by David McDine
DEAD MAN’S ISLAND
David McDine
© David McDine 2018
David McDine has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published by Endeavour Press Ltd in 2018.
Table of Contents
1 A Watery Grave
2 Angels of Mercy
3 A Mysterious Mission
4 Damned With Faint Praise
5 A Floating Gin Palace
6 Back from the Dead
7 Return to Ludden Hall
8 Careless Talk
9 A Cunning Plan
10 A Copybook Exercise
11 An Unwelcome Caller
12 An Unwelcome Guest
13 Down the Swale
14 Arranging a Bunfight
15 A Fairlight Interlude
16 Pye Alley Farm
17 A Welcome Invitation
18 A Warning Signal
19 A Clash at Seagate
20 The Key to England
21 The Duel
22 Under Wraps
23 On the Run
24 The Presentation Sword
25 A Proposal
26 Armstrong at the Admiralty
27 A Family at War
28 A Lesson in Economics
29 Sparking Up the Fencibles
30 A Night Crossing
31 Boulogne
32 Turncoats
33 “Nelson Speaking to the French”
34 Brotherly Love
35 Run for Home
36 The Chain of Command
37 Wedding Bells
38 Volunteers to a Man
39 Band of Brothers
40 Boulogne in Chains
41 “Row Like Hell!”
42 Aftermath
43 The Weakest Link
44 Convalescence
45 The New Divisional Captain
1
A Watery Grave
Dead Man’s Island in the rain was as God-forsaken a place as you could find anywhere on earth.
In a steady downpour, four bedraggled Frenchmen in the tattered remnants of their sulphur-yellow prisoner-of-war uniforms shuffled forward carrying a plain wooden coffin.
On the order of a British naval captain, who lifted his bicorn hat in salute, they lowered the tricolour-covered box into a shallow, watery-bottomed grave.
Three members of the burial party moved back, leaving their comrade standing alone beside the grave, his long lank hair soaked through and clinging to his shoulders. He leaned forward, muttered some words, made the sign of the cross, paused for a moment and stepped back himself.
A corporal called four sodden, red-jacketed marines to attention. They discarded the canvas covers protecting their flintlocks from the rain, raised their muskets and on his barked order fired over the grave.
But it was only a three-shot volley and the marine whose weapon misfired winced at the corporal’s hissed curse.
The Frenchman who had spoken the words over the coffin that no-one else but his maker could have heard, stepped forward again. He bent to retrieve the flag, folded it and tucked it under his arm. No doubt it would be called into service again before long.
Without needing orders, his three companions began shovelling mud into the grave, abandoning their task as soon as the coffin was covered.
*
A tall, dark-haired naval lieutenant standing beside the captain replaced his own hat and turned up his collar against the elements. But it was a losing battle.
It was one of those dark, depressing days of low cloud, a biting wind off the North Sea and continuous rain that to Lieutenant Oliver Anson felt as if it were soaking him through to his very soul.
Wishing he had worn a boat cloak like the captain, he was wondering what the hell he was doing there anyway. Why, he asked himself, had he been summoned from his Sea Fencible command on the coast to this sinisterly named islet at the junction of the Swale and the Medway – the river that divides the Men of Kent from the Kentish Men?
Island was a misnomer for what was in truth little more than a miserable stretch of sub-tidal mudflats, frequented only by wildfowl and the occasional burial party from the nearby prison hulks.
Shelduck, ringed plover, lapwing, oystercatcher and redshank probed the shallow waters for lugworm and other sustenance, and to the superstitious sailors manning the oars of the captain’s barge the plaintive crooee, crooee, crooee cries of curlew that haunted this dismal place sounded like the uneasy spirits of the dead.
*
An urgent message from Commodore Home Popham had brought Anson to the dockyard but when he arrived there had been no sign of the enigmatic senior officer known in the navy as ‘a damned cunning fellow’ owing to his unconventional, inventive way of thinking.
The curiously named commodore was in overall command of all the Sea Fencible detachments from Beachy Head in Sussex to Deal in Kent – the area likely to be first stop on the invasion route when the French decided the time was right.
It had been Home Popham himself who came up with the idea of establishing the Sea Fencibles, a kind of naval militia made up of boatmen and fishermen – and no doubt a good many smugglers – whose role was to man shore batteries and gunboats to oppose enemy landings.
In return for their service they were granted an exemption from full-time naval service – or servitude, as they thought of it.
Many – including Anson – had thought of this rag-bag force of harbour rats as an ineffective bunch of man-of-war dodgers, but he had changed his tune since his Seagate detachment’s capture of a Normandy privateer. They had proved their worth then, sure enough.
When Anson was appointed to the Seagate unit, Home Popham had hinted strongly that there would be an extra dimension to his duties – the gathering of intelligence and possibly what the commodore had called ‘tip-toeing around France’ on clandestine missions.
Certainly Seagate was well positioned for such activities, being a little over twenty miles from the enemy coast. And Anson’s recent escape from France following an abortive cutting-out raid fitted him well for such a role.
