King's Captain

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Daft little bugger,” Lewrie whispered in appreciation. “There’s method to his madness, aye … Still mad as a hatter though.”

  “It’s … !” Knolles gulped, as if witnessing the Second Coming.

  “A cheer for Captain, lads!” Lewrie bade in a quarterdeck roar, “ … a cheer for Commodore Nelson … he’s showing us the way!”

  His crew obeyed gladly, sure they were witness to one of those rare miracles, whooping and tossing their hats into the air and overside, no matter the cost of replacements that their Purser, Mr. Giles, would dun them for once soberer heads prevailed.

  Lewrie looked astern again for aid. Several other vessels had taken Nelson’s cue; for here came Blenheim of 98 guns, Prince George of 98, with Ocean and Irresistible in their wakes to re-enforce the insanity; still out of gun-range, far astern of Culloden but spreading more sail, letting fall their powerful courses, which were usually brailed up during battle to prevent accidental fires from the discharges from their own guns. And HMS Victory—Old Jarvy’s flagship—was in the process of wheeling about, tacking ponderously slow but sure, exposing her tall, bluff sides. Would those powerful ships arrive soon enough though, Lewrie fretted? Turning back to look at Captain, Lewrie could see her snuggling up close to a large Spanish two-decker, guns ablaze and ripping pieces off her with every shot. Taking fire too, taking damage but shrugging it off. The Spanish ships weren’t firing quickly, none of them—nothing like three broadsides in less than two minutes.

  “Poor practice, their gunnery,” Lewrie commented.

  “Slow, sir. Damn’ slow, aye!” Knolles agreed. “Two or three minutes ’tween broadsides, not …”

  “Mister Crewe!” Lewrie bellowed for his Master Gunner.

  “Sir!” that worthy barked back from the waist.

  “A broadside, Mister Crewe. I know it’s too far for a hope of hitting anything, but the Dons yonder need a little more discouraging.”

  “Sir, uhm … !” Knolles blanched.

  It was the accepted, gentlemanly practice for repeating frigates or auxiliaries near the battle-line to keep mum, their gun-ports closed, and they wouldn’t be fired upon by the more powerful liners in return. To open their ports though, run out and fire upon larger ships, allowed them to be re-considered as fair game. And an 18-gun sloop of war with 9-pounder popguns had no business even placing herself near stray shot, much less inviting quick destruction.

  “Bloody insane, ain’t it, Mister Knolles?” Lewrie said, with his mouth screwed up, and an eyebrow raised. “But … there seem to be bags of insanity about today.”

  “Long as we don’t take ourselves too serious, sir.” Lieutenant Knolles shrugged, feeling fatalistic. His captain was wearing his bemused look, that wolfish, “Oh, what the merry hell,” smirk. And his eyes … eyes that Knolles had come to be able to read; they were blue, or they were grey, by mood or temper. Had they steeled themselves flinty cold-grey, he would have been trembling in his boots, for when Commander Lewrie was out for blood, and there was hell to pay … Thankfully, this time he saw that they remained placidly, rake-hellishly blue.

  “We’ll not go plungin’ into range of those monsters like we’re a 1st Rate, no, Mister Knolles,” Lewrie assured him with a chuckle and a wink. “But we will make them look astern and see blood and thunder comin’ down on ‘em.”

  “Ready, sir!” Crewe reported.

  “Blaze away then, Mister Crewe. Blaze away!”

  It was impossible, really; nearly a mile-and-a-half separated Jester from the nearest Spaniard, and had her guns been able to shoot that far, with the elevating quoin blocks all the way out and the gun breeches resting on the truck-carriages, 9-pounder round-shot could do no more than doink! against thick oak sides and bounce off.

  But out ripped their puny broadside, a bow-to-stern rippling of sound and fury, higher pitched and lap-dog sharp, compared to the great-guns of Captain or Culloden. But those puny iron balls would sing through the air, whistle and moan, and they would raise splashes where they struck—might even skip a time or two like a well-flung river pebble. They’d get someone’s attention, or divert it.

  “Short,” Mr. Knolles noted, seeing the trout-splashes.

  “Well, of course,” Lewrie snickered.

  “Bloody hell!” several gunners crowed from the waist, standing to peer over the bulwarks and gangway, through the open ports to spot the fall-of-shot. “Cowards, cowards!” someone began to sing-song.

