag-Captain, Niles. “They’ve a lot of these things, d’ye imagine?”

“The rumours say three or four hundred, my lord,” Lewrie said.

“First that nonsense about torpedoes, now these,” Lord Gardner went on, peering down into the bowels of the barge where the soldiers would sleep, sup, and shelter. “Three or four hundred, did ye say?”

“So I was told by a friend in Secret Branch, my lord.”

This tour was the fifth that Lewrie had given to various officials, and it was getting old, by then. The lack of praise beyond the usual “Good show!” was irksome, too. He imagined that if Nelson had come across them, that fame-hungry fellow would have commissioned special editions of all the London papers, with illustrations to boot!

“Damned waste of good artillery, packing a twenty-four-pounder in the bows,” Lord Gardner went on in a grumble. “Do the French think they can use them as gunboats, too? Wheel them round with those huge paddles? I saw armed galleys in the Mediterranean in my youth, but… it looks iffy to me.”

“Concentrating all the paddles in the forward end, too,” Captain Niles added. “I suppose they work well enough in a river but not at sea. Has anyone tried paddling them about?”

“Once we made port, sir,” Lewrie told him with a grimace, “to shift them alongside. They don’t row worth a damn, nor steer, either. They’re fitted with a tiller to the exposed rudder, and my helmsmen about wore themselves out on the way here under tow, tryin’ to follow the stern posts of the leadin’ barge, or my frigate. A handful o’ lee helm, then a handful o’ weather helm. We did hoist their sails, to steady ’em, but that didn’t help much. I’d imagine that did one try ’em under sail, without bein’ towed, they’d wallow from beam-to-beam, be slow as cold treacle, and with their flat bottoms, they’d make lee-way like a wood chip.”

“Heh heh heh,” the Port Admiral, softly, evilly cackled, bending down to survey the interior more closely. “How many soldiers might it carry, Lewrie?”

“These large versions are said to carry an hundred, my lord. A shorter one may carry about eighty,” Lewrie told him.

“One hundred Frogs, cooped up down there on those benches, or in those slat beds, my my!” Lord Gardner said, enjoying the image. “Cold rations. I see no galley facilities. No ‘heads,’ either.”

“Rations for five or six days, I heard, sir,” Lewrie supplied. “Though, part of that might be for after they landed in England before they could loot and pillage the countryside… or hope to.”

“Bonaparte must not have much regard for his soldiers, milord,” Captain Niles imagined, “if he expected them