Inferno

Chapter 69

There was little ceremony: it wasn’t his way. Krieger stood aft in the kanonchalup Stubbekobing, keeping out of the way of Peder Bruun, her captain, as the gunboats up and down the trots were manned.

It wasn’t much of a battle plan because things could change so quickly. If the British found shallow-draught reinforcements, if they themselves came under fire from long range – but all the gunboat chiefs were professionals and would read the situation as it unfolded.

There was nothing to do now but wait for the signal.

The faint sound of musketry and small field pieces came across the mile or so of water. A cloud of powder-smoke rose around Swan Mill – the attack had begun.

‘Go!’ Krieger bellowed, through cupped hands.

A cheer arose, rolling over the water, echoing back from the old stones of Lynetten. Half a thousand backs bent to the oars and the flotilla put out on the grey-green waters to go to war.

The British had nothing to prepare them for the onslaught, no experience of the deadly effectiveness of a gunboat swarm. He wasn’t going to forewarn them: his divisions were deliberately cloaked as part of a mass of boats, all apparently sent to the aid of their army comrades.

It was an exhilarating charge stretching out powerfully for the fighting. With pride Krieger saw the Orlogsflag in each boat, the swallow-tailed war ensign of the navy, its brilliant red with a pure white cross streaming out defiantly as it had done for centuries of sea warfare.

There was Nakskov with Wulff standing nobly, like a Nordic warrior, his gaze fixed sternly on the enemy. And over there was Julius Zeuthen in his kanonjolle urging on his men like a maniac, determined to reach the battlefield first. Every man of one heart, doing what they could against near hopeless odds. It brought a catch to his throat that it had taken English perfidy to bring out the finest in his men.

Their objective was clear, marked out for them by the smoke and dust of battle in the low shore. It wasn’t hard to reason that the English artillery would be removed back from the infantry clashes and there it was – the raw earth of their defensive works. It was time to go to work.

The Orlogsflag dipped and rose once.

One by one the divisions separated. The kanonchalups swung their bows shoreward, the mortar craft in line abreast of them, the kanonbad wheeling to face out.

Captain Bruun looked at Krieger, who nodded curtly.

A touch on one side of oars, and then his whistle pierced the air. Instantly all oars lifted clear of the water and the rowers tensed. In the next split second the twenty-four-pounder in the bows crashed out, the livid flash in a billow of gunsmoke, a heavy round shot sent into the English lines. Almost immediately it was followed by the others in an avalanche of noise and destruction.

Krieger saw the morterchalups get under way, with a flurry of white as the oars bit deep, disappearing into the powder-smoke slowly drifting away in the light breeze. There was now a tapping of musketry from the shoreline and the thin crack of a field piece here and there – the English had woken up to what was happening but there was nothing they could do to fend away the approaching catastrophe.

Off the beach they came to a stop and with the same nudging at the oars the first morterchalup aimed the boat carefully. A blinding flash, a deep report, and a hundred-pound shell arced through the sky, leaving a thin trail of smoke. It disappeared behind the earthworks, followed by a muffled crump. First blood!

The gunboat captains knew their business. Firing consecutively gave time to select a fresh target and allowed each to track the fall of shot and make corrections.

The British fought bravely. They brought horse artillery to the water’s edge but this meant they were within range of the gunboat howitzers, which threw case shot in their shells. Bodies of men and horses were strewn along the shoreline.

Krieger’s blood was up – it seemed an age before their long gun was reloaded but the space for the ten-man gun-crew to wield rammer and stave on the cramped fore-deck was very small. At last the whistle blew, the oars went up and the big gun smashed out its fury, the entire boat recoiling eight feet backwards.

Firing was now general and the smaller mortar vessels were continuously wreathed in smoke as they hurled their bombs in a carpet of destruction into the English camp. Nothing could live in that. For the next phase, against the transports, they would be able to sail by, unmauled.

‘Sir.’ Bruun pointed seaward. The British inshore squadron was in full sail towards them, colours flying.

