In Northern Seas
Page 29
‘The Chief Minister who prevented you from seeing the Crown Prince?’
‘The very same! He is dismissed! Sent packing! That will teach him to be so damned high-handed with Nicholas Vansittart, what? By Jove, I would give a hundred guineas to see Talleyrand’s face when word of all this arrives in Paris.’ The diplomat laughed again, and Clay tried to chuckle along but found it too painful for his rib.
‘So what will happen now?’ he asked instead.
‘The French are thwarted, and the war is over, at least in this corner of the world,’ said the diplomat. ‘Admiral Parker will return home with the more battered parts of the fleet, including the Griffin, while Lord Nelson will stay on until the Swedes and Prussians fall into line. For my part, I must report back to the government. Of course, by the time I return home, I will have missed most of the London Season, but hey ho. The sacrifices one has to make in the service of the king, what?’
‘Does this mean that you will be leaving the ship?’ asked Clay.
‘I think not,’ said Vansittart. ‘Sir Hyde did offer to accommodate me in his flagship but, astonishing as it may sound, I find that I have grown fond of my little cabin down in the bilges. I would also miss the society of your wardroom, so with your blessing, I thought that I might voyage home aboard the Griffin.’
‘Astonishing is the word,’ said Clay. ‘We may make a sailor of you yet, sir.’
‘Do not press your advantage too far,’ laughed his guest. ‘Now tell me, Clay, there is one aspect of this battle that I don’t understand at all, although you will recall my view wasn’t the best, what?’
‘Mine was hardly superior, from beneath my pile of cadavers, but I will help you if I can, sir.’
‘Most obliged,’ said Vansittart. ‘I had always understood that you naval coves had some regard to deference and rank.’
‘I should say that we do,’ said the captain. ‘Without obedience the navy would come to a sad pass.’
‘Then why, in all creation, did the fleet not break off the action when the commander-in-chief ordered it to?’
‘The custom is to take you orders from your direct superior,’ explained Clay. ‘Mine was Lord Nelson, and he continued to wish his ships to engage.’
‘And why, pray, did Nelson not follow the instruction?’
‘According to Captain Foley, he was in a rare passion over the signal,’ said Clay. ‘He named Admiral Parker an old woman and said, “Leave off the action? Well damn me if I do!” or words to that effect. Then he took up his telescope, clapped it to his blind eye, and claimed not to be able to see the signal at all.’
‘I trust he will not be censured for such a lack of obedience?’ asked the diplomat. ‘I am not sure how many courts martial a fellow can attend to keep you and Nelson away from the gallows, what?’
‘Things might have gone ill for him if we had been defeated,’ said Clay. ‘Fortunately, we won.’
‘And another deuced layer of veneer is added to the growing ego of Lord Nelson,’ said Vansittart. ‘He will be requiring larger hats presently.’ Clay put his drink down and frowned at his companion.
‘It is very easy to sneer at Lord Nelson, sir,’ he said. ‘He offers so many marks to aim at, what with his boastful character and shameful private life, but consider this.’ Clay pointed towards the ships still visible through the windows. ‘Nine from ten officers would have followed Parker’s ridiculous order, lost the battle and sacrificed their men. Choosing to disobey, and risk the consequences, required true courage.’
‘Bravo, Clay,’ said the diplomat. ‘Your rebuke is merited. It is those that go beyond convention who genuinely influence the world. You could almost say he took the harder path, just as I was obliged to do, not so long ago, much against your advice, if I recall. Which brings me to the, eh... events in St Petersburg.’ He sipped at his sherry and looked towards the steward.
‘Would you leave us, please, Harte,’ ordered the captain. When they were alone, Vansittart resumed, leaning towards the captain and lowering his voice.
‘You know, Clay, welcome as the prowess of the Royal Navy is, it will ultimately take an army to defeat Napoleon, and a deuced big one at that. We shall have need of the Russians to fight for us before this damned war is done. No hint of what happened that night at the palace can be allowed to escape. Paris would play Old Harry with such a tale, if they ever learned of it.’
