The Letter of Marque

by Patrick O'Brian

  'So it was your answer. You did answer. Stephen, I should never worry you about ancient history at a time like this, but you look so well, you eat so well, and Dr Mersennius is so pleased with his hellebore, that I thought I might just mention it, to show that I was neither unfeeling nor altogether stupid.'

  'I never thought you were either, soul,' said Stephen, 'though I did know that your sense of chronology was little better than mine; and I cannot remember my age without I do a subtraction with pen and ink. The letter was indeed my answer, and a mighty difficult answer it was to write. For one thing it had to be written quick, because we were under sailing orders, because I wanted you to have it as soon as possible, and because I had an overland messenger waiting. For another thing I had been flaunting a red-haired lady up and down the Mediterranean—or at least down it, from Valletta to Gibraltar by way of the African coast—and it certainly looked as though she were my mistress. But, however, she was not. The fact of the matter is—but this must not go beyond the two of us, Diana—the fact of the matter is that she was concerned with naval intelligence; the French at that time had some very dangerous secret agents in Malta and there was a nest of traitors in the city itself; at a given crisis it was thought necessary to remove her at once. The removal certainly preserved her life, but it damaged her reputation among those who were not connected with intelligence. Even Jack was deceived, which surprised me; I had thought he knew me better.'

  'So was Wray. So were a great many other people. I heard it on all hands. Oh, it was so galling to be treated tactfully. And never a word from you. Theseus, Andromache and Naiad all came in, all of them with letters or messages for Sophie, and not a word for me. I was furious.'

  'I am sure you were. Yet the letter was written: and as I say, it was difficult to write, because there would have been criminal imprudence in speaking of any matters to do with intelligence in a letter that might fall into the wrong hands; and without doing so I could hardly exculpate myself, for to my astonishment I found that my bare assertion carried no weight. People smiled and looked knowing: perhaps it was because her hair was red—there are all sorts of lubricious ideas abroad about red-haired women. Though I may add that her husband, an officer as far removed from the mari complaisant as you can possibly imagine, was not deceived: he knew that red hair and chastity were perfectly compatible.'

  'Stephen, you did say that she was not your mistress?'

  'I did. And I will say it again on the holy Cross if you wish.'

  'Oh don't do that. But then why did you say you had come to be forgiven?'

  'Because I had so mismanaged things that you thought I needed forgiveness—because I caused you distress—because I was too stupid to send a copy of my letter by Theseus—because I was fool enough not to suspect that traitor Wray.'

  'Oh Stephen, I have used you barbarously, barbarously,' she said: and after a pause, 'But I will make it up to you if ever I can. I will make it up to you in any way you like.' They both raised their heads at the sound of a carriage. 'That will be Mersennius,' she said. 'I must let him in. Ulrika will never hear and the Lapp is cutting wood.'

  Mersennius it was. He was particularly well-disposed towards Stephen as a grateful, responsive patient and a perfect example of what hellebore could do. He pointed out its virtues again, and Stephen said, 'Certainly: I shall prescribe it myself. Tell me, dear colleague, you would have no objection to my leaving your care in a day or so? There is a ship coming for me—indeed she may even be in Stockholm at this moment—and I should not like to keep her waiting.'

  'Objection? No,' tapping Stephen's leg—'none, with my Basra dressing, so long as you can travel by coach and be conveyed directly to your cot. I will put up hellebore for your voyage. Is the ship coming from England?'

  'No. From Riga.'

  'Then you may set your mind at rest. The wind turned fair today, but for a great while it was foul, and no ship could have got out of the Gulf of Riga except by venturing upon the Suur Sound. I have a small pleasure-boat, and I watch the weather most attentively.'

  'At least I shall have time to pack,' said Diana, and then in a very much happier tone, 'Stephen, what am I to do while you are in South America?'

  'Stay with Sophie while you look about for a place with good pasture for your Arabians, and a house in London town. I think I heard that the one in Half Moon Street was for sale.'

  'Shall you be long, do you suppose?'

  'I hope not. But I tell you, my dear, that until the war is properly over and that Buonaparte put down, I must stay afloat, at least most of the time.'

