Chapter XI San Fernando Attacked From the Sea
Written by Captain Grattan, R.N.
Much to my relief, young Wilson came off in time to keep his afternoon watch, none the worse for his extremely exciting forty-eight hours’ leave, and directly he had told me that all fighting had ceased, I sent Watson, my Fleet Surgeon, and my young Surgeon, Clegg, ashore to help patch up the wounded, giving them as many chaps as they wanted to take to help them, and writing a polite note to the New President’s Secretary informing him of the fact. I knew that every doctor would be wanted, because the fighting had been very severe and all that morning we had seen streams of wounded men dragging themselves back from Marina along the road by the sea. Already one Englishman, a man named Seymour, had been brought off to the ship, badly wounded, but he died as he was being hoisted on board, so his friends took the body ashore again.
I went ashore, myself, soon afterwards, and found everybody at the Club. A cheery lot of chaps they were, in spite of their pal’s death, and when the little Secretary, who had heard that I had come ashore and followed me there, bowed himself in half and said, ‘The President is much gratitude for the guns,’ they yelled with delight.
‘The hydraulic machinery you brought from Princes’ Town,’ they roared. ‘We couldn’t have managed without it—just came in the nick of time,’ and then bundled my little friend into the next room. They told me that the whole of General Zorilla’s artillery had been captured, and, before I went back to the ship, drove me down to have a look at it—four field-guns of French manufacture, four English field-guns, and two 4.7’s on field carriages.
‘Those English guns don’t seem to have done much work,’ I suggested, screwing my eyeglass in very hard, ‘do they?’ and they explained that they’d been busy polishing them up ever since they’d been brought in—that was why they looked so new.
It struck me that, now the insurgents—or I suppose I should say Gerald Wilson—possessed all these guns and had knocked Zorilla so hopelessly, they had only to capture El Castellar to make themselves safe from the Santa Cruz Navy. Once they had captured it, the guns there would prevent any cruisers passing through the narrow entrance, and they could sit still and wait till that big cruiser, La Buena Presidente, came along and made them masters of the sea.
I told my friends, the Englishmen, about that little ‘accident’ down at El Castellar with our 9.2, and they were highly amused—everything seemed to amuse them that day. A most cheery lot they were, and when I wished them good-bye, before getting into my boat, and asked them what they actually had done with the hydraulic machinery I had brought them, they were more amused than ever, and I left them enjoying some little joke they had.
Old ‘Spats’ sent me a wireless signal from the Hercules next day to tell me that La Buena Presidente, flying the black and green flag, had put into Madeira to coal, but had been refused permission. If that was the case, she’d have a good deal of trouble to arrange for colliers to meet her at sea, and it might be many weeks before she arrived here.
Things went along remarkably peaceably for the next few days, my two doctors were up to their necks in work ashore, and hardly had time to come aboard and ask after my gout, and we heard that Gerald Wilson had driven Zorilla and his army into El Castellar and was investing it.
Then, one fine morning, along came the whole of the Santa Cruz fleet, cruisers, gunboats, and torpedo-boats, escorting half-a-dozen tramp-steamers filled with troops.
They anchored close to El Castellar—we could see their smoke plainly enough—and began firing—shelling Wilson’s trenches, we presumed. Of course we all thought they’d do the natural thing—land their troops there, drive off the insurgents, join hands with all that was left of Zorilla’s army—about two thousand infantry—and come marching along the seashore under cover of the ships’ guns. This was evidently what Wilson’s brother thought, for we could see his people streaming out from San Fernando, along the road to Marina, towards El Castellan.
Well, I suppose I’m a bit of a fool, but when I was a youngster I should have been mad to have missed anything like that, so I sent for the Commander, and told him he could give leave to the mids. and as many of the officers as he could spare. Most of them were already crowding on the fore bridge and up in the fore fire-control position, trying to see the Santa Cruz ships through their telescopes, but they clambered down in a twinkling, and cleared ashore in less than half an hour.
‘Don’t get into mischief or there’ll be the dickens to pay,’ I sang out to them, and, of course, immediately afterwards regretted letting them go.
They had been gone about two hours, and we’d seen them driving or walking out towards El Castellar, when the firing ceased, and it was reported to me that the fleet and transports were standing towards us.
I went along to my spare cabin, which I had given up to fat little Navarro (Zorilla’s A.D.C.) whilst he was aboard, with his broken thigh, and told him what was happening. He was very excited, and craned his neck out of his scuttle to see the advancing ships.
