Reefs and Shoals

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Cashman and I sat up and downed a few,” Lewrie said, sighing, and easing his position on the settee. “He had a crock o’ Kentucky aged whisky, thank God, and I tottered up to bed quite late. Damme, but it’s been a while since I slept in a soft feather bed … a bed that doesn’t sway back and forth like a hanging bed-cot, and I don’t think I got three hours’ sleep. Cadbury snores, by the way.

  “Then, to put the icing on the cake, who accosts me on my way back to the piers t’take our leave but a scurrilous little pest from the town newspaper!” Lewrie growled. He took a deep sip of his ale before going on. “Demandin’, mind, when Great Britain was going to stop inspectin’ American ships for contraband, making prize of those bound for enemy ports … violations on free trade, and uppermost, when were we going to stop pressing American-born sailors to man our ships! Wished I could’ve strangled him on the spot. Wished I had strangled those two Chiswick bitches. Now there’s my kind of tactful diplomacy!”

  “Ever read Machiavelli, sir?” Lt. Westcott asked.

  “Who the Hell’s he when he’s up and dressed?” Lewrie growled.

  “An Italian writer of long ago, sir. Wrote a book of instructions for rulers, called The Prince,” Westcott said, with a sly smile. “One of his pieces of advice was that a ruler should be more feared than loved. Since you obviously created little love in Wilmington, it might have been better for you to have spread a little fear.”

  “Hmm … doubt it’d do any good t’go back, with guns run out and matches lit,” Lewrie said, sounding weary. “What’s done is done.”

  Lewrie sat up and finished his ale.

  “First thing in the morning, Mister Westcott, make Stations for Weighing. Fire a gun, and make hoist for a pilot to see us safely out to sea. All purchased supplies loaded, I take it?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Good,” Lewrie replied, sounding and looking more alert. “Dine with me this evening, Mister Westcott. You, Mister Cadbury, who can contribute to the tale of my embarassment, and some others. I’ll have Midshipman Eldridge in, as well. I haven’t dined him in, yet.”

  “And, will you tell us the tale of how you escaped Yorktown, sir?” Westcott asked as he set his empty ale mug aside and stood.

  “Well … if I must,” Lewrie promised, grinning.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  HMS Reliant swanned a leisurely way from Wilmington to Charleston on a steady but light tops’l breeze, twelve or fifteen miles offshore, making no more than seven or eight knots, slow enough to trawl a large net astern to see what sort of fresh fish would turn up when hauled in. But for a brief rain squall in late afternoon, the jaunt was all blue skies and fine white clouds, over a steel-blue sea that glittered with white caps.

  For the benefit of any fishermen or passing American merchantmen, Lewrie had the crew exercised on the great guns all through the Forenoon, with live firing, and ordered a fresh, large Union Jack to be flown aft, so that everyone who espied her, even from shore, would know that the Royal Navy was cruising American waters, and, perhaps not for any idle purpose, as Lt. Westcott had suggested, to inspire more fear than love.

  By mid-morning of the next day, she was off Charleston Bar and calling for a pilot. There were several channels she could use through the Bar; the Sullivan’s Island Channel to the North, which ran close under the guns of Fort Moultrie, the North Channel below Sullivan’s, the Swash Channel which was only suitable for small vessels at high tide, and the Main Ship Channel, which lay closest to the lighthouse and beacon. Lewrie was taking no chances—he would use the Main Ship Channel. His old Atlantic Neptune still held true: Hold North-West, place the spire of St. Michael’s Church square on the bows, and the lighthouse square off the stern once past it, into Five Fathom Hole, and there was deep water all the way to the Battery at the foot of the city, with good holding ground a bit west towards the mouth of the Ashley River.

  “Like goin’ to China, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said, rocking on the balls of his fresh-blacked boots as the pilot cutter approached. “South Carolinians eat a lot of rice, and worship their ancestors.”

  Hell, he hasn’t heard it yet, and it’s true enough t’be funny, Lewrie told himself.

  “From that, one could construe that both the ship’s cook, and yours, are South Carolinians, sir … when it comes to frequency with which rice accompanies our victuals,” Westcott japed back, after he’d had a brief laugh at his captain’s jest.