  'Of course,' said Diana, who was of a service family. 'I believe I should best like to stay with Sophie until then, if she will have me: and perhaps I could use Jack's stables, they being empty. Stephen, did you mean we could buy a house in town? They are terribly expensive.'

  'So I understand. But my godfather, God rest his dear soul, left me a terrible lot of money. I forget what it comes to in English pounds, but the part that is already invested brings in far more than the pay of an admiral of the fleet. When peace comes we can have a house in Paris too.'

  'Oh what joy! Stephen, could we really? I should love that. What a sad mercenary creature I am—I find my heart is quite thumping with happiness. I was quite pleased to have my husband back, but to find him covered with gold from head to foot as well fairly throws me into transports. How vulgar.' She sprang up from her seat, walked up and down the room with an elastic step, looked out of the window and said, 'There is Jagiello in his coach. And Lord,' she cried, 'he has Jack Aubrey beside him on the box!'

  Jack came into the room on tiptoe, with an anxious, apprehensive face, followed by Martin and Jagiello. He kissed Diana in an absent, cousinly way, and took Stephen's hand in a warm, dry, gentle grasp. 'My poor old fellow,' he said, 'how do you do?'

  'Very well, I thank you, Jack. How is the ship, and has she her poldavy?'

  'She is in fine form—brought us out of the Suur Sound under topgallantsails, going like a racehorse, starboard tacks aboard, studdingsails aloft and alow, nip and tuck in that damned narrow Wormsi channel—you could have tossed a biscuit on to the lee shore—and she has a dozen bolts of the kind of poldavy they serve out in Heaven.'

  Stephen gave his creaking laugh of satisfaction and said 'Diana, allow me to present my particular friend the Reverend Mr Martin, of whom you have heard so much. Mr Martin: my wife.'

  Diana gave him her hand with a welcoming smile and said 'I believe, sir, you are the only gentleman among our friends that has been bitten by a night-ape.'

  They spoke at some length about the night-ape, the capybara, the bearded marmoset; Ulrika and the Lapp brought coffee: and in a pause Stephen said, 'Jack, are you alongside that elegant quay in the old town?'

  'Yes, moored head and stern to bollards; and she is already turned round.'

  'Would it be convenient if we came aboard tonight?'

  'I should like it of all things,' said Jack. 'I do not trust this breeze to hold for another twenty-four hours.'

  'Can you indeed travel with a broken leg?' asked Jagiello.

  'Mersennius said I certainly might, if I went to the ship in a coach. Jagiello, would you be so kind?'

  'Of course, of course. We will carry you downstairs on a door taken off its hinges, and prop you up inside, with Mr Martin to hold you. I shall drive at a very gentle trot, and you shall have a colonel's escort from my regiment.'

  'Diana, my dear, does that suit you at all? Or would you sooner have another day or two to pack?'

  'Give me a couple of hours,' said Diana with shining eyes, 'and I am your man. Gentlemen, do not stir, I beg, but finish your coffee. I will send Pishan up with some sandwiches.'

  Presently the gentlemen did stir, however; or at least Aubrey and Jagiello went off to see whether a door Jagiello remembered in his grandmother's barn would answer, and whether one of her remaining maids might not bear a hand in the packing.

  'Surely I hear Bonden below,' said Stephen when he
and Martin were alone. 'Is Padeen here?'

  'To tell you the truth,' said Martin, 'he is not. Unhappily we had a disagreement this morning, and Captain Pullings put him in irons. I do hate informing,' he went on, 'but without the least intention of catching him out I came upon him siphoning laudanum from one of the carboys and replacing the tincture with brandy . . .'

  'Of course, of course, of course,' murmured Stephen. 'What a heavy simpleton I was never to have struck upon that.' And when Martin had finished his sad tale of Padeen's violence on having his bottle taken away from him he said 'I was very much to blame for leaving such things in his reach. We shall have to take the whole matter seriously in hand—we cannot turn him into the world a mere opium-eater.'

