The King's Commission

by Dewey Lambdin

  What forces formed a Hawke, a Rodney, a general like Clive, he wondered? There was no chap-book like Clerk’s little book of tactics to guide a run-of-the-mill officer, to turn him into the sort who could achieve a magnificent victory. Most came aboard as cabin-servants at eight years old, or at twelve as midshipmen, blessed with only rudiments of decent educations, and all they learned from school-masters and mates was how to curse, tie knots, drink, and be practical seamen. No one tried to teach them to think. And with material security tied up in first gaining one’s lieutenancy, then gaining a commission aboard ship on active service, how much of one’s very source of bread would someone be prepared to put at risk, if thinking too much led to half-pay idleness and penury?

  He was free of that, thank God. Between his prize-money, his hoard of gold, his grandmother’s bequest and his later inheritance, he did not have to depend on the Navy to put food on his table, if he was careful with his money. How much worse an officer would he make than most of the ones he had met, who could only stump about a deck screaming “Luff!” He was from a deeper well of knowledge, and he could think, when he was forced to. Did he really have more promise than most? And was the Navy a place to shine, because of that?

  God help me, I think I shall, Alan decided. I’ll write that letter, and the devil with the consequences. If the Navy won’t have me after that, then that’s their loss, isn’t it? I’ll have said my piece.

  Fate, however, did not allow the letter to be delivered. Shrike sailed, and for days, it was as much like yachting, that watery sport of the aristocracy and the idle rich, as any cruise he had ever seen. The winds were bracing and fresh, quartering mostly from the nor’east to the sou’east. Once leaving Port Royal and Kingston, Lieutenant Lilycrop was in no hurry to rejoin Hood’s squadron off Hispaniola, and the ship loafed along like every day was a “rope-yarn Sunday.”

  But, while they had good weather, a storm had blown Admiral Hood off-station at Cape Francois, and with a gust-front of wind and gloomy skies from the east, the fleet was blown down onto them the first week of February, on its way to Port Royal. All Shrike could do was to announce her presence, change flags to Hood’s Blue Ensign once more, and beat her way east past the squadron of line-of-battle ships to make the best of her way to join the ships remaining on blockade. There was no contact close enough to allow Alan’s epistle to be delivered.

  Once past the fleet, Shrike took one last lingering look at the southern coast of Cuba, their old hunting grounds, and then a favorable slant of wind took them up the Windward Passage.

  Alan finally discarded his crutch. Though the wound still pained him, he could make his way about the decks with more ease. He had to admit that the wood and canvas deck chair was comfortable, an admirable invention that should be standard equipment for the aspiring (but lazy) Sea Officer such as he. He was close to the wheel and the quartermasters, could see the work at the guns or the gangways, and could “stand” his watches in sublime ease for once. And noon sights could be performed just as well from a sitting position as they could be standing by the sunward rail and gritting his teeth with each pitch and heave of the deck.

  When called to walk forward, or do his tours below decks, he could wince manfully, with Edgar or Rossyngton or Cony to aid him, and limp about, searching for a convenient handhold for which he could lunge the last few feet and utter a loud whoosh of relief from the titanic effort of performing his duties.

  Secretly, the wound was no longer that troubling, but after a little over three years of hard service, he was not going to admit to any more agility than was absolutely necessary, certain he was due some ease. And it was fun to portray the wounded hero, stoically going about his rounds as though he were secretly suffering the agonies of the damned, and making a great show of shrugging off any offers of assistance or sympathy.

  He had finished his morning watch and had turned the deck over to Caldwell and Rossyngton, but lingered in his deck chair with a mug of sweet tea, half-dozing with the “injured” limb stuck out stiffly in front of him. His chin rested on his breast and his cocked hat was far forward over his forehead to counter the early morning sun on this their third week of patrolling several leagues to seaward of Monte Cristi off the coast of Hispaniola. He took a sip of tea, then wrote up his lieutenant’s journal. He had gotten past the usual bumf: “Fri., Mar 7th, 1783: Winds NW, Course NNE, Lat. 20.05N, bearing at dawn Isabella Pt. Monte Cristi SE by E off shore 5-6 leagues. Fresh breezes & Cloudy,” and was wondering what else he should write down (and attempting to stifle a rather huge yawn) when the lookout interrupted him.

