The Maddest Idea

Continuing the enthralling REVOLUTION AT SEA series begun in By Force of Arms.

In the late summer of 1775, General George Washington discovers that his cache of gunpowder has dwindled to a mere nine shots per man. A desperate plan is hatched – to send a ship under the command of Captain Isaac Biddlecomb to Bermuda to capture the British powder known to be there.

But the plan is a trap, set by a traitor among the patriots, and one from which even Biddlecomb cannot escape. Washington despatches his aide-de-camp, Major Edward Fitzgerald, to hunt the traitor down, while Biddlecomb must rely on cunning and seamanship to free his men and the ship, and to capture the gunpowder that is the lifeblood of the fight for liberty.

Divided by an ocean but bound by the cause, as well as by their own private fears, Biddlecomb and Fitzgerald must take on a common enemy – the greatest military power on earth…

Spritsail
Jib
Fore Topmast Staysail
Foresail (clewed up)
Fore Topsail
Fore Topmast Studdingsail (removable)
Fore Topgallant Sail
Fore Topgallant Studdingsail (removable)
Main Staysail
Mainsail
Main Topsail
Main Topgallant Sail

Jibboom
Bowsprit
Spritsail Yard
Foremast
Foreyard
Fore Topmast
Fore Topsail Yard
Fore Topgallant Mast
Fore Topgallant Yard
Mainmast
Mainyard
Main Topmast
Main Topsail Yard
Main Topgallant Mast
Main Topgallant Yard
Boom
Gaff
Ensign Staff (removable)
Mainstay
Fore Shrouds and Ratlines
Fore Topmast Shrouds and Ratlines
Main Shrouds and Ratlines
Main Topmast Shrouds and Ratlines

It is the maddest idea in the world to think of building an American fleet. Its latitude is wonderful. We should mortgage the whole Continent.

—Samuel Chase, Maryland delegate to the Second Continental Congress October 3, 1775

CAPT. ISAAC BIDDLECOMB steadied his telescope against the backstay of the armed brig Charlemagne and fixed the distant topsails in the lens. The ship he was watching was just visible at the southern end of Narragansett Bay, and he imagined that she had just cleared out of Newport. He considered for a moment the clarity of the air that allowed him to see that far, even with a glass. He would expect such fine visibility in Rhode Island during the winter; for mid-July it was exceptional.

Through the lens he watched the topsails turn and flutter as the vessel came about on a new tack. He had seen those topsails in the daylight only once before; still, he was in no doubt as to which ship they belonged. She was, on that particular summer day in 1775, the most powerful ship within one hundred miles. She was a British frigate, the Rose of twenty guns, Capt. James Wallace commanding. She was the enemy.

Isaac Biddlecomb was a few months into his twenty-ninth year, having spent the past sixteen of those years as a merchant seaman. Of those sixteen years at sea he had served as a ship’s captain for the last five, a successful merchant captain with a reputation for fiscal cunning. Still, he was not a man who stood out in a crowd; his height was an unremarkable five foot ten inches, not fat though certainly not thin, dark brown hair tied in a queue and hanging down just past his shoulders.

It was only on the quarterdeck, on the captain’s stage, the weather side, that he became more than just another sailor. He stood there now, hands clasping a telescope behind his back, a well-worn cocked hat pushed down over his head. In grudging deference to his current attachment to the fledgling Rhode Island naval force, he wore a long blue coat over a passably new waistcoat and white breeches; not a uniform by any stretch but clothing more formal than he would have worn on the quarterdeck of a merchant ship under his command. He hooked a finger under his neck cloth and tugged at it with mounting irritation.

Around and about him the crew of the Charlemagne were engaged in the chaos of setting sail and clearing for action. The smell of fresh paint, tar, new running rigging, and canvas overpowered any scent from the brackish water or the shore. This was hardly surprising; the Charlemagne was a brand-new vessel. Only yesterday they had crossed the last of the new man-of-war-style yards with the sails, cut navy fashion, bent on. This morning was the first time that she had ever been under way.

‘Sheet home the fore topgallant sail! Haul away your halyard!’ Biddlecomb heard Rumstick’s booming voice over the din of rushing feet and the running in and out of the brig’s guns. Ezra Rumstick was acting first officer, a big man, over six feet tall and two hundred and fifty pounds and had a voice to match. ‘Avast haul—!’ Rumstick’s shouted order was cut short by the sound of tearing and flogging canvas. ‘God damn that bloody sailmaker to hell!’ he cursed, firing off a string of obscene invectives aimed at the craftsman who had built the Charlemagne’s new suit of sails.

Biddlecomb looked aloft. The fore topgallant sail was torn clean in two from foot to head, the canvas blowing forward and flapping like a tattered ensign.

‘Hands aloft!’ Rumstick called. ‘I want the number two topgallant sail bent! Let’s go!’ Four men leapt into the rigging and scrambled aloft as if driven by the force of his voice. Four more ran down the forward hatch to wrestle the number two fore topgallant sail topside. Rumstick leapt up the short ladder to the quarterdeck and stepped over to the larboard side. He swept off his hat and held it out from his side in a smart salute.

