Guns to the Far East (7 page)

Some of the gunboats had evidently come up, for heavier fire than could have been sustained by the oared boats was opened on the second fleet of junks, which brought a brief but timely respite and enabled the leading boats to close with their opponents. Twice Phillip took his launch alongside a junk with the intention of boarding but each time the crew abandoned ship with scant ceremony and, adhering to his orders, he left the third and fourth divisions to take what prizes they could and continued upstream. As the smoke cleared he could see, a mile or so ahead, the flag-draped mastheads and red and green prows of yet another line of moored junks.

Keppel's galley, flying his pennant of blue bunting, was making towards them, the rowers straining at their oars and several light gigs and pinnaces close astern in support. With the
Sybille
's launch and the
Calcutta
's black pinnace to starboard and just ahead of him, Phillip urged his own men to redouble their efforts and, aided by the now strongly flowing tide, they managed to reduce the distance separating them from the leading boats. But then both launches and one of the rocket-boats grounded off the southern side of a small, flat island. When they finally refloated, they were a hundred yards astern of the Commodore's gig which, with only four boats in support, was receiving terrible punishment.

“Come on, lads!” Phillip yelled hoarsely. “A strong pull does it! Fire as you bear, Gunner's Mate!”

The junks, he saw, were so placed as to present a front of their heavy thirty-twos; their fire was as rapid and accurate as if they formed the broadside of a frigate, and the two launches, with the
Hornet
's rocket-boat fractionally ahead, emerging into the main channel north of the island, found the water alive with ricocheting shot. Phillip's bow-gun engaged in a brief duel with one of the junks and then was put out of action by a roundshot, which struck with such force that the gun was dismounted, crashing backwards and pinning the gun-captain's legs beneath it. Whilst they were struggling to drag the injured man clear, a second shot took his head from his body and, continuing on its deadly way, wounded two of the midships oarsmen.

All about them, Phillip could see foundering boats, some with whole sides of oars shot away. He went to the aid of one but succeeded in rescuing only four of the crew, the rest being dead and, through a momentary gap in the swirling gunsmoke saw, to his dismay, that Keppel's gig was sinking, the Commodore himself standing ankle-deep in water on one of the thwarts. He yelled to Lightfoot to steer towards the stricken gig but the
Calcutta
's black pinnace was before him. Keppel, his Flag-Lieutenant, Prince Victor of Hohenlohe, and two others— both obviously wounded—managed to scramble aboard the pinnace only seconds before the gig submerged. The Chinese, sensing victory, sent salvo after salvo into the scattered boat flotilla but they were not having it all their own way—several of the junks were sinking, others on fire, and two, at least, had their sweeps out, preparatory to taking flight. Obstinately determined to reply to their fire, Phillip scrambled forward to assist the two surviving members of his gun's crew to right their weapon, but the task was beyond their strength and their frantic efforts came near to swamping the launch.

“Sir … sir!” Lightfoot was at his side, mouthing something at him which he could not hear. But the boy was pointing and he saw that the
Calcutta
's barge, with Keppel in the sternsheets, was coming towards them, her Commander waving to them to retire, and he gave the order thankfully. Rowing back against the tide, with the men gasping and close to collapse at the oars and a disabled gig in tow, they had to run the gauntlet of the junks' fire but, miraculously, the launch was not hit. The
Hong Kong
and
Starling,
floated by the rising tide, had come up two miles from Hyacinth Island and the boats of Keppel's division reformed abreast of the
Hong Kong.
The gunboats were under very heavy fire, which was now concentrated on them and, although they replied with spirit, the
Hong Kong,
her decks crowded with wounded men from the boats, was hulled a dozen times in as many minutes and Keppel, standing on her sponson, his glass to his eye, gave the signal to retire out of range.

