Chapter XV The Santa Cruz Fleet Again
Written by Sub-Lieutenant William Wilson, R.N.
For days after that awful morning we seemed half stunned. We had left El Castellar the night before, as smart a ship and as cheery a lot of officers and men as there were in the Navy, and fifteen minutes after La Buena Presidente fired her first broadside the Hector was a complete wreck above the waterline, and was so badly holed beneath it that she only managed with difficulty to keep herself afloat and crawl back into shallow water. Fortunately one anchor and cable had not been destroyed, and we anchored under El Castellar, the Hercules anchoring as close as possible in case it should become necessary for us to abandon the ship.
She sent working parties aboard at once, and we eventually managed to make the Hector fairly water-tight, pump her dry, and get her on an even keel again. But that was not until the third day, and those three days and nights have always been like a horrible nightmare.
We could not get away from things—the stump of the foretopmast and that single copper voice-pipe, sticking out where the fore control had been, to remind us that Montague, Pearson the A.P., Marchant the cheery little Clerk, and the ‘Angel’ had simply disappeared—blown to pieces; the stump of the after 9.2, inside the turret of which Barton had been killed, and the wreckage of the bridge, on top of the starboard foremost turret, which had crushed poor Bigge.
It was two days before it was possible to cut a way into the wreck of the Forlorn Hope’s turret and get out what remained of him and his crew, and really I don’t know what we should have done had we not had to work, hour after hour, day after day, trying to make the Hector seaworthy, and ready to tackle La Buena Presidente again.
Practically everything above the level of the armour had been either completely destroyed, or so crumpled and twisted, as to be almost unrecognisable. We had not one single boat left, and the Hercules had to lend us two of theirs. The foremost funnel had fallen during the action, and the next one was so damaged that it fell overboard that same night. The fo’c’stle mess-decks, the sick-bay, the whole of the lower deck, the ward-room, and nearly all the upper cabins were now simply great blackened spaces, filled with tangled and crumpled iron bulkheads, deck plates and beams, from which every vestige of paint had been burnt off.
Our galleys had been completely destroyed, and it was impossible to do any cooking, so the Hercules cooked food for us and sent it on board till we could rig up temporary fittings.
Of Dr. Clegg and the poor little Padré, or of their stretcher party, not a trace remained. We did find a foot in the wreckage of the after magazine cooling-room, but we could not tell to whom it belonged, and it was buried at sea by the Hercules with the remains of Barton, the Forlorn Hope, and what we thought were thirty-two bodies.
Twenty-four men were missing besides these, and we sent forty-one wounded on board the Hercules to be treated there.
To think that—— No! It’s no use thinking.
Strangely enough the Captain’s quarters had not been damaged, nor had the gun-room and the gun-room flat; and when I first went below from that scene of desolation above to where the midshipmen’s chests stood in four rows, their hammocks slung above them, and their blankets hanging down untidily, just as they had been left when ‘General Quarters’ had sounded, and the gun-room clock was still ticking cheerfully, I almost imagined that I had woke from some horrible dream.
I am thankful to say that the mids. were all sent on board the Hercules to get them away from the ship, and also to let the ward-room officers come down into the gun-room. Their chests were sent after them the following day, and it was the saddest thing in the world to see the four belonging to Barton, the ‘Angel,’ the Assistant Paymaster, and Marchant standing alone by themselves. We could not stand the sight of them, and Mr. Perkins had them taken away somewhere.
The only bright spot in those dreary days was that Ginger and I told each other that we were silly fools, and made up our stupid quarrel. His mids., too, had behaved so jolly well to mine that there was every chance of them also making friends.
The fact that La Buena Presidente had escaped did not even give me any pleasure, for Gerald’s sake, because the Skipper was determined to sink her as soon as he could steam to San Fernando, off which she had anchored, and whatever she did, and however she damaged us above the water-line, she could not, in the narrow Laguna, escape our torpedoes.
I had a long yarn with my chum Navarro, the fat little A.D.C. Strangely enough he seemed quite pleased that the insurgent ship had escaped.
‘It was a great fight,’ he said, his eyes glistening, ‘for Santa Cruz—the Santa Cruz Navy have much honour to beat the great English ship.’
‘But if we’d captured or sunk her the Santa Cruz fleet would have been safe,’ I said, wondering why he was not sorry that she had got away.
He shrugged his shoulders: ‘Captain Pelayo is the best officer in the Navy of Santa Cruz—all men on board her belong to Santa Cruz Navy—it has much honour to Santa Cruz.’
