A huge blue ensign hung from the stern flagstaff (Sir Edward Codrington was Vice Admiral of the Blue), the onshore breeze merely ruffling its points. Peto could see the smaller Union flag billowing a little more from the jackstaff on the bowsprit: it would have been hoist as soon as the anchor was dropped, and would be hauled down again as they got under weigh, for it would otherwise foul the jibs and fore-staysails. The familiar and reassuring routine! Yes, it was good to be drawing near one of His Majesty’s warships again – the only three-decker in Codrington’s combined fleet: 120 guns – thirty-six more than the biggest line-of-battle ship the Turks could dispose, one whole deck of eighteen-pounders. The expense of taking a first-rate to sea was prodigious: their lordships at the Admiralty were always reluctant, therefore, to bring a three-decker out of the Ordinary. And soon his own pendant would be streaming from the main mast! He was most conscious of the investment in his charge.
‘I could not find better hands on the Post List,’ the Duke of Clarence had said when he told him he was to have her. The compliment had startled Peto, for he had been of the decided conviction that the new Lord High Admiral had no very high opinion of him (because, he had told his old friend Hervey, he himself had no very high opinion of Clarence); but, advanced as he was on the Post List, and having served – he trusted he did not flatter himself – with distinction and honours in the late war with Ava, why should he not have command of this wooden fortress, whose broadsides were the equal and more of Bonaparte’s grand battery at Waterloo?
‘Boat your oars!’ came the reedy voice of the young midshipman as the barge neared the gangway on Rupert’s starboard, lee, side, recalling Peto to the lonely state of captain of a first-rate.
Peto glanced at him, studied him for the first time – a mere boy still, not yet sixteen perhaps, but confident in his words of command and boat handling. He had blond curls and fine features – so different from the Norfolk lad of fourteen that he himself had been as midshipman in the early years of the ‘never-ending war’. He had never possessed such looks, as would delight fellow officers and females alike or earn the seaman’s habitual esteem of the patrician. Big-boned he was: ‘hardy-handsome’ his mother had called him, which was not handsome at all in her reckoning (or so he had supposed). But Elizabeth Hervey had not rejected him. No; not at all. Indeed he thought that Miss Hervey had once actually made eyes at him – in Rome, many years ago. Oh, how he wished he had recognized that look (if look indeed it had been – preposterous notion!).
He snapped to. Belay the thought! For he could hear the boatswain’s call.
In Rupert’s lee the water merely lapped at the towering wooden walls. With oars now vertical the midshipman steered the barge deftly to the side, and Peto stepped confidently onto the lowered gangway as yet she ran in. He would have been content to scramble up the ladder to the entry port on the middle deck, as many a time he had, for he fancied himself as agile still as when he had been a midshipman; but he was pleased nevertheless to come aboard this way, with less chance of missing a footing or losing his hat in a sudden gust of wind. He glanced at the decoration above the port, handsomely carved dolphins gilded as freshly as the ship’s name had been whitened. The lieutenant had evidently been active since they had put in to port three days before. Peto marked it with some satisfaction. He did not know the lieutenant, Lambe, except that he had a good reputation. A bit of sea-greening on the stern counter and dulling of the carving gilt he could have endured (who knew what repairs the Biscay weather had occasioned?), but Lambe had chosen to smarten these presents. If they were not meant merely to distract, it augured well.
And now the piping aboard, the shaking hands with officers and warrant officers – he had done the same before, several times; but never on a first-rate. To be sure, he had hardly set foot on a three-decker since he was a young lieutenant. He had decided not to address the crew, as he had when taking command of Nisus, for whereas his frigate’s complement had been but two hundred (and he could know every man by name and character), Rupert’s was in excess of eight – far too many to assemble decently for the sort of thing he would wish to say. Command of a first-rate was perforce a rather more distant business. Strictly speaking, command even of Nisus was properly exercised through his executive officer, the lieutenant, and to some degree by the master, but in a ship of two hundred souls the captain’s face was daily – at times hourly – known to all. His own quarters were on the upper deck: he had to climb the companion to the quarterdeck, and in doing so he might routinely see half the crew. As captain of Rupert he would merely step from his cabin under the poop: descending to any of the gun-decks was an ‘occasion’. His world was changing even if he were not. He could no longer be the frigate-thruster. But his nature was by no means aloof, and he now must find some happy middle channel between his own inclination and the customs of the service. He did not expect it to take long, or even to try him; but meanwhile – as any prudent captain – he would take up the command firmly yet judiciously. He passed the assemblage of officers with but a nod here and there.
