"For what we're about to receive," Mr. Lyle muttered, "may the Good Lord make us grateful."
Heavy shot moaned overhead, close enough to the upper masts to set them thrumming, their shrouds quiver. Splashes between both ships showed where round-shot fired a bit too low skipped in First Graze, but dead in line with Thermopylae, to thud into her hull, travelling about 800 or 900 feet per second after the Grazes, with enough force to make the frigate stagger, and smash stout scantling planks. One fired but a bit higher crashed through the sail-tending gangway bulwarks with a loud parrot Rwark!, creating a cloud of broken oak splinters as big as a man's forearm, cutting a Marine on the gangway in half at the waist, and spraying a cloud of his blood over the gunners on the deck below. Two sailors on the gangway spun away shrieking as they were quilled by wood splinters. Surgeon Mr. Harward's team of loblolly boys carrying a mess-table for a stretcher mounted the gangway, bearing one man away to the midships companionway hatch, but shoving the ruin of the second over the side through the blown-open gap in the bulwarks. The dead… those horribly dismembered and splattered, or the ones who seemed to be sleeping and whole… were to be gotten out of sight quickly. Was a hand too grievously wounded for the surgeon and his mates to waste time dealing with him, it was considered a mercy to deliver a skull-smashing blow with a maul, and pass the unconscious sufferer out a gun-port to drown and sink out of sight, before the pain of his wounds set in… and his screams un-nerved his mates. Mourning was for later.
"This'll be hot work, today," Lewrie said, watching the wounded man disappear down the companionway ladders, then returned his attention to their foe, straining to see what damage, if any, their fire had caused. He raised a telescope to peer at the Danish ship.
"Soaks it up like a bloody sponge," Lewrie griped, finding but little damage to cheer him, so far.
"That frigate of theirs," Mr. Lyle pointed out, jutting an arm over the larboard bows to the last Northerly ship in the Danish line, "is getting a drubbing, sir. As is our target. Amazon, Blanche, and the rest of the frigates share their fire 'twixt her and this one."
Before Thermopylae could fire another broadside, shot from the other frigates did splash round the stump-masted two-decker off their beam, and flay her scantlings and upper works with iron.
"By broadside… Fire!" Lt. Farley howled, and HMS Thermopylae belched out another great gush of smoke and thunder.
As the smoke from that fresh broadside slowly thinned, Mr. Lyle lifted an arm to point at the fortress beyond the embattled ships. "I do believe the Trekroner… the Three Crowns… has opened upon us, sir."
Indeed, the middle and southern faces of the great stone works were alive with gushes of powder, reddish flashes as heavy guns upwards of 36-pounder fired.
"Know why the Danes call it the Three Crowns?" Mr. Lyle asked, as phlegmatically as if they were on a day-tour in search of "quaint" sights.
"Recall the Bard of Avon," Capt. Hardcastle piped up, sounding squeakier. "At the end of Hamlet, the last of the tragedy is the seizure of Denmark by the Prince of Norway… wasn't it Norway? Way back then, Denmark, Sweden, and-"
He stopped his gob briefly, ducking as a heavy round-shot hummed close over the quarterdeck.
"Sweden, Denmark, and Norway were allies, with three kings, so they named it the Three Crowns," Mr. Lyle completed for him, unwilling to let the civilian get the last word on anything.
"And it's a bugger," Capt. Hardcastle said, straightening up.
"We're well within her greatest range," Lewrie noted, lifting his telescope once more. "Same as the guns of Kronborg Castle, up the Narrows. Their ramparts are, what…'bout a thousand yards or so to loo'rd? They've at least five hundred yards range over us."
"The fortress's gunners don't seem that well drilled, though, sirs," Lt. Ballard contributed to the conversation, his demeanour the required cool and unruffled sang-froid that British Sea Officers were to display. "And no more accurate than the gunners of the Kronborg were, when the fleet passed them without a single hit."
" 'Sound and fury, signifying nothing,' hey, Mister Ballrd?" Mr. Lyle japed. "To quote Shakespeare."