Nobody was allowed ashore, and no boats came off to the ship, so I never heard from Gerald; but the green and black flag now flew over El Castellar, and we knew that the Commandant had at last surrendered. I thought of the ‘Gnome’ marching across that dirty red parade-ground with the black and green bundle under his arm, and hoped that Gerald had allowed him to hoist it himself.
In a week there was no danger of our sinking, and the Hercules went across to Princes’ Town to land the wounded at the Colonial Hospital, and to telegraph home news of the engagement and request orders. I got Ginger to send a telegram to the pater to tell him that Bob and I were all right, although, as a matter of fact, I was very worried about my cousin. He had not ‘bucked up’ in the least. Ginger told me that he hardly spoke a word to any one, and moped all day, so I very much hoped that the change to Princes’ Town, and getting away from the sight of the Hector and of that broken mast, would do him good.
Whilst the Hercules was away the Skipper got out a kedge-anchor astern, to keep us ‘broadside on’ to the narrow entrance, in case La Buena Presidente tried to put to sea, and each night we swept ‘La Laguna’ with our searchlights, and stood ready to fire our torpedoes. However, nothing happened, and when the Hercules returned with orders that La Buena Presidente was to be sunk at all costs, if she would not surrender, we almost immediately weighed anchor and steamed towards San Fernando.
Captain Roger Hill wanted to lead the way in the Hercules—as we were crippled—but the Skipper would not hear of this at any price, so with our mutilated foremast, wrecked bridge and upper works, and our two remaining funnels we started up the bay.
All our big guns, except the after 9.2 and two of the 7.5’s, were fit for action, Mr. Perkins took charge in the after fire-control position, and I do not think we cared what happened to us so long as we sunk the insurgent ship, and avenged our defeat.
The Skipper did not mean to stand off and plug at La Buena Presidente, but to steer straight at her and torpedo her. In fact, if he found her still at anchor, he intended to send everybody, even the guns’ crews, down below the water-line, only himself and enough people to transmit orders and fire the submerged torpedo-tubes remaining above in the conning-tower.
We went to ‘General Quarters’ before we were abreast Marina and the Casino, and I sat on the top of my turret with the long 9.2 cocked up in the air in front of me.
I soon spotted La Buena Presidente’s tripod mast, and as we gradually drew nearer expected her to open fire any minute, but she didn’t, and we crept along for another ten minutes or so. She seemed to be very low in the water, and I was wondering whether that would be due to the mirage, when a signalman, perched on the wreck of the fore bridge, shouted that she was sunk, and, sure enough, as we drew still nearer, we saw that her upper deck was all awash, and only her tripod mast, funnels, and upper works showed above water—the black and green flag hanging from her gaff.
We were too astonished to feel relieved, and anchored within a couple of cables of her.
Almost immediately the Provisional Government came off to make the most abject apologies for what had happened—they wouldn’t have come, I suppose, if their ship had not sunk—and with them came Captain Don Martin de Pelayo—just such another as General Zorilla, as Gerald had told me. He wore eyeglasses, talked English, was awfully polite, and genuinely sorry for the damage he had done.
‘I had my orders—you had yours,’ I heard him tell the Skipper, after they had shaken hands very heartily. ‘I am very sorry. We are not enemies of the English. I try to run past you without firing, but—voila!’ (and he shrugged his shoulders) ‘you shoot so fast and you damage my ship so much, I fear that I shall never arrive at San Fernando. Fifty times you fire—I do nothing—but then I had to fire—it was necessaire, and my guns—voila! they are very big.’
‘Why did you sink her?’ the Skipper asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Treachery—the night after that we come in—we land our wounded—they are many—and many killed—some traitor open our valves, and in the middle of the night we sink in the mud.’
‘We should have sunk you with our torpedoes, so it doesn’t make any difference,’ the Skipper said.
Well, that was the end of La Buena Presidente and the end to all the hopes of the insurgents. The Santa Cruz fleet could come and go where and when it pleased, land another army, and drive Gerald and the Provisional Government into the forest again, beyond the reach of their guns, and there was not the slightest chance either, whilst the fleet controlled the coast, of joining forces with the insurgents in the north and of attacking Santa Cruz itself.
That same evening our young red marine subaltern, the ‘Shadow,’ went mad.
