Sea of Grey

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Way they go after poor, helpless merchantmen, maybe they are kin t‘sharks, but too proud and arrogant t’turn cannibal!” Wilder rejoined quickly, raising his glass to clink against Lewrie’s.

  “You’ve seen no French warships, as yet, Captain Lewrie?” his host enquired.

  “No, sir. My advisories tell me that there are very few true warships about,” Lewrie answered, “though hundreds of privateers. I wonder, sir … perhaps we might break the old strictures, and share some, uhm … ‘shop-talk?’ After all, I’ll be cruising north of Saint Domingue, and I gather that your frigate will be going south after we part?”

  “That’s so, sir … and an excellent idea.” Kershaw agreed.

  “Keepin’ a close eye on me for the rest o’ my voyage?” Captain Wilder hoped aloud.

  “You may count on my support, sir,” Kershaw assured him,

  “I wonder, sir …” Lewrie said, putting down his glass. “Do you have any qualms about acting in concert, you and I, should we meet with a French warship?”

  “I, uhm …” Kershaw waffled. “We are ordered to cooperate, in certain circumstances. America is not officially at war with France, not yet. I am not even certain that outright war is desirable. If a change in their policy towards neutral shipping—returning to the status quo ante, without boarding and demanding manifests and muster rolls—were to result from a show of determination, with the threat of force to make them change their minds, well …” He trailed off and waved one hand in a flaccid, “iffy” gesture, before busying his hands with a wine decanter.

  “But, do you encounter one of their privateers, in the act of pillaging an American merchant vessel, a merchantman sailing alone as a prize,” Lewrie pressed, irked by the man’s sudden diffidence, “or if you met one of their privateers or warships in these waters, alone … ?”

  “Then I would have a free hand to engage at all hazards, and I would, at once, sir,” Kershaw told him, a bit more formally and stiffly than moments before. “But before we assemble a proper squadron in the Caribbean, my initial orders are to cruise, to escort convoys down as far as Dominica or Antigua … make a show of force off Guadeloupe and the other French isles, then pick up a convoy and escort them back as far as the Bahamas before returning to Boston.”

  “Yet,” Lewrie said with a faint frown, steepling his fingers to his lips, “were we to be ‘in sight’ of each other, and I, unhindered by any strictures, engage a French National ship … would that allow you to cooperate in her taking? Would that be one of your ‘certain’ circumstances, Captain Kershaw?”

  “None but a poltroon would reject a chance for action, Captain Lewrie,” Kershaw intoned, making Lewrie suspect that he had in some way stung Kershaw “below” his personal sense of honour. “I doubt I’m allowed to cruise in concert with you. We may both blockade Guadeloupe, for one instance … but you run yours, and I would run mine. Our areas may overlap at times, but that would be all, since my country is not officially allied with yours. But … does the chance of a fight arise, then that’s a different story. In that instance, I can see no limits on my coming to your aid … or, conversely, refuse any aid you render, should you heave up over the horizon and find my ship yardarm-to-yardarm with Monsieur.”

  Lewrie could but nod at that cautious circumlocution, and reach for his wineglass to bury his nose in it and slurp, thinking it over.

  “Now, that’s not to say that when we have more ships down here, a proper squadron, my orders won’t get expanded to closer cooperation,” Kershaw continued, hemming and trimming as if speaking for himself and not his government this time. “Or, with enough ships, we might wish to go it alone. Either way, I doubt the French will back down and let our ships alone, without they get their noses bloody first. There is always a chance your frigate and mine could fight side-by-side …”

  “Against the French, pray God,” Lewrie chuckled. “After seeing her, I wouldn’t wish to test my metal against the weight of yours.”

  Kershaw and Wilder both chuckled along with him, thankful for a jest to lighten the mood.

  “Then you’ll be thankful t‘see the good ol’ John Hancock stand up alongside ye,” Captain Wilder boasted. “She’ll save your bacon and beat the French so hard, they’ll wet their britches at mention of her name! Ol’ John’ll write somethin’ else large, ha ha!”

  Oh, so that’s what Hancock did! Lewrie suddenly recalled; wrote his name on their Declaration of Independence so bloody big and bold.

