The Bomb Vessel

'I'm sure I'm begging your pardon, Mr Rogers.' Rogers hurried away shouting for Matchett and Willerton. 'Why he's a touchy one, Mr Drinkwater.'

'We're agreed on a number of things, Mr Tumilty, not least that we'd both like to add 'Captain' to our name, but I believe there was much bad blood between the artillery and the navy the last time an operation like this took place.'

'Sure, I'd not be knowing about that sir,' replied Tumilty, all injured innocence again.

Virago creaked and leaned to starboard as the weight came on the tackles. The sun had already set and in the long twilight the hands laboured on. The black mass of the ten-inch mortar, a little under five feet in length, hung above the lightened hoy.

At the windlass Mr Matchett supervised the men on the bars. Yard and stay tackles had been rigged with their hauling parts wound on in contrary directions so that as the weight was eased on the yard arms it was taken up on the stay tackles. The doubled-up mainstay sagged under the weight and Rogers lowered the mortar as quickly as possible. Mr Willerton's party with handspikes eased the huge iron gun into its housing and snapped over the cap-squares. Virago was upright again, though trimming several inches by the head.

'Throw off all turns, clear away the foretackles, rig the after tackles!'

It was as Drinkwater had said. The wind had died and the first mortar had come aboard without fuss. Mr Tumilty had left the pure seamanship to the navy and gone to closet himself with his sergeant and Mr Trussel, while they inspected the powder stowage and locked all the shell rooms, powder rooms, fuse rooms and filling rooms that Willerton had lined with the deal boards supplied by Chatham Dockyard.

The tackles suspended from the main and crossjack yards were overhauled and hooked onto the carefully fitted slings round the thirteen-inch mortar. Next the two centreline tackles were hooked on. To cope with the additional weight of the larger mortar Drinkwater had ordered these be rigged from the main and mizzen tops, arguing the mizzen forestay was insufficient for the task.

Again the hauling parts were led forward and the slack taken up. There were some ominous creakings but after half an hour the trunnions settled on the bed and Mr Willerton secured the second set of capsquares. The sliding section of the mortar hatches were pulled over and the tarpaulins battened down. The last of the daylight disappeared from the riot of cloud to the west and the hands, grumbling or chattering according to their inclination, were piped below.

For the first time since the days of disillusion that followed his joining the ship, Nathaniel Drinkwater felt he was again, at least in part, master of his own destiny.

'Well, Mr Tumilty, perhaps you would itemise the ordnance stores on board.'

'Sure, and I will. We have two hundred of the thirteen-inch shell carcases, two hundred ten-inch, one hundred and forty round, five-vented carcases for the thirteens, forty oblong carcases for the tens. Five thousand one pound round shot, the same as you have for your swivels…'

'What do you want them for?' asked Rogers.

'Well now, Mr Rogers,' said Tumilty, tolerantly lowering his list, 'if you choke up the chamber of a thirteen inch mortar with a couple of hundred of they little devils, they fall like iron rain on trenches, or open works without casemates, or beaches, or anywhere else you want to clear of an enemy. Now to continue, we have loaded two hundred barrels of powder, an assortment as you know of fine cylinder, restoved and mealed powder. I have three cases of flints, five of fuses, six rolls of worsted quick-match, a quantity of rosin, turpentine, sulphur, antimony, saltpetre, spirits of wine, isinglass and red orpiment for Bengal lights, blue fires and fire balls. To be sure, Mr Rogers, you're sitting on a mortal large bang.'

'And you've everything you want?' Tumilty nodded. 'Are you happy with things, Mr Trussel?'

'Aye, sir, though I'd like Mr Willerton to make a new powder box. Ours is leaky and if you're thinking that… well, maybe we might fire a mortar or two ourselves, then you'll need one to carry powder up to the guns.'

'Mr Trussel's right, Mr Drinkwater. The slightest leak in a powder box lays a trail from the guns to the filling room in no time at all. If the train fires the explosion'll be even quicker!' They laughed at Tumilty's diabolical humour; the siting of those ugly mortars had intoxicated them all a little.

'Very well, gentlemen. We'll look at her for trim in the morning and hope that Martin does not say anything.'

'Let us hope Captain Martin'll be looking after his own mortars and not overcharging them so that we haven't to give up ours,' said Tumilty, blowing his red nose. He went on: 'And who had you in mind to be throwing the shells at, Mr Drinkwater?'

'Well it's no secret that the Baltic is the likely destination, gentlemen,' he looked round at their faces, expectant in the gently swinging light from the lamp. From the notebooks he had inherited from old Blackmore, sailing master of the frigate Cyclops, he had learned a great deal about the Baltic. Blackmore had commanded a snow engaged in the timber trade. 'If the Tsar leagues the navies of the north, we'll have the Danes and Swedes to deal with, as well as the Russians. If he doesn't, we've still the Russians left. They're based at Revel and Cronstadt; iced up now, but Revel unfreezes in April. As to the Swedes at Carlscrona, I confess I know little of them. Of the Danes at Copenhagen,' he shrugged, 'I do not think we want to leave 'em in our rear.'

'It's nearly the end of February now,' said Trussel, 'if we are to fight the Danes before the Russkies get out of the ice, we shall have to move soon.'

'Aye, and with that dilatory old bastard Hyde Parker to command us, we may yet be too late,' added Rogers.

'Yes, I'm after thinking it's the Russkies.' Tumilty nodded, tugging at the hairs on his cheeks.

'Well, they say Hyde Parker's marrying some young doxy, so I still say we'll be too late.' Rogers scratched the side of his nose gloomily.

'They say she's young enough to be his daughter,' grinned Trussel.

'Dirty old devil.'

'Lucky old sod.'

'Tis what comes of commanding in the West Indies and taking your admiral's eighth from the richest station in the service,' added the hitherto silent Easton.

'Well well, gentlemen, 'tis of no importance to us whom Admiral Parker marries,' said Drinkwater, 'I understand it is likely that Nelson will second him and he will brook no delay.'

'Perhaps, perhaps, sir, but I'd be willing to lay money on it,' concluded Rogers standing up, taking his cue from Drinkwater and terminating the meeting.

'Let us hope we have orders to proceed to the rendezvous at Yarmouth very soon, gentlemen. And now I wish you all a good night.'

Chapter Seven Action off the Sunk

 February 1801

Lieutenant Drinkwater hunched himself lower into his boat cloak, shivering from the effects of the low fever that made his head and eyes ache intolerably. The westerly wind had thrown a lowering overcast across the sky and then whipped itself into a gale, driving rain squalls across the track of the squadron as it struggled out of the Thames Estuary into the North Sea.

Their visible horizon was circumscribed by one such squall which hissed across the wave-caps and made Virago lean further to leeward as she leapt forward under its impetus. A roil of water foamed along the lee scuppers, squirting inboard through the closed gunports and Drinkwater could hear the grunts of the helmsmen as they leaned against the cant of the deck and the kicking resistance of the big tiller. A clicking of blocks told where the quartermaster took up the slack on the relieving tackles. Drinkwater shivered again, marvelling at the chill in his spine which was at odds with the burning of his head.

He knew it could be typhus, the ship-fever, brought aboard by the lousy draft of pressed men, but he was fastidious in the matter of bodily cleanliness and had not recently discovered lice or fleas upon his person. He had