Reefs and Shoals

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Of course, sir.”

  “I’ll fetch your foul-weather rig, sir,” Pettus, his cabin steward, offered, staggering from one piece of furniture to the next, and looking a tad green. Lewrie looked aft into the gloom of his cabins. His cats, Toulon and Chalky, were curled up on his bed-cot’s coverlet, like two furry loaves of bread, bristled up and moaning in misery. To larboard, his young cabin servant, Jessop, was on his knees inside the quarter-gallery toilet, with only his shoes and shins showing, bent over the “seat of ease” and making offerings to Neptune; rather loudly.

  “Carry on, Jessop!” Lewrie called out.

  “Ah … aye, sir,” the lad muttered back, between gags.

  Once bundled into tarred canvas coat and hat, Lewrie staggered forward, steeling himself for a second or two before opening the door to the weather deck. When he did so, it was like barging out into utter chaos: the force and howl of the wind, the sudden chill of it, and the stinging volleys of sea spray that pinpricked his hands and face. Here, too, was the full sound of the storm, and the hiss and thunder of the waves, and the alarming groans of the hard-pressed masts, and the booming of the hull as the frigate fought the sea.

  Off-watch sailors were swarming up from the relative warmth and security of the gun deck where they berthed and messed, adding to the sense of confusion as Lewrie managed to clamber up to the quarterdeck.

  “Sorry about this, sir, but we must wear,” Lt. Merriman said, his mouth close to Lewrie’s ear.

  “Aye,” Lewrie shouted back. “If you think the weather shrouds will hold ’til we’ve got her round on larboard tack!”

  “I believe they will, sir,” Merriman hopefully replied.

  At present, their frigate laboured heavily, even though the mizen tops’l had been taken in, as had the main course. The fore course and fore and main tops’ls were close-reefed, and the jibs up forward had been replaced by the fore topmast stays’l. Above the quarterdeck, the spanker had been reduced, and the mizen stays’l had been rigged.

  Leave the tops’ls, for now, Lewrie speculated; they’re higher up than the wavetops, and can still catch wind. The fore course’ll get us round the quicker. Send up the main topmast stays’l, again? Hmm. Oh God, all these bloody years at sea, and I still feel like a total fraud!

  He’d not wished to go to sea and be all “tarry-handed”, but his father had seen to that, “crimping” him into the Navy at seventeen, and years behind his peers in experience—for God’s sake he could not even swim!—and even the ten-year-olds in his first mess had known bags more than he had, and his bottom had paid the price for not “knowing the ropes” from expasperated officers; and all his career he felt as if he had never quite caught up.

  There had been a series of small ships, where things were much simpler, where little was expected of a lowly Midshipman. Surely, he had had no business at all becoming old Lt. Lilycrop’s First Officer in the Shrike brig, where his first few months had been an embarassing pot-mess of ignorance and re-learning of his trade. There had been a whole year of shore idleness between the end of the American Revolution and his assignment aboard Telesto, and the jaunt to the Far East and China in ’84, and when he’d come back and gotten his first command, the little Alacrity, in ’86; just enough time to forget almost everything! By 1789, after paying Alacrity off, there had been years of bucolic peace ashore, with wife and children on their rented farm at Anglesgreen, and once more all he’d learned of the sea had sloughed away ’til 1793 and the war with France. When he’d reported aboard the Cockerel frigate as her First Lieutenant, he’d felt as overawed and unready as the rawest fresh-caught landlubber, unable to recall the proper names for things without long hours secretly poring over his frayed, illustrated copy of Falconer’s Marine Dictionary, just as he had done when first aboard a warship in 1780!

  God help ’em all, he thought; lookin’ to me t’keep ’em safe!

  “All hands are on deck, sir,” Lt. Merriman reported.

  “Very well, Mister Merriman, have Bosun Sprague pipe ‘Stations for Wearing Ship’,” Lewrie said, after a deep breath and shrug into his foul-weather rig. “Let’s be about it. The men are getting cold.”

  “If I may, sir?” the Sailing Master, Mr. Caldwell, intruded before Lt. Merriman could raise his speaking-trumpet to his lips. “I’ve been studying the set of the waves, and believe they’re coming in sevens, with the seventh the most forceful. Once that one is past, we’ll have an easier go.”

