A Hard, Cruel Shore

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Now!” he cried, raising a full glass. “Charge your glasses, gentlemen. I give you … Success to our Prospects!”

  “Success to our Prospects!” they all yelled back at him, and drank their full bumpers back to “heel taps” again, laughing, cheering, and Yearwood burst forth in song in a deep and burly voice, surprising everyone that he could actually carry a tune and sing hellish-well, so well that they all joined in.

  Wine, wine, it cures the gout, the spirit, and the colic.

  Wine, wine, it cures the gout, the spirit, and the colic,

  Hand it to a-all men, hand it to a-all men,

  Hand it to a-all men, a very specif-physick!

  “Good Lord, what’s that?” Capt. Chalmers exclaimed, breaking off from the second verse.

  “Oh, that’s my cat, Chalky,” Lewrie leaned over to tell him as Chalky, who had been fed in the starboard quarter gallery among all the stores, came to Lewrie for comfort from the loud noises, and had leapt atop the table, then into Lewrie’s lap for a reassuring snuggle, trying to wriggle between his uniform coat and waist-coat. “They are awfully loud, ain’t they, puss? I thought you’d be hidin’ in my bed-space, by now,” he crooned as he stroked the cat’s chin and neck.

  “So that’s why they call you the ‘Ram-Cat’ is it, sir, haw haw?” Capt. Yearwood boomed once the song was done, reaching over with one huge paw to ruffle Chalky on the head, which made him lash out with his claws, and Yearwood snatched his hand back before any damage was done.

  “Careful, sir,” Lt. Westcott cautioned from down-table. “Like our foes have learned, the ‘Ram-Cat’ has sharp claws.”

  “Hah!” Commander Blamey laughed, “Like the McPherson clan’s motto …‘touch not the cat bot a glove’!”

  “Toast, toast!” Commander Teague insisted, “I give you … May we all have sharp claws with which we draw blood!”

  “Sharp claws, and blood!” they all chorused.

  “See what ye started, kitten?” Lewrie whispered to Chalky, who tucked his tail round his front paws and hid his head in Lewrie’s coat, uttering a long moan that might have signified fear, or anger.

  This is goin’ well, Lewrie could tell himself, pleased with his squadron mates’ spirit; Even if Chalmers is still givin’ me chary looks. Maybe he’s a dog person. Before he departs, I should introduce him to Bisquit!

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  With all last-minute wants and needs loaded aboard, the squadron had fallen down to St. Helen’s Patch near the Isle of Wight, where they had awaited a break in the weather and a decent slant of wind. A day later, and HMS Sapphire could finally hoist the signal for all ships to hoist anchors and make sail.

  From that moment on, all five ships had enjoyed a blustery but brief passage, down the English Channel, and into the wide Atlantic, arrayed like beads on a string, with the brig-sloops in line-ahead of Sapphire by about a mile, and allowed to scout about if they spotted anything interesting, much like gun-dogs after pheasant. Undaunted and Sterling followed in the flagship’s wake, trailing by about one cable’s distance from her and one frigate from the other by a like separation. Lewrie was certain that they were having no fun.

  Lewrie was tempted to play a “Captain Blanding”, the squadron Commodore under whom he’d served in 1803, and a man in love with the Popham Code signal book, and un-scheduled orders to perform manoeuvres from pre-dawn to sundown, but no. It would be a rare thing for them to work together as a proper squadron, like the Third Rate 74s that plodded and wheeled on un-ending blockade duties. Besides, he didn’t wish to be dubbed a man afflicted with the “flag flux”, or one who ran off at the signal halliards like a gossipy old “chick-a-biddy” at a “cat lapping” tea party.

  Their Southerly course cross the Bay of Biscay was over three hundred or more miles seaward of the French coast, so they rarely espied a sail on the horizon, and when they did it was always one of their own Navy’s ships, making their way to or from the blockade. The home-bound convoys of British-flagged merchantmen, even with the comforting presence of naval escorts close at hand, stayed a careful two hundred miles further out into the Bay, well West of the 10th Meridian, down which Lewrie and his squadron sailed.

