Dewey Lambdin - The King`s Coat

‘Too close, sir, won't bear that high.’

’The larboard gun.’

’Aye, might reach.’

’Even if you hit the mast, that'll bring 'em down," Lewrie said, running to larboard. The carronade mount could be swiveled about in a wide arc, so it was easy to lay it in the general direction. But their activity attracted the sharpshooters, and a powder boy screamed as his eleven-year-old life was snuffed out with a larger-caliber rifle ball through his spine.

Lewrie dove for the powder cartridge and shoved it into the muzzle, standing aside as the rammer man thrust away. They got a ball down the muzzle, but then the rammer man gave a shriek and spun about, a bullet through his brains. ’Jesus Christ, save us," the gun captain said, picking up the rammer and giving the ball a few taps. ’Quoin out, there!" Lewrie told the man behind the gun. He felt a breath of air on his face, heard a hum like a summer bee and saw the larboard rail toss off a burst of tiny wood chips as a rifle ball nearly divided his skull. ’Hot work, sir," the tackle man nearest him said with a gaptoothed smile. "At least you're getting paid," Lewrie said, lost in a fighting fever. ’Stand clear!" the gun captain said, lowering his linstock.

Up close, the explosion of the powder charge was like having one's head down the muzzle, and Lewrie's ears rang and ached, but he saw the foretop shattered by the explosion of the carronade shot, and the cluster of sharpshooters was tom away in pieces as the topmast came down in chunks as well, and her rigging draped her like a netting.

The foremast gave a groan, and then the thick column of the lower mast began to split like a sawn tree that had been felled badly, pivoted forward with the pressure of the wind on a loose forecourse yard and came down with a crash across the enemy's forecastle, crushing the bow-chaser gun crews that must have been firing at them at that point-blank range but had gone unnoticed in the general tumult and chaos.

The brig was now almost alongside, her gangways slightly below Desperate's taller railings, and the Marines were having a great time shooting down into the enemy ship's waist. ’Boarders," Railsford yelled, drawing his sword. "Repel boarders… ’

‘Holy shit on a biscuit," the carronade gun captain shouted. ’I don't believe these people!" Lewrie seized a cutlass from a weapons tub and went to the starboard forecastle rail. The brig was bumping into Desperate, and such of her crew as had survived were tossing grapnels to hold their ship against the frigate even as the Marines' volleys cut swathes out of their closely packed ranks. A gawky, thatch-haired young man leaped up in front of Lewrie with a cutlass, and Lewrie engaged with him as more poured over.

The man was strong but clumsy. Lewrie beat his guard aside and cut back across, slashing the man's throat. The man fell back into the sea, blood shooting out like a claret fountain. The next man up took a boarding pike through his stomach and also fell into the sea. The third, Lewrie had time to skewer with the point of his cutlass, and he too raised a splash alongside.

The enemy had gained the midships gangway but were being cut up by boarding pikes and Marine bayonets, and the enemy's stem was pivoting away from Desperate.

Lewrie waved his cutlass, attracting more angry bees that rushed by him. "Fend 'em off the forecastle.. ‘.

With rarnmers, with handspikes, crows and boarding pikes, about a dozen hands were there with him, some slashing the air with cutlass steel, others fighting like wild Indians with tomahawks. The rebels who had gained the forecastle began to fall back, leaping for their own decks. A Marine corporal came forward with ten privates and began to volley into them. ’Do we board her?" the corporal asked. ’Won't trap me over there," a gunner said. ’I think she's sinking," Lewrie said. "Look how low in the water she is.’

The brig was indeed very low in the water now, the sea almost up to her gun ports; her wale and chain-plates were already under. Lewrie could see the tangle of bodies on her forecastle and forward gun deck, piled up like slaughtered rabbits after a successful hunt; how two guns were shot free of any restraints and rolled back and forth on the bloody deck.

But they were still firing. Swivels and light four-pounders on her quarterdeck, where the only resistance still stood, an occasional musket or rifted gun, and pistols still popped. ’Cut her free," Lewrie ordered the tomahawk men. "We’ll” not be able to save her, and if we roll over she'll have the sticks out of us.’

The three-inch lines grappled to Desperate were already iron-hard and taut, groaning and crying with tension, and each time the brig slunk into a wave there was a pull downward on the frigate.

Once cut with an axe, the lines twanged like bowstrings and almost snapped a man's right arm off as they parted. The brig's forecastle was level with the sea, and her beakhead and jib boom was under, sinking quickly now by the bows. She would not last long. Ominous rumbles came from her as the surging waves explored her innards. ’Strike 1" Treghues yelled. "In the name of humanity, strike!’

‘Hell, no, you British duck-fucker," their young captain yelled back, cupping his hands and standing foursquare on his shattered deck. "You tell the world, we were the brig 0' war Liberty , Continental By God Navy.. ‘.

Then with a foamy surge the ocean broke over her bows and she tilted up by the stem, gear and shattered timbers and loose guns and internal stores screaming in pain and bulkheads battered into ruin. She slipped beneath the sea, leaving a few survivors swimming in the light flotsam. Her mainmast was the last to go under, still bearing the striped rebel colors with the starry blue canton nailed to the mast. She had lost her fight, but it didn't feel so.

They fetched up and went over with a boat to pick up survivors, but there weren't a dozen men left and the young captain was not one of them. Treghues offered them dry clothes and rum and put them below.

Lewrie wished that the day was over but it was not to be. Once they had swayed up a new t' gallant mast, roved a fresh outer jib stay, taken down the damaged tops'l yard, fished it with a stuns'l boom, rehoisted it and bent on a new sail, they were off once more in search of prizes that lay tantalizingly to leeward.

After their labor a late meal was brought up from the galley, cold meat and cheese and biscuit. The rum ration was doled out along with as much small beer as they could drink. Their dead were hustled below out of sight by the loblolly boys and the decks washed clean of blood and offal to keep up their fighting spirit.

They came across another brig beating up to windward for Fredericksted from the west, unaware that anything was happening, and did not notice that Desperate was British until it was too late. She turned out to be French, come for a load of stores to smuggle, and was crammed to the deckheads with I1lIIl. molasses and naval stores. There was no resistance, and Mr. Monk went away with Carey in charge of her, leaving Alan as the last midshipman still aboard.

Let it be over, he thought in weariness, and the awful let~ down he had come to know as his normal reaction after each hard fight. All he wanted to do was find a patch of shade and go to sleep as some of the hands could, never mind slinging a hammock below. They had finally stood down from Quarters… every sail still in sight was hull-down over the horiwn running for their lives.

By late afternoon even Treghues had to admit that they had run out of hope of future prizes, that they had seemingly swept the ocean clean. On their way nor'west toward Culebra and Vieques Islands, they could see sails jogging along behind them, and in trail of the other warships, perhaps ten captures in all, in which all the frigates and sloops would share. Actually in material terms they had not made a real dent in the volume of imports to the rebellious Colonies, but perhaps the audacity of the raid would give the smugglers pause, or make them choose new areas in which to operate.