Sails on the Horizon: A Novel of the Napoleonic Wars

by Jay Worrall

  “Don’t worry. He’s in a good mood this morning, and he’ll stay that way if we don’t keep him waiting. Come along.” The lieutenant led Charles past the twin marine sentries to Jervis’s office, knocked once, and opened the door. He gestured Charles inside and closed the door behind him.

  Admiral Sir John Jervis sat in his shirtsleeves behind a large, ornate, and hopelessly cluttered desk, scribbling something on a sheet of paper. Without looking up he gestured for Charles to sit on a small wooden chair opposite him. After a moment he laid his pen down and lifted his eyes. “Lieutenant Edgemont, isn’t it? How’s your head?”

  “Yes, sir. Fine, sir,” Charles answered, stammering slightly on both sirs. Then for something to do he presented his report and laid it on the desk. “You requested this, sir.”

  Jervis nodded, picked up the paper, and read it through, glancing at the attached list of killed and wounded with raised eyebrows. “Tell me what happened. Not the whole thing, just your part in it,” he said, laying the report on top of a pile of papers on the corner of his desk.

  “Sir, my station at quarters is the main gundeck,” Charles began hesitantly, “where I remained throughout the battle until I was informed that the captain and the first had been killed.” Once begun, his speech came more easily. “I then turned the guns over to Midshipman Winchester and called for Lieutenant Bevan, the only other remaining officer, to meet me on the quarterdeck. At that time we were still fighting the San Nicolás, but the issue had been largely decided.”

  “I see,” Jervis said. “So I am to understand that you assumed command long after the battle had commenced and shortly before it concluded.”

  Charles swallowed hard and said, “Yes, sir.”

  “The Argonaut was dismasted, with no wheel, and generally sinking when you came onto the quarterdeck. Is that true?”

  “Very nearly,” Charles said. “We still had our mizzen—at least for a few moments.”

  “Yes,” Jervis showed a small smile. “The San Josef ’s appearance must have come as rather a nasty shock. My question is, why didn’t you strike?”

  “It hadn’t occurred to me, sir,” Charles answered slowly. “I’m not saying that I’m some kind of hero who would go down with his ship against overwhelming odds. I mean that I hardly had enough time to consider it. Besides, after the mizzenmast fell I had no flag to strike and nowhere to strike it from. If the San Josef had fired a second broadside into us, I might have found something, though.”

  Jervis nodded slowly. “That’s the correct answer. I’ll have no officers thoughtlessly throwing their crews’ lives away for some foolish gesture.” Charles didn’t think he was expected to reply to this, so he said nothing.

  Jervis sat silently for a moment, absently fingering a paper on the desk in front of him. Finally he glanced down at it, then looked up at Charles. The steady, unblinking gaze made Charles want to squirm, but he held himself rigid.

  “What are you, an American subject, doing in the King’s Navy?” Jervis asked unexpectedly.

  “I’m not an American,” Charles answered quickly. “I am English. My family lives in Cheshire.”

  “It says here,” Jervis held up the page and Charles could see it was a leaf from the Argonaut’s muster book, “that you were born in Philadelphia.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s true; I was born in the colonies. My father had a tea-importing business there. But I was born before the rebellion. After the troubles began, when I was about five, he moved us back to the family estate in Cheshire. I’ve lived most of my life there, sir, when not at sea, that is.”

  “I see,” Jervis answered, his expression softening. “That’s entirely different. A loyal Tory family. We can have no Jonathans, cousins or otherwise, as officers in the king’s service. A dastardly ungrateful lot, those Americans.”

  Charles sat uneasily, knowing that he had left his admiral less than fully informed. It was true that his father left Pennsylvania for Cheshire with his American-born wife and their children after the beginning of the Revolution. But not because he was a true-blue Englishman; in fact, he had been actively sympathetic to the rebel cause, as was his wife. He had left only because his own father had written asking him to, owing to the unexpected death of the eldest brother in a riding accident. Charles’s father, the second son, was needed to manage and eventually inherit the Edgemont family estate.

  “Both Nelson and Collingwood,” Jervis continued, “have put it to me in the strongest terms that I raise you in rank to commander because of their misperceptions of your role in the battle.”

