Armada

Evardo drew his sword and twisted the weapon slowly in his hand, examining the keen edge as the sunlight reflected off the long narrow tapered blade. He glanced up at the galleasses two hundred yards ahead, marvelling at their sleek, spear-like hulls and the hypnotic glide of the oars as they rose and fell in seemingly effortless grace. The stranded English galleons would be helpless against such predators. Evardo became acutely aware of the weight of the sword in his hand, knowing he would soon have a chance to wield it on the deck of an English ship.

Evardo checked the line of his galleon. He nodded, confident that Mendez was garnering every knot of speed he could from the light breeze. The galleasses would certainly reach the English first. Their lead was increasing fractionally with every draw of the oars, but once the galleasses engaged at close quarters the Santa Clara and the galleons behind her would be upon the enemy in minutes.

Then Evardo noticed that some of the starboard oars of de Moncada’s flagship, the San Lorenzo, seemed to be out of sync. The entire bank of oars lost their cohesive tempo. The bow of the San Lorenzo skewed violently and almost hit one of her sister ships. The galleasses slowed, their once arrow-straight trajectories falling foul of some unseen force that defied their purpose.

‘Rip tide,’ Evardo whispered, recognizing the consequences of the dreaded phenomenon.

‘Mendez, shorten sail,’ he shouted, his command coinciding with the sailing captain’s own instinct to slow the pace of the Santa Clara.

Within minutes the floundering galleasses had steadied their hulls, but they were no longer advancing. The rip tide was holding them fast. Evardo balled his fist in anger and sheathed his sword, unsure of what he should do next. He could try to go around the galleasses, but he had no idea how far the tidal race extended. With such an insipid wind there was little chance he could forge a path through the rip. The tantalizingly close enemy slowly turned their broadsides to the struggling galleasses.

‘Give ’em hellfire,’ Robert whispered a heartbeat before Larkin’s voice was drowned by the tremendous boom of the broadside cannonade. The Retribution shuddered from the recoil, the decks trembling as if in fury, its firepower marking the galleon as a warship born for the maelstrom of battle.

‘Hard about, Mister Seeley. Chasers to bear,’ Robert called coldly, drawing on his loathing for the mongrel galleasses and their fearful rams.

Seeley called for the change, his focus locked on the calamity that had befallen the Spaniards.

‘Portland Race,’ Robert explained, seeing Seeley’s expression.

‘Of course.’ He had heard of the tidal race but had never encountered it and knew little of its power. It had never occurred to him that this was Frobisher’s stratagem – to use the massive disturbance caused by the tide flowing between The Shambles and the tip of Portland Bill.

At five hundred yards Larkin’s guns were having little effect on the structure of the galleass in the Retribution’s line of fire, but the round shot had torn bloody swathes across her open decks and the crimson hull could not conceal the devastating effects of the broadside. The Retribution continued to turn in an agonizingly slow figure-of-eight, the gun crews poised expectantly behind their charges, while near at hand the broadsides of the other galleons fired off in uncoordinated salvos, the ships firing as they could. As bait they had held their nerve and kept their fire in check. As aggressors they would let fly with all the wrath they could muster.

‘Neapolitan cobardes,’ Evardo shouted, unable to contain himself. ‘Why don’t they pull through?’

The galleasses were still arrayed before the Santa Clara, unable or unwilling to advance. It appeared that de Moncada had lost his nerve for the fight. Where initially the galleasses had been clapped in the irons of a rip tide they were now paralysed by their indecisive commander. If only the galleasses were commanded by Spaniards. They would not shirk. The Spaniards were warriors, not whore-bred traders like the Neapolitans. While Evardo’s own ship was a slave to the wind, the galleasses’ oars should allow them to break through and take the first prizes of the campaign. The strength of a ship needed only the courage to wield it. For a moment Evardo was tempted to close and board the nearest galleass and take command of its crew.

The boom of a full broadside washed over the deck, followed an instant later by the whistle of round shot, many of them missing the galleasses to tear holes in the air around the Santa Clara. Evardo had ordered his gunnery captain to return fire with the bow chasers if any targets presented themselves but with the galleasses under their sights the guns of the Santa Clara had remained quiet, robbing Evardo’s crew of the satisfaction of fighting fire with fire.

‘Comandante,’ Mendez called.