Pirate Latitudes

Chapter 29

HE RUSHED TOPSIDE, in time to see six fireboats bearing down on the galleon. They were the warship’s longboats thickly coated with pitch, and now blazing brightly, illuminating the still waters of the bay as they floated forward.

He cursed himself for not anticipating this maneuver; the smoke on the warship’s decks had been a clear clue, which Hunter had failed to understand. But he wasted no time in recrimination. Already the seamen of El Trinidad were pouring over the side, into the galleon’s longboats, tied alongside the ship; the first of the longboats cast off, the men stroking furiously toward the fire ships.

Hunter spun on his heel. “Where are our lookouts?” he demanded of Enders. “How did this happen?”

Enders shook his head. “I don’t know, the watch was posted on the sandy point and the shore beyond.”

“Damn!”

The men had either fallen asleep at their posts, or else Spaniards had swum ashore in the darkness, surprised the men, and killed them. He watched the first of his longboats with its complement of seamen battle the flames of one burning ship. They were trying to fend it off with their oars, and to overturn it. One seaman caught fire and jumped screaming into the water.

Then Hunter himself went over the side, dropping into a boat. As the crew rowed, they drenched themselves with seawater, as they approached the burning boats. He looked off and saw that Sanson was leading a longboat from Cassandra to join the fight.

“Bend your backs, lads!” Hunter shouted, as he moved into the inferno. Even at a distance of fifty yards, the heat from the fire ships was fierce; the flames streaked and jumped high into the night; burning gobs of pitch crackled and spit in all directions, sizzling in the water.

The next hour was a living nightmare. One by one, the burning ships were beached, or held away in the water until their hulls burned out and they sank.

When Hunter finally returned to his ship, covered in soot, his clothes ragged, he immediately fell into a deep sleep.

. . .

ENDERS WOKE HIM the next morning with the news that Sanson was down in the hold of El Trinidad. “He says he has found something,” Enders said doubtfully.

Hunter pulled on his clothes and climbed down the four decks of El Trinidad to the hold. On the lowest deck, redolent of dung from the cattle above, he found Sanson, grinning broadly.

“It was an accident,” Sanson said. “I cannot take credit. Come and see.”

Sanson led the way below to the ballast compartment. This narrow, low passage stank of hot air and bilge water, which sloshed back and forth with the gentle motion of the boat. Hunter saw rocks placed there for ballast. And then he frowned — they were not rocks, they were too regular in shape. They were shot.

He picked one up in his hand, hefting it, feeling the weight. It was iron, slippery with slime and bilge water.

“Five pounds or so,” Sanson said. “We have nothing on board to fire a five-pound shot.”

Still grinning, he led Hunter aft. By the light of a flickering lantern, Hunter saw another shape in the hold, half-submerged by water. He recognized it immediately — it was a saker, a small cannon no longer much used on ships. Sakers had fallen out of popularity thirty years earlier, replaced either by small swivel guns or by very large cannon.

He bent over the gun, running his hands along it, underwater. “Will she fire?”

“She’s bronze,” Sanson said. “The Jew says she will be serviceable.”

Hunter felt the metal. Because it was bronze, it had not corroded much. He looked back at Sanson. “Then we will give the Don a taste of his own delights,” he said.

The saker, small though it was, still comprised seven feet of solid bronze weighing sixteen hundred pounds. It took the better part of the morning to wrestle the gun onto El Trinidad’s deck. Then the gun had to be lowered over the side, to a waiting longboat.

In the hot sun, the work was excruciating and had to be done with consummate delicacy. Enders shrieked orders and curses until he was hoarse, but finally the saker settled into the longboat as gently as if it were a feather. The longboat sank alarmingly under the weight. Her gunnels clearing the water by no more than inches. Yet she was stable, as she was towed to the far shore.

Hunter intended to set the saker on top of the hill that curved out from Monkey Bay. That would place it within range of the Spanish warship, and allow it to fire on the offshore vessel. The gun emplacement would be safe; the Spaniards could not get enough elevation from their own cannon to make any reply, and Hunter’s men could shell them until they ran out of balls.

