Dewey Lambdin - The Invasion Year

“Modifications?” Captain Speaks gravelled, grimacing as if the word was a sort of blasphemy. “What sort?”

“First of all, sir, a fixed rudder at the, ah… whichever end one names the stern, sir,” Lt. Merriman eagerly contributed. “An oar or sweep extending from the stand-pipe down the top and over the end? That might help them stay on course once released. And a sea-anchor rigged from the bow-end, deployed and allowed to fill, and its tow-line to go taut before the torpedo is set free would drag the torpedo inward, sir!”

“Since one can’t rig a mast and sail on it, sir-,” Lieutenant Westcott attempted to add, but Speaks cut him off short.

“I am tasked… we are tasked to make experiments with the torpedoes as built and delivered to us, sirs!” Speaks snapped. “We will make a go of what we have to work with. We will prove them useful, as they are, sirs! Got that?”

“We do, sir,” Lewrie replied, speaking for all again.

“Now, should they not produce the desired results in their current form, we might suggest improvements to their designer and the yard at Gosport,” Speaks relented and allowed, a long moment later. “For now, though, let’s be about the task at hand. Lieutenant Clough and his people are ready for sea. Are you as well, Captain Lewrie?”

“I am, sir,” Lewrie told him.

“Last-minute lading to be concluded by the end of the First Dog today, and we shall sail by dawn tomorrow, the wind depending,” Speaks ordered. “We shall be trying them North of the Channel Isles, mostly off Guernsey. Too damned close to spying French eyes for me, but… those are my orders. We done, gentlemen? Have Mister Clough and I satisfied your curiosity?”

Not in the slightest, Lewrie uneasily thought, but was forced to say that he and his officers were ready and willing.

“Excellent!” Captain Speaks barked, in happier takings, leading the way to the weather deck, fresher air, and a dubious sort of safety.

“Ehm… Captain Speaks seems dead-keen on them, does he not, sir?” Lt. Westcott said once they were back aboard Reliant and standing on the quarterdeck together, a bit apart from Spendlove and Merriman.

“Driven,” Lewrie glumly agreed, cautious to not be heard making unfavourable comments about a senior officer; it just wasn’t done!

“One hopes they go boom as advertised, sir, on time and all that…,” Westcott went on in a guarded mutter, heaving a leery shrug. “If they don’t, one also hopes Admiralty allows modifications. If not, I fear that Captain Speaks takes the project too seriously, sir?”

“Privately, Mister Westcott, we may think what we wish, but for the hands, we’ll just to have to ‘soldier on,’ ” Lewrie told him, tapping a finger on his own lips. “Make the best of it without quibbles?”

“ ‘Growl we may, but go we must,’ aye, sir,” Westcott said with a resigned sigh.

“It’d be best did we not even growl, sir,” Lewrie japed.

“Aye, sir, aye, sir, two bags full!” Westcott quipped back, and clicked his heels together as he raised two fingers to his hat.

If they don’t work… and I’m pretty sure they won’t, Lewrie thought as Westcott and the others made their way below to take their ease for an hour or so; there’ll be Hell t’pay. And do we raise our suggestions again, will Speaks be desperate enough t’listen, or will he snap all our heads off?

“I suppose this beats convoying, sir,” Lt. Westcott said before he departed the anchored frigate for his first taste of picking up one of the catamaran torpedoes to tow it in, prime it, and release it.

“We may look back on those days as idyllic, aye,” Lewrie said. “Off ye go, then. Don’t get yourself ‘hoist by your own petard.’ ”

“By God I’ll try, sir! Ready, Mister Houghton?”

“Eager to go, sir!” their eldest Midshipman perkily replied.

“Ah, the enthusiasm of the young!” Westcott laughed.

The afternoon before they sailed from Portsmouth, they had seen Captain Blanding once again, as Modeste had departed for The Downs to gather a fresh West Indies-bound trade. Their old comrades-in-arms of last year, Parham in Pylades and Lt. Hyde in Cockerel, had sailed with him, re-enforced by a brace of brig-sloops. Blanding’s two-decker 64 flew a red broad pendant, a solid red pendant marking Blanding as a substantive Commodore, no longer a senior Post-Captain, so that might have been a good-enough sop to his ego, along with his knighthood and baronetcy… even if the duty assigned him would be sheer drudgery and frustration. Bound for the West Indies in late Summer, too… he’d sail into the start of hurricane season, by the time he arrived, and most-like would have to winter over, or risk a late-Autumn departure at the very height of the storm season!

Dreadful as all that would be, Lewrie almost envied him!

“Coffee, sir?” Pettus asked once he’d gained permission to come up to the quarterdeck. He held Lewrie’s battered old black-iron pot by the bail and one towelled hand underneath it, with a string of pewter mugs clanking together from his elbow.

“Aye, Pettus, thankee,” Lewrie answered, taking a mug.

“ I’d take a cup, Pettus,” Lt. Spendlove cajoled.

“Then here you go, Mister Spendlove,” Pettus cheerfully agreed. “Black only… what the French call noir. ”

Lewrie went over to the starboard bulwarks to watch Westcott’s and Houghton’s thirty-two-foot barges row over to Penarth, which was anchored about two cables off. One torpedo was already in the water, and the second to be tried this morning was being hoisted out, its grapnels at either end-Lewrie could not quite deem them bow or stern!-attached as soon as it emerged from the deep hold and rested on deck for a bit.

Both ships lay West-Sou’west of Guernsey, and St. Peter Port, about two miles offshore, anchored by best bowers and stern kedges to keep them beam-on to the island, though the holding ground was “iffy,” and the strong Channel tides were already in full flood, making thigh-thick anchor cables groan in the hawse-holes. If a French warship did appear, they would have to cut their cables and lose their anchors in a rush so that Penarth and her secret torpedoes could escape, and the frigate to engage the foe to save her. Lewrie would have liked them to have remained under way for the first trials, or at the least come to the wind fetched-to, but Captain Speaks had insisted, fearful, perhaps, that the tide would carry both ships into too-shallow water and take the ground, right behind their own torpedoes, or almost atop them when they exploded! If they exploded.

The second torpedo swayed high over Penarth ’s bulwarks, inching upwards and outwards in fits and starts as her crew grunted and heaved on capstan and windlass bars. There was a goodly sea running, and for a time it looked as if the collier’s rolling would swing the torpedo so far out-board that the weight would over-set her, and God help the men tailing on the steadying lines to check those swings!

At last, though, the jib-arms and fore-course yard dipped far enough to lower the torpedo out of Reliant ’s sight, below her starb’d bulwarks, and Lewrie let out a sigh of relief. If the torpedo slammed against Penarth ’s hull hard enough, would that set the pistol off?

He heard a long “whew!” nearby, and turned to see Lieutenant Clarence Spendlove, still with a wince on his face and his eyes wide.

“Perhaps they’d do better towed by the collier from the outset, sir… if they are as water-tight as they claim them to be,” Spendlove said with a dubious shake of his head. “Anything but a flat calm…?”