Sea of Grey

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Once we take a good, long look into Cape Francois, we’ll head back to the Old Bahama Passage,” Lewrie decided aloud. “Yankee merchantmen’ll be floodin’ South this time of year, and most-like that will be where the Frog privateers’ll be thickest, too. So many of ’em tradin’ at Havana, and other Spanish Cuban ports … before heading further South to the Leewards, ey, Mister Winwood?”

  “Always a wrench, to cede the windward station, sir, but in the circumstances …” the Sailing Master said with a noncommittal shrug, as he carefully, almost lovingly, stowed away his own precious sextant in its velvet-lined rosewood box.

  “Shortest distance, we might’ve been better off in the Gulf of Gonave, if they’re comin’ from Havana,” Lewrie griped, “most-like sailing right past us. Or passing far to the East’rd of the Bahamas and Puerto Rico.”

  “Well, sir, there’s great risk in that,” Winwood replied, digging out another chart and spreading it on the traverse board. “There are reefs and shoals aplenty near Puerto Rico, and the Danish Virgins, and our own. Anegada and Virgin Gorda are infamous wrecking grounds, and the north shore of Saint Thomas? A rocky maze, sir!”

  Mr. Winwood used a closed divider as a pointer as he indicated the dangers, sketching courses from America.

  “Do they leave New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, the Chesapeake, or even the Carolinas or Georgia, their best course would be very far Easterly, out to beyond Bermuda, before taking a slant across, abeam the Nor’east Trades, with hopes to fetch Anguilla or Saint Martin just a touch alee of them, and close to all those lee-side harbours.”

  “Which’d put them in our Antigua squadron’s bailiwick, then,” Lewrie said, nodding, “and we’d never see ’em …’ til on their way back home, through these waters.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “But they can’t all sail that far East and South first. There must be some who trade closer to home,” Lewrie griped. “Witness those Yankee men o’ war and Treasury cutters convoying merchantmen here. Or are you saying we’ve been handed a bill of goods, Mister Winwood?”

  Winwood winced and sucked his teeth; it was a cold day in Hades when he ventured an opinion outside his own expertise.

  “It might not have been the most productive area to patrol, sir. How else may one explain why, with over seventy or eighty men o’ war on the West Indies Station, we’ve been so unsuccessful in eliminating the many French privateers?”

  “Sloth and indolence,” Lewrie scoffed, with a sour laugh. “So little profit in it, such hard work … when it’s more exciting, more profitable, to hunt enemy merchant ships and warships! Prowling about for such—even if it’s fruitless—holds the greater honour, and a chance t‘get your name in the papers back home. Make a great show, with all the huffing and puffing? ‘By God, we almost had ‘em but for a slant o’ wind, but we’ll do better next time, wot?’ Surely you know their sort by now, Mister Winwood.”

  “Indeed, sir,” Winwood said in response, very even and flat.

  And by God, was he lookin’ at me cutty-eyed when he said that? Lewrie thought, trying to recall six months of bombast or excuses.

  “Sail ho!”

  Lewrie’s head snapped upward to the mainmast lookout’s perch.

  “Where away?”

  “Four points orf th’ starb’d bows!” the spry young topman wailed back. “Three … four sail! They’m sloops and luggers, there!”

  “And we’re inshore of them!” Lewrie exulted. “Where bound?” he shouted aloft through cupped hands.

  “Standin’ North, sir!”

  “North, hmmm …” Lewrie mused, riffling through the charts for one of Saint Domingue and Santo Domingo. “Fishing boats, perhaps. Out of a French or Spanish port. Either sort, they’re fair game.”

  He traced the reciprocal course back to the coast, but found no point of origin, other than a few coves or inlets, and those were two-a-penny. He glanced at the commissioning pendant high aloft, which was flowing to the wind, now steady out of the Nor’east once more.

  “A point higher than we could manage, goin’ close-hauled. That fits,” he muttered. “Now, Mister Winwood. Were you wishin’ to coast to the East, you’d have to zig-zag, wouldn’t you?”

  “Aye, sir. A short board along the coast, but a long one, out to sea, to make any ground to weather,” Winwood agreed. “Even with a sloop or lugger rig, it would be an all-day chore to make twenty miles to the good.”

