An Ill Wind (17 page)

Their fire was having practically no effect: the fortress being round meant the cannonballs could rarely strike with any consequence and, on a stationary vessel they were more at risk than the defenders. Broadside after broadside had ripped out to hit at those walls, some missing completely, for, even anchored, the ship was subject to the tide and the swell while enough returned shot had missed the hulls to either hiss into the sea or slice through the rigging, setting that alight so that the fire engine was in constant use.

Toby Burns saw the springs let go so that both frigate and ship-of-the-line swung on their single anchors, thus reducing the size of the target they presented. Soon those same anchors were being plucked from the water, this as sails were sheeted home to take the ships out of range,
Fortitude
trailing smoke from smouldering wood as she did so: the bombardment had failed. Aboard Hotham’s flagship, Captain Holloway was required to work hard to keep off his face a smirk, certainly as long as his admiral was in plain view.

‘A poor showing,’ said Moore, ‘but damned brave.’

‘Quite, sir,’ the other officer replied, though the look on his face implied he disagreed.

‘I must report back to the shore, sir,’ Toby cried, ‘to say you have achieved your object.’

Colonel Moore let the tip of the walking stick touch his gold-edged, tricorn hat. ‘Then, young sir, you’d best be off, but tell whoever you are to report to we overlook the tower. A pair of cannon up here and we could make their lives warm.’

If the defenders on the tower at Mortella Point were cheered by their success, and thought themselves impervious to either ground assault or bombardment from the sea, they reckoned without the Royal Navy or the ingenuity of Colonel John Moore. Toby Burns, given he knew the man in command and the route to the redcoats’ camp, was employed as a messenger, running back and forth, convinced that every bush and
boulder hid a Frenchman, but through his offices a plan was hatched.

Next day they saw a stream of boats coming inshore, as well as near to a hundred sailors, to rig uprights and pulleys onto which were winched cannons and their trunnions, those brought in on a hatch cover lashed to empty barrels. More triangular stanchions were erected ashore, with yet more lines and blocks, this while a path was cut through the trees by the soldiers, the wood being taken up to where Colonel Moore was waiting. He had been examining the tower for some time and a notion of how to subdue it had come to him.

‘It seems a great pity to me, gentlemen,’ he eventually said to the assembled officers, ‘to waste all this firewood. It will make a bonny fire, I think.’

All day the sailors toiled, roving and rigging, hauling and lifting, creating a run of lifting gear that raised those two-ton lumps of metal up the steep hillsides, until finally they were ready to be put in the emplacements the bullocks had made ready. Also brought ashore, requested by Colonel Moore to the mystification of his naval contemporaries, was the equipment to heat shot, the long-handled carrier that could be lifted onto the fire and held there until the cannonball glowed.

Prior to heated shot, the range had been tried and established with round shot, but it was clear that, even plunging on to the fortress, the place was so sturdily built that little damage would be done, certainly not enough to entirely overcome defenders who could
shelter inside. Any break in the bombardment brought them rushing out to fire cannon now elevated to the maximum, which posed great danger to the sailors manning the British cannon and the redcoats who were alongside them, though it also exposed them: it was seen a pair were not swift enough when the British fire recommenced, and they paid the price, being cut in half by a volley.

‘Heated shot, sir?’ asked the officer commanding the party of sailors who had provided the men to both haul and work the guns – Lord Hood’s nephew, also called Samuel, captain of HMS
Juno
. ‘Against stonework?’

Colonel Moore smiled and handed over his telescope. ‘I bid you, sir, look upon the parapet of yonder tower and tell me what you see.’

Sam Hood took the glass and did as he was asked and it was clear that, whatever it was Moore had in mind, it was not immediately obvious.

‘Our French friends,’ the Colonel pointed out, ‘have lined the outer and inner parapet with a material called bass junk, the object of which is to defray shot and stop stone from shattering, which would send debris flying in all directions to the detriment of the men manning the guns. I believe, if I were to employ a naval expression, it would be a sort of “gammoning” and it extends all the way down to the flooring.’

