The Corvette nd-5

by Ричард Вудмен

  The Corvette

  ( Nathaniel Drinkwater - 5 )

  Ричард Вудмен

  The fifth book in the Nathaniel Drinkwater series

  Commander Drinkwater's experience of battle was what mattered when Earl St Vincent entrusted Drinkwater with his new command — as escort to the Arctic whaling fleet on its annual expedition to the Greenland seas. With the French established as masters of the war upon trade, violent action ensued.

  The Corvette

  Richard Woodman

  For my Mother

  PART ONE

  The Convoy

  '… and there came a report that the French were away to murder a' our whalers…'

  The Man O' War's Man BILL TRUCK

  London

  May 1803

  'He has what?'

  The First Lord of the Admiralty swung round from the window, suddenly attentive. He fixed a baleful eye on the clerk holding the bundle of papers from which he was making his routine report.

  'Resigned, my Lord.'

  'Resigned? Resigned, God damn and blast him! What does he think the Service is that he may resign it at a whim? Eh?'

  The clerk prudently remained silent as Earl St Vincent crossed the fathom of Indian carpet that lay between the window and his desk. He leaned forward, both hands upon the desk, his face approximating the colour of the Bath ribbon that crossed his breast in anticipation of a court levée later in the morning. He looked up at Mr Templeton.

  Considerably taller than the first lord, Templeton nevertheless felt his lack of stature before St Vincent. Although used to his lordship's anger, his lordship's power never failed to impress him. The earl continued, his deep frustration obvious to the clerk.

  'As if I have not enough with the war renewed and the dockyards but imperfectly overhauled, that I have to teach a damned kill-buck his duty. Good God, sir, the Service is not to be trifled with like a regiment. It has become altogether too fashionable.'

  St Vincent spat the word with evident distaste. Since the Peace of Amiens he had laboured to clean the dockyards of corruption, to stock them with naval stores and to end the peculation and jobbery which beset the commissariat of his rival, Sir Andrew Snape Hammond, Comptroller of the Navy and head of the powerful Navy Board. He had found suppression of mutiny in the Cadiz squadron an easier task. He could not hang every grasping malefactor who stole His Majesty's stores, nor break every profiteer in the business of supplying His Majesty's Navy. Yet his affection for his ships and their well-being demanded it, and his honest opposition to the worldliness of the London politicians had made him many enemies.

  Lord St Vincent hunched his shoulders and wiped his nose on a fine linen handkerchief. Templeton knew the gesture. The explosion of St Vincent's accumulated frustration would be through the touch-hole of his office, since his opponents stopped his muzzle.

  'Be so kind, Templeton, as to add upon the skin of Sir James Palgrave's file that he is not to be employed again during the present war…'

  'Yes my Lord.' St Vincent turned back to the window and his contemplation of the waving tree-tops in St James's Park. It was now his only eye upon the sky he had watched from a hundred quarterdecks. Templeton waited. St Vincent considered the folly of allowing a man a post-captaincy on account of his baronetcy. He recollected Palgrave; an indifferent lieutenant with an indolent fondness for fortified wines and a touchy sense of honour. It was perhaps a result of the inconsequence of his title. St Vincent, whose own honours had been earned by merit, disliked inherited rank when it eclipsed the abilities of better men. Properly the replacement of Palgrave should not concern the First Lord. But there was a matter of some importance attached to the appointment.

  Templeton coughed. 'And the Melusine, my Lord?' St Vincent remained silent. 'Bearing in mind the urgency of her orders and the intelligence…'

  'Why did he resign, Templeton?' asked St Vincent suddenly.

  'I do not know, my Lord.' It was not the business of the Secretary's third clerk to trade in rumour, no matter how impeccable the source, nor how fascinating it sounded in the copy-room. But Sir James's hurried departure was said to stem from an inconvenient wound acquired in an illegal duel with the master of one of the ships he had been ordered to convoy. Templeton covered his dissimulation: 'And the Melusine, my Lord? It would seem she was in your gift.'

  St Vincent looked up sharply. Only recent illness, a congestive outbreak of spring catarrh among the senior clerks, and including his Lordship's secretary Benjamin Tucker, had elevated Templeton to this daily tête-à-tête with the First Lord. Templeton flushed at his presumption.

