The Cursed Fortress

by Chris Durbin

  What interested Carlisle was that this inspection was taking place without him having ordered it. Until now he’d had to remind Moxon of nearly every element of his duty, but here he was acting very much at his own initiative and – it could be said – intruding upon the master gunner’s own responsibilities and privileges. He couldn’t stop himself comparing Moxon with his previous first lieutenant Holbrooke. He knew that Holbrooke would have done something very similar, but he’d have consulted his captain first. It was slightly irritating to see that Moxon felt no need to consult him. His mind ran away to remember the halcyon days when Holbrooke had sailed with him in this very frigate. And yet…and yet something was intruding on his recollection. Was it fair to compare Moxon with Holbrooke? To treat Moxon in the same way as he’d treated Holbrooke? Moxon was a much older man with greater experience, whereas Holbrooke had been rushed through the ranks with almost indecent haste. Was this in fact what he should expect of a good first lieutenant? For the first time Carlisle wondered whether he’d become too accustomed to a second-in-command with an abundance of intelligence, leadership and fighting spirit, but lacking the experience that would have come with a few commissions to larger ships with senior lieutenants to show the way. Was he guilty of having mothered Holbrooke, of having controlled him too much?

  So agitated had he become that he started pacing the quarterdeck, for’rard and aft, turning at the taffrail and the quarterdeck ladder. Hosking could see that he was distracted, could see the intensely thoughtful mask that had descended, and motioned the quartermaster and the midshipmen to move to the leeward side. Evidently, the captain was thinking of his pregnant wife left behind in Virginia. How wrong he was.

  ***

  Up and down paced the captain. The bells struck, the watch was changed, and still he kept his lonely vigil. Over the past two years, Carlisle had come to think of himself as a born leader of men and a brilliant seaman. It was a private conceit that he’d shared with nobody, but the facts provided enough evidence to support the theory. He’d brought an old and under-gunned frigate and her people from the depths of peacetime ennui to a peak of fighting efficiency that had allowed him to beat a much larger French frigate into submission. That had been in the Mediterranean back in ‘fifty-six. At the same time, he had, by his own efforts – so he told himself – saved his master’s mate George Holbrooke from the otherwise inevitable ruination of his career. He’d nurtured and encouraged the boy and had seen him grow into one of the most notable young lieutenants of his day. He’d been given a new, more powerful frigate in which he’d taken prizes and won sea battles in the Caribbean. Young Holbrooke had prospered under his command and had been promoted and given a sloop. He was now somewhere in the North Sea blockading the French army’s supply lines. In his mind, that was all Carlisle’s doing. Fury and Medina would have been nothing without his leadership. Holbrooke and Jackson, his old coxswain, would have been unnoticed without his patronage. Those facts were the bedrock of his self-esteem, the fixed points that justified his view of his own brilliance. That was a very comforting thought, and yet he was starting to see the danger. Had he become addicted to the sort of detailed management that had protected Holbrooke from the consequences of his own inexperience? Would the master’s mate have become a lieutenant and now a commander – probably the youngest in the navy – without his captain’s protection?

  In reality, of course, it had been eight months since he’d sailed with Holbrooke. In that time the young man had taken temporary command of Medina while Carlisle recovered from a wound, and he’d sailed for England in his sloop before Carlisle had resumed command. Holbrooke had fought Dutch pirates and French frigates without Carlisle’s help, and he’d taken part in a significant squadron action off Cape François. Heaven alone knew what fresh adventures he was having off the German coast, but whatever it was, he was doing it alone.

  Carlisle dissected his own motives and performance. Perhaps…just perhaps, he’d become too controlling. It had been a unique experience when he’d lost his old and experienced first lieutenant in Fury and in a moment of serendipity had asked for Holbrooke as a replacement. It had forced him into becoming more involved in the management of the ship, in matters that were properly the responsibility of the first lieutenant. Yes, he acknowledged, that was probably the case, but what else could he have done? The ship had to be run, the men had to be led, and there was a war to be fought. He felt justified in filling the void that would otherwise have opened with a raw, untested second-in-command.

