The Friendly Sea (The Duty and Destiny Series, Book 1)

by Andrew Wareham

  Frederick had heard of the Hermione, knew of her captain’s predilection for savagery, of his delight in the lash; he justified himself by presenting a flash, shiny, smart ship, all gleaming brass and white decks. Hermione had not been in action once under Pigott’s command, had excited comment on occasion for not managing to arrive in time to join her consorts who had brought an enemy to bay. Pigott had been a favourite of Prince William Henry’s when he was a captain on the station, was untouchable under ordinary circumstances as a result.

  They rowed back in sullen silence – every man had considered desertion at one time or another.

  Frederick briefed the captain in his cabin before presenting his take on the quarterdeck.

  “Names?”

  ”Smith, sir”, the tattooed deserter.

  “Ablett, sir,” a tall, thin, wiry man, the one the American had addressed as ‘Jones’.

  “You were a Benbow, Smith?” Atkinson asked.

  “I was, sir.”

  “And you a Lively, Ablett?”

  “I was, sir, but …”

  Frederick interrupted him, most unusually, the captain being in charge of the interrogation.

  “The captain did not ask you for comment! Pipe down, Ablett!”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Comprehension and sudden relief on Ablett’s face as he realised how the interrogation was to be manipulated.

  “Neither ship is on this station, Mr Harris, so we are not able to return them to their places. Have we evidence that they deserted? No? So be it! Missed ship, drunk. You are very foolish men and must behave yourselves in future! Enter them on the books, Mr Harris.”

  Frederick took over, discovered their ratings without once mentioning the Hermione, found them to have been a quarter gunner and, in Ablett’s case, in the gunner’s party and in line for warrant as Gunner’s Mate at the earliest vacancy. They were skilled, valuable, steady men, able to run because they were never expected to – men such as these would never desert any normal ship.

  “Mr Thomas, the gunner, will look at you – he needs skilled hands, he tells me. We don’t flog on this ship unless a man really pushes us to it – neither the captain nor myself enjoy flogging, but that does not mean we will not if we must. Fit in and you will find life better on Athene – and we earn prize money!”

  “Can we do that, legally, sir?”

  “No. The Articles oblige us to return all deserters, but the people don’t want us to send any man back to Hermione so that Pigott can lick his lips while they get an unlawful five hundred laid on.”

  “I’ll keep them below if ever we are in port with Hermione, sir.”

  East along the coast, well inshore, the two schooners in casual company, Arkwright and Gleeson with four men apiece and pacing their very own quarterdecks, all three under courses only, no topsails, looking like ordinary, stumpy merchantmen on their way to Orleans Nouvelle, coincidentally together.

  “If the village idiot is on watch and sees only what he expects, then they may not recognise us until we are within a mile, and I shall be annoyed if we can not catch anything we get that near.” Atkinson was openly gleeful, in piratical mode, able to see a comfortable existence ahead of him – successful cruisers received more cruises, reward upon reward – a house in town and a respectable middle age beckoned.

  “There’s a lugger beating out of the main river mouth, Mr Harris. Deep laden, about a hundred and twenty tons, would you say?”

  “About that, sir. Worth taking, certainly. Mainmast hailing, sir!”

  “On deck! Beyond the lugger, same bearing, distant another mile. Brig, sir, with topsails and topgallants.”

  Topgallants said ship of war; few merchantmen possessed them, fewer still carried crew enough to set them.

  “Blood for dinner, Mr Harris! She has the wind of us. What are we making, Mr Paston?”

  “Four knots, sir, thereabouts.”

  Atkinson stared blankly, working triangles in his head.

  “Forty minutes on this course, him unchanged as well, and we have the gage – but as soon as he is clear of the shallows south of the river mouth he will change course for wherever he is bound, so we need another … how much?”

  “One and a half knots, sir. Topsails.” Paston supplied.

  “Let us hope the lugger shelters us enough for him not to notice. Set the topsails and then ship the topgallant poles, but set nothing on them until the actual chase starts – he may well not see the bare poles and yards, if he fails to notice topsails first.”

