SHARPE’S TRAFALGAR. Bernard Cornwell. Sharpe’s Trafalgar: Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Trafalgar, October 21, 1805

No one knew what had caused the northward turn, for no other ship was visible from the cabin portholes, though it was possible a lookout high in the rigging had seen some topsails on the southern horizon. The motion of the ship was more uncomfortable now for she was slamming into the waves and heeling over. Then, when the supper was carried to the passengers, the officier marinier ordered that no lights were to be shown, and promised that anyone who disobeyed him would be thrust down into the ship’s hold where fetid seawater slopped and rats ruled.

“So there is another ship,” Dalton said.

“But has she seen us?” Sharpe wondered.

“Even if she has,” Dalton said gloomily, “what can we do?”

Sharpe prayed it was the Pucelle, Captain Chase’s French-built warship that was as quick a sailor as the Revenant. “There is one thing,” he said.

“What?”

“I need Tufnell,” Sharpe said, and he went down to the officers’ quarters in the great cabin and hammered on the lieutenant’s door and, after a brief conversation, took the lieutenant and Dalton to Ebenezer Fairley’s cabin.

The merchant was robed for bed and had a tasseled nightcap falling over the left side of his face, but he listened to Sharpe, then grinned. “Come on in, lad. Mother! You’ll have to get up again. We’ve got some mischief to make.”

The problem was a lack of tools, but Sharpe had his pocket knife, Tufnell had a short dagger and the major produced a dirk and the three men first pulled up the painted canvas carpet in Fairley’s sleeping cabin, then attacked a floorboard.

The board was made of oak over two inches thick. It was old oak, seasoned and hard, but Sharpe could see no alternative except to make a hole in the deck and hope that it was in the right place. The men took it in turns to hack and scratch and carve and cut the wood, while Mrs. Fairley produced a kitchen steel from a traveling chest and periodically sharpened the three blades that were slowly, so very slowly, digging through the plank.

They made two cuts, a foot apart, and it took till well past midnight to cut through the board and lift the section out. They worked in the dark, but once the hole was made Fairley lit a lantern that he shielded with one of his wife’s cloaks and the three men peered into the darkness below. At first Sharpe could see nothing. He could hear the grating of the tiller rope, but he could not see it, and then, when Fairley dropped the lantern into the hole, he saw the great hemp rope just a foot or so away. Every few seconds the taut rope would move an inch or more and the creaking sound would echo through the stern.

The rope was fastened to the tiller which was the bar that turned the Calliope’s great rudder. From the tiller the rope went to both sides of the ship where it ran through pulleys before returning to the center of the ship where two more pulleys led the rope up to the ship’s wheel which was really two wheels, one in front of the other, so that as many men as possible could heave on the spokes when the ship was in heavy seas and high winds. The twin wheels were connected by a hefty wooden drum around which the tiller rope was tightly wound so that a turn of the wheel pulled on the rope and transferred the motion to the tiller bar. Cut that rope and the Calliope would be rudderless for a while.

“But when to cut it, eh?” Fairley asked.

“Wait for daylight?’ Dalton suggested.

“It’ll take some cutting,” Sharpe said, for the rope was near three inches thick. It ran in a space between the main and lower decks and Fairley put the canvas carpet back into place, not only to disguise the hole, but to keep the rats from coming up into his cabin.

“How long will it take to replace that rope?” the merchant asked Tufnell.

“A good crew could do it in an hour.”

“They’ll have some good seamen,” the merchant said, “so we’d best not waste their efforts now. We’ll see what morning brings.”

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