Man Of War

With her mainsail filling the more, Rupert answered well, rounding Asia’s bows with a graceful ease indeed – and to the great dismay of the second Turk, whose crew only now realized their fate.

Rupert’s leading guns fired. At fifty yards, aim was nothing and the effect devastating. By the time the fourth bank fired, the Turk’s stern was shot right away above the counter. But Peto could not have checked Rupert’s firing even if he had wanted to. Shot upon shot tore the length of the dying ship, turning over her guns as if they were balsa. Flames were soon lighting the smoky darkness of her gun-decks, and she fell silent but for the agonies of her shattered crew, whose cries the Ruperts could now hear quite clearly.

‘Let go!’ The master’s speaking-trumpet recalled the topmen to their work – stretching the weather braces ready, hauling the lee tacks, weather sheets and bowlines through the slack . . . ‘Off tacks and sheets!’

Rupert came into the wind. Peto gasped as he saw the Turk’s starboard guns were not run out. She had not had the crew to man both sides at once; and now she had not the crew to man a single gun. He had thought to sink her, but it was not worth the effort. The Ruperts began cheering again as flames took hold and the mizzen toppled. ‘Cease firing!’

In the silence which followed, a single voice piped clear. ‘Fireships close on Dartmouth, sir, and corvettes engaging!’

Peto made mental note to commend Midshipman Simpson in front of the crew when it was all done. ‘Let us hasten back to her, then, Mr Lambe.’

* * *

Twenty backbreaking minutes’ labour, the sailing-master barely drawing breath, Veitch himself taking the helm to feel with his own hands how close he could sail to the wind, and the gun-crews working like machines to have the batteries ready once more. Dartmouth’s perilous position compelled the Ruperts as no lash could: fire ringed her, and two corvettes off the lee beam plagued her with shot and grape.

‘Damnable,’ muttered Peto, several times. How had Fellowes allowed himself to be pressed so? And somewhere in that fog of smoke and flame was Rupert’s own cutter . . .

The bowchasers opened up. The range was too great and the motion of the ship too uneven, however. Nevertheless the corvettes recognized the approaching danger. One of them began bearing away into the smoke; the other made a clumsy attempt to wear, and ended making unwelcome leeway instead. Peto smiled, ironically: the wind, such as it was, now worked to his advantage.

There was a convention that a ship of the Line did not fire on a single-decker unless that ship herself opened fire. Doubtless the corvette would prefer to drift by, guns silent. But it was too late. ‘Larboard guns fire as they bear!’ said Peto, coldly.

The Turk’s crew began abandoning her even before Rupert’s first gun bore. When the third bank fired, the corvette blew up, her yards soaring into the sky like rockets, debris falling across half a mile, the sea about her like a puddle in a hailstorm. Most of the Ruperts had never seen an explosion; they stood gaping, until the boatswain’s curses recollected them. Peto nodded grimly; he only wished he had caught the other on the hop so. Now he must sink the fireships.

Midshipman Simpson’s voice was suddenly urgent. ‘Two-decker dead ahead!’

Peto could see nothing ahead but smoke. There should have been no Turk battle-ship in this quarter; had Simpson seen the Genoa?

The white smoke was suddenly flame. Shot smashed into Rupert’s prow, bowled along the gangways, ricocheted into waist or quarterdeck, bringing down the netting. Splinters swept the upperworks like grapeshot. Men fell like skittles at a fair, mashed to a bloody pulp. Others were carried off as if by hurricane.

‘Hard a-starboard!’ bellowed Peto, though he was but five paces from the helm. He turned, to see two of the quartermaster’s mates now corpses, and Veitch himself covered in blood.

By the taffrail lay Midshipman Simpson writhing crazily, his entrails on the deck like offal at a slaughterhouse. Peto motioned to the third lieutenant, who looked at him with an expression of hopelessness. He angered. ‘Mr Durcan, do your duty, sir!’

Durcan sprang to horrified life. With two marines, he carried Simpson to the side and cast him into the water – a ghastly, merciful end to his torment.

Peto swallowed hard. ‘Mr Pelham!’

There was no answer.

Lambe was now at his side. ‘No option but to fight it out, Mr Lambe.’

‘Ay-ay, sir,’ he replied doggedly, raising the speaking-trumpet. The upper- and quarterdeck batteries had suffered sorely: ‘All hands to starboard!’

Peto turned to the poop. ‘Mr Pelham!’

A faltering voice answered. ‘Mr Pelham is killed, sir.’

Peto turned back, biting his lip. ‘Mr . . . Bullivant!’

The Turk followed with grape. A hail of iron scythed across the quarterdeck as Rupert got off a ragged broadside.

‘Sir?’

‘Mr Lambe?’

‘I asked if—’