  “Sail ho! Deck thar! Three sail, four points awrf t’ starb’d bow!”

  That brought him up with a start, almost making him spill his tea and the inkwell all over his journal. There was nothing to their suth’ard, or the east but French or Spanish vessels. Little Shrike would be no match for a squadron of foes that had escaped the blockade.

  “Mister Rossyngton, go aft an’ inform the captain,” Caldwell directed. “You hear, Mister Lewrie, sir?”

  “Aye, thankee, Mister Caldwell,” Alan said, forgetting how “lame” he was supposed to act as he levered himself out of his chair and got to his feet to hobble (only slightly) to the bulwarks. “I have the deck now, Mister Caldwell.”

  “Deck thar!” the lookout called again. “Four … no, five sail to starb’d, now! ’Ard on t’wind onna starb’d tack!”

  “On passage for the Bahamas, perhaps,” Alan said as Caldwell joined him at the rail. With his telescope, Alan could just barely make out three tiny slivers of whitish-tan that could have been clouds on the horizon. The lookouts aloft would have a better view, at least one hundred feet higher above the decks.

  “One sail’s ’auled ’is wind, sir!”

  “Falling down on us, sir,” Caldwell said primly, sounding more annoyed than anything else. “To smoke us.”

  “I have the deck, sirs,” Lilycrop said as he emerged from his quarters and strode to join them. “Hands to Quarters, put out the galley fires, an’ stand ready to rig out stuns’ls an’ haul our own wind to loo’ard.”

  “Bosun, beat to Quarters!” Alan shouted with the aid of his brass speaking trumpet.

  “Mister Lewrie, sir, once Mister Cox’s ready with his batteries, I’d admire we ease her a point free more northerly,” Lilycrop ordered.

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Midshipman aloft,” Lilycrop snapped, turning to them once more before strolling to the abandoned chair and dropping into it heavily as though he had no real care in the world what was over the horizon.

  Gangly Mr. Edgar swarmed his way to the mainmast cross-trees like a spastic spider.

  “A flag, sir!” Edgar piped moments later. “Looks British, I think. Yes, sir, Blue Ensign, sir, and a private signal!”

  “Might be a ruse,” Alan speculated.

  “T’ ’ands is at Quarters, sir,” Fukes reported, with Mr. Cox.

  “Private signal, sir!” Edgar added in a boyish yelp. “She’s the Drake sloop, brig-rigged! Now she’s flying ‘Attend Me,’ sir!”

  “Presumptuous bastard.” Lilycrop snorted at the audacity of another lieutenant master and commander much like himself, in command of a brig below the rate issuing pre-emptive orders without knowing whom he was addressing. “What’re the others doin’?”

  “Standing on north, sir!”

  “Belay, Mister Lewrie,” Lilycrop barked out, rubbing his white-stubbled jowls. “Bring her back to the original course. We can spy out this’n, if she’s a Frog in disguise, if the others stay up to windward. Lay us close-hauled as may be and close her.”

  Within half an hour, the small squadron was hull-up over the horizon, and the Drake was within hailing distance. By the private code signals for the month, they could identify the other ships: the Albemarle frigate, a 6th Rate of twenty-eight guns, according to the List under the command of one Horatio Nelson; a 5th Rate frigate, the Resistance, of forty-four guns; another twenty-eight-gunned 6th Rate, t
he Tartar, under a Commander Fairfax; and Drake, under a man named Dixon. And bringing up the rear was a final 6th Rate twenty-eight-gunned frigate that flew French colors under a British flag, a recent prize.

  “Ahoy there!” came a call from Drake as she surged close.

  “Ahoy, Drake!” Lilycrop bellowed. “Shrike, twelve-gunned brig o’ war! Lilycrop, Lieutenant, master and commander!”

  “Captain Nelson in Albemarle is senior, sir!” Dixon shouted back. “His compliments to you, and he directs you to fall in astern of us! We are on passage for Turk’s Island! The French have taken it!”

  “When?” Lilycrop asked.

  “Middle of last month, sir!” Dixon yelled. “Captain King in Resistance, with the Dugay Trouin frigate, were in Turk’s Island Passage four days ago! They spotted two French royal ships at anchor off Turk’s Island and gave chase. Took La Coquette here, and a sloop of war! Captain Nelson thinks we can overwhelm them if we act quickly!”

