Fletcher's Fortune

by John Drake

  Eventually, I noticed a strange sound. A booming, rumbling noise like a heavy wagon going over a wooden bridge, but without the hoofbeats. To any seaman it was a sound to prickle the hairs on the back of his neck, because, somewhere nearby, a ship was running out its guns. Then we shot out of the mist and there was the ship, Phiandra, a thirty-two-gun frigate of 700 tons. Her port-lids were up and a line of round muzzles glared at us. I could even see the eyes of the gun-captains squinting at me over their sights, as they knelt to take their aim. If she’d been about to fire, then that would have been my last sight on earth. But here in Portsmouth, this could only be a drill and it was. The ship was anchored without her topmasts and men were hanging over the bow with brushes and paint pots busily at work.

  From inside the ship came the coughing and gasping of exhausted men, until a volley of orders set them all moving again to haul the guns back in. Through the gun-ports, I saw gnarled fists, straining limbs and fierce brown faces running with sweat. It was a vision of the inferno; a totally alien world that I wanted no part of. Unfortunately, it wanted me.

  An instant later we bumped alongside and Mr Roston was screeching at us to make lively. Marines with muskets and bayonets herded us on to the quarterdeck where a committee was waiting to receive us: the ship’s family of specialists, from carpenter to cooper, waiting to see what the Press had brought. It was all very businesslike, with the Purser at a trestle-table with ledgers, pen and ink, to record what they got. He was a stringy old Scot with a shabby-genteel air and an old-fashioned wig like a clergyman’s. McFee, his name was.

  But what stood out was none of these things. It was the officer in charge that caught the eye. Mr Williams, the First Lieutenant. He was something special. A man in his mid thirties, only of average size, but intensely handsome, with fair skin, black hair and movements like a dancer or an athlete, beautiful to watch. He put heart into the Pressed men instantly, laughing and joking and slapping us on the back, while always letting us know that no liberties were to be taken. He had the same magic that Nelson had.

  “Step up there, first man!” says he, and my friend of the scraped knee shuffled forward with bowed shoulders.

  “Name?” says the Purser.

  “Norris Polperro, sir” says he, and instinctively gave that peculiar salute that identifies a sailor, knuckling his brow and stamping with the right foot.

  “Aha!” cries the Lieutenant. “Here’s a real seaman. Thank God there’s one among us!” He said it with such enthusiasm that Norris swelled with pride, straightened his back like a guardsman, and the misery of capture dropped off him like an old coat. “And what ships have you served in, m’lad?”

  “Alcide, ’74, under Sir Andrew Douglas, and Hebe, frigate, under Cap’n Sir Alexander Hood ... I was Cap’n of the maintop under Sir Alexander, sir ... ”

  “And so you shall be again! Mr McFee ... enter this man as Cap’n of the maintop!” Mr Williams turned to the rest of us. “And are there any more like this among you?”

  The smile was dazzling, and those who were seamen crowded forward. Even I, nonsensically, was searching my memory for any traces of seafaring experience with which to please him. I had none, of course, but I had something else.

  As my turn came, McFee peered at me thoughtfully. Even with my shaven skull I didn’t look quite like the rest. He offered me the pen.

  “Sign your name here,” says he and I dashed off my name with a flourish ... beneath a line of roughly scratched crosses.

  “Aha!” says Mr McFee. “A scholar, as I thought.” He looked up and beamed at me. “One for my department, Mr Williams, with your permission?” But the Lieutenant glanced at my signature, looked me over, and put a hand on my shoulder like a father.

  “What?” says he. “A fine big lad like this? To be no more than a clerk? You’ll be a seaman, won’t you!” I saw the daggers flashing from McFee’s eyes at this rebuff and tried to think what was best. Even then I knew all about pursers. It was the only aspect of the Navy I’d ever taken an interest in, and for good sound reasons. The Purser was master of every consumable aboard ship. His opportunities for legal and illegal profit were legendary. Why, the rum alone was worth a fortune in graft, not to mention the tobacco, candles and salt meat. And the Purser’s clerks stood no watches. At night they slept snug in their hammocks while common seamen were turned out to lay aloft in a howling gale. If my wits hadn’t been dulled there could have been no question as to which offer to accept.

