The Baltic Gambit

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Conall o’ th’ Victories, or Finn Mac Cooal,” Desmond added, in a wistful, respectful voice.

  Lewrie, who knew next to nothing of Irish myths, kept his mouth shut, and even managed not to snicker, scowl, or raise a single brow, though he thought the both of them were off on a pagan religious jaunt. Just like the Irish, he thought; Swannin’ off into fables.

  “Pardon me more, Cap’m, but, is this Thermopylae still fittin’ out?” Desmond asked him further. “Mean t’say . . . if she’s fresh from th’ gravin’ docks, it might be weeks afore she’s ready for sea.”

  “No, Desmond, she’s aswim already, in full commission,” Lewrie informed him. “And ready in all respects . . . but for the health of her captain. He’s come down with the winter agues so badly, they told me, that he had to write and ask for relief, else his ship and his officers and men would miss out on things, and he thought that a worse thing than stepping aside, himself. A Captain Joseph Speaks, I think he is. Never heard of him myself, even though I imagine he’s a lot senior to me, and was ‘made Post’ years before I was. Have either of you?”

  No, they hadn’t, either. Furfy went back to staring out his windows at the countryside, whilst Desmond frowned in thought. Lewrie was about to shut his eyes and try to nap, despite the jolting of the coach, when Desmond spoke up in a soft voice.

  “Cap’m, sir . . . it might be tetchy, yer takin’ over. This Cap’m Speaks most-likes been posted a year or more, an’ all his people would be usedta him, by now. Here’s me, yer Cox’n, replacin’ his, an’ sore th’ fellow’ll be, t’lose his ‘call’ an’ his position, t’be certain.”

  “Well, there is that,” Lewrie uneasily allowed. From his first ad hoc appointment to command of a converted bomb ketch in the Far East, to the Shrike brig when old Lt. Lilycrop had been invalided off, to the Alacrity, the Jester sloop, and the frigates Proteus and Savage, he had either commissioned them with new crews, or been the first appointed to them. Shrike, well . . . he’d already been her First Lieutenant when he had supplanted Lilycrop, so he’d been familiar with her crew, but . . . this would be the first time in his career that he would be stepping into someone else’s shoes, off-loading one man’s cabin furnishings and putting his own in place . . . and facing an utterly strange new set of faces and names and attitudes; a ship’s company that most-likely had rubbed together for a year or two already, and might look upon him as an interloper. Much like his last First Officer in Savage, Lieutenant Urquhart, had probably felt, being appointed into a ship whose crew had turned over entire after three years as shipmates in Proteus!

  And he would be going aboard without the usual entourage that a Royal Navy captain should have, too. Instead of his own cook, clerk, and steward, his own favoured boat crew; he had a mere two, his Cox’n Liam Desmond, and the hapless Patrick Furfy. Most captains rated at least half a dozen trustworthy people from previous commissions together, sometimes as many as fifteen for admirals, if one counted an extra clerk, and several more snot-nosed “gentleman volunteers” too young to qualify as Midshipmen yet, but could serve as cabin servants.

  Such a coterie of long-time favourites would be upsetting to the men holding small “place” aboard a ship already in commission. Anyone who did not hold proper Admiralty Warrant could be demoted and replaced in a twinkling, and that would further foment the distrust, and dread, of the coming of a new captain, who might prove to be as big a tyrant as Pigott had been in HMS Hermione, where they’d finally mutinied, and murdered, and sailed her into an enemy port!

  Better the Devil ye know, Lewrie mused; Oh, damn . . . servants.

  There was another snag. Lewrie had depended upon the staff of the Madeira Club after Aspinall had quit to enter his new career as an author. To replace all the skills Aspinall had possessed, he’d need at least three men; a cook, a manservant, and cabin steward, combined. And, most-like a cabin servant to aid the steward! As quick as his appointment had come, though, there hadn’t been time to interview people and hire a few . . . not if he’d had two weeks’ notice!

  Lewrie could only hope that within his new frigate’s crew, from among the people Captain Speaks had left behind, he might discover some who at least knew their left hand from their right, could boil water or brew coffee, set plates without breaking half of them, or scribble correspondence that was actually legible.

  And stay out of his wine and spirits locker!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Ahem?” Mr. Midshipman Tillyard announced, rapping on the door frame that led to the officers’ gun-room. “Sirs?”

  “Come,” Lt. Farley, the Second Officer, lazily called out.