  The topgallants were swayed up and set two minutes faster than any exercise had achieved.

  The brig showed no reaction, no change of course.

  “He is distant half a mile from the lugger now, sir, compared to us at three times as far. We are masked from him to a proportionately greater extent.”

  Atkinson and Frederick listened to Paston, the same blank incomprehension showing; he took the slate from the binnacle, held it close to their faces and then retreated.

  “The size of the slate remains the same, gentlemen, but nearer to you it blocks more of your sight.”

  They were really quite surprised by this, and even more surprised that Paston should understand it.

  “How long, Mr Paston?”

  “Ten minutes, sir, just under. I shall, with your permission, sir, set the topgallants in nine minutes, and add two more jibs, then the driver, brailing-up the mizzen course as the wind will be on our stern quarter when we have made our tack.”

  “Agreed, Master. All hands!”

  The formal announcement served to inform the crew that the business of the day was about to commence. Athene was still unchanged from her clean sweep at dawn and both boats were towing still. The sole effect of the order was to cause the boys to run to the magazine with their cartridge buckets.

  They counted down the minutes, waited for the brig to change course, to leave them facing a long chase, but she held on unvarying.

  “Bound for Cuba, carrying despatches to the Dons, perhaps, sir?”

  “Possibly … let’s find out! Take her round, Mr Paston, straight for the brig. Chasers load!”

  The schooners conformed, spinning on their heels, being handier vessels though slower to make sail with their thin prize-crews. Some faint shouts and waves and they split four cables apart, descended on the lugger as it belatedly decided to flee the scene. Arkwright’s prize fired a swivel and the lugger dropped its booms, lay-to meekly waiting its captors’ pleasure.

  “Crewed by three men and a dog, I expect, Mr Harris, the dog often the better seaman. Luggers need so few men because of the nature of the rig, they never have enough men aboard to make a fight, except for those buggers in the Channel, out of Dunkirk and the Brittany ports – favourite rig of smugglers and privateers for them.”

  The brig was now turning slowly to show her broadside, having realised that she could not extend a chase to anything near dusk, had no chance of losing her pursuer.

  “Seven ports. For what we are about to receive …” Atkinson muttered the traditional blasphemy as he set his telescope to use. “I wonder what she carries – four pounders? Six, more likely, eights or even nines not impossible. Range, Mr Paston?”

  “Six cables, sir.”

  It was a reasonable limit to the accurate carry of the iron chase guns.

  “Chasers, open fire! Stay here, Mr Harris, let us see what young Stewart is made of.”

  Larboard gun fired; fifteen seconds later starboard loosed its sighting round.

  “Good – he fired separately so as to note the fall of shot. There! Under one hundred, left of line, fifty. Starboard, on line, short … hit first bounce, think you?”

  “Remarkable shooting, sir, how ever did he do it?”

  “Natural virtue, I presume – being the cousin of an admiral’s wife must encourage the nautical tendency.”

  The chasers fired again before the brigs’ ports bloomed white smoke.

  “Sixes at most, nicely together
, all grouped up well – very handsome, but would have been better for being on line.”

  A great splash of white water fifty yards off the larboard bow showed the French to be short as well.

  “Mr Paston! Fighting sail after the next broadside, ease her to larboard and then correct her as you strip sail. Mr Stewart! We shall return to original course after the next broadside.”

  Another broadside, another splash, this time to starboard, fairly well where they would have been if Atkinson had not altered course.

  The chase guns fired a final time, both hitting the brig’s forecastle.

  “That stung her, sir. A Long Nine would have hurt her by now.”

  “Might well have sunk her, too. We want to take a Froggy home, Mr Harris – much more impressive than half a dozen soggy prisoners and a report.”

  “One cable, sir. Which broadside?”

  “Run out the starboard guns, Mr Harris. Half a cable, Mr Paston, we are still loaded grape.”

  The brig’s third broadside came on the uproll, howling through the rigging, holes in the sails, a cat’s cradle of dangling rope ends but no crunch of breaking timber, no spars falling.