  Nothin’ t’do with us, Lewrie thought, goggling as he saw the line of Spanish ships begin to peel apart; we couldn’t’ve … !

  The head of that line, their van group, was arranging itself in proper line-ahead at last, but hardening up to the wind to spare those astern from collisions—and inclining more to the West-Nor’west! The further column which had their guns masked by the nearest were stretching out into line as well, the ones nearest Jester back and filling, whilst those further North were making more sail, making room for those astern. And bending away! Leaving the smaller pack near Captain, including that massive four-deck flagship, by themselves, a bit to leeward!

  “Mister Hyde, hoist a signal,” Lewrie snapped. “Any one’ll do, as if Nelson sent one. Dons can’t read it, but … Mister Crewe, serve ‘em another! Helmsmen, do you ease a spoke’r two a’weather. Let her fall off the wind a bit.”

  And open the range, he told himself; so we don’t sail right into that mess—get too close—and get squashed like a cockroach!

  “Ready, sir! On the up-roll, lads … steady … fire!”

  Their slight turn away swung their broadside to point in the general direction of that monstrous four-decker. Mile-and-a-half, it was, for their 9-pounders—Range-To-Random-Shot. And this time that useless-as-dried-peas broadside struck the sea within half a cable of her waterline—flying tortoise-slow by then, Lewrie suspected—the iron round-shot crippleskipping even closer a time or two.

  She fired back!

  Such a stupendous, sudden explosion from all her decks of guns that sailors whooped with delight for an ignorant second or two; that they’d somehow struck a weak spot and blown her sky-high!

  “Uhm, errr …” Mr. Knolles said again, stoic but corpse-pale.

  Oh, shit! was Lewrie’s prime thought.

  Moans and roars, sounds of tearing silk, irate witches’ screams, and heavy surf crashes that went on and on, rustling overhead, beyond the bow and stern! Great pillars and feathers of spray leaped skyward, and the oceans boiled and frothed with more surf noises, as if Jester had conjured up a tropical reef at the entrance to a lagoon! Hundreds of yards to windward though … nowhere near her.

  And once the shock had worn off, as chagrined gunners and gangway brace-tenders got back to their feet after flinging themselves down instinctively, Jester’s crew began to jeer their hapless foes.

  “Uhm, Helmsman … two more points off the wind’d suit,” Lewrie shakily ordered, marvelling that he hadn’t pissed his breeches.

  “Aye, aye, sir!” the senior quartermaster agreed, enthusiastic.

  “Well,” Lewrie crowed, clapping his hands and trying to justify his arrant stupidity, “that should draw their teeth for four or five minutes at any rate. A good broadside wasted, and them slow as treacle at reloadin’. Spare Captain her attention too. Mister Crewe, do you secure the larboard battery for now. Reload and stand easy.”

  “Aye, aye, sir!”

  “Five minutes more, we’ll have some other ships up to us,” Lewrie went on, pacing aft to peer at the reinforcements which were positively bounding over the sea by then. “Mister Hyde? What signal flags are we flying?” he asked, craning his neck to look aloft up the mizzenmast.

  “You said anything’d do, sir, so I grabbed the first four near to hand, sir.” Hyde smirked. “Accident, really, but it’s … It, uhm … means … ‘Start Excess Water,’ sir.”

  Lewrie looked aloft once more, hands on his hips, shaking his head in wonder, and began to bray with laughter! “Take it down, Mister Hyde … ta
ke it down. ‘Fore the others think we’re passing the word from Nelson to pump out and lighten ship. Run up more, as if we were speakin’ the flagship. Meaningless strings of rubbish, mind, no real legible orders to anyone. Serve ‘em gibberish, to keep our Dons on the hop. Good, God … ‘Start Excess Water’! Hah!”

  “Aye, sir.” Hyde chuckled.

  “Well, we won’t be trying that on again anytime soon,” Lewrie told Knolles, once he’d paced back to the nettings overlooking the waist at the forrud end of the quarterdeck. “Discretion above valour is our watchword. How is Captain faring?”

  “Her fore topmast’s shot away, sir, but it appears she’s gunnel-to-gunnel with one of theirs. And boarding her!” Knolles relished to relate. “A real neck-or-nothing day, sir.”

  And by five in the afternoon it was over. The Spanish never managed to unite, and the smaller body of ships which had lain to leeward had turned about and sailed off to the South, out of sight. The bulk of the main body had limped away towards Cadiz, with the British squadron too cut up to pursue But it was a day of victory.

