By the Mast Divided

by David Donachie

  ‘Captain Barclay.’ The high voice, with the burr of a Norfolk accent, made Ralph Barclay spin slowly round, and being sure he knew the speaker he dropped his head to return the greeting, looking into a pair of startlingly blue eyes and a youthful face, this under a hat worn athwart the head instead of fore and aft, a method of dress Barclay had always found affected.

  ‘Captain Nelson.’

  ‘Should I be surprised to see you here?’ Nelson asked.

  ‘I cannot think why.’

  ‘I was talking to Davidge Gould,’ Nelson responded, ‘we met at the Assembly Rooms last night. He told me you and he were set to weigh this very morning.’

  ‘That is so,’ Barclay replied, nodding in the directions of the Commodore’s office, ‘but as you well know, sir, it is often easier to issue orders than to obey them.’

  Nelson smiled, a natural reaction given his own reputation, which was one that could be said to hold a cavalier attitude to authority. ‘Only too well, Captain Barclay, only too well.’

  ‘But I shall weigh soon, never fear.’ Barclay said that more in hope than anticipation, for at this moment he had no idea of the condition of his ship. He had departed yesterday from a vessel yet to complete her stores.

  ‘Waste not a moment, eh?’ said Nelson cheerfully.

  ‘An admirable sentiment, sir,’ Barclay replied, thinking that only someone like the man before him would employ such a worn and trite cliché.

  ‘You chose not to attend the ball last night.’

  Ralph Barclay wondered if Nelson knew he was in hot water, and was guying him. ‘I was, Captain Nelson, otherwise engaged.’

  ‘You missed an entertaining evening,’ Nelson replied.

  ‘Really?’

  Nelson very obviously failed to pick up Ralph Barclay’s mordant tone, for the flat and featureless Isle of Sheppey, on which Sheerness stood, was a place reckoned by most naval officers to be damned dull. The inhabitants were a singular bunch, their view of the world formed by a flat, windswept, marshy landscape; fishermen, subsistence farmers who scratched at poor soil, prone to smuggling to make up for what they lacked in legal income. Excepting those that toiled in the dockyard, most were wary of a Navy that could press men and make sail in a wink, and damned reluctant to bow the knee to naval pretensions. They kept themselves aloof, obliging the Navy to make its own entertainment with regular gatherings at the Assembly Rooms and the occasional private house, all populated by the same familiar faces.

  ‘But I daresay your wife will inform you of that,’ Nelson added, ‘for there can be no doubt that she enjoyed the occasion.’ Ralph Barclay stiffened while Nelson burbled on in happy reminisce. ‘I doubt there was one blank space on her dance card, sir, and pretty and vivacious as she is, Mrs Barclay lit up the whole affair. Davidge Gould was particularly attentive.’ Nelson shook his head slowly, as if in wonderment. ‘He certainly knows how to make the ladies laugh.’

  ‘Since he is to be my junior on my allotted convoy duty, I have more interest in his ability to sail his ship.’

  The tone of that response, and the far from pleasant look that accompanied it, penetrated both Nelson’s naiveté as well as his good humour and he mumbled, in a slightly embarrassed fashion, ‘You are bound for the Mediterranean, I believe?’

  ‘We are.’

  Back on safe ground, Nelson’s bright blue eyes lit up again. ‘Then we will serve together once more, as we did in the West Indies in ‘82, for I believe I am to be ordered to the Med also.’ Nelson dropped his voice, as though what he had to impart was confidential. ‘We may even, I am told, be under the same Commanding Officer.’

  ‘Nothing is certain. I saw Lord Hood yesterday and he has not made up his mind.’

  ‘If only it was his mind to make up, Captain Barclay. He aches for the Channel, but I for one hope that he is given the Mediterranean, because I know, and I am sure you agree with me, that he will be an active commander.’

  Ralph Barclay looked at Nelson hard then, trying to discern once more if he was being practised upon. Hood had been the last Commander in Chief they had served under together, and it could hardly have been a secret that the relationship between the admiral and Ralph Barclay had not been warm. And Nelson, despite having a more friendly rapport with the man had, like him, spent the last five years on the beach, his pleas for employment made to that self-same Lord Hood ignored – good grounds for dislike, if not downright detestation.

