Sea of Grey

by Dewey Lambdin

  “And I’ll have a tune, Mister Langlie,” Lewrie added. “Summon the fiddlers. Spanish Ladies, I should think.”

  “Er … aye aye, sir.”

  The hands were piped down from aloft, the last tug of a brace was tugged. Sheets and halliards were gathered on pin-rails and fife-rails, the hawsers were hosed down and stowed below in the cable tiers, the hawse bucklers fitted to block spray and sluices from high waves. Excess ropes were flemished down in neat piles. Proteus was ship-shape.

  “Farewell and adieu, to you Spanish ladies,

  farewell and adieu, you ladies of Spain!

  For we’ve received orders t’sail from old England,

  and we hope in a short time t’see you again.

  We’ll rant and we’ll roll, like true British sailors,

  we’ll rant and we’ll roll, all across the salt seas!

  Until we strike soundings, in the channel of old England,

  from Ushant to Scilly is thirty-five leagues!”

  Fiddles, tin-whistles, the youngish Marine drummer, and Desmond on his uillean lap-pipes, made it sweetly longing.

  “‘So let ev’ry man, raise up his full bumper,’” Lewrie joined in, bellowing (as was his wont when singing) the words out, “‘let ev’ry man drink up his full glass … for we’ll laugh and be jolly, a-and chase melancholy … with a well-given toast to each true-hearted lass!’”

  A few lances of sunshine broke through the dawn clouds, spearing HMS Proteus, making her glisten as bright as a new-minted coin, as she proudly made her way to sea, all bustle and swash, gleaming fresh canvas and giltwork flashing … out where she properly belonged.

  No matter where those sealed orders took them.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Is he reading them?” Lieutenant Catterall, the sly and waggish rogue who had risen from senior Midshipman to Third Officer, asked.

  “Aye, just now,” Lieutenant Langlie answered as he paced along the windward side of the quarterdeck, stepping over the ring-bolts and tackles of the light 6-pounders and 24-pounder carronades.

  “Opened ’em, sir?” Bosun Mr. Pendarves enquired.

  “I do believe, Mister Pendarves,” Lt. Lewis Wyman replied with an abrupt nod, as he stood at the top of the larboard gangway ladder.

  “So we’ll soon know our orders, won’t we, Mister Pendarves?” Mr. Midshipman Sevier (the shy one) opined near the ladder’s foot.

  “Or, not,” Mr. Midshipman Adair, a clever Scots lad, jeered at him. “He has no duty to tell us anything, if it’s secret doings.”

  “Gracious!” little Midshipman Elwes gasped. “Secret work?”

  “Work o’ some sort’s in order, young sirs,” Bosun Pendarves told them, noting that all six “mids” were hanging about, ears cocked for a bit of gossip and doing nothing, which was sinful in boys, either nautical or civilian. “Go on, now … back t’yer duties, lads.”

  “Bloody Christ, this is lunacy,” Lewrie muttered aloud once he had broken the seals on his canvas-bound supplemental “advisories.”

  “Sir?” Aspinall idly asked from his wee pantry.

  “Someday I’d love t‘meet a one-armed Admiralty clerk, Aspinall. Someone who can never say ’but on the other hand’,” Lewrie griped. At least Aspinall was amused.

  The Royal Navy was infamous for over-vaunting orders. Sending a small brig o’ war to patrol off Leith was too easy, too simple. No, additional tasks were always larded on, like sketching the headlands, taking new soundings when not chasing smugglers, amassing a new dictionary of Scots’ slang, trawling for a 1588 wreck rumoured to contain Spanish Armada gold and silver, or fetching back some pregnant female sturgeons for the royal table!

  His advisories did not require any new tasks of a secret or more perilous nature than usual, but …

  On the other hand! Lewrie most snidely thought, snickering.

  They were secret, nonetheless. Lewrie suspected that they had been so labeled because no one responsible for their issuance was willing to let himself be known as a complete lack-wit!

