Richard Testrake - (Sea Command 2) (14 page)

HMS Valkyrie was assigned to the Inner Squadron blockading LeHavre. Along with some small fry, consisting of the cutter Glowworm, the brig Terrier and another sloop-of-war, HMS Savage, she was to control any movement of shipping along this coast. It was dangerous work in bad weather, since an on-shore gale could put a ship on the rocks in the blink of an eye.

No fat prizes would be encountered here. Most of the traffic consisted of small coasters trying their luck escaping the scrutiny of the blockading fleet. Occasionally, larger ships from the French sugar islands might try for port here, but these would likely be intercepted by the ships farther out.

Still, this was worthwhile duty. It was not profitable for the French to send merchandise to coastal areas by road. It was simply too slow and expensive. Even a small coaster could carry more than a whole train of wagons. The question was, how to evade the blockade? Most masters chose to wait in small, defended harbors for a stormy night, when the predators might have more on their minds than their prey.

Many of these small craft took days to reach their intended ports, dodging from one cove to another, hoping the defensive batteries would keep the blockading craft at bay. Of course, there were always those daring captains of the blockading ships who sent landing parties in to cut out moored small craft or even attack the batteries.

Captain Mullins had been waiting for such an opportunity. Glowworm’s captain, Lieutenant Bryant, had recently chased a coaster into a small defended cove. There were three other small craft in that same inlet, awaiting their chance to continue their journey. Mullins’ difficulty arose with the captain of HMS Savage. Commander Fisher was a rather ancient man of fifty or so. He had received his promotion years ago but had promptly been sent to the beach. At sea now, after a hiatus of many years, he wished to do nothing that might get him sent ashore again. He wished desperately to be promoted to post, and he must be at sea to do that.

Since Fisher was the senior captain present, he was in command of these ships. Until recently, a post captain had been in command, but Captain Hardesty had been compelled to take his well-worn frigate to port for needed maintenance. Until he returned, the timid Fisher was the man to convince.

Mullins had spent a few hours on HMS Savage attempting to do just that. He thought, by emphasizing the chance of promotion to Fisher, the man might stiffen his spine. In the end though, Fisher agonized over the chances for failure and decided against any dangerous actions ashore.

The small fleet continued their over watch, with Savage remaining well offshore. One night though, a blinding squall sent Savage into shoal waters while an inexperienced officer had the deck. She scraped a submerged rock and sprung a plank, requiring the outraged Captain Fisher to take his sloop to port.

For the time being, Mullins was the senior officer and he made the most of it. One of the small craft bottled up in the cove had taken a chance and successfully escaped, but three others were still present. Over the previous days, all of the other officers in the inshore fleet had discussed ways and means of taking the coasters. Most of the ideas required cutting-out parties in ship’s boats to come into the anchorage and board the vessels in the face of the battery of four guns that guarded the anchorage.

Mullins had taken a few coastal batteries before and wished to take this one. The night before the plan was to go into effect, he invited the captains to his ship for a council. He explained to all how he wished the attack to go.

Estimating perhaps fifty men, at most, that might be manning the battery, he would use his own men to take that. Men from the Terrier and Glowworm would take the three coasters. The crews of the coasters would be allowed to escape ashore in their own boats and the prizes would set sail, escorted out by Terrier.

Glowworm would remain behind to cover the assault force attacking the battery and carry the force away when they finished their task.

Not all went quite according to plan however. The landing force went ashore a mile away and had to march through some rough country to reach their attack position. They were late arriving and found they were late for the dance.

The cutting-out parties also had their difficulty. A seaman on one of Glowworm’s boats dropped his oar, making a noise heard by an alert sentry on the battery. A gun fired, more to alert all of danger than with the expectation of hitting anything. The shot hit nothing and before the other guns could be readied, the boarders were swarming up the sides of the coasters.

