“Thank you. I’m sorry, I don’t know your name yet.”
“Smith, sir.”
Frederick grinned – he had heard of ships where half the men were ‘Smith’, having found it expedient to rename themselves. Smith might, just, have been born into the name – more likely he had deserted another ship or fled a civilian hangman, none of which was any of Frederick’s business at all – men were too hard to find to ask silly, impertinent questions.
A tiny lath and canvas cabin containing, just, a hanging cot, his chest, a neat washstand and shaving mirror and a rack for a pair of swords and pistols, the deckhead high enough that he could stand upright with an inch to spare, one of the few advantages of being short. It opened directly into the wardroom, itself able to accommodate a table capable of seating eight at a pinch, each with barely enough room for a servant behind his chair.
On deck, changed into dress that vaguely resembled uniform in colour, his boots alone proclaiming his status.
To Horley’s side, an eyebrow raised in expectation of orders; none were forthcoming, although Horley was very ready to make polite conversation.
“Mr Harris!”
“Sir!” Frederick touched his hat to the captain, crossed to his side.
“I would wish you to look to the gun crews, Mr Harris, as well as your boats. Foremast to be yours, main and mizzen under the First’s eyes, with master’s mates and midshipmen to assist. With the boats it will be rational for you to work up the boarders, a task I know to be congenial to you.”
In a line of battle ship or a heavy frigate it was usual for the First to act as second in command, to be solely the captain’s deputy, but in smaller vessels he was expected to work his part of ship fully. Horley seemed to be not quite one thing or the other – no doubt for good reason. Frederick noted but did not comment.
“Beg pardon, sir, how far are we completed yet?”
“Purser’s and Master’s stores are up, except for water. Gunner, all except powder. We lack a suit of light, summer sails. The dockyard has almost finished with us, at most a day’s work and that mostly in my cabin. The bos’n’s stores are probably all in, but, of course, he won’t tell me.”
The boatswain always embezzled some part of his stores – it was traditional and the wise captain said nothing unless it was taken too far and affected the running of the ship.
“For crew, I have set my heart on ninety six. We have sixty two men and seventeen boys – too many boys, but I dare not refuse them.”
“For fear they may be all there is. Have we expectations of more men, sir?”
“The Port Admiral says we have. He bears us constantly in mind, he says. Because of the stir this ship made so recently, he may be telling the truth, however unhabitual that might be. Some scribbler may well wish to earn his penny a word by informing the gullible that Athene has sailed, bearing its heroic captor to further excesses of patriotic glee and fervour – a half-manned ship would not perhaps go well with that, though it would make an excellent scandal.”
Frederick reddened, becoming aware that he carried a burden of expectation on this ship and that he must live up to it – every bill came due, eventually.
“Don’t blush, sir! It was not to criticize – more, perhaps, to express my envy! We shall get our men, because of it, and I would not have been half so well treated normally. Mind you, we may yet come to rue the admiral’s generosity. Chaffinch brig came in from blockade on Thursday last, sent in with four dozens of Marines put aboard!”
Frederick winced – that had to have been disorder, incipient mutiny at the very least.
“Court-martial sits tomorrow. The word is that they will hang two ring-leaders – Irish, I expect – will flog another pair round the fleet and will break up the rest of the crew. We might expect to get some score or so, those thought to be less-willing accomplices, some of them so much flogged as to be almost broken.”
“Her officers, sir?”
“Will not sail again, of the commissioned. Warrants have all been sent to sea already, or will go within days, most having been degraded. The captain and premier were in competition to be the bloodier tyrant, both favourites of Prince William Henry in his days on the West Indies station, one understands.”
There was no more to be said; the King’s third son was despised in the service as a bullying poltroon of low breeding and poor manners – many a sneer referred privately to the ‘son of a lunatic father’. In public, however, a royal favourite must be deferred to – if they could not go to sea again then a post in a dockyard or on one of the Boards or in the Impress Service, with appropriate rank, was inevitable, as was punishment of the Chaffinch’s crew. Injustice was a part of life, when all was considered, and it was still a better system than the French alternative had to offer, so Frederick consoled himself, trying to think no more on the matter.