The real question was when to open fire. Hunter had no illusions about the strength of this cannon. A five-pound shot was hardly formidable; it would take many rounds to cause significant damage. But if he opened fire at night, the Spanish warship might, in confusion, cast off and try to move out of range. And in shoal water at night, she could easily run aground or even sink.

That was what he hoped for.

The saker, lying in the wallowing longboat, reached the shore, and thirty seamen groaned to haul it onto the beach. There it was placed on rollers, and laboriously dragged, foot by foot, to the edge of the underbrush.

From there, the saker had to be pulled a hundred feet up to the top of the hill, through dense clusters of mangrove and palm trees. Without winches or tackles to help with the weight, it was a forbidding job, yet his crew bent to the task with alacrity.

Other men worked equally hard. The Jew supervised five men who scrubbed the rust from the iron shot, and filled shot-bags with gunpowder. The Moor, a skilled carpenter, built a gun carriage with trunnion notches.

By dusk, the gun was in position, overlooking the warship. Hunter waited until a few minutes before darkness closed in, and then he gave the order to fire. The first round was long, splashing on the seaward side of the Spanish vessel. The second round hit its mark, and so did the third. And then it became almost too dark to see anything.

For the next hour, the saker slammed shot into the Spanish warship and in the gloom they saw white sails unfurl.

“He’s going to run for it!” Enders shouted hoarsely.

There were cheers from the gun crew. More volleys were fired as the warship backed and filled, easing away from the mooring. Hunter’s men kept up a steady pattern of shots, and even when the warship was no longer visible in the darkness, he gave orders to carry on firing. The crack of the saker continued through the night.

By the first light of dawn, they strained to see the fruits of their labors. The warship was again anchored, perhaps a quarter-mile farther offshore, but the sun rose behind the vessel, making her a black silhouette. They could see no evidence of damage. They knew they had caused some, but it was impossible to judge the extent.

Even in the first moments of light, Hunter was depressed. He could tell from the way the ship rode at anchor that she had not been seriously injured. With great good fortune, she had maneuvered the night waters outside the bay without striking coral or running aground.

One of her topsail spars hung cracked and dangling. Some of her rigging was ragged, and her bowline was chipped and splintered. But these were minor details: Bosquet’s warship was safe, riding smoothly in the sunlit waters offshore. Hunter felt enormous fatigue and enormous depression. He watched the ship some moments longer, noticing her motion.

“God’s blood,” he said softly.

Enders, by his side, had noticed it, too. “Longish chop,” he said.

“The wind is fair,” Hunter said.

“Aye. For another day or so.”

Hunter stared at the long, slow sea swell that rocked the Spanish warship back and forth at anchor. He swore. “Where is it from?”

“I’d guess,” Enders said, “that it’s straight up from the south, this time of year.”

In the late summer months, they all knew to expect hurricanes. And as consummate sailors, they were able to predict the arrival of these frightful storms as much as two days in advance. The early warnings were always found in the ocean surface: the waves, pressed forward by storm winds of a hundred miles an hour, were altered in places far distant.

Hunter looked at the still-cloudless sky. “How much time, do you reckon?”

Enders shook his head. “It will be tomorrow night at the latest.”

“Damn!” Hunter said. He turned and looked back at the galleon in Monkey Bay. She rode easily at anchor. The tide was in, and it was abnormally high. “Damn!” he said again, and returned to his ship.

He was in a foul mood, pacing the decks of his ship under the hot midday sun, pacing like a man trapped in a dungeon cell. He was not inclined to polite conversation, and it was unfortunate that Lady Sarah Almont chose this moment to speak with him. She requested a longboat and crew to take her ashore.

“To what end?” he said curtly. In the back of his mind, he wondered that she had made no mention whether he had visited her cabin the night previous.

“What end? Why to gather fruits and vegetables for my diet. You have nothing adequate on board.”

“Your request is quite impossible,” he said, and turned away from her.

“Captain,” she said, stamping her foot, “I shall have you know that this is no mean matter to me. I am a vegetarian, and eat no meat.”

He turned back. “Madam,” he said, “I care not a whit for your eccentric fancies, and have neither the time nor the patience to oblige them.”

