Chapter 15: The Pirates’ Response

While an alarm could come at any time during the day, it was most likely at dawn when all of our lookouts first got a good look at the sea. And, until the sun was up, the eastern lookouts couldn’t see any signal-fire smoke from the western towers.

We had an alarm gong at Jayport, hanging next to the docks. It had been hammered out of brass and it didn’t make a loud noise that could be heard over cars and trucks and all the sounds of a modern industrial Earth city. It was plenty loud enough for Jayport, though, where the loudest sounds were the gristmill and the shouting coming from some off-duty sailors having a good time in the tavern. And it used a lot less brass than a real bell would have needed.

Whenever the lookout tower ran a black flag up its pole, we rang the gong three times. That told everyone to go to their emergency stations. For all the locals, that meant go to their farms if they intended to defend them, or close up their shops and go to the walls to help defend the port. For the crews, the sailors and marines, that meant report to the ships as quickly as possible.

That last was really all we wanted, to get the ships’ crews onboard so we could get underway. Okay, there was something else we could do, we could have separate alarms for the ships and the walls. Maybe three-pause-one for a sea emergency and to man the ships, and three-pause-two for a land attack and to man the walls. And just the three by themselves for both? That would probably work.

It took too long, it always did, but then all of the crews were volunteers and many of them were out in the town looking for trouble. Many of them had wives and families, and they all lived in or around the town. A good many of our crews had been farmers and woodsmen before we came to the “Jay River” and founded Jayport, and many of them had already been married when we arrived.

I had not formally named the river, but everyone who came here and heard the base’s name just assumed that Jayport was at the mouth of the Jay River and got its name from it. So much for having a great city named after me!

Anyway, we’d been at Jayport for a couple of years, and every farmer in the whole area who was tired of the endless struggle to grow enough with poor tools had come to town to see if he could get a high-paying job on one of our warships. We had long since been able to outfit everyone in hard leather armor that could be slipped off quickly if you fell into the sea, and we had our own training program for our marines.

The bay at the river’s mouth had some shallow water, and we’d made everyone who wanted to be crew learn how to swim. They didn’t have to be expert swimmers, but I wanted everyone on our ships to at least be able to tread water while they got rescued. Part of their training was shedding their shield and armor as quickly as possible so that they could stay afloat longer.

If they fell in the water, they were to drop whatever they were holding and get rid of their shield, and then take their belt and armor off and let it go. If they could get their shoes off, too, that would help, but the weapons, shield, and armor were first. If we were just out for a day at sea, we would stop and go back and pick them up immediately, but if we were in the middle of a fight we may not be able to do that until the fight was over.

We had gotten enough experience that we all knew what had to be done when, and it had become standard practice to lower at least one boat immediately after the fight ended. Sometimes it was needed to go to the pirate ship, sometimes it was just used to go collect everything that was floating away, like all the big oars that the ships all needed to move against the wind. If we had lost anyone overboard, picking them up would be their first task.

Anyway, between our three ‘first line’ warships, our three or four ‘second line’ warships which were really only good for escort duties, and our cargo ships, we had collected a huge number of sailors and marines. We were in a hurry to get underway, so we didn’t worry too much about which particular men we took as long as we had enough.

Shark was significantly larger than Wrong Place and Thunder, and we’d settled on forty armored shield-and-sword marines plus another fifty archers with much lighter armor. Shark also had two of our “cruise missile launchers” but we almost never used them. They sank ships, and we wanted to capture them if we could.

Wrong Place, our first warship, was smaller and only carried twenty marines and thirty archers, along with the two launchers. Thunder was a bit smaller than Place and we could only fit one launcher, firing to port. There was plenty of room for men, though, so it carried the same twenty and thirty as Place.

Lion was also in port and got underway to help as soon as it had a full crew. Lion was one of our escorts with a partial conversion. Lion had two square-rigged masts and a pair of jibs, but no topmasts or topsails or launchers. Still, that meant it had plenty of room on deck for crew, and it normally sailed with thirty marines and thirty archers. It could carry more, but since it was just escorting freighters and wasn’t looking for trouble it usually didn’t.

For this, though, knowing that there was a fight coming, Lion crammed in everyone who wanted to go. I found out later that Lion had left port with more than forty marines and almost sixty archers, all looking for their share of the prize money.