  Officers did not stand harbour watches; that was left to the Midshipmen and the petty officers. Midshipman Tillyard stepped into the frowsty warm gun-room, hat under his arm, and beheld his superiors at their leisure. Lt. Farley and Lt. Fox, his very good friend, were at the long table down the centre of the space in their shirtsleeves, a backgammon board between them, with Lt. Fox in mid-throw of the dice. The Marine Officer, Lt. Eades, in full kit despite the officially sanctioned idleness, was reading. The Sailing Master, Mr. Lyle, was poring over a chart, as usual, and the Ship’s Surgeon, Mr. Harward, was playing a wager-less game of vingt et un with the Purser, Mr. Pridemore.

  “Beg pardons, sirs, but there’s a sailing barge bearing down on us, and there’s a Post-Captain aboard her,” Mr. Tillyard announced. “I think our new captain is come at last.”

  “Yipes!” Lt. Farley barked. “Who has the deck?”

  “Sealey, sir,” Tillyard told him.

  “Bloody Hell, that’ll never do!” Fox said with a snort, rising from the game, and a very promising cast of the dice, to throw on his waist-coat and coat.

  “Sir?” Lt. Farley said, rapping upon the louvred door set into the deal partition to the First Officer’s small cabin.

  “I heard, Mister Farley, thank you,” the First Officer replied, departing his cramped private space, shrugging into his own coat.

  “Sarn’t Crick!” Marine Lt. Eades was calling out, already out on the gun-deck beyond. “Side-party to the starboard entry-port!”

  “Respects to Midshipman Sealey, and he’s to summon all hands on deck, Mister Tillyard. How much time do we have?” the First Officer ordered as they all dressed properly and began the trot up the ladderway to the quarterdeck and gangways.

  “She’s still about a cable off, sir,” Tillyard replied, “bound direct for us, but under reduced sail.”

  “Not trying to catch us napping, then,” the First Officer said with a firm nod. “Perhaps our new captain is giving us time to welcome him properly.”

  “Aye, sir,” Tillyard hesitantly agreed.

  The First Lieutenant took a quick inventory once he was by the open entry-port; every yard squared to mathematical perfection, every brace and halliard, all the running-rigging, properly coiled and hung on the pin-rails, or flemished down on the decks. The sails were gasketed and furled as snug as sausages, the guns were stowed at proper right angles to the bulwarks, muzzles bowsed to the bottoms of the gun-port sills, their tackle and blocks taut and neatly stowed. There was nothing out of place, nothing to be faulted for.

  Despite that, the fellow crossed the fingers of his right hand behind his leg, and almost muttered a prayer. Another glance about, and he was satisfied that they were ready in all respects.

  “Boat ahoy!” Midshipman Sealey shouted overside through a brass speaking-trumpet.

  “Aye aye!” a bargeman in the bows of the approaching boat yelled back, holding up one hand to show four fingers, as well, in warning that a Post-Captain was aboard, and in need of the requisite number of men in the side-party to receive him. The senior officer in the barge had also thrown back his boat-cloak to display the gilt epaulets on his shoulders. As the barge dropped her lug-sail and turned to ghost parallel to the main-chains and boarding battens, HMS Thermopylae’s First Officer’s eyes crinkled at the corners, his full mouth tautening in a faint grin.

&n
bsp; “Well damn my eyes,” he muttered.

  Officers presented drawn swords, Marines in full kit stamped and slapped Brown Bess muskets in salute, so hard that small white puffs of pipeclay arose from crossbelts and taut musket slings. The Bosun, Mr. Dimmock, and his Mate, Mr. Pulley, trilled away in long duet tune upon their silver calls as the dog’s vane of the new-come officer’s cocked hat peeked above the lip of the entry-port as he nimbly scampered up.

  The new captain attained the deck, performing a last jerk upon the tautly strung man-ropes, a little hop for the last step before he doffed his hat in return salute, his eyes roaming down the line of officers “toed up” to the tarry seam of a freshly holystoned deck plank . . . and his mouth fell open in surprise.

  “Arthur Ballard?” Lewrie gawped. “I was wond’rin’ where you’d got to.”

  “Welcome aboard, Captain Lewrie, sir,” Lewrie’s former First Lieutenant into the converted bomb ketch, HMS Alacrity, in the Bahamas, replied, performing a brief bow from the waist.