  “Yes, sir, I know,” Charles said, coming quickly back to the present. “Both of them visited the Argonaut. I tried to tell them I’d done nothing exceptional, but they insisted.” His heart sank. He knew full well that a number of lieutenants would be promoted to commander or even captain following the Battle of St. Vincent. There were promotions after every successful fleet action. Now it appeared he had talked himself out of his.

  “Quite,” Jervis said drily. “Lieutenant Edgemont, I am going to promote you to commander, provisionally of course. The Admiralty will have to confirm it, but they can hardly refuse.”

  Charles sat stock-still. “Thank you sir, I—”

  “Don’t thank me, son,” Jervis cut him off. “I’m doing you no favors. For every officer like Nelson who is promoted young and goes from glory to glory, there are ten who become overconfident, overaggressive, or complacent. Up to now you have had what can fairly be described as an unspectacular career. You’ve hardly been mentioned in Captain Wood’s dispatches, except once for indiscipline.”

  Charles opened his mouth to speak, but Jervis raised his hand. “That’s past. Nelson has insisted you be given a frigate. Lord knows why, but I’m going to recommend you be assigned to the Louisa. She’s currently under renovation at the Plymouth yards. She’s the smallest frigate that the Admiralty has available; twenty-eight guns, mostly long twelves. I shall be interested to see what you can do with her.”

  “I’m very grateful sir,” Charles managed.

  “I imagine you are,” Jervis observed. “Is there anyone you wish to bring with you from the Argonaut? I can’t promise anything, but I will request it.”

  “I’d like Lieutenant Bevan and Mr. Winchester, sir.” Charles hesitated, wondering how far to push his luck. “And I hope you will approve Winchester’s promotion. He’s behaved very ably since I made him acting lieutenant.”

  “Has he?” Jervis’s eyebrows rose. “Wonders will never cease. His father will be pleased. He writes to me incessantly. I will consider it. Now, I have a favor to ask of you.”

  “Me, sir?”

  “Yes. I’d consider it a personal favor for you to take Wood’s servant, Timothy Attwater, with you. He served under me back in fifty-nine and I’d be unhappy if he were put on shore against his wishes.”

  “Of course,” Charles answered without thinking.

  “Good, that’s settled,” Jervis said. “I’m sending you to London on the morning tide with my complete report. Please take Attwater along. I recommend you employ him as your steward—that’s what he’s best at.” Charles nodded and wondered what he was getting himself into. “Your orders will be sent around to the Argonaut this evening.”

  Jervis rose from behind the desk and extended his hand. “Congratulations, Commander Edgemont. Work hard and learn from your mistakes and I am confident you will be a credit to the King’s Navy. Oh yes, I nearly forgot.” He opened a drawer in his desk, came up with a small card, and handed it to Charles. “This is a reputable prize agent in London, a Mr. Edwards of Threadneedle Street. I recommend him to you. He will see to the condemning of Argonaut’s prizes before the Admiralty Court, the investment of your money, and that sort of thing. It should come to quite a piece.”

  “I’m most grateful sir, thank you,” Charles said, looking at the card and feeling its texture between his fingers.

  “Good luck,” Jervis said, sitting down and immediately leafing throug
h some papers on his desk, “and good day.”

  IF SOMEONE ASKED Charles an hour later how he got from the Victory back to the Argonaut, he probably could not have said whether he was rowed or if he had walked across the waves.

  “Well?” Daniel Bevan asked Charles the moment he set foot on board.

  “Well, what?” Charles said, grinning broadly.

  Bevan made a loud hooting sound and hugged his friend tightly, actually lifting him off the deck. “We’re to have a frigate, a small frigate,” Charles said as soon as the air came back into his lungs. “A twenty-eight, long twelves.”

  “A twenty-eight is as big as you could get?” Bevan said, his face still lit with joy.

  “You missed the ‘we’ part,” Charles said by way of an answer. “You’re to be my first.”

  “Sweet Jesus, Captain Edgemont,” Bevan considered. “This day will probably go down in history as the beginning of the decline of the once-great British navy. ‘Except for his selfless and hardworking first lieutenant,’ they’ll write someday, ‘it would have been much worse.’”

