In Dangerous Company: The Dorset Boy Book 4 Read online

  “Problem skipper?” asked James.

  “Not a stitch of canvas on the yards,” he barked.

  “We will have to tow her out?” Thompson chipped in from behind him.

  “Dammit, but it certainly looks like it.”

  He took another look before the light completely failed.

  “Looks like she is just tied to the next ship across. There are three together and then another three behind them. Get the cutting crew together and prepare the boats as soon as its fully dark. I want half the men back here once you secure the whaler to help with the sweeps. We are going to need them and the sails to get out of here.”

  Two hours later the boats left. Marty ordered The Alouette cast off and they gently started her towards the whaler under the sweeps. James set a shuttered lamp, that could only be seen from ahead, on the bow of the whaler as soon as they boarded to give Marty something to steer for.

  Marty was concentrating on bringing The Alouette up to the right point to swing her around so they could attach a tow, when there was a barked query from just off the port beam.

  “Hey there on the corvette, what are you doing?”

  It was a guard boat. One of the men was stood holding a lantern and peering up at the side.

  Marty walked over to the side trying to appear casual.

  “Our mooring has slipped, damn my crew for a bunch of incompetent idiots, and we are now trying to find the buoy again,” he shouted across. “Do you know where there is one nearby?”

  “For a brandy we will show you!” laughed the guard.

  “If you come aboard and help us, I will give you a bottle!”

  The guards pulled up alongside and the crew help them tie up alongside. They came up the side grinning like cats who had got the canary. They were very quickly subdued by Tom and the Basques and tied up.

  “When they wake up, they aren’t half going to be embarrassed,” Tom remarked with a grin, slapping his blackjack into his palm.

  They made the turn and one of the boats came up pulling a messenger cable that they used to haul a hawse over the stern. The light blinked twice. They were free and ready to be towed. The returning crew swarmed up the side and the boat made fast.

  Marty wet a finger and held it up. There was the faintest of breezes coming up from the south. They would have to do this just with the sweeps for the time being.

  He warned the men against making unnecessary noise and they started to row. He had three men to a sweep, and they had to pull hard.

  At first nothing seemed to be happening but then they started to move. Slowly so slowly they started to make headway. Marty checked his watch; they were still at slack tide. It would be another thirty minutes or more before the tide turned and started going out.

  Time dragged and it seemed they were making such slow progress it would be light before they were out of the harbour.

  He felt the ship move slightly differently. The tide had turned! It was easier but they were still changing the oarsmen every ten minutes, and the men were getting tired.

  He was just beginning to think they would have to give up on the whole enterprise when he felt a slight increase in the breeze.

  “Set the courses,” he hissed.

  The triangular sails filled then went slack.

  “Damn!”

  Then another puff of breeze and they filled again. He felt their pull immediately, but it still wasn’t enough.

  He ran to the stern and looked back at their charge. James was keeping her as straight as he could. The hawse was lifting out of the water as their speed picked up.

  “Keep them rowing, two men to an oar,” he commanded.

  He walked down the line of sweating men. One looked to be struggling so he tapped him on the back and told him to move over as he took the oar himself.

  Oar butt forward, dip and pull, raise the blade, oar butt forward and repeat.

  He got into the rhythm and sweat ran down his face.

  Then Tom was stood in front of him, hands on the oar stopping him. Marty looked at him, surprised.

  “The sails have it now skipper,” he said and looked up.

  Marty followed his gaze and sure enough the sails were full and pulling. He looked across the moonlit bay and saw they were at the mouth of the harbour. They were clear! A cannon fired from the fort, but the ball fell far away from them. The French had woken up far too late.

  “Get those men back in their boat and cast them adrift,” he ordered pointing to the French guards.

  Late morning found two ships sailing towards the English coast. One looked as if it was wearing a set of borrowed sails, as they didn’t sit right on the yards, but she was moving under her own power and that was what counted. They were an odd pair. A Sloop of War and a Whaler who had the day’s recognition signal, so were left to proceed unchallenged.

  Back at the dock Marty and James set about inspecting their acquisition and were starting to be quite pleased. She couldn’t be more than two or maybe three years old with sound timbers. Her bottom needed a clean and coppering due to being moored up for too long and her rigging needed tensioning, but she was sound and her three masts solid. There were no guns fitted and there was no canvas on board, but that could be remedied. She had davits for four boats which was perfect for what they wanted. She also had the big brick oven that was used to render down whale blubber to oil, which would be removed.

  She needed a refit so Marty contacted Admiral Hood, reported that they had succeeded in finding their second ship and could he please buy her in so they could get her to Chatham. Hoods reply was by return and the Honfleur joined the Royal Navy. A month at the docks, and some spectacular bribes, saw her fitted out as an armed troop transport with new sails and a clean, newly coppered, bottom.

  She only needed about thirty crew to sail her but the new whale boats needed eight men each to row them so she would carry a complement of sixty men and forty marines. Armament-wise they fitted her out with twelve-pound longs for artillery support of the shore party rather than for fighting a sea battle. All in all, she was about perfect, and a delivery of men recruited from the pubs in Maidstone by Ryan Thompson, and a purse full of shillings, meant they were ready to go.