The deeper-draught steamers, led by the
Haughty,
with the third and fourth divisions of boats, could be seen coming up, and, clear of the worst of the enemy fire, the
Hong Kong
dropped anchor to await the arrival of much-needed reinforcements. Phillip transferred his wounded, numbering four, to her surgeon's care, replaced them with volunteers from the gig they had rescued and, with their aid, managed to remount his battered brass gun. The order came to serve out quinine and biscuit to the exhausted boats' crews and this was being obeyed when Commodore Keppel, still keeping the junk fleet under observation from his vantage point on the
Hong Kong
's paddle-box, suddenly gave vent to a stentorian bellow.

“The rascals are making off!” A small, unmistakable figure in his white pith hat, he shook his fist in the air. “You rascals— I'll pay you off for this! Man the boats, my boys! Man the boats!”

Not everyone had heard his order but his meaning was clear as he was seen to go over the side into the
Raleigh
's cutter, commanded by Edward Turnour, the faithful Spurrier at his heels with his length of blue bunting, the dog, Mike, clutched under his left arm. A cheer went up from the
Hong Kong
's deck, which was taken up and echoed resoundingly by the boats' crews. The newly arrived third and fourth divisions cast off their tow-ropes and raced after those of the nowdepleted first division, all of them somehow finding the heart and energy to join in the cheering. For all the world like boats at a peacetime regatta, the whole flotilla made straight for the junks which, evidently taken by surprise at this sudden turn of events, slackened their fire. Oars out, they broke their hitherto compact line and started to retreat up river, several hoisting their sails.

The manoeuvre, Phillip saw, was performed in beautiful order, the outermost moving off first and the rest continuing to fire at their on-coming attackers. But now, lacking their earlier cohesion and fire power, they were vulnerable and the British shot began to tell, particularly that of the
Hong Kong.
She steamed after the boats for a considerable distance, her bottom scraping mud, until once again the water shoaled and her progress was halted. She kept up her fire, however, scoring hit after hit with roundshot and rockets.

One of the junks, bearing a baleful red and yellow eye painted on her bow, received a hit which smashed most of her port-side oars to matchwood and Captain Cochrane yelled out an order to head and take her. Phillip's boat won the race, his men pulling their hearts out in their efforts, and he came alongside with a jolting crash among the shattered oars, seeing above his head the junk's lower gun-ports open yet robbed of menace, since the angle was now too steep for the gun muzzles to be depressed so as to bear on the launch. A frantic pounding of bare feet on the main deck told him that her crew were about to abandon her and, seizing a dangling rope, he led the rush to board her.

It was—as he had earlier imagined it would be—a novel and exhilarating experience to leap on to the deck of an enemy ship, cutlass in hand and six eager seamen at his back, all cheering wildly as they prepared to secure their prize. But … He drew in his breath sharply. Not all her crew had sought refuge in flight. Three or four were grouped round a swivel-mounted gingall, feverishly trying to slew it inboard to ward off the attackers, and a huge fellow with a pock-marked face, armed with a sword, rallied some of his people about him with the clear intention of making a fight of it.

Thankful that he had left young Lightfoot in charge of the boat, Phillip made for the big Chinaman, ducking a vicious slash from his sword and only dimly conscious of the shots whistling above his head as the crew of the gingall brought their cumbersome weapon into action at last. His pock-marked opponent parried his thrust and struck at him again but this time he went in under the man's guard, warding him off with jabbing blows as the Chinese attempted to kick the blade from his grasp. He was surprised and not a little disappointed when his adversary screeched something in his own language and, turning swiftly, dived over the junk's wooden guardrail into the river. The remaining members of his crew instantly followed his example, leaving their weapons behind them, and Phillip halted, breathless.

“Sir!” O'Brien seized his arm. “Watch out!” He pointed to a train of greyish-black powder laid along the deck. It had been ignited but hastily laid and Phillip could hear it hissing—or imagined he could—just behind him and there was scarcely need to look to ascertain in which direction it led. He yelled to his boarding party to get back to their boat and, fearing that they would not make it before the spluttering powder train reached its destination, started desperately trying to stamp it out. O'Brien joined him and he had barely time to repeat his order to return to the boat when the junk's magazine exploded with a dull roar. The force of the explosion flung both of them off their feet. Phillip picked himself up, bruised and shaken. With water pouring into her shattered hull, the junk took on a heavy list and, the deck canting steeply under his feet, he went in search of his coxswain, groping blindly in the black, choking smoke which, now ominously tinged with flames, was rising from the lower deck.

