Hostile Shores (28 page)

He shrugged off that hopeful fantasy, tossed them all a boyish smile, and continued. “
Diomede
and the sixty-four-gunners will stand guard against just that possibility, slim as the odds for that may be. It would be best did our frigates and lighter vessels close the shore and anchor near the first transports which bear the regiments for the initial landings.”

“If the wind is up and there’s a heavy surf running, sir, then we might help form a breakwater,” Captain Donnelly of the
Narcissus
frigate posed. “We, and the transports together … hey?”

“But, should Dutch artillery appear upon the hills behind the landing beach,” Commodore Popham countered, “you will consider yourself free to close to gun-range and engage with what fire you are able to deliver. Can’t let the Army do it all by themselves, what?”

“Of course, sir,” Donnelly said, seemingly satisfied with the Commodore’s reply.

Lewrie thought that Popham’s response to Donnelly’s query was just a tad “tetchy”. For all his charm and
bonhomie,
he might not care for doubtful questions from his subordinates, nor for suggestions on details which he had not yet fully considered, either.

“Once all the troops are landed, though,” Popham went on with a grin on his face, “we cannot let our compatriots in the Army have all the
fun,
either. I intend that we combine all our Marines, and such parties of armed sailors as we may spare, to go ashore and lend a hand.”

“Well, sir,” General Sir David Baird said, after a long pause and a tug at one earlobe, “that is a generous gesture, though hardly a necessary one, Sir Home. I fear your Marines and sailors would feel wasted guarding the beach, and the supply train.”

“Does the Navy do the guarding, Sir David, that spares your men from doing so,” Popham told him. “We determined earlier that the foe might possess more cavalry than infantry, given the vast size of the Cape Colony. Do the Dutch think to emulate the exploits of mounted partisan militias, like the Americans during their Revolution, or the irregular tactics of Red Indians, well!
Your
cavalry might be best-employed harassing
them
!”

Lewrie relished the sound of that, and was quick to volunteer.

“God yes!” he piped up. “I can land fourty Marines and an equal number of sailors under arms without diminishing
Reliant
’s ability to fight, or provide fire! Put me down for it! After all,” he added in jest, “I know the country, and all the poisonous snakes, scorpions, centipedes, spiders, and bugs!”

“By name, sir … personally?” Captain Byng of the
Belliqueux
said with a snicker. “
All
of them?”

“Once we take Cape Town, I also know all the good taverns and eateries,” Lewrie quickly rejoined in equal humour. “That’s surely worth something. And all the scorpions answer to Jan van der Merwe!”

“A moot point, for the nonce, gentlemen,” Popham told them, after he and the rest had had a good laugh. “But, once the bulk of the army and their supplies are ashore, we shall see about forming a Naval Brigade. First things first, hey? It may be that Sir David overwhelms the Dutch so quickly that our services might not be necessary, and we may go ashore at our leisure, after. Then, Captain Lewrie may give us a nature tour, ha ha! That may be as much as we may expect to contribute, more’s the pity.”

I don’t believe a
word
of it!
Lewrie scoffed to himself;
He’s nigh-droolin’ t’take an active part! If he can’t have a victory at sea as grand as Nelson at Trafalgar, I’d lay guineas that he’s cravin’ his name featured prominently in the papers back home! Didn’t he already say the Navy’d give the nation a
new
Nelson … and that he’s the best candidate for that … in so many words?

Lewrie accepted a fresh refill of wine and took a slow sip or two, looking round at the other officers in
Diadem
’s great-cabins with an eye for other candidates to inherit the title of National Hero. It was circumstances that caused that, being at the right place at the right time, and being lucky enough, stubborn enough, or talented enough to succeed, to win. He found it nigh-impossible for a man to
arrange
success, and acclaim.
All
Navy officers were aspiring, for promotion, command, and for honour and glory, though it usually was the rare one in an hundred who gained such fame.

Lewrie had had his short stint at being well-known and even famous … or infamous, depending on how you looked at stealing those dozen slaves to man his ship at Jamaica, becoming the darling of the Abolitionists and Wilberforce and his crowd, then being acquitted at his trial for it. Stout and prosperous London businessmen
still
gave him the evil eye, the ones who saw nothing wrong with the slave trade and the wealth that came from it!