  Chapter 12 Bang on Time

  Marty was in his study at the farm when there was a knock at the door.

  “Enter” he called and in walked the three men he had tasked with making a timer.

  “We has figured out how to make a timer for settin’ off bombs sir,” the watch smith, Private Harbrook, reported. Marty had almost forgotten about that with all the running around to get the Honfleur and fit her out.

  “Excellent,” he said.

  “We would like to ” he looked to his colleague who muttered something “demonstriate it,” he smiled at Marty, happy to get that out of the way.

  “And how will you do that?” Marty asked.

  Harbrook was nudged by Private Dibble, the blacksmith, who stepped forward and carefully placed a mechanism on the table in front of Marty.

  Marty picked it up. It was made of brass and consisted of a clockwork mechanism housed in a cylinder with a graduated dial on the top. At the other end was, what looked like, a wheellock.

  “You set the time you want the bomb to go off on the dial at the top.” Explained Dibble. “Each notch is ten seconds.” Marty looked at the dial and saw that there was a knob in the centre with an arrow engraved in it. “You turns that there knob to the number of 10 seconds you want. So, a minute be six notches.”

  Private Collins, the farrier, elbowed him in the ribs and whispered, “he do know that yer burk he be edewcated.”

  Dibble glared at him and continued. “When the timer has got all the way back here,” he pointed to a graduation with a ‘0’ engraved on it, “it sets off the wheel lock and the sparks fire the charge. Only don’t knock it or it might trip the lock afore you are ready”

  “May I?” Marty asked and all three nodded.

  He set the timer for thirty secon
ds and set it on the table. The mechanism started to tick and dead on the count of thirty he was making in his head, the wheel lock spun sending out a shower of sparks.

  “Boom,” he said quietly.

  He questioned the men about how they came up with the design and they told him how they had tried lots of different designs, but many had just been too fragile or too complicated. Then they had gone to London and talked to a clockmaker Harbrook knew, without telling him what it was for, and between them they had come up with a simple, but reliable, clockwork timer. Then they had to make it sturdy enough to take some knocks and figure out how to fire the powder. They had tried to fit a flintlock mechanism, and even made several, but they didn’t work very well. Then they had the idea to use a wheel lock and figured out how to attach and trigger it.

  “So how long do these take to make and how much do they cost?” Marty asked.

  “That’s the best bit,” declared Dibble. “Now we has the design we can knock out three a week if we can get the brass. The materials cost five bob a time”

  “More than enough,” Marty said thoughtfully. “How many have we got already?”

  “This one, and two others.” Collins stated.

  “Get another ten made,” Marty ordered, “and get ready for a live demonstration.”

  “Wiv real powder?”

  “With real powder. Well done all of you, there will be an extra guinea each for you next pay day.”

  A week later Admiral Hood and William Wickham were stood on a cold beach wondering what the hell Marty was doing. All he had told them was that he wanted to demonstrate an innovative new weapon to them and that had been enough to get them there.

  “Gentlemen, in precisely two minutes and thirty seconds, this keg of powder will detonate,” said Marty pointing at a small keg that was immediately in front of them. “You will notice there are no fuses running to it and no wires or other mechanisms to trip a lock.” He picked the keg up carefully and showed them by holding it above his head. “Yet, it is primed and ready to explode exactly when we want it to.” He put it down and took both men by the arm and moved them away. When they were at a safe distance, he took out his watch and said.

  “One minute to go.”

  “How the hell?” started Hood and stopped as Marty held up his hand and said.

  “Forty-five seconds.”

  Wickham looked intrigued.

  “Thirty seconds.”

  Marty grinned at him and looked back to his watch.

  “Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two,”

  BOOM! The keg went up and bits of wood and sand flew skyward. Gulls shrieked and the men watching cheered.

  “By God! How did you do that?” Hood spluttered amazed at the accuracy of the detonation.

  “If you would like to come back to the farm all will be revealed.” Marty said and nodded to Tom who got the men cleaning up the evidence.

  Marty gave the boys the privilege of explaining their design to the two worthies. Once completed, and they had received praise for their ingenuity, he sat with Hood and Wickham in his study.

  “A reliable timer for detonating bombs opens up a host of possibilities.” Wickham observed. “However, I would not want it to be generally available.”

  “I agree,” nodded Hood. “In the wrong hands this could cause chaos.”

  “We could offer you exclusivity.” Marty grinned cheekily.

  “Don’t let your commercial successes go to your head youngster” Hood responded. “I believe this was invented by Navy personnel on Navy time so it’s ours.”

  “We should reward the men somehow though,” Marty pleaded.

  “Very worthy of you to argue their cause my boy. What did you have in mind?”

  “A shilling for every one they make was what I had in mind. It’s not enough to turn their heads but will encourage them to come up with more ideas.”

  “I can live with that,” Hood agreed, and Wickham nodded.

  “Good. That’s settled,” Marty said and then looked at Wickham and asked.

  “How many do you want?”

