“There’s a semaphore tower there, at Salobreña?” Lewrie asked. “Anything else?”
“The semaphore tower is all that matters,” Mountjoy told him, “though it will be harder to get at, since it’s at the back of the town, on a higher spur, It would’ve made more sense to build it nearer to Motril, which is uphill, but for a ridge East of Motril that blocks the view.”
“We’d have t’fight our way through a town?” Lewrie exclaimed. “What happened to bein’ sweet to the Spanish? Ye can’t trust soldiers t’not loot a little, on the sly, and if fire’s exchanged, there’s the risk o’ civilians gettin’ shot. If the government in Madrid is apin’ the French, they’ll have their own equivalent of Bonaparte’s Moniteur, and play up the deaths and destruction like the Americans played up a few dead rebels as the Boston Massacre!”
“It’s on the extreme outskirts of the town,” Mountjoy pointed out, producing some more sketches from his field agents and informers. “Look here. Up here’s the tower, about a quarter-mile inland from the beach, beyond a grove of trees, some pastureland, an orchard, and a few scattered houses, barns, and out-buildings. It’s not as if you’d be chargin’ through the streets. Sort of below the village of Motril, but out past the last of the ridge, where the sightline to the towers further East is better.”
Lewrie ignored the sketches for a moment, looking closer at the chart, and finding an host of wee markers which resembled tall, skinny triangles with vees above them, all along the coast.
“Mountjoy, there are hundreds of the bloody things…” he said.
“Well, not hundreds, really,” Mountjoy objected.
“… about eight or ten miles apart, else they couldn’t even begin t’read what signal they’re making. I expect the expense for all the needed telescopes is horrid, even so. Why don’t we just burn the one at Almerimar, and work our way West, startin’ at dawn and ending by dusk?”
“You told me that it takes an hour or so just to get the men ashore, and hours more to complete the destruction as you did with the battery at Puerto Banús,” Mountjoy dis-agreed. “I doubt you could hit no more than two, before the Spanish Army could respond, especially if you kept it up for several days. You might even draw warships out of Cartagena, and then where would you be? So far, the Mediterranean Fleet has kept them penned up in their ports, and, after the trouncing they took at Trafalgar, the Spanish may be loath to lose any more precious ships, but … a series of raids like that would sting them out.”
“Are you insisting it has t’be Salobreña, Mountjoy?” Lewrie asked, all but gritting his teeth. That sense of old, of being Twigg’s dim but useful gun-dog, was back, with a vengeance.
“Given what little information I’ve been able to glean, these two objectives are the only ones about which I know the most,” Mountjoy grimly told him, shaking his head sadly. “Unless there are troops on the march, of which I would also know nothing, these two have no garrisons, no batteries, and the closest garrison would be at Órjiva, and that’s about ten miles inland, and they’re all infantry, so they’d take hours to hear of your presence in the first case, and even more hours to march down, arriving long after you’ve sailed, in the second.”
“Well…” Lewrie temporised, not caring for the prospects in the least, but feeling that he had no choice but to go along with it.
A fortnight at sea, weather permitting, just to burn one insignificant semaphore tower, then return to Gibraltar, would be a waste of everyone’s time and efforts.
“Very well, then,” he growled in surrender. “We’ll strike both, beginning with Almerimar. It’s the easiest, and quickest, and the one with the least risk of opposition. Just to keep the landing parties in trim, I’ll close the coast a bit later in the morning, just round pre-dawn, so we can see where we’re going, land them at the first of the sunrise, and get them off round mid-morning.
“I s’pose the tower works round the clock?” Lewrie asked, leaning on the table with both hands. “Pig bladders for day signalling, and some sort of oil lanthorns at night? Good, then there’ll be more than enough oil for the burning, and I’ll only have to send a keg or two of gunpowder ashore t’help that along. Then…”
He studied the chart more closely, considering that the tower at Almerimar would be sending an urgent message as soon as Sapphire and Harmony were spotted closing the coast, to Roquetas de Mar to the East, to Adra in the West, with word of the raid sent as far as Salobrena and thence to Málaga.
“Then, Salobreña?” Mountjoy prompted.
“A diversion,” Lewrie finally explained. “Once the troops are back aboard, I’ll cruise Easterly and let the tower at Roquetas de Mar have a good, long look at us, perhaps stand as far as the Cabo de Gata, before turning out to sea. Let the Dons think I’m bound up the coast towards Cartagena, Alicante, or Valencia, instead. We’ll double back and go at Salobreña last, and land the troops in the full dark.”
“They’d be better at that, by then, is your thinking?” Mountjoy assumed, nodding quite cheerfully now that Lewrie had given in. “We have more of that good Spanish white, the tempranilla, and I’ve got a plate of some fresh cheese and good cured ham. D’ye think we need the mustard pot, too?”
“I’m a sailor, and we’re both British,” Lewrie said with a grin. “Of course, we need a dab of mustard.”
They went out to the rooftop gallery with the wine and a plate of cheese and cold cuts. Lewrie sat down and began to study the drawings of Salobreña, considering it the harder nut to crack, and the one that most worried him.
“You, ehm … mentioned some minor problems with the last raid? Some … worries?” Mountjoy asked as he poured the wine. “Have those settled, have you?”
“Hughes is the problem,” Lewrie said, almost spitting the name. “First, he over-rode my Midshipmen, Hillhouse and Britton, ordering them to land short of the battery, where it was darker, ’cause he didn’t wish to alert the sentries. I put ’em on notice that they were in charge on the water, and they’d land the troops where we planned t’land ’em, in future. Hughes … he acted as if he was in charge of a regiment, confronted by an equal number, and he acted like he was trained,” Lewrie griped with a shake of his head. “Open fire with rollin’ volleys, kill, or daunt, the foe, and only go in with the bayonet once the enemy’s been sufficiently whittled down. God!”
“You’ve spoken with him since you all returned?” Mountjoy asked with a quizzical expression. “How did that go?”
“Decidedly … not … well,” Lewrie barked in sour humour, and grimacing.
* * *
Lewrie had invited all officers to a celebratory “drunk” aboard HMS Sapphire, including Midshipmen Hillhouse and Britton to join them, along with the two Ensigns of the detachment of the 77th Foot, Gilliam and Litchfield. His first intent was to congratulate them all on an operation that had gone off rather well, then had waited ’til everyone was “cherry merry” in wine, following the old adage that in vino veritas; in wine there is truth. It was only then that he had suggested that an informal review of the raid might prove helpful to the conduct of future operations; what worked, what might be improved or done differently.
As Pettus and Jessop circulated among them to top off their wineglasses with a sprightly, effervescent Spanish white, they all had sat dumbfounded for a minute or two, Who in the world cared what a junior officer thought? They hesitated, slack-jawed—and “half seas over” it must be confessed—waiting for Lewrie or Major Hughes to speak and tell them what to make of their recent experience.