An Ill Wind (16 page)

‘Pearce, you will command the cutter,’ said Daws. ‘Thank God we are short-handed and can get everyone off.’

‘Aye, aye, sir,’ he replied, given there was no choice. ‘And you, sir?’

Daws looked at him as if the mere posing of the question was tantamount to a hanging offence. ‘What I am about is none of your concern. Once I am sure everyone is off the ship I will call the cutter in.’

It was a tale oft told, of captains going down with their ships, as if to lose one was more damning than life itself. The image of Daws, who was glaring at him, doing just that, was unmistakable, and this while above their heads they could hear the dislodged spars and blocks thudding into the deck as the fire detached them from the rigging.

‘Do not be tempted to stay, sir, it is nought but romantic folly.’

‘Do not presume, Mr Pearce, to tell me my duty,’ Daws shouted. ‘Now get aboard that damned cutter.’

There was no inclination to disobey. Michael, Rufus and Charlie had already lowered themselves down the manropes – not very far, as the ship was still settling – and were now looking up at him. Yet he was not going to leave this fool to his chosen fate, if indeed that was what he intended. He might well signal for the cutter to come and take him off, but then he might not. Suddenly Pearce spun round and the punch, one of which Michael O’Hagan would have been proud, took an unsuspecting Daws right on the jaw and he went down like a sack of dried peas.

‘Below, catch the captain, he has inhaled too much smoke.’

There was no way to throw the man, he had to be dragged to the edge, and no way to avoid him rumbling down the battens that lined and protruded from the side of the ship. He would be a bruised and battered soul but at least, John Pearce reckoned, he would be alive. Daws was caught with no expertise, and throwing his own hastily gathered clothing first, Pearce lowered himself into the cutter, which immediately cast off.

By the time they got far enough off to rest the oars and look back HMS
Grampus
was alight from end to end. One of the hands had been using seawater to try and revive his captain, with some success, given his eyes began to open and he began to groan. The man who had administered to him was speaking softly, urging him to come round, which he did eventually, sitting up and nursing his head, that followed by gentle touching of the various parts of his anatomy which had met with
those wood battens. That did not last: the head lifted and the eyes fixed on Pearce.

‘I’ll see you swing from the end of a yardarm for that.’

‘What, sir?’ asked Pearce, looking innocent.

‘For laying hands –what am I saying? – for punching a superior officer, damn you!’

Pearce affected surprise. ‘I fear the smoke must have harmed you more than I suspected, sir. You collapsed from inhalation and I was required to help you. I observe a certain amount of pain was caused by that, which I could not help and for which I apologise.’

‘You punched me, Pearce.’

‘Did I, sir?’ Pearce replied, eyes open in surprise. Then he looked at the rows of eyes examining him in what was a crowded boat. ‘Did anyone see me punch the captain?’

It was amusing to watch the reaction: sailors loved a guy and were much given to ribbing their mates. They could not openly shake their heads or nod, because Daws had turned to scrutinise their reactions. Did he see what Pearce saw in those blank looks: a substitute for mirth?

‘Barky’s goin’, your honour,’ said one fellow, nodding towards the ship.

Every eye fixed on
Grampus
then, as she slowly settled, hissing as the fire turned water to steam, not going down by bow or stern but as if she were lowering herself into her watery grave. She only tipped when water filled the hull, which tilted the burning upper works towards the cutter, but soon they sank too, in that continued stately fashion, until the last of the top part of the mainmast
slid into the sea. Pearce looked at Daws then looked away, given the man had tears streaming down his face.

‘Man the oars,’ he croaked. ‘Let us join with the other boats.’

The figures the master produced, forty-six degrees north by some nine degrees west, put the four crowded boats squarely in the middle of the Bay of Biscay, and if the numbers did not mean much to most of those who could overhear – Pearce was struggling with them and not alone in doing so – the location was enough to dishearten anyone, that along with the knowledge in the souls of the doubters that they might not be entirely accurate. The only bright spot was that HMS
Grampus
had been on course to weather Ushant on the Brittany coast, en route to the Lizard, and any ship heading home to England would sail the same line; there was some hope of being rescued.

Daws, who had transferred with some difficulty to the launch, leaving the cutter with twenty-eight souls aboard, had called for an inventory of stores and water and ensured the distribution was fair. He then fell into a discussion of the state of the weather and the way it might develop, the conclusion being that even if they were bobbing up and down through ten feet of swell it seemed clement for the time of year: the wind was stiff but not severe, certainly not at present dangerous enough to make it imperative to head for the French shore.

‘It’s getting dark,’ Daws said finally, examining a glowering, cloud-filled sky that might threaten rain but
would certainly produce no moonlight. ‘We will raise sail on the launch and the pinnace, but we must each tie a cable with an oared boat overnight. In daylight they can keep pace rowing, but in the dark they will be in danger of becoming separated over several hours. At dawn we will spread out, but maintain sight of each other, and look out for a ship, hopefully one heading towards home, but I will not trouble to be taken back south.’

