Inshore Squadron

by Kent, Alexander

  He got a hasty impression of glittering bayonets and red coats, of stiff-faced lieutenants, and then the admiral himself, thrusting forward to meet him.

  “Come aft, Bolitho. God’s teeth, this chill is enough to pierce your marrow!”

  The Tantalus was a good deal larger than the Benbow, and Damerum’s quarters more lavish than Bolitho had ever seen in a King’s ship. Apart from the movement, and the muffled shipboard noises, it could have been part of a rich chamber. If the ship ever had to clear for action in a hurry, the fine drapes and expensive French furniture would suffer badly.

  Damerum gestured towards a chair while a servant took Bolitho’s hat and boat-cloak.

  “Sit you down, sir, and let’s have a good look at you, eh?”

  Bolitho sat. Sir Samuel Damerum, Knight of the Bath, Admiral of the Red, was, at a guess, in his early fifties. He had a brisk, lively way of moving and speaking, but his greying hair, and an obvious thickening about his middle which even an immaculately tailored waistcoat could not conceal, made him seem older.

  He said, “So you’re Richard Bolitho.” His gaze fell briefly on the gold medal which Bolitho wore around his neck for this formal visit. “The Nile medal, no less.” He shook his head. “Some people have all the luck.” In the same quick manner he changed tack again. “How’s the squadron?” He did not wait but added, “You took longer to reach me than I’d hoped, but can’t be helped, what?”

  Bolitho said, “I’m sorry about that, sir. Bad weather, raw lands-men. The usual.”

  Damerum rubbed his hands, and as if by sorcery a servant appeared.

  “Brandy, man. And not that muck we keep for captains!” He chuckled. “God, what a war, Bolitho. On and on. No damn end to it.”

  Bolitho waited, not yet at ease with this erratic man. He spoke a lot, but so far had said nothing.

  Bolitho said, “My flag captain is sending some stores across for you, sir.”

  “Stores?” The admiral’s eyes were on the brandy and the two glasses which his servant had carried to a table. “Oh, yes. Mr Fortnum, my grocer in London, does his best to keep me supplied, y’know. Not easy these days.”

  Bolitho did not know who Mr Fortnum was, but felt he should have done.

  The brandy was mellow and warming. Much of it and Bolitho knew he would be asleep if he was not careful.

  “Well, Bolitho, you will know that you are to assume the duties of the inshore squadron. The Danish affair seems to have cooled down for the present, but my information is that the Tsar of Russia is eager to join with the French against us. You know about the pact he has been trying to make with Sweden?” Again he did not wait for an answer but hurried on. “Well, he is still set on that idea. In addition, he has the backing of Prussia. Together they may force the Danes against us also. It is never easy to live in peace next to a raging lion!”

  Bolitho pictured his small squadron trying to stem the advance of the combined Baltic fleets. Beauchamp had said that his task would not be an easy one.

  “Will we enter the Baltic, sir?”

  Damerum signalled to his servant for the glasses to be refilled.

  “Yes and no. A great show of strength would be wrongly interpreted. Tsar Paul would use it to fan the flames. We’d be at war in a week. But a smaller force, yours, can go with peaceful intent. My ships are known to all the spies who flit past my frigates. It will soon be common knowledge that a new squadron is here. Smaller, and so a lessening of tension and suspicion all round.” He smiled, showing very even teeth. “Besides which, Bolitho, if there was real trouble we are helpless until next year. March at the earliest. We could not get to grips with the Tsar’s ships while they are in harbour, so we must wait for the winter ice to melt. Until then,” he fixed Bolitho with a calm stare, “you will keep an eye on things at close quarters.” He chuckled. “At very close quarters to begin with. You are instructed to enter Copenhagen and meet with a British official there.”

  Bolitho stared at him. “Surely you, as senior officer, would be a better choice, sir?”

  “Your concern does you credit. But we have to tread warily. Too junior an officer and the Danes will feel slighted. Too senior and they will see this for something sinister, a threat perhaps.” He wagged a finger. “No, a young rear-admiral would be about right. The Admiralty believes so, and I have confirmed my support.”

