The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War - xaviantvision

Chapter FiveThe Tyrannicide, flying the pine-tree flag of the Massachusetts Navy, was the first warship to engage the enemy. She came from the west, sliding beforethe freshening wind towards the harbor's narrow entrance. To the men watching from the shore it seemed she was determined to force that entrance bysailing into the small gap between HMS Nautilus and the battery on Cross Island, but then she swung to port so that she sailed northwards, parallel withthe British sloops. Her forrard starboard gun opened the battle. The Tyrannicide was armed with six-pounders, seven in each broadside, and her first gunshrouded the brig in thick smoke. The ball struck the sea a hundred yards short of the Nautilus, bounced off a small wave, bounced a second time, andthen sank just as the whole British line disappeared behind its own smoke as Captain Mowat's ships took up the challenge. The Hampden, the big shipfrom New Hampshire, was next into action, her nine-pounders firing into the British smoke. All that Captain Salter of the Hampden could see of the threeenemy sloops were their topmasts above the cloud. "Batter them, boys!" he called cheerfully to his gunners.The wind was brisk enough to shift the smoke quickly. Titus Salter watched as the North reappeared from the smoke cloud, then another stab of brightflame flashed from one of the British sloop's gunports and he heard the crash as her round shot struck the Tyrannicide ahead, then his view was againobscured by the gray, acrid smoke of his own guns. "Reload!" a man bellowed. The Hampden sailed out of her smoke and Captain Salter cupped hishands and shouted. "Hold your fire! Hold it!" A British round shot screamed close overhead, smacking a hole through the Hampden's mizzen sail. "Holdyour damned fire!" Salter bellowed angrily.A brig had suddenly appeared on the Hampden's starboard quarter. She was a much smaller vessel, armed with fourteen six-pounders, and herskipper, instead of following the New Hampshire ship, was now overtaking her and so putting his ship between the Hampden's guns and the Britishsloops. "Damned fool," Salter growled. "Wait till she's clear!" he called to his gunnersThe brig, flying the pine-tree ensign of the Massachusetts Navy, was the Hazard, and her captain was vomiting from a stomach upset so her firstlieutenant, George Little, was commanding her. He was oblivious to the Hampden, concerned only with taking his ship as close to the enemy as he couldand then pounding the sloops with his seven-gun broadside. He wished the commodore had ordered a proper assault, an attack straight into the harbormouth, but if he was ordered to restrict himself to a bombardment then he wanted his guns to do real damage. "Kill the bastards!" he shouted at hisgunners. Little was in his early twenties, a fisherman turned naval officer, a man of passion, a patriot, and he ordered his sheets released so that thepower went from his sails and the Hazard slowed in the water to give her gunners a more stable platform. "Fire, you bastards!" He gazed at the smokecloud shrouding the British ship Nautilus and saw it infused with a red glow as a gun fired. The ball struck the Hazard low by the waterline, shuddering thehull. The ship shook again as her own guns fired, the noise seeming to fill the universe. "Where the devil is the Warren?" Little protested."He's holding her back, sir," the helmsman answered."For what?"The helmsman shrugged. The gunners on the nearest six-pounder were swabbing out the barrel, propelling a jet of steam through the touchhole thatreminded Little of a whale spouting. "Cover that touchhole!" he screamed at them. The rush of air caused by a thrust swab could easily ignite powderresidue and explode the rammer back into the gunner's guts. "Use your thumb-stall, man," he snarled at the gunner, "and block the touchhole when youswab!" He watched approvingly as the charge, wadding, and shot were thrust efficiently down the cleared gun, then as the train-tackle ropes were hauledand the cannon run out. The wheels rumbled on the deck, the crew stepped aside, the gunner touched his linstock to the powder-filled quill and the gunbelched its anger and smoke. Little was certain he heard the satisfying crunch of a shot striking home on the enemy. "That's the way, boys!" he shouted,"that's the only message the bastards understand! Kill them!" He could