So far he had not been called upon to perform such additional duties and the summons to Chatham had filled him with expectation. But when he arrived at the dockyard the commodore was nowhere to be found.
Instead, Anson learned that he was required to attend the funeral of a Frenchmen from one of the hulks who, he was told, had fallen ill and died ashore in hospital.
And although he had racked his brains he could not think of a reason for being called to witness the interment of a Frenchman he could not have known from Adam.
Without any explanation he had been ordered to take his place in the launch carrying the coffin and burial party out to Dead Man’s Island, and, having witnessed the pathetic ceremony, he was still none the wiser.
No doubt Captain Matthew Wills who had presided over the burial would put him in the picture later.
Anson had passed this way three years earlier during the Nore Mutiny. Indeed, the 64-gun third rate HMS Euphemus, the ship he had been called upon to prise away from the mutinous fleet, had stuck fast on mud-banks not far from here and had to be kedged off while under fire.
It had been a hazardous time, when the red flags of mutiny had flown from almost every masthead in the great anchorage and Anson had thought his time had come, staring down the barrel of a pistol levelled at him by a ruthless revolutionary.
But against the odds he and the loyal hands had managed to break free and take the ship into the safety of Sheerness dockyard, their defection spellin
g the beginning of the end for the mutiny.
So he knew the captain from that time when he had been able to render a vital service at a perilous moment.
The brief funeral over, the marines formed up and stomped through the mud back to the boat, followed by the four prisoners.
Anson took step beside Captain Wills and as the two walked slowly away from the grave he asked: ‘I’m not entirely sure why I’m here, sir. Can you enlighten me?’
The captain indicated the Frenchmen plodding ahead of them towards the boat, so that Anson could now see the letters T.O. stamped on the back of their ragged yellow jackets. He knew this stood for Transport Office, the organisation responsible for administering prisoners-of-war. ‘You make a reliable witness, Anson. These fellows don’t—’
‘I’m afraid I don’t follow your drift, sir.’
Wills spoke quietly, for Anson’s ears only. ‘Commodore Home Popham wanted you to witness the burial of Lieutenant Hurel for a particular reason that will soon become apparent.’
‘So when will the commodore see me?’
‘He won’t. He’s left.’
‘Left?’ Anson was taken aback.
‘Yes, posted. He’s been given command of HMS Romney and a small squadron and is due to sail any minute – something to do with throwing the French out of Egypt, I hear, and then on to India. It was all rather sudden.’
‘Good grief!’ Anson had known that if Home Popham had been involved then whatever lay behind the summons to witness the funeral must be of a clandestine nature. Although the commodore had been in overall command of Sea Fencible units along the invasion coast, his role had encompassed intelligence too.
‘So now that he’s gone will you be briefing me as to what all this is about, sir? I must admit that at the moment I am totally mystified.’
‘Of course – once we’re away from this dreadful place and are drying out back at Chatham.’
Anson asked: ‘But perhaps you can tell me now, sir, who was this Lieutenant Hurel and what did he die of?’
‘Just one of the prisoners, and you could say it was gaol fever that carried him off, although after he …’ The captain hesitated. ‘After he was, well, taken ill, he was brought ashore to spend his last hours as a prisoner in some comfort. The hulks are not the most salubrious lodgings.’
Anson nodded. His own brief period as a prisoner of the French had been a push-over compared to what he had heard of life in the hulks and he resolved to give the French burial party a few of the coins in his purse.
He was well aware that even a small amount could make the difference between survival and going under in an environment where some men sold or gambled even their last rags of clothing and went naked to obtain food.
More than one thing about his summons to the funeral bothered Anson – not least how long the Frenchman’s body had been awaiting burial.
‘May I ask, when did he die, sir?’
Captain Wills, his prematurely grey hair now thoroughly soaked and clinging to his forehead, hesitated. ‘Hmm, just last night I believe.’
Anson frowned, trying to fathom it out. ‘But, sir, I came in answer to a message sent two days ago – and yet you tell me he died only last night?’
‘Let’s say that a few days ago he exhibited signs of a contagious disease, so he had to be removed immediately from his fellow prisoners. It could be assumed he was about to, shall we say, pass on … so you were sent for in anticipation.’
Anson’s bewilderment was obvious and Wills smiled. ‘I appreciate this is all a little mysterious, but come, my boy, and all will be revealed.’
Carefully negotiating the already deeply puddled salt marsh, they made their way back to the launch, where the coxswain was holding the painter tied to an ancient mooring post to steady it against the current and the rowers were cradling their oars between their knees, blades upright.
The prisoners and marines embarked, Anson climbed on board and lent an arm to Captain Wills who boarded last according to strict naval custom – senior officer last in, first out.
The coxswain untied the rope and on his order to ‘Shove off!’ the rowers dipped their oars as one. He barked: ‘Give way!’ and they pulled away strongly, relieved to leave the sinister atmosphere of this desolate place.
A teenaged midshipman leaned forward over the prow calling instructions aimed at avoiding the treacherous series of mudflats off Queenborough that were fast being covered by the incoming tide.