In an hour or so His Majesty’s governor of Gibraltar would pay a call on him, and then, if the westerly continued to freshen, Rupert would make sail for Syracuse to take on the pure water of the Arethusa spring, just as Nelson had before the Nile. Peto knew that a long blockade of the Peloponnese – if blockade were what Codrington intended – would be thirsty work. He knew it from long experience, though not perhaps as much in the eastern as the western Mediterranean, and also from recourse to that most faithful of teachers, history. For he had with him – and had been reading most assiduously since leaving England – Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War. And in that latest edition of Dean Smith’s translation he was reminded of the necessaries of such a course, for the Athenians at Pylos, blockading the Spartans on the island of Sphacteria, had been reduced to scraping away the shingle on the beach to get relief for their thirst. He could at least make sure his men had the sweetest water (and there was none sweeter or more plentiful than from the spring of that patron-goddess). Thence, from Syracuse, he would set a course for Codrington’s squadron in the Ionian. For the time being, however, he would withdraw to his quarters, hear the reports, read the signals, sign the returns.
Flowerdew, his steward of a dozen years and more, was waiting. The sentry presented arms – more sharply, thought Peto, than even the well-drilled marines on Nisus. The red coat, the black lacquered hat, the white breeches and pipeclay – Peto suddenly felt himself a little shabby by comparison in his sea coat. But that, he reminded himself, was how it should be: a marine sentry was by his very turnout a powerful aid to discipline, whereas a captain’s attire must be weather-seasoned. He might put on his best coat for His Majesty’s envoy (his dunnage Flowerdew had brought aboard earlier in the day); there again he might not.
He took his first, portentous steps aft of the sentry, followed by his executive officer and Flowerdew. At once he saw how much bigger were his quarters – appreciably bigger than any he had occupied before. He saw the little oils on the bulkheads which he had had on Nisus, and the furniture, over and above what their lordships provided, which he had bought from the previous captain (who had been only too happy to strike a bargain and thus save himself the expense of shipping home). He could be confident, too, that his cherished silver, china and glass would be safely stowed.
‘Coffee, sir?’
‘Thank you, yes, Flowerdew.’
‘With your leave, sir,’ said the first lieutenant.
Peto took off his hat and placed it on the dining table (Cuban mahogany reflecting the sun through the stern lights like a mirror). ‘By all means, Mr Lambe. A half-hour’s recollection, and then, if you please, you may give me the ship’s states.’
‘Shall I assemble the old hands too, sir?’
It was the custom of the service for a new captain to ‘read himself in’ – to read his commission before the caretakers and old seamen aboard the ship.
‘By all means.’
The executive officer replaced his hat, touched the point and withdrew. ‘Ay-ay, sir.’
When Flowerdew came with coffee he found his captain sitting in his favourite leather chair. Peto had had it made many years before in Madeira, with pouches fixed on each arm: the left side for his clerk to place papers for attention, and the other for Peto himself to place them after his attention. But rather than attending to his clerk’s papers, Peto was staring out of the stern gallery, and with a look of considerable contentment. Flowerdew could not be surprised at this: if his captain mayn’t have a moment or two’s satisfaction in his new command then what did it profit a man to be in the King’s service?
‘Coffee, sir.’
Peto nodded, and raised his hand in thanks.
Flowerdew had no wish to intrude on the moment; there would be time enough to get back into the old routine. He placed the cup and saucer in Peto’s hand, and left the cabin quietly.