‘Yes. Time to greet ’em, I believe.’

Krieger was in no mood to have his operation interrupted. ‘You know what to do.’

Crisp orders had the rowers give way larboard and backwater starboard, bringing the big gunboat around until it faced the oncoming squadron. Their gun smashed out and a massive plume arose close to the leading sloop. Other gouts shot up among them as all twelve kanonchalups opened up.

Krieger felt a stab of sympathy – theirs were forward-firing guns able to range in any direction; the squadron heading towards them had broadsides only and could not reply, helplessly suffering the onslaught of the heavy guns until they were close enough to wheel about and bring their guns to bear. And with relative pop-guns this would never be a decider.

They were taking hits. First one, then another fell away; one more lost its foremast. They came on, theirs the only defence in the corridor that led to the store-ships.

The pity of it was that it was all in vain. Off Svanemollen there was not depth of water for deep-keeled sailing ships and they were going to have to yield it to the Danes, who knew the waters intimately. While they hovered impotently offshore the kanonchalups could take their pick of the targets they made.

Their twenty-four slammed out again and the guns of the kanonbads joined in, heavy-calibre but inaccurate pieces that could be relied on to intimidate by the storm of shot they threw out.

As the water shoaled, the squadron eased sail, knowing their fate if they went aground, finally slewing about to open fire on their tormentors. Their six-pounders cracked out but with no hits that Krieger could see and the forest of splashes around them whipped up by the furious Danish cannonade only increased.

It could have but one result. The squadron turned and retreated to lick its wounds, unable to sustain the unequal encounter.

With leaping elation, Krieger whirled his hat in the air, acknowledging the bursts of cheering from his little fleet. Against all the odds, they were making a difference.

Deeper thuds sounded – the distant anchored British ships-of-the-line were firing at them in what must be despair and frustration, a measure of what they were achieving, but the much smaller gunboats were a near impossible target at range, Krieger knew.

‘Back to work!’ he snapped, and attention turned to the shore again.

The morterchalups had been hurling their shells for an hour and more, the arcing trails ending in sullen thumps and flying debris from within the British encampment, which must now be a scene of havoc and slaughter. There could be no easing of it out of humanity: the next stage would be even crueller when, with their great guns, the Danes went against helpless store-ships.

‘Look!’

Krieger turned quickly and saw not the inshore squadron but a dozen or more boats in a line emerging from the English fleet, stroking fast in their direction. Baffled, he watched them advance. Then he understood. These were the very ships’ boats of warships sent on the cutting-out expeditions and daring raids that had brought the Royal Navy fame and respect over their hard years of war. Now they were being sent into open battle because they had the same shallow draught as themselves and therefore could close with them and bring about a hand-to-hand fight. A courageous and intelligent move.

He couldn’t let it happen. His sailors were not in the same class and would quickly be bested by these seasoned veterans.

‘Reduced charges!’ he bellowed at the gunboats with long guns. Some grasped it immediately, others, puzzled, hung back.

When the first shots crashed out, it quickly became clear to them. Aimed directly in line with the oncoming boats the heavy shot hit the sea short but ricocheted on in a series of deadly skips until it reached the boats at their own level, smashing oars, taking lives, sinking them.

Krieger knew that those vessels mounted carronades, the short, stubby weapons ideal for boatwork but futile against Danish gunboats, with long guns, able to stand off and punish them at will. There could be only one outcome, however brave the attempt.

He felt a savage satisfaction in knowing the Danes had gone on the offensive at last – who knew, when they came back to deal with the store-ships sustaining the besieging army, might not the whole situation be turned around? The British trapped ashore for all their great fleet, starved of victuals and ammunition, themselves ending up as the besieged?

Their return in the setting sun was sweet indeed, the shoreline alive with wildly waving onlookers, who’d witnessed the whole spectacle. He’d left three of the mortar vessels to keep up an intermittent fire during the night to discourage any work of repair, and at daybreak, when they went after the store-ships, it should prove an open highway.