Sam Hood, still looking through the telescope, smiled. ‘Would I be right in thinking this bass junk is flammable?’

‘It will not burn, sir, but it smokes like the devil.’

‘Then I look forward to seeing the effect of your heated shot, sir.’

Normal round shot was employed to clear the fortress gunners, who were through the trapdoor before the first ball landed, this so they would not see the heated shot. Loading that was a tricky affair, a task for men who knew their game, and not for the bullocks. Two sailors, each with a pair of handles, carried the red-hot shot to the cannon, not delaying, for that would obviate the purpose, but with care, given they were surrounded by powder in cartridges and barrels, which had only to be touched by those cannonballs to blow the whole encampment to perdition.

Loading had to be quick, any false tipping and the ball would miss the cannon muzzle, and it needed solid oak, slow to fire, to drive the ball home, with both the men tasked to load the ball and the man tasked to drive it down to its furthest seat getting well clear immediately their work was done, lest the heat conduct to the powder and set the whole thing off prematurely. The man on the flintlock did not hesitate either: the gun had been pre-aimed and he pulled the flintlock lanyard as soon as there was clear daylight before the muzzle.

The first ball flew over the top of the tower, leading Colonel Moore to speculate on the scientific possibility that the nature of the ball, allied to the amount of powder used, was affected by the heat. Range dropped, the process was repeated again, this time the ball
dropping into the top of that crown roast to roll until stopped by the parapet.

‘A few more, I think,’ the redcoat colonel said, ‘will do the trick.’

And it did: soon the whole top of the round tower was wreathed in smoke and it was obvious that the colder air of the interior was drawing in through the trapdoor that led to the next floor down, and in time, Moore had surmised, the whole building would be full of dense smoke making it impossible for those inside to breathe.

In the hope that his stratagem would work, the colonel had placed a company of his soldiers in the rocks leading to the base of the tower. The doorway, twenty feet in the air and unassailable even with ladders, was suddenly flung open and smoke began to billow out, followed by coughing and spluttering Frenchmen, the signal that the notion had worked sent to a ship, then passed on to those working the guns.

‘I think we have our fortress, Captain Hood. You may tell Admiral Hotham the upper reaches of the Bay of San Fiorenzo are his.’

It wasn’t over: there was a redoubt named Convention, of twenty-one heavy cannon, which was easy to see held the key to the town, one that to assault over open ground would be murderous in casualties. Again the navy did the impossible, transporting guns along paths meant for donkeys, sometimes wide enough for
only one man, often with a drop of five hundred feet to one side, never once losing a tar or equipment as they manhandled tons of metal along on ropes and pulleys, using the very rocks as stationary points, to set up a battery that overlooked Convention from the one angle at which it was vulnerable. Once employed they destroyed it in two hours; the whole anchorage and the tiny port was now in British hands.

At a dinner to celebrate, Colonel John Moore, returning a toast from Sir William Hotham, named Captain Sam Hood and his men as heroes, and then he added that Midshipman Toby Burns had done sterling service as a runner and, if the admiral did not mind the temerity of a soldier suggesting a course of action to a sailor, the lad deserved a mention in whatever despatch was sent back to London.

There was no way of knowing how much time had passed before the loss of the tow was discovered, only that the line which had attached them to the stern of the pinnace was slack enough to be hauled in. It looked as though the two men on the oars had, like John Pearce and every other soul in the boat, fallen into a troubled sleep, which not only allowed the cutter to drift but also meant they had failed to turn the sandglass and wake a relief. He also had cause to curse himself for failing to note the miscreants were a pair who had probably got into the spirit store, this established when dawn broke and not only their bleary eyes told a tale, but their rank breath as well.