  “Ten for now, delivered to my house discreetly. I will pay you the ten shillings on receipt.”

  “But…” Marty started to say something and then caught on. “Ah, it’s payback time.”

  Wickham just smiled as he sat back in his chair with his hands folded over his stomach.

  Chapter 13 Evolutions

  The Honfleur was finally fully equipped with her boats and Marty decided to try out a practice landing or two. He selected Studland bay in Dorset for no other reason than it gave him the chance to visit his family and holdings down there. It did, coincidently and quite secondarily, resemble beaches along the coast of France and offer a certain amount of privacy.

  The Alouette, now named The Swan while they were in British waters, and the Honfleur set sail on the early morning tide and headed down the coast. The weather cooperated for once and was fine with a steady West-south-westerly breeze. They arrived mid-afternoon and Marty had the two ships anchor a half mile off shore. He called the boat captains, Lieutenant La Pierre and his sergeants to a briefing.

  “The idea here is to get fifty marines ashore in good order as close together as possible and at the same time. To do that the boats will need to form up in a line, far enough apart to not get their oars tangled and maintain that line to the beach.

  Once ashore the marines are to skirmish into the dunes and then return to the boats to debark back to the ships. Any questions so far?”

  Nobody stepped forward so he continued.

  “This is your first try at this, so I don’t expect it to be perfect. Boat captains step forward.”

  The men stepped forward and Marty got them into a line.

  “Six boats. In this order. Make sure you remember who is either side of you. The approach will be led by the number three boat. That’s you Ryan.”

  Midshipman Thompson nodded to acknowledge the honour. “To make this easy we will start with all boats in the water without their marines and just practice forming up in line. Once you have got that down, you will move on to rowing to shore in line. Once you have that, we will start practicing loading the boats with marines and taking them ashore.”

  Marty stood on the quarter deck of the Alouette and watched the boats trying to sort themselves into order. It was quite frankly a shambles. He blew a whistle and ordered them back to their stations beside the ships. When they got back, he ran through the ideal routes for each boat in his mind based on their starting position. He went to the stern rail and shouted across to James.

  “Re-number the boats as follows!” He then pointed to each boat in turn and renumbered them. Ryan Thompson’s boat was still number three. But he re-numbered the shoreward boat at the bow of the Honfleur as two, the seaward side one, the one nearest the shore at the stern four and the one on the seaward side five.

  “Try again,” he shouted and signalled the depart.

  This time it went much better as the boats didn’t have to cross each other. They did it another four times and it worked well.

  “Ok this time when you are in line, make for the beach,” he called.

  They got into position just fine but as they made towards the beach, they had a tendency to bunch up and clash oars. That resulted in a lot of shouting and cursing as they blamed each other for not staying straight.

  He got them all back on board and asked what the problem was. It turned out that as they were all in a line, they had no reference point to steer by and they tended to drift one way or the other. They talked about possible solutions when one of the mates suggested in a broad Yorkshire accent.

  “If we were all a bit behind each other like geese do fly, then we would ‘av some points we could line up on t’other boat and keep us place like.”

  Marty laughed; it was so obvious when pointed out. He put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a guinea and flipped it to the sailor.
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br />   “Norris isn’t it? he said. “Where did you get that idea?”

  “I were a wildfowler back in the day and I would watch the geese fer ages and never saw one run ‘is beak up another one’s arse.” he replied causing the room to dissolve into laughter.

  After the men had their lunch, they tried it again. The echelon formation worked a treat. The boats went in in an arrowhead and all hit the beach within a minute of each other. Getting off was simple, the men just turned around and faced the other way while the boat captain shipped the rudder to the shore end then they just rowed out.

  Satisfied that all was well, and all the men and boats were safely back aboard, Marty ordered his gig brought around and manned. He jumped in last and saw that it was manned by Tom, John and the Basques. With a grin he ordered them to sail around the headland into Poole harbour then up the Frome to Wareham. They moored up at the wharf and Marty told the boys to make themselves comfortable at the Shovel and Crown pub. He would make his way to his mother’s house.

  Tom was having none of that. He would go with him as escort.

  “Lady Caroline would have my hide if’n anything happened to you,” was his excuse.

  Marty rented a carriage from the Red Lion and the two of them went across the causeway to Stoborough and on to Furzebrook. It was just getting dark as they pulled up at the house. Marty paid the coachman and asked to be picked up at dawn.

  He could see a face at the window so called out.

  “It’s me Mum. Marty!”

  The door opened and his brother Alf was there grinning.

  “Don’t you ever give any warning when you be visiting?” He joked grabbing Marty in a hug.

  “Wotcher Tom,” he said shaking the big man’s hand. “Aint seen you since the wedding.”

  “Is Mum inside?” Marty asked.

  “Yeah. She is.” Alf replied. “We’ve tried to get her to move over to Church Knowle with the rest of us, but she says she will stay here. ‘Her Marty got her this place, and this is where she will die,’ she says. Tis my turn to stay with her this week. We don’t like to leave her on her own and she won’t ‘ave anyone but family here with her.”