  “Sooner, sooner or later, they’ll have to come about onto larboard tack and head Sou’east, would they not? Right into our range, so to speak, sir?” Lewrie snickered.

  “Aye, sir … do they not see us first.”

  “And if they do, their best hope’d be to come about Sou‘west, and run back into whichever little harbour or inlet they left,” Lewrie crowed. “And … we’re still inshore of ’em, and can run ’em down; do they put about this instant!”

  Lewrie went to the larboard bulwarks and looked out at the land, now that Proteus was within three miles or so of it and scudding along almost due West. Fingers drumming on the cap-rails, thinking, evaluating … . With a jump, he was at the binnacle rack and snatching a glass, then up into the starboard mizen shrouds, clambering aloft, up past the cat-harpings and onto the futtock shrouds, dangling dangerously for a second or two before gaining the mizen top platform, where he felt the need to pant for a bit before scrambling onto the stays and rat-lines to the upper masts and cross-trees above the mizen tops’l.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid, he chid himself; ya impatient sod! That left arm still don’t feel right. Must’ve hurt it worse than I thought at Camperdown. Send a midshipman, next time, or Wyman. He’s a well fed look about him, lately.

  Once he’d levelled his glass, there they were. Two two-masted luggers, and a brace of single-masted local sloops or cutters, flying large jibs forrud, and all four of them fairly big boats, perhaps over forty or fifty feet, overall. And crammed with people!

  Incredibly tiny dark exclamation points were crammed shoulder-toshoulder over there, he realised, braced up against their weather rails—perhaps as human “ballast” to keep them sailing flatter on their bottoms, making them faster.

  “Deck, there! They’m hull-up, now! Four points orf th’ starb’d bows!” the lookout atop the mainmast, forward of his perch, cried.

  “Deck, there!” Lewrie shouted down. “Cast of the log! Now!”

  Those luggers and sloops might just be about forty feet or so in length; Lewrie compromised at fourty-five feet. Their masts should be a third again longer, did they follow Caribbean custom of tall masts to catch more wind in larger sails, as opposed to European custom using shorter masts with longer booms, and the centres of effort of the sails lower to the deck. With sixty-foot masts, he could estimate that they were at least four miles out to sea. Did they turn and run before the wind, he guessed that they could make five or six knots, with the sail they already flew.

  “Captain, sir!” Midshipman Elwes squeaked. “We make nine knots!”

  “Thankee, Mister Elwes! Good lad! Mister Wyman … hands aloft and set the fore t‘gallant, the main t’gallant stays’l, the middle stays’l, and main topmast stays’l! Smartly, now!”

  “Aye aye, sir! Smartly t’will be!”

  He looked aloft to the commissioning pendant once more. It was a decent wind this morning, a dependable, clear day Tradewind. With a bit more sail aloft, Proteus could make ten or eleven knots with it on their starboard quarters … as it now stood. Sailing almost due West, they’d intersect those small craft within the hour!

  Now, t’get my puckered arse down from here, he told himself in a silent grimace. Clambering down to the lubber’s hole was not manly or nautical, and after those uneasy twinges in his left arm, he didn’t quite trust himself on the shrouds and rat-lines. He slung his glass and took hold of a standing backstay, using his right hand and leg to swing out and wrap himself around it, to slide-clamber hand-over-hand to the deck, the greasy, slushed stay grating ’twixt his knees, sc
issored calves, and along his groin.

  With a thump against the bulwarks that he felt through the soles of his shoes, he reached the deck and jumped down to the quarterdeck, with an evident whoosh of relief, flexing his singed fingers despite a career of callouses.

  “Damme,” he sighed, looking at his breeches and shirt, now greasy with the skimmed fat from the steep-tubs used to lubricate the rigging to keep it supple, and the tar used to keep it waterproof. “At least they’re the pale blue’uns. No great loss.”

  No amount of scrubbing could improve that condition, as Aspinall had proved the last few days, whenever they had caught some rainwater from the brief daily squalls. They were now hopeless.

  “Perhaps sky-blue will become fashionable, sir,” wee Midshipman Grace tittered; being the youngest, he was the only one who’d dare.

  “You’re no bigger than bait, Mister Grace,” Lewrie told him with mock severity, “and I dearly love fresh fish. I’d keep that in mind, were I you, younker,” making the other midshipmen snigger.

