Ken Follett - A Column of Fire

Barney went down to the gun deck. His master gunner was a dark-skinned North African called Bill Coory. Barney had taught Bill everything he knew and now Bill was as good as Barney had ever been, perhaps better. Barney ordered Bill to prepare the gun crew of the Alice for a fight.

He watched Drake’s Revenge bear down on the San Martin . The two ships were headed for a broadside pass like hundreds that had taken place in the last nine days with little effect. But this one was different. Barney became increasingly apprehensive as the Revenge took a course to bring it dangerously close to the Spanish ship. Drake had scented blood, or perhaps gold, and Barney feared for the life of England’s hero as he came within a hundred yards of his target. If Drake were killed in the first clash of the battle, it could demoralize the English totally.

Both vessels fired their bow guns, small nuisance weapons that might disconcert and panic the enemy crew but could not cripple a ship. Then, as the two mighty vessels drew level, the advantage of the wind became apparent. The Spanish ship, downwind, heeled over so that its cannons, even at their lowest elevation, pointed up into the air. The English vessel, upwind, leaned towards its enemy, and at this close range its guns aimed at the deck and the exposed underbelly.

They began to fire. The guns of the two ships made different noises. The Revenge shot in a measured tattoo, like a drumbeat, each cannon on the deck firing as it reached the optimum position with a discipline that gladdened the artilleryman’s heart in Barney. The San Martin ’s sound was deeper but irregular, as if its gunners were saving ammunition.

Both ships rose and fell on the waves like corks, but they were so close now that even in heavy seas their guns could hardly miss.

The Revenge was struck by several huge balls. Because of the angle, the shots hit the rigging, but even that might cripple a ship if the masts were broken. The San Martin suffered a different kind of damage: some of Drake’s guns were firing a variety of unconventional ammunition — packets of small iron cubes called dice shot that shredded the flesh; pairs of cannonballs chained together that whirled through the rigging and brought down the yard-arms; even lethal shards of scrap metal that could destroy sails.

Then the scene was obscured by the fog of gun smoke. Barney could hear the screams of maimed men between the bangs, and the taste of gunpowder was in his nose and mouth.

The ships drew apart, firing their stern guns as they did so. As they emerged from the smoke Barney saw that Drake was not going to slow his pace by turning around to attack the San Martin again, but was making a beeline for the next nearest Spanish ship. Barney deduced with relief that the Revenge was not badly damaged.

The second ship in the English line, the Nonpareil , pounced on the San Martin . Following Drake’s example, its commander drew breathtakingly close to the enemy vessel, though not close enough to permit the Spanish to grapple and board; and the guns thundered again. This time Barney thought the Spanish fired fewer balls, and he suspected their artillerymen were slow to reload.

Barney had watched for long enough: it was time to join in. It was important for the Alice to be seen attacking Spanish ships, for that entitled Barney and his crew to a share of the spoils.

The San Felipe was the next galleon in the Spanish line, and it was already surrounded by English ships that were pounding it mercilessly. Barney was reminded of a pack of hounds attacking a bear in the English people’s favourite entertainment. The ships were approaching so close that Barney saw one crazed Englishman jump across the gap to the deck of the San Felipe and immediately get cut to pieces by Spanish swords. He realized it was the only time in the past nine days that anyone had boarded an enemy ship — a measure of how the English had succeeded in preventing the Spanish from using their preferred tactics.

As the Alice swept into the attack, following in the wake of a warship called the Antelope , Barney glanced to the horizon and saw, to his consternation, a new group of Spanish vessels appearing over the horizon and racing to join the battle. To come to the rescue of an outnumbered fleet took courage, but it seemed the Spaniards had plenty of that.

Gritting his teeth, Barney yelled at his helmsman to approach within a hundred yards of the San Felipe .

The soldiers on the galleon fired their muskets and arquebuses, and were near enough to score several hits among the men crowded on the deck of the Alice . Barney dropped to his knees and escaped unscathed, but half a dozen of his crew fell, bleeding onto the deck. Then Bill Coory started firing, and the guns of the Alice thundered. Small shot raked the deck of the galleon, mowing down sailors and soldiers, while larger cannonballs smashed into the timbers of the hull.

The galleon replied with one large ball for the Alice ’s eight smaller shots, and as it crashed into the stern, Barney felt the thud in the pit of his stomach. The ship’s carpenter, waiting on deck for exactly this moment, rushed below to try to repair the damage.

Barney had been in battle before. He was not fearless — men without fear did not live long at sea — but he found that once the fighting started there was so much to do that he did not think about the danger until afterwards. He was possessed by high-energy excitement, yelling instructions at his crew, dashing from one side of the ship to the other for a better view, dropping down to the gun deck every few minutes to shout orders and encouragement to the sweating artillerymen. He coughed on gun smoke, slipped on spilled blood, and stumbled over the bodies of the dead and wounded.

He looped the Alice around behind the Antelope and followed the larger ship on its second pass, firing the port guns this time. He cursed as a shot from the galleon struck his rear mast. A fraction of a second later he felt a sharp stinging pain in his scalp. He reached up and pulled a splinter of wood from his hair. He felt the warm wetness of blood, but it was only a trickle, and he realized he had escaped with a scratch.

The mast did not fall and the carpenter hurried to brace it with reinforcing struts.

When the Alice was clear of the sulphurous smoke, Barney noticed that the armada was slowly moving into its crescent formation. He was amazed that the commanders and crews could summon up such discipline as they took a hellish pounding. The Spanish ships were proving worryingly hard to sink, and now reinforcements were about to arrive.

Barney looped the Alice around for another attacking run.

The battle raged all day, and by mid-afternoon Rollo was in despair.

The San Martin had been hit hundreds of times. Three of the ship’s big guns had been dislodged from their mountings and rendered useless, but it had plenty more. The holed ship was being kept afloat by the divers, the bravest of the brave, who went into the sea with lead plates and hemp caulking to patch the hull while the gunfire raged. All around Rollo men lay dead or wounded, many calling on God or their favourite saint to release them from their agony. The air he breathed tasted of blood and gun smoke.

The Maria Juan had been so terribly damaged that it could not stay afloat, and Rollo had watched in despair as the magnificent ship sank, slowly but hopelessly, into the grey waves of the cold North Sea and disappeared from sight forever. The San Mateo was close to the end. In the effort to keep her afloat the crew were throwing everything movable overboard: guns, gratings, broken timbers, and even the bodies of their dead comrades. The San Felipe was so badly damaged that it could not be steered, and it was drifting helplessly away from the battle and towards the sandbanks.