Reefs and Shoals l-18

by Dewey Lambdin

  I’d scare what little he’s learned clear outta his head, did I haul him aboard! Lewrie told himself; Fragile as I still think he is, that’d be the ruin of him. And, he’d not thank me, and end up resentin’ it!

  Lewrie busied himself with creaming and sweetening a fresh cup of coffee, to cover his dread that what really motivated him was fear that he would witness Sewallis should he fail!

  “Suggestions, Mister Westcott?” Lewrie asked. “Nightingale, Eldridge, or a sprat?”

  “Well, sir… I’d go with Eldridge,” the First Lieutenant said. “I’ve stood so many watches with both that one can’t help but natter, here and there. Nightingale’s ambition is to become Sailing Master, someday, he’s told me. Mister Eldridge joined as a Landsman, but he’s shot up like a rocket… Ordinary, then Able, Quartermaster’s Mate to Quartermaster, and now a Master’s Mate. And, he’s still young enough to hope for a Sea Officer’s commission. Nightingale’s married, with a child, and promoting him would most-like sling him into debtor’s prison. Midshipman’s pay’s not much improvement on what he earns, now… the cost of uniforms and such’d do him right in, sir.”

  “And, he’d not be the one t’pick his nose at table, or use the wrong fork?” Lewrie joshed.

  “God, they all do that, sir!” Westcott laughed out loud. “Mids have the manners of so many pigs.”

  “Mister Caldwell?” Lewrie asked. “Sound right to you?”

  “Aye, sir,” the Sailing Master slowly intoned, nodding solemnly. “I’ll advance Quartermaster Hook to Eldridge’s place, if I may…”

  “Good man, he was aboard Thermopylae with me,” Lewrie said.

  “Then move Malin up as a Quartermaster, and ask about for one who wishes to strike for Quartermaster’s Mate, sir,” Caldwell agreed.

  Crash-bang! “Midshipman Munsell, SAH!” Slam-crash!

  “Enter,” Lewrie bade. “Busy as a tavern door today, ain’t it?”

  “Beg pardon, sir, but Mister Houghton is ready to depart, and the Surgeon sends his duty, and a request for a boat to bear Mister Rahl ashore to hospital, as well,” young Munsell reported.

  “My hat and sword, Pettus,” Lewrie asked. “Let’s give both of ’em a proper send-off. If you gentlemen will join me?”

  * * *

  “All Hands” was piped to summon the ship’s company on deck to see Houghton off, with three cheers raised. A bit of a dullard that Houghton was, he was recognised by all as a competent officer-to-be, and a “firm but fair” disciplinarian who’d treated everyone the same.

  The Marines turned out with the side-party to render honours, the bosuns’ pipes blew, and Houghton’s fellow Mids and the officers shook hands with him and wished him well.

  “Make us proud o’ bein’ a Reliant, Lieutenant,” Lewrie urged.

  “Thank you for everything, again, sir, and I shall!” Houghton vowed before doffing his hat at the entry-port, and beginning to make a careful way down the boarding-battens to the waiting gig, where the boat crew were turned out in Sunday Divisions best.

  A few moments later, though, and it was a much sombrer send-off for Gunner Johan Rahl. Strapped to a carrying board, and swaddled in blankets, he came up from the forward companionway hatch, rolling his head with his eyes half-glazed from doses of laudanum to smother his pain. The ship’s people parted to let the loblolly boys through, and many reached out to give him goodbye pats and reassurances, though he was all but oblivious. “Take care, mate!” and “Bye, ye old son of a gun!” and “Get well an’ back on yer pins soon!” were called out.

  “Greenwich ’Ospital’z good’z Fiddler’s Green, Mister Rahl. Ale an’ rum, they flow like warter, an’ niver a reckonin’!” one hopeful older hand assured him. “Music an’ fetchin’ girls visitin’ round th’ clock, they say, ye lucky ol’ devil!”

  It wasn’t the entry-port for Rahl, though. Bosun Sprague had rigged a lift for the four handles of the carrying board, The main-mast course yardarm was fitted for hoisting out, with hands standing by at braces and clews to raise him up and out-board of the starboard gangway bulwarks, then down into a waiting cutter. Rahl’s battered old sea-chest, has hammock, rolled up into a fat sausage with all of his bedding and spare clothing, and a pale grey sea-bag sat amidships to be lowered down, too… meagre as it was, that represented everything that Rahl had amassed in decades of spartan Navy life.

