“Doctor Mills,” said Neville. The doctor looked up, almost with surprise. In the dim light, his horse-like face appeared even longer. In this surreal situation, Neville wouldn’t have been surprised if he had whinnied. “Captain’s been knocked on the head. He’s in his cabin. Can you come have a look, please?”
“Right away,” he replied. “Mr. Jackson, finish this.”
They worked their way aft and up, this time with a small carrying-candle that one of the men found for them. Once there, Mills looked to Troubridge’s head wound. It had been bound to stop the bleeding and, when the bandage was removed, the bleeding did not begin again.
“Not so bad,” Mills said to the captain. “A hard whack, though, I’d say by the lump. I still have some raspberry leaves that haven’t gone moldy. I’ll send you up a tea for the headache and nausea you’ll have, but you should be all right. You might suffer confusion for a few days, though. What’s that, Sir?”
Troubridge mumbled again, with Mills’ ear close to his lips. “Heave to, he said,” reported Mills just as Lt. Froste stepped into the cabin.
“We’re working on that. It’s a bit dodgy with all the rubbish at the main, however. We’ll have a go with mizzen and fore. Ratcliffe’s about to lift storm jib and trys’l for’ard.” There was a sudden shiver throughout, and the motion of the ship changed immediately. “That’ll be it. Mr. Burton, if you’re done here, best get with the crew clearing the mainmast rubbish.”
“Aye, Sir, but one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Mr. Graesson has been on the wheel since this began. I’d think he’s about done for.”
“Thank you, Mr. Burton. Now hop forward.”
On the fourteenth day of 1794, the wind still blew, but far less. Castor’s motion was far easier; she rolled smoothly on the surface of a white-streaked sea and did not wallow, nor was she surfing forward on each wave. Neville was clinging to the ratlines about halfway to the top, completing the final procedure of striking down the main topmast. Stars were visible low to the west, with a gibbous moon setting. He guessed that would make it about six a.m. – five bells in the morning watch. The dust storm was over, then, or he would see nothing to the west. It was still very black to the east, where the sun should be about to rise.
There was enough light to see that most of the ship had held together. If the main topgallant had been furled when the squall hit, they would probably be in fine condition, indeed. There was the gap in the aft rail, sure, but that was minor, and the jolly boat was gone missing.
He could hear Froste: “Mr. Tillman, pipe all hands below. Starbowlines have the watch.”
Brilliant, he thought. I’m still on duty. He saw Daniel passing below and called, “Oi! All right?”
“Right,” Daniel said scratchily as he shuffled by.
Neville was standing, leaning against the mainmast two hours later; leaning rather than sitting so that he would not fall asleep on duty. There was a glow to the east, but only a glow. Eight bells rang. Mr. Tillman was piping the starbowlines down. Bless you, Froste, he thought. He’ll probably give us two hours as well. He’s made it forenoon watch, and no breakfast.
What, up already? I’ve only just slung my hammock. But it’s light. It wasn’t a bright day, but it was light, and he could smell breakfast. Not the wonderful cooked breakfast he had dreamt of, but the cook had real coffee on, thanks to Port Mahon, and there was at least burgoo. His stomach growled fiercely as he struggled up the companion.
“Can you believe it, Mr. Burton? Never been in such a thing,” said a sailor he passed.
He reached the deck. The larbowlines had got her sailing again – Froste and Ratcliffe, Colson, and even little O’Hanlan achieving the unbelievable. Neville took his plate of breakfast to the quarterdeck.
“Ahoy, there, Neville,” said Aiden. “How was your nap?” He sounded much too cheerful to Neville, but it was wonderful to be alive today.
“Too short,” said Neville. “You’ve done amazing, Aiden. What’s the situation?”
“We’re scudding before the wind, as you see. We’ve got tops’l on all, and jibs, too. Course is sou’-east by east. How’s the plum duff?”
The sun was halfway to its zenith under a patchy blue sky. A strong, warm breeze pushed HMS Castor forward with the wind six points free, surging like a dolphin.
