“These damned French things you brought in, Lewrie,” Captain Speaks said, turning too mellow and “chummy” too quickly for Lewrie’s taste. “We both have access to high secrets. What are they, really?”
“I cannot reveal that, sir. Truly!” Lewrie insisted.
“Bosun, lay on! Two dozen lashes! Rwark!” the parrot uttered, prefaced, and concluded, with what sounded like a throaty and rasping gargle, or cat-purr, as it paced along its perch.
“Have the French developed a form of torpedo, Lewrie? Perhaps anchored torpedoes?” Speaks further asked, almost cajolingly.
“I can assure you that they’re not torpedoes, sir, but that’s all I can tell you,” Lewrie cautiously replied. “About Admiral Lord Keith, though… he intends to employ catamaran torpedoes, did y’say? Before the weather in the Channel turns foul?”
“You will be informed at the proper time, Captain Lewrie,” the choleric older fellow snapped, seeing that the nature of Lewrie’s secret would not be forthcoming, and keeping his own ’til the last minute. He turned snippish once more. “Thanks to you, sir, there will not be time for further testing, and the catamaran torpedoes will be employed before their ultimate perfection, and…,” Speaks gravelled, levelling a finger at Lewrie like a pistol barrel, “should they fail to achieve the desired results, such failure will not be placed upon my head, but upon yours, sir, for your lack of support to me!”
“Despite our suggested improvements of drogues and rudders that drifted them quicker and straighter, sir?” Lewrie asked, having a hard time stifling his anger at such a threat, and the unfairness of it. “I and my men have been very supportive to you, as you told me earlier.”
“Damn my…!” Speaks said, spluttering with fury. “You are to keep your bloody frigate ready to sail at a moment’s notice! You are to restrict access with the shore, and except for victualling, you are to keep your people aboard, where they cannot blab.”
“Well, Reliant’s people have earned a brief spell Out of Discipline, after…,” Lewrie countered, instantly regretting how tongue-in-cheek that sounded.
“Absolutely not, sir!” Speaks roared. “You will sit and swing at anchor ’til I’ve need of you. Do not be obstreperous or insubordinate with me… I’ll not have it, do you hear?”
“Quite clearly, sir,” Lewrie replied, abashed.
“Dismissed, Captain Lewrie,” Speaks ordered, stone-faced.
“Mutinous dog! Mutinous dog… rwark!” from the parrot.
Once out on deck in the fresh air, Lewrie let out a deep pented breath, puffing out his cheeks and sharing a rueful glance with Lieutenant Douglas Clough, Penarth’s captain, who had wisely found another place to be while Speaks was tearing a strip off Lewrie’s arse. Clough looked sympathetic.
“Might there be something up, Mister Clough?” Lewrie asked him in a close-by mutter as he made ready to board his waiting big.
“Ye dinna hear it from me, sir, but… we’ve been ordered to take a fresh load of torpedoes aboard, in a tearing hurry, mind, and once done, I’m to take her down to Saint Helen’s Patch and wait for a favourable wind… for The Downs, sir, to join Admiral Lord Keith! Captain Speaks gave me a hint… it’s to be Boulogne, sir!” the rough-featured Scot muttered back, though with an eager grin. “Explosive boats, fireships, our torpedoes, and even some rocket-firing vessels… Mister William Congreve’s explosive rockets!”
“What’s a Congreve rocket?” Lewrie wondered aloud, in a soft, conspiratorial tone. “I know signal rockets, but…”
“Don’t rightly know, sir, for no one ever tells me things, if they don’t pertain to our torpedo trials,” Lt. Clough said with a wee and wry laugh. “Mark my words, Captain Lewrie… we’ll be a part of a grand attack on Boulogne, sure as Fate, and that soon!”
“Thankee, Mister Clough,” Lewrie said, grinning back, “for the news. Now, I’ll have t’play dumb ’til our superiors decide t’tell us for certain.”
“With no shore liberty for anyone… even officers,” Clough mournfully agreed.
“Boulogne, though… well, well!” Lewrie whispered, imagining what that would be like, on the day ordained.
Play dumb ’til I’m told the details? Lewrie thought as he went through the ritual of departing honours, I was born t’play dumb! It’s what people expect o’ me!
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
At least it’s a pretty day for it, Alan Lewrie thought as the coast of France loomed up from the southern horizon, as a squadron, of which HMS Reliant was a part, sailed for Boulogne. Lewrie did wonder, though, why the expedition was so small, if the undertaking was of such vital importance to England’s survival.
The squadron was led by Admiral of the Blue Lord Keith in HMS Monarch, a two-decker 74-gunned Third Rate, not the lofty First or Second Rate more suitable to his seniority. With Monarch were two 64-gun two-deckers and two much older Fourth Rate two-decker 50s, a type of warship more commonly seen on convoy duty or troop carrying these days, not in the line of battle. It was smaller ships that made up the bulk of the squadron’s numbers; there were bomb vessels with their big sea-mortars, some older warships converted to fire William Congreve’s infernal rockets, brig-sloops and frigates, and a host of cutters and armed launches… along with at least four fireships and the collier Penarth bearing their catamaran torpedoes.
Lewrie savoured the last few sips of tepid coffee in his pewter mug as he stood by the windward bulwarks of the quarterdeck, slouched a tad, it must be admitted, as he surveyed the lines of warships, the sea and sky. Did the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte wish for fine weather in which to launch his titanic invasion force, he could not ask for a milder day, for the conditions were rarely seen in the Channel in late Autumn, this first day of October of 1804.
The sky above was a soft and milky pale blue, almost completely blanketed by vast swathes of thin cirrus clouds, the sunlight softened and almost shadowless. Further up the Channel nearer to the Straits of Dover, and further down-Channel on the West horizon, there were thicker, taller, and more substantial clouds through which the sun speared down in bright shafts. There were sootier, darker shafts, too, as if there might be rain there, or, as superstitious old salts maintained, the sun was drawing up columns of water for a later deluge.
The waters of the Channel, usually boisterous, cross-chopped and sparkling with white-horses and white-caps, were calmer, too, the waves longer and shallower for once, and the muted sunlight turned the sea’s colour to steely grey-blue close aboard, and a paler blue that mirrored the sky further away. France, off the bows, was a thin smear of dull green and sand, a single coloured pencil-stroke, so far.
The only stark colours were the solidities of the warships, and their hulls and sails; dark brown weathered oak, the shiny black of the painted upperworks or the matte black of tarred wales, and the yellows, reds, ochres, or buffs of their hull stripes, with here and there glints of giltwork on transoms, entry-ports, or carved figureheads. Pale, new white canvas, or aged and weathered buff or parchment tan sails, made a ragged scudding cloudbank above those hulls. Above them all, and aft on wooden staffs, all ships sported Blue Ensigns with vivid red-white-blue Union flags in their cantons… and all flew yards-long commissioning pendants from their main-mast tops, streaming and flickering like snakes’ tongues licking the wind for the taste of prey.