  The days were filled with sail-tending, trimming, reefing then making sail, with live-fire gun drills to get Sapphire’s people up to snuff after several weeks in port, with cutlass drills, musketry and pistol practice, as well as the usual sluicing and scrubbing of decks, meals, rum issues, and the changes of watches, with Sunday Divisions and “Rig Church”, followed by a few precious hours of “Make and Mend” before the start of Sunday’s First Dog Watch.

  At heart, Alan Lewrie, when left to his own devices, could be as lazy as a butcher’s dog, a minor vice that the Navy had beaten out of him long before, but a vice that could arise on a long passage such as this one, now that there were no watch officers standing over him with a stiffened rope starter, and the necessary separation from his officers and crew left him, the Captain, with time on his hands.

  He threw himself into weapons training, honing his skill with his hanger, shooting at passing flotsam targets with his pistols or his breech-loading rifled Ferguson musket, sometimes his Girandoni air-rifle. He paced the ship right round several times a day, from the flag lockers and taffrail lanthorns on the poop deck to the round house abaft the crowned lion figurehead, over and over. In his cabins, he hoisted wooden pails filled with various weights of shot over his head, swung them about, to keep fit, ’til he blew and puffed, short of breath. Despite his dread of it, he ascended the main mast right up to the cat harpings, now and then even essaying the futtock shrouds to the fighting top, then down the other side to maintain the strength of his arms and hands, and to test the soundness of his leg, wounded off Buenos Aires by a musket ball three years before, which had healed so slowly that for a time he’d feared that he would end up a gimp-legged cripple, putting an end to his naval career.

  Even with all that, though, there were still so many long hours with nothing to do, and no demands upon his attention, that he had to retire to his cabins before he became a pest to the watchstanders, and began to be slurred as “old fussy”. There, he had a small selection of new books to read, along with some of his older favourites, of the bawdier variety it here must be noted. There was Chalky to play with, though his cat was now of an age,—Twelve years old, now? he realised—and was no longer quite as eager to chase after things and fetch them back. Chalky was now fonder of laps, sometimes a playfight when Lewrie donned a thick leather glove and rolled him about and let Chalky bite and scratch and make aggressive noises.

  Touch not the cat bot a glove, indeed, Lewrie thought!

  There was Bisquit, who was more eager to play, thundering about the great-cabins to chase his soggy, thick rope, or his equally damp stuffed rabbit hide. Bisquit had begun as the Midshipmen’s pet when he’d had the Reliant frigate in the West Indies, and still roamed the lower decks to call upon his many friends among the crew, especially at mealtimes, but a Winter spent in the country on Lewrie’s father’s estate at Anglesgreen in Surrey as Lewrie had recuperated made him more the Captain’s dog, who assumed the freedom of the great-cabins as his right, and it was a rare night that Bisquit slept in his wee house under the starboard ladderway to the poop deck. By Lights Out every evening, Bisquit would be whining and scratching at the door to be let in, and the Marine sentry didn’t even bother to announce him any longer, but simply opened the door so Bisquit could frisk through.

  There was Lewrie’s music, if one could call it that. Long ago his late wife, Caroline, had gifted him with an humble penny-whistle, and after all those years, Lewrie could tootle along right well, but for Bisquit’s responses, his long whines and even longer howls as if the music pained his ears, or he tried to sing along, it was hard to tell which. The penny-whistle was best indulged in when the dog was elsewhere.

  There were letters to write, of course, to be posted someday if they ever spoke a passing mail packet, or dropped anchor
at Lisbon; long “sea letters” to family and friends, added to each day as events struck him as notable ’til they were several pages thick, filled in on both sides in the smallest writing he could manage.

  He’d gotten some whose authors had penny-pinched, also written on both sides, but also written firstly horizontal, then vertical atop that, and the very Devil to decypher stacked atop each other, and as hard to figure out which direction the writer wrote first!

