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honoratTitle: Crossing the Bar(1/?): Ambush
Author: Honorat
Rating: PG
Characters: Commodore Norrington, Mr. Gibbs, Jack Sparrow, Anamaria
Pairing: Eventually a very light Jack/Anamaria
Disclaimer: The characters of PotC! She’s taken them! Get after her, you feckless pack of ingrates!
Summary: Every once in awhile, I have to write some raving sailing. Norrington has finally got the Black Pearl trapped. Jack is bound to do something crazy, but will it be the last thing he does? Supposedly for the “Bar” challenge at Black Pearl Sails, but this ain’t no drabble, pilgrim!
Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
geek_mama_2 for the beta help.
* * * * *
1 Ambush
His informant had not lied. Through the grey veil of rain stinging his eyes, Commodore Norrington focused his spyglass on the sheltered harbour. Months of fruitless searching, chasing wild rumours and even wilder truths, had led him to this place. There, enfolded in the verdant arms of the headlands, safe from the storm that pummeled the Royal Navy ships out on the open ocean, rocked a shadowy vessel, her bare poles slender brush strokes against the restless grey-green water and white froth.
Even without her signature black sails, Norrington recognized the lines of the ship that had haunted his waking hours and not a few of his sleeping ones for far too long.
The Black Pearl.
He’d chased her up and down the Caribbean in vain, following reports of pirate activity over the entire Spanish Main. But while his ships had brought in a number of prizes in that frenzy of pirate hunting, this last, greatest threat had remained at large and largely unsighted.
Finally, he’d decided that he would never chase down Jack Sparrow. His only recourse was to somehow let the man come to him. He had to chart Sparrow’s known haunts, find the key to that pirate’s mind, learn his habits. Every man eventually fell into a predictable pattern, but Sparrow was less predictable than most. Late into the nights, the commodore had sifted through his information—official dispatches, scraps of wrinkled paper covered with strange stains, neatly-folded letters. The trail had eventually led him here to this secret harbour where the Black Pearl had been spotted several times.
The Dauntless and her smaller sister, the brig Defender, had been lurking out of sight of this harbour for months now. His men had been growing increasingly restless and his ships increasingly spit and polished. But at last all that not-so-patient waiting was paying off in Spanish gold. On the wings of a storm, his prey had dashed across the bar into that harbour where Sparrow no doubt planned to wait until the weather cleared. By the time Norrington had his ships in position to block the escape route, the wind had risen severely and the ebb tide was making it impossible for him to pursue the Black Pearl through the channel. The naval vessels would have to endure the full wrath of the storm out on the open sea. To attempt to make harbour now would be suicidal.
While his ships fought to maintain their positions relative to that harbour mouth, Norrington had the leisure for strategy. He’d not had much opportunity to engage Jack Sparrow in pitched battle, so he was not sure whether the pirate would prefer to take on a first rate ship of the line and a more agile pirate-hunter in a fight to the death, or whether he would rather surrender the Black Pearl than see her destroyed.
Elizabeth and Will Turner had been uncharacteristically close-mouthed about their time spent with the infamous pirate. The one time he’d attempted to presume on old friendship and gather any useful intelligence about Sparrow, Elizabeth had brought up her indomitable chin, narrowed her dark eyes, and with a North Sea chill in her haughty tone, informed him, “That is unworthy of you, James.”
So he had nothing to go on but stories—rumours picked up by his agents in notorious pirate ports, garbled accounts from shipmasters who’d run afoul of that pestilential black ship—and the few encounters his ships had managed with the elusive pirate.
He knew Sparrow preferred not to fight. With the fastest ship in the Caribbean, Norrington grudgingly admitted, he hadn’t been forced to do more than snarl a few shots with his stern chasers as he wheeled his ship onto the wind and left his adversaries in his wake. But now they had the sparrow caged, trapped, imprisoned in this harbour. When the wind finally stood down and the tide turned, the Dauntless and the Defender would cross that bar and bring all their immense firepower against Jack Sparrow’s beautiful ship. He hoped the pirate would be a sensible man and surrender. However, limited experience did not lead him to expect common sense from that maniac. When Norrington’s ships pinned the Black Pearl up against that shoreline, the commodore very much feared she would turn like a tiger brought to bay, and the combat would become very ugly before its inevitable conclusion.
