By the Mast Divided

by David Donachie

  A gun boomed from the built-up shore, and everyone stopped pulling as all eyes turned towards the puff of smoke it created. To Pearce, looking aft, those on deck, officers and seamen alike, seemed for a second to be frozen in tableau. That did not last; Barclay appeared, hatless and looking to be in a foul mood, so the officers began to yell even louder at their various parties, as did Kemp. Abel Scrivens was slow to respond, and stood looking at the shore, which earned him a stinging blow across his shoulders.

  ‘Will you get your back into it, they’ve made our number,’ spat Kemp, his face furious. Having no idea what the bosun’s mate was talking about, Scrivens failed to move at the required speed, and was forced to cower as he received another swipe, which had Pearce interposing his own frame between the bosun’s mate and that of the older man to prevent a third.

  Face to face with Kemp, he could see nothing but venom in his eyes, and total contempt in his expression, while at his back he heard the whimper of an old man who had been hurt, perhaps as much in his self-esteem as in the flesh. ‘I think you have harmed him enough.’

  ‘It’ll be you that’ll feel the pain if you don’t step aside.’

  ‘I can take pain,’ Pearce hissed, sick to death of being on the receiving end of other people’s malice, ‘and be assured that there will come a time when I can also mete it out.’

  The flicker of doubt that flashed through Kemp’s eyes was enough to tell Pearce he had succeeded, planting in the man’s mind some notion of future retribution. For a bully, that was enough to induce caution.

  ‘Get back to work.’

  ‘Mister Roscoe,’ Pearce heard Barclay call, ‘my cabin if you please.’

  Ralph Barclay could not sort out the watch bills by himself. He might know the warrant and petty officers, but when it came to knowledge of the crew Roscoe, with his constant contact, knew more than he. The task was to balance the two elements that made up each watch so that they matched each other in skill and numbers – the right quantity of topmen per watch, including the older ship’s boys who would deal with the highest yards; men to man the wheel and haul on the falls that controlled the sails, each group working four on four off while the others slept or idled below, with the caveat that should they go into battle over eighty percent of the crew must be able to work the guns or take station to fire from the tops.

  ‘This will not be written in stone, Mr Roscoe,’ he said. ‘We have too many landsmen for that.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘The pilot?’ Barclay asked.

  ‘Already aboard, sir.’

  Every minute of delay endangered the ship. The pilot had been in the wardroom for over an hour, with the Commodore’s gun banging and HMS Brilliant’s number on his signal mast above the order to weigh immediately. The man who was supposed to take them safely downriver would, as like as not, be so drunk as to be incapable before the frigate finally complied with its orders. That was not unusual – pilots as a breed were addicted to the bottle and not shy of demanding that craving be satisfied.

  ‘I need a time, Mr Roscoe?’ demanded Barclay, as that infernal signal gun banged out yet again. Every other captain at anchor would be laughing up his sleeve at him, while secretly thanking God it was not himself on the receiving end of the Commodore’s impatience.

  ‘I would say as soon as the men have been fed, sir.’

  This was imparted with some passion – Roscoe was clearly worried that Barclay would deny the crew that before they weighed, for they were, as the captain himself was well aware, disgruntled that dinner and the spirits they were entitled to before that, had been delayed.

  ‘Then you have my permission to tell the cook to get his coppers lit,’ Barclay said, before adding, ‘I want that we come off river discipline on the first dogwatch. Come dawn, whatever our position, all hands are to stand to quarters as if we were at sea.’

  That surprised Roscoe, and Barclay knew he might well be gilding it, for they could very well still be in the lower reaches of the Thames. But he wanted his ship to be an efficient weapon of war in record time, which meant working up the crew to sea duty as soon as it was humanly possible.

  ‘I would point out, sir,’ Roscoe protested, ‘that many of the men have yet to be allotted any station for that. We could have mayhem.’

