Hostile Shores

Now, how the Devil do we get all we need ashore? Lewrie wondered to himself; If we’re ordered ashore. Put wheels under a cutter and drag the damned thing with ropes?

No matter how daunting the whole thing seemed, though, Lewrie more than half-way hoped that Popham would get his way. It would have to be fourty-six empty wine bottles, for he would need one, himself!

BOOK THREE

Therefore, great king,

We yield our town and lives to thy soft mercy.

Enter our gates, dispose of us and ours,

For we no longer are defensible.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,

T HE L IFE OF K ING

HENRYTHEFIFTH,

ACT III, SCENE III, 47–50

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The 7th was a let-down. Reliant’s larger-than-normal cutters and barges were assigned the task of ferrying the remaining troops of the infantry regiments, and the dis-assembled artillery pieces, their carriages, caissons, and limbers, ashore as the army slowly gathered on the beaches amid piles of stores, and the Leda frigate, along with the Encounter brig and the newly-arrived gunboat Protector, were sent near the shore to engage Dutch batteries on Blaauwberg Mountain with fire.

Other than those few Dutch guns on the heights, there was little sign of enemy resistance, so far. Some thought it odd, and ominous; others considered their absence providential. The bulk of the British field force might be onshore, but looked to be very vulnerable to any spoiling attack. The cavalry mounts and artillery team horses would be weak after weeks at sea, and getting over sea-sickness and barely getting their shore legs back, and every trooper or infantryman would be in much the same condition. With little of the artillery landed, and that portion still being re-assembled, an attack by the Dutch in force could be disastrous, with their backs to the sea already.

“Lucky bastards,” Lt. Westcott groused as the last of their cutters came alongside the larboard entry-port, and its weary crew began to clamber up to the deck, their onerous task completed at last.

“Who, the oarsmen?” Lewrie asked.

“The Leda and the others, I meant, sir,” Westcott explained. “At least they got to fire at something.”

“We earned our day’s pay, even so, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie told him. “Princely as that is, hey? And, there’s still hope for an order to form the Naval Brigade.”

“Pray God, sir,” Westcott said with little enthusiasm.

“Now our army’s all ashore, I expect General Baird will march them off inland, tomorrow morning,” Lewrie told him, rising from his sinfully idle wood-and-canvas deck chair. He went to the bulwarks to peer shorewards with a telescope. “Hmm … perhaps by noon tomorrow. Christ, what a mob they make. Several mobs, in point of fact. About as organised as a horde o’ cockroaches.”

What he beheld were groupings of soldiery by regiment and by squadron or battery. Tents were pitched in seemingly well-ordered lines, horses were tethered in groups of teams or cavalry troops, and field guns were parked wheel-to-wheel. Soldiers, though, milled about in their shirtsleeves, sat under canvas and smoked or chewed out of the heat of the sun, or snored in their tents. Only a few were posted as pickets under arms and in full kit. Officers and messengers were the only ones mounted and riding about, and none with any sense of urgency.

“It appears the landing was so strenuous that our soldiers are in need of a ‘Make And Mend’ day, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said with a sneer. “I swear, I doubt there’s an ounce o’ ‘quick’ in the whole lot. Napoleon, now … he may be a whole clan o’ bastards, but when he puts an army in the field, they tramp along at the ‘double-quick’!”

“Our army is better going backward, sir,” Westcott said with a sour laugh. “Like they did in the Dutch expedition in ’98?”

Before Napoleon Bonaparte had wooed, or bewitched, the insane Tsar Paul of Russia in 1801, Russia and Great Britain had briefly been allies, and had launched an invasion of the Lowlands, which had turned into a shameful embarrassment. The first time that the British Army had met the terrifying and seemingly invincible French Army in battle, it had been British redcoats that had been routed.

“Mister Munsell? Is the chore done at last?” Lewrie called down to the ship’s waist.

“It is, sir!” Munsell replied, doffing his hat. “The army now has the last of their stores ashore.”

“Went well, did it?” Lewrie asked.

“Very well, sir, The wind and surf are very calm today,” the Midshipman reported. “It is too bad that we did not begin the landings today, instead of yesterday.”

“Very well. Carry on, Mister Munsell, and well done,” Lewrie said in dismissal. “There’s a fresh-water butt on deck. Drink your fill, you and your men.”

“Aye, sir.”

Two muffled gunshots broke the day.

“Diadem, sir,” Midshipman Rossyngton a

“Pick a fresh boat crew, Mister Westcott, and you might as well let Rossyngton command it … he’s fresh,” Lewrie directed, beaming in expectant pleasure that he would soon have letters from home and his sons, and Lydia, after months without. And, was he allowed to share copies of the London papers, he could find out what the rest of the world had been up to, to boot!

I could pace and fret ’til it arrives, or…, Lewrie thought.

“I will be below, Mister Westcott,” he decided, instead. “Do inform me when the mail arrives.”

*   *   *

Half an hour later, and he had a tidy stack of correspondence on his desk in the day-cabin. He quickly sorted out the lot, fresh newspapers on the bottom, personal letters atop them, and the official bumf the first to be opened. Long before, he had been bent over a gun and caned, “kissing the gu

Paramount to all the letters from Admiralty was a folded note from Commodore Popham. With a tall glass of his trademark cool tea near to hand—though it was January, it was summer in the Southern Hemisphere—he broke the wax seal and spread it out. It could be an invitation to supper aboard the flagship, congratulations for the efficient landing of the army, or an order sending Reliant far away on a new duty, but—

“Aha!” he read with satisfaction. “Pettus, open two bottles of Rhenish, set out glasses for five, then pass word for the officers to attend me.”

“Yes, sir,” Pettus said, headed for the wine cabinet.

“The Commodore will be forming the Naval Brigade,” Lewrie told Pettus and Jessop with some glee. “All those preparations we talked about … see that all’s ready t’go by dawn.”

“Very good, sir,” Pettus replied, pausing before pulling the first cork. “And … might you need my services ashore, sir?”

“Hmm … I thought I’d take my boat crew, Furfy, and my Cox’n as part of the naval party, so they could do for me … unless you’re volunteering?” Lewrie replied.

“Be nice to go ashore and see Africa, sir,” Pettus told him. with a wistful grin. “Do something … active, for a change?”

“Well … see you have a stout pair o’ shoes, then,” Lewrie said. “Draw a musket, cutlass, and a pistol when we unlock the arms chests in the morning.”

“Careful ye don’t stab yerself, Mister Pettus,” Jessop teased.

“Fetch out the glasses, you, and make sure they’re clean!” the cabin steward snapped, pulling a cork with a loud thock!

Lewrie had time to go through the rest of his correspondence from Admiralty, most of it of little import. There were changes to be made to charts, where one of His Majesty’s vessels had discovered an unknown rock or shoal, or fresh soundings; quarterly promotions lists; directives Fleetwide about excessive purchases and the need to conserve, etc. That left the personal letters, and the very first one atop the pile was from Lydia Stangbourne. The next one beside it was from Hugh, who had surely been at the battle of Trafalgar, as part of Nelson’s fleet, and sure sign that he was still alive, but—