Over the next few weeks, Lewrie could almost agree with Kenyon that blockade duty was boresome, indeed. If there were merchant ships attempting to enter the Gironde, they were caught further out to sea by the larger frigates that served with the line-of-battle ships. And if any vessel was prepared to depart Bordeaux, then the sight of Royal Navy ships, hull-up and prowling the river’s mouth, put the wind up its master.
Given the tides, Savage could only spend a few hours deep in the estuary, and then only on fair-weather days, for the continual Westerly winds off the Bay of Biscay could gust up to half a gale without warning, pinning Savage on a lee shore, and, able to “beat” only sixty-six degrees off the eye of the wind, she could end up wrecked on either the north or south shores.
Such a “sack” limited the usefulness of the two brig-sloops of his small squadron, too, for, square-rigged as they were, they suffered the same limitations on how close they could go “full and by” should a blow arise. If the weather got really bad, they had two bad choices; attempt to work their way further out to sea, abandoning the blockade, or try to anchor in the estuary and ride it out, with both bowers down and dragging through the unfirm, sandy sea-bed.
It was the fore-and-aft rigged cutters—Lt. Umphries’s eight-gunned Argosy, Lt. Bartoe’s Penguin, and Lt. Shalcross’s slightly larger ten-gunned Banshee—that could dare operate inside the invisible dividing line ‘twixt Pointe de la Coubre and Soulac sur Mer on a regular basis.
After meeting and dining-in those three worthies, Lewrie could at least feel secure in his mind that his cutters were in good hands. Lt. Umphries was only twenty-two, and some Admiral’s favourite, a lad with lots of “interest,” and secure enough in his prospects to show a lot of sauce and high spirits. Lt. Bartoe, on the other hand, was in his mid-thirties, had little official favour, and Penguin was his very first independent command. He was, therefore, more hard-bitten and taciturn, but just as eager to get at the foe and prove himself, at last. Lt. Shalcross might as well have been a swash-buckling pirate from the first decades of the eighteenth century, from the days of Blackbeard, Stede Bonnet, and Captain Kidd; a very clever and aspiring fellow, with the most engaging and exuberant personality.
All three were growing tired of stopping the same fishing boats each day, of snooping within gun-range of the middling-sized fort near St. Georges de Didonne to draw fire, and nimbly tack about to frustrate the Frogs . . . or of taking a few pot-shots at the battery being built near Pointe de Grave to panic the local workers and slow progress.
Lt. Bartoe was eldest, the more senior by date of commission, so Lewrie gave him charge of all three cutters’ daily operations, hinting that he would be highly pleased did the cutters make even more nuisances of themselves.
As for HMS Mischief and HMS Erato, Lewrie assigned them to work only slightly across the “dividing line,” with Erato to stand sentry-go from Pointe de la Coubre to St. Palais sur Mer, and sometimes taunt the St. Georges fort, and for Hogue in Mischief to pace back and forth from the barren beach point below Soulac sur Mer to Pointe de Grave, and, if the wind allowed, get close enough to take the battery under fire along with the cutters, every now and then.
For himself and Savage, though, he could not risk her across the “line” he had drawn except for the rarest circumstance. Lewrie began to feel Commodore Ayscough’s frustration with blockade duty, of commanding from a distance, no matter how short; of being there to protect all his smaller and weaker vessels should the French get so tired of them that they sortied to try to drive them off.
He “poached” a little instead, venturing north into Charlton’s bailiwick, as far as the northern end of the Cote Sauvage peninsula, to the southern tip of lie d’Oleron and the Pertuis de Maumusson, the channel that led into the sheltered bay that lay behind the isle, and the maze of waterways near the towns of Marennes and La Tremblade.
To the south, Savage might cruise into Capt. Lockyear’s territory as far as the north end of the Etang d’Hourtin-Carcans, a shallow “lake” back of the barren beaches ‘twixt Hourtin and Maubuisson, just to keep the French honest. And to relieve the boredom of tacking at the stroke of every second watch bell from one bank of the estuary to the other, as predictably as a pendulum clock.
And, to make things even more boresome, Medoc and Aquitaine were unremarkable, with very flat land, no significant hills or headlands by which to navigate or take bearings. The pine forests were immense and dark, and from Soulac sur Mer south to Cap Ferret by Arcachon and its large basin, the dunes and beach were unbroken. When scouting outside his proper area, and going alongside Capt. Lockyear’s 20-gun Arundel for a relatively merry “get to know each other” dinner, Lewrie learned that the coast Lockyear watched was much the same sameness, all the way to Biarritz and Bayonne in the Golfe de Gascogne. In yawning point of fact, Capt. Lockyear and his tiny squadron of cutters and schooners saw as little activity as Lewrie’s, and, frankly, were beginning to make a few forays onto the beaches, just to break the monotony! At least in Lockyear’s area of operations, there were several thin rivers, or wide creeks, that fed directly to the sea below Arcachon, where they watered without opposition!
