Rocks and shoals, p.7
Rocks and Shoals, page 7
‘The Comte de Bougainville was on board the commander’s frigate,’ said the master.
Carlisle looked blank; the name meant nothing to him.
‘He’s the aide-de-camp to the Marquis de Montcalm,’ the master added, ‘the military commander in New France. Monsieur de Bougainville was sent to France last year to plead for more support for the colony, it was all the talk over the winter. Now he’s back with his fourteen supply ships and who-knows-what assurances. He should have had seventeen,’ he continued, ‘but he lost contact with three of them in the fog. I’m supposed to be looking out for them. Monsieur de Bougainville hopes that another convoy will be close behind, but the master of the privateer didn’t think so, he shook his head at me when the comte wasn’t watching.’
Carlisle heard something else too. The frigates wouldn’t make the return voyage until the end of the year. They were to stay in the Basin below the city, and if there was any danger, they’d move upstream perhaps as far as Trois Rivières, seventy miles beyond Quebec and halfway to Montreal. From there they could quickly descend to threaten any invasion force that didn’t have the protection of ships-of-the-line.
This was important information that should reach Durell or Saunders as soon as possible. It would undoubtedly influence the way that Saunders decided to approach the monstrously tricky problem of bringing Wolfe’s army to Quebec, and of protecting and supplying it through the campaign season. Durell would be embarrassed by the evidence that he hadn’t properly carried out his duties to blockade the river, but Carlisle couldn’t help that. One thing was sure; the information must be sent to the admirals as quickly as possible. Carlisle came to a snap decision.
‘Mister Wishart, do you believe you can find Halifax on your own?’ he asked.
It wasn’t a serious question, of course, but Wishart answered enthusiastically. He knew where it was leading.
‘Aye-aye sir,’ he replied with a grin spreading over his face. ‘I believe I can.’
‘Just keep the land to starboard,’ muttered Hosking, ‘and you’ll be fine.’
‘Then you’ll have written orders and dispatches in thirty minutes. The bosun will give you a crew, and I want you underway as soon as the Frenchmen have brought their possessions out of the brig.’
Wishart’s grin broadened. Not only was this an opportunity for a few weeks of independence, but it would look good in the journals that he must soon present to a lieutenant’s board.
‘You’re to proceed to Halifax, keeping a close lookout for Admiral Durell’s squadron. You must make every effort to find the admiral, and to that end, you are to lie-to overnight to reduce the chance of missing him in the dark. Otherwise, you’re to make best speed. There’ll be a letter for Admiral Durell. It will inform him that the ice has cleared and that the French have got a convoy up the river already. If you take my advice, you’ll say nothing about the ice and the French convoy unless you’re pressed. Let my letter be the bearer of bad news. I imagine Mister Durell will detain you while he writes his own letters to Admiral Saunders. However, if you don’t meet Mister Durell on the way, and if he isn’t at Halifax, then deliver the dispatches to Admiral Saunders. Again, I advise you to let my letter do the talking; there’s no honour in bearing bad tidings.’
Wishart looked thoughtful. This wasn’t his first prize command, and while he was comfortable with his navigation and seamanship, he was terrified at the thought of explaining himself to an admiral. He resolved to curb his natural loquaciousness.
‘I’ll give you our position and a course for North Cape and then to weather East Point,’ added Hosking. ‘From there, keep close inshore to avoid the banks. If the wind doesn’t shift, you’ll have a hard beat from Louisbourg to Halifax.’
Carlisle paused a moment before retiring to his cabin. The longboat was already taking the French master back to his brig to collect his crew and private belongings. Swinton, the bosun, was telling off a prize crew and they were hurrying away to pack their kitbags for this unexpected jaunt. It was a popular duty, and he could see some disappointed men wrangling with Swinton over his choice. There was no need to interfere. Swinton knew the men better than he did, and he could be relied upon to gather a competent crew. Satisfied that everything was moving as fast as he desired, Carlisle moved onto the next step, the drafting of the dispatches. He needed to be careful about how he phrased the news for Admiral Durell. It was bad enough being the bearer of evil news, but any hint of gloating could only sour their relationship.