  He reached out and tipped Grace’s cocked hat over his eyes, to prove that he wasn’t upset, then stalked over to the helm to stow his telescope. “Mister Wyman, once you’ve everything ‘Bristol fashion’ I wish the ship beat to Quarters.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Whoever yon bastards are, we’ll have them for dinner.”

  “Deck, there! Puttin’ about! Haulin’ ‘eir wind, and wearin’!”

  “Ah, Mister Langlie,” Lewrie said quite gaily, as the First Officer came to the quarterdeck, noting that Langlie already had his pair of single-barrel pistols hung on his belt, along with his smallsword. “I see you’ve come full-dressed for the ball. Good. The first dance is just begun.”

  After a quick look about, Langlie got a sly look on his face as he said, “From the look and sound of it, Captain, sir, I’d say they’ve gone past the quadrilles, right to the galop and country dances. Or rather … off to the races?”

  “Captain, sir … Mister Langlie, sir,” Lieutenant Wyman reported. “I am ready to call for Quarters.”

  “I’ll take the deck, Mister Wyman,” Langlie asserted his right.

  “I yield with pleasure, sir,” Wyman grinned back, with delight of the chase and the hunt in his eyes.

  “Mister Sevier to stand as acting lieutenant in lieu of Mister Catterall, sir?” Langlie asked. “He can oversee the forecastle guns.”

  “Very good, Mister Langlie. And call on Desmond and his lads to give us a tune, once we’re at Quarters. Something lively. I will be below, getting presentable … and armed.”

  “Dear Lord, sir, but I suspect that‘un was ‘The Battle of Aughrim,’” Lt. Langlie, who had a good ear for music, exclaimed. “An old fight from back in King William’s days. Just like our Irish, to cock a snook at us.”

  “Lively, though, you must admit,” Lewrie replied, beating one hand along in time as Desmond, the ship’s fiddler, a Marine drummer, and a brace of fifers held forth in the middle of the waist.

  “The Pipe on the Hob,” “The Bride’s Favourite,” and old double jigs were mixed with “The Derry Hornpipe” and “Fisher’s Hornpipe” as music for sailing into battle, followed by “Jenny’s Wedding” and “Lord MacDonald,” a pair of reels. Now, within a mile of the sloops and luggers, Desmond and the band were well into a lively, merry tune named “Planxty Browne,” with the fiddler and fifers prancing the deck in impromptu dancing.

  “I prefer hornpipes,” Langlie groused, “Jigs, reels, and all are too … toodly. All over the shop, and too many flutt’ry notes.”

  “Well, so was Bach, and that little Mozart fellow,” Lewrie said with a chuckle. “Might’ve killed him, in fact. Too many notes in his head, and ‘Pop!’ Hmmm … d’ye think we’re in good range, sir?”

  “I do, indeed, Captain,” Langlie soberly agreed.

  “Then please run out the starboard battery and give them a try, Mister Langlie,” Lewrie bade, turning formal.

  “Aye aye, sir. Mister Wyman! Make ready! Thank you for the music lads, but now belay! Run out the starboard battery!”

  Creaks and groans, squeals and screeches sounded as tackle was run through wooden blocks, as wood trucks and axles turned under guncarriages as they were trundled up to butt against the port-sills, and ports were opened. Tacklemen stood aside, overhauling their run-out, as gun-captains fussed at elevating quoins, ordering crow-levers for a shift in point of aim. The train-tackles were tautened, and breeching ropes adjusted so the guns would recoil smoothly, without a kink that would jerk their deadly weight aside and maim their minders. One at a time, gun-captains put up a fist to show readiness, and their Number Twos leaned away from their pieces, holding the trigger lines that led to the flintlock strikers over the touch-holes, taut and cocked.

  “On the up-roll … fire!”

  A second’s pause as Proteus surfed and wallowed off the winds, slowly rocking upright and hanging still for a moment or two, her deck level to the horizon … then her 12-pounders erupted in ear-ringing power, almost as one! Great thunderclaps, huge jetting clouds of hot gases and smoke, reeking of rotten eggs and coal, as the guns lurched in-board to the limits of their breeching ropes, snubbing with a shock that seemed like to jerk the stout bulwarks apart, and made the frigate shudder as if she’d run aground!

