Scarborough Fair - Chris Scott Wilson [70]
Below the main deck Lieutenant Richard Dale stood with one arm hanging onto a stanchion, eyes screwed into slits against the smoke and stink of spent gunpowder. After only one broadside the heat from the cannon had already brought out fresh sweat on his back and shoulders where the cold sweat of fear had dried. The gun crews on Richard’s port side stood by their unfired charges, numbly staring at the sweat drenched starboard gunners working their cannon. Flung back by the recoil, the smoking muzzles were inside the ports.
“Reload!” Lt. Dale shouted.
The men had begun without him. The leading hand pulled a stave from the low beam above then dipped the sponge tip into a water bucket before ramming it straight down the barrel to kill sparks or scraps of burning cartridge. Turning a deaf ear to the cannoneer’s sequence of orders, they automatically followed the ritual. Cartridge, wad, ball, heave the gun carriage until it hit the topsides, prime, aim. Only when all was ready did they glance at the lieutenant braced against the stanchion, or glance at their shipmates who had watched the performance.
“Fire!” Dale shouted.
The cannoneers held slow matches to the touchholes. An almighty explosion ripped through the gun deck. Men were flung into the air to bounce off beams like dolls discarded by petulant children. Another explosion followed, horrified faces turning open mouthed, starkly lit by orange bursts of fire. Carnage everywhere. The idle port gunners still on their feet were spattered by spraying blood. A head, complete with open eyes, ragged tendons dangling bloody from a sheared neck, was caught by a sailor in a reflex movement. He stared at it for a second in disbelief then threw it away. The second blast sent him staggering to his knees. The severed head rolled back in front of his face. He vomited as he tried to scramble away but his feet slipped on the gory deck.
“Oh my God!” a man wailed, his eardrums burst by pressure waves. “The magazine’s blown! We’re dead!”
Richard Dale pulled himself upright, wiping blood from his eyes. Picking through the debris, he moved forward to inspect the scene. Two of the eighteen-pounders had burst, barrels blown open like flowers. With carriages upended, the ruined muzzles stared uselessly at a gaping hole in the timbers above. Their crews were nowhere to be seen in the smoke, blown to bits along with the crews from several cannon on either side and men from the port battery. Horribly disfigured sailors lay moaning among the human debris of bone and gristle, clutching wounds in a bid to staunch welling blood. It was as though a madman had run the length of the deck whirling a scythe about his head.
Lt. Dale hid his revulsion and fought the heaving in his stomach by issuing a rapid stream of orders.
“Those guns still intact! Reload and fire at will! You, yes you, get your crew to take the wounded below to the surgeon. You port side men, make up the men missing from the starboard crews. Jump to it!” Behind him, an English cannonball punched through the topsides, leaving a charred trail as it careered across the deck. He never flinched. “You heard me! Get to it or I’ll know the reason why!”
***
Smoke had begun to permeate into the brig below the main gun deck. The prisoners-of-war crouched in rows, shackled together with nowhere to run and nobody to fight. The deafening roar of the eighteen-pounders bursting had driven heads lower between hunched shoulders, hands clapped to ears. Except for distant warning shots when the Baltic convoy had sighted Bonhomme Richard, Jackie Rudd had never heard cannon fire. Broadsides thundering out overhead left him staring helplessly upwards, fearful of the decking crashing down.
“Soon be out, Jackie boy!” his