  Carlisle paused in his pacing. The inspection of the guns had ended an hour ago. The watch had changed and now there was a master’s mate on the quarterdeck, a painfully shy young man who probably hadn’t even started shaving. And yet the business of the ship went on. The lookouts were changed, he could see Nathaniel Whittle climbing the main shrouds now, apparently looking forward to his thirty minutes perched on the main topmast crosstree. The log was being cast, the quartermaster was watching the luffs and the compass, and the steersmen were moving the spokes of the wheel through their fingers in response to the regular thrust of the waves on the frigate’s quarter. All this was going on without his intervention, and that was as it should be. He wouldn’t have dreamed of interfering in these minute-by-minute tasks that kept a King’s ship at sea. Why, then, did he feel the need to supervise his second-in-command so closely?

  By long-standing seagoing tradition, the internal workings of the ship were the first lieutenant’s responsibility, and now that he thought about it, it wasn’t just a tradition, it was codified in his own printed orders. The first lieutenant effectively presented the ship as an efficient fighting machine so that its captain could use it to fulfil the tasks that his admiral or the Admiralty gave him. It was a sensible demarcation that allowed the captain of a man-of-war to concentrate on his mission, secure in the knowledge that his ship and its people would step up to the mark when he called. He’d been guilty of pushing the boundary of his responsibility down, squeezing his first lieutenant’s room for initiative. That, he now realised, was a consequence of having such an inexperienced second-in-command for so long.

  Carlisle thought again about Holbrooke, but that was history. They would never serve together again; there was room for only one captain in a ship and Holbrooke would surely be posted in the next year. Posted or found wanting and put on the beach, to languish on half pay for the rest of his days. Was that likely? Carlisle realised with a start that he knew nothing of how Holbrooke had reacted to the demands of command. Had he cast off his dependence on Carlisle? Presumably so, otherwise his few months in command of Medina would have been a conspicuous disaster, and that didn’t appear to have been the case. Certainly, Commodore Forrest thought well of him and had recommended his promotion to the commander-in-chief at Jamaica. Of course, he could ask Hosking, but it wasn’t really a fit subject for discussion between a post-captain and a sailing master. If not Hosking, then the only other person he could ask was his former chaplain, David Chalmers, but Chalmers had chosen to sail with Holbrooke and was three thousand miles away in the North Sea.

  Pondering on Holbrooke was an unprofitable use of his time. It was his present first lieutenant who deserved his attention. It was starting to dawn on Carlisle that he may have done Moxon a disservice by treating him in the same way that he’d treated Holbrooke. Moxon had been a junior lieutenant in ships-of-the-line for several years, and his commission as first of Medina must have been the answer to his prayers. Here he could be noticed, and he was only one heartbeat away from the command of a twenty-eight-gun frigate! Carlisle could only imagine his disappointment when he found that his captain hovered over him and monitored everything that he did. Carlisle examined his actions over the last four months. Yes, he’d certainly stifled Moxon’s initiative, reminding him of every action that he should be taking, just as though he was as inexperienced as Holbrooke had been. And worse, Carlisle had started to believe that Moxon lacked the skills that were needed to maintain Medina as
an efficient weapon of war. And that, thought Carlisle, was unforgivable.