  They mused for a while and Martin gave Stephen an account, a very long and detailed account, of their doings in Riga and of the manners of the Letts and their Russian masters. He had gone on to speak of the presumably Sclavonian grebes far out on the broad Dvina when Diana came in. She gave Stephen an extraordinarily violent shock, one that needed all his recovered strength and the leaves he was chewing to withstand, for she was wearing the green riding-habit of his dream. 'Stephen,' she said, her eyes brighter still, 'I have packed all I need for the time—a couple of trunks—the rest can follow by sea. The coach will be round in five minutes, with Countess Tessin's door. But I am not coming in it with you. You need a man to hold you, and with him and the door there is no room for me, so I am going to ride'—laughing with pure joy—'I am going to fetch your things from the hotel and put flowers in our cabin.'

  'My dear,' said Stephen, 'do you know an apothecary's shop near the hotel, with monsters in the window and a stuffed armadillo?'

  'And the apothecary very small?'

  'That is the place. Pray step in—have you someone to hold your horse?'

  'The Lapp will go with me.'

  'And buy all the coca leaves he has left; it is only the tail of a sack.'

  'Stephen, you will have to give me some money.' And when he waved to his coat, 'You see, Mr Martin, what horse-leeches we wives do become.'

  The Surprise lay, as Jack had said, moored head and stern against the quay. Her deck had a somewhat deserted look, for Tom Pullings and the purser were below, trying to disentangle the Riga merchants' accounts, and a fair number of men were on shore-leave until six.

  West was the only officer on the quarterdeck, and it so happened that the party of hands making dolphins and paunch-mats on the forecastle were all Shelmerstonians. West was gaping rather vacantly over the taffrail when he saw an extraordinarily handsome woman ride along the quay, followed by a groom. She dismounted at the height of the ship, gave the groom her reins, and darted straight across the brow and so below.

  'Hey there,' he cried, hurrying after her, 'this is Dr Maturin's cabin. Who are you, ma'am?'

  'I am his wife, sir,' she said, 'and I beg you will desire the carpenter to sling a cot for me here.' She pointed, and then bending and peering out of the scuttle she cried 'Here they are. Pray let people stand by to help him aboard: he will be lying on a door.' She urged West out of the cabin and on deck, and there he and the amazed foremast hands saw a blue and gold coach and four, escorted by a troop of cavalry in mauve coats with silver facings, driving slowly along the quay with their captain and a Swedish officer on the box, their surgeon and his mate leaning out of the windows, and all of them, now joined by the lady on deck, singing Ah tutti contend saremo cosí, ah tutti contenti saremo, saremo cosí with surprisingly melodious full-throated happiness.

  Jack Aubrey’s Ships

  BRIAN LAVERY

  PATRICK O’BRIAN, unlike other writers of naval fiction often uses real ships as the basis for his plots. In the Hornblower stories of C. S. Forester, for example, the hero serves on only one real ship—the Indefatigable, which really was the ship commanded by Captain Pellew during the time when the hero served under him as midshipman.

  Several of the Aubrey stories are based on real incidents and use real ships: in particular, The Mauritius Command, is based on the real campaign in that area. The use of real ships which have a past adds to the effect of the story: the cutting out of the Hermione in the case of the Surprise, and the incident between the Leopard and the USS Chesapeake in 1807, which led to difficulties after Jack Aubrey’s capture by the Americans in The Fortune of War.

  The Royal Navy of Napoleonic Wars had nearly 1,000 ships at its peak in 1814. These were divided into six rates, according to size and gunpowder, with numerous smaller vessels which were unrated.

  In general the rates were divided as follows:

  Unrated ships included sloops of 10—18 guns, brigs, bomb vessels, fire-ships, storeships, cutters, schooners, luggers, hospital ships, prison ships, and gunboats.

  After service as a midshipman and lieutenant, a successful naval officer would expect to take command of a sloop, with the rank of Commander. After promotion to Post Captain, he would rise through ships of the different rates, perhaps reaching a third rate after seven to ten years in command of frigates. In the early stages, Jack Aubrey’s career roughly conforms to this. As a commander he began in the tiny sloop Sophie and, after a period on the beach, he continued in the Polychrest. Following his promotion, Aubrey took temporary command of the 38-gun fifth rate, the Lively. This was rather a large ship for a newly promoted captain, but the command was temporary and the circumstances were exceptional. He then went to the Surprise, a sixth rate of 28 guns, a ship more appropriate to his seniority. His next ship was the Boadicea, a fifth rate of 38 guns. After that his career in frigates might have ended. With six or seven years of seniority he was offered the Ajax, a ship-of-the-line of 74 guns, but turned it down in order to go to sea more quickly in the Leopard, a 50-gun ship.

