A Fine Retribution

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Whichever you prefer, sir,” Lewrie offered.

  “Hmm, since it is the end of my naval service, I suppose that I might as well go out in style,” Nunnelly gruffly allowed, “so, let’s make it Wednesday.”

  “Happy to oblige you, Captain Nunnelly,” Lewrie said. He sipped his coffee in silence for a bit, and Nunnelly seemed to feel no need to speak further. “Ehm … how does she sail, sir? How fast has she been?”

  “On the way to her station, or on the way back to port, she’ll turn a fair ten or eleven knots on a beam or quartering wind, and she’ll go to windward as well as one can expect. A heavy, steady sea-boat in a gale, too. Fourteen hundred tons. They took her lines off a French sixty-four, though I still think her entry’s not as fine as it could be, like the French design them. But, she’s stouter and stiffer than any of theirs. The French build too light, with too few frame timbers. I think you can find her … tolerable, for as long as you’re saddled with her.”

  Her officers, her petty officers? The experience, or lack of it in her crew? How many pressed men, County Quota Men, or petty criminals dredged up from gaol? Any to be cautious of? Nunnelly was just too soured on her use on blockade work, but he had no real complaints except for the general low morale that that dull duty engendered.

  Nunnelly thought that her First Officer, Lieutenant Farley, was able, but too much of a wag. Her Second, Rutland, was fool enough to marry, and moped to be apart so long from his young wife, but a good officer for all that. The Third, Lieutenant Greenleaf, was a bluff and hearty “bulldog”, too loud and profane for Nunnelly’s taste, and prone to be stricter with the hands when on duty, and her Fourth Officer, Mister Grace, was only twenty-five or so, able, but shy, according to the wardroom, and perhaps a bit too popular among the hands.

  “Mister Farley served under me in the Thermopylae frigate, sir, and Mister Grace was a volunteer when I was fitting out my first ‘Post’ ship, the Proteus frigate, at the Nore during the Mutiny. I made him a Midshipman and gave him his first ‘leg up’,” Lewrie related with a happy grin on his face.

  “Came up through the hawse-hole, did he?” Nunnelly queried with a grunt. “No wonder his lack of polish, or social poise. Not that this ship will ever have call for showing off to her betters, hah!”

  “Came from the Nore fisheries, he did, sir,” Lewrie told him, “his father and grandfather, too, after their boat foundered. Good men, all.”

  Nunnelly coughed into his handkerchief again, after nigh strangling on a sip of his coffee. Lewrie wondered where Nunnelly had come from, and what his family’s social status was, for it was rare to find people in the Navy who made light of “tarpaulin men” who had risen from the lowest rates; perhaps he was just sour on the whole world after a thankless climb from Midshipman to Post-Captain himself, only to see it snatched away.

  “Well, I thank you for the coffee, Captain Nunnelly,” Lewrie said as he set his cup and saucer aside at last, and prepared to rise and depart. “I’ll be alongside at Six or Seven Bells of the Morning Watch this Wednesday for the change-in-command.”

  “I’m looking forward to the relief, do believe it, Captain Lewrie,” Nunnelly replied. “You’ll pardon me if I do not rise or see you to the quarterdeck, sir, but I ache hellish-bad this morning.”

  “Of course not, sir.”

  “Need any cabin furniture, Captain Lewrie?” Nunnelly suddenly offered. “Should I leave anything other than the bed-cot behind?”

  “Well,” Lewrie said, taking a long look round the cabin, and spotting the table in the dining coach. “I did leave my old eight-place dining table and side-board at my house, else I’d deprive my wife, so … may I look at yours, sir?”

  Captain Nunnelly waved him leave to go inspect it, too busy at hocking up a lung full of phlegm, and Lewrie walked over to find that Nunnelly possessed a twelve-place table and set of chairs, sturdy and non-collapsible, made of highly polished oak, and much too fine to take to sea. The side-board was fine, too, elaborately carved and inlaid with contrasting woods on the doors and top.

  “I would admire your dining coach furnishings, sir,” Lewrie told him as he returned to the day-cabin. “Name your price.”

  “Hell’s Bells, Captain Lewrie,” Nunnelly gargled and wheezed. “I doubt I’ll have any need of it six months from now. Say, twenty pounds, enough to buy me a good coffin, and pay the parish sexton his fee to plant me, and that’ll do.”