In an hour they were abreast the Hector, and steamed slowly past. First their flagship, the Presidente Canilla, then the still smaller cruiser, San Josef, the old-fashioned torpedo gunboat, Salvador, the rakish Estremadura, an armed steam yacht, and the Primero de Maie, looking like a Gosport ferry steamer. They were steaming at about seven knots, but even at that speed the Primero de Maie and the Salvador could not keep station. Although I had a marine guard on the quarterdeck, my fat Subaltern of Blue Marines—the Forlorn Hope—flourishing his sword, and the bugler sounding an Admiral’s salute, as the flagship crawled past, she took not the slightest notice of us, and we were all intensely amused to see the officers on her fore bridge gazing everywhere except in our direction, absolutely pretending to ignore the fact that we were there at all.
When you remember that barely seven weeks ago my ship had towed the whole five of them out from behind the breakwater of Los Angelos, it was all the more funny.
They fired a few shells into the town as they went past it, not more than three hundred yards from the shore, and I wondered whether my humorous friends at the Club were laughing quite so heartily. Half a mile astern of them came the two old-fashioned French torpedo-boats and the first of the transports, crowded with blackamoors, with yellow and green stripes in their hats, hooting and hissing as they passed close to us, though their officers, standing up amidships, took off their hats and bowed to make up for their men’s rudeness. I took off mine and swept it to the deck in the most approved Spanish fashion.
Three more little transports lumbered by chock-a-block with troops, and the whole armada anchored at the head of the bay, about two miles beyond the town, and immediately began lowering their boats. My Sub was terribly put out. ‘I’m afraid they’ve caught my brother napping this time, sir,’ he said to me. ‘He must have rushed all his troops out there early this morning, and look, sir, you can see them hurrying back again. They’ll be too late.’ I proceeded to give him a little lecture on the advantages of possessing the ‘Command of the Sea.’ ‘A very neat illustration, my boy, right in front of your eyes. Canilla moves his troops about by sea—dumps them here and there, wherever he likes, whilst your brother, uncertain where he’s going to land ’em, runs his chaps off their legs, backwards and forwards.’
‘It’s jolly hard luck, sir,’ he answered, not relishing my short course of instruction on strategy.
In half an hour we saw three or four boats crowded with troops make for the shore, saw the black ragamuffins jumping into the shallow water, scrambling up the beach and lining the top of it, whilst more boats came along from the transports. They went to and fro so rapidly that, before the insurgents could get back to San Fernando, they must have had nearly a thousand men ashore. At last some insurgents began to pour out of the town along the beach, but directly they came in view, the cruisers began to fire at them, their shells bursting right among them on the beach, and the road, and among the trees behind it. The insurgents scattered like smoke.
Presently we heard a good deal of rifle firing from the same spot, and Wilson sang out, very excitedly, ‘They’re still there, sir; I can see them crawling along the beach, and there are others in the woods. The regulars are firing rifles at them now, sir.’
However, regular troops were being landed in such numbers, and we could see that they had already begun to push their way towards the town so determinedly, that I thought there was every likelihood of San Fernando being captured within an hour or two, and wished to goodness I had not allowed all those officers of mine to go ashore.
I had just sent for the Commander, to see what could be done about recalling them, when suddenly two loud reports of guns fired from somewhere behind the town made me jump—they sounded so close, and were so unexpected—and two spouts of water leapt up among the anchored ships close under the bows of the Presidente Canilla. I guessed at once that they came from those two 4.7 guns I had seen ashore, and smiled to see my Sub’s face brighten. We all looked through our telescopes again to see what would happen. ‘Bang! Bang!’ the reports knocked against our ears, the two guns had fired again, and two more water-spouts sprang up just beyond the flagship. The noise came from the back of the town, but I’m hanged if I could see the guns, though I searched the whole of that tree-covered ridge most carefully.
I turned my glass on the ships and saw that they were all in confusion, their crews running about like ants, and then a spurt of flame shot out from the fo’c’stle of the flagship, and a large shell screamed and shrieked over the town. The other cruisers began firing too, their shells dropping all over the place, but very seldom bursting. One struck a patch of swamp, and sent the mud flying up in fine style.
The two shore guns fired again, and this time I did see the thin brownish smoke for a second, but a moment later couldn’t see the guns themselves.
‘The flagship’s got one aboard, sir!’ several people shouted. She was covered with smoke for twenty or thirty seconds, but when it cleared away we could not see what damage had been done, and she still fired the big gun on her fo’c’stle and the little ones on one side of her battery. She was searching that ridge, trying to find those guns, but was making execrable shooting.