Shouting proved pointless when, on the crest of several waves, no sign of a sail could be seen. Pearce felt even worse when presented with the end of a piece of
rope which showed no signs of fraying: if anyone could tie a secure knot a sailor could, even the most useless sod. Yet he could not say what he suspected: that the knot might have been loosened, given the propensity of Jack Tar to see evil in any unexplained event.

Sailors were the most credulous folk he had ever met in his life: put the wrong foot on the ship first and it was doomed, any number of birds sighted promised perdition, so that sometimes it seemed there was a superstition for every waking hour, which on a ship at sea was twenty-four. There had been mutterings too, he suspected, about Emily Barclay. Every ship in King George’s Navy had women aboard, even where captains were strict about their presence, some even going to the length of disguising themselves as males. It would be the status of a woman like Mrs Barclay that made her an object of nautical misgivings.

Looking at the faces in the crowded boat he surmised there were no natural navigators present, this allied to his own knowledge of his lack of ability in the subject: they were in the middle of the Bay of Biscay and they might as well be in the middle of the moon. Nor did he have the instruments necessary to even try for a course that would take them home; there was, in short, no choice but to set the prow towards the point at which the sun had risen, albeit that was partly guesswork given the dense overhead cloud.

‘Which would be where?’ asked Michael O’Hagan quietly, his head lowered to make sure the question did not carry.

Pearce, too, dropped his head. ‘The coast of France.’

‘Holy mother of God,’ Michael hissed, ‘do you so love the place you cannot stay away?’

‘I have no choice. My sextant went down with the ship and even if I had thought to fetch it I am not sure I can remember all I need to know about fixing a course by starlight, as Mr McGann taught me.’

‘Holy Christ, we need sight of that sainted man now. Are we not on the same line as he would sail to and from Gibraltar?’

There was brief flash of hope then: McGann’s postal packet ran the route from England to the Straits on a regular basis. It was he who had taken John Pearce to the Mediterranean in the first place, carrying the letter to Lord Hood, which had occasioned him being entrusted with the reply he now had in his coat pocket. When Michael called him sainted he was not far wrong, for McGann was one of the kindest and wisest persons Pearce had ever met, that is till you got him ashore and near a tankard of ale, from whence he became a burden.

‘Michael, we have been drifting all night. I have no idea where we are in line of longitude. All I could do is probably establish our latitude, which would not be much help if we are in the middle of the ocean with nothing but oars to propel us. We are not well supplied and drifting in the hope of the sight of a sail could see us all expire. We must make for land.’

‘Where there are heathens waiting to lop off our heads.’

‘Savin’ your presence, Lieutenant, we would be obliged to be knowing what it is you and Paddy are a’whispering about.’

Pearce looked up into a sea of eyes, all on him, and they included Charlie and Rufus, though they, at least, were not full of suspicion. These men were part of the crew of HMS
Grampus
, on which he had been a supernumerary with no actual duties; they did not know him at all and therefore had no loyalty to anything other than his rank, which would be tenuous in the extreme if they thought he had no idea of what he was doing. The bargain between officers and hands was simple: blue coats got respect because of their knowledge, and sometimes from the fear of their power in the article of punishment, but it was a covenant easy to rupture when neither were present.

Odd that he should think of his father at that point, for here was the very notion over which they had disputed often, once Pearce junior had become old enough to form his own opinions. Adam Pearce maintained there was a basic good in people, not Christianity, in which he did not believe, but in their innate nature, the caveat being that a lack of the necessary means to exist in comfort – food, warmth and security – allied to a dearth of education, was what often rendered them little better than beasts.

His son had disputed the contention, on the very good grounds that there were men of high education and full bellies, surrounded by servants to see to
their every comfort, well warmed by blazing fires and devoted families, who behaved like ravenous monsters. Incarcerated in Fleet Prison, they had found it necessary to take turns in sleeping to avoid being robbed of all they possessed, which stripped the scales from young John’s eyes, and his thinking had not altered with their subsequent flight. In the latter stages of their gentle arguments John Pearce was wont to point out to old Adam that being in Paris, in the midst of revolution going from euphoria to bedlam, they were surrounded by events which supported his argument. What did he face here?