“It ain’t plum duff at all, Aiden. You must have knocked your head.”
“You’d think it was, the way everyone’s throwing it down. Eat up. I’d like to go for mine.”
Small piles of sand were everywhere. There had been no holystoning, sloshing the decks, and flogging dry – only the very basics.
The ship’s company did not look so well, though. Several bled from one eye or another, or from hands or feet that were raw from the wearing of sand, or from cuts; several had on splints or head bandages.
Lt. Tripp called him over: “Mr. Burton, your muster?” was all he asked.
“I’ve all mine, Sir, except the maintopmen I told you went over with the t’gallant. We’ll miss them – best able seamen we had aboard. Did we lose any more?”
“A marine went with the swivel gun. He must have seen it loose and tried to lash it. Mr. Watson lost two off the foc’sl with that main top-hamper, and the cooper’s mate, of all things. He had his foot in a bight of the main t’gallant sheet when it went by the boards. Sick list will be long, though, and the captain’s still on it.
“We’re leaving the idlers below for two more hours, except the cook and stewards who made this simple meal. Cooks will go down now, though, and the carpenter and his mates will come up to piece the mainmast back together.”
During the day, the ship slowly began to regain normalcy. Burton walked the lee side of the quarterdeck for most of his watch, and Lt. Froste had the weather rail where Troubridge usually paced.
Mr. Graesson came up at four bells of the forenoon watch and asked that Neville take a noon sight with him, “As I would much desire to be able to report our position as close as I possibly could. Latitude we’ll have, but it may be some time before we can properly establish our longitude,” he said. “We can sail south to the latitude of Funchal and run down our westing until we raise Madeira. It is six hundred and ten nautical miles from Gibraltar to Funchal. We should expect to be there roundabout five or six days.”
Graesson and the midshipmen, with Lt. Froste and Ratcliffe as well, took their noon sights, standing in a line on the poop. More carefully than usual, Neville held his breath and moved the arm to bring the sun’s image down to where it sat on the horizon, where he clamped it to read the angle. Graesson had done that and had turned ‘round the opposite way doing something much the same thing. He waited for Graesson to finish and make his ledger.
“What is it you do in the opposite direction, Sir?”
“It is the newer procedure, which I am soon to teach you. You take the measurement in the other direction, as well, and average the difference in order to be as accurate as possible. What did you get?”
“Thirty-three degrees, twenty-seven minutes, Sir. You?”
“That is exactly it. I had the same. Very good, Mr. Burton.”
He turned to Lt. Ratcliffe, officer of the watch, and said “Noon, Sir.”
Following proper naval tradition, Ratcliffe stepped about five faces to Lt. Froste and doffed his hat. He, too, then said, “Noon, Sir, if you please,” with a bit of a good-natured smirk, since he wasn’t used to reporting thus to Froste.
With a wink, Lt. Froste returned the formality, saying, “Make it twelve, Lieutenant Ratcliffe.”
Lt. Ratcliffe called down for Mr. Tillman to pipe hands to dinner. Mr. Graesson advised the midshipmen, “You are well acquainted with the copies of the Nautical Almanac and Mackay we have aboard, and we have just had a lovely noon sight. We shall shoot the moon tonight, weather permitting, and see if we can estimate a longitude.”
Mr. Graesson had called a special navigation class for this purpose. They had done thi
s before but, for the first time, they were truly remote from land. The midshipmen gathered on the poopdeck for the class prior to Graesson’s arrival.
The hot breath of the Sahara Desert expired at six bells in the afternoon watch. HMS Castor now wallowed uncomfortably in the remaining sloppy seas.
“I can’t believe this,” O’Hanlan griped. “Yesterday we were digging sand for our lives, and now we sit here whistling for wind. And, it’s hotter here than it was in bloody Toulon last August.”
“Oh, cut it, O’Hanlan,” responded Colson. “You wasn’t the only one there or here, y’know, and we ain’t about to get a nice English breeze just because you’re runnin’ yer mouth. It’s cooling off nice like with evening coming, anyway, runt, so wot’s yer problem? I’d ruther be sippin’ my pint right now than doing moon sights. Oh, shush. Here he comes.”
