The King's Privateer

by Dewey Lambdin

  Sir Hugo reset his waist-coat, the hang of his smallsword, and thumped down the steps to the muddy yard, leaving Lewrie at a loss for words, red-faced with sudden shame.

  “Sir?” Alan called out, stepping down into the mud and drizzle. “Father?”

  Sir Hugo halted and turned around, squelching mud on his boots.

  “Yes?” he snapped.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” Alan admitted. “I didn’t even know there was anything you really cared about. Except for money and quim.”

  “Well, they still rate pretty high on my list of favorites,” Sir Hugo confessed. “Doing what I’m best at, horrible as it can be, is on that list, too, you know.”

  “I most heartily apologize, Father.”

  “Apology accepted. Son. To be expected, I suppose. You know very little about me. Part of that’s my fault. Come to my quarters.”

  “You haven’t brought your band with you, have you?” Alan smiled.

  “No, and the girls are in someone else’s bibikhana now. Still, I never travel without a decent wine cellar. There’s some claret you might appreciate.” Sir Hugo laughed.

  “I’d admire that, thankee … Father.”

  “You know,” Sir Hugo commented as they trudged across the muddy maidan of the military cantonment, “I don’t half trust your man Twigg.”

  “I’ve yet to know what to make of him, yes.”

  “What bothered me most was what you said about scouting out the islands we’re to capture. He sounded more eager to get his precious goods back to Calcutta. First ship in would reap a fortune. Fortune to fund your expedition out here, yes. And fortune enough to line the pockets of a palatikal with what’s left over.”

  “He knew!” Alan spat out. “That’s what surprised me. Right after we sank La Malouine, he knew. By that morning at the latest. And yet he kept it to himself, told no one, didn’t suggest we look in on the Spratlys. If that taifun hadn’t forced us down here to Bencoolen for shelter, I expect we’d be halfway up the Malacca Straits by now, your battalion be damned, and he’d sit on his news until we’d crossed the Hooghly Bar. Probably wanted something to impress Warren Hastings with.”

  “Ah, well he’d better be quick about it, then. Hastings is under a cloud. There’s talk from home of him sailing for England to face impeachment charges with ‘John Company.’ Might have someone new in the Bengal Presidency soon.”

  “Someone who doesn’t know a bloody thing about our mission?”

  “That could make things very interesting.” Sir Hugo frowned. “Damme, here come the bloody rains again! I assume a sailor can run? Run or get soaked.”

  “This sailor can,” Alan said, matching the older man’s stride easily.

  “One thing to expect,” Sir Hugo puffed.

  “What?”

  “Twigg probably cares for you now … as much as cold, boiled mutton,” Sir Hugo replied between breaths. “Look for a spell of the dirty.”

  Chapter 4

  It didn’t seem like a spell of the dirty, even if Twigg had a hand in influencing the captain’s decision.

  Ayscough had explained it to him. Lieutenant Choate, as first officer and his most reliable man, would be the one first in line to take the job, normally, but he would be needed to take command of whichever suitable vessel they hired in Calcutta while Telesto was refitting.

  To fill his vacancy, he had to draw upon his next-most experienced and skilled officer, Lieutenant Percival, to remain aboard Telesto to advance to first officer in Choate’s absence. Lieutenant McTaggart had to remain aboard Telesto, at least to Calcutta, and go as first officer for Choate in his new captaincy.

  Captain Ayscough could advance the midshipmen-in-disguise now serving as master’s mates to Mr. Brainard into acting lieutenants, but they would be slender reeds upon which to depend to command the escort north with Lady Charlotte.

  “As I said in my journal about this matter, Mister Lewrie,” the captain had told him, “that leaves only you, but you have shewn yourself to be more than reliable, competent and daring, but not too daring. I also made note that you only of the remaining commission officers, had, no matter your lack of seniority, commanded a King’s ship even briefly. The chore is fairly simple, if you do not exceed your brief and go off chasing pirates too rashly. If they don’t kill you, then I shall.”