Pearce looked in the gathering gloom towards the pinnace just ahead of them, containing the Barclays and Lutyens, as well as Devenow and Gherson, this as the line was passed so they could progress in line ahead, the same arrangement taking place between the other two boats.

‘Heinrich, did you manage to rescue your instrument chest?’ he called.

‘I’m afraid not, John. I lost everything.’

‘A pity, my friend.’

It was no good cursing the fate that had seen him leave those papers with Lutyens for safety, and he reassured himself that he still had Hood’s letter, so if he could get home, he would get to see William Pitt. Something might be possible, after all, and he could always write to Hood asking for another copy, not that he held out much hope there. Looking past Lutyens to Emily Barclay, he was half amused, half annoyed by the way she deliberately looked away. It seemed to him deeply ironic that here they were in a very steep tub indeed, and still she hung on to her foolish morality.

Complete darkness came slowly, preceded by a long period of low, grey and diminishing light. Pearce organised those aboard to sleep or man the oars, the only object to keep the cutter on course, then issued a cup of water to each man, plus a ship’s biscuit and a morsel of cheese, thinking, as he compared that with which he started, set against that with which he was left, they had best be picked up quick.

Well wrapped up, he tried to sleep, which should have been easy now it was pitch dark. The only light was a small lantern on the top of the mast of the lead boat, and that was only there for a short while because it began to rain, the light being far enough off to be blotted out by the fall. Having issued instructions to drink as much of it as they could, and to gather more in anything they could, he rewrapped himself and fell into a fitful slumber.

It was hard to have a whispered conversation in the pinnace, so crowded was it; even harder for Cornelius Gherson, once he got to his captain on the opposite side to his wife, to persuade Ralph Barclay on the course of action, then to find a reason to get into the position he needed to carry out what had been agreed. Then he waited until sleep took over from concern. Unfamiliarity with ropes and knots – he had served on the lower deck but was useless – meant it took him time to loose the cable, but eventually, without disturbing his sleeping companions in misfortune, he got it free and lowered it into the water.

‘It is my opinion,’ said Admiral Hotham, in a voice loud enough to carry, he wanted to be overheard, ‘that the attack is a waste of effort. The Bay of San Fiorenzo is too open to a northerly gale, and according to my reading of the charts, there is precious little deep water inshore and plenty of rocks on which to rip out the bottoms of our ships should they drag their anchors.’

The reply came from Mr Holloway, the captain of HMS
Britannia
; no one else on the quarterdeck would have dared voice an opinion and it was precarious for him: like most flagship captains he was not of vast seniority, admirals preferring to have running their ship a man they could easily overawe.

‘Do the French not use it as an anchorage, sir?’

‘Only for the odd frigate, Mr Holloway.’ Hotham waved a lazy hand to where the French had scuttled the
only ship stationed in the bay, to avoid it being taken. ‘Like the fellow whose topmast we can just see sticking out of the water. I have no knowledge that they have ever used it for a fleet anchorage.’

Those in earshot, and there were many, were left to wonder at the truth of Hotham’s remarks, given his relationship with the man who had ordered the attack was no secret. If Hood proposed, Hotham objected, not that such opposition changed anything: it was also common knowledge that in the counsels of the fleet he was generally ignored. It was, therefore, doubly galling that he had been given the task of carrying into the bay the troops necessary to take the town at its base.

Hotham raised his telescope and ran it along the shore of Mortella Point: dark green hills running down to broken-up grey rocks full of stunted bushes where it met the sea, with only the very odd patch of beach. Those rocks, boulders really, strewn along the shore, were enough to indicate that the northernmost point of the island of Corsica was subject to violent storms, which produced waves big enough and powerful enough to break them up and toss what remained into the confusion of boulders they could now observe.

‘That’s a damned odd-looking tower, is it not?’ Hotham exclaimed, which had every other glass on the quarterdeck following the line of his own. Round, some forty-feet high and near the shape of a crown roast of lamb with its slightly wider crenellated top, it stood right on the shoreline and commanded the
western entrance to the bay. On either side there was nothing but jumbled rocks, making any assault from the actual shore troublesome, though it was about to be attempted, this while the navy sought to subdue it from the sea.

‘Genoese, sir, I believe, built when they had the island.’ Hotham dropped his telescope and looked at his flag captain, the bright-blue eyes seeming to imply that being in possession of such knowledge was somehow unbecoming. ‘I bespoke a fellow in Leghorn, sir, when our destination was first mooted,’ Holloway replied quickly, making much effort to sound confident in order not to be diminished in front of his own officers. ‘He told me of it and seemed to think it would cause us trouble.’

‘A single tower?’

