Heart of Steele (16 page)

And then the
Fury,
which had held back from the cannon fire, ranged alongside, with John Barrel clinging to the shrouds. “Ahoy!” he bawled in a voice that carried across the water. “Astern! Look astern! The
Red Queen
is bearing in!”

I sprang into the shrouds and climbed halfway to the mizzentop, gazing back over the water. Standing out against the growing light of dawn, an enormous black bulk of ship towered up from the sea. I felt the shrouds twitch, and my uncle laboriously clambered up to me, where he clung awkwardly, panting. “I must see this prodigy,” he grunted.

“There,” I said, pointing.

For a moment Uncle Patch was silent, holding his breath. Then he exhaled and whispered, “Sweet mother of—’tis clean impossible! Nothing that big can float!”

I knew how he felt. The skin of my arms crawled
as I realized the
Red Queen
was still a good two miles away. She loomed as though she were much closer. The
Concepcíon,
to starboard of our ship, was so large that the
Aurora
looked like a fisherman’s sloop next to her. But the
Red Queen
dwarfed even the
Concepcíon.
She was so large that the
Aurora
could have been placed on her main deck with room to spare fore, aft, and to both sides.

Steele’s ship was under a pyramid of billowed sails, standing in for all she was worth. I heard Captain Hunter bellowing orders, and our ship wore, turning away from the wind, to head toward this new threat. Don Esteban followed suit, but more slowly, for his ship could not maneuver so well as ours. I noticed that the
Fury,
the smallest of us all, was making for the security of Hog Island.

Uncle Patch and I scrambled back down to the deck, ran forward, and stood staring at the monster approaching us. The rim of the sun gleamed above the eastern horizon, first lighting her topgallants, then her topsails, and so down to the courses and decks. When the sun’s rays struck her sides, the
Red Queen
became a crimson blaze, nearly glowing. Mr. Jeffers, the master gunner, came and whistled. “Three
gun decks,” he said softly. “And I make no doubt the bigger cannons throw thirty-two-, thirty-six-pound balls. Mates, she’s a floating fortress, she is.”

“God help us all,” muttered my uncle. “That is what William proposes to fight!”

Despite all her sails the
Red Queen
made poor headway against the foul wind, for she stood only a matter of eight points free. That is, she could not sail directly toward us, for that would put the wind dead against her. Instead, the bloodred ship tacked, now swinging her prow to one side of the head-wind, now to the other.

The
Concepcíon,
after our turn, lay to the left, or larboard, of the
Aurora,
and one hundred yards away and astern of us. Uncle Patch and I hurried back to the quarterdeck. “William!” my uncle barked. “For the love of mercy, let Don Esteban catch up. If Steele hits us one at a time, we have not even a prayer.”

Captain Hunter clenched his hands, staring ahead at the oncoming pirate ship. Then he nodded. “Very well.” Raising his voice, he ordered, “Take a reef in the mainsail! Lower the topsails!”

It took only a few moments for the
Concepcíon
to
come abreast of us. Then the captain drew his sword. “Steady, lads! Steele means to sail right between us!”

I kept expecting my uncle to order me to accompany him below to the sick berth, which was our battle station. But he seemed frozen by the sight of the
Red Queen
and stood at the rail staring at her. I did not speak to him at all, but gazed at the figurehead of the closing ship, a woman dressed in flowing robes and wearing a crown. She had a billow of brilliant red hair, but where her face should have been I could see merely a grinning skull.

“Port your helm!” roared Captain Hunter. “Fire as they bear!”

The
Aurora
turned smoothly to the right, and beginning at the bows the guns went off one right after the other, a rippling crash. Jets of water leaped at the
Red Queen
’s waterline, and scarlet splinters flew from her bloodred hull where our guns struck true. At the same time, the
Concepcíon
had wheeled to larboard, and her own three decks of twenty-four-pound cannons blazed away. Some of her shot flew shockingly wild, but much of it battered into the
Red Queen.
Still the pirate ship
came on, clearly meaning to sail between us and fire both sides.

