The Contraband Shore

by David Donachie

  Outside the double doors, fronted by a pair of brass cannon on either side of a flagstaff on which fluttered a Union Flag, stood another two marine sentries who presented arms at his passing, while inside a second ex-tar manned access to the inner sanctum. Brazier was directed to a side room to wait while his name was sent up to Braddock. He was not left for long.

  ‘Damn me, I’m surprised to see you, Brazier. How many years has it been?’

  ‘Must be near seven, sir.’ Brazier responded with faux enthusiasm, suspecting it being a question to which the admiral well knew the answer, despite an enquiring expression on the bluff, ruddy face.

  ‘Premier on Hero, if I have the right of it.’

  ‘Indeed, sir.’

  ‘Dined aboard often. Commodore kept a good table, I must say.’

  ‘He was fond of entertaining, sir.’

  Knowing what was coming after this opening exchange, Brazier sought to delay the shared memory, one larded with mixed feelings, by turning to look out of the large windows. He and the then-Captain Braddock had first met just before an expedition to the Cape of Good Hope and subsequently on the voyage, many times in Commodore Johnstone’s dining cabin.

  The squadron had been tasked to take the Cape colony from the Dutch, a notion scotched by the French under the formidable Bailli de Suffren, first off the Cape Verde Islands. It was a fight that might be claimed as a draw, but one which favoured the enemy more than Britannia. Admiral Suffren then got to his Dutch allies at the Cape first, to deny Johnstone the harbour, leaving him no choice but to sail on to the Indian subcontinent.

  Braddock was no different to Pollock; he would want to reprise the whole expedition. Total deflection would be impossible, but it could be put off. ‘That’s a fine third rate you are overseeing, sir.’

  ‘Bellerophon, they’ve named her. You should go aboard, Brazier, and look her over.’ Braddock produced a rather forced laugh. ‘How long is it since you sniffed a ship’s timbers and smelt anything other than rot?’

  ‘I don’t recall ever doing so. She’s fitting out, of course?’

  ‘Aye, safer to do so in this neck of the woods than at the Medway dockyards. I will not say nothing goes missing in this yard, that’s never to be stopped, but it’s a fraction of what the Chatham dockies would pilfer. Come, man, take a seat, have a glass of wine and tell me what brings you into my bailiwick.’

  The question brought disquiet; as with his old commanding officer, if not for the same reason, he had no desire to discuss personal business. He could hardly say he had come to take the sea air when he had just been paid off in Portsmouth from long service in Jamaica. After several thousand miles sailing the Atlantic that was a commodity of which he’d had an abundance.

  ‘I came on from visiting Admiral Pollock at Adisham, sir. Having never anchored here and close by, I was curious to cast an eye over the place.’

  It did the trick as Braddock, with Pollock mentioned, was required to manufacture interest, as well as regard, for a long-known fellow officer. ‘And how is the old rogue?’

  ‘Longing to be active, sir.’

  ‘Don’t we all, Brazier, don’t we all? I have always meant to call upon him myself, but the time …’

  The consequence of the lack of that commodity was left hanging, for it was unlikely to be factual. If he and Pollock had been cordially friendly once, it was doubtful such an attitude would be maintained now, it being a truism that the higher you rose in the service the less amiable became your relations with your peers, due to endemic competition for increasingly limited opportunities.

  ‘Still you came on?’

  ‘Curiosity, sir, as I say.’

  That got a raised eyebrow as Braddock clearly tried to imagine what was worth exploring in such a backwater. ‘Not much to see, less you’re an aficionado of Tudor castles, gun bastions and the shoals of fish.’

  ‘I’m at present without encumbrances, sir, and have the time to act with a freedom I have not enjoyed for many a year.’

  ‘Ah, blessed freedom,’ Braddock responded, which was as good a way as any of covering the fact that he was at a loss as to what to say next.

  ‘Since you are based here, sir, you must know Deal well.’