  “Surely you jest, sir,” Lewrie gently protested. “Some time to rest, thaw out away from the sea? Twenty pounds is more than fair.”

  “Done and done, sir. See you Wednesday … if I live that long, that is,” Nunnelly grumbled.

  *   *   *

  “Grace,” Lieutenant Farley said with a sly grin as he entered the wardroom a deck below. “You’ll never guess who’s to be Captain Nunnelly’s relief.”

  “Who?” Lieutenant Grace asked, looking up from his hand of cards. “Admiral Hosier come back from ghosting?”

  “Who do you recall who likes cats?” Farley gaily hinted.

  “No! It can’t be!” Grace perked up. “The ‘Ram-cat’?”

  “Can’t abide cats,” Lieutenant Greenleaf hooted. “Too damned sneaky for my taste. Gimme hounds, anytime.”

  “Well, you’d better get used to them, Charles,” Farley said in glee, “the last time I served with him, he had two.”

  “Captain Lewrie, really?” Grace marvelled. “Good Lord!”

  “Who?” Greenleaf demanded.

  “Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet,” Farley announced, “knighted for bravery, and they call him the ‘Ram-cat’ for the way he goes after the enemy, too.”

  “One of the fightingest, most successful scrapers in the whole Royal Navy,” Grace told him. “Oh, he’s a wonder!”

  “An honest-to-God fighting Captain here, in Vigilance?” Charles Greenleaf scoffed. “What a waste!”

  “Just about to say, Tom,” Farley said to second Grace’s opinion. “I could tell you stories, Charles. Whatever brought Captain Lewrie to this old barge, I doubt it’s his skill at blockade work that sent him to us. We might just have a shot at seeing some action, for a change.”

  “Oh, God, please let him take us anywhere but back to the coast of France!” Greenleaf exclaimed, looking aloft to the overhead, so piously that even gloomy Lieutenant Rutland laughed.

  “Just you wait,” Grace assured them, “I’d wager a month’s pay we’ll be choking on powder smoke before the winter’s out. Captain Lewrie will find a way. He always does.”

  *   *   *

  A change-in-command ceremony was something new to Lewrie, all of his previous ships had been newly commissioned or re-commissioned from a spell in-ordinary. Even when he’d replaced Thermopylae’s Captain at Great Yarmouth, that man had already left the ship. He showed up at the appointed time in his best dress uniform, wearing the sash and star of the Order of the Bath, both his medals, and his fifty-guinea presentation sword. Captain Nunnelly, though, emerged from his great-cabins in much the same state as when Lewrie had first met him, though someone in his retinue had combed his hair, and his steward and senior servant took him by the elbows to support him, in addition to his walking-stick, making Lewrie wonder how long the poor fellow had stubbornly endured his affliction.

  Afflictions, Lewrie thought as they briefly shook hands, for Nunnelly’s hands were swollen and gnarled, his fingers permanently cupped like tree roots. When Nunnelly got to the cross-deck hammock stanchions at the forward edge of the quarterdeck, his voice was still capable of a volume that could reach the bowsprit. He then stood aside while Lewrie drew out his commission documents and read himself in. A turn, a doff of his hat, and a formal “Captain Nunnelly, sir, I relieve you,” a last shake of hands, and a call for three cheers to see the old fellow off followed, and the crew’s cheers sounded heartfelt, lasting ’til Nunnelly had suffered the indignity of being hoisted aloft in the Bosun’s chair to be lowered overside, and was deposited like an empty wat
er cask into a waiting boat. Lewrie stood by the open entry-port, hat raised in salute ’til Nunnelly’s boat was at least two hundred yards off, then turned to his waiting officers and Midshipmen.

  “Mister Farley,” Lewrie said, “how is the ship laden with stores? Enough for the next few days, at least?”

  “Well, aye sir,” Lieutenant Farley replied. “We’ve salt-meat, bisquit, and victuals enough for another month and a half, and fresh bread and beef is coming from the dockyard daily.”

  “Very good,” Lewrie decided. “Once all my dunnage is aboard, do you pipe ‘All Hands’ and announce ‘Make and Mend’ ’til the end of the Second Dog this evening. Tomorrow, we’ll start taking on fresh stores. I’ll also want the Master Gunner and his Mates to sort through the powder to see if any of it’s damp. I’ll want that replaced.”

  “Aye, sir,” Farley agreed.