* * * * *
Mr. Gibbs was grumblingly reflecting to himself that Anamaria never drew the short straw for watches during foul weather. Let the day or night be clear as an infant’s conscience, and it was “take your worthless hide off to the racks, Gibbs,” and that infuriating woman would settle herself on the Pearl’s sunny or starry deck, watching the dolphins frolic beside the ship, putting the occasional mental thumbscrew on a green hand, or lashing the lot of them with that cat o’nine tails she called her tongue, and in general enjoying herself mightily. But let the black clouds boil up on the horizon and the rain come down like the influenza and the pestilential torrents of water run down one’s neck like rats, and the ship be pitching like to tip them all off into the drink, and it was “your watch, Mr. Gibbs! I’m going belowdecks.”
There was something unnatural about it. He wouldn’t put it past the little harpy to be practicing a spot of voodoo on the side. He wondered if the captain would listen to a word he said if he complained. Hunched under the scant shelter provided by the companionway, Gibbs took a hasty pull at his flask. Women! He also wouldn’t put it past her to water the rum. She was always grousing about a boatload of drunken pirates.
Jack was a madman to keep her on as mate. But wasn’t calling Jack crazy entirely redundant? He’d known the man was daft from the day they’d met. Hadn’t stopped Gibbs then, and wasn’t stopping him now. Worth hanging around just to see what would happen next. Never a dull day around the captain. Gibbs took another swallow for insurance. Man needed a little internal heat on a bloody miserable day like this.
A call from high up the mainmast brought his attention back to the ship and his duty.
“Sail ho!”
Now there was a poor sod with even worse luck than Gibbs’, stuck up there in this frightful weather keeping the real watch. Hunching his shoulders against the deluge, Gibbs staggered out on the pitching deck. Probably only some poor merchant trying to make port before the storm swamped it. But it was too late to enter this harbour, that was for sure.
“Can ye identify her!” he shouted through the Pearl’s vociferous creaks and groans as she consigned the weather to perdition.
“Two of ‘em,” the faint voice floated back down through the wind’s equally profane shrieks in the rigging. “A real monster of a ship and a two-masted brig. Both under storm canvas. Can’t make out their colours in this soup.”
“What headings?” Gibbs hollered hoarsely.
“They’re in formation,” the wretched lookout coughed. “Coming in from the southwest—around the headland”
Two ships in formation. Gibbs didn’t like the sound of that. No, he didn’t like that at all.
“Good eye, lad!” he called. “Keep watching. I’ll inform the captain.” And informing the captain would give him a moment out of these thrice-blasted elements.
When he pounded on the cabin door, he heard Jack’s careless, “’S open.” It always made him grateful to have made it out of the Navy alive. Jack could skin a man down to his bare bones with words, but he never looked down on his crew like they were animals.
He opened the door on a familiar sight. The dark mahogany, richly-carved, glowed in the flickering light of lanterns and candles. Jack was relaxed in an ornate, over-stuffed, high-back chair, with his boots kicked up on the table top, looking gaudily piratical, except for the fact that he was reading a rather decrepit, rat-chewed tome Gibbs recognized as part of the plunder from the sack of Balenbouche. Gibbs had never known a pirate who looted books with the same greed he pilfered gold. He didn’t know how the man could stand to read the way the Pearl was wallowing about in the storm swells, but Jack never seemed to note how his ship rolled.
Anamaria, the underhanded little weasel, was warm and dry and practicing her writing at the other end of the table, her tongue clamped between her teeth, her brow wrinkled in the ferocious scowl she usually reserved for incompetent lubbers who’d fouled the Pearl’s lines. Every time the Pearl gave an especially violent twitch, she’d cuss the air blue. As usual, she’d unconsciously decorated her face with various black smudges. Another of the captain’s mad starts—teaching that fisherman’s wench to read and write. As though she weren’t uppity enough as it was.
“What is it, Mr. Gibbs?” the captain waved expansively.
“Sails, sir,” Gibbs reported tersely. “Two of ‘em from the southwest around the headlands. I don’t like the smell of this at all.”
Anamaria looked up at this, her eyes gone even darker and more intent. Her forgotten quill bled a puddle of ink on the creamy paper in the middle of the word “topgalla . . .”
“I see,” Captain Sparrow said, his tone still leisurely, but his eyes, too, had gone hard and calculating. “Well then, I suppose I’d best hop up top and take a look, eh?”
