“Yes, by God!” Lewrie said with a laugh. As that smoke wafted alee, he avidly sought signs of damage through his telescope as gouts of disturbed water near her waterline leapt upward, as sails twitched again as they were holed, and bits of the Spanish frigate’s bulwarks and hammock-filled stanchions were smashed away. “Best gunners in the entire Navy, the best in the world, indeed!”
As he watched, the frigate’s large main course was clewed up, and enemy topmen scooted out the yard to brail it up. She was readying to return fire. A signal hoist went up her after halliards, and the trailing frigate began to take in her main course, as well. They would fight. “Now, it gets int’resting,” Lewrie muttered.
The lead frigate endured two more broadsides from Sapphire before her side erupted in smoke and jets of flame. The range had been closing all along, and she was only half a mile off when she opened upon the British ship. Heeled over to the press of wind and still on a beat to weather, her guns would reach further, their maximum elevation aided by the cant of her decks. Shot moaned overhead as Lewrie fought the natural inclination to duck, crouch, or cringe. One ball hummed over the poop, between the bulwarks and the lower spanker boom, creating a sudden gust of air that shoved him against the bulwarks, and came near to sending his hat overboard. There were several loud thuds and crashes as enemy shot hit home. Lewrie peered over the side and saw the hazes and swirls of splinters rising where some shot had hit, flinging engrained dust and paint or tar from the wounds.
“On the up-roll, by broadside … fire!” Lt. Westcott yelled, his voice gone raspy from the effort, and the ever-present smoke.
In the heat of the moment, some of Lewrie’s gun-captains had forgotten to re-insert the quoin blocks under their guns’ breeches, too intent on re-loading, priming, over-hauling tackle, and running out as the range shortened. While most of Sapphire’s broadsides were aimed at the Spaniard’s hull, some shots went high. Unwittingly they emulated French or Spanish practice, which was to cripple an enemy’s speed and manouevrability by taking down masts and rigging before closing for a slug-fest at musket-shot.
“By broadside, fire!” and Sapphire roared out her fury once more. Her guns were hot, now, and when they discharged, they did not slam back in recoil, but leapt clear of the deck by several inches, slewing off-centre and straining breeching ropes, making the stout iron ring-bolts groan, and making gunners dodge aside to keep from being hit, or their feet caught in the tackles.
When the smoke cleared from that broadside, Lewrie whooped in glee, pointing to the Spaniard and yelling, “Just look at that!” Those shots from the guns with the quoin blocks fully out had pummeled the frigate’s rigging. Her fore royal mast and yard, her fore t’gallant mast and yard above the cross-trees, had been shot away, falling like a hewn pinetree to leeward, and dragging her outer flying jib with it. A moment later and her main t’gallant stays’l parted from the foremast to swirl back against the main mast. All that wreckage hung for a long moment as Spanish sailors scrambled up from the foremast fighting top to chop or slash it away, but it all broke free and fell, the yards of her topmasts spearing into the frigate’s fore tops’l to rip it open like a gutted fish before finally falling clear into the sea!
“Another point free, Mister Westcott!” Lewrie ordered. “Close the range on her!”
And make the angle too great for the trailin’ frigate t’shoot at us, he grimly told himself; Just take ’em on one at a time!
With her foremast sails ravaged and short a jib, the Spanish frigate slowed, though she still was at least two knots faster than the two-decker, still steering Sou’west by South while Sapphire was now sailing Due West, the angle of approach greater, and drawing together. Gamely, her side lit up with a broadside of her own. Roundshot moaned or shrieked past the bows, past the stern, above the decks, punching holes in Sapphire’s sails, and slamming into her side, making her planking squawk parrot-like as thick, seasoned oak was stove in.
“By broadside … fire!” and Sapphire gave as good as she got, crushingly so. Her lower-deck 24-pounders hulled the Spanish frigate, and Lewrie could see fresh, star-shaped shot holes blasted into that former loveliness, could see her masts sway and quiver from the force of the blows. Something had shattered the frigate’s main tops’l yard and the windward half collapsed onto the brailed-up main course yard, jerking the brace-line for the main t’gallant apart, and both sails winged out alee, the tops’l fluttering like a shirt on a clothesline, and the upper t’gallant angling out almost fore-and-aft, flattened by the winds and making the frigate heel leeward.
“We’re almost close enough, now, to employ the carronades and six-pounders, sir!” Westcott shouted up to Lewrie.
Lewrie looked forward and found his cabin-servant, Jessop, at one of the quarterdeck carronades, promoted from powder monkey to a gunner. Jessop was hopping from one bare foot to the other in impatience. He looked aft at Lewrie as if pleading.
“Aye, Mister Westcott, serve ’em with ev’rything!” Lewrie called back. “Woo-hoo!” Jessop could be heard yelling.
“All guns, by broadside … fire!” Westcott shouted.
With the addition of the 24-pounder carronades, it was an avalanche that struck the Spaniard, even as she got off a ragged broadside of her own. Both ships blanketed themselves in powder smoke and blotted out any chance of a view for long moments before being blown alee. The damaged tops’l, the un-controllable flatted-out t’gallant, had drawn the frigate over several more degrees of heel, forcing her fire to dash high above Sapphire’s decks, but the two-decker’s fire, aimed “’Twixt Wind And Water”, smashed into her side, gun-ports, bulwarks, and her waterline. Lewrie could see the frigate’s underwater coppering, tinged and streaked algae-green, exposed for a foot or more, as several heavy roundshot punched ragged, dark holes through it. If she rolled upright, the frigate surely would begin to flood!
Spanish sailors were high aloft in her rigging trying to control her t’gallant, slashing and hacking at any line that held the sail taut to the wind. At last, it was freed to flutter leeward, horizontal to the sea, and the frigate righted herself, those shot holes now smothered in foamy, disturbed seawater. She lost more speed due to all her damage aloft, and finally fell a point off the wind to bring her guns to point abeam at Sapphire, but she was limping, by then.
“By broadside, fire!”
That was the stroke that did her in. When the smoke cleared, all could take delight in seeing her entire foremast above the fighting top falling, taking her fore tops’l and the last of her jibs and stays’l over her starboard side, pressed by the wind. The sudden drag in the sea jerked the frigate’s head downwind, reducing her to a crawling cripple. Sapphire’s sailors erupted in taunts, jeers, and loud cheering, and the fifer and fiddler struck up a lively jig in celebration.
“Oh, the poor bastard!” Westcott shouted, pointing off at the trailing frigate. She had been following in her leader’s wake, about one cable astern, and was turning leeward abruptly to avoid collision!
“Cease fire, Mister Westcott!” Lewrie ordered over the loud din of his crew. “Pipe the Still. We’ll let ’em celebrate when the work’s finished. A water break for the gun crews, but put the hands to the sheets and braces, and get us back on the eye of the wind ’til we see what this’un intends to do.”
“Aye, sir,” Lt. Westcott replied. “Bosun, pipe the Still, then hands to sheets and braces!”
That call, the Still, was rarely heard aboard Sapphire, though there were some severe disciplinarians in the Royal Navy who ran their men and their ships in silence by day and night, with all orders passed by Bosun’s calls.
“I thought you’d finish her, sir,” Captain Pomfret said as the crew’s cheers fell away, and sailors fell to their required duties.