  “Very well, Mister Caldwell. Carry on, Mister Merriman, but do you wait to issue your first order ’til the seventh has passed, as the Sailing Master directs,” Lewrie said.

  “Here it comes, Mister Merriman,” Caldwell warned.

  “Stations to Wear!” Merriman bawled out the preparatory orders. “Main clewgarnets and buntlines … spanker brails, weather main and mizen cro’jack braces! Haul taut and stand by!”

  Reliant butted through a creaming, humping wave at a slant with a thrum and groan, surging upward toward its crest as the wave billowed under her keel, hobby-horsing upwards, then pitching bows-down into the trough with a roar.

  “This is the one, sirs!” Caldwell shouted excitedly, as if he enjoyed heavy-weather sailing. His seventh wave marched down to the frigate, humping higher like a steep hill, its crest fuming white and its lee slope mottled with rippling circular eddies. “Whoo!”

  “Up mains’l and spanker!” Lt. Merriman screeched once the ship had staggered up, over, and down into that great wave’s trough. “Clear away after bowlines! Up helm!”

  Reliant fell off quickly, shoved by wind and waves to lie abeam the sea for a bit, slowly, so very slowly falling alee and taking that howling force on her starboard quarter.

  “Overhaul the weather lifts! Man the weather headbraces! Rise, fore tack and sheet!” Merriman cried.

  Further, further off the wind, ’til it was coming just about dead astern, and …

  “Clear away head bowlines!” Merriman howled. “Shift over the headsheets, and lay the head yards square!”

  Now the wind was clawing at their ship’s larboard quarter, and she was coming round, wallowing and rolling, but on larboard tack.

  “Man main tack and sheet! Clear away the rigging! Spanker outhaul! Clear away the brails!”

  “Haul aboard! Haul out!”

  “Mind yer helm, there!” Lewrie cautioned as she swung up closer to the wind and seas.

  “Brace up head yards!” Lt. Merriman ordered, looking and sounding calmer than when he began the evolution, now that Reliant had crossed from one tack to the other. “Overhaul weather lifts, and haul aboard!”

  “Nicely done, sir!” Mr. Caldwell congratulated.

  “Thankee, sir,” Merriman replied, quite pleased and relieved, then turned to deliver his last trimming-up orders. “Steady out the bowlines! Haul taut weather trusses, braces, and lifts!”

  “And, here comes the bloody seventh wave, again,” Lewrie said just as the larger, fiercer wall of water humped up before them. The ship heaved up and over, then down into the trough, where she wallowed as the wave stole the wind from the tops’ls for a moment before bowling astern.

  “Clear away on deck, there!” Lt. Merriman ordered.

  “Mister Westcott,” Lewrie bade. “Let’s go forrud and see to the shrouds. Rhys, how’s her helm, now?” he asked the Quartermaster of the watch at the wheel. “Can you hold West-Nor’west?”

  “Aye, sir. Fair balanced, she be. Not too crank, nor griped.”

  “Very well,” Lewrie said with a firm nod. “Full and by, and none to loo’rd. Ready, Mister Westcott?”

  “Aye, sir,” Westcott replied with a brief flash of teeth. “I’m as wet as I’ll ever be. Bosun Sprague? Hands to the lee bulwarks.”

  The shrouds, the main portion of the standing rigging, ran from the outboard channel platforms down the sides of the ship, the thick and stout oak “anchors” that jutted out to ease the steep angle of support to keep the masts standing, and un-moving. Each thick rope shroud was
further supported below the channel platforms by metal fittings bolted into the hull, called the chains. For each shroud there were two massive blocks, the dead-eyes, with lanyards running between them in four-part purchases. To ease or tighten the dead-eye lanyards, sailors had to go overside—the steeply angle lee side—where the heaving waves that creamed down Reliant’s flanks could surge up over the channels, turning every hand-hold or precarious foot-hold ice-slick with chill water. Even with the slackened starboard shrouds now eased by being on the lee side, it would require gruelling manual labour to set the tension to rights. For every man going over the side, there were two to anchor a shipmate with safety lines.

  “Handsomely, now, lads, and have a care,” Lewrie urged them as the first clambered over the gangway bulwarks to work on the foremast shrouds. In better weather, they might have seen to all three masts at once, but not now.