Aye, and look where all
that’s
got me!
he scoffed;
But … it
might
be nice t’be mentioned in despatches, now and again. Hmm.
Me,
the new Nelson? Oh, bosh!

*   *   *

The conference ended about half an hour later, after the last niggling details had been threshed out, and Lewrie went back to the upper deck, and the sunshine, waiting his turn to depart in order of seniority, the junior-most first, and the senior-most last, into their boats. While chatting with the others, he became even more convinced that there
would
be a Naval Brigade formed, whether it was needed or not … with Popham at its head, most likely!

He determined that as soon as he was back aboard his ship, he’d see to his personal weapons, oil them and clean them, and fit fresh flints in the dog’s jaws of their locks. He’d take his pair of double-barrelled Manton pistols, and his pair of single-barrelled pocket pistols, too, the ones made by Henry Nock. Of course, he’d take his Ferguson breech-loading rifled musket, which could shoot accurately almost three times as far as any Tower musket, and fetching along the longer fusilier musket wouldn’t go amiss, either. And, for hunting game, the Girandoni air-rifle, which was almost silent.

Game! Fresh game meat, roasted over a campfire on a spit. His mouth began to water at the thought, and if Popham didn’t send a Naval Brigade ashore, then By God he’d find a way to land with the Army, and Devil take the hind-most!

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“A pretty day for it, I must say, sir,” Mr. Caldwell the Sailing Master commented as Lewrie paced the quarterdeck near him, in passing.

“Pretty, aye, but a windy one,” Lewrie responded after a long squint aloft to the stiffly fluttering commissioning pendant and the thrumming and clattering of running rigging and blocks. HMS
Reliant
lay almost beam-on to weather, rolling alee, then upright, and snubbing at her anchor cables. “Yesterday was calmer. Better for it.”

The fleet had come to anchor just West of Robben Island on the night of the 4th. Yesterday, on the 5th, the demonstration towards Green Island had been made. Now this morning, the 6th of January, was the day selected by Commodore Popham to land the army.

At the moment, that prospect didn’t look all that promising to Lewrie, for though the skies were clear blue and the high-piled clouds were as white as fleece, there were strong winds from offshore, which had stirred up a heavy surf, combining to make a landing very risky.

Lewrie fetched a longer, more powerful telescope from the binnacle cabinet forward of the double-wheel helm and went to the bulwarks on the lee side to extend the tubes and raise it to one eye to peer deep into Blaauwberg Bay.

“Christ on a crutch,” he muttered in dour appreciation.

The bay was chopped with white-caps and white horses right to the shallows, and streaked with long, white curling waves mostly parallel to the shore where they began to break, rank upon rank of them marching onwards to crash and expend themselves upon the shingle and sand, each a little more than one hundred yards apart. Were heavily loaded boats sent in under oars, they would be hobby-horsing up and over each wave, bows-high first, then stern-high as they passed over the steep crests, and burrowing their bows in. Their final dashes to the beach would be nigh un-manageable, riding the crests if they were lucky, but it was good odds that many would broach beam-on to those waves, and be rolled over and under!

“Still no signal from
Diadem
?” Lewrie asked over his shoulder.

“None yet, sir,” Lt. Westcott told him.

“It might be best were the landings put off ’til tomorrow,” Lewrie said as he lowered the long day-glass, collapsed the tubes, and turned away from the rails, with a frown on his face.

“Perhaps conditions may be better in Saldanha Bay, sir,” Lieutenant Merriman hopefully suggested. “It is a
bit
more sheltered.”

“But, only the slightest bit, Mister Merriman,” Lewrie pointed out as he pulled out his pocket-watch to see how much of the morning had been wasted. “From Saldanha Bay, it’s more than a day’s march to Cape Town. That’d give the Dutch bags of time to mount a counter move. Daylight’s wasting. If we don’t move soon, we might as—”

The blustery morning was broken by the report of two guns, the announcement of a general signal to all ships. Two sour and yellowish-white puffs of powder smoke sprouted from the flagship, HMS
Diadem.
A long moment later, strings of brightly-coloured signal flags went soaring up her halliards.

“It is … ‘To Weigh … In Order of Sailing’,” Lt. Westcott slowly interpreted. “The last is spelled out letter-by-letter, sir. It is … ‘Saldanha’!”