  ‘Too damn well, Brazier, and it does not render me fond.’ A raised eyebrow obliged the admiral to continue, though he acted to gather his thoughts by indicating the decanter, issuing a silent invitation to partake. ‘It’s a confounded place and full of the worst kind of villainy.’

  ‘Worse than Portsmouth or the Nore towns?’ was the disbelieving response: both the main fleet bases of the Royal Navy were hardly virtuous, quite the reverse.

  ‘Most certainly. What do you know of smuggling?’

  ‘I am hardly unaware of what it entails.’

  He was tempted to add he had spent the last three years acting against it in the Caribbean; he sensed that would not be welcome, given it was an extremely lucrative station on which to serve and therefore a source of envy.

  ‘Well this place is wedded to it. There’s barely a soul in the town who’s not either a perpetrator or a beneficiary and it’s a damned nuisance. I rate it as no business of the navy to be seeking to stop the perpetrators, which is a task for the Revenue Service. Should we catch anyone, we are obliged to hand them over, with no certainty we will be rewarded for the value of what they carry.’

  Braddock would be thinking of his own purse, not anyone else’s; that was the way of flag officers.

  ‘I’m nudged by the Admiralty for the sake of appearances,’ he continued, with a sly look, ‘but I happen to know they share my view. Trouble is, I’m plagued by demands from Billy Pitt to act forcibly.’

  ‘I would think the King’s First Minister would have more on his plate than people running contraband.’

  ‘He has and he should stick to it. I make a show of some effort, but I’m damned if I’m going to wear out the ships I command by having them beat up and down the Channel, to then have the Admiralty clerks demanding an explanation for the wear and tear on wood and canvas, with a demand that I and my captains make good any losses.’

  The admiral slapped the top of his desk. ‘Let Pitt propose, but in this area of the briny, as far as the navy is concerned, I dispose. I’d be chasing shadows anyway, for the sods are damn clever, which I must admit even Pitt acknowledges. It would be better for his well-being if he didn’t spend so much time here—’

  An expression of obvious ignorance changed the admiral’s line. ‘You do know he desires to be Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports?’

  ‘I did not,’ Brazier replied, seeking and failing to recall what such an office entailed.

  ‘Pure flummery, of course, and not worth much more than a brass farthing. Lord North has the title now, but he resides in Oxfordshire when not on Parliamentary business. So Pitt uses Walmer Castle as a retreat when the House is not in session. Likes the sea air, he says, and is ambitious to have full possession when North goes to meet his maker, it being a lifetime appointment.’ The decanter was visited again. ‘Trouble is, what goes on is right under his nose, which is no doubt why he’s become obsessed.’

  Braddock shook his head at such perceived idiocy. ‘Inclined to go off the deep end too. He called in the army to burn every seagoing boat on the whole strand a couple of years back, trying to put a cap on it, which my predecessor wisely declined to be part of. We have to live here and I don’t want my tars being at risk of a beating by the locals on a run ashore, and for something we should not be part of.’

  That brought another artful look to the older man’s face. ‘You ain’t come to the Kent coast with that in mind, have you?’ The look of mystification had Braddock add, ‘To have a word in his ear?

  ‘Sir,’ Brazier replied truthfully, ‘I didn’t even know he used Walmer Castle, so why would I?’

  Braddock made an attempt to look as if he believed his visitor and failed, given what he had proposed made sense to a competitive and devious mind. William Pitt’s elder
brother had recently been offered the post of First Lord of the Admiralty, and might in future be able to dole out employment to the likes of Brazier and Braddock. What better way to apply pressure on Lord Chatham than through his younger sibling, who just happened to also be, as the King’s First Minister, his political superior?

  ‘Wasting your time, mind you. More wine?’

  Brazier nodded and held out his glass, deciding it was time to get to the nub of his reasons for calling. ‘I was wondering how you were fixed in the article of spare mounts, sir. I will require a horse while I’m here.’

  ‘Dire, Brazier, dire. Half our nags are near to spavined and asking the Navy Board for the funds to retire and replace the creatures falls on deaf ears, which means of course the fit horses are asked to do too much. That said, you tickle my curiosity. What good would one of our shire horses be to you?’

