Scarborough Fair - Chris Scott Wilson [73]
“We’ll show the English bastards now, eh sir?”
The commodore’s smile froze, but amusement danced in his eyes. “Mr. Stacey, it’s no time to be swearing. You may be in eternity within the next few minutes, and have to answer for it. Let us do our duty!”
***
Captain Pearson strode Serapis’s quarterdeck in a fury. That accursed American in a decrepit old merchantman had outmaneuvered his brand new frigate. His rage was such he was oblivious of the musket balls hammering into the deck about him, fired from the foremast crosstrees of Bonhomme Richard. His own marines knelt by the rail, loading and firing through a pall of powder smoke.
“Wright!” Pearson bellowed, hands clasped behind his back, head hunched bulldog-like between his shoulders.
“Sir?” First Lieutenant Wright answered, matching the captain pace for pace.
“What’s happening down there?” He jerked his head at the weather deck, obscured by fallen rigging and smoke.
“They’re throwing grapples, sir.”
“Cut them free and order the starboard battery to open fire. Hah, point-blank range. We’ll blow that old wreck out of the water. And her insolent upstart of a commander with her.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but the gun ports on the starboard side are blocked by the American cannon.”
“Blow them off from the inside.”
Wright looked horrified. “But sir…”
Pearson ignored him. “When the guns are ready, order the crews clear but for the cannoneer. It’s been done before, it can be done again. Well? Get on with it, man!”
As the English sailors rushed forward with axes to chop away the grapples, sharpshooters in Richard’s mast-tops shot them down. It was revenge for the massacre during the earlier boarding attempt. When Lt. Wright returned with news that the gunners were preparing to blow the ports and that attempts to sever the grappling lines were failing, Captain Pearson changed tactics.
“Let go the forward port anchor. The wind and tide should pull the pirate clear. And when the guns come to bear he’ll soon strike his colors.” He estimated they stood about three miles southeast of Flamborough Head, the white cliffs faint in the moonlight, and the tide was running strongly. If Serapis’s anchor held fast to the seabed, the plan should work.
***
Paul Jones was unable to stand still, adrenaline racing through his bloodstream as he paced about the quarterdeck. His eyes raked the various scenes of battle unfolding before him. The nearly full moon had climbed above a bank of heavy cloud on the eastern horizon to throw its ghostly grin across Bonhomme Richard as she swung with the tide, clinging to HMS Serapis like a limpet to a rock. Muzzle flashes, bright orange in the dark, drew a latticework of the entangled rigging. Richard’s yards overhung the Englishman so far he could see his men sidling across on the safety ropes to fight hand to hand with the English sailors in the mast-tops.
He grinned when he saw his men win their skirmish, tossing their opponents out over the side before pouring down gunfire onto the deck below. They threw grenades, thunderous explosions littering the English deck with those too slow to flee. Fire flickered in a dozen places, powder igniting with dull whumphs and clouds of murky smoke.
Within minutes, Serapis’s battery of ten-pounders on the weather deck was abandoned, murderous grapeshot flung by Richard’s swivel guns at any English tar who thought to regain the deck. Sparks and smoke blossomed against the gray sails of both warships accompanied by the bark of muskets as sharpshooters beaded on selected targets.
Bonhomme Richard winced and shuddered. If Serapis had temporarily lost her main deck battery, then the gun deck battery bore no loss lightly. The cannoneers had blown away the blocked ports and now loaded and fired as fast as shot could be rammed down the muzzles of the eighteen-pounders. Ball