‘They’re going back to their boats, sir!’ Wilson shouted, and turning my glass on the shore, I saw the ragamuffins hurrying down as fast as they’d scampered up half an hour ago, clustering at the edge of the water, and wading out towards the boats. I watched one boat-load pulling like blazes back to its transport, and, just as it got alongside, these two guns fired again and, simultaneously, I saw two black gaps appear in the transport’s side. One spout of water sprang up on the lee side, so I knew that one shell must have gone clean through her, but the other evidently burst aboard, for smoke poured up from amidships.
These transports didn’t do much waiting for boats then, they simply slipped their cables and got under way, steaming farther out from the shore—the boats pulling frantically after them.
The cruisers, too, weighed their anchors and hauled off in a hurry. In fact, they were in so much confusion, and in such a hurry, that the Estremadura, whilst trying to avoid being rammed by the flagship, ran ‘slap’ into the little Primero de Maie, and when they separated, we saw that her stem was twisted, and that the little gunboat had a big gap in her side. She suddenly fell over to starboard, and was so evidently sinking that I sent the Commander away in the picket-boat to help save life. By the time he’d reached her, only her one mast and the top of her funnel could be seen, and the water was thick with little black heads.
The other ships left most of the ‘save life’ business to the picket-boat, and steamed off, firing wildly all the time, though as we who were near could not see those two shore guns, they certainly couldn’t, and hadn’t a chance of hitting them.
The whole flotilla steamed very slowly along the opposite shore, waiting there a little while for their boats, but those two guns soon picked up the range again, and quickened their retreat, actually having the cheek to fire once or twice at them when the Hector was in the direct line of fire, the shells going right over my ship.
The cruisers and transports got out of range presently, and again waited for those of their boats which were still pulling desperately after them.
One wretched boat, crowded with soldiers, had taken a short cut past the town, and as it came towards us, we saw that it was under a heavy rifle-fire from the shore, bullet splashes jumping up all round it.
The men were pulling frantically, ran the boat under our side—the side away from the town—where they were safe—and stopped to take breath. I recognised the officer standing in the stern-sheets—the smart chap who had put old ‘Spats’ and myself into our seats in Santa Cruz Cathedral. He recognised me too, and, taking off his hat, sung out, ‘Permis—sion, Yuesencia, to stay.’
‘Tut! tut! boy! Stay as long as you like,’ I called down, and pointed to the gangway. ‘Come on board and have a drink.’
He got his boat alongside, and was up the ladder in a twinkling. I took him down below. He was very excited, and kept shrugging his shoulders and spreading out his hands.
‘Nous sommes trahis—trahis! Before that we depart from Los Angelos, ze guns of ze forts make plusieurs coups—bang!—bang!—bang! We all up jump—we ask pourquoi they do so? They tell us General Zorilla has won une grande bataille—los insurrectos sont vaincus complètement—allez!—allez!—San Fernando est le votre. Nous sommes trahis—trahis! Nous arrivons à El Castellar—what we find? El General? Oui! Mais l’armée?—where is it? L’artillerie—all gone—peuf! We are brave—we advance—et quoi!’ he shrugged his shoulders till I thought he’d dislocate them. ‘You see what arrive—and they leave me en arrière—behind. Peuf! Nous sommes trahis!’
I tried to soothe him, praised his great courage, and sent the picket-boat, which had already brought back the few people from the sunken gunboat who had not got aboard their own ships, to tow him and his boats down to the transports. I knew that the insurgents would not fire on her when she was protected by the steamboat’s White Ensign, and as we had helped them several times, we might as well do the Government troops a good turn—once in a way. Then I went ashore myself—the smoke of the gallant armada smudging the opposite side of the bay as it steamed back to El Castellar. I went ashore in uniform, too—Perkins, my First Lieutenant, coming with me, and the Comfort, my coxswain, following at a respectful distance behind.
I was doing my best to work myself into a temper, for I wanted to know what the dickens the Provisional Government and Mr. Gerald Wilson meant by firing over my ship, but I’d hardly got ashore, before Mr. Gerald Wilson came galloping past—on his way back along the coast—and I forgot about the shells over my ship, and sung out, ‘Beaten ’em again! Good lad! Good lad!’
‘I hope he didn’t hear the “good lad” part,’ I said to Perkins, as Wilson galloped on. ‘Afraid I wasn’t very angry with him.’
‘I don’t think you were,’ he said, smiling. I really don’t think I was.
We met hundreds of the insurgents pouring back through the town, sweating like pigs, but wild with enthusiasm at the defeat of the Government troops, shouting ‘Viva los Inglesas’ as they passed us on their long march back to El Castellar.
‘I don’t see how we helped ’em to-day,’ I said to Perkins, who was hobbling along on his game leg beside me.
