A Ship for The King

by Richard Woodman

  ‘It is astonishing, is it not, Kit, that two ladies-in-waiting whom, one would have thought, possessed refined tastes, can so be-powder a few square feet of wretched cabin-space that it looks as though a market has been held herein?’

  ‘Well, I suppose . . .’

  ‘Oh, you suppose the luscious Mistress Villiers inhabited one such hutch and made it a bower of unrequited love, do you?’

  ‘Oh, hold your tongue!’ His reaction surprised Faulkner himself.

  ‘Come, Kit, she was a flirt – a damned pretty flirt, I’ll grant you, but a flirt nonetheless – and a cousin distant to his High-and-Mightyness the Duke of Muckingham.’

  ‘Oh, come now,’ Faulkner responded, ‘Buckingham was not so bad. He seemed civil enough to me.’

  ‘Of course he did. He beguiles the susceptible. Now see how you are defending him. The man bends for the King – what good will come from that unnatural conjunction?’

  Faulkner fell silent. The truth was he remained ill-at-ease over the entire voyage. Of course, he had no hope of seeing Katherine Villiers again, had no expectations of further advancement, despite Buckingham’s encouragement – which he took for mere condescending civility on the Duke’s part – and remained concerned about the animus he must have aroused in Rutland. Indeed, as he smartened himself up for Mainwaring’s dinner, his most profound hope was to escape and return to Bristol and the life of mate aboard the Swallow or another merchantman. All hopes of advancement in the King’s service had evaporated, not least because his encounters with Rutland, Buckingham, even the lovely Katherine, had disarmed his ambition and made him realize his inadequacies and the impediment of his low birth. That was something he could only disguise in the short-term – exposure was, in the end, inevitable. He should henceforth count himself lucky to have come thus far, and return to trade and the merchants’ service.

  The dinner was a convivial enough affair; Mainwaring’s generosity lubricated the occasion, encouraging Brenton’s irreverent sparking and drawing from Edward Slessor a short but pointed diatribe on the unwisdom of courtly influence on the sea-service. Mainwaring presided genially, his easy manner demonstrating his skill at handling others. Only Faulkner failed to enjoy the evening, his reticence seemingly overwhelming him so that he was tempted to get drunk at Mainwaring’s expense and would have done so had not Slessor’s words given him pause for thought, for it was clear that Slessor’s inspiration arose in part from Rutland’s attitude towards Faulkner. Slessor did not mention either the admiral or his junior colleague, nor was it clear what he thought of Faulkner, which had at least the effect of diverting Faulkner’s thoughts from himself. Instead he toyed with the unlikely idea of continuing in the naval service before rejecting it, and in doing so realized that the officers were rising – somewhat unsteadily – from their seats. He followed suit, only to be restrained by Mainwaring who motioned for him to remain behind.

  ‘A word with you, Kit,’ he said with the quiet intimacy of former times, as he bid the rest of his guests goodnight. Fortunately, Slessor was amused at some remark of Brenton’s while Whiting and the others had already withdrawn. When they had gone, Mainwaring indicated to Faulkner that he should be seated. ‘A word with you, if you please,’ he repeated, and Faulkner again felt the cold hand of apprehension seize his stomach.

  ‘I am well pleased with you, Kit, notwithstanding your, er, contretemps with my Lord of Rutland.’ Mainwaring smiled and Faulkner bowed his head.

  ‘I apologise, Sir Henry, for forcing you to the extremity of intervening on my behalf. It was perhaps foolish of me to have engaged Mistress Villiers in such intimacy as I did . . .’

  Mainwaring waved his explanation aside. ‘Between ourselves, it did not do the admiral any harm to mind his manners for, in all justice, his appointment to flag rank was exactly what I am opposed to, as are those of us intent, by command of the King and the Commissioners he set so recently above us, to man His Majesty’s ships with only competent officers – though I daresay we shall have to accommodate and make allowances for the high-born from time to time.’ Mainwaring paused a moment, gathering his thoughts. ‘What I have to say to you bears directly upon you and your prospects. Whether or not Mistress Villiers plays any part in them,’ he added with a wry smile, ‘is a matter for yourself, but I must caution you to be wary where the Duke is concerned. He showed an interest in you, and this may have been on my recommendation as a tarpaulin officer of merit and prospect, but might be from some personal desire of His Grace towards your person in a less flattering manner, if you take my meaning.’