  Lewrie got command of Culverin.

  She had started life in 1778 as a bomb-ketch, laid down in Calcutta once the last war had spread from the Colonies to a world-wide conflagration against the Spanish, the Dutch and the French. To be a bomb-ketch, she had to be solid and heavy enough to absorb the kick of two twelve-inch mortars firing at high angle, so she was made of teak, as overbuilt as a 1st Rate line-of-battle ship, though her sides did not need to be as thick. She would never have been required to stand in the line of battle, anyway. She was further stiffened with riders that were scarfed from her frames as cross-members, to the keelson up to the deck beams, making her interior a maze totally unsuitable for large cargoes, with much of her centerline length taken up below deck as magazine and shot racks for her former weapons.

  The huge mortars were gone, though the wells where they had sat remained, one forward of her main-mast, and one forward of her shorter mizzenmast. Culverin had been sold out of naval service once the war in the Far East had ended in 1783. Bombs were too easily replaced if war broke out again, the Admiralty decried the expense of maintaining many of them in-ordinary and their usefulness was limited to those occasions where high-angle explosive shells needed to be hurled into harbors and fortifications along a hostile coast.

  She would have seemed like the perfect answer to an enterprising captain for coastal trading. About ninety feet on the range of the deck, roughly the length of a trading brig, about twenty-six feet in beam, and shoal-drafted to let her get within firing range of coastal forts. Her rig was only two masts instead of three, making for less crew, and ketches sported large gaff-rigged fore-and-aft sails on the rear of her masts, making sailing, tacking and wearing ship even simpler.

  All of which—her ease and cheapness of operation, rigidity and stout construction, and shallow draft—had convinced young Captain Dover to buy her and put her to work on the Bencoolen-Calcutta run, contracted to service the needs of that fearsome settlement, with the occasional jaunt to Macao running opium lurking somewhere in the back of his mind as well.

  The only trouble was that she was not particularly weatherly; even with fore-and-aft sails she could not go close-hauled against the wind. She could point closer to the wind, yes, but her shallow draft made her slip to leeward too much, unlike a deeper-bellied ship with more grip below the waterline. And then, there were those riders in her innards, that limited the amount of cargo she could carry. They could not be removed without dismantling Culverin completely, bolted as they were from the outside of her hull, right through planking, her beams and frames, keelson and futtocks. But at four thousand pounds sterling, she had seemed a bargain, so he had bought her, and had been losing money on the deal ever since, scrimp as he might to make her pay.

  Which was why Captain Dover had leaped at that chance not simply to hire her out, but sell her outright, even if Twigg had only offered three thousand pounds. Neither was the enterprising Captain Dover quite so enterprising or ambitious as to remain aboard as part of the venture, so he took passage for Calcutta aboard Telesto, along with his first mate and four of his small crew that hadn’t decided to cut his gizzard out yet.

  Most of the remaining crew were just as happy to see the last of Captain Dover, though he left their pay in arrears, so when Ayscough harangued them to sign on at civilian pay rates, with a golden guinea for a joining-bounty, and the promise of untold loot, they had agreed to stay with her.

  He would have no surgeon or purser, no sailing master—none of those excess warrants who made an officer’s life easier. Lewrie suspected he’d have to swot up on how to lance boils, issue biscuit and rum, do his own navigation and almost serve as his ow
n bosun. He did get Mr. Hogue, promoted to acting lieutenant, to serve as his first mate, which helped immensely. And Ayscough gave up Hodge and Witty as senior hands, Owen, the quarter-gunner, Hoolahan and some of the lower deck carronade gunners, Murray, the forecastle captain, to serve as bosun, and Cony to come along as cabin-servant/ cox’n/seaman. All in all, he had, including himself, only sixty-five people aboard, thirty of them her original crew. Not exactly inspiring circumstances, but she was a command, and she was all his. And once Ayscough had delivered new paint and bosun’s stores to put to rights the neglect she’d suffered, he had to admit that Culverin looked almost saucy.

