Reefs and Shoals

by Dewey Lambdin

  Oh, shit! Here we go again! Lewrie told himself, hoping that his phyz didn’t mirror the stricken feeling inside him. He’d been in “Cream-pot Love” with his late wife, Caroline, and had admitted “there’s a girl worth marrying … someday, perhaps, maybe!” before circumstances anent her future had dragooned him into proposing, to give her an out from the beastly attentions of her neighbour Harry Embleton, or her only other options: marry a much older tenant farmer, or take a position as governess to someone’s children, far from family.

  “And, did you come to some conclusions?” Lewrie whimsically asked, wishing he could cross his fingers.

  “God, the look on your face, Alan!” Lydia said, laughing out loud. “Have I frightened you into next week?”

  “Astonished, not frightened, really,” Lewrie breezed off. “You have a knack for that,” he added with a teasing smile.

  “As for Percy and Society, I don’t give a toss,” Lydia said with a cynical jerk of her head. “I’m already scandalous, so what else would they expect? And, no … as fond as I’ve become of you, I am not that un-conventional, at bottom. The man must do the asking. Lastly…”

  “Hmm?” Lewrie prompted.

  “Fond as I am, I would refuse,” Lydia told him, turning sombre.

  “Mean t’say…?” Lewrie flummoxed. Not that he would be asking, but it irked that she would have spurned him if he had!

  “After all I’ve been through, Alan, my dear, I’ve too many fears to be settled, before I place myself, and my heart, at the mercy of any man again, without knowing him so completely that I could overcome my trepidations. I told you once, remember?” she slowly explained.

  “At the Cocoa Tree, wasn’t it?” Lewrie replied. “Tea and scones in a quiet corner, while Percy was in the Long Rooms, gambling. You told me you’d never willingly re-enter such a slavish institution as marriage. And what did I tell you?”

  “To suit myself, and enjoy my life,” Lydia replied, grinning, pleased that he could recall.

  “Do you enjoy your life?” Lewrie asked her softly.

  “I began to, that very night,” she answered, “and ’til now, I must own that I have, immensely. But I would not marry you. Even for a sea voyage to the splendours of Cathay. Not yet.”

  “Call it early days?” Lewrie fondly teased.

  “Early days,” Lydia whispered back, beaming at him, though he discerned the rising moisture in her eyes. Before her tears came, he scooped her to him and kissed her long and gently.

  “I will pack and coach back to London tomorrow,” she told him, her face pressed to his gilt-laced coat collar. “You will have many things to attend to, and I would be in the way … at the best, quite ignored, so…”

  “I’ll settle your lodgings,” Lewrie offered.

  “You will not!” she chuckled for a moment. “You, as you said, are ‘comfortable’, but I am rich. Consider it my gift to you.”

  “Your being here’s been the real gift,” Lewrie assured her.

  “That night at the Cocoa Tree, later that night,” Lydia teased. “Recall where we went?”

  “Your house in Grosvenor Street,” Lewrie supplied promptly.

  “And what did I ask you there, dear Alan?”

  “You said … ‘Make love to me’,” Lewrie quite gladly recalled, leaning back to look her in the eyes, knowing that he was beaming like the hugest fool in the Universe.

  “Such a keen memory you have!” she praised him. “Do, please?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Whether HMS Reliant had received sailing orders or not, all the business of provisioning and victualling for sea was continual. Spare spars and replacement sails, huge bolts of cloth from which to fashion or repair the existing ones; livestock for fresh meat issue in harbour, and for the first week or so on passage … Captain Alan Lewrie was in sanguine takings that only a day or two more to take aboard last-minute items, and he could take his frigate to sea just as soon as the winter winds swung round to a favourable quarter. Then …

  “Currant jam, of course, sir?” his cook, Yeovill, suggested as he went down a long list of “necessities” to be purchased for Lewrie’s comfort from a chandlery.

  “I’ve developed a taste for raspberry,” Lewrie mused aloud with a grin. “Those tarts and popovers o’ yours? Dried currants and raisins for duffs, aye, but…”

  “Midshipman Houghton … SAH!” the Marine sentry shouted, with a crash of his musket butt and his boots on the deck planking, beyond.

  “Enter,” Lewrie bade.

  “Good morning, sir!” Midshipman Houghton said, right cheerily, as he stood before Lewrie’s desk in the day-cabin, hat under his arm, and all but rocking on the balls of his feet. “I fear I must depart the ship, sir. My Lieutenancy’s come through.”