  “Well, thank you, sir.” He did not know what to say. It was all happening so quickly. A squadron, a new station, and almost at once he was off again on something quite different. He had a feeling he was going to find Browne very useful after all.

  Damerum added suddenly, “In any doubts at all, send a fast vessel to find me. Half of my ships are returning to England for overhaul, the remainder are to reinforce the Dutch blockade. It is all in the written instructions which even now my flag lieutenant is handing to yours. They are lucky men. They handle the destiny of a fleet, but take no part in the skill of responsibility for it, damn them!”

  Water dashed against the stern windows like pellets. It had begun to rain or worse.

  Bolitho stood up. “I shall find my fresh instructions interesting reading, Sir Samuel.” He held out his hand. “And thank you for the trust you have placed in me.”

  As he said it he realised the true meaning for the first time. It was like having a line severed. The instructions were for him to interpret as he saw fit. There was nobody nearby to run to for guidance or advice. Right or wrong, it was his decision.

  “I’ll not see you over the side, if you don’t mind, Bolitho. I’ve letters to write to catch the courier brig for England.” As they walked to the screen door, beyond which Browne was conversing with a very weary looking lieutenant, he said, “So good luck in Copenhagen. It’s a fair city, I’m told.”

  After a perilous descent down the flagship’s side, Bolitho and Browne wedged themselves in the sternsheets and wrapped their boat-cloaks around their bodies.

  Through chattering teeth Browne asked, “All well, sir? I should have been with you, but the admiral’s aide was waiting to head me off. I did not even get offered a glass, sir!” He sounded quietly outraged.

  Bolitho said, “We are going to Copenhagen, Mr Browne.” He saw the lieutenant’s eye light up. “Does that suit?”

  “Indeed it does, sir!”

  It was good to be back aboard Benbow. New she might be, and as yet untried, but already she had a personality, a warmth which had been lacking aboard the ship he had just visited. Perhaps it was Herrick’s influence at work. You never knew for certain with ships, Bolitho thought.

  Herrick joined him in the cabin and waited patiently while Bolitho rid himself of his dripping cloak and hat.

  “Copenhagen, Thomas. We will lay a course for The Skaw at once, and I shall inform the squadron what is to happen.” He grinned at Herrick’s grave expression. “When I know myself, that is!”

  It was a hundred miles at least to The Skaw, the northern-most point of Denmark. It would give him ample time to study his instructions, and perhaps even to read that which had been left out.

  Bolitho lay back in a chair while Allday finished shaving him. It was early morning and barely light beyond the salt-streaked windows, but Bolitho had been awake for an hour, preparing himself for a testing day and going over his instructions to see if he had missed anything.

  Bolitho was surprised he was so relaxed. He was able to drowse while the razor slid smoothly up his throat, to listen to the sluice of water overhead and the attendant march of bare feet as the decks were washed down.

  He thought he heard the boatswain’s thick voice, too. Swale, Big Tom as he was called, had a strange sounding tone, almost a lisp, caused by the loss of most of his front teeth. In battle or brawl, Bolitho did not know. Herrick had said he was a good boatswain, and at this moment he was probably examining the poop and quarterdeck again. It was always a strain for the first weeks at sea for a newly built ship. Timber, not always as well seasoned as it should be after years of war and shortages,
could do strange things with the hull rolling about in all directions.

  Benbow certainly sailed well, he thought. Several times the other two-deckers had been forced to spread more canvas to keep up with her. A fine ship. She alone must have taken the best part of a forest to build.

  Bolitho jerked upright in the chair, making Allday exclaim, “Easy, sir! I all but parted your windpipe just then!”

  Then he said, “I heard it, too. Gunfire!”

  Bolitho started to rise and then lay back again. “Finish the shave, please.” He controlled his sudden excitement. “It won’t do for me to go rushing on deck.”

  It was hard, all the same. He had always been used to going at once to the quarterdeck to assess the circumstances for himself. He recalled one of his first captains, when as a midshipman he had been ordered to pass an urgent message aft to that same lordly presence.