  After this Aubrey’s rise up the rates slows down considerably. Stephen Maturin’s intelligence activities generally demand small ships, and Aubrey is certainly more at home in the single ship missions carried out by frigates, than service with the main fleet in a ship-of-the-line. His next command after the Leopard (apart from several ships as a virtual passenger) is the sloop Ariel. It is made quite clear that he is being given the ship because of ‘a delicate, pressing piece of work that calls for a cool, experienced hand’, and that it was ‘fully understood that the command of the Ariel in no way represented the Board’s estimate of Captain Aubrey’s merits’; the ship was technically transformed from a sloop to a post ship by the mere fact of Aubrey taking command. (Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate)

  In The lonian Mission Aubrey’s career briefly resumes a normal course, when he becomes captain of the Worcester of 74 guns. This however does not last for long and he soon returns to his old friend the Surprise. The association with this ship continues through the remaining books, even survivIng his dismissal from the navy in The Reverse of the Medal.

  Aubrey’s first two ships, the Sophie and the Polychrest, were fictitious, and rather unusual vessels. The Sophie was described as ‘almost the only quarterdeck brig in the service’, and certainly such a deck, reaching from the stern to almost midships in a larger ship, was highly unusual in one so small. Formerly known as the Vencejo, she had been captured from the Spanish. She was old-fashioned in construction and fitting, and was regarded as rather slow. She was about 150 tons in burthen, which would have made her about 70ft long on the gundeck. Her main armament consisted of 14 guns, apparently very light ones firing 4-pound shot, but Aubrey successfully applied to have two 12-pounders fitted as ‘bow chasers’, firing directly forward. As a brig she would have been fitted with two masts, both carrying square sails. (Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander)

  The Polychrest was even more unusual. She had been designed to carry a secret weapon, later abandoned. She was double-ended, in that head and stern were alike. She apparently had a very shallow draught, as she had no hold. This was compensated for by the use of sliding keels, rather like those used by modern dinghies (and in fact a few vessels were built with such sliding keels, mostly to
the design of Captain Shanck). Her armament of twenty-four 32-pounder carronades was a very heavy one for a ship of her size, but would only have been effective at short range. She was three masted, square-rigged, but was unusual in that she had two main topsail yards. She was ‘the Carpenter’s Mistake’, ‘a theorizing landsman’s vessel . . . built by a gang of rogues and jobbers’. (Patrick O'Brian, Post Captain)

  The Lively is the first real ship we encounter, and she was a perfectly standard frigate of 38 guns. When Aubrey took up his acting command in the autumn of 1804 she was almost brand new, having been launched at Woolwich Dockyard in July. She was the first of a class of 15 ships, designed by Sir William Rule the Joint Surveyor of the Navy. She was of 1,076 tons, 154ft 1in. long on the gundeck, and 39ft 6in. broad. Like other ships of this type, she carried twenty-eight 18-pounder guns on the main deck, twelve 32-pounder carronades and two long 12-pounders on the quarterdeck, and two 32-pounder carronades and two long 9-pounders on the forecastle. Officially this type of ship carried a crew of 284 or 300 men, though in practice many were under-manned. By this time the 38 was the third most common type of frigate in the fleet. There were 45 of them on the list in 1805 compared with 53 frigates of 36-guns and 59 smaller vessels of 32-guns.

  The Surprise, to which Aubrey was appointed after his temporary command of the Lively had ended, was ‘a trim, beautiful little eight and twenty, French built with a bluff bow and lovely lines, weatherly, stiff, a fine sea boat, fast when she was well handled, roomy, dry’. (Patrick O'Brian, H. M. S. Surprise) The real ship had distinguished herself in 1799. Two years earlier the crew of’ the frigate Hermione, under the brutal Captain Pigot, had mutinied and butchered their officers. They had surrendered her to the Spanish, who were fitting her out for their fleet at Puerto Cabello, in what is now Venezuela. On the night of 21 October six boats from the Surprise went into the enemy harbour, stormed the Hermione and towed her out to sea. (William James, The Naval History of Great Britain from the Declaration of War by France)