  “Though a ship so well armed and well manned may never fear for her honour against the Frogs, sir,” Lewrie offered, extending his hand across the table to Kershaw. “Do we meet again in such a circumstance, you may count on me to wade in and help you.”

  Kershaw pondered that but for a moment before reaching out, as well, and seizing hands with Lewrie, to pump away enthusiastically in agreement. “Hancock and I shall back you, as well, Captain Lewrie … any British ship that we encounter in need of assistance! And damn any fool in Washington City who’d dare say I exceeded my brief!”

  “Then, gentlemen, a toast,” Lewrie proposed, once he had gotten his hand back in usable condition. “To the United States Navy!”

  “Huzzah!” Captain Wilder cheered, hurriedly pouring for all.

  “Good supper, sir?” Aspinall asked, once Lewrie was back aboard Proteus and flinging hat and shoes to the wide in his great-cabins.

  “Passin’ fair,” Lewrie told him with a grin, “though I’d admire a brandy. The Yankees didn’t much run to it, it bein’ French, and all. Prob’ly swore off for the duration outta patriotism. And find a place for this, would you?”

  Aspinall took the large gallon stone crock of corn-whiskey and set it inside the wine cabinet, down at the bottom where it would not tip or overweight an upper shelf.

  “A monstrous frigate, I tell you … hellish-powerful. Built as stout as a Norman castle, back home,” Lewrie sleepily enthused.

  And what wouldn’t I give t’have a ship like her someday? he asked himself as he unclipped his hanger and stood it in the arms rack near his desk in the day-cabin. Though I’d change some things.

  Hancock was massive, as solid as any towering ship of the line, and she did mount 24-pounders on her lower gun-deck, as he had suspected, with an odd mix of 18-pounders and 12-pounders on her upper decks. He put that down to the uncertain supply available in the States’ seaports, arsenals, or yards when the war came, and the “iffy” condition of American foundries and their reliability at producing ordnance in the required numbers … or ordnance of decent quality.

  With a patriotic smirk of his own, he recalled how many of the artillery pieces he’d seen on his brief tour had borne stamps or proof marks from British manufacturies! Though not officially allied, those Yankee Doodles were not averse to buying arms from their late enemies.

  What had amazed him even more was the first sight of her upper deck, once he had been piped aboard. It was built flush, what junior American officers had boastfully termed the “spar deck,” and that deck was simply stiff with guns!

  His own frigate, and every Royal Navy warship he had ever seen, had open “waists” ’twixt the raised quarterdecks and forecastles, with narrow gangways meant only for sail-tending and Marine musketry, spanned by cross-beams between them, fit only for binding the ship’s sides together, and as a place to rest ship’s boats, as boat-tier beams.

  The Americans, though, had widened those gangways, made hatches for companionways smaller, and reduced the size of the “waist” open to the sky to long and narrow openings much like a merchant vessel’s cargo hatches; and stiffened that “spar deck” with thicker cross-deck beams and longitudinal timbers, supported by stout carline posts, until that deck could bear heavy artillery, as well.

  Too damn’ much artillery, Lewrie silently groused, stifling one more weary yawn; everything but carronades, and thank God we don’t sell ’em those!

  Captain Kershaw had seemed very proud of the fact that Hancock, while officially “rate
d” a forty-four gun frigate, bore nearly fifty-eight guns of various calibers and weights; right down to 9-pounders on the quarterdeck! At that boast, Lewrie could have almost sworn he heard Hancock groan like Atlas under the burden. At first glance, the Sailing Master’s suspicion that the frigate would “hog” at both ends, and eventually break her back, seemed an accurate premonition. But …

  Down below, Lewrie had espied the massive knees, futtocks, and beams that made up her hull, as thick as anything aboard a First Rate flagship, and the other beams, those oddly angled timbers that curved up from below and continued upwards past the overhead deck, like some diagonal strapping inside a well-made wicker basket. Could they stiffen her enough to make her as rigid as an iron cauldron, a ship immune to the eternal flexings and groanings, as stresses made her abrade and weaken herself with every pitch, roll, or toss?

  Despite being more than sated with supper and all that wine, he felt driven to sketch his impressions that moment, before they faded from his mind. If the Royal Navy could attempt some construction along similar lines, with those diagonal thingamajigs …!

