Missed you by a bloody mile! Lewrie crowed to himself, seeing the barge captain waving a fist (and making some very English gestures) in his direction as Proteus bore off and began to rumble downriver … at least two musket-shots clear of collision with barge or lighters.
“Quartermasters, a full point to weather … mid-channel,” Lewrie instructed. “Once abeam the wind, allow nothing to loo’rd.”
“Aye, aye, sir … nothin’ t’loo’rd,” Mr. Motte the senior said.
There’s one tricky bit over, Lewrie congratulated himself; now … only four or five more t’go ’til we’re safe as houses. He gave his First Officer, Ludlow, another searching glance; but he was huddled in his coat, round-shouldered and enigmatic once more. Lewrie turned to spy aft at Peacham and the afterguard, but could find nothing amiss in that direction either. Some hurt feelings, a touch of sulkiness … ?
Well, do I have potential trouble aboard, he assured himself, I have time to get it sorted out at the Nore. Cure some newlies’ ignorance ’fore sailing further, sort out the truly stupid, and …
“Three-master in the main channel, sir!” Mr. Winwood hailed with some urgency. “Breastin’ the tide under all plain sail.”
“Making leeway of course?” Lewrie winced, leaning over the larboard bulwarks to peer out.
“Afraid so, sir.”
“Well, we’ll try to pass alee of her,” Lewrie said, hands firm in the small of his back as he strode back towards the wheel, with more confidence in his voice than his innards. “She’s the pilot’s so-called bags of room to weather. Quartermaster, maintain course, but give us a point alee when I call for it. No more than a single point, mind.”
Brace up, you bastard, he thought, else! Make leeway like a wood chip, and we’ll surely collide, you … !
Shit! Just, shit!
BOOK THREE
Fit fragor, aetheris ceu Iuppiter arduus arces
impulerit, imas manus aut Neptunia terras.
There is a crash, as though Jupiter had risen in might
and overthrown the citadels of heaven,
or Neptune’s arm had rocked the foundations
of the world.
—ARGONAUTICA, BOOK V, 163-64
VALERIUS FLACCUS
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Gloomy damn’ place, Lewrie sighed to himself, as he emerged on the quarterdeck by his private after-companionway ladder, abaft of the great-cabin’s coach-top. It had rained during the night, after they’d dropped anchor, and though it was now mid-May, the wind had a bite to it. He’d allowed himself a full bottle of burgundy with his solitary supper, a stout brandy before, and two glasses of a good aged port out of that ten-gallon barricoe he’d bought at Fortnum & Mason’s … to celebrate a safe arrival off Sheerness. To settle his nerves. In point of fact, his nerves had gotten so steady—somewhere following cheese and sweet biscuits—that he’d been temporarily immobilised! Aspinall and Andrews had had to pour him into his hanging bed-cot! But he felt he’d more than earned his over-imbibing.
Proteus lay safely anchored just off Garrison Point, her heaviest “bestbower” down, with a stream-anchor astern to keep her from fouling another ship should the wind or tide take her. Before going aft to his lone celebration, he’d summoned the crew to gather ’round the break of the quarterdeck, had congratulated them for a safe passage downriver, had joshed them gently on things that had gone wrong, and had pointed out how to improve. Then, he had ordered a bullock slaughtered for their supper and had ordered “Splice The Main-Brace,” to make an extra issue of rum. “Won’t always be thus,” he’d cautioned them; “once at sea, we won’t make such jolly distinctions. Proper performance of duty will be expected as commonplace. Then we’ll only celebrate surviving a storm, the taking of a rich prize … or beating the Be-Jesus out of the French!”
Depressin’, he griped to himself, wringing the already thick sheaf of official paperwork between his hands—meaning both his “head” from taking aboard his load of spirits the previous evening and the sight of Sheerness and the tossing Nore besides. They were about equal for depressing.
Low, muddy, shoaling, and windswept, and even a bright day of sunshine probably couldn’t make Sheerness any fairer a prospect. It was a garrison town, a warehousing and dockyard town, ringed with forts which usually fell early to any foe who tried to enter the Thames or Medway. Stopping them was the job of the more-substantial forts at the many tight bends in the Thames or Medway further upriver. The ships assembled here were not organised in a proper fleet, flotilla, or squadron. They were just here, because the Nore and Sheerness were at the mouth of the Thames and Medway, near enough to London and the many shipbuilding and armaments industries in the capital’s environs to supply them at little cost in shipping.