‘Ezra, must you salute every time you come aft to speak with me?’ Biddlecomb asked as he grudgingly swept off his own hat. ‘It’s a great nuisance. You’re as bad as Whipple,’ he added, nodding his head over the starboard rail. Directly abeam of the Charlemagne, and one hundred yards away, sailed the sloop Katy, her big gaff mainsail winged out in the following breeze, three of her six four-pound guns run out and men stationed at her numerous swivels.

‘Whipple ain’t such a bad commodore,’ Rumstick said, replacing his hat. On the Katy’s high quarterdeck the portly figure of Captain, now Commodore, Abraham Whipple could be plainly seen, standing alone at the larboard rail.

‘He’s a first-rate merchant captain, and I’ve no doubt he’s a first-rate naval captain. I just wish he wouldn’t take this navy thing so damned seriously.’

‘I believe you were coming aft to tell me about a fore topgallant sail?’ Biddlecomb changed the subject. Rumstick never missed the chance to expound on his extreme political convictions, like some fire-and-brimstone preacher, and it annoyed Isaac greatly. The fighting at Concord and Lexington, and just recently at Bunker Hill, had only served to whip Rumstick into a greater frenzy.

The two men stepped up to the break of the quarterdeck where they could see past the main topsail to the men on the fore topgallant yard. The torn sail had been lashed into a canvas sausage, and a gang on deck was lowering it down on a gantline.

‘Goddamned sailmaker left a panel out. We tore it clean in two sheeting it home. Bolt rope parted, must have been rotten,’ Rumstick explained.

‘That sailmaker’s either a thief or an idiot. Both, I’ll warrant.’ Biddlecomb watched the men aloft shuffling out onto the yard. They were taking the Charlemagne into a fight before they had had a chance to put her through her paces, to find and correct the little defects such as the poorly made topgallant sail that they had just discovered. It was not what he considered a good idea.

Biddlecomb did not think of himself as the captain of a naval vessel. He knew little about it, and when he stood on the quarterdeck and looked down the line of guns, he felt entirely at a loss, like an actor who is thrust out onstage without benefit of a script or director. Despite Rumstick’s assurance that Isaac was born for such work, he felt like a fraud, and it was a feeling that he loathed. He found the traditions and trappings of the military to be irritating in the extreme.

That attitude notwithstanding, he was already famous in the colony for inciting a mutiny aboard a British brig of war, the Icarus, onto which he and Rumstick had been pressed. Together, and with the men of the Icarus, they had fought their way back into Narragansett Bay. They had made it halfway to Providence before the Rose, the same Rose now on the far horizon, had beaten the ship into kindling. Any thoughts that he had entertained of himself leading men into battle died that night, along with more than half of the Icarus’s company.

And then his employer and mentor, William Stanton, got the notion of privateering. Stanton was a prominent radical in Rhode Island, as well as one of the colony’s most wealthy merchants, and like many of his ilk he saw privateering as a way of helping the cause and greatly enriching himself all at once. He had built the Charlemagne and asked his favorite captain, more an adopted son than an employee, to take command. Biddlecomb could not bring himself to refuse.

But a privateer was one thing; as a privateer one assiduously avoided fighting, avoided risking men’s lives, and he had had enough of leading men to the slaughter. One night of that was enough. One night of slaughter, and then seemingly endless nightmares, dream images of dead men waving to him from the shattered wreck of the Icarus, barely visible through the dark water. The thought of sleep terrified him now. He would not be a naval captain. But a privateer was different.

Then a week before the privateer brig Charlemagne was to get under way, Capt. James Wallace, patrolling Narragansett Bay in the frigate Rose, captured two American packets, the Abigail and the Diana. As if their capture were not outrage enough, he then fitted them out as armed vessels to use against their former owners. The Rhode Island General Assembly purchased the Katy and appointed Captain Whipple to command her, and Stanton loaned to that fledgling navy his new privateer and her captain. And now, together, they were going to take the packets back.

‘Number two fore topgallant sail’s bent, sir.’ Nathanial Sprout, the Charlemagne’s acting boatswain, addressed the officers from the waist. Sprout was no taller than Biddlecomb, but he outweighed the captain by a good eighty pounds. His girth was not composed of the fat of lethargy, but the solid mass of physical power. Nathanial Sprout was every inch a boatswain.

‘I’ll get that set, sir, if the panels’re all there,’ Rumstick said, saluting again.

‘Very good, Mr Rumstick,’ said Biddlecomb, scowling as he returned the salute.

He let his eyes wander over the Katy, the flagship of their tiny fleet. She was a lovely example of the craftsmanship of the New England shipwrights, fast and weatherly. Her armament seemed pathetic, even in comparison to the little Charlemagne. But Whipple took pride in her and cheerfully drove her into battle as if she were a first-rate ship of the line.

Two small bundles rose up a flag halyard to the Katy’s yardarm. They reached the yard and broke out into bright-colored signal flags.

‘Signal from the flag!’ David Weatherspoon piped up brightly. Weatherspoon was fourteen and serving in the capacity of midshipman. He dug through the signal book that Whipple had created for his little fleet. ‘Enemy in sight,’ he announced at last.

Biddlecomb put his glass to his eye and swept the lower reaches of Narragansett Bay. Whipple couldn’t be referring to the Rose; she had been in sight for the past twenty minutes. He fixed the frigate in his lens. She was closer now, much closer, making for the Rhode Island fleet, beating straight into a light breeze from the north. But it would take Wallace some time to come up with the Americans, no matter how weatherly his ship or how well he sailed her.