  Lewrie got to his feet, shaking his head in wonder as he paced aft to the transom settee, to gaze out upon the ship’s wake. It was a grey and blustery day, the horizon a bare two miles of visibility even from the mastheads, when Proteus was rolled and scended upwards atop a salty hillock. The ocean was a‘heave, grey-green and spumed by white caps and white horses. Proteus groaned and creaked, then roared as she soared aloft on a wide, rising wave, her sails and masts, her standing rigging strained wind-full. Moments later, the sluicing roar was even louder as she coasted and surfed down into an equally wide, but deep, trough, where her courses were robbed of wind and slatted, whilst her tops’ls and t’gallants remained taut, and her stout bows thundered as they met a low hedge of water that ran a shudder through her timbers from stem to stern.

  He unconsciously shifted his weight from foot to foot, as if he were riding a short seesaw atop a drum, as Proteus metronomically rolled about fifteen degrees either side of upright every thirty seconds or so—all the while soughing or rising, by turns, at least one every forty-five seconds, now that the weather had moderated, the seas had flattened a bit, and the space between great waves had increased.

  The last cast of the log a half-hour before showed that Proteus was making about twelve knots, even under cautiously reduced sail, but the winds were finally out of the Nor’east on her starboard quarters, presaging the first of the Trades that would bear her slantwise for the West Indies. With a clean and newly coppered bottom, Proteus was always fastest on a quartering wind.

  The rest of the voyage had been perfectly, miserably vile, but for a short break in the weather when they had met up with old Admiral Jervis’s fleet to deliver despatches; day after day of reduced canvas, pouring icy rains and sleet pellets, of soaked and swelling rigging all going slacker by the hour, threatening the loss of spars and masts to every sickening heave, toss, or roll, with the bows smashing fist-like into every oncoming wave with a deep, echoing boom, as if they had run aground, an hundred miles out in the Bay of Biscay! Cold rations from an unlit galley, tepid soups and gruels when they had risked fires in the hearths under the steep-tubs, hatches mostly closed and everyone in a dim, foetid “fug” on the gun-deck, with bedding and every stitch of clothing sopping wet or only half-dry when re-donned, the drying salt crystals itching like mad, creating boils wherever flesh and wool had a chance to chafe, had made even the “chearly” hands grumble. Bedding was no dryer, and the hammocks, so tight-packed, had swayed and dipped and jerked to the ship’s vicious motion, robbing everyone of sleep, and awake or a’nod, the cold and wet had set everyone coughing.

  Even that brief spell of decent weather had been boisterous, he recalled, just nice enough to air and dry things out under a weak and watery winter Mediterranean sun, and being rowed over to “Old Jarvy’s” flagship, Lewrie had nearly been pitched from out his gig as it rose and fell so swoopily that he’d had to hang on for dear life, or end up flipped arse-over-tits like a pancake!

  Not the sort of activity for a man who could not swim; nor was scaling the tall sides of a heaving, rolling three-decker. At least Admiral Jervis, now Lord St. Vincent, had been appreciative, and had a welcome glass of claret whistled up once Lewrie’d gained her upper decks; all the while doffing his gilt-trimmed cocked hat in his eccentric manner, from the instant Lewrie had addressed him ’til the moment he had turned to depart.

  Now, even here past 15 degrees West and 34 degrees North, where he had been at last allowed to open those intriguing additional advisories, the weather was foul; just better by matter of degree. It was no longer frigid … now it could perhaps be described as only “cool and brisk.” And he had finally thawed out!

  He slapped his hands together behind his back and rocked on the balls of his feet as he swayed from side to side along with his ship, pondering.

  No matter several expeditions sent out from France attempting to reclaim their prewar island colonies, the French had lost most of them, except f
or Guadeloupe, and the much smaller isles nestled close around Guadeloupe—Marie—Galante, La Desirade, the tiny Iles de Saintes and Iles de la Petite Terre. They had lost St. Barthelemy, Dominica, and Saint Martin, which they had shared with the Dutch; they had lost Martinique, its planters and settlers welcoming British occupation as salvation from the brutal Jacobin terrors of Parisian revolutionary officials who panted to behead or hang anyone suspected of less than total ardour for the Republic.

  The French had also lost Tobago, Grenada, and Saint Vincent, and for a time had lost Saint Lucia, ‘til the islanders had rebelled, driving British troops off the island three years before, in ’95. Grenada was also “iffy,” with British forces only holding Fort St. George, and the rest of the island in the hands of a slave rebellion led by a coloured planter, Julien Fédon.