  “I asked for Winchester, too, and to have him confirmed. He’d be the second.”

  Bevan considered this seriously and nodded. “Do you think they will? He’s worked like a dog these past days. And capably, too. What he doesn’t know he asks or figures out.” Winchester had evidently risen in Bevan’s estimation.

  “I think they will. Jervis apparently knows his father, or at least has heard from him.”

  “Well,” Bevan said happily, “this calls for a celebration. Do you think you can borrow Niger’s gig again? We’ll take Winchester.”

  “I have all the wine we could want from the captain’s stores,” Charles offered.

  “Ah, but in Lisbon they have women—fine black-haired, black-eyed women.”

  Charles couldn’t argue with that.

  THREE

  JOSHUA TURNBULL, COMMANDER OF THE BRIG RAVEN, welcomed Charles aboard in the damp gray light just before dawn. Charles brought with him onto the cramped vessel his single sea chest, Admiral Jervis’s reports on the English victory off Cape St. Vincent, and his newly acquired steward, Timothy Attwater. He arrived with a pounding headache after a serious night of celebratory debauchery in the lower parts of Lisbon with Daniel Bevan and Stephen Winchester, which he now deeply regretted. Raven pulled her stream anchor and set sail for London almost as soon as his unsteady legs gained her deck.

  Bevan and Winchester he left behind. They were to stay with the battered Argonaut on her slow journey to Plymouth, most likely for the breaker’s yard, after she’d been made seaworthy enough in Lisbon for the journey. Afterward, they’d all agreed to meet at Charles’s family home in Cheshire before returning to sea in his new command.

  Commander Turnbull, a kindly, awkward-looking man with a face like a jackass, insisted that Charles (“the hero of St. Vincent, and wounded to boot”) take his cramped cabin for the duration of the voyage. He would be more than happy, Turnbull said, to shift his things to his lieutenant’s almost minuscule quarters, and the lieutenant could mess with the midshipmen. Charles noted that Raven’s only lieutenant did not look pleased at this, but remained stoically silent.

  For Charles the weeklong journey in the tiny brig stood in stark contrast to his years aboard the Argonaut. For the first time in his career, he had no responsibilities and was left to his own devices, except when he was at dinner with Turnbull, or in what served as the wardroom, or with others of the ship’s officers and warrants in their leisure time. He was asked the same unending questions about the battle and Argonaut’s part in it, and he happily gave the same answers over and over again.

  He found Turnbull a confident and friendly man who discussed the everyday workings of his ship in an open, give-and-take manner with his officers and even the crew, and addressed everyone by their first name. If he wanted a sail trimmed or a change of course, there were no shouted orders or bosuns swearing and swinging their starters. Rather, Turnbull would seek out the appropriate warrant and say something like, “Dickie, the wind’s picking up. Do you think your lads could take in a reef on the topsail?” The suggestion was always acted on as if it were an order and the sail quickly shortened. With the task done and the topmen back on deck, Turnbull would usually follow up with a comment loud enough to be heard by all concerned, as, “Aye, she’s riding much easier now. Well done.” Charles looked hard for any sign of slackness or lack of discipline among the crew and found none. The Raven was a smart, polished, well-run ship, and it obviously didn’t take the lash to make her so.

  CHARLES SAT NEXT to Commander Turnbull in the sternsheets of Raven’s cutter as two seamen leapt ashore to steady the craft against the Whitehall Steps in London. Another seaman had already been set running toward the Admiralty building to announce the arrival. Charles pulled his boat cloak up to his chin to ward off the cold rain-flecked wind in the last of the evening light, then rose and stepped carefully out onto the landing, followed by Raven’s commander.

  “Well, this is as far as I can take you, Commander Edgemont,” Turnbull said, extending his hand. “I’ve taken pleasure in your company and I wish you well.”

  “I thank you for both a pleasant and a speedy voyage,” Charles answered, shaking it. “I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed myself more.”

  “You have everything you need? Admiral Jervis’s reports?” Turnbull asked. Before he could respond, Turnbull continued, “Ah, here comes your escort.” He nodded toward a detachment of approaching marines.

