Sails on the Horizon: A Novel of the Napoleonic Wars

by Jay Worrall

  Charles was pleased with what had been accomplished thus far, but the test of a ship (Freemont was right about this much) was in how she performed, not what she looked like. He looked forward to receiving orders from the admiral and wondered why they hadn’t been delivered yet.

  The next day, to give them something to do, he exercised the men at changing sails and running the guns in and out. He couldn’t order practice with shot and powder, of course. They were still anchored in the Mersey and the noise might panic the citizenry. No orders or communications of any kind arrived from the port admiral or anyone else.

  Friday morning he sent Tillman in a boat to Liverpool to inquire as to the admiral’s pleasure. Charles set the men to tarring the rigging, and, when that was done, blackening the masts.

  “Nothing,” Tillman reported on his return. “We’re to be informed in due course.”

  Charles knew that he would only command the Lomond for a month, maybe less. Almost a week of that had already passed. He wanted to be at sea, hunting for privateers or serving as lookout against a French invasion fleet. There were said to be plenty of privateers in all seasons, and a French fleet had sailed boldly into the Irish Sea only a few months before with a large body of troops for the purpose of aiding the rebellion in Ireland. Only bad weather and ill-luck had prevented them from landing. In the absence of an enemy threat, even carrying dispatches or escorting a convoy would be agreeable. He didn’t want to ride at anchor while all his work went for nothing and the men grew bored. In that case, he thought, he might as well invite the women back.

  On Saturday, out of desperation, he turned the men to painting the hull. There was sufficient black paint in the bosun’s stores for the task. He had the gunports and the strakes between them painted white. He even sent Attwater in one of the ship’s boats to buy a pot of gold paint for the carved lettering on the stern and the scrollwork by the beak. When all was done, he had himself rowed around and thought the old girl looked rather sharp. On Sunday he led a religious service, which he had never done before, the burial service on board Argonaut excepted. He read long sections from the Bible. It seemed to bore everyone.

  Charles found himself pleased with his ship and crew. The Lomond looked clean, even businesslike, and the men seemed in good spirits. Except for the watch, he left his officers and crew to their own devices for the rest of the day and decided to personally call on the port admiral the first thing in the morning.

  SIX

  NORTH OR SOUTH? THAT WAS THE QUESTION. IT WAS ONE of those imponderables that had no real answer. Still, it might be important. There could be a hundred privateers or smugglers in the southern half of the Irish Sea at this moment and none in the north. Or it might be the other way around. One never knew, or at least Charles was sure that he didn’t know. And he didn’t want to ask Tillman.

  “The anchor’s aweigh, sir,” Tillman reported. Charles already knew, of course. He had been standing next to the lieutenant as the men heaved on the loudly clanking capstan to winch the brig’s bower up from the muddy bottom of Dublin Bay and laboriously catted it home. The Lomond’s bow was already falling off with the wind and turning toward the sea. The tide was on the ebb, the wind sufficient and steady from due west. He would sail in either direction he wished. Should it be north or south? The northern channel was the route of most shipping from North America. South was closer to the privateers’ home ports in France and Spain.

  “Thank you, Mr. Tillman. You may sheet home the foresail and jib. As soon as her head’s around, set all the sail she’ll carry. Lay a course to make the mouth of the bay and then steer…north.”

  Tillman looked at him in surprise. “North, sir? What about Liverpool?”

  “North,” Charles repeated firmly. “As if toward Belfast or Glasgow or Scapa Flow. We will return to Liverpool in due time. First, I want to see if there’s anything interesting to the north.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Tillman said. “North it is. But if you’re thinking of hunting privateers, then I’d head south. They’re thicker down that way, if you pardon my saying so, sir.”

  Charles cleared his throat while he digested this. Which was more important, covering up for his ignorance and insisting on continuing to the north, or giving Tillman the satisfaction of having seen through him? “Thank you,” he said finally. “Once we clear the bay you may make to the south.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” the lieutenant said, trying unsuccessfully to suppress a smile. “You mean as if toward Wexford or Penzance or Buenos Aires.”

  Charles laughed. “Exactly,” he said.

  Today was Saturday. On the previous Monday, Charles had gone to the port admiral’s office in Liverpool to plead for orders, any orders. He had the sinking feeling that no one in the admiral’s office had any plans whatsoever for the Lomond until Commander Freemont returned. Charles’s temporary command was only to be a caretaker’s job, a nanny to the ship to see that nothing bad happened in the interim. Not surprisingly, the port admiral was still unavailable when Charles called, and Captain Dawson had no orders for him. “Just sit easy and relax,” he’d said. “Enjoy yourself. You’ve only a few more weeks before Freemont will be back.” Charles did not want to sit back and relax and said so. He argued for something, some task to do, however small. Anything that would allow him to take the Lomond to sea. In the end Dawson relented and very reluctantly allowed that Charles could use the Lomond to ferry a newly appointed colonel in the Irish Guard, his horses and entourage, to Dublin. “Mind, you’ll have to clean the old girl up a bit,” Dawson added. “It’s not my place to say, but Freemont keeps her in a shocking state.”

