Sails on the Horizon: A Novel of the Napoleonic Wars (7 page)

HMS
Argonaut
Off Cape St. Vincent
Midnight, Feb.
14
,
1797

Sir,

I have the honor to report that at about
1
:
30
this afternoon the
Argonaut,
as ordered, engaged the Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent. We came into conflict with an unknown number of Spanish warships of which we were fortunate enough to disable three before the battle ended. They were the
San Ysidro,
74
guns, the
San Antonio,
74
guns, and the
San Nicolás,
84
guns. I wish to state strongly that throughout the engagement the entire ship’s company performed their duties with exceptional dedication and courage under the most adverse of circumstances.

It is my sad duty to report that in the course of these encounters Captain Sir Edward Wood was killed, as was the First Lieutenant, Thomas Hudgins. The ship’s master, George Peabody, and her purser, Darcy Adkins, were also fatally injured. A complete list of the dead and wounded is attached.

The
Argonaut
sustained severe damage in the course of the battle, including the loss of all her masts and her helm, and was holed more than twenty times below the waterline. Thanks to the selfless and capable efforts of Lieutenant Daniel Bevan and Midshipman Stephen Winchester (whom I have provisionally appointed to acting lieutenant), repairs completed at the time this is written are sufficient to make her seaworthy to be towed to Lisbon on the morning of the
15
th.

Your servant, sir,
Lieutenant Charles Edgemont,
Acting Commander

Charles pushed the paper away from him and slouched back in Captain Wood’s chair. It slightly annoyed him that the events of such a tumultuous and deadly day could be summed up in three short paragraphs. Finally the tension and the weight of his responsibilities began to seep away. The pain in his head was manageable, but his limbs seemed too heavy to move. His eyelids drooped.

“’Ere, sir.” A voice presented itself so unexpectedly beside him that he started. The voice belonged to Timothy Attwater, whom Charles knew to be Captain Wood’s elderly steward. Attwater deftly placed a large crystal goblet full of deep, deep red liquid on the desk in front of him. “Drink this. The captain, ’e had a tote every night afore ’e went to bed. ’E won’t mind.”

“What is it?” Charles asked, lifting the glass to the light.

“Claret, sir. It’s good for the blood, and it relaxes you. The captain swears—swore—by it.”

Charles tasted the wine and savored the soothing, numbing sensation as it wound its way to his stomach. “Would you have a glass with me, Attwater? I hate to drink alone.”

“Oh, no, sir. I couldn’t. I never did nothing like that with the captain.”

“You will now. Get yourself a glass and a chair and sit down with me. I’m not leaving unless you do.” Attwater did as he was told, with crossed expressions of pleasure and trepidation on his wizened face.

The two sat in the large cabin in complete silence, sipping their wine. When Charles drained the last drops from his glass, he carefully placed it on the desk and slowly rose to his feet. He felt unbelievably relaxed and a little light-headed. “I’d best get back to my quarters before I fall asleep on the floor,” he said, turning toward the door. “Would you pass the word to Lieutenant Bevan to have me wakened at dawn?”

“Oh, no, sir,” Attwater said, looking alarmed. “I mean, yes, I’ll call you at dawn, but no, sir, you can’t go to your lieutenant’s berth. You’re the captain now. I’ve made up the bed for you with fresh linens and a clean nightshirt. You can’t go back there with the others. It ain’t fitting.”

Charles opened his mouth to argue that if he was the captain he could sleep wherever he damn well pleased, decided he didn’t have the energy to prolong the argument, and said, “Fine.” He allowed the steward to help him out of his blood-caked clothes and into an oversized nightshirt—Captain Wood had been a man of rather generous girth. Attwater led him into the sleeping cabin with its soft bed, warmed by a pan of hot coals brought from the galley. It was a hanging bed, suspended from the ceiling and swaying with the roll of the ship. Charles climbed carefully in and lowered himself gratefully between the heated sheets. Before he could form a coherent worry about the state of his ship, he fell into bottomless sleep.

WHEN HE AWOKE
to a pounding pain in his head, Charles was conscious of two things: He couldn’t recall where he was, and the
Argonaut
was under way. “Attwater!” he yelled, remembering that much.

