1805 (16 page)

Drinkwater stepped forward and held out his hand for Rogers's speaking trumpet. As
Antigone
scudded before the wind he could make himself understood with little difficulty.

‘D'you hear, there! Pay attention to all my orders and execute them promptly. No one shall fire until I order it. All guns are to double shot and load canister on ball. All gun-captains to see their pieces aimed before they fire. I want perfect silence at all times. Any man in breach of this will have a check shirt.' He paused to let his words sink in. An excited cheer or shout might transform his intended audacity into foolhardiness. ‘Very well, let us show these shore-squatting Frogs what happens to 'em when they come to sea. Lieutenant Quilhampton!'

‘Sir?'

‘Abandon your guns for the moment, Mr Q. I want you on the fo'c's'le head listening. If you hear anything, indicate with your arm the direction of the noise as you do when signalling the anchor cable coming home.'

‘Aye, aye, sir.'

Drinkwater turned to the sailing master. ‘Well, Mr Hill, take a bearing of that French seventy-four and the instant the snow shuts him from view, heave the ship to. In the meantime try and lay us in his track.'

Hill turned away and peered over the taffrail, returning to the binnacle to order an alteration of course to the north. Drinkwater also turned to watch the approaching French. He was only just in time to catch a glimpse of them before they vanished. They were well clear of the land now, catching the full fury of the gale and feeling the effects of carrying too much canvas in their eagerness to overtake
Antigone
. Then they were gone, hidden behind a white streaked curtain of snow that second by second seemed to cut off the edge of their world in its silent approach.

‘Now, Hill! Now!'

‘Down helm! Main-braces there! Leggo and haul!'
Antigone
began to turn back into the wind. As men hauled in on the fore and mizen braces to keep the frigate sailing on a bowline, the main-yards were
backed against the wind, opposing the action of the other masts and checking her, so she lay in wait for the oncoming French. Drinkwater turned his attention to Quilhampton who had clambered up into the knightheads and had one ear cocked into the wind.
Antigone
bucked in the rising sea, her way checked and every man standing silent at his post.

‘ 'Tis a wonderful thing, discipline,' he heard Hill mutter to Rogers, and the first lieutenant replied with characteristic enthusiasm, ‘Aye, for diabolical purposes!' And then the snow began to fall upon the deck.

‘Keep the decks wet with sea-water, Mr Rogers. Get the firemen to attend to it.' He had not thought of the dangers of slush. Men losing their footing would imperil the success of his enterprise and wreak havoc when they opened fire. The snow seemed to deaden all noise so that the ship rose and fell like a ghost as minute succeeded minute. Drinkwater walked forward to the starboard hance. He wondered what the odds were upon them being run down. Even if they were, he consoled himself, mastering the feeling of rising panic that always preceeded action, they would seriously jeopardise Missiessy's escape and the Admiralty would approve of that.

‘Sir!' Quilhampton's voice hissed with urgent sibilance and he looked up to see the lieutenant's iron hook pointing off to starboard. For an instant Drinkwater hesitated, his mind uncertain. Then he heard shouting, the creak of rigging and the hiss of a bow wave. The shouting was not urgent, they themselves were undetected, but on board the Frenchman petty officers were lambasting an unpractised crew. And then he saw the ship, looking huge and black, the white patches of her sails invisible in the snow.

‘Main-braces!' he hissed with violent urgency. ‘Up helm!'

Drinkwater had no alternative but to risk being raked by the Frenchman's broadside. If the crew of the enemy battleship were at their guns, a single discharge would cripple the British frigate. But he hoped fervently that they would not see
Antigone
in so unexpected a place; that the novelty of being at sea would distract their attention inboard where, he knew, a certain amount of confusion was inevitable after so long a period at anchor. Besides, he could not risk losing control of his ship by attempting to tack from a standing start. Hove-to with no forward motion,
Antigone
would jib at passing through the wind and probably be caught ‘in irons'.

