The Flying Squadron

by Richard Woodman

  ‘Damme yes, sir. Most emphatically. Whilst I don’t doubt for a moment the temper of your men, it would place an insupportable burden on the Ministry to engage in hostilities with them.’

  ‘I think it might place an insupportable burden on His Majesty’s Navy,’ Drinkwater added, thinking of the difficulties they had experienced manning Patrician.

  ‘Aye,’ put in Metcalfe, ‘we have squadrons in almost every corner of the world in addition to the Channel Fleet. To raise another, or reinforce the ships at Halifax . . .’

  ‘Plans are afoot to send Rear-Admiral York out with four seventy-fours and a brace of frigates, I believe,’ Drinkwater said, ‘though I agree that this would be insufficient for a blockade, and if we contemplate war then we must enforce a blockade.’

  ‘What force is the American navy?’ Moncrieff derided.

  ‘Small, lad,’ said Wyatt, helping himself to more wine, ‘but they will issue letters-of-marque and have privateers shoaling like herrings.’

  ‘Oh, come Wyatt, privateers . . .’

  ‘Enough of ’em and they’ll pick our bones clean, snap up our trade. Don’t despise the Yankees. Remember the Little Belt . . .’

  ‘That was a damned outrage,’ protested Metcalfe vehemently, alluding to the unprovoked attack made by the American frigate President upon the smaller British sloop, ‘a deliberate provocation . . .’

  ‘What tommy-rot and nonsense, it was a case of mistaken identity . . .’

  ‘The principal aim of British policy’, Vansittart broke in, aware that his lecture, hitherto the only means of ascendancy he had gained over the frigate’s officers, had been seized by his audience, ‘is to avoid provocation. That is why the offence committed by the President was allowed to pass . . .’

  ‘To our eternal shame,’ interrupted Metcalfe.

  ‘Sometimes it is necessary to swallow a little pride, Mr Metcalfe,’ Vansittart said, ‘in order to guide the conduct of affairs. Some sea-officers consider themselves so far in the vanguard of matters that they rashly compromise our endeavours. Take Humphries of the Leopard, for instance, when he engaged the Chesapeake; he scarcely endeared us to the Americans.’

  ‘Oh, damn the Jonathans,’ snapped Wyatt, out of patience with the pettifoggings of diplomacy. ‘They poach our seamen and must be made to spit ’em out again, given a . . . what the deuce d’ye call it, Bones?’ Wyatt turned to the surgeon.

  ‘An expectorant, I think you mean,’ Pym answered drily, adding, ‘ ’tis all very well to take men out of Yankee merchant ships, God knows we do it enough to our own, but to attempt to do so out of a foreign man-o’-war and then fire into her when she won’t comply . . .’

  The allusion to Captain Humphries’ action provoked Wyatt further: ‘That’s what the buggers deserved! You call ’em foreign, by God! They were no more than damned rebels!’ Wyatt protested, dividing the camp. There was a rising tide of argument into which Vansittart plunged.

  ‘They are most certainly not, Mr Wyatt! You’ll please to recall they are a legitimately established sovereign state, what ever memories you older gentlemen have of the American War.’

  Drinkwater’s grin was still-born; he was one of those ‘older men’.

  ‘The whole business was a shameful affair,’ Vansittart went on, ‘the Chesapeake was not in fighting trim, half her guns were not mounted and she had no cause to expect an attack . . .’

  ‘Beyond the fact that she had British deserters on board,’ Wyatt persisted sarcastically.

  ‘Her captain surrendered,’ added Metcalfe with a characteristic lack of logic lost in the heat of the dispute.

  ‘He struck, Mr Metcalfe,’ Vansittart said, and Drinkwater realized he was more than holding his own; he was enjoying himself. ‘He struck, merely to avoid the further effusion of blood. It was a pity Humphries insisted on searching the Chesapeake . . .’

  ‘He found four men,’ Wyatt snapped, ‘four deserters.’