“Yes, sir.” The door to the cabin opened and the steward carried in a basin of steaming water for him to wash in. “There’s shaving things on the dressing table. ’Ere’s a towel. Your breakfast will be ready as soon as you’ve dressed, sir. I took the liberty of sending for your uniforms from your old quarters.”

“Not now,” Charles said, hurrying past him. “The ship’s under way and I need to be on the quarterdeck.” Before Attwater’s mouth could find words, Charles hurried out the door, past the very startled marine sentry, and up onto the quarterdeck, where the wind instantly caught the tentlike nightshirt, billowing it around his thighs.

“Ah, Venus rises,” Bevan said to Winchester in an aside loud enough to be heard in any corner of the deck.

“I sent word to be woken at dawn,” Charles snapped, his face dark with anger. The effect was largely lost because most of those present were distracted by the sight of him fighting to keep the nightshirt from flying up over his waist.

“Never got it,” Bevan said, failing to suppress a smile. “But you’re just in time. Look what’s about to happen.”

Charles looked. He saw the
Niger
immediately ahead with all plain sail aloft, and the gracefully dipping arc of the fifteen-inch cable connecting the two ships.
Argonaut
herself had fore and mizzen staysails set, as well as the forecourse and a very peculiar-looking mizzen sail.

“Not that,” Bevan said, pointing to starboard—“that.” Charles looked over the lee rail. The entire fleet,
Niger
and
Argonaut
excepted, was in a perfect line-astern formation behind
Victory,
which was rapidly overhauling them. Each ship was flying
Argonaut
’s number from her signal halyards, and their yards and shrouds were covered with sailors. As
Victory
came abreast, she fired a slow salute while her crew cheered and waved their hats and then she sailed past. The next in line,
Blenheim,
did the same, and then
Orion,
and so it went. Coincidental with the
Orion,
Attwater appeared with a clean uniform, which Charles hurriedly changed into on the deck. It didn’t occur to him till later that every glass in the fleet was probably trained on him while he dressed.

After Attwater buttoned his uniform jacket and was brushing some lint off his shoulders with a small whisk, Charles said sternly, “I told you to have me called at dawn.”

“Sorry, sir,” Attwater responded guilelessly. “I did call you, sir, but you didn’t seem like you wanted to get up just yet. I went and asked the lieutenant if you was needed on deck, and ’e said ’e didn’t see why. So I left you be.”

Charles didn’t know where to focus his anger, which quickly began to drain away.

“Actually,” Bevan said, “my words were, you’d never been any use on deck before, so I couldn’t see why we’d need you now. And Lieutenant Winchester here looked after the shipping of the cable and making it fast to the bitts with never a hitch. Also, with the bang on the head you’ve had, we all thought you could do with the sleep. Everything’s fine. Be easy.”

Charles turned to Attwater. “In the future,” he said slowly, emphasizing each word, “when I say I want to be called at dawn, it doesn’t mean whisper through the door and tiptoe away. It means I want to be got up and out of bed by any means necessary. Is that clear?”

“Yessir,” Attwater responded evenly, “I got it now.”

Charles nodded, unsatisfied but not knowing what else to say. He decided on, “You may bring me some coffee.”

Around nine-thirty the surgeon and his mate appeared, waving a piece of paper. “What’s that?” Charles snapped as they approached.

“It’s the report you asked for,” the surgeon replied. “The butcher’s bill—the dead and wounded, sir.”

“Thank you,” Charles said, relieved that they weren’t planning to do anything to him. “What does it say?”

“Four score and seven killed outright,” the surgeon intoned emotionlessly. “One hundred thirty-two wounded. Maybe two score seriously. Twelve of them died during the night.”

“Thank you,” Charles said again, sobered. Ninety-nine dead so far and there would be more, he was sure. And for this he was honored by the fleet. “You may go.”

The surgeon hesitated, looking at him expectantly. “We have to change the dressing on your head, sir.”

“You touch my head and I’ll run you through with a sword,” Charles snarled. “Go away.”