  “Once we’ve fully replenished, we’ll put the ship Out of Discipline for a day or two,” Lewrie added, turning to a lean fellow in a plain blue coat he assumed was the Purser, who spoke up before being asked.

  “Ship’s Purser, sir, Leonard Blundell,” he said, doffing a civilian hat.

  “I’d admire did you see that the ship’s people get their back-pay before we let ’em dance and rut, sir?” Lewrie asked. “So long as you’re ashore … which I assume will be often, Mister Blundell?”

  “Aye, sir,” the man replied, more formally, wondering if he was being put on notice. Lewrie rewarded him with a quick little smile, as if to do that very thing, which was always a good place to start with a civilian merchant appointed aboard a warship as an independent contractor.

  “If you would be so kind as to introduce me to the rest of the officers and Mids, Mister Farley,” Lewrie said, and he went down the rows, making his own rough appraisals of Lieutenant Rutland and Lieutenant Greenleaf, then greeting young Lieutenant Grace warmly, and asking of his family, though old HMS Proteus had cost the Graces the father and grandfather before her commission had ended.

  Lewrie met the Marine officers, a Captain Whitehead and a Lieutenant Webster, asking if they might be eager to do something out of the ordinary off the ship in future, and getting a warm response.

  God, but there were a lot of Midshipmen, sixteen of them in all, and over half under the age of twenty, with very little time at sea, in addition to the sprinkling of older young men, and it might take Lewrie weeks to sort their names out properly. He also met the Sailing Master, Francis Wickersham, the Surgeon, Mr. William Woodbury, the Master Gunner, Mr. Carlisle, and found them suitable.

  “Gentlemen, I will make no promises yet about what new duties we will be performing, or where Vigilance will be going,” Lewrie summed up their first encounter, “but I will say, and you may pass this on to the ship’s people, but we will definitely not be plodding off-and-on in the Bay of Biscay any longer, so everyone should be ready to sharpen his gunnery, musketry, cutlass work, and boat-handling.

  “Now, Mister Farley, you may dismiss all hands,” Lewrie said to his First Officer, “and I’ll fill them in later. My goods are coming alongside, I see, and must be carried to my great-cabins. Upon that head, I need to speak with the Carpenter.”

  “Mister Gregory, sir, aye,” Farley said, “I’ll send for him.”

  “I’ll be aft, seein’ what I have t’work with,” Lewrie told them all, and went to the doors to the great-cabins, being saluted for the first time by his Marine sentry as he entered the yawningly empty cabins, peering round and pacing about, looking for a place to hang his hat from the overhead deck beams.

  The sentry announced the presence of the Ship’s Carpenter, and a round, red-haired fellow of middle years entered, a shapeless felt hat clasped to his chest.

  “Ye sent for me, Cap’m sir?”

  “Ah, Mister Gregory!” Lewrie warmly replied. “There’s a few things I need done, if you’d be so kind. First, a wider bed-cot, say, thirty inches across? I’m prone to toss and turn. Next, I need a box made, about eight inches deep and two feet on a side, open-topped, for my cat’s ‘head’, with very snug-fitted bottom boards so his sand don’t dribble out.”

  “Bed-cot and a box, aye, sir,” Gregory said, nodding sagely.

  “Lastly, the door to the stern gallery,” Lewrie said, crossing to the rear of the day-cabin and the lazarettes either side of the glazed door. “On warm days, I like to leave it open, and the cat will try to get out and chase sea birds, so … I need a door frame hung in addition to the real one, with twine strung like a fishing net across it, good and taut, so fresh air can get in, but he can’t get out and drown his silly self.”

  “Bed-cot, a jakes for a cat, and a twine door,” Gregory said, screwing up his brows and forehead. “Got it, sir. Be at it directly, sir,” he said, bowing himself out with a knuckle to his forehead, in a tangle for a moment with seamen bearing in the first of Lewrie’s sea chests, and his folded-up collapsible wood and canvas deck chair.

  It would be far too cold and rainy, or snowy, to set it up on the poop deck above, not ’til Vigilance had made a goodly Southing nigh to the latitude of Cádiz; for now, the sailor who carried it in raised his brows in puzzlement as if he bore a set of golf clubs.

  Familiar faces entered next; his new steward, Michael Deavers, his servant, Tom Dasher, and his cook, Yeovill, fetching Chalky in his wicker cage, and more chests.

