The Baltic Gambit

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Russia has already had one ogre such as he . . . Ivan the Terrible,” Mr. Oglesby intoned with a grim nod. “Thankfully, the Russians did away with him, though I cannot help but imagine that his death was but a temporary respite. An absolute monarch will, sooner or later, turn monstrous, if only to preserve his seat on the throne . . . which is so rewarding and pleasing.”

  “Well, with luck, perhaps his nobles will treat this Tsar Paul as they did their Ivan the Terrible,” Lt. Follows said with a laugh. “Oh, I know . . . lèse majesté and all that,” he partly retracted not a tick after, but still with a merry air, “yet . . . he’s not our King . . .”

  “Thank God,” Midshipman Oglesby piped up.

  “. . . and perhaps the new’un might take years before he goes as mad as his predecessor, ha ha!” Lt. Follows suggested. “Unless insanity runs in the Romanov family.”

  “Peter the Great was sane,” Mr. Oglesby pointed out, “though I can’t recall why his heirs weren’t suitable to rule, and Russia ended with a German girl on the throne. After the Dowager Tsarina died, and Catherine got rid of her useless idiot of a husband, no one could say that Catherine the Great ever evinced the slightest sign of madness. Her son, though . . . well,” he said, finishing his latest cup of tea, and dragging out his pocket-watch. “Good Lord, lads, we were to meet the wife in the Strand by twelve. We must go, else she’ll be wroth with us . . . me, more to the point. You will pardon us do we depart, Captain Lewrie?”

  “It has been a pleasure to make your acquaintances, sirs, and a most enlightening conversation, for which I thankee,” Lewrie said as they all rose and made their parting salutations.

  After they’d bustled out the door in overcoats and boat-cloaks, Lewrie decided that he might as well pay his reckoning, too, and hunt up his own mid-day meal. Stultifying, and as earnest, as dinner conversation at the Madeira Club could be, with so many gentlemen who had made their fortunes in Trade sharing stock tips and complaints about workers, prices, and goods, the club did lay a good table, and could boast of a wine cellar that even Almack’s, White’s, or Bootle’s might envy. There was also the realisation that said table, said wine list, was included in his weekly fee, which his father had arranged for him, which was about a quarter less than the others were charged—in some instances, being kin to the old lecher had its advantages!

  Was his pace quick enough, he could just make it back in time for a glass of something warming before the dining room door opened!

  Though, as he maintained a brisk stride back up Orchard Street to Wigmore Street, Lewrie could not help recalling a late-night talk with that devious old rogue Zachariah Twigg nearly two years before, when his legal troubles were just beginning to come home to roost . . .

  Twigg’s grand scheme did not care a whit for the abolition of slavery, though many of the reformers thought him an ally against the “peculiar institution,” did not care if thousands of planter families in the West Indies were impoverished should slavery be outlawed in the British Empire, along with the slave traders and shipping interests in West Country seaports. What Twigg intended was to cripple any threat to Great Britain from slave-driving nations, with his own country and its abolition of slavery the shining example; the United States of America, for one, whose economy, treasury, and power was based on agricultural exports, mostly reaped by slave labour. Create a rebellion as bloody as Saint Domingue, or Haiti, or whatever they were calling it, these days, and America might even fracture in twain, with one of the halves forced to ally itself with Great Britain against the other half, perhaps even see the error of its ways and rejoin the Empire someday!

  No matter how much blood might be shed in servile revolts and civil war, no matter how many hundreds of thousands perished! And . . . hadn’t Russia come up, that night? What had Twigg cold-bloodedly said? That, if Russia ever turned its insatiable appetite for conquest westward, and set its massive peasant conscript armies on the march, those “white slaves,” the serfs, could be turned against the nobility and the landowners, against the Tsar himself, and all the Cossacks in the world could not put down the revolution, the civil wars ’tween the warlords that would ensue, in the Holy names of Abolition and Freedom!

  Russia now seemed a foe. And what was Twigg up to in the face of that? It wasn’t just the nip in the air that made Lewrie shiver!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  There was a warming pea soup, served with a pleasant hock; then Dover sole with boiled potatoes and carrots; the salad course was nothing worth much, in the dead of winter, but the roast pigeons, accompanied by more potatoes, carrots, and peas, was succulent, and complemented by a promising Beaujolais. Cheese, sweet biscuit, and the port, some of the house’s famed namesake, a Portuguese Madeira, finished off the meal, which, despite the victuals, was nothing but a litany of bad, sad, gloom, and the portent of utter ruin.

