The Baltic War(227)

"So go. You have my blessing. Try not to let the ship sink somewhere in the North Sea, would you? I don't want to have to listen to the admiral wailing and moaning about it."



Mike couldn't imagine John Chandler Simpson wailing and moaning about anything. Like most of Gustav Adolf's jests, this one was heavy-handed.



But he chuckled anyway. "London, here we come. Get me Melissa on the radio, please," he said to the radio operator. Doing his level best to sound as calm and unruffled as the man who, from time to time, he really didn't mind calling "Your Majesty."





Chapter 51





Luebeck Bay


The Bay of Luebeck was a dark blue sheet of polished marble, burnished with regular patterns of silver foam, sliding steadily north-northwest. The wind was brisker than it had been, and the visibility had cleared as SSIM Constitution led her squadron steadily south toward the city of Luebeck and the estuary of the Trave River.



It was chillier than it had been, too, Simpson reflected as he stood on the bridge wing once more, and the wind-over-deck generated by the ships' speed made it even chillier.



He looked astern, at the clouds of smoke belching from the timberclads' funnels, and wondered once more if he should have left them behind. It was a hard call. Steaming through the water as fast as their thrashing paddle wheels could drive them, they were making good a speed of almost thirteen knots. He couldn't drive them any faster than that, even under these relatively benign conditions, and the strain of maintaining that sort of speed was undoubtedly having its consequences in their engine rooms. Temperatures down there must be soaring, however brisk it might feel out here on the open bridge, and he was well aware that he was running the risk of severe injuries—possibly even fatal injuries—to his stokers and engine room personnel by driving them so hard.



Unfortunately, those two timberclads represented forty percent of his total carronade strength and a third of his total available hulls. He was going to need those guns—and those hulls—very shortly now.



His problem, like most problems war threw up, was fundamentally simple. It was the solution that was hard.



Colonel Woods' last reconnaissance report put the League of Ostend's naval strength in the Bay of Luebeck at thirty-plus men-of-war. Any one of Simpson's vessels should be able to demolish any seventeenth-century warship in no more than a few broadsides. What had happened to Railleuse constituted a sort of practical field test proof of that assumption. And, every one of Simpson's vessels was much faster—probably three times as fast, even the timberclads, under these weather conditions—than any of the League's ships could possibly be. The problem was that there were at least five times as many League ships as Simpson had, even with the timberclads. If they did the smart thing and scattered and ran for it the instant he arrived on the scene, he'd need as many weapons platforms as he could get his hands on just to chase them down. And he'd also need as many hours of daylight as he could get in which to accomplish the aforesaid chasing down, which meant he had to get there as quickly as he could.



On the other hand, he thought moodily, looking at the dark pillars of smoke coming along at the end of his line, there's the little problem of smoke.



The funnel smoke from Achilles and Ajax had to be visible for miles. The squadron had certainly outrun any Danish or French vessels that might have sighted them and tried to take warning to Luebeck. Unless Captain Admiral Overgaard's lookouts were blind, however, they were going to spot that smoke well before the squadron's ships themselves ever became visible. And unless Captain Admiral Overgaard was a complete and total idiot (which, manifestly, he was not), the instant anyone reported smoke rising out of the water somewhere to the north of him, he would know exactly what must be coming toward him from just over the horizon. Admittedly, he might not know exact numbers, and his estimate of Simpson's vessels' capabilities was undoubtedly problematical, at best. Aage Overgaard, however, had already been the recipient of several unpleasant surprises, courtesy of Gustav Adolf's former up-timer allies and current up-timer subjects. He was unlikely simply to sit around waiting for the next unpleasant surprise to be visited upon him.



What was it Clausewitz said? "In war, everything is very simple, but even the simplest things are very difficult," or something like that.



Well, he'd made up his mind, and one thing he'd learned long ago. Once you'd committed yourself to a course of action, trying to change course in the middle of things was a sure path to disaster.



So stop worrying about the damn smoke clouds, John, he told himself sternly.



Sure, no problem, himself replied sarcastically.