Treachery, as the French afterwards said, enabled him to do this. One of their artillery officers, according to French accounts, had a quarrel with the Governor, deserted and sold the secret of the passage for a large sum to Admiral Watson. He sent the money, so the story proceeds, to help his father in France, an aged and poor man, only, however, to receive back again the price of his treason, together with a bitter letter of reproach on the receipt of which the traitor hanged himself. On the other hand, Dr. Ives, on board the flagship, says nothing of any traitor. Admiral Watson in his dispatch simply says that he was delayed “until ... I could further discover by sounding a proper channel to pass through, which the pilots found out without being at the trouble of weighing any of the vessels.” There was hardly need for a traitor, and no need at all to pay for information with the masts of the sunken French vessels in the river standing up in the air, right across the bed of the Hooghly, for every man and boy in the English squadron to see. There was a traitor at Chandernagore, De Terraneau, an artillery officer; but he deserted to Clive’s camp, and, useful as his information proved to the land attack, he knew nothing about the river defences.
By midday on the 22nd all was in order for the squadron to go forward to the final fight. The tides now were running higher every day, and the next tide would probably serve. That afternoon Rear-Admiral Pocock (afterwards Sir George, and a very distinguished commander), the Second in Command of the East Indies squadron, came up the Hooghly rowing up from Calcutta in his barge. He had hurried up to join, in the hope of being in time to see something of the fighting. He had left his flagship, the Cumberland, at Balasore, unable to enter the river owing to the same low tides that had during the past few days delayed the Kent and her two consorts in approaching Chandernagore. With Admiral Watson’s sanction, Pocock hoisted his flag for the battle on board the Tyger, to lead the line.
At dusk that evening, as soon as it could be done without observation by the enemy, boats crept ahead quietly and lashed lanterns to the masts of the sunken vessels, so screened as to show their light only in the direction of the English ships. By means of these the ships were to be guided before daybreak next morning between the obstacles and across the danger zone where the French had marked the range, past the heavy battery that overlooked the sunken ships.
The order to go forward was given at daybreak. Within five minutes they were on the move.
Anchors were silently weighed between 5 and 6 a.m., and on the top of the flood tide the three ships, the Tyger leading, and the Kent and Salisbury in her wake, glided ahead through the water with the least possible noise. Apparently their getting under way was not observed.
Admiral Watson’s plan of battle was to bring-to directly opposite the river face of Fort d’Orleans within pistol shot. The Tyger was to lead on until she came in front of the further bastion of the river face of the fort, the north-east or “flagstaff bastion,” as it was called, and then drop anchor. The Kent was to anchor between the two river front bastions at the north-west and south-east angles of the fort, directly facing the curtain and the eight-gun ravelin covering the main gate. The Salisbury was to post herself opposite the south-east, or St. Joseph, bastion.
As the Tyger, a few minutes before six o’clock, neared the battery covering the sunken ships, the French ashore sounded the alarm. Apparently they were surprised. The soldiers in the first battery merely fired a few rounds at the leading ship as she passed by, a dim spectre in the half-light, and then the men in the battery cleared out at a run, and fell back to join the main garrison inside the fort. For their part the three British men-of-war passed on for their appointed stations without replying with a single shot.
The main garrison now were quickly on the qui vive, and the south-east bastion took up the firing; but for the moment the light was too uncertain for the gunners in Fort d’Orleans to shoot with much effect, until the Tyger and Kent had nearly drawn up abreast of the fort. Then, however, they got their chance.
The French gunners took advantage of it to the full before the men-of-war were in position. As it were by signal, a tremendous burst of artillery fire flashed out all along the ramparts from end to end, from bastions and curtain and ravelin. The tornado of iron beat on the Tyger heavily, but she stood up to it, forging her way ahead stolidly, and then let go anchor within her allotted station to a yard. The flagship was not so lucky. She was following at a half cable’s length astern—a hundred yards—when, almost at the moment that the Tyger anchored, the tide turned, and began to race back, swirling down the river. It checked the Kent’s way instantly, and she hung back at a dead standstill, unable to breast her way against it. At the same moment a heavy concentrated fire from the ramparts beat upon her, and the ship, reeling under the terrific battering began to drift down, stern first. First one anchor was let go, then another. Both anchors dragged, and the big seventy-gun ship drove down astern right across the bowsprit of the smaller Salisbury.
The Frenchmen yelled and cheered and redoubled their efforts, and there was for a space intense excitement. Would the two ships collide and get foul? At the moment that the flagship first checked her way, Captain Speke had fallen severely wounded, with, close to him, his little son, a boy midshipman, acting as aide-de-camp to his father, who was struck down by the same shot and mortally wounded.