“Eccentric fancies?” she said, coloring. “I shall have you know that the greatest minds of history were vegetarian, from Ptolemy to Leonardo da Vinci, and I shall have you know further, sir, that you are a common drip-knuckle and a boor.”

Hunter exploded in an anger matching hers. “Madam,” he said, pointing to the ocean, “are you aware in your monumental ignorance that the sea has changed?”

She was silent, perplexed, unable to connect the slight chop offshore to Hunter’s obvious concern over it. “It seems trivial enough for so large a ship as yours.”

“It is. For the moment.”

“And the sky is clear.”

“For the moment.”

“I am no sailor, Captain,” she said.

“Madam,” Hunter said, “the swells are running long and deep. They can mean only one thing. In less than two days’ time, we shall be in the midst of a hurricane. Can you understand that?”

“A hurricane is a fierce storm,” she said, as if reciting a lesson.

“A fierce storm,” he said. “If we are still in this damnable harbor when the hurricane strikes, we shall be smashed to nothing. Can you understand that?”

Very angry, he looked at her, and saw the truth — that she did not understand. Her face was innocent. She had never witnessed a hurricane, and so she could only imagine that it was somehow greater than other storms at sea.

Hunter knew that a hurricane bore the same relation to a fierce storm that a wild wolf bore to a lapdog.

Before she could reply to his outburst, he turned away, leaning on a pastpin. He knew he was being too harsh; his own concerns were rightly not hers, and he had every reason to indulge her. She had been up all night treating the burned seamen, an act of great eccentricity for a well-born woman. He turned back to face her.

“Forgive me,” he said quietly. “Inquire of Enders, and he will make arrangements for you to go ashore, so that you can carry on the noble tradition of Ptolemy and Leonardo.”

He stopped.

“Captain?”

He stared into space.

“Captain, are you well?”

Abruptly, he walked away from her. “Don Diego!” he shouted. “Find me Don Diego!”

. . .

DON DIEGO ARRIVED in Hunter’s cabin to discover the captain drawing furiously on slips of paper. His desk was littered with sketches.

“I do not know if this will succeed,” Hunter said. “I have only heard of it. The Florentine, Leonardo, proposed it, but he was not heeded.”

“Soldiers do not attend an artist,” Don Diego said.

Hunter glowered at him. “Wisely or not,” he said.

Don Diego looked at the diagrams. Each showed a ship’s hull, drawn in profile from above, with lines running out from the sides of the hull. Hunter drew another.

“The idea is simple,” he said. “On an ordinary ship, each cannon has its own gun captain, who is responsible for the firing of that single gun.”

“Yes . . .”

“After the gun is loaded and run out, the gun captain crouches behind the barrel and sights the target. He orders his men with handspikes and side tackles to aim the gun as he thinks best. Then he orders his men to slide the wedge to set the elevation — again as his eye thinks best. Then he fires. This is the procedure for each individual gun.”

“Yes . . .” the Jew said. Don Diego had never actually seen a large cannon fired, but he was familiar with the general method of operation. Each gun was separately aimed, and a good gun captain, a man who could accurately judge the right angle and elevation of his cannon, was highly regarded. And rare.

“Now then,” Hunter said, “the usual method is parallel fire.” He drew parallel lines out from the sides of the ship on the paper. “Each gun fires and each captain prays that his shot will find its mark. But in truth, many guns will miss until the two ships are so close that almost any angle or elevation will hit the target. Let us say, when the ships are within five hundred yards. Yes?”

Don Diego nodded slowly.

“Now the Florentine made this proposal,” Hunter said, sketching a new ship. “He said, do not trust the gun captains to aim each volley. Instead, aim all the guns in advance of the battle. Look now what you achieve.”

He drew from the hull converging lines of fire, which came together at a single point in the water.

“You see? You concentrate the fire at one place. All your balls strike the target at the same point, causing great destruction.”

“Yes,” Don Diego said, “or all your balls miss the target and fall into the sea at the same point. Or all your balls strike the bowsprit or some other unimportant portion of the ship. I confess I do not see the value of your plan.”

“The value,” Hunter said, tapping the diagram, “lies in the way these guns are fired. Think: if they are pre-aimed, I can fire a volley with only one man to a gun — perhaps even one man for two guns. And if my target is within range, I know I will score a hit with each gun.”