  ***

  Carlisle paused his walking and gazed astern at Shark, now becoming an indistinct lighter patch in the gathering darkness. Medina’s top light had been lit at some time while he was pacing the quarterdeck. He hadn’t even noticed the shielded flame being carried into the top, nor the inevitable sequence of orders that would have set it in motion. Proof, if it were needed, that the business of the ship carried on without his intervention as, of course, it should. The watch was being changed again, and here was Moxon himself, taking the last dog watch to give the regular watchkeepers a break. He watched his first lieutenant covertly. He didn’t know what he was expecting, some sort of disrespectful demeanour being shown by his subordinates perhaps, something to validate the private impression that Carlisle had not yet managed to shake off. But nothing of the sort was evident. He seemed to have a relaxed relationship with the off-going master’s mate, the man who was most likely to challenge his first lieutenant, relaxed but respectful. The master’s mate even removed his hat when Moxon approached him, an unnecessary formality in a frigate. Was it done only because Carlisle was on the deck? No, he could see that there was no ambiguity in the relative status of first lieutenant and master’s mate; the younger man was positively deferential to his senior. It may well have been otherwise; he was the senior of the two master’s mates in Medina’s establishment and a candidate for a lieutenancy. He wasn’t planning to try for a master’s warrant, so only an examination and a commission separated him from Moxon, and of course the years of seniority that the first lieutenant had accumulated.

  Yes, now that he bothered to study Moxon, he realised that his experience was matched by his natural authority. Enrico Angelini was keeping the watch with the first lieutenant, and he clearly hung on his every word. Carlisle could even see that the midshipman studiously copied Moxon’s actions; he held his hands behind his back in just the same way, and he mimicked the way that Moxon looked from the luff of the mainsail to the binnacle and then walked to windward to see how the jib was drawing. All the sort of things that he’d expect when a first lieutenant was properly respected. Why had he not noticed it before? He was certain that the junior officers and the people hadn’t treated Moxon with respect when he’d joined in Port Royal.

  Carlisle cast back through the incidents of the cruise. Yes, that was it, the engagement with the French frigate, that was the point where Moxon earned the respect that he now enjoyed. And it had happened quickly, in a matter of days.

  Was he, the captain, the last person in the frigate to acknowledge Moxon’s qualities? It appeared so. Hard self-analysis suggested that he’d failed to adjust his own leadership style for this new relationship, but why hadn’t he noticed this error before? The answer came slowly and reluctantly. In the first days after they sailed from Port Royal, he’d been preoccupied with his wife’s comfort, and then, when she’d revealed that she was expecting their child, he’d been consumed with worry about where she should be landed. That concern for his wife had prevented him from considering the integration of his new first lieutenant into the frigates command structure. That and his regret at parting with his friend Holbrooke. He’d been deficient in a fundamental task of command, he now knew.

  ***

  ‘It all seems quiet, Mister Moxon. Would you join me in my cabin? I believe Mister Angelini can keep the watch for a glass or two.’

  ‘With pleasure, sir,’ Moxon replied, removing his hat, then turning to give a few instructions to the midshipman.

  Now there was another benefit of delegation. Carlisle could see the pleasure on Enrico’s face. As it happened, this was the first time that his wife’s cousin had been trusted with a night watch alone, and he evidently relished the opportunity.

  While his servant fussed around offering drinks, Carlisle sought to put Moxon at his ease. It was odd, now that he thought about it, that he hadn’t really had the opportunity get to know his second-in-command. Yet another proof of the disadvantages of bringing a wife to sea.

  ‘Mister Angelini appears to be progressing well,’ he said as a way of opening the conversation.

  ‘Yes, sir, he is. He still struggles a little with the language, but the men understand him well enough, and his seamanship is improving.’

  ‘I have the impression that he was a little startled by the amount of professional knowledge that’s required of a midshipman in the Navy.’

  ‘In contrast to that required of an ensign in the Sardinian army,’ Moxon replied, smiling. ‘Yes, although I haven’t heard him complain, he appears to positively enjoy accumulating knowledge. In other circumstances, I’d say he’d be ready for the examination in a year or so…’

  Carlisle nodded. There was an air of unreality to Enrico’s service in Medina. All midshipman strove for a commission – it was the whole point of the rank – but Enrico had perforce to find other motivation. In fairness, nobody could question his zeal, it was just where it was all leading.