  ‘We will not have that, Mr Roscoe, because you, along with the other officers, will ensure we do not. A certain muddle is inevitable – I do not expect everything to be just the thing. Dawn will not be for some three hours in this part of the year, ample time after the men are roused to get matters organised without anyone on any nearby ship observing the confusion.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Emily Barclay, emerging from a side cabin. ‘Am I disturbing you?’

  Roscoe had shot to his feet, careful to duck his bare head to avoid cracking it on the deck timbers, while Emily’s husband had eased his backside a fraction off his chair. ‘My dear, I think Mr Roscoe and I are done, are we not?’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  Emily had only met Roscoe on two occasions, both ashore, and found him very stiff and formal. On the first her husband had made the introduction, which, having already been appraised of the nature of their relationship, accounted for his manner. But the second time had been the previous night at the Assembly Rooms and then he had been excessively reserved. Her sex and station made it impossible for her to encourage him to add his name to her dance card, and he had shown no inclination to place it there – indeed he had actively sought to avoid the sociable look in her eye. She suspected that, regardless of his opinion of her husband, he did not approve of her presence aboard ship.

  ‘I have been knitting, lieutenant, a comforter for my husband, to wear under his foul weather clothes when the weather is inclement.’

  Roscoe’s look made her feel foolish. Of course, with his lazy half face he had to work for any expression, but there was not a trace of a smile at yet another effort to be friendly.

  ‘With your permission, sir,’ Roscoe said, ‘I will be about my duties.’

  ‘Certainly,’ Barclay replied, ‘but be so good as to send my coxswain to me.’

  ‘He does not like me, Captain Barclay,’ Emily said, as the door closed behind him.

  ‘Nonsense, my dear! He is shy of your sex, that is all. I doubt Roscoe has much experience of ladies outside the…’ Barclay had to clear his throat then, as he had been about to say whorehouse, which was not a word to be used in polite company, let alone that of his wife. ‘From the little I know his family is all males, brothers.’

  ‘There must, in all conscience, husband,’ replied Emily, with a twinkle in her eye, ‘have been one lady in the house. It is a necessity of reproduction, I believe.’

  The remark jarred, being almost too much like deck language, not blasphemous but outré, until Ralph Barclay recalled that Emily was almost of a different generation, one perhaps where liberties such as the one she had just taken might need to be forgiven.

  ‘Of course, but I alluded to a lack of sisters, who are less inclined to indulge a son than a mother, who for the sake of nature is free with her partiality.’

  Ralph Barclay had three sisters and Emily had watched the way they twittered around him, the head of the family, terming him their hero and flattering him for a wit that he could hardly be said to possess. They were, to her mind, mighty silly creatures, but of course she could not say so. She could only think that if she had possessed any reservations about coming to sea with her husband, the prospect of being left at home in Somerset with that trio had spurred her to bury them.

  ‘Tell me, my dear, what do you think of your new home?’

  ‘It is all very strange.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  With her husband looking at her expectantly, Emily was in a quandary. There were many unpleasant things about being aboard; it was cramped in the extreme, and in terms of creature comforts sadly lacking – no pictures adorned the walls and what furniture had come aboard was functional rather than eye-cat
ching. Some of the smells she had experienced, especially on her short tour of the ship, had made her thankful that she had brought aboard a batch of herbs to make a nosegay, and there seemed to be no one for her to talk to. Poor Captain Barclay was buried under the pressure of his labours, the only other woman, the wife of the gunner, had shown a marked disinclination to share intimacies, no doubt due to Emily’s rank, though there was hope that would alter with time. The officers and midshipmen were polite but silent, going no further than a raised hat, and connection to anyone below that was impossible, and very likely forbidden. Shenton, the steward, was not used to the needs of females, nor overburdened with what could be termed decent manners and had already barged into the side cabin after only the most perfunctory knock.

  ‘I am sure,’ she replied, walking round the desk to touch her husband’s shoulder, ‘I will come to love it so much that I will scream when you try to put me ashore.’

