Gentleman Captain

by J. D. Davies

  'The wind is east by north, Mister Farrell,' I said at length.

  Kit smiled. 'Indeed it is, sir. Our Jupiter sails large, with a fair wind from east by north. Your bearings are coming to you, sir, as I knew they would. For but a very few hours' work yesterday and this morning, I'd rate that a fair outcome.'

  Ahead of us, and slightly to starboard, the Royal Martyr sailed majestically on. I had signalled Judge with my intention of intercepting the strange sail on the horizon, but he had overruled me. Through his voice-trumpet, the exquisite fellow shouted that we had already lost too much time to challenge every ship we saw, despite the Lord High Admiral's injunction to his warships to enforce the 'salute to the flag' demanded of all foreign vessels passing through the king's waters.

  In those times, we fondly believed that we ruled the waves–every inch of water up to the tidal mark on the beaches of France or Holland, and all the way from Norway down to Cape Finisterre. But this one, distant ship, at least, would escape having to prostrate herself before a warship of the King of England. We had already lost much time on the previous day, becalmed for hours off Portland Bill and then waiting for Royal Martyr to enforce the salute on a wine ship bound from La Rochelle to London, manned by drunken Frenchmen who had strayed off course and perversely refused to salute the King of England's flag. Refused, until the threat of Judge's broadside taught them the error of their Gallic ways.

  The wind was now fresh and too favourable to squander, Judge shouted. We were sailing fairly close to the land; this was the custom of those days, wind and tide depending, but it was also a condition of our sailing orders. We were to hug the shore, no more than a few miles off, until we had cleared Cornwall. Landon had grumbled mightily about the folly of this course, proclaiming it too close to a lee shore if the wind shifted more southerly or westerly. Judge now shouted that we must make all haste to round the Lizard and Land's End before such a shift occurred and trapped us in Falmouth for days or even weeks. His words, carrying across the water indiscriminately to every man on our ship's rail, caused many a frown and some audible grumbling; our brave Cornish lads had, it seemed, been praying for exactly that eventuality.

  Kit Farrell had supped with me two evenings before, the night we sailed from Spithead, after I had toasted our voyage in bowls of punch with the rest of the officers. All, that is, but the Reverend Gale, whose family of crusted port had seemingly propagated, and who responded to Musk's invitation with a stream of invective that would have shamed Lucifer, let alone his notional employer on high. Among the other officers, there was evident resentment at the newest and most junior of the master's mates being singled out to share the captain's table on our first evening at sea. James Vyvyan sulked like a schoolboy. Landon protested at having to accommodate yet another mate, one above his complement. Peverell barely restrained his fury, for in his view, entering a supernumerary mate in his precious muster and pay books so soon after the unexpected addition of Musk was apparently a contravention of the whole of English common law and an affront to the Lord God himself. He had burst into my cabin, without even a by-your-leave, and thrust his ugly face so close to mine that I could see the black pus that clogged the pores of his nose. Landon and Peverell were eventually cowed into submission only by the sign of the king's own seal on the order; even then, Peverell warned me that there were limits both to his exemplary patience and to the powers of captains and kings alike. I did not know whether to laugh out loud at the liberties these two wretches chose to take with their captain, or to be intimidated by their lack of regard for my office. No doubt James Harker would have rewarded such disrespect with a spell in the bilboes. In the end I did nothing, falling prey once again to my habit of indecision.

  Phineas Musk, who had an infallible ear for other men's conversations, reported the immediate birth of a rumour that the captain's catamite had come aboard, and was to share his sea-bed that very night. He also reported that some of the larboard watch had woven my presence fancifully into the other conspiracy of the moment, and avowed in hushed whispers that I was some sort of all-seeing Machiavel who had sanctioned Harker's murder in order to take his place (presumably absconding with the Duchess of Newcastle in the process). But Musk had taken against Kit Farrell almost at once, and could have been as easily the originator of both rumours.

  Kit Farrell seemed oblivious to such tittle-tattle. He had listened intently on that first day as I explained our mission to him, and told him of Harker's mysterious death. I did not confide in him that, for all my scepticism upon the matter of murder, I found it hard to suppress the pervasive dread that someone might seek to mete out the same to the second captain of the Jupiter. But Kit had glanced keenly at me for a moment, and I do not doubt he could see my thoughts writ large in my eyes. He plainly thought hard upon the matter, but for the moment, he kept his counsel.