  But looking into the infernally trusting face of this short-arse before him, he had to conclude, on the experience of past acquaintance, that there was no nuance in the words, because it was something Horatio Nelson was incapable of. The man was an innocent, who had no idea how he was practised upon by those with more guile than he – which, on mulling it over, included just about everybody, not least a crew Ralph Barclay had seen talking to their captain on his quarterdeck as though he was a common seaman. The man had no notion of the difference in service before and abaft the mast, claiming to treat all, officers and hands, with equality. Of course, Nelson craved popularity, which was always a mistake. Come a desperate battle, men over-indulged would not fight as well as those who had been exposed to proper discipline.

  ‘That service is not a time I recall with much pleasure, Captain Nelson.’

  ‘Really?’

  Left with Hood after Rodney had gone home, Ralph Barclay had not enjoyed anything in the way of a cruise that might bring in some money, and that in a sea teeming with privateers and American trading vessels trying to run the island blockade; that had gone to Hood’s favourites, and was just another lump of grit in the relationship he had with the man who controlled the Navy. Mind, neither had Nelson been allowed to cruise, but that was because of the tub he commanded.

  ‘It would surprise me if you did, given the vessel which you had under your hand.’

  ‘Ah,’ Nelson sighed, ‘old Albemarle.’

  ‘From what I recall, Captain Nelson,’ Barclay replied, with deep irony, ‘she was never new.’

  Nelson looked pained. Barclay knew him to be one of those coves who hated to say a bad word about any ship he had captained. A lot of commanders were like that, superstitious that condemnation of a vessel’s very obvious faults would bring ill fortune. Ralph Barclay was a man who could damn the planking beneath his feet in a hurricanno. Seeing the sudden sadness of Nelson’s eyes, he had to look away in embarrassment, though he did not have to wonder what had brought that on, Nelson being notorious as a sentimental creature.

  ‘I do not say she was perfect, Albemarle, but I cannot bring myself to condemn her.’

  ‘Oh come, Captain Nelson, she was a complete dog.’

  And she had been, a wallowing tub of a converted merchantman, rated as a frigate, that missed stays with depressing regularity and was forever struggling to keep station on Hood’s flagship, canvas of every description being employed in a bewildering set of changes to the sail plan that had provided a deep vein of amusement on what was otherwise the dull service of cruising in the hope of the arrival of another French fleet.

  ‘Though I must add,’ Barclay said hastily, as he saw that he had deeply wounded Nelson, ‘that the crew must have been the best men aloft in the Caribbean.’

  Nelson brightened at that; Barclay knew from their previous acquaintance that he was in the presence of a man who wore his heart on his sleeve. You could always get a smile from Horatio Nelson if you praised his crew. Personally, he would have flogged half of them for the liberties they took, and the state of a Nelson deck was not something to recall with fond memory. He wondered what it was about this man, whom he really didn’t think he liked, that he bothered to care if he was happy or not?

  ‘You would be amazed. Captain Barclay, how many of them have joined me aboard Agamemnon.’

  So, Nelson, not far above him on the captain’s list, had got HMS Agamemnon, a ship-of-the-line, albeit a small one of sixty-four guns, while he had been given one of the lesser frigates. There, in stark relief, was the way
both men stood in the eyes of the man with the power to dispense commands. Perhaps Nelson was right to esteem Hood after all.

  ‘Though you’re still short on your complement I’ll wager,’ Barclay growled.

  Nelson replied, with a cheerful grin. ‘Never in life, Captain Barclay! I am happy to say that my muster book is near full, and the number of capital seamen who have come aboard is astonishing. A very high proportion, naturally, are Norfolk men from my own home county.’

  Barclay was sure Nelson was exaggerating, that or boasting – the common view was that swanking was a trait of his. A sixty-four gunner required a crew of over four hundred men. ‘You cannot have manned a ship the size of Agamemnon solely with personal volunteers?’