“If you would, sir,” Gibbs agreed heartily. “It’d ease my mind a bit.”
Jack bounced to his feet in that way that always made Gibbs feel about a hundred years old and achy in his bones, shrugged into his jacket, crammed his hat on his head—lopsided this time—the angle of Jack Sparrow’s hat was always an indicator of just how tense the man was, Gibbs had discovered—and joined his quartermaster at the door. “Lead on, Mr. Gibbs,” Jack invited.
Bracing himself against the drill of raindrops that met his undefended face when the door swung open, Gibbs reluctantly headed back out into the vile weather. Jack followed him, as usual seeming annoyingly impervious to the worst the elements could throw at him. Anamaria brought up the rear, refusing to be left out of any incipient action.
At the base of the mainmast, Gibbs shouted up at the lookout, “Any changes, lad?”
“Bad news, sir,” came the reply. “Them there ships are Royal Navy, and one of ‘em’s totin’ no less than a hunnert guns!”
* * * * *
The instant Captain Jack Sparrow heard the report from the lookout that one of the ships slipping out of the shadow of the island was a first rate Navy man o’war, he recognized the ambush.
While from a purely aesthetic standpoint, he could admire Commodore Norrington’s masterful check and mate in this deadly game they played, from every other angle, the situation was intolerable. He knew what Norrington expected. Jack would be forced to remain in this harbour like a fish in a net until the weather cleared enough for either the Black Pearl or the Navy ships to dare the bar at its mouth. Either way, the Pearl would find the Dauntless and her utterly deadly curtain of fire barring the only escape route. The second, faster ship complicated matters further, decreasing Jack’s options to the singularly unappealing.
For the first time, Jack Sparrow was seriously having to consider whether he would surrender his ship to the Royal Navy. His other choice was to invite the destruction of his ship and crew by returning fire and doing as much damage to two Navy warships as he could before the Pearl was scuppered. Either option made him heartsick in a way he’d thought he’d forgotten.
They had, Jack gauged, several hours before the tide began its reverse and Norrington might consider it worth the risk to cross the bar in such heavy weather. There was a brief, golden moment now for him to make his decision. And plenty of time to worry whether it had been the right one.
Without a word, he turned and headed for the bow of the Black Pearl, leaving Gibbs and Anamaria behind, staring at each other in sober surmise at his unprecedented silence.
Jack needed to talk to his ship.
TBC
2 No Regrets
Author: Honorat
Rating: PG
Characters: Commodore Norrington, Mr. Gibbs, Jack Sparrow, Anamaria
Pairing: Eventually a very light Jack/Anamaria
Disclaimer: The characters of PotC! She’s taken them! Get after her, you feckless pack of ingrates!
Summary: Every once in awhile, I have to write some raving sailing. Norrington has finally got the Black Pearl trapped. Jack is bound to do something crazy, but will it be the last thing he does? Supposedly for the “Bar” challenge at Black Pearl Sails, but this ain’t no drabble, pilgrim!
Thanks to
geek_mama_2 for the beta help.* * * * *
1 Ambush
His informant had not lied. Through the grey veil of rain stinging his eyes, Commodore Norrington focused his spyglass on the sheltered harbour. Months of fruitless searching, chasing wild rumours and even wilder truths, had led him to this place. There, enfolded in the verdant arms of the headlands, safe from the storm that pummeled the Royal Navy ships out on the open ocean, rocked a shadowy vessel, her bare poles slender brush strokes against the restless grey-green water and white froth.
Even without her signature black sails, Norrington recognized the lines of the ship that had haunted his waking hours and not a few of his sleeping ones for far too long.
The Black Pearl.
He’d chased her up and down the Caribbean in vain, following reports of pirate activity over the entire Spanish Main. But while his ships had brought in a number of prizes in that frenzy of pirate hunting, this last, greatest threat had remained at large and largely unsighted.
Finally, he’d decided that he would never chase down Jack Sparrow. His only recourse was to somehow let the man come to him. He had to chart Sparrow’s known haunts, find the key to that pirate’s mind, learn his habits. Every man eventually fell into a predictable pattern, but Sparrow was less predictable than most. Late into the nights, the commodore had sifted through his information—official dispatches, scraps of wrinkled paper covered with strange stains, neatly-folded letters. The trail had eventually led him here to this secret harbour where the Black Pearl had been spotted several times.
