Weighted with lead, the contraption is almost entirely submerged, making it hard to see or sink. Two helmsmen steer with a paddle, aiming for specific ships and specific mooring cables. As they near the target, one yanks a lanyard to set the clockwork ticking, releases the torpedo, and they paddle the catamaran away.”
“Paddle where?” Popham asked. I admired such practicality.
“To English ships waiting offshore. It will take pluck, of course, but the doughty rogues who steer this weapon might turn the tide of war.”
All the Smiths turned to look at me. I hastened to speak up. “Damned clever, like all Yankee ingenuity. As an American myself, I’ll direct the attack from a quarterdeck, given my knowledge of the French port. I can study the charts, observe the weather, and make calculations off the tide tables.”
“Tide tables!” Sidney Smith laughed. “I know you too well to think you’d be content with that, Ethan. Nor would I trust your arithmetic. No, no, this is the perfect job for you and your giant friend, Pasques. Doughty rogues indeed! And you both speak fluent French, in case you’re hailed by suspicious lookouts. By God, I’ll wish I was with you, paddling toward the entire French navy and army with blackened face and dark little cap, lonely spearhead for the might of England, unleashing a positive cataclysm of rockets, mines, and cannon fire.”
“You can take my place,” I offered hopelessly.
“Alas, I’m chained to high command. But you can unleash a hideous new way of warfare. Not quite sporting to sneak in like that, but effective, what? Yours will become a peculiar kind of glory, but glory nonetheless.”
“I’ll slip you so close we’ll smell their damned snails,” Johnstone added.
“It is the garlic one smells,” Pasques contributed.
I cleared my throat. “Sir Sidney, I thought you didn’t trust me after my poor performance as a spy in France?”
“Which is why I know you’re burning to prove yourself, Ethan. Sign on to make this work, and your friend Robert there gets a lucrative contract from the admiralty to build more of his devil machines.”
“Bully for him.”
“Sign on, and history turns a new chapter.”
“History will flip its own pages without any help from me.”
“Sign on,” he said, looking at me intently, “and you’ll win passage to Venice to find your wife and son.”
CHAPTER 23
The French masts combed the sky like a line of dead timber, backlit by lanterns on the hills of Boulogne. The British ships were entirely dark, and we ghosted to attack on a light midnight breeze, planning to win the war not with blazing line of battle but secret weapons. The captains and sailors I met thought we inventors were eccentric at best and bound for bedlam at worst, but they were under orders to let us try.
Our mission was to set ablaze the line of ships guarding Boulogne, and then all the invasion craft inside the harbor. Our plan was to attack first with Fulton’s torpedoes, and then with volleys of Congreve’s rockets.
My job was to get things off to a rousing start.
It had taken nine agonizing months since returning to England to prove myself, lay new plans, and train for this mission, all the while with no word of my wife and son. I was wildly impatient to search for them, but Smith kept a close eye on me, and two warring nations stood in my way. So maybe this inventive warfare could end the conflict. My separation from Astiza had stretched to an eternity, but perhaps this night eternity would have an end.
Fulton built two pontoons connected by thwarts, with a long cylinder slung beneath that was packed with gunpowder. This was the torpedo. Each component floated, but lead sank this “catamaran” so that the top of the twin pontoons was barely above the surface of the water and the torpedo itself was entirely submerged to protect it from gunfire. Pasques and I straddled each pontoon like riders on horses, dressed in black with our faces coated with polish. Once released from our mother ship, we were to paddle with the tide to reach the anchor cable of a moored French naval vessel, tie on the torpedo, and paddle away.
“All that’s required is pluck and genius to reach the anchor cable undetected and set the clock ticking under the very eyes of the enemy,” Fulton told me after the catamaran was lowered over the side of the Johnstone’s Phantom, clunking ominously against its hull. “Having first landed and then escaped from France, you’ve demonstrated