The King's Coat

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Mister Swift, I’ll have a first reef in the courses,” Captain Bales said. Seconds later all hands were called, but the mizzenmast had no lower course, merely a cro’jack yard to lend power to the braces and hold the clews of the mizzen tops’l down, so he could sit this one out. He went aft to the quarterdeck and stood by the larboard rail with the afterguard should he be needed to trim the braces. He could see Ashburn standing with the first lieutenant, pleased as punch to be underway, who turned and gave him a wink when Swift was too busy to notice. Lewrie became fascinated watching the water cream bone white down the leeward side, just feet away from him with the ship at a good angle of heel. The hull groaned and creaked as before, but now Ariadne also made a continual hiss as she turned the ocean to foam, and made an irregular surf roar as she met an oncoming wave.

  There were ships coming up-Channel in a steady stream with the wind on their quarters, and Alan had to admit they made a brave sight to see, heeled over and rocking slowly, and he wondered if Ariadne made much the same picture to them.

  “Lewrie, quit skylarking and keep your eyes inboard,” Lieutenant Harm snapped at him as he headed for the ladder down to the waist. Harm was making good on his promise to keep a chary eye on him, and being such a surly Anglo-Irish bog trotter, was eager to find any fault in him.

  “Aye aye, sir,” Lewrie answered brightly. Cheerfulness seemed to upset Lieutenant Harm very much, so Lewrie made it a point to be as happy and eager as possible around him.

  “Mister Lewrie?” Lieutenant Swift called, “Come here.”

  “Aye aye, sir?” Lewrie doffed his hat.

  “I watched you on the mizzen. You did that right manfully enough, and you’re too old to be wasted on the mizzenmast. See me in my quarters and I’ll move you on the watch lists and quarter bills. I think we’ll move one of the new lads to your place and you may serve on the mainmast.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” He secretly dreaded that, for the mainmast was much taller, had longer and heavier yards, carried the main course and the largest tops’l, was the place where studding booms had to be rigged in light airs, and meant a quantum leap in work. The mizzen was manned by the oldest topmen, or the very newest and clumsiest, the nearly ruptured and the ones with foreheads as big as a hen. Some eleven- or twelve-year-old sneak was going to get a soft touch, and he was going to work his young ass off. Still, it did have advantages. He would no longer be in Lieutenant Harm’s division or watch, but would get to serve under Lieutenant Kenyon, the second officer, who was considered much fairer and so much more polite.

  Lewrie went forward to the base of the mainmast, where Kenyon and a bosun’s mate were chatting and pointing at something aloft. And when Alan told him of the transfer he welcomed him to the starboard watch most pleasantly.

  “Very glad to have you with us, Mister Lewrie,” Kenyon said. “Though I am sure you realize that much more work is involved. Still, I can use such a well-set-up young fellow like yourself.”

  “Aye, Mister Kenyon. And I may learn the faster,” Alan answered, thinking that it never hurt to piss down a superior’s back. Actually, he would be working much the same duties in any watch or subdivision on deck or aloft, for the watches rotated equally each four hours, using the much shorter Dog Watches in late afternoon to make sure that the same men did not have to work two nights running, and everyone turned up at 4:00 A.M. to begin the ship’s working day, washing and scraping decks and standing dawn Quarters, so there wasn’t much to choose, really.

  “Well said, Mister Lewrie. We shall make a tarpaulin sailor of you yet, though the bosun despairs of your ropework. You are not seasick yet?”

  “Well … no, sir,” Alan replied, realizing with a shock that he wasn’t. He was clumsy as a new-foaled colt on the tilting deck, and he staggered from one handhold to another, but the ship’s motion did not affect him overly. All he had in his stomach was a raging hunger.

  How disgusting, he thought; I’m getting used to this!

  “When do I make the changeover, sir, from one watch to the other?”

  “Ship’s day begins at noon, at the taking of the sights for our positions,” Kenyon said. “I’d suggest you go see Lieutenant Swift as soon as he’s had his breakfast. Then show up for the Second Dog Watch.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Oh, by the way, Mister Lewrie,” Kenyon said, calling him back with a drawling voice. “We have a man missing from my division. He has run. Went out a gunport last night, probably. There’s a rumor he was smuggled money and some street clothing. Heard anything about it?”

