A Fine Retribution

by Dewey Lambdin

  “And a good day to you, Sir Alan,” Lobb responded in kind.

  God-dammit! Lewrie fumed on his way to his waiting boat; Just dammit to bloody-fucking Hell! Bloody damned French gunners, as blind as so many bats … couldn’t hit a beer keg with a bloody sledgehammer but their wild shots’ve done for us! The cack-handed, cunny-thumbed … snail-eatin’ sonso’bitches!

  He reached the top of the floating landing stage ramp, paused to take a deep breath and try to calm himself so that he could face his boat crew with the proper equanimity required of Post-Captains in the Royal Navy. He found that the fingers of his left hand had a death grip on the hilt of his hanger, and he let go to flex his fingers back to life.

  And there was his ship, anchored fore-and-aft about half a mile off, with the morning sun gleaming upon her fresh-painted hull, upper works, and gunn’ls, as bright and fresh as a new-minted shilling. The sun and somewhat still harbour waters in-shore of her reflected her on the bay, sparkled winking flashes of sun dapples all down her length, and made a rippling mirror image like something seen through a rain-streaked pane of glass. Sapphire was as pretty, and as trig, as her namesake gem, and even the lack of gasketed sails on her mainmast yards could not, at that distance, detract from her perfection.

  Her gun-ports were open for welcome ventilation on her lower decks, and every now and then, in unison, the black iron muzzles of her guns jerked into sight as the crew practiced play-loading, running out, then simulated recoil; three pretend rounds every two minutes, as they had since he’d taken command of her in 1807, even the lower deck 24-pounders. His exacting standards, which his crew had learned to perform, and the cutting of crude sights on the upmost breeching rings and muzzles, had produced the smashing broadsides, and a fair amount of accuracy, that had turned Sapphire from a lumbering ugly duckling to a killer, a world-striding conqueror manned by proud, skilled men as invincible as an armada of ancient Vikings.

  And she would limp home to become a dray waggon, and all that experience would be strewn to the wind like chaff to man other ships in need of hands—twenty there, a dozen here? It was disgusting!

  Lewrie went on down the ramp to the floating stage and into his waiting cutter, one long stride over the gunn’l to a thwart with a hand on an oarsman’s shoulder for a moment, then aft to take a seat by his Cox’n, the “Black Irishman”, Liam Desmond, who’d been with him since the Nore Mutiny in ’97, and the Proteus frigate.

  “Back to the ship, Desmond,” Lewrie growled.

  “Aye, sor,” Desmond replied. “No help from the yards, sor?”

  “No, not a damned bit,” Lewrie told him.

  “Pity, for she’s lookin’ like th’ belle o’ th’ fair, today,” Desmond commented with a jerk of his chin towards Sapphire. “Hoist oars, lads. Out oars, larb’d, cast off lines, shove off, bowman an’ starb’d stroke oar … out oars, starb’d, and … stroke.”

  The cutter surged forward, bows lifting as eight oarsmen put their backs into it, then a second stroke, a third, and seawater began to hiss and burble, with a chuckling sound under the stern transom, and a slight judder to the tiller bar under Desmond’s arm.

  *   *   *

  Once aboard in the privacy of his great-cabins, Lewrie stripped off his coat and waist-coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and loosened his neck stock and sat down at his desk, ready for a long afternoon of ink smudges and finger cramp as he wrote letters to prepare people in England for his ignoble return. Lewrie wondered if a letter for Admiralty would really be necessary, for it was good odds that he and his ship might arrive at Portsmouth days before, if not the day of, the letter’s reception; there was not a mail packet in port at the moment, and he might as well carry it himself, post it once moored in the Solent, a surprise to everyone.

  The necessities, really, was a much shorter list; his father, his sons, his sneering brother-in-law, Governour Chiswick at Anglesgreen, his solicitor, Mr. Matthew Mountjoy (in hopes that some prize-money might have been sent on from Lisbon in the meantime), and … Miss Jessica Chenery. That one would be the most enjoyable, the one left for last like a sweet dessert after an indifferent supper. And he would see if she could work him into her schedule to paint him that promised portrait!

  “Cool tea, sir?” Pettus asked as he began to write the one to Admiralty. Long ago, Lewrie had developed a taste for at least one quart of tea to be brewed for him each morning, allowed to cool, and served with sugar pared off a cone kept in his locking caddy, and if available, a generous squeeze of lemon juice, and those who thought it daft could go to the Devil.