Mullin’s people had reached the rear of the alerted battery and went into their own attack, some minutes later. On past occasions, when Mullins took part in such assaults, the gunners, taken by surprise, would disappear, leaving the assault force in command of the battery.

That did not happen this time. The artillery soldiers, alerted by the activity in the harbor, were confidently aware of their own force and would not be easily cowed. They stood to their guns and manned a barricade in their rear to hold off the attackers. In addition, a force of foot had marched in that afternoon. Destined for a recruiting depot, these were conscripts with little or no training, but they were armed and even had a few rounds of ammunition. These troops, reinforced the men at the barricade and their confident commander thought they could hold the landing force until other help arrived.

Mullin’s seamen were unused to attacking into massed fire like this and the attack stalled, with the men taking to ground and sniping at their opponents. Two Glowworm’s boats that had delivered some of the assault force saved the day.

Each boat had a twelve-pounder carronade in the bow, loaded with grape. They were just out of range when the trouble began but the boats pulled to the shore near the battery and fired their guns. The boats, just offshore, flanked the barricade, and the grapeshot from those two carronades acted like so much birdshot fired into a crowded chicken yard.

The spreading pattern of grapeshot hurtled down the enemy line at the barricade, dropping defenders by the dozen.

The shot was devastating on troops standing in the open and the conscripts especially, could not face the fire. While the guns were reloaded, the landing force fired a volley and the defenders broke, running for cover in the brushy hillside. Moments later, the assault force had possession of the battery.

Mullins would ordinarily have permanently disabled the enemy guns, but in this case, he did not have the time. Anticipating enemy reinforcements might arrive at any moment, a hardened steel spike was hammered down the touchhole of each gun, then broken off. A length of quick match was laid to the magazine and a few inches of slow match was attached to that.

Glowworm was close to shore with her boats in the water and it was now time to go. The men piled into the boats while Mullins fired the slow match. That would smolder slowly for a few minutes until the ember reached the quick match. Then, the fire would flash along the quick match to the charges in the battery. The last boat was halfway to Glowworm when the magazine exploded.

The battery would be out of commission for weeks. It would take hours of labor by skilled workmen to remove the spikes from the gun’s touchholes, and even then, the ruined magazine and gun positions must be rebuilt. Mullins suspected the French might decide it would not be worth the trouble.

The blockading force continued their watch for the remainder of the winter, taking a few blockade runners, running a few more on shore and slowly wearing down ships and men with the strenuous work.

The day came when HMS Savage returned. Mullins expected a peremptory order from Captain Fisher ordering him to come aboard and report his actions. He had kept a log of the squadron’s actions since Savage departed, but was not anxious to justify himself before the crotchety old man.

Surprisingly, no such demand was signaled. Instead, HMS Savage merely signaled she was reporting for duty. Then came a signal indicating she was carrying mail and wished to send a boat. Puzzled, Mullins ordered the affirmative signal be hoisted and waited for the boat.

Instead of the diminutive midshipman in the stern sheets Mullins might have expected, a tall, young commander sat there, his boat cloak pulled aside to show his epaulette.

The Marines were alerted to the occasion and the newcomer was met at the entry port with all due courtesy. Handing over a packet of papers, the commander introduced himself as Harding, the new captain of HMS Savage. To avoid possible misunderstanding, he also mentioned his commission date, which was very recent, indeed.

Mullins invited him below, where they addressed a bottle of port, to ward off the chill. Mullins attempted to worm out the details of his assuming command of Savage. Harding declined to comment, merely saying that Captain Fisher had been called to the Admiralty, leaving the ship in the care of his first lieutenant. Fisher had returned in due course and watched over the reconditioning of the ship.

Shortly before the expected sailing date though, Fisher was called to the flag. Soon after, one of the flag’s boats took Fisher ashore and no more was seen of him. Harding, serving as second officer on the flag, was summoned, told he was now a commander, and to fit himself out and assume command of Savage.