  Fresh red paint inboard, bright blue upper bulwarks and the rest of her hull freshly varnished, and some yellow paint to touch up her transom, beak-head, entry port, quarter-galleries and railings.

  And fresh black paint, grease and varnish for her guns. She had once been outfitted with ten six-pounders, in addition to those two monstrous mortars, but they were gone now. They had been replaced with ten twenty-four-pounder carronades, another sign of her recent civilian nature. The carronades were lighter to mount, only took two men per gun to fight them (which required fewer paid hands) and their recoil was lighter. Most merchantmen were switching over to carronades for those reasons, and Captain Dover had swapped the original battery for them in Madras.

  Finally, four days after her purchase and refitting, with her new crew sorted out into a semblance of naval discipline, her holds, former magazines and shot-racks crammed with edibles and her mortar wells so crowded with livestock that she resembled the original Ark, they got under way.

  Chapter 5

  “This ain’t all claret and cruising,” he sighed to himself on the sixteenth day of passage. Trying to take Culverin north was a thankless chore. With fore-and-aft sails hauled in close, square-sails furled, and flying all her stays’ls and jibs, she would point within 55 degrees of the apparent wind, a whole point of sail higher than a square-rigger. But she made so much leeway! For every two feet gained forward, it seemed she slipped 1 foot sideways.

  So for a course of roughly nor’west, she had to make a long board on the starboard tack to make progress, then come about and do a short board on the port tack headed almost due east to correct her drift. If not, they’d have ended up somewhere in the Gulf of Siam!

  And, for a vessel with such a wide beam compared to her hull length, she obstinately refused to put her shoulder to the sea on either tack, never heeling over more than 15 degrees or so like a proper ship with more-rounded chines.

  “You say something, sir?” Hogue asked, turning his head.

  “I said, it’s not all claret and cruising, Mister Hogue,” Lewrie repeated, louder this time.

  “Well, sir, it is to me,” Hogue smiled, still be-dazzled by his sudden advancement to part-sailing master, part-lieutenant. “For myself this couldn’t be a better day. We’re roaring along like a whale!”

  They stood aft on the miniature quarterdeck, which did not measure twenty-four feet by twenty, out of the way of the long tiller bar by which she was steered, and the bulk of the after capstan. It was more like a poop deck, steeved higher than most to give almost-standing headroom below in the officers’ and warrants’ quarters under their feet.

  Culverin was bucketing along ahead of Lady Charlotte. They had decided to keep station up to windward, where their little ship might have room to point up higher, and slide sideways quicker, without ramming the slower but better-behaved square-rigger. The winds were quite fresh, trending more easterly than when the voyage began, as the Monsoon breezes shifted to their summer direction of sou’easterly.

  Culverin rattled and banged, her rigging sang to wind-song and her wake spread out wide and white behind her, creaming down her sides and frothing into a huge mustache under her bluff bows. Up she’d ride, on a long Pacific swell, then down she’d swoop, sedately cocking stern or bow into the air. Now and again, when her bowsprit rose up to the blue skies, she’d fling a cloud of salt-spray droplets around herself. And, now and again, a fleeting rainbow would form across her fo’c’sle, and shimmer in the slots between her jibs where air was compressed and sped along, imparting drive, those sails bedewed with atomized ocean nearly to the main-course yard.

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” Lewrie breathed, taking in the glory of it. “Don’t know as how I’ve ever seen that before!”

  “’Tis lucky, sir,” Hogue laughed out loud. “We’ve a lucky little ship here. Now she’s back in proper hands, that is, and I think she knows it.”

  “Captain,” Murray said, raising a knuckle to his brow. “Nigh to seven bells o’ the forenoon, sir. Permission t’ pipe ‘Clear Decks an’ Up Spirits,’ sir?”

  “Aye, Murray, on the bell. How are our hands doing with their merchantmen counterparts below?”

