Dewey Lambdin - The Invasion Year

“Some vagary in the tide, perhaps,” Lt. Merriman puzzled.

“Wide of the mark, yes, George, but… far short of where one would expect it to drift. Still too far offshore, even released within a mile of the island,” Lt. Spendlove patiently countered. “And in full view and gun range of the French batteries, had we tried it out against them.”

“Well, perhaps Captain Speaks will let us try my drogues on the next batch,” Merriman rejoined, shrugging it off. “They’d be easy to rig up.”

“Signal from Penarth, sir,” Midshipman Grainger reported. “It is ‘To Weigh Anchor,’ sir.”

“Very well, Mister Grainger. Ah! Mister Westcott! And how was your little jaunt?” Lewrie asked his First Officer as he came back to quarterdeck. “Ye look a tad moist, ” he teased him.

“ ’Tis a soggy duty, sir, having to ride the back of the damned thing like a boy on an ox,” Lt. Westcott wryly told him, flashing one of his brief white-teethed grins. “Out of the boat, into the boat… I missed my leap and got soaked from the waist down.”

“Ye’ll have to let the wind dry ye off, Mister Westcott. No goin’ below for a change of clothing,” Lewrie grinned as he told him. “For now, let’s get our anchors up and get the ship under way.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Westcott ruefully replied. “I expect that my breeches’ll drain, do I undo the knee buttons.”

There were no more trials that day, or for the next two, for the winds and seas got up, making the hoisting-out of more torpedoes too dangerous. The two ships stood off-and-on Guernsey, out to mid-Channel, and back again in shifting winds, rolling grey seas, and now-and-then showers of rain. It was only on the third day that the sky cleared and the seas abated, allowing a full day of trials with four catamaran torpedoes, two in the morning and two in the afternoon. All four reliably blew up on time, but nowhere near enough to shore, nor anywhere near where they were expected to drift from the points at which they were released.

They stood back out to sea for the evening, and Penarth put up a hoist that Lewrie was sure Speaks detested; he requested permission to come aboard Reliant, instead of ordering Lewrie and all of his officers and Mids to come aboard Penarth for a conference.

“We’ll have all but the officer and Mids of the watch to dine, Yeovill,” Lewrie warned his talented cook. “Maybe a good feed’ll make the fellow feel a tad better. Do your best.”

Not ten minutes later, one of Penarth ’s boats made the crossing to Reliant, and both Captain Speaks and Lieutenant Clough were piped aboard.

“Sorry for the intrusion, Captain Lewrie,” Speaks began as soon as he gained the quarterdeck, “but we’ve too much to go over with your people who’ve handled the damned things. Take too many of them away from their duties, what?” Speaks added, puffing from his clamber up the side, and looking mortified that he’d had to ask .

“I’ll summon everyone but the Sailing Master, sir,” Lewrie said. “And welcome aboard.”

It made the great-cabins cramped, but Westcott, Merriman, and even the reluctant Spendlove, who had gone off with one of the afternoon torpedoes in strict rotation, were there, as were the Midshipmen who had tried them out: Houghton, Entwhistle, and Warburton. Eight of them sat round Lewrie’s dining table whilst he jammed himself in at the head next to Speaks, using the chair from his desk from the day-cabin. There was tea and two bottles of claret on the side-board.

“We’ve proved that they work,” Captain Speaks began, clearing his throat and speaking in a gruff voice full of seeming confidence. “Everyone agreed on that point?”

“In terms of reliability of their timing and ignition mechanisms, aye, sir,” Lewrie agreed; sort of.

“They do go off most impressively, sir,” Lt. Westcott added.

“Right, then, we’re halfway there.” Speaks beamed, rubbing his hands together. “Now, about why they don’t seem to go in as quick as we’d like, or… end up anywhere near where we’d wish, well,” Speaks tossed off as if that was a mere quibble. “Perhaps the reasons for that lie more in our imperfect hydrographic charts of the area, with a lack of knowledge of what varies the expected straight run-in of the tide, than with the torpedoes themselves. The Admiralty is desperately in need of a proper office of hydrography, after all. All those captains’ journals, sailing masters’ journals and observations, stacked to the rafters in the basements, ignored for years and years, Those that survive the annual floods of the Thames that rise in the basements, ha!”

“Perhaps we should send ashore to Guernsey for experienced fishermen to aid us, sir?” Lt. Westcott dared to suggest.

“And let out the torpedoes’ secrecy to one and all? No, sir!” Captain Speaks said with a growl, one brow up and leaning far back in his chair, making it squeak alarmingly.

“Hardly a secret by now, sir,” Lewrie pointed out, nigh tongue-in-cheek. “I expect Guernsey’s whole population brings their dinners to the shore to watch, like a royal fireworks show.”

“Now, had we done the trials off Land’s End, The Lizard, or the Scillies, there would be fewer spectators,” Lt. Clough contributed.

“The Channel Isles were Admiralty’s choice, sir,” Captain Speaks gruffly rejoined, “not mine, or ours. Better than launching torpedoes off the mouth of the Somme, hey, Captain Lewrie? Or was that their designer’s choice, to which you demurred?”

“Admiralty orders, sir,” Lewrie told him, stung by the gibe over the location of the first trials with MacTavish’s casks. “I still have them, do you wish to see them, sir.”

“Hmm!” Speaks uttered, twisting his mouth to a grimace. “It is of no matter. Now, sirs! What may we do to increase the range and the accuracy of our torpedoes? That’s the matter at hand.”

“One might as well try to direct a sheep to graze northwards,” Lt. Spendlove baldly stated, though he did so in a calm voice without too much sarcasm. “Do the French anchor row after long row of peniches and barges along their harbour moles and breakwaters, a torpedo might end up alongside one of them, sir, but which one would be asking far too much of them, in their present form. I doubt even Merriman’s idea for explosive boats could choose a target, any more than a fireship set loose to sail in on its own.”

“I think Captain Speaks does not intend that sort of accuracy, sirs,” Lt. Clough quickly interjected. “It’s more a matter of ending up somewhere alongside those long, anchored rows, instead of drifting a whole mile wide.”

“Drogues,” Lewrie said. “Sea-anchors t’pull ’em in quicker and straighter.”

“Though, whatever variations in the direction of the tides, the eddys and such, might not a drogue pull them off course even faster?” Clough wondered aloud, his thick brow as furrowed as a wheat field.

“We’ll never know ’til we try,” Lewrie said.

“Rudders, too, sir,” Lt. Merriman stuck in, looking eager again after the general gloomy tone of the gathering. “I dare say our Carpenter and the Bosun could whip something up in short order.”

“Sir?” Lewrie said, turning to Speaks.

Poor old fart don’t have a ship command, and now it looks as if his project’s a dead-bust, too, Lewrie thought as Captain Speaks hemmed and hawed and wiped his hand over his mouth.

Lewrie felt certain that the catamaran torpedoes in their current form would sort of work, if the yards built enough of them and the eventual attack on the main French marshalling port of Boulogne used hundreds of the damned things at one go. That might be enough success for Admiralty, and Speaks’s career. But, if the old fellow was seen to use his wits and made improvements which worked even better…! There was a feather in his cap, a pat on the back from Admiralty, and a promotion into a ship of his own.