  “Let’s be at the bastards, then, Captain Dixon!” Lilycrop agreed loudly.

  “Aye, aye, Captain Lilycrop!”

  “Not the bloody Frogs again, sir,” Caldwell groused. “Thought we had ’em bottled up proper once de Grasse was defeated. Don’t they know to stay in their kennels when English bull-dogs are out on the prowl?”

  “Been a year since The Saintes, almost, Mister Caldwell,” the captain said. “Even curs get their courage back sooner’r later. Mr. Lewrie, stand the crew down from Quarters, if you please, and secure. Then proceed with the rum ration and the noon meal. Then I’d admire to have both of you in the chart-space with me.”

  “Dry as old bones, mostly,” Lilycrop mused as they looked at the charts of Turk’s Island, or more properly, Grand Turk. “Turk’s, South Caicos, and Salt Cay, an’ salt tells the story—’bout the only export they got. With this slant o’ wind, we’ll fetch the Passage sure enough, if it holds.”

  “Miss the Mouchoir Bank, thank the Good Lord,” Caldwell said. “Turn the corner north and east of the Northeast Breaker. There’s said to be rocks and coral heads awash south and west of there. I’d prefer to see waves breaking before I’d turn.”

  “Or stand on as we are, into the Turk’s Island Passage, staying clear of the Apollo Bank, sir,” Alan said drawing on the chart with his finger. “Leave Sand Cay and Salt Cay to the starboard.”

  “Aye, be safer.” Lilycrop nodded. “That’s up to this feller Nelson. Hope he’s a little caution in his bones.”

  “Know anything of him, sir?” Alan asked.

  “Not much,” Lilycrop informed him, marching a brass divider over the chart slowly. “Uncle’s Sir Maurice Suckling, Comptroller of the whole damn Navy. Never hurts, ey? Funny. Thought Jemmy King in Resistance would serve as commodore to our little squadron. He’s got a 5th Rate, Nelson only a 6th. James King was Captain Cook’s second lieutenant out in the Pacific in Resolution, you know. Maybe even with a 5th Rate to command, he’s a couple names down the seniority list. No, don’t go playin’ with that, sweetlin’,” Lilycrop admonished one of Henrietta’s kittens, who had jumped up for attention, and had become entranced with the movement of the brass divider. She was pouncing on it, her short little stub of a tail wiggling in delight.

  “Looks like a good anchorage here, sir,” Alan said, shoving the kitten’s rump out of the way long enough to indicate Hawk’s Nest Anchorage sou’east of the southern end of the island. “Not much to look at from the chart, though.”

  “Been here before,” Lilycrop said, now busy entertaining the cat. “Nothin’ much but coral, salt and mud. Only drinkin’ water is what they catch from a rain. More reefs around it than a duchess got necklaces, an’ pretty steep-to, close under the shores. Hawk’s Nest or Britain Bay up here seem best, ’less we just barge our way into this little harbor on the western side. But I expect the Frogs have a battery there. I would.”

  “What about fortifications, sir? Ours, I mean, that they’ve taken over.”

  “Nary a one, sir.” Lilycrop shrugged. “Not much reason for ’em before, since it was only the salt trade that anybody’d come for, and that only in the summer months. God pity the poor French possession of the place, I say.”

  “If they landed back in the middle of February, they wouldn’t have much time to build fortifications, sir,” Caldwell pointed out. “Sand and log, rubble from the town perhaps. That sort of place would just soak up round-shot.”

  “Worth taking, though, sir,” Alan said after studying the chart. “Look at all these passes. Turk’s Island Passage, Silver Bank, Mouchoir Passage, and up north, the Caicos and the Mayaguana Passages. Put some privateers in here, and just about any ship using the Windward Passage from the west would have to run the gauntlet by here to get to the open sea for home.”

  “Nobody ever said the French were stupid, aye,” Lilycrop said. “A little prospectin’ for territory before the war ends. It’d be a year before the peace conference hears of it, and even begins to get the place sorted out in our favor. But, Resistance took two ships, and a sloop of war and one 6th Rate frigate can’t carry many troops, or land much in the way of artillery. They’re cut off on this island for now, without any ships to support ’em—what, not more’n one hundred fifty or two hundred troops? We can outshoot ’em with our three frigates, and muster more men from our Marines an’ seamen. Best kick ’em up the arse now an’ have done.”

