“Damme, she’s goin’!” he muttered.
The frigate’s masts were canted far over to larboard, and she looked very low in the water, with the sea breaking mildly just under her line of gun-ports though he could see the coppering tacked to her stern, as if she was also down by the head with her stern cocked up. Looking closer, he could make out weak streams of water gushing from her, as if her sailors were flailing away madly at her pumps, but it seemed a losing fight.
“Cast of the log!” he demanded.
“Seven and a half knots, sir!” Midshipman Griffin shouted back after a long minute to let the log-line run and be pinched after the sand ran out of a minute glass.
We’ll be too late, Lewrie thought; Those poor buggers.
Time out of mind, since Tudor days, England and Spain had detested each other, and it was natural to loathe the Dons. When engaged at war with them, in the heat of battle at close broadsides or teeth-to-teeth with crossed blades, killing them any way possible without a thought and exulting in their slaughter bothered good Englishmen no more than piling up dead rabbits, or a terrier’s kills in a rat pit.
Helpless sailors of any nation, though … men who risked the sea and its perils, and who were suffering a fate that could befall any British sailor, if his luck ran out, that was another matter.
It would take Sapphire the better part of an hour to reach the stricken frigate, and she would slip beneath the waves long before, no matter what frantic efforts the Spanish could do to prolong the inevitable.
Six miles off, and Lewrie could see what was left of her upperworks falling free over her larboard side as her sailors chopped, cut, and axed away everything standing above her fighting tops to ease the weight that was dragging her over. For a short, hopeful moment, she did come a bit more upright, but those shot holes that had been blown into her a little below the waterline continued to flood her innards.
Four miles off, and quarterdeck and forecastle guns were cast overside, but that made little difference. The San Pablo had borne her ship’s boats on the boat-tier beams that spanned the waist, and they had been turned to scrap wood, but they were freed and shoved by human force to the larboard side, where great sections of the bulwarks that remained were hacked down, and the boats put over, though not a one of them floated.
Three miles off, and Lewrie could see the tangle of ropes that bound spare sails that had been fothered over the shot holes, and the fothering patches seeming to breathe as air compressed in her orlop and bilges pressed out, and the sea dimpled them inward.
Two miles off, and the San Pablo’s bows were submerged up to the forecastle, and she suddenly roiled onto her larboard side and began to go down in a foaming welter of great air bubbles and flying spray shot out of her hull.
“Damme, damme, damme!” Lewrie muttered, closing the tubes of his telescope, thinking that he could hear the mortal groaning noises of a proud ship beginning to drown, and the faint screams and prayers for salvation from her crew!
Her masts slid under, ’til only the mizen stood above the sea, and a hint of her taffrails and her captain’s cabin windows, the red-gold-red flag of Spain still flying, and then even that was gone in a boiling froth of foam as she gave up her last exhale and headed for the bottom.
“Fetch-to, close as you can, Mister Westcott, and man all the boats,” Lewrie ordered, chiding himself for not going after her sooner. Even with aid so close, the long minutes required to bring up to the winds and bring the boats up from astern, then man them and get them off, was too long for many of the Spanish sailors. Some survivors clung to broken yards or the shattered ship’s boats, some hung on to floating hatch gratings, and some of the frigate’s walking wounded lay atop them. But Lewrie could see many bodies floating face-down and drowned, and what had become of her badly wounded who could not be moved from her belowdecks surgery did not bear thinking about. Many men who’d managed to escape her had gotten entangled in the confused masses of standing and running rigging and had drowned, unable to claw their way to the surface, and … it appeared that it was not only the majority of British sailors that could not swim, but it was the same case with the Spanish. Spanish sailors were thrashing in panic, flailing the water and slipping under even as he watched!
All he could do was pace the poop deck, head down so he didn’t have to watch any longer, with his hands clasped in the small of his back, trying to shut out the terrified shouts, screams, and prayers and play stern and stoic, and wait for the final report.
“Ah, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said at last as his First Officer came to the poop deck after the last boat had been recovered. “What’s the count?”
“We only managed to save fifty-nine of them, sir,” Westcott said, lifting his hat in formal salute. “None of her officers or her Mids. Her captain … he was determined to go down with his ship, and those in command who’d survived the fight swore they’d do the same. Damned if they didn’t gather in his cabins for a last drink before she went. I’ve never heard the like!”
“Perhaps the Spanish treasury is so empty, he thought it likely they’d ask him t’pay t’replace her,” Lewrie said with a brief snort of the blackest of gallows humour. “Poor devils. Rig out boats for towing, and get us under way to rejoin our prize, Mister Westcott.”
“Aye, sir,” Westcott said, looking grim and disappointed with his best efforts to save more. “Shape course for Gibraltar?”
“Aye, Gibraltar,” Lewrie said, nodding gravely. He lingered on the poop deck for several minutes to savour the airs. It was getting on for November, and even the Mediterranean was turning brisk. The sun was lowering in the West, getting on towards dusk, and the skies in that direction were almost glowing amber, yellow, and red.
Red skies at night, sailor’s delight, he glumly thought, though far from delighted by then. At last, he descended to the quarterdeck, hoping that his cabins, which he had not seen since the ship had gone to Quarters that morning, might have been put back in some semblance of decent order, though he dreaded the idea that he would have to dine in his officers who remained aboard, along with Captain Pomfret and a few Mids; they’d be cock-a-whoop boisterous, too ready to celebrate, and he would have much preferred to dine alone, just him and Chalky.
“Too bad about the other Spanish frigate, ain’t it, sir?” Captain Pomfret commented. “All those poor, drowned men! Still, defeating two enemy ships in one day is quite a rare feat, I should think. Make all the papers and cheer folks back home something wondrous! My congratulations, Captain Lewrie … even if, as I understand the process of ‘to the victor go the spoils’, your ship will only reap prize money on the one, what?”
“You shall share in it, too, Captain Pomfret,” Lewrie assured him with a faint grin. “You were present upon our decks. Take joy o’ that. Dine with me tonight. With any luck, my cook, Yeovill, will prepare us something special.”
“Delighted to hear that I should prosper, even in a small way, and I would also be delighted to dine, and celebrate your victory,” Pomfret eagerly said.
“Yes, it was a victory, wasn’t it?” Lewrie mused, wanting no more than to go aft and get off his feet. “Not completely mine, though. If a grand victory it was, it’s Sapphire’s victory, their victory,” he said, pointing forward to the many sailors on deck. “It’s always theirs.”
EPILOGUE
I begin by taking. I shall find scholars afterwards to demonstrate my perfect right.
FREDERICK II, THE GREAT
KING OF PRUSSIA (1712–1786)
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Bart., was having one of the worst mornings of his life. To say that he felt rowed beyond all temperance, to describe his mood of being betrayed, and as ill-used as if assailed by so many bears, would be an understatement.