Reefs and Shoals

by Dewey Lambdin

  Now, though … it had been painted and re-painted, then neglected for so long that it was hard to choose which pastel colour it was now. The deep front and back porches, and the dog-run breezeway held rickety tables and mis-matched chairs, occupied by off-duty soldiers from Fort Montagu, jaded doxies, and scruffy, ill-clad civilian topers, all of whom peered cutty-eyed at him, or found the presence of a naval officer amusing.

  He looked past their old house up the drive towards the manse that had once been a sedate and solid home; even if it had been painted the colour of boiled shrimp with glaring white trim. It, and the rental houses, the wood “salt boxes” that the Boudreaus had run up had gone to seed as badly as the gate house, the wooden houses reduced to greying, weathered, tumbledown shacks.

  The Boudreaus had refugeed from Charleston, South Carolina, at the end of the American Revolution, Low Country planters and grandees who’d upheld the Loyalist cause. Like so many “Torys” who had fled to the Bahamas, the West Indies, or Canada, they had faced sudden poverty, and the wrenching shock that if they could afford to purchase land, or slaves with which to work it, the island colonies could not support them for long. The sandy “white lands” were only good for truck gardening, and the richer “red lands” further inland were deceptive. Without livestock and their manure, the “red lands” gave out after two or three good crops; and Nassau could never have the grazing land large enough to support livestock herds.

  The Boudreaus had quickly given up the idea of a plantation and had gone into housing, supporting themselves at a modicum of their old lifestyle from rents and the running-up of modest lodgings. They had stayed in the Bahamas, whilst so many others, heartbroken, fled.

  Warily, Lewrie went to the front porch of his old home and ordered a pint of ale. “Have you ever heard of the Boudreau family?” he asked the tapster, who looked very much like a retired pirate.

  “The who, Cap’m?”

  “They owned all this, once,” Lewrie said. “I rented from them, my wife and I, back in the eighties.”

  “Ye lived up there, ye did?” the old fellow marvelled.

  “No. Here, This was our rented house. The Boudreaus lived in the house, yonder.” Lewrie corrected him. He took a peek inside the tavern, and was sorry that he did. The gleaming white woodwork, the pale tan-painted walls, had gone as scabrous as a basement dive in the worst London stew.

  “Never ’eard of ’em, Cap’m. ’Tis a boardin’ house now, when it ain’t a whorehouse, hee hee. Th’ doxies board there, an’ all th’ soldiers foller,” the tapster supplied with goodly mirth.

  “Ah, well. Ye go away a few years, they’ll change things all round,” Lewrie sighed, with a sad, philosophical shrug. He finished his ale, then went back to the road; he’d seen enough. He was certain that the Boudreaus were both dead and gone by now, and as French-born Huguenots—French Protestants turned Church of England—their graves could be found in some parish’s churchyard, but … he felt by then a dispiriting langour, and a desire to be away.

  To make matters worse, it was a long, warm walk back to town and the docks, and no wheeled traffic from which to hitch a ride. By the time he was there, he needed another ale to quench his thirst and cool him off. He took a seat on a covered porch off the side of the public house, fanned himself with his hat for a while, and looked at the harbour and up Bay Street. The flowers, the flowering vines and bushes, and all the planters all about him! How could he have forgotten? Once more, he felt a pang, recalling how scrofulous and weedy the grounds about the old gate house and mansion were.

  With help from Mrs. Boudreau and her old Black gardener, Caroline had created a new Eden, nigh a jungle! Their house had been awash in greenery, and blossoms of the most vivid and exotic colours. There had been tamarinds and flowering acacia, Tree-of-Life bush, cascarilla and red jasmine, bright yellow elder and bougainvillea vines growing up the trellises, poinsettias and poincianas, angel trumpets and flamingo flowers, graceful bird of paradise, and Jump-Up-and-Kiss-Mes in planter pots and beds. To screen their front gallery from the road, and the rear gallery from the main house, they had had palmettos, sapodillas, soursops, and guava saplings, and their own lemon or key-lime trees, their candlewoods and sea grapes, and Caroline had been so very proud of her fragrant and colourful handiwork!

  Ghostlike, there was a shift in the breeze that brought scents of flowers from the nearby gardens, as sweet and intoxicating as the sunset breezes off Potter’s Cay and Hog Island had come to their old house so long ago, forcing Lewrie to recall the sweetness, the contentment, and lazy satisfaction of sitting with a young wife at the tail-ends of tropic days, and he had to squint and grimace in pain. To cover his public un-manning, he pulled a handkerchief out to dab at his eyes before even slight tears of grief came.