  The smoke was quickly whisked away by the Trades, to scud downwind off her larboard bows, to the shore which was now only two miles away, so the officers could spot the fall of shot among those boats.

  Another long second’s pause, and geysers erupted from the sea, tall and slender feathery plumes that hung in the sky like suddenly frozen icicles, that only slowly collapsed downward upon themselves in matching circles of frothing spume, drenching the targets like a torrential summer squall, and making them heel and rock, their winged-out sails sluiced and drowned with seawater.

  “Damn’ good shooting,” Lewrie commented. “Now, serve ’em another,” he ordered, raising his telescope.

  “Sir?” Mr. Winwood whispered from his right side. “Sir, we are getting rather close inshore, and we do have them abeam. Perhaps one point abaft of abeam.”

  “You wish to harden up and stand out from the shore?” Lewrie asked, the glass still to his eye.

  “I would, sir. The best we have are century-old Spanish charts.”

  “Mister Langlie, a point to windward,” Lewrie called. “And put some spare hands in the larboard fore-chains to sound with the lead.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “As you bear … on the up-roll … fire!”

  Under a mile now, Lt. Wyman was letting gun-captains aim for themselves, picking their own targets. Proteus shuddered and jerked, anew, as the 12-pounders exploded in a stutter that ran from her bow to her stern. Wyman paced the waist of the ship between the starboard and the idle larboard batteries, betwen the foremast and main, urging gun-captains and more experienced senior quarter-gunners for a steady pace to keep the guns firing two rounds every three minutes.

  “Hit!” Lt. Devereux the Marine officer cried from among his men on the starboard gangway above the guns. “Well shot, you lads! You’ve hammered one of the luggers, and shot a mast clean away!”

  The gun crews cheered, even as they tugged and hauled, even as ship’s boys scampered along the deck with their leather cases holding sewn powder cartridges from the risk of premature explosion, even as barrels were swabbed out by the rammer men, as Number Twos held leather thumb-stalls over the touch-holes to prevent backblast from the lingering shards of cartridge bags and smouldering powder embers.

  Cartridges were rammed down, roundshot was thumped firm against the charges, as vent-pricks were inserted into the touch-holes, piercing the bags to spill powder, so the jets of fire from the flintlock strikers and the priming powder in their pans could ignite the charges in the blink of an eye when the trigger lanyards were jerked.

  Up the deck to the ports the guns were rolled one more time, as Proteus swung her bows seaward one point, not only to f
lee the risk of hidden rocks and shoals, but to close the range on the small craft and cut them off from running any longer to the Sou‘west. With the wind more on the starboard beam, it was harder to run the guns out, but the fire-blackened muzzles jutted through the ports and began to wave and elevate in small jerks, ’til the gun-captains were satisfied.

  “As you bear … on the up-roll … fire!”

  The damaged lugger was struck again, a heavy ball smashing into her larboard side and spilling people into the sea. A one-masted sloop in the lead of their gaggle was hit near her sternquarters and jerked to the impact, rolling half on her starboard beam-ends before rocking slowly upright, but beginning to settle as she started to fill, stern down but still sailing, like a wounded goose.

  “Too good to last, sir … the other two are breaking free from their partners,” Lt. Langlie pointed out, his arm outstretched to the right and a bit aft. “Ducking astern of us.”

  Lewrie took a long look at the damaged sloop, and found it low in the water, aft, its transom almost level with the sea. It wouldn’t last long, in his estimation; nor would the crippled lugger whose lone surviving foremast could not drag her to freedom fast enough.

  “Two points more a‘weather, Mister Langlie, and engage the two off the starboard quarters,” Lewrie decided. “Those two’ll be there, when we’ve dealt with these. Damme! Right plucky of ’em, to tack and cross our stern! They’ll be within carronade shot in a minute. We’ll open with the stern chasers and carronades! Ready, the after-guard!”

  “Perhaps there’s more fight in the Frogs than we thought, sir,” Lt. Langlie commented.

  Lewrie raised his telescope once more and eyed the boats that were aiming to beat Sou’easterly and run aground where they might on the Spanish shore of Santo Domingo … before Proteus could kill them.