  But all I could think of was avoiding trouble, so I took the offer of the more powerful man — the Lieutenant.

  “I’ll be a seaman please, sir!” says I, and McFee sneered in fathomless contempt.

  “Good fellow!” says Williams. “I’ll rate you a landsman in the afterguard, in my division where I’ll keep my eye on you. And I’ll enter you into Sammy Bone’s mess. Follow him and you’ll not go far wrong. Off you go now.”

  “Yes, sir,” says I, as a heavy hand seized my elbow and a bosun’s mate propelled me across the quarterdeck and down the companionway to the maindeck, all at the run.

  In the kindly way of seafaring folk, he lost no opportunity to begin my instruction into their little ways.

  “Lissen, you bleedin’ farmer!” he spat into my ear. “Say ‘Aye aye sir’ to a bleedin’ officer! Or even your bleedin’ mother won’t know you again, you bleeder! D’you hear?” With the barest hesitation I managed, “Aye aye sir.”

  “Huh!” says he.

  Then we were picking our way down the choreographed pandemonium of a working gundeck. It ran bow to stern, the length of the ship, but there was barely room for all the gear crammed in. A heaving machine of men, iron and timber, jam-packed with not a place to set foot that wasn’t occupied with some piece of tackle or other.

  My guardian stopped by a young officer who was bawling in anguish at one of the gun-crews. He was a short man with a big head and ungainly limbs. He had on a round hat, like a common seaman, and was leaping alive with energy. This was Mr Seymour, the Second Lieutenant and master of the ship’s guns. He was intent upon one particular gun-captain, who was stood shifting uneasily behind the breech of his piece, with the firing lanyard dangling from his fist.

  “No. No. NO!” cries the Lieutenant, stamping his foot in a passion and swinging at the man’s head with his speaking-trumpet. “Handsomely, you cock-eyed lubber! Get away! Get away, rot you!” He elbowed the man aside and grabbed the lanyard. “Like this!” says he, crouching to sight down the barrel. “Then ... handsomely!” He tugged the lanyard and the firelock gave a shower of sparks and a whoof of powder. “Do it wrong again and the next balls rammed down that barrel’ll be yours!”

  The man grinned uneasily and the Lieutenant turned to me and the bosun’s mate.

  “And what do you want, rot you?”

  “New hand aboard, Mr Seymour, sir,” says the bosun’s mate, saluting. “Sent down to drill with his mates ... Sammy Bone’s gun, sir.”

  “Well? Well? Get on then! Number eight gun, down there.” He pointed at a nearby gun, then something caught his eye and he broke off in a fury and dashed up the deck. “Enemy on the quarter I said! You’re training on the bow, you mob of Frenchmen God rot you!” He kicked one man violently up the backside and swiped another round the ears with his speaking-trumpet.

  “Ah ... ” sighs the bosun’s mate, nodding in utmost approval, “that’s the boy to make them bleeders jump!” Then he took me to number eight gun. “Sammy?” says he. “This here’s for your mess. Mr Williams’s orders.” He jerked his thumb at me.

  A skinny little man turned to look at me. He was naked to the waist and shining with sweat and his eyes were bright and black on either side of a sharp ferrety nose. His hair was snow white and he looked old. He glared at me.

  “Well, don’t just stop stood there!” says he in a strong Yorkshireman’s accent. “Take hold o’ this bastard tackle and haul! We’re two men short here, you ... ”

  And out tumbled the most amazing stream of
inventive abuse that the mind of man could conceive. Compared to Sammy Bone, Lieutenant Spencer of the Impress Service was but a choir boy playing with his first dirty word.

  So I took hold and hauled. All my natural inclinations turn me away from physical exertion. There’s no profit in it. But Nature has made me big and strong and that day I was glad of it. I hauled and hauled till everything ached and I sweated like the others. I was dazed in my mind and entirely happy to melt in with the rest and do as I was told.

  Later on I was sent into the depths of the ship to be issued with slops from the damp mysteries of the Purser’s store. McFee was there with his Steward, busy with lists and papers, and the pair of them ignored me for a sufficient time to impress their great importance upon me. The clerk was a little plump man by the name of Danny Smith, with a piggy round nose and lips like a woman’s. He turned my stomach over, and I kept as far back from him as possible, but McFee seemed to like him well enough.

