King's Captain

by Dewey Lambdin

  “I thought you would not mind did we use my barge to take you out to her ’stead of requesting of her to send over your gig,” Mr. Proby said, after taking a long, satisfying gander of his own.

  “Thankee, Mister Proby, that’s most accommodating of you, and I would be honoured,” Lewrie said, unable to tear his gaze from her, in a lust to be abroad and too impatient to wait for a boat to row shoreward to fetch him … like a parcel.

  My frigate! he exulted, even if she was accursed; my frigate, my first frigate! The freedom, the power … those guns of hers! God help me, but I do love ’em. Ships and guns … and the reek o’ both!

  “Andrews?” he called over to the hired boat. “I’ll go in the barge. Do you see my dunnage to the larboard port?”

  “Aye, aye, Cap’um!” his Cox’n shouted back.

  They descended the King’s Stairs, got into the barge, and were shoved off. It was after Proby’s Cox’n had a way on her, and steering clear of shore, before Proby continued his tale.

  “Ah, Captain Churchwell,” Proby sighed, toying with the lapels of his cloak. “He and his chaplain came ashore to dine with me that last evening. And as sober a lot as ever you could wish for, Captain Lewrie.”

  “The last evening? You don’t mean t’say … ?”

  “Saw him to his gig, just there at the King’s Stairs, as we did just now in my coach,” Proby gloomed, turning a weathered face downriver to keep an eye on the ships in his charge, the refits and all of the new construction still skeleton-like on the slipways; and to get a whiff of ocean, Lewrie suspected.

  “And not a half-hour later, his chaplain was dead. Drowned.” Proby sighed.

  Well, a chaplain, that’s no loss, Lewrie thought most sourly; a reverend on a ship’s a bit gloomy-makin’ anyway. Haven’t seen one of ’em worth a tuppenny shit, and most vessels sail without ’em.

  “How terrible!” he felt compelled to gasp though.

  “Dead calm, just at slack water it was, sir,” Proby said, with another dis-believing shake of his head. “Not a breath of wind stirring, and no cause for Proteus to roll or toss. Side-party up on her gangway ready to render honours.

  “It might have been someone on the main deck took a poke with something through the scuppers, but no one could recall seeing hands on deck that late at night, other than the side-party up above the gun-ports on the starboard gangway. But …”

  “But, sir?” Lewrie pressed, feeling his hands twitch once more with impatience, as Proby turned the tale into a two-volume novel.

  “For no apparent cause, sir … she heaved a slow roll starb’d,” Proby whispered, leaning close to Lewrie on the thwart they shared near the sternsheets. “The chaplain, Reverend Talmidge, was halfway aloft, and Captain Churchwell was just by the lip of the entry-port, when she did her roll. And then, sir!—Captain Churchwell gave out a yelp, like he was stung by a wasp, he told me later—and lost his grasp on the man-ropes. He slipped and fell backwards, slid down into Reverend Talmidge and knocked him loose as well, and they both hit the water and went under. Right ’twixt ship and boat, without touching either, sir … not a mark on the gig, as there would have been had the Reverend Talmidge struck his head on her gunn’ls and knocked himself out. Captain Churchwell came to the surface a moment later, and his boat-crew pulled him out. But the chaplain never did. Now both men were strong swimmers, I was told, since boyhood; and Captain Churchwell thought that the chaplain might be beneath the gig, trapped and unconscious, and he dove under, searching for him, but never found him. He was never found, Captain Lewrie.”

  “That’s odd,” Lewrie had to admit aloud. “Usually a drowned man comes up, sooner or later. Downriver, perhaps … ?”

  “We searched, sir, indeed we did. Captain Churchwell had boats on the river not a half-hour later,” Proby told him. “He sent news to me, requesting everything that’d float to search, as far as Gillingham Reach, the first morning and for several days after; but nary a sign of him did anyone see. And even did a man strike his noggin and put himself out, well … being ’round ships, ports, and rivers the most part of my life, Captain Lewrie, I’ve seen men fall overside, seen drownings aplenty, God save me. And the most of ’em do come up, right after they fall in. ’Fore their clothes get soaked, they’ve enough buoyancy for at least a single surfacing, if they’ve a scrap of air in their lungs.”

