Chapter 24: Safety Bay

After a while I got called back to Flying Arrow. Tony, Eric, and the Commander were fairly confident that they wouldn’t need all of our soldiers to take the citadel. They wouldn’t be sure until they actually saw Safety Bay, but if their new information was right they could release a lot of the transports to go with us on our sweep around the island.

I appreciated the heads-up, and we modified our plans accordingly. The whole fleet would all go to Safety Bay, which was a inlet on the south side of a peninsula that stuck out the east end of the island. The warships would lead. Once the defending fleet had been disposed of, the transports would start landing and the escorts would keep them safe.

The warships would take off for our sweep as soon as Sir Tony gave us the okay, and transports would be released to follow us as soon as they were sure they weren’t needed for the citadel. Depending on how things looked, that could be before the first landings or it could be never, but the intention was to release them as soon as possible.

For our part, all we could do was get ready for combat. Our informants could not guess at what size the defending fleet was. Anywhere from none up to thirty ships. Well, we had almost sixty ships that could fight their way if they had to, plus seven ships that could fight our way. Eaglet and “The Larder”, what we were calling the captured provision ship, were the only ships we had that couldn’t defend themselves. I put all the escorts right behind us again, to finish up anyone left after we had passed them. We only left Flying Arrow behind with the transports, and that was because King Tom was on it.

I also asked the warships to look over their opponents, as ships that would make good additions to our fleet could be boarded and captured by the escorts. Any ships that weren’t worth the cost in blood of capturing them should be just sunk as we passed by them. I asked the escorts to assume that any enemy ship not sunk outright by the warships was probably worth capturing and taking home with us.

We found South Isle in the afternoon of our second day after passing between Central and Mountain Isles. Once we had our location we gathered the fleet again with warships first, the escorts behind us, and the transports in the back. We skirted along the island to the east, just over the horizon and using one of our ships as a scout. We rounded the peninsula that protected Safety Bay the next morning, but it took a couple of hours to beat upwind to the city. When we got there it was almost noon, with high tide soon to come.

We found a dozen ships on patrol waiting for us, and with my telescope I could see another twenty or so beached or tied to various piers. This was a larger seaport than any I’d seen yet. Not even the major cities on the mainland had that many ships just pulled up on shore.

If they had the manpower to put two hundred men on each ship that was over five thousand men and we were in trouble. The city itself didn’t look that large, though. Certainly no larger than several of the mainland cities I’d seen.

Were these ships coming to meet us the dregs of their fleet, relegated to patrol duty? Or were they their elite, the ones kept ready at all times? I figured that the simple fact that they were coming out to meet us answered that. If they were older and slower ships only good for patrolling for smugglers, they wouldn’t be coming to meet a fleet of fifty ships.

Once we were only a half-mile or so apart, I sent up “BK”, a space, and “1UP” on one signal halliard and “2F” on the other. That was “All ships stop”, “Shark will parley”, and “Wrong Place follow me”. The signal flags made everything easier. I’m not going to say that everyone obeyed at the same time and it looked like a crack fleet, but all the geese stopped soon enough.

We furled our sails and started rowing slowly towards the enemy ... fleet? Squadron? Guard flotilla? When Wrong Place joined us, we sped up a little and then stopped when we were about halfway between the two fleets.

Soon afterwards, we could hear speaking trumpets and all of the pirate ships lowered their yards except for one large one in the middle, probably the flagship. The large ship continued on towards us, and eventually lowered its yard when it was close, rowing to meet us.

We both stopped when we were beside each other, about twenty feet apart. Close enough for boarding hooks, archers, and thrown spears, but too far for thrown axes. We could talk without having to yell.

“This is Shark, out of Jayport. I am Lord Jason of Topeka. I command this fleet for the King of Hunter Island. Does one of you command this ... group of ships?”

One of the men stepped forward, saying “I am Senior Captain Michael of Short Creek. I command here for the Mayor of Safety Bay.”

Mr. Black had told us that “Mayor” was one of the titles the Pirate Isles used for the head mo-fo in charge, and in most places it was a hereditary title passed from father to son unless there was a violent change of dynasty. For Safety Bay, the Mayor had been a nasty warlord named Landon the last time he had heard.

