King's Captain

by Dewey Lambdin

“Come up here, Seaman Grace, you and your son! Hell, bring the grandson too! Assist the Sailing Master ’til we reach deep water.”

  “Aye, aye, sir!”

  Skreakings and squeals of the lignum-vitae sheaves of the pulley blocks as the fore-course finally reached its limit of travel and the main-course began to ascend too, more squeals as the brace-blocks to the courses took a strain, as the braces were trimmed in to cup wind.

  BOOM! From astern at last, and a few seconds later a cannon-ball went shrilling past Proteus’s starboard side, very wide of her and hopelessly high. The ball’s first graze raised a feathery plume at least a quarter-mile beyond and well alee.

  “Showin’ ’em our stern, Mister Winwood. Aye, Easterly, as much as you wish,” Lewrie agreed, crossing to the binnacle rack to fetch a telescope. He could see several ships near their recent anchorage that had opened their gun-ports; but it was a haphazard thing, as irregular as a beggar’s teeth, and he doubted if they’d get off a killing broadside before Proteus got out of range. BOOM! another piece spoke, but it was a forecastle carronade on one of the 64-gunners, not a long-range gun. This ball was closer to line-of-aim, but couldn’t even begin to reach her and fell very short, not even skipping near.

  “Sergeant Skipwith?” Lewrie demanded, pacing back to the hammock nettings.

  “Aye, aye, sah!” Skipwith said, stamping to attention.

  “You and the Master At Arms, the Ship’s Corporals assist Mister Offley. I want all our mutineers taken under arms in chains at once!” Lewrie ordered. “Especially that bastard!” he said, pointing at Bales with the tin-whistle, which was by then pretty-much the worse for wear.

  Rumbold, Smyth, and Mash, Mr. Handcocks, Mr. Morley, and Private Mollo, two of the Sailmaker’s crew, Bales, and two other of the Marines, a few more faces he’d come to loathe by then, scooped up from where they lay or slumped on the deck, some dragged up from below already in irons, hooted and jeered by the victorious doxies who’d bamboozled the lot of ’em. Seventeen, altogether, less Haslip and O’Neil. He hoped Proteus, had enough restraints to hold them. If Proteus had sailed into Sheerness through a blizzard of gunfire, he’d have been able to dispose of them with the authorities. Now, though, escaping to sea, he was stuck with them and he doubted his died-in-the-wool mutineers would go quietly. They’d finagle and whisper, perhaps cry out to the rest of the crew for help, try to turn them back into mutineers and free them, retake Proteus … Bales especially. There were a whole nest of vipers in his breast, and he needed to be shot of them as quick as he could. How, though? Hmmm … good question, he mused.

  More cannonfire, as Proteus got a bone in her teeth and began to put on speed, gathering way out into Queen’s Channel, beginning to bend her course a touch Sutherly at Elder Grace’s suggestions, sailing Large off that North wind, and the sea round her peppered by misses still, but more guns were now involved. And there was a mutineer frigate far up near The Warp, off the North shore, that was speeding down on Proteus to intercept, abandoning her clutch of ten or twelve captured merchant ships to punish a defector.

  “Mister Wyman?” Lewrie snapped, turning to his Second Officer.

  “Aye, sir,” Wyman replied, still smiling dreamily over retaking the ship.

  “You are now my First Officer, Mister Wyman,” Lewrie said.

  “Ah … I see, sir. My goodness gracious!” Wyman sobered. That was an onerous job of work he hadn’t thought to expect, sure that Lieutenant Langlie, or even Ludlow, might return aboard.

  “Get sail on her, Mister Wyman, quick as dammit!” Lewrie said. “Before yon rebel frigate catches us up. Tops’ls and t’gallants. The foremast first, to lighten and lift the bows.

  “Er … aye, aye, sir!” Wyman goggled, then gulped, reset his hat, and cupped his hands round his mouth. “Hoy, there! All topmen aloft! Lay aloft, trice up, and lay out! Free tops’ls and t’gallants! Smartly, foremast … handsomely, main and mizzen!”

  Lewrie looked aft. That frigate off his larboard quarter seemed to be gaining slightly, though not yet within range of her foredeck chase-guns. Heavier stuff was peppering about astern though; someone had gotten a 3rd Rate’s lower-deck 32-pounders in action at last and three or four round-shot went moaning past Proteus, rustling the air with the sound of ripping canvas, to splash about a quarter-mile ahead of her bows. Turning to follow their flight, and seeing those towering plumes of spray, Lewrie could see several merchantmen far beyond, out to sea, some coastal fishing boats slanting in towards the Thamesmouth or the Medway. Or at least they had been, until they’d seen firing and gotten a fright, for they either fetched-to or broadened profiles even as he watched, steering clear of something they didn’t wish to be involved with.