  He sat down at his desk and fumbled open a drawer for paper and pencils, suddenly aware that his brandy was sitting on it, with Toulon lurking over it, one curious paw raised and his nose at the edge, mouth hanging open the way it did when he found a new scent.

  “Mine!” Lewrie hissed, dragging it to him. He took a sip, then stood briefly to strip off his coat before beginning to draw. Toulon was intrigued by that, too, following the pencil end wide-eyed.

  Happy the officer who brought Admiralty an innovation, Lewrie told himself. Happy, too, the officer who provided a hint that Americans were divided by sectional differences, that their burgeoning new Navy was rent by jealousies ’twixt the rich maritime states closer to the seat of power and interest, and the rest who dwelled too far away to north or south. Even as he drew, a part of his mind was composing a report that he would pen in the morning … once his head cleared.

  They have an elite, an aristocracy just like us, Lewrie thought; New York, Boston, and Philadelphia … all of em related and schooled together. Yale and Harvard, Wilder mentioned, just like our Cambridge or Oxford. Fine republicans they are … what a sham!

  “Oh dear Lord, sir,” Aspinall softly gasped.

  “What?” Lewrie snapped, impatient to be interrupted. He looked up to see Aspinall staring at him, as wide-eyed as Toulon. “Come down with the pox, have I? What is it, man?”

  “Yer shirt an’ waistcoat, sir,” Aspinall mournfully told him. “That new cotton dress coat o’ yours has bled blue all over ’em.”

  “What?” Lewrie yelped, jumping to his feet and trying to crane around his own body, arms raised, to see how much damage had been done. He pawed at his sides, trying to drag his shirt ’round to the front. He quickly undid the buttons of his waistcoat and stripped it off to hold it up to the light.

  “Well, damme!”

  The thin white satin back of the waistcoat was very blue, and so were the armholes, shading outwards almost in a ripple pattern, like a troutsplash down the sides to a paler sky-blue! Even the front of the garment, originally pristine bleached white #8 sailcloth, was now faintly stained where his coat had overlain it.

  “Shirt’s worse, sir,” Aspinall meekly informed him.

  Kershaw’s great-cabins had been close, airless and humid, without canvas ventilation scoops; even the overhead skylights in the coach-top had been closed. Obviously, Kershaw, from already muggish Charleston, was used to perspiration; perhaps even had a Froggish fear of night airs and their miasmas … especially in the tropics, since Yellow Jack and malaria were no strangers to the Carolinas.

  “Well …” Lewrie said at last, lowering the garment in defeat. “It seemed like a good idea. In broadcloth wool, I’d have turned to soggy gruel hours ago. Live and learn, I s‘pose. Try and wash ’em, but … damme.” Lewrie began to strip off his shirt, too.

  “I’ll give it a go, sir, but I ain’t promisin’ much.” Aspinall said. “Uhm … yer breeches’re in the same shape, sir.”

  “Still have white stockings, do I?” Lewrie asked, feeling the need to laugh the tiniest beaten snort of sour amusement. It was that or scream to high heaven!

  “I’ll fetch yer nightshirt, sir.”

  “And a basin of water, Aspinall. Before I show up on deck tomorrow, as blue as an old Druid.”

  “Aye, sir … lots o’ soap, too.”

  Once coolly bathed and clad in his thin nightshirt, Lewrie bent once more to his drawing, adding curved diagonal lines atop the crosshatchings of a ship’s skeleton, thinking that even if the matter of his cotton uniform coat hadn’t exactly worked out, the evening hadn’t been a total loss. He had learned more than he had expected, had elicited some sort of promise of cooperation from a Yankee captain that could in future apply to the others as they assembled a squadron.

  He eyed the small wash-leather purse of coins that Bantam’s captain had given him; £100 in various English, French, Spanish, and Dutch specie that, so far, took the place of a trustworthy United States currency.

  It was what some—should they ever come to know of it, and he would be damned if they did!—might call a bribe. Taking Bantam and restoring her to her owner would involve reams of paperwork at the nearest Prize Court, at Kingston; placing a value on ship, fittings, cargo, and such to determine Proteus’s official reward, with poor Wilder paying court fees and demurrages for swinging at anchor for weeks in that port, ’til the matter was adjudicated and his ship returned to him.

  Easier all ’round, really, for Lewrie to write his report, saying that in the spirit of “cooperation” he had surrendered precedence and possession to the arriving American frigate.