Mullins, with no evidence to the contrary, believed Fisher’s timidity had caught him out, causing him to be put on the beach again. In any event, he was still commander of this little force, strengthened with the addition of the re-conditioned Savage.

Early in the spring, a dispatch boat approached. This was merely a decked-over launch, under command of a master’s mate, which came alongside, delivering mail and a message from the commodore. He was to leave his station and report to the commander of the Channel Fleet for other duty.

Mullins dashed below and scrawled a note to be delivered to Captain Harding, informing him he would be in command until further notice. The note handed down to the boat, Valkyrie was put to the wind and made her way offshore to the fleet.

There was some difficulty in finding the flagship, but she perservered and Mullins found himself climbing the side of the huge line-of-battle ship.

Admiral Bridport courteously saw Mullins, inviting him into his quarters immediately after he came aboard the flag. Bridport was most apologetic over the previous trouble with Captain Peebles in HMS Felicia. He hurriedly left that subject and got to the one for which he had called Mullins away.

“Captain, last month one of our 74’s got in some trouble in a squall. Too close to shore in such weather, HMS Odin lost two topmasts and went aback while trying to claw her way back out to sea. She ran onto a rock and stranded herself, eventually breaking her keel.”

“One of her boats got away with a few men and that is how we found out what happened to her. Later, an intelligence source on the mainland sent word by a fisherman that the surviving members of her crew had been rescued by the French and are now being held by a military force in an old manor a dozen miles inland. It is anticipated the men will be removed as soon as the French sort out the details.”

“Of course, I am well aware of your previous experience operating on the enemy shore. I decided to ask if you have any ideas of how we might get our people back. Would you be willing to lead a mission to free these men?”

“Sir, that is a difficult question to answer without further knowledge of the circumstances. Do we know how many men are holding them? What about their condition? Are they able to march?”

“For the answers to these questions, I will turn you over to my intelligence advisor. The Marine outside my door will find someone to take you to him.”

A small midshipman, all of ten years of age, led him through the bowels of the big first rate to a tiny box of a cabin far below the waterline. Monsieur André Leclerc was an elderly French official of no particular importance who felt he could no longer serve this new regime. Finding his way to London by various means, he appeared in the Admiralty one day to see if they might be interested in what he might have to say.

Of course, M. Leclerc knew nothing about the recent stranding of HMS Odin or the rescue of her crew by the French, but he was familiar with the country around their prison. Reports from other sources had the crew being held in an old manor, the former property of a family of aristos who had lost their heads to Mme. Guillotine.

In better days, Leclerc had once been a guest on that estate and was able to sketch pertinent areas. He thought the prisoners might be held in an enclosed courtyard that had been built with an eye for defense. The high stone walls were crenelated to offer marksmen protected firing positions.

Mullins thought this wall would offer little defense against properly sited artillery, but should be adequate against troops attacking with small arms only.

For further information, Mullins was sent to Marine Captain Aldrich. Aldrich had been spending his shipboard time aboard the big first rate studying the terrain ashore, with a view in possibly taking part in some future foray. He had a variety of maps, some of which he had drawn himself. Aldrich was always ready to spread a map out on the nearest flat surface and discuss its features.

Aldrich was prepared for him when he arrived in the officer’s wardroom. The long table had been covered with a dozen maps. After their initial greeting and a glass of wardroom wine, they went to work. The first item to be examined was a chart of the coast, showing the coastal waters and extending only a few miles inland. Their destination was not on this map.

Aldrich indicated a broken line designating a coastal road. The Marine indicated this road had not been well maintained since the beginning of the war and vehicular travel on it was impractical. Most traffic today, including the post, travelled on a better road a few miles inland.

There were no ports of any kind in this area, save for a few fishing hamlets whose fishermen pulled their boats up on the beach.

