The Bomb Vessel

by Richard Woodman

  At noon Drinkwater checked Easton’s entry on the slate and stood down the watch below. Despite the confusion in the fleet Martin’s little squadron was keeping tolerably good station. It was clear Martin wanted a post-captaincy out of this expedition.

  ‘What course for the passage, sir?’ asked Easton formally.

  Drinkwater smiled wanly. The fleet was tired of uncertainty. ‘I have only orders to stand towards the Naze of Norway, Mr Easton, as I told you yesterday.’

  ‘Mushrooms, Mr Easton,’ said Rogers cheerfully, ‘that is all we are, mushrooms . . .’

  ‘Mushrooms, Mr Rogers?’ said Easton frowning.

  ‘Aye, mushrooms, Mr Easton. Kept in the dark and fed with bullshit.’

  ‘But I tell you I am right, Bones.’ The smell of rum hung in the heavy air.

  Mr Jex had drawn the surgeon into the stygian gloom of Virago’s hold on the pretext of examining the quality of a barrel of sauerkraut. The familiar tone he used in addressing Lettsom only emphasised the purser’s misjudgement of the surgeon’s character. Listening to the exaggeratedly flippant remarks which Lettsom customarily used, Jex had assumed the surgeon might prove an ally. Part of Jex’s desire to find a confidant was due to his isolation after the discovery of his conduct in the affair off the Sunk. Lettsom avowed an abhorrence of war and the machinations of Admiralty, a common attitude among the better sort of surgeon and a product of keeping educated men in a state of social limbo, mere warrant officers among compeers of far lesser intellect.

  Jex had decided that since he could not escape the taint of cowardice he might as well assume a spurious conscientious objection. The rehabilitation of himself thus being complete in his own eyes, if in no-one else’s, he now began to search for a means of furthering his own ends. But Jex’s mind was expert in calculating, and the readiness and facility with which he did this was apt to blind him to his limitations in other fields. He was a man who considered himself clever when he was not. He was, therefore, a dangerous person to thwart, and Drinkwater had crossed him.

  Mr Jex’s stupidity now led him to believe that certain facts that had come his way were a providential sign that his new, Quakerish philosophy had divine approval, and that his deductive powers used in reaching his conclusion merely proved that he was a man of equal intellect with the surgeon, hence the familiar contraction of the old cognomen, ‘Sawbones’.

  It was unfortunate that a mind skilled in feathering its own nest and dividing the rations of unfortunate seamen to an eighth part (for himself), was a mind that delighted in nosing into the affairs of others. He had nursed a grievance against Lieutenant Drink-water since he had been out-manoeuvred in the matter of his appointment. Drinkwater had intimidated him as well as humiliated him in his own eyes. Jex had not expected fate to be so kind as to put into his hands such weapons as he now possessed, but now that he had them it seemed that it was one more confirmation of his superior abilities.

  It had started when he had been turned from his cot at one in the morning by an angry Mr Trussel. The gunner had brought a new recruit and Jex had let the dripping wretch know exactly what he thought of being roused to attend to the wants of waterborne scum. So vehement had he become that he had shoved his lantern in the face of the newcomer. Jex was incapable of analysing the precise nature of the expression he found there, but the man was not afraid as he should have been, only cold and shivering. Jex’s suspicions were roused because the man did not quail before him.

  Jex had seen the man immediately he came aboard, before his hair was cut and he had lost weight, while he was still dressed in a gentleman’s breeches. At that moment Jex did not recognise Edward, merely took note of him. And because Jex had taken note of him he continued to observe ‘Waters’. Rogers had quartered Edward Drinkwater among the ‘firemen’, an action station for the most inept and inexperienced waisters whose duty was to pump water into the firehoses deployed by the purser.

  There might have been no more to it had Jex not gone ashore for cabin stores at Yarmouth shortly before the order to sail. Being idly curious he had bought a newspaper, an extravagance he was well able to afford. Had he not purchased the paper he might never have made the connection between the new ‘landsman volunteer’ and the man he had seen in the Blue Fox, a man who had come into the taproom immediately Lieutenant Drink-water had left the Inn.