The Dauntless and her smaller sister, the brig Defender, had been lurking out of sight of this harbour for months now. His men had been growing increasingly restless and his ships increasingly spit and polished. But at last all that not-so-patient waiting was paying off in Spanish gold. On the wings of a storm, his prey had dashed across the bar into that harbour where Sparrow no doubt planned to wait until the weather cleared. By the time Norrington had his ships in position to block the escape route, the wind had risen severely and the ebb tide was making it impossible for him to pursue the Black Pearl through the channel. The naval vessels would have to endure the full wrath of the storm out on the open sea. To attempt to make harbour now would be suicidal.
While his ships fought to maintain their positions relative to that harbour mouth, Norrington had the leisure for strategy. He’d not had much opportunity to engage Jack Sparrow in pitched battle, so he was not sure whether the pirate would prefer to take on a first rate ship of the line and a more agile pirate-hunter in a fight to the death, or whether he would rather surrender the Black Pearl than see her destroyed.
Elizabeth and Will Turner had been uncharacteristically close-mouthed about their time spent with the infamous pirate. The one time he’d attempted to presume on old friendship and gather any useful intelligence about Sparrow, Elizabeth had brought up her indomitable chin, narrowed her dark eyes, and with a North Sea chill in her haughty tone, informed him, “That is unworthy of you, James.”
So he had nothing to go on but stories—rumours picked up by his agents in notorious pirate ports, garbled accounts from shipmasters who’d run afoul of that pestilential black ship—and the few encounters his ships had managed with the elusive pirate.
He knew Sparrow preferred not to fight. With the fastest ship in the Caribbean, Norrington grudgingly admitted, he hadn’t been forced to do more than snarl a few shots with his stern chasers as he wheeled his ship onto the wind and left his adversaries in his wake. But now they had the sparrow caged, trapped, imprisoned in this harbour. When the wind finally stood down and the tide turned, the Dauntless and the Defender would cross that bar and bring all their immense firepower against Jack Sparrow’s beautiful ship. He hoped the pirate would be a sensible man and surrender. However, limited experience did not lead him to expect common sense from that maniac. When Norrington’s ships pinned the Black Pearl up against that shoreline, the commodore very much feared she would turn like a tiger brought to bay, and the combat would become very ugly before its inevitable conclusion.
* * * * *
Mr. Gibbs was grumblingly reflecting to himself that Anamaria never drew the short straw for watches during foul weather. Let the day or night be clear as an infant’s conscience, and it was “take your worthless hide off to the racks, Gibbs,” and that infuriating woman would settle herself on the Pearl’s sunny or starry deck, watching the dolphins frolic beside the ship, putting the occasional mental thumbscrew on a green hand, or lashing the lot of them with that cat o’nine tails she called her tongue, and in general enjoying herself mightily. But let the black clouds boil up on the horizon and the rain come down like the influenza and the pestilential torrents of water run down one’s neck like rats, and the ship be pitching like to tip them all off into the drink, and it was “your watch, Mr. Gibbs! I’m going belowdecks.”
There was something unnatural about it. He wouldn’t put it past the little harpy to be practicing a spot of voodoo on the side. He wondered if the captain would listen to a word he said if he complained. Hunched under the scant shelter provided by the companionway, Gibbs took a hasty pull at his flask. Women! He also wouldn’t put it past her to water the rum. She was always grousing about a boatload of drunken pirates.
Jack was a madman to keep her on as mate. But wasn’t calling Jack crazy entirely redundant? He’d known the man was daft from the day they’d met. Hadn’t stopped Gibbs then, and wasn’t stopping him now. Worth hanging around just to see what would happen next. Never a dull day around the captain. Gibbs took another swallow for insurance. Man needed a little internal heat on a bloody miserable day like this.
A call from high up the mainmast brought his attention back to the ship and his duty.
“Sail ho!”
Now there was a poor sod with even worse luck than Gibbs’, stuck up there in this frightful weather keeping the real watch. Hunching his shoulders against the deluge, Gibbs staggered out on the pitching deck. Probably only some poor merchant trying to make port before the storm swamped it. But it was too late to enter this harbour, that was for sure.
“Can ye identify her!” he shouted through the Pearl’s vociferous creaks and groans as she consigned the weather to perdition.
