An Onshore Storm (Alan Lewrie Naval Adventures) by Dewey Lambdin

Author:Dewey Lambdin [Lambdin, Dewey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250103642
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2018-05-29T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The next morning, Vigilance’s barges carried her Marines ashore to practice their musketry at the 94th’s firing range, and Lewrie took an idle morning off to go witness, and get a little practice of his own with his Ferguson rifled musket and his pair of double-barrelled Manton pistols, weapons that had been stowed away idle far too long, to his likes. Even as a youngster, he had always been a good shot, and when he and his father, Sir Hugo had been invited down to the country estates of his father’s friends, he had excelled with a fowling piece.

The 94th’s newlies seemed to have had only the sketchiest training before sailing from England, barely able to get off three shots a minute, and many of them turning their heads away from the flashes of the pans when “Fire!” was ordered, and God only knew where half their musket balls went, for the long canvas target sheets, painted with an array of enemy soldiers shoulder-to-shoulder, showed little damage.

“Four rounds a minute, lads!” an exasperated new-come Captain roared. “You’ll have to load faster, and when I say, ‘Level,’ you must try to look down the barrel at the target. When I say, ‘Fire,’ squint if you like, but you must try to aim!”

“Water break,” Major Gittings ordered. “Ten minutes in the shade, men. We’ll let the Marines have a go.”

“Thank you, sir,” Marine Captain Whitehead said, then ordered his men to the butts. There was some muttering from the Army troops, some jeers about the superiority of Redcoats over “Lobsterbacks.” The Marines ignored them, stepped to the lines, and, at the order to load, drew paper cartridges from their pouches, bit off one end, and primed their pans. With the firelocks closed, the rest of the powder was poured down the barrels, and ramrods twirled to ram the charges snug. Balls were spat down the muzzles, the wadded up cartridge paper was rammed down atop them.

“Make ready … cock your locks … level … fire!” Whitehead snapped, looking at his pocket watch held in one hand, an expensive one with a second hand. Seventy muskets barked almost as one, then the muskets were lowered, butts on the ground, and reloading began.

“That’s four!” Capt. Whitehead crowed after the last volley. “In one minute! Now, tap-load, lads, and we’ll do five!”

And instead of ramming powder, ball, and wadding down, musket butts were thumped hard on the ground to settle everything snug, and the ramrods were only used to force the wadding down against the ball.

“That’s five!” Capt. Whitehead shouted after the end of the second minute. “And that’s how to do it! Cease fire!”

It took another minute or so for the gunsmoke to roll away, so the target sheets could be seen, revealing shot holes all along the breast-high silhouettes. The Marines had been shooting from fourty yards’ distance, but Whitehead ordered his men to turn round and go to the fifty-yard posts, where they fired another three volleys at the target sheets, then did the same from sixty yards.

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