  “Of course,” Charles agreed. “She’ll be presentable. The colonel is prepared to board before tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Oh, no. Certainly not. He’s from a very important family. Nobility, in fact. I shouldn’t think he’d consent to embark for a week or more. His Lordship hasn’t even been informed that transport is available. I’ll have to find a courier to inquire as to his pleasure. We’re shorthanded as it is.”

  “As the ship’s captain, I would be most pleased to contact the colonel myself,” Charles offered.

  Dawson pursed his lips while considering the offer. “If you wish, but tactfully, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “After all, there’s no hurry, is there? It’s only a week over to Dublin and back. A nice, leisurely trip. It doesn’t matter if you leave this week or next.”

  “Well,” Charles answered carefully, “Commander Freemont may recover sooner than expected. I shouldn’t want to keep him waiting for his ship any longer than necessary.” This was such a bald lie that he wondered how he could have said it so easily. If it were up to him, he would keep Lomond until his own ship was ready, and Freemont could rot on the beach. He also didn’t want to return to Cheshire any sooner than necessary. After his disappointment, he wasn’t sure if he ever wanted to return. He was better off at sea. At sea something distracting, even interesting, might happen.

  “That’s very considerate of you,” Dawson replied. “But I wouldn’t worry too much over when you return. All in good time.” Which were exactly the words Charles had hoped to hear.

  After receiving his written orders, Charles went directly to the lodgings of his soon-to-be passenger. It proved to be an elegant brick house on the edge of Liverpool with extensive stables and manicured gardens. A uniformed butler answered his knock.

  “Commander Edgemont to see Colonel Fitzhugh on military business,” Charles announced. He was ushered into a parlor, where a rather short man in his early twenties with a very military bearing soon appeared. Charles thought he had aspiring aide-de-camp stamped all over him. “I have an urgent communication for your commanding officer, Colonel Fitzhugh,” he said officiously. “I am required to deliver it personally.”

  “Then do so,” the young man retorted. “I am Fitzhugh.”

  “Oh,” Charles said, caught off guard. “I apologize. I thought—” Catching himself, he
hurried on: “Sir, I command His Majesty’s brig Lomond. I have orders to transport you and your party to Ireland and am hoping to do so with all possible dispatch. If it would be convenient, sir, for yourselves and your luggage to be dockside by noon tomorrow, we will sail on the afternoon tide.”

  The unlikely colonel stared unblinking for a long moment, whether in intense concentration or disbelief Charles couldn’t tell. “Convenient?” he finally said. “What do you mean, if convenient? We’ve been waiting nearly a month for the damned navy to provide transport. I was about to hire my own ship to take us across at my own expense. You’re damned right it’s convenient. What’s wrong with this afternoon’s tide?”

  Charles pulled his watch from his waistcoat pocket and looked at it. “There was nothing wrong with this afternoon’s tide—if you could have had your company, equipment, and baggage ready about an hour and a half ago.”

  “And the next tide?”

  “The next tide is at fourteen minutes past two in the morning,” Charles answered.

  “All right. When do you want us assembled?”

  Fitzhugh and his party of nearly a dozen, with a small mountain of luggage and fully eighteen horses, assembled dockside at precisely the appointed time in the dead of night. The Lomond sailed on the tail of the tide for Ireland. It proved an uneventful if uncomfortable three days to Dublin in a seriously crowded ship against contrary winds, under intermittent rain, and with the horses secured on the foredeck, where they made an ungodly mess.

  The crew, however, he found to be capable and good-humored as they went about their business. They took in and let out the sails with a minimum of fuss and hauled on the yards repeatedly as the Lomond tacked and tacked again battling to windward. Charles noted with satisfaction that the petty officers did not carry rope ends to “encourage” or threaten the men in their divisions. Only one seaman was presented to him for discipline, and that was for doing a jig on the end of the fore topgallant yardarm during a squall. The bosun’s mate complained that the man was “endangering the king’s property and must be punished.” When Charles asked him to explain, the mate said that, “if ’e’d fell ’e could of landed on ’nuther seaman, or if ’e’d missed ’e could ’av kilt ’isself. Either way ’e was endangering the king’s property.” Charles awarded the offending seaman a stern lecture and a week on a half-ration of spirits, and everyone seemed satisfied.

  He took a day in the harbor to hose off the decks and replenish the Lomond’s food, water, and firewood, then sailed again. Charles calculated that at the farthest margin he had two and a half weeks before the Lomond absolutely had to be back in Liverpool. His written orders were happily not explicit on this point and he intended to use every minute sailing the Irish Sea, looking for privateers or smugglers or whatever may come. The question he had not yet decided: Would he have better luck sailing north toward Belfast or south into St. George’s Channel? In the end, with some assistance, he decided to sail south.

  PRIVATEERS—PRIVATELY OWNED warships legally authorized to fight on their country’s behalf by the contrivance of a letter of marque—were an all-too-common menace up and down the Irish Sea. Little better than semilegal pirates, they were usually small, fast craft designed for the twin purposes of capturing enemy commercial shipping and avoiding enemy warships. French, Dutch, and Spanish raiders, among others, prowled the waters in search of fat, slow British merchantmen and coastal traders. It was a potentially lucrative profession. A hull full of furs or tobacco from North America would bring far higher prices in trade-starved Amsterdam, Brest, or Bordeaux than in Liverpool, and the privateers didn’t have to go through the inconvenience of paying for them.