“Is Landon still the Mayor there?”

“Yes, he has been Mayor for more than ten years now.”

“Very good. We have ... business ... with Landon. We are willing to accept the surrender of anyone on South Isle who wishes to stay out of this. We are willing to kill anyone who wants to die for Landon. Now, I can understand that you might be willing to fight for your homes and your families, but unless you live with Landon we’re not interested in your homes and your families. Do you think that Landon and his men can keep out eight thousand men who want in?”

“Maybe not, but we’re not going to surrender just because you say so.”

“I’m trying to avoid your ships being boarded by our ships. We have more than fifty ships here. Each one has more than a hundred men onboard, most of them close to two hundred, and they all know how to fight. Would you be willing to have just a couple ships fight, so that you see what happens?”

“I can do that.”

“Very well, would you be willing to send two of your ships against one of mine? I won’t even use this one. Choose two ships that you think can win, but that you can afford to lose because I expect both of your ships to be sinking soon. If your ships win, then your group has a chance against us and your ships should fight us. However, if my one ship can sink both of yours, perhaps you should surrender so that the rest of your ships aren’t sunk.”

“Our ships are all in good shape. They won’t sink because of a few bumps.”

“Perhaps not, but I want you to warn your men that they may have to go swimming.”

“I will choose this ship and one other.”

“Do you have an assistant who will command after you are dead? There’s no point in this if we are going to have to start this over again with whoever commands after you.”

“I don’t plan to die.”

“Fine. Can you swim?”

“If need be, I can swim long enough to reach another ship.”

“Very well. My ship will withdraw until after the fight is over. If your ships win, then you will think that you have a chance and we will have a battle between all of our ships and a lot of good men will die today. If my ship wins, the rest of your ships will surrender and no one else will die.”

While Shark was withdrawing I used my trumpet to tell Filo “They are going to send two ships to show you what pussies you are. I want you to just sink them both. Once they are going down you should stop and pick up survivors.”

Then I had my signalmen hoist “BUX2K” and “2UAZTWO”. “All ships except Wrong Place stop” and “Wrong Place attack two”. I wanted to say “ ... attack two enemies” but I had no way to say “we’re done spelling the word, next flag is to be read as its normal meaning” so I had to leave the ‘E’ off. Besides, Filo already had my orders. The signals were for the rest of the fleet to know what was going on.

Right there was two places my signal book was screwed up. Since a raw number meant “the ship with that pennant number”, I should have a flag that meant ‘following is a number’. I could spell out a short number like ‘TWO’ with ‘Z’, but what if I wanted to state a number with a larger name like eleven or seventeen? I didn’t want to hoist “ZELEVEN” or “ZSEVENTEEN”. I should be able to hoist the ‘number’ flag and then ‘11’ or ‘17’. I didn’t think we even had four ‘E’ flags.

Later, I looked at the code-book for a while before I saw the answer. The letter ‘U’ was used to mean “alternate meaning” for a bunch of common codes that didn’t fit in the rest of the alphabet, and they were all alternate meanings for letter flags. ‘A’ meant “Acknowledge” but ‘UA’ meant “Attack”. What if ‘U’ was followed by numbers instead of letters? I could say that any numbers that followed ‘U’ were literal.

With that, the signal hoist would be “2UAU2E” for “Wrong Place attack two enemies.” It solved both problems, it added a word to make the message clearer, and it was even fewer flags.

It wasn’t until much later that I realized I could have done that with ‘Z’ instead of U and ‘Z’ would still have the same meaning: “Whatever follows is literal”. If letters, they spell a word. If numerals, I mean that number. I made that change once we got back to the Island, and ‘U’ went back to simply “alternate meanings”. In fact, that gave us another ten alternate codes, for ‘U0’ through ‘U9’. We didn’t need them, we were a long way from coming up with alternate meanings for all the letters, but they were there for when we needed them.

Anyway, we took Shark back to the rest of our ships while Wrong Place slowly rowed back and forth between the two fleets. The lead pirate ship turned around and rowed back to their fleet. We heard speaking trumpets for a while before it turned back towards us and advanced on Wrong Place, another ship following it.