Old Bahama Straits: The Fifteenth Carlisle & Holbrooke Naval Adventure by Chris Durbin

Author:Chris Durbin [Durbin, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chris Durbin Author Ltd.
Published: 2024-05-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Soundings

Wednesday, Thirtieth of June 1762.

Dartmouth’s Yawl, at Sea, off the Morro Castle, Havana.

The oars made barely a sound as they levered against the canvas-wrapped thole pins and there wasn’t a single light in the boat, not even a dark lantern. The yawl passed through the night with something between a sigh and a whisper and the few stars to the north where the sky was clear of clouds showed nothing but a vague grey shadow that shared little with the hard oak and elm of a yawl belonging to one of His Britannic Majesty’s ships-of-the-line. Only a faint luminescence stirred up by its passage through the water betrayed that something moved over the vastness of the ocean, and that was minimised by the yawl’s slow and steady pace. Nobody spoke and even the laboured breathing of the oarsmen seemed like an affront to the profound silence.

Souter, eight brawny oarsmen and Dartmouth’s two best leadsmen manned the boat, while Hervey, Carlisle and Beazley went about the business of determining whether tomorrow’s expedition had any chance of success.

‘This should do, we’re about three cables off. You can start soundings here, Mister Beazley.’

Carlisle’s whisper sounded like a shout on this still night and the stroke oar winced and instinctively looked over his shoulder towards the castle, sending the whole crew off their timing. It was a miracle that they didn’t make more noise and Souter leaned forward and rapped the guilty man’s ear with his knuckle.

‘It won’t happen again, sir,’ he hissed savagely, ‘stroke oar will keep his eyes in the boat from now.’

This was an old, old story. If the oarsmen could be persuaded to ignore everything that was going on around them they could keep to a perfect stroke, but one distraction, one change in the tempo and the effect rippled through both banks of oars in a flash. Before anything could be done there would be oars flailing in the air, raising splashes and retarding the boat’s progress, possibly with fatal consequences.

‘They can rest on their oars for a spell now, Souter.’

A whispered word and suddenly all eight oars were parallel to the water with the oarsmen leaning their forearms on the inboard ends while they rested before the next spell of rowing.

‘No bottom at twenty fathoms.’

Carlisle realised that he hadn’t heard the splash of the first lead line entering the water. Beazley must have had the leadsman lower it through the first half fathom before letting the line run through his fingers. That would never do for a ship underway because the depth must be measured when the line is vertical. To achieve that the lead line is cast well in front of the ship so that it becomes up-and-down as it reaches the sea bed. It wasn’t an exact art, but a good leadsman who knew roughly what depths to expect could achieve that vertical reading more often than not. Tonight, with the boat almost stationary, no such skill was required.

‘By the mark, twenty.’

That was the second leadsman, on the larboard side of the yawl.

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