“Well, Angus, when the time comes, are we successful, there’ll be all those in concert, but… with the addition of my torpedoes… my cask torpedoes, aha!” MacTavish cried triumphantly. “Those things shrouded in the mortar wells, sir? We’ve half a dozen ready to go and more being fabricated even as we speak. When the time comes we intend to launch them by the hundreds on a French port, and blow all of their caiques and boats and barges to kindling!”
“Uhm… how?” Lewrie had to ask. It sounded fine, but…
“Imagine, sir, an assault launched in the dead of night without an inkling of danger,” Mr. MacTavish continued, squirming impatiently on his seat. “Ship’s boats tow my cask torpedoes in close to shore, cock the detonating mechanisms, start the clock timer, and set them to drift in on a making tide. Channel tides are rapid, inexorable! Now… silently, un-seen, for they ride very low in the water, waves of them waft inshore, right up to those caiques, peniches, and barges, as quietly as mice!”
“Dinna forget th’ grapnels, an’ th’ spikes,” McCloud dryly added.
“They bob up alongside the French boats,” MacTavish further enthused, sketching out the assault with the tips of his fingers flutter-creeping towards a box of sweet bisquits on the table top. “Grapnels and old bayonets snag or spear into the hulls of the boats, the first warning that anything’s amiss to the few French sailors aboard them to watch over their anchor cables and the lines which moor them together, hah! Then, when the clock timer winds up the trigger cords, and those few Frogs’ best efforts to dis-lodge them prove fruitless, up they go in gigantic blasts, ah ha!” he cried, raising his hands, his fingers spreading further to simulate soaring chunks of debris.
“Float in on the tide,” Lewrie said back, shifting uneasily on a hard sea chest. “That could take a while, even on a Channel tide. Your clock timer mechanism…?”
“We determine the speed of the tide, set the timers to account for it, judge the distance at which the torpedoes are released, then prime them and off they go,” MacTavish told him, beaming.
“Uhm, Channel tides flow into their ports, aye, Mister MacTavish… but, there’s a strong tide up or down Channel to consider,” Lewrie had to point out. “Is the bottom smooth, tide-washed sand and mud, or is it rocky, which sets off strong eddies? It’s not as if all your cask torpedoes will just drift straight in. Some will swirl about and might end up a mile from where you want them.”
“But the bulk of them surely will succeed, sir,” MacTavish said with complete assurance in his devices. “Boats will be lost to them, some damaged and force the French to replace them, and once a few blow up without warning, think of the panic they will engender. What French sailor would dare to sleep aboard his caique or peniche if the presence of death may come with each sunset?”
Think of the panic in the boat crews who tow the damned things in, ready to explode! Lewrie sourly thought.
“How close ashore to the anchored boats would boat crews have to get before releasing them?” Lewrie asked.
“Well, that would depend on the run of the tide, Captain Lewrie. I should imagine that each boat will have a Midshipman with a passable skill in mathematics,” MacTavish said, shrugging off the problem. “Some of your, what-do-you-call-them… Master’s Mates, able to judge the height of the boats’ masts, and perform simple trigonometry to determine the distance, the speed of the tide, and set the clock timer accordingly.”
Boy Midshipmen with good mathematics? Lewrie wondered; Now there is a snag! A veritable paradox!
“As to the matter of suitable boats, sir,” Lt. Johns brought up once more. “We’ve only a small gig and an eighteen-foot jolly-boat on our inventory. To tow them in quickly, then make their way out just as quickly, it would be best if we had some boats larger than your two cutters… thirty-two-foot barges with two masts for lug-sails and a jib would be best. Or at least twelve-oared barges.”
“We’ll ask of the dockyard,” Lewrie told him. “I’m sure they might have some spares. What condition they’re in, well. If we need authorisation, who do we mention? Are we under Lord Keith and North Sea Fleet? Droppin’ a powerful name sometimes helps.”
“No worry, then, Captain Lewrie,” Mr. MacTavish said with a top-lofty smirk. “We have letters from Lord Melville, personally signed, authorising any expense or requisition. Might they do?”
Mine arse on a band-box! Lewrie thought; What do I want, what does Reliant need… and how much can I get away with?
“I expect they’d do main-well, Mister MacTavish,” Lewrie allowed. “Uhm… could I see these wonders? Not the plans here, but the real articles?”
“Aye, weel…,” Artificer McCloud grumbled, rubbing his beard.
“But of course, sir! This instant!” MacTavish quickly agreed.
“Hmm… rather big,” Lewrie commented once the canvas shroud had been drawn back just far enough to expose one of the devices to his eyes. To all outward appearances, the “cask torpedo” was a large water butt, about four feet tall and fat in the middle, tapering at each end to shallow hemispherical lids, not the usual flat wooden lids set into the ends two or three inches below the rims. Any large tun, cask, or barrel made to hold liquids was constructed with extra care, of course, so that the staves fit together so closely that only the slightest bit of seepage occurred. In this case, seepage inward would be the ruin of the device, so it had been slathered all over in tar, then wrapped with more tarred canvas.
“Th’ bottom’s heemispherical, ye’ll note,” McCloud pointed out, “sae thayr’s space feer th’ ballast, tae keep eet ridin’ oop-right een th’ water.”
“And the upper hemisphere is a void, a space for air,” MacTavish added. “That is where the clock mechanism sits, along with the pistol which ignites the charge at the proper time. When one is about to let one go, one first pulls the line with the blue paint on the last inches of the line… that will start the clock. The red-painted line cocks the primed fire-lock of the pistol. The clock gears drive a circular wooden disk, which has several dowels projecting from it. The trigger line is bound to one of the dowels, and, as the clock turns the disk, the line is drawn taut, ’til it pulls the trigger of the pistol, and… bang!” he gleefully concluded. “The gunpowder and the pyrotechnicals ignite, and adieu, Monsieur Frog, ha ha!”
“How much gunpowder?” Lewrie asked, getting up on his tip-toes to peer over the top of the torpedo, taking hold of one of the hoisting ring-bolts. “And how low in the water will it ride? I notice the top is not tarred, but painted black. And, how do you set the clock at the last minute?”
“One hundred and twenty pounds of powder,” MacTavish told him.
Lewrie stepped back a foot or two!
“D’ye mean it’s loaded, now?” he gawped.
“Weel, o’ course eet’s loaded!” McCloud said with a short snort of amusement. “But, the pistol’s nae primed, nor cocked, an’ th’ clock ain’t runnin’. Eet’s safe as sae many bricks!”
“So… when the time comes to prime the pistol’s pan, set the clock timer, and ready it to go, how do you, if the top’s sealed?” Lewrie asked, growing a bit more dubious of the whole enterprise, and feeling a faint shudder of dread in his middle.
“As to that, Captain Lewrie,” MacTavish said soothingly, “one must remove the bung set into the very top. The hole is wide enough for your average man to reach down into it, set the clock timer for the minutes judged best, pull the lock back to half-cock and prime the pan, then draw it to full cock…”