  “Who was it, sir?” Lewrie said, having a sneaking suspicion of exactly who it was, and where the money had come from.

  “Harrison, one of my main topmen. Had a wife and family in the port, so I’m told.”

  “He was in one of my boat crews, sir. Had to hunt him down about two weeks ago, but he swore he was only taking a piss behind some crates and barrels,” Alan carefully replied.

  “Hmm, that was after you had stood the boat crew to a pint?”

  “Uh, yes, sir, I did see a woman with two children but I didn’t connect them with him.”

  “Well, you weren’t to know. What I regret is that he was no green hand, but a prime topman. He’s probably halfway inland by now. There are some hands in this ship you can trust with your life and your sister’s honor, and you’ll find out who they are quick enough. There are also some men I wouldn’t approach with a loaded pistol. Since you’ll be closer to them than I, it is up to you to discover the shirkers and the ones who work chearly.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “You can’t treat them all like scum, Mister Lewrie, though they are halfway scum when we first get them. Neither can you be soft on ’em. Someday, you may have to order a great many men not only to do something dangerous, but maybe tell a whole crew to go die for you,” Kenyon went on at some length. “I do not expect my midshipmen to be popular with the men, nor do I wish them to be little tyrants, either. The men respect a taut hand, a man who’s firm but fair, and a man who’s consistent in his punishments and his praise, and in the standards he calls for. Don’t court favor; don’t drive them all snarling for your blood. If you are so eager to learn the faster, as you put it, there are good lessons to be had from the older hands. I suggest you find them.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Lewrie said with a hearty affirmative shake of his head, though he regarded it much like a lecture from a travelling Italian surgeon who might see salubrious benefits for mankind in the cholera.

  “Now be off with you. I can hear the wolf in your stomach in full cry, Mister Lewrie.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  * * *

  Ariadne butted her way through the Channel chop until she was out past Land’s End, and began to work hard in the great rollers of the unfettered Atlantic, and up into the Irish Sea to meet her duty.

  It was not blockade work for her; that was for the largest 3rd Rates that mounted more guns. Since Ariadne was much older and lighter armed, her lot was convoy duties. She met her first convoy off the Bristol Channel; forty or so merchant vessels under guard by Ariadne and a 4th Rate fifty-gun cruiser named Dauntless, and if she was anything to go by, it was going to be devilish miserable work; Dauntless was sanded down to the bare wood on her bows, and her sides as high as the upper gun deck ports were stained with salt, and her heavy weather suit of sails was a chessboard of patches of older tan and new white.

  After getting the convoy into a semblance of order, Ariadne took the stern position and let Dauntless lead out past Ireland for New York in the Americas. The weather was blowing half a gale when they began, and the bottom fell out of the glass within forty-eight hours. Ariadne rode like an overloaded cutter, pitching bow high, then plunging with her stern cocked up in the air, rolling her guts out and shipping cold water over the gangways by the ton. The hatches were battened down and belowdecks became a frowsty, reeking hell where it was impossible to get away from several nauseous stinks, impossible to cook a hot m
eal, impossible to sit down in safety, impossible to get warm or, once having been soaked right through on deck, to find a speck of dry clothing for days on end. Even in a hammock, one was slung about so roughly it was impossible to relax enough to really sleep. Gunnery exercises were cancelled, and sail drill became sail-saving, as lines parted, sails were torn or simply burst in the middle and flogged themselves to ribbons of flax or heavy cotton. With new rigging, it was a constant war to keep the tension necessary to support the masts as new rope stretched.

  A watch could not pass without all hands being summoned to reef in or totally brail up the sails, cut away those that had blown out and manhandle new ones aloft and lash them to the yards and their controlling ropes.