  Coasters! Lewrie thought; find myself a coaster, warm him off of the Thames, and get him to land my chained mutineers somewhere else … turn ’em over to a civil magistrate, if not a Navy officer. Where’s the Impress Services; they’d suit? Harwich, Whitstable, Herne Bay … bloody Margate?

  “’Ere!” Miss Nancy was crying, scampering up the starboard ladder to the quarterdeck, with several other doxies in tow. “We’re goin’ out! We wanna go back t’Sheerness, Cap’um, not t’sea!”

  “Aye, what’re ya playin’ at, sir?” Sally Blue’s mother carped. “By God, didya play us false, I’ll have yer gizzard!”

  “Ladies!” Lewrie boomed, spreading his arms in greeting, just as chearly as anything to placate them. “You did it, by Christ!”

  Mr. Winwood could be heard uttering a scandalised groan.

  “My undying thanks to all of you!” he pressed on quickly, taking off his hat, making a formal leg to them. “’Twas a fearsome and brave deed you did in your King’s, and Country’s, service; and I will be sure to list each of you by name, with the firmest recommendations to Vice-Admiral Buckner, the First Secretary to Admiralty, Mr. Evan Nepean … aye, I’ll write ‘His Nobs’ King George himself, swear I shall! telling them what splendid, patriotic women you are. And honour our pact, I assure you. But …” he said, straightening and pointing astern, “we aren’t out of the woods yet. We almost lost again, and it was happenstance that we beat ’em down when the tide was running out, not in. I will set you ashore … promise! But we have to get out of the range of their guns first. Wait ’til dusk, no longer. Swear it.”

  He didn’t think it would go amiss to walk amongst them (though he suspected they still had their impromptu weapons about their persons), bestow kisses on work-hardened hands, buss cheeks on the younger—and cleaner—and speak a few personal words of congratulations and gratitude. Sally Blue responded most eagerly, flinging her arms ’round him again, and he patted (well, perhaps stroked as well) her slim back as she jounced atip-toe and squealed nicely. It seemed to mollify them.

  “Oh, give ’im ’is fob back, Sally,” Miss Nancy chuckled when they’d untangled from their embrace, relenting to his logic.

  “Sorr-eyy.” Sally Blue blushed quite prettily. “Habit, like.”

  “Right, then, Cap’um Lewrie.” Miss Nancy shrugged. “We’ll wait ’til dark.”

  “You kill any of ’em, Miss Nancy?” he had to ask.

  “Hurt a few, I reckon.” She shrugged again. “Aye, one o’ them committeemen …’at Kever feller? Ravin’ ’bout settin’ light to th’ powder store, ’fore he’d let th’ ship be took, so …” She drew a hand across her throat, though not with as much enthusiasm as Sally Blue had the moment before the counter-mutiny had erupted. “Lost int’rest fer quim too quick; couldn’t ’old ’im back.”

  Lewrie nodded, thinking on how he’d manage Proteus as a fighting ship without Master Gunner, Mate, and Yeoman of The Powder. Oh shit, he suddenly realised; we could’ve been blown higher’n a kite! I do b’lieve I need me a sit-down. And who slit Kever’s gizzard for him? You, Nancy? he wondered. Damme, don’t know why I ever thought her attractive. There’s some women just too dangerous t’mess with!

  He looked aloft, saw the tops’ls on both fore and main drawing, the fore t’gallant
heaving upward from the fighting top, almost in position, half-open and flagging like a rattle of musketry. He turned to look back towards the Great Nore. What cannonfire directed at Proteus from the anchored ships wasn’t reaching them and was tailing off in a weary acceptance—and it had never been more than half-hearted. The frigate to her North still stood on, though slanting more to the Sou-Sou’west, back into the Queen’s Channel, as if she was breaking off pursuit too.

  Can’t trust their own hands to chase us too far, Lewrie realised with joy; ’fore they get ideas about escape in their heads too!

  “Things well in hand, Mister Winwood?” he asked, walking back to the helm where Winwood was buried in his charts, and the two Grace men were craning their necks and conferring on where the next deadly shoal might be.