  Lewrie could pore over his newly-marked charts of the Spanish coast, and usually spent a whole hour each day at that, making guesses as to which ports the French used more often for their coasting ships. Did they put in each night, as they did along the coasts of France itself when he’d prowled those shores? Or, did they employ larger merchantmen, and dash from Bayonne, Arcachon, or the Gironde River estuary straightaway, with escorts? And, what sort of escorts would the French put to sea, and of what strength? Frigates, corvettes, or the sort of armed chasse-marees that were employed as privateers or raiders in the Channel or in the Baltic, the plague of British shipping?

  After all that, there was a lot to be said for the restorative powers of naps on the starboard side settee, or the cushioned tops of the lazarette lockers right aft, though they were a tad narrow.

  The closer they got to Spain, nearing the 45th Latitude, there was a subtle change in the weather. It was still nippy, and sometimes raw and chilly, but at last the sash-windows in the stern transom could be lowered several inches from the tops, during the days, at least, to purge the long-pent stuffiness (and frankly some stinks) from the great-cabins. Lewrie longed for the day when the windows could be fully lowered, the door to his stern gallery opened, and the twine-strung screen door which kept Chalky from dashing out to chase sea bird, leaping atop the gallery rails and falling overboard, could let in all the fresh air that he wished. Why, with any luck at all, soon he could put a chair out there and read, and loaf, and snore, in full view of his subordinates!

  And in the evenings, after dining in some of his officers and Mids, Lewrie could tap one of the stone crocks of American corn whisky that he’d found in London, savour a nightcap, then roll into his bed-cot, there to be rocked and lulled to sleep by the swaying of the ship and the scend of the sea. He thought it perverse, but while he loved the snug softness of a feather mattress in a shoreside bed, he still got his best rest in his almost-wide-enough-for-two hanging bed-cot and its thinner cotton batt mattress, and the sag of the heavy sailcloth support. Even if he did have to sleep in his shirt and slop-trousers under two blankets as long as it was cold, craving the time when he could strip down to his underdrawers and pull up one sheet in milder weather. Either way, there would be a cat tucked into the back of one knee, or the small of his back.

  * * *

  “Ah, so many hopeful faces,” Lewrie quipped as he emerged from his cabins with his sextant case and his boxed chronometer. Awaiting him at Noon Sights were all his watch-standing officers, the Sailing Master, and all of the Midshipmen with their own sextants and slates for calculations. The youngest of them looked anxious.

  “Wouldn’t get my hopes up too high, sir,” Mr. Yelland growled as he cast a glance aloft at the overcast. “It looks like another dead reckoning day.” The Sailing Master swept a hand in the direction of his sea chart, pinned to the traverse board of the binnacle cabinet. There had been very few semi-clear noons on-passage, so the track of Sapphire’s progress was littered with hourly notations of her speed, some with sarcastic question marks.

  “It’s a thin cirrus overcast, though, Mister Yelland,” Lt. Harcourt pointed out. “You can see the sun ball through it, direct. You can look straight at it.”

  “Vague, though,” Yelland replied, scratching his un-shaven chin. “Drag the iffy blob down to the horizon and make a wild-arsed guess?”

  The younger Mids found that amusing.

  Lewrie consulted his chronometer, then his pocket watch, to determine the exact time. He noted that his and the Sailing Master’s were only two seconds out of agreement.

  “And … time,” Yelland said at last, just before the sand ran out of the half-hour glass up forward at the belfry, and a ship’s boy began to strike Eight Bells. Up went the sextants to people’s eyes, sure fingers drew the “blob” down to the horizon, then locked the angle with the set screws. Chalk began to screech on the slates as the mathematical formula drummed into them was solved.

  Lewrie kept his mouth shut, waiting for whatever result could be announced. He had not brought a slate, or pencil and paper, and would be the first to confess that while the Navy had thrashed mathematics into him, it was best to wait for consensus, for sometimes his own estimates were “wild-arsed guesses”, not quite as exact as others’ could be, putting his own work within sixty or one hundred miles of the correct position on his worst days.

  Close enough for “church work”, he told himself with a secret grin.

  “Hmm,” Yelland announced with a shrug as he looked over what he and the officers had derived from their sums, “Fourty-four degrees, ten minutes North, or thereabouts, sir … five degrees, twenty minutes West … or so we think, mind.” He leaned over the chart on the traverse board and ran a thick finger to those co-ordinates. “About here … ninety miles off the coast, round the longitude of Gijon.”