“Two of ‘em,” the faint voice floated back down through the wind’s equally profane shrieks in the rigging. “A real monster of a ship and a two-masted brig. Both under storm canvas. Can’t make out their colours in this soup.”
“What headings?” Gibbs hollered hoarsely.
“They’re in formation,” the wretched lookout coughed. “Coming in from the southwest—around the headland”
Two ships in formation. Gibbs didn’t like the sound of that. No, he didn’t like that at all.
“Good eye, lad!” he called. “Keep watching. I’ll inform the captain.” And informing the captain would give him a moment out of these thrice-blasted elements.
When he pounded on the cabin door, he heard Jack’s careless, “’S open.” It always made him grateful to have made it out of the Navy alive. Jack could skin a man down to his bare bones with words, but he never looked down on his crew like they were animals.
He opened the door on a familiar sight. The dark mahogany, richly-carved, glowed in the flickering light of lanterns and candles. Jack was relaxed in an ornate, over-stuffed, high-back chair, with his boots kicked up on the table top, looking gaudily piratical, except for the fact that he was reading a rather decrepit, rat-chewed tome Gibbs recognized as part of the plunder from the sack of Balenbouche. Gibbs had never known a pirate who looted books with the same greed he pilfered gold. He didn’t know how the man could stand to read the way the Pearl was wallowing about in the storm swells, but Jack never seemed to note how his ship rolled.
Anamaria, the underhanded little weasel, was warm and dry and practicing her writing at the other end of the table, her tongue clamped between her teeth, her brow wrinkled in the ferocious scowl she usually reserved for incompetent lubbers who’d fouled the Pearl’s lines. Every time the Pearl gave an especially violent twitch, she’d cuss the air blue. As usual, she’d unconsciously decorated her face with various black smudges. Another of the captain’s mad starts—teaching that fisherman’s wench to read and write. As though she weren’t uppity enough as it was.
“What is it, Mr. Gibbs?” the captain waved expansively.
“Sails, sir,” Gibbs reported tersely. “Two of ‘em from the southwest around the headlands. I don’t like the smell of this at all.”
Anamaria looked up at this, her eyes gone even darker and more intent. Her forgotten quill bled a puddle of ink on the creamy paper in the middle of the word “topgalla . . .”
“I see,” Captain Sparrow said, his tone still leisurely, but his eyes, too, had gone hard and calculating. “Well then, I suppose I’d best hop up top and take a look, eh?”
“If you would, sir,” Gibbs agreed heartily. “It’d ease my mind a bit.”
Jack bounced to his feet in that way that always made Gibbs feel about a hundred years old and achy in his bones, shrugged into his jacket, crammed his hat on his head—lopsided this time—the angle of Jack Sparrow’s hat was always an indicator of just how tense the man was, Gibbs had discovered—and joined his quartermaster at the door. “Lead on, Mr. Gibbs,” Jack invited.
Bracing himself against the drill of raindrops that met his undefended face when the door swung open, Gibbs reluctantly headed back out into the vile weather. Jack followed him, as usual seeming annoyingly impervious to the worst the elements could throw at him. Anamaria brought up the rear, refusing to be left out of any incipient action.
At the base of the mainmast, Gibbs shouted up at the lookout, “Any changes, lad?”
“Bad news, sir,” came the reply. “Them there ships are Royal Navy, and one of ‘em’s totin’ no less than a hunnert guns!”
* * * * *
The instant Captain Jack Sparrow heard the report from the lookout that one of the ships slipping out of the shadow of the island was a first rate Navy man o’war, he recognized the ambush.
While from a purely aesthetic standpoint, he could admire Commodore Norrington’s masterful check and mate in this deadly game they played, from every other angle, the situation was intolerable. He knew what Norrington expected. Jack would be forced to remain in this harbour like a fish in a net until the weather cleared enough for either the Black Pearl or the Navy ships to dare the bar at its mouth. Either way, the Pearl would find the Dauntless and her utterly deadly curtain of fire barring the only escape route. The second, faster ship complicated matters further, decreasing Jack’s options to the singularly unappealing.
For the first time, Jack Sparrow was seriously having to consider whether he would surrender his ship to the Royal Navy. His other choice was to invite the destruction of his ship and crew by returning fire and doing as much damage to two Navy warships as he could before the Pearl was scuppered. Either option made him heartsick in a way he’d thought he’d forgotten.