  Thought I was beyond all that, he chid himself.

  He finished his ale quickly, for he really needed to be back aboard his frigate, in the privacy of his great-cabins … where he could hide for a while.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  To Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Bart.

  Aboard the Reliant frigate

  Sir;

  After giving the matter due Consideration, and pursuant to Admiralty Orders received from your hand, I deem myself able to second to you only two Vessels, to wit; the hermaphrodite brig Thorn (12), Lieutenant Darling, and the sloop Firefly (8), Lieutenant Lovett, now lying at anchor in East Bay. Orders to the officers commanding in regards to their Transfer to your flag are issued, and …

  “Take those two and get the Hell out o’ my sight, hey?” Lewrie chortled as he read the letter. “The sooner we’re gone, the better Forrester’ll sleep!”

  Of course, Forrester made that conditional, referring to the transfer of the two ships dependent upon whether the Spanish threatened the Bahamas or Turks and Caicos and he needed them back, further claiming that if such occurred Lewrie would simply have to ignore his original orders and place Reliant under Forrester’s command, and if he, Lewrie, stepped into the “quag” up to his neck over in Florida waters and found himself over-matched by the Spanish, he’d best place himself under Forrester to, in essence, pull his chestnuts out of the fire!

  “I take it that your early days with this fellow were not all that jolly, sir?” Lt. Westcott asked once Lewrie had read the orders aloud to him.

  “Forrester and the Desperate, and Commander Treghues … ah, what splendid memories!” Lewrie said, the sarcasm dripping. “Well, it’s of no matter, Mister Westcott. We’ve a squadron. Don’t know what sort, yet, but it’s a start.”

  “I asked about when I was ashore yesterday, sir,” Lt. Westcott told him with a sly look. “People in the taverns, civilians and Navy sorts alike, say that Captain Forrester’s Mersey has been at anchor so long, she’s not aground on beef and pork bones, but he’d have to send people overside to chip her off the coral reef that’s built up under her keel!”

  “If he don’t much care for Nassau or its lacks, ye’d think he’d at least put to sea and sail round the islands,” Lewrie supposed, as he tossed the letter atop his desk. “But that might take him too far off from his fresh tucker. Hmm … while you were ashore, you didn’t pick up anything about Thorn and Firefly, or their commanding officers, did you, Mister Westcott?”

  “No sir, sorry,” Westcott told him with a shrug. “Didn’t know we’d be getting them, so…”

  “Oh, well. I s’pose I should go call upon Lieutenants Darling and Lovett and introduce myself … before Forrester changes his mind and snatches ’em back,” Lewrie said with a short laugh. “You see to an hour’s drill on the great guns, then the rest of the Forenoon with cutlasses and boarding pikes, and I should be back aboard by the start of the rum issue.”

  “Very good, sir,” Westcott replied, preparing to rise and leave the great-cabins. “Uhm … not live firing, sir?” he japed.

  “And wake all of Nassau’s drunks? Lord no, sir!”

  * * *

  Lewrie had himself rowed over to HMS Thorn, first
, assuming that a 12-gun ship would rate the senior of the two. As his gig came to a stop under her boarding battens, he could see that Thorn was alert and ready to greet him with the proper side-party. He had served in a schooner, a ketch, then three-masted ships, but never aboard an hermaphrodite brig, which was neither a real brig-rigged vessel, nor the usual fore-and-aft-rigged schooner or cutter, but a bit of both.

  “Welcome aboard, sir,” her “captain” said once the salutes and the Bosun’s calls were done. “Lieutenant Peter Darling, sir, commanding. My First Officer … the only’un, really … Lieutenant Child…”

  “Your servant, sir,” Lt. Child said, doffing his hat once more.

  “Alan Lewrie, sir … Mister Child,” Lewrie said, naming himself. “You’ve received Captain Forrester’s orders, transferring you and your ship to my squadron?”

  “I have, sir,” Darling replied. “Might I ask if our transfer may involve some special duty?”

  “You may, and I will gladly reveal all to you over supper this evening, say … half past six?” Lewrie offered. “Ye never can tell who might blab in the meantime if allowed ashore. Nassau’s bung-full of un-trustworthy people, so I’d feel more confident did your people see to last-minute victualling if they don’t know much right now.”