  The captain had been drinking in his stern cabin. Bolitho could picture him without effort. As he had stammered out the message, the captain had turned merely to nod and say, “My compliments to the first lieutenant, Mr Bolitho. Tell him I will come up shortly. That is, if you have still the breath for it!”

  Perhaps he, too, had been dying to see for himself, as Bolitho was now.

  There was a tap at the screen door and Herrick entered the cabin.

  “Good morning, Thomas.” He smiled. It was wrong to play games with Herrick and he added, “I heard firing.”

  Herrick nodded. “From the bearing I would say it is Lookout, sir, to the nor’ east.”

  Bolitho wiped his skin with a towel and stood up, feeling the deck quiver as the rudder fell heavily in a trough. Lookout was the little sloop-of-war, and her captain was Commander Veitch, Herrick’s previous first lieutenant. A stern-looking man from Tynemouth, utterly dependable, who had earned his promotion the hard way. If he was tackling something on his own, then it was small and agile. Veitch obviously considered there was no time to inform his flagship or call for assistance. He was not that sort of man anyway.

  Herrick suggested, “Probably a blockade runner, sir.”

  Ozzard hurried in with Bolitho’s coat and held it out like a Spaniard tormenting a bull.

  Bolitho said, “Are either of the frigates in sight yet?”

  More explosions echoed against the Benbow’s side. Short and sharp. Lookout’s bow-chasers from their sound.

  Herrick replied, “Not when I was on deck, sir. Relentless should be away to the sou’ west and Styx down to lee’rd as instructed.”

  “Good.” He slipped into his coat. It felt damp. “Let us see for ourselves.”

  The sky was much brighter when they walked from beneath the poop, and Wolfe hurried to meet them.

  “Masthead reports Lookout in sight, sir. She’s in company with another smaller craft. Either a brig or a ship with one mast shot out of her!” He bared his teeth.

  Bolitho could read his mind. An early capture. Prize-money. A command for somebody. Even a temporary one as prizemaster was all it needed in wartime. And some luck. Bolitho had had both, and had so won his own first command.

  People bustled about the quarterdeck, securing the pumps and scrubbers, faces still obscured in shadow. But all well aware that their admiral was up and about. What did it mean to them? A sea fight? Death or mutilation? It would certainly be a break in the monotony of daily routine.

  Bolitho saw some of the officers on the lee side of the deck. Byrd and Manley, the fourth and fifth lieutenants, and, younger still, Courtenay, the sixth, whom Allday had ousted from his barge.

  He must find time to meet and get to know them. He was lucky to know the minds of the officers who captained the squadron, but if the Benbow was driven into a hard battle, a young lieutenant could find himself in command after one devastating broadside.

  Wolfe had a telescope to his eye and said, “Here comes Relentless! I can just see her sky-scrapers. She scents the smell of battle, sir.”

  Bolitho could imagine the activity aboard the thirty-six-gun frigate. He had met her young captain, Rowley Peel, only twice. He was the odd one out in the squadron, but was quick to move when need be. Dashing down from his station to protect his heavier consorts, to harry the enemy, to attempt whatever was so ordered by the flagship.

  Old Grubb rumbled, “Better day today. Fine an’ clear.” He lapsed into silence again, his hands thrust deeply into his shabby watch-coat.

  Wolfe saw Pascoe on the larboard gangway and called harshly, “Would you go aloft, Mr Pascoe. Take a glass and see what you can determine.”

  Pascoe threw his hat to a seaman and ran to the weather shrouds. He was amongst the black tangle of rigging and beyond the mainyard before Bolitho could watch his progress. Bolitho thought of his own hatred for heights, what it had cost him at Pascoe’s age. He felt his mouth lift in a smile. It would sound ridiculous to tell somebody that one of the fruits of his promotion had been that he no longer had to climb up those head-spinning shrouds.

  Pascoe called down, his voice clear above the drumming beat of canvas and rigging.

  “Lookout has grappled, sir! The other one is a brig. She wears no flag but they are hoisting our colours now!”

  Several of the idlers on the gangways and gundeck cheered, and Herrick exclaimed: “So soon. Well done. Well done.”

  Bolitho nodded. “You trained your old first lieutenant well, Thomas.”