  “Aye, Pettus,” Lewrie said, not even looking up. “Have we any lemons?”

  “Yes, sir, a fresh dozen came off shore yesterday morning, and Dasher’s already sliced one into quarters,” Pettus replied.

  Lewrie looked up to see Dasher making a puckery face as if he had sucked one.

  “Tangy, sir,” Dasher commented, “wif a dash o’ sugar, or salt.”

  “Salt? My word,” Lewrie commented, with a pucker and a shiver. “Never would’ve thought o’ that combination. Something closer to lemonade’s best.”

  “Never had lemonade, sir,” Dasher said with a shrug.

  “Then we’ll see to it that you try some,” Lewrie promised, and the imp’s face lit up in anticipation.

  So much like Jessop, Lewrie’s former cabin servant, who had been killed in the boarding action with the big 40-gun French frigate, one more street waif who had signed aboard as a volunteer ship’s boy for eight pounds pay a year, shoes and slop clothing, three meals a day, and a safe place to sleep instead of wherever one could doss for the night without harm.

  Jessop had been sixteen or seventeen when he’d fallen, dirty-blond, sharp-eyed, and wiry, aspiring to be more than a servant, who had learned his knots, had become a hand on one of the carronades, and had been learning how to go aloft as a budding topman. Jessop had also learned how to drink, chew tobacco, gotten tattooed, and taken runs at the whores when the ship was put out of Discipline.

  Perhaps Dasher won’t go that way, Lewrie thought, giving the lad a closer look as he fetched a tall china mug of cool tea.

  Tom Dasher—which couldn’t be his real name—was darker-haired with odd green eyes, only thirteen or fourteen, and, until he came to the great-cabins, was as dirty and smudge-streaked as the “duck fucker” who tended the forecastle manger, or the usual Midshipmen’s mess steward, the filthiest to be found aboard any man-o’-war. A good hosing down, new slops, an attempt at a haircut, and iron-buckled shoes with stockings (for once) had spruced Dasher up considerably, but he was still learning his trade, after a shiftless life on the streets of London, or so he said, and when pressed, the details of what he’d done to survive were damned thin.

  “Oh, one other thing, Dasher,” Lewrie told him.

  “Aye, sir?”

  “I wish you to go forrud and find my cook, Yeovill,” Lewrie bade him, “and tell him I intend to dine in the First and Second Officers, Marine Officer, Purser, Acting-Sailing Master Mister Stubbs, and the senior Mid this evening at Seven P.M.”

  “First Officer, Second, Mister Keane, an’…” Dasher said with a frown of concentration, ticking them off on the fingers of one hand.

  “Six guests plus myself,” Lewrie supplied. “Seven, in all.”

  “Seven t’eat, at Seven in th’ ev’nin’, aye sir.” Dasher said, then, emulating his name, dashed off, slamming the door to the quarterdeck on his way.

  “Early days, sir,” Pettus commented.

  “He’ll come round … I hope,” Lewrie said with a shrug and a lift of his eyebrows.

  Aye, dine ’em in, and tell ’em we’re sailin’ for home, Lewrie told himself; with our tails ’twixt our legs.

  BOOK ONE

  What comes next you never know,

  Lady Luck runs the show,

  So pass the Falernian, lad.

  —PETRONIUS, THE SATYRICON, “DINNER WITH TRIMALCHIO”

  CHAPTER FIVE

&n
bsp; “You should have taken more mousers aboard, Captain Lewrie,” Mr. Posey, the Surveyor of Portsmouth Dockyards, japed after taking a long look at Sapphire’s damaged lower mainmast. “Large and fierce terriers, perhaps? For it seems your ship is infested with a particularly large species of wood-eating rats, hah hah hah!”

  “I thought it more the work of beavers, but…” Lewrie tried to play along, though his jaws were clenched.

  “Pity, for there’s money in beaver pelts,” Posey went on in gay amusement, “even the inferior French breed!”

  Mr. Posey whipped out a colourful calico handkerchief, making Lewrie fear that the man had not gotten over his gargling, sneezing fits of January, when first he’d come aboard to survey the lightning-struck mainmast, but it was only to wipe his eyes of humour tears.