  “I see, sir,” Darling said, looking a bit happier that his new duties might bode of some mystery, and the prospect of action.

  “Tell me a bit about your ship, sir,” Lewrie said, “and give me a brief tour, if you would.”

  “Gladly, sir!” Darling said, leading the way forward. “Thorn was Spanish, a merchant ship taken as prize off Mayaguana just after we learned of our declaration of war against Spain. The previous officer on station decided that she’d make a useful cruiser. We think she was built by an American yard, for the split rig’s rare back in Europe, so far. Quite handy, though, sir, on almost every point of sail.”

  And how’d you find favour enough t’have her? Lewrie wondered, suspecting that Darling might be one of Forrester’s protégés, pets, or cater-cousins. They certainly resembled each other. Lt. Darling was two inches shorter than Lewrie’s five feet nine, but outweighed him by at least two stone. Lt. Darling had a round, cherubic face, a stout upper body, and short bandy legs; he had an odd, scissory strut when he walked about his decks.

  Lewrie looked aloft at Thorn’s masts. Her foremast was rigged with course, tops’l, royal and t’gallant yards, and a large pair of gaff booms so she could set a fore-and-aft lugs’l behind that mast, or hoist a very large main topmast stays’l in its place, depending upon whether she was working to weather, or sailing large off-wind. Her main mast, aft, featured a very large spanker, the equivalent of a schooner’s main sail, but had no yards crossed above.

  “You’ve carronades?” Lewrie asked, noting the short, stubby guns mounted on slides ranged down either beam of her deck.

  “We’ve two six-pounders for bow chasers, but twelve eighteen-pounder carronades, sir,” Lt. Darling said with a wry moue. “It will be quite the shock to anyone our size who closes with us and offers us a fight, sir,” he hopefully declared.

  “Unless he has nine-pounder long guns, hangs back and shoots you to pieces,” Lewrie dryly replied, pulling at an earlobe.

  Carronades were much lighter than long guns of the same calibre, required smaller gun crews to man them, and threw much heavier shot … unfortunately, not all that far; anything over three hundred yards was iffy.

  If he’s one o’ Forrester’s pets, he didn’t get all that much of a plum command, Lewrie thought; Still, beggars can’t be choosers, and she might’ve been the best Forrester could offer him.

  “You came off Mersey?” Lewrie asked, trying to make that sound mere idle curiosity.

  “Oh no, sir,” Lt. Darling countered. “I was Fifth Lieutenant aboard our previous senior officer’s two-decker sixty-four, Aquila. Mister Child was her senior Midshipman, and we scrounged up a brace of lads off other ships for our Mids.”

  Lewrie took late note of the presence of two young Midshipmen; that meant that Thorn had at least one hundred crew altogether; one Mid for each fifty hands was the norm.

  “What’s your draught, Mister Darling?” Lewrie asked.

  “We draw ten feet, sir,” Darling said, looking as if he hoped that would be useful. “She’ll go very close inshore, if needed.”

  “That’ll be most satisfactory, sir,” Lewrie told him, smiling with delight at that news. His smile engendered one upon Darling’s face, too. “She handles well?”

  “Quite well, sir,” Lt. Darling proudly said. “Under fore-and-aft sails, with stays’l and jibs only, she’ll go about quick as one can say ‘Jack Ketch’, and she’s tolerably fast, to boot.”

  Lewrie put his hands in the small of his back and went stoic and silent for a moment, taking in Thorn’s material condition, as if judging her. In reality, he was counting up supper guests:

  Me, the Sailing Master, Mister Westcott, Bury, Darling and his First Officer, that Lovett fellow yonder on Firefly, that makes seven, Lewrie tallied up; Whoops, there’s Lizard’s other Lieutenant, Rainey, that’ll make eight. I’ll place him or Child at the foot, “below the salt”. Somebody junior’s got t’give the King’s toast!

  “I’d admire did you and Lieutenant Child both dine with me this evening, Mister Darling,” Lewrie said, as if coming up from the depths of a serious musing.

  “Delighted to accept, sir!”