  Guadeloupe (so Lewrie was informed) was a hornet’s nest of privateers, with everything from proper merchant ships to longboats outfitted and armed. French frigates, corvettes, and smaller National Ships sometimes called there for resupply. A particularly vicious and greedy bastard by name of Victor Hugues had landed with a small army in June of 1793, after Guadeloupe had been occupied by British regiments under General Sir Charles Grey, and had defeated them. Ever since, he had sent agents provocateurs to stir up revolution on the former French islands, among the French-speaking slaves and free coloureds on Dominica and Grenada, among the Black Caribs of Saint Vincent. A bloodthirsty fanatic, he had guillotined over 1,200 “disloyal” white settlers so far. But he was brutally effective, even getting agents, arms, and money to British-owned islands’ slaves and freedmen.

  Lewrie and Proteus were, therefore, to patrol vigourously, with an eye out for privateers, proper French warships, and anything suspicious, no matter how small, that might help foment more troubles.

  Right, so far so good, he thought; so’s especial care to protect British merchantmen, and enforce the Navigation Acts. British goods in British bottoms, to and from British colonies … and everyone else can go sing for the scraps!

  Except for the Americans … temporarily!

  The Spanish were still at war with England, but his “advisories” didn’t make them sound up to much; Cuba had few ships, and was under a heavy blockade from Jamaica. The aforementioned Santo Domingo was not a real factor; neither was Puerto Rico, even if the locals had driven off a British expeditionary force. Should French ships not be able to use French ports, their privateers and warships might be found near a Spanish possession, or lurking among the Danish Virgin Islands … .

  Then there was Saint Domingue … and the Americans, again.

  Before the French Revolution in 1789 (so his “advisories” told him), Saint Domingue had been the richest prize in the West Indies, and its trade in sugar, molasses, rum and arrack, coffee and dye-woods had been worth more than all the British colonies put together. William Pitt the Younger, the Prime Minister, along with Lord Dundas and those worthies in Whitehall, had desired it above all.

  Another British expeditionary force had invaded Saint Domingue from Jamaica in 1793, with eager help from white French planters and traders, the so-called grands blancs, those richest, with the most to lose … along with their heads; most were royalists who’d be first in line for the tumbrils to the guillotine. At present, British soldiers held most of the seaports in South Province and West Province, with the French Republicans pretty much in charge of North Province.

  Tired of staring at the ocean, Lewrie turned and strode forrud to his chart-space for a peek at a map. Toulon woke from a nap and trotted beside him.

  “Good puss,” Lewrie cooed as Toulon rolled onto his back atop a map of the island of Hispaniola. “That’s it … crush the Dons in Santo Domingo, not this half.”

  Saint Domingue was like the letter U laid on its side, the two long arms aimed Westerly. First settled and richest, North Province was the upper arm and long peninsula that thrust towards Cuba and the Windward Passage. British troops held the harbour of Mole St. Nicholas near its western tip, and Port de Paix; the Royal Navy blockaded the provincial and colonial capital, Cap Francois—he made a note to himself that the locals referred to it as “Le Cap”—and the port of Fort Dauphin, near the eastern border with Spanish Santo Domingo.

  Between the two arms lay a vast bight, and West Province, with all its freshwater rivers running down from the high mountains, where the French had dug intricate irrigation canals to water their fields. British troops held the port of Gonaives, just above the river Ester and the port of Saint Marc.

  In the south, the small island of Gonave was lightly garrisoned by British troops. The isle broke the Bay of Port Au Prince into two channels leading to the large harbour and town of the same name, down at the “elbow bend” where South Province’s peninsula began. British troops had a firm grip on South Province, and the port towns of Grand Goave and Petit Goave, on the northern coast, and Jacmel on the southern shore. South Province had been last to be settled and farmed with slaves; it was much drier and less productive, since it lay in the lee of those storm-breaking mountains, in the “rain shadow.” Most nourishing rainwater fell on West Province, therefore.

  Such a rich place, so lush and green … and so deadly.

  “Murff?” Toulon asked, sprawled on his belly, with his chin on the border, looking for “pets.”

  “Damn’ bad place, aye … you’re right, puss,” Lewrie said, as he swept him up to cradle him and tickle his white belly.