  ‘Oh no. A hundred hands, prime seamen all, came only yesterday, shipped down from the Tower, I’m told, following a very obliging order from the Admiralty itself – I suspect the hand of Lord Hood. I must say he has done me proud, but the Impress Service officer did say that my own efforts were the cause, that it was a pleasure to provide men for a captain who could garner three-quarters of his crew without recourse to them.’

  Barclay spun away then to hide his anger, and to keep Nelson from seeing the look of deep malevolence that filled his face. But there was a feeling of hurt too – of injustice that this pipsqueak should get so easily what he himself had been so roundly denied. Why? It could not be competence; when it came to ship management Ralph Barclay bowed the knee to no man, and even though he had never fought an action against a well-armed enemy he had no doubt that when the time came he would perform well. Did Hood hate him, or was it the memory of Admiral Rodney that plagued him?

  He began to move away, lest his emotions become obvious, that action followed by an invitation from Nelson to ‘join me for dinner at the Three Tuns in Sheerness, should the opportunity arise’.

  It was fortuitous that the summons to see the Commodore followed right on that, because Ralph Barclay would not have been able to compose a polite reply.

  The interview that followed was uncomfortable in the extreme; the kind of dressing down he had not had since he had ceased to be a lieutenant and achieved Post Rank. That he had succeeded in securing some hands, though he took care not to mention the source, counted for nothing in the face of what was seen as the gross insubordination of being not only out of his ship without permission, but actually off the station, and he was told that if he did not weigh with alacrity he might find himself once more on the beach.

  If anything, his ‘interview’ with his wife could be rated as even more unpleasant, made more so from the haste with which it had to be conducted, for even in a hurry to get aboard ship it had been necessary, on the way to the rooms they had rented, to pay a visit to the Sheerness pawnbroker to retrieve goods he had pledged to fund the recruitment of volunteers – the silver buckles from his best shoes and some of the presents so recently gifted to them at their wedding. Emily was awake but not dressed, so he found himself trying to censure someone whose natural look of innocence was compounded by an appearance – tousled hair, night cap and gown, plus a pout on her face – that was almost childlike.

  ‘You would surely not forbid me permission to go to a ball, Captain Barclay?’

  ‘I admit I would not, but I cannot comprehend that you not only did so, but made an exhibition of yourself with my inferior officer.’ The pout changed to a look of perplexity, as Ralph Barclay continued. ‘Lieutenant Gould…’

  ‘Is he not a captain?’ Emily asked.

  ‘He is a Master and Commander, the senior officer on his vessel, which gifts him the courtesy title of captain, but his substantive rank is lieutenant. Not that it matters. He is a bachelor who has a reputation with the ladies…’

  Emily interrupted him a second time. ‘He is also exceedingly kind, husband. It was he who found me at the Dockyard Commissioner’s house yesterday afternoon – we were taking tea there – to tell me what orders had been posted for you, and to say that he had passed those on to your First Lieutenant, Mr Roscoe.’

  ‘In that he did no more than his duty demanded.’

  ‘I think he exceeded that, husband. For Lieutenant Roscoe informed him that your own personal stores were woefully inadequate. I spent most of the evening before attending the Assembly Rooms accompanied by Captain, I mean Lieutenant Gould, rectifying that.’

  It was Ralph Barclay’s turn to look perplexed, an expression that had Emily opening a drawer to produce a sheaf of bills, which she handed to her husband. As he, with increasing disbelief, read the long list of items she had pledged him to pay for, she kept talking, her voice a mixture of pride and humility, the former to cover her actions, the latter to admit to her need for assistance.

  ‘Of course, I immediately admitted my ignorance to the ladies with whom I was taking tea, that included the Commodore’s wife, and they were most obliging in giving me advice, though I can say the only item that all agreed on was the need for ample vinegar to maintain the sweet-smelling nature of your cabin.’

  Indeed each naval wife had felt it her bounden duty to forego their tea to ensure that Emily, whom they knew to be a novice in such matters, was aware of all the things absolutely necessary to a naval officer going on active service. Quill and paper was produced for the compilation of a list and the air was full of advice to ensure that food was plentiful, wine less so for men were weak creatures in the article of consumption. One lady was loud in praise of lemons, another insisting that tubs of purified goose fat be acquired for her husband’s chest so that good Captain Barclay could ward off the chill without smelling like a common seaman, with the added advice that a bit of flannel next to the skin was efficacious in all weathers. There was tincture of this and extract of that – cheeses were compared for the taste and longevity, butter excoriated in favour of lard because it would go rancid – and all the while the list grew longer.