  “Well, just damn my eyes,” Lewrie said with a pleased chuckle. “It’s been what . . . twelve years now?”

  “Aye, sir, about that,” Ballard (pronounced Buh-LARD) answered in his typical sombre gravity; a gravity that camoflauged a dry wit.

  “S’pose I should read myself in, then we’ll have some time to catch up,” Lewrie allowed, reaching into his best-dress uniform coat for his stamped and sealed commission document. Swords were sheathed, muskets lowered, hats plumped back on heads as Lewrie walked to the cross-deck hammock nettings at the forrud edge of the quarterdeck to face his new crew, gathered along both sail-tending gangways, and in the frigate’s waist below the boat-tier beams and gangways.

  “Ship’s comp’ny . . . off hats,” Lt. Ballard ordered.

  “ ‘By the Commissioners for executing the office of Lord High Admiral of Great Britain and Ireland, and all His Majesty’s Plantations, and et cetera . . . to Captain Alan Lewrie, hereby appointed to His Majesty’s Ship, Thermopylae,’ ” he read to them in his “quarterdeck voice,” so that even a half-deafened old gunner in the bows could hear him, “by virtue of the Power and Authority to us given, we do hereby constitute and appoint you Captain of His Majesty’s Ship, Thermopylae . . . willing and requiring you forthwith to go on board and take upon you the Charge and Command of Captain in her accordingly. Strictly charging all the Officers and Company belonging to said Ship subordinate to you to behave themselves jointly and severally in their respective Employments with all due Respect and Obedience unto you their said Captain and you likewise to observe and execute such Orders and Directions you shall receive from time to time from your superior officers for His Majesty’s Service.

  “ ‘Hereof nor you nor any one of you may fail as you will answer the contrary at your peril. And for so doing this shall be your Warrant. Given under our hands and the Seal of the Office of Admiralty, this twenty-third day of February, Eighteen Oh One, in the Fourty First year of His Majesty’s Reign,’ ” he concluded, carefully rolling up the precious document into a slim tube, to stow inside his coat ’til he had time to store it safely away in his great-cabins. Lewrie looked down on the men who were now officially his crew, and noted that some of them were smiling, whispering back and forth behind their hands or their hats. As in most ships of the Royal Navy, there were some men from almost every nation, even some from enemy states, and, of course, there was always a sprinkling of Free Blacks; Lewrie spotted at least half a dozen, and they were all beaming fit to bust. The others, though . . .

  What, they’ve seen me tuppin’ Tess? he puzzled to himself; Some other “mutton”?

  “I know that the sudden change in captains can be wrenching to a crew which has gotten used to the old one’s ways,” Lewrie said on in a slightly softer voice, though with a stern expression plastered on his face to appear “captainly” to the ship’s people, despite wanting to grin, cut capers, snap his fingers, and do a little horn-pipe of glee to be back aboard a ship . . . any ship. “I am certain Captain Speaks’s Order Book, his postings to positions of trust, and his methods were carefully thought out and crafted for the overall good of the ship and her people.”

  Don’t know . . . he could’ve been a ravin’ crank! Lewrie thought.

  “So . . .’til I’ve gotten myself sorted out and familiar with his strictures, his ways will continue in force,” Lewrie assured them. “In a few weeks, perhaps sooner, the warships gathering here in this port, the ships readying in other harbours, will sail for the Baltic . . . by now that’s no secret, is it? I fully expect that Thermopylae will be in the thick of things, and am determined that she, and all of you, will acquit yourselves in the finest traditions of our Navy. Mister Ballard?” he said, turning to face his First Officer. “Carry on, sir.”

  “Ship’s company . . . on hats, and dismiss!” Ballard ordered.

  Lt. Ballard then introduced Lewrie to his officers and holders of Warrant, allowing Lewrie to make quick sketch-judgements about them.

  Lt. Farley, the Second Officer, was a slim fellow with curly dark blond hair and a lean face; behind his grave expression, he looked to be a bit of a tongue-in-cheek wag. Likewise the Third Officer, Lt. Fox, who might as well have been his partner in crime. Lt. Eades the Marine was about the same age as the Commission Officers, in his late twenties, but a stiffer, more sobre sort, perhaps a stickler for discipline with his Marines. The Sailing Master, Mr. Lyle, was in his late fourties, a fellow from Felixstowe just down the coast, thick-set and round-faced. Unlike most East Anglians, though, he seemed most affable.