‘Pass the word for my secretary, Mister Hosking. I’ll be in my cabin.’
◆◆◆
The last of the ebb and the swift flow of the Saint Lawrence carried the brig rapidly away down the Gulf. Carlisle could see Wishart standing proudly at the taffrail, looking back at Medina occasionally in case of any last signals. By the time the hands were piped to a late dinner, the brig had disappeared in the eastern haze, and the frigate was alone again. Medina set a course for the Seven Islands. With a fair wind broad on the larboard beam, they could expect to be there at dawn the following day, and it would be a matter of only a few hours to put the Frenchmen ashore.
Carlisle was pacing the windward side of the deck. The Frenchmen were lounging around the fo’c’sle, but he’d allowed the master the freedom of the quarterdeck and he was chatting happily to Hosking, who understood perhaps one word in ten. They were a philosophical lot. They had no financial interest in the brig or its cargo, and now they were free of the concern of finding their way home in the teeth of the British navy. There’d be no anxious days trying to avoid the blockading squadron off Rochefort, and they could enjoy the Canadian spring in idleness. Who knew, the war could be over soon, and they’d be able to return home unhindered.
Carlisle should have been happy. The brig was a fine prize, and its cargo would fetch a good price in Boston or New York. It may not even get that far. Admiral Saunders had extensive powers as commander-in-chief, and he might condemn it out-if-hand and buy it into the service. He could use the deals for the fast-developing navy yard. The furs could be sent south at leisure, and the brig would be a useful addition to the fleet of transports that by now were crowding Halifax bay.
He had also gained some valuable intelligence. The cargoes from fourteen supply ships would mean the end of any hopes of starving the city into submission, at least for this year. And because of the presence of those four frigates, a superior British force would need to be sent all the way up the treacherous rocks and shoals of the Saint Lawrence at least as far as the Basin below Quebec.
◆◆◆
‘There’s the channel, sir,’ said the French master, ‘between the two islands on the bow, Île du Corossol and La Petite Basque. There are two miles of deep water between them, leading to Domaine Royale.’ He pointed out the two islands that guarded the entrance to the bay. With their humped, wooded appearance they looked for all the world like gigantic green beavers in a startlingly translucent blue sea.
Hosking nodded his agreement. This Frenchman was eager to be ashore, and it wasn’t in his interest to put Medina aground. Nevertheless, it did no harm to check the facts and, after all, he was a merchant master, not a pilot.
‘There’s ice on both sides, and the bay is probably full of it,’ said Hosking. ‘I can see a clear channel about a mile wide. It’ll be no problem for the longboat.’
‘How big is the town?’ Carlisle asked.
‘Hardly a town, sir,’ the Frenchman replied with a laugh. ‘It’s more like a village, and a small village at that. There’s nowhere for a ship to come alongside and only a handful of houses. But it’s the best place for the trappers to bring their furs from the whole of that territory that stretches to the north of Quebec City until you come to the British lands at Hudson Bay.’
He waved an arm carelessly towards the forested shore.
‘Your people destroyed it entirely sixty years ago, and it’s only recently become a useful port again. That’s where we picked up our furs. Your furs now, of course, sir,’ he added without rancour. ‘We took them to Quebec before the winter, but nobody would buy them; they’re all afraid that you English will come before they can profit from the trade. I had to sit in that cold hell-hole of a city from September through to the ice breaking. Then all I could do was to ship them to La Rochelle with my deals, but it’s all the owner’s loss now, or rather the insurer.’
‘And that insurer is probably in London,’ Carlisle said, smiling at this friendly Frenchman. By one of the stranger quirks of international commerce, much of the French maritime trade was insured by companies in the capital of their adversary.
Carlisle was coming to like the brig’s master. Once he had bargained the best treatment for himself and his crew, he’d put aside any animosity that he felt for his captor.
‘Will the people respect a flag of truce?’ he asked.
The Frenchman stroked his chin.