Biddlecomb stepped down off the quarterdeck and made his way forward. To larboard and starboard the men were just running out the guns, buckets of water and smoldering match beside each. Rumstick stepped over and walked forward with him.

‘This ain’t a man-of-war’s crew, Isaac, this is the first time most of them have cleared a ship for action. Most of them ain’t even sailors.’ He was hurt by the implied criticism, and Biddlecomb was immediately sorry for his words.

‘You’re right, Ezra, of course. I’m sorry. I’ve a great deal on my mind.’

‘I can well imagine. But remember, you’ve been captain of a proper man-of-war, so it’s natural this crew seems slow to you. They don’t have your experience in these matters.’

‘“Captain of a proper …”? Well, I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. God help us all.’ In the brief time that he had commanded the Icarus, Biddlecomb had learned as best he could the art of commanding a man-of-war as he battled the vessel back to America. It had been a perfunctory and brutal training. ‘God help us all,’ he said again.

The two men arrived at the bow. Biddlecomb stood on the heel of the bowsprit and swept the horizon with his telescope. Off the northern end of Gould Island he saw the sloop, the former packet Diana, the ship for which he had come.

She was as familiar a sight as the islands beyond or the wooded shores of Rhode Island to larboard. The little sloop was well known on the Bay, like an acquaintance often seen strolling the neighborhood. She was on a larboard tack, and with her sails drawn in she looked lean and fast, plunging north against the wind, an occasional flash of white water boiling around her cutwater and streaming aft along her oiled sides, even in the light air. She was lying as close to the wind as she could, and that was very close.

The Diana was no longer a benign packet. Biddlecomb could see flying from her masthead the white ensign with the red cross, the Union Jack in the upper left corner. There were carriage guns on her deck, six in all, run out from gunports pierced through the sloop’s bulwarks. The upper deck was crowded; at least thirty men were aboard her. When sailing as a merchant packet her crew had never numbered above ten.

That was all that he needed to see. ‘I’m laying aft, Mr Rumstick,’ he said. ‘See that the men are at quarters and ready to jump.’

The brig was just drawing abeam of the southern end of Prudence Island when the Charlemagne’s captain took his place alone at the quarterdeck’s weather rail. He looked over the taffrail at Dyer Island in their wake.

It was there, just past Dyer Island, that the Rose, lying hove to, had opened up with her murderous broadsides. The memory of the lightning and thunder of gunfire, the screams of the wounded men, the dark blood on the Icarus’s deck, were as vivid now as they had been on the night of that one-sided battle over three months before.

He forced himself to remember those who had survived: Israel Barrett, Appleby, Dugan, and the rest. They were safe now and better off than they had ever been, given a sizable bounty by William Stanton and hurried off to western Pennsylvania, beyond the reach of the British navy.

But that was less than half the crew. The bones of the rest, the bones of his friends, the men who had trusted him, lay among the wreckage of the Icarus in the deep, cold water of the bay. They had followed him because he had tricked them into thinking that his was a good idea, and now they were dead. Images of the slaughterhouse that was the Icarus’s deck floated before his eyes.

He had come as close to dying as any of them, of course, but that thought did not bother him, indeed it rarely occurred to him. He had led other men to their deaths; he himself might as well have fired the shots that tore them apart and spilled their blood on the white planking. The memory haunted him, tortured him when he could no longer resist the urge to think about it.

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? Biddlecomb was afraid that he would be sick. He squeezed the quarterdeck rail tight, felt the sweat under his palm, slick on the oiled wood. He swallowed hard. He could not allow himself to be sick in front of the men. The Icaruses had been butchered by their own navy, he told himself, not for the first time. But he had led them to it. He had led them to it.

Biddlecomb startled and looked up. He had not even heard Rumstick approach. He looked over the big man’s shoulder. The former packet was on the starboard tack now and heading more directly toward the two Americans. ‘Thank you.’

Rumstick followed his gaze out toward Dyer Island. ‘Men die in war, Isaac,’ he said after a pause. ‘They was men-of-war’s men, and they made a choice.’

‘I know, Ezra. Thank you.’ Biddlecomb looked forward again. The Diana was almost a mile away, but on their converging courses the three ships were closing fast. The Rose was now clearly visible even without the telescope. She was on a starboard tack, clawing north as fast as she could, which was not nearly as fast as her fore-and-aft-rigged consort.

‘We best think of how we’ll engage,’ Biddlecomb said. His stomach knotted and he was again afraid he would be sick. Damn it, damn it to hell, he thought. He was tired of fighting this demon. He looked aloft at the spread of canvas; foresail, topsails, and topgallants as well as the huge gaff-headed fore-and-aft mainsail, winged out to starboard.

‘Let’s clew up the foresail,’ he began, starting to work out solutions to potential crises. The knot in his stomach eased. ‘Then set the jib. Take the best seamen you have and station them at the braces. The gunners’ll have to fend for themselves.’

‘Aye, sir.’ Rumstick hurried forward. So glad was Biddlecomb to have this to occupy his mind that he returned Rumstick’s salute without a thought.