  “I’ll tell Lieutenant Walsham, sir,” Alan said grinning. “God, he’ll love it, after being stuck aboard during the Florida thing. Full ‘bullock’ kit and cross-belts for a proper show.”

  “How’s the leg, Mister Lewrie?” the captain inquired.

  “Still a mite tender, sir, but I’ll cope,” Alan offered. “It really is feeling much better.”

  “No, I’ve seen you wincin’, try as you will to put a good face on it,” Lilycrop replied, waving off Alan’s enthusiasm for action. “If we land troops from Shrike, I may go myself. Can’t let the young’uns have all the fun, now, can we, Mister Caldwell?”

  Damnit, it was Alan’s place to go as first officer, and he now regretted his earlier theatrics. But, to act too spry on the morrow would reveal what a fine job of malingering he had been doing; and, he considered, he’d done more than his share of desperate adventuring in the last few months—why take another chance of being chopped up like a fillet steak if there was no reason to?

  “Well, if you really are intent on the venture, sir,” he sighed, trying to give the impression that he was hellishly miffed.

  Chapter 2

  Their tiny flotilla arrived in Britain Bay off Turk’s Island before sundown, just at the end of the first dog-watch. The holding ground was coral and rock, so getting a small bower and the best bower secure in four or five fathoms of crystal-clear water was a real chore. They had to row out a stream anchor as well. The Tartar frigate was driven off her anchorage, losing an anchor in the process, while Captain Dixon from Drake rowed ashore under a flag of truce to demand the French garrison surrender. The prize, La Coquette, stayed out at sea, standing on and off as the winds freshened.

  Once they could pause from their labors and consider Shrike safely moored, Alan could see French troops ashore in their white uniforms, drawn up on a summit overlooking the ships, which were not over a cable to two cables’ length from the shimmering white beaches. It looked to be, Alan decided after plying his glass upon them, not more than the one hundred fifty to two hundred men that Lieutenant Lilycrop had surmised.

  Captain Dixon’s boat came off the shore just at the end of the second dog, around eight in the evening, with news that the French had refused to surrender. That response was thought to be pretty much a formality for the sake of their honor, the prevailing view being that once a determined landing party went ashore in the morning and a few broadsides had been fired off, the French would shoot back a few times and then haul down their flag in the face of overwhelming force.

  During the night, Albemarle and Resistance fired a few shots into the woods overlo
oking Britain Bay to keep the French awake and in a state of nerves for the morrow. Shrike’s people sharpened their swords and bayonets; the Marines went about hard-faced and grim, tending to their full uniforms (which were only worn for battle or formal duties in port) and seeing to their fire-locks, flints and powder. The rasp of files and stones on bayonets and hangers and cutlasses made a harsh, sibilant rhythm under the sounds of the fiddlers on the mess decks who went through their entire repertory of stirring airs before Lights Out.

  At first light, just at 5 A.M., they stood to, ready to board their boats and set off for the shore expedition. Captain Dixon of the Drake brig would lead. Evidently, Tartar had not been able to keep good holding ground, for there had been no sign of her since she had lost a second anchor and been driven off shore in the night.

  “Not much to the place by daylight, is there, Mister Cox?” Alan asked as their swarthy little master gunner strolled aft to the quarterdeck.

  “Little dry on the windward end here, sir, true,” Cox said in a rare moment of cheerfulness as he looked forward to some action for a change. “Same’s most islands here’bouts. Might I borrow your glass, sir?”

  Alan loaned him his personal telescope and let the man look his fill of the shadowy forests above the beach where the troops would land. There wasn’t much to see, not in dawn-light. Sea-grape bushes, poison manchineel trees, sturdy but low pines and scrub trees that only gave an impression of green lushness rooted firmly in the sandy soil of a coral and limestone island.

  “No sign of a battery this end, sir,” Cox commented, handing the tube back. “And I’d not make those heights over forty-five feet above the level of the beach, even if there was. Good shooting for us.”

  Lieutenant Lilycrop came on deck in his best uniform coat, wearing his long straight sword at his hip, with a pair of pistols stuffed into the voluminous coat pockets. His face was red and raw from a celebratory shave, his first of the week.