“. . . if it shall become necessary to maintain against any combination the honour and independence of the British Empire, and those maritime rights and interests on which both our prosperity and our security must always essentially depend,” the King had further declared, “I enter no doubt either of the success of those means which, in such an event, I shall be enabled to exert, or the determination of my Parliament and my people to afford me . . . ‘’
A later edition of The Times told that “the public will learn with great satisfaction that Lord Nelson is about to be employed on a SECRET EXPEDITION and will hoist his flag in the next few days. His instructions will not be opened until he arrives at a certain latitude. We shall only permit ourselves to observe that there is reason to believe his destination is to a distant quarter, where his Lordship’s personal appearance would preponderate over the influence of the intrigues of any Court in Europe.”
Secret? Lewrie scoffed to himself, with an audible snort; Mine arse on a band-box! Not now it ain’t! Some news writer needs to be shot! It’s the Baltic for certain . . . even if he can’t take his dear Emma, which thought make Lewrie smirk.
Those prim and newly righteous hosts and hostesses of his were down on Horatio Nelson, just promoted to Vice-Admiral of the Blue on New Year’s Day. He’d been jumped from the eleventh of fifteen Rear-Admirals of the Red over senior men, and even if his rash actions had won the Battle of Cape Saint Vincent, even if he had destroyed a whole French fleet at the Battle of the Nile, then captured Malta, that was grumbled over, not cheered, for Nelson was not quite . . . Respectable. Not enough for them, anyway.
Nelson was carrying on an affair (grand, to some; infamous to others) with Lady Emma Hamilton, doting over her like a calf-headed cully in “cream-pot love” right out in public, and with her doddering old husband, Sir William Hamilton, by their side. Lewrie had heard he snubbed his long-suffering wife, Fannie, leaving her to trail behind like a maidservant. At an Admiralty supper back in November, she had sat mum, watching her husband spoon and gush over the bouncy, buxom Emma’s every word; she’d shelled some walnuts for him and put them in a glass, which Nelson had so brusquely brushed aside that the glass had been broken, and it couldn’t have been blamed on his blinded eye.
Gentlemen of the aristocracy and squirearchy had been having mistresses and affairs time out of mind; it was almost considered the proper thing, once male heirs were assured upon the wife . . . though an affair was not usually so overt, with the husband tagging along, and a fuming wife in tow! Most British gentlemen would hardly cock an eye over such; the man was a fighter and won battles, by God!
The common people, and the Mob, loved him, and, with their usual waggon-load of common sense, cheered him like Billy-Oh, and if a naked romp with Emma Hamilton in the middle of the Strand took place at noon, they’d chortle and snigger and call him a Hell of a fellow, huzzah!
Maybe I should let folks know how Caroline and I stand, Lewrie idly mused; or, that I rantipoled the mort in Naples, long before him! Any odds ye wish, the suppers I’m invited to would be from a livelier set! ‘Had Emma too, did ye? Why, ye could dine-out on that for years!’
His toast done, and with a fresh cup of coffee poured and milked and sugared to his taste, Lewrie read on through the pile of papers. An item in The Morning Post spoke of armaments being carried on in Swedish and Danish ports, a “rupture” with the new Northern League, and “it is daily expected that orders will be issued for capturing the vessels of those nations.” Tit for tat; seize our merchantmen, we’ll seize yours.
And, from The Times on the thirteenth of January, there was even more lunacy. “Yesterday, Lord Nelson took his leave of the Lords of the Admiralty, and this morning his Lordship will positively leave town to hoist his flag. . . . We have reason to believe to know his destination is NOT the Baltic.”
“My God, they can’t be that clumsy!” Lewrie muttered. “Not the Baltic? Who do they think they’re fooling, I ask you?”
“Who, indeed, sir,” a fellow in Navy uniform scoffed as he and two others took seats at the next table over; he was a Lieutenant, and with him was a Midshipman, and an older fellow in civilian clothes. “I beg pardon for intruding, but, how open may our press be, to speculate or publish rumours, of things that should remain secret, so freely. I saw in The Times on the sixth that Admiral Nelson was to be sent to the Dardanelles, to chastise the Russians there. What foolishness!”
“With Admiral Lord Keith already in the Med with a strong fleet?” Lewrie said, with one mocking brow up. “Nothing for Nelson there, if we wish t’swat the bear’s nose. Lord Keith, allied with the Ottoman Turks since Napoleon invaded the Holy Lands, can kick the Russians in the fundament, while Nelson goes for their throat in the Baltic, soon as the ice melts. Good morning to you, Lieutenant, young man . . . sir?”
