“The Billy Ruffian?” Sharpe asked, puzzled by the name that was evidently attached to a two-decker seventy-four that otherwise looked quite unremarkable.
“The Bellerophon, Sharpe. She was Howe’s flagship at the Glorious First of June and she was at the Nile, by God! Poor Henry Darby was killed there, God rest his soul. He was an Irishman and a capital soul, just capital! John Cooke has her now, and he’s as stout a fellow as ever came from Essex.”
“He came into money,” Haskell said, “and moved to Wiltshire.”
“Did he now? Good for him!” Chase said, then trained his glass on the Bellerophon again. “She’s a quick ship,” he said enviously, though his Pucelle was just as fast. “A lovely ship. Medway-built. When was she launched?”
“‘Eighty-six,” Haskell answered.
“And she cost £30,232 14s and 3d,” Midshipman Collier interjected, then looked ashamed for his interruption. “Sorry, sir,” he said to Chase.
“Don’t be sorry, lad. Are you sure? Of course you’re sure, your father’s a surveyor in the Sheerness dockyard, ain’t he? So what was the threepence spent on?”
“Don’t know, sir.”
“A ha’penny nail, probably,” Lord William said acidly. “The peculation in His Majesty’s dockyards is nothing short of scandalous.”
“What is scandalous,” Chase retorted, stung to the protest, “is that the government permits ill-founded ships to be given to good men!” He swung away from Lord William, frowning, but his good spirits were restored by the sight of the British fleet’s black and yellow hulls.
Sharpe just gazed at the fleet in awe, doubting he would ever see a sight like this again. This was the majesty of Britain, her deep-sea fleet, a procession of majestic gun batteries, vast, ponderous and terrible. They moved as slowly as fully laden harvest wagons, their bluff bows subduing the seas and the beauty of their black and yellow flanks hiding the guns in their dark bellies. Their sterns were gilded and their figureheads a riot of shields, tridents, naked breasts and defiance. Their sails, yellow, cream and white, made a cloud bank, and their names were a roll call of triumphs: Conqueror and Agamemnon, Dreadnought and Revenge, Leviathan and Thunderer, Mars, Ajax and Colossus. These were the ships that had cowed the Danes, broken the Dutch, decimated the French and chased the Spanish from the seas. These ships ruled the waves, but now one last enemy fleet challenged them and they sailed to give it battle.
Sharpe watched Lady Grace standing tall beside the mizzen shrouds. Her eyes were bright, there was color in her cheeks and awe on her face as she stared at the stately line of ships. She looked happy, he thought, happy and beautiful, then Sharpe saw that Lord William also watched her, a sardonic expression on his face, then he turned to gaze at Sharpe who hastily looked back to the British fleet.
Most of the ships were two-deckers. Sixteen of those, like the Pucelle, carried seventy-four guns, while three, like the Africa, only had sixty-four guns apiece. One two-decker, the captured French Tonnant, carried eighty-four guns, while the other seven ships of the fleet were the towering triple-deckers with ninety-eight or a hundred guns. Those ships were the brute killers of the deep, the slab-sided gun batteries that could hurl a slaughterous weight of metal, but Chase, without showing any alarm at the prospect, told Sharpe there was a famous Spanish four-decker, the largest ship in the world, that carried over a hundred and thirty guns. “Let’s hope she’s with their fleet,” he said, “and that we can lay alongside her. Think of the prize money!”
“Think of the slaughter,” Lady Grace said quietly.
“It hardly bears contemplation, milady,” Chase said dutifully, “hardly bears it at all, but I warrant we shall do our duty.” He put his telescope to his eye. “Ah,” he exclaimed, staring at the leading British ship, a three-decker with ornate giltwork climbing and wreathing her massive stern. “And there’s the best fellow of them all. Mister Haskell! A seventeen-gun salute, if you please.”
The leading ship was the Victory, one of the three hundred-gun ships in the British fleet and also Nelson’s flagship, and Chase, gazing at the Victory, had tears in his eyes. “What I wouldn’t do for that man,” he exclaimed. “I never fought for him myself and thought I’d never have the chance.” Chase cuffed at his eyes as the first of the Pucelle’s guns banged from the weather deck in salute of Lord Horatio Nelson, Viscount and Baron Nelson of the Nile and of Burnham Thorpe, Baron Nelson of the Nile and of Hilborough, Knight of the most Honorable Order of the Bath and Vice Admiral of the White. “I tell you, Sharpe,” Chase said, still with tears on his cheeks, “I would sail down the throat of hell for that man.”
The Victory had been signaling to the Mars, which, in turn, was passing the messages on down the chain of frigates to the Euryalus, which lay closest to the enemy, but now the flagship’s signal came down and a new ripple of bright flags ran up her mizzen. The PuceHe’s guns still fired the salute, the shots screaming out to fall in the empty ocean to starboard.
“Our numeral, sir!” Lieutenant Connors called to Captain Chase. “He makes us welcome, sir, and says we are to paint our mast hoops yellow. Yellow?” He sounded puzzled. “Yellow, sir, it does say yellow, and we are to take station astern of the Conqueror.”
“Acknowledge,” Chase said, and turned to stare at the Conqueror, a seventy-four which was sailing some distance ahead of a three-decker, the Britannia. “She’s a slow ship,” Chase muttered of the Britannia, then he waited for the last of the seventeen guns to sound before seizing the speaking trumpet. “Ready to tack!”
He had some tricky seamanship ahead, and it would have to be done under the eyes of a fleet that prized seamanship almost as much as it valued victory. The Pucelle was on the starboard tack and needed to go about so that she could join the column of ships which sailed north on the larboard tack, yet as she turned into the wind she would inevitably lose speed and, if Chase judged it wrong, he would end up becalmed and shamed in the wind-shadow of the Conqueror. He had to turn his ship, let her gather speed and slide her smoothly into place and if he did it too fast he could run aboard the Conqueror and too slow and he would be left wallowing motionless under the Britannia’s scornful gaze. “Now, quartermaster, now,” he said, and the seven men hauled on the great wheel while the lieutenants bellowed at the sail handlers to release the sheets. “Israel Pellew has the Conqueror,” Chase remarked to Sharpe, “and he’s a fine fellow and a wonderful seaman. Wonderful seaman! From Cornwall, you see? They seem to be born with salt in their veins, those Cornish fellows. Come on, my sweet, come on!” He was talking to the Pucelle which had turned her bluff bows into the wind and for a second it seemed she would hang there helplessly, but then Sharpe saw the bowsprit moving against the cavalcade of British ships, and men were running across the deck, seizing new sheets and hauling them home. The sails flapped like demented things, then tightened in the wind and the ship leaned, gathered speed and headed docilely into the open space behind the Conqueror. It had been done beautifully.
“Well done, quartermaster,” Chase said, pretending he had felt no qualms during the maneuver. “Well done, Pucelles! Mister Holderby! Muster a work party and break out some yellow paint!”