‘Agreed, sir,’ said the captain. ‘I will never mention it.’
‘That is welcome, and we can trust the Russians present to stay silent, for they have more to lose from a full disclosure then anyone. As you and I are gentlemen, our word not to speak of it will suffice, but that will not cover that negro coxswain of yours.’
‘Sedgwick?’ said Clay. ‘He was not even present. Do you not recall, you sent him from the room? Besides, he is wholly to be trusted. No word of this will come from him, I assure you.’
‘Hmm, well, I suppose I am in his debt,’ mused Vansittart. ‘He did save me a task when he dealt with Rankin.’ Clay spluttered over his sherry.
‘What did you just say?’ he gasped. ‘What is it that Sedgwick did?’
‘I believe that he killed Rankin,’ said Vansittart, calmly brushing a little dust from his britches.
‘Sedgwick killed your valet!’
‘Very like,’ said the diplomat. ‘Rankin told me as much, just before he died. But I daresay it was revenge for Rankin murdering that seaman of yours.’
‘Who? Ludlow? How many damned murders have there been!’ exclaimed Clay. ‘But stay a moment, Ludlow was under armed guard. How did Rankin manage such a thing?’
‘It was not just the use of the garrotte that he learned during his time serving the Madras Presidency,’ explained Vansittart. ‘He was also skilled with poisons, and carried several upon his person. As soon as I heard tell of this mysterious fit from your surgeon, I was sure that Rankin was behind it.’
‘I am captain of this ship, and yet I seem to be the last to be acquainted with what is truly happening,’ said Clay. Then he stared at the diplomat, as another thought came to him.
‘You spoke of Sedgwick having saved you a task, sir,’ he said. ‘What exactly did you mean?’
His guest pulled one of his lace cuffs straight. ‘I meant that there can be no loose ends in this affair,’ he said. ‘I have already sent Rankin’s more incriminating possessions to the bottom of the Baltic in a weighted package. You may trust your coxswain, but I did not trust Rankin at all. I daresay, if he had lived, he would have found a way to turn his knowledge into cash, either by blackmailing the government or from selling the story of Paul’s death to our enemies. Your coxswain’s actions have saved me the unpleasantness of dealing with that situation.’
‘What would you have done?’
‘I don’t personally attend to such matters, Clay,’ said the diplomat. ‘I would have sent him back to India, together with some confidential instructions for his superiors. They tell me the climate there is especially unhealthy for those of the white races, don’t you know?’
Clay waited for Vansittart to say more, but the diplomat remained silent. The captain noticed, for the first time, that the master shared the same expressionless eyes his late servant had once had.
The End
Note from the Author
Historical fiction is a blend of the truth with the made up, and In Northern Seas is no exception. These notes are for the benefit of readers who would like to understand where the boundary lies between the two.
The frigates Griffin and Liberte, the privateer Hirondelle, and the brig Fair Prospect are all fictitious, as are the characters that crew them. That said, I have tried my best to make sure that my descriptions of those ships and the lives of their crews are as accurate as I am able to make them. All the other ships that I mention are historic, and were in the locations that I state at the time. As always, any errors I have made are my own.
The historical background to the campaign behind In Northern Seas i
s broadly accurate. In 1800, under strong French pressure, Russia, Prussia, Sweden and Denmark were encouraged to renew the Northern League of Armed Neutrality that had been formed during the American War of Independence. This threatened the supply of naval stores that were vital for both the Royal Navy and Britain’s merchant marine. London’s response was to send a large fleet under Admiral Sir Hyde Parker to the Baltic in the spring of 1801. In advance of the fleet, a trusted diplomat called Nicholas Vansittart was despatched on a mission to the Danish court in the hope that he could negotiate a peaceful resolution. When this failed he returned to the fleet aboard the frigate Blanche. There was no subsequent voyage to St Petersburg as portrayed in my novel.