“God, your manners, George,” the elder fellow chid him. “Allow me to name my nephew to you, sir, for you sound like a Navy man. This is George Follows. The younker here is my youngest son, Roger Oglesby . . . soon to go aboard his first ship, and I am William Oglesby.”
“Captain Alan Lewrie, sirs,” Lewrie said, rising to shake hands with them all.
“B . . . Black Alan Lewrie?” the Midshipman gushed.
“Guilty,” Lewrie said with a chuckle, though he felt like wincing over that sobriquet. “Or, as the court recently decided, not, ha! A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mister Oglesby, Mister Follows, Midshipman Oglesby. Will you join me at my table, sirs? What ship?” he asked as they moved over to sit with him.
“Ehm . . . I’m to go aboard the Trojan, sir . . . seventy-four,” Midshipman Oglesby shyly said. “With cousin George.”
“I’m Fifth Officer into her, Captain Lewrie,” Lt. Follows said, eyes alight with glee to be introduced to an officer with a reputation in the Fleet as a scrapper, who went after enemies with the ferocity of a howling Tom; hence the name Follows more-likely knew, the “Ram-Cat”; that, or as Lewrie sarcastically suspected, to run into a lucky thief in the flesh! “I convinced my captain that Trojan needed another gentleman-in-training . . . the more the merrier, hey?”
“We’ve spent the last two days purchasing the lad’s sea-chest and such,” the elder Oglesby told Lewrie, with a wink. “George, here, supervised, so Roger’d not go to sea with an hundredweight of useless fripperies. Tomorrow we’ll all coach down to Portsmouth.”
“And the very best of good fortune go with you, sirs,” Lewrie wished them as the waiter arrived to take their orders. “Why, with any luck, Trojan’ll be in the thick of it by mid-March.”
“And you, Captain Lewrie?” Lt. Follows enquired. “Will you be with us, do you imagine?” He sounded eager enough for a good fight.
“I had to give up command of Savage before Christmas,” Lewrie was forced to admit, “the trial, and all, d’ye see, and . . . so far, I have not yet heard from Admiralty as to any new openings. One hopes for another frigate, even one half as fine, but . . . ‘’ He ended with a shrug, as if it was only a matter of time before he received a fresh active commission, though in his heart he was dead-certain that Hell would freeze over before Lord Spencer or Evan Nepean would consider him “Decent” enough to command another King’s ship.
“Dev’lish-odd, this Russian business,” the elder Oglesby said as he spooned sugar into his tea. “Thought we were allies not all that long ago. Now, this nonsense. That Tsar of theirs must be daft if he thinks he can take on England.”
“Man’s got a huge army already, and millions more peasants to conscript if he feels like it,” Lt. Follows remarked as he stirred up his own tea. “Big as the French Army is reputed to be, with that levée en masse of theirs, I expect the Russians could field three times as many men. And wouldn’t that be grand to see . . . the Tsar and Bonaparte going at each other hammer-and-tongs!”
“He can parade an army,” Lewrie said, “but I doubt he’s any experience with ships. Strong as the Russians are on land, I doubt anyone’d try to invade, so they real
ly don’t have much need of a fighting fleet, and don’t expect their navy to have much of a role to play, if anyone did. What did the Russians do at sea back when they beat the Swedes, early last century? Galleys and gunboats rowed up coves and marshes . . . round the maze of islands? Up the rivers?”
“Well, they did send a strong squadron alongside us when we went at the Dutch, in ’98,” Mr. Oglesby pointed out. “Don’t recall all that much action at sea, then.”
“Another fleet from the Black Sea,” Lt. Follows added, “sailed round the Aegean, and the Med. And their Black Sea fleet has gained a lot of experience ’gainst the Turks over the years. When Catherine the Great was still alive, she knew to maintain an efficient navy . . . even if about half the officers were really British, or Americans.”
“Like John Paul Jones!” Midshipman-to-be Oglesby dared to contribute to an adult conversation.
“I’ve met some fellows who served with the Russians,” Follows told them, “when they couldn’t find a post in our Navy. Promotion is quicker in Russian service, and the rates of pay are more lucrative, though . . . I never heard them say much good of their ships, or their men.”