  “Good as may be expected, Captain,” Winwood allowed, not quite sure he liked being counselled by two common seamen; wasn’t he Sailing Master, the Admiralty-chosen sage responsible for safe navigation?

  “In th’ main channel, sir.” Elder Grace grinned. “An’ clear o’ th’ worst bars an’ shoals, so far. Markers an’ buoys’ll see us right.”

  “Very well, Mister Winwood, Seaman Grace. Carry on.” Lewrie nodded. “And, thankee … thankee both. Or, all three, that is,” he added, as their son/grandson crooked his neck to follow Winwood’s finger on the chart, between their legs, seeing a wonder he’d not suspected could be pictured or written down, that lore he’d learned from the cradle, most-like. “For your loyalty and steadfastness through all our troubles. I believe, Mister Winwood, we’ll be needing a replacement for your Irish Master’s Mate, Mister Nugent?”

  “Well, aye, sir.” Winwood frowned.

  “Move one of the quartermasters up, one of the mates to replace that’un … and Mister Grace here,” he nodded at the elder, “advanced to Quartermaster’s Mate?”

  “Very good, sir.” Winwood nodded, whether he liked it or not.

  “And Young Grace, sir!” Lewrie said, squatting down. “Mister Peacham is ashore … permanently, pray Jesus. For the short time we must promote Mister Catterall an acting-lieutenant, Mister Adair, too, as Third Officer. That leaves an opening in the midshipman’s mess. Would you be interested, Master Grace?” he asked the boy. “Try your hands as a trainee midshipman?”

  For a poor fisheries lad with no hopes of a naval career, it was a miraculous bolt from the blue. Aye, he was more than eager!

  “Good, then,” Lewrie said, rising to his feet. “Carry on, Mister Winwood. Make us a good offing, but we’ll lurk off to the South, for a while longer. Deep water off Herne Bay, Whitstable? By dark, we’ll close the coast and land our prisoners and civilian women. Should we not come across a coaster or large fisheries boat, we could pay to put them ashore.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Winwood perked up, glad to be rid of the women at last.

  “Know most of ’em, sir,” Elder Grace supplied, still peering at the seaward horizon with one hand shading his eyes. “Beg pardon, but do ya wish, it’d be best did I hail ’em. They know me, but they’d run from a Navy ship, expectin’ a Press Gang, sir.”

  “Very well, Grace, we’ll do it that way.” Lewrie nodded. “I’ll go below for a moment then. Mister Wyman? You have the deck, sir. I have much to write ’fore dusk, and little time in which to do it.”

  Proteus had been slowly hobby horsing over the tide-run, surging a bit to the press of the winds. Now her bows lifted as a wave, a sea wave, crested below her cutwater and broke to cream down her flanks. A cheer went up, for she was now truly free and halfway to salt ocean.

  “Mister Wyman!” Lewrie roared. “Haul down those yard ropes … haul down those red flags. Mister Catterall? Fetch out a Red Ensign from the aft lockers and bend it on. Put us back under true colours!”

  He went forrud to the edge of the nettings to look down on his crew. It was a thinner crew than before, barely the numbers he needed to work her or fight her, and God knew when he’d get more, especially sailors he could trust implicitly. Perhaps the entire Navy would have that problem from this moment on, no matter when the Nore mutiny was over. And it would be over, he was mortal-certain. With his crew as a guide, there weren’t enough wild-eyed radicals to sustain rebellion, when that wasn’t what the most had sworn on for. Days … weeks even; but sooner or later, it would be over. He just hoped it ended before England’s enemies took advantage of it.

  They stood on gun-deck or gangways, now the topmen were down off the upper yards, looking to him their captain. Proud and pleased; the sullen, who still might prove untrustworthy; the frightened and confused, who’d always wavered in the middle …

  “Thankee, lads! Thankee,” he said, taking off his hat in humility. “We’re now returned to duty. The Spithead terms are yours. See you yonder!” he cried, spearing an arm aloft.

  Red Ensign at the mizzen peak, where it belonged.

  “H … M … S Proteus!” he roared. “Won back from the brink of shame by men! A proud ship … redeemed! A proud young frigate, manned by a proud crew! Mister Coote, sir? I note it is now a quarter-past noon. B’lieve ‘Clear Decks And Up Spirits’ is late, sir! We’ll splice the main brace! Proteuses, ladies and wives, alike!”

  That raised an even greater cheer.

