Chapter 5
16 December, 1659 = Tuesday
The next day, as we sailed on a southwest course past Nevis, we caught sight of another ship. It was another merchantman headed towards the port, and we gave chase. With the port so close, it seemed as if the ship would evade us as it came under the protection of the port's guns before we would reach her.
"Two points to port," I called to my current helmsman as the wind seemed to change direction. It would take us off a direct chase and bring the foremost cannons to bear. "Stiles! Load chainshot in the starboard cannon!"
"Aye!" he said, the crew rushing to load the chainshot per my command. Once the cannons were ready, the freshening breeze seemed to help speed us along, making the other captain nervous as our cannons began to line up.
"Aim high," I told the gunners and they adjusted the elevation.
"The masts?" Stiles said, guessing my target.
"Can't run from me if they can't run," I told him darkly. With the first cannon lined up, we began to fire the chainshot flying fast for its target. It landed in the sheets just as the second cannon fired, the first shredding the canvas sheets. The second shot was a little wide, ripping the rope rigging and making the mainsail flap. The other ship lost even more speed, as the third cannon fired, the shot wrapping around the mast to do little damage.
"Close and board!" I called and the crew cheered. The other captain was understandably perturbed at the loss of his sail and subsequently slower ship, and began to shout orders to his crew. I mounted the railing, drawing my sword to lead the charge when Stiles mounted the rail next to me.
"We need to make this fast," he said quietly.
"Stay close," I told him. "Turn the ship away from the port lest we sail straight into a jail cell."
"Aye," he said as the port loomed close. The first pop of the defense cannons sounded, the cannonballs landing just short of my ship as we began to pull alongside the fleeing merchantman. "Not a moment too soon."
Raising a sword, the moment our ship crawled up beside the merchantman, I led the charge aboard the enemy ship. Thankfully the poop deck was an officer's only affair with minimal crew manning this area. I had led the charge here to limit the likelihood of them sinking the Badger on me, and also to limit their ability to use grapeshot on the crew and cut down the boarding party before we even left our own ship.
"To arms!" their captain yelled, rallying his men as my own swarmed over the side. I charged the enemy captain, treating my cutlass like a razor edged bat as I slashed and hacked, knowing the enemy captain would be forced to give ground under my assault lest he get cut by my attack.
His downfall came when I pushed him back to the stairs, my constant attack making him forget where he was. His foot slipped on the top step and he went over, dropping his sword along the way. I rushed down the stairs and checked him, but the longsword he had been carrying had slashed his inner thigh and blood was everywhere. I knew he was already dead, so I turned my concentration to subduing the rest of the crew, but they were lowering a longboat already as they held off my crew. Stiles seemed content to let them run, and I didn't see the harm in it. Besides, this close to shore they could be on land within the hour.
"Sail!" someone yelled, and I turned. There was indeed another ship leaving Nevis, slightly smaller than the Badger, but it was the amount of redcoats aboard that stilled my blood.
"Hard-a-larboard!" I yelled to Stiles who still had the helm. He turned the wheel hard, the ship leaning as we turned. I moved closer to Stiles, glad the men still aboard the Badger turned her to follow, then ran down into the hold. The powder magazine was right in front of me, given evidence by the lit lantern which I took back up to the main deck.
"Abandon this ship!" I called to the crew. "Back to the Badger!"
"Sir?" one of the crew said.
"We don't have the men to keep it and face the King's men!" I yelled at him. "Back to the Badger!"
His face paled as it set in, and he quickly joined the men swinging back over to our main ship. I ran to the poop deck, grabbing the ledger and tucking it in my belt. Lantern in hand, I tossed it down into the hold and swung for it, the deck of the Badger tilting as Stiles seemed to catch what I had done and put distance between the two ships.
I no more landed on the tilted deck than the other ship gave a mighty belch as the gunpowder finally blew. When I looked back, the ship had broken apart and was beginning to flood, its goods starting to spread out in the tide.
"Make sail!" I called, heading for the poop deck. The other ship was approaching fast, but I realized that in getting clear of the merchantman we had given up the weather gauge.
"We be sitting ducks," Stiles groused as the other ship began to run us down. "They already be gaining on us."