  ‘I do so hope that you are pleased, husband,’ Emily concluded, a wish that died as soon as he lifted his head from the handful of bills and she saw the look in his eyes, sad rather than angry, reeking of disappointment.

  That was the only emotion he could muster, though inside he wanted to scream blue murder. Of all the people in the world, even furious, Ralph Barclay found it impossible to chastise his young wife in the manner he would another. In a world he saw as having been less than kind to him, a rough twenty years at sea climbing the slippery ladder of promotion, she was the one bright spot of good fortune. All the assaults he had received as a midshipman, all the tirades he had endured from idiotic captains as a lieutenant, and the desire he had to get vengeance on them and all those who had slighted him, faded within the orbit of Emily. He could still not believe that she had consented to marry him, a man seventeen years her senior, her second cousin, who had at the time, with no ship and no expectation of one, severely limited prospects. There was, of course, a family inheritance to protect, but Emily had never even alluded to that nor shown him anything other than happy acquiescence in the match.

  ‘I fear you have been taken advantage of, my dear.’

  ‘How so?’ Emily replied, the pout returning to her face in response to the grave tone of his voice.

  ‘These are the stores an admiral might take to sea, not a mere frigate captain.’

  That was not strictly true – a frigate captain, if he had the means to buy on credit, might well include in his personal stores pipes of fine wine, quality hams both cured and dried, tubs of cheese that would mature and taste better the longer they were left, food salted as well as fresh and enough live animals, pigs, sheep and chickens to ensure good dinners for several months to come.

  ‘I was led to believe,’ she said, eyes now fixed on the floor, ‘that you would wish to entertain both the officers on your ship, as well as those from other vessels, and that your standing amongst them would demand that you kept a good table.’

  ‘I do think, Mrs Barclay, that when it comes to entertaining my fellow officers, I have the right to be consulted.’<
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  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And I do also advance the opinion,’ he continued in a stern tone, ‘that it is likely to make me uncomfortable to return to the station after an absence of only one day, only to be told by a fellow Post Captain that Gould, regardless of the rank by which he is termed, an officer with whom we are bound to have a high degree of contact in the coming weeks, was assiduous in his attentions towards you at an Assembly Room dance, an affair I doubt we would have even attended if I had been in Sheerness.’

  That was wounding. Who was this other captain and what had he said to her husband? Whatever it was, it was not true. While Gould’s attention had been persistent, it had not been excessive – he had not monopolised her attention and she had entered many other names on her dance card, not to still wagging tongues, but merely because she enjoyed dancing, something of which husband Ralph disapproved. The fact that he had gone to London had allowed her the chance to indulge herself in what might be her last dance for months.

  ‘If I have embarrassed you in any way, I am most humbly sorry.’

  ‘Please pack my sea chest, Mrs Barclay, and your own. I must hasten aboard and see how we stand in the matter of weighing anchor.’

  His visit to the ship’s chandler, which time certainly did not permit, in an effort to get him to take back the goods for which Emily had engaged, proved fruitless. She had, of course, been persuaded to buy from the most expensive and rapacious source in the port. He left the warehouse with the stinging rebuke in his ear, one that he had endured in the past and was only too pertinent now, to ‘mind his credit, if he did not want to be had up for debt’.

  Back in the pinnace, being rowed out to his ship, which was surrounded by hoys loading stores, Ralph Barclay calculated what he owned and what he owed, and came to a conclusion that was reflected in the face that came through the gangway, his mood not mollified by the line of waiting officers and midshipmen, the stamp of marine boots or the fluting of Bosun’s pipes. He looked along the deck, glaring at the sight of his men toiling to get all they were due aboard, a task which should by now have been completed. Not one returned that look, or dared to observe their captains disposition too closely, reckoning that if by mischance they caught their commander’s eye, given the mood he was plainly in, it would likely be seen as a challenge and bring down upon them a subsequent chastisement.