O’Hanlan had to get his last word in; “Fat arse,” he whispered.
Graesson stepped up to the quarterdeck with his sextant just as the new darkness was interrupted by the rising of the moon. He began the discussion of the procedure, reading from The Theory and Practice of Finding the Longitude at Sea or on Land for the hundredth time, it seemed.
“This is not like the Med, where we could see land within a few days wherever we sailed. Here in the Atlantic, we could be hundreds of miles from where we think we are, and this passage could take weeks, if not months, longer if we aren’t where we need to be to catch the trade winds or avoid known adverse currents. But, I can’t do much about the ship’s motion.”
Taking a moon sighting when first it rose came to be somewhat more difficult than expected. “Here it is, lads. Now,” he said, and they all steadied themselves, raised their instruments, looked in the mirrors, and stumbled, every one almost falling as a large wave hit the aft quarter. Again, they raised and looked, held their breaths, adjusted, and clamped the arms: “I will see you all back here at the end of the last dog watch with your answers. I know you have at least one pocket watch amongst you – Mr. Watson’s. Did you check it against the bells today?”
“Aye, Sir.”
“Get on with it then.”
When they re-assembled on the poop at eight bells, the seas had dropped considerably. “Let’s see what you’ve got,” said Graesson.
Burton, Watson, and Colson all had the same. Only O’Hanlan’s position set them in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Colson leaned over to him and whispered, “Simpleton.”
“You see, Sirs?” he said to Lt.s Froste and Tripp. “Two hundred fifty miles in a day! I know it don’t seem possible, but here we are, even becalmed.”
“Thunder!” said Lt. Froste. “All right, write it in the log, clean the slate, and reset the course sou’west. Captain’s a bit better today. He says we’re not to touch at Funchal, but to pass south of Madeira on our way to the horse latitudes. We’ll pass close enough to see the islands and be sure of our position, though, and, if your position is correct, that will be in merely three more days – if the wind comes back at all.”
A very annoying night followed. The ship rolled badly; despite the best efforts of the watch above, blocks thudded noisily on spars, halyards and braces slapped on sails. It might have been worse, but the watch below was so exhausted from their efforts of the past two days that they fell into their hammocks instantly asleep and weren’t awake at all until Mr. Tillman and his mates came down shouting “Out and down! Rouse out there. Awake you sleepers,” and making whatever racket they could simply because they themselves could not sleep.
A hint of chilly breeze the next morning, which rose from east of northeast, found HMS Castor returning to her normal schedule. While the cook and stewards began lighting their fires, the waisters and other idlers came on deck to clean sand out of everything. At two bells in the morning watch, holystoning began. A bit of extra sand was not a trouble for this work, so it went forward as usual. Instead of working their prayer books at the nooks and corners, however, there was still a need to remove all manner of sand and grit. Buckets of water were sloshed into the corners first, and small sticks or brushes were used to dig it out. The scuppers ran brown for over an hour before they began to use their brooms and mops and then to flog it all dry.
“Why hello, Doctor,” said Lt. Tripp. “Good Morning. What news have you from the nether world?” Mills, squinting, walked up to them from the main hatch.
“A good morning to you as well, Sirs,” he replied. “Nether world, you say? I’ll admit I haven’t seen much of the sun in the last couple days, but I could argue that it’s the most educated part of the ship, save the captain’s cabin, sure.”
“As to the captain, how is he?”
“Much better today. I let him know that if he confines his work to that of a sedentary nature, I would remove him from the sicklist.”
“Very well; and of the sick list, what is the count today?” Lt. Tripp asked.
“Seventeen, as I have told the captain and Lieutenant Froste. Various broken limbs and cuts, another who knocked his head similar to the captain, and two with serious eye problems. Too much grit packed in them to expect them to cure very fast, if at all. That fellow you brought down out of the main didn’t make it. Mr. Murch, was he? There are none of the usual complaints from the rest. I assume no man would dare come to me to complain of a sore hand or such after seeing what his mates look like. They’d probably beat him for being a sissy. What’s happened to your face, Mr. Burton?”
