Alternate Generals (29 page)

His knighthood—and
Torbay
—had been his reward for that . . . and now he was risking it all.

He grimaced at the thought and headed aft to pace his scorching quarterdeck. If anything befell the convoy, his decision to order it back to Antigua escorted by a single sloop would ruin him, and he knew it. Worse, the orders he had elected to ignore had come from Sir George Rodney, who was even less noted for tolerating disobedience than Paul himself. But at least he also understood the value of initiative. If events justified Paul's decision, Rodney would forgive him; if they didn't, the admiral would destroy him.

He paused in his pacing and beckoned Gaither to his side.

"Yes, sir?"

"Lieutenant Jansen needs more men. General Cornwallis has supplied ample labor and a battalion to picket each battery, but Jansen needs more gunners. Instruct the Gunner to select a half-dozen gun captains—men with experience using heated shot."

"Yes, sir. I'll see to it at once."

"Thank you." Paul nodded brusquely and resumed his pacing as Gaither summoned a midshipman. He heard the lieutenant giving the lad quiet instructions, but his mind was back on the scene he'd just left ashore.

It was August 25, 1781. His squadron had taken the better part of nine days to reach Chesapeake Bay, but he'd picked up two more of the line along the way, having met the old sixty-gun
Panther
in the Caicos Passage, and the seventy-four
Russel
, bound for New York after repairing damages at Antigua, off the Georgia coast. Jasper Somers,
Russel
's captain, was barely two months junior to Paul, and he had been less than pleased by the latter's peremptory order to join
Torbay
. Paul hadn't blamed Somers, though that hadn't prevented him from commandeering
Russel
with profound relief. But welcome as her guns were, the ship accompanying her to New York had been even more welcome. HMS
Serapis
had brought him luck once before; perhaps she would do so again.

Something
had better do so. He had five of the line, counting
Panther
(which was considerably older than
he
was), plus
Serapis
, the forty-four
Charon
(which he'd found anchored off Yorktown with the small frigates
Guadalupe
and
Fowey
and the tiny sloop
Bonetta
), and Westman's
Lark
. That was all, whereas de Grasse must have
at least
twenty sail of the line. That force could smash Paul's cobbled up command in an hour, and he knew it.

But he also knew General Rochambeau and the rebel Washington were headed south with far more men and artillery than Cornwallis could muster. If de Grasse could command the bay long enough for the Franco-American army to crush Yorktown, the consequences would be catastrophic. Efforts against the rebellion had been botched again and again, and support back home had weakened with each failure. Personally, Paul suspected the colonies were lost whatever happened, and the sooner the Crown admitted it, the better. America wasn't Ireland. There was an entire ocean between Britain and her rebellious colonists, and they couldn't be disarmed with the wilderness pressing so close upon them. Besides, England couldn't possibly field a large enough army to hold them down by force forever.

But personal doubt didn't change the duty of a King's officer. And even if it could have, the war was no longer solely about America. It might have started there, but England now faced the French, the Dutch, the Spanish. . . . The entire world had taken up arms against Paul's country. One more major defeat might seal not only the fate of North America but of England herself, and Washington, at least, grasped that point thoroughly. He'd wanted the French fleet to support an attack on the main British base at New York, but de Grasse's letters made it clear he could come no further north than the Chesapeake. Apparently Louis XVI's willingness to aid his American "allies" did not extend to uncovering his own Caribbean possessions or convoys.

None of which would make a successful combination against Cornwallis any less of a calamity, and Paul's jaw clenched. He respected Rodney deeply, but the last year had not been Sir George's finest. True, his health was atrocious, but his absorption in the capture of St. Eustatius from the Dutch and his inexplicable refusal to force an engagement in June, following de Grasse's capture of Tobago, had set the stage for the present danger.

Without control of American waters, we can't possibly wear the rebels down
, Paul thought grimly
, and if the Frogs can win sea control
here
, they may take control of the Channel, as well.
Holding
it would be another matter, but they only require control long enough to land an army. And the only way to ensure that they can't is to smash their fleet—which means fighting them at every possible opportunity, even at unfavorable odds. Those who will not risk, cannot win. Hawke understood that, and so should Rodney!