Anson shielded his eyes with his hand to look back through slanting rain, but already Dead Man’s Island had faded from sight almost as if it had never existed.
2
Angels of Mercy
Phineas Shrubb, Baptist preacher, apothecary, sometime surgeon’s mate in the Royal Navy during the American War of Independence and now of the Seagate Sea Fencibles, had set up surgery at the detachment building and was awaiting his patients.
He had made the eight-mile journey from his cottage in a fold of the North Downs to tend to the wounded from last week’s battle against a Normandy privateer.
The 12-gun Égalité had caused mayhem along the Kent and Sussex coast for many months past, snapping up small merchantmen and coasters as prizes. But at last the raider been lured into a trap, set by Lieutenant Anson, the detachment’s commander, overwhelmed and taken.
The feat was still the talk of the town and was already being dubbed somewhat grandiosely as the Battle of Seagate, although most – including the mayor – had been led to believe that the divisional captain was the hero of the hour rather than Anson.
Indeed, the social-climbing Captain Arthur Veryan St Cleer Hoare, whose pretentious name reflected his claimed kinship with West Country aristocracy, was still showing off the privateer captain’s sword to all and sundry. It had been surrendered to him, he boasted, at the end of the battle.
The French had lost a good many men thanks mainly to a well-aimed carronade shot from one of the detachment’s gunboats and the ferocity of the boarders.
Sea Fencible casualties had been light and the more serious of them were now being ferried to the detachment building in Tom Marsh’s pony and trap.
The bosun, Sam Fagg, had organised this rather than home visits so that each man would qualify for his shilling a day for turning up. To him it meant that the men would not have to aggravate their wounds by scratching around for their daily bread – a kindness appreciated by all.
‘Anyways,’ the bosun rationalised, ‘I reckon good old King George ’as got more’n enough and can afford to give our boys a shillin’ or two arter what they’ve done.’
Shrubb, a white-haired, kindly, smiley man, had been recruited by Lieutenant Anson to vet new recruits, weeding out only complete imbeciles and those with rickets, consumption, ruptures and the like.
Otherwise the policy was to allow pretty well anyone in – keenness being seen as more important than being totally sound of wind and limb.
Anson himself had allowed young Tom Marsh, patently a cripple who hopped around on crutches, to slip through Shrubb’s net. The lieutenant justified this on the grounds that the youngster was keen to a fault, had considerable upper body strength due to handling his crutches that made him a superb oarsman – and owned a pony and trap which was currently the detachment’s only form of land transport other than shanks’ pony.
Now that the detachment was almost up to strength and had seen action against the Normandy privateer, Shrubb’s role had changed from vetting recruits to repairing fencibles wounded in the fight.
It was a skill he had learned well during his service in the proper navy and had not forgotten in the two decades since the American war, but he looked more preacher than medical man, severely dressed as he invariably was in black from top to toe except for the white of his shirt showing at his neck.
His daughter Sarah, who had volunteered to help with the wounded after the privateer action, was also attired in almost puritanical fashion – in a long, plain black dress with white bonnet that c
ompletely hid her hair.
But Anson himself, and no doubt many of the fencibles, had noted how friendly, confident but gentle she was – and how attractive in a wholesome way.
Fagg had summed her up as: ‘Not one as I’d marry meself on account of not being keen on prayin’ an’ all that. More of a girl what you’d like yer son to marry if you ’ad a son, which I ain’t, thank Gawd, so far as I know, that is. Whatever, ’er and ’er father are right bleedin’ angels of mercy, they are.’
Shrubb and his daughter were in the detachment building examining the wounded men’s injuries when Sergeant Tom Hoover walked in, asking: ‘How’s it going?’
The pair looked up and Shrubb told him: ‘Pretty well. I need some hot water, but it would not be fitting for Sarah to fetch some from the inn on her own. Perhaps …?’
‘Sure, I’ll go with her. My pleasure.’
*
Both Fagg and Hoover had been wounded and captured along with Anson during the raid on the port of St Valery-en-Caux in Normandy by the frigate HMS Phryne the year before and during their prolonged and arduous escape back to England they had bonded closely.
Anson had hoped to be reappointed to his ship along with his fellow escapers but instead was posted against his wishes to run the then shambolic Sea Fencible detachment that had been poorly led and bullied by a corrupt bosun.
He had enlisted the aid of Fagg and Hoover, had them promoted and appointed as bosun and master at arms, and together the three had cleaned out what Anson called ‘the Augean stables’ – a reference to one of the Labours of Hercules – and turned the Seagate detachment into a force capable of taking on, and capturing, the Normandy privateer.
The cheeky, wise-cracking former foretop-man Sam Fagg had been dragged up on the mean streets of Chatham and was an ace procurer of whatever the unit needed, albeit not always strictly according to the rule book.
Rules, he reckoned, were made to be bent – as long as no-one’s looking. But although that was his personal philosophy, he knew every trick in the book so the rest of the Seagate fencibles could get nothing past him.