They had, Jack gauged, several hours before the tide began its reverse and Norrington might consider it worth the risk to cross the bar in such heavy weather. There was a brief, golden moment now for him to make his decision. And plenty of time to worry whether it had been the right one.
Without a word, he turned and headed for the bow of the Black Pearl, leaving Gibbs and Anamaria behind, staring at each other in sober surmise at his unprecedented silence.
Jack needed to talk to his ship.
TBC
2 No Regrets
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-11-23 08:14 am (UTC)Seriously, though, I really like this chapter and want to see what Jack asks Pearl to do. Nice that you show Norrington as the competent fellow he actually is.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-23 01:52 pm (UTC)I'm delighted you like this so far. I've got lots more Norrington written, but Jack keeps dodging me for once. I will get done eventually in spite of that pirate! Norrington just reads more "right" when he's being competent.
Thanks so much for commenting.
Fabulousness!
Date: 2005-11-23 11:53 am (UTC)I love the weather in this fic. Your descriptions of the storm are just wonderful - in particular I like
And competant-hunter!Norrington is excellently well characterised. He seems to be canny in a way that works far better strategically here than it did in the movie.
I also particularly enjoy Gibbs' voice here; he is just as superstitious and disgruntled as he was in the film. From a number of fics I've read (elsewhere, obviously), Gibbs seems to have a voice that is difficult to pinpoint, and you have managed it admirably.
And the cliffhanger ending - Dun-dun-dunnn!
Fabulous.
Re: Fabulousness!
Date: 2005-11-23 02:28 pm (UTC)In the movie, poor Norrington seemed to be a little off his stride thanks to the situation with Elizabeth and Jack's manipulation, but I can't imagine he isn't learning from the mistakes of the past.
Gibbs is such a fun character to write. I love his grouchy, grousing voice. I'm happy you think I'm capturing some of it.
Sorry to leave everybody hanging, but the pirates made me do it. *grins evilly*
I really appreciate your feedback.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-23 02:18 pm (UTC)-mia
no subject
Date: 2005-11-23 02:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-23 03:36 pm (UTC)Norrington was nicely calculating in this, and I like his logic that lead to the Pearl-- seems that even Jack's canniness can avoid a Commodore on a mission!
Your descriptions were, as usual, absolutely stunning.
...enfolded in the verdant arms of the headlands, safe from the storm that pummeled the Royal Navy ships out on the open ocean, rocked a shadowy vessel, her bare poles slender brush strokes against the restless grey-green water and white froth.
This just gave the Pearl a very ethereal sense, both strong and delicate at the same time. Almost like Jack in a way-- not that Jack is delicate, but he's so small and wiry that his strength is not physical, but in his words and thoughts.
On the subject of Jack, his imperviousness to the weather and to sea-sickness was both charming and also seemed to cement his relationship with the Pearl and the sea, in that its movements do not affect him as it would other men. Nice touch.
But cliffhanger-- no!
Oh yeah, if you go to my journal there's a link to the Dead Man's Chest trailer. Ignore the abuse of punctuation and distinct fangirliness ^^ It was an immediate reaction.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-23 08:20 pm (UTC)I thought that once in awhile the good commodore should deserve to make that pesky pirate sweat.
That description of the Pearl combines a view I had of sailing vessels at achor during a tropical storm once with some of the PotC2 pictures of the Black Pearl. I'm glad you liked it.
Jack is so fun to write when he's on ships. That storm in the movie--everyone else is falling all over the decks and washing up in the scuppers, but Jack is just planted at her helm grinning away like a madman. So I always write him very at home and right at sea.
Mwahahahha! Cliffhangers! And I haven't finished writing the next chapter yet! Although half of each chapter is done.
I got a heads up for the trailer this morning, but I had to wait until I got to work and had the latest Flash player to view it. *Squeeeeeeee! Goes off fan-girling, too!*
no subject
Date: 2005-11-24 08:40 pm (UTC)Poor old Gibbs! I loved his double-act with Anamaria, but I felt for his aching bones, and I can't help hoping that one day he manages to out fox her voodoo story radar :)
Woo, Norrington's going to blow them to pieces, hurray! ...whoops, sorry. A little *too* much naval fervour there.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-24 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-25 02:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-25 02:57 am (UTC)Poor Mr. Gibbs. His day isn't getting any better.
