1634: The Baltic War

Chapter 37

Hamburg

"All stations report closed up and ready for action, sir!"

"Very good."

Captain Halberstat acknowledged the report from the signalman manning the voice pipes, then glanced around SSIM Constitution's conning tower one more time, letting his eyes sweep across the uniformed officers and sailors of the USE Navy. The conning tower about him was very, very different from anything he had ever seen in his previous career, and not simply because of its gleaming efficiency and up-timer lighting.

The notion of providing sailors with actual uniforms had struck him as incredibly outlandish when he first volunteered for Admiral Simpson's newborn navy. Not even armies bothered with that sort of thing, and they had to worry about identifying one another in the midst of confused melees on a field of battle. But Simpson had insisted, and like so many other of his initially preposterous seeming ideas, it had repaid his efforts enormously. The navy-provided uniforms (and Simpson's draconian notions of diet and hygiene… and discipline) created a powerful sense of identity. Not to mention the healthiest ships' companies Halberstat had ever seen.

Franz Halberstat was a highly intelligent man. One who had served at sea his entire life, starting on his father's North Sea fishing boat and working his way up to the command of his own coastal lugger, with temporary diversions as a deck officer on French and Danish naval vessels. Yet he knew now that he'd been slow to recognize just how different John Simpson's navy truly was. This world had never seen anything like it, for it was the first truly professional navy in history. And that, Halberstat had come to realize, was an even more fundamental change than the marvelous ships the up-timers had been able to build.

"Ready to proceed, Admiral," Constitution's captain said, turning to his commanding officer with a crisp salute. "All hands are closed up to action stations and the ship is flooded down to fighting draft."

"Very well, Captain," John Chandler Simpson said formally. "Carry out your orders."

"Aye, aye, sir!"

Thorsten Engler looked up as the flagship's horn gave a single raucous burst of sound. Having ridden around the city, he and the other members of his battery, along with the rest of the cavalry escort, were dug in around and on a slight rise that lay just down the river from Hamburg. Now, from a distance they watched the ponderous-looking ironclads getting slowly underway in the morning light-those of them, at least, who had access to an eyeglass. Simpson's flotilla was barely visible to the naked eye. Fortunately, Lieutenant Reschly was willing to share his eyeglass with Thorsten.

They'd been supposed to begin their attack at dawn, Thorsten knew. He wasn't certain why they hadn't, but he suspected it had something to do with the heavy mist that had cloaked the river. Camp rumor said that Prime Minister Stearns had "suggested" to Admiral Simpson that he underscore the emperor's unhappiness with Hamburg's refusal to grant his navy free passage to the North Sea. Thorsten hadn't yet seen the navy's big guns in action against a real target, but like most people who'd lived in and around Magdeburg for the last six months or so, he'd heard-and seen-their crews training with them. No one in Hamburg had done that, but unless Thorsten was sadly mistaken, Admiral Simpson had decided to wait for the visibility to clear expressly so that he could give the good citizens of Hamburg the best possible opportunity to observe the consequences of that training.

This would be their last assignment, as part of Simpson's expedition. Assuming the ironclads made it through Hamburg with no significant problems, the battle group would be dissolved. Once past Hamburg, the Elbe became wide enough that there was simply no point to keeping an escort of cavalrymen and volley guns. Engler and the rest of Colonel Fey's men would be rejoining the rest of the army under General Torstensson.

Captain Rolf Hempel felt himself swallowing hard as the squat-looking American warships came slowly, steadily towards him through the morning light. Only the four iron-plated monsters were underway; apparently the wooden ships with the smoking chimneys were going to let their bigger sisters deal with Hamburg. And, Hempel thought unhappily, those bigger sisters seemed ominously confident of their ability to do just that.

They were huge, far bigger than anything anyone in Hamburg had ever seen moving up and down the Elbe, and they looked more like looming fortresses-or perhaps enormous floating barns-than ships. There was something profoundly unnatural about watching them move with no apparent regard for wind or current. There was no visible, outward sign of whatever semi-magical marvel the intruders from the Ring of Fire used to move the things. Instead, they simply glided smoothly, silently, effortlessly down the river.

Hempel didn't know which was worse: the endless winter-long rumors about the deadly weapons Gustav Adolf's unnatural allies were building for him, or actually seeing those monstrous constructs moving towards him. The second, he decided after a moment. There was a certain… immediacy to it, after all.

According to all the reports that had reached Hamburg, the heavy gunships moving into position were supposed to be capable of preposterously high rates of speed, as well, which made their slow, deliberate approach even more ominous. It was as if they were emphasizing the fact that the Wallanlagen's heavy batteries, which had been even further reinforced over the last several months, concerned them not at all. The city had spent an enormous sum building that massive addition to its medieval defenses over the past seventeen years, secure in the well-proven axiom that no ship could fight a well-sited shore battery. The heavier guns and steadier firing platforms of a fortress were simply more than any wooden-hulled ship could face and survive, especially when they fired heated shot to set the ship's timbers on fire. Which didn't even consider the fact that a battery could be protected by enormous masonry walls and thick, shot-absorbing earthen berms, invulnerable to any ship's fire.