  The Purser, Herbert Pridemore, was even stouter, proof of the adage that all “Nip Cheeses” fed better than the crew. The Surgeon, Frederick Harward, seemed almost amused, which was rare in the Fleet, and young for his posting.

  “I’ll request that you find me a large keg of sand, sir,” Lewrie bade the Purser.

  “Sand, sir?” Pridemore asked, puzzled. “For the gun crews, sir?”

  “For my cats, Mister Pridemore,” Lewrie said with a smirk, “so they can relieve themselves. My compliments to the Ship’s Carpenter, as well, Mister Ballard, and I’ll have him make me a box, about so . . .” he said, sketching the size in mid-air with his hands. “For their necessary.”

  “Aye, sir,” Ballard replied, with one brow cocked significantly. “Surely old Pitt can no longer be with you.”

  “No, he’s gone to Fiddler’s Green long ago,” Lewrie said, “but Toulon and Chalky are still young’uns.”

  “The ‘Ram-Cat,’ ” Lewrie heard someone whisper in glee. One of the Midshipmen, of course; no one else’d dare.

  Lewrie was then introduced to his six Mids, from the eldest down to the youngest. Midshipman Sealey was old for the rank, in his early twenties, and looked to Lewrie’s lights to be none too bright, else he would have passed the oral exams by now. There was a lad in his late teens named Furlow, who appeared bags sharper. There was a Midshipman Privette, about sixteen, as hawk-nosed and dark-haired as a Cornish-man, who looked tarry-handed. There was also Mr. Tillyard, who stood out of order with the younkers, who looked to be a wag, then a brace of fourteen-year-olds named Pannabaker and Plumb; one could barely gawk and stammer, whilst Plumb doffed his hat, gave a jerky waist-bow, and could not resist asking, “Are your cats the reason you’re called the ‘Ram-Cat,’ sir?” in a cheeky manner.

  “That’s for me t’know, and for you t’find out, Mister Plumb,” Lewrie said with a sly grin before turning to Ballard again. “Soon as I’m settled in, Mister Ballard, I’d wish to meet the Bosun and his Mate, the Master’s Mates, Quartermasters, the Master Gunner, and all department heads. Might as well get the names and faces settled in my mind, quick as possible.”

  “Very good, sir,” Ballard replied. “Might you care to see your quarters now, Captain? We’ve sent the most of Captain Speaks’s things ashore already. There are some, ah . . . remaining, for the nonce.”

  “Yes, let’s,” Lewrie agreed. “Oh . . . Mister Ballard, my Cox’n, Liam Des
mond, and his friend Patrick Furfy, from my old boat crew.”

  “Lads,” Ballard said with a nod. “Mister Dimmock? Work-party to see the captain’s goods aboard.”

  “Aye aye, sir!”

  The Marine sentry by the doors to the great-cabins presented arms and stamped boots as Lewrie entered, ducking under the deck beams. The great-cabins might have once been nice, Lewrie decided. There was the usual black-and-white chequer canvas nailed to the deck, and there were the 18-pounder guns bowsed to the port sills, which took up a lot of the space. The lower half of the inner hull planking was painted the usual blood-red, and the planking above was pale tan, as were the deal partitions that would come down, fold, and be stacked below when the frigate cleared for action. A chart-space had been constructed at the forward starboard side, its fiddled shelves now bare, and the tall desk with its slanted top empty. To larboard, Lewrie could see where a side-board, a dining table and chairs, had been placed. Much the same brighter marks or scuffs on the canvas deck covering showed where desk and chairs made the day-cabin, where a settee and more collapsing chairs had been grouped round a wine-cabinet to larboard. There was a narrow hanging-cot still slung in the sleeping-space, handily near to the larboard quarter gallery and its “necessary closet,” and . . .

  “Hello, you old bastard! Hello!” something squawked.

  Furfy had fetched in the wicker cage which held the cats, both of whom stood on their hind legs, front paws working on the wicker and their tails swishing. Little jaws chattered as they let out shuddery urgent trills of hunting-killing lust.

  “I meant to mention that, sir,” Lt. Ballard dryly pointed out. “Captain Speaks’s African Grey parrot. He’s had it for years, and it’s developed quite a vocabulary. Bought it at Cape Town when he—”

  “Flog the bugger! Flog the bugger!” the parrot cried, once it had espied the cats.