  “I’ve his Discharge papers, and pay chits, sir,” Mainwaring told Lewrie, who had come down from the gangway to shake Rahl’s hand one last time. “I’ll see him ashore, myself, if that’s alright?”

  “Perfectly fine, Mister Mainwaring,” Lewrie agreed. “Will he… make it through?” he asked the Surgeon in a softer voice.

  “Touch and go, sir, touch and go,” Mainwaring said with a sigh. “He’s old, but he’s a tough old bird. Assuming he gets good care and sepsis does not set in, he stands a decent chance of surviving, but at his age, what life would be like, well…” he wondered, shrugging.

  “Hoist away, handsomely,” Bosun Sprague ordered, and the course yard began to tip upwards, bearing Rahl aloft.

  “Don’t let your fellow pensioners talk you into cookin’ for ’em, Mister Rahl!” Lewrie shouted to the departing burden. “Three cheers, lads. See your shipmate off with a cheer!”

  Bosun’s Mate Wheeler began a long call on his pipe; the Marine boy-drummer rattled the Long Roll, and a fiddler and fifer began a gay tune, “The Bowld Soldier Boy”, the air that was played aboard Reliant when the rum keg was fetched on deck, that usually brought joy.

  “Sway out, easy!” Bosun Sprague directed, and Rahl’s sling-load slowly swung out-board, above the starboard gangway bulwarks. “Aft a bit… ’vast hauling!” as Rahl hung above the open entry-port.

  Just before Sprague ordered the yardarm to dip, the last that Rahl’s shipmates saw of him was his right hand feebly raised above his blankets, giving them all a goodbye wave and a “thumbs-up”.

  “Bit more… a bit more,” Midshipman Entwhistle called, standing in the open entry-port, looking down into the waiting cutter. “A foot of slack, there.”

  “We have him!” Midshipman Warburton, in charge of the cutter, reported. “Carrying board’s secure, and the lines are free.”

  The cheers and the happy tune faded away as the Surgeon left the ship to descend to the cutter, and his patient, with only the customary honours.

  “Ship’s comp’ny, on hats, and dismiss,” Lt. Westcott ordered, and the men fell silent, drifting off in threes and fours, or idling on deck despite the cold in eight-man messes, gun-crews, or mast-tender groups. Mostly looking very glum.

  “Rather a lot of change, of a sudden, sir,” Westcott muttered as he and Lewrie mounted to the quarterdeck together. “Perhaps too much for them, in one morning.”

  “Promotion, departure, people discharged,” Lewrie mused aloud. “Happens all the time in the Navy. At least six of the people gettin’ promoted, and more pay. I should think there’ll be some celebrations, by supper this evening.”

  “Might I suggest talking to them before supper, sir,” Westcott said, leaning close. “And ‘splice the main-brace’ to give them cause to celebrate? The people brood on it, and they might take this morning as a bad omen, right before the start of a winter sailing.”

  “A bad omen, Mister Westcott?” Lewrie asked, frowning heavily. “D’ye really think so?”

  “They already know we’ve sailing orders, sir,” Westcott went on, standing close with his hands in the small of his back. “And it’s sure to be a stormy passage. That’s gloom-making enough, but now…”

  “It ain’t like the ship’s rats’re leapin’ overboard,” Lewrie said back, with a disparaging laugh, but then thought better of that.

  They could take it as a bad omen, he realised; and damme if I ain’t feelin’ a bit fey, myself! Now where’s a good-luck seal that I can whistle up?

  “Hmmm… you may be right, Mister Westcott,” he told the First Lieutenant. “Aye, we will ‘splice the main-brace’
at the second rum issue, and see that the people get fresh roast meat, and a figgy-dowdy for supper… damned near a Christmas feast. I’ll speak to the cook, and see to the arrangements.”

  “So they can congratulate the newly promoted, and see the upset as an opportunity, aye, sir!” Westcott said, baring his teeth in one of his nigh-savage characteristic grins.

  “Just so long as the officers don’t mind making some minor contributions to said feast, hey, Mister Westcott?” Lewrie japed. “Can’t be expected t’foot the bill all by myself. Hmm?”

  Westcott looked close to a shiver; whether it was the wintery wind that caused it, or the loss of nearly a pound from his purse in pursuit of his aim. “ Touche, sir.”