‘We are crowded into an eighteen-foot cutter with supplies insufficient to keep us alive for very long. We have two choices, to drift around in the hope of rescue or to head east for land.’

‘That bein’ where?’ asked the man who had first spoken, his question producing nods in the others: clearly they were happy to see him take on the role of spokesman. Pearce concentrated on him, searching his face to try to discern the kind of man he was. The nose was flat as if it had been hit often and hard, the eyes were brown and small under heavy black brows, they topped by a flat forehead. Yet the look was not one of threat, more of enquiry.

‘France.’ Beside him Pearce could feel Michael shifting sideways to get his right hand free, something that did not go unnoticed: those small brown eyes flicked slightly and the brows knitted a fraction, though it was
impossible to tell if that was caused by the answer or the Irishman’s movement. ‘Might I enquire as to your name?’

‘My mates call me Polly, and I can’t say the word “France” makes me happy.’

That name, with the obvious hard look of the man, nearly made Pearce smile, but that would be, he knew, unwise. ‘Then, Polly, if I may be permitted to call you that, I have to tell you that I do not feel competent to suggest any other course.’

‘You not bein’ a true lieutenant, like?’

‘You know?’

The positive reply was accompanied by nods from the rest of the tars. ‘It be a habit to find out about folk, Mr Pearce, an’ you bein’ you, that weren’t hard, it being special, like, that you was the prankster of the fleet.’

‘Leghorn?’

‘An’ the ladies thereof.’

‘I’m curious to know if such a reputation flatters me or damns me?’

‘Neither one nor t’other, but what happens to us here might have a bearing on that.’

‘So if I ordered you to row east, I might not be obeyed?’

‘Depends on if you is certain or not.’

Why do I think I like this man? Pearce thought. There is no passion in his speech, he is not trying to guy or overbear me, just asking the questions that
are in every one of his shipmates’ minds.

‘If you know about me at all, it will not surprise you if I say I am not the man to navigate you to safety and I am of the opinion, formed by standing on the deck of the ship and seeing nothing even on a busy route, that to hope to be picked up by a passing vessel is too risky to contemplate. I would therefore suggest, since I am in no position to command…’ Pearce paused as Polly nodded: they both knew this cutter was a republic. ‘My view is the only safe course is to seek the nearest land.’

‘And I go with that,’ said Michael.

‘As will your two mates, Paddy, but I doubt Mr Pearce would mind if we stick in our ha’penny worth.’

‘Not at all.’

Polly raised his voice. ‘Seems right to me, lads, but it is up to you to speak your piece if’n you dispute it.’ The murmuring was low, no man prepared to speak other than to his nearest neighbour, this while Pearce was fixed by those small and unblinking eyes. After half a minute, Polly spoke again. ‘Seems, as is common, none of you have a voice, so I say we go with what the officer suggests.’ Again no one spoke up, so Polly added another opinion. ‘Then we’d best get our backs into it, mates, and say thank Christ that the way the sea is running is in our favour.’

Aboard the pinnace, there was certainly no republic: there might be a lieutenant and a midshipman aboard but there was also Ralph Barclay, and for all his infirmity
and being in constant pain, he was still a senior post captain. With the cloud cover he decided on a direction of sailing by the location of the rising sun, as well as the north-east current which was common to this area, a good enough course until the sky cleared, hopefully at night, where the north star would help to guide them home.

If he was in pain it had no affect on his ability to command, and so ingrained were the habits of the service that no one, not even the most contentious lower-deck lawyer, of which there might well be a few aboard, was going to dispute with him, and that included the way he dealt with the loss of sight of the cutter and the suggestion from the lieutenant that they should instigate a search.