One such hamlet had a circle marked around it. This one showed some kind of path that led inland. Aldrich assured Mullins this pathway, while probably not up to much wear and tear from prolonged military traffic, should serve them well enough for this mission. It was used by the locals to take their produce and fish to market. He said the French military did not usually patrol this road since it led to no militarily important target.

However, it did lead directly to the manor where the prisoners were thought to be located. The main post road crossed well to the north of their route and it was not anticipated they would meet any traffic from this route.

With this information store in his head, Mullins next went to the flagship’s sailing master. Mister Handley pulled out the relevant charts and the pair pored over them.

“As you can see”, commented Handley, “there is no good holding ground anywhere near your landing site, I wouldn’t dare take your sloop-of -war in close, at any rate. Too many underwater snags and rocks. What you could do is heave-to well offshore, and put your party in boats to land on the fishermen’s beach. After offloading your people, your ship can go back out to sea until you return.”

Armed with all of this data, Mullins next called on the flag captain to go over his ideas and present his plan.

“I suggest we put our landing force in boats well out at sea at sunset. By the time we get to shore, it should be fully dark. We will take control of the village and seize what horses and carts or wagons might be there. We may have to transport wounded or injured people. We pay the inhabitants for what we take and leave a garrison with them to prevent word getting out. We will set out at once, hoping to reach our destination by first light. If we can take the defenders by surprise, I hope to charge into the courtyard, organize the prisoners and begin our escape. Hopefully, we will be back at the beach before defenders can be organized.”

The flag captain looked dubious. “See here Captain. Those people are holding at least several hundreds of ours. Don’t you suppose it may be likely they have a defense force of appropriate size?”

Mullins rebutted. “Sir, I plan on taking one hundred men with me, all armed with musket and pistol. I hope to march through the night without attracting any attention. The men will be warned beforehand of the need for silence.”

“I expect the defending troops will have only a few sentinels on duty when we arrive. I hope to charge in, scatter those sentinels and perhaps take the remaining guards in their beds.”

Captain Aldrich was adamant that his Marines be included in the march. Mullins was just as determined that he have no red coats displaying the nationality of these invaders. Aldrich reluctantly agreed to leave his uniform behind and have his men march in the ship’s slop clothing. From a distance, a casual observer might imagine these men might be a column of conscripts being marched to a depot.              

The sailmaker and his mates made up a hundred sailcloth bags in which to carry two days’ rations of boiled beef and ship’s biscuit. If they were to take longer than this, they might have to march on empty stomachs. Mullins was concerned over the length of the march. True, a dozen miles were not a great distance, but his seamen were not accustomed to long marches, especially carrying extra gear like muskets and ammunition as well as their rations.

As the men waited to load into their boats, a last check was made of their equipment. Mullins saw three men have their water bottles seized and emptied of their contents over the side. He was informed these contents were rum.

The boats set out toward the shore, now invisible in the dark. There was a heavy sea and Mullins was concerned about landing in the surf, but approaching the little cove, they saw a neck of land jutting out to protect the beach.

It was too much to expect to land one hundred men in silence, but what noise they made was muffled by the sea and the men formed upon the beach, unopposed, ready to take the town. It was now well into the middle watch and the townsfolk were mostly in their huts. One fellow, standing outside his own hut, pissing against a post, was astonished to see a hundred strangers coming toward him at the double. He had not the time to arrange himself before someone clouted him with a musket butt, and he fell into his own puddle.

Other than this initial victim, no one else was hurt. Once the townspeople were gathered outside their homes, Midshipman Adolphus spoke to them, telling them their horses and cattle were needed, but they would be paid in hard money for the animals. Any animals found hidden were subject to seizure without payment.

In short order, horses were hitched to wagons and set out on the road, cattle being driven along to serve as extra rations, if needed.