Well, Norrington is certainly hoping to blow them to pieces. I guess we'll have to wait and see! *grin*
Thank you so much for commenting.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 10:37 am (UTC)(They'd try not to sink the ship because it's worth more whole as a prize, but they'd try to cut up the rigging and hull enough so that it would be impossible for it to sail away, leaving those on board the alternatives of fighting til they were all dead or surrendering.)
I had a quick trawl round the websites but unfortunately couldn't find more than that.
Because the Pearl is faster and presumably more maneouverable, I suspect that Norrington's first priority would be to take down her masts and rigging, initially with ordinary cannon balls which are more accurate and can be used from a further distance, and will still blow out a sail or crack the masts, and then with chain-shot. Once he has taken away the Pearl's advantage of speed, then he can hammer it to toothpicks or board as he pleases.
You have two Naval ships don't you? I would say that the Dauntless which can do more damage and take more punishment would probably lie broadside to broadside with the Pearl, while the other ship attempted to box her in to the bar and concentrate its fire over her bows.
Sorry I can't help more than that.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 01:42 pm (UTC)Question: how did two ships pin an enemy between them without endangering each other with friendly fire?
Right now I have the Defender sailing wide. The Defender runs up the lee and attempts to cross the Pearl's path and rake her again by the time the Pearl has managed to pull ahead of the Dauntless. The smaller ship does end up broadsiding the Pearl from the lee--which means the pirate ship decks are really exposed--and then there is a chase. The Pearl does not begin this engagement as the faster ship--I've just swamped her and laid her on her beam ends, so she's in a bit of a mess, a top gallant mast snapped and only some of her canvas in one piece. Also she's having to pump water out of everywhere--breached hatches.
Question: Am I correct in assuming that so much water in her holds is going to have a negative effect on the Pearl's powder magazine?
As for gunnery tactics--from what I can discover about gunnery in this time-period (1700-1750 is what I'm assuming from the fashions) the carronade had not been invented yet, so I've only used the longer cannons. At this time the British tactics were to sail in a line against the enemy and pummel them with round shot--absolutely brutal on the crews in the crowded gundecks but less likely to significantly damage a ship's ability to sail. The French, on the other hand, concentrated their fire, particularly chain shot, on the masts and rigging. This meant the British tried to get the weather gauge while the French normally tried to engage from the lee. The British tactics resulted in their killing enemy sailors at a rate of 10 to one of their own deaths, but their disabling of ships was significantly less frequent than the French, who disabled ships but killed fewer of the enemy crew. The mixture of the two tactics seems to be a later innovation. The tactics of the Black Pearl against the Interceptor in the movie were a combined approach--which makes sense with a heterogeneous crew.
From the weather gauge it was difficult to aim cannons at the rigging. I'm going with the idea that Norrington is going to be innovative with British doctrine and do what works--but the Dauntless will have a harder time with her hull heeled over in high winds in getting her cannons aimed high enough.
Question: How does heavy weather affect combat? Do the ships have to worry about shipping water in their gunports? The seas here are high enough to break across the decks occasionally.
Thanks so much for your time--I particularly appreciate your discussion of timing--when Norrington would be likely to use which tactic--and your confirmation that my battle plan is not totally unlikely.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-11 07:32 pm (UTC)I don't know! I have to assume that they would do it by firing low - making sure the shot went into the hull of the enemy ship and not across its decks.
Am I correct in assuming that so much water in her holds is going to have a negative effect on the Pearl's powder magazine?
I think it must - it's going to be incredibly difficult for them to keep the powder dry, though they could move the barrels up to the handling room. Not exactly safe but better than it all being wet.
Do the ships have to worry about shipping water in their gunports?
Yes, if the seas are high that may mean that the Dauntless cannot open her lower gunports and the Pearl can't open hers at all on the lee side.
I'm assuming that Norrington had to learn to fight pirates - which requires different tactics from a fleet battle, but that by now he's quite good at it.
*g* No, your battle plan sounds exactly like what would have really happened. I'll be fascinated to see how it turns out. (Sorry if I'm not making much sense today - I'm not terribly well and my brain doesn't seem to be working.)
