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

by Andrew Wareham

  Frederick had not the faintest idea what he might or might not have ordered before seeking sleep the previous night. He had managed, by sheer will power, to climb aboard unaided and to walk almost steadily to his cabin, but he certainly had no memory of saying anything to anyone. He surveyed the two impassive faces, knew he would get no more from them, accepted the situation – they had shown an ostentatious loyalty and he must live with it.

  “Thank you. Course for the Trinidad, Mr Munson. Lookouts at fore, main and mizzen and a guinea on the nob for the first man to report any prize we take – ten if it be a national ship. The men need prize money, Mr Fraser – no half-pay for them – it is their only reward in a harsh life, and we should seek it for them.”

  The quartermasters, three feet away and officially deaf, unable to hear a word of their betters’ conversation, nodded gravely, much in favour.

  No national ships crossed their path, for a week of quiet sailing in inconstant winds very little happened at all, other than a useful series of uninterrupted drills.

  Hands were mustered and Frederick read them the Articles of War, being loathe to venture on a sermon, or any religious observation more rigorous than the mandatory Lord’s Prayer; he had increasing doubts about the place of a loving God on a man of war. He had equal doubts when hands were called to punishment for the first time – should he flog a couple, so as to demonstrate that he would if necessary, or give lesser punishment to show that he was no tyrant? He had no particular objection to flogging on moral or philosophical grounds, but he had no liking for beating either – he had, of course, not had the appropriate schooling to inculcate the English vice in him, did not find the lash at all stimulating.

  Still undecided, he listened gravely to Fraser as he presented his first ever defaulter.

  “Jonas Smith, sir, landsman.”

  Two years on commission and Smith still a landsman – therefore stupid, weak, clumsy or idle – inadequate or vicious, which?

  “What is the case, Mr Fraser?”

  “Use of vile oaths and obscenities, sir. To Mr Horrocks.”

  Horrocks stood forward, green-headed spots on his chin, gravy or something like on his uniform coat, a button missing, brass on his dirk dull.

  “One moment, Mr Fraser. Mr Horrocks, how dare you show yourself in slovenly filth on my quarterdeck? Get below, sir! Make yourself presentable and report to my cabin immediately after Defaulters. Bos’n, be present, please!”

  The boatswain carried as a symbol of office a three foot rattan cane.

  “Mr Fraser, I beg your pardon. Please carry on, sir.”

  “On being given a lawful order, sir, Smith used cruel and reproachful words to Mr Horrocks, finally saying, sir, in the presence of Mr Jackman, ‘you knows your trouble, boy? You fucks pigs, you do!’”

  “Oh dear! I presume the accusation to be unfounded, Mr Fraser?”

  “We have no pigs on Magpie, sir.”

  “There’s a relief!”

  They waited whilst an outbreak of coughing and stifled laughter was quelled and a ship’s boy was cuffed into silence.

  “What have you to say for yourself, Smith?”

  “Beg pardon, sir. I were cross. Mr Horrocks got it in for me.”

  “You heard the Articles on Sunday, Smith, and at least twenty times before. Your words constitute a grave breach of those Articles. I am tempted to bring you in irons to Antigua, there to stand trial.”

  Indrawn breaths all round – they would hang Smith for those words, five captains not knowing Horrocks or caring for anything other than the need to support lawful authority.

  “But, I see no reason why you should lie in idleness for a month, everyone else working for their bread. And, as well, you may just be so foolish as not to realise how perilous your words were. Mr Fraser, what can you tell me of Smith?”

  “Three times before Captain Marston, sir. Admonished, grog stopped, cleaning the heads for two months. Reproachful words, sir.”

  “So, Smith, you will not be admonished, nor will lesser punishments sway you from your chosen path of vice. One dozen lashes, Smith, your last chance. You will go to court martial if you come before me again for this cause.”

  No other defaulters were brought forward and punishment commenced immediately. Some captains were known to hold men under punishment for days before the lash fell, believing that the waiting gave them time to contemplate their punishment and repent the sins that had led to it, but it seemed to Frederick to be a gratuitous cruelty, a form of malice that he rejected.

  Frederick stood expressionless as the two boatswain’s mates laid on six apiece. Smith bore the first four quietly, screamed with each successive lash, much to the disapproval of the watching crew, some of whom bore the scars of five dozen taken in silence. When he wet himself there was a universal shaking of heads – very poor, not at all the thing, where was his pride?

  “Hands to dinner, Mr Fraser. Come with me and we shall deal with this horrible young lout now.”

  Twenty minutes of bellowing bad temper, Horrocks in tears before being bent bare-arsed over the breech of the aftermost nine pounder to be beaten raw by the flexible, whipping cane. He would present himself, properly uniformed, for inspection by the officer of the watch every time he came on duty and he would be beaten for every shortfall, irrespective of excuse.

  “You may be utterly useless as an officer, Mr Horrocks, but you will look the part while you remain on my ship. Do not provoke Smith again, Mr Horrocks: this is his fourth punishment for back-answering you, not any other officer, you alone. Fail in your duty again and I will disrate you and you will berth and work as a common sailor until the ship pays off, which I expect to be in Portsmouth and not for another five years! You are lazy, slovenly and probably stupid. I cannot improve your brain, but, by God! I can and will make you clean and hard-working!”

  “Bos’n, do your duty by Mr Horrocks. Two dozen well laid on – two for every one Smith received.”

  His words would have been heard and would be reported through the ship, well exaggerated, but the essence of the story would be known to all – young Mr Bollocks had been brought up short, Fearless Fred had stopped his farting in chapel!