Frederick made the acquaintance of the midshipmen who would have a boat apiece, launch, longboat and jollyboat to respectively the second, third and fourth senior, the eldest in the rank having charge of signals. As ever in small ships the mids were the unprepossessing sons of poor parents, their uniforms worn, faces pinched, expressions anxious and unconfident. Gleeson and Ball had four of their six years of servitude under their belts, were just into manhood and outgrowing their clothes rapidly. Woodgate was a squeaker, a little boy of ten years or so, as yet quite unlearned in the trade. All three were the sons of unpromoted lieutenants, sanguine fellows who had married young and started their families in the sure knowledge of success, glory, wealth to eventuate; now they relied on the favours of old comrades to get their boys to sea and relieve the strain on their households’ purses. A commission to the Sugar Islands could put a few hundreds in prize-money into the lads’ pockets and set them up for their whole careers; or kill them in six months.
“Your boats, young gentlemen! When I inspect them with you, say two days hence, they will be properly equipped, fully furnished, their crews told off to their oars, to the boat guns, to act as boat holders, will they not?”
They most earnestly assured him they would, expressed horror at the thought that they might not have been. He might rely on them, they said.
Frederick retired to the wardroom, his expression that of maneater waiting for his next meal. He hoped they would have sense enough to talk to their leading hands, to ask the boatswain for his help, to discover the inevitable shortfalls and start to make them good or bring them to his attention.
Dinner had been taken early, as was normal, but there was a bottle of wine on the mess table and the remains of a round of beef and shore-bought bread, the ship in port and feeding well. Harris enquired of the mess caterer, was amazed to discover Mr Horley had taken the role, and paid him ten guineas against his fees. The wine, an anonymous red, was recognisably a claret and made from the grape; Frederick was used to blackstrap, coloured by cochineal and its alcohol derived from the potato, was very pleased to discover so palatable a bottle, suspected it must have come from a hogshead in Horley’s home cellar.
The master, a Norfolk Dissenter, Abednego Paston by name, ostentatiously drank water, whilst the surgeon, Mr McAllen, made a very brief appearance before falling into his cot, having evidently preferred gin. The master sniffed mightily as the surgeon collapsed, his spare austerity deeply affronted by the presence of sinners; he took up a well-worn Bible and sat by the lamp to slowly read his daily chapter, oblivious to the demands of society. It would be a dull mess, Frederick feared.
Horley set himself to discover who Frederick was – there were many branches of the Harrises, not all wholly obscure. The discovery that Frederick’s grandfather had been a Viscount and his uncle was a public man pleasured him greatly; he disclosed that his father was an Honourable, too, felt this to be a matter for congratulation, one that should create an immediate bond of the pure against the common clay.
“Captain Atkinson, now, a good seaman, to be sure, and lucky to be first when his frigate took a Frenchman, promoted to honour hi
s captain, you know, but his father deals in leather, a mere shopkeeper!”
Frederick expressed his surprise, the more so as his own enquiries on being told the captain’s name before taking furlough had suggested the family to be long-established London merchants in a very good way of trade.
“The men deserve better, Mr Harris! They have a right to be led by gentlemen of breeding. Blood will out, you know!”
A long disquisition followed on divine right and the sacred nature of noble birth; Frederick, who knew just enough history to be aware that the great bulk of the English aristocracy was either descended from Charles the Second’s whores or were recent political creations, was not convinced, but said little. He brought the conversation round to naval service, over the second bottle discovered Horley’s naval pedigree, was distinctly unimpressed.
Horley had served his years as a midshipman borne on the books of various flagships, had spent less than a year at sea, all in Home Waters, had learnt little more than how to wear a uniform. As a lieutenant he had been posted to the Admiralty, then to the Port-Admiral’s staffs in Portsmouth and Harwich; now the family felt he should be promoted and had arranged for him to go in a small ship to the West Indies and to come back a post captain in his own frigate in a couple of years. A line of battle ship would not do for this purpose, their lieutenants doomed to obscurity, and Athene had attracted some attention in the fashionable world; a mere lack of knowledge of seamanship was, of course, irrelevant, the gentleman’s function was to lead men, and this Horley was to be seen to do. There would be chances made, for sure.