“Mine?” he asked.
“Yes, yours,” Lt. Tripp affirmed. “I’ve been meaning to ask you as well. You look fine in the middle, but red as raw meat on the sides. How did that happen?”
Touching the sides of his face, he winced: “Oh, that must be the futtock shrouds. I think I spent ten minutes trying to pull my head out.”
“Come down later. I have some ointment I made using some of those things you had to carry back to the ship in Toulon that should set you up quickly, and I have some oak bark as well. I’ll show you how to make a fomentation with it.”
Madeira ghosted past as a cloud-ringed purple triangle to starboard three days later, fixing their longitude without question. Another day of puffy white clouds, sprinkled sparsely about the field of blue above, gave them Selvagem Grande, the last of the Portuguese islands, to larboard and well clear of the Canary Islands. The routine of the navy way of life would engulf them for the next month or so. The crew was informed of this by the stories of the old hands. It was drummed in by the boatswain and his mates as well to be sure the crew didn’t expect otherwise and act out their discontent.
8 - “The Empire of Frost and Snow”
Sixty-four days’ time carried them across the great ocean and up the eastern coast of the United States. The Caribbean waters that aided the wind decreased slowly in strength and warmth as they followed their meandering course surging northward past the United States, south of Georges Bank, and past Halifax. Castor finally arrived at the Grand Banks and St. John’s, Newfoundland in early March. The coast had held dangers they had learned well – possibilities of running aground in a fog or falling from the rigging in an ice storm or hitting a fishing boat. Fishermen were here in Newfoundland by the scores, hauling cod and herring out of the frigid water by the barrel.
“That’s what we’ve come for, Mr. Burton,” offered the captain, “ships full of dried cod, so we can have our Banyan Days, as well as butter and the rum from the Caribbean, and tobacco from America, of course.”
“Deck, there, ahoy. Guard boat on the starboard bow,” Smythe called down.
“Aye, Smythe, we see him,” Lt. Froste yelled back.
All the Castor’s officers, commissioned and warrant, as well as every man not confined by some duty below, were on deck for the arrival at St. John’s. Having been at sea for more than two months out of Gibraltar, every one of them longed to set a foot on land, not just to see it from a distance.
“When I wished to see the Americas, Daniel,” began Neville, waving his hand out across the landsca
pe before them, “I had hoped for both a shorter voyage and a warmer landing. Just look at that. I don’t think we’ve arrived at Jamaica. Nary a palm tree in sight.” They looked beyond the guard boat at the rocky shore covered with snow and ice. HMS Castor had been piloted well by Mr. Graesson, who had been here before and knew the coast. Even with the cross current from the Labrador stream, she came in directly at the mouth of the harbor. She then waited, sails aback, for instructions from the pilot. Graesson had told them what to expect, and Tillman’s men were ready to sway out the boats.
‘That’ll be Fort Amherst, there, Lieutenant Ratcliffe. Prepare to fire the salute,” said Froste.
A moment later, seven great guns fired, one after another, their heavy roar echoing back over the quiet water from snow-bound rocks. The fort responded with twenty-one, and Colson raised the signal for the pilot boat.
The guard boat, after coming close enough to confirm the visitor to be a British warship, turned on its heel and returned home. Itself a boat from a warship already at anchor within the harbor, it understood that there would be no pressing of seamen from this arrival, leaving this newcomer a thing of disinterest.
“Boats away,” roared Tillman as soon as the pilot boat nosed its way out through the rocky narrows of St. John’s harbor. HMS Castor began the process of being warped in between the rocks and directed where to anchor. Merchant ships of all shapes and sizes lay at anchor along with other Men-o-War. Gulls and seals filled the air with their continual noise, and the smell of fish hung over the harbor. A flight of seven pelicans skimmed a few inches above the quiet water, one after the other in rigid formation.
The Glorious First Of June (Neville Burton: Worlds Apart Book 1) Page 11