  “Ah, good,” Lewrie said, glad to see them. “You all know where things go, so I’ll be out on deck, and out from underfoot, for now. If you’ve any questions, Deavers, give me a shout.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Deavers said with an easy grin, “but, between the three of us, I think we can sort it out. Wash-hand stand in the sleeping cabin, plates and glasses in the side-board, and your wine-cabinet to larboard, right, sir?”

  “Got it in one, Deavers,” Lewrie said, clapping his hat back on and going out to ascend to the poop deck. He took in the view, looking round the vast anchorage, the many warships present, and the flotillas of rowing or sailing boats working between them and the shore. Birds swirled in the hundreds, a fairly insistent wind out of the Sou’east snapped flags and pendants, and made his boat cloak flail about his legs. At least, though, it was a sunny and clear day, a perfect one for reading himself in to take command of a new ship, and for a Winter day, it was not too chilly, and the sun felt good.

  An auspicious sign? he wondered. That hopeful idea lasted just as long as he peered outward. When he turned his gaze inboard and saw the length of his new ship, nigh one hundred seventy feet on the range of the deck, and the sight of hundreds of men in her crew, some idling, some scurrying on duties, on her sail-tending gangways and in the ship’s waist, Lewrie felt a qualm of trepidation. Most of those sailors, boys, and Marines peeked aft at him, as if wondering what sort of a Captain they’d gotten this time round. He spotted the Carpenter, Mister Gregory, and his crew making their way aft with tools, lumber, and with fresh, white storm canvas with which to line his bed-cot, sharing quick comments with crewmen as they passed, who looked up again in response to those comments, most with quizzical looks on their faces.

  A bed-cot almost wide enough for two, a twine door, and a box for a cat’s relief? Who was this new’un, anyway? he was sure they were asking themselves. Most sailors were mortal-certain that Captains were a quirky lot, but … how much quirkiness and eccentricity could they abide? And would it be good for them, in the long run?

  Me to know, Lewrie told himself; and you to find out.

  He paced the poop deck, from the hammock stanchions at the edge overlooking the quarterdeck all the way aft to the flag lockers and the taffrail lanthorns, back and forth, impatient to at least have his desk set up in the day-cabin. He had only written Jessica twice since they had gotten to Portsmouth, whilst she had written him a brief, one-page letter almost every day, and he felt guilty for being remiss.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “Settled in aboard, are you, Lewrie?” Captain Middleton asked over coffee at the George Inn where he and Mi
dshipman Chenery still resided.

  “Quite well, sir, thankee,” Lewrie told him.

  “I note you haven’t hoisted a broad pendant,” Middleton added.

  “I wasn’t authorized one,” Lewrie said with a moue. “Perhaps if the plan is successful, and we get all five transports allowed us, and a couple of brig-sloops for additional escorts, they may make me a Commodore, again, who knows.”

  “Speaking of transports,” Middleton said, all but rubbing his hands in glee, “I’ve heard from Bristol Lass’s owners. Not only will they accept a new contract for her for a full year at thirty shillings a ton per month, they’ve offered us a second, the Spaniel, of the same tonnage and age as the first one, for the same price.”

  “Why, that’s grand, sir!” Lewrie hooted. “Spaniel, hey? That will please my wife. She has a cocker. How soon will she get here?”

  “They write that she can be in Portsmouth within ten days to a fortnight,” Middleton told him. “I’ve let London know of the arrangement by yesterday morning’s post, Admiralty seems delighted that we could hire on Bristol Lass at the rate for armed transports, which is cheaper than purchasing them outright, and, they have allowed us to deem them King’s Ships, so that’s out of the way. The local Captain of the Transport Board, though, had to be brow-beaten. He had plans for Bristol Lass, to take part of a regiment to Lisbon, and I put his nose out of joint, looking for a replacement. God, what a hide-bound lot. I don’t envy them their posts, being Commission Sea Officers but desk-bound ashore ’til God knows when, shuffling papers and wrangling contracts for ships they’ll never set foot on.”

  “But, Bristol Lass is ours, outright?” Lewrie pressed. “I can shift part of Boston’s crew aboard her today, or…”

  “As soon as the signed contract is in hand, and the lease fee is in their bank account, aye,” Middleton told him. “A few days hence, I’d imagine.”

  “Days!” Lewrie groaned. “The Dockyard Commissioner is on my arse t’get Boston to the breakers. He’s a schedule to keep, and I’m holdin’ him up. I’d imagine that’s why he hasn’t said when he can even start to build the eight-oared barges we need.”