  Lewrie was shivering with cold, his clothing soaked with spray, and his face felt like a bad shave with a dull razor as the icy droplets kept stinging. Despite a wool scarf, cold water trickled under his tarred canvas coat, too, but he was determined to remain on deck as long as the work took; if the ship’s people were miserable, then he would be, too. At least he could comfort himself with the thought that he was on the gangway, not on the weather deck below, where the icy surging waters showered down each time the bows soughed deep into the sea, and left shin-high floods sluicing from beam to beam with each roll of the ship!

  * * *

  “Think that’s got it, sir,” Lt. Westcott reported, at last, an hour later.

  “Very well, Mister Westcott. Dismiss the working party below,” Lewrie replied. “Let ’em thaw out, and dry out, as best they can.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Lewrie went back forward from the mizen stays, steeled himself, and waited for the hull to roll upwards before making a dash for the hammock nettings and stanchions at the break of the quarterdeck. Then it was a slow ascent, clinging to the nettings, to the weather side, where a captain was supposed to be. He hooked an arm to the shrouds of the main mast to stay upright as Reliant heeled far over to starboard with the next roll, and stood there, scowling at the fury of the sea, and wishing for a cup of something boiling hot; coffee, tea, or cocoa, it made no difference. Even hot water would suit, but with the ship pitching, heaving, and rolling so violently, everyone was on cold rations, for the galley fires could not be lit in such weather. Lewrie let out a long, deprived sigh.

  Eight Bells chimed in four double-dings from the foc’s’le belfry up forward; it was 4 P.M., and the end of the Day Watch and the beginning of the First Dog. There were happy and relieved smiles upon every hand’s face, for they could go below for two hours. Far glummer were the faces of the men of the fresh watch, some of them the spare hands who had just gotten below for a few minutes, and would face two more hours of misery before the Second Dog Watch.

  Lieutenant Spendlove was mounting to the quarterdeck to replace Merriman, so Lewrie timed a (fairly) level-deck dash down to the helm, and the binnacle cabinet as those worthies exchanged salutes.

  “I relieve you, sir,” Spendlove was intoning.

  “I stand relieved, sir,” Merriman answered. “Course, full and by to West-Nor’west. The last cast of the log showed five knots.”

  “Gentlemen,” Lewrie intruded.

  “Sir,” they chorused.

  “I’ll go below with you, Mister Merriman, and leave the watch to you, Mister Spendlove,” Lewrie told them. “Should the wind shift a touch more Sutherly, alter course as near as you’re able. If the wind veers ahead, summon me at once. Nicely done, by the way, Mister Merriman.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Lt. Merriman said, grinning.

  “Aye aye, sir,” from Spendlove.

  * * *

  Once below and aft, in the relative warmth of his great-cabins, Lewrie peeled off his hat and canvas coat, both stiff and soaked with half-frozen spray, and wound off the useless scarf. He hugged himself and shivered, blowing on his chilled fingers as he slid into the chart space to plot the last few hours’ progress, and the change of course.

  “Might you care for something warming, sir?” Pettus asked. “I could heat up some of your cold tea over the candle warmer.”

  “God, yes, Pettus, and thank yer kind soul!” Lewrie boomed out with a quick laugh. “How’s Jessop doin’?”

  “Crop-sick as a hound, sir,” Pettus said with a shrug.

  Lewrie looked aft, and found Jessop in pretty-much the same position he’d been in when he’d left to go on deck, hours before.

  “Aye, some warmed-up tea, Pettus, with lots of milk and sugar.”

  Lewrie returned to peering at the chart, speculating with brass dividers and parallel ruler that if they could maintain at least five knots over the ground for so many hours going West-Nor’west, the ship would have made … Pah! He tossed the tools aside in frustration, for that course would carry them further North into even colder seas, and gained them nothing to the West.

  As much as he detested the idea, they would have to wear about once more, right at the time that the second rum issue of the day was doled out, in the midst of preparations for what meagre cold rations would be served. Before sunset would be best, but … it was better than standing on ’til they struck Iceland!

  Lewrie managed to make his way aft to his hanging bed-cot, to check on the cats. “How ye copin’, lads?” he gently asked them.