He had almost given up hope of finding the missing seaman when he stumbled over the prostrate body and heard O'Brien cursing dazedly. He dragged him up and together they staggered to the rail. The launch was below them, the boarding party safely inboard, and Lightfoot was standing up, waving furiously.

“Jump!” he managed thickly and, to his relief, O'Brien did so. Minutes later, the boat's crew picked both of them out of the water, O'Brien shocked into full consciousness by his immersion and swimming strongly. They paddled clear of the junk before she sank in a welter of smoke and flames.

“We're licking them, sir,” Midshipman Lightfoot offered consolingly, as Phillip slumped down beside him on the sternsheets, dripping and breathing hard. “Just look, sir—they're all on the run! And the Commodore's not going to let any of them get away. He's signalling for a chase, sir!”

The boy was right, Phillip saw. The majority of the junks had been taken or run ashore; some, abandoned in midstream, were on fire as their lost prize had been, their crews adding to the hundreds of bobbing heads on the wreckage-strewn surface of the water. But some twenty or thirty had contrived to make their escape and it was these the Commodore was after, heading the chase in Edward Turnour's cutter. Only seven or eight boats followed him, for the flotilla had taken savage punishment, some hulled and barely afloat, others disabled by casualties and capable of doing no more than paddle slowly to the rescue of sinking comrades. Keppel, he knew, was not the man to quit when there was still fighting to be done and he would need all the support available … He glanced at O'Brien. The coxswain, reading his thoughts, gave him a grin.

“I'm all right, sir,” he asserted.

“Very good,” Phillip said. “Obey the Commodore's signal, Mr Lightfoot.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Lightfoot acknowledged happily. He gave a shrill-voiced order and the men bent to their oars.

The fleeing junks were well commanded and, even in defeat, they fought back bravely. Some were headed and taken, several blew up or ran aground, but the remainder continued the running battle, hotly pursued by Keppel's boats. For mile after mile they pulled, the rowers half-blinded by sweat and suffering casualties from the persistent fire of the Chinese stern-guns and gingalls. As a wounded oarsman slumped across his thwart, his place was taken by an officer or a marine and the chase continued, with only six boats in it now, two badly disabled by the enemy's fire.

Phillip, serving the battered brass gun in the bow of his launch, realised suddenly that he could see the red roofs of the city of Fatshan coming steadily nearer and found himself wondering whether the Commodore knew how small their force was and, if he did, whether it was his intention to attempt the capture of the city with his half-dozen boats. That the inhabitants feared an attack became evident, a few minutes later, when several hundred of them sallied forth in martial array, ringing bells and beating gongs, their waving banners and brandished swords clearly visible from the river.

A few shots from Minié rifles and a shower of grape from the bow-gun of the cutter commanded by Captain Cochrane soon scattered them and they retired in undignified haste to the city. Three of the leading junks took advantage of their appearance to make their own escape but five others were caught up with and captured intact, and Commodore Keppel, his coxswain Spurrier lying severely wounded beside him and his boats' crews exhausted, finally gave the signal to break off.

“Well done, my brave boys!” he called out, as the boats clustered about him. “I wish I could lead you into the city—with the support you've all given me today, I fancy it would be in our hands by nightfall. But never mind …” He shook his fist in the direction of the retreating Fatshan soldiery and added, with a laugh, “We'll be back, you rascals—and very soon!”

The men, spent and weary though they were, somehow found the energy to respond with a cheer.

“Do what you can for the wounded,” the Commodore ordered. “And then we'll take our prizes back with us.” He looked down at the injured Spurrier, whose hand was clasped in his own, and the flush of elation faded from his cheeks. “Only three of them got away from us … we must have polished off most of their fleet and that's a good day's work, by any standard. But now there's the butcher's bill to be paid, more's the pity … still, we saved your dog for you, Spurrier my lad. Although I shall never know how!”