A Fine Retribution

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Well, perhaps if I wave my orders under his nose as an Admiralty Commissioner, I could light a fire under him for you,” Middleton offered with a look of sly glee. “What’s the use of being one, if you can’t use that august power, now and then, hey?” he joshed.

  “I’d be grateful if you did, sir,” Lewrie assured him. “For that matter, I’d like to swap Vigilance’s cutters, pinnace, and jolly-boat for three more new barges, too. Well, I’ll leave the gig aboard. The Boson, Mister Gore, has t’have something to row about in. He’d feel slighted if he couldn’t, if only to see to squaring the yards.

  “Ehm … boarding nets for Vigilance, too,” Lewrie added, “and an ocean of paint and tar. Fresher gunpowder than what I have, as well. At least a quarter of it shows signs of damp, and…”

  “We’d best make a list,” Middleton said with a dramatic sigh as he opened a folio-sized leather ledger which served as a portable desk, replete with several pencils in some slots in the inside. “Best that we let the dockyard know what’s lacking all at once than coming back hat-in-hand day after day. Paint … tar … boarding nets, heavy duty, and three more twenty-nine-foot eight-oared barges. And?”

  “And nigh an hundred other wants, sir,” Lewrie admitted as he fumbled in a side pocket for a list of his own. “My Purser, Bosun, and First Officer have already submitted most of the usual items, and this is a rough copy.”

  “Oh, rough indeed,” Middleton said as he squinted at the list, turning it about to decypher the scribbles. “Your clerk writes like a scratching chicken.”

  “My hand, in haste, sir,” Lewrie confessed. “I’ve been too busy to hire on a new clerk. There’s a Midshipman Severance aboard whom I’ve called upon to help with the usual submissions, he has a good copper-plate hand. Late twenties, a Passed Midshipman, but hasn’t had any luck at gaining his Lieutenancy, yet. I’d love to promote him to Sub-Lieutenant and make him my aide, even if I have to pay him extra out of my own pocket.”

  “Hmm, well … why not?” Middleton said after a long moment to mull that over. “Whether Admiralty allowed you to hoist a broad pendant or not, you do need an aide, and a clerk, someone with more authority than young Mister Chenery when dealing with the transports, and the Army contingent, when you get them. Write me a formal request, which I will authorise and forward to Secretary Croker, making it all legal, soon as you’re back aboard, and your man will be a Sub-Lieutenant by nightfall.”

  “Excellent!” Lewrie said, breathing out in relief. “Then, I can enter Chenery on ship’s books … but still at your disposal ’til we sail, of course.”

  “Capital,” Middleton agreed. “I’ve found him extremely helpful. Ah, speak of the Devil!” for Midshipman Chenery entered the dining room with some letters in his hand.

  “Fresh from the morning post, sirs,” Chenery announced, handing over some he’d already sorted out. “Yours, Captain Middleton, and yours, Captain Lewrie. One from my sister,” he said with a wink.

  “And one from your sister to you, peeking from your pocket, is it, Mister Chenery?” Lewrie teased.

  “And one from Father, too, sir,” Chenery said, blushing.

  “When you write them back, tell them that I’ve a sudden opening in the Midshipmen’s mess, and you will be filling it, sir,” Lewrie told him. “Of course, ’til we sail, you’ll still help Captain Middleton.”

  “Glad to hear it, sir!” Chenery all but crowed.

  “Now, if we could only find our third transport,” Lewrie said wishfully.

  “Is there no pleasing you, man?” Middleton pretended to object.

  “Not ’til I hoist sail and leave the Lizard astern, sir!” Lewrie rejoined with a laugh. “Nor, ’til I’m at Malta, and picking up a battalion of soldiers.”

  “Very well, Lewrie, I’ll see what we can do to please you,” Middleton mock-grudgingly said. “Mister Chenery, go fetch your pen and ink. You’ve a good, legible hand … unlike your Captain … and I’ve a fresh list to be copied down.”

  “And, whilst you’re doing that, I’ll hire a boat and go aboard Boston to speak with Lieutenant Fletcher, and let him know that we’ll have the first transport to be manned within a couple of days, and the second to arrive within a fortnight. That should get the dockyard off his arse, and mine.”

  “Very good, sirs,” Chenery said, ready to dash up to their lodgings to fetch the writing materials, and a sheaf of good bond paper, though he looked as if he would dally long enough to at least scan his letters from home.