  For the Spanish had left behind four ships: San Ysidro, a 3rd Rate of 74 guns; San Nicolas, a 3rd Rate 80, which Nelson had first engaged and boarded; the San José and Salvador del Mundo, both 2nd Rates of 112 guns! All defeated by slipshod sail handling and collisions, by horrendous casualties, and extremely poor, and slow, gunnery.

  For a time, the flagship of Vice-Admiral Don José de Corduba, that four-deck monster the Santissima Trinidad, had struck her colours too, after being totally dis-masted, forcing the Spanish admiral to transfer to a frigate. A last-chance rally ’round 4:00 P.M. though had driven the British off, so the Spaniards could tow their flagship away. The largest warship in the world of 136 guns, the only four-decker anyone would ever build, and she’d almost been taken as prize—by the ferocity of Nelson and his 74-gunned HMS Captain!

  “There, there, bad noises done … no more gun stinks,” Lewrie told his cat, Toulon, as he carried him in his arms, cosseting and stroking him. The black-and-white ram-cat had spent the day far below decks on the orlop with Aspinall and the Ship’s Carpenter, Mr. Reese, bottled up and moaning as gun-thunder echoed and thrummed ’round him. Now he was famished for attention and “pets,” mewing plaintively, pawing, kneading “biscuits” for comfort. “Mmmah-whahh!” he entreated, muzzle under his master’s chin.

  “Big, timorous baby, yes I know …”

  “Signal, sir!” Midshipman Spendlove announced. “Our number from the flag!”

  Followed by “What Sort of Lunatic Are You?” I shouldn’t wonder, Lewrie told himself with a rueful shrug.

  “It’s ‘Captain Repair on Board,’ sir,” Spendlove concluded.

  “Very well,” Lewrie replied, turning to call out to his First Officer, “Mister Knolles? Take us down to Victory and lay us under her lee. Mister Cony? Ready my gig and boat crew. Best turnout, Cox’n Andrews.”

  “Aye, sah … best rig,” his Jamaican coxswain answered. “We’ll be ready, sah … as hon’some as Sunday Divisions!”

  Handsome they were, half an hour later, when they rowed him over to the flagship, tricked out in clean check shirts, slop-trousers, and brass-buttoned, short, blue shell jackets. Ably competent too, hooking onto the starboard main-chains at the first try, oars tossed upright as one, as Lewrie made the long ascent up boarding battens and man-ropes to the upper deck.

  A fresh-scrubbed side-party greeted him with twittering bosun’s pipes, the slap of stout shoes on oak planking, horny hands on Brown Bess muskets, and a glittery whirl of swords presented in salute, winking in the wan winter sunset.

  “This way, Commander Lewrie, if you please,” an officer bade.

  Up to the broad quarterdeck, where a group of senior officers stood, hats off and chortling like they’d just left a good comedy back home in Drury Lane and were waiting for their coaches to take them to some even more diverting entertainment: Captain Robert Calder and Captain Grey, Fleet Captain and the Flag Captain of HMS Victory; Rear-Admiral Parker off Prince George; Vice-Admiral The Honourable William Waldegrave off Barfleur—Admiral Hood’s old flagship during the Revolution—Vice-Admiral Charles Thompson off Britannia; and Lewrie’s recent squadron commander during ’94–’95, Commodore Horatio Nelson, cheek-by-jowl with the gruffly gracious Admiral Sir John Jervis, K.B., a dour old tar who (there’s a wonder, Alan goggled!) seemed almost congenial for a change. ’Twas a wonder what a victory would do.

  “Sir John, gentlemen,” the lieutenant announced. “Commander Lewrie of the Jester sloop.”

  “Lewrie … ah!” Old Jarvy grumped, doffing his large cocked hat as Lewrie did his, his head tilted back a bit to peer (rather dubiously, did Alan imagine?) down his fine-sculpted nose. “Heard some about you, sir. ’Deed I have,” he pronounced, most disconcertingly.

  That don’t sound promisin’, Lewrie quailed, not knowing how he might respond. Just how much has he heard? And which bits?

  “Your servant, Sir John,” he cooed instead, making a “leg.”

  “Well?” Old Jarvy barked, still holding his hat high over his head though Lewrie had lowered his to his side. “Did you? ‘Start your water’? And was that before or after the Santissima Trinidad fired?”