  I had seen my saviour but once since that black October day in County Cork, and that was on the occasion of my court-martial: the obligatory trial that occurs on any captain who loses his ship. This had been in the great cabin of the mighty Agincourt, laid up in the Medway, on a January day so cold that it was almost possible to walk out to the ship from Chatham shore. There had been no time for conversation on that occasion, beyond a rushed word of thanks for a deposition that threw all the blame for the loss of the Happy Restoration onto her drunken master. Despite some contradictions in the statements of other survivors, and some awkward questioning by the president of the court, old Sir John Mennes, Kit Farrell held to his story, and Captain Matthew Quinton was honourably acquitted. His debt to the young man who had now saved him twice over weighed heavily on his heart and honour.

  I said nothing of this to him, for we were both entirely and silently aware of how matters stood between us, and of what each owed the other. Instead, I asked him why he had abandoned a lucrative Indies voyage for what would probably be but a short commission, with no certainty of speedy pay. 'We'll hardly be back in the Thames before the ships in the Mediterranean and Portugal come back home, Mister Farrell. They'll take precedence for payment, no doubt.'

  Kit nodded. 'You'll be right enough, Captain. But if I'd gone to the Indies, you see, would I have been paid in three years or more, until we came back? True, I'd have made much more in the end, but at what price? The Indies does for enough men, be it through disease or the guns of the Dutch or the Portugee. Then there's the natives. And even if you keep clear of all of them, you're at the mercy of cheating Arab factors, and worse, all the way from Cochin to Melaka.' He looked away, his mind bent upon distant memories. 'I can be a master in the king's service in another five years or so, if I cultivate enough brethren of Trinity House and–begging your pardon, sir–get enough good certificates of recommendation from enough captains. Down in my mother's alehouse, they all say there'll be another Dutch war sooner than later, and that's always a sure way of creating vacancies for promotions. On the Indies voyages, I'd be lucky to be a master of a ship this side of my fiftieth year. No, Captain. When I got your letter, in the Downs, I looked into my soul, and it was written there as large as life. You're a navy man, Kit Farrell, it said, just like your father.'

  'Your mother wrote that your father had served twenty-eight years in the navy,' I said.

  'Twenty-eight it was, Captain. He went out first under Sir Robert Mansell against the corsairs of Algiers in the year twenty. Served with merchants a while, including that Indies voyage, but came back to the navy in thirty-seven, when the late king's Ship Money fleets were strutting the oceans. But then...'

  For every family in England in those last twenty years, my own included, there had been a but then ...It was a time that had set fathers against sons, brothers against brothers, and killed enough of all of them.

  'But then, the war between king and Parliament began,' I said, 'and the navy declared for the Parliament. Your father stayed in the navy, ergo he was a Parliament-man.'

  Kit Farrell shrugged sadly. His father had told him that he and his fellows thought the
y were fighting for king and Parliament together–not to overthrow the king. Those who led them said it was a war against the king's evil ministers, who had misled His Majesty. They said those things year after year, until the day they cut the king's head off–or so Kit Farrell's father had claimed. Uncle Tristram, whose politics had been more inclined to Parliament than those of his brother or sister-in-law, my father and mother, had said much the same thing to me, once.

  'You're fighting for a new commonwealth now, boys, they told my father and his kind. A land where we've abolished kings and Christmas alike, and you need to hear three sermons every Sunday, and you must never drink and never gamble and never whore and never sin. We were in the family alehouse one evening, Father and I alone, and there were no customers. You see, sir, all the seamen from Shadwell down to Stepney village were so afraid of the ministers and being denounced from the pulpit, and of the fanatic soldiers who stood behind the ministers, that they wouldn't be seen with a drink any more. And he said to me, sir–my father said–"Kit, boy, if I could live long enough to see just one thing more in my life, I'd want it to be the day when England has its true and rightful kings again."'

