The Invasion Year

BOOM!

A gigantic column of spray and foam liberally mixed with dark clouds of exploded gunpowder sprang up from the sea… tall enough to tower over the brig’s mast-head trucks, between her and the shore.

“Oh shit,” Lewrie breathed.

Hope her owner has insurance, he further thought.

“One half-hour to the minute, sirs,” the Midshipman meekly said.

“My God!” from MacTavish.

“Weel, hmm,” from McCloud.

A shiver in the sea from the explosion was transmitted to Fusee to rattle her blocks, up through her hull to the tiny quarterdeck, to make the oak planks shudder for a second or two.

“What have we done? Dear Lord, what have we done?” Mr. MacTavish was almost whimpering, about ready to tear his hair out by the roots.

“Weel, eet deed wirk, sir, sae…,” McCloud tried to comfort him.

Lewrie took another long look. The merchant brig had hardened up to a close-reach; it was the wind pressing her sails that made her heel over more steeply, not the blast of the torpedo. She sailed off to their right-hand side, revealing that titanic column of spray and foam that was collapsing upon itself like a failing geyser, at least a mile inshore of the brig, but closer to the mouth of the Colne river than the centre of Mersea Island, as MacTavish had planned.

“That’ll put the wind up him,” Lewrie commented sarcastically. “Perhaps the whole coast. Mister MacTavish, did you or Admiralty warn the locals of your trials?”

“Well, of course not, Captain Lewrie!” MacTavish snapped back. “They are to be secret!”

“Well, it don’t look too secret, now,” Lewrie told him with a wry grin as he lifted his telescope once more. What fishing smacks that had been out off the coast were haring shoreward. Signal rockets were soaring aloft from Clackton-on-Sea, and a semaphore tower’s arms were whirling madly, the large black balls at their ends passing on a message to somewhere most urgently.

They were a bit too far offshore to see or hear the alarm their torpedo’s explosion had caused, but Lewrie could only imagine they had stirred up a hornet’s nest; militia drums would be rattling, mustering bugles would be ta-rahing, and the womenfolk would be dashing about in a dither, sure that the mysterious blast had been a fiendish French device, sure sign of imminent invasion!

“Good Lord, sir, do you imagine that the locals might think our torpedo was a…?” Lt. Johns gasped, aghast at the implications.

“I’m going back aboard Reliant, Mister Johns,” Lewrie told him, wishing he could wash his hands of the entire endeavour, that minute. “I think the best action on our part would be to slink away… very quietly and quickly, and practice saying’, ‘Who, me?’ ”

“And declare my torpedoes a failure, sir?” McTavish said with a snort; now that the brig had escaped all harm, he was back on his high horse.

“It did work, sir,” Lewrie rejoined, “But I don’t think more trials on our coast are a good idea. You wish to try them in the conditions they’ll face if accepted? Better we go mystify and frighten the French, in a real Channel tide-race.”

“Well, right, then… in the Channel, yes,” MacTavish relented. “Yes, it did work, didn’t it?” he declared, beginning to strut a bit in pride of his invention. “Boulogne, perhaps. The harbour where they’re marshalling their forces.”

“Uhm, perhaps someplace less well-defended, first,” Lewrie said. “Let me think of something. For now, Mister Johns, get under way and follow me at two cables’ distance. We’re off for France.”

“Aye aye, sir!” Lt. Johns enthused, all but licking his chops.

And get as far away from the results of our handiwork as we can! Lewrie thought.