Dozens of ships, he noted, taking a deep breath of clean air, as he waited for his gig to be reported ready; dozens of warships, he corrected himself. There were night on an hundred or more merchantmen close at hand waiting for a suitable wind and tide to proceed up the Thames to the Pool of London and the thousands of cargo-handling docks. Or waiting for a wind-shift to carry them seaward, to join a convoy forming in the Downs. Full-rigged ships, ocean-going vessels deep-laden with treasures, the lofty Indiamen or packets from the Caribbean. Coasters and colliers filled with fish, coal, timber, pig iron, tin, wool, bales of manufactured clothing, or shoes from other small ports in the British Isles. And trading smacks loaded with oysters or poultry, eager to be first to market for a hungry city—they were all here or off on the horizon, streaming dense as poured treacle from night anchorages off the Leigh Sands, the Warp, and the Maplin Sands, up the Queen’s Channel along the Yantlet Flats … even the short way ’round from the Whitstable oyster beds, up the shallow, narrow Oaze to the Swale, from Faversham behind the Medway Boom, to Queenborough.
He’d prefer (had he his indolent druthers!) to sleep in, nurse his indulgent “head,” and curl up with a good book and a warm cat, but there were “duty calls” he must make this dreary, nippy morning; upon Vice-Admiral Charles Buckner, for one, the “Officer In Command of HM Ships and Vessels in the River Medway and At The Buoy of The Nore,” to give his full title—who had promised to solve his manpower shortage. And upon the Commissioner of HM Dockyards at Sheerness, Captain Francis John Hartwell, to arrange the lading of the tons upon tons of supplies due Proteus to put her in full fig: bags of biscuit, kegs of salt-meats, waxed cheeses, dried peas, ground flour by the boatload, the powder and shot and cartridge cloth to fill her magazines … and whatever his Purser, Mr. Coote, might wish to stow below for later. She was even short of rum, wine, and small beer at the moment, and afloat above her load waterline.
“De boat be ready, sah,” Andrews reported at last.
“Very well, let’s be going.” Lewrie sighed, stuffing his paperwork into a sewn sailcloth haversack slung over his shoulder beneath his boat-cloak and wishing he’d had time for another restoring pot of coffee!
Things went well ashore. Buckner was an old fellow, welcoming as could be asked for, though seeming troubled. Lewrie put that down to his being in charge of everything, and nothing, for he had no command over the warships gathered in the Nore, only with an eye to fitting them, manning them, making repairs, and passing them on to other units.
He’d had some good news, even so. The semaphore telegraph had wagged the news that Admiral Howe’s negotations with the mutineers at Spithead were going well, and a final solution now looked very likely.
“One which, I trust,” Admiral Buckner had sighed, “will settle the grievances once and for all. Not only for Channel Fleet, but with the mutineers at Plymouth too, Captain Lewrie. And … uhm, a close-run thing. There was some fighting at Spithead aboard a few ships … nothing too drastic, but … the sort of thing which might have caused a violent rebellion had it spread. Spread much wider, d’ye see.”
“Something akin to the Culloden business, sir?” Lewrie had asked, feeling a tad more perceptive by then; Vice-Admiral Buckner had had a la
rge coffee pot at hand and had been most liberal in sharing.
“Captains acting a bit too forcefully … engaging in perfidious, two-faced dealings, aye.” Buckner had nodded. “Captains were forced to … uhm, back down in the face of resistance. Sensibly, I must allow. The retention of a single ship … the return of a vessel or two to proper order … could never balance against the rancour incited—among vessels beyond Portsmouth.” Buckner had most mystifyingly hinted.
“D’ye mean here, at the Nore, sir? Or at Great Yarmouth too?”
“There have been, uhm … letters of grievances sent me, Lewrie—so far from individual ships—requesting shore-leave, back pay, food issues much like the demands of the Spithead mutineers. The removal of certain officers and mates they deem tyrannical or overly harsh, aye.” Buckner had gloomed, and Lewrie had realised that his troubled mien was due to more than his usual travails. “Nothing organised so far. And pray Jesus when word of settlement arrives … as I am mortal-certain we will receive in a few more days … the terms and conditions will be mollifying throughout the Navy.”