  Ralph Barclay laid his hand on hers, positively cooing. ‘Take the word of an old salt, my dear, the day will come when you will scream to be ashore, for that is a state everyone reaches who goes to sea. But I would want you happy now.’

  ‘When will we be able to invite your officers to dinner?’ The sudden look in his eyes, a change from tender affection to a flash of annoyance had her adding, ‘I would so like to feed up little Mr Burns – am I allowed to call him Toby? He looked so peeked when I came aboard.’

  Ralph Barclay had softened his look, though inwardly he was still taut. Thanks to Emily he had the means to entertain his officers royally, and her question had reminded him of that. But it had also reminded him of the fact that his deck officers were not his choice. Sam Hood had foisted them on him, so the natural inclination to be social with them was lacking.

  ‘You may call him Toby in private, my dear,’ Barclay replied, hedging round the main question, ‘but it would be a mistake to do so on deck, or even if he was our guest at dinner. As to entertaining the officers, let us get to sea, for I fear that you will observe me being stiff with all of them until the ship is properly worked up. I must also tell you that it is deuced difficult to be continually barking at a fellow one minute, which the nature of my duty demands, then hosting him to a meal the next.’

  The knock at the door saved further explanation, as the shout of ‘Enter’ brought in Hale, her husband’s coxswain, who immediately whipped off his tarred hat and knuckled his forehead, while at the same time shoving a quid of tobacco, which he had been chewing, into the side of his mouth.

  ‘Mr Hale,’ Emily said, noting the numerous scratches that covered the coxswain’s face. ‘I am very pleased to see you again.’

  ‘Why that’s right kind of you, Mrs Barclay,’ Hale replied, his knobbly face creased with pleasure, the number of missing teeth rendered visible by a wide smile that showed, in a rather unpleasant way, the brown, tobacco-stained remainder.

  Here was another person Emily thought she must get to know better, for Hale had served with her husband for many years, and had turned up to attend his captain at their wedding, walking all the way from Portsmouth to Frome, a distance of some seventy miles. He had brought a gift of a pair of embroidered linen handkerchiefs that must have cost much more than he could afford, which served to mark the depth of his respect and loyalty. The bond that lay between them was obvious in the way Hale had been greeted by her husband at the churchyard, with equal respect. Here was a man that Captain Ralph Barclay trusted absolutely. The thought struck Emily, that from Lemuel Hale she might learn more about her husband than she would ever glean from his own lips.

  ‘I be right sorry, Mrs Barclay,’ Hale said, twisting his stiff black hat in his gnarled hands, smile now gone, ‘that you was forced to hire a pair of Medway brutes and their wherry to get yourself aboard the barky. Should have been me that fetched you, it bein’ like my duty.’

  ‘I am sure you had other duties more important to perform, Mr Hale.’

  ‘Still, I made plain to Mr Roscoe that it weren’t right, respectful like, but plain, but he would not spare me a boat and the men to crew it.’

  Ralph Barclay shook his head slowly and tut-tutted at such pettiness, but she could only nod, feeling a marked reluctance to enter into any discussion with the likes of Hale regarding any of the officers, and particularly Lieutenant Roscoe. At the very least it would be tactless, and quite possibly downright perilous, for Emily was already aware of some of the currents of friction that existed. Besides, it was a golden rule drummed into her by her own mother that one did not discuss one’s peers with servants.

  The fact that the two men obviously had some service matter to discuss saved her from any response and obliged her to move to the coach, the small side cabin which had been set aside for her as a place of ease, leaving her husband and Hale to their business.

  As the morning wore on, a gun banged every half hour and each time they heard it those in command looked towards the shore with a troubled expression, before yelling at their parties to demand greater effort. During that time Pearce warmed more and more to Michael O’Hagan, for the Irishman, a prodigious worker, had a happy knack of getting under the skin of those put over him with seemingly innocent, softly delivered enquiries, questions that had Pearce struggling not to laugh out loud.