  ‘If I take your meaning, Sir Henry, I must, perforce, be most careful.’

  ‘Indeed. In such circumstances a healthy interest in Mistress Villiers may be out of place, but would not be inappropriate.’

  ‘I thank you for your advice.’ Faulkner made to rise from his seat, but Mainwaring put up his hand to restrain him.

  ‘There is more, Kit. I am charged by His Grace whom, for all his sodomitical faults, does not lack energy or determination to do good by the King’s service. You and Brenton have promise and I would see you continue in it. My Lord Duke and the Commissioners of the Naval Board had the task of reforming the Service and have put their hands to the building of new ships, ten in five years, of which the last two have most recently been put in commission. Four of these – the St George, St Andrew, Swiftsure and Bonaventure – were most recently in our company. Much is therefore afoot and, hearing some word that you were minded to return to Strange’s employ, I thought it better to offer you some more permanent part in what is under way.’

  Faulkner was surprised and coloured at the reference to his intended return to the merchants’ service. ‘I had intended to speak with you, Sir Henry. I am in want of sufficient funds to continue in the King’s Service without some assurance of payment. As you well know I am without means and I do not wish to be a burden upon yourself.’

  ‘You need not labour the point and you are not a burden. Believe me, if you accept my offer, I shall make certain that you are not idle. To this end I am going to make over to you thirty-two shares in the vessels in which I have an interest, and by which means you will enter into partnership with myself and Gideon Strange. Spread among five or six ships, they will yield you a small competence to which additional benefits will undoubtedly accrue. Gideon will attend to the matter of business insofar as it is necessary, leaving you to more effectively assist me in the implementation of those reforms, surveys and reorganisations that the Naval Board deem requisite. I will do all in my power to advance you, though it will be necessary for you to venture from my protection and make a name for yourself when opportunity arises.’ Mainwaring paused, looking at his young protégé for a moment, before asking, ‘Come now, what do you say?’

  Faulkner shook his head. ‘Sir Henry,’ he said, a catch in his voice, ‘what can I say but express my gratitude for all the interest you have taken in me. You have been most kind. It is true that, not knowing what the future held for me in your own service, I was contemplating returning to Bristol. But now that you have so graciously—’

  ‘My dear Kit,’ Mainwaring broke in impatiently, ‘will you cease this prattle. You are beginning to sound too like a damned courtier for my liking. My motives are entirely devoted to the King’s Service, for which I think you are an ideal officer and I would simply have it so. Since you still wear the King’s sash I could order you, but I prefer to carry you within the stream of my intention. So, yea or nay?’

  Faulkner rose to his feet and held out his hand. ‘A most assured yea, Sir Henry.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Mainwaring took his outstretched hand and wrung it warmly, then Faulkner turned and left the great cabin. For a moment Mainwaring stared after the younger man. ‘Excellent,’ he breathed, sitting down and reaching for his pipe. What an odd encounter that had been all those years ago, when he and Gideon had walked back to the Swallow and found Mr Rat scavenging for food. Suppose they had not had an eye for the apple-seller a
nd bought of her wares? Would he otherwise have extended a charitable hand to the starveling? He doubted it, yet there were certain acts of expiation a man had to carry out if he sought redemption from charges of piracy. Besides, he had sworn to work in the interests of the King in exchange for his pardon. He had made enemies, though. Rutland would probably not forgive him his impudence! And as for Lord Zouch at Dover, well there was no love lost between them. In the end he could only launch Mr Rat upon the wide waters of the world. For his personal voyage, the young man would have to find his own fair winds. As for Mistress Villiers . . .