  Lieutenant Browne appeared through the after companion, buttoning his coat and saying, “I heard something. What is happening?”

  Wolfe said to the sailing master, “A lot of use he’ll be.”

  Herrick answered, “We have taken a prize, Mr Browne. I fear you have missed it.”

  Several of the nearby seamen were grinning and nudging each other. Bolitho sensed the change. There was a better feeling already.

  “Deck there! Land on the lee bow!”

  Herrick and the master bustled to the chart room beneath the poop to consult their findings.

  That would be The Skaw. As far as the strange brig was concerned, it had been a near thing. An hour earlier and she would have slipped away unseen.

  Bolitho said, “I will take breakfast now. Let me know when Lookout is near enough to exchange signals.”

  Herrick stood by the chart room entrance, shading his eyes as if he expected to see the other vessels.

  “Mr Grubb thinks we should be off The Skaw before noon if the wind stays with us.”

  “I agree. Once there you may signal the squadron to anchor in succession.” Bolitho nodded to the other officers and made his way aft.

  Herrick gave a great sigh. He tended to worry when Bolitho was nearby, but he worried all the more when he was gone.

  Pascoe slithered down to the deck and retrieved his hat. He was about to approach the quarterdeck when a small figure stepped from between two 18 -pounders and said, “Excuse me, sir!” It was Midshipman Penels.

  “Yes?” Pascoe paused and studied the boy. Was I ever like that?

  “I—I don’t know how to explain, sir.”

  He sounded and looked so despairing that Pascoe said, “Speak out.”

  It was virtually impossible to find any privacy in a ship-of-war. Apart from the captain, and possibly a man deep in the ship’s cells, there was always a crowd.

  Pascoe knew very little about the newest midshipman. He was from Cornwall, and that was all he had to go on.

  He said, “You are from Bodmin, I believe?”

  “Yes, sir.” Penels looked around like a trapped animal. “There’s someone in your division, sir. Someone I grew up with back in England.”

  Pascoe stood aside as a file of marines stamped past on their way to one of their complicated drills.

  Penels explained, “His name is John Babbage, sir. He was taken by the press-gang at Plymouth. I didn’t know until we were at sea. He worked for my mother after my father died, sir. He was good to me. My best friend.”

  Pascoe looked away. It was not his place to interfere. In any case, Penels should ha
ve gone to the first lieutenant or the master.

  But he remembered his own beginning. The long, hungry walk from Penzance to Falmouth. Just a boy, and quite alone.

  “Why did you approach me, Mr Penels? The truth now.”

  “My friend said you are a good officer, sir. Not so sharp as some.”

  Pascoe formed a mental picture of this unfortunate Babbage. A wild-eyed youth, nearer his own age than Penels’, he would have thought.

  “Well, we are with the squadron now, Mr Penels. Had you come to me in port I might have been able to do something.” He thought of Wolfe and knew it would have made little difference even then.

  A ship needed men. Every hand she could get. Wolfe was a good officer in many ways, but he was short of sympathy for any catch brought aboard by the press.

  But it must be hard for both Penels and his friend of boyhood days.

  In the same hull, yet neither knowing the other was aboard until the ship was standing out to sea. Separated not only by rank and station, but also by the ship’s own geography. Penels served with the afterguard for sail drill and duty with the quarterdeck nine-pounders. Babbage was classed as a landman in his own division at the foremast. Babbage was young and agile. With luck he should soon learn to run aloft with the topmen, the aristocrats of seamanship.

  He heard himself say, “I will look into it. I’ll not promise anything though.”

  He strode away, unable to bear the gratitude in Penels’ eyes.

  Commander Matthew Veitch arrived in Bolitho’s cabin and looked around him curiously. On his left shoulder the single epaulette denoting his rank glittered in bright contrast to his shabby sea-going coat. Veitch had served with Bolitho before and knew he would get no thanks for wasting time to change his clothing before he reported to the flagship.

  Bolitho said, “Sit down and tell me about it.”

  It felt strange to be at anchor again. The four ships of the line were all lying to their cables in close formation, with the Danish coast clearly visible through the quarter windows. The frigates were still on patrol, like watchdogs, they rarely rested.