  “Oh!” Lewrie brightened instantly, much relieved to hear the chuckle which rose from Sir John, see the puckish grin on his phyz … to receive much the same sort of cheery approbation from the rest, all those senior and august commanders! “I’m certain more’n a few of our people did, Sir John … immediately after. For myself, ’twas a close run thing. I didn’t anticipate such a response … certainly not her full attention.”

  “A fellow who yanks the lion’s tail, sir,” Admiral Jervis said, with a touch of high-nosed frost, “simply must expect a clawing!” He twinkled, snorted—actually making a jape! Almost but not quite as full of jollity as an affable compatriot and nothing like the flinty, humourless disciplinarian he was reputed to be, who could give anyone a case of the runs by simply glaring at him.

  Admiral Jervis clapped his hat back on, stepping closer to take Lewrie’s hand and pump away at it quite vigourously for a brief time, as the rest tittered polite appreciation for their commander’s jest.

  “I’ll caution you, Commander Lewrie, about making a career of tomfoolery,” Sir John added, pursing his features nigh to an actual admonishment, “but ’twas a splendid gesture nonetheless. You, Captain Troubridge in Culloden … Commodore Nelson … Was it disobedience of my signalled orders … ?” he posed, detaching his hand from Lewrie’s.

  Christ, am I for it after all? Lewrie shivered again.

  Distressingly, now his hand was free again, Admiral Jervis doffed his hat high aloft once more, making Alan twitch in indecision.

  “ … then it was a most forgivable disobedience, hmmm?”

  “Thankee, Sir John,” Lewrie muttered, dumbstruck. That hat … !

  “Your casualties, sir, your damage?” Admiral Jervis asked more softly, coming closer, and glooming up in grim expectation.

  “Why, none, sir,” Lewrie declared. “No damage either. They couldn’t shoot worth a … they were very poor at long-range firing.”

  “Close-in, though …” One of the senior officers sighed.

  “But still, slow as ‘church-work,’” Little Nelson chortled with glee. “Else we’d never have been able to stand within pistol-shot for as long as we did, sirs. Yank the lion’s tail indeed, Sir John. Got Santissima Trinidad to waste a month’s worth of shot and powder on his ship … ’stead of mine. My thanks, Commander Lewrie. When he was of my squadron at Genoa, sirs, I found none more expeditious and slyboots than Commander Lewrie when it came to befuddling our foes.”

  “No casualties … and no damage,” Sir John mused heavily. “I do declare. Good, though. Good. ’Tis been a bloody-enough day.”

  “Well, for the Dons, much worse, sir,” Nelson prattled on. “I must think they suffered ten times worse than us. You’ve been aboard the prizeships, seen …”

&
nbsp; “Aye,” Sir John grunted, clapping one hand behind his back to pace himself back to his usual taciturn grumpiness. “So you may sail off towards Cadiz and ‘smoak’ the dispositions of their remaining warships, sir?” He directed this to Lewrie.

  “Aye, Sir John,” Lewrie said automatically. “Though … we are a tad worn down, sir. I was hoping to careen her, re-copper her bottom. A short spell in port before …” Should I doff my hat to him too?

  “You’ve been in commission since … Captain Calder?”

  “Three years, this month, Sir John,” Calder supplied, off the top of his head.

  “We shall make other arrangements then,” Sir John said, almost mournfully. But instantly there was a twinkle in his eyes. “Lewrie, today is Valentine’s Day. I shall make you a present. Remain under my lee ’til I send you written orders.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “And, well done, Lewrie. Damn’ foolhardy, but well done.”

  “There was a lot of that going round today, sir. I think it must be catching,” Alan allowed himself to jape.

  “ … called the San Nicolas my ‘Patent Bridge for Boarding First Rates,’ ha, ha!” Nelson could be heard to titter in his high voice. “Up and over, without a pause, ‘board the San José, d’ye see.”

  Lewrie cocked a chary brow at that statement; Nelson was never a shy man when it came to taking acclaim—he’d seen that preening side to him before. And he most-cynically suspected no one had called it that yet—Nelson had made it up himself. For his vaulting vanity!

  Damn’ fool! Lewrie sighed. Never knew when to stop troweling it on!

  Servants were sporting trays of drinks ’round, and Lewrie snagged himself one and took a welcome sip of a very good claret. Old Jarvy’s best, he imagined, saved for a rare occasion such as this.