The Flying Squadron

by Richard Woodman

  ‘Is it that much a matter of chance, then?’ Drinkwater asked. ‘I mean to say, will Madison blow like a weather-cock to the prevailing breeze?’

  ‘So my correspondents in the southern states write, and they, needless to say, are opposed to this madness. Everywhere they are surrounded by men intent upon it.’ This gloomy assessment laid a silence on them. ‘I suppose we’ll drum up sufficient ruffians to hold Canada. There are enough loyalists in New Brunswick to form a division, I daresay, and the Six Nations of Mohawks are more inclined to favour us than the perfidious Yankees. With the navy blockading the coast, I daresay things will turn out to our advantage in the end.’

  ‘If we can afford it,’ put in Elizabeth shrewdly.

  ‘You are well informed, ma’am, my compliments.’ Moira downed another glass of the burgundy. ‘The India trade will sustain us, though I don’t doubt but it’ll be a close-run thing.’

  ‘There is one matter we have not considered,’ Drinkwater said, an uncomfortable thought striking him with a growing foreboding. He realized that for months he had been subconsciously brooding on Stewart’s last remarks. The American officer’s allusion to the bluff-bowed British frigates was a criticism that had stuck in Drinkwater’s craw if only for its very accuracy. The memory, thirty years old, of being prize-master aboard the Yankee privateer schooner Algonquin when a young midshipman had been all the evidence he needed to realize Stewart had been indiscreet; that, and the knowledge Stewart had himself commanded a schooner.

  They were all looking at him expectantly.

  ‘The Americans will use privateers, my Lords, if it comes to war; scores of ’em, schooners mostly, manned with the most energetic young officers they can muster from their mercantile and naval stock . . .’

  He was gratified by the exchange of appreciative looks between Moira and Dungarth. He sensed, in a moment of self-esteem, he had divined the passing of a test.

  ‘They will attack our trade wherever they are able, just as they did in the last war. Moreover, their success will tempt out the more active of the French commanders and corsairs who would not need to rely on the blockaded ports of Europe, but could shift their operations to American bases where there will be no dearth of support and sympathy, reviving the old alliance of ’79 in the name of the twin republics . . .’

  ‘Do you have any more horrors for us, Captain?’ Moira asked mockingly.

  ‘Do you want any more, my Lord?’ Drinkwater asked seriously. ‘They will ambush the India trade, attack our fishing fleets and whalers, ravage the West Indies . . .’

  ‘And how do you know all this, Captain?’ Moira asked drily.

  ‘It is what he would do in Madison’s place, ain’t it, Nathaniel?’

  ‘It is certainly what I would do if I were Secretary of Madison’s navy, my Lords, and wanted to compensate for its weaknesses. When it cannot achieve something itself, the state encourages its more rapacious citizenry to do it on its behalf.’

  ‘And will it come to this?’ Elizabeth asked. ‘You are all talking as if the matter were a fait accompli.’

  ‘If Napoleon don’t invade Russia, Elizabeth,’ Dungarth said with solemn intimacy, ‘then he will surely not miss the opportunity to capitalize on a breach between London and Washington which he has for months now been so assiduously encouraging.’ And then he snicked his fingers with such violence that the sudden noise made them jump and the candle-flames flickered, adding, as if it had just occurred to him, ‘By God! It’s what he has been waiting for!’

  And for a moment they stared at the puffy face of the once-handsome man, transfigured as it was by realization.

  And so it proved, despite a stone-walling by the so-called doves. The hawks, roaring into the Congress chamber banging cuspidors, startled a tedious orator into sitting and conceding the floor. Thus provoked, Speaker Clay put the question which was carried almost two to one in favour of war with Great Britain. Later the Senate agreed and within two days the National Intelligencer of Washington, the Freeman’s Journal and Mercantile Advertiser of Philadelphia and every other broadsheet in the United States repeated the text of the Act opening hostilities. Even the news that the British had finally set aside the infamous Orders-inCouncil, anxious to protect the American supplies vital to Wellington’s advancing army, failed to stem the headlong dash to war. Madison’s intention of issuing letters-of-marque and of general-reprisal against the goods, vessels and effects of the government and subjects of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was quoted alongside the declaration.