  “I want to die,” Alan kept repeating to himself as the afternoon wore on on their tenth day of passage. He was soaked to the skin, half-frozen, and his tarred canvas tarpaulin was turning into a stiff suit of waterlogged armor that he swore weighed twenty pounds more than when he had put it on. He had not eaten in three days and had lived on rum heated over a candle. He honestly could not have choked anything down that could possibly scratch on the way back up.

  “I hate this ship,” he screamed into the wind, sure he could not be heard over the howling roar. “I hate this Navy, I hate the ocean. And I hate you, too. Rolston…”

  Rolston stood nearby at the quarterdeck nettings, looking down at the upper gun deck, a slight smile on his cocky face.

  “You love this shitten life, don’t you, you little bastard?” Only the wind heard him. The ship gave a more pronounced heave as a following wave smashed into the transom, rolled heavily to larboard, and Alan dropped to the deck, his feet ripped from beneath him. He slid like a hog on ice along the deck that ran with water until he fetched up against coiled gun tackle and thumped his shoulder into a gun-truck wheel.

  “Goddamn it,” he howled, looking straight at Captain Bales by the wheel binnacle. Bales nodded at him with a vague expression, not knowing what the hell he had said.

  “Resting?” Lieutenant Swift boomed near to him.

  “‘No, sir,” he shouted back, hoping Swift hadn’t been close enough to hear what he had said, though a full flogging could not hurt much worse than being bounced around like this.

  “Then get on yer feet,” Swift barked in a voice that could have carried forward in a full hurricane. Alan scrambled to obey and clung to the nearest pin rail, trying to rub his shoulder where he had smacked it.

  “Go forward and check on the lashings on the boat tier,” Swift ordered.

  “Aye aye, sir,” he screamed back, inches from the officer’s nose. “Bosun’s Mate!”

  The duty bosun’s mate, Ream, could not hear a word he said, so he took advantage of the ship’s roll upright to dash over to him and cling to the man as the ship rolled to larboard once more and threatened to take him back where he had started.

  “Come with me,” he yelled into the man’s cupped ear. “Boat tiers!”

  Alan muttered curses at everything in general all the way along the starboard gangway, clinging to anything that looked substantial. Ream fetched a couple of hands along the way, and Alan took notice that Ream and both hands were also moving their lips in a canticle of woe and anger, probably directed at Alan, but he could have cared less at that point.

  They reached the thick timbers that spanned the waist of the upper gun deck between the gangways and stood studying the lashings on the stored boats that were nestled fore-and-aft on the massive beams.

  “Chafing,” Ream shouted into each ear, pointing at the ropes that were wearing away slowly before their eyes each time the ship did a particularly violent roll and pitch. “Tell the first lieutenant.”

  Alan made his way back aft, getting freshly drenched in waves of spume and spray until he could stagger to the mizzen weather chains, where Swift stood, one arm hooked through the shrouds.

  “Chafing, sir,” he shouted.

  “Rolston!” Swift bellowed. “All hands on deck!”

  Rolston’s mouth moved but no sounds were to be heard as he relayed the message, and in moments men began to boil up from below and muster on the upper gun deck below them.

  “Rolston, take windward with Mister Kenyon,” Swift ordered. “And, Mister Lewrie, go to looard with Mister Church. Oakum pads and baggy-wrinkle on old lines, and new lashings doubled up.”

  “Aye, sir,” Alan replied, knuckling his forehead. Shit, new words again. Baggy-wrinkle? Sounds like my scrotum about now.

  He went forward with their little third officer and tried to explain what was desired to each man, but Church simply roared out one command, and everyone fell to with a sense of purpose that left Alan standing about.

  “Go keep an eye on ’em,” Church barked, shoving Alan toward the boat-tiers. He realized that he would have to scramble out onto the timbers to the upturned boats, and that timber could not be more than two feet wide and deep, with absolutely no safety line of any kind.

  He took a deep breath, waited until the ship rolled about as much upright as she was going to, and ran out onto one of the timbers. The ship slammed her bows into a wave as the stern lifted once more, the beakhead buried in foam, and she lurched as if she had been punched right in the mouth. The beam seemed to dance out from beneath him, but Alan was close enough to fling himself forward and grab onto one of the lashings that stood out from the nearest craft, the jolly-boat. One leg dangled into the waist, but he had made it by the merest whisker.