“A sloop of war named Jester was not cited as one of the ships where violence erupted, was she, sir?”
“Ah, no, Captain Lewrie. I do not recall any mention of that ship. Your last command, I suspect, sir? Rest easy … on that head, at the least. Now, sir … how many men did you say you desired? My, my!”
The last task of his day’s work away from Proteus. With a precious letter from Vice-Admiral Buckner and his Regulating Captain of the Impress Service safely in hand, he went aboard HMS Sandwich to pick up more seamen (hopefully!) and some more warm bodies to fill in the gaps in his watch-and-quarter bills. He stopped to pick up Lieutenant Ludlow to go along with him to aid him in the choosing.
Sandwich was crammed far beyond his most horrid imaginings. It reeked like an abattoir despite being scrubbed daily, the sickly, foetid reek of a hospital ward where hopelessly sick or wounded men were left to perish in their own good time.
As Buckner’s flagship she was fully manned, ostensibly fit for sea at a day’s notice, stocked and stored and armed for battle not one hour out to sea against any Dutch ships which might try the Thames and Medway again, as they had in wars of the previous century.
But she’d been saddled with hundreds more new-comes and recently impressed sailors, with all the other receiving ships already full with others. Buckner had been specific that they must choose from among the potential hands aboard Sandwich, not the other hulks. To reduce the odours, Lewrie suspected most cynically; when he made his rare appearances aboard her.
God, they were a villainous lot! He’d thought that the people who’d greeted him aboard Proteus had approached “villainous,” but this crowd gave “villainous” a whole new aspect! Not only were they clad in rags and greasy civilian clothes, the most of them, but they shivered in bare feet, bare shins devoid of stockings, and even the ones who gave the appearance of nautical experience could barely boast of a single, thin shirt and a pair of torn, stained slop-trousers, a neck-kerchief, or a hat of any description. They smelled like a corpse’s armpit, emitting a sour cloud of steam from being pent so close and thick below decks and freshly exposed to the cool open airs. Some were speckled with a host of rash-marks; fleas, lice-bites, saltwater boils, and ulcers that had grown large as the wens and buboes seen with the Black Death! Doddering oldsters, pitifully shivering children, barely in their teens. Long-haired, grey-haired, gap-toothed. As miserable an assortment of wretchedness as ever he’d imagined!
“This is Captain Lewrie … of the Proteus frigate,” Sandwich’s officer shouted to the hundred or so gathered amidships. “He is come for willing hands. A frigate, lads! Now who’ll step forward to volunteer for her? Anyone? Nought of you willing to serve your King and Country in a fine, tall frigate? Damme!”
Lewrie looked at the faces glaring back at him, most wearing an utter blankness, a weariness beyond all reckoning of the opportunity he offered. Here and there were younger, fitter faces, men with straight backs and clean limbs, a few who’d retained their clothing and tried to keep themselves in better order. He hoped some of them might step forward.
“God, what a pot-mess!” Ludlow sniped, ready to spit on deck and be done with the lot of them. “Not one of ’em better than what a crop-sick hound’d spew up!”
“Their issue slops, sir? Where are they?” Lewrie asked.
“Lord, sir”—Sandwich’s lieutenant sneered then, in a loud voice, to their faces—“gutter scum such as them? Improvident drunkards such as them, sir? Sold or gambled ’em away with no thought for the morrow, like all their lot do, ’thout you’d beat some sense into ’em. Weaker’uns … well, mayhap the tougher stole ’em blind, Captain Lewrie. Be the first to admit such happens.” The officer shrugged, as if it was of no matter to him what these “recruits” did amongst themselves. “Real sailors are so rare now, sir … we have to settle for the hopeless shit, such as these! Who’d rob shipmates, hey, you lot? No more dawdling … let’s have some of you step forward and volunteer ’fore we choose you by throwin’ rocks.”
“A moment, sir …” Lewrie snapped, his neck burning with anger at the lieutenant’s choice of words, of being such a cruel bastard. “I would like to address them. Your surgeon has cleared them, I trust?”
