George Washington's Ghost

During that last, slow-motion turn to the north the cruiser had been systematically dismantled by those shore batteries, perhaps a dozen 6-, 5-, and 4-inch guns smashing away at her over open sights, albeit poorly handled by guns crews who had probably not drilled in months, soon after the bombing and the shelling had begun. The cannonade had ceased within a minute of that torpedo exploding somewhere near the stern, possibly when it encountered a sand bank. That had seemed like the end of the world at the time. The detonation had opened up the packing around the starboard shaft, probably bent it out of true and within minutes flooded one of the machinery compartments.

Suddenly, the ship had been crawling, slewing sideways, drawn helplessly on the ebbing tide into the mouth of the anchorage. Once, twice she had touched bottom and then, capable of only making two or three knots under her own steam, she had been carried out to sea…

Anything and everything pale or white had been waved at the Gimlet amphibian, which they now knew was from the Indefatigable, which had come to investigate the sinking hulk, flying wide, slow concentric circuits of the dying ship.

And then the destroyers had come racing out of the haze with streaming white crescent bones in their teeth.

And miraculously, the rescue had begun.

The Emden

sagged under the two men’s feet.

“Not long now,” Claus Wallendorf sighed. He turned to face Peter Cowdrey-Singh. “I hope my old friend Weitzman has been looking down on us these last few hours. Honour in the Kaiserliche Marine is not dead.”

“Indeed, it lives, Her Kapitan,” the Royal Navy man agreed.

The two men shook hands.

“We shall meet again on the other side, sir,” the Anglo-Indian promised, straightening to his best impression of attention, and crisply saluting the older man.

It was time to go.

For Peter Cowdrey-Singh life continued; Claude Wallendorf was travelling another road.

They would never meet again in this world.

EPILOGUE

Chapter 39

Saturday 13th May

Vera Cruz, México

Forty-year-old Vice Admiral Count Carlos Federico Gravina y Vera Cruz, the Chief Minister and Commander-in-Chief of the Armada de Nuevo Granada, and High Admiral of the Fleets of the Triple Alliance, welcomed his guests with impeccable respect and charm. This was hardly surprising because if there was one man in New Spain, or for that matter, the whole of Catholic Christendom he feared and respected in equal measure, it was General of the Army of New Spain Felipe de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Mexican Republic.

As to the other, tall, distinguished man in the uniform of a Colonel of the Chapultepec Horse Guards, the elite Presidential Cavalry Regiment, he assumed that if the man was with Santa Anna, then he too, was to be taken very, very seriously.

Behind his haughty public façade, Gravina was not the arrogant, seedy aristocrat that many of his enemies in the House of Representatives or in the Army took him for. In the Navy, tradition and what the British might term ‘keeping up appearances’ were the twin pillars upon which high command rested. Besides, if his underlings regarded him as a puffed-up buffoon – an image his family’s tendency to florid corpulency in middle age inflicted upon him – who knew no better than to charge headlong into any battle, that was fine so long as they remained afraid of him. In the meantime, he was in the business of playing what was a relatively weak hand, with every ounce of panache he could beg, borrow or steal.

Moreover, Santa Anna understood as much.

The Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Republic introduced his companion.

Gravina’s eyes widened in curiosity.

Colonel Rodrigo de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano of the Geological Department of the National Academy for the Natural Sciences, of Cuernavaca University.

Gravina had spared nothing in his report of the week-old disasters which had befallen the Dominicans at San Juan, or the sinking of the Hispanic squadron charged with ‘harrying’ the King of England’s beard in the Eastern Caribbean.

The violence of the sudden attack on San Juan had initially, left Gravina stunned. In an air attack and an naval bombardment which together, had probably not lasted more than ten to fifteen minutes from start to finish, San Juan Island had been wrecked from end to end, the port and dockyards severely damaged – perhaps, put out of actions for at least six months – and the Dominicans were reporting several thousand naval and dockyard personnel, and civilians dead or missing under the rubble of the towns around the bay.

Moreover, the English had mercilessly shelled the German Concession!

Fire-bombed the city!

Destroyed over forty aircraft on the ground!

And torpedoed or dive bombed nine ships moored in the bay, or tied up alongside the docks or under repair in two completely flooded and wrecked dry docks!