July 7, 1837
38°17’N, 75°06’W
8:45 a.m.
As soon as he’d heard word that a British fleet had been spotted making for Sinepuxent, Captain Sydney Smith Lee had ordered full steam ahead. These ships were expensive. High time one of them was tested in battle, to see if they were worth the money.
Until last night, USS
Representation had never once in all her years of service moved faster than three knots. (Lee was sure the Navy would claim this was foresight and part of some devious years-long plan, but he knew it had just been to save coal.) For the past eighteen hours, she had been moving at her top speed of six—still nothing to brag about in front of the captain of a sailing vessel, such as… was that really
Endymion up ahead?
Yes. It was. The swift and deadly frigate that had been such a terror to the Americans in the last war. Sailing right up as if it had nothing to fear.
They weren’t expecting us so soon. They never did learn our top speed, because we never had a reason to show it to them until today.
Let’s see what else they don’t know.
“As soon as they’re in range, destroy the rigging.”
That took another few minutes. Lee was very glad the Navy had agreed to equip
Representation with rockets. He’d insisted on the best ones available—or what he hoped was the best. Some of them exploded with a fine blue flame. Did that make them hotter? They certainly made a merry blaze of
Endymion’s sails.
Not so fast now, are you, my dear? And that was only the beginning.
“Is the shot heated, Rasmussen?”
“Another fifteen minutes, sir.” That Dane from Massachusetts might be a northerner, but he was exactly the kind of man you wanted in charge of something as dangerous as heated shot.
“Very well.” Lee gave the orders for the second rocket bombardment—canister to sweep the decks and anti-ship incendiaries. There he was sure he had the best—at least the best that was currently available. (
Take your time, Stabler brothers. No rush.) The fires that blossomed along the side of
Endymion could not be put out by water.
Endymion fired back, of course.
Representation didn’t even turn to engage. She simply steamed past, ignoring the cannonballs that left little dents in its iron-plated hull, briefly illuminated with orange-yellow light when the fire reached
Endymion’s magazine.
* * *
Cochrane lowered his spyglass. HMS
Endymion, with Captain Wolfe and 359 men on board, was gone—blasted out of existence by a soulless grey mechanical monster that didn’t even look like a proper ship.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw semaphore flags being raised on
Nelson.
EG, 1-RATES ENGAGE, BOARD REP
REST GO NORTH, RENDEZVOUS
What the hell is he playing at? Is he trying to go down in a blaze of glory?
On second thought, it made sense.
Egmont was the closest ship to
Representation and had over six hundred men on board, and every single one of the first-rates held a much larger crew complement than that thing. If one of them could get close enough for a boarding action… they still couldn’t take it as a prize, because there was no way of getting it back to Bermuda, never mind Portsmouth. But at least they could scuttle it. And that would be a blow to the Yankees—a lot of work and a lot of money must have gone into that monstrosity, and it was the keystone of their defenses on this part of the coast. But how many ships and men would be sacrificed in the attempt?
Never mind. I have orders to follow.
Cochrane gave the command. He hated doing anything that felt like a retreat, but…
we’ve already won. We did what we came to do. We could all turn and flee this instant and still call this battle a victory. Even if that horror is faster than we thought, it can’t possibly outpace us. If nothing else, it will run out of coal before we run out of wind.
And there is always a chance that the admiral will succeed.
With
Illustrious underway, Cochrane had nothing to do but stand at the stern and watch the progress of the battle. He could see the red sparks of heated shot arrowing from
Representation into the sides of
Cornwall and
Poictiers.
Egmont was already on fire from heated shot and rockets, the crew piling into the boats or swimming for shore.
Prince Regent was trying to get closer to
Representation by using the burning third-rate as a shield.
Then she passed
Egmont, coming up alongside
Representation.
And the columbiad spoke.
Cochrane could still feel his bones vibrating from that sound when he heard the splash and the splintering of heavy timbers. The
boom of a hundred-pound columbiad was louder than the report of a normal cannon, deep as distant thunder and abrupt as a rifle-crack.[1] It had a terrible finality to it, like a book the size of a city slammed shut by the hand of God.
It seemed to say:
If you can hear this, you are already dead.
This battle is over.
Which for
Prince Regent, it surely was. The shot had been exactly the sort of damage the columbiad was designed to inflict—a massive hole right at the waterline. Worse, the shot appeared to have gone right through the keel. The front of the ship was collapsing in on itself, dragging her to a dead stop in the water.
And now that no one was paying attention to them, the forts had gotten in on the act, sending cherry-red heated shot and screws of fire at the ships that came within range.
Illustrious was already too far north, but none of the others were. Everyone not manning the guns was bringing up buckets of water or pouring those buckets over the decks or sails, or down the sides of the ships. Every once in a while a canister rocket would explode over a deck and kill a handful of men, but the rest would just keep working. HMS
Powerful had lost almost all her sails and, with no way to escape and nothing better to do, was still trying to plaster the southern fort with suppressive fire.