‘I doubt they’d know what it means,’ he replied. ‘If you can land me near the entrance to the bay on the east side then we’ll make our own way to the village. It’s only about three miles from the point, just where the little river comes in from the hills. It will be free of ice; that eastern channel thaws before the main channel.’
The Frenchman wanted a simple, clean delivery to the shore. Complications with the locals were not of interest to him.
‘Mister Hosking. You may bring-to when the tip of Corossol bears west at two miles.’
Moxon touched his hat.
‘The longboat’s ready, sir. With the wind holding in the southwest, it will be a reach both ways, perhaps an hour in and an hour out. Allow three hours for dodging the ice.’
‘Very well. Make sure your men have warm clothes and pistols and cutlasses but keep them out of reach of the Frenchman.’
‘Aye-aye sir. I’ll stow the frogs for’rard, there should be space for them.’
Carlisle frowned. He didn’t approve of wholesale denigration of a nation such as the French, it led to underestimating their capabilities, and he knew that could prove fatal. He’d been at the battle of Minorca after all. However, he could hardly stop his second-in-command using a time-honoured epithet for England’s oldest adversary.
‘When you’ve landed the Frenchmen ,’ he said with emphasis, ‘if it all looks quiet and there’s not too much ice, just poke your nose into the bay and see what’s there. This talk of nothing more than a village may be true – I expect it is – but there may be another ship loading furs, and we’d be foolish to leave it there.’
The longboat was about to push off when Carlisle remembered a question that he had meant to ask the French master.
‘Monsieur,’ he shouted down into the boat, ‘how many pilots at Bic?’
‘Forty or more, but half of them went up with the convoy. The rest are drinking themselves to death for want of business. No vessel is allowed past Bic without a pilot, and nobody in his right mind would try it. The Traverse, you know. It’s claimed more lives and ships than the whole of the river. Don’t try it, captain, I beg you.’
Carlisle heard Hoskins’ snort of derision from his right shoulder. The master had no faith in any English pilots, and French pilots would necessarily be even less reliable.
◆◆◆
The longboat was lost in the haze at five miles. There was a holiday feeling in the frigate; the captain had retired to his cabin, the first lieutenant was away, and the master was absorbed with Enrico in sketching a profile of the shore. The much-anticipated Admiralty order that masters should keep a remark book was expected any time now, and Hosking had realised that it would be used as a means of determining the zeal and competence of the whole corps of sailing masters. Rocks, shoals, sea marks, soundings, bays and harbours, times of high water and setting of tides, directions for sailing into ports and roads and for avoiding dangers; all these were to be recorded. And Hosking had an advantage over most of his fellows: Enrico Angelini had real talent as an artist and could make illustrations of the shore that would enhance the master’s remarks.
The spring sunshine was warming the hands as they busied themselves in the endless tasks that the bosun found for them. Blocks were re-stropped, and cringles of sails were replaced while the watch on deck pretended to be busy with swabbers and brooms.
‘Sail ho!’ shouted the lookout. ‘Sail to leeward. She’s another brig, sir.’
Carlisle hurried on deck. It could, just conceivably, be Durell’s squadron, but it was a couple of days earlier than he’d expected and this was too far north for them. Most likely it was a French man-o’-war or a merchant ship that had come through the Straits of Belle-Isle and was taking the northern side of the Gulf to make the Saint Lawrence before the door was irrevocably shut. Or perhaps one of the three lost ships of the French convoy.
‘Under correction, your honour. She’s a snow. She’s close-hauled under coarses and tops’ls,’ shouted Whittle as Carlisle made the quarterdeck, ‘jib and stays’ls, she’s not carrying t’gallants.’
Any man-o’-war would be making her best speed to get through the Gulf. Furthermore, after a North Atlantic passage in the spring, most merchantmen would be incapable of setting t’gallants, even if they carried such lofty sails. That settled it, a French merchantman for sure.
‘Can you see the longboat?’ Carlisle shouted up to the masthead.
‘No sir, nothing in sight up the channel.’
‘I can see the chase now,’ said Hosking. ‘Ah, she’s going about, I think she’s running, sir.’