  Three days a week, on Banyan Days, no meat was issued, and the rations were oatmeal, cheese, ship’s bisquit, with nary a morsel of salt-meat, but with rice so cheap, the ex-slave cook, Mr. Cooke, and Yeovill boiled up enough to make the ship’s people feel full. Even Lewrie’s cats had gotten used to some rice with their sausages, pemmican, and jerky, or table scraps.

  “Aye, and after Mister Cadbury makes a purchasing run ashore, there’ll be even more of it,” Lewrie told him. “Unless the officers of the wardroom wish to buy something else for their mess?”

  “Potatoes, sir,” Westcott idly said. “Mashed, baked, hashed with cheese, diced and fried … ah, an humble but regal dish in all its manifestations!”

  “The pilot boat is coming alongside, sir,” Midshipman Rossyngton warned.

  “Very well … side-party, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered.

  The harbour pilot turned out to be a cheery fellow in his mid-thirties, and, once the introductions were done, gaily announced “Welcome to Charleston, Captain Lewrie … the very place where the Ashley and the Cooper Rivers come together to form the Atlantic! I presume you wish a good anchorage, not too close to shore, to make it too hard for any of your sailors of a mind to run?”

  “That’d be most welcome, sir, thankee,” Lewrie replied.

  The pilot pointed off the larboard bows to the open waters to the left of Charleston’s Southernmost tip, the Battery, more towards the Ashley. “There’s good ground there, sir, well clear of any ship bound for the piers along the Cooper, well clear of the Middle Ground, and Shute’s Folly. Bad for desertion, but a short row to town.”

  “There is a long tongue of shallows to starboard, from the city’s tip to the deeper channel of the Cooper,” Mr. Caldwell, their Sailing Master, said, pointing to his chart pinned to the traverse board of the compass binnacle cabinet.

  “Sure is, and I’ll conn you well West of it, sir,” the pilot vowed. “With your permission, Captain Lewrie, I’ll take charge of the deck?”

  “Proceed, sir,” Lewrie allowed with a smile.

  The First Officer, Lt. Westcott, and Mr. Caldwell stood close by the pilot, as if ready, to second-guess the fellow, but not close enough to discomfort him.

  “Topsl’s, reefed spanker, and the inner and outer jibs will be enough, I think, on this breeze,” the pilot said, peering about at his own set of harbour marks, the slant of the commissioning pendant high aloft, and the rippling of the sails. “Oh, one thing, sir. Hope you don’t mind, but … would it kill your soul to be anchored within two or three cables of a French ship?”

  That laid them all a’back, producing grimaces on the faces of the quarterdeck officers, some wide eyes on some, or slitted eyes on the others.

  “What manner of French ship, sir?” Lewrie warily asked, after his initial surprise.

  “Don’t rightly know, sir,” the pilot breezily admitted. “She’s schooner rigged. Might have come up from the Antilles to trade?” he added with a shrug. “Ah … let’s lay her head a point more to starboard, if you please, sirs. Steer direct for the tall church spire, helmsman.”

  “Did you pilot her in, sir?” Lewrie asked.

  “Not me, no, Captain. She came in almost two days ago, when I was off,” the pilot went on, pacing from one side of the front of the quarterdeck to the other, and peering close overside. When he returned to amidships, and the helm, he said, “I know the gentleman who did, though. He said she’s fairly big, for a schooner. Might’ve been built in a New England yard, he reckoned, from her lines, and the rake of her masts.”
/>
  “Did he comment on her being armed?” Lewrie further asked, his excitement rising.

  “Lord, Captain Lewrie … who ain’t?” the pilot cracked, cocking his head back for a good laugh. “What with the war and all, it’s common sense to be armed. Never can tell when a warship, a privateer, or an outright rogue pirate crosses your hawse, no matter which flag you’re flying. War makes it parlous for merchant ships of any nation … the guilty and the innocent,” he pointedly added, having a dig at the British practice of stopping and inspecting any ship that they encountered on the suspicion that they might be trading with the foe.

  “Brace up, Bosun!” Lt. Westcott called out. “Mind the luff of the heads’ls and fore tops’l! Cast of the log, Mister Grainger?”

  “Five knots and a bit, sir!”

  They were past the lighthouse and the Beacon, now abreast of Fort Johnston on James Island, with the city beginning to spread out before their bows. Lewrie trusted that the pilot, and his officers, had the situation well-enough in hand to go forward to the break of the quarterdeck and lift his day-glass for a good look at the city … and spy out the French schooner.