  ‘Well, well,’ Mainwaring chuckled, ‘Mr Rat will not cut that pretty flirt out from under the guns of her great protector. Not in a hundred lifetimes!’

  Four

  Bristol, 1623–1627

  In the four years that followed the Spanish voyage, Faulkner busied himself at Mainwaring’s side. Although he continued to act as Mainwaring’s secretary, thereby improving his literary style and expanding his view of the world in which Mainwaring moved, he also undertook independent commissions which were of increasing significance and were concluded as his own, rather than his principal’s work. Most involved surveying and taking inventories in the dockyards, and on three occasions he acted as pilot, moving men-of-war from the Thames and Medway to the westwards, but they also included several commercial transactions. It was true that he assisted, in a collaborative sense, in drawing up the tables of dimensions for the spars and sails appropriate to men-of-war, which with other data was included in the draft of Mainwaring’s Nomenclator Navalis, the Seaman’s Dictionary, which made but slow progress. Faulkner also worked alongside and grew to know others, such as the Master Shipwright Phineas Pett whom he had first met – but had little to do with – aboard the Prince Royal on the passage to Santander. Among the most significant of the several charges given to Faulkner in this period was that of preparing a report on the reviving of Portsmouth as a Royal Dockyard, the place having fallen out of favour since Tudor times. The final document laid before the King’s Council bore Mainwaring’s imprint, but many of the arguments adduced therein had originated with Faulkner, not least a remark that by comparison with Chatham, a fleet based on Portsmouth was ‘as for one to have his sword in his hand, whilst the other is rusty in its scabbard’. Though approved of by many influential persons, the decision was not then implemented, falling as it did at the time of the death of King James and the accession of his son as King Charles I. Other circumstances were said to have militated against the project; several rumours being circulated affirmed that the nomination of Mainwaring as the controller of the new dockyard stank of self-interest. Such blackening of Mainwaring’s name coincided with other events of note, none of which enhanced Sir Henry’s reputation or advanced the career of Faulkner. To some extent Mainwaring himself had a hand in the latter, preventing Faulkner being appointed to any ship commissioned under the command of Sir Edward Cecil when war was declared on Spain in the aftermath of the disastrous ‘Spanish Adventure’ of the Prince of Wales and Buckingham.

  ‘Cecil is entirely devoid of experience at sea,’ Mainwaring explained when the two discussed the matter. ‘The Victualling Commissioners are corrupt and you yourself have personally seen the stores intended for the squadron and reported on the rotten state of the ropes and cables. That they should send to the St George, a vessel built only in ’twenty-two, the sails from the Triumph that were put ashore in ’eighty-eight, is evidence enough!’

  The expedition was a fiasco, as was a second sent under another soldier’s flag. The Lord Willoughby’s fleet was in open mutiny, his ships – even some of the new tonnage – leaked abominably, the lack of good food increased the incidence of disease, there was no money to pay the seamen, and many of the officers were obliged to petition the Lord High Admiral for relief, stating that neither the food supplied nor the money paid them was adequate to sustain life. Three hundred angry sailors marched on London and mobbed the house of the Treasurer of the Navy who escaped with his life only on promises of redress. Nevertheless, both Cecil and Willoughby were honoured, Cecil with a viscountcy and Willoughby with an earldom, honours which rang hollow and began a prejudice in Faulkner’s own mind against such trumpery things. Nevertheless both grandees were appointed to a ‘Council of the Sea’ to enquire into the two disasters, joining Phineas Pett and Sir Henry Mainwaring, who sat among several grizzled veterans who had fought the Spanish Armada thirty-five years earlier.

  In this work Faulkner continued at Mainwaring’s side and was therefore regularly in the company of the Commissioners, coming again under the eye of Buckingham who headed the Commission, though he was not always present, particularly during the inspection of the ships lying in the Medway. Thus in the cold January of 1627 Faulkner was at Chatham when instructions were received from Buckingham which required the completion of the Commission’s surveys, after which twenty men-of-war were to be made ready for service by the end of February. It fell to Faulkner to carry a written request for the shipwrights to attend the Commissioners in order to receive this news and in consequence was present when they did so.