  The Yarmouth Courier reported: ‘A foul double murder, which heinous crime had lately been perpetrated upon an emigrant French nobleman, the Marquis de la Roche-Jagu, and his pretty young mistress, Mlle Pascale Eugenie Vrignaud. The despicable act had been carried out in the marquis’s lodgings at Newmarket. He had died from a sword cut in the right side of the neck which severed the trapezius muscle, the carotid artery and the jugular vein. Mlle Vrignaud had been despatched by a cut on the left temple which had rendered her instantly senseless and resulted in severe haemorrhage into the cranial cavity. Doctor Ezekiel Cotton of Newmarket was of the opinion that a single blow had killed both parties . . .’

  Jex rightly concluded that the two lovers had been taken in the sexual act and that the murderer had struck a single impassioned blow. But it was the last paragraph that filled Mr Jex’s heart with righteous indignation: ‘A certain Edward Drinkwater had earlier been in the company of Mlle Vrignaud and has since disappeared. He is described as a man of middle height and thick figure, having a florid complexion and wearing his own brown hair, unpowdered.’

  Mr Jex had embraced this news with interest, his curiosity and cunning were aroused and he remembered the man in the Blue Fox.

  ‘I tell you I am right,’ Jex repeated.

  Lettsom looked up from the opened cask. ‘There is nothing wrong with this sauerkraut, it always smells foul when new opened.’

  Lettsom straightened up.

  ’To save ‘em from scurvy

  Our captain did shout,

  You shall feed ’em fresh cabbage

  And old sauerkraut.

  ‘Make ’em eat it, Mr Jex, Mr Drinkwater’s right . . .’

  ‘No, no, Mr Lettsom. Damme but you haven’t been listening. I mean this report in the paper here.’ He thrust the Yarmouth Courier under Lettsom’s nose. Lettsom took it impatiently and beckoned the lantern closer. When he had finished he looked up at the purser. Jex’s porcine eyes glittered.

  ‘You are linking our commander with the reported missing man?’

  ‘Exactly. You see my point, then.’

  ‘No, I do not. Do you think I am some kind of hierophant that I read men’s minds.’

  Jex was undettered by the uncomprehended snub.

  ‘Suppose that the murderer . . .’

  ‘Even that scurrilous rag does not allege that the missing man actually carried out murder.’ The legal nicety was lost on Jex.

  ‘Well suppose that he was the murderer, and was related to the captain.’

  ‘Good heavens Mr Jex, I had no idea you had such a lively imagination.’ Lettsom made to leave but Jex held him.

  ‘And suppose that the captain got him aboard here under cover of night . . .’

  ‘What precisely do you mean?’ Lettsom looked again at the sly features of the purser.

  ‘Why else would Lieutenant Drinkwater turn his own brother forrard? Eh? I’m telling you that the man Edward Waters is the man wanted for this murder at Newmarket.’ He slapped the paper with the back of his hand. Lettsom was silent for a while and Jex pressed his advantage. Lettsom did not know that Drink-water’s acquisition of Jex’s funds had poisoned the purser against his commander. Jex had writhed under this extortion, ignoring the fact that his own perquisites were equally immoral.

  ‘Well, will you help me, then?’ asked Jex revealing to Lettsom the reason for this trip into the hold and the extent of Jex’s stupidity.

  ‘I? No sir, I will not.’ Lettsom was indignant. He made again to leave the hold and again Jex restrained him.

  ‘If I am right and you have refused to help me you would have obstructed the course of justice . . .�
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  ‘Jex, listen to me very carefully,’ said Lettsom, ‘if you plot against the captain of a ship of war you are guilty of mutiny for which you will surely hang.’

  Lettsom retired to his cabin and pulled out his flute. He had not played it for many weeks and instantly regretted his lack of practice. His was not a great talent and he rarely played in any company other than that of his wife. He essayed a scale or two before launching into a low air of his own composition, during which his mind was able to concentrate upon its present preoccupation.

  Mr Lettsom was a man of superficial frivolity and apparent indifference which he had adopted early in his naval life as a rampart against the cruelty in the service. He had found it kept people at a distance and, with the exceptions of his wife and three daughters, he liked it that way. The experience of living as a surgeon’s mate through the American War had strangled any inherent feeling he had for the sufferings of humanity. In the main he had found his mess mates ignorant, bigotted and insufferably self-seeking; his superiors proud, haughty and incompetent and his inferiors brutalised into similar sub-divisions according to their own internal hierarchy.