  * * *

  Lt. Oliver Lovett’s HMS Firefly would be the smallest of their squadron. Thorn was about ninety feet on the range of her deck, Lizard about eighty-five, whilst Firefly barely managed to attain seventy feet. She was fore-and-aft rigged, with only one crossed yard on each upper mast to spread square sails. Her armament was made up of eight old 6-pounders, with only 2-pounder swivel guns on stanchion brackets for bow or stern chase guns. Unlike Thorn or Lizard, which had a Commission Officer to assist their captains, Lt. Lovett had only one Midshipman, and was his own sailing master or purser. None of them rated a Marine complement, either, and all had but two small ship’s boats, a gig and a jolly boat each. That would have to be rectified, somehow, Lewrie determined, if they came across a privateer encampment, though he did not know how to whistle up suitable boats at short notice, right off. He could not afford them out of his own purse, might spend years explaining issuing Admiralty chits, and doubted if Forrester would allow them a spare bailing bucket. Could he steal some, he wondered?

  Lt. Oliver Lovett was another “odd bird”, though nowhere near as solemn as Lt. Bury. Lovett was an inch taller than Lewrie, slimly built, but leanly muscular. He had a large “beak”, as big and cranked as a Cornishman, dark brown hair that he wore long and curly on both sides of his head, in an un-manageable mop over his forehead, with the “surplus” bound at the nape of his neck in an old-time sailor’s queue as thick as the tail of a border collie. When Lewrie went aboard, Lt. Lovett was dressed in stained breeches, Hessian boots, and a weather-tanned linen shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Give him a waist sash and an eyepatch, and Lovett could do a fair impersonation of a pirate; the young fellow nigh-vibrated with pent up, and boundless, energy.

  “Bless you, Captain Lewrie, sir, for you bring deliverance from utter drudgery!” Lovett loudly exclaimed, with such eagerness that he seemed impatient that they would not be off, instanter. He would also be delighted to be dined aboard Reliant this evening, though he did make apologies for how shabby his turn-out might appear, and hoped he would not disappoint.

  “It’s more a working supper, nothing grand, Mister Lovett,” Lewrie assured him. “Come alongside a bit before half past six.”

  After a quick tour of Firefly, Lewrie had himself rowed back cross the roadstead to the deeper anchorages in the West Bay, and his mid-day meal, feeling quite satisfied, so far. He had two vessels of ten-foot draught, and one, Firefly, that only drew nine, all of them able to prowl quite close inshore, or into the many inlets and rivers too shallo
w for his frigate. He had a slew of 6-pounder guns available, did they operate together, and even if Thorn’s carronades could not reach out very far, or aid in the bombardment of privateers’ shore camps, when put up against the light wales of a privateer at the usual range, Lt. Darling and his stubby guns could shoot clean through them!

  Lewrie turned his attention back to his oarsmen, instead of musing on the shore, and noted that they seemed … antsy, constantly looking over their shoulders towards Reliant.

  “Anything wrong, lads?” he asked.

  “Oh, no sir!” one replied.

  “Well…” Patrick Furfy carefully spoke up. “If ye wouldn’t moind, sor, might ye be tellin’ us th’ time?”

  Lewrie pulled his watch from his pocket and opened it, grinning as he twigged to their concern. “It’s twenty minutes past eleven … and I do believe we’ll all be back aboard in time for ‘Clear Decks and Up Spirits’. If we get a goodly way on, that is.”

  “Hear the Cap’m, lads?” his Cox’n, Liam Desmond, snapped. “Git a way on, ye lummoxes. Set a hot stroke, Pat.”

  “Pull!” Furfy cried, digging in with his oar. “And … pull!”

  All in all, a good morning’s work, Lewrie happily told himself.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  With his cook’s, Yeovill’s, help Lewrie aimed to make the supper a succulent and filling affair to introduce his new subordinates to each other, and to himself. Though the various courses were toothsome, he had promised a working supper, so, over the spicy shredded chicken broth soup, the grilled shrimp and vegetable medley, the mid-meal vinaigrette salad, and the requisite roast beef, roast potatoes, and peas, he quizzed them on their backgrounds and past experiences. Darling was the most loquacious and amusing, Lovett gruffer and more modest, and Bury the most enigmatic, but Lewrie was secretly satisfied that all three younger men had come up from the orlop cockpit at slow paces with years as Mids or Passed Mids before gaining their Lieutenancies. Both of the Lieutenants off Thorn and Lizard, Child and Rainey, mostly kept proper and deferent silence, much like Midshipmen allowed to dine aft with their superiors; though they did tuck the victuals in heartily, and knew enough to laugh or smile when past merriment was mentioned.