  “Good God!” Lewrie gawped. “Well, congratulatons, of course.”

  When Lewrie had fitted Reliant out for sea in May of 1803, when the war with imperial, Napoleonic France had broken out again, Midshipman Houghton had been his senior and most experienced at twenty-one, and had already faced one board of harsh Post-Captains’ grilling for promotion. Houghton was very competent, in a stolidly quiet way, but not the sharpest nail in the keg; he’d always struck Lewrie as rather dull. Whilst Reliant had been at Sheerness the previous Spring, he’d finally become a Passed Midshipman, but no immediate commission. The secret nature of their work with catamaran torpedoes that Summer might have been the factor.

  “Where are ye bound, and how soon, Mister Houghton?”

  “I’m to be Fifth Officer aboard the Victorious, a Third Rate, sir, just in with a Spanish prize sloop, and her First was promoted to Commander, so there’s an opening, and, well … my uncle’s one of the civilians on the Board of Admiralty, so…”

  I’d known that, I’d’ve cultivated the fart a lot hotter! Lewrie told himself.

  “Immediate, is it? Well, if you must,” Lewrie said, rising to shake Houghton’s hand and offer him a parting “stirrup cup” of brandy, though pondering how he’d fill Houghton’s experienced but dull shoes. Could he advance one of the Master’s Mates? Eldridge and Nightingale were in their mid-to-late twenties, and were good at their trade, but … might he be able to cultivate a little “interest” from stuffy old Admiral Lord Gardner, Port Admiral of Portsmouth, or from Admiral the Honourable Cornwallis, head of Channel Fleet, of which Reliant was yet a part ’til sailing?

  “Sorry to place you a fellow short, sir, but…” Houghton said.

  “Oh, tosh!” Lewrie quickly assured him. “That’s the Navy’s way. Never can be sure of anything, one year to the next. And, when a man gets a shot at promotion, he’d be a fool t’turn it down outta sentiment. We’ll send you off in my gig, with my boat crew, to make a good show for your new captain. A brandy with you, Lieutenant Houghton?”

  “Ehm … thank you most kindly for the offer, sir, but, I’d not wish to report myself aboard my new ship with spirits on my breath, if you see my point, sir?” Houghton hedged.

  “Coffee, then, t’warm yer long row,” Lewrie decided. “Pettus, a coffee for Lieutnenant Houghton, and a top-up for me,” he bade his cabin steward.

  “Accepted most gladly, sir,” Houghton brightened. “And might I say that the last two years aboard Reliant have not only been most instructive, but … delightfully exciting, Captain Lewrie, sir. I shall consider serving under you one of the…”

  “Hoy, ‘ware…!” came a shout from on deck, followed by a loud series of thuds and bangs, as if a large sack of potatoes had slipped from someone’s grasp and was tumbling down a steep ladderway.

  “Oh, ow! Gottverdamt!” came a painful howl, and then a curse or two. “Sheisse, meine arm, meine beins! Sheisse!”

  “Mister Rahl!” Lewrie said. There were very few “Dutchies” in Reliant’s company, and the raspy voice of the Master Gunner, Mister Johan Rahl, was easily recognised by one and all.

  “Passing word for Mister Mainwaring!” a muffled shout demanded from the gun-deck, forward and below.


  “Let’s go,” Lewrie urged, dashing for the forward door.

  Master Gunner Johan Rahl had fallen down the main companionway hatch, and lay sprawled on his back, grimacing and growling bear-like to keep from howling in pain, and un-manning himself before his shipmates. Even as Lewrie knelt beside him, the Ship’s Surgeon, Richard Mainwaring, arrived with his kit-bag, closely followed by several loblolly boys from the forward sickbay, with a carrying board.

  “What happened, Mister Rahl?” Mainwaring asked.

  “I trip unt fall … down der fockin’ verdamnt ladder, arrhh!” Rahl shot back, his long and stiff-waxed grey mustachios wriggling. “Heilige sheisse, but it hurts!”

  “A tot o’ neat rum for Mister Rahl, smartly there!” Lewrie ordered. “Stand back and give the Surgeon room t’work, lads.”

  “I’d take a tumble for a tot,” Patrick Furfy whispered to his mate, Liam Desmond, Lewrie’s Cox’n.

  “Oh, hesh yerself,” Desmond hissed back. “Is it bad, sor?”

  Lewrie shrugged his answer, looking into Mainwaring’s face as he glanced up from his work.