  To his patients Lettsom had applied the dispassionate results of his growing experience. He was known as a good surgeon because he had an average success rate and did not drink to excess. His frivolous indifference did not encourage deep friendship and he was usually left to his own devices, although his versifying brought him popular acclaim at mess dinners. He had rarely made any friends, most of his professional relationships were of the kind he presently enjoyed with Rogers, a kind of mutual regard based on respect overlaying dislike.

  But Mr Lettsom’s true nature was something else. His deeper passions were known only to his family. His wife well understood his own despair at the total inadequacy of his abilities, his resentment at the inferiority of surgery to ‘medicine’, his fury at the quackery of socially superior physicians. A long observation of humanity’s conceit had taught him of its real ignorance.

  In a sense his was a simple mind. He believed that humanity was essentially good, that it was merely the institutions and divisions that man imposed upon man that corrupted the metal. It was his belief that mankind could be redeemed by a few wise men, that the dissenting tradition of his grandfather’s day had paved the way for the unleashing of the irresistible forces of the French Revolution.

  Drinkwater had been right, Lettsom was a Leveller and a lover of Tom Paine. He did not share Drinkwater’s widely held belief that the aggression and excesses of the revolution put it beyond acceptance, holding that man’s own nature made such things inevitable just as the Royal Navy’s vaunted maintenance of the principles of law, order and liberty were at the expense of the lash, impressment and a thousand petty tyrannies imposed upon the individual. A few good men . . .

  He stopped playing his flute, lost in thought. If Jex had discovered the truth, Lettsom feared for Drinkwater. Despite their political differences the surgeon admired the younger lieutenant, seeing him as a man with humanist qualities to whom command came as a responsibility rather than an opportunity. Jex’s evidence, if it was accurate, appeared to Lettsom as a kind of quixotic heroism in defiance of the established law. Drinkwater had hazarded his whole future to assist his brother and Lettsom found it endearing, as though it revealed the lieutenant’s secret sympathy with his own ideals. With the wisdom of age Lettsom concluded that Drinkwater’s subconscious sympathies lay exposed to him and he felt his admiration for the younger man increase.

  He took up the flute again and began to play as another thought struck him. If the new landsman-volunteer was indeed Drinkwater’s brother then Lettsom would not interfere and to hell with Jex. He did not find it difficult to condone such a crime of passion, particularly when it disposed of a marquis, one of those arrogant parasites that had brought the wrath of the hungry upon themselves and destroyed the peace of the world.

  ‘Flag’s signalling, sir.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Number 107, sir.’ There was a pause while Quilhampton strove to read the signal book as the wind tore at the pages.

  ‘Close round the admiral, as near as the state of the weather and other circumstances will permit.’

  ‘Very well.’ The circumstances would permit little more than a token obedience to Parker’s order. Since the early hours of Monday, 16 March, a ferocious gale had been blowing from the west south west. It had been snowing since dawn and become very cold. The big ships had reduced to storm canvas and struck their topgallant masts. At about nine o’clock the fireship Alecto had reported a leak and been detached with the lugger Rover as an escort.

  Drinkwater ordered an issue of the warm clothing he had prudently laid in at Chatham as Lettsom reported most of the men afflicted with coughs, colds or quinsies. His own anxiety was chiefly in not running foul of another ship in the snow squalls that frequently blinded them. The fleet began to fire minute guns.

  ‘Do you wish to reduce sail, sir?’ asked Easton anxiously, shouting into his ear.

  Drinkwater shook his head. ‘She stands up well, Mr Easton, the advantage of a heavy hull.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  Virago was a fine sea-keeper, bluff and buoyant. Though she rolled deeply it was an easy motion and Drinkwater never entertained any apprehension for her spars. Although at every plunge of her bowsprit much of it immersed she hardly strained a rope-yarn.

  ‘She bruises the grey sea in a most collier-like style, Mr Easton, how was she doing at the last streaming of the log?’

  ‘Six and a half, sir.’