  “Tactical error there, Mr Harris: he should have hulled us. Lying on the quarter as he is he could have sent a shower of splinters through our gun crews, slowed us down, given him the chance to tack and lie off outside the range of the carronades. His textbook says to slow us by cutting up the rigging, hopefully taking down a topmast – that then gives him the option to fight or fly as he finds good. Never wise, considering retreat as a tactical option rather than a shameful last resort. Right, our turn!”

  Atkinson stepped forward, raised his hat. “Gunners, wait my word! As you wish, Mr Paston.”

  A few more seconds and Paston gave the command, the Frenchman seeming to swing broadside on to them, much closer than half a cable, right into the carronades’ ideal range, less than eighty yards, the beak head crawling past her stern, halfway to the bows, the French captain shouting orders, their wheel spinning.

  “Too late, sir, but the right idea, following us round. As we come off the roll, now…Shoot!”

  A single crash, Athene shuddering as nearly half a hundredweight of black powder detonated with a great bellow, the smell of sulphur, nitre and charcoal swamping their senses, smoke hiding all for a few seconds.

  “Sheets flying, sir,” Stewart shouted from the bow.

  Ropes cast off to spill the wind from the sails, the traditional sign of surrender; the smoke blowing ahead of them to show the brig wallowing in the trough of the light swell, blood running down her side, a single dorsal fin cutting the surface, investigating.

  “Mr Harris, Mr Jackman! Both boats, await the command.”

  Atkinson walked to the rail, cupped his hands, shouted in very poor French.

  “Ahoy, le vaisseau! Est-ce que vous rendez?”

  The tricolour on the jackstaff at the stern was hauled down; no colours showed in the rigging.

  “Go, Mr Harris!”

  A frantic pull to the brig, before any enthusiast could change his mind, up the low side, Bosomtwi at his right shoulder, musketoon levelled and steady despite its weight. A pair of pistols, equally steady on his left, Ablett with half a grin on his face. “Didn’t ‘ave no place assigned to me yet, sir, so I thought I’d make meself useful, like.”

  “Welcome to the party, Ablett!” The grin broadened.

  The stern had been swept virtually clean, wheel gone, blood and rags where the quarterdeck party had been. Given short range and time the sternmost five carronades had each aimed personally at the French captain, displaying a fair degree of success.

  A warrant officer was bobbing in front of Frederick, offering the hilt of a cutlass in token of surrender, trying to behave properly.

  “Thank you! Merci! Mr Jackman, find the Frog surgeon, see what he needs. I’ll get Isaacs as well. Secure spirits room and magazine; man relieving tackles to the rudder and set the fore tops’l to get her out of the trough. Check the well, then count and guard the prisoners and get a butcher’s bill. Conform to Athene.”

  Atkinson had brought Athene sidling across to conversational distance, was stood waiting a first report.

  “Can I have the bo’sun, sir, and a party for the rigging, and Chips to look at the steering, sir? And Mr Isaacs as soon as he is available.”

  By nightfall the five vessels were in close company and in superficially good order. Athene had lost one man only to a lone six pound ball fired unnoticed in her own broadside. His shoulder smashed, he had bled to death inside a minute, mercifully, as mortification would certainly have followed such a wound.

  “Landsman from the Chaffinch, sir, Burdette.”

  “Channel Islander with that name, I would guess.”

  “Don’t know, sir. He was very quiet, sir, almost never seemed to speak. He wasn’t very bright and never recovered from five dozen awarded for insolence, so they tell me.”

  “Dumb insolence, one presumes, Mr Harris.”

  They formally committed Burdette and eighteen French sailors, before night fell. The unidentifiable bits on the brig’s quarterdeck had been hosed away without benefit of clergy, solemnity seeming somehow out of place in the circumstances.

  The fight, brief though it had been, had certainly been witnessed by fishermen and coastal barges – there would be no more business off these shores. Atkinson announced his conclusions at dawn, no doubt after study of the charts in Paston’s company.