Frederick wrote the first page of his letter that night and tore it up in the morning – there was such a thing as too much honesty, he found. The forenoon found him in Portsmouth in the largest, most respectable-seeming apothecary’s he could find.
“Going to the Sugar Islands, sir? A chest? Why, certainly, sir! Ward’s Drops, sir, and James’ Powder, to balance the humours and soothe the system. Jesuit’s bark and Grains of Paradise for the fever, made up in lead sealed bottles, do you see. A quart of laudanum, should you not be able to sleep, and medicinal alcohol to cleanse any wounds you might take. Turpentine, sir, to bathe on rashes or eczemas of the skin – few will stand the turpentine, I find. For the rest, sir, bicarbonate of soda to cleanse the teeth, for healthy teeth promote a good digestion, and basilicum powder to dust the sweaty parts, and the expressed juice of rhubarb – Chinese rhubarb! – to deal with any little, ah, irregularities, that may occur in the system.”
The chest made up and delivered set him back twelve guineas, but he felt it was worth it, having seen the surgeon.
Inspection of the boats duly took place, Frederick having begged the services of the boatswain to assist him. The three boats were normally towed behind in harbour or stored, one inside each other, on the booms. Now, at great inconvenience to the normal working of the ship, they were separated on the deck. Trailed by three nervous boys Frederick and Mr Porson peered carefully at everything, there would be no opportunity for another such inspection short of refit in a yard after storm or battle damage.
The boats possessed all they should, even the eyebolts and ropes to mount a twelve pounder carronade as a boat gun; the midshipmen’s sighs of relief rapidly turned to indrawn moans of horror as Porson probed with his knife below the bottom boards of the longboat and tapped its point against the copper.
“Rotten as a pear, Mr ‘Arris. Under the copper, ‘idden away with an inch of water slopping about and careless young gentlemen what don’t lift the bottom boards to ‘ave a look-see. Not that they could of, ‘ere, being as ‘ow they ain’t French and she was.”
Launch and jollyboat were sound, the smaller craft not being coppered.
Frederick was rowed to the dockyard, introduced himself to the Intendant, then sought out the Master Boatbuilder.
“Five oar longboat. None of they ‘ere, sir, nor time to repair or build afresh in the four days before you sails, sir.”
A pair of gold coins appeared in Frederick’s hand.
“However, sir, it does so ‘appen that we ‘as summat like what might do the job, like, as you might say.”
Frederick found himself staring at a teak-built twenty footer fully equipped with pole-mast and eight oars.
“Which, she was knocked up rough-like in Bombay for the old Tiger, 50, what was condemned out of service a twelvemonth since and we salvaged what we could, sir, even the non-regulation, foreign stuff, sir.”
A brief discussion, three more guineas to ‘meet expenses’ and it was arranged that Athene would send a crew for the ‘little old skiff of a thing’ on the next day, the dockyard to take away Athene’s condemned boat, ‘as a favour’.
They inspected their acquisition in the forenoon, Ball swelling with pride as he explained his new charge.
“New sails, sir. Six water barricoes and a pair of lockers in her stern. New oars, sir. A boathook, ropes and a brass bailer. They have done us proud, sir.”
“So they have, now. Make sure your new oarsmen are strong, she’s very heavy.”
Next morning they filled water, the great butts brought out by lighter, all hands swaying them aboard and deep down into the hold, the master in person numbering them and overseeing the settling of each into careful safety, bung up and clear of the bilges. The afternoon they spent at the powder hoy, transferring with elaborate, overstated care the small brass-ringed barrels across wetted decks and down to the magazine. Later still a shore-boat came off to them and Horley supervised the unloading of mess stores, almost entirely cases of wine.
“Twenty four dozens of claret and the same of port. Twelve of Madeira. Pale ale in bottles, forty eight dozens – I am told that towed alongside in a net it cools nicely and is far safer than water in the Tropics.”
“And besides that, Mr Horley?”