  'I beg pardon, my Lord, I meant only to allude to the intelligence…'

  'Quite so, the intelligence had not escaped my recollection, Templeton,' St Vincent said sharply, and added ironically, 'whom had you in mind?'

  'No one, my Lord,' blustered the clerk, now thoroughly alarmed that the omniscient old man might know of his connection with Francis Germaney, first lieutenant of the Melusine.

  'Then who is applying, sir? Surely we are not in want of commanders for the King's ships?'

  The barb drove home. 'Indeed not, my Lord.' The clerks' office was inundated daily with letters of application for employment by half-pay captains, commanders and lieutenants. All were neatly returned from the secretary's inner sanctum where the process of advancement or rejection ground its pitiless and partial way.

  'Bring me the names of the most persistent applicants within the last month, sir, and jump to it.'

  Templeton escaped with the alacrity of a chastened midshipman while St Vincent, all unseeing, stared at the rolling cumulus, white above the chimneys of Downing Street.

  Since the renewal of the war two weeks earlier, officers on the half-pay of unemployment had been clamouring for appointments. The lieutenant's waiting-room below him was filled with hopeful officers, a bear-pit of demands and disappointments from which the admiralty messengers would be making a fortune in small coin, God rot them. St Vincent sighed, aware that his very overhaul of the navy had caused a dangerous hiatus in the nation's defences. Now the speed with which the fleet was recommissioning was being accomplished only by a reversion to the old vices of bribery, corruption and the blind eye of official condonement. St Vincent felt overwhelmed with chagrin while his worldly enemies, no longer concerned by the First Lord's zealous honesty, smiled with cynical condescension. Templeton's return broke the old man's bitter reverie.

  'Well?'

  'Three, my Lord,' said Templeton, short of breath from his haste. 'There are three whose persistence has been most marked.'

  'Go on, sir, go on.'

  'White, my Lord, Captain Richard White…'

  'Too senior for a sloop, but he must have the next forty-four, pray do you note that…'

  'Very well, my Lord. Then there is Yelland. He did prodigious well at Copenhagen…'

  St Vincent sniffed. Whatever Yelland had done at Copenhagen was not enough to overcome the First Lord's prejudice. Templeton, aware that his own desire to please was bordering on the effusive, contrived to temporise: 'Though of course he is only a commander…'

  'Just so, Templeton. Melusine is a twenty, a post-ship. Who is the third?'

  'Er… Drinkwater, my Lord. Oh I beg your pardon he is also only a commander.'

  'No matter,' St Vincent mused on the name, trying to recall a face. 'Drinkwater?'

  'I shall have to return…' began Templeton unhappily, but the First Lord cut him off.

  'Read me his file. We may appoint him temporarily without the necessity of making him post.'

  Templeton's nerve was near breaking point. In attempting to shuffle the files several papers came loose and floated down onto the rich carpet. He was beginning to regre
t his rapid promotion and thank his stars it was only temporary. He had forgotten all about his promises to his kinsman on the Melusine.

  'Er, Nathaniel Drinkwater, my Lord, commissioned lieutenant October 1797 after Camperdown. First of the brig Hellebore sent on special service to the Red Sea by order of Lord Nelson. Lieutenant-in-command of the bomb tender Virago during the Baltic Campaign, promoted Master and Commander for his services prior to and during the battle of Copenhagen on the recommendation of both Parker and Nelson. Lately wounded in Lord Nelson's bombardment of Boulogne the same year and invalided of his wound until his present persistent application, my Lord.'

  St Vincent nodded. 'I have him now. I recollect him boarding Victory in '98 off Cadiz before Nelson incurred their lordships' displeasure for sending that brig round Africa. Did he not bring back the Antigone?'

  Templeton flicked the pages. 'Yes, my Lord. The Antigone, French National Frigate was purchased into the Service.'

  'H'm.' St Vincent considered the matter. He remembered Mr Drinkwater was no youngster as a lieutenant in 1798. Yet St Vincent had remarked him then and had a vague recollection of a firm mouth and a pair of steady grey eyes that spoke of a quiet ability. And he had impressed both Parker and Nelson, no mean feat given the differences between the two men, whilst his record and his persistent applications marked him as an energetic officer. Maturity and energy were just the combination wanted for the Melusine if the intelligence reports were accurate. St Vincent began to cheer up. Palgrave had not been his choice, for he had commanded Melusine throughout the Peace, a fact that said more about Palgrave's influence than his ability.