A group of marines were at the spanker brails, hauling in the big after-sail as
Antigone
turned, gathering way and answering her helm.
At the knightheads Quilhampton's raised arm indicated he still had contact with the enemy. They steadied the ship dead before the wind. Drinkwater went forward to stand beside Quilhampton and listen. The frigate was scending in the following sea and Drinkwater knew the wind, already at gale force, had not finished rising. If he was to achieve anything it would have to be soon. He strained his ears to hear. Above the creak of
Antigone
's fabric and the hiss and surge of her bow-wave he caught the muffled sound of orders, orders passed loudly and with some urgency as though the giver of those instructions was anxious, and the recipients slow to comprehend. There were a few words he recognised: ‘
Vite
!
Vite
!' and ‘
Allez
!' and the obscenity ‘
Jean-Foutre
!' of some egalitarian officer in the throes of frustration. And then suddenly he saw the flat surface of the huge stern with its twin rows of stern windows looming through the snow. Drinkwater raced aft.

‘Stand by larbowlines! Give her the main course!'

Then they could all see the enemy as a sudden rent in the snow opened up a tiny circle of sea. The gun-captains were frantically spiking their guns round to aim on the bow and Drinkwater looked up to see an officer on the battleship's quarter. He was waving his hat at them and shouting something.

‘By God, he thinks we're one of his own frigates come too close!'

Drinkwater watched the relative angles between the two ships. There was a great flogging and rattle of blocks as the main clew-garnets were let run and the waisters hauled down the tacks and sheets of the main-course. The relative angle began to open and someone on the French battleship realised his mistake.

He heard someone scream ‘
Merde
!' and ordered
Antigone
's course altered to starboard. Standing by the larboard hance he screwed up one eye.

‘Fire!'

The blast and roar of the guns rolled over them, the thunderous climax of Drinkwater's mad enterprise. The yellow flashes from the cannon muzzles were unnaturally bright in the gloom as the snow closed round them once again. He caught a glimpse of the enemy's name in large gilt roman script across her stern:
Magnanime
.

The smoke from the guns hung in the air, drifting forward slowly then suddenly gone, whipped away. The gunners were swabbing, reloading and hauling out, holding up their hands when they were ready. The sound of enemy guns barked out of the obscurity and they were alone again, shut into their own tiny world, and the snow was
falling thicker than ever.

‘Fire!' yelled Rogers and the second broadside was discharged into the swirling wraiths of white.
Antigone
's deck took a sudden cant as her stern lifted and she drove violently forward. Down went her bow, burying itself to the knightheads, a great cushion of white water foaming up around her.

‘Too much canvas, sir!' yelled Hill. Drinkwater nodded.

‘Secure the guns and shorten down!'

It took the combined efforts of fifty men to furl the mainsail. The huge, unreefed sail, set to carry them alongside the
Magnanime
, threatened to throw them off the yard as they struggled. In the end Lieutenant Fraser went aloft and the great sail was tamed and the process repeated with the fore-course. At the end of an hour's labour
Antigone
had hauled her yards round and lay on the starboard tack, her topsails hard reefed and her topgallant masts sent down as the gale became a storm and Drinkwater edged her north to report the break-out of Missiessy and the fact that he had lost contact with the enemy in the snow and violent weather.

Antigone
was able to hold her new course for less than an hour. Laughing and chaffing each other, the watch below had been piped down when they were called again. Drinkwater regained the deck to find the wind chopping rapidly round, throwing up a high, breaking and confused sea that threw the ship over and broke on board in solid green water. For perhaps fifteen minutes the wind dropped, almost to a calm while the snow continued to fall. The ship failed to answer her helm as she lost way. The men milled about in the waist and the officers stood apprehensive as they tried to gauge the new direction from which the wind would blow. A few drops of rain fell, mingled with wet snow flakes.

‘Sou'wester!' Hill and Drinkwater shouted together. ‘Stand by! Man the braces!'

