“Told you they were purblind fools!” the staff-captain said with an angry bark. “Well, let me tell you, Captain Lewrie, the Royal Navy has records, too, and vaster experience in the West Indies than anyone else, hundreds of years in these waters, and even we depart the Indies by June, and don’t come back ’til late September. Why Sir Hyde’s flagship Queen is in the careenage this very moment, sir … to ready her for her voyage to Halifax.”
And here I thought it was ’cause the seaweed on her bottom had taken root in the harbour mud! Lewrie thought, hiding his smirk. He’d heard that Sir Hyde Parker was making a vast fortune in prize money in the West Indies, the richest plum assignment that Admiralty could bestow; and that he was doing it the classic way … trusting to others in frigates and sloops of war, to junior officers in hired brigs, cutters and tenders to reap the spoils, whilst the big ships languished at anchor, waiting for a French fleet that might never come, so tight was the British blockade of the French ports.
“Why the other Third Rates are in, outfitting, too,” Sir Edward further informed him. He topped up his own glass, but made no offer to do the same for Lewrie’s this time. “By no later than mid-June, this harbour will be nearly empty. Then it will be up to the lesser ships on the station to exert themselves in our stead. Tenders to the Third Rates, tenders to the flagship …
Pets and toadies, Lewrie sneerfully told himself; captains’ favourites who can fatten their sea-daddy’s purse, and their own. While better men twiddle their thumbs and never see tuppence.
“ … hired brigs, captured schooners, and a few frigates, just to keep the French on the qui vive. What is your draught, sir?”
“Umh …” Lewrie said, coming back to the moment, “seventeen and a half feet aft, sir.”
“Excellent! Though you’ll want to purchase, or capture, a tender, or tow some additional single-masted boats for close inshore work,” Sir Edward suggested. “Base out of Kingston, here, so the voyage over to Saint Domingue will be short, when you run low on stores. You may even contemplate landing some stores, sailing lighter, to reduce draught to seventeen feet, or slightly less.”
“I see, sir. Most helpful advice,” Lewrie replied, realising he was probably the lowest-ranking Post-Captain on-station, and would be staying after the valuable ships departed for hurricane season. Dull blockade work off some French-held port on Saint Domingue, off-and-on plodding back and forth, and nothing worth chasing but for island-built luggers and single-masted sloops. And reefs and shoals, aplenty!
“So Proteus is to patrol close to Saint Domingue, is she, sir?” he simply had to ask, in way of sly prompting for a wider liberty for action … and prize money! “Or shall she have leave to patrol more, uhm … aggressively?”
“Blockade work, Captain Lewrie,” Sir Edward told him, sounding almost glad to grind it in, as if he had formed a low opinion of him, in a twinkling. “Get your sea legs in the West Indies, after all that derringdo of yours in European waters,” the staff-captain sneered, with a dismissive gesture towards Lewrie’s medals. Unfortunately, the hand that he employed was the one that held his wineglass, and he spilled a goodly dollop of it on his own breeches, the wine-table, and his carpet, which was a very fine—mostly pale—Turkey. “Goddammit!”
“Oh, what a pity, sir …’bout the rug,” Lewrie said, making a charitable grimace, instead of the angry scowl he felt like showing.
“Best pair, dammit,” Sir Edward seethed, trying to swipe at his drenched thigh, setting that dangerous glass down, at least … but he flung droplets from his hand with an idle shake that spattered Lewrie in turn. “Oh, bugger!”
“Actually, Sir Edward, I did a few years in the West Indies in the Revolution. Started out here, in ’80. So I wonder if the best use of Proteus is …” Lewrie slyly attempted to wheedle.
“Damned puppy!” Sir Edward screeched of a sudden, glaring back at him. “Don’t like your orders, do you? Presume to talk me out of ’em, will you? In debt, are you? That eager for prize money?”