  It was no wonder to him that the British forces, now under General Maitland, had gone little farther inland. After all that “Liberté, Fraternite, Egalité” bumf of the revolutionary mobs, Saint Domingue had erupted in civil war between Royalists and Republicans, with the grands blancs and the petits blancs—which could mean any white settler from a modest tradesman or overseer to a drunken harbour layabout—up in arms, with the help of those aspiring gens de coleur, the free Blacks and mixed race Mulattoes. Until the Whites had made it plain that the colony wished freedom from France, but would keep the slave plantation system and the strict racial hierarchy, that is; then the “persons of colour” had made it a three-sided civil war. High-flown edicts written in Paris, granting full voting rights to gens de coleur born free, and of two free parents (maybe 400 in all the island!) had enraged the lower class petits blancs, who would die before being valued lower than a “Cuffy”.

  And, to top it all off, in 1791, the 450,000 darkly black slaves in the countryside had risen in revolt, murdering their masters, burning lush manor houses, raping white women, raiding and looting, before forming into loose battalions that used hoes, pitchforks, scythes, and cane knives to fight and defeat European-trained and armed soldiers and militias, as well as the countryside police, who were mostly Mulatto or half-coloured to begin with.

  Paris had sent another slobbering fanatic, Léger Sonthonax, to Saint Domingue, with 7,000 European troops and some portable guillotines. More Free Blacks had arrived, too, fresh from the Terror to lead the cause of full equality. Sonthonax thought that all island whites, no matter their station, were Royalist or separatist, so his guillotines stayed busy, and as his home-bred troops died of malaria and the Yellow Jack, or got massacred in the back-country by slave rebels, he aligned with the Mulatto militias, who aspired to emulate their white parents rather than side with the darker, mostly illiterate plantation slaves.

  Now the interior of the colony was controlled by the slaves in arms—well-armed, too, so Lewrie was informed—and led by a man who styled himself General Toussaint L’Ouverture, a former house slave himself. When the war began in ’93, a Spanish army of 14,000 men had tried to invade Saint Domingue from Santo Domingo; now L’Ouverture was just about ready to invade the Spanish half of Hispaniola to free his fellow Spanish Blacks!

  Such servile unrest, his orders firmly advised, was not to be allowed off that unhappy isle; he was to take, sink, or burn any ships of a “slave navy” departing Saint Domingue, before rebellion, along with arms and encouragement, could get t
o Jamaica and other colonies.

  “But on the other hand, Toulon …” Lewrie wryly mused, as he stroked the ram-cat’s silky belly, making Toulon rattle-purr and half shut his eyes in bliss.

  He was to do nothing to impede the slaves, since they were good at making mincemeat of what troops the French still had ashore, or had a chance of fetching from Europe. As the orders subtly hinted, “arms and munitions imported by whatever means are not to be discouraged, so long as no hint of future export to British colonies is suspected.”

  It was hoped, the advisories stated, that this spring of ’98, General Maitland could march inland and defeat the ill-fed, barefoot slaves, further isolate any remaining French garrisons, and finally conquer the damned place. Failing that, the semblance of amity, encouragement, and cooperation with the slaves’ aspirations, to either delude them long enough to disarm them, or “bring them into the fold” as temporary allies would suit.

  And speaking of temporary allies …

  Those orders and advisories waxed eloquent about the Americans. They were back at sea with a real navy, after scrapping their last old Continental Navy ships in 1785, no longer dependent upon a tiny clutch of revenue cutters in the Treasury Department, or small customs vessels maintained in coastal waters by the several states.

  Not that the Continental Navy had been worth all that much in those days, Lewrie recalled with a snort of derision. He’d only seen one real warship, and she’d gone down with her guns firing in a hopelessly onesided fight with his old ship, HMS Desperate. The brig o’ war … Liberty, had been her name?

  No matter. The Royal Navy had taken, sunk or burned, or blockaded most of them ’til they’d rotted at their anchorages. No, it had been their adventurous privateers that had carried the fight, decimating British trade. Americans were an odd lot, Lewrie had gathered; if war came at sea, they’d prefer the lax discipline, and hope of profit-sharing, of a privateer to the regimented life of a navy vessel! Patriotism for flinty-eyed, avaricious “Yankee Doodles” went down better when sweetened by plunder, prize money, and the chance to gallivant in high adventure for a few months.