“A side of bacon, wrapped in cheese-cloth, some oranges, four barrels of coleslaw – so good for us, the cabbage! Oh, and a dozen of fine old Diabolino cognac, for entertaining.”
Frederick made no comment – it was a hard-drinking age, and Horley’s habits were his own to indulge; he had a suspicion that the captain might be less philosophical, however.
The court-martial gun fired for the Chaffinches and within less than three hours the order was given for hands to witness punishment. The procession of boats trailed slowly round the third, fourth and fifth rates at anchor, halted a few minutes at each for their bos’n’s mates to deliver two dozen apiece to the convicted pair, carried their maimed bodies away.
“Five hundred, I make it, Mr Harris. That will teach them their place, I doubt not!”
Horley seemed quite excited, mouth open, licking his lips, craning his neck to see as the boats came past; he shuffled in suddenly tight breeches. He did not notice the openly contemptuous stares of many of the crew. He was on deck with his telescope on the following morning as the gun fired and two figures were hauled up to the yardarm of the Chaffinch to kick for a few, slow minutes.
Twenty three seamen came aboard soon after under armed guard from the Provost-Marshall’s office. The least culpable of the Chaffinch’s crew, they made a sad showing as they climbed the side.
“They are all in their own, landsman’s clothes, Mr Harris!” Captain Atkinson exclaimed. “No issue of slops, ragged, threadbare. Disgraceful! Where is Mr Mason?”
“Not aboard, sir.”
Frederick had not yet seen the purser, all of his work having been performed by the Master or his underlings.
“He was due back yesterday, was at Haslar for a tooth-drawing.”
The hospital at Haslar provided medical services beyond the capacity of the ships’ surgeons as well as being a last refuge for some of those crippled and broken by the service and too much maimed to be discharged to beg.
“Mr Horley!”
Horley appeared, a whiff of brandy about him, but he was smartly dressed, perfectly steady.
“Have you word of the purser, Mr Horley?”
�
��Mason? Oh, yes, now that you come to mention it, sir, there was a messenger came, but I had turned in for the night … had ended my duties for the day, as it were.” He searched his pockets, vaguely fumbling. “Ah, yes, here we are,” he cried, producing a sealed note, waving it in triumph.
“Well, sir?”
Horley looked surprised, glanced about him as if to pass the job to another more suited to so menial a task, eventually broke the wax and opened the single folded sheet.
“Oh dear! Poor fellow! Only a tradesman though… Dead, sir. Bleeding that could not be stopped, heart failed, overweight. What a nuisance, having to replace him.”
Atkinson swore, briefly. “More than a bloody nuisance, Mr Horley. My boat, please. I must go to the Port-Admiral with this. Should have gone yesterday afternoon, sir! I beg you will not again put business to one side, sir, however pressing your bottle! Issue these men cold-weather slops, Mr Horley, within the hour. Mr Harris, you will take them to the surgeon, please, and on his acceptance ascertain their names and ratings and assign them temporarily to their parts of ship.”
The surgeon was awake, just; the half of a water glass of neat gin restored him to efficiency and he proceeded to quickly, two minutes each, examine the twenty three.
“Four ruptured, Mr Harris; one mad, one simple; six with floggings not yet healed; eleven fit topmen. Three of the ruptures and the mad man must go ashore, sir, cannot survive the Atlantic or be of use in working the ship. I shall write their certificates now, with your leave, sir.”
The one rupture remaining, well-trussed, was a cooper’s mate, valuable and skilled, his work relatively light. The simpleton could haul on a rope, provided he was pointed in the right direction. The six with scratched backs could clean and polish and paint for a few days. Frederick called the nineteen together, their slops clasped to them, a symbol of hope, he trusted.
“New ship, new captain, new ways. You will not be flogged for last off the mast or dull brasswork or because I want to. You will be beaten if you misbehave. Your past is finished, over, none of our business on Athene. We sail for the Sugar Islands and the chance of a fortune, under a fighting captain. Do your duty and the officers will do theirs and we will all do well.”
The Friendly Sea (The Duty and Destiny Series, Book 1) Page 4