“Never, sir!” Lewrie declared, with his best “righteous” face on. “Proteus is fast and nimble, and does draw seventeen feet, sir. I was merely wishing to point out that a shoal-draught brig or large schooner would better serve close-in, whilst a frigate might stand farther offshore, to better interdict ships attempting to smuggle arms into Saint Domingue. And be better placed to intercept the odd French warship. As you say, in a few weeks our strength in the Indies will be reduced ’til the end of hurricane season, and fewer ships will have to cover a vast area, so it struck me that the most, uhm … efficient use of all our vessels is necessary, so—”
“Teach your granny to suck eggs, would you, sir?” Captain Sir Edward Charles fumed back, still mopping himself with a pocket handkerchief. “Know better than your superiors, do you?”
“Absolutely not, sir, why—!”
“Specific orders will be draughted and aboard your ship by the end of tomorrow’s Forenoon, Captain Lewrie. Good day, sir.”
“Very good, sir,” Lewrie answered, quickly quaffing the last of his claret and getting to his feet, his face now an inscrutable public mask. “Uhm … there is still my courtesy call upon the Admiral. Do you think … ?” he enquired in an innocent tone, trying to salvage his odour, thinking that, should he make a favourable impression upon Sir Hyde Parker, what harm he’d done himself with this quarrelsome drunk could be cancelled out. And those orders changed!
“Our admiral is a most busy man, Captain Lewrie,” Sir Edward intoned, “engaged with weighty matters anent the war, and his additional duties as prime representative of the Crown in this part of the world. Most busy. Some other time, perhaps,” he concluded, not without a malicious simper to his voice, and a top-lofty twitch to his lips. He did, at least, rise to his own feet to steer Lewrie out, though more than a trifle unsteadily.
“Thank you for receiving me, sir,” Lewrie was forced by manners to say, just before the double doors closed in his face, and the muffled cry for a manservant to come swab up the mess reached his ears—ears that were burning with rage!
Damme, but I mucked it! he chid himself as he stomped down the corridor, all but leaving gouged hoofprints in the gleaming tropical mahoghany boards; never argue with a drunk! One who holds powers over you, especially! If my luck’s not out, mayhap he’ll be half-seas-over by teatime, and so foxed he’ll forget I was ever here!
“Arrogant old bastard!” he muttered under his breath. “Must keep his manservants up all night, washin’ the wine and the vomit from out his wardrobe! Not sayin’ he’s so ignorant, he doesn’t know how to pee, but I’ll wager there’s more’n a time or two his breeches are yellow, and his shoe-buckles’re rusty! God!” he spat aloud. Cautiously.
And it wasn’t as if Sir Edward Charles was likely to stand tall in repute, either, he groused to himself; he was a staff-captain, not the flagcaptain of the fleet. A drunken stumbler a pistol-shot shy of being “Yellow Squadroned,” a jumped-up senior clerk left ashore by his superiors to shuffle papers for the real fighting captains!
He found a black servant tending to a laving bowl and a stack of towels just by the wide double doors that led out to the courtyard and coachway, a luxury for officers and civilian visitors who wished to swab off perspiration and cool themselves before reporting to superiors. Badly in need of a cooling-off, Lewrie set aside his hat and plunged his hands into the water, sluicing his face and neck several times, wishing that he could bury his head in the bowl until he blew bubbles, or just up-turn it over himself ’til his choler subsided.
“Thankee,” he said to the well-liveried slave as he offered him a towel. “Needed that. Hot in there.”
“Aye, sah,” the slave replied, not quite rolling his eyes with long experience of officers who needed his ministrations after their interviews.
Damme, I know I saw a man in admiral’s togs, standin’ on a balcony as we sailed in. Was that Parker? Lewrie recalled.
Fort Charles had partially blocked his view, along with all
of the gunsmoke, but Giddy House had been in clear sight for a little bit! It had been too far off to count buttonholes or cuff rings, but he had seen what looked to be a coloured sash and a star of knighthood!
“Uhm, is Admiral Parker ashore, today?” Lewrie asked the slave.
“Aye, sah,” the servant said with a sly smirk. “But he’s werry busy, sah,” he told him in a distinctive Jamaican patois.
“And here I must still pay my courtesy call,” Lewrie responded, retrieving his hat, and his hopes. Something about the servant’s expression gave him a salacious clue. “And he’d be busy doing … ?”
The slave pointed a finger skyward to the upper floor above.
“His shore office?” Lewrie enquired.
“His chambers, sah,” the servant replied with a wee grin.