  Some of Lewrie’s fellow lodgers, while not strictly so deep in Trade that they kept a shop and handled money directly, had all taken “flyers” on the Exchange, had invested in stocks and bonds beyond the safe and sane Three Percents and the Sinking Fund as a repository for their “New-Made Men” profits, and the Northern League recently formed round the shores of the Baltic, their Armed Neutrality, and the threat of an expanded war, had many of them shivering like a dog that was trying to pass a peach pit . . . as an American naval officer had so vividly said to Lewrie a few years back.

  “The Tsar is so demented he could be committed to Bedlam,” said one who had invested heavily in naval stores.

  “They don’t have one,” an Army officer in mufti rejoined.

  “Well, they should,” the civilian fellow reiterated. “And that King Christian of Denmark’s not a whit better. How else explain why the Danes joined Russia in this pact?”

  “Same as the Swedes, old man,” said another near the head of the long table. “It’s fear of what Russia would do, did they not sign on.”

  “King Christian’s in Bedlam, of a sorts, already,” the Army officer snickered. “Called his royal apartments. Soon as the Danes ousted King George’s sister, Caroline Matilda, and chopped the head off her lover . . . what the Devil was his name, their Prime Minister, then?”

  “Struensee,” a much older gentleman told them between bites of his meal, “Johann Friedrich Struensee, and one of the biggest fools of the age. I remember it well. A feather-brained German, besotted with Voltaire, Rousseau, and all those pagan French reformers. Turned all Denmark inside-out before they did for him and his cronies. Imagine, a commoner German running an entire country, and fathering bastards on a queen! He’d all but buried King Christian in a dungeon before he was deposed. Mind now, the Danish king needed to be put in a dungeon, for he was a vicious lunatick.”

  “So their Crown Prince, the Regent, is really Struensee’s illegitimate ‘git’?” a member asked. “Egad!”

  “They say not, but he ain’t insane like the old king, so . . . ,” the old gentleman lasciviously hinted. “They shuffled off the little princess. . . . They were sure Struensee quickened her, and Crown Prince Frederick was the only male heir.”

  “The Swedes, though,” Lewrie posed.

  “Beaten to a pulp by Russia, their northern empire lost back in the seventeen-twenties,” the Army fellow offered. “Swedish Pomerania gone, Polish provinces, and Finland, too. Fear, again, sir. Why they even attempted to fight the Russians again in ’87 is beyond me.”

  “But what about Prussia signing on?” another asked.

  “Fear of Russia, again,” the Army officer said with a shrug. “Perhaps a fear of France, too, after Napoleon gave them a drubbing. Better to crouch in Russia’s shadow than stand out in the open, alone. And, since, as Captain Lewrie here will tell you, the Prussians don’t have much of a navy, nor much of a merchant marine, either, it’s no skin off their nose. Ain’t that right, sir?”

  “Nothing to lose at sea if we retaliate, for certain,” Lewrie agreed as he broke open a fresh hot roll and buttered it.

  “All those s
hips confiscated, put out of business,” the investor in naval stores bemoaned. “It’s an outrage, a violation of a solemn treaty! And the embargo they threaten on their goods will cripple our navy. Pine mast stocks, tar, pitch, turpentine, and resin . . . hemp for sails and rope rigging. . . .”

  “Well, there’s Nova Scotia and the Maritime provinces, there’s Wilmington, North Carolina,” Lewrie suggested. “Much the same available in New England . . . Vermont, New Hampshire, and such?”

  “Longer voyages, higher prices,” the sad investor grumbled.

  “Aye, trust the Yankee skin-flints to take quick advantage of us, and wring every penny they can from our lacks,” another said.

  “Do they not embargo us, as well,” a very gloomy cynic down the table posed. “There’s no love lost, ’twixt them and England since the Revolution ended, and despite that little ‘not-quite-war’ they had in ’98, the United States still thinks the French hung the very moon!”

  “Demned war’s gone on long enough,” someone said.