‘Nor do I, sir, but they seem jolly pleased.’
I found de Costa and his blooming Provisional Government—they were all bows and scrapes and hand-spreading.
‘I want to know how you had the confounded impertinence to fire over my ship?’ was what I said to the little Secretary.
I don’t know what he repeated, and for a minute there was terrible consternation among them. They all—theoretically—grovelled in the dust before me. But then they began to smile.
‘His Excellency the Presidente will take you to see ze two gons,’ the Secretary told me, and I think there was a twinkle in his eye.
He did take us, I, de Costa, and his Secretary driving solemnly in one carriage, Perkins and the rest of the Provisional Government crowding into another. We rattled through the lanes, along which Gerald Wilson had driven me, and stopped on top of the ridge. Here we got out, and had to tramp along it.
‘You will see a sur-prise,’ the Secretary bowed—I’m certain that now there was a twinkle in his eye.
We tramped along for a hundred yards or so, turned round a bit of a cocoa plantation, and there, behind a slope, was the first gun, and sitting on the top of one wheel was Bob Temple, and on the other, young Sparks—the ‘Angel’ they called him—both as black as my hat, swilling kola bitters,8 whilst my young clerk, Marchant, with his hand bound up in a blood-stained handkerchief, and half-a-dozen other mids. were lying on the slope, most of them doing the same. Twenty or more ragamuffins were standing by with baskets full of more bottles of kola, and trays of pastry, and the ground was littered with empty brass cylinder cases.
So it was they who’d fired over the Hector, was it! and I wished to goodness that I could look impressive and angry when I wanted to.
They’d sprung to attention when they saw me, and the only thing I could say was, ‘Tut! tut! disgraceful!—go on board at once—your leave’s stopped for ever—tut! tut!’ and as they picked up their coats and obeyed me, I stalked away to the other gun, fifty yards farther along.
Well, the rest of my beauties were there, but I’d had time to fix my eyeglass, and had worked up a fierce glare—I can glare much more successfully behind an eyeglass.
Mr. Bostock, my Gunner, was with them, too, in plain clothes, looking very sheepish, and trying to put one foot on the ground between two brass cylinders which would roll together.
‘You ought to have known better, Mr. Bostock,’ I said.
‘Beg you pardon, sir,’ he muttered humbly, ‘but it was like this. I ‘appened to stroll up ’ere, arter the firing began—just to ’ave a look, sir—and I sees the young gen’l’men ’aving a bit of a spree.’
‘And you helped them—you ought to be ashamed of yourself.’
‘Well, sir, it was like this, sir, I didn’t want the young gen’l’men to disgrace ‘emselves in front of all this kittle cattle, so I just stays ’ere, sir, to see they do the drill proper, sir.’
‘Well, go aboard and report yourself to the Commander. I’ll see you to-morrow.’
‘Viva los Inglesas! Viva la Marina Inglesa!’9 yelled the ragamuffins, as I solemnly marched back to the carriage, and drove back, trying to avoid the eyes of de Costa and his Secretary, who were tittering and grinning delightedly.
‘Hi, lad! Get in here,’ I called to Marchant, as we overtook the boys from the first gun. ‘What’s the matter with your right hand?’
‘Jammed it in the breech-block, sir. They let me do cartridge number,’ he answered proudly.
‘Bad?’ I asked.
‘One finger’s nearly off, I’m afraid, sir.’
‘Tut! tut!’ I said. ‘You won’t be much use for writing, boy, not for some weeks.’
‘I’m afraid not, sir—I’m very sorry, sir.’
Dear, dear! If all this got known, I knew I should get into a terrible row at the Admiralty—it was very tiresome.
When I got aboard I sent for my steward.
‘How many can I ask to dinner to-night, please, Mobbs?’
‘We might do eight, sir,’ he allowed, after a time.
‘Give my compliments to Mr. Bostock when he comes aboard, and ask him to give me the pleasure of his company at dinner to-night, the same to Mr. Marchant and the five senior midshipmen when they come aboard.’
‘Very good, sir,’ he said, much annoyed, ‘but it won’t be what we call a ’igh-class dinner, sir.’
‘Tut! tut! That doesn’t matter, Mobbs. We’ll not grumble,’ I told him, as he went away to consult the cook, scratching his head in despair.
We didn’t grumble, and I made the Comfort stand behind young Marchant and cut up his meat for him—it was about the only job he was fit for—and we finished the evening in poor little Navarro’s cabin trying to cheer him.
He was very down on his luck—poor little chap.
Notes
8 Kola bitters is a sweetish pink aerated water.
9 Hurrah for the English Navy.