  If she’s not a privateer, I’m a Turk in a turban! he thought, noting the rake of her masts that the pilot had mentioned, in Down East New England Yankee style, which would make her fly like a tern, and as weatherly as a witch. There was a large blue-white-red French Tricolour flag streaming over her stern, one more suitable to a frigate-sized warship, as if to proudly flaunt her nationality.

  After a sniff of disgust, he swung his telescope to look over the city. The few times he’d put into Charleston during the Revolution, after General Clinton had conquered it, and given how short his shore excursions had been, he’d always been impressed by the beauty of the town, the impressive residences, and how wide were the streets; Broad Street, which ran across from the Ashley to the Cooper, was an hundred feet wide, and to a lad used to the close, meandering, and reeky lanes of London, the sense of open space had made quite an impression. Beyond that, Charleston was awash in palmettos, white oaks festooned by wreaths of Spanish Moss, in graceful weeping willows, and all manner of brilliant, flowering flora, as exotic as any isle in the Indies, but richer, grander, and more … civilised than even Kingston, Jamaica.

  “Ever been here, Captain Lewrie?” the pilot took time to ask.

  “Long, long ago,” Lewrie told him, smiling in reverie, “when I was a Midshipman. Back when Saint Michael’s spire was painted black.”

  “Some said that was for mourning, when the city surrendered to General Clinton,” their pilot said.

  Actually, the Rebels had painted it black so the British could not use it as a sea-mark or range-mark, but that had been fruitless, just as extinguishing the lighthouse and the Beacon had been.

  “Always liked Charleston,” Lewrie went on “though we never stayed long. Come in with despatches, sail out the next day, mostly. I ate well, when I was allowed ashore.”

  Rutted well, too, at that mansion-cum-brothel up the bank of the Cooper, Lewrie told himself with a smug grin, remembering how he and his fellow Mid, David Avery, had sought the place out to celebrate Avery’s birthday … and how they’d been set upon by Rebel foot-pads on their way back to the docks. A quick peek with his telescope up the Cooper showed that the commercial piers and warehouses had grown past where that mansion had been. Another part of his past long gone, he realised, along with David Avery, who had fallen not a year later.

  “I was always inpressed by how open and wide the town is laid out,” Lewrie commented.

  “That’s to catch any cooling breeze in the summers, Captain,” the pilot said with a wry snicker. “Nothing gets built too high, or too close together, if people don’t want to melt like candle wax.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” Lt. Westcott intruded. “Might you wish that we come in ‘all-standing’, and anchor ‘man o’ war fashion’? Just to thumb our noses at the Frogs?”

  “Hmm … best not, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie decided. “We’re a bit out of practice at that evolution.”

  And, if we mucked it up, we’d never hear the end of it, Lewrie thought.

  “When we come about into the wind, we’ll let go the kedge, and stand on ’til we lose way, then let go the best bower,” Lewrie said. “The depth there, sir?” he asked their pilot.

  “Four fathom, and a bit, Captain. Unless we get a full gale, a rare thing this time of year, a three-to-one scope will suit,” the pilot informed him.

  HMS Reliant ghosted on another quarter-mile or so before their pilot suggested that she should be put about. That brought the ship within a cable of the anchored French schooner, whose decks were now full of spectators.

  “Smartly, now, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie snapped.

  “Helm hard down, topmen aloft!” Westcott shouted.

  Sailors scrambled up the shrouds to the tops’l yards to haul up and brail up in harbour gaskets, while hands on the gangways hauled at the clews to draw the tops’ls upwards, spilling wind from them. Other men tended the spanker over the quarterdeck, freed the stays’ls and jibs so they could fly over to the opposite tack and keep some drive going as the kedge was freed to splash into the harbour, and the thick hawse cable to run free. Reliant paid off the wind a bit, right on the edge of “stays” a while longer before the helm was put up, and the ship’s bow faced the sea breeze directly, which slowly brought her to a full stop. At that moment, the bower anchor was let go.

  After that, with the squares’ls gasketed, and the stays’ls and jibs and spanker handed, it was a matter of “tweaking” on the capstans to take in on the kedge cable, let out the bower cable, to place the frigate equidistant from her anchors, at equal strain.