Just Lewrie’s luck, though . . . the only freshwater streams he’d spotted so far were near the tip of Pointe de Grave, that split into three rills by Le Verdon sur Mer, right by that bloody a’building gun-battery, and the closest freshwater lake, ‘twixt Hourtin and Maubuisson, lay more than two miles behind the beach, the dunes, and the sea! But, the idea of armed landing-parties was tempting.
“Have you ever heard an estimate of how many French troops there are in Medoc, or cross the river in Saintonge, sir?” Lewrie asked one day over dinner when Commodore Ayscough, as weary of offshore plodding as he, had brought HMS Chesterfield to within five leagues of the shore, and had stumbled upon Savage first.
“Can’t say that I have, sir,” Ayscough had to admit, frowning. “Your cutters do you proud, by the by, and I am grateful for your kind offer of all this fresh butter. Goes well with the equally fresh rolls. Though, I’d adore did you fetch off a sheep. Why do you ask, Lewrie?”
“Sheer, jaw-cracking boredom, sir,” Lewrie said, chuckling. “I spoke Captain Lockyear, and—”
“Told you you’d like him!” Ayscough jovially interrupted. “Got on like a house afire, I’d wager?”
“Aye, sir, we did, indeed, but . . .,” Lewrie began again, explaining the watering and shooting parties that Lockyear was performing upon his own beaches and streams, supplying his crews with fresh game meat as well as potable water. “He reported very little opposition, almost next to nothing, sir. Surely, there’s more we might be doing than just . . . swanning about and stopping the odd fishing smack. There is that battery being built on Pointe de Grave, for one. I’d dearly love to have a go at it before it’s completed. Several kegs of powder, all of my Marines, and a boat or two of armed seamen from each brig or cutter to run off the few French troops we’ve seen, and we could blow it sky-high.
“But, there’s no peeking round the point into the two shallow bays east of Le Verdon sur Mer,” Lewrie complained, “not with t’other fort cross the river able to fire completely across the Gironde.”
Pointe de Grave tapered to the nor’east; immediately to the east was a wide, sweeping, but small bay where all sorts of shipping, or gunboats, might lurk. In fact, after peering over the charts for hours on end, Lewrie had come to think of Pointe de Grave as a dragon’s head . . . the point itself was an erect crest, the shallow bay below it on the river was the slope of its snout, and, below that, he could imagine the mouth and fangs, for a very narrow small peninsula dashed due south as a natural breakwater very much like a long fang to protect the harbour of Le Verdon sur Mer, which looked like an opened mouth, with another equally narrow peninsula or breakwater jutting East like a thin lower jaw. Below that, where a stout neck would meet an upper torso, lay one more cove, which the charts indicated had sufficient depth for lighter coastal shipping . . . and all of it as unknown as the blank swathes of an unexplored continent; terra incognita, indeed.
“We’ve not learned all that much about the fort by Saint Georges de Didonne, either, sir, the weight of its artillery, or the strength of its garrison,” Lewrie explained, “whether there’s a rampart on the land face, or whether it’s an open, three-faced lunette. Before hostilities commenced, the French guarded the Gironde with Saint Fort sur Gironde, far up-river, and most-like maintained a substantial garrison at Bordeaux, but now . . . who knows? That they’re building these two forts or batteries may indicate they’ve stripped Saint Fort of troops, powder, shot, and heavy artillery, and have elected to defend closer to the sea.”
“Doubtful we’d ever muster sufficient forces to raid that deep up the Gironde, really,” Ayscough mused aloud, knife poised ready for a thick smear of mustard on his mutton chop, “not after the debacle of the Vendee landings. Trusted Royalist Frogs to raise their commoners, what, and spring to arms with Great Britain? Thank God we didn’t lose all that much when it failed . . . prestige notwithstanding.”
He took a bite of his mustardy mutton, chewed blissfully for a moment, then took a sip of wine. “Aye, it is possible that the French have shifted troops and guns nearer the estuary. The risk to our own side in sending Third Rates and frigates up-river, with the Westerly winds square in their teeth in a narrowing stream should they be deterred, would be too great. Take whole regiments . . . perhaps an entire brigade of Army troops, as well. And, you and I know for certain that such an undertaking would have to be schemed and planned in London at Horse Guards, which might take two years before a decision was reached, then shuffled over to Admiralty, where another two years of muddling would be necessary. Hmmpf! Wish we could do something active, though. Your French fishermen . . . they’ve related nothing of value?”