not keep still. He was shifting his weight from foot to foot, fidgeting, as if all hisenergy was frustrated by his inability to get closer to the hated enemy.Captain Salter had now edged the Hampden ahead of the Hazard again. Earlier in the afternoon the commodore had toured the anchored fleet in thefast schooner Rover to shout his instructions to the captains who would engage the British. Aim for their anchor rodes, he had ordered, and Salter wasdoing his best to obey. His guns were loaded with bar and chain shot, both designed to slash rigging and, though he doubted his gunners' accuracy in thesmoke-shrouded afternoon, Salter understood what Saltonstall wanted. The three British sloops were held fore and aft by anchors to which springlineswere attached, and by tightening or loosening the springs they could adjust their hulls to the wind or current and so keep their wall-like alignment acrossthe harbor mouth. If a spring or an anchor-line could be severed then one of the enemy ships would swing like an opening gate, leaving a massive holeinto which a rebel ship could sail to rake the sloops.The chain shot was two halves of a cannon-ball joined by a thick length of chain. When the shot flew it made a sudden sighing noise, like a scythe. Thelinked half-balls whirled as they flew, but they vanished into the smoke fog and Salter, staring hard at the mastheads, could see no sign that the scythingchains were severing any lines. Instead the British gunners were returning the fire fast, keeping the smoke constant about their three hulls, and more fire,heavier fire, was thumping into the Hampden from the battery on Cross Island. The high bluff of the peninsula was also wreathed in yellow-gray smoke asthe smaller battery on Dyce's Head joined in the fight.The tide was flooding, drawing the ships closer to the harbor mouth, and Salter ordered his sheets tightened so that the Hampden could sail away fromany danger of going aground. The Continental brig Diligent, with its puny three-pounders, sailed into the smoke cloud left by the Hampden and her smallbroadside spat towards the enemy. The Hazard, realizing the same danger of grounding, had gathered way and now crossed close behind Salter's stern."Where the devil is the Warren?" Lieutenant Little shouted across at Salter."Anchored still!" Salter called back."She's got eighteen-pounders! Why the devil isn't she battering the'?"Salter did not hear the last word because a six-pounder ball, fired from Dyce's Head, smacked into his deck and gouged long splinters from the planksbefore vanishing off the portside. By a miracle no one was hurt. Two more ships were now following the Diligent into the smoke, their guns spitting fireand iron at the king's sloops. The noise was constant, a ceaseless ear-pounding percussion. Lieutenant Little was still shouting, but the Hazard haddrawn away and Salter could not hear him over the sky-filling noise. A ball screamed overhead and Salter, looking up, was surprised to see a second holein his mizzen sail. Another round shot cracked into the hull, shaking the big ship, and he listened for a scream, relieved when none sounded. The shiftingsmoke that hid the three British sloops was being constantly lit by gunflashes so that the gray cloud would glow for an instant, fade, then glow again. Glowafter glow, relentless, flickering along the line of smoke, sometimes melding to a brighter red as two or three or four flames flared at once, and Salterrecognized the skill that lay behind the frequency of those flashes. The gunners were fast. Mowat, he thought grimly, had trained his men well. "Maybe thebastards will run out of ammunition," he said to no one in particular, and then, as his ship turned west beneath Dyce's Head, he looked up to see redcoatsamong the trees on the high bluff. A puff of smoke lingered there, and Salter assumed a musket had been fired at his ship, but where the ball went he hadno idea. Two more gouts of smoke showed among the trees, and then the Hampden was in open water, running down towards the anchored transports,and Salter wore ship to take the Hampden around again.The Hazard's carpenter, his trousers soaked to the waist, appeared from the after-hatch. "We took a shot just under the waterline," he reported toLieutenant Little."How bad?""Nasty enough. Broke a pair of strakes. Reckon you'll need both pumps.""Plug it," Little said."It killed a rat too," the carpenter said, evidently amused.