  “Yes, everything,” Charles answered, patting the thick dispatch case under his cloak. “Wish me luck.”

  “Which of you is Lieutenant Edgemont?” the marine sergeant inquired while his men drew up in rigid attention. At the response, “I’m Edgemont,” Charles was unceremoniously marched directly across to the Admiralty courtyard and through the large double doors. He had never been inside the ornate, high-ceilinged building before and stood somewhat in awe to find himself at the very seat of British naval power. Clerks and messengers hurried around him, while senior captains and admirals standing in small clusters in the hallways paused in their conversations to look curiously at the young lieutenant with his bandaged head, weathered uniform, marine escort, and dispatch case.

  “St. Vincent?” one of the admirals, a short, pugnacious-looking man with the red sash of the Order of the Bath across his chest, spoke out, guessing at the subject of Charles’s dispatches.

  “Yes, sir,” Charles answered, touching his forehead as he was hurried past.

  “Damn good show, young man. Capital victory. That’ll teach those papish heathens who rules the seas,” the admiral called. There were echoed shouts of “Hear, hear” and “Well done, Lieutenant” and “A noble thrashing” from around the room. The marines halted with a loud stamp and handed him to a rather dowdy clerk, who walked him down a corridor and without knocking entered what must be the First Lord’s office. The First Lord of the Admiralty, George Spencer, the second earl of Spencer, rose from behind the largest desk Charles had ever seen to personally greet him and receive the reports he carried. Charles felt as though he were shaking hands with God.

  “Lieutenant Edgemont of the Argonaut, is that right?” Spencer asked.

  “Yes, your Lordship,” Charles answered.

  “Admiral Jervis indicated in his preliminary correspondence, directly after the victory, that he would be sending you along. Please sit down,” he said, gesturing toward a chair. “The sun is well over the yardarm; would you prefer port or sherry? And tell us of your experiences in the battle.”

  ___

  IN ALL, CHARLES spent a busy week in London, sharing a pair of rooms with Attwater in a boardinghouse in Haymarket. He visited an infinitely more competent physician than the Argonaut’s to have his sutures removed and to have a smaller, less cumbersome dressing applied to replace the turbanlike winding employed by Argonaut’s surgeon. A tailor who catered to naval officers measured him for two uniforms suitable fo
r a newly made ship’s commander in His Majesty’s Navy, with a single gold-fringed epaulette proudly perched atop the left shoulder. During the evenings he was invited to so many dinners and gatherings to celebrate the victory that he had to refuse most of them. All the attention left him a little bewildered, and the repeated references to him as “the hero of St. Vincent” made him uncomfortable. On the other hand, he told himself, a free meal was a free meal, the food and drink were good, and he vastly enjoyed the attentions of young women in their fashionable gowns who hung on his every word as he described how the Argonaut had single-handedly forced three Spanish ships of the line to strike.

  Charles’s exposure to these women, though delightful, was also awkward. He had spent almost all his adolescent and adult years at sea. His principal interactions with women, and these were rare, were confined to ladies he encountered at various ports of call: ladies of a singularly basic and commercial inclination. He became acutely conscious that he had none of the easy talk or social graces with which to steer a conversation from a naval battle to a more personal discussion of other shared interests. In fact, he thought, he had very little idea what respectable women expected from him or how he might relate to them.

  It was also during this time that his nightmares returned. The deafening roar of the cannon, the cloying smoke, the deaths, and a paralyzing, terrifying helplessness replayed itself most nights. The dreams were more than unsettling. He did not know what to make of them except that they must be the result of his own moral weakness and lack of courage. He spoke to no one about them.

  After several days in the city he called on Mr. Edwards of Threadneedle Street, which he learned was practically adjacent to the Bank of England and just up from the Stock Exchange. “T. Edwards, Agent and Counselor,” read a small, brightly polished brass plaque beside the doorway. An elegantly liveried servant responded to his bell. Charles stated his name and presented the card Jervis had given him. The servant ushered him into a foyer lit by an impressive candelabra and disappeared into the depths of the house. A moment later, a short and somewhat plump man in his late thirties or early forties appeared.