Worry filled me as I dug in my desk for the telescope, soon finding and extending the brass tube for best results. The other ship, which now that I could see it up close was more like a clipper, was well armed with twelve cannon and what had to be fifty men crowding the rails. With nervous fingers, I handed the spy glass off to Stiles, who whistled at what he saw.
"A mail runner," he breathed as he collapsed the spy glass. "I'd seen 'em before, but not like this."
"Can we outrun it?" I asked him, but he gave a solemn shake of his head.
"Tis one of the fastest ships on the sea," he told me. "And they be sitting for a boarding action. They get close enough, they'll swarm us like we did that merchantman."
I took the spy glass and looked again, but it was then I noticed that all I was seeing were redcoats.
"Load grapeshot," I told him as I scanned the rigging, but there was only a handful of sailors visible. "I think they gambled on taking us a prize. There's only a handful of sailors aboard, and I be willing to bet you a honest piece of eight that those redcoats lack any real gunnery talent."
"Run in close and take us," he mused, then dawn seemed to light on his thoughts as he grinned devilishly. "You intend to cut them to ribbons and take their ship?"
"Oh yes," I said, grinning back.
"Load grapeshot!" Stiles called, rushing to round up the men we had left and ready us for battle. My men seemed to gather some courage as they worked, loading the cannons as the mail runner gained, but the cannons on the mail runner stayed untouched.
"Cannons loaded, sir!" Stiles called. "Both sides ready to report!"
"Man the port," I called back to him. "Ready a full broadside."
"Aye sir!" he called and rallied the men to the port side cannons.
"Are ye sure, sir?" the helmsman said as he looked over his shoulder.
"Hard to port," I told him. "And then hold it even if fights you!"
"Aye!" he said, turning the wheel. The ship leaned to starboard as we turned to port, the pitch increasing as the wind filled the sheets and nearly laid us over. I had to hold on to the railing to see the other ship as it neared, smiling as my ship was laid in irons as we sailed back into the wind and our ship leveled out.
The result was a skeet shoot as the other ship suddenly had no time to ready its cannon as it rushed past, and my gunners began taking potshots with their deadly artillery. Redcoats, eager to engage my ship and waiting to get close enough, took the brunt of the damage as if I had a firing line of muskets hundreds strong and were firing en masse at them, which was a fair comparison to the carnage dealt them. Men either fell into the water wounded or whole, now removed from this fight until someone came for them.
It wouldn't be me, and I was bound to keep it from being them.
"Keep us turning," I told our helmsman as our sheets again began to catch the wind. "Put us in pursuit of that ship."
"Aye sir!" he called, now realizing what I had done. J-turns hadn't been invented yet, and while technically impossible to pull off in a sailing vessel, I had come close. I was now behind them after getting in some fatal licks, their own captain now trying to coax more speed out of his ship as we began to give chase.
"Stiles, rig two cannons for chasers!" I called to him. "Load with chainshot and fire at will!"
"Aye!" he called happily as he and the men began to rearrange the cannons. With over a dozen men, the cannons were easily relocated and soon we had a volley of chainshot flying into the rigging of the mail runner. On the third volley, the captain looked glum and shook his head.
"They're striking the colors!" my lookout yelled. I looked with the spyglass but it was as he said, they were lowering the colors, meaning they had given up. They slowed, and my own men were ready to swarm the ship, but the longboats were already lowered and the men were waiting by the rails to be dismissed, many wounded.
"You are a savage fiend," the captain groused as I stepped aboard his vessel. There was little to do since they had already given up, but my crew held them at sword point along the railing anyway.
"Search them for gold," I told my crew. "Leave them their other valuables, but take their money."
"Fiend," the captain groused. "It isn't the first time the Sea Lion has been taken a prize. I wonder what her name will become, now?"
"She's been renamed?" I asked him.
"She was originally called the Beaumont," he told me. "An English privateer took her from the French and renamed her when he took the ship for his flagship. My understanding is that when a privateer takes a ship a prize for a flagship, he renames it to ward off any bad luck the ship had under its previous name."
"Superstitous nonsense," I muttered. The captain smirked at that, but a look at my crew told me the practice was likely deeply rooted in naval legends of the era and that I'd likely need to play along. Soon, a crew carrying a bag brought it over and handed it to me.
"I counted the equivilent of three hundred pieces, sir," he told me as I took the bag.
"Thank you, sailor," I told the man, who went back to guard the prisoners.