The Jew, aware of Hunter’s short crew, clapped his hands together. “Of course,” he said. Then he frowned. “But what happens after the first volley?”

“The guns will run back from the recoil. I then collect all the men into a single gun crew, which moves from gun to gun, loading each and running it out again, to the predetermined marks. This can be done relatively quickly. If the men are trained, I could fire a second volley within ten minutes.”

“By then the other ship will have changed position.”

“Yes,” Hunter said. “It will be closer, inside my point. So the fire will be more spread, but still tight. You see?”

“And after the second volley?”

Hunter sighed. “I doubt that we will have more than two chances. If I have not sunk or disabled the warship in those two volleys, we shall surely lose the day.”

“Well,” the Jew said finally, “it is better than nothing.” His tone was not optimistic. In a sea battle, warring ships usually settled a contest with fifty broadsides or more. Two well-matched ships with disciplined crews might fight the better part of a day, exchanging more than a hundred broadsides. Two volleys seemed trivial.

“It is,” Hunter said, “unless we can strike the aft castle, or the magazine and shot-hold.”

Those were the only truly vulnerable points on a warship. The aft castle carried all the ship’s officers, the helmsman, and the rudder. A solid hit there would leave the ship without guidance. The shot-hold and magazine in the bow would explode the warship in a moment.

Neither point was easily hit. To aim far forward or aft increased the likelihood of a harmless miss by all cannon.

“The problem is our aim,” the Jew said. “You will set your marks by gunnery practice, here in the harbor?”

Hunter nodded.

“But how will you aim, once at sea?”

“That is exactly why I have sent for you. I must have an instrument for sighting, to line the ship up with the enemy. It is a question of geometry, and I no longer remember my studies.”

With his fingerless left hand, the Jew scratched his nose. “Let me think,” he said, and left the cabin.

. . .

ENDERS, THE UNFLAPPABLE sea artist, had a rare moment of discomposure. “You want what?” he said.

“I want to set all thirty-two cannon on the port side,” Hunter repeated.

“She’ll list to port like a pregnant sow,” Enders said. The very idea seemed to offend his sense of propriety and good seamanship.

“I’m sure she will be ungainly,” Hunter said. “Can you still sail her?”

“After a fashion,” Enders said. “I could sail the Pope’s coffin with m’lady’s dinner napkin. After a fashion.” He sighed. “Of course,” he said, “you’ll shift the cannon once we’re in open water.”

“No,” Hunter said. “I’ll shift them here, in the bay.”

Enders sighed again. “So you want to clear the reef with your pregnant sow?”

“Yes.”

“That means cargo topside,” Enders said, staring into space. “We’ll move those cases in the hold up on the starboard railing and lash them there. It’ll help some, but then we are top-heavy as well as off-trim. She’ll roll like a cork in a swell. Make the devil’s own job to fire those guns.”

“I’m only asking if you can sail her.”

There was a long silence. “I can sail her,” Enders said finally. “I can sail her just as pretty as you wish. But you better get her back in trim before that storm hits. She won’t last ten minutes in weather.”

“I know that,” Hunter said.

The two men looked at each other. While they sat, they heard a reverberating rumble overhead, as the first of the starboard cannon was shifted to the port side.

“You play long odds,” Enders said.

“They are the only odds I have,” Hunter replied.

Firing commenced in the early afternoon. A piece of white sailcloth was set five hundred yards away, on the shore, and the cannon were fired individually until they struck the target. The positions were marked on the deck with the blade of a knife. It was a long, slow, laborious process continuing on into the night, when the white sail target was replaced by a small fire. But by midnight, they had all thirty-two cannon aimed, loaded, and run out. The cargo had been brought topside and lashed to the starboard railing, partially compensating for the list to port. Enders pronounced himself satisfied with the trim of the boat, but his expression was unhappy.

Hunter ordered all hands to get a few hours sleep, and announced they would sail with the morning tide. Just before he drifted off to sleep, he wondered what Bosquet would make of the day’s cannon fire inside the cove. Would he guess the meaning of those shots? And what would he do if he did?

Hunter did not ponder the question. He would know soon enough, he thought, and closed his eyes.