  “It seems you’ve broken your left arm, Mister Rahl,” Mainwaring said at long last. “It seems a clean break, and it’s good odds that it will heal, but your legs … hmm. The right one feels like a clean break, as well, but the left…”

  “You cut it off, sir?” Rahl asked, almost incredulous. “I vill not be der ein-legged cook, nein!”

  “We must get you to the sickbay, up forward,” Mainwaring said. “That’ll be easier on you than being strapped down and bumped down to the orlop cockpit. More light and air, up forward, too. Get Mister Rahl onto the carrying board, you lads. Easy, now! Don’t jostle him too much.”

  “Der doctor heff to take meine leg, Captain Lewrie, do not make me a cook,” Rahl insisted, rasping, gasping, and spitting his words as the loblolly boys gently shifted the carrying board under him, causing him sheer agony.

  “I swear I won’t, Mister Rahl,” Lewrie told him, shaking his hand for a moment. “Served with ye before, and I never saw a sign ye could even toast bread.”

  “Ja, d’ose were gut times, sir,” Rahl replied. “Sheisse, you are trying to kill me, you bastards?”

  “Slowly and gently, there!” Mainwaring snapped, before his hands started the carrying board down the length of the gun-deck, between the mess-tables, stools, and sea-chests, and the horde of curious onlookers.

  “Desmond, Mister Houghton’ll need a boat so he can report aboard his new ship,” Lewrie told his Cox’n. “Best turn-out, and see him to the Victorious in my gig.”

  “Arrah, you’re a Commission Officer now, Mister Houghton?” Liam Desmond exclaimed.

  “He is,” Lewrie assured him, and the rest of the nearby people.

  “Huzzah fer Mister Houghton!” a sailor cried, raising a cheer from the rest.

  “When you’re ready to debark, Mister Houghton, pray do inform me, and we’ll see you off, proper,” Lewrie promised.

  “Thank you, sir. Well, I should go pack my traps,” Houghton said.

  “Can I have your second-best silk shirt?” Midshipman Warburton, one of Reliant’s cheekiest, asked tongue-in-cheek, razzing him.

  “Uhm, pass word for the Gunner’s Mate, there,” Lewrie said. “I will be in my cabins.”

  * * *

  “Acres, you’re now Master Gunner,” Lewrie told that worthy when he reported to him.

  “Thankee, sir. Though ’tis not the way I’d o’ liked t’get it,” the burly Gunner’s Mate replied, fidgetting with the wide brim of his hat that he held before him. “Poor old Rahl. Th’ Surgeon think it’s bad for ’im, sir?”

  “No word, yet, Mister Acres,” Lewrie said, shrugging his lack of information. “His left leg looked damned bad, though. Old Rahl, well … Lord, he was ‘old’ Rahl when we served together, years ago.”

  “An’ stiff’z th’ guards at Saint James’s Palace, sir,” Acres said, chuckling. “Or one o’ those Prussian grenadiers, where he came from, in the Kaiser’s artillery.”

  “Does Kemp look likely to take your place?” Lewrie enquired. The current Yeoman of the Powder was fairly young in his position, up from a gun-captain of short service before Reliant commissioned.

  “Well, sir, I’d prefer Thorn, the senior Quarter-Gunner. He’s older and more experienced,” Acres said. “Shift Kemp t’be a Quarter-Gunner, and bring a good gun-captain on as Powder Yeoman.”

  “Your choice, then,” Lewrie allowed, “and we’ll see how they work out. Congratulations, Mister Acres.”

  “Thankee, sir, and I’ll see ye right when it comes to gunnery.”

  * * *

  Half an hour later, and it was the Sailing Master, Mr. Caldwell, who stood before Lewrie’s desk, to settle who might be promoted into Midshipman Houghton’s position.

  “Are either of your Master’s Mates promotable, or should I send ashore to the Port Admiral, Mister Caldwell?” Lewrie began. “Sit, and have some coffee, do, sir.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Caldwell said in his usually cautious manner, even giving the collapsible leather-covered chair a good looking-over before entrusting himself to it. “I expect either of them would leap at the chance to be made a Midshipman, but … ah, thank you, Pettus. Very good coffee, I must say,” he said to the cabin steward after one taste. “Nightingale’s a tarry ‘tarpaulin man’, a bit rough about the edges, but he’s been in the Navy eight years, off and on, and he can hand, reef, and steer, and can lay a course as good as any. Ehm … there is the problem that he’s not what you’d call … gentlemanly. He came out of the fisheries, and that life’s coarser and rougher than where most Mids come from.”