  Many were making such speeches in those days, for it did not do to admit enthusiasm for the old rule, when the godly fanatics and their turtle-helmeted agents, the swordsmen, had dictated how people should live, and lie. But as I watched Kit Farrell, I knew that he, at least, spoke the truth. It was impossible to doubt those clear blue eyes and the good soul that looked out from them. We sat in silence for some little while, and I envied Kit Farrell in that time. I envied him his command of his trade; I wished that I too could move unerringly about the ship, fixing what was wrong and improving what was right. And I envied him that time with his father in the Farrell alehouse, too. He had known his father until he was thirteen, and almost a man; I had lost mine when I was but five, and still a child.

  'And then there is the rest, of course,' he said suddenly.

  'The rest?'

  'Of why I decided to leave my Indiaman and repair here, sir, to join you on this particular expedition. It was the day the Happy Restoration was lost, sir. What we said to each other, in the fort of Kinsale. I made a promise to you, Captain Quinton,' he said quietly. As you did to me. And the Farrells keep their promises, too.'

  I thought on this for a moment, and said, 'I fear I'll be a poor pupil, Mister Farrell. I do not know if my heart is truly in it, if truth be told, for my ambition still lies elsewhere–a commission in the Horse Guards, at the very least.' I looked out at over the waters that stretched smoothly away to my left, turning pewter and violet in the evening light. It was a beautiful sight. I turned to look Kit full in the face. And you'll face many on this ship who'll hate you for the privileged place you'll have in my company, to teach me the sea-craft.'

  'Only as many as you'll have for setting up a favourite, which is something all sailors hate.'

  I thought of Vyvyan. His demeanour, once distracted by grief, seemed to have hardened into something colder since Kit's arrival. His manners were impeccable, but the disdain in his eye was a hard thing to bear.

  'But as you say, Captain, it'll be but a short commission,' he went on. 'And besides, the crew seem too wedded to the shade of Captain Harker to love you, whatever you do. It's more to the king's benefit, and mine, to turn you into a good seaman, and for you to make me into a man of letters, than it is for me to seek out popularity on the lower deck. Or the quarterdeck.' The evening gun fired, the signal for the night watch to be set and all lanterns and candles doused. When Kit spoke again, his tone was serious but tentative. 'Sir, may I speak freely?'

  'I rather thought you already were, Mister Farrell,' I said, laughing despite my trepidation at what might follow. 'By all means. Plain-speaking is a rarity when the speaker is to be trusted.'

  He pondered a moment, choosing his words as carefully as a man of his breeding could. 'Sir,' he said at length, his tone thoughtful. 'Men talk much of the matter between the gentlemen captains and the tarpaulins–which of them is better fitted to command the king's ships. I've already observed that Master Landon talks of little else when you are absent, and envies you this commission.' I nodded, for that much was obvious amidst the master's grim malevolence. 'I see it this way. Now, the advocates of the tarpaulin will tell you that a gentleman is ignorant of the sea, so the men will be discouraged, and he must leave the navigation to the master. They'll tell you a gentleman captain will be too harsh to his men. They'll tell you that a gentleman can't recommend good officers, because he doesn't understand their trades, and the officers can delude him and so defraud the king.' This was too close for comfort, but I wished to know Kit Farrell's conclusion, so for the present I merely nodded. 'On the other hand, your tarpaulins can detect embezzlements and will keep their accounts in good order, or so their advocates say. They'll take care of their ships and will know their men—'

  'But,' I said, impatient at being damned on so many counts, 'surely, Mister Farrell, some men would say that your tarpaulin is too familiar with his men. Not to mention that they have no lineage or honour. How could they possibly tell the difference between the honour of a warship and a merchantman? Nor do they bear themselves well in proper society. Can you imagine Master Landon as a captain, dining with the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta or the King of Portugal, Mister Farrell? He'd disgrace himself before the end of the first course. The captain of a king's ships must be a man of honour, for it is more than a ship–it is England incarnate.'

  Kit Farrell nodded. 'Yes, sir. I've heard all those things said, on both sides. But it seems to me, one of the failings of our English temper is our eagerness to take one side or another, simply so that we can say we belong to a side.'

  I had a sudden thought of Cornelia, who often declared something similar to me, but with one small difference; being that whereas the English predilection was to divide into two sides, the Dutch were never content with fewer than five or six. I said to Kit, 'Your point being?'