  ‘America, having obtained her independence from Great Britain, is going to engage her old enemy to prove the young eagle is ready to supersede the old lion,’ Drinkwater explained later to his children as they watched in silence while he ordered the packing of his sea-chest.

  Within days Napoleon’s Grande Armée began to cross the River Nieman and invade Russia. Half a million men, French, Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Württemburgers, Italians, Poles, marched, as Marshal Marmont was long afterwards to recall, ‘surrounded by a kind of radiance’.

  ‘Now we shall see, Nat,’ said Dungarth, the warmth of final achievement mixed with the excitement of a vast gamble, ‘what this clash of Titans will decide.’

  For Captain and Mrs Drinkwater there were less euphoric considerations. He waited upon their Lordships at the Admiralty immediately and within two days had received his orders. Indeed, the presence of Captain Drinkwater in the capital was considered ‘most fortuitous’. While the focus of Dungarth’s apprehensions lay to the east, Drinkwater shared Moira’s concern for the outcome of events upon the Western Ocean and beyond. At the end of June the Drinkwaters returned home to Suffolk and their children. He was impatient, his heart beating at a faster pace. Patrician was to be hurried to sea again, her lack of men notwithstanding.

  Drinkwater’s last days at Gantley Hall were spent writing letters which Richard, his son, took into Woodbridge for the post. Drinkwater dismissed Richard’s pleas to be rated captain’s servant aboard the Patrician. Instead he roused Lieutenant Quilhampton from his connubial bliss, thundering upon his cottage door on a wet evening when the sun set behind yellow cloud.

  ‘My dear sir,’ said Quilhampton, stepping backwards and beckoning Drinkwater indoors. ‘We heard you had gone up to town . . .’

  ‘You’ve heard of the outbreak of war with America?’ Drinkwater snapped, cutting short his host’s pleasantries.

  ‘Well, yes, yesterday. I meant to try for a ship . . .’

  ‘My dear James, I have no time, forgive me . . . ma’am,’ he bowed curtly to Catriona who had come into the room from the kitchen beyond, with an offer of tea, ‘can you spare your husband?’

  ‘You have a ship for me?’ broke in Quilhampton, nodding to his wife and ignoring her silent protest.

  ‘Not exactly, James. As a lieutenant I can get you a cutter or a gun-brig, but nothing more. I am, however, desperate for a first luff in Patrician.’ He paused, watching the disappointment clear in Quilhampton’s expression. ‘It ain’t what you want, I know, but nor is it as bad as you think, James. I am to be the senior captain of a flying squadron . . .’

  ‘A commodore, sir?’

  ‘Aye, but only of the second class. They will not let me have a post-captain under me, but I can promise you advancement at the first opportunity, to Master and Commander at the very least . . .’

  ‘I’ll come, sir, of course I will.’ Quilhampton held out his remaining hand.

  ‘That’s handsome of you, James, damned handsome,’ Drinkwater grinned, seizing the outstretched paw. ‘God bless you, my friend.’

  ‘He was mortified you sailed for America without him last autumn, Captain Drinkwater,’ Catriona said quietly in her Scots accent, pouring the bohea. Drinkwater noticed her thickening waist and recalled Elizabeth telling him the Quilhamptons were expecting.

  ‘My dear, I am an insensitive dullard, forgive me, my congratulations to you both . . .’

  Catriona handed him a cup
. The delicate scent of the tea filled the room, but cup and saucer chattered slightly from the shaking of her hand. She caught his eye, her own fierce and tearful beneath the mop of tawny hair. ‘My child needs a father, Captain. Even a one-armed one is better than none.’

  ‘Ma’am! . . .’ Drinkwater stammered, ‘I am, I mean, I, er . . .’

  ‘Take him,’ she said and withdrew, retiring to her kitchen.

  Drinkwater looked at Quilhampton who shrugged.

  ‘When can you be ready?’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘We’ll post. Time is of the essence.’

  ‘Talking of which, I have something . . .’ Quilhampton turned aside and opened the door of a long-case clock that ticked majestically in a corner. He lifted a dark, dusty bottle from its base.