“Very well, Saldanha Bay it is,” Lewrie said with a quick nod of his head, puffing out his cheeks in a disappointed sigh. “And God help poor soldiers. Hands to ‘Stations To Weigh’, Mister Westcott.”

“Aye aye, sir!”

Once every warship and transport had hoisted their own ‘Affirmative’ signals to acknowledge receipt and understanding of the orders,
Diadem
struck her string of signals, which was the ‘Execute’. On each vessel, messenger lines were fleeted to capstans, the messengers nippered to the much stouter anchor cables, capstan bars fitted to the tops of the drums, and sailors breasted to the bars and began the heaves to reel in the hawsers. Most ships were anchored fore-and-aft by best bowers and kedges, so bow hawsers had to be eased and the aft hawsers taken in to break the kedges free; then, the process had to be repeated to bring the bow hawsers to “Up And Down”, just shy of breaking the bowers from the bottom. Sail began to appear on every ship, mostly jibs, stays’ls, and spankers to begin with, to gain some control and keep them from sagging alee onto the shoals round Robben Island, and to put a bit of forward drive on.

Altogether, all those evolutions took the better part of an hour, before the first transports bearing the 38th Regiment of Foot, the bulk of the cavalry, and the artillery led out ahead of the rest on course for Saldanha Bay, up the coast.

“Hmm,” Lt. Westcott said, looking aloft. “We may need to let the tops’ls fall to the next reef point, sir. I think the winds are moderating.”

Lewrie, who had been standing by the windward side of the quarterdeck, on the larboard side, first looked seaward to determine if another column of ships was stealing their wind, then turned to face his First Officer. “Damned if it ain’t, Mister Westcott. Do you bare more canvas, aye.” He took another long moment to judge how his ship moved underneath his feet, then exclaimed, “And, damned if the sea’s not as lively, either. Think I’ll take another peek ashore.”

Back to the compass binnacle cabinet he went to fetch out that powerful telescope, went to the lee, starboard, bulwarks, and looked shoreward. Blaauwberg Bay was off the fleet’s starboard quarters, by then, and the approaches to Saldanha Bay were off the starboard bows, still miles away, and Blaauwberg Bay was … calming!

The confused chop had ebbed in a single hour with the dropping of the offshore wind, and the clashing large white horses seemed to have dissolved, leaving only scattered white-caps and cat’s paws on the sea. The strong sets of rollers and breaking waves no longer crashed on the beaches, but merely gushed ashore in sheets of foam, and were much reduced in height.

“Signal from
Diadem,
sir!” Midshipman Eldridge sang out. “Two guns, general to all ships, and it is … ‘Columns Wear South In Order Of Succession’ … and ‘Leading Columns First’! ‘Land … Army’ … she’s spelling out
B
 …
L
 … ‘Blaauwberg’!”

“Now
this
is goin’ t’be a rat-scramble!” Lewrie hooted in sour amusement. “Recall our bloody ‘sugar trade’ two years ago, Mister Westcott? And what a cock-up that was when America-bound ships tried t’leave the convoy?”

“Sadly I do, sir,” Lt. Westcott agreed, snickering.

There had been over an hundred merchantmen to herd and guard from the “rondy” at Jamaica to England, but no one had given a thought to the ships bound for Savannah, Charleston, the Chesapeake, and ports in New England. They’d been scattered throughout the convoy like raisins in a pudding, and when they’d altered course to thread their ways through the long columns of ships, perfect panic had resulted, and it had taken the better part of a whole day to sort the convoy back into proper order again, with the America-bound ships posted down the lee side, so they could leave without frightening the wits from everyone!

“Well, here it comes again!” Lewrie said, laughing out loud. “I expect the Commodore will wear out two sets of signal flags before he’s done … and he’s the one who invented the code system!”

The fleet was sorted out in order of importance, with the merchantmen and transports bearing the intial landing force in the lead, and the secondary waves astern of them. Now, the lead group must go about, one at a time, to reverse their order of sailing, and steer for Blaauwberg Bay, whilst the rest would have to stand out to sea to give them room, then wear about to reverse
their
order and fall astern of those ships carrying the first regiments.