  'Well, sir. I'm an ignorant man, as you know, with no reading or writing–not until you finish teaching me, at any rate,' and he smiled swiftly at me, 'but it seems to me there may be grains of truth in all these points, good and bad. Now, if that be so, why should some cry up the gentlemen, and say that all the commands in the navy should be theirs? Why should others damn the gentlemen, and give those commands only to rude tarpaulins like myself or Master Landon?'

  'Mister Farrell, I have heard the king and Duke of York speak on this many times, and I agree wholeheartedly with them. What they say is, commands should go to a mixture of gentlemen and tarpaulins, according to their merits. Take our own voyage. I, a gentleman, have one of the commands, and Captain Judge, a tarpaulin, the other—'

  'Yes, sir,' said Kit, 'but my point is that the day must come when we have no distinction of gentleman and tarpaulin any longer! When we have gentlemen who know the sea and their ship so well that they are as capable of command as any tarpaulin. And our tarpaulins, in turn, become gentlemen, to give them those qualities they need to be proper when dining with the King of Malta or the knights of Portugal, sir.'

  The great red sun was sinking down behind the Royal Martyr. I watched it turn her sails to gold. 'There's something in what you say, I think, Mister Farrell. The king and duke have started sending young gentlemen to sea under royal letters, some of them as young as thirteen or fourteen. Not many years from now, there'll be a whole generation of sea-officers who'll be gentlemen born and bred, but who've been at sea almost as long as any tarpaulin, and learned the trade just as well.' A thought struck me. 'Men not too unlike Lieutenant Vyvyan, in fact.'

  Kit smiled. 'I forbore from mentioning him, sir, but it's true. A very fine sailor, and a good family.'

  Kit Farrell ever spoke with a rare clarity. Nevertheless his words angered me and I stood for a moment composing my countenance before I turned to him again. 'A pity indeed that such a fine officer should be so marred by suspicion and perversity,' I said, spi
teful and ashamed of myself at the same time. 'His tiresome obsession with his uncle's death...' I tailed off, aware of my companion's stillness and silence. 'But perhaps I should try harder to deal with him, then, Mister Farrell, if you say he should be my model.'

  Farrell shrugged and smiled, and vanquished my peevishness of spirit with that one honest gesture. We feel into a sprightly conversation on the quarters of the wind and finished our meal in good humour.

  As he made to leave the cabin, I detained him for a moment. 'You are a plain speaker indeed, Mister Farrell,' I said. 'I value that. I need-that, here on this ship, with these officers who are Harker's, not mine. You have my sanction to speak plainly to me at all times, Kit Farrell. Do not flatter me as you teach me the sea-craft. If I've been a dullard, tell me so. If I make mistakes as the captain of this ship, tell me that, too. I am determined on one thing above all, which is that I will not take another Happy Restoration and all its men to their graves, and face another court-martial for so doing.'

  Kit Farrell nodded. 'I speak plainly only with men I trust, Captain.' He ruffled his hair in a gesture of boyish embarrassment. 'Well, sir, if it's a reminder of mortality you want, then learning the dead reckoning and some celestial navigation should do it. Shall we begin with them in the forenoon watch, Captain?'

  'Not, then, the names of the ropes and the sails, or all the pieces of wood? I thought such knowledge lay at the heart of the mariners' mysteries.'

  He smiled. 'Knowing the name of a rope won't bring you off a lee shore, Captain, nor bring you alongside an enemy. My father served in the last Dutch war under Generals Blake and Monck, that's now the lord Duke of Albemarle, and they knew so little of the sea they'd shout "Wheel to the right!" or "Haul up that whichum there!" or the suchlike. It didn't stop them bringing down the Dutch and all their great sailor-admirals, did it now? The sea's not a mystery, Captain, though sailors are like lawyers–for both make their trades a mystery, wear peculiar garb, and gull the layman with a strange language. But using the sea is just like making a journey on land, sir. It's all about knowing where you are, where you're going, how you'll get there, and what you'll do once you're there. You don't need to know the name of a horse to make it gallop, or to carry you to the next town, Captain. And you don't need to know the name of every sail and shroud on this ship to win a battle in her.'