"Wrong play," Capt. Hardcastle quipped. "The First Lieutenant is correct, Captain Lewrie. The fortresses are manned by the Danish army, and I cannot recall seeing them practice with live powder and shot in all my years passing through the Narrows."
"Well, they're getting some practice today," Lewrie said with a smirk. "Hello! Well shot, Mister Farley! Hammer the bitch again!" he cheered as iron shot pummeled the Danish two-decker, smashing scantling planks and stoving in her bulwarks in showers of splinters. For good measure, there was an explosion aboard her, fire stabbing upward, and powder smoke jutting skyward… a sure sign of a burst gun!
A second later, though, the Danish gunners responded, their side erupting in a staggering, stuttering series of explosions as her guns went off, no longer in controlled broadsides, but as quickly as gunners could swab out, re-load, and run out.
Balls shrieked overhead, passing close-aboard the frigate's bow and stern. The roundhouse atop the forecastle was blown open with a round-shot that went clean through it; the larboard anchor cat-head was shattered with another parroty screech, and the best bower anchor, its cat and fish lines shot away, dropped free to splash into the harbour, lost forever, most likely. Yet a third ball, perhaps an 18-pounder, buried itself in the trunk of the foremast below the fighting top and made the mast, and the ship, sway to starboard, so that sailors and Marines in the tops had to hold on for dear life.
"Well, the Danish army may be half-blind dodderers, but it seems their navy knows their business," Lewrie said. "See to it, Mister Ballard."
"Aye, sir."
"By broadside… Fire!" Lt. Farley in the waist was yelling, his voice gone hoarse and raspy on smoke and excitement, and Thermopylae rocked to starboard a few degrees, settling an inch or two in the water to the massive recoil as the guns slammed backwards from the ports, the truck-carriages squealing and the breeching ropes and recoil tackle and ring bolts groaning. The guns were hot now, and 18-pounders weighing nearly two tons altogether were leaping from the deck as they lit off, thundering back down at the full extent of the breeching ropes at odd angles. Sure enough, there came a howl from a tackle man struck in the shins by an erratically recoiling carriage, and a scream as the heavy wood carriage and sizzling-hot gun rolled over one of his ankles.
"Loblolly boys, here!" Lt. Fox yelled. "Spare man from starboard, take his place. Quick now, lad! Overhaul tackle! Swab out!"
"Oh, poor fellow," Lt. Ballard calmly said, returning from up forward.
"The foremast sound, Mister Ballard?" Lewrie asked him.
"I would not trust it with more than forecourse and the fore tops'l, sir," Lt. Ballard gloomily replied. "The ball is half-buried in the trunk, fourty feet above the deck. It will need fishing, and banding, do we get the chance."
"Cold shot, I take it?" Lewrie asked with a wry grin. "Not sizzlin'?"
"Cold shot, aye, sir, not heated shot," Lt. Ballard replied with almost an impatient expression, as though he found Lewrie's attempt at humour disagreeable. "We've no fear of bursting aflame, sir."
"By broadside… Fire!" Lt. Farley yelled, and the guns roared and thundered yet again, re-wreathing the frigate in a dense cloud of spent powder smoke, adding to the acrid, rotten-egg cumulus that stood above and to leeward from their first broadsides, muffling Thermopylae in a white-yellow mist that made it hard to see the forecastle from the quarterdeck.
Lewrie paced aft to the taffrails, past the larboard carronades to the taffrail lanthorn, to see how the rest of the battle was going. But even his telescope could not pierce the palls of smoke towering over the British and Danish lines. He could make out the Lynetten, a smaller version of the Trekroner to the West-Sou'west, and only the nearest warships in the opposing lines of battle. Now and again, as the guns fired or the smoke pall cleared, he could espy a few Danish gunboats anchored with their bows pointing East behind the larger Danish vessels, great bow-mounted pairs of guns erupting, and sea-mortars huffing upwards with even more massive shot.