It was late afternoon before the squadron got under way, again, with Lord Keith’s flagship, Monarch, leading all three frigates, bomb vessels, fireships, the Penarth collier, and all the brig-sloops and cutters closer to Boulogne.
“Now, we’ll see something!” Speaks enthused, pacing the quarterdeck with jaunty steps and clapping his hands in eagerness for action.
But no, they didn’t, for Monarch signalled for all ships to anchor again, this time just outside of the maximum reach of French cannon! In much shallower water, even the cutters could put down an anchor and find good holding ground without paying out too much scope of cable.
“A word, sir?” Lt. Westcott whispered, near Lewrie’s shoulder.
“Aye,” Lewrie allowed, just as guarded.
“This doesn’t make any sense, sir,” Westcott grumbled, his face set in a beetle-browed frown. “We haven’t even been ordered to clear for action, and here we are, sitting ducks should the French come out, as you feared round Noon, when we fetched-to instead of anchoring.”
“Well, it doesn’t make any sense t’me, either, if there’s comfort in mutual perplexity,” Lewrie gravelled back, shaking his head. “I would’ve thought we’d bring the other four ‘liners’ along. If Monarch can anchor this closely, so could the sixty-fours and the fifties.”
“One hates to question the judgement of superior officers, but… surely, sir, were Nelson here, one would think we’d have been hot at it, hours ago,” Westcott said.
“Second-guessin’ superior officers?” Lewrie said with a cackle. “Damme, Mister Westcott, that’s the Navy meat and drink! Hmm,” he went on after a long moment of pursing his lips and staring shoreward. “Perhaps Lord Keith’s of a mind t’launch the attack tonight, when fireships’d cause even more panic than they would in daylight. You may be in the boats and right under the French guns by midnight!”
“One can only hope, sir,” Westcott eagerly agreed.
“Mister Spendlove?” Lewrie called out to the officer of the watch. “You have the deck. I’m goin’ aloft for a look-see.”
Since his first days as a raw and callow Midshipman in 1780, he had always been pluperfect-terrified of going aloft, hundreds of feet from the sane safety of solid decks, “yo-ho-hoing” out the futtock shrouds to hang like a spider nigh upside-down instead of using the “lubber’s hole” to the fighting top platform, scrambling higher up the narrowing shrouds and rat-lines to the cross-trees, or the fearful mast caps… going out to the tip of a tops’l, t’gallant, or royal yardarm to fist canvas, with upper arms locked over the yard and his feet teetering on a foot-rope that shimmied like a circus performer’s high wire, with a bare second of clumsiness dooming him to plunge overside to drown, or go Splat! on the upper deck!
He slung his telescope over his shoulder and went up the starboard shrouds of the mizen mast. Damn what Captain Speaks thought of him, he eschewed the futtock shrouds and transferred to the counter-bracing cat-harpings to reach the top through the lubber’s hole.
I ain’t a twenty-year-old topman, he grimly told himself; nor a twenty-year-old anything any longer!
“Uh, evenin’, sir!” a spry young sailor bade him as Lewrie took a deep breath to steady his twanging nerves before extending his telescope.
“Evenin’, Grimes,” Lewrie replied, sparing a moment to grin back, recalling that Grimes was one of the two-dozen or so that his old Bosun, Will Cony, now the owner of The Olde Ploughman public house in Anglesgreen, had recruited as volunteers when Reliant had been fitting out.
“Ehm… d’ye think we might see a bit of a fight tonight, sir?” Grimes asked with a wolfish expression.
“Ye never can tell, Grimes,” Lewrie told him. “If we don’t get ordered in, I don’t see the Frogs comin’ out to us. What’s your station, do we go to Quarters?”
“Well, I would be here, sir, t’tend sail and see to damage, but if we get t’launch those torpeder things, I’m down for Mister Houghton in his boat, and handle the swivel gun.”
“You’d have more fun in Houghton’s boat,” Lewrie assured him as he turned his attention to the shore. “We might blow some French boats to Hell… and some Frogs with ’em.”
“There’s a lot of ’em, sir,” Grimes commented.
God, ain’t there, just! Lewrie thought as he levelled his telescope on the top-mast shrouds and rat-lines and got a good view. Even as dusk began to fall, there was still enough light for him to make out hundreds of vessels in Boulogne harbour, everything from prames, First Rate gunboats, to the smallest single-masted caiques. They were lined up against the inner harbour piers several rows deep, along the minor jetties where small fishing boats would tie up, in row after row round the harbour in deeper water, and all alongside the inner side of the stone breakwaters with only their masts showing… a deep forest of masts! Boulogne was so full of invasion shipping that any vessel attempting to sail out would have to pick a tortuous way without ramming into something.