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Date: 2005-11-29 02:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-29 06:19 pm (UTC)Great predicament
Date: 2005-12-18 11:09 pm (UTC)Re: Great predicament
Date: 2005-12-18 11:30 pm (UTC)Re: Great predicament
Date: 2005-12-19 02:31 am (UTC)Re: Great predicament
Date: 2005-12-19 03:40 am (UTC)Re: Great predicament
Date: 2005-12-19 02:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 05:38 pm (UTC)I'm also commenting now because it appears that time constraints will be forcing me to read most of it later *sob of agony*, and it merited a comment right away! :-)
no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 07:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-15 04:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-16 05:41 am (UTC)A complete stranger begins to babble delighted admiration
Date: 2006-05-23 11:14 pm (UTC)SEVERAL HOURS AGO -- because I have been totally engrossed all morning. Work? Haven't done any. Couldn't stop reading. This is FANTASTIC. At the end of chapter one I started to make notes because I knew I would have to tell you in detail how much I loved this. So I apologise in advance for the flurry of comments-to-come but just... WOW.
Things I really loved about this chapter: the way Anamaria is painted in so well with the two primary images of her being so very contradictory: the harpy with a cat-‘o-nine-tails for a tongue versus the girl hunched over the table learning to write. It forms a wonderful parenthesis that lets you fill in the character in the gaps. And Jack with his books. I love him with books.
Fave para: When he pounded on the cabin door, he heard Jack’s careless, “’S open.” It always made him grateful to have made it out of the Navy alive. Jack could skin a man down to his bare bones with words, but he never looked down on his crew like they were animals.
And now, looking back at it from the dreadful vantage-point of the end of chapter nine, it's even more poignant.
Re: A complete stranger begins to babble delighted admiration
Date: 2006-05-24 12:05 am (UTC)I am so very flattered that you were interested enough in my first extended, non-movie novelization effort to read the whole monstrosity through! No need to apologize for commenting. My muse is doing Snoopy Dances. We, the muse (commonly known as the Bloody Freakin' Muse or BFM) and I like comments excessively, yes we do.
One of the things I've loved about writing this story is the way Anamaria has developed and become more complex for me. I'm delighted you like her. She's such a great character opportunity with her combination of strength and femaleness and her own unique personality that makes Jack's crew so much more intriguing. I wrote a prequel to this about the first time Jack offers to teach Anamaria to read called Black Magic (http://honorat.livejournal.com/19702.html). I too love Jack with books. He has the vocabulary of a reader, so it just seems natural.
Jack's relationship with this crew has been a joy to develop. After that fiasco with Barbossa's bunch, he deserves to sail with loyal men, and I think he's learnt a lot about reading character since the mutiny--a bit of a survival skill.
Thank you so very much for the fabulous responses. I'm really quite overwhelmed.
Re: A complete stranger begins to babble delighted admiration
Date: 2006-05-24 12:32 am (UTC)In case you hadn't noticed, I'm an artist Noticed, schmoticed! How could I not? I confess I have one of your Jack drawings on my PDA. Just in case of sudden emergency, you know how it is. I'm just one of those awful sneaking things that just looks and grabs and runs away, too shy to say boo. I paint and draw quite a lot myself too (though not people, so much) -- but your drawing skill makes me feel faint and pathetic with the intensity of my envy.
He has the vocabulary of a reader, so it just seems natural. Absolutely! I mostly write him in crossover with a character who's illiterate, and it makes for the most delicious frustration on both sides.
Okay, so I'm done bothering you for today, I promise. But I am totally hanging out for Ten. And Eleven. Which I know are done, because I have Inside Information. So post already or I shall have to start offering your Beta bribes for an advance copy :)
Re: A complete stranger begins to babble delighted admiration
Date: 2006-05-24 12:48 am (UTC)I'm delighted to hear that Jack is gracing your PDA. Now you can mainline His Beautifulness. I've got a spoiler photo of Jack charting a course on a map for my computer desktop, and when things get too unbearably boring, I minimize my programs and just meditate. Thank you for your kind words about the art. It's nice to meet another artist.
I can imagine a literate person could find it very inconvenient to communicate with someone who can't read. No leaving a note with the bartender or saying "Swallow this when you've read it." And watching someone enjoying reading must be incredibly boring.
Ten goes up tonight. I had to wait until Eleven was complete because some details had to be adjusted between the two of them. Also no one is going to forgive me for Ten. You don't want to see the unedited version. Trust me on this one!
And thank you again.
A captivating first chapter!
Date: 2011-07-29 04:11 pm (UTC)Re: A captivating first chapter!
Date: 2011-07-29 06:29 pm (UTC)