  'There's one other thing, my Lord,' offered Templeton, eager to re-establish his own reputation in his lordship's eyes.

  'What is it?'

  'Drinkwater, sir,' said the clerk, plucking the fact from the file like a low trump from a bad hand, 'has been employed on secret service before: the cutter Kestrel, my Lord, employed by Lord Dungarth's department.'

  A gleam of triumph showed in St Vincent's eye. 'That clinches it, Templeton. Have a letter of appointment drawn up for my signature before eight bells… noon, Templeton, noon, and instructions for Captain Drinkwater to attend here with all despatch.' He paused reflecting. 'Desire him to wait upon me on Friday.'

  'Yes, my Lord.' Templeton bent to retrieve the papers scattered about the floor. St Vincent returned to his window.

  'Does one smoke a viper from his nest, Templeton?' The clerk looked up.

  'Beg pardon, my Lord, but I do not know.'

  'No matter, but let us see what Captain Drinkwater can manage, eh?'

  'Yes, my Lord.' Templeton looked up from the carpet, aware that his lordship was no longer angry with him. He wondered if the unknown Captain Drinkwater knew that the First Lord's receiving hours were somewhat eccentric and doubted it. He reflected that there were conditions to the patronage of so punctilious a First Lord as John Jervis, Earl St Vincent.

  'Be so kind as to have my carriage sent round, Templeton.'

  The clerk rose, his bundle of papers clasped against his chest. 'At once, my Lord.' He was already formulating the letter to his kinsman aboard the Melusine:

  My Dear Germaney,

  In my diurnal consultations with his excellency The First Lord, I have arranged for your new commander to he Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater. He is not to be made post, hut appointed as Job Captain so there is hope yet for your own advancement…

  Chapter One

  The Job Captain

  May 1803

  ' Non, m'sieur, non… Pardon,' Monsieur Bescond smote his forehead with the palm of his right hand and switched to heavily accented English. 'The shoulder, Capitaine, it must be 'igher. More… 'ow you say? Elevated.'

  Drinkwater gritted his teeth. The pain in his shoulder was still maddening but it was an ache now, a manageable sensation after the agony of splintered bone and torn muscle. And he could not blame Bescond. He had voluntarily submitted himself to this rigorous daily exercise to stretch the butchered fibres of his shoulder whose scars now ran down into the right upper arm and joined the remains of an old wound given him by the French agent Santhonax. That had been in a dark alley in Sheerness the year of the Great Mutiny and he had endured the dull pain in wet or cold weather these past six years.

  Monsieur Bescond, the emigre attorney turned fencing master, recalled him to his purpose. Drinkwater came on guard again and felt his sword arm trembling with the effort. The point of his foil seemed to waver violently and as Bescond stepped back he lunged suddenly lest his opponent notice the appalling quivering.

  Mr Quilhampton's attention was elsewhere. The foible of Drinkwater's foil bent satisfyingly against the padding of Quilhampton's plastron.

  'Bravo, M'sieur, tres bien… that was classical in its simplicity. And for you, M'sieur,' he said addressing Quilhampton and avoiding the necessity of using his name, 'you must never let your attention wander.'

  Pleased with his unlooked for success Drinkwater terminated the lesson by removing his mask before Quilhampton could avenge himself.

  'Were you distracted, James?' Whipping off his own mask Quilhampton nodded in the direction of the door. Drinkwater turned.

  'Yes, Tregembo, what is it?'

  Drinkwater peeled off his plastron and gauntlet. His shirt stuck to his lean body, still emaciated after his wounding. A few loose locks of hair had escaped the queue and were plasted down the side of his head.

  'I brought it as soon as I saw the seal, zur,' rumbled the old Cornishman as he handed the packet to Drinkwater. Quilhampton caught sight of the red wafer of the Admiralty with its fouled anchor device as Drinkwater tore it open.