Closer to, the outside of the breakwaters was lined with long rows of every sort of barge and caique, arrayed two-deep, and there seemed to be at least two hundred of them, as Lewrie tried to keep a running count. Wee lanthorns were winking to light aboard them, among the vessels he could still see inside the harbour, and he began counting them instead of masts or hulls, but gave it up after a moment; it was as futile as trying to count all the stars in a clear West Indies night! Warehouses along the piers, houses, taverns, and shops began to blossom wee glims, too, and they all blended together. And beyond the harbour town, thousands of points of light emerged as the evening drew on, until every clifftop, every open field, every overlook above the sea, was transformed to a faeryland of winking lights, and Boulogne became a city as great as London, as well-lit as Paris when he had been there during the Peace of Amiens… the campfires and lanthorns and candles of a vast army encamped for miles and miles about in tents and huts!
And the French were ready for them. Long before their revolution, in the time of French kings, Boulogne had been fortified, guarded by stone forts well-armed with good artillery, and with the ascendancy of Napoleon Bonaparte-an artilleryman!-the defences had gotten even stronger, with batteries erected on the breakwaters and flanking high ground in stout stone redans, or in thick earthen batteries every three miles along the French coast, the entire length of the Channel, from Ushant to Dunkerque. Smoke, not from cook-fires, arose from some of the stouter emplacements… furnaces and forges for heated shot?
Near the harbour entrance between the enveloping arms of the breakwaters, Lewrie could barely make out some three-masted gunboats, swinging at single anchors to the wind and tide, where they could sortie if Lord Keith launched his attack. Out beyond them and the lines of boats along the outer breakwater faces, large armed launches were rowing, keeping a wary eye on the British squadron.
“This could turn hopeless, fast,” Lewrie whispered to himself.
“Say somethin’, sir?” Grimes asked.
“Enjoy the view,” Lewrie said, louder, then turned to begin his descent to the safety of the deck.
“The tide’s beginning to run well, sir,” the Sailing Master, Mr. Caldwell, pointed out just after Lewrie stowed his telescope in the compass binnacle cabinet, “though the wind’s both perverse and scant for an assault.”
“Perhaps we won’t be going in, after all, Mister Caldwell,” Lewrie replied with an impatient shrug, and a peek aloft to the commissioning pendant, which was streaming the wrong way. “If we send in the fireships, there’s a chance they’d just drift back onto us.”
“We’ve the bomb vessels in place, the rocket ships anchored and in good range,” Captain Speaks grumbled. “If the wind won’t serve, at least we could begin to shell them, tonight. Stap me, this delay and dithering is maddening!”
Should’ve stayed aloft, Lewrie thought; and avoided the pest a while longer!
The bomb vessels that Lewrie had seen while aloft were of the newer type, with their two masts set far back to leave their two mortars free play up forward, set deep in re-enforced wells. They’d been anchored by a single stern kedge and both their bower anchors set out at extreme angles so tensioning or loosening their bower cables could swing their aim in great arcs. The older, converted rocket ships were beam-on to the shore, anchored from bows and sterns with springs on their cables to shift their aim. All seemed ready.
“Aye, but how many rockets have we to fire?” Lewrie speculated aloud. “How many shells are aboard the bombs? We shoot off half of our bolts, without usin’ the fireships and torpedoes at the same time…?” he added, finishing with another, greater, arm-lifting shrug.
“We’re to sit here and wait for tomorrow night’s tide, and hope the wind co-operates?” Captain Speaks groused. “Pah!”
“Well, at least we may savour a good supper in peace,” Lewrie said with a chuckle. “My cook assures me he’s a cured ham for us, and if we don’t have to go to Quarters, we’ll dine on a hot meal.”
“A hot supper!” Captain Speaks barked incredulously, sneering at Lewrie’s priorities. An inarticulate growl followed.
“You’ll join me, Mister Caldwell?” Lewrie offered, grinning.
“Gad, yes, I will, sir, and thankee most kindly!” Mr. Caldwell quickly responded, rubbing his hands in expectation.
Speaks turned away to mumble something, which made Lewrie grin impishly. “D’ye know, Mister Caldwell, this puts me in mind of Copenhagen, the night before the battle, with the two fleets anchored not two miles apart, like ancient armies, glarin’ at each other, with the battlefield between ’em.”
Lewrie knew how much that would rile Speaks, and determined he would expand on the subject over supper, which Captain Speaks would not turn down… unless he intended to sulk and fast in his hammock!