  Finally McFee condescended to notice me.

  “Well, Smith,” says he, “here’s a gentleman as considers himself too good for the Purser’s department. What do you think of him?”

  “Gallows-fodder I shouldn’t wonder, Mr McFee,” says the other, and they proceeded to make a spiteful dissection of my appearance, like the pair of old women that they were.

  Mr Williams’s insistence that I should be a seaman had made a fine enemy for me in the Purser, but I left his presence on that occasion, staggering under the pile of goods he’d given me. This included a complete uniform such as I’d seen the boat’s crew wearing, also canvas to make a pair of hammocks (one for spare while the other was washing), a blanket, a straw mattress, a wooden platter, a spoon and a cheap horn mug. Of course, the cost of all this came out of my pay so nobody was being generous. And I later found that every single item had something wrong with it through careful selection by Mr McFee; the opening salvo in the private war that the two of us would fight.

  Then I blundered off, up and down ladders, to find Sammy Bone’s mess. A frigate is too small a thing to get lost in, but it was confusing enough, with its warren of bulkheads and forbidden places with marine sentries. The Purser’s store was on the orlop: the lowest deck, actually below the water line. Above that was the lower deck, lit during the day by gratings set in the gundeck above, but otherwise completely enclosed. The gundeck (also called the maindeck) was open to the skies in the waist, but decked over by the quarterdeck at the stern and by the fo’c’sle at the bow. The whole ship was about 120 feet long and 30 feet wide at its greatest dimensions. And 250 men were crammed into that to live, work and fight.

  I found the lower deck soon enough and found Sammy and his messmates waiting. There were five of them, sat on benches round a legless table fastened to the hull by a hinge. At the inboard end it hung by a rope. Another five or six like it hung on each side of the deck like wooden ghosts of the guns on the deck above. All the messes seemed to have been given time to receive their new men. No officers were present and there was conversation up and down the deck. It seemed a peaceful place.

  Norris Polperro had also been sent to Sammy’s mess and he was already there, sat at table with the others as if he’d been there all his life. He was a seaman and they’d taken him in as one of their own. But I was different and they knew it. They stared up at me with frank suspicion in their hard, peasant faces. Like most sailors, they were illiterate, ignorant and superstitious. We had not a thing in common other than youth. They all looked my age or perhaps a little older.

  That is except for Sammy Bone, who was different from the others in every way absolutely. He was the oldest man in the ship and his intellect was needle sharp. Given any reasonable start in life, who knows where he would have risen? As it was, he was captain of the mess and the others took their lead from him. He stared at me without expression.

  “Now then,” says he, “sit down and I’ll read you the rules. Put your dunnage there.” I unloaded my bundle and looked at him as I sat. He was a tiny man, no more than five feet tall. I saw that I was being judged.

  “First, you’re only here because Mr Williams says so. He says you’re a bit of a gentleman and we should be glad to have you, but we chooses our own messmates aboard this ship, and we heaves out them as we don’t care for. So if you find you ain’t welcome, you go and see Mr Williams again. Aside from that, we keeps this mess clean and we likes to make a show.” He indicated a line of pegs set in the ship’s side above the table. They supported a row of polished pots and pans. “You ain’t no seaman, so I’ll tell you what a mess means. We stick together: messmate before shipmate, shipmate before marine ... marine before dog! Understand?”

  After that, he showed me where to stow my gear (there was another row of pegs for that, with canvas “trugs” hanging from them, one for each man’s goods). Then he fell silent and they all stared at me.

  I had no idea how to strike the right chord with them. I was thick-headed and very tired. I can’t remember what I said but I wasn’t well received and I was set fair for a bad start with my new mates.

  Most of them got up and wandered off, leaving me and Sammy at the mess table. I had nowhere else to go and he sat and watched me. Finally I thought that I might as well wear the clothes I’d been given. After Bullfrog and the slop-ship, my own clothes were thoroughly ruined. Awkwardly, I pulled off the remains of my shirt and fumbled with the new one.