We would be within pistol shot of her decks. We had fired two broadsides at her and were nearly ready with a third when her guns came within play. My uncle grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and thrust me down to the deck, falling beside me, as the
Red Queen
began to fire. The explosion of sound was incredible. I heard huge shot howling just overhead, or so it seemed, and heard the crash and crack of cannonballs hitting us.

But our cannons replied, at point-blank range. They stabbed into the open gunports of the pirate ship’s lowest deck. Through the din I heard the clang of one of our cannonballs striking a gun or an anchor on the other ship. Men in our tops, armed with muskets, blazed away, though to hit anything on the
Red Queen
’s towering main deck they had to fire horizontally.

The
Red Queen
began to wear, turning her red bulk away from the wind and from us, and I guessed that Steele counted the larger
Concepcíon
as his main foe. The
Red Queen
lurched suddenly, for no reason that I could see until I realized that she
had just fired her whole broadside at Don Esteban’s ship. A moment later, the guns on our side fired again, but the shot mostly went wild, for the huge ship had heeled far over from the broadside opposite us.

Then we were past her stern, and I could see the
Concepcíon
had taken great punishment. Her sails were rags, with broken spars dangling from every mast. Two of her gunports had been smashed into one. She was desperately turning to get her larboard broadside into action.

Captain Hunter’s orders had brought us into a turn as well. Now both the
Aurora
and the
Concepcíon
were astern of the
Red Queen.
The huge ship could not turn as nimbly as ours. Don Esteban and Captain Hunter were going to have a clear shot at the
Red Queen
’s starboard side.

We hammered her again, throwing everything we had, but to my eyes the striking cannonballs made no impression on the huge crimson ship. Don Esteban had given the order just that much too slowly, and before his gunners could fire, the
Red Queen
hit the
Concepcíon
again, splinters flying and the fore-topmast plunging down. But the Spanish
gunners loosed a broadside, smashing hard into the
Red Queen
’s bows.

The top row of Steele’s guns went off then, aiming over the
Concepcíon
and at us. The shot whistled high, but struck the mizzenmast at the partners. The sharpshooters in the top screamed as the mast toppled, and a tangle of splintered spars and cordage thumped to the quarterdeck, barely missing Captain Hunter.

The
Red Queen
fled ahead of us now, standing off and making good time to the east. Clearly Steele knew his position and realized he could not fight two fortified islands and three vessels at once. I ran forward, ducking dangling lines and leaping over an upset cannon, until I reached the bowsprit and clambered out onto it. I could see a figure aboard the
Red Queen
looking backward at us over the gold-and-scarlet taffrail. It was a thin man with long silvery white hair or a wig. He caught sight of me and mockingly drew a rapier and lifted it in a duelist’s salute. But I could see no humor in the somber face of Jack Steele.

I hurried back to my uncle. Captain Hunter had climbed into the rigging, but now he dropped back
to the deck. “He got away!” he shouted in a voice of despair. His words came faintly to me, for my ears were numb from the thunderous din of battle.

Uncle Patch clapped a hand onto his shoulder. In a hoarse shout, he said, “Aye, but you’ve hurt him badly, William! You’ve hit him hard twice. You’ve deprived him of two safe havens, and sure, that’s more than all the navies in the world have done. Come away, now, come away! Your ship needs ye.”

Captain Hunter pounded the rail with his fist. “I shall find him again, I swear it. I will never rest until the bloody
Red Queen
lies on the bottom of the sea, with Jack Steele in her arms!”

Across an expanse of sea, the
Concepcíon
was desperately signaling her need of carpenters. She listed to starboard, obviously taking on water. The
Fury
came closing in to help, and I saw Chips, our carpenter, loading a skiff as he and his crew prepared to row across.