The foresail rose like a curtain, revealing behind it the Diana less than a quarter mile away. Biddlecomb was startled by how quickly the distance was closing, but the Diana had always been fast, and the Charlemagne and Katy were swift sailors as well. The Diana was still on starboard tack. If she held that course she would pass down the Katy’s starboard side, and the Katy would shield her from the Charlemagne’s guns and possibly prevent the Charlemagne from getting into the fight.

Commodore Whipple stood on the Katy’s quarterdeck, his arms raised as a servant buckled his sword belt around his waist. He looked for all the world as if he were surrendering, and Biddlecomb smiled at the sight. Then he wondered if he should have brought a sword. He did not in fact own a sword, save for his fencing foils, the one sport for which he had a passion, but they would be useless in a real brawl. In any event it was too late. If it came to hand-to-hand combat, he would find something with which to fight.

The Diana was less than five hundred yards away, still on a starboard tack. Then suddenly she turned up into the wind and her small square sail braced around and came aback. Her speed dropped until she lay hove to, as if she were fixed to the bottom.

‘What ship is that?’ the Diana’s officer called through a speaking trumpet.

Commodore Whipple answered immediately, ‘Rhode Island ships Katy and Charlemagne. Strike. Strike or we will sink you immediately!’

The two colonial ships were silent, all eyes on the sloop. Biddlecomb wondered if she would turn and run for the protection of the Rose’s guns. Then her square sail braced around and filled and the big mainsail was sheeted in and the Diana resumed her previous course, heading as directly as she could for the Americans.

‘Give that rascal a shot!’ Whipple called, and instantly a swivel gun fired from the Katy’s bow.

A puff of smoke belched out from the Diana’s side, and a jet of water shot up between the two colonial ships.

‘Signal from the flag,’ Weatherspoon piped, and a moment later said, ‘Engage the enemy.’

‘Acknowledge, Mr Weatherspoon,’ said Biddlecomb, only half-listening to the midshipman. Isaac could see the men crowded onto the packet’s deck, the blue-coated officer aft. What will he do? Biddlecomb tried to plumb the stranger’s mind. As thorough as his understanding was of the ways of man, an understanding honed to a fine edge through hundreds of hours bartering for cargos all over the Atlantic, he was only now beginning to understand the machinations of a mind that wanted him dead.

The former packet, now less than two hundred yards away, flew up into the wind, her big jib flogging as she turned. She tacked smartly, settling on her new course, now heading for the Charlemagne. He would come up the Charlemagne’s larboard side, Biddlecomb realized, run the Diana into the brig, and his large and disciplined crew would pour over the rail in a rush of boarders, overwhelming the Charlemagne’s crew. Or so he intended.

‘Mr Rumstick! I believe they’re hoping to grapple, larboard side!’ There was little time; the Diana was no more than one hundred yards away. ‘We’ll spin on our heel right in front of them! Stand ready at your braces! Starboard guns will fire, then all hands to the larboard guns! Let’s go! Starboard your helm!’ This last order he called over his shoulder to the men at the tiller.

If the Charlemagnes had not been able to grasp those hurried orders, there was nothing for it. Rumstick at least would understand. From the corner of his eye Biddlecomb saw the helmsman pushing the tiller to starboard. The Charlemagne heeled slightly as she came broadside to the wind, and overhead the yards braced around to Rumstick’s direction. Forward the captain of number one gun peered over the barrel and out the gunport.

‘Fire as you bear!’ he shouted. The captain of number one gun stepped back and brought the match down to the touchhole. The gun roared out and slammed back on its breeching, and the crew abandoned it as they ran to the larboard side. Pieces of bulwark were torn from the Diana’s larboard bow. The boarders who had gathered there now jumped back and ducked below the rail.

The Charlemagne continued to turn, presenting more and more of her broadside to the oncoming sloop. One by one the six-pounders roared out, blasting dark holes in the Diana’s sails and knocking pieces of her hull into the air. If their range had been farther than the twenty yards that it was, Biddlecomb knew, the Charlemagne’s neophyte gunners would not have scored so many hits.

Number seven fired, the aftermost gun on the starboard side, and the last of the gun crews raced over to man the larboard battery. The Charlemagne was still turning, showing her stern to the Diana as the sloop continued her pursuit. The headsails began to flog as the brig came up into the wind. It was time to tack.

‘Helm’s alee!’ Biddlecomb shouted to the helmsmen. ‘Let fly the headsails! Mr Weatherspoon, cast off that leeward mainsail sheet.’

The bowsprit was pointing north and Biddlecomb felt the changing angle of the wind on his face. The bow swung up into the wind, up and up. ‘Mainsail, haul!’ he shouted, but the words were lost in an explosion of gunfire. The deck jarred under his feet, and with the bellow of the guns came the sound of shattering wood and breaking glass.

The Diana had turned to bring her broadside to bear on the Charlemagne’s exposed stern. Small-arms fire crackled and Biddlecomb could see the muzzle flashes through the smoke of the broadside. Musket balls thudded in the rail and plowed thin furrows across the deck at his feet.

No time for this, he thought as he turned his back to the Diana. He looked aloft. The mainsails were braced around and starting to fill. It was time to order the foresails braced around as well.

The Diana fired again, her small cannon sounding inordinately loud over the short span of water. He could hear the sound of round shot crushing wood, could feel the impact in the deck beneath his feet, and knew that his great cabin below was reduced to wreckage.