‘Beat to quarters, Mister Angelini, clear for action,’ said Carlisle with the telescope to his eye.
‘She’s hard on the wind, tacking inshore,’ said Carlisle, ‘she’s not running at all. I think she’s making for that eastern channel into the bay. Her master must know this coast well.’
‘But will it be free of ice?’ asked Hosking.
‘The brig’s master said so,’ replied Carlisle. ‘We’ll run down to pin her against the land. If the longboat’s still there, then she’s ours!’
Carlisle and Hosking watched the chase intently. She still had the option to wear and run back down the Gulf, but that would be a most unattractive course if the Seven Isles was her destination. It would mean days of beating back up the Gulf, and in any case, they couldn’t expect to out-run a frigate.
‘She’s furling her foresail,’ said Hosking. ‘Ah, she’s backing her fore tops’l, just for a moment to take the way off, I believe.’
‘They’d be concerned about ice, I’m sure,’ Carlisle replied.
Grosse Boule was alongside to larboard now. Carlisle was taking Medina outside the islands to block the snow’s escape to leeward. There was little chance of her beating up between Petite Basque and Gross Boule; he could ignore that channel.
The minutes passed, and the snow continued towards the east passage. She was moving slowly now, backing and filling as though unsure whether the passage was clear.
‘If they make it through the channel then they’re home,’ said Carlisle. ‘I won’t be sending a cutting-out party, not into an ice-bound bay.’
‘She’s hauled her wind,’ said Hosking.
‘Deck there. I can see another sail near the snow. I think it’s our longboat, sir.’
◆◆◆
‘We dropped off the Frenchmen at the southeastern point and then had a quick look inside,’ said Moxon, his cheeks red with cold. ‘The whole of the north and west of the bay is full of ice. As that Frenchman said, there’s a trading post with a dozen houses where a stream flows into the bay. Then we reached back down towards the channel. That’s when we saw the snow, sir, backing and filling just beyond the eastern passage. I reckoned you must be bottling him up, so we ran alongside and made a noise about boarding; you may have heard a pistol or two.’
Carlisle shook his head. They’d heard nothing. The snow and longboat must have been at least five miles from the frigate.
‘Anyway, he struck his colours without any fuss whatsoever. I took the liberty of putting the crew ashore where we landed the others; I hope that was the right thing to do.’ He looked momentarily anxious.
‘Yes, it was. Well done, Mister Moxon, very well done,’ Carlisle replied.
It was well done. Now they would waste no more time in sending the longboat back into the bay, into a situation where the locals would already be aware of the presence of the enemy and may take it upon themselves to fire on the longboat.
‘All the papers are intact, sir. She was part of the convoy that came through a few days ago, but she lost contact with them in a gale off North Cape. She’s loaded with military stores for the garrison at Quebec. Powder, muskets, swords, uniforms, a pair of six-pounder field guns and limbers, all varieties of shot and shell. There’s also a lot of crated furniture consigned to a merchant in Montreal which isn’t documented at all; it’s probably on the master’s own account.’
Then the snow hadn’t come through the Straits of Belle-Isle. The master must have been very lost in the fog to have been that far north. Carlisle briefly considered burning the vessel. Giving it a prize crew and sending it back to Halifax would deplete Medina’s complement and could bring down upon his head the wrath of Admiral Durell when he arrived. On the other hand, it was a valuable prize, and the admiral would have his eighth. He may, therefore, be inclined to look favourably on the decision.
‘I’ll put Mister Atwater in command,’ Carlisle said after a moment’s thought. ‘He won’t be going far; I’ll keep him with us so that the admiral has a spare dispatch vessel as soon as he arrives.’
Admirals were always in need of vessels to send away with dispatches, and if Saunders was delayed in Halifax, a sloop-of-war would otherwise have to be spared for the task.
Moxon beamed his agreement. His share of a brig and a snow, both loaded with valuable cargoes, would make a big impression on his bank balance. Then another thought occurred to him; he could expect Carlisle to mention his name in his dispatches after this neat little capture.
