Johnny O'Brien - Day of Deliverance

Jack and Angus were squashed into a wooden barrel that was open at the top. Above them was clear sky. Jack popped his head over the edge of the barrel and immediately wished he hadn’t. They were suspended forty metres in the air above a choppy, grey sea. Seconds ago, before the time transport, they had been in the safehouse. The barrel swung from side to side in a giddy arc. It felt like some sort of mad fairground attraction. In fact, they were in the crow’s nest of an English battleship. But this was no ordinary battleship — they were soaring high above the deck of The Revenge, Sir Francis Drake’s flagship, as it led the English line towards the Spanish Armada. The ship’s motion in the water was transmitted through the masts so that at the crow’s nest the movement was wildly accentuated. Jack’s response was to cling on to the edge of the barrel to avoid being flung into the abyss below. But his terror was replaced by goggle-eyed incredulity when he surveyed the scene beneath them.

The sea around them was thick with ships of all shapes and sizes — massive galleons, barges and hulks — some powered by sail, some by oars and some by both. Everywhere, they could see white canvas sails billowing in a freshening wind and a forest of masts, fighting tops and the complex tracery of rigging. The sails of the great Spanish galleons were emblazoned with giant red crosses. Behind them, the English ships were adorned with the St George cross, the royal standard and the rose of the House of Tudor.

“Ships… everywhere…” Angus gasped in amazement.

“Look…”

Jack pointed to a very large Spanish galleon on which The Revenge was rapidly closing in. They could even make out the lettering on its side — San Martin — the Spanish flagship. With its raised castles, fore and aft, it towered over The Revenge , which by contrast was built for speed and agility. They were close enough to see men with muskets and arquebuses in the fighting tops of the San Martin and lines of close-packed soldiers along the rail of the decks ready to fire. Jack knew that the Spanish would try to grapple and board the English ship, but they had already learned from bitter, earlier experiences on the Armada campaign that the English would not allow them to do so. Instead, using their greater manoeuvrability, the English would keep just out of grappling distance and one by one they would use their superior gunnery to pick off and pulverise each lumbering Spanish galleon, like a pack of hungry wolves descending on a helpless, tethered cow.

“Cling on. Looks like we’re going in,” Angus said.

The Revenge was less than twenty metres from the San Martin when first her bow guns and then her broadside guns erupted in cannon fire. Although Jack and Angus were above the main action, they were still in danger, but the spectacle had a hypnotic momentum and they stared in wonder as they inched past the San Martin . Jack could see that there were holes in her sails already and some of her magnificent carpentry had been reduced to matchwood. They could hear screaming from the close-packed decks and upper works as chain-shot, hail-shot and cube-shot, each designed to maim, kill and destroy in its own unique and bloody way, took their terrible toll.

Jack looked away and tried to focus on his feet and the inside of the barrel, but Angus continued to stare — his face lined in horror.

“Those poor guys…”

Finally, The Revenge drifted clear, but the plight of the San Martin was not over. Behind them, the rest of Drake’s squadron, followed by Frobisher’s squadron, headed by The Triumph and Hawkins’s squadron in The Victory , lined up in turn to pummel the San Martin . They now saw other ships of the Armada rallying to protect the San Martin , but the English cannons pounded relentlessly in a progressive rumble as the cannons fired successively along the length of each ship.

Suddenly, a round of chain shot from a Spanish ship spun through the upper rigging of The Revenge . It hit the upper mast and sliced through the rope that tethered the crow’s nest. Jack and Angus felt the barrel lurch violently as the securing ropes fell away. The barrel inverted itself, although somehow it remained hanging by a single thread. Jack and Angus could do nothing to save themselves. Sliding out of the upturned barrel, Angus was propelled through empty space, but before he could reach any speed, he slammed into a cross-spar that broke his fall. He clawed desperately at a flapping rope secured from the mast above, which he finally managed to reach and cling on to. But then, a second shot shredded the cross-spar, which promptly collapsed, leaving Angus suspended in the rigging, twenty metres up, swinging from side to side like a human pendulum.

Jack was only slightly luckier. As he was launched deckwards, the furious assault from the Spanish ship dislodged the upper gallant and its huge billowing sail floated seawards like a giant parachute. Jack, accelerating rapidly through the air, landed square on top of the rolling canvas as it floated down. The sail deposited him gracefully on the foredeck of The Revenge , before folding in on itself and floating gently into the sea. Jack had no time to reflect on his incredible escape. The deck of The Revenge was alive with men fighting for their lives. He craned his neck upwards, searching the rigging for any sign of Angus, but he could see nothing.

“You there!” a man shouted. “Gun deck!”

With no time to think, Jack found himself being bundled below. The gun deck was a single, low-ceilinged cavern. The massive trunks of the ship’s masts passed directly through it, rising from the floor and up through the roof. Inside the gun deck, Jack could see that every timber was black with spent powder. There were huge iron guns decorated with coats of arms, which rested on massive carriages held on wheels cut from whole sections of tree trunk. The oak planking around them was grooved where the guns had been run in and out time and again. Piles of shot and cartridges of black powder were stacked in the lockers by the guns alongside ramrods, powder scoops and match cord. Suddenly, a cannon ball from a Spanish ship ripped though the planking of the gun deck, unleashing a blizzard of splinters. Jack saw one man collapse, impaled by a shard of wood. But his comrades kept grimly to the routine of their work. As the men sweated, the master gunners barked orders. It was a scene from hell, and Jack knew that if he stayed he would die. Nobody noticed as he bolted back up on deck.

But the deck of The Revenge was more nightmarish than the scene below. Jack gagged on the smell of gunpowder, which was heavy in the air. The smoke from the guns cloaked the water in great billows of dark mist causing ships to appear and disappear like hulking beasts. The bodies of the injured and dying lay across the deck of The Revenge , but it was nothing compared to the damage to the Spanish ships. Some ships were close and Jack could see that their sails were tattered and torn and their splintered decks strewn with the dead, blood pouring from the scuppers as they heeled in the wind.

“Down here!”

Jack swivelled round. “Angus!”

“How did you…?”

“Never mind about that. I found the others — come on!”

Jack followed Angus into the aft-castle of The Revenge and down into the captain’s cabin. It was strewn with broken furniture, books and the half-emptied bags that Jack had seen at the safe house. Tony was near the shattered rear windows wrestling with some sort of large tubular device. To one side, Joplin knelt by Gordon, who groaned in pain.