Both of them were two-masted, either topsail schooners or Bermudan or Jamaican sloops, neither much longer than Lizard or Firefly, with their jib-booms and bow-sprits steeved closer to the horizontal than was the usual fashion in merchant ships or purpose-built warships. Their hulls were so dark that they were almost black, with narrow hull stripes; on the nearest was a dark blue stripe, and on the furthest an odd blue-grey. Their masts were raked aft a bit more than usual, as if they followed the American shipbuilding fashion.
“Aha! Wakey-wakey!” Lewrie snickered after he lifted his telescope, and spotted men popping up on their decks, dashing about in confusion, as if ordered to man their guns, make sail, and cut their anchor cables, all at the same time. But they had no time.
Just bloody beautiful! Lewrie exulted; Them, the bay, everything! The bay was an artist’s palette of dark greens, aquas, and jade, sparkling in the dawn light like a field of gems. And the trap he’d sprung…!
“Note in the log, Mister Caldwell,” Lewrie called over to the Sailing Master, “that Lizard and Firefly opened upon the near vessel at… a quarter ’til six A.M.,”
Damme, that’s well done, Lewrie appreciatively thought as Lizard, the slightly stronger ship in weight of metal, stood up to the nearest sloop and wheeled to lay abeam of her at a range of a single cable before she opened fire off the sloop’s starboard bows, sails reduced and making a slow steerage way so Lt. Bury’s gunners might be able to get off a second or third broadside in passing. Firefly followed in her wake, wheeling abeam in succession to add her four starboard 6-pounders a bit later.
At such close range, it was almost impossible to miss. Shot-splashes rose close-aboard the sloop’s waterline, and roundshot punched holes below the sloop’s row of gun-ports, and smashed chunks from her bulwarks, staggering her masts.
A few of the first sloop’s gun-ports swung up, and stubby gun muzzles appeared as some were run out, but only two fired, aimlessly, before a scramble began to her un-engaged side as her crew abandoned the fight, leaping over the larboard rails for their boats, or a long swim to the beach.
“Carry on, Bury, carry on!” Lewrie yelled as if his voice would reach that far, hoping that the little two-ship column could engage the second sloop before she could prepare herself for battle.
“We’re almost at a cable’s range of the first, sir,” Westcott judged aloud.
“My compliments to Mister Spendlove, and he’s to open upon her the instant he deems it feasible, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered, quite looking forward to the thunder and clouds of powder smoke.
“Aye aye, sir!” Westcott replied. “Hoy, Mister Spendlove!”
The second sloop had managed to cut her single anchor cable and was paying off leeward as her crew got up a jib, and her main fore-and-aft gaff sail, very slowly sagging and swinging her bows towards the leading British ship, Lizard. Bad luck for her, for all that was doing was presenting her weak bow scantlings to a rake, and closing the range to her own mauling.
“ As you bear… by broadside… fire!” Lt. Spendlove shouted, waiting for the decks to pause on the faint scend and the up-roll, when it was level and still.
The range was about a quarter-mile to the first sloop when the first of Reliant ’s broadsides lit off, 12-pounder bow chase gun, all the starboard 18-pounders, the quarterdeck 9-pounders, even the 32-pounder carronades with their elevating screws fully down and their muzzles lifted to the fullest safe elevation.
The 6-pounders of the smaller ships had nipped and bitten the anchored sloop, but Reliant ’s broadside was an iron avalanche. Just before the thick bank of spent powder smoke blotted out their view, Lewrie got a quick glimpse of bulwarks and upper planking shattering in dusty clouds of splinters and chunks, of large, irregular holes blossoming in her sides, and of both masts and tops’l yards coming apart in darting zig-zags of jagged ruin.
As the guns were swabbed, and the recoil and run-out tackle overhauled, the light winds wafted the reeking powder smoke alee to larboard, giving Lewrie a clearer view with his day-glass.
“I don’t think she’ll be needin’ another broadside,” Lewrie said, chuckling. The target was dis-masted, almost level with where the tops of her bulwarks had been, if they hadn’t been blown to kindling. There were several holes in her upper and lower hull planking, and a large one just by her waterline. If anyone was still aboard her, they were out of sight.
Lizard and Firefly were engaging the further sloop, which by then was helplessly bows-on to their fire. Bury and Lovett had closed the range to the point that even their swivel guns were yapping like terriers. That sloop was being sieved with shot!
What’s Thorn doing? Lewrie wondered, stepping over to the lee rails to get a better look. The smoke from his ship’s guns, and the guns of the smaller ships, had mingled and accumulated rapidly, held together, perhaps, by the early-morning humidity, making a thick and drifting haze ahead and to larboard, but he could make out Thorn as she stood in close to the shore and the river mouth, and that encampment, beam onto Reliant. She was wreathed in smoke from her stubby but powerful carronades. Beyond her, trees and bushes writhed, the large tents and shelters were being whipped away, and Thorn must have hit something explosive, for there was a burst of flame and a thick cloud of dark smoke, and a shower of hot sparks that set even more of the camp afire.
“Ehm, captain, sir,” Mr. Caldwell cautioned. “It’s getting a tad shallow for us. Perhaps…”
“Aye, Mister Caldwell,” Lewrie replied. “Mister Westcott, lay us two points alee, into the deeper water to loo’rd. Mister Spendlove? We’re falling off alee. Serve that second sloop as best you can!”
“Quoins out a bit,” Lt. Spendlove instructed his gun-captains. “And aim small, lads. Ready, the battery? On the up-roll by broadside… fire!”
The second sloop was almost bows-on to Reliant, with Firefly and Lizard standing well clear beyond her by then. The range would be closer to half a mile, and the target narrow, but the broadside roared out. Already damaged, that sloop shivered like a stand of saplings to the weight and fury of the frigate’s hail of roundshot. Her jib-boom, bow-sprit, and foremast were scythed away, and misses frothed the waters close aboard her.
“Drop it, Mister Spendlove! Dead’un!” Lewrie shouted down to the waist, jeering in the vernacular of the rat-pit to urge a terrier to go kill another. “Cease fire, and secure!”
Beyond the shattered sloops there were several rowing boats, all pulling madly for the far shore or the long strip of barrier islands, like a gaggle of panicked ducks.
“Ye might have to spell this out, Mister Eldridge, but make to Lizard and Firefly, their numbers, and ‘Take Prisoners’.”
Oh, eager lads! he thought a moment later, even as the signal was being assembled, for Lt. Bury in Lizard was already leading her consort in pursuit, sailing much faster than the boats could be rowed, heading them off from escape.
“Belay, Mister Eldridge. It seems it’s bein’ done.” Lewrie said, turning to share a grin with Lt. Westcott, then crossing over to the other side of the deck to see what Thorn was up to.
Lt. Darling had taken his ship past the encampment, almost to the mouth of the river before coming about to fire with her larboard battery, near the eyes of the wind for a bit, sails shivering or laid aback, before paying off Sutherly. When she was done, there was little sign that the camp had been there, but for the burning, smouldering ruin of the shacks and tents, and a new clearing littered with felled trees and up-rooted bushes.