  “Slate’s clean again!” he shouted, as they began to queue up at the foc’s’le belfry. “And nary a man who returned to duty will ever be charged, you hear? Now when you drink … drink to yourselves. Drink to success for our ship! May her fame never be tarnished again!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Nigh to dusk and HMS Proteus lay fetched-to a scant five miles off Herne Bay and Whitstable. They’d come across a Margate lugger two hours before, had had to run her down and fire a warning shot to bring her up, then perplexed the very Devil out of her captain by having Elder Grace call over to her, for he’d known her identity as soon as her patched sails were close enough to fill a telescope.

  “Hoy, Jemmy Vernish! Ye want t’make some money?”

  Aye, Captain Vernish did and had come aboard to haggle out the price for carrying prisoners, despatches, and whores into Whitstable: prisoners dumped on the local magistrate, whores wafted upriver behind the Medway booms to Sheerness in shallow oyster dredgers owned by men whom Middle Grace recommended.

  “Glad you have ’em chained, Cap’um Lewrie”—Vernish had smiled—“for my own piece o’ mind … and, for the constable at Herne Bay. Not one you’d call a capable feller, God help him.”

  Despatches! Lewrie and Padgett had scribbled away in a fury, and a flurry of ink to get them all done in time. He wrote to Admiralty, Admiral Buckner, even the King, as he’d promised, praising the loyalist hands who’d stood by him, naming those who had wavered but rallied to his side—and damning the prisoners, citing their crimes. He urged for Langlie, Devereux, and most of the others sent ashore to be sent posthaste to Whitstable, swearing he would patrol close offshore, to await their arrival as long as he could.

  As for Lieutenant Ludlow and Midshipman Peacham, he strongly hinted at their assignment to another ship, since their brusque and abusive dealings had been partly responsible for stoking the fire of mutiny in the first place, despite his cautions to modify their behavior … the reassignments and acting-promotions he had made, being very short-handed …

  And, short-handed though he was, and his crew inexperienced or not, he wrote that, barring orders to the contrary “ … it is my intent to remove my ship as far from mutinous assemblies as possible, ’til my taint is scoured away by dint of routine Discipline, and Instruction in seamanship restores her people to complete Obedience. Therefore, once my officers are aboard, I shall sail at once for the Texel to bolster what few ships Admiral Duncan has got, shorn as he is for the moment of two-deckers. I see this course of action as my bounden Duty, in such parlous times, with the threat of battle or invasion ever before us …”

  God, but I’m a toadyin’ wretch! even he groaned as he read his prose; what a canting bastard! But it will read well with tho
se who count, he told himself. And I didn’t trowel it on too bloody thick!

  Recommendations for his “distaff” re-enforcements, his whores; a draught on his funds to his solicitor, Matthew Mountjoy in London, to pay them, or their representatives, a certain sum each. Hmm, Lewrie thought; and a rather handsome sum it was too! Thirty-two women, at £5 per … that atop the pound note he’d slipped each one after they’d made it to sea, and the five shillings per for passage with Vernish … and the money Padgett would carry to buy their further passage back to Sheerness too! And if Padgett thought he was going to enjoy his short voyage with ’em, then God help the poor lad!

  Finally it was done, and all but the personal copied into his letter books, with Padgett aided by Mr. Coote’s Jack-In-The-Breadroom clerk, who would spell Padgett until he could return aboard. He still had to update his watch-and-quarter bills, of course, but that could surely wait … Lewrie rather hoped he’d get Langlie back as his First Officer quickly … then he could saddle him with the drudgery! That’s what First Lieutenants were for, by God, Lewrie could gladly contemplate!

  Proteus heaved and clattered slowly on a slack sea, now that the tide had turned for the night and sundown reddened the western skies; laying cocked up to weather near Captain Vernish’s dowdy old lugger—which went by the grand name of Marlborough. Proteus’s boats were hard at it, stroking over to her filled with iron-bound men. Some waited on the larboard gangway for their turn in the boats. Pleading …

  “Sir, Captain Lewrie, sir,” Mr. Handcocks smiled sheepishly with his wrists before him. “Hope ya put in a good word for me, sir. Didn’t mean no harm, ever. Stood up for sailors’ rights, sir, same as ev’ry other hand. Didn’t wish t’be a delegate, sir, but th’ lads chose me an’ I couldn’t say no, now could I, sir? Keep’ ’em on th’ straight’un narrow?”

  “It’s over, Mister Handcocks,” Lewrie grunted, having no wish to bandy words with the man. “You, a man with years at sea, Admiralty Warrant … God help you, Mister Handcocks, for I can’t.”