In an hour, they were well on their way and men were beginning to complain of sore feet and tired bodies. Some were beginning to lag behind. Since they had six empty wagons pulled by good horses, Mullins allowed the men to drop their extra kit in the vehicles. When a few men became obviously lame, he also allowed them to ride. As false dawn began to hint at daybreak, they crossed a stream that indicated they were almost at their destination. Mullins pulled the columns into a nearby meadow where the men were told to rest for a few minutes. Some haycocks were broken into to provide forage for the animals and the men rested until it became light enough to see.

There had been a heavy dew during the night so the ground was wet and one could walk without fear of making much noise. The men were told by hand signal to arise and the assault force went forward. Around a bend in the road, the country opened up and they saw their objective.

The manor, now in a sad state of repair, spread out over the grounds, on which an early herdsman watched over some cattle. The courtyard was as described, stonework enclosing it, with a heavy oaken gate barring entrance. From inside, several tendrils of smoke arose, presumably from morning breakfast fires.

The interesting view, to Mullins anyway, was that of a French military encampment nearby, well away from the fortified courtyard. It was small, clearly a temporary camp for a limited time. The barricades around the perimeter of the camp were of brushwood, which theoretically might slow an attack. A lone sentry stood at the only entrance, with a pole across the pathway to slow any aggressor. As Mullins watched from cover, he saw a squad march to the front of the encampment and attach a flag to a halyard on a flagpole.

To the sound of a bugle, and the bark of a small gun, the tricolor rose up the pole. The camp was beginning to stir when Mullins gave the word to charge, and a hundred men ran out shouting and screaming. It was over in a minute. There were only about fifty men inside the encampment and these were not hardened troops. Few of them had loaded muskets or knew where to find their ammunition and most stood with their hands in the air while their attackers tried to make their way through the brushworks.

The victory had not been bloodless, a dozen soldats were stretched out on the ground, and Mullins saw Seaman Otis suffering from a gut wound he could not hope to survive.

Now, the courtyard was beginning to be heard from. Shouts and yells, some of them in English were heard.

Also to be heard was the popping of muskets from the stonework parapets over the courtyard. It did not sound like a great many defenders were behind those walls but those that were present could undoubtedly take a bad toll of his men. As he debated to himself how he was going to get inside without losing half his force, one of the petty officers doubled up to him. “Sir”, he said, pointing to the flagpole. There was a small brass gun at its base, a four pounder, by the look of it.

It was gleaming in the morning sun and had obviously been well cared for. Obviously a gun used mainly for firing salutes, there was no reason it could not be used for more deadly purposes.

With any action against the targeted courtyard in abeyance, Mullins inspected the gun. A charge was already laid out for firing the next salute. A pyramid of little iron balls was beside the gun, for display purposes only. No sane person would fire a ball in a salute.

Looking around at his men, he saw one from his own ship who was a gunner’s mate. “Sawyer, will you see if you can lay that gun on the courtyard door? I’d like to knock it down if we can.”

Answering with an “Aye aye!”, a party of men had the gun turned about and aimed at the target door. Fearing the prisoners he had come to rescue might be standing in back of the door, Mullins approached as close to the wall as he could. Several marksmen took ranging shots at him and when one ball missed his head by inches, he shouted, “You men of HMS Odin, stand away from the door, Stand well away from the door.”

Another shot burned the skin of his shoulder and he beat his retreat. The gun was in place and a crew beside it. Sawyer assured him the gun was charged and ready to fire. The flintlock mechanism could not be found, so one man split the end of a green stick and inserted a length of slow match. This would serve as a linstock. This gun was on a travelling carriage rather than one for shipboard use, but the gunner had no difficulty. Carefully sighting along the barrel, he stood aside, glanced to make certain his men were clear, and put the ember of the slow match to the touchhole. The little gun emitted its high pitched bark and an instant later the ball struck the door with a dull ‘thunk!’

Little damage had been done to the door, but Mullins thought it might have captured a little attention. The gun continued firing, with most shots hitting the door. It was beginning to look a little ragged when Mullins asked the gunner to try for the door’s hinges.