  ‘Cognac, James?’ Drinkwater asked, raising an eyebrow, ‘How reprehensible.’ Quilhampton smiled at Drinkwater’s ill-disguised expression of appreciation.

  ‘It is usually Hollands on this coast, but I can’t stand the stuff. This’, he held up the bottle after lacing both their cups of tea, ‘the rector of Waldringfield mysteriously acquires.’

  ‘Here’s to the confinement, James. Tell her to stay with Elizabeth when her time comes.’

  ‘I will, and thank you. Here’s to the ship.’

  CHAPTER 12

  July–November 1812

  David and Goliath

  ‘What is it, Mr Gordon?’ Drinkwater emerged on to the quarterdeck and clapped his hand to his hat as a gust of wind tore at his cloak.

  ‘Hasty, sir; she’s just fired a gun and thrown out the signal for a sail in sight.’

  ‘Very well. Make Hasty’s number and tell him to investigate.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  Fishing for his Dollond glass Drinkwater levelled it at the small twenty-eight gun frigate bobbing on the rim of the horizon as they exchanged signals with her over the five miles of heaving grey Atlantic. Then he cast a quick look round the circumscribed circle of their visible horizon at the other ships of the squadron.

  The little schooner sprite clung to Patrician like a child to a parent, while two miles to leeward he could make out the thirty-eight gun, 18-pounder frigate Cymbeline, and beyond her the topsails of Icarus, a thirty-two, mounting 12-pounders on her gun deck.

  ‘Hasty acknowledges, sir.’

  Drinkwater swung back to Gordon and nodded. ‘Very well. And now I think ’tis time we hoisted French colours with a gun to loo’ard, if you please, Mr Gordon.’

  Midshipman Belchambers had anticipated the order, for it had long been known that they would close the American coast under an equivocal disguise. The red, white and blue bunting spilled from his arms as the assisting yeoman tugged at the halliards. Clear of the wind eddies about the deck, the tricolour snapped out clear of the bunt of the spanker and rose, stiff as a board, to the peak. The trio of officers watched the curiosity for a moment, then Drinkwater held his pocket-glass out to the midshipman.

  ‘Up you go, Mr Belchambers. Keep me informed. We should sight land before sunset.’ He hoped he sounded confident, instead of merely optimistic, for they had not obtained a single sight during the week the gale had prevailed.

  The boom of the signal gun drowned Belchambers’ reply, but he scampered away, tucking the precious spy-glass in his trousers and reaching for the main shrouds. Drinkwater stared at Hasty again as she shook out her topgallants. Captain Tyrell was very young, younger than poor Quilhampton, and he was inordinately proud of his command which, by contrast, was grown old, though of a class universally acknowledged as pretty. Drinkwater suspected a multitude of defects lurked beneath the paint, whitewash and gilded brightwork of her dandified appearance. Yet the young man in command seemed efficient enough, had understood the signals thrown out on their tedious passage across the Atlantic and handled his ship with every sign of competence. Perhaps he had a good sailing-master, Drinkwater thought, again turning his attention to the Sprite: they must be damnably uncomfortable aboard the schooner.

  Sprite’s commander was a different kettle of fish, a man of middle age whose commission as lieutenant was but two years old. Lieutenant Sundercombe had come up the hard way, pressed into the Royal Navy from a Guinea slaver whose mate he had been. He had languished on the lower deck for five years before winning recognition and being rated master’s mate. There was both a resentment and a burning passion in the man, Drinkwater had concluded, which was doubtless due to his enforced service as a seaman. Maybe contact with the helpless human cargo carried on the middle passage had made him philosophical about the whims and vagaries of fate, maybe not. His most significant attribute as far as Drinkwater was concerned was his skill as a fore-and-aft sailor. His Majesty’s armed schooner sprite had been built in the Bahamas to an American design and attached to the squadron as a dispatch vessel.