  “ Touche, Hell, Mister Westcott, I barely grazed ye!” Lewrie said with a satisfied smirk.

  BOOK I

  LETTER OF MARQUE

  A commission granted by the lords of the Admiralty or by the vice-admiral on any distant province, to the commander of a merchant ship, or privateer, to cruize against, and make prize of, the enemy’s ships and vessels, either at sea, or in their harbours.

  – FALCONER’S MARINE DICTIONARY 1780 E DITION

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Reliant frigate left Portsmouth on the last Monday in January, after four days at anchor in the Sutherlymost protection of St. Helen’s Patch, near the Isle of Wight, waiting for a slant of wind, and taking aboard the last necessities and luxuries for a long winter voyage. An icy shift from the Nor’east came at last, and she hoisted sail and raised her anchors, severing her last, slightest connexion to England, and pounded out into the riotous Chops of the Channel.

  The first day and night, she could bowl along under reduced sail, pushed by the forceful following winds. Her top-hamper, all her t’gallants and royals-masts, sails, yards, and stays-had been brought down and stowed alongside the spare ones even before she left harbour, in expectation of storm conditions that might prevail right across the entire Atlantic.

  The second day at sea, the winds blew just as strongly, shifting more Easterly, allowing a slanting course closer to the Lizard and Land’s End than the French side of the Channel, and Cape Ushant, letting them stand out further to the West with the winds fine on the starboard quarter, with the frigate booming and thudding through the heaving, churning waves.

  By the third dawn, though, the fickle winds changed direction, howling an Arctic blast down upon them from the Nor’west, pushing the seas slamming against Reliant ’s starboard sides, starting a sickening, wallowing heave and roll that had even the saltiest hands gagging at the lee rails. It was the roughest sort of beam-sea, and maintaining a beam reach required hands aloft to take reefs in the courses and tops’ls, reduce the spanker, and take in upper stays’ls completely. The only good thing that could be said for that day was that Reliant could still steer roughly West, gaining even more of an offing from the dangerous lee shoal of the French Bay of Biscay coast. Lewrie could turn into his swaying bed-cot that night a bit before midnight cautiously satisfied that they were making decent progress West’rd.

  When he rolled out at 4 A.M. on the fourth day, though, his hopes were dashed, for the winds had veered ahead into West by North, half North, and Lewrie had to lay his ship onto a close-hauled “beat to weather”, steering no closer to the wind than Sou’west by South, heeled hard over onto her larboard “shoulder” with the bows rising and plunging and shipping great bursts and avalanches of cold white water over the forecastle to swirl and pool and slosh from bow to stern almost knee-deep, before gurgling and gushing out the lee scrappers, and every seam in the deck planking, no matter how firmly packed with tarred oakum, then paid over with more tar with iron loggerheads, dripped chill misery onto the off-watch hands on the mess-decks.

  * * *

  “One would think that some damned fool was whistling,” Mister Caldwell, the Sailing Master, gruffly muttered as he peered at their pencilled-in track in the chart-space in Lewrie’s cabins. “Or, someone’s snuck a woman aboard.”

  The Westerly winds had churned up the sea nigh to a slow boil, with vast grey-green rollers nearly as tall as the main course yard, a sickly snot-green sea that shed stinging blizzards of spray pellets from every wavecrest, even foamy dollops that tumbled and flew from wave to wave like fleeing rabbits. The smell of fresh fish was prominent, the reek that came from storm-wrack, as if the sea below them was stirred right to the bottom.

  “Bosun Sprague didn’t sneak his wife aboard, did he?” Lieutenant Westcott asked, striving for amusement, though his lean, harsh face and four days of stubble showed nought but grimness and a lack of real sleep; especially so in the eerie, swaying glare of the overhead lanthorn which cast long shadows over the chart.

  “I have it on good authority that the official Mistress Sprague resides in Chatham… and the Bosun can’t abide the harpy baggage,” Caldwell told Westcott with a nasty cackle. “So, whoever that doxy was he had aboard as his ‘wife’ in Portsmouth, she was young enough to be one of his daughters.”

  “Mistress Sprague’s presented the Bosun with nothing but girl children, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie stuck in. “Half a dozen now, or so I heard. No wonder he stuck with the Navy so long. Hmmm… we are in need of a backin’ wind. Does the current one veer into Due West, we’ll be on a good course for Spain.”