‘It is unfortunate, I grant you, but we must trust to the competence of the people aboard to look to themselves.’ Seeing his inferior about to protest he added sharp words. ‘Do you see Captain Daws or any sign of the other boats?’

‘No, sir.’

‘And what, pray, does that tell you?’ Faced with no reply it was easy to nail an end to any discussion, which he did with a firm tone. ‘It tells me, sir, that the amount of drift we have all suffered is substantial. It tells me that the cutter and the men aboard her could be miles distant. If we were safe on a ship, with sharp eyes high on the masthead, your notion would be a good one, but we are not. We are able to see no further than the
wave height allows us and at some risk to ourselves, therefore we are constrained by circumstances to look to our own needs.’

Overheard by all aboard, it was easy to see it as a base appeal to their collective self-interest, so Ralph Barclay saw the need to give a nod to a more Christian notion, knowing he was on safe ground.

‘Your concern, Lieutenant, is commendable and is, I am sure, shared by all of us in this boat, as is fear for our own safety. But I am no tyrant, sir. If the sentiment lies with what you say I will abide by it.’

Another voice spoke, that of a man on the oars. ‘Would we be allowed to ask what the odds are, your honour?’

The speaker received a glare in response: no common seaman should address an officer so, yet some allowance had to be made for circumstance. ‘Fellow, if William Bligh can sail a boat over four and a half thousand miles to safety, I am sure I can get us all home and dry.’

That cheered all he faced and got them nodding; he would not look sideways to his right, where sat his wife. Then the man who had posed the question spoke again. ‘Thank you, your honour, much obliged.’

‘Lieutenant, I wish to take that man’s name, for I propose that a loss of discipline will not be to our benefit. The matter can be left till we reach England, but dealt with it must be. For now, I wish you to supervise the distribution of the rations, then we must rearrange
the way the boat is manned to get maximum advantage for our rate of sailing.’

‘Aye, aye, sir.’

‘You know who is in that cutter, do you not, husband?’ Emily asked, her lips close to his ear.

His reply was made with his head down, and quietly. ‘It makes no odds, my dear, it could be the devil himself or my bosom companion, my thinking would not differ. You do not comprehend that we are in grave danger, being as we are in an overcrowded boat in a bad place. Biscay is home to many a violent storm and I have to tell you if we face one we will not be likely to survive it, for we will be swamped. The wind is favourable and the sea benign for the time of year, we have a window of hope but no more, so it is imperative that we take advantage of our good fortune.’

‘Yet you did not tell everyone that?’

‘It is our spirit as well as our luck which will get us to safety. Now I must ask you to leave me be.’ Then he raised his voice. ‘Lieutenant, some men on the larboard gunnels; let us see what better rate of sailing we can achieve.’

The orders that followed saw the sail hauled round to take more of the wind, the weight of bodies on the larboard side used to compensate the extra pressure, with the midshipman now sat with Ralph Barclay, doing what he was told on the tiller. When it came time to tack, the sail and bodies shifted, and if it was not fast sailing of the kind Ralph Barclay had experienced as a
younger man, for being overcrowded the boat was low in the water, the increase in speed was obvious by the way the bows were now creating white spray every time they hit a wave.

Rowing was hard work, requiring constant changes of oarsmen to prevent fatigue, but that same current which was aiding Ralph Barclay was even more kind to John Pearce. If he was less the experienced sailor than a man he saw as his enemy, he knew well the reputation of Biscay, for that same sainted Captain McGann had told him of its troublesome vagaries on their voyage south. He, too, knew that a storm would likely prove fatal, so the way the rowers were rotated had to be tempered by the need to achieve as much speed as possible.

He was glad that those aboard had allowed him the authority to decide, though he worried as the day wore on that he had no certainty he was holding to a true course. He had set the prow to where the sun had risen to tinge the horizon but that was a pretty nebulous thing to rely on, and while he might suspect the current ran towards the shore he had no way of knowing, or any deep learning, to say if that was true.