AAR. April Solo mission. "Between a rock and a hard place."

[Bligh]

Part one. Hobson's choice.


Captain Rupert Hobson of the Frigate HMS Orpheus watched with a sense of disbelief as the American Privateer Thorn headed for the channel between the Isles de Sacre Coeur and Leon.





No sooner was it in range and running full before the wind than the Battery on the Sacre Coeur opened up on the tiny Sloop and scored two waterline hits at extreme range.





Putting over his helm, Captain McGruder steered away from the barrage, and seemed to have escaped almost unscathed. Then it was the turn of the Battery on the Leon promontory to add its plunging fire to the drama , as one seaman plummeted from the tops where a hole had appeared in the Main topsail, another ball scored a hit on the gun deck.





Still the brave little ship pressed on and clearing the narrows ran for the channel farthest from the dominating vast Fort St. Just with its fifty 48 pounders on the opposite headland.
Just as it seemed that the Sloop had slipped out of the jaws of death, the guns built into a field fortification on the low lying sand spit of the Islet known as de Rey gave vent to their fury.





Front raked by double shot at close range the little Sloop shuddered under the impact. Her steering shot away and half the crew dead or dying, she shed her masts one after the other, and lying hulked before the guns of de Rey, Captain McGruder, who was incredibly unhurt amongst the carnage all about him was forced to raise a white flag of surrender.



With a sigh Hobson closed his spyglass and turning to his first remarked to him.
"A very brave but foolish American, that Captain, to risk his ship just in order to save a day's extra sailing around these cursed French Isles.
Port your helm Mr. Smith and hold her North by North West."

"Aye aye sir."

Little did Captain Hobson realize that within 24 hours he would be having to plot his way through those very same waters that had just claimed the Thorn.

Bligh.