Peto reached inside his coat and took out Elizabeth’s letter. He had placed it within the leather binding of an old copy of Steel’s Mastmaking, Sailmaking and Rigging from which he had removed the pages, and wrapped it in an oilskin. Even thus preserved, the letter bore the signs of much consultation.
Horningsham
28th March 1827My dear Captain Peto,Let me at once say that I accept your offer of marriage with the very greatest delight. I perfectly understand that you were not able to travel to Wiltshire, and I am only content that you did not delay until you were able to do so. For my part, I should have wished at once to accept, but you will understand that I felt a certain obligation to my brother, though I could never have doubted his approval.I am so very happy too at your news of command, though I shall confess also that my happiness is tempered considerably by the thought that H.M.S. Prince Rupert is taking you so very distant. But that is the way of things, and you may be assured that I shall never be a jealous wife where your ship is concerned!I am so very proud, too, that your command is to be in the Mediterranean, not only for its healthiness and beauty but because I believe it a very noble thing that we should assist the Greeks in their endeavours to shake off the Ottoman yoke. You will, of course, be now daily in my prayers – I think I may say constantly – and they will be for your safe and speedy return.My father will make the usual arrangements for the notice of our betrothal, which I must trust shall be to your liking.I hasten to close this, though I would write so very much more were there the time, for the express boy is come even now, and trust that you shall receive it before you sail.Your ever affectionate
Elizabeth Hervey
Peto read it a second time, and then a third. It was the first letter in a female hand that he had ever received. He had no certainty of the tone or convention, but he considered it the warmest expression of esteem. How different it felt – strangely different – taking to sea with a wife awaiting his return (for he already imagined her in the Norfolk drawing room, wed): his world was no longer wholly wooden, sea-girt and male.
He folded the letter, replaced it between the bindings, wrapped it in the oilskin and put it back into his pocket. As he did so he thought again of Elizabeth’s sisterly duty – so admirable a thing – and then the object of that duty, and wondered how was his friend in southern waters. Perhaps – his own new command notwithstanding – he might even envy Hervey a little, for would not his friend have more prospect of the smell of black powder than would he himself in the Ionian? The native tribes of the Cape Colony would know no better than to chance against His Majesty’s land forces; but the Turk must know that he could have no fight at sea with a first-class naval power. And certainly not with three.
He drained his cup, and glanced about his new quarters – new, but entirely familiar, for the difference between these and his earlier quarters was more of scale than design, or even luxury. He looked at the painting of Nisus, his first command – Flowerdew had fixed it on the starboard bulkhead exactly as it had been on Liffey, his last. He had loved Nisus – a frigate of, to his mind, most excellent proportions – to the exclusion of all else. Next to the painting – portrait – of her, Flowerdew had fixed the oil of his Norfolk home, in which he had yet truly to take residence. Never, indeed, had he thought he would prize it so much as now he did, for no longer was it an unlooked-for refuge ashore, more wreckers’ yard than haven: Elizabeth Hervey – Elizabeth Peto – would one day, soon, occupy it. Truly, he told himself, he was at this moment possessed of the very best of both worlds.
II
A SIGHT SO TOUCHING IN
ITS MAJESTY
London, seven months later, 22 April 1828
Acting Lieutenant-Colonel Matthew Hervey, officer commanding the detached troop of His Majesty’s 6th Light Dragoons in the Cape Colony, and acting commanding officer of the Corps of Cape Mounted Riflemen, rearranged his bones as he got down from the Rochester mail. The Canterbury turnpike was a fine, fast road, which served only to make the occasional pothole more jarring, though from Deptford, where it became a mere municipal affair, not evenly made or mended, the jolts had come with greater frequency and severity. His travelling companion, Captain Edward Fairbrother, also of the Mounted Rifles (the lieutenant-governor at the Cape, his old friend Sir Eyre Somervile, had insisted that Fairbrother should accompany him on account of his wound and the remittent fever), looked distinctly qualmish, for the coach’s rolling action had at times been pronounced – though not as bad as the packet’s rolling off the Azores, when even Hervey, whose sailing-stomach was strong, had been prostrated for two days. Yet despite heavy seas they had made the passage from Cape Town to the Medway in just short of six weeks.