Tsar Paul was murdered by strangulation on the 23rd of March 1801 in the Mikhailovsky Palace. Those responsible were led by General von Bennigsen and Count von Pahlen. The conspirators obtained the support of the Grand Duke Alexander by showing him his arrest warrant, although at this stage their plan was just to force Paul to abdicate. After a tense banquet, the tsar retired to his private rooms. The conspirators were then let into the palace by the guards, and forced their way into Paul’s bedroom using violence. When the tsar refused their demands, he was killed. No British citizens were present, although the change of regime came as a huge relief to London and effectively ended the Northern League of Armed Neutrality. Some historians have suggested that the British Ambassador, Lord Whitworth, may have encouraged the plotters. The murder of his father was to haunt Alexander for the rest of his life.
The scene on the eve of the Battle of Copenhagen in which Nelson receives news of Tsar Paul’s death is my invention. In reality, word of the change in the Russian regime only arrived in Denmark after the battle was over, where it helped to bring the two sides to a swift peace agreement. My portrayal of the battle itself is mostly correct. The ships I show as running aground did so, and the Danish defenders fought with the tenacity and bravery I portray. With the help of a constant flow of reinforcements from the shore, ferried across in a variety of boats, the Danish ships resisted for much longer than the Royal Navy had expected. Nelson came closer to defeat at Copenhagen then in any of his other major fleet actions.
As with my account of the Battle of the Nile in A Man of No Country, I wanted my characters to serve as the eyes of the reader, witnessing history. To this end I substituted the Griffin for the frigate Desiree, which placed herself across the bow of the Danish ship Provesteenen during the battle. The Griffin’s subsequent intervention in the flow of boats from the shore, and the Danish attempt to board her are both fictitious.
The Battle of Copenhagen is best remembered for Admiral Parker’s notorious signal ordering the fleet to break off the action, which was flown at the height of the fighting. At the time he was too remote to have made such a decision, and although he could see that three of Nelson’s ships were aground, he undoubtedly should have trusted the judgement of the commander in the thick of the battle. Nelson is reported to have held his telescope to his blind eye and claimed not to be able to read the signal, an incident from which we get the expression “to turn a blind eye.” Sir Hyde Parker later claimed that his signal was meant simply to give Nelson permission to break off the action if he wished to, rather than a definite order. This explanation lacks as much credibility today as it did at the time. After the battle, Parker was recalled by London, and command of the Baltic Fleet passed to Nelson.
About The Author
Philip K Allan
Philip K. Allan comes from Watford in the United Kingdom. He still lives in Hertfordshire with his wife and his two teenage daughters. He has spent most of his working life to date as a senior manager in the motor industry. It was only in the last few years that he has given that up to concentrate on his novels full time.
He has a good knowledge of the ships of the 18th century navy, having studied them as part of his history degree at London University, which awoke a lifelong passion for the period. He is a member of the Society for Nautical Research and a keen sailor. He believes the period has unrivalled potential for a writer, stretching from the age of piracy via the voyages of Cook to the battles and campaigns of Nelson.
From a creative point of view he finds it offers him a wonderful platform for his work. On the one hand there is the strange, claustrophobic wooden world of the period’s ships; and on the other hand there is the boundless freedom to move those ships around the globe wherever the narrative takes them. All these possibilities are fully exploited in the Alexander Clay series of novels.
His inspiration for the series was to build on the works of novelists like C.S. Forester and in particular Patrick O’Brian. His prose is heavily influenced by O’Brian’s immersive style. He, too, uses meticulously researched period language and authentic nautical detail to draw the reader into a different world. But the Alexander Clay books also bring something fresh to the genre, with a cast of fully formed lower deck characters with their own back histories and plot lines in addition to the officers. Think Downton Abbey on a ship, with the lower deck as the below stairs servants.
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