  “Nicely done, Mister West— What the Devil?” Lewrie began to say.

  The crew of the French schooner had burst into song, shouting the words of “The Marseillaise” to taunt them. French sailors were in the shrouds, atop the bulwarks and lowered gaff booms, shaking their fists, slapping their arses in derision, and making insulting finger signs.

  “Quite a lot of them,” Lewrie pointed out, with a wry smile on his face. “Too many to be a merchantman.”

  “Do you wish to salute them, sir?” Lt. Westcott asked, looking as if he wished that they would. Some of Lewrie’s officers and hands were scowling and cursing, already.

  “Bosun Sprague!” Lewrie bellowed. “Hands to the larboard gangway!”

  “Sir?” the Bosun asked, looking up at the quarterdeck, his face asquint.

  “Two-fingered salute, Mister Sprague!” Lewrie ordered. “A two-fingered salute to those snail-eatin’ sons of bitches!” By example he went to the larboard bulwarks and lifted his right hand, his fore and middle finger jutted upward into a Vee, a very British insult.

  And fuck diplomacy! he angrily thought.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  According to the instructions from Admiralty, the British Consul at Charleston was one Mr. Edward Cotton, an Englishman, not a local man, who kept offices at the corner of East Bay Street and Queen Street, conveniently near the city wharves. Lewrie wished to go ashore at once to see him, but there was an host of things to see to, beforehand. The best he could do was to send Midshipman Entwhistle in a cutter with a quick, introductory note, and a request for an audience, though Lewrie halfway hoped that the rare appearance of a Royal Navy frigate would pique the fellow’s curiosity and lure him to boarding Reliant, first.

  There could be no shore liberty for any of his hands, for certain: It was a risk to send too many of the ship’s boats ashore for firewood, water, and victuals, for the chance to desert would be quite a temptation, even to sailors who had been with the ship since she had been re-commissioned, and had pay and prize-money due. And, certainly, there would be many “patriotic” South Carolinians who would encourage Reliant’s people to flee “Limey despots” and become free Americans!

  With a French schooner, most-likely an enemy privateer, present, he could not let his guard down by putting
the ship “Out of Discipline” for a carouse, either. Marine Lt. Simcock already had fully uniformed men posted as sentries at the bow, stern, and on each gangway, fully armed with loaded and bayoneted muskets to prevent desertion, too.

  Yet, some of his people must go ashore. Mr. Cadbury was eager, as were the officers, who busily invented excuses to set foot ashore for a few hours. Surprisingly, so did Yeovill and the Black ship’s cook, Mr. Cooke, who accompanied Cadbury to the foot of the starboard ladderway to the quarterdeck. Both men were turned out in their best buckled shoes, canvas trousers, clean shirts with neckerchiefs, short blue sailors’ jackets, and flat tarred hats, as scrubbed up and fresh-shaven as they would be at Sunday Divisions. Lewrie could not recall Cooke ever being turned out so well.

  “Permission to go ashore with the Purser, sir,” Yeovill said.

  “Me too, sah,” Cooke spoke up, looking puppy-dog eager.

  “D’ye think that’d be … safe for you, Cooke?” Lewrie asked. “South Carolina’s a slave state. If a gang o’ bully-bucks decide to snatch you up for a quick profit, there’s little we could do about it, but complain.”

  “Beg ya pahdon, sah, but I’d be with Mistah Cadbury an’ Yeovill, heah,” Cooke objected. “I’m in uniform, an’ I don’ sound like no po’ field hand. Ain’t no slavuh gonna mess with me, sah.” Like all Navy hands, he wore a clasp knife in a leather sheath on his hip. And he was big and strong.

  “Hmm … it’d be best did I write you out a certificate, just in case,” Lewrie decided. “So you and Yeovill can protect the Purser, if some people try to mess with him. There may be some lingering resentment of anyone from England. Or Jamaica,” Lewrie added with a wry expression. He didn’t have to go to his great-cabins, for his clerk, Faulkes, was on deck, scrubbed up and dressed in clean clothes, hoping like all the others that he might get a few hours ashore, too. Once the certificate had been dictated, written out in Faulkes’s excellent copper-plate hand, and given to Lewrie to sign, it was given to Cooke, who read it over, nodded, grinned, and carefully folded it to stick into an inside pocket of his short jacket.