‘Let go and haul!’ he shouted, and the foreyards squealed around. They were through the wind now, and Biddlecomb turned to concentrate on the enemy.

‘Larboard side, fire as you bear!’ he ordered, and the aftermost gun went off.

The Katy was fifty yards away, trying to get into the fight, firing as best she could into the Diana. Whipple was standing on the quarterdeck, his sword in his hand, his face frozen in a broad grin as he drove her into the fight. He seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself. The forwardmost of Katy’s four-pounders and half a dozen swivel guns fired at once, their report sounding more like big muskets than cannon.

The Diana tacked just as the Charlemagne had, the British officer still hoping to grapple and board the American. Broadside to broadside, separated by no more than thirty feet of water, the two vessels pounded away. Thick white smoke hung between them, like the densest fog, and was whisked away in patches by quirks of wind, giving Biddlecombe sundry glimpses of his adversary.

‘Mr Rumstick, we’ll have that foresail, if you please!’ he called forward, and seconds later the big sail was again set and drawing.

With the extra canvas the Charlemagne drew ahead of the Diana but could not shake her. Whipple had managed to bring the Katy in closer, and now both Americans were pouring fire into the British sloop. The activity on the Diana’s deck was furious, the muskets firing as fast as they could, firing over their larboard and starboard sides, the gun crew working frantically at their weapons. A section of the Charlemagne’s bulwark crumpled, and Biddlecomb saw one of his men fall, eyes wide, clutching his thigh.

He felt the Charlemagne heel, ever so slightly, in a cat’s paw of wind. The breeze lifted the smoke like a blanket and carried it away. He put his telescope to his eye, and at that short range he was able to see every detail of the activity on the Diana’s deck. A gun captain was pointing at him, and the gun crew trained the cannon around until it was aimed straight at the Charlemagne’s quarterdeck.

It’s not polite to point, Biddlecomb thought ridiculously. The man straightened, a linstock with smoldering match in his hand. Biddlecomb tensed for the blast of the gun. He hoped desperately that it would not be canister shot. He wondered if in the next instant he would be dead. And then, before he could fire the gun, a musket ball shattered the gunner’s left arm.

The man grabbed the broken limb, tossing the burning match aside. Confusion seemed to sweep across the Diana’s deck like grapeshot. Biddlecomb saw some men freeze as if turned to stone in various attitudes of surprise and horror. Others dropped their weapons and fled fore and aft. And then the Diana exploded.

BIDDLECOMB DROPPED THE telescope to the deck. He heard the sound of shattering glass as he doubled over and pressed his hand against his eye. He could feel the tears streaming through his fingers. His telescope had been aimed directly at the explosion, and the flash, much magnified in the lens, had all but blinded him in that eye.

The gunfire had stopped. He straightened and tried to open both eyes, but his right eye could see only dark and light patches. The tears came with renewed vigor. He closed it and held his hand over it and with his left eye he surveyed the scene.

A tower of black smoke rose from the Diana. She looked like a whaler trying out blubber. Men swarmed around her decks, and the clanking of the pumps was loud even over the running and shouting. Two seamen manning the deck-wash hose directed a stream of water at the base of the column of smoke.

‘Are you all right, Isaac?’ Rumstick asked, rushing up the quarterdeck ladder. ‘Was it a splinter? Were you hit?’

‘No, I was just looking straight into the damn explosion. Can’t see out of my right eye. Here’ – he pulled his handkerchief from his pocket – ‘tie this over it, will you?’

Rumstick took the handkerchief and tied it around Biddlecombe’s head, covering his injured eye. ‘That whoreson Wallace keeps saying we’re nothing but pirates. At least now you look the part.’

‘Looks like a powder chest blew up. Don’t seem to have done any damage, except to throw ’em into full-on confusion.’

Biddlecomb looked over to the Diana again. She was in a perfect position to rake the Charlemagne’s stern, but the men on her deck were too involved in the aftermath of the explosion to even notice their advantage.

‘It’d be a famous help if all the British navy would blow itself up,’ he observed. ‘Let’s get hands to the braces, see if we can cut off their escape.’

Biddlecomb’s good eye caught a distant flash. He looked south past Gould Island, and as he did, a spout of water shot up less than one hundred feet from the Charlemagne, a ranging shot from the Rose’s bow chasers. The frigate was coming up with them, driving hard with studdingsails aloft and alow. She was still three-quarters of a mile away but coming up fast, much faster than he had thought she would. The tide was flooding now, and carrying the frigate north. They did not have much time.

‘Hands to the braces, Mr Rumstick,’ he shouted, realizing with annoyance that he had already given that order and that the men were already there. ‘Put your helm to larboard, steer to cross the Diana’s bow,’ he said to the helmsmen. The brig began her turn and the yards came around in accompaniment.

The Diana was just off their starboard bow and fifty yards away. The fire from the exploding powder chest was nearly under control, but the fight was out of the Diana’s crew. The Katy was peppering her decks with shot from the swivel guns. Those not fighting the blaze were loitering in the bows, as far from the Katy’s fire as they could get, and hunkering down behind anything solid. No one seemed to take an interest in defense of any description.

The British officer was pacing the Diana’s quarterdeck, seemingly oblivious to the hail of shot that the Katy was pouring into the packet. He glanced alternately between the Katy, the Charlemagne, and the rocky shore of Conanicut Island, with which he was closing rapidly.