‘Housing as its main armament the equivalent to a pair of our eighteen pounders, sir.’

‘Hardly a match for thirty-two pounders, do you think?’

Hotham, as he said that, looked around the faces of the assembled officers, his half smile inviting, if not demanding, agreement. That such a gesture did not elevate Captain Holloway was inherent in the act and it was not singular: the admiral wanted everyone to know he was vastly more experienced than the younger man, to know that it was his judgement that mattered. The fact that it hit home was obvious by the stiff face Holloway adopted.

‘I look forward to pounding it to dust, sir.’

‘Which we must do, of course, before we can secure the bay.’ No one reacted visibly to that piece of hypocrisy, Hotham having dismissed the tower as no threat in one breath to then term it a hazard with the next; admirals were like that. ‘Let us get our bullocks ashore and see what Johnny Crapaud has to oppose us. Signal
Fortitude
and
Juno
to proceed to their stations.’

The lieutenant in charge of the flags had been standing by for this very order, so the various pennants were swiftly bent on and raised, a signal gun firing as soon as they broke out – quite unnecessary, for on the deck of those two vessels, as well as the troop transports close by them, every eye had been on the flagship waiting for such a command. Indeed, many of the soldiers destined to land were already in the boats, gathered from every ship in the fleet, so that the first body of troops could set off immediately.

Toby Burns was in one of those, leading a line of several more. He looked at the approaching shore, still some distance off, with trepidation: a beach of grey sand that looked dirty in the cold morning light with the dark green hills rising behind it, hemmed in at both ends with a jumble of boulders and scrub which look impassable; once they were on that beach they would advance or die – not, to the midshipman, a very enticing prospect.

Sat in the stern thwarts of
Britannia
’s launch he was facing the stony-faced bullocks who were under
his charge, while his superior, Lieutenant Beddows, no doubt to underline his personal bravery, was stood in the bows, one foot on the prow, as if he was prepared to take in his chest the very first volley of musket fire from the French defenders. The great boom of cannon fire broke the stillness of the morning as the warships designated to support the attack opened fire to subdue any shore-based batteries.

The black balls flew over their heads to land in the trees which lined the rear of the beach, sending up great founts of sand, earth, wood and foliage. In between the lines of boats loaded with bullocks were armed cutters, each with an eighteen-pounder cannon in the bow and a crew to work it. They began a cannonade too, their shot, lower in trajectory and being grape, designed to sweep out of the defence any human component, in the hope of driving them away so the soldiers could land unopposed.

The counter-battery fire was not long in coming, the land-based guns firing from elevated batteries, both on the hillsides and the tower itself, and so able to project plunging fire. The sea around them was full of plumes of white water shooting up in the air, but one gunner got lucky and struck home just two lines to the left of where Toby Burns sat, crashing into another boat and causing it to fold like a piece of paper, bows and stern rising to meet each other as bloody bodies, redcoats and rowers were thrown into the water, that accompanied by loud screams of pain and distress.

His stomach already troubled, Toby Burns could feel it getting even more taut. He was vaguely aware that they were now in shallow water, pale instead of deep green so clear was it, and it was not long before the keel of the boat ground into the soft underwater sand. Beddows leapt forward immediately to land in no more than a few feet of water, just enough to cover his knees. As soon as his feet touched the bottom, the sea around him began to boil with spouts as a volley of grapeshot was let loose by the French. Any balls that went into the sea, given the angle of fire, lost all velocity immediately, but one, which must have just skimmed the surface, hit his upper leg and with a yelp Beddows went down, the cry of anguish followed by a shout.

‘Mr Burns, take charge and get these fellows onto dry land.’

The youngster’s mouth moved but no sound emerged and it was as well for him that the bullocks knew only too well that they, sitting with their backs to the shore, were prime targets. The man in charge, a sergeant of some years by the look of his greying locks, gave the order to disembark and, as one, the troopers went over both sides of the boat, in a very disciplined fashion that showed the act had been carried out before, for it kept the boat steady.

‘Best look to the lieutenant,’ cried one of the oarsmen, his gaze fixed on the still-rigid midshipman. It was only when all eyes were on him that Toby was shamed enough to move, jumping over the side, aware that balls
were still arriving in quantity, either hissing into the sea or cracking as they passed his ear, and wondering, in his terror, if his bowels would hold. The cold water he barely noticed and he forced his way forward to where Beddows was still on his knees, his trunk surrounded by blood.

‘You there, get Mr Beddows back into the launch. We must get him to a surgeon.’

‘Your place is ashore, Mr Burns.’

‘Don’t speak, sir,’ Toby gasped, as he tried to lift his superior, glad when more hands came to help.

‘You must see if the soldiers need support with cannon and take back some assessment of their progress.’