  “Yes, well…,” Lewrie began, but Posey was nowhere through.

  “Egads, Captain Lewrie, but you keep breaking things aboard your ship, and the Navy may start making you pay for their replacement, ha ha!”

  Knew that was coming, Lewrie thought with a wince; Damme, ye think you’re bloody hilarious, don’t ye?

  “Even if I do end up payin’ for it,” Lewrie asked, growing a tad impatient, “do you think the yard can put her to rights?”

  “Are you under orders at the moment, sir?” Posey asked, more seriously.

  “No, I only wrote Admiralty of our arrival from a foreign station yesterday morning, soon as we anchored,” Lewrie told him. “They already knew of her state of repair. I’m waiting to hear.”

  “Oh,” Mr. Posey said with a sorrowful suck at his teeth. “In that case, Captain Lewrie, I fear that ’til the Commissioner of the yards hears from London, there’s little he, or I, can do for you. An official authorisation to justify the expense of a new lower mainmast, and the dockyard’s labour, will be necessary.”

  “The last time, I went up to London to plead my case,” Lewrie said. “Perhaps I should go again.”

  “One never knows, sir, a personal appeal may avail,” Posey said.

  Lewrie took Posey’s diffident response to that course of action as a bad omen; the man shrugged and looked away cutty-eyed for a second as if he had other incoming ships and their hurts to deal with, and was merely being polite ’til he could make a dignified escape.

  “Let us pray that Our Lords Commissioners at Admiralty will send word soon, then, Mister Posey,” Lewrie told him. “’Til then, I’m sure you have other pressing concerns.”

  “I will advert to you what they order us to do, the very first instant, Captain Lewrie,” Posey replied, all outwardly solicitous, but making steps towards the entry-port and his waiting boat, eager to get off Sapphire as if she was a plague ship sporting the yellow Quarantine pendant!

  Damn their eyes, everyone’s a wit! Lewrie fumed after he saw him off with as much false bonhomie as he could muster at that dour moment. He stalked off to the quarterdeck and up a ladderway to the poop in a foul mood, knowing that he couldn’t go up to London. His letter that announced his arrival had gone off the day before, soon as the anchors had bitten the harbour grounds, and unless the “flying coach” carrying the mail had vanished off the face of the Earth, his letter had been opened and read this very morning. A reply could come as early as the next morning; if it was urgent, word of Sapphire’s fate could come down the line of semaphore towers even earlier. He was “anchored” as firmly as the ship!

  He leaned against the hammock-filled cross-deck iron stanchion racks at the forward end of the poop deck, looking down at the quarterdeck, the waist, and the sail-tending gangways, where hundreds of his crew performed minor ship-keeping tasks, or lazed about to enjoy yet another “Make and Mend” day of idleness. Lewrie dearly wished that he could order the ship be put Out of Discipline to allow the bum-boats alongside with their gew-gaws, fancy foods, and the doxies, but that wasn’t possible at the moment. The men’s pay had yet to arrive, and they could not afford even a sniff of a whore’s perfume in passing.

  One of the last letters he had posted at Gibraltar had been to the Prize Court at Lisbon, informing them that should they ever decide how much Sapphire was due, the money should be sent on to Portsmouth.

  Those four prize frigates, though, had been turned over to the Prize Court here at Portsmouth—Lieutenant Geoffrey Westcott had seen to that, he’d assured him—and such an ado was made of their capture and arrival that the Court might yield to public and political pressure and render their decisions. Lewrie had shot them a short note as well, and with any luck, money in the form of chits might come aboard for the men to spend. They’d be cheated badly, of course, for those chits could only be turned in for real money and full value when presented to the Councillor of the Cheque in London. Bum-boat vendors and jobbers would buy them up, sometimes for as little as half the value, sure that sailors were rarely thinking in the long-term, and too eager to have coins, or war-issue Bank of England paper notes, in hand to squander as quick as they could spend it. If paid in bank notes, they would spend even quicker, for no one, sailors most especially, thought that paper money was real money!

  Admittedly, even Lewrie had his doubts about bank notes, sure that someday someone in government would cry “April Fool’s!”, and he’d much prefer a pile of guineas to run his hands through like water!