“Now, do be serious, sir. It’s just the dressing. We only have to unwind the old one, slap on a little physic, and wrap on a new one. It might go bad if we don’t.”

Charles hesitated. On a signal from the surgeon, his mate pulled up a stool and pushed Charles down onto it. “Just you sit still, it won’t take a minute. Won’t hurt a bit.” As the surgeon was winding the new and somewhat cleaner bandage around Charles’s head he said, conversationally, “When are we going to have the service?”

“Service for what?” Charles asked.

“The burial for the dead, of course. We have to have a service with words and all.”

Charles tried to focus his mind on it.
Argonaut
carried no parson, and Captain Wood had neither encouraged nor discouraged attendance at the brief Bible readings held most Sundays. The last church service he could remember attending was his sister’s christening when he was nine years old. He’d always considered himself as nominally Church of England when he thought of it, which was rarely. He had, however, been present at numerous burials at sea, and he knew generally what to do. He turned to Bevan. “Have the pulpit rigged and the dead brought on deck. Not Captain Wood; we’ll carry him to Lisbon. Have all hands called aft at six bells.”

He found a Bible in Wood’s cabin, and at six bells he stood solemnly at the pulpit, said a short speech about remembering shipmates who’d made the last sacrifice, and then read the dog-eared sections from the book. He signaled to Winchester to have the first plank tilted over the rail. The drummer began his roll, one of the few remaining marines fired his musket into the air, and the bundled figure of a man, sewed into his own hammock and with two twelve-pound roundshot at his feet, slid off the board and plunged into the sea. The act was repeated to the solemn roll of the drum and the diminutive volleys innumerable times. When it came to the smaller form of Billy Bowles, Charles watched with a lump in his throat until it sank out of sight. He spent the remainder of the day distant and uncommunicative. That night he slept poorly and awoke twice to find himself sitting bolt-upright in a cold sweat, with images of the ship’s side exploding inward and men being hideously mangled all around him. After the second episode he rose, dressed, and spent the rest of the night pacing back and forth on the quarterdeck.

THE VICTORIOUS BRITISH
fleet sailed grandly between Lage Point and Calha Point, past the now single-turreted Belim Castle (the other turret had been shot off by a British frigate during another war, when the two countries had been adversaries, two decades earlier) and up the Tagus estuary into Lisbon harbor, prizes and
Argonaut
in tow. There was much celebration, flying of flags, and firing of salutes to and from the forts overlooking the harbor entrance. No sooner had
Victory
let go her anchor than signals ran up her halyards with
Argonaut
’s number and the command “Captain report on board.”

Charles was ready. He had arranged to borrow the
Niger
’s gig—all
Argonaut
’s boats had been beaten to scrap in the battle. He wore his best full-dress uniform and had his report and hat tucked under his arm; he had to carry the hat because it wouldn’t fit over the heavy bandage wrapped around his head. He’d also noticed while shaving that the side of his face below the wrapping had turned a nasty yellowish color and was very tender to touch. The gig fairly skipped across the anchorage toward the flagship, with four strong hands pulling hard and a bosun at the tiller while Charles fidgeted nervously in the sternsheets. Sir John Jervis had a fearsome reputation among the junior officers of the fleet. Charles had been briefly introduced to him months ago at a reception on board
Victory,
but he doubted the admiral would remember him. He remembered Jervis as a stocky, white-haired man who walked with a limp and talked in a growl. The weathered face and hard eyes bespoke a penchant for blunt speech and a sense of strict discipline that he exercised on himself as well as the officers and men who served him.

“
Argonaut,
” the bosun yelled as the gig hooked into
Victory’
s mainchains, indicating that a ship’s captain was about to come on board. Charles jumped for the side steps and climbed as best he could to the entry port on the ship’s side. He was piped aboard by three smartly dressed, white-gloved sideboys and immediately welcomed by the flag lieutenant, the same person who had delivered the admiral’s letter to him the day of the battle.

“You look awful,” the lieutenant said, shaking Charles’s hand. “How’s the head?”

“I’ll probably survive the injury,” Charles answered. “I don’t know if I’ll survive Jervis, though.”