  By day Charles had the Lomond hug the verdant Irish coast, alive with the new greens of spring. He had lookouts posted in both masts and to port and starboard at the bow and stern. They looked carefully into every fishing village, inlet bay, and cove for ships that might be sheltered there: Bray, Greystones, Wicklow, wearing around Wicklow Head, Arklow, Kilmichael, Courtown, Riverchapel, and so on. Two hours before dusk, they would stand out to sea and run down any strange sails they spied. They spied many: fishing boats of all descriptions, coastal scows, large and small merchant vessels from twenty different countries, even “blackbirders,” the dark, fast, foul-smelling slave ships hurrying to or from Africa, the Caribbean, or the United States with their precious and perishable cargos. Slavery constituted the single most important commodity on which Liverpool was said to have built its fortune.

  Each even remotely promising bottom was boarded, its papers and hold inspected, and in every case sent on its way. Every master they encountered had proper papers showing they were British, allied, or neutral craft, and their cargo more or less matched the bill of lading. One or two Charles suspected were smugglers on their way to France or Spain, but he couldn’t prove it, so he let them go.

  On the sixth day out, cruising in the empty sea off Greenore Point, Charles reluctantly decided that he had just about stretched to the limit the time he could keep the Lomond at sea. A quick sail across St. George’s Channel, then northward along the coast of Wales, stopping only to challenge the most suspicious craft, would take three or four days, wind permitting, and bring him back to Liverpool very nearly at the end of the promised month of his command. There would be questions, he knew, about taking nearly three weeks for a simple voyage to Dublin and back, but he could answer those. He’d broken no orders, he told himself, nor endangered any British shipping or other interests by his absence from port. Besides, no commander in these circumstances was likely to be disciplined for excessive zeal in searching for his country’s enemies. Or at least he didn’t think so. Still, it would go better if he had a prize or two to show, or at least could report that he had sighted and attempted to engage an enemy.

  “Wear ship if you please, Mr. Tillman,” he said, trying to keep any hint of disappointment out of his voice. “Make the course east by northeast.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Tillman answered. “It’s too bad about the privateers, that we haven’t found any, I mean. I’d have thought we’d do better.”

  “We’re not home yet,” Charles responded.

  Tillman gave the orders for the wheel to be put over and the yards braced around. The Lomond heeled moderately as she turned on the calm blue sea, then righted when the wind came over her quarter.

  “Deck there!” a cry came unexpectedly down from the fore masthead. “Sail off the port bow. Mebbe four, five leagues.”

  “What rig?” Charles called up, little interested now in some slaver or merchantman.

  “Can’t tell, sir,” came the reply. “She’s standing toward us. I can only see her t’gallants. They’re in a line.”

  It was good work for a lookout to spot a ship at that distance. “Well done,” Charles yelled back. “Let me know anything you see as she closes.” Turning to Tillman, he said, “Take note of that man’s name. I’d consider him for promotion if I were you.”

  Tillman nodded thoughtfully. “That’s Wilkins. He has uncannily good eyes. He’s already been promoted twice and twice disrated soon after. He has a penchant for sneaking young girls aboard and hiding them in the cable tier.”

  “Ah,” Charles said.

  The lookout on the foremast called down again. “She’s signaling. Can’t make it out yet. She’s a frigate, I think.”

  This was something different. Signal flags meant another British warship. “Send the signals midshipman up into the rigging with a glass,” he said to Tillman. Turning to Wilson by the wheel, he ordered, “Stand toward her. We’ll see what this is about.”

  Charles stood by the weather rail in the bright sunshine, feeling the fresh wind and pondering what the approaching warship might want. He could see the distant speck of her upper sails, white against the deep blue sky. The signals midshipman should have been able to read her flags by now. Indeed, he saw the young man starting down from the tops with his glass pressed firmly under his arm.

  “She�
�s the Foxhound, sir, thirty-six. Captain Pierce,” the boy reported. “Pass within hail, he asks.”

  “Thank you,” Charles answered. “Acknowledge, then get aloft again and watch out for any further signals.”

  The distant specks slowly became a sleek gray-painted frigate wearing a full suit of tightly braced canvas. As the two ships came within hailing distance she put her helm down, turned cleanly into the wind and through it, all the while her sails braced around in perfect unison. As she settled on a parallel course, a figure on the Foxhound’s deck raised his speaking trumpet and called across. “Lomond, there, who’s in command?”

  Charles put his own speaking trumpet to his lips and yelled back. “Commander Edgemont, sir, job captain while Freemont is ill. We’re on our way back to Liverpool.”

  “From where?” Pierce asked.

  “Er, from Dublin, sir.”

  “Bit out of your way, aren’t you? Get lost?” Charles could hear laughter from the Foxhound’s quarterdeck. Then Pierce called out, “Don’t answer that, I can guess. When are you expected back in port?”