  Vansittart turned a contemptuous expression on Wyatt. ‘The facts, Mr Wyatt,’ he said with a cool detachment, ‘indicate three of those men were Americans pressed into our service. Had Captain Humphries contented himself with accepting the surrender and apologizing for the dishonour he had done the American flag by his unprovoked attack, we might have thus avoided the necessity of eating humble pie in the affair of the President and the Little Belt.’ Vansittart stared round the table, a smile of satisfaction playing round the corners of his mouth which he hid by delicately dabbing at it with his napkin. He had achieved a victory over these rough sea-officers and was justifiably pleased with himself. He caught Drinkwater’s eye. ‘I know many of you to be vexed by the case of Americans born before Independence and therefore theoretically British subjects ripe for impressment into the British fleet. But I hardly think one of you to be so mean-minded as to admit this a casus belli, eh?’

  ‘I do not think the Americans will go to war over the plight of their seamen,’ Drinkwater said, breaking the silence of Vansittart’s triumph, ‘though their politicians may make a deal of noise about it. However, there is always the danger that they may imagine us to be in a position of weakness, as indeed we are, with the army in Spain to supply. Suppose they did let loose say five hundred privateers, as Mr Wyatt suggests, to tie up our cruisers with the burden of convoys, and suppose then they attempted, as they did in the last war, to conquer Canada. I would venture to suggest the most disloyal conjecture that they might succeed.’

  ‘Ah, sir, that’, said Vansittart, holding up a wagging finger to add import to his words, ‘is what concerns His Majesty’s government . . .’

  ‘Or that of the Prince of Wales,’ Metcalfe interjected sententiously.

  ‘No, sir, the Ministry remains the King’s; the Prince, in his capacity as Regent, is, as it were, in loco sui parentis.’ Vansittart’s little joke was lost. The King’s supposed insanity combined with his son’s extravagant and profligate frivolity and the Duke of York’s corruption and malpractice at the War Office, served to cast a shadow over most political deliberations.

  ‘We should also remember Russia,’ Drinkwater went on. ‘She has seized Finland from the Swedes and her fleet is not to be despised . . .’

  ‘Canada is the keystone to it all,’ Vansittart said, almost waving away Drinkwater’s words. ‘It all depends upon whether the hawks prevail over the doves in the Yankee administration.’

  ‘Let us hope’, said the chaplain, speaking for the first time, ‘that good sense and Christian charity prevail . . .’

  ‘We always hope for that, Mr Simpson,’ said Pym the surgeon ironically, ‘and are so consistently disappointed, that did hope not spring eternal into the human breast, there would be an end to all your piety.’

  A small tribute of laughter followed this and a silence fell as Mullender cleared the table. The ruined carcass of the pig lay dismembered before them. The dinner had not been entirely unsuccessful.

  ‘It is the Orders-in-Council prohibiting trade with the French Empire which will provoke a war,’ Drinkwater said. ‘The Americans believe it to be an unwarranted interference with their right to trade. Their grain saved the Revolution once, in ’94, and they are great boys for profit . . . they might yet prove a force to be reckoned with.’

  The cloth was drawn and the decanter set before him. He held the lead-crystal glass against the heel of the ship. It had been a present from Elizabeth and he would be most upset if it were lost. He drew the stopper and sent the port on its slow circulation. An anticipatory silence fell upon the company.

  When it had completed its circuit he proposed the loyal toast. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, solemnly, ‘the King.’

  ‘The King,’ they chorused.

  He raised his glass a second time. ‘His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent.’

  They mumbled their responses and waited as Drinkwater again lifted his glass. ‘And to peace, gentlemen, at least with the Americans.’ He bowed towards Vansittart. ‘And success to Mr Vansittart’s mission.’

&nb
sp; ‘Amen to that,’ said the chaplain.

  After the officers had left, Drinkwater motioned Vansittart to remain behind. He refilled their glasses while Mullender clattered the dishes in the adjacent pantry.

  ‘I am glad to see you fully recovered from the sickness, Mr Vansittart, and in such good form. I am afraid they are not sophisticates where political matters are concerned.’

  ‘I thought my presence offended them, they seemed so taciturn.’

  Drinkwater laughed. ‘You marked their odd behaviour then, but discovered the wrong cause.’

  ‘I think not, Captain, though I own to that apprehension initially. It seemed to me they find Metcalfe overbearing.’