  As soon as Midshipman Chenery returned, Lewrie penned his request for Midshipman Severance to be promoted, which he handed over to Captain Middleton, who wrote a letter of approval that instant, then added news of that to his latest letter to be sent to First Secretary Croker.

  “There, see how simple that is?” Middleton japed.

  *   *   *

  That was the easiest thing that Lewrie accomplished that day, for when he went aboard the aged Boston frigate, Lieutenant Fletcher told him that the Victualling Board ashore had deemed the ship de-commissioned and had listed her as In-Ordinary, vastly reducing the rations issued to her, barely enough to sustain the tiny crew of Standing Officers carried on idle hulks to maintain them.

  Back to Vigilance Lewrie went to rouse out his Cox’n and boat crew, dig into his desk for the precious documents authorising all of his requests and needs to further the experiment, then back ashore to the Victualling Board offices to set things right.

  “Who’s the new stroke-oar?” Lewrie whispered to Desmond as the boat got under way.

  “Kitch, sor,” Desmond told him in a like mutter.

  “’At’s me, sir,” Kitch spoke up as he plied his oar smoothly and strongly. “Johnny Kitch. I woz Cap’m Nunnelly’s stroke-oar, an’ Cox ’ere tells me ye’d be needin’ a new’un.”

  “He ain’t Pat Furfy, sor, nor Irish neither, but he’ll do,” Desmond grudgingly allowed. “They all will, I reckon, sor.”

  Kitch was about as tall as Furfy had been, but was much leaner with wide shoulders and corded muscles. He had long light brown hair clubbed back into an impressive queue, and the face of a professional boxer, battered and rough, right down to a broken nose, but he had a set of merry but sly eyes.

  “Right, then,” Lewrie said, giving Kitch a approving nod. “I’m sure Desmond told you that you’re steppin’ into the shoes of a hellish-good man.”

  “‘At ’e did, sir,” Kitch replied. “Won’t let ya down.”

  *   *   *

  Mr. Pettijohn of the Victualling Board, once Lewrie was let in to see him after a half-hour’s delay, struck Lewrie as a proper “Captain Sharp”, the sort of minor tyrant who, if appointed aboard a ship as a Purser, would have to be watched exceedingly carefully lest he not only make the Discharged, Dead, and the deserters “chew tobacco” but list them as needing new issue slops, buckled shoes, and try to make it look as if they’d signed their pay over to him to safeguard.

  I wager he got his start by stealin’ the coins from his dead mother’s eyes, Lewrie thought.

  “But, Captain Lewrie,” the oily little git lazily drawled with a half-hidden smirk, “Boston has been dis-armed and de-commissioned. She is to go to the breakers, and, most importantly, she has no Captain at present, so I do not quite understand why you involve yourself in her victualling.”

  “I am, as Captain of the Vigiliance sixty-four, to take under my command the officers and crew of the Boston,” Lewrie told him, “to man three armed transports, two of which will be under contract with the Transport Board, and will both be in port within a fortnight. The third is being looked for, but it may take another fortnight to find her and issue a contract on her. Boston’s people must be supplied in all respects ’til they can leave her and take charge of them.”

  “I know nothing of that, sir,” Pettijohn said with a dismissive laugh, leaning back in his desk chair, toying with a letter opener between both forefingers. “Perhaps you should take it up with the Transport Bo
ard.”

  “They do not victual,” Lewrie almost hissed. “You do, and you must. Not only salt-meat and bisquit but fresh bread and meat, along with water, small beer, and their rum issue, ’til the transports are here.”

  “Ah, to my knowledge, sir, Boston is laid up In-Ordinary ’til she’s turned over to the breakers,” Pettijohn smirked, “and her crew has been reduced to only the Standing Officer party and their wives and children. I am not authorised to issue more, sir.”

  “Want me t’row you out to her, sir?” Lewrie spat. “Let you see the nigh two hundred and fifty people still aboard?”

  “Are you sure they are not deserters, sir?” Pettijohn replied, “lurking aboard a hulk, looking for handouts?”

  “What does your position pay, Mister Pettijohn?” Lewrie asked. “Two hundred pounds a year, at best?”

  “Well now, sir…,” the uppity clerk began to dispute.