The fire from the Katy stopped, and in its place came Whipple’s voice. ‘Do you strike?’ he called. The British officer paused in his pacing to stare briefly at the American sloop, then resumed without a word.

Fifty yards away a plume of water shot up, and a second later the rumble of the cannon fire rolled down on them. Biddlecomb felt his stomach tighten. He looked south. The Rose had covered another quarter of a mile.

He turned his attention back to the Diana. It was clear now that her commander intended to drive the sloop ashore rather than suffer the ignominy of striking. He was less than a cable length from the steep-to shore of Conanicut Island, and there was nothing the Americans could do to stop him. Biddlecomb smiled as he considered the irony; he had escaped from the Rose once by doing just this thing.

‘Mr Rumstick, we’ll heave to.’ He knew that the water was deep right up to the bank, but still he was as close to the rocky ledge as he cared to be. ‘Main braces, let go and haul! Strike the jib, if you please.’

The main sails braced around again and the Charlemagne stopped dead in the water and hung there, balanced between the opposing pressures on her canvas. Whipple had hove to as well, and Isaac could see the Katy’s crew readying to launch their whaleboat.

The Diana closed with the island, her jibboom spearing the thick vegetation on the shore and driving on through, presenting Biddlecomb with the odd sight of a vessel’s headrig disappearing into the woods.

And then her forefoot struck the rocks. Her mast swayed forward with a loud groan and the vessel shuddered, but the shrouds and backstays held and the mast remained intact, snapping back to its original angle. In the gentle late-afternoon breeze her speed was not above four knots, and Biddlecomb doubted that the impact would result in much damage.

The Diana had not even come to rest before the British crew began to abandon her. They swarmed forward over the bow and along the bowsprit, then one by one fell to the ground and disappeared from sight under the sloop’s jibboom. Last of all, the officer made his way forward, walking rather than running. He looked over his little command one last time, then he too went over the bow and disappeared into the woods.

The Rose fired again, the shot sounding much louder than before. A spout of water shot up between the Charlemagne and the Katy. In twenty minutes they would be under the frigate’s broadside.

The Katy’s whaleboat came off her deck and soared outboard at the end of the yard tackles. It hit the water and twenty armed seamen, eight more than the boat could safely hold, clambered over the side and took their places on the thwarts. Whipple took up his speaking trumpet and pointed it at the Charlemagne.

‘I’m sending a landing party to hunt those rascals down!’ Whipple called over the twenty yards of water that separated the two vessels. ‘Can you spare some men?’

Biddlecomb looked at the stranded Diana and then at the Rose, quickly closing the distance between them, and made a decision. ‘I’m going to pull the Diana off,’ he called back. If they left the sloop for the British to retake, then they would have to go through this nightmare all over again There was not much time, but if there was any possibility of taking the Diana back, then it was worth a try. It was the only way, he knew, that he would be released from his service to the Rhode Island navy and allowed to go privateering. It was the only way he could avoid having to order these men to their deaths.

Biddlecomb waved and then turned to the problem at hand. The Katy’s whaleboat was nudging ashore and the men piling out. He was amazed that the boat had not swamped with the eight inches of freeboard remaining.

‘Mr Rumstick, we’ll need a cable run aft. We better run it through whatever’s left of the great cabin.’ Isaac gave orders rapidly as he worked through solutions to the problem of pulling the sloop off the shore. It would not be easy. In fact he was not certain it could be done at all in the time allowed, but unlike with military considerations he was comfortable and expert in matters of seamanship. ‘The light hawser, the eight inch, will serve. I’ll leave it to you to run the hawser over to the Diana.’

Rumstick nodded and began issuing his own orders. The Charlemagne’s whaleboat lifted off the booms and was soon floating beside the brig. ‘Boat’s crew away,’ Biddlecomb ordered, and the boat’s crew clambered over the side and took up their oars. ‘Mr Rumstick, give me a shout when the hawser’s fast. I want you to take command of the sloop when she’s off.’

‘We’ll have to set the kedge anchor and pull her off with the capstan. I’ll do that while you get the hawser aboard the Diana.’

Rumstick nodded and swung himself over the side of the brig, disappearing below the level of the deck. ‘Give way,’ he called out, and the order was followed by the creaking of the oars in the tholes.

The Rose fired and a black hole appeared in the Charlemagne’s fore topsail.

‘Son of a bitch!’ The frigate was less than half a mile away and clearly getting the range on her bow chasers. And they still had to get the hawser aboard the Diana, get the Charlemagne under way and set the kedge anchor, then tow the Diana off the ledge. It would be close, if it happened at all. And if it did not, then Rumstick and his men would be trapped.

‘Beg your pardon, sir, but there’s a boat from Katy alongside,’ Weatherspoon said, pointing over the leeward rail. Biddlecomb looked over the side. Riding there was the Katy’s gig with five seamen aboard.

‘Commodore Whipple’s compliments, sir, and he reckoned as you only got one boat, will you have us set your kedge, sir?’ asked the seaman at the tiller.

Biddlecomb looked skeptically at the little boat. ‘Will the gig bear the weight?’