  ‘I regret, Mister Moxon,’ said Carlisle when they were both seated with drinks, and his servant had withdrawn, ‘that I haven’t had as much leisure as I would have liked to become acquainted with you.’

  Moxon inclined his head in acknowledgement; there was no need to state the obvious reason. Moxon had joined the frigate just days before sailing, and both men were aware of the amount of Carlisle’s time that had been taken up with his wife on the passage north.

  ‘Indeed, I haven’t really had the chance to acknowledge your conduct in the fight with the French frigate, but I hope you’ll accept my thanks even if I’m a few days late. I have, of course, mentioned you in my letter to their Lordships. It’s the last letter that I’ll send to them as we come under Mister Hardy at Halifax, or Mister Boscawen if we meet him first.’

  ‘Thank you, sir, it was no more than my duty, but I appreciate your good word. Promotions are becoming tighter as the first rush of new ships slows down and, well you know …’ replied Moxon, spreading his hands in the universal and eloquent gesture of acknowledgement that nothing is certain in life, except death and taxes.

  ‘You deserve it, Mister Moxon, and I hope I’ll have other opportunities to acknowledge your value. However, here we are just days away from joining the fleet, and I hope you’ll be able to give me an impression of the frigate’s readiness for what will be a hard few months.’

  ‘Perhaps I can bring the latest statements from the warrant officers, sir,’ replied Moxon, rising to leave.

  ‘No, no, I’ve seen those. It’s your personal thoughts that I’m interested in. You’re much closer to the people than I am, and command opens a gap between the cabin and the wardroom, let alone the mess-decks. I’m asking for your own thoughts.’

  Moxon looked slightly uneasy, as well he might, having become accustomed to his captain’s aloofness. He was used to being ignored or at best viewed with disfavour. He was a philosophical soul, and all his experience taught him that he should expect nothing better from the god-like entity that inhabited the great cabin.

  ‘Well, sir, the carpenter has put the damage to rights now and our second suit of sails is drawing well. The bosun has finished repairing the rigging and just needs to refresh the gammoning when it’s light tomorrow.’

  He thought for a moment.

  ‘I won’t be quite happy with our spare sails even when the sailmaker has finished patching them. Too many are shot through in the boltropes. I hope we can obtain a new suit in Halifax.’

  ‘We can certainly try,’ replied Carlisle. ‘They’ve been maintaining a substantial squadron over the winter, so perhaps they’ll have built up a reserve of sails.’

  ‘As for the men, sir, the old Medinas are, of course, the backbone. The new men that we had in Port Royal are well on the way to becoming useful seamen, those with previous service of course. Only the sixteen that we took as landsman volunteers are still a problem, they’ve formed a clique and I believe they’ll jump ship at the first opp
ortunity.’

  ‘Really?’ Carlisle was only marginally surprised, although this was the first that he’d heard of any disaffection. It was commonplace for men abandoned by their employers in Jamaica to sign on for a voyage home, and to desert at the first attractive port.

  ‘It’s not a serious problem yet. The master-at-arms watched them with great care in Hampton and Boston, the most likely place for desertion, but they’ll have more opportunity to run in Halifax. Although where they’d run to in that howling wasteland, I don’t know.’

  ‘Do they mess together?’ asked Carlisle.

  ‘They did, in numbers seven and nine messes, but I’ve had them broken up and spread amongst the regular sailors.’

  They spoke of the ship, the people, the stores, the training, the guns and all the myriad of subjects that kept first lieutenants awake at night. It was eight bells when they had finished, and it was Midshipman Angelini, knocking on the cabin door to report the change of the watch to the first lieutenant, that broke up the discussion.

  ***

  When Moxon left, Carlisle sat long into the night reflecting on the errors of judgement that had brought him to this turning point in his relationship with his first lieutenant. He’d caught himself just in time, he realised. Another few weeks and the vaguely hostile – no, not hostile, just distant – relationship would have become settled, endangering the effectiveness of Carlisle’s precious frigate to the detriment of the King’s business.