The Invasion Year

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Making a nuisance of themselves in the Gulf of St. Malo was not as easy as it sounded, however. Reliant’s draught of almost eighteen feet limited where she could go, or dare go for only a few hours, due to the dramatic rise and fall of the tides, forcing her to venture no closer than two miles of the French coast, far beyond the Range-To-Random Shot of her 18-pounder guns.

Besides, other Royal Navy vessels were already in the Gulf and quite successfully making nuisances of themselves, vessels which drew much less water than she; the bulk of them were small and light single-masted cutters, backed up by brig-sloops or the rare three-masted full-rigged sloops, mostly lieutenants’ commands, with half-squadrons or flotillas led by commanders in their Sixth Rates. If Reliant did meet with a larger warship commanded by a Post-Captain, an offer of help was turned down, for the most part, since all the aid the Fifth Rate 38-gun ship could provide was more moral than substantial, too far offshore to back up the blockading patrols or operations unless a French frigate of her own weight of metal emerged… and so far none had. What opposition the French had sent out had been chasse-marees, prames, and chaloupes, the gunboats purpose-built to defend the armada of invasion vessels, and those not too often, either.

Some people were having fun, though, swarming over the convoys of peniches and caiques trying to make their way to join the immense gathering at Boulogne, hugging the coast as close as the shoals, sand-bars, and rocks allowed, sneaking from port to port in short and breathless stages. More enterprising young officers were leading their men ashore at night to cut out barges, or set fire to them, and the very bravest would row up the creeks or rivers to block the many canals or raid the small riverside shipyards where the invasion fleet was being built. And Reliant could take no part in that.

After a few days of fruitless prowling, all Lewrie could do was shake his head, take a squint at Point de Grouin east of St. Malo, and order Reliant turned North for a return to Guernsey and the open waters of the Channel, wishing his more-active compatriots well, though he did in point of fact envy the Hell out of their shallower draughts, their opportunities, and even their lower ranks which could justify their active participation in such harum-scarums. If he could pinch Reliant into high-tide reach of the Normandy coast, he might find a chance for action off Granville, Coutances, Lessay, or Barneville-Carteret or some other inlet or fishing port along the way.

If someone did not beat him to it, first!

He did not know what awakened him, the coolness of the night or his cats. Lewrie had rolled into his hanging-bed-cot round midnight in all his clothes but his boots and coat, more for a long nap than anything else, too fretted by the wind and sea conditions to imagine that he would drop off so soundly or quickly. Just after Lights Out at 9 P.M. the winds had nigh-died on them, and the sea had turned to nearly a flat calm, slowing the frigate to a bare three knots.

The air in the great-cabins was clammy and cool, and his first thought was to pull up the coverlet, or rise and close the upper halves of the sash-windows in the transom, as well as the propped-open windows in the overhead coach-top. Lewrie never left the lower halves open at night; did Toulon and Chalky prowl and play-fight in the dark, it was good odds that one, or both of them, would tumble out some dark night.

They were both with him in the bed-cot. Toulon, the older black-and-white, was puddinged up atop his hip, working his front paws and loudly purring. Chalky, the younger mostly white ram-cat, was in his face. When Lewrie opened one gritted eye, all he could see was warm fur, though he could feel Chalky’s pink nose and whiskers brushing at his own nose and eyes.

“What?” Lewrie grumbled in irritation to be wakened so early in the wee hours. “Can’t I have the last hour? We have t’play now?”

Far forward, a ship’s boy began to strike the watch-bells, and Lewrie let out a groan. It was Seven Bells of the Middle Watch, which ran from Midnight to 4 A.M. While he usually wished to be awakened a few minutes before the change of watch, this was a bit too premature!

“Right, then,” Lewrie mumbled, gingerly shifting position and reaching out to pet both cats, yawning heavily and stretching to ease stiffness. With a frown, he became aware of how still the motion of the ship felt, of how faintly Reliant’s timbers groaned as they worked, almost as if she was securely moored in harbour. His ears caught the creaks, the squeaks of slack blocks, and the slatting of sails as if there was no wind, and he sat up quickly, worried that his frigate was becalmed off a hostile shore, possible prey to oared gunboats with those rumoured 24-pounders in their bows!

He rolled out of the bed-cot, found his boots by tripping over them, and groped about the top of the nearest sea-chest for his coat to don it and head for the deck. He startled the nodding Marine sentry who guarded his door, dashed up the ladderway to the quarterdeck, and looked about.

“Er, good morning, sir,” Lt. Merriman exclaimed, as startled as the sentry by Lewrie’s appearance. “I was just about to send for you, Captain. The wind has fallen away, the last half-hour, and I believe there’s a mist rising.”

“We still have steerage way, Mister Merriman?” Lewrie asked as he looked aloft for the commissioning pendant, the normal indicator of the apparent wind, but it was too dark to see it. Looking forward to the forecastle, not an hundred feet from where he stood, the lanthorn by the belfry looked fuzzy, too!

“Barely, sir,” Lt. Merriman replied. “Mister Grainger just had a cast of the log, and it showed a bit over two knots.” Merriman went on to state that the wind was still out of the West, but fading. His cross-bearings on the lights of Granville off their starboard quarter, and the lights of Coutances on their starboard bows placed the frigate roughly six miles off the French coast, with Coutances and its inlets about eight miles ahead.

“Ah! Good morning to you, sir… Mister Merriman,” the Sailing Master, Mr. Caldwell, said as he clattered up the ladderway to the quarterdeck.

“Did Merriman send for you, sir?” Lewrie asked.

“No, sir, I woke on my own, and something, just didn’t feel right. Just afore Seven Bells was struck,” Caldwell said.

“How odd. Me, too,” Lewrie said, wondering if after all of his twenty-four years in the Navy, he had finally gained a sea-sense.

“Misty,” Caldwell commented, lifting his chin to sniff. “There will be a fog, I fear, sir. Perhaps even a shift of wind.”

“I will confess my lack of experience in the Channel environs, Mister Caldwell,” Lewrie said, “but, in your experience, is this millpond sea, scant wind, and fog normal?”

“All together, sir? Damned rare, I warrant. Even eerie!” Mr. Caldwell told him, his head cocked to one side in frustration.

“Wind’s died,” Lt. Merriman pointed out as the main course sail ahead of them went limp, and the spanker overhead sagged, with its long boom creaking. Lewrie could barely feel even the faintest breath of it on his cheek-they were becalmed!

“No helm, sir!” Mr. Baldock, Quartermaster of the Watch on the double wheel, announced. “She ain’t bitin’ no more.” To prove that, he spun the wheel to either side, which did nothing to shift the compass as Reliant coasted along on course, slowing, shedding the inertia that her long hull imparted.

“Oh!” Lt. Spendlove exclaimed as he came to the quarterdeck to relieve Merriman, a few minutes before Eight Bells. “Good morning to you all. Egad, sirs, a flat calm, is it?”

“And a fog, Mister Caldwell assures us, soon to come,” Merriman told him with a grimace.

“We’ll dispense with scrubbing decks, gentlemen,” Lewrie said, striving to put a calm face on things. “We will go to Quarters right after the people’s bedding is stowed. When the galley’s got breakfast ready, we’ll let the hands below by watches, but keep the guns manned. We’ll not be surprised by something Froggish at short range, right?”

If Caldwell’s right, and there is a fog, Lewrie thought; if it’s a good thick’un, we can’t see them, but maybe they won’t see us!