  ‘You have no others?’

  The response was sharp. ‘Only coach horses, and they are for my personal use.’

  ‘Then I wonder perhaps about stabling a hired animal?’

  ‘Town’s not short on places and we are surrounded by farms who would oblige you.’

  ‘If I could stable here, it would be convenient for the Three Kings and I can be sure your men would look after any hire properly. I will of course pay for feed.’

  Braddock waited for some indication of what length of time that would be; he waited in vain, not responding till after a deep gulp of wine.

  ‘I daresay we can find you a stall. As for feed, a few oats and some hay, it will not rate the time it takes to calculate a bill. Now, let’s put our minds back to the Cape Verdes, for I don’t recollect talking it over with you after Suffren humbugged us, French swine that he is. I do recall your name being praised by the Commodore for your taking back of the Infernal.’

  ‘That was a hot affair.’

  Braddock’s shoulders shook with mirth. ‘Very good, Brazier, a telling pun.’

  ‘Unintended, sir,’ was the honest reply, Infernal having been a fireship. ‘But I will add there were many others who should have had their names recalled in that and subsequent encounters. The men I had the honour to lead deserved recognition for it.’

  ‘Luck, Brazier, it all comes down to luck: whose name is put forward for praise and who’s left out. Only the Good Lord knows how I have suffered from that.’

  By the time he exited the Naval Yard, Edward Brazier and Braddock had refought three engagements: the one against Admiral Suffren off Porto Praya in the Cape Verdes, another at the Cape of Good Hope and a third battle to take the port of Trincomalee in Ceylon. The last was where Brazier got his step to post rank, leading the successful assault to take the fort, which dominated the harbour.

  He had partaken of too much of Braddock’s wine and, his host not being choosy in the article of quality, it sat ill on Brazier’s stomach and even worse on his tongue. The remedy was sea air and legs fully employed, so he set off along the busy street fronting the beach at a pace – an object of some curiosity to the locals, who must know every officer who oversaw the yard and wondered at a newcomer.

  The strand itself, shiny pebbles glimpsed through the numerous alleys which allowed access to the shoreline, was busy as goods were loaded to be carried out to the waiting ships. That acknowledged, there were just as many craft idle as employed; those who crewed them, bearded, weather-beaten fellows clad in dirty and well-worn oilskins, sat on the gunwales smoking their pipes.

  Brazier knew ships sailing down from London took on much of what they required here, not least hands for blue-water sailing, in numbers not necessary for the trip down the River Thames. These were men who had been discharged from other merchant vessels on arrival in the roadstead, and for the same reason.

  Many of the buildings on both sides of the street advertised themselves as ship chandlers, while one was very obviously a place to recruit hands, given the clutch of tars milling around outside. There would be competition for the more experienced: those who could hand, reef and steer. Also numerous tables were laden with several varieties of fish, dead on the slab but with the seawater smell of freshness. Others held piles of live crabs and lobsters, these manned by females of such brutish appearance and formidable build that they looked sure to get the best of any bargaining.

  He passed a pair of armed bastions placed to back up, with cannon, those of the old twin castles. These occupied the only spaces not given over to dwellings, going on till he came to the most northerly of the local Tudor-built fortresses: a very run-down affair, with its moat gone and its walls at the mercy of the sea.

  What lay beyond looked to be flat scrub and marshland dotted with sandhills all the way to a distant set of chalk cliffs, so he decided to make his way back by a different route, taking a gentle slope through a jumble of gimcrack dwellings, hovels really, until he came to what seemed to be some kind of main thoroughfare: a long and straight, lower-level road.

  At this north end of the town there were buildings only on the seaward side, opposite a series of market and vegetable-growing gardens. The road itself was not short on ruts, through which various conveyances, hand- and horse-drawn, sought to manoeuvre by each other with no set order. Thus the air was replete with shouting and endless disagreement on the right of way, with no shortage of blaspheming. There was also no scarcity of equine filth, both fresh and driven into the mud, which gave employment to a series of crossing sweepers at each junction.