“Some of the larger boats, and some middling-sized, do venture out past Pointe de Grave or Pointe de la Coubre, sir, and they’ve come to accept Savage’s presence as a minor nuisance, not a threat to their livelihoods or boats . . . and, a source of coin for whatever they might smuggle out. All our vessels hereabouts are reckoned good customers.”
“As I told you, ha ha!” Ayscough rejoined as he buttered a new roll. “A few silver shillings go a long way.”
“They’re locals, though, sir,” Lewrie bemoaned, “and never get up-river, so they know nothing of note about Bordeaux, or the condition of the old fortress. They’ve no reason to enter the local forts . . . or, the French Army won’t let ‘em, for fear of what they’d see. A few of the captains sound like they’d sell information, if the reward was big enough, but . . . I’m still not sure which of ‘em I can trust.”
“Well, there is that,” Ayscough said with a wry rolling of his eyes over the perverse slyness of the French. “Damme, though, Lewrie . . . wouldn’t it be fine to put together an expedition to both of these pesky fortifications! Recall our assault on the pirate lair and fort in the Spratly Islands, or our two-pronged attack on Balabac, in the Spanish Philippines, where we ran that fiend, Guillaume Choundas, to earth, at last, ha ha! What grand times those were!
“What sort of force might you muster for the landing?” Ayscough suddenly demanded, intrigued, and savoury mutton chops bedamned.
“My own Marine complement would amount to fourty-three, and off the brig-sloops, another fifty-six, sir,” Lewrie told him, having done some preliminary scribblings over the last few days of ennui. “About ninety to an hundred armed sailors off all six vessels, before our artillery and sail-tending suffer. Not nearly enough, sorry t’say.”
“No Marines aboard your cutters and such, aye,” the Commodore grumped. “But! Should you smoak out the particulars anent what force the French own, and does it sound feasible, I have seventy-odd Marines aboard Chesterfield. Perhaps in a month or two, the second sixty-four I requested may turn up, with a matching number of Marines available, and, with two sixty-fours, I might be able to assemble about an hundred and fifty sailors to go ashore with them. And, bring both liners inside the estuary to take the lunette fort by Saint Georges under my fire, to boot. My God! Charlton!”
“I’d wager a rouleau of gold guineas Charlton would leap at the chance, and be heart-broken to be left out!” Ayscough hooted. “That’d add another fourty Marines and perhaps fifty sailors to the endeavour. And, does your plan seem intriguing to Lord Boxham, I might be able to convince him to close the coast with two or three of his Third Rates, and add his own Marines and tars to the landings. Lewrie, you dog! A man after mine own heart! A glass with you, sir, and success to you in discovering all needful facts.”
Cabin stewards refilled their glasses from a bottle of Chateau d’Issan Bordeaux, a splendid little wine from a local seventeenth-century vineyard little known beyond the Medoc region so far, but one that both Ayscough and Lewrie thought a treasure that went well with the mutton.
While it was more than pleasant to have Commodore Ayscough toast him, and declare him an aggressive and active fellow possessed of such uncanny wit and wile, Lewrie thought there was one niggling hitch to such praise . . . he would now have to deliver.
It was one thing to speculate idly, and quite another to enter into a thorough investigation, which would require long hours questioning French fishermen; cajoling, getting drunk, bribing, and playing a spy’s game to determine whether he was being told the truth, the half-truth, or having his leg pulled, and two out of three could prove fatal.
Then, perhaps gulled like one of Clotworthy Chute’s newly come heirs, or haying the entire French defensive plan laid before him like Moses’ first peek at the Commandments, he would actually have to plan a complicated operation . . . with his head on the chopping block did it go awry!
Oh, won’t this be just bags o ‘fun! he sarcastically thought as he clinked glasses with Ayscough; should’ve kept me bloody gob stopped! What was I thinkin’? This is more Twigg’s game than mine. Sortin’ fact from fiction. Christ. Don’t know if I’m bright enough for it!
Another realisation struck him, right after that doubt. Well, two realisations, really. The first was that, whenever in his life, be it in his personal life or his naval career, he had felt sly-boots and clever, Dame Fortune usually woke from her nap and came down from Mount Olympus to kick him firmly in the fundament.
The second was that he would have to make nice of a sudden with Capitaine Jules Papin, and that might be just too horrid to contemplate.