  “Well, perhaps he drew in a breath, but underwater …” Lewrie surmised. So far it was a tragic tale, perhaps indicative of his new ship’s—perverse nature? he shivered—Gaelic, Druidic, and Celtic soul. Certainly there was a frigate near her like, HMS Druid, built back in the early ’80s, and there’d been a spot of bother at first over her name, with the Established Church’s Ecclesiastical Court upset by an allusion to the old pagan ways and the necromancing Druids. He had never heard, though, that she’d been trouble. Made into a trooper, last he’d heard … with guns removed, en flute, so she could transport a whole battalion at once.

  But the way Proby was glooming and ticking the side of his nose, as if in sage warning, he wondered when the other shoe might drop.

  “It could be as you say, sir, for I’ve seen that happen also,” Proby confessed. “’Mongst the drunk-as-lords, the ones who did strike their heads. But, sir … Reverend Talmidge was stone-cold sober when he entered that gig. And no one could recall him striking his head … no dented wood, no smear of blood or hair … ?” Proby shrugged. “And may I remind you, noted to be a strong swimmer. I sometimes wish our Lords Commissioners might follow the example of the Dutch Navy. They require every man-jack sent to sea to learn how to swim, or know how before joining. And their surgeons and surgeon’s mates can revive a drowned man in almost miraculous fashion by laying him out face-down over a large keg laid on its side. Roll him back and forth and, more than half the time, he begins to cough and sputter and spew up what he swallowed or breathed in. And is returned to the living, Captain Lewrie, like Lazarus called out from his grave by Our Dear Saviour. I have seen that done too, sir, in my time.”

  “So he lost his chaplain, sir. But you said he was her previous captain?” Lewrie urged. “What made Captain Churchwell … ‘previous’?”

  “Oh, sir,” Proby groaned, looking appalled. “Close as brothers they were to each other … cater-cousins from the same county, the same social set. Captain Churchwell was as heartbroken as a man who’d just lost all his brothers and sisters at a single stroke!”

  “He threw over his commission due to grief, Mister Proby?” Lewrie frowned. Well, it did take all kinds, he felt like saying.

  “I’ll warrant there was a certain amount of grief, the cause.” Proby nodded, looking seaward once more, towards HMS Proteus, to judge how near she was. “And guilt, for he was the one who’d jostled Talmidge when he slipped and fell. And that was an odd thing too, in addition to her strange roll. The man-ropes were spanking-new manila, hairy as so many badgers and dry as dust. The batten steps had been fresh-tarred, with sand scattered for a good foothold. No cause for him to slip at all. No linseed oil anywhere in sight for him to slip on with hand or foot.”

  “Prickly strands of manila … that might have been what he said stung him, sir,” Lewrie suggested, turning to eye his new ship also.

  “Sting a lubber, sir,” Proby grunted most querulously. “Or sting a lady’s soft hands. But never a tarry-handed sailor like him. Had a bear’s grip, he did … and all over rope-handling callouses.”

  “So?” Lewrie shrugged. “Why that night then?”

  “I recall most vividly him saying that it felt like he’d gotten stung by several wasps at once, Captain Lewrie,” Proby told him. “At the tail end of winter, when they’re still a’nest? No, he claimed the ship … bit him!”

  “Beg pardon?” Lewrie gawped. “Bit him, did y’say?”

  “Claimed she hated him and was out to kill him too,” Proby told him, shrugging. “Not five days later, he wrote Admiralty asking for immediate relief. Aged ten years, he appeared, as haggard as a dog’s dinner. Un
kempt, his hair turned grey almost overnight, I tell you. And falling-down drunk, sir! Him, so abstemious before, but in his cups right ’round the clock afterwards. Running on deck at all hours, claiming he heard voices warning him to leave or die? Mister Ludlow claims he smelled sober in the beginning, even when he told the most horrendous fantasies and saw things no one else on deck saw, sir. Turned out the Marines to search his cabins more than a few times and claimed there was someone there, but nary a sign of an intruder there was. He began drinking soon after that. After the first two days, I think it was. Babbling to himself, weeping before the hands … ’twas a sorry spectacle Captain Churchwell was when he took the coach back to London. Never seen a man so shattered in body and soul.”

  “Perhaps he was one of those secret topers, Mister Proby,” Lewrie wondered, “who hold it well and hide it well. Does a man play a role well enough in public … and don’t most people … ?”