Already three ships—
Ajax,
America, and
Scarborough—were pulling away
. Then a single rocket from somewhere on the beach needled its way through one of
America’s gunports and found the magazine.
The ship exploded.
A moment later, as if she had forgotten she was on fire and needed to be reminded, so did
Egmont.
And
Representation wasn’t even trying to engage the two remaining first-rates that were coming after it. It was chasing the rest of the fleet. It should have been like an angry cow chasing racehorses, but some of the other ships had lost too much of their sails to those incendiaries and could hardly make better speed.
Cornwall’s crew was abandoning her—the fire had gotten out of control there.
But
Representation was turning away.
No—it was turning to point its other side at
Caledonia, which was getting too close behind it.
The other columbiad spoke.
A hole a horse could have leapt through appeared in
Caledonia’s side, and the mainmast—severed at the base—began collapsing into the bowels of the ship.
All that from a cannonball scarcely larger than a man’s head.
And
Nelson—on fire in three places—was still pressing the attack.
We came with twelve ships. We’ve lost six—probably seven, Powerful
will be captured once she runs out of powder and shot. But if we can only rid the world of that damned thing…
* * *
“Sir!” shouted Rasmussen. Captain Lee wasn’t sure if it was to overcome the noise of the battle, or the ringing in both their ears. “If we fire the columbiads one more time, the carriages won’t take it! They’re not strong enough!”
“If that ship gets close enough to board, it won’t matter! Do it now!”
* * *
A third shot.
Nelson was zigzagging—as much as such an enormous ship could—and the hundred-pound ball sliced along the hull, sending a whole cannon spinning out into the sea.
Representation poured the heated shot into the gaping hole that had just formed. Then, at the last moment, she closed all her gunports on that side.
Nelson exploded so close to
Representation that flames washed over the starboard deck of the demologos, causing rockets to launch themselves in random directions.
Farewell, Admiral Cockburn. You were one of the greats.
Wait. Can it still be coming?
Yes. One side was painted black with enemy soot, but
Representation was still chugging away in pursuit of the limping, wounded
Poictiers.
Captain Cochrane felt sick with despair.
There’s nothing we can do. We can’t stop it. We can’t harm it. We can’t even hinder it.
It’s slow, but if it sets our sails on fire we can’t escape. We can’t protect the smaller ships carrying the Marines. We can’t do anything against that bloody…
And then it stopped… and began to turn, rotating in the water like an immense compass needle.
For no reason, it turned and headed for the harbor, leaving behind a sea strewn with scorched wreckage and dead or struggling men.
Why? It had us. Why?
Never mind. Thank you, God. Thank you. Thank you. Thine is the victory.
Because it can’t possibly have been ours.
“Send out the boats and be ready with lines,” Cochrane ordered. “God willing, we can save some of those men.”
* * *
“It seems you were right,” said Lee.
“Sorry, sir,” said Rasmussen. The
Demologos class of warships was a class in name only. Every ship was different in design, and carried with it innovations that might or might not be used in the next one.
Representation had been the beneficiary of this, faster and more seaworthy than any of her adoptive sisters, but now she was paying the price.
Someone made a mistake when they were building this ship. They should have considered that we might have to fire each columbiad more than once in a given battle. They should have taken greater care in their calculations of force and strain.[2] They should have given us better gun-carriages. And more reinforcement for the lower decks and hull while they were at it.
That recoil from that last blast had broken the columbiad’s carriage, the huge gun had fallen, the deck was damaged, and water was coming in from somewhere below the armor at a rate that meant there was no hope of returning to Hampton Roads. They would have to make port in Sinepuxent, and that within the hour. And there they would remain for some time—Sinepuxent didn’t have the facilities to repair a demologos. Men and equipment would have to be brought here, and that would take who knew how long. Months, probably. It might be most of a year before
Representation steamed to sea again.
All around them, U.S. Navy cadets were either putting out the last ashes of their Academy, or heading out in boats to collect the survivors of the battle.
They burned our academy. We ravaged their fleet. Who won this battle?
I don’t know. But thanks to me, the mouth of the Chesapeake lies open to the enemy. I don’t know who won this battle, but I fear I have just lost us the war.
[1] A bit speculative on my part.
Here’s a columbiad firing with one pound of gunpowder. According to my research, a loaded columbiad fired in anger would have used somewhere between 10 and 20 pounds.
[2] Ever since I toured an old fort in Kansas and saw the firing slits positioned directly facing each other across a corridor, so that if invaders ever got inside the defenders would have no alternative but to shoot each other, I’ve never been willing to underestimate the capacity of designers to screw things up.
Happy New Year!
In January we head to Florida.