Fairbrother, his indisposition notwithstanding, was as arrested by the sights and sounds of the metropolis as Hervey had been that day, thirteen years before, when first he had come to London – and by this same route. Southwark High Street, narrow, towering, inn-lined, had been all mid-morning bustle, so that the captain of Mounted Rifles had fancied he might be in Shakespeare’s London; or even Chaucer’s, for Hervey had pointed out The Tabard (though nowadays it was called The Talbot). And London Bridge, no wider than that high street but just as teeming and looking every bit as antique, had afforded him two sights as inspiring as might be: downstream the Tower of London, and all the evidence of the capital’s maritime commerce; upstream, but a stone’s throw from the mail, the new London Bridge, its massive, graceful arches not yet complete but already as sure and solid as anything he had seen – certainly these late years in Africa. Here was security, confidence, investment, and increasing wealth. Here was the future.
‘We may take a paddle steamer down the river later this week, if there’s time,’ Hervey had said in answer to his wide-eyed enquiries.
Fairbrother had liked that. And then in Lombard Street, where the mails drew up at the General Post Office, he was wholly taken by the crowded, purposeful activity, both wheeled and pedestrian. Never had he seen its like, not even in Kingston when a slaver filled the wharves with its black cattle. He shook his head slowly. ‘I begin to understand, my friend.’
‘Understand what?’ replied Hervey absently, seeing down what little baggage the mail would carry for them (Private Johnson would bring the bulk of it by stage later in the day).
‘The great enterprise.’
Hervey thought he understood, but elucidation he would leave until another time. He had his own preoccupations for the moment. He wanted above all to know the particulars of the Royal Navy’s engagement in the Ionian, what The Times was calling the Battle of Navarino Bay. The first report – the only one he had seen, and that in South Africa – spoke of a great many ships and a great many casualties. He had not the least idea whether his old friend Sir Laughton Peto’s ship had been engaged, however, for he knew that Peto had first to make passage to Gibraltar to take up his command, and that the journey thither, and thence to Greek waters, was with sail an unpredictable business.
It was his intention therefore, as soon as he and Fairbrother were established i
n the United Service Club, to go – this very afternoon – to the Horse Guards and ask his friend Lieutenant-Colonel Lord John Howard, assistant quartermaster-general, to give him sight of the official despatches (a month’s worth of mail and Gazettes had been adrift still when he left Cape Town). He might even learn something about the wretched board of inquiry. That was the true imperative for his recall to London. He did not relish it – far from it – but it were better that he grasp the nettle than be stung with it at the hands of some malefactor. There were always those who would see the army as a cruel instrument of repression. He had rather liked Shelley – admired him, even – when they had spent those days together in Rome a decade before (God rest his soul – for Shelley most assuredly possessed one, whatever he himself had professed . . .), but he abhorred the poet’s disliking of the army, and bridled even now at his invention of that word ‘liberticide’ and its appellation to the unlooked-for, and thankless, duty of aid to the civil power.
He had thought there would be no inquiry. That had been his understanding when Lord John Howard had prevailed on him to withdraw his report on the incident at Waltham Abbey. Before the Africa commission, while in temporary command of his regiment, the 6th Light Dragoons, he had found himself embroiled in a savage little affair at the royal gunpowder mills. Home Office spies had discovered a plot in which an armed body of Irishmen working on a nearby navigation were to break into the mills and carry off a quantity of powder. Hervey’s dragoons had foiled the attempt, and with considerable execution, but the business had troubled him, for the actions of the Irishmen – drunk, most of them – had not suggested any serious enterprise. He had smelled fish (a parliamentary bill for Catholic ‘emancipation’ was the cause of much agitation in certain Tory quarters), and he had submitted a report implying as much. However, his friend had persuaded him to withdraw it, for an inquiry would have required Hervey’s presence in London, and the appointment at the Cape therefore would not have been his.
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