‘I reckon. The commodore had us lash up some water butts under the stern here.’ Biddlecomb followed the man’s pointing finger. Just below the surface of the water he could see the empty barrels lending their buoyancy to the after end of the boat. For all his irritating qualities Whipple was a seaman through and through.

‘Woodberry,’ Biddlecomb called out, rethinking his orders as he did. ‘We’ll sway the kedge anchor aboard the gig. You’ – he turned to the man beside Woodberry – ‘get the anchor runner and tackle aloft. Do you know what that is, at all?’ he asked, prompted by the confusion on the man’s face.

‘Very good, Mr Weatherspoon, see that it’s set up and we’ll get the kedge anchor over the side.’ The Rose fired again, the shot landing less than ten yards from the Charlemagne’s side, the spray falling across the brig’s deck. ‘I need not tell you to hurry.’

Rumstick and his crew were aboard the Diana, and a thin messenger line stretched from the packet across the water to the Charlemagne and disappeared into the great cabin below Biddlecomb’s feet. Rumstick waved in reply to some unseen signal from Gardiner in the great cabin, and the men aboard the Diana began hauling the messenger in. A few seconds later the hawser, eight inches around, emerged from the Charlemagne’s great cabin and began snaking across the stretch of open water.

Biddlecomb heard the crushing sound of iron on wood as a shot from the Rose’s bow chaser struck the Katy. The frigate was well within range now, and if Wallace decided to turn and bring his broadside to bear, rather than continue to close the distance, then the Americans would be helpless under his devastating fire.

‘Have we time for this, Biddlecomb?’ Whipple called across the water. His voice betrayed no concern; his tone was the same as he might have used to ask his fellow captain aboard for dinner.

Biddlecomb paused before answering. ‘Mr Weatherspoon, the other end of the tackle goes aloft. Yes, that end.’ He then called across to Whipple, ‘I think we can have the sloop off in five minutes. Any more than that and we’ll have to leave her.’

‘Five minutes it is,’ Whipple replied, ‘you have not a second more than that!’

‘Haul away!’ Weatherspoon shouted, his voice too high-pitched to give the proper weight to the order. Still, the men pulled with a will and the kedge anchor lifted from its resting place on the fore channel and was eased into the waiting gig.

On the Diana’s foredeck Rumstick had run the hawser up to the sloop’s windlass and Biddlecomb could clearly hear the pawl falling in place as the men hove the slack out of the line. A splash forward told him that the kedge anchor had been dropped. Gardiner was standing at the break of the quarterdeck, hat in hand, saluting, a habit he had picked up, to Biddlecomb’s annoyance, from Rumstick. ‘Hawser’s aboard the sloop and made fast at both ends, sir.’

‘Very good.’ They were almost done. Now they had only to haul the sloop off. ‘Rig the capstan, please, and heave away.’

As Gardiner began pushing the men into position, Biddlecomb turned back to the Diana. ‘We’re going to heave away now!’ he called through the speaking trumpet. Rumstick waved in acknowledgment. ‘Heave round!’ Biddlecomb shouted forward, and the men at the capstan stamped around in a circle, their pace growing slower and slower as they strained to pull both the Charlemagne and the Diana toward the set anchor.

Suddenly the air was filled with the scream and rush of round shot and chain, passing close. Two black holes appeared in the Charlemagne’s mainsail, and the Katy’s topsail yard sagged like a broken wing, the slings shattered. Just over a quarter mile away, now all but invisible in her own gunsmoke, the Rose had hove to, presenting her full battery to the American ships. The men at the capstan ceased heaving and stared stupidly at the frigate as the muted sound of the gunfire followed after the shot.

‘Oh, damn me to hell,’ Biddlecomb muttered. He felt the first wave of panic rush over him. ‘Heave, God damn your eyes!’ he shouted to the men at the capstan. With the sound of the broadside came the living memory of the horror that the Rose had visited on him before. His breath was coming fast and shallow. ‘Do you want to leave this place?’ he added, and with that the men fell to heaving again with a will.

Again the Rose fired. Wood shattered forward, torn canvas flapped overhead, but the steady rhythm of the capstan continued, and with an audible groan the Diana pulled away from the shore. The sharp report of a small cannon burst out nearby, then another and another. Whipple was impudently firing back with his four-pound guns.

Armed men poured out of the woods under the Diana’s bow. Biddlecomb’s heart leapt and he felt suddenly sick to his stomach. If the Diana’s British crew tried to retake the vessel, they would overwhelm the small American force, and Rumstick would be taken. Worse, he realized, Rumstick would fight to the death.

He raised his speaking trumpet to shout a warning, and in that instant he realized that the men in the woods were the Katy’s landing party returning from the hunt.

‘Anchor’s at short peak!’ Gardiner sang out, indicating that they had hove in as much anchor cable as they could. And still the Diana remained fixed to the shore.

The Rose was under way again, leaving a cloud of gunsmoke in her wake. Wallace had paused long enough for two broadsides, and now he was again closing the distance. She was a quarter mile away, less than a quarter mile, coming fast. Her next broadside would be at point-blank range.

The hawser connecting the Charlemagne to the Diana was like an iron rod, straight and ridged, the pressure squeezing the water out of the fibers of the rope, but still the sloop did not move. Something was holding it fast.

Then he saw it. A small tree had passed between the mast and the fore topmast stay, and as they hauled the sloop off, the two had become completely entangled. The mast was bending under the great force exerted on it, holding the sloop fast, and Runstick did not see it.