  The east-side houses turned to an untidy set of more trading emporiums, each with its beam and double block to raise and lower goods from the upper floors. Just like the front, all the trades that serviced seagoing ships were here; sailmakers and purveyors of canvas by the bolt, emporiums selling rope from whip lines to multi-stranded anchor cables, businesses suppling vinegar and turpentine spirits. There would be a woodyard and bakeries for ship’s biscuit somewhere, as well as a slaughterhouse for meat.

  Interspersed with these emporiums was a ready supply of places in which you could buy drink, some no more than a sign and a single open window, behind which probably sat a naval widow, granted the right to earn the means to eat by vending spirituous liquor, mostly gin, in lieu of a pension.

  The dominant building was the church, solidly constructed in brick on the landward side and with no pretentions to the excessive elaboration of the Papist tradition. It was of a design popular in the reign of William and Mary – a style Brazier, as a midshipman, had seen replicated in what had been the American colonies. His ever-curious nose took him down the side street to reveal a large graveyard to the rear and, knowing it must contain the remains of sailors like himself, he was drawn to examine the headstones.

  The sight of the parasol and two bonneted females exiting a narrow gate made him stop and, if he was surprised, that was as nothing to the look of sheer shock they displayed. The older of the two, as he lifted his hat, bent to whisper in the ear of the younger woman and, by her expression, the urgent words she was saying were not praiseworthy, though any strictures she issued were not obeyed.

  ‘Captain Brazier. I cannot adequately express the depth of my astonishment at seeing you here.’

  ‘Mrs Langridge, my amazement is equal to your own. Yet I welcome it, in that I should meet you so fortuitously. Knowing you resided hard by the town, it had been my intention to drop you a note asking if it would be fitting to call.’

  As a touch of colour came to the cheeks of Betsey Langridge, Brazier turned a fraction to look at the older woman, her Aunt Sarah. If her niece showed no malevolence, it was not replicated in a woman saddled with a most inappropriate name.

  ‘Mrs Lovell.’

  ‘Why do I sense your presence is no coincidence, sir?’

  ‘I do assure you, this meeting is just that, madam.’

  ‘You will forgive me if I take leave to doubt it.’

  It was Betsey who spoke next, her pleasant tone annoying her aunt, who sucked in irritated cheeks. ‘It does seem strange, Captain Brazier, given the last time w
e met was some three thousand miles distant.’

  ‘A meeting that I fondly recall.’

  Another hint of a blush was followed by a twirl of Betsey’s parasol, as a clearly exasperated Aunt Sarah spoke once more. ‘We came to lay flowers at the memorial to Mr Langridge.’

  This was forcibly delivered to remind him of the situation of her niece.

  ‘I was given to understand Mr Langridge was buried in the Caribbean?’

  ‘That does not preclude recollection of his fine nature, as well as a plaque to his memory, in the graveyard of a parish church in which he worshipped many times and to the building of which his family generously subscribed.’

  ‘Please feel free to call, Captain Brazier, though I would take it as a kindness to be allowed some prior warning.’

  ‘Perhaps in a few weeks’ time?’ posited Aunt Sarah, with an attempt at, and an utter failure to produce, a sweet smile.

  Brazier was looking very directly at her niece. ‘I doubt I could delay that long.’

  ‘And neither should you, sir.’

  ‘Elisabeth! We must be getting home.’

  ‘Of course, Aunt Sarah,’ was the reply, but her eyes were still on Edward Brazier, who had just told both women where he was residing.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was a much-cheered fellow who returned to the Three Kings, the immediate task to write to Betsey Langridge. The doubts he had harboured as to his reception, which had plagued him for some time, could be put to rest. From where he sat now, they looked to have been absurd, yet that had to be acknowledged as hindsight. The last time he had seen her had been thousands of miles away, which took no account of a twelve-month gap.