  “Main well, sir,” Murray shrugged. “They’ve heard tell o’ all our ships disappearin’, an’ most o’ them had mates aboard some. So they’re rarin’ t’ have at the Frogs, sir, an’ the pirates, too. An’ the booty’s got ’em pretty keen-like, sir. No problems so far.”

  The deck angled a bit more to leeward, the starboard side going about six inches higher than before, and Lewrie turned to look at the helmsman at the tiller, then at the long coach-whip at the peak of the mizzenmast truck.

  “Wind’s backing on us, at last!” he cheered. “Put your helm down to larboard and keep her full and by.”

  “Aye, sir!” the helmsman agreed. “Full an’ by. Now she lays nor’nor-west, half north, sir.”

  “We’ll make that bloody island by sundown, if the winds will only cooperate, sir,” Hogue stated. “We won’t have to jog to the west so far now, nor do a board back.”

  “Excellent. If the wind does indeed stay backed,” Lewrie said, fretting for a while at the pendant. Seven bells chimed. Murray put his bosun’s pipe to his mouth and blew the call for labors to cease and rum to be issued.

  “Look, sir!” Murray exclaimed, pointing over the windward bow to starboard. “Dolphins, sir. Come t’ play on our bow wave!”

  “And flying fish, too,” Hogue added, as a school of the fish broke the surface and began to beat their “wings” to race alongside Culverin, leaving a tiny frothing wake behind each.

  “Dolphins, an’ a rainbow, captain,” Murray sighed happily. “I b’lieve ever’thin’s gonna turn out aright this time!”

  “The island is occupied,” Chiswick stated once he was back aboard Lady Charlotte. They had fetched the low-lying island just before sundown, and had laid off-shore out of sight, sending a cutter in with a party of scouts from Chiswick’s light company.

  “Then should we risk entering harbor and landing troops?” Captain Cheney of Lady Charlotte asked. He was not a Navy officer, merely a civilian transporter of military and naval goods and people, and had never been called upon in a long career to do anything really risky.

  “Any ships in the harbor?” Lewrie asked, leaning over the chart he’d obtained from Mr. Brainard before Telesto sailed for Calcutta.

  “Aye, there were, Alan,” Burgess nodded. “You’d have to ask Lieutenant Hogue as to what they were, though.”

  “One small trading brig, sir. Anchored here,” Hogue said, tapping the chart of the harbor with his finger. “And a slightly larger three-masted ship … here. We landed here, on this narrow peninsula to the west of the harbor. There’s quite a good beach on either side, and the ridge down the center is just high enough to screen anyone from view who lands on the seaward side.”

  “There’s not much vegetation for cover anywhere that I could see,” Chiswick added, looking up to match gazes with his colonel. “But these rocks were pretty jumbly. The main encampment is farther along, in the center of the curve of the harbor beach, here.”

  “So we could land troops here, at the base of the peninsula,” Sir Hugo said, humming to himself. “Set up artillery atop the ridge here, and advance down the beach, and from slightly inland.”

  “There’s a flat place perfec
t for artillery, sir,” Chiswick agreed.

  “What about the ships, Mister Hogue? Could their guns interfere with a landing, once they were over the harbor-side of this peninsula?” Lewrie inquired.

  “They’re moored fore-and-aft, sir. Stems to the peninsula, starboard beams facing to seaward and the harbor entrance,” Hogue went on. “The small brig is a Yankee named Poor Richard, out of Boston. I think she might be a prize. T’other is French for certain. Stella Maris. I couldn’t make out her homeport.”

  “Gad, what eyes the lad has!” Sir Hugo chuckled.

  “They were unloading cargo, sir. Lots of work-lanterns on both ships, and long torches stuck into the sand. A bonfire or two burning ashore as well,” Hogue explained. “No Mindanao pirate boats about yet. I heard no English spoken, though, aboard Poor Richard. That’s why I think she was a prize. Just French was all I heard.”