It came with the unimaginable violence that only seamen experience. The squall hit
Antigone
like a gigantic fist, laying her sails aback, tearing the fore-topsail clean from its bolt ropes and away to leeward like a lost handkerchief. The frigate lay over under the air pressure in her top-hamper and water bubbled in through her closed gun-ports. From below came the crash and clatter of the mess kids and coppers on the galley stove, together with a ripe torrent of abuse hurled at the elements by the cook and his suddenly eloquent mates.

‘Lee braces, there!' Look lively my lads! Aloft and secure that raffle!'

With a thunderous crack and a tremble that could be felt throughout the ship the main-topmast sprang at the instant the main-topsail also blew out of its bolt ropes, and then the first violent spasm of the squall was past and the wind steadied, blowing at a screaming pitch as they struggled to bring the bucking ship under control again.

The gale blew for several days. The rain gave way to mist and the mist, on the morning of the 15th, eventually cleared. On the horizon to the north Drinkwater and Hill recognised the outline of the Ile d'Yeu and debated their next move.
Felix
must by now have communicated the news of Missiessy's break-out to Graves, in which case Graves would have withdrawn towards Cornwallis off Ushant. But supposing something had happened to Bourne and the
Felix
? After such an easterly wind Graves would be worried that Missiessy had gone, and gone at a moment when, through sheer necessity, his own back had been turned. Graves would have returned to Rochefort and might be waiting there now, unable to get close inshore to see into the Basque Road, for fear of the continuing gale catching him on a lee shore.

‘He'd be locking the stable door after the horse had gone,' said Hill reflectively.

‘Quite so,' replied Drinkwater. ‘And we could fetch the Ile de Ré on one tack under close-reefed topsails to clarify the situation. If Graves is not there we will have lost but a day in getting to Cornwallis. Very well,' Drinkwater made up his mind, clapped his hand over his hat and fought to keep his footing on the tilting deck. ‘Course south-east, let us look into the Basque Road and see if Graves has regained station.'

On the morning of the 16th they found Graves off the Ile d'Oléron having just been informed by the
Felix
of Missiessy's departure. In his search for the admiral, Bourne had also run across the French squadron heading north. During a long morning of interminable flag hoists it was established that this encounter had occurred after Drinkwater's brush with the enemy and therefore established that Missiessy's task was probably to cause trouble in Ireland. This theory was lent particular force by Drinkwater's report that troops were embarked. It was a tried strategy of the French government and the signalling system was not capable of conveying Drinkwater's theory about the West Indies. In truth, on that particular morning, with the practical difficulties in handling the ship and attending to the admiral,
Drinkwater himself was not over-confident that he was right. Besides, there was other news that permeated the squadron during that blustery morning, news more closely touching themselves. In getting into Quiberon Bay to warn Graves, the
Doris
had found the admiral already gone. Struggling seawards again,
Doris
had struck a rock and, after great exertions by Campbell and his people, had foundered.
Felix
had taken off her crew and all were safe, but the loss of so fine a frigate and the escape of Missiessy cast a shadow over the morale of the squadron. Afterwards Drinkwater was to remember that morning as the first of weeks of professional frustration; when it seemed that providence had awarded its laurels to the Imperial eagle of France, that despite the best endeavours of the Royal Navy, the weeks of weary and remorseless blockade, the personal hardships of every man-jack and boy in the British fleet, their efforts were to come to naught.

But for the time being Graves's squadron had problems of its own. The morning of signalling had thrown them to leeward and in the afternoon they were unable to beat out of the bay and compelled to anchor. When at last the weather moderated, Graves reported to Cornwallis, only to find Sir William in ailing health, having himself been driven from his station to shelter in Torbay. For a while the ships exchanged news and gossip. Cornwallis was said to have requested replacement, while it was known that Admiral Latouche-Tréville had died at Toulon and been replaced by Admiral Villeneuve, the only French flag-officer to have escaped from Nelson's devastating attack in Aboukir Bay. Of what had happened to Missiessy no one was quite sure, but it was certain that he had not gone to Ireland. A few weeks later it was common knowledge that he had arrived at Martinique in the West Indies.