  After weeks at Gibraltar, his announcement that they would be sailing for Portsmouth was more than welcome to one and all aboard, for it meant an end to enforced idleness and doubt, a chance to see their home country, again, and could result in the dispersal of back-pay and prize-money. Though many looked upwards cautiously, after a few days at sea, and in fine weather, few feared that the mainmast would fail, so Sapphire had been a happy ship, filled with comfortable and expected at-sea routine, and the Dog Watches thumping with music and dance, and, no matter how closely Lieutenant Harcourt and Acting-Lieutenant Hillhouse had overseen the crew, they had found few defaulters to bring to Lewrie’s attention, and certainly no one worthy of the cat-of-nine-tails at the hatch gratings.

  It couldn’t last, though, Lewrie knew, just a brief interlude between spells of boredom and uncertainty, and here they were, again, broke, idle, and up in the air in a new harbour!

  Now, what the Devil can you do, clown? he chid himself; think of something t’keep ’em engaged. For how long?

  Lewrie heaved a sigh, shrugged, and promised himself a rare bout of drink. A good supper fetched from shore, a bottle of wine or two, and more than several brandies or some of his American whisky, then—was God just—a good, lazy, and overlong night’s sleep!

  CHAPTER SIX

  A substantial sack of mail for all hands arrived aboard three days later, and with it, several pieces for Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, one, most ominously, from Admiralty.

  Lewrie was loath to open it, at first, busying himself with a fresh cup of creamed and sugared coffee, but at last, he picked it up and broke the seal to spread it atop his desk.

  “Oh no, no no no no!” he muttered, his voice rising as he read its contents, perking the attention of his cabin steward and servant.

  Dasher opened his mouth to blurt out a question, but Pettus shushed him with a shake of his head and a finger to his lips.

  The Lords Commissioners for the Execution of the High Office of Admiralty have determined that the current material Condition of His Majesty’s Ship Sapphire, now lying at Portsmouth, renders the said Ship Redundant to the Needs of the Royal Navy.

  The financial Cost, and the Time required to return the said Ship to full Active Duty, and the Inability of any Ship of the Fourth Rate to render useful Service in these times requires her immediate De-Commissioning. To that end, you are directed to turn the said Ship over to the Commissioner of His Majesty’s Dockyards, Portsmouth, to be placed In-Ordinary, pending any Use which could be made of the said Ship in future.

  They did it, Lewrie groaned to himself; they’ve gone and done it! Half-pay for me, is it? Thank Christ I’ve no debts owing. For only a month or so … I hope!… befor
e I get new orders, and a new ship.

  The Port Admiral, Portsmouth, Admiral Lord Gardner, is directed and authorised to assist you in all Respects anent in so doing, and with the Distribution of the said Ship’s Pay and any Prize-Moneys owing, pending the final Accounting and Arrival of Funds.

  My people can finally get drunk and put the leg over, Lewrie was relieved to think.

  He should have had the word passed to summon his officers to give them the bad news that moment so plans could be implemented, but, truculently, he delayed, setting the orders aside so he could read the rest of his mail as if it was just another idle day at anchor, and, if he ignored it, it might yet go away.

  There was one from his solicitor in London, Mr. Matthew Mountjoy, a man who served both as his shore business agent and his prize agent, and Lewrie turned to that one in hopes of badly needed better news.

  My Dear Sir Alan;

  What a windfall is come your way! Shortly after I was in receipt of your letter informing me of your arrival in England, a substantial packet arrived from the Lisbon Prize-Court, enumerating the results of their determinations of your captures since the start of this year.

  For the value of sixteen prizes, all told, and especially the value of the war material found as cargo, cargo of the utmost use to the armies of our allies, the Portuguese and Spanish, and of use by our own forces as well it goes without saying, the Court declares the sum total owing is £192,000, of which your two-eighths share, less my humble fee, is £46,800!

  We are assured that Admiralty Prize-Court here in England is also informed of the results, and that, if your ship may pay off, as you feared in your most recent letter, that the sum total will be due to you and your ship and will be dispersed in full in either case.

  “Yes, by Christ!” Lewrie shouted, loud enough to startle his cat. “And come in pudding time, at that!”

  “Some … good news, sir, might I ask?” Pettus cautiously said, after clearing his throat.

  “Damned right, Pettus!” Lewrie hooted. “There’s prize-money from Spain coming. There’s t’be a share-out within a fortnight!”