  He was answered by low moans and the flicks of bottled tails. They had not moved far from where he’d last seen them, either.

  “Tea’s almost ready, sir,” Pettus informed him. “A few minutes more, and it’ll be nigh scalding.”

  Thud! came the Marine sentry’s musket butt on the deck without, and the cry of “Midshipman Munsell, SAH!”

  “Enter!” Lewrie called out, the fingers of his right hand most firmly crossed against more bad news.

  “Mister Spendlove’s duty, sir, and he says that the winds are veering ahead, West-Nor’west, to Half-North in gusts,” Munsell said, his teeth chattering.

  “Steadying on West-Nor’west, or more Northerly, young sir?” Lewrie asked.

  “Ehm, it seems to be shifting more and more Nor’westerly, sir,” Munsell speculated.

  “Very well,” Lewrie said with a sigh. “I will come up. Give my compliments to Mister Spendlove, and inform him he’s to summon all hands and be ready to wear about.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “The tarpaulins, Pettus,” Lewrie said, looking for his sodden scarf. Once dressed again, he took time to duck into the chart-space and stepped off six points of sail from their present course, then suddenly smiled. Six points off the relative wind would be Due West, did they continue sailing “full and by”, but … did they fall off to a “leading wind”, two more points, to West-Sou’west, he could ease the ship its tortuous twisting and pounding, and not only make bags of Westing, but much more progress to the South, as well, where surely the weather might be a touch more moderate!

  It might be a tad warmner, too, by God! Lewrie thought; And we might not be blown ashore on Cape Finisterre, either!

  Feeling more hopeful of their immediate prospects, he headed for the door, with but one longing look at the mug of tea on the warmer, which was beginning to steam most nicely.

  Damn, and bloody damn! he mourned.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The harsh Nor’westerly gales continued to blow fiercely for all that night after wearing, and all through the next day, allowing the frigate to trundle along “two points free” headed West-Sou’west, and making a goodly Westing, as Lewrie desired. The force of the gales was too great to bear more canvas than they already had spread aloft, and the great rolling of the troubled sea’s wavecrests still robbed wind each time that Reliant sagged down into the deep troughs, so it was still hard to exceed a snail-like five knots, but it was still progress.

  It couldn’t last, of course. The Nor’westerly blew itself out, the storm driving it spending its wrath on the Fren
ch and Spanish coasts as Reliant reeled onwards. To replace it came a fresh gale, this one from the West-Nor’west at first, requiring the tautening of sheets and braces a bit at a time ’til they were back on a beat to weather steering West-Sou’west, then ceding one point, then another, to Sou’west by South. If there was a moderation of the fierceness of wind and sea, it was only a matter of degrees, with only a slight rise in barometric pressure, and a fresh chalk mark on the neck of the liquid barometer perhaps a quarter-inch below the others. There had still been no sun sights, but the communal agreement on their Dead Reckoning had them near the 43rd line of latitude, and a safe one hundred miles West of Cape Finisterre.

  By that point, the temperature had warmed a bit, so that the spray droplets that got flung like bird-shot stayed liquid, and the seas shipped over the bows were no longer icy. What sloshed or dripped below was no longer frigid misery, but cool, damp, soggy misery.

  * * *

  “Nine days … about nine hundred miles made good, sir,” Lt. Westcott commented as Lewrie came to the quarterdeck for the second time at Four Bells of the Morning Watch at 6 A.M. Lewrie grunted his acknowledgement as he looked at the chart which Westcott had spread by the compass binnacle. “And it’s not raining, for a wonder.”

  During the night, the seas had abated a bit, and the wind had backed more to the North, and had lost some of its fierce strength.

  When Lewrie had first come up at 4 A.M., at the end of the Middle Watch, there had been a steady rain, driven by the wind at a slant to drum and hiss on every flat surface, sometimes thickening in squalls, then easing off to a sullen downpour.

  “It’s easing, at last,” Lewrie replied after a long lookabout the ship, the sea state, and a deep sniff of the wind. “Our course?”

  “Back to Southwest by South, sir, and the wind’s still backing. We could be heading Sou’west by the start of the Forenoon,” Westcott said with a brief, savage smile.