  He scrambled up on top of the jolly-boat with the help of one of the older hands and clung to her keel with a death grip. The man smiled back at him, teeth gleaming white as foam in his face.

  Don’t tell me this cretin enjoys this, Alan thought …

  “New lashin’s first, er baggy-wrinkle, sir?” The man asked, coming close enough to carry the smell of his body.

  Alan clung tight as Ariadne rolled once more to larboard. He felt more than heard the grating as more than two tons of wooden boat shifted against the tiers to the leeward side—the boat he was sitting on.

  “New lashings!” he decided quickly, bobbing his head nervously.

  “Aye aye,” the man yelled, then scrambled over to the next boat, with a grace that Alan could only envy, and shout something to the rest of his party, then hopped back over to Alan.

  “How do we do it?” Alan asked when the wind gusted a little softer than normal. “I’m not too proud to ask.”

  “Stap me if I know, sir, thought you did.”

  And that’s the last time I am not too proud to ask, Alan promised himself as the man beamed his stupidity at him.

  Alan bent over as far as he dared and studied the existing lashings, the way they threaded under the beams, crossed under like a laced-up corset and crossed over the boats.

  “Give me a … bight on the forward timber,” Alan shouted. “Then make sure it’s wrapped snug in oakum or old canvas. Take it up and over the boat, under this beam we’re on, and on aft … then back forward, like … well, like a woman’s bodice is tied up, see? Double lashings this time.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Ship work on a heaving deck or shaky spar was, as Ashburn had prophesied, much like church work; it went damned slow. Alan inspected each point where the new ropes could rub on wood and had them padded and wrapped. He thumped on each bight until satisfied that they were as taut as belaying pins so there would be no play after they were finished. Lieutenant Church made his way out to him and gave him an encouraging grin, squatting on one of the boat-tiers.

  Once his men had gotten the idea, Alan swung his way over to the centermost boats, the massive cutter and barge, to watch from another vantage point. He was feeling very pleased with himself, in spite of being wet as a drowned rat and aching in places where he hadn’t thought one could ache.

  “Being useful?” Rolston shouted into his face, taunting him.

  “Yes, damn yer eyes,” Alan shot back, and was disappointed that he had to repeat himself to be understood. His thr
oat was almost raw with the effort of making himself heard.

  “Church tell you to do that?” Rolston shouted back.

  “Do what?”

  “Rig new lashings before padding the old … that’s wrong.”

  “What if the old ones part before you have new ones on?”

  “They won’t part,” Rolston shrieked into his nose. But he didn’t look as confident as he had earlier, which prompted Alan to look at what his hands were doing. Rolston’s team was applying a single lashing without any padding or baggy-wrinkling, and were loosening the frayed lashings to pad them.

  “Then what the hell are we doing out here?” Alan demanded. “Did Kenyon tell you to do it that way?”

  Rolston looked away.

  Alan made his way farther to starboard over the barge to the captain’s brightly painted and gilt-trimmed gig, which was being lashed down in much the fashion that Alan had thought correct, providing him with a tingle of satisfaction. He waved to Lieutenant Kenyon, who clambered out to join him. But once out there Kenyon took one look at the way the two heaviest boats were being treated and frowned.

  “Rolston, you young fool,” he shouted. “Leave those lashings be!”

  “Sir?” Rolston cringed, not able to believe he had done wrong.

  At that moment Shirke came from aft to request some top-men to go aloft and secure a corner of the mizzen tops’l that had blown out her leeward leach line.

  Alan looked at Rolston, gave him a large smile, then went back to his own hands, who were busily doing things all seamanlike.

  He climbed over the keel of the biggest and heaviest boat, the barge, and was about to traverse the short distance to the jolly boat when he felt the barge shift underneath him. A frayed lashing gave way and came snaking over past his head with the force of a coach whip. It struck the jolly-boat and cracked like a gunshot, leaving a mark in the paint.