“Hoy, the ship!” Lewrie called as his gig came alongside of her larboard entry-port. Irritatingly, no one paid him any mind. Instead, he could hear rhythmic chanting of French “pulley-hauley,” then noted that Chlorinde’s main course yard was being used as a crane. Slowly, a 12-pounder or 18-pounder gun was hoisted clear above her starboard bulwarks, even more slowly swung clear of the hull, and lowered. They were lightening ship by jettisoning all her artillery overside, to the shallow side.
There were more basso grunts as more of her crew laboured on the capstan. Her best bower anchor had been rowed out towards the channel depths, and the cable was now bar-taut, in an effort to drag her bows free. No matter how strongly her people breasted to the capstan bars, though, dug their shoes or bare toes into the deck and pressed forward with all their strength, that didn’t seem to be of any avail so far.
“Bugger their side-party,” Lewrie muttered. His bow man had a good grip with a gaff on the frigate’s main chain platform, and his gig was close alongside. Lewrie stood and made his way through his oarsmen, stepped onto the boat’s gunn’l, and hopped onto the platform. “With me, Desmond, Furfy.”
“Aye, sor!” his Irish Cox’n replied.
The battens were not sanded, and the man-ropes strung loose on either hand of the battens were old and grey, but they held. Lewrie made his way upwards, step at a time, thinking that stringing the man-ropes through the battens to make taut hand-rails, as his own Navy did, made a lot more sense.
“Anybody home?” Lewrie asked once he’d gained the larboard gangway. “Anybody bloody care?” As he’d judged the day before, there were at least a thousand people aboard the Chlorinde, sailors, soldiers of Infantrie de Marine, survivors of infantry regiments from shore, and civilians everywhere, all intent on heaving things overside on the far side of the ship.
“Qui vive, m’sieur?” a French Midshipman asked him, eyes wide in surprise. “Uhm, M’sieur le Capitaine?”
“Lewrie… Royal Navy… here to… pourvoir assistance? Or, secours?” he answered, pointing out towards his fetched-to frigate.
“Ah, mais oui! Lieutenant Veeloughby? M’sieur?” the Midshipman said with a relieved smile, then turned to bellow.
“What the bloody…! Aha!” a Royal Navy officer, his hat off and his waist-coat undone, barked, crossing the quarterdeck through a throng of furiously labouring people to Lewrie. “Josiah Willoughby, sir, of the Hercule, seventy-four.”
“Alan Lewrie, the Reliant frigate,” Lewrie replied. “Sorry we can’t get her close aboard you, but… we’d end up in the same predicament. I’ve four boat crews and some spare hands with me, so… what needs doing, first, Mister Willoughby?”
“Just about everything, sir!” Lt. Willoughby quickly replied with a disarming grin. “Cast her guns and carriages overboard, and may the rebels have joy of them… all her roundshot. We’ve started her water butts, gotten a bower out. No joy there, yet, but we’re trying, and the French sailors are doing their best.”
“My cutter could take her kedge out to mid-channel, to wrench her stern free, if there’s something that could serve as a capstan, or a purchase,” Lewrie offered.
“That’d be grand, sir… though, she’s already beat off her rudder, so, do we manage to get her off before the rebels open fire on her, there’s no telling of how she’ll handle.”
“We’ll get right to it. Desmond, summon all our boats under her transom, and tell Mister Houghton to be ready to take aboard a kedge.”
“Right away, sor!”
A chorus of axes rang out as a gun carriage, too heavy to bear up in one piece, was being hacked to bits below on her gun-deck, with the resulting chunks heaved out open gun-ports.
“I’ve cut away her second bower, sir, and jettisoned its cable, and was just about to jettison the kedge and its cable, before your arrival,” Willoughby related, taking a second to mop his streaming face with a handkerchief and allow himself a rueful grin. “Don’t quite know if we can get her afloat before the forts set us all afire.”
For a fellow in his straits, Lt. Willoughby was in a damnably good mood, as if danger and difficulties were his meat and drink.
“If you can’t, I s’pose we could ferry her people out to my ship,” Lewrie offered. “Women and children first, though I don’t know how the rest would feel about standin’ passive and takin’ heated shot as we do so.”
“It’s a wonder the rebels haven’t already, sir,” Willoughby said with another of those beaming grins. “The deadline’s long past.”
“Well, you keep on doin’ what you’re doin’, Mister Willoughby, and I’ll see to her kedge,” Lewrie told him, tapping the brim of his hat as Lt. Willoughby knuckled his own brow in shared salutes.
Once back in his gig, Lewrie had himself rowed aft to the tuck-under of Chlorinde’s squared-off stern, where Midshipman Houghton and his cutter were waiting. A leather hawse-buckler was torn free, then a kedge cable was passed through the hawse-hole, then taken back onto the deck to be seized to the upper ring of the so-far-unseen anchor.
Long minutes later, and the kedge appeared, suspended from its cable, with handling lines bound to its upper cross-arms to ease the thing down. Midshipman Houghton, an excellent boat-handler, chivvied the cutter forward a foot or so, aft a foot or so, then starboard for a few feet ’til the kedge-nowhere as monstrous-heavy as a bower, but still a weight to be reckoned with-could be lowered into the midships of his boat.
“No after capstan, sorry, Captain Lewrie, but, they’ve a fair-heavy windlass, for purchase!” Lt. Willoughby called down, sticking his head and shoulders over the taffrails for a second; now coat-less, to boot.
“Pass me two more lighter lines, Mister Willoughby, and we’ll see what we can do towards haulin’ her stern off,” Lewrie said back.
“Done, and done, sir!” Willoughby right-cheerfully shouted.
Ye’d think he relishes this! Lewrie sarcastically thought, as two more four-inch lines were heaved over, through after gun-ports as if by magic. “One for you, Mister Entwhistle, and one for you, Mister Warburton,” Lewrie ordered. “Lash down, and haul away!”
Eight oarsmen in the launch, only six oarsmen in the smaller jolly-boat, could not generate much effort with those lighter lines; once extended to their full length, the boats remained in one place, no matter how hard Reliant’s people strained. It was the kedge cable that bore the bulk of the draw, once Midshipman Houghton let it go over the side at mid-channel, at right-angles to Chlorinde’s hull. The cable went bar-taut, rising from the water, dripping water, then spraying droplets and groaning as it was wrung like a wash-rag by the strain put on it by the lower-deck windlass aboard the French frigate.
“I could take one of those light lines, sir,” Houghton offered once he’d returned from deploying the anchor. “I’ve more hands aboard than the jolly-boat.”
“Aye, go close aboard her, and call for Lieutenant Will…,” Lewrie began to say, before he spotted what he took for an abandoned admiral’s barge being rowed out to them from shore by a crew of shirtless, dark brown oarsmen. “Willoughby!” he bellowed aloft, instead. “Trouble coming!”
“I’ve seen them, sir!” Willoughby shouted down to him. “What should we do? Begin evacuation?”
“I’ll try to stall them,” Lewrie replied, wondering just how he’d pull that off. “Hold on a bit… I know that bugger!”