  From the moment that their frigate had cleared the Isle of Wight into the Channel, while they still had clearly visible sea-marks, the chip log had been cast each half-hour, and an officer of the watch had pencilled in the course and the rate of knots recorded. The skies had been solidly overcast when they departed England, and they hadn’t seen even a brief glimpse of the sun since, so their progress and position were pretty-much By Guess and By God, all by Dead Reckoning.

  The recorded course was a staggering, stuttering series of X’s strung along a jagged line, some close together, some X’s further off from each other where they’d had a good run and turn of speed.

  “Not to borrow trouble, sir,” Westcott glumly said, “but does the wind veer close to a Sou’wester, we may have to wear, even in this, else we fetch up somewhere East of Corunna and Cape Finisterre.”

  “It could go Sou’westerly, sir,” Caldwell cautioned. “So long as this Arctic gale rules, another day or so with any luck, we’re making ground West’rd, but does it blow out, a Sou’westerly’s not unknown in Biscay.”

  If that happened, Reliant would have no choice but to wear. A Sou’westerly would smack them right in the mouth, and paying off would drive them even deeper into the “sack” between the long right-angled trap of the French and Spanish coasts. Square-rigged ships could not sail closer than sixty-six degrees to the true wind.

  “We’re too far North at the moment to meet Sou’westerlies,” Lewrie said after a long moment, in which he used a ruler to measure from their latest cast of the log to the edge of the chart. “We’re still round the fourty-seventh latitude, so we’ve bags of sea-room, but it’s longitude that’s wanting. Now if…”

  Their frigate smacked into yet another wave with a deep hollow boom, and rolled back onto her larboard side, then rose up, shedding tons of seawater, and wriggling a bit more upright with a sickening twist, making them all cling to the flimsy chart table and shuffle their feet to keep upright.

  I won’t gag, or spew, Lewrie commanded himself, though he had a feeling that he was damned close to doing so. He tried to recall when it was that he had been in such foul weather, and in such a predicament, and realised that it had been years.

  I’m worried… worried and scared, he admitted to himself, alone; I wouldn’t trust mine arse with a fart, right now. Nor a gag, either! Why didn’t Father shove me into the bloody Army, instead? Oh, aye… ’ cause he was too cheap!

  Lewrie looked to his liquid barometer for inspiration, but the blue-dyed water in the fat lower flask was still rather high up the upper tube, about as high as his last peek at it an hour before, when he had made a chalk-mark slash upon it. The storm’s pressure was still
low, allowing the fluid to creep upwards; no higher yet, thank God!

  “About all we may do for now, sir, is ride this out and hope for the best,” Mr. Caldwell concluded.

  “Even with bare yards and storm trys’ls,” Lt. Westcott added.

  “Midshipman Grainger, SAH!” the Marine sentry outside the door to the great-cabins shouted, his usual piercing cry almost swallowed by the din of wind, rain, and the working of the hull. With luck, he might have been allowed a tarred tarpaulin coat with which to tolerate the elements.

  “Enter!” Lewrie shouted back, louder than usual, too. He and the others staggered out from the tiny chart space, clinging to light deal-and-canvas partitions. Grainger entered, sopping wet and looking as miserable as a drowned rat.

  “Mister Merriman’s duty, sir, and I am to report that several of the fore and main-mast shrouds are slackening,” Grainger said.

  “Well, damn,” Lewrie spat. “It seems we must wear, after all.”

  There was no safe way to adjust the necessary tension of the mast shrouds unless the immense load was taken off them, even on good days. Their weather shrouds must become lee shrouds, if they wished to keep the masts standing.

  “Aye, sir,” Lt. Westcott regretfully agreed.

  “My compliments to Mister Merriman, Mister Grainger, and he’s to have ‘All Hands’ piped,” Lewrie ordered. “With your able assistance, of course, Mister Westcott… Mister Caldwell?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “I’ll fetch your foul-weather rig, sir,” Pettus, his cabin steward, offered, staggering from one piece of furniture to the next, and looking a tad green. Lewrie looked aft into the gloom of his cabins. His cats, Toulon and Chalky, were curled up on his bed-cot’s coverlet, like two furry loaves of bread, bristled up and moaning in misery. To larboard, his young cabin servant, Jessop, was on his knees inside the quarter-gallery toilet, with only his shoes and shins showing, bent over the “seat of ease” and making offerings to Neptune; rather loudly.