  ‘Yes, you are right,’ agreed Drinkwater admiringly. Vansittart was no fool, though there was no point in dwelling upon the subject. ‘As to their attitude to our present assignment, they have been too closely bred to war and would delight in licking what they consider to be the upstart Yankees.’

  ‘You have reservations, Captain?’

  ‘I am old enough to have served in the last American war and, in a lifetime of service, have found it to be a foolish man who underestimates his adversary.’

  Vansittart nodded, his face suddenly wise beyond his years, borne down by the responsibility of his task.

  ‘You are more than a mere messenger.’

  Vansittart looked up, his eyes shrewd. He could hold his liquor too, Drinkwater acknowledged.

  ‘Yes. It is likely that we will give ground on the matter of impressment. It will be a great coup for John Quincy Adams who has been alleging our perfidious actions are on a par with murder. He claims several thousand such cases and it will set a deal of lawyers pettifogging over the rules governing neutrals but . . .’ he shrugged.

  ‘Needs must when the devil drives, eh?’

  ‘It defuses any action mediated towards Canada. You see, Captain, there is a rumour, gathered by persons close to French affairs, which suggests the Americans will claim certain oceanic rights over the Gulf Stream, and that they are approaching France for the means to build seventy-five men-o’-war . . .’

  ‘And John Quincy Adams has been hob-nobbing with Count Rumiantsev in Russia . . .’

  ‘How the devil d’you know about that?’ Vansittart’s eyebrows rose in astonishment. ‘Ah, I collect: Lord Dungarth.’

  Drinkwater nodded. ‘He has from time to time seen fit to enlighten me.’

  ‘He seeks to draw Russia back to the old Coalition and reaffirm an alliance with Great Britain again.’

  ‘Yes.’ Drinkwater thought of the dropsically obese, one-legged man whom he had first known as a dashing young first lieutenant in the war with the American rebels a generation earlier. ‘He has devoted his life to the defeat of the French.’

  ‘It is not entirely that which prompts this appeasement of the Americans, nor the news of Adams and the Russians combining against us. The truth is that a halting of trade with America is having a bad effect on our industries. The mercantile lobby is active in Parliament and though the Luddites are hanged when caught, their cause cannot be thus easily suppressed. Public disorder’, Vansittart said, leaning forward slightly and lowering his voice confidentially, the exaggeration betraying a degree of insobriety, ‘is currently tying down more regiments of light dragoons then the French are in Spain.’

  Drinkwater knew of the frame-breaking riots. Skilled unemployed men, deprived of their trades by newfangled machines, had taken the law into their own hands and the law had fought back with its customary savage reprisals. He thought of the Paineite, Thurston, occupied somewhere about the Patrician.

  He refilled Vansittart’s glass. ‘So politics are again guided by expedience, eh, Vansittart?’ he said. He raised his own glass and stared at the dark ruby port, then looked directly at his young passenger.

  ‘D’you reckon you can do it?’

  ‘Not a doubt, Captain. They shouted loudest about sailors’ rights, whatever their true motives. We’ll concede that point and all will be well.’

  ‘But for one thing,’ Drinkwater said, squinting at his glass again, ‘which I doubt you have taken into account.’

  ‘Oh? And what is that?’

  ‘It will encourage our men to desert.’

  CHAPTER 3

  August 1811

  A Capital Shot

  In the hermetic life of a ship the smallest matters assume an unreal importance. This is often the case when a voyage has just begun, as with His Majesty’s frigate Patrician, during the process of shaking down, when men thrown together under the iron rule of naval discipline jostle each other for the means by which to express themselves, to keep and maintain their own sense of identity.

  The obligations of duty combined with those of dutifulness to suppress the natural instincts of the officers in a subtler and more dangerous way than among the ratings. The stuffy formalities and the rigid, pretentious hierarchies mixed uneasily with a cultivated and assumed languor in the wardroom. The officers were fortunate in having their cabins. Convention permitted private retreat, but while this was more civilized, it tended to prolong the incubation of trouble.

  Elsewhere, on the berth and gun decks, men frequently abused each other and came quickly to blows. Such explosions were usually regulated by the lower deck’s own, inimitable ruling, and while fights were swift and decisive, they were rarely bloody or degenerated into brawls. The bosun’s mates and other petty officers charged with the maintenance of order knew how far to let things go before intervening.