  “You think he might not fit in?” Lewrie asked, frowning. With Houghton all but gone, he had Mr. Entwhistle, now twenty, the “Honourable” Mr. Entwhistle, as the oldest and most experienced, a lad to the manor born. There was Mr. Warburton, now eighteen, Grainger, who was now seventeen or so, then Munsell and Rossyngton, both about fifteen. All, like most Mids, were from the landed gentry, the “squirearchy”. He could not see any of them turning top-lofty to a much older, rougher John New-come, but …

  “There’s that, sir,” Caldwell said with a nod. “Now, Eldridge. He’s younger and quicker, and just as experienced as Nightingale, and I have noted that he might be a bit more aspiring, though he’s never mentioned becoming a Midshipman. Eldridge comes from Bristol, son of a ship chandler, so I expect he was raised better off than most before he volunteered, back in ’98. Better-mannered?” Mr. Caldwell added with a shrug. “Eldridge’s family could send him the funds he’d need for new kit, whilst Nightingale might have to go deep in debt to cover the expense.”

  “And, which’d be more jealous of the other, Mister Caldwell?” Lewrie posed to the Sailing Master, with one brow up. “It don’t signify to me as to which is more polished, and if it does in the Mids’ cockpit, then there’ll be some boys at the mast-head, but … I’d not cause you and your department too much aggravation. If promoting one and passing over the other won’t serve, then I might as well send for a ‘younker’ from the Port Admiral, and take whichever Tom-Fool they have on the shelf, some ten-year-old ninny-pate.”

  “Uhm … perhaps it’d be best did I ask them, sir,” Caldwell suggested, shifting his bulk in the chair, and crossing one leg over the other. “Sound them out on their ambitions?”

  “We don’t have long, Mister Caldwell,” Lewrie pointed out. “A sudden shift of wind, and we’ll have to be off, instanter.”

  Crash-bang! from the Marine sentry beyond the door.

  “First Orf’cer, Mister Westcott … SAH!” Stamp-Bang!

  “Enter,” Lewrie shouted back.

  “Good morning, sir, Mister Caldwell,” Lt. Geoffrey Westcott said once he’d entered the great-cabins. “I’ve spoken to the Surgeon, sir, about Rahl, and it don’t look promising.” There had been but one brief flash of his teeth in greeting before Westcott’s dark-tanned and hatchet face went glummer. “Mister Mainwaring had
to take off Rahl’s left leg, above the knee. He’s made it through the surgery, and he’s resting quietly, but … he needs to be gotten ashore to the naval hospital as soon as he’s able to be moved.”

  “Christ, that bad?” Lewrie grimaced. “I saw how the bone was snapped, and stickin’ through his skin, but…”

  “Evidently, sir, his arm and right leg were clean breaks, and didn’t jut out, but the left was not only broken, but his knee joint was so badly wrenched that it couldn’t be saved. Like a mangled turkey leg.”

  “Damn,” Lewrie said with a long sigh, drumming his fingers on his desk. “Pardon my manners, Mister Westcott. Take a pew and have a coffee t’warm ye. Faulkes?” he called to his clerk and writer. “Do up a Discharge form for Mister Rahl, and a petition for him to be sent to the Pensioners’ Home at Greenwich Hospital. See the Purser to get his pay and debts cleared, would you?”

  “Of course, sir. Poor old fellow,” James Faulkes sadly agreed.

  “He pleaded that I’d not make him a cook,” Lewrie mused. “Now, at the least he’ll have a good retirement, in sight of Deptford Dockyard and traffic on the river.”

  “With no kin that I ever heard tell of, sir, I suppose that’d be the best he could expect,” Lt. Westcott agreed. “And the best we can do for the old fellow.”

  “There’ll be dozens of old gunners to trade yarns with, aye,” Caldwell chimed in. “He’ll not be slung onto the beach to starve and beg on the streets. And get his rum issue ’til Eternity.”

  “Word has it were losing Mister Houghton, sir?” Lt. Westcott asked after Pettus had gotten him his coffee, with sugar and sweeter goat’s milk, the way he liked it. “Good for him.”

  “Aye, we were just debating who’d take his place, Nightingale or Eldridge, or should I request some Admiral’s favourite idiot, hah!” Lewrie informed him with a sour bark of humour.