The fact that no one aboard those slab-sided iron behemoths appeared ever to have heard of that axiom-or to care about it, if they had-was enough to make Hempel's bowels feel distinctly watery.

John Simpson stood gazing out of one of Constitution's conning tower vision slits. Somewhat to his surprise, he actually felt almost as confident as he appeared. Which wasn't precisely the same as feeling calm.

He'd invested far too much sweat, thought, discipline, and emotion in these ships and the men who crewed them to feel calm as the moment to commit them to action approached at last. Unlike the majority of his fellow up-timers, Simpson had seen and known the reality of combat before the Ring of Fire snatched them all back to the Thirty Years' War. He wasn't precisely looking forward to seeing it again, or to the casualties he was about to inflict upon Hamburg's defenders. But there was an undeniable sense of… anticipation. And there was an additional strand of satisfaction which he would have felt uncomfortable explaining to most people.

Whatever doubts he might have felt-might continue to feel, for that matter-about many of Michael Stearns' policies, John Simpson was now a citizen of the United States of Europe. Despite the opposite sides of the political divide upon which he and Stearns would have found themselves in the future from which they came, they agreed with one another far more deeply and completely than either of them agreed with the seventeenth-century establishment. And even if that hadn't been true, Simpson had served in the United States of America's navy. He had thoroughly internalized the belief that the navy's function was to obey the orders of the duly constituted civilian government and to defend all of its society, not just the parts of it that might happen to enjoy the personal approval of individual members of that navy.

Besides, the USE was his home now, and the city of Hamburg had decided-for reasons which undoubtedly seemed good to it-to support his home's enemies. The city fathers might not see it quite that way, but John Chandler Simpson did, and it was time to teach them that giving aid and comfort to the enemies whose sworn purpose was the utter destruction of the home and people he cared about was… unwise.

The American ships seemed to be moving even more slowly as they entered the effective range of the Wallenlagen's batteries, Hempel noted. That was undoubtedly a bad sign. Clearly, the Americans weren't interested in simply getting past the Wallenlagen's guns as quickly as possible, which suggested they had some other purpose in mind.

A purpose Rolf Hempel felt unhappily certain no one in Hamburg was going to much care for.

"Stand ready," he said, as calmly as he could, to Jurgen Esch.

"We are ready," his second-in-command replied, and Hempel snorted. Esch was not a particularly imaginative man, and whatever he might think, Hempel was grimly certain that no one in Hamburg was truly "ready" for what was about to happen.

He started to say something more, then closed his mouth as the first of the city's artillery opened fire at last.

Simpson clasped his hands behind him as the first jets of smoke erupted from the nearest bastions.

The range was short-less than a hundred and fifty yards. He'd made that decision weeks ago, and he was a bit surprised to discover that he felt absolutely no temptation to second-guess himself at this point as he gazed through the vision slit.

On the other hand, "short range" was a relative term, he reminded himself as half a dozen heavy round shot plunged into the river without scoring a single hit. They kicked up white plumes of foam around Constitution, leading the squadron's steady advance, but none of them came closer than a good twenty yards.

No one in the conning tower said a word, he noted with approval. Whether they were really that calm or not was another matter, of course.

"I see the CoC did cut the chain, sir," Captain Halberstat observed as they passed the point at which the chain boom had been supposed to stop them.

"Yes," Simpson agreed.

The admiral was relieved that the Committee of Correspondence's members had managed to disable the boom. He'd been confident of his ironclads' ability to break that chain, if they'd had to, but he hadn't exactly looked forward to the possibility of the underwater damage it might have inflicted.

"Pass the word to the rest of the squadron that the boom is definitely cut," he said.

"Aye, aye, sir," Halberstat said, and Simpson heard him passing the order down to the radio room located in its well protected, central position.

All of the ironclads-and, for that matter, their three accompanying timberclads-had radio capability. Not all of the navy's ships did; the supply of radios remained strictly limited, after all. That was why all of Simpson's ships, including his ironclads, also had masts from which signal flags could be flown. And all of them (so far, at least) had signal "searchlights" converted from mining truck headlamps, as well. Flags and lights were visibility-limited systems, but they still provided a flexibility of communication which no other present-day navy could possibly match.

Yet, at least, Simpson reminded himself.

"Time the intervals between salvos, please, Captain," he said. "Let's get a feel for just how good their guns crews are."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"What happened to the chain!" Esch demanded as the lead ironclad sailed imperturbably past the point at which the massive boom should have halted it.

"Obviously, someone cut it for them," Hempel observed with massive restraint.

"Those goddamned 'Committees of Correspondence!' " Esch swore, and Hempel shrugged.

"Probably," he agreed. "Not that it matters too much who did it at this moment."