  “What’s the goin’ rate, two thousand pounds for a job where you can reap thousands in jobbery and graft? Declare fit rations as rotten and sell ’em to merchant masters under the table?”

  “I think this conversation will prove to be un-fruitful, sir, so I suggest…,” Pettijohn snapped, getting heated by Lewrie’s true-to-the-mark accusations.

  “Think you have patrons who’ll save your arse, sir?” Lewrie said with a savage grin as he pulled his orders from a pocket of his coat. “Read that … sir.”

  Grudgingly, frowning, Pettijohn took the document and read it. His eyes blared and his brows shot up as he noted the names associated with the orders: Sir Alan Lewrie, Bt.; First Secretary of the Admiralty John Croker; First Lord of the Admiralty Henry, Lord Mulgrave; and even Secretary of State for War, Lord Castlereagh.

  “I, uh … ahem,” Pettijohn stammered, his ruddy, well-fed visage paling, “I did not know, I wasn’t told, Captain Lewrie … Sir Alan, my pardons. A fortnight, did you say? Perhaps a whole month? Victuals for two hundred fifty men to be continued ’til Boston is officially turned over to the breakers? I will see to it, Sir Alan, I assure you.”

  “So I, and Admiralty Commissioner Captain Middleton, won’t have to write London to lay a complaint, aye,” Lewrie said with a sense of satisfaction, snapping his documents back from nerveless fingers.

  “No need for that at all, Sir Alan,” Pettijohn quickly said, sure that his patrons would never lift a finger to help him should he be sacked, and their share of his illicit profits be revealed.

  “Then I bid you good day, Mister Pettijohn,” Lewrie told him, furling up his documents and putting them back in his pocket, sure that they would have to be shoved into the faces of a great many more petty drudges before he was through.

  Patrons, Lewrie mused on his way back to his boat; can the men who tried t’keep me on half-pay the rest o’ my life have clout down to ink-slingin’ clerks? They give orders t’block me so the experiment’s a failure ’fore it even starts? Oh, horse manure! I’ll be lookin’ under my mattress for monsters, next!

  *   *   *

  After a short row to the shipyard, though, and a confrontation with yet another smugly self-satisfied official, Lewrie began to wonder.

  “Bless my soul, Captain Lewrie!” the fellow said with a start. “Twenty-one barges, all at once? Good, seasoned oak, too? See here, sir,” he said, sweeping an arm round the long stretch of shoreline where the keels, stems, and stern posts of ships under construction stood like skeletal fingers spearing to heaven, where laborers shaped piles of hull timbers, and saws and hammers and adzes rang. “We’ve enough on our plate as it is, sir, and seasoned oak is all spoken for. Even new frigates and brig-s1oops are being built out of fir, these days, Stockholm pine, New England fir when we can get it. And ship’s boats would be the last thing we’d be slapping together.”

  “So, you’ve no idea where they could be obtained on short notice?” Lewrie asked, already hot under the collar from his last encounter at the Victualling Board warehouses.

  “Not from a Navy dockyard proper, sir,” the official said, “the best bet would be to speak to the people who build on speculation ‘back of the beach’. That’s where most ship’s boats get built, anyways, and they’ll be fir-built. I expect any of the minor yards would turn hand springs to get such a large contract.”

  “And you have no twenty-nine-foot barges to hand at present?” Lewrie asked him.

  “No more than three or four, that I can recall, sir, and those are waiting for a pair of Second Rates finishing their refit or construction, sorry,” the fellow said with a hapless shrug.

  “Back of the beach, then,” Lewrie said with a heavy sigh.

  Another contract for Middleton to wrangle, Lewrie thought as he went back to his waiting cutter, sure that Middleton would feel even more put-upon. At least after his spell in command of HM Dockyards at Gibraltar, he’d know to a penny what each barge should cost, and negotiate a fair price that wouldn’t make the Admiralty officials kick furniture.

  When he got back to his boat, he noted that there was a carter with kegs of ale aboard, with a row of wood piggins hanging on pegs down one side, lingering quite near, and the itinerant merchant having a slanging match with his men, who, upon his arrival, suddenly found great interest in the shore birds, the clouds, and the boats stirring near the piers.

  “Penny a pint, sir,” the carter announced as Lewrie drew near. “Right refreshin’, even on a cold day, it is!”

  Kitch and Desmond looked up at him, both faces innocent as new-born babes, but Desmond gave the game away, licking his lips.

