CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“I want this mongrel hybrid of a ship sunk and its piratical Captain hung at the yard-arm,” Rear Admiral Hawthorn tapped a thin finger on the reports scattered on his desk.
“Actually he has acted within the law as it stands, Sir, by declaring before going into action, and the reports on your desk do point out that he has acted the gentleman at all times in regard to his prisoners and passengers,” suggested his Senior Officer.
“Gentlemen do not sneak up on merchant ships in disguise then blast the hell out of them, Captain: I want him found and sunk, if Whitehall get even a whiff of this there will be hell to pay,” said Hawthorn.
“We are hard pressed at the moment, Sir, protecting our convoys with every available ship of the line,” pointed out his Senior Officer.
“Ship of the line be damned, send a well-armed, frigate,” ordered the Admiral
Several hundred miles to the north a well-armed British frigate was about to engage Talon.
“I suppose it had to happen sooner or later, Sir, just bad luck we have so many prisoners aboard,” commented Lewis as both men viewed the approaching frigate with concern.
“I know this frigate, Number One, but she is the Eagle and more importantly she knows us as the French Juliet. Have all the prisoners moved starboard side, any action will be on the port, and double-shot the carronades,” ordered Richard.
Eagle came on relentlessly.
“If he follows the rule book correctly, Captain, he will station marines in the rigging, and that could prove rather awkward,” Lewis pointed out.
“We will have to rely then on his arrogance,” replied Richard.
The Captain, ex-Lieutenant of the Eagle, squinted through his telescope. He saw two young women at the rail with their arms around each other. He did not hear the wolf whistles of their crewmates in the rigging. The ship’s cannons were unmanned.
“I know this ship: it is the French Juliet and had rather a bad time last time I boarded her; put a shot into her bows,” he ordered.
“Did you mean across her bows, Sir?” asked his Lieutenant.
“I meant into her bows, Lieutenant: she needs to be taught a lesson,” the Captain replied.
The shot, when it came, was completely unexpected and smashed well aft of the bows, killing two gunners crouched behind a hatch cover.
“That was no accident.” Lewis was so incensed he forgot the ‘Sir’.
“Patience, Number One, any time now,” said Richard softly.
An alert midshipman on Eagle spotted the gap of a gun-port near where the shot had damaged Talon’s side and squeaked a warning. It came too late.
Talon’s colors broke and her broadside slammed over a ton of iron into Eagle’s side. No frigate had ever been designed to withstand such punishment and Talon’s deck cannons swept her decks with grape, compounding her misery.
Eagle heeled away from the impact, then lurched back like a dying animal. Her sails fluttered and flapped like the broken wings of some great white seabird and she began to settle. Talon put on sail, cleared the sinking ship and reloaded. It was unnecessary. Eagle had only managed to get two shots away, neither of them causing any serious damage to Talon.
The enormity of what they had done began to sink into the memories of the Officers and men of Talon.
“Stand by to pick up survivors, Number One, I fear this may be our action in these waters; once word of this gets out we shall have to hunt further afield,” reasoned Richard.
It was not their last action: Talon took two more prizes, making a total of five before returning to Boston.
Richard delayed his sailing to await the birth of his child. After James came crying into the world at seven pounds two ounces Rebecca pleaded with Richard to remain with her.
“You are a very wealthy man Richard; resign your commission and enjoy your family, you have done your bit,” pleaded Rebecca.
“One last cruise, my love, and I will do just that,” promised Richard.
The cruise did prove to be his last.
Richard studied the charts with his Navigation Officer and Lewis.
“We will have to go northeast on a large semi-circle to reach the south, that is the safer route target ships will sail to reach America,” suggested Richard. His officers agreed. Talon never reached the south.
“A frigate, Sir, the same class as the Eagle,” pointed out Lewis.
“But without the same arrogance I fear,” answered Richard.
The British frigate did not hesitate: it closed to within four hundred yards and opened an accurate fire with its twelve-pounder cannon. Richard had no option but to reply with his two similar deck guns.
“Have the two port cannon shifted to the starboard, Number One,” he ordered.
“Four into fourteen will not go I fear, Sir,” replied Lewis.
In a very short time shot began to hit Talon, pounding her sides, thwacking through her sails and dismounting a cannon. Talon had some success, judging by the reduced fire from the frigate, but it would only be a matter of time.
“Fire at her sails, Number One; Talon is French built, so let us fight like the French,” ordered Richard.
Talon’s gunners elevated their cannons slightly but initially had no success. It was a wind change that gave Talon a temporary respite. It struck her first and gusted her out of range. Richard ordered on every stitch of sail Talon could manage and watched as the frigate fell further behind.
“We might just do it,” Lewis prayed.
Finally the wind reached the frigate and her sails filled. Whether she set too much sail area or that Talon had damaged a mast would never be determined, but the frigate’s fore top-mast snapped and fell, snagging the rigging and fouling other sails. The men on Talon gave a ragged cheer.
A shot from the frigate had smashed previously into Talon’s forward paint locker. Normally it would have done little harm, but William had left some of his highly inflammable varnish behind. The heat of the shot burned some spare sails, then almost extinguished until a puff of air through the shot hole glowed the material red and then burst it into flame. When the flame reached the varnish it became a roaring fire.
The smoke was not noticed at first, smoke being a backdrop to any ship in action and by the time it was, the bow was well aflame. Richard ordered Talon to turn away from the wind in an attempt to tack without the wind spreading the fire to the rest of the ship. He also hoped the bow wave would put out the flames, but it was not to be.
“Man the pumps men or we are lost,” Richard shouted, but the spurts from the hoses were too little, too late.
After ten minutes Richard gave the order that no Captain wishes to give.
“Abandon ship, save whatever you can water, food and small arms,” he ordered and silently thanked God that he had no prisoners to attend to; Talon had not enough longboats to accommodate them. Of the frigate there was no sign.
Talon’s longboats bobbed in the water, survived heavy seas, sailed when the wind was in the right frame of mind and rowed until the men were exhausted for three weeks. When the food had long gone and they were down to the last barrel of water for the six boats, Lewis’s accurate navigation brought then to within sight of land north of Boston. Fishing and boats found and attended to them before towing them back to Boston. Talon was gone, but many a British merchant Captain, unaware of her fate, continued to sail well south of the area until the end of the war.
EPILOGUE
Richard was never offered another command. High-ranking officers from both sides condemned his tactics. The Americans labeled them ‘bordering on illegal’ and the British ‘smacks of murder’. He kept his promise to Rebecca and resigned his commission to build up a small merchant fleet. Rebecca bore him another son, Andrew, and a daughter, Rachel. James would later become a congressman for the new State of Massachusetts. It is not known what became of the Italian barreled rifles imported by Richard, only smooth bore muskets were used by both sides at Concorde, Lexington and later, Bunker Hill
.
Talon was the first armed merchant raider but not the last. The last square-rigged ship commissioned as a warship was the armed merchant raider ‘See Adler’ commanded by the flamboyant Count von Luckier in World War One. The ‘See Adler’ sank seventeen merchant ships without the loss of any enemy crewmembers before being wrecked in the Pacific.
The concept proved costly for the Allies: in two world wars, German armed merchant raiders sank more tonnage than the combined submarine and surface fleets.
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