  “Good enough, then,” Lewrie said, tracing the dead reckoning track from the last noon’s guesstimate, and finding that their sights were close enough to corresponding. “Time for us to part, I think. Mister Kibworth, go to the flag lockers and make up this signal, if you please. Good Luck, Good Hunting, Be Here in a Fortnight. Got that?”

  “Aye, sir!” the Mid answered, furiously scribbling on the back side of his slate, then scampering up to the poop deck. He paused, though, halfway up, and returned. “Ehm, if I may suggest, sir, that we use the single flag for Pursue the Enemy More Closely, then Good Hunting, and the ‘rondy’ point?”

  “Ahem!” the Second Officer, Lt. Harcourt, barked, irritated that a Mid would dare make a suggestion to a Commission Sea Officer.

  “Aye, that sounds more to the point,” Lewrie breezily agreed. “Pursuin’ the buggers is what we’re here for. Do so, young sir.”

  “Has a nerve, sir,” Lt. Harcourt groused close to Lewrie’s ear.

  “He has wits, more-like, Mister Harcourt,” Lewrie told him. “He and the other lads. They’re not the pink-cheeked children who came aboard two years ago. Somewhere along their way, they must be able to learn to think for themselves, and contribute.”

  Lewrie looked forward to where the other Midshipmen were gathering up their sextants, slates, and sticks of chalk, some of them looking pleased with their reckonings, and only the newest, Holbrooke and Chenery, getting cautioned by the Sailing Master, nodding dutifully, though looking sheepish.

  “Well, most of ’em,” Lewrie added with a jut of his chin in their direction, and a brief smirk. “I believe you have the watch, sir?”

  “Aye, sir,” Harcourt replied, looking un-convinced by Lewrie’s words.

  “Continue on this course to close the coast, somewhere round Gijon, however one pronounces that,” Lewrie ordered. “The last cast of the log showed seven knots, so we’ll be at it a good, long while. If the weather gets up, you may reduce sail at your discretion, but I’d admire being informed.”

  “Aye, sir,” Harcourt dutifully said, nodding assent.

  “We’re in no great rush t’get in sight of land,” Lewrie went on, crossing to the traverse board for another peek at the sea-chart. “With this ship, we never are,” he japed. “Seven, eight knots … it will be round nine hours from now to fetch the coast, middle of the bloody night, really, when we change course Due East and stand off-and-on ’til dawn. Warn your replacement.”

  “That I will, sir,” Lt. Harcourt promised.

  “Carry on, then, Mister Harcourt,” Lewrie bade him, doffing his hat in a departing salute. He did not retire to his cabins, but went up to the poop deck for a better look round, just as the signal hoist
soared up the halliards, bright, clean flags brilliant against the gloom of the day. Lt. Westcott was already there, indulging in one of his cigarros, a newly acquired habit.

  “Sir,” Westcott said, tapping the brim of his hat.

  “Mister Westcott,” Lewrie replied, nodding acknowledgement.

  “What happened to your new bicorne, sir, might I ask?” the First Officer enquired with a taut grin, taking note that Lewrie had reverted to one of his older cocked hats.

  “The bloody thing doesn’t keep the rain off my ears,” Lewrie confessed with a grin of his own. “I’ll trot it out for formal, full-dress occasions … and to make Captain Chalmers happy, I suppose.”

  Lewrie looked down to the quarterdeck and at Lt. Harcourt.

  Such a tight-arsed man, Lewrie thought with a shake of his head; A good, conscientous officer, but a hard stickler. And a dullard. No imagination.

  When Lewrie first got command of Sapphire, the officers and her people had been split in support of her former Captain, a fierce disciplinarian, and her former First Officer, who had been opposed to some of the harsher practises, and Lt. Harcourt and his favourite Midshipman, Hillhouse, had been in the former Captain’s camp. Thank God that those two officers had wounded each other in a duel, ending their careers, allowing Lewrie and Westcott to take her over and unite their new crew into a happier, more efficient concern.