He shook himself. Rodney
did
understand, but he was a sick man who had been given reason to believe de Grasse was bound back to Europe, escorting a major French convoy. That was why he'd elected to return to England himself and sent Sir Samuel Hood to assume command at New York after Admiral Graves' unexpected death, with only fourteen of the line as reinforcements. But Rodney's intelligence sources had been wrong . . . and Sir John Paul was the senior officer who knew it.

That made it
his
responsibility to act. He could have taken his captured letters to New York, but Hood had strongly endorsed Rodney's estimate of de Grasse's intentions, and he was renowned for his stubbornness. Changing his mind could require days England might no longer have, and so Paul had taken matters into his own hands. He would
compel
Hood to sail for the Chesapeake by taking his own small force there and sending dispatches to announce what he'd done.

Samuel Hood was arrogant, stiff-necked, and contentious, but he was also a fighter who would have no
choice
but to sail south once he learned Paul had committed a mere five of the line to a fight to the death against an entire fleet. If Paul's estimate of de Grasse's intentions proved wrong, he could always be punished later. If it proved correct, Hood's failure to relieve him would be an ineradicable blot on not only his personal honor but that of the Navy itself.

Paul drew a deep breath and walked to the side, looking out at his command. To a landsman, his ships must look small and fragile, isolated from one another as each lay to a pair of anchors, but he saw with a seaman's eye. The mouth of the Chesapeake was ten miles wide, and no squadron this small could cover it all. Yet for all its size, the shallow bay was a dangerous place for deep-draft ships-of-the-line. Paul didn't have to block its entire entrance: only the parts of it de Grasse's heavy ships could use.

That was why
Russel
and
Charon
were anchored between the shoals known as the Middle Ground and the Inner Middle Ground, blocking the channel there, while
Triumph, Panther, Serapis, Prince William
, and
Torbay
blocked the wider channel between the Inner Middle Ground and the shoal called the Tail of the Horseshoe. And because they had anchored on springs—heavy hawsers led from each ship's capstan out an after gunport and thence to her anchor cable, so that tightening or loosening them pivoted her in place—they could turn to fire full broadsides at any Frenchmen attempting to force the channels.

Unfortunately, there were two other ways into the bay. One, the North Channel, between the Middle Ground and Fisherman's Island at the north side of the entrance, was no great threat. Landing parties and detachments from Cornwallis' army had emplaced twelve of
Prince William
's twenty-four-pounders—and furnaces to heat shot for them—on the island, and the channel was narrow enough for them to command easily.

The southern side of the Bay's entrance was more dangerous. Lynnhaven Roads, inside Cape Henry, was shallow, but it would suffice. Indeed, it was in most ways an ideal anchorage: sheltered by the cape, yet close enough to open water for a fleet to sortie quickly if an enemy approached. But Paul's ships were stretched as thinly as he dared blocking the channels; he couldn't possibly bar Lynnhaven Roads as well.

What he
could
do was place a second battery on the western side of Cape Henry, although Lieutenant Jansen was finding it difficult to mount his guns. Simply ferrying them ashore was hard enough, for the battery consisted of thirty-two-pounders from the seventy-fours. Each gun weighed over two and a half tons, but only their three-thousand-yard range could hope to cover the water between the cape and
Torbay
, and at least Jansen had finally found a place to site them.

I've done all I can
, Paul told himself, gazing out at the boats pulling back and forth across the water.
Something must be left to chance in a fight . . . and simply finding us waiting for him should at least make de Grasse cautious. I hope.

He shook himself as the ship's bell chimed eight times to announce the turn of the forenoon watch. His stomach growled as the bell reminded it he'd missed breakfast yet again, and he grinned wryly and took himself below in search of a meal.

"It would appear you were correct, Sir John," Captain Somers said quietly, five days later.

He and Paul stood gazing at a chart of the Chesapeake while
Torbay
creaked softly around them, and Commander Westman stood to one side.
Fitting that Westman should be the one to sight de Grasse's approach
, a corner of Paul's brain mused, but it was a distant thought beside the strength estimate
Lark
had brought him.

