Scarborough Fair - Chris Scott Wilson [65]
Lt. Dale frowned. “Sir?”
“A pilot will know what is going on in these waters and I want to know too.” Jones gestured to the prize brigantine. “Colliers and sloops and brigantines. Nothing of importance. For all the sail we have taken, not one that will hurt the English. Not a solitary one.” He peered off the port bow where several pilot cutters showed billowing sails above the estuary’s choppy water. “Too much activity. Something is going on and I mean to know what. If one answers the signal, get him aboard and find out. When he discovers we are the enemy, he may need persuasion. You have my permission to use any means necessary.” He waited until the Union Jack fluttered from the halyard and a cutter responded, her bow cleaving toward Richard. “I’m going below. Call me when you know.” He glanced again at the approaching cutter. “I have a feeling, Mr. Dale.”
An hour passed before the commodore looked up from his papers to Richard Dale’s smiling face. “Yes?”
“Sir, a convoy is expected from the Baltic, and by the pilot’s description, a big one. He expects it to be escorted by at least two warships, perhaps three, probably frigates.”
“When?” Paul Jones’s fingers toyed with his quill, a hint of a smile curling his lips.
“Anytime now, today or tomorrow. That’s why all the pilots are on the water. They’re all eager to secure the contract.”
The Commodore consulted a chart. “So, knowing the Royal Navy, they’ll make landfall as soon as possible then hug the coast south. What’s more, if they’ve been at sea they won’t know I’m here. That’s my little surprise.” He fingered the chart then stabbed a finger at the coastline. “And we’ll be waiting here. We’ll hang in the shadow of the land and when they clear the point we’ll sail into them like trawlers into a shoal of herring.”
Dale leaned forward over the chart. “Where?”
Jones stabbed the map again. “Here. Flamborough Head.”
***
“So now we know,” Captain Richard Pearson said, refolding the parchment the cutter had carried out from the commander of Scarborough garrison. Along with the dispatch was a cartoon cut from a London newspaper. It portrayed “the pirate” Paul Jones drawn like a circus clown with flapping pantaloons and baggy jacket, face caricatured into a scarred buccaneer topped by a plumed hat more suited to a merchant from Genoa than an American.
Captain Richard Pearson allowed himself a mirthless laugh and glanced at the land where the red danger flag flew over Scarborough’s silent gun battery. His gaze swiveled north at the empty horizon, as though he could still see the thirty ships which had left his convoy at Whitby for the last leg of their journey to Scotland. He had protected them throughout the eight-day voyage from Christiansund in Denmark and now he was left with forty-two merchantmen to be escorted to London. Their cargo was badly needed stores for the Royal Navy, and he had only two ships to ensure their arrival. His own, HMS Serapis, was a fast new frigate, extra speed gained by a copper bottom which discouraged marine growth. Rated at forty-four guns, she carried fifty. The main armament was twenty eighteen-pounders mounted on the lower gun deck with twenty nine-pounders on the covered deck, while the quarterdeck carried ten six-pounders. His support vessel was HMS Countess of Scarborough, a sloop-of-war boasting twenty guns, commanded by Captain Thomas Piercy.
Captain Pearson stared south. He had served in the Royal Navy for thirty years and had experienced combat on several occasions. At the siege of Pondicherry he had been caught in a blast of grapeshot. Suffering broken ribs and internal bleeding, he had bravely stood to his post until the action had terminated. For the last nine years he had held the post of captain, commanding two frigates before being handed Serapis. For a moment his thoughts wandered to his wife and two daughters at home