  They had, after all, the value of L’Oiseau to reckon with, with eight great-guns and over one hundred privateers brought to book, with “head money” for each, along with the schooner’s worth as a tender to a larger ship; why, with any luck, they’d buy her in, perhaps even let Proteus claim her as a tender, and if they did …!

  Lewrie leaned back from his artwork with a satisfied smile, in full “scheme.” With L’Oiseau, he could run the same subterfuge he had in the Mediterranean when captain of Jester, with a captured lugger on the Genoese and Savoian coasts; as an “innocent” harbour raider to cut out merchantmen who thought themselves safe in a friendly port, or as a tempting piece of “cut bait” trolled before a privateersmen, flying a French Tricolour flag, looking for “rescue” from those horrible English “Bloodies”!

  He hefted the coin purse, calculating in his head; two-eighths of £100 was £25, a captain’s share of the bribe. Who knows, it might just cover the cost of the ruin of his wardrobe!

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  By noon of the next day, Hancock and Bantam were out of sight in the South, and L’Oiseau was hull-under on her way to Port-Au-Prince to report her capture … and dump her hundred-odd prisoners on somebody else. And with any luck at all, Lewrie imagined that HMS Halifax and her irascible Captain Blaylock would become their gaolers, now that she was stripped of even more guns and would have bags of room below. It was piquant to picture Blaylock’s phyz turning purple at that news … and, Lewrie further surmised, that Captain Nicely, who already despised Blaylock worse than cold, boiled mutton, would be more than happy for a chance to “slip him a bit of the dirty” one more time. And perhaps even think fondly of the officer who’d made it possible! Again, with any luck, Proteus might have L’Oiseau back as her “unofficial” tender within the week; and then they could really hit their stride!

  The winds had backed a full point from Nor‘eastly to Nor’east-by-East, as well. Proteus had loafed Sou’easterly after their meeting with Hancock during the night, closer to Cape St. Nicholas, so a “beat” close-hauled to the North-by-West could take them up to Matthew Town at the western tip of Great Inagua, where Proteus could once more keep an eye on both the Windward Passage and the Old Bahama Passage, before tacking and heading Sou’east for Tortuga. Then s
he could slowly zig-zag her way Easterly between Turk’s Island and Saint Domingue towards the tempting Mouchoir and Silver Bank passages, where arriving French merchantmen and privateers must appear, sooner or later.

  “Mister Langlie, we’ll stand in as close as we may to the Cape of Saint Nicholas before tacking,” Lewrie announced. “Claw us out all the ground you can to weather, before we come about to North-by-West.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Ah, now that is Monte Cristi, sir,” Mr. Winwood pointed out as he fiddled with his charts at the binnacle cabinet, “bearing, uhm … Sou’west-by-West. And to the East’rd …”

  “Cape Isabella,” Lewrie supplied, “which now bears, ah … Sou’eastby-East, or thereabouts. I make it … eleven miles, if the chart is correct as to its height.” He lowered his sextant and fiddled with it for a moment.

  “Then we are here, sir … nine miles offshore of Spanish Santo Domingo, ‘twixt Monte Cristi and Cabo Isabella,” Winwood opined. “And the depths shown are still abyssal. First real soundings with a deep-sea lead don’t begin ’til we’re within the three-mile limit, Captain.”

  “Three miles, hmm,” Lewrie muttered. “Mister Wyman, we’ll haul our wind and stand due South, for a piece …’ til Mister Winwood says we’re near ‘soundings.’ After that, we will wear and reduce sail, to scud back along the coast towards Cape Francois and see what’s stirring.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Wyman said, reaching for a speaking-trumpet with which to relay orders to the watch.

  “And let’s hope something is out of harbour, Mister Winwood.”

  “Indeed, sir.”

  Lewrie’s familiar old stomping grounds about the Turks Islands had been nearly empty of all but local fishing boats and small traders, the Caicos, Turk’s, Mouchoir, and Silver Bank passages glittering but barren, and conversations with local boats had revealed that it was a rare day when they’d seen any sail at all. Such stops had allowed the Purser, Mr. Coote, to purchase a bonanza of fresh fish and sea turtles, now trussed with their flippers threaded together, and all for a song, but useful intelligence was nil.