  ‘Would you be after explaining to me now,’ he enquired of some fellow in a blue coat, ‘what it is you mean by stays, as any of those I ever saw were on a lady and never made of rope?’ That answered, he had another, which earned him a swipe. ‘Would them blessed stays you were telling me about, be like to hold in what you’re after calling the waist?’

  Michael got in another telling dig when Kemp showed them the heads, and the common sailors’ place of easement, no more than an exposed wooden seat facing the prow with a hole that led to the filthy detritus-filled water that lapped against the side of the frigate. Kemp, eager that they should not mistake their station, pointed to another privy, one with a door. ‘This here roundhouse, which be shut off from wind and weather, ain’t for the likes of you. This be for those with the rank to go with the privilege.’

  ‘Well, John-boy,’ said Michael, with a look of wonder. ‘There’ll be a right rank stink emanating from that quarter. Happen we’re better off in the fresh air.’

  All the pressed men had felt a rattan cane on their backs at some time during the morning, but Michael seemed almost to go out of his way to encourage it, never once, to the further annoyance of those given charge of him, letting them know that he had even felt their blows. Abel Scrivens got his repeatedly for feeble inability and squealed like a stuck pig each time it happened, seemingly unaware that such a carrying sound tended to encourage a second blow. There were two others in the same mould, grey faced coves of the kind he had seen too much of in the Bridewell, who looked set to collapse, and for reasons he did not bother to explore, Pearce set himself to alleviate their suffering as he had Abel’s, time and again getting his own body in between them and whoever was close enough to clout them. O’Hagan did likewise, and managed half their work as well, which went some way to getting the three of them through the hours of toil.

  With Gherson, Pearce experienced the overwhelming temptation to borrow the rattan himself and give him a good hiding. When not grinning inanely at any passing sailor in the hope of eliciting some favour he moaned incessantly without ever seeming to consider that everyone else had suffered an equal loss of liberty. He refused to put any extra effort in where it might have aided another – indeed he was able to avoid labour while seeming to be extremely busy. He was lazy in a manner that was clearly endemic to his nature, yet he had the knack of never being near the means of an administered punishment when his ruses failed – that always seemed to devolve on to another back.

  The pressed men had scant contact with the crew, most of whom would grunt at them as a form of communication rather than speak, though it was clear they were just as busy, and in many cases no less put upon. There was an occasional audible complaint that they were ‘str
apped’ from not yet having had their dinner, which, with the coppers only just lit, was ‘like to be held back in the face of all custom.’ It was as if the newcomers were an alien species, though John Pearce noticed that in some cases the look in a man’s eyes didn’t always correspond to the grating tone of his voice. If it wasn’t sympathy it was at least an understanding, the same kind of look he had had from that fellow who had sought to accost him in the back room of the Pelican just before he clouted him. It did nothing to soften his feelings for them – he despised them – and he made sure in his returned looks that they had a clear idea of how he felt.

  Pearce had seen the fellow he’d clobbered several times, moving between the points at which he was working and the bows of the ship, had heard him called Dysart, and noted that he had a bit of Scotch about his accent when he replied. He wondered if he might seek retribution for a blow that had left him wearing a bandage under his hat. But there was no sign of animosity. Soon the deck was nearly clear of stores and the work began to slack off as the ship was tidied to the satisfaction of the Premier, who had finally left Digby in command.

  There had been no sight of the little marine, though Pearce gave a smile when Charlie told him what he had done to make his nose bleed again. Normally Pearce would sympathise with the immature and vulnerable; was he already so corrupted by the harshness of the Navy as to take pleasure in pain being visited on one so young? A single hate-filled look from the boy, when he finally did espy him, disabused Pearce of any compassion. He watched young Martin make his way into the rigging and forgot about him, until a belaying pin landed no more than a foot from where his head would have been had he not been moving, and a glance aloft showed him the little bastard grimacing from above, furious with himself no doubt for having missed.