“How so, sir?” Lewrie prompted, waving for a fresh coffee.
“The way they told it, Captain Lewrie, is . . . when the Russians need warships, they go level several forests and set up shipyards on the banks of the nearest river to the sea. They round up just any old sort of carpenters, and put them to work in work-regiments, using green wood with no more seasoning or drying than the timbers get coming down to the banks from the woods on waggons! And they conscript their men the same way. Turn Army regiments into sailors overnight . . . conscript serfs from the nearest estates and drill them like parade ground soldiers on facsimiles of masts and decks ashore whilst their ships are still building. Good for part of the year, but when their northern ports freeze up, they’re crammed into infantry barracks ashore, in unutterable squalor ’til they’re needed again, and it’s a wonder half of them don’t perish. And by the time they’re ready to go aboard in the Spring, it’s good odds their assigned ship has already rotted and must be replaced.
“I’d expect things are better in the Black Sea, where they may sail almost year-round,” Lt. Follows allowed, “but their fleet in the Baltic may not be all that formidable.”
“Never heard the like!” Lewrie scoffed. “That’s an insane way to care for a ship’s crew, or train it to excellence.”
“Not our way, certainly, sir,” Lt. Follows agreed. “I’m told their discipline is hellish”—He winced as he saw his uncle’s deep frown—“brutal in the extreme. Russians are, so I’ve heard, a cruel and surly race, their peasants little better than dumb beasts rolling round in pig-stys. Illiterate, in the main, and horrid drunkards. Do they get their hands on vodka, they go as mad as Red Indians, and just as dangerous to themselves as anyone who crosses their path. With such men, I’d imagine only the cat-o’-nine-tails can keep control.”
“Hmm, like British tars with a shipload o’ wine or rum?” Lewrie japed. “Give them just enough of a vodka ration t’keep ’em mellow, do they? Devilish tipple, that. Worse for you than gin.”
Back in better days, not all that long ago during the Frost Fair on the frozen Thames, Lewrie had run across Eudoxia Durschenko in an off-moment from her role in Wigmore’s Peripatetic Extravaganza and had tasted a sip of vodka . . . used as he was to imported Kentucky bourbon, he’d thought he’d poisoned himself! It was better ice-cold, she had told him, but he rather doubted it. At least it did not have the juniper berry taste of good old British “Blue Ruin”!
“Malta was the problem with the Tsar,” Mr. Oglesby mused aloud. “We took it back from the French before the Russians could get there. Admiral Nelson hoisted the flag of the Kingdom of Naples and the Two Sicilies, ‘stead of our flag, or the Russians’, and the Tsar most-like was mad enough to fall down and chew the carpets over it. That King Ferdinand of Naples was the real owner, in a way, after all.”
“And Lord Nelson spent a lot of time with King Ferdinand and his wife, our ambassador to his court, Sir William Hamilton,” Lewrie said (leaving Emma Hamilton unsaid!). “They did influence him, for certain, but I was in Naples in ’94 through ’96, and dined with King Ferdinand several times. D’ye know he maintained a waterfront fish shop, where he did the cooking? An odd sort o’ bird! . . . and a dab-hand cook, too! But I never heard that Naples claimed Malta. ’T wasn’t Malta owned by the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem since the Crusades?”
“Ah, but King Ferdinand is the Grand Master of the Knights, sir!” Mr. Oglesby slyly returned. “The real one, I suppose. Though I heard that the Tsar thought he was, since a few Knights in the Russian court flattered him up and held an election of their own, making him the Grand Master. Imagine what an uproar that could cause in Russia, their own Tsar, the upholder of the Orthodox Church, accepting an honourific that is usually awarded by a Catholic Pope, ha ha!”
“The Tsar had another grudge with us, too,” Lt. Follows contributed. “During the Holland expedition, there were two prizes taken . . . not worth tuppence, really, a fifty-six gunner and a seventy gunner . . . were supposed to be Russian prizes, but we kept them.”
“My Lord, is he that petty?” Lewrie said, amazed.