  The midshipmen’s berth, by its very proximity and open location in the orlop, generally knew about these disturbances, but a tacit and unspoken agreement existed between the men and the younkers, for the latter too often had recourse to their own fists.

  While the officers festered in their differences and disagreements, the fights held in the semi-secret rendezvous of the cable tiers provided a cause for betting and gaming, as much natural releases for men pent up within the stinking confines of one of His Britannic Majesty’s ships of war, as the catharsis felt by the protagonists themselves.

  The tiny, insignificant causes of disorder, whether in the wardroom, the gunroom or the berth deck, fuelled the ship’s gossip, or scuttlebutt. Their triviality was rarely a measure of their importance. This lay chiefly in their ability to rouse sentiment and cause diversions.

  In the case of Mr Frey’s dislocation with Mr Metcalfe, it united the wardroom almost unanimously behind the third lieutenant. Almost unanimously, because Mr Wyatt refused to take sides, his coarse nature impervious to aesthetic considerations, while Mr Simpson the chaplain pretended a charitable neutrality, though Metcalfe’s manner deeply offended him.

  It was this strained atmosphere that the officers took with them to dinner with Captain Drinkwater and although they might have left it behind them in their commander’s presence, it was Metcalfe’s peculiar comments about the captain which prevented this. The cause of the trouble had been nonsensical enough. Mr Frey, during his afternoon watch below, had spread a sheet of paper on the wardroom table upon which he was executing some water-colour sketches. He had brought a large number of pencil drawings back from the Patrician’s circumnavigation. Some of these had been of hydrographic interest and had been worked up, overlaid with washes, and submitted to the Admiralty. Their lordships had expressed their approbation and Frey, by way of diversion as much as seeking further approval, had decided to embellish all his folio of drawings, many of which were competent and fascinating records of the frigate’s sojourn on the coasts of China and Borneo. They ranged from a spirited representation of an attack on the stronghold of piratical Sea-Dyaks and the horrors of a typhoon to dreamy washes showing the Pearl River under calm, grey skies, the background pierced with the exotic spires of pagodas and the foreground filled with the bat-winged sails of junks tacking up under the high poops of anchored Indiamen.

  Returning from some roving inspection, Metcalfe had entered the wardroom and sat without comment in his customary ch
air. Tipping it back on its rear legs against the heel of the ship he nonchalantly threw both feet upon the table. One heel rested upon, and tore, the corner of a sheet of Frey’s cartridge paper. Frey looked up from his work with brush and paints. ‘If you please, sir . . .’ he said, at which Metcalfe adjusted his feet and succeeded in extending the tear. Instead of the margin of the paper being damaged, the washed-over drawing was ripped still further.

  In the argument which followed, Frey was constrained by his subordinate rank and his outrage, which made him almost mute with indignation. Metcalfe protested Frey had no business ‘covering the whole damned table with rubbish’, and compounded his vandalism by picking up the drawing by a corner. Already old and browned at the edges, the paper tore completely in half as he held it for the inspection of the others. Frey went deathly pale.

  ‘Have a care, sir . . .’ he breathed almost inaudibly and Moncrieff, suddenly alerted to the seriousness of a situation which warranted a challenge, rallied to Frey’s support. He lamented the first lieutenant’s carelessness and when Metcalfe rounded on him, damning his insolence, Moncrieff coloured dangerously and put his hand on his empty hip.

  ‘By God, sir, had you done that to me I should have drawn upon you,’ he hissed as Simpson came forward to restrain him and Pym emerged from his cabin to stare over his glasses at Metcalfe.

  The first lieutenant continued to bluster and Simpson expressed regret that Metcalfe had not the manners to apologize. The consensus of opinion had gathered against Metcalfe. He resorted to a damning of them all for being the captain’s lickspittle and reviled Captain Drinkwater for an incompetent tarpaulin officer who, by his very age, was barely fit to command a frigate, had been passed over for a line-of-battle ship and clearly deserved no better than to be commander of the glorified dispatch-boat that the Patrician had become. This irrational outburst astounded the officers. They stood silent with disbelief as Metcalfe’s bravado ran its erratic course and he finally slammed out of the wardroom.