He’d been very peculiar ever since that awful morning when his chum, the Forlorn Hope, had been killed, and the strain of the next few days, followed by the prospect of fighting the insurgent ship again, was too much for his brain. He went raving mad, and had to be shut up in his cabin and his marine servant shut in with him, to see that he did not hurt himself. For three days and nights, although the Fleet Surgeon tried everything to make him sleep, he did not stop shouting and knocking on the cabin bulkhead, and as his cabin was in the gun-room flat we couldn’t get away from his shouting, and it got on our nerves most terribly, so much so that we were all beginning to feel jumpy ourselves. On the fourth morning he was quiet, and the Fleet Surgeon hoped he would recover, but he died early in the afternoon without having ever regained intelligence.
This had a most awfully depressing effect on us all, and, in addition, Cousin Bob was giving Ginger and me a lot of worry. Several times I had been across to the Hercules to see him, and I didn’t like the look of him at all. He could talk of nothing else but that awful fifteen minutes, and of his poor little chum the ‘Angel,’ so that I feared that his brain, too, might be affected.
‘He’s young,’ the Fleet Surgeon said, ‘he’ll get over it;’ and I only prayed that he was right.
Gerald, I heard, was all this time busy mounting some of La Buena President’s small guns on the walls of El Castellar and on that ridge behind San Fernando, hoping to drive off the Santa Cruz fleet if it came again and brought old Zorilla with another army. Still, even if he did drive the fleet away, he had no possible chance of bringing the revolution to a successful termination till he had destroyed it, and there was not the slightest chance of his doing that.
There had been a good deal of trouble ashore since we left San Fernando, because, as soon as the insurgent troops learnt that La Buena Presidente was to be captured by us and handed over to President Canilla at Santa Cruz, and heard of the part we had played in delaying the surrender of El Castellar, they were so bitter against the English that they burnt the Club, and would have killed the Englishmen if the Provisional Government had not, with much difficulty, prevented them doing so. Now, however, that the big ship had been sunk by treachery and El Castellar had surrendered, they, in some way or another, thought that we would again help them, and were just as keen on us as ever. The Provisional Government simply loaded us with fruit and fresh food whilst we remained at San Fernando busy trying to make the poor old wrecked and gutted Hector seaworthy. No leave was given because of the trouble ashore, so that I could not go and see Gerald, and of course, with that warrant for his arrest still lying in the Skipper’s knee-hole table, he could not come and see me.
We heard that General Zorilla and the fleet were preparing for another attack on San Fernando—now that La Buena Presidente no longer could prevent them—and every day we expected to hear the guns firing from El Castellar and to see the ships steaming past it.
And one afternoon they did come; they were half-way between us and the entrance before they were sighted, and we rushed on deck to see them, very glad of any excitement to make us forget our own troubles, but we couldn’t understand why we hadn’t heard any firing, and how it was that Gerald had allowed the ships to slip by him without making an effort to stop them. Poor old Gerald, he’d had a good many ‘ups’ and ‘downs,’ but now it seemed to be all ‘downs.’
I ran below to tell Navarro, and he was as puzzled as I was, shrugging his shoulders as he always did when he couldn’t understand, or didn’t care to tell what he thought.
I ran up on deck again, and on shore we could see the people running about in a scared kind of way, and the small guns on that ridge being manned. I only wished that our mids. could have fought them again.
The flagship was already abreast of El Casino, the three remaining ships, the two torpedo-boats and one wretched transport, following her.
Why only one transport, we wondered!
As we watched and waited for the small guns to fire, the torpedo-boats suddenly increased speed and came steaming quickly towards us.
‘What can be their game?’ we were all thinking, when there were shouts from all over the ship, ‘Look at their flags! Look at their flags! The stripes are horizontal! It’s the black and green flag! It’s flying on the flagship as well! Look!’
There wasn’t a doubt about it. Each torpedo-boat had a huge black and green flag at her masthead, and in ten minutes we could see the colour and the horizontal stripes with the naked eye, as they dashed along close to the shore. We heard hurrahing, and saw hundreds of the little brown forest-men crowding down on the beach as they passed, jumping about on the sand, wading into the sea up to their waists towards them, and waving their rifles. The shouting and the hurrahs spread along the road till the town itself was full of voices, all the bells in the place began ringing, and hundreds of black and green flags were hoisted.
‘I’m blowed if they haven’t become insurgents themselves,’ the Skipper muttered, dropping his eyeglass in his surprise; and there couldn’t be the least doubt of it, for now we could see the crews of the torpedo-boats waving their caps to the troops on the beach, and could hear the crews of the ships cheering.