Toby wanted to shout at Beddows that he was passing on the job he was supposed to undertake, the very one he had heard him volunteer them for, to tell him if he had not been so stupid and determined to show off he would have been able to carry it out, and what right did he have to put forward someone else without so much as a by your leave?

Now raised to his feet, although supported, the wound in his thigh was visible, bleeding but not pumping blood: nothing vital had been hit. ‘Go, Mr Burns, the men can tourniquet my injury.’

There was no choice: loss of face, which would come with a refusal, was not an option. It was only as he surged forward he realised that along the beach men were landing, realised that with some already ashore and advancing on the line of low trees, the rate of
musket fire and grapeshot was diminishing. Out of the water, the sand on which he stood was firm, and his progress to those trees he could carry out at a run; he hid behind one as soon as he reached them.

Toby Burns’s chest was heaving, yet he knew it was not from much in the way of exertion, for the beach was not that deep nor the sand soft. Out of sight, he wondered what to do next: to follow the soldiers in the hills, now through the trees and out of sight, was one option; the other was to stay here.

‘You all right, lad?’

The voice made him jump and he looked around in alarm to see a red-coated officer, senior by his rank badges, in his hand a walking stick, looking down at him.

‘Just getting my breath, sir. I am supposed to see how the attack progresses and report back about the need for support.’

‘I think we have that already, boy,’ the redcoat said pointing out into the bay.

The seventy-four-gun ship-of-the-line, HMS
Fortitude
, accompanied by the frigate
Juno
, thirty-two, had got into position and were in the process of using springs on their anchors to swing their sides round to bombard the tower. The gunners in the fortress had not waited: already shot were peppering the sea around the warships.

‘Don’t take much puff to walk, boy, even uphill, so why don’t you come with me?’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Toby lied, falling in behind the bullock as he strode off, dashing slightly to get close so that the man’s body would shield him from danger, vaguely noticing as he passed them the abandoned French positions: dead artillery men and the odd dismounted cannon, though most, surrounded by various accoutrements, seemed to have just been abandoned. There was also a number of crumpled redcoats and they passed some wounded going in the opposite direction, en route to attention.

‘A poor lot we have fought this day, don’t ye know.’

The boy was thinking even a damn fool could get lucky. ‘The attack seems to have been a success, sir.’

‘It will be that, lad, when we have that tower.’

The sound of a broadside filled the air and, looking out to sea, although they could not espy the ships screened by the trees, they could see the billowing clouds of smoke rising into the air. Moving on, they were now passing mixed French and British wounded, mostly sat against trees, their heads lowered in despair. There was also the odd body, all in blue coats.

‘Regular soldiers, boy,’ the redcoat exclaimed before stopping suddenly and demanding of him, ‘What is your damned name?’

‘Burns, sir, Midshipman.’

A tree suddenly splintered by Toby Burns’s shoulder as a musket ball hit it, making him jump sideways and cry out in alarm. His redcoat merely turned and glared
at the now visible outline of the tower, sure that was where the shot had come from.

‘Damned impertinence,’ he cried, before looking back at Toby. ‘Mustn’t react, Mr Burns, it only encourages them. Coolness under fire, young sir, an absolute prerequisite.’

The only thing the youngster could think of was that the man who had fired was busy reloading for another attempt, so he was glad when his companion strode off in the direction from which that shot had come and he was quick to get his body between himself and possible harm. Still trending uphill, they finally came to clear ground and what had obviously been a defensive redoubt, to see French soldiers being taken prisoner. Another red-coated officer, seeing Toby’s companion, rushed to meet them, stopping to raise his hat, his face alight with joy.

‘We have the position, Colonel Moore. I have sent the men ahead to clear it right through but I reckon the resistance to be broken.’

‘Their commander?’

‘No sign of him, sir, he’s taken to his heels and fallen back to the tower.’

They were above the tower now, though still too far off for muskets, and so were presented with a clear sight of the whole bay and the battle going on between ship and shore, and it was far from clear to Toby Burns who was winning. The round shot was not denting those outer walls, if anything it was bouncing off them
to ricochet ineffectively into the surrounding rocks. Occasionally a huge cannonball would hit right on the face and that would chip at the stonework, but it did not in any way look as if it was creating a breach: stone flew but no cracks appeared. Also obvious was the brazier sitting in the tower top, right by the two long cannon: they were firing red-hot shot, which could be deadly to wooden ships.

The boy did not know the half of it and had he been aboard either vessel he would have known the true meaning of terror. That red-hot shot had hit the hull of HMS
Fortitude
on half a dozen occasions, lodging in the scantlings to start fires which must be extinguished by cutting the balls out of the hull, a task that was full of risk to those employed. Three of the ship’s lower-deck thirty-two pounders had been dismounted, leaving six men killed, and some fifty were already wounded so that in the cockpit the ship’s surgeon was hard at it with his saw, knives and a needle and thread.