  “Seen more than my share of those too, in my time, sir”—Proby chuckled—” claiming to be the strictest abstainers … but experience gives the lie to their lies. Didn’t look the sort. That sort of lust for drink will show in a man his age. In Sea Officers more than most, as I’m certain you’ve noted. No, sir, I may attest to you that this demonic craving for spirits was sudden. And the poor devil was quite capsized.”

  “Well, perhaps she bit him after all, sir. In a way? Bottle-bit?” Lewrie could not help saying, with a quirky smirk.

  Proteus was near now—not a musket-shot off—and the barge was steering to pass under her out-thrust bowsprit and jib-boom, about ten yards in front of her bows to gain her starboard side. There was a thunder of feet as her partial crew was mustered, the shrill of bosun’s calls to summon a side-party.

  “Boat ahoy!” came a shout from her larboard cat-head, from the strange midshipman of the harbour watch.

  “Proteus!” Proby’s midshipman in the sternsheets cried back, to warn them that their caller was not just any officer, but her new captain. The bow-man thrust four fingers in the air, showing the number of side-men to be mustered.

  “Perhaps she did, Captain Lewrie,” Proby snipped, sounding as if he was put off by Lewrie’s cynical comment. “Perhaps she did, at that. And the very oddest thing was, sir, the poor Captain Churchwell and the Reverend Talmidge both, sir … were Anglo-Irish. Son of an Irish peer, Churchwell was, from near Drogheda. And Talmidge the younger son of another, gone into the ministry. Both families were land-owning in the large way,” Proby drawled. “The most extensive estates, equal to whole counties, with hundreds, if not thousands, of poor Irish tenants. Absentee landowners, most of the time, with them living well-off in Dublin or London most of the year. Anglo … Irish, sir! Protestant folk. Now were a ship to find her soul and resent her name, it just might be that, does she prefer something Gaelic or Celtic—like some of this fellow Ossian’s romancings—she might have resented a Protestant English churchman and a taut-handed Tartar of a captain? Hmmm?”

  “Murder, perhaps, sir,” Lewrie said, after he’d gotten his jaw re-hinged. “But by someone in the crew. One of those United Irish I’m certain you’ve heard about. A sea-lawyer Quota Man who’d gotten what he thought was an unfair portion of the ‘cat’? Half o’ that lot are better off in prison or swingin’ from a gibbet at Tyburn. One or more of their poorest tenants come into the Fleet to find him over them and couldn’t resist takin’ revenge for bein’ turfed off their little plots?”

  “All those possibilities were considered, Captain Lewrie, but so far, there is no plausible explanation. Oh, but she’s a wondrous ship, sir. As lovely as a swan, do you not think? But who ever knows how a ship will turn out? Even more unpredictable than children, sir. And heartbreaking to see them turn off evil, to see them fail to be the sort you’d wished them to be. Ships, sir.” Mr. Proby sighed, a bit wistfully philosophical. “I do believe, Captain Lewrie, that ships live, after a fashion. Call it heretical, or pagan … or simple-minded superstition, but being ’round ’em so many years, I’ve come to believe it. Mariners suspect it, merchant or Navy. As I’m certain you do.”

  “They’re more than oak and iron, Mister Proby, aye,” Lewrie was forced to confess. “My last ship, well … there was a spirit to her too. A kindly one. Gad, you make my skin crawl, sir.”

  “I did not intend to daunt you, sir,” Proby insisted, as the barge coasted towards the main-chains, those suspect boarding battens and man-ropes. “There could be a most prosaic explanation for all of the oddities surrounding her … .”

  Aye, and it could be Lir’s work, Lewrie silently scoffed; elves and leprechauns skitterin’ about with drawn daggers too! Eeriness, just waitn’ for the next … her next victim! Has he turned on me?

  “ … either way, sir. This ship has, I must avow, discovered her spirit early. She may be mettlesome, but never dull. And does she have a will of her own, well … it’s the most-willful stallions make the best chargers. You’d not take a mare to sea, sir … a dim gelding! No, you’d prefer a fighter!”

  Is he tryin’ t’sell me a haunted house? Lewrie felt like sneering. Oh, don’t mind the old spook by the fire; he’s no bother! Ghastly hole in the roof, but I’m sure you’re the sort appreciates fresh air!