  ‘Tolerably good.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  Two hours later the wisdom of not reducing sail was borne out. In a gap in the snow showers the London was again visible flying Number 89.

  ‘Ships astern, or in the rear of the fleet, make more sail!

  ‘Aye, very well. We’ve no need of that but I wonder if those in the rear can see it.’ Half an hour later Parker gave up the struggle.

  ‘Number 106, sir, “Wear, the sternmost and leewardmost first and come to the wind on the other tack”.’

  ‘Oh, my God,’ said Rogers coming on deck to relieve Easton, ‘that’ll set the cat among the pigeons.’

  ‘That’ll do, Mr Rogers,’ said Drinkwater quickly, ‘At least the admiral’s had the foresight to do it at the change of watch when all hands should be on deck.’

  And so the British fleet stood away from the Danish coast in the early darkness and the biting cold, uncertain of their precise whereabouts and still with no specific orders for the Baltic.

  The cold weather continued into the next day while Parker fretted over his reckoning and hove-to for frequent soundings.

  ‘I’ll bet those damned pilots aboard London are all arguing like the devil as to where the hell we are,’ laughed Rogers as he handed the deck over to Trussell who as senior warrant officer after the master kept a deck watch. It was eight in the morning and the gale showed little sign of abating, though the wind had veered a point. It was colder than the previous day and cracked skin and salt water boils were already appearing.

  ‘Hullo, that’s a new arrival ain’t it Mr Rogers?’ asked Drink-water coming on deck. He indicated a seventy-four, looming out of the murk flying her private number and with a white flag at her mizen. Rogers had not noticed that the ship was not part of the fleet as they stood north east again under easy sail, the ships moving like wraiths through the showers.

  ‘Er, ah . . . yes, sir,’ he said flushing.

  ‘Defiance, sir,’ volunteered Quilhampton hurriedly, ‘Rear Admiral Graves, sir, Captain Richard Retalick.’

  ‘Thank you Mr Q.’ Quilhampton avoided the glare Rogers threw at him and knew the first lieutenant would later demand an explanation why, if he was such a damned clever little wart, he had not informed the officer of the watch of the sighting.

  The forenoon wore on, livened only by the piping of ‘Up spirits’, the miserable file of men huddled in their greygo
es, their cracked lips, red-rimmed eyes and running noses proof that the conditions were abysmal. The only fire permitted aboard a vessel loaded with powder was the galley range and the heat that it dissipated about the ship was soon blown away by the draughts. The officers fared little better, their only real advantage being the ability to drink more heavily and thus fortify themselves against the cold. Mr Jex, whose duties rarely brought him on deck at all, took particular advantage of this privilege.

  Edward Drinkwater had received an issue of the heavy-weather clothing that his brother had had the foresight to lay in against service in this northern climate. He had found it surprisingly easy to adapt to life below decks. A heavily built man who could afford to lose weight, his physique had stood up well in the few days he had been on board. His natural sociability and previous experience at living on his wits inclined him to make the best of his circumstances, while his connections with the turf and the stud had made him familiar with the lower orders of contemporary society as well as ‘the fancy’. The guilt he felt for what he had done had not yet affected him and although he was periodically swept by grief for Pascale it was swiftly lost in that last image of her in life, her face ecstatic beneath her lover. He relived that second’s reaction a hundred times a day, snatching up the sword and hacking it down in ungovernable fury in the turmoil of his imagination.

  The rigorous demands of his duties combined with the need to be vigilant against exposing his brother, and hence himself, had left him little time to ponder upon moral issues. When turned below, his physical exhaustion swiftly overcame him and the fear of the law that had motivated his flight to Yarmouth evaporated on board the Virago. From his messmates he learned of the numbers of criminals sheltering in the navy, and that the service did not readily give up these living dead, could not afford to if it was to maintain its wooden ramparts against the pernicious influence of Republican France. Edward had relied upon his brother with the simple trust of the irresponsible and Nathaniel had not let him down. He did not know the extent to which Drinkwater had risked his career, his family, even his life. From what Edward had seen of the Royal Navy, the captain of a man of war was a law unto himself. He was fortunate in having a brother in such a position, and delivered his fate into Nathaniel’s capable hands.