  “Oh I say now!” several cried.

  “We’ve not a single ally left, Bonaparte’s driven Naples out of the war and beaten the Austrians so badly at Marengo and just last month at Hohenlinden, they’ve sued for peace, too,” the doubter retorted. “Seven years of war worldwide, millions of pounds spent to prop up so-called allies . . . none of them faithful . . . the Treasury reduced to issuing paper fiat money, prices five times what they were in ’93, and all these horrendous, crushing taxes. And what have we to show for it, I ask you, gentlemen? A few conquests in the West Indies, more lands for rich sugar planters, and nigh fifty thousand of our lads dead, mostly of tropical fevers. Consider the very bread we eat today, sirs . . . rye, or barley, not wheat, and—”

  “Oh dear, there goes the price o’ beer and ale!” a younger wag said, sniggering, which at least gave most of them a relieving laugh.

  “Staple of your common Englishman, indeed, young sir,” Doubting Thomas quickly said, “and, as you say, becoming dearer by the minute, as are all foodstuffs and goods. Yet, do our common Englishman’s wages increase in like measure? They do not, and this war is pinching the very souls of the people.”

  “He’s to stand for a seat in Commons, next by-election, or so I heard,” the Army officer in civilian suitings whispered to Lewrie.

  “God help us, then,” Lewrie muttered back. “Ye’d think he was one of those who cheered the French revolution.”

  “I’m sure ’twill be a pretty speech, on the hustings,” the Army man hissed behind his hand. “Bloody Liberals.”

  After dinner was done, Lewrie took himself upstairs to his rooms for a lie-down. He removed his coat, undid the buttons of his vest, and tugged off his boots. He plumped up the pillows and stretched out on the new-made bed, welcoming his cats, Toulon and Chalky, who awoke from a snooze on the bench before the fireplace and pounced up to join him with glad cries, arch-backed stretches, and playful expressions.

  There was nothing for it but to indulge them, fetch some of their toys from the night-stand, and dangle them by their strings, letting the cats dash and pounce, capture and leap, ’til they were worn out and ready for naps of their own, with Toulon slung against the side of his leg, and Chalky softly purring on a pillow by his head.

  Not in the Baltic, mine arse, Lewrie thought as he tried to go to sleep, yet mulling over all he had heard that morning. Nelson was the very fellow to daunt the Danes, Swedes, and Russians. Did he get a fleet into the Baltic before the ice melted at Copenhagen, Karlskrona, or Reval and Kronstadt—before this new Armed Neutrality could get their fleets to sea and combined—he could crush them as completely as he had the French in Aboukir Bay.

  As odd a bird as Lewrie considered Horatio Nelson to be, he was a man who did nothing by halves. At the Battle of the Saintes in the West Indies in 1782, Admiral Rodney had been satisfied to capture only five French ships of the line, and let the rest slink off. Lewrie had been at the Battle of St. Kitts, and had watched the famous Adm. Hood repulse the French fleet, yet not go after them after they were cut up and damaged. Adm. Hotham in the Mediterranean in ’95, whose laziness and caution had nigh-driven Lewrie berserk, thought he’d done very well to capture a mere two! Well, the wind had been scant, yet . . .

  Cape St. Vincent and Camperdown; Lewrie wore the medals for both great battles, and had seen Adm. Sir John Jervis, “Old Jarvy,” and Adm. Duncan in action. Despite their estimable repute as scrappers, Jervis had let the Spanish fleet return to port after taking only a few ships as prize (two of them Nelson’s doing, that day) whilst at Camperdown, at least, Duncan had managed to overawe the Dutch and force them to go about and head for port, scotching their hope to link up with a French fleet in the Channel and invade England, firstly; then, herded the foe into the shoal waters of their own coast, strung out in a long line of battle, before driving right into them in several columns at right angles, and shattering them thoroughly, taking most of them as prizes in Nelson-fashion.

  Or, Duncan-fashion, Lewrie thought with a snigger, recalling the wild-haired, towering Duncan, who’d take you on with his fists for the possession of a wheel-barrow, if his blood was up. And, when does the bloody ice melt in the Baltic anyway? he asked himself, wishing he had asked one of the “trading gentlemen” at-table an hour before. Truth to tell, Lewrie had never served in the Baltic, and, in point of fact, had only the foggiest notion where Sweden, Denmark, and Prussia were, much less the location of their naval bases. They all lay to the east, he was pretty sure, t’other side of the North Sea, with Russia the furthest east of them all, where one ran out of sea water.

