Dewey Lambdin - The Invasion Year

England might’ve turned to the Baltic states like Sweden, Denmark, and Russia under its new teenaged Tsar Alexander, had England not destroyed the Danish fleet at Copenhagen in 1801 and cowed the others (for details of which see Baltic Gambit, a preceding Alan Lewrie adventure, and a crackin’-good read, if I do say so myself!) into backing down from their League of Armed Neutrality. They were sore losers!

That summer of 1804, there sat Napoleon Bonaparte’s army, just a few miles across the English Channel, massed round Boulogne and adjacent harbours that were crammed to bursting with invasion vessels of all kinds and sizes, as I described. Those caigues, prames, peniches, and what-nots had to be reduced in numbers… hence, torpedoes.

Believe it or not (I’d strongly advise believe it!), there were trials done with cask torpedoes, the American Robert Fulton’s copper-sphere chained-together torpedoes, and catamaran torpedoes of the size, dimensions, and explosive charges cited. All were what we would today properly call “drifting mines,” for they had no motive power and were to be carried in by a strong making tide. As they proved at their use during the assault on Boulogne in October of 1804, they were all pretty-much duds. On the night of October 2nd-3rd, Clowes’s History of the Royal Navy says that only five catamaran torpedoes got released, but hey, six is a nice round number. The last of them did not go off ’til around 3:30 A.M., and the only French vessel which was actually badly damaged or sunk was Peniche Number 267, one of those armed launches which had the mis-fortune to stumble across a torpedo that had drifted in, decks-awash, and drew their curiosity. Just as they came alongside it with much head-scratching, sacre bleu -ing, and mort de ma vie -ing, its recalcitrant clockwork timer pulled the trigger line and blew No. 267 to kindling, killing its commander and thirteen crewmen.

Lieutenant Clarence Spendlove’s worries about the use of torpedoes, along with those horribly in-accurate Congreve rockets, famed later as “the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air…,” gave Bonaparte, and France, an invaluable propaganda plum which they touted world-wide, to nigh-unanimous outrage and revulsion against “perfidious Albion.” In those days, people, and nations, took matters of honour much more seriously than we “Enlightened and Politically Correct” folk of later centuries. One did not indiscriminately bombard cities and civilians. Indeed, there were many in England, even with their backs to the wall by that point, who were disturbed. And there were many who could see the other side of the coin; if England used such sneaking and low weapons such as torpedoes, and shelled harbours with sea-mortars and rockets, how long would it be before the French, or someone else, employed such “hellish engines” against Great Britain?

Anyway, after the attack on Boulogne, the French protected their harbours, and their hundreds of invasion craft which had to anchour outside the breakwaters, with long chain-and-log booms to catch fireships, un-manned explosive boats, and torpedoes before they could burst among their vessels, making any further attempts fruitless.

Those two UFO-looking barges designed by Monsieur Forfait that Lewrie took as prize off Normandy were real, too, and built in the same numbers cited. I could find no contemporary drawings of them, but I did have good written descriptions of their two types and sizes, the number of troops to be carried, and the crews to sail them, their sets of large, fat paddles with which to beach them, and so on. An English spy in Paris, Mr. Paul Sullivan, sneaked out a report on them to Admiralty.

An un-named British admiral who inspected one called them “contemptible and ridiculous craft,” and even a knowledgeable French academician, M. Denis Decres, sneered that they were “monstrous ideas… which are as wrong as will prove to be disastrous.” In actual fact, a Royal Navy vessel did capture one of them and brought it in for inspection, though neither Clowes, nor Robert Harvey’s The War of Wars, said just who it was that did it, so I took dramatic license and gave the honour to Lewrie… and God only knows that he’s in more need of honourable deeds to polish up his repute than most!

So here’s our hero at the tail-end of a momentous year, shivering in the November chill; shivering also in some dread that Bonaparte might still have a go at invasion in 1805; shivering, too, in anticipation of a few days ashore with the fascinating (and hellishly-rich!) Lydia Stangbourne. Should we believe him when he told James Peel that he didn’t give a toss for her dowry and has no plans for another marriage? Or might his new amour beguile him to the altar once more? We must remember that Alan Lewrie can be so easily beguiled!

Will Lewrie ever be reconciled to the fact that, for whatever use the government made of the tragic murder of his wife, Caroline, by the French, he really is Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Knight and Baronet, justly and honourably earned, or not?

And what will he write to that ex-pirate, that murderous Mlle. Charite de Guilleri? Is her offer to play spy really a clever French ploy to pass along harmful dis-information to His Majesty’s Government, or might she really be sincere in her vow to punish the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte for selling her beloved New Orleans and Louisiana to the odious Americans, and ending her dreams for a French Creole “empire” in the New World?

And, now that his experiments with all forms of torpedoes are over, where will the new year of 1805 take Alan Lewrie, HMS Reliant, and his men… and into which new and fascinating young miss might a change of latitude take his randy First Officer, Lieutenant Geoffrey Westcott… and will Lewrie get any ideas in that direction, too?

One wee hint-it’s warmer climes than English home waters.

’Til next year, God willing, stay well-read!