Well, that pretty nearly knocked us all ‘flat aback,’ and we realised at once that now Gerald, with the Santa Cruz fleet to help him, would be master at sea and could do anything he liked, join forces with the insurgents in the northern province, and attack Santa Cruz itself whenever he was ready. It was so grand and so jolly unexpected that I hardly know what I felt, only awfully thankful that the revolution would be over soon, and that Gerald wouldn’t be worrying them all at home.
The two torpedo-boats slowed down as they came towards us. ‘Viva los Inglesas! Viva la Marina Inglesa!’ their crews shouted, and then they were past and abreast the poor old La Buena Presidente, with the water running through her upper works and the top of her foremost turret just showing above the surface like the back of a whale.
They stopped, their crews stood to attention along their rails and saluted the flag that drooped over her, and suddenly burst into cheers, shouting, ‘Viva El Capitaine Pelayo! Viva Pelayo! Viva la Marina Santa Cruz! Viva Presidente de Costa! Viva los Horizontals! Viva Don Geraldio!’
The last shout made me warm up all over. Good old Gerald! they hadn’t forgotten him, didn’t bear him any ill-will, and were proud of him too.
‘I’ll be able to ask him to dinner after all,’ the Skipper said, twinkling and rubbing his hands. ‘The Government is almost certain to recognise the Provisional Government now. Don’t expect he’d come, though—wouldn’t care to dine with the poor Skipper of a beaten ship.’
The ships themselves came along now, and this time they did notice us, their crews crowding behind the hammock nettings and in the gun ports to see the awful destruction La Buena Presidente had done to us. The flagship had only ‘Presidente’ on her stern—the ‘Canilla’ part had been knocked off—and she slowed down and fired seventeen guns to salute the sunken ship.
For the first time since that awful morning I felt happy, and rushed down below to tell Navarro what had happened.
He did not seem in the least depressed, and shrugged his shoulders. ‘I make the guess. When you tell me El Castellar no fire guns when they pass, I had the suspic—ion. De Costa will now be Presidente—Canilla will fly.’
‘What will become of General Zorilla?’ I asked him. I didn’t want to see the old chap go to the wall.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘He never change. If Canilla tell him “fight,” he will fight till he killed; but when de Costa is Presidente and tell him to fight, he also fight till he killed.’
I knew what Navarro meant, and it was just what I thought the grand old chap would do.
Well, that is what happened and how everything was changed in a single hour; the Santa Cruz Admiral came to call on the Skipper and explain matters, and the Provisional Government came off to renew their claims for Recognition. It was just as Navarro had thought. The news that their old comrades in La Buena Presidente had beaten one of the finest cruisers in the English Navy had come to the ships huddled under the breakwater at Los Angelos, expecting every hour that she’d come along and sink them, and they were so proud of her and her people, and so enraged when they heard that she’d been treacherously sunk after her glorious fight, that they hoisted the black and green flag and came along to throw in their lot with the insurgents.
The Provisional Government, as a reward for his great services, made the Admiral Vice-President and gave his job to Captain Pelayo.
This pleased the fleet even if it did not please the Admiral, who must have known that it was only done so that there’d be no chance of his altering his mind again. Gerald told me, long afterwards, that he’d been given the choice either of becoming Vice-President or of being shot.
The Hercules went off to Princes’ Town to renew the Provisional Government’s demand for Recognition, and came back again, two days afterwards, with the welcome news that both the British and United States Governments had granted it. This was like a weight off my chest, because Gerald now could come and go wherever he liked without fear of arrest.
The Skipper sent a private note to de Costa telling him the news, and let me go with him when he and Captain Roger Hill went ashore to communicate it officially. We could hardly get through the crowds that blocked the streets and filled the square in front of the Alcade’s[#] offices, where the Provisional Government were installed; thousands of the insurgent troops surged round us cheering for all they were worth, but we got through them eventually and I spotted Gerald.
[#] Mayor.
‘It’s all splendid,’ he said; ‘won’t the mater be glad? D’you know that that transport they brought is “chock-a-block” with ammunition and stores from Los Angelos?’
‘I expect you’ll be back at the rubber plantation soon,’ I laughed, I felt so jolly happy; but Gerald only smiled and shook his head, ‘Not exciting enough.’
‘How about that little beast?’ I asked. ‘Is he safe in hospital?’
‘You cruel brute!’ he answered; ‘you maimed him for life. He’s cleared out somewhere—they let him go—no one knew him.’
I felt awfully vexed and angry about that, and implored Gerald to be careful, but he only smiled and knocked the ashes out of his pipe. He was looking as fit as a fiddle, he’d done away with the sling for his arm, and it did please me so to see him, in the same smart white riding things and polo helmet, ‘bossing’ it among all the other fellows, who’d put on their most gorgeous uniforms for the occasion, and were covered with huge green and black sashes.