“Napping, then?” Lewrie further pressed.
“Oh, nossah,” the slave answered with a wider grin and high-pitched titter.
“With company, is he?” Lewrie puzzled out. “Well, that’s good reason t‘be busy, I s’pose. All the live-long day, I take it?”
“Mos’ de night, too, sah,” he was further informed. “Been ovah t‘Saint Nicholas Mole, ’board ship so long … De Admerl, he got a fine eye fo’ de ladies, Cap’um, sah.”
Lewrie heaved a sigh of defeat. The staff-captain’s impression of him would get to Sir Hyde first, and he and Proteus would be slighted. Attempting to gain admittance, mid-jollifications, would make his odour even worse! He clapped his hat on his head and strode out into the late morning glare, pausing in the shade of Giddy House to steel himself for the full brunt of the sun. And, merry and light as local birds, he could hear the tinkle of a harpsichord, and the soft chuckle of at least two people on the balcony above.
“‘Least someone’s havin’ a good mornin’,” he growled.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Remind ’em again, about the Maroons,” Lewrie told his officers.”All to be back aboard by midnight … with so many ships in port, it’s impossible not t‘hear the watch-bells chime it. Plain drunks and half-dead get slung below … fightin’ drunks’ll get the ‘cat’ and stoppage of rum and tobacco for a month. Remind ’em not t’take too much money ashore, too. That should do it … pray God.”
“Aye, sir,” the officers, senior mates, and midshipmen chorused as they doffed their hats in dismissal.
It was a hellish risk he was running. Lewrie knew that more men took “leg bail” from ships’ companies that were fairly new together, whereas ships longer in commission, and shaken down together, had fewer hands who would end up marked as “Run.” After a time, the ship became home, one’s closest mates and supporters almost like family. A stake in future pay-outs of prize money could provide a leash, as well, and HMS Proteus still awaited the reward for the Orangespruit frigate. Maybe his luck was in. He uncrossed his fingers.
Lewrie had seen unhappy and happy ships both, and felt that Proteus had shaken down rather well, even after the Nore mutiny and Camperdown. The music, the dancing in the Dog Watches, showed him high spirits; he had a somewhat honest Purser, so the rations were not rotten “junk” and were issued to fair measurements. He had decimated the gun-room and midshipmens’ mess of bullies and tyrants, by refusing to take back aboard those budding despots and brutes the crew had wished off during the mass mutiny of the year before. There were very few requests for a change of mess, these days. A constant reshuffling of who could not stand the others in an eight-man dining/sleeping group was a sure sign of unrest and trouble. And, lastly, he had called everyone aft and had spoken to them.
Of trust and honour … of shipmates, future pay, and the prize money; of how Marines and the Army garrison and local militia kept up a full patrol; that Jamaica was an island, after all; that did anyone run inland, there were venomous snakes released long before by plantation owners to frighten their slaves into staying put; that runaways in the hills and back country, the slave “Maroons,” were just waiting to butcher lone whites … well, he’d stretched the truth on that one. The Maroons were mostly high up in the Blue Mountains, fortified in the inaccessible places, not on the very edge of Kingston town; but thank God for the naive gullibility of your average tar—they’d eaten it up like plum duff, and had goggled in horror.
“But, most of all, lads … I trust you. I trusted you when we almost lost the ship and her honour at the Nore,” he had told them and meant every word of it. “And you proved yourselves worthy. And I will trust you with shore liberty, knowing that you will return to duty … with thick heads and a bruise or two, most-like. Does anyone run, the rest of the crew will lose their chance, ’cause you’ll have proved me mistaken in my trust. Don’t let your shipmates down. Don’t toss away what you’ve earned. Don’t let Proteus down. Prove me right in trusting you. That’s all … dismiss. Larboard watch to go ashore.”
In an English port, he would never have risked it; once ashore and with access to civilian “long clothing,” a fair number would have scampered, no matter how happy the ship, but here …
And when one got right down to it, Lewrie thought that his men had earned something better than putting the ship “Out of Discipline” and hoisting the “Easy” pendant to summon the bum-boatmen and whores aboard. He would be going ashore, after all, as would his midshipmen and officers … and it didn’t feel fair, that the men who might still have to die with him, for him and their ship, would be denied what he could enjoy as a captain, as a gentleman.