  As for the other frigates and their captains, the bluff and hearty Thorowgood of the Cymbeline and the stooped and consumptive Ashby of the Icarus, though as different as chalk from cheese in appearance, were typical of their generation. With the exception of Sundercombe and his schooner, in whose selection Drinkwater had enlisted Dungarth’s influence, the histories of the younger men were unremarkable, their appointment to join his so-called ‘flying squadron’ uninfluenced by anything other than the Admiratlty’s sudden fright at the depredations of Yankee privateers. None of them had seen action of any real kind, rising quickly through patronage or influence, and had been either cruising uneventfully in home waters or employed on convoy duties. Tyrell on the Irish coast where, in the Cove of Cork, he had been able to titivate his ship to his heart’s content; and Thorowgood in the West Indies, where rum and women of colour seemed to have made a deep impression upon him. Ashby looked too frail to remain long in this world, though he possessed an admirable doggedness if his conduct in the recent gale was anything to go by, for Icarus had carried away her fore topmast shortly before sunset a few days earlier and had been separated from the rest of the squadron. The last that had been seen of her as she disappeared behind a grey curtain of rain was not encouraging. The violent line squall had dragged waterspouts from the surface of the sea and the wild sweep of lowering cloud had compelled them all to look to their own ships and shorten sail with alacrity. Patrician’s raw crew, once more decimated by idleness and filled from every available and unsuitable source, had been hard-pressed for an hour.

  Captain Ashby had fired guns to disperse a spout that threatened his frigate and these had been taken for distress signals. When the weather cleared, however, there was no sign of the Icarus, and though the squadron reversed course until darkness and then hove-to for the night, the dawn showed the three remaining frigates and the schooner alone.

  ‘I suppose’, Drinkwater had remarked as David Gordon returned to the deck shaking his head after sweeping the horizon from the masthead, ‘our still being in company is a small miracle.’

  But two days later Ashby’s Icarus had hove over the eastern horizon, her damage repaired and a cloud of canvas rashly set, proving at least that she was a fast sailer and Ashby a resourceful man with a competent ship’s company. Now, as the gale blew itself out and they closed the lee of the American coast, Drinkwater chewed over their prospects of success and the risky means by which he hoped to achieve it. His orders gave him wide discretion; the problem with such latitude was that his judgement was proportionately open to criticism.

  ‘A sail, I hear, sir,’ said Quilhampton, coming on deck and touching the fore-cock of his hat at the lonely figure jammed at the foot of the weather mizen rigging.

  Drinkwater stirred out of his brown study. ‘Ah, James, yes; Tyrell’s gone to investigate and Belchambers is aloft keeping an eye on the chase.’

  ‘I see we’ve the frog ensign at the peak . . .’

  ‘You disapprove?’

  Quilhampton shrugged and cast his eyes upwards. ‘I comprehend your reasoning, sir, it just feels damned odd . . .’

  ‘Any ruse that allows us time
to gather intelligence is worth adopting.’

  ‘Has Icarus gone off flying the thing, sir?’

  ‘If he obeyed orders he has, yes.’

  ‘Deck there!’ Both officers broke off to stare upwards to where Belchambers swung against the monotone grey of the overcast, his arm outstretched. ‘Land, sir, four points on the starboard bow!’

  ‘What of the chase?’ Drinkwater bellowed back.

  ‘Looks like a schooner, sir, to the sou’westward. Hasty’s hull down but I don’t think he’s gaining.’

  ‘He won’t against a Yankee schooner,’ Drinkwater grumbled to his first lieutenant. ‘Though Belchambers can’t see it yet, she’ll be tucked under the lee of the land there with a beam wind, damn it.’ Drinkwater sighed, and made a hopeless gesture with his hand. ‘I really don’t know how best to achieve success . . .’

  ‘I heard scores of Yankee merchantmen left New York on the eve of the declaration with clearances for the Tagus,’ remarked Quilhampton.

  ‘Aye, and we’ll buy their cargoes, just to keep Wellington’s army in the field, and issue licences for more, I daresay.’ He thought of the boasting finality he had threatened Captain Stewart with, calling up the iron ring of blockade to confound the American’s airy theories of maritime war. Now the government in London showed every sign of pusillanimity in their desire not to interfere with supplies to the army in Spain. ‘I wish to God the government would order a full blockade and bring the Americans to their senses quickly.’

  ‘They misjudged the Yankee’s temper,’ agreed Quilhampton, ‘thinking they would be content with the eventual rescinding of the Orders-in-Council.’