  “South to Cuba, poke our nose into the sea lanes to Havana for a few days, then retrace our steps – we might not be expected back – lightning not striking twice, and all that. We have four weeks before we must return to Antigua. How is the bo’sun doing in Citoyen Paine?”

  “Chips says he can’t jury rig a wheel, sir, so they have clapped a pair of vertical beams to the rudder – a spare yard sawn in half, I gather – and are affixing a spar horizontally to form a tiller, a sort of a gallows shape with capstan bars as diagonal reinforces. It might work, so long as there is no attempt to tack or do more than wear ship very delicately-like. There’s splicing for a dozen men for a week, but they have fore and main topsails and two jibs drawing, sir.”

  They would be able to take her in to English Harbour as a prize, would not have to set her afire, unsalvageable. She was too small to be a source of Gazette letters and promotions, but a national ship made an honourable addition to Athene’s prizes, showed a willingness to fight as well as seek profit. It did the crew good as well, nothing pulled the men together like a successful fight.

  “And so, sir, we swept the coast of the Louisianas again, and Florida as well, then through the islands to Antigua, seeing nothing big enough to take, though we could have burnt out two dozens of little barges and cutters and ketches, each with five or ten or twenty tons aboard – but I do not see that as our way of making war, sir.”

  The admiral nodded – there was something to say for hitting the enemy as hard as possible, for total war, but it was not his way either, and he would not order it without the most absolute of instructions from the Admiralty.

  “I must note, sir, that my premier has grown well into his role, is now highly effective, could well take a command soon, and Mr Stewart showed well on the chasers, is a good officer. Young Mr Jackman brought the brig home, not an easy task with her steering the bodged job it was. I am lucky in those three, sir.”

  “Good, good, I am glad to hear such news of them. Your very young men showed well, also – snapping up the lugger was a bold stroke, and welcome, the prize-court has hardly sat this month. Both frigates are on convoy with the army, and you must join them after a few days in port, Captain Atkinson. You must convoy the expeditionary forces until the Hurricane Season brings their adventuring to a close. A refit may be possible then, if it seems necessary.”

  Book One: The Duty and Destiny Series

  Chapter Five

  A long letter home, with the usual enclosure to Miss Paget, celebrating one
year away from Hampshire and his achievements in that time – though not all were detailed, certain milestones he felt were exclusively his business. Two packets were waiting from Marianne, prettily written, signed with her Christian name only, very possessively – one did not make every Tom, Dick and Harry free of one’s name, as well tie one’s garter in public! She certainly made several references to the glory accruing to ‘her lieutenant’, as if, in her mind, there was a degree of commitment.

  ‘Perhaps she has the right of it’, Frederick reflected, rather shamefacedly, as he relaxed at Madame Blanchard’s – he had certainly wished that his companion might have been Marianne. ‘One day! Another two or three years.’ For the meanwhile he rolled over, demanding of the second-best substitute that was available.

  When he got his breath back he set his mind to more immediate and soluble problems, most particularly to the matter of boatswain’s stores. Too much of the Athene’s issue had gone to making Citoyen Paine seaworthy after their one, horribly accurate, broadside: blocks, ropes, cables; nails and spikes; paint, varnish and turpentine. All had to be replaced if they were to be long on convoy duty; he would have to bleed gold to the dockyard, or assist Porson in resorting to cappabar, the unlawful purchase of another ship’s stores, robbing probably Trojan to pay Athene. Fifty guineas to Porson, some of which would stick to his fingers, or the same to the black-hearted thieves of the yard – who would feel neither gratitude nor loyalty to ship or man. A questing hand felt between his legs and he decided to deal with business in the morning, particularly as he suddenly realised that a tongue had replaced the fingers. He jolted awake in absolute amaze, never having even heard of such a thing - the navy could be very sheltered – but he very soon decided his best course of action was to lie back and take the lesson he was being given – school was never like this!

  “We need quite a lot of stores, Mr Porson, and the yard seems somewhat short. Do you suppose we could buy them somewhere?”

  A little leather bag changed hands, the boatswain sure he could find something, somewhere.