  “And I’m certain you will have the most splendid fortune with her, Captain Lewrie,” Proby concluded, as the barge’s bow thumped on her timbers, and the bow-man lanced out with his boat-hook to grab at the chain platform. “And here we are!”

  She plan t’murder me too? Lewrie wondered, as he swung his sword to the back of his left leg, stood up, and flung back his cloak to show off his epaulet. I ain’t an Anglo-Irish landowner, so she can forget that score! Callin’ me well-churched’d be a real amusement, so that’s out. Is she upset with bein’ an English frigate, well too damn’ bad! Maybe we’ll get on together … ?

  He eyed the battens: dry as anything, fresh-tarred, sprinkled with grit. The man-ropes rove through the eyes of the battens were as white as snow, served with red spun-yarn, just waiting …

  Hell, maybe I’m just as much a pagan as any she could wish! he told himself as he stepped on the barge’s gunn’l to step over; I mean, God knows, most people who know me well already think so!

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Such a sea of faces, he thought, even with her just partly manned. Seamen, lubbers, idlers, and waisters, petty officers and their mates on the gun-deck below him, a double file of Marines lined up to either hand just aft of them. A scurrilous lot, the most of ’em though, he took time to note: ill-clad, pasty-faced, and filthy, in the “long-clothing” they’d worn in gaols or debtors’ prisons, what the seamen among them had used for disguises so they wouldn’t be chased by the Impress gangs.

  “‘ … by virtue of the Power and Authority to us given, we do hereby constitute and appoint you Captain of His Majesty’s Ship’”—he read off, speaking in an authoritative semi-bellow; he paused for one anxious second—“‘Proteus,’” he declared.

  And took a breath before continuing, waiting to see if top-masts might come crashing down on him for insulting her. He’d made his way up her side without harm, been saluted on the gangway from the instant his hat’s vane loomed over the lip of the entry-port. So far, so good!

  “‘Willing and requiring you forthwith to go on board and take upon you the Charge and Command of Captain in her accordingly. Strictly charging all the Officers and Company belonging to the said Ship subordinate to you to behave themselves jointly and severally in their respective Employments with all due Respect and Obedience unto you their said Captain, and you likewise …’”

  An odd lot, those officers he’d just barely met too; not quite the most promising at first appearance. But then, who ever was, Lewrie sarcastically wondered?

  Then here came the phrase he hated the most. Army commissions were almost like love-letters, replete with “Greetings,” and spoke of the recipients as “trusty and beloved,” in whom the Sovereign reposed “especial Trust and Confidence in your Loyalty, Courage, and Good
Conduct.” The Fleet, however …

  “‘ … superior Officers for His Majesty’s Service. Hereof nor you nor any of you may fail as you will answer the contrary at your peril. And for so doing this shall be your Warrant. Given under our hands and the Seal of the Office of Admiralty this ninth day of May, 1797 in the thirty-seventh year of His Majesty’s Reign.’”

  Lewrie carefully slipped his precious commission document into a folio of other papers and handed it to his Cox’n, Andrews, then turned to peer once more into that sea of strange new faces, that ear-cocked, shuffling pack.

  “Not many get this chance,” he carefully began, weighing words’ meanings. “A spanking-new ship to serve in, not a month from the slipways, a ship still in search of her heart, her soul, as young and callow as a spring hatchling.”

  And we’ll just hope she’s not found a spiteful heart, he wished to himself, feeling the urge to cross his fingers behind his back, for luck. He noted the grave nods from the older hands, the long-serving petty officers who knew the nature of ships; from those horny-handed men already clad in slop clothing whom he wished he could mistake for experienced Ordinary or Able Seamen upon whom he could rely.

  “A spanking-new captain, too,” he allowed himself to say, with no shame in confessing, “from command of one of the sweetest sloops of war ever you did see. You older men … you know better than any what makes a new ship come alive. From your old ships, where you came of age and rate … gladsome ships, for the most part, I trust. Do you miss them, well … you just bring our Proteus that spirit, and we’ll get on well. Did you come from ships you’re glad to see the back of, did you fetch along bad habits and bad feelings, well … overside with ’em, For I will tell you all that I’m firm … but I do trust that I’m fair, as well. Did some turnover as bad bargains … then Proteus is your place to start over with a clean slate. Do you serve her … and me … chearly, then all that’s gone before is so much jetsam. Is that a fair bargain, lads?”