“It would appear so, Captain Lewrie,” Mr. Oglesby said, nodding. “What’s worse, when his mother, Catherine the Great, was still with us, in 1787, Turkey declared war on Russia, for the umpteenth time, and we . . . Great Britain and Prussia . . . egged the Swedes to invade Russian-owned Finland, so Tsar Paul . . . Crown Prince Paul, then . . . naturally despised us for meddling, and distrusts us to this very day. The only reason Russia became our ally in ’98 was because he thought that Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion in Egypt’s final aim was against Russia, not our possessions in India! Why else would he ally himself with his worst enemy, the Ottoman Turks, against the French?” Oglesby said with a mystified shrug. “Perhaps only the madness of kings may explain why the Tsar now is so enamoured of Bonaparte, and the French.”
“Napoleon told the Tsar he’d surrender Malta to the Russians,” Lt. Follows stuck in. “Only the Russians. And Napoleon had captured thousands of Russian soldiers when he conquered Switzerland. To make the deal sweeter, he returned them, in new uniforms, boots, and kits, with all their colours, as a gesture of good will.”
“Hmmph,” Lewrie commented. “I s’pose that would be enough for the Russians to say ‘thankee kindly’ and stand aloof from now on, but . . . to cozy up to the Frogs? Surely their aristocracy should be quaking in their boots, lest all that Jacobin French insanity take root in their country. ‘Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité,’ and bloody revolution, would be the end of ’em. Whish . . . chop!” he said, miming the drop of the guillotine’s blade with one hand, “I’ve an . . . acquaintance who’s Russian, who’s told me how they use their serfs so cruelly. Let the landless, powerless slave-peasants get a whiff of freedom and rise up, and it’d be the Terror all over again, with the slave revolt on Saint Domingue thrown in, to boot!”
“Factor in, Captain Lewrie, the atheism of the French Jacobites,” Mr. Oglesby sagely pointed out, in full agreement with him. “Russia is a deeply religious country, though its Orthodox Church is even more of a mystery to me than Popery. I’d imagine their theologians and lords spiritual would consider the French the very imps of Hell, and their First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, the Anti-Christ revealed.”
“Indeed, uncle,” Lt. Follows chimed in. “One of the fellows who took service in their navy told me that the peasant conscript sailors ’board his ship took the authority of their priests as solemn as their officers’, and that the only reason there weren’t more revolts by serfs out in the countryside was deathly fear of condemnation and excommunication by the local priests. Even nobles walk wary round them. After a thousand years of servitude, with the threat of abandonment by their church, and the coming of the Cossacks to hack them to pieces should they turn on their masters, abject subservienc
e and resignation to a life of misery is common.
“Mind, he said your average Russian sailor or soldier is a marvellous fighter, if decently led, and treated,” Lt. Follows said on with a grin, “but, dull as oxen, in the main. Superstitious, un-educated, and easily controlled . . . so long as one doesn’t act too much the tyrant.”
“Push ’em into a corner, whip ’em for no reason?” Lewrie mused aloud. “You bully and beat a puppy, you end up with a wolf who’d tear your throat out. Sounds t’me as if all Russia is teeterin’ on a thin razor’s edge, with nothing but the fear of Hell and Cossack sabres to keep it from exploding.”
“A grievous social system,” Mr. Oglesby sadly commented, “much like our own West Indies colonies, or the American South, with so many restive slaves. I doubt any rich or titled, and landed, Russian dares sleep too sound of a night. Surely, the Tsar knows, as does his court nobles and church leaders, how dangerous this new friendship with the French can be.”
“Well, you mentioned the madness of kings,” Lewrie japed. “But as you say, surely those who have the Tsar’s ear could advise him not to run the risk.”
“Fellow’s a Nero, a Caligula,” Mr. Oglesby said with a sniff of disdain. “Emperor of All the Russias, reputed to be as mad as a hatter, and, unlike our parliamentary system, he’s a total autocrat, as powerful as any Roman emperor, with nothing and no one able to rein him in. And, like a Caligula, the Tsar is indeed mad. Cruel, sadistic, and is rumoured to be . . . perverted. Cover your ears, Roger, there is evil coming,” he told his youngest son, who had been sitting gape-jawed to be allowed to hear adults talking of such worldly things. “The man is said to have the morals of a wild beast, such that no woman, from the highest to the lowest palace servant, is safe. Some also say that no man is safe, either,” Mr. Oglesby added with a grimace of distaste of such practices. “Does he take a dislike to someone . . . noble, valet, or stableman . . . because he didn’t like the wine, the temperature of the soup, someone’s new suit or dress, hair ribbons, or a beard not shaven that morning . . . well, off one goes to gaol, Siberia, or a dungeon full of instruments of torture.
The Baltic Gambit Page 6