Damme, I’m become an imbecile in my dotage! he chid himself one more time; bad as a Frog … Republican! A “popularity Dick”?
He found that he’d crossed his fingers all over again.
The seat of government on Jamaica was thirteen miles west, over a rough road, at Spanish Town. Kingston was the principal commercial harbour and naval base, so even without the presence of the great or near-great who decided things, it was a lively place.
Lewrie landed just by The Grapes, the cheery red-brick Georgian inn and public house hard by the foot of the landing stage, an inviting establishment mostly frequented by ship captains, naval officers, and chandlers, along with an admixture of importers and exporters looking for a ship to haul their goods.
He strolled over to the chandleries and shops, at first with an eye for novelty, of being on solid ground and presented with the many rich goods displayed, nigh as varied and of as good a quality as could be found in England. There were his wine-cabinet and lazarette stores to be replenished, more paper, ink, and quills to be purchased, a book or two to read—great, whacking thick ones to be rationed out at a chapter per day. He was low on mustard, coffee, and tea, and eager for local-made preserves, the mango chutneys, the exotic dry-rub spices he remembered from his early days that could enliven grilled shoe leather, and, like Hindoo curry, make even rotten salt-beef or salt-pork worth eating. More dried meat—“jerky”—for Toulon, and a fresh keg of lowtide beach sand for his box in the quarter-gallery.
And, on the spur of the moment, cotton canvas uniforms! He sought out a tailor’s that he remembered, got measured, and ordered a brace of dark blue undress breeches, another pair in white, and coats for undress, at-sea, days.
“Bleed all over your shirts and waistcoats, sir, the first time in a squall,” the tailor cluck-clucked, just as he had back when Lewrie had needed a new midshipman’s uniform in ’81.
“Well, wash the cloth a time or two first, then run ’em up. No shrinkage then, either, right?” Lewrie countered.
“Cost extra, it would, sir,” the old fellow contemplated.
“Hang the cost. Better a shilling or two than suffocate in a wool coat, with summer coming.”
“Be ready in two days, sir.”
“And, do we sail before then, I’m assured my ship will be back in harbour quite often. You could hold them for me, if I put half the sum down now?”
“Quite acceptable, sir. Unlike some, d’ye see. Why … here! I recall you, Captain Lewrie. Long before, oh years and years, but …”
&n
bsp; “I do not owe you from then, do I, sir?” Lewrie teased.
“Not as I recall, sir. And I’ve a long mem’ry for debtors. In this line, such is ruin or salvation, don’t ye know.”
The tiny bell over the front door tinkled, and an Army officer entered, mopping his face with a handkerchief and fanning his hat.
“Ah, Colonel … all’s ready for you, as promised!” the tailor chirped. A large-ish order, or another who paid his reckoning on the nail, Lewrie gathered.
“Well, stap me!” the officer said, with a goggle.
“Damn my eyes!” Lewrie rejoined quite happily. “Cashman!”
“Young Lewrie! Made ‘post’! Hell’s Bell’s, who’d have dreamt you’d rise so high!”
They advanced on each other and clasped hands with warmth, all but pounding each other on the back and shoulders.
“And you, a Colonel,” Lewrie marvelled.
“Well, Lieutenant-Colonel,” Christopher Cashman allowed with a becoming modesty in one Lewrie remembered as so brash.
“But with your own regiment, I take it?”
“Aye, the Fifteenth West Indies, just raised last year. A one-battalion, wartime-only regiment, but all mine. Local volunteers, and funded by rich planters. We do have a Colonel of the regiment, but for the most part, he’s too busy making money. The odd mess-night boredom, when he shows up to bask, d’ye see.”
“So you may run things as you see fit, at long last!” Alan said.
“Mostly, and thank God for it!” Cashman said with a merry laugh.
“You must tell me all about it.”
“We’ll dine you in, and you can see ‘em,” Cashman vowed. “And you’ve a ship, I s’pose. What is she?”
“HMS Proteus, a Fifth Rate thirty-two gunner. Damn’ near new!”
Sea of Grey Page 13