“Rig towing lines from the stern to one boat, and another to the second,” Lewrie ordered. “And have the prize parties take in those paddle things, with an experienced helmsman in each.”
“Aye aye, sir!”
“Once we’re trimmed to the wind, Mister Caldwell, shape course Nor’-Nor’west, so we pass between Jersey and Alderney,” Lewrie told the Sailing Master. “Once we’re out in the Channel, we’ll take a bee-line for Portsmouth!”
BOOK V
Ye true honest Britons who love your own land
Whose sires were so brave, so victorious, so free,
Who always beat France when they took her in hand
Come join honest Britons in chorus with me.
Should the French dare invade us, thus armed with our poles,
We’ll bang their bare ribs, make their lantern jaws ring;
For your beef-eating, beer-drinking Britons are souls
Who will shed their last blood for their Country and King!
~POPULAR TAVERN SONG
CIRCA 1757
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Anyone who was anyone in the Navy wished to see the odd French contraptions once Reliant towed them into Portsmouth harbour. The Surveyor of the Navy, Sir William Rule, and the Deputy Controller of the Navy, Captain Henry Duncan, came down from London to gawk and wonder, in company with the Port Admiral, Lord Gardner, and the Commissioner of HM Dockyards at Portsmouth, Captain Sir Charles Saxton, Bart. The Foreign Office sent down a functionary, and there were some “redcoat” Army types rather high in rank who evinced great curiosity about what sort of threat the landing barges might make. There were representatives from the Pitt government, along with a select group of Navy captains charged with patrolling the Channel, so they could recognise the damned things should they run across them in future.
Lieutenants Westcott and Merriman prepared detailed sketches of the things, several sets done by hand, for no one wanted to trust the drawings to even a government printer. And, Lewrie was “on show” for each curious visitor to explain their capture, and how they handled in the open sea, but, if he had imagined a hero’s welcome, he was greatly disappointed. There was no celebration dinner, no presentation sword or set of silver plate, no band, no parade through the streets with a cheering crowd, or several dozen sailors replacing the horse team to draw him in an open carriage, either. And a fireworks show and a Te Deum mass at St. Thomas A’Becket’s Church were right out, too.
The pair of boats that Reliant had captured were hurriedly covered with great swaths of sailcloth and towed into an empty graving dock, then placed under armed Marine guard.
“Well, damme, Captain Lewrie, but ye do keep popping up with one surprise after another,” Admiral Lord Gardner commented after making a clumsy, arthritic way aboard one of them in company with his Flag-Captain, Niles. “They’ve a lot of these things, d’ye imagine?”
“The rumours say three or four hundred, my lord,” Lewrie said.
“First that nonsense about torpedoes, now these,” Lord Gardner went on, peering down into the bowels of the barge where the soldiers would sleep, sup, and shelter. “Three or four hundred, did ye say?”
“So I was told by a friend in Secret Branch, my lord.”
This tour was the fifth that Lewrie had given to various officials, and it was getting old, by then. The lack of praise beyond the usual “Good show!” was irksome, too. He imagined that if Nelson had come across them, that fame-hungry fellow would have commissioned special editions of all the London papers, with illustrations to boot!
“Damned waste of good artillery, packing a twenty-four-pounder in the bows,” Lord Gardner went on in a grumble. “Do the French think they can use them as gunboats, too? Wheel them round with those huge paddles? I saw armed galleys in the Mediterranean in my youth, but… it looks iffy to me.”
“Concentrating all the paddles in the forward end, too,” Captain Niles added. “I suppose they work well enough in a river but not at sea. Has anyone tried paddling them about?”
“Once we made port, sir,” Lewrie told him with a grimace, “to shift them alongside. They don’t row worth a damn, nor steer, either. They’re fitted with a tiller to the exposed rudder, and my helmsmen about wore themselves out on the way here under tow, tryin’ to follow the stern posts of the leadin’ barge, or my frigate. A handful o’ lee helm, then a handful o’ weather helm. We did hoist their sails, to steady ’em, but that didn’t help much. I’d imagine that did one try ’em under sail, without bein’ towed, they’d wallow from beam-to-beam, be slow as cold treacle, and with their flat bottoms, they’d make lee-way like a wood chip.”
“Heh heh heh,” the Port Admiral, softly, evilly cackled, bending down to survey the interior more closely. “How many soldiers might it carry, Lewrie?”
“These large versions are said to carry an hundred, my lord. A shorter one may carry about eighty,” Lewrie told him.
“One hundred Frogs, cooped up down there on those benches, or in those slat beds, my my!” Lord Gardner said, enjoying the image. “Cold rations. I see no galley facilities. No ‘heads,’ either.”
“Rations for five or six days, I heard, sir,” Lewrie supplied. “Though, part of that might be for after they landed in England before they could loot and pillage the countryside… or hope to.”
“Bonaparte must not have much regard for his soldiers, milord,” Captain Niles imagined, “if he expected them to use wooden buckets as their ‘necessaries,’ then have to pass them up from below. The reek would be horrid,” he said with a sniff, as if reeks already existed.
“The staleness of the air,” Lord Gardner happily fantasised. “The reek of their ‘cess,’ as well, Niles, and the stench of sea-sickness, which would naturally engender even more sickness! Why, after a day or two of that, with these daft things wallowing like hogs in the mud, and rolling like logs, it’d be a bloody wonder that they could fight at all! Right, Niles?”
“Stagger ashore reeling like tars off a whaler that’s been at sea two years running, and be so crop-sick even our militia can round them up, milord!” Captain Niles hooted. “They’re a completely daft idea, and if the French really mean to employ them, they’ll pay an ungodly high price in dead, and in prisoners.”
“Drown nigh a quarter of their men, should the Channel whip up rough during the crossing,” Admiral Lord Gardner estimated, looking highly pleased with his conclusion. “What was it that Bonaparte was reputed to have said, sirs? ‘Give me six hours’ mastery of the Channel, and we shall be masters of the world’? Bah! Bah, I say!”
“Lord Keith in The Downs estimates so large an invasion armada would take two tides to get across in sufficient strength, milord,” Captain Niles gleefully pointed out. “Twenty-four hours with the sea and tides scattering them, sickening them, and our ships clawing at them like so many tigers? Let them try, is what I say!”
“Congratulations to ye, Captain Lewrie,” Lord Gardner said as he stood erect, going so far as to offer his hand. “It was a brave thing to snatch them up, in such a thick fog, with no thought for the presence of escorts… and, to get them away for study!”
“Well, it seemed a good idea at the moment, my lord,” Lewrie replied, shaking hands with the old fellow and trying to sound modest.
“Damme, Lewrie… had you not already been granted a knighthood, this deed surely would have earned you one!” Captain Niles said in praise as well.
Well, damned if it might’ve! Lewrie thought, feeling for the first time as if he had done something worthy of the honour, instead of secretly scorning his sash and star as a sop given for his usefulness, and the usefulness of his late wife’s murder, to ignite revulsion and hatred of the French, and Bonaparte.
“Long after the fact, though, Niles,” Lord Gardner said, dashing cold water on that speculation. “Our possession of the damned things is to be of the utmost secrecy… same as Lewrie’s torpedo devices. Least said, the better, what? Did the Crown decide Lewrie was worthy, it’d not be announced for years! Damme, even we’ve been put on strict notice to forget we ever saw them, and to not go blab to anyone they even exist! Do we dream about them, we’d best not talk in our sleep, hah!”