The Skipper came up to congratulate him, and I went off to shake hands with the ‘Gnome’—he hadn’t put on any rotten sashes—and with José, who was squatting outside, on the steps, holding Gerald’s horse. Then we went back to the Hector.
‘Couldn’t get your brother to dine with me,’ the Skipper said, looking as if he’d been snubbed, ‘he’s too busy and has no clothes.’
I was very sorry, because I had so looked forward to showing him off to every one on board.
Next day we crawled across to Prince Rupert’s Island, the Hercules close by, in case we wanted assistance, and people came swarming off to see us and the wreck we were. Navarro was sent ashore to the Colonial Hospital, the mids. were still kept aboard the Hercules, and the local ship-repairing yard commenced to patch us up and make it safe to find our way to Bermuda for a more thorough repair.
The black ‘washer’ ladies came crowding aboard, as before, and were struck all of a heap when they saw the mess we were in.
Arabella Montmorency had brought back some of the ‘Angel’s’ washing—it had been left behind—and when I told her that he’d been killed, she burst out crying, sobbing out, ‘De Good Lo’d take de pretty little boy; why He no spare him for Arabella to vash his clo’s. Oh, de pretty boy, de pretty boy!’ She was terribly upset about Perkins’s washing too. A shell had entirely destroyed his cabin and everything in it, so that he had absolutely nothing to wear except what he stood up in.
She burst out into fresh sobs. ‘Poor Massa Perkins! poor Massa Perkins!—no clo’s—no vash clo’s—Arabella more sooner vash for him for noddings than Massa Perkins have no clo’s for Arabella to vash.’
For five weeks we remained anchored off Princes’ Town, and everybody began gradually to brighten ‘up’ as the memory of that awful fifteen minutes and the next week of woe became less vivid, though we still had not the heart to arrange any matches with the Hercules or with Princes’ Town. At first the shore people were always saying, ‘Couldn’t you arrange a cricket-match for this day or that?’ and we’d answer, ‘Ask our doctor, ask Clegg. He runs the cricket,’ and then remember that he had disappeared, and that Bigge, our best bat and bowler, and Montague and Pearson, two others of our team, had also been killed. It was very difficult to forget about them.
We had plenty of news, all this time, from San Fernando, because those local steamers, which had been lying idle for the last few months, resumed their work and ran regularly up to La Laguna. Gerald even found time to write a letter and let me know that preparations were being made for the final attack on Los Angelos and Santa Cruz, but he wrote that there would be some delay as the insurgents in the northern province were not yet ready. They were exhausted, temporarily, by the effort of driving Canilla’s army into the mountains and wanted rest. I knew that if Gerald was there they wouldn’t get much rest, but he couldn’t be in two places at once. He didn’t mention the ex-policeman, so I hoped that the little brute had disappeared for good.
From Santa Cruz we heard very contradictory reports, but there was no doubt that President Canilla was making desperate efforts to defend the city, and that the batteries above Los Angelos were practising almost daily. He was issuing fiery proclamations to encourage his troops, but, in spite of them, and in spite of General Zorilla’s popularity, his men were deserting in great numbers.
It was known that directly the insurgents commenced to make their final attack on the city, the Hercules was to go across to Los Angelos, to be there in case any trouble arose and she might be wanted to back up the authority of the British Minister. As the Hector was to go to Bermuda you can imagine that every one on board her was rather sorry not to be able to see the end of the revolution. Of course I was especially sorry because of Gerald. You can therefore guess how jolly pleased I was when the Skipper sent for me one morning and told me that he was transferring me to the Hercules. One of her lieutenants had been invalided home and I was to take his place.
‘Tut, tut, boy!’ he said; ‘I chose you because I knew you’d like to keep an eye on that haughty brother of yours.’
It was jolly good of him, and when the local repairs had been completed, and the Hector was fit to steam to Bermuda, I packed my gear, was taken across to the Hercules, and, with Ginger and Cousin Bob, watched her slowly crawl past us, out through the northern entrance. The band struck up ‘Rolling Home’ and ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ and I felt rather mournful to see my old ship steaming away without me, looking, even now, very desolate and dreary with her jerry foretopmast, patched bridge and upperworks, and only her two after funnels.
I had a very jolly time aboard the Hercules with Ginger, found Cousin Bob much brighter, and Ginger and I often chuckled to see how his mids. and mine had become as thick as thieves.