Twenty-eight of the line.
Six times
his strength, and no sign of Hood. It was one thing to know his duty, he found; it was quite another to know a desperately unequal battle which had been only a probability that morning had become a certainty by evening.

"What d'you expect them to do?" Somers asked, and Paul rubbed his chin, eyes fixed on the chart in the candlelight.

"They'll scout first," he said. "For all de Grasse knows, we're the entire New York squadron. But he won't need long to determine our actual strength, and I expect he'll try a quick attack then. He'll have the flood only until the end of the morning watch; after that, the ebb will make the channels even shallower."

"Um." It was Somers' turn to rub his chin, then nod. "I think you're right," he said, and grinned suddenly. "I was none too pleased when you pressed my ship, Sir John. Now—"

He shrugged, grinning more broadly, and held out his hand.

The morning was cool but carried promise of yet another scorching afternoon as Paul came on deck. Although the ship had cleared for action before dawn, he'd taken time for a leisurely breakfast. It hadn't been easy to sit and eat with obvious calm, but this would be a long day, and he would need all his energy. Even more importantly,
Torbay
's crew must know he was so confident he'd seen no reason to skip a meal.

If
only they knew the truth
, he mused, and glanced at the masthead commission pendant to check the wind. Still from the west-southwest. Good. That would make it more difficult for any Frenchman to creep around Cape Henry into Lynnhaven Roads.

He lowered his eyes to the guard boats pulling for their mother ships. The French were scarcely noted for initiative in such matters, but in de Grasse's shoes Paul would certainly have attempted a boat attack, for the French squadron had more than enough men and small craft to swamp his vessels. However unlikely Frenchmen were to make such an attempt, he'd had no option but to guard against the possibility, and he hoped de Grasse would delay long enough for those boat crews to get some rest.

He looked up once more to where Lieutenant Gaither perched in the mizzen crosstrees. Paul would have preferred to be up there himself, but that would have revealed too much anxiety, and so he had to wait while Gaither peered through his telescope. It seemed to take forever, though it could actually have been no more than ten minutes before Gaither started down. He reached the deck quickly, and Paul raised an eyebrow in silent question.

"More than half of them are still hull down to the east-sou'east, sir," Gaither replied, "but a dozen of the line—all two-deckers, I believe—and two frigates are four or five miles east of Cape Henry. As nearly as I can estimate, their course is west-nor'west and they're making good perhaps four knots."

"I see." Paul rubbed his chin. De Grasse's maneuvers showed more caution than he'd dared hope for. He himself would have closed with all the force he had, yet he had to admit that, properly handled, a dozen of the line would more than suffice to destroy his squadron.

Assuming, of course, that the French knew what to do with them.

He squinted up at the cloudless sky. The flood would continue to make for another three hours, during which the rising tide would be available to refloat a ship which touched bottom coming in. In his enemy's place, Paul would have begun the attack the moment the tide began making, but it seemed the French had no desire to
attack
. Their course was for the North Channel, apparently in order to exploit the "unguarded" chink in Paul's defenses rather than risk engaging his outnumbered, anchored ships. Yet it would take them at least three hours just to reach the channel, and when they got there . . .

"Thank you, Mr. Gaither," he said after a moment, and his cold, thin smile made the quarterdeck gunners nudge one another with confident grins. He could be a right bastard, the Captain. He had a tongue that could flay a man like the cat itself, and he used it with a will. But that very sharpness lent his praise even more weight, when he gave it, and the storm or fight that could best him had never been made.

Lieutenant Wallace Hastings of HMS
Russel
and his work parties had labored frantically for six days to build the battery. In fact, he'd never thought they could finish it in time, but people had a way of not disappointing Sir John. Or, at least, of not disappointing him more than
once
. And so now Hastings and his gun crews—each with a core of naval gunners eked out by artillerists from Lord Cornwallis' army—waited as another slow, thunderous broadside rippled down
Russel
's side.