We had a policy of splitting the money from any captured ship between the crews of all ships present whether they all fought or not, as their mere presence made it easier to capture the pirate ship. If a ship didn’t participate in the fighting it only got half a share, though. If we had two ships involved, they would split the value in half. If one ship did all the work and another ship was nearby but didn’t do anything, the ship that did the fighting got two thirds of the prize money while the spectators only got one third.

Before we set sail, we had a quick conference for Captains and senior lieutenants, We were going to have to tack westward until we found them, so I wanted Lion as the slowest to be on our right, closest to shore. Shark would be next, then Wrong Place and last Thunder as the fastest ship would be the farthest to the south. I wanted us to spread out as far as we could get but still be in sight of each other.

Whoever saw the pirates first should signal by lowering their blue ensign and raising one black flag for each pirate seen. The other ships would be watching for that signal and would converge on the one signaling.

When we found the pirates and closed on them, I wanted the captains to count how many pirates there were. We had four ships, counting Lion. If there were more than four pirate ships, they could sandwich us between two or more of their ships and overrun us. Therefore, we should not attempt to capture any of them until we had at least evened the odds. We should just simply sink any pirate ships we could approach until they were reduced to no more than four.

One of them asked how many ships I thought we’d find.

“Two, probably. However, we don’t know, and we have to be prepared for more. They have to know that something is going on. They’ve lost, what? Between us and the cities and the ones they lost at Widemouth? Twenty five or thirty ships that we know of in the last three years? Perhaps they normally lose one or two ships every year from wrecks or storms, but that is far too many. Sooner or later they will have to respond in some way. For all I know we might find a fleet of fifty ships. If that happens we’re going to be sinking a lot of ships before we’re done tonight.”

Ceecee and Gina both volunteered to come with me, but I vetoed that. This wasn’t a cruise where we stayed out for weeks at a time and I needed someone to keep my bed warm. This was going to be one or two days at the most with a horrible battle in the middle, and no one should be on any of our ships except for the combat crews.

I couldn’t say flatly ‘no women’ because five or six of our sailors were female. They were crew and they belonged onboard just as much as any of the men. Actually, two of them were women who we’d recovered from pirate ships, and they were among the most vicious of our crews.

Those two had to be watched closely when we were dealing with a surrendered pirate ship. No surrendered pirate was safe, with them around. Still, what goes around comes around. They started it. If the pirates hadn’t captured and abused those two women, they wouldn’t be this way today.

So, I was thinking that this was probably just a drill, probably a pair of unknown ships to be checked out. They could even be honest traders or a trader with an escort coming down from Widemouth. In the last couple of years we’d seen ships from countries and towns none of us had ever even heard of. Far to the south, there were some wealthy nations that would trade anything with anybody, and with the new safer seas to their north we were seeing more and more of their ships.

In mid-morning seeing Lion, far off to the north and almost on the horizon, suddenly replace their blue ensign with several black flags and then turn to run to the southeast was a surprise. We did the same thing with our flags to warn Wrong Place and Thunder, and then turned north to see what was going on. Within a few minutes we saw several sails to our northwest.

We reduced sail, just barely making headway towards the north, to allow Place and Thunder to catch up. Meanwhile, Lion was heading southeast, away from the strangers, and soon shifted to due south to join us. If nothing else, we’d all be together soon.

The sails also shifted southward, apparently chasing Lion. Before long, the sails had shifted even more to the south, to meet us too. Great. Probably not a group of honest traders.

They soon resolved to six different ships. From their sails, they were the same things that the pirates used, elongated cogs with a lot of oars so that they could row home again against the wind. It didn’t look like any of them could jack their yards around to tack, so unless they were headed directly downwind they had to row.

Lion wouldn’t have any trouble staying clear of them. Our other three ships could sail circles around any of them, but if they lowered their sails they would be a lot more maneuverable, at least until their rowers tired. On the other hand, if this was an attempt to deal with whatever was taking their ships, every one of them would probably be packed with men, and they could change out rowers whenever they wanted, or even double- or triple-man them for more speed.

Still, every little advantage reduces casualties. The more men they had rowing, or exhausted from rowing, the fewer men they had ready to fight. I had Shark shift to port some to pass them upwind, and before long every pirate ship had lowered their yards.