  “What’s this?” says Sammy Bone. He was staring at me for some reason that I couldn’t make out. My mind was so dulled that I had actually forgotten Bosun Dixon and his starter. So when Sammy came round for a look at my back and shoulders I couldn’t think what he was doing.

  He cursed and grumbled a lot, and suddenly grew more friendly. He even lent me a canvas bag to put my goods into.

  “Here’s a trug for you, mate,” says he. “Just you let me have it back when you can. And don’t worry, there’s no starting, hardly, in this ship and only those get flogged who stand in need of it.”

  I believe he meant it kindly but the mention of flogging did nothing to put my mind at ease. I wanted nothing more to do with the Navy’s addiction to corporal punishment. Unfortunately, I was not able to avoid it.

  8

  This foul deed has ignited the patriotism of our people!

  (From a special edition of “The Polmouth Monitor”, Wednesday 13th February 1793.)

  *

  The Bosun cursed from the bottom of his soul as the cart jolted over the cobbles. Every bump was agony to the suppurating punctures in his buttocks. He’d served in the Indies and he’d seen what happened to men bitten by snakes, but even they hadn’t suffered like this. By God they hadn’t!

  The cart lurched round the corner of Mill Lane and into St Luke’s Square. They rattled past the Guildhall and the church and headed for the Town Hall. Across the square, on the Town Hall steps, was a great crowd of people. Instantly a pang of fright drove the pain away. The Bosun knew very well what the mob might do to a press-gangsman caught on his own.

  “Avast there!” he cried and, snatching the reins from the driver, he pulled the horse to a stop. Outside the Town Hall, heads turned and fingers pointed. A chatter of voices arose.

  “Gimme them ribbons!” said the carter. “I got my orders from Mr Pendennis!”

  “Damn your orders,” said the Bosun. “Them swabs’ll have my guts for garters!”

  “No they won’t,” said the carter, “not today. They’ll not touch you ... Look at ’em.” The Bosun looked and let go the reins.

  “See?” said the carter and cracked his whip. The cart set off again and the Bosun groaned in pain.

  Sure enough, the crowd opened to let them through and nobody raised a finger against the Bosun. There were no jeers, no waving of fists and nothing was thrown. If he’d not known it was impossible, the Bosun would have sworn they were friendly.

  “God save the King!” yelled a voice.

  “Aye!” they roared.

  “God save our Navy!” cr
ied another and there was a fierce yell of agreement. The Bosun’s head swum in amazement. They were helping him down and thumping him on the back as he passed through the crowd!

  Inside the Town Hall, officials stood around as if waiting for something. They whispered to each other and looked at him with strange expressions on their faces. Then silence fell as Mr Nathan Pendennis bore down upon him with grave and ponderous bearing.

  “Sir,” said Pendennis, “inauspicious as our first meeting was, I extend the friendship and comfort of the city of Polmouth at this fell moment,” and he held out his hand. Nervously, the Bosun took it.

  “Aye aye, sir,” he said. He didn’t know what the hell was going on, but you couldn’t go far wrong by saying that. Pendennis saw the Bosun’s mystified face and frowned.

  “Surely, sir, you are not unaware ... ?” he said, and he glared at the carter standing behind the Bosun. “Has he not been told?” he said, and the carter twitched in sudden guilt.

  “No sir, your honour, sir. I thought he knew.”

  “Hmm ... ” said Pendennis. He took the Bosun by the arm and led him towards a side room. Three men stood at the door, two civilians and an Army officer. He introduced them to the Bosun. “Colonel Morris from the garrison, Mr Richards the surgeon, and Mr Granby of the ‘Monitor’. We have, of course, sent word to the Naval authorities at Portsmouth.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” said the Bosun, embarrassed in this exalted company.

  “Sir, you must summon your courage,” said Pendennis. “Never in all my years as a magistrate have I seen such a thing. One hears of the like in London, but not here in Polmouth.” Opening the door, he led the way forward and the Bosun gulped as he saw what they’d got in there. Laid on a table, toes up and arms by his sides, was Lieutenant John Spencer. His clothes were wet and one shoe was missing. He looked peaceful except that his throat had been cut from ear to ear by a long stroke from a sharp blade, slicing to the bone and all but separating head from body. The Bosun staggered and they found him a chair.