  “Penny a pint, is it?” Lewrie asked the carter. “Well, give us eight pints, then,” he said, pulling out his wash-leather coin-purse and extracting a shilling. “It’s a dry row, back to the ship.”

  “Thankee and arrah, sor!” Desmond was quick to say, scrambling up to the quay ahead of the rest. “An’ a foin gentleman ye are!”

  Long ago in his Midshipman days, barely a week aboard his first ship, the old Ariadne, Lewrie had sprung for ale for the crew of the cutter he’d taken to the piers, and been bent over a gun to “kiss the gunner’s daughter” by the First Officer upon his return.

  Think my bottom’s safe now, Lewrie told himself, savouring an ale, too; So long as I don’t make a habit of it.

  *   *   *

  Once back aboard Vigilance and in his great-cabins, Lewrie sent Dasher to pass the word for Midshipman Severance. As he waited, he peered slowly round his cabins to see if there was anything lacking that he must buy in Portsmouth before sailing.

  The hull bulkheads and deal-and-canvas partitions which separated the dining coach, day cabin, and bed space had been re-painted in a pale sky blue, with louvres and false wainscots white. The cushions of the settee and chairs, and the cushions atop the lazarette lockers were now upholstered in ruby red storm canvas. His Turkey and Axminster carpets were faded and a tad ratty after years of use, but were still serviceable. The overhead deck beams had been freshly linseeded, and the overhead was now a brighter white, whilst the black-and-white canvas deck chequer had been touched up. Coin silver or bright brass lanthorns hung from the beams, slowly swaying with the faint movement of the ship at anchor. Satisfied, he sat behind his desk, and his eyes were naturally drawn to his wife’s portrait, prominently displayed on the forward bulkhead. Despite Jessica’s protestations that Madame Berenice Pellatan had rendered her too wispily and romantically, Lewrie thought it a perfect representation of her; bareheaded, with her lustrous nigh-black hair done up, with hints of flattering candlelight to warm her with touches of amber; her dark blue eyes so alive that he could swear they followed him as he paced his cabins; a hint of a wee smile on her lips, and her graceful neck bare to mid-shoulders before the embrace of a white-trimmed blue satin gown.

  God, why’d I accept this commission? he chid himself, thinking himself a fool to part from her, all for his wounded pride!

  “Midshipman Severance, SAH!” his Marine sentry bawled.

  “Enter,” Lewrie respon
ded.

  “You wished to see me, sir?” Severance said, his hat under his arm as he came to the day-cabin desk.

  “Aye, Mister Severance,” Lewrie began, finding at least one good thing to come of his frustrating day. “I have spoken with Commissioner Middleton, and he has seen fit to appoint you a Sub-Lieutenant and aide to me.”

  “Oh! Ah, thank you, sir!” Severance gawped in surprise, “Thanks to Commissioner Middleton, too, sir!”

  Severance was an impressive young fellow on his mid-twenties, tall and fit with broad shoulders and lean waist, handsome in a rough-hewn way, with chestnut hair worn short, and green eyes.

  “What rumours have circulated are mostly true, sir,” Lewrie told him. “We are forming an ad hoc squadron, with three troop transports to sail with us, manned by Navy crews. You will be instrumental to me to liaise with the officers commanding them as they fit out for overseas service, and, as they train themselves and the troops they take aboard for the task we’ve been assigned.”

  “I see, sir, I think,” Severance said with a cock of his head.

  “Clear as mud, now,” Lewrie said with a smile, “but all will be made clear once we sail. Midshipman Chenery, the young’un? He’s been helping me, but he’s barely a year in the Navy, and I need an experienced fellow who can deal with our transports and Army officers, when we obtain them. Think of yourself as a Flag-Lieutenant to a man who’s not an Admiral. Of course, I’ll still need you to stand in as a clerk when you can, at least ’til that office proves too demanding on your time.”

  “I’m sure I can handle both, sir,” Severance assured him.

  “Good. I suppose you should see the First Officer, Mister Farley, and tell him of your promotion,” Lewrie said. “The wardroom has a spare Flag-Captain’s cabin, which I’m sure Mister Farley will be more than happy to take for his own, leaving a dog-box free. You can shift your berth to the wardroom. And, once at sea, I’m certain that the Sailing Master will be spending more time in his sea cabin than in his space in the wardroom.”