Then my uncle said, “Come, Davy. We’ve wounded to tend, and that’s a man’s business too.”

As we worked over the wounds of our shipmates, I could not help saying, “We failed, Uncle. We failed to take him.”

Uncle Patch did not look up from the gash he was stitching. Through the wind port sunlight streamed, gleaming in his coppery red hair. Patiently he said, “There is nothing like complete success this side of heaven, lad, and nothing like complete failure this side of perdition. We have dealt the pirate king Steele a blow from which he will never recover.”

“But he’s free!”

“Aye,” said my uncle, neatly tying off his last stitch. “A tot of rum for Mr. Grady, Davy, that’s a good lad. Who’s next?”

A gunner with a scorched hand took Mr. Grady’s place, and as he prepared a salve, my uncle said, as if no interruption had occurred, “Aye, Steele sails out there, and free, but here we are, our joints sound and whole. And now Steele sails all alone, Davy. We’ve taken his navy from him, and his harbors are closed or destroyed. ’Tis a terrible fate for any man to be all alone. It will be worse for Steele, for not even a pirate will trust him now.”

When we finished our work, we came back onto the deck. It was noon by that time. The wreckage had been cleared overboard, and we were about to
anchor in the lee of Hog Island, so that our own repairs could begin. Men thronged the yardarms and deck, lowering sails, preparing to drop the anchors.

But on the quarterdeck, his hands behind his back, his head bowed, stood Captain Hunter.

And looking at him, I could not help but think, This man, too, sails alone.

The Red Queen

Jack Steele’s fearsome pirate ship is of a type that did not really exist until a little later in naval history. In the late 1600s, ships were beginning to change, becoming faster, sleeker, and more maneuverable. It is surprising to many people that the ship’s wheel, the spoked steering wheel, was not invented until the early 1700s. Until that time smaller vessels were steered by tillers. These were levers attached to the rudder. Moving the lever to the right caused the rudder to turn to the left, which steered the ship to the left. Larger ships used a vertical lever called a whipstaff. The invention of the ship’s wheel would lead to ships that were easier to turn and more effective in battle.

Something like that improvement is at work with the
Red Queen.
She was a Spanish galleon, and so was among the largest ships sailing the American
seas during the 1600s. However, the Spanish were very conservative in building their ships. Galleons had a high forecastle in the front and a very high aftercastle in the back. In a way, that gave them an advantage in combat, because the high-mounted guns in the aftercastle could fire down at an enemy ship. However, the tall structure caught the wind and made the ship hard to maneuver and slow to turn.

Jack Steele cut off the higher decks from both the front and the rear of the
Red Queen.
She still had three rows of huge guns. After Steele redesigned the ship, she could turn almost as fast as a frigate, which was a much smaller vessel with only one deck that carried guns. And the loss of the high aftercastle meant that she could spread more sails and sail along at a very rapid rate. Steele took a ship that was meant to carry and protect treasure and turned it into a ship of prey. With its speed, heavy cannons, huge crew, and maneuverability, the
Red Queen
would have been a terror of the seas, and years ahead of her time.

Part of our inspiration for this improvement in ship building came from many years after the
Red
Queen
s era. The USS
Constitution,
built for the United States Navy in 1797, was similarly ahead of her time. With her unusually thick hull, she could withstand enemy fire. The cannonballs often bounced off, giving her the nickname “Old Ironsides.” Her cannons were large and well-aimed. She carried a fierce array of them. Her standard armament called for forty-four heavy cannons, but she has carried as many as fifty-two, far beyond the British standard of twenty-eight or thirty-two guns on their frigates. She was also bigger than British frigates. As the saying went, she was big enough to defeat anything smaller, and fast enough to outrun anything larger. Like the
Red Queen,
“Old Ironsides” was never defeated in her many battles. She was so well built that she is still afloat today in Boston Harbor. In fact, after more than two hundred years she is still a ship on active duty in the United States Navy!