"Might I at least know your name, captain?" the defeated captain asked me.
"Owen Hunt," I told him, wondering why he would want my name.
"Very well, Captain Hunt," he said as he looked to what remained of his men. "Permission to disembark?"
"You may," I said, watching as his crew climbed over the railing and down into the waiting longboats. "Fair winds, captain."
"And may we meet again," he said as he swung over the railing to join his men. That's when it hit me why he wanted my name. I was now going to be a wanted man in English ports. Well, I wasn't planning on going there anyway.
"Secure the ship!" I called as the longboats pulled away. "Stiles! Set course due west! We sail for Saint Eustatius!"
"Aye!" he called, getting our ships under way.
I turned to look over the Sea Lion, noting her cannon. She was fully equipped with a dozen cannon, four more than I had on the Badger. Remembering what Stiles had said about mail runners like this being among the fastest ships on the sea, it was tempting to make it my flagship as it already had a good amount of cannon.
I went down the nearby hatch, finding that the berthing, orlop and cargo were all on one deck. I knew it meant that the ship couldn't hold much in the way of cargo, nor sailors, but as a privateer who didn't stray far from home port that wasn't much of a problem. In fact, her speed going into battle was a definite plus.
But, was she better suited for battle? Smaller ships tended to be thinner hulled, meaning one well placed cannonball could sink it where maybe my sloop would be be able to stay afloat. My sloop could also field more men and cargo, and, if I were so inclined, more cannons. Cannons would be the name of the game if I had to fight off larger ships, or as in the film Master and Commander, take a larger ship. Aubrey's tiny frigate was almost worthless against what amounted to a fourth rate ship-of-the-line, the Archeron being based on the USS Constitution in the movie and the cannonballs bouncing off the hull in the same way. It had come down to the ship's two weaknesses, it's masts and being subject to boarding, and here again I knew the mail runner was in a similar situation. I might get close enough to board, but the ship was likely to be sunk in the action.
Where was the good in that?
Sighing, I knew that I needed to trade up, not down, when it came to ships and the mail runner was a step down from a sloop. Still, the ship was of a style some captain might want so it had some value, which was good. Now I was just wondering how much ships were worth and if they were worth taking as a prize or if my best course of action was to take the ship, grab the ship's log, shake the crew down for valuables then sink the ship.
Decisions that needed answers, when I was only learning to ask the question.
Moving back up to the deck, I saw that the merchantman we had taken earlier had started to follow us and that we were slackening sails to allow it to follow more easily. Stiles aboard the Badger seemed to be in charge of things and near the end of the day, as the sun set, I ordered the sails lowered and anchors dropped.
"Orders, sir?" Stiles said once all three ships were tied off together, the Badger in the middle.
"Move cannon from the merchantman to the Badger," I told him. "I want the Badger fully outfitted with as many cannon as she can hold."
"Aye, sir," he said, giving orders to the crew.
"In the morning, we set sail west to Saint Kitts, then round the island to turn north to Saint Eustatius," I informed him and the crew. "We'll rid ourselves of these extra ships and take a few days off. Then we'll return and do it again!"
The crew cheered, then set to transferring the cannons. It took hours to move the four cannons to the Badger and rig them for use, but when they were done the new cannons were arranged on the main deck. The crew, tired from moving the heavy cannons, went to bed with only a few lookouts per ship to keep an eye out for trouble.
"You know we never got around to electing a commander for the new ship?" Stiles reminded me as the crew slunk off below decks to sleep.
I sighed deeply, thinking the crew would be upset at being rousted from bed to hold a vote now. Stiles chuckled at that, looking at the new vessel with a wide grin.
"I'll take command of it," he told me.
"Favor it that much?" I asked him.
"I just don't want to entitle too many of the crew to extra shares," he finally admitted. "Besides, we're sailing for home on the morrow. No need for that now."
"Sounds good to me," I told him, feeling relieved I wouldn't look like the fool.
"Then, I shall see you tomorrow," he said as he went to get his personal effects from below decks.
I slunk back into my own cabin, taking my shoes off and laying back on my bed. As I often did at the end of the day or when excessively bored, I took my guitar and began playing, winding myself down until I was tired. Then, setting the guitar aside and my thoughts on Megara, I went to bed, wondering what tomorrow would bring.