‘Rumstick! The fore topmast stay!’ Biddlecomb shouted. He saw Rumstick looking at him, saw him put a hand to his ear. ‘The stay! The goddamned fore topmast stay!’ The Rose was three hundred yards away, swinging around, bringing her great guns to bear.

Rumstick spun around, and when he did, he saw what was hanging them up. He snatched up a cutlass and charged toward the bow. He leapt over the windlass and raced out along the bowsprit, chopping wildly at the tree.

‘No! Not the tree! Cut the stay!’ Biddlecomb yelled, not knowing if Ezra could hear him. It was not in Rumstick’s nature to cut a perfectly good stay, but this was absurd, this time the rigging had to go.

‘Rumstick—’ he shouted again, and the Rose fired, so close that the blast of the guns was mixed with the shattering of wood and falling gear into one prolonged nightmare sound, and Biddlecomb was once again on the deck of the Icarus, watching his men being torn apart. The Charlemagne’s spritsail yard was shattered and the Katy’s jibboom snapped like a twig. He held his breath, waiting for the screams of wounded men, but none came.

‘Rumstick, God damn it!’ he shouted, but the first officer now saw what had to be done. He stepped back, wound up, and severed the fore topmast stay with one stroke.

The Diana came instantly alive. She surged away from the shore as the hawser between the vessels went limp. The men on board, the men from the Charlemagne and the Katy, leapt to get the sloop under way. The hawser was slipped and slid into the water; below in the Charlemagne’s great cabin eager hands hauled it aboard the brig.

The Rose was close enough now that Biddlecomb could hear the sound of heavy gun carriages rumbling across wooden decks as the great guns were loaded and run out.

Gardiner’s ax fell on the taut anchor cable, parting the stiff line. ‘Anchor’s gone, sir!’ The Charlemagne was free of the bottom and starting to drift.

‘Just a minute, Mr Weatherspoon.’ Whatever Whipple had to say was secondary to getting the Charlemagne up the bay to safety. He looked over at the Diana. She was gathering way already, close hauled with Rumstick at the helm.

‘Brace up, sharp larboard tack!’ The yards on the Charlemagne’s main mast swung around and the sails rippled and filled and the brig gathered way. ‘Full and bye,’ Biddlecomb said to the helmsman.

The Rose did not fire. Wallace was getting her under way, opting to chase rather than try to cripple the Americans. It was a good choice, good, at least, for the Rhode Island navy. The heavy frigate would not catch the smaller vessels in that light air. Once around Conanicut Island they would be shielded from the frigate’s guns and would soon be in water too shallow for the Rose to follow.

Biddlecomb looked over the starboard side. Katy was under way as well, gathering speed, quickly moving beyond the reach of Wallace’s guns. His eye was brought back to the bright flag streaming aft on the Katy’s yardarm.

‘Very well, Mr Weatherspoon, what’s the commodore signaling?’ He suspected that he already knew the answer.

IT WAS THREE hours before the time he would normally have risen had he been back at his father’s estate in Virginia when Maj. Edward Fitzgerald felt the servant’s hand on his shoulder, shaking him from his sleep.

Fitzgerald swung his feet out of the bed and onto the smooth wood floor and sat for a moment in that position, orienting himself. A candle stood on the nightstand, placed there by the servant, the flame dancing in the drafts. ‘Thank you,’ he muttered, and the man disappeared as silently as he had entered.

Fitzgerald let out a low moan. It was already warm, and already humid. July was miserable in Virginia, but he was quickly discovering that it was worse in Massachusetts. He had left home with a vague idea that it was always cold that far north.

Fitzgerald looked around the room, as far as he could see in the light of the single candle. The white plaster walls glowed yellow in that light. Lurking in the shadows was a large mahogany wardrobe on one side of the room, and on the other, below the one window, a chest of drawers. There was, besides that, one chair and a desk, both lost in the darkness. In Fitzgerald’s experience this room typified the New England Puritan aesthetic. By Southern standards it was quite spartan.

Fitzgerald, twenty-five years old, had been an officer in the Virginia Militia since his seventeenth birthday. None the less, his present rank of major was owed almost entirely to his family’s place in Fairfax County society and their friendship with the man who now commanded the Army of the United Colonies. Unlike many others in the Militia who had fought in the last war, Fitzgerald had done nothing more dangerous than drill and parade.

If anyone had so much as insinuated to Fitzgerald that his commission was based on influence alone, he would have called that person out and would most likely have killed him. That fact notwithstanding, Fitzgerald was well aware of his shortcomings in the military line. He had hunted fugitives and runaway slaves, he had fought duels and brawls, but he had never, for all his eight years in the Militia, been in a real battle or a military engagement of any description.

This fact had annoyed him in Virginia; in Massachusetts, in the siege of Great Britain’s ministerial army in the city of Boston, it tormented him. The New England militiamen, as far beneath him as they might be in rank or wealth or social standing, had seen combat and he had not. There were here many veterans of the last French War, and those too young to have fought in that conflict had fought at Concord and Lexington and Bunker Hill. He was an officer, and he had not been in combat, and he felt like a fraud.

So until he had the chance to prove himself in combat, Major Fitzgerald intended to prove himself through