“Aye, sir … I s’pose,” the lieutenant allowed.
He’d not thought to fetch his own surgeon, Mr. Shirley, along. He had not expected, however, to be presented with a spectacle such as these poor wretches.
“You men …” he began, “those sailors among you. Far back in the rear there … suspicious, I’d imagine.” He chuckled. “Proteus is a frigate, and you know what that means. She’s fast, well-armed, and has more deck space and mess space than other ships. So you won’t be living with two other bastards’ elbows in your eyes, off-watch. And a frigate means prize-money. To the Devil with ships-of-the-line like Sandwich. She’ll never catch anything, but a frigate will. I’ve been lucky with prize-money in my last ship, and so my people’ve been too! There’s frigate-men come home so rich they bought new pocket watches, then fried ’em in lard in public just for the Hell of it! Proteus is a spanking-new frigate too! Just come down from the Chatham yard. Not a month in commission. You lubbers, you know what that means, do you? She doesn’t stink! Fresh, clean paint and tar, sweet-smelling timbers, nothing rotting in the bilges … and as pretty as a brand-new house. A fast ship, a proud ship …”
“I will, sir!” someone in the back called out, though several sneered at him for sounding so eager. He came forward, a slim, young man with a nervous smile that showed he had most of his teeth. “Mash, sir. Topman, sir. I’ll volunteer for her.”
“Very well, Mash.” Lewrie beamed. “Any mates of yours able to hand, reef, and steer … serve a gun, back yonder? Any others wish to ship with Mash, then?” he called out.
He saw a pair of likely men shrug and pick up their seabags to shuffle through the press of men and also volunteer.
“Martyn, sir,” one husky brute said. “Ord’n’ry Seaman, sir.”
“Lucas, sir,” said a blond-haired teen. “Topman, sir.”
“Bannister, sir,” claimed a whip-thin, dark, ferrety lad. “I done a voyage’ r two, but ain’t rated Ord’nary yet.”
“Good, though, we can use you, and thankee, Bannister,” Lewrie said, clapping him on the shoulder as he passed to stand to one side. “Any other sailors or watermen of a mind to get out of this hell-ship? Get clean again? Eat decent rations again?”
“Me, sir!” A wee lad about Sewallis’s age and size piped up in a falsetto. “Come on, Da!” he said to the man who stood behind him with his hands on his shoulders. “Be t’gether?”
“What’s your name, lad?” Lewrie grinned. The boy didn’t look like much of a sailor, but at least he was enthusiastic, and he hoped that enthusiasm might spread.
“Grace, s’please ye, sir.” The boy tentatively smiled back.
“You’re kin?” Lewrie asked the
elder man behind him, hoping that the lad wasn’t the grownup’s “plaything.”
“Grace, sir,” the man said. He was withered, ropy, and wiry, and looked as if he’d spent his life on the water somewhere. “Had us our own fishin’ smack outa Whitstable; but she went down back durin’ the winter, an’ …”
All they’d owned, most-like, Lewrie surmised; and once lost, they had laboured for others, for a tenth of the income they’d made on their own bottom. For friends, neighbors, or no!
“’Tis me grandson, Cap’um, sir,” the elder admitted with pride. He was grey-haired, missing some teeth, but appeared sound in wind and limb. “Never sailed ’board a big ship all me born days, sir. Me an’ me son too, here,” he said, indicating a third possibility. “But …”
“Young Grace … Middle Grace, and … Elder Grace, aye.” Lewrie nodded. “Three pay certificates for the one household then, men?”
“Aye, reckon it’d help, sir. We’ll volunteer f’r yer frigate,” the middle one allowed, as he gathered up his few pitiful possessions.
More began to come forward, though some Lewrie and Ludlow had to turn away. They were too spindly, too weak and hacking with coughs, or covered with sores, some just too shifty and cutty-eyed—too old, too young, even for ship’s servants. And how the Impress Service had hoped to justify dredging them up, Lewrie couldn’t begin to fathom.
“Bennett, sir.” Then, Peacock and Thornton, Humphries and Inman and Slocombe and Sugden, Grainger and Brough. Only half were sailors, or could even charitably admit they were on a first-name basis with a basin of water … but every sound man was more than welcome.
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