  The men, led by the masters of their craft, came into the Commissioners’ lodgings in sober state, presenting a petition and refusing to lift a finger to prepare the ships. ‘We have had not a penny of pay these last twelve months,’ their spokesman explained, ‘no allowance for food nor drink. We have pawned all we can and many among our company have been turned out-of-doors for failure to pay their rents; our wives and children starve and we must forage for whatever necessaries we may find, which is precious little. In such circumstances, My Lords and gentlemen we have neither energy nor means to carry your orders forward.’

  After the delegation had departed the members of the Commission ruefully shook their heads and mumbled among themselves, expressions of impotent frustration clear on every face.

  ‘Is this treasonable?’ someone asked.

  ‘Would that His Grace could see the indigence to which these men have been reduced,’ one of the older Commissioners remarked sourly.

  ‘Aye,’ said another, ‘it is damnably shameful,’ to which the Earl of Denbigh responded, ‘I find it difficult to comprehend the depths of corruption which, having regard to the sums expended upon the King’s ships, has reduced us to this woeful state of affairs.’

  ‘Is that not the purpose to which we have been appointed?’ Pett asked with his customary pointed testiness. ‘I have spoken often enough about the difficulties of building these ships and there are those that hold their private purses wide-open when they are fitting them out, such that nothing but rotten stores, putrid or rancid victuals are supplied. We shall have no better luck with those of the ships’ companies presently mustered,’ Pett asserted.

  ‘I hope thy purse is not thus filled, Mr Pett,’ Denbigh said.

  ‘Indeed not!’ snapped Pett.

  ‘Or yours, Sir Henry?’

  ‘Your Lordship is welcome to scrutinize my accounts,’ said Mainwaring warmly, adding, ‘as I hope is the case with all presently assembled.’ Several pairs of eyes swivelled towards Denbigh, whereupon Mainwaring snapped, ‘This is to no purpose. These men speak the truth and Mr Pett says likewise of the seamen. I have seen men compelled to lie on the bare decks of the Vanguard, gentlemen, devoid of food, clothing, fire, and this in a time of freezing weather . . .’

  ‘It is beyond our power to redress any of these grievances,’ said Denbigh loftily, ‘but we must inform His Grace . . .’

  ‘I think, My Lord,’ offered Faulkner from the window, ‘that we must hasten, for the men are assembling below. I imagine they intend to take their petitions to the Lord High Admiral themselves.’

  ‘Very well, sit and write, Mr Faulkner. Gentlemen, your corrections to my dictation, if you please.’

  By the end of the month Mainwaring and Faulkner were, with the other Commissioners, on their way back to London. ‘It passes belief,’ Mainwaring remarked to his young companion, ‘that ships scarce
ly three and a half years old can be found so wanting that we cannot recommend them for service. That damned scoundrel Burrell had the building of them and three hundred per annum for the doing of it. Such a state of affairs would not be tolerated in the merchants’ fleets.’

  ‘Then surely something must be done,’ remarked Faulkner.

  Mainwaring turned to him and said with utter conviction, ‘No. Nothing will be done. Nothing at all. Pett informs me – and he ought to know being himself a shipwright – besides Burrell and his complicit, villainous shipwrights, Edisbury the Paymaster, Norreys the Surveyor and Wells the Storekeeper, not to mention the whole confounded pack of the Victualling Commission, have their noses so firmly entrenched in the arses of others lying closer to the Court, that decent seamen will be left to starve.’ Mainwaring paused, before going on. ‘And talking of arses, I would wager a guinea or two on His Grace of Buckingham being a recipient of such filthy profit; his absence from Chatham was most marked and that disappoints me.’ Mainwaring dropped his voice and muttered so that Faulkner only half heard him, ‘And they have the effrontery to call me a quondam pirate!’