  Waiting with quickening pulse Quilhampton regarded his old commander with mounting impatience. He saw the colour drain from Drinkwater's face so that the thin scar on the left cheek and the blue powder burns above the eye seemed abruptly conspicuous.

  'What is it, m'sieur? Not bad news?' Bescond too watched anxiously. He had come to admire the thin sea-officer with the drooping shoulder and his even skinnier companion with the wooden left hand. To Bescond they personified the dogged resistance of his adopted country to the monsters beyond the Channel who had massacred his parents and driven a pitchfork into the belly of his pregnant wife.

  'Mr Q,' said Drinkwater with sudden formality, ignoring the Frenchman.

  'Sir?' answered Quilhampton, aware that the contents of the packet had transformed the salle d'armes into a quarterdeck.

  'It seems we have a ship at last! M. Bescond, my best attentions to you, I give you good day. Tregembo, my coat! God's bones, Mr Q, I have been made a "Job Captain", appointed to a sloop of war!'

  An elated James Quilhampton accompanied Drinkwater to his house in Petersfield High Street. Since his widowed mother had obtained him a midshipman's berth on the brig Hellebore, thanks to the good offices of Lieutenant Drinkwater, Quilhampton had considered himself personally bound to his senior. Slight though Drinkwater's influence was, Quilhampton recognised the fact that he had no other patron. He therefore accorded Drinkwater an absolute loyalty that was the product of his generous nature. His own mother's close ties with Elizabeth Drinkwater had made him an intimate of the house in the High Street and it had been Quilhampton who, with Mr Lettsom, late surgeon of the bomb vessel Virago, had brought Drinkwater home after his terrible wounding off Boulogne.

  To Quilhampton the Drinkwater household represented 'home' more than the mean lodgings his mother maintained. Louise Quilhampton, a pretty, talkative widow assisted Elizabeth Drinkwater in a school run for the poor children of the town and surrounding villages. Her superficial qualities were a foil to Mistress Drinkwater's and she was more often to be found in the house of her friend where her frivolous chatter amused five-year-old Charlotte Amelia and the tiny and newest arrival in the Drinkwater menage, Richard Madoc.

  James Quilhampton was as much part of the family as his mother had become. He had restrained Charlotte Amelia from interfering while her father sat
for his portrait to the French prisoner of war, Gaston Bruilhac. And he had rescued her from a beating by Susan Tregembo, the cook, who had caught the child climbing over a fire to touch the cleverly applied worms of yellow and brown paint with which Bruilhac had painted the epaulette to mark Drinkwater's promotion to Master and Commander. That had been in the fall of the year one, when Drinkwater had returned from the Baltic and before he rejoined Lord Nelson for the fateful attack on Boulogne.

  Quilhampton smiled at the recollection now as he looked at Bruilhac's creditable portrait and waited for Drinkwater to return from informing Elizabeth of their imminent departure.

  That single epaulette which had so fascinated little Charlotte Amelia ought properly to have been transferred to Drinkwater's right shoulder, Quilhampton thought. Apart from concealing the drooping shoulder it was scandalous that Drinkwater had not been made post-captain for his part in extricating the boats after Nelson's daring night attack had failed. Their Lordships did not like failure and Quilhampton considered his patron had suffered because there were those in high places who were not sorry to see another of Nelson's enterprises fail.

  Quilhampton shook his head, angry that even now their Lordships had stopped short of giving Drinkwater the post-rank he deserved. Allowed the title 'captain' only by courtesy, Commander Drinkwater had been made a 'Job Captain', given an acting appointment while the real commander of His Britannic Majesty's Sloop Melusine was absent. It was damned unfair, particularly after the wounding Drinkwater had suffered off Boulogne.

  The young master's mate had spent hours reading to the feverish Drinkwater as he lay an invalid. And then, ironically, peace had replaced war by an uneasy truce that few thought would last but which made those who had suffered loss acutely conscious of their sacrifices. The inactivity eroded the difference in rank between the two men and replaced it with friendship. Strangers who encountered Drinkwater convalescing with energetic ascents of Butser Hill in Quilhampton's company, were apt to think them brothers. From the summit of the hill they watched the distant Channel for hours, Drinkwater constantly requesting reports on any sails sighted by Quilhampton through the telescope. And boy-like they dodged the moralising rector on his lugubrious visits.