  Supper, then up early tomorrow, Lewrie ordered himself; Drop by Admiralty . . . see in what odour I’m held. Then a bookstore or a map maker’s. Another good nap after that, then . . . the theatre, again, or Ranelagh Gardens?

  There would be a grand expositon of new nautical art held there through the Spring, along with a magic lantern slide depiction of the Battle of the Nile, replete with stirring musical accompaniment and a narrator hidden behind a curtain. Lewrie had bought his children one of the smaller magic lanterns at Scott’s Shop in the Strand for Christmas, along with Bissinger’s chocolates and a new doll for his wee daughter Charlotte; one of the better ones that went for ten guineas. Hopefully, the boys hadn’t burned down the house with the oil lamp yet, or broken all the glass slides.

  “Supper scraps suit ye, lads?” Lewrie asked his cats.

  Toulon cocked his rather large head up over his thigh for a second or two, gave out a guttural, close-mouthed Mrr, then lay back down. Chalky stretched out his forepaws to touch Lewrie’s head and yawn, all white teeth and pink mouth, before dozing off again, too.

  “That’s what I thought,” Lewrie muttered, closing his eyes once more.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Lewrie had found himself an atlas, so at least he knew where the possible enemies were; Sayer’s & Bennett’s had Baltic charts and larger-scale charts of their principal naval harbours, so he had a rough idea of how things lay. As for when the ice melted, though, all he’d gotten was a day-long series of shrugs.

  Admiralty had been no better. The infamous Waiting Room was an arseholes-to-elbows chamber of hopefuls, so many of them that the fireplace was almost redundant when it came to heating that large room, as the lucky ones holding active commissions or warrants crowded in for a bit, were ushered abovestairs, then came clattering quickly down with a fresh set of instructions and making hasty departures . . . not without a smirk or two from some of the cockiest of the lucky at those cooling their heels in hopes of employment.

  A hint of action, the chance of more older warships being fitted out and manned, brought out even the nigh-dead; oh, it was a grim mob that Lewrie beheld. There were grizzled Lieutenants in their fourties, Captains in need of crutches in their sixties, all of whom had been on half-pay since the end of the American Revolution, whose uniforms were ready for museum pieces, all sniffing the air like white-muzzled foxhounds who could barely w
alk anymore . . . bleating like ancient sheep, all rheumy-eyed, for just one more shot at sea.

  Christ, is that what I have t’look forward to? Lewrie wondered to himself, appalled. He had sent his name up to the First Secretary, Evan Nepean, ’round ten of the morning. Rather too quickly for belief a silky-smooth young snotty had called out his name and sought him out with a note of reply in hand. For one brief moment, Lewrie had felt a surge of hope. Even through the flunky’s smug smirk.

  The First Secretary regrets that pressing matters preclude an interview with you today, Cpt. Lewrie; or in the near future. At any rate, there are no openings in the Fleet at present for a Cpt. of your qualities. Given your single year on the senior Cpt’s List and lack of seniority, it may be some time before we may contemplate your active employment.

  Polite way o’ sayin’ it’ll be a cold day in Hell, Lewrie thought as he quickly wadded up the note and jammed it into a side pocket of his uniform coat, his face reddening in embarrassment and anger. And that smooth young flunky was still standing there before him, with a faint smirk on his face.

  “Waitin’ for a tip?” Lewrie harshly muttered. “Bugger off!”

  With the eyes of an hundred or more of his contemporaries upon him, Lewrie gathered up his hat and boat-cloak and prepared to depart, his soul smarting . . . to be gawked at and whispered about behind hands by such a pack of superannuated dodderers and droolers, by failures and drunkards, by fools too lack-wit to pass their Lieutenants’ exams, and incompetent twits and no-hopes. Worse yet! To imagine what false sympathy some felt. “Bugger him, more chance for me! Oh, poor fellow . . . the bastard! Born one, ye know, hee hee!” To be pitied by such a lot!