  The door closed behind the pair, shut out Horrocks’ sniffling.

  “Repellent brat!”

  “A nasty youth, to be sure, sir. Son to a friend of Captain Marston’s, sent to sea in hope of mending his ways at the age of twelve.”

  “His ways will mend, or he will have no ways left, Mr Fraser. What of Smith? Can anything be made of him?”

  “No, sir, not a thing! He is a poor oarsman, cannot work a splice or tie a knot, and is slow at the guns because he is frightened of them; he is too clumsy to become a topman. All he is good for is pulling on a rope, and he is not particularly strong.”

  “Well, bugger him, then, Mr Fraser! If we should be involved in a boarding put him in the front rank – if he stops a blade or bullet aimed for a better man he will have been useful for the first time ever. Now then, to important matters – I am not satisfied, not at all pleased, with our rate of fire. Three broadsides in six minutes should not be unattainable with short barrel iron guns, I believe – it is not as if we had long chasers on our sides. Two minutes should be ample to load and run out a nine pounder. Do all the gun captains know their business, one must ask?”

  More drill was the answer, of course, each crew to be worked individually by Mr Jackman as well as the regular daily exercises. A shortage of powder meant that the guns must be worked in dumbshow six days out of seven, but that need not deter willing hands, the captain believed.

  They raised Trinidad and their luck changed. A strengthening south westerly made it possible to beat up to the harbour mouth, tack across the entrance examining the port as the headlands opened and then make a rapid offing as the two forts woke up, found where they had put the keys to the powder room and finally opened fire in slovenly Spanish fashion.

  Gleeson, Arkwright and Jackman had taken glasses
aloft and gave their reports, tallying very closely to each other, to the amaze of all.

  “Two heavy frigates, forty or forty four guns; three small brigs of eight or ten guns and a schooner, what they call garda costas, I expect, sir. Of the private ships, four or five schooners seem too heavily armed to be innocent. Of certain merchantmen, two are ships of three hundred tons or more, and there is a mass of smaller craft of every rig, too many to distinguish. No English frigate, sir. A very busy port, sir.”

  Sailing peacefully up to that busy port as Magpie slipped out of the range of a lone, energetic and massive coastal gun, at least a ninety pounder, water splashes bigger than any they had ever seen before, came a large four-masted barquentine, her promiscuous mixture of square and fore and aft sail exciting much comment.

  “An entry for your journals, young gentlemen,” Munson suggested to the midshipmen. ”Elegantly drawn, perhaps coloured, her name noted with date and time. A written description of her rig.”

  “The Virgin of Maracaibo, sir.”

  “She’ll not be sailing in company then, Mr Gleeson – you will never find two virgins in any seaport.”

  Frederick recognised the forced laughter – God had made a joke…

  “Close her. Chaser, Mr Jackman, wait my order.”

  Fraser put down his telescope, endeavoured to look calm like his young mentor. “Six hundred tons, sir? Three times our size, at a guess, and will have the legs of us, I suspect. Can’t count her gun ports on this tack.”

  “Let us hope she is no privateer, Mr Fraser.”

  “Still less a local bottom built for the Spanish navy, sir.”

  They considered this possibility, together clasped their hands casually behind their backs, put on a show of insouciance, spoiled by their anxious glances at the masthead as he hailed.

  “On deck! Hands to braces, furling square sails, sir.”

  “Preparing to tack, Mr Fraser?”

  “Fighting sail, or … No, I have it, sir! A light crew, merchantman, tack or wear under fore and aft sail only, use the square sails on a wind when making their speed.”

  “That is typical of a merchant hull, I agree, Mr Fraser. Mr Jackman! Open fire!”

  The first round, intentionally high and wide, sounding very close to the Spanish sailors, peaceful men with no experience of war, knowing only small pirates who could be outpaced and avoided. The Spanish master began to order his hands to wear ship, realised this would open his ship to a full broadside from the nasty-minded descendant of Drake just two cables off. Brief consideration of tacking suggested this would merely offer his other side, if not for so long. If he held his course then the heretic would simply range onto his quarter and place his broadside there. He glanced at his men, none of whom chose to catch his eye.

  “Bring her up to the wind! Strike our colours!”

  “We are flying none, sir.”

  “Line the rail and raise your hands, then! They will not fire unless we try to attack or run.”

  The boats took possession very quietly, apologetically almost – the Spanish were different, somehow, there was a feeling of unfair game in taking a Spanish vessel – it was not really their war, but prize money, the Magpie’s first of this commission, spoke louder than qualms of conscience.

  Fraser reported back very quickly, quite delighted: like any lieutenant living on his pay he had minor debts waiting in England, small but irritating and now easily cleared. Life was suddenly much more attractive.

  “Full holds, sir. Mainly hides, well cured. Some logwood; cocoa and coffee beans in sacks. A few tons of mahogany, seasoned in baulks and boards. Some of that balsa wood. Tons of sweet potato and Irish potato, sir – slave food. A crew of eighteen, sir, who will work the ship in exchange for our promise of a return to a Spanish port, sir. Apparently they believe that the English habitually enslave captured ships’ crews, sir.”

  “Dear me! The falsehoods people – unnamed – do not scruple to tell to innocent, naïve sailormen! Assure them that they will be returned unharmed, with their personal possessions, although it may take a month or two to find a cartel.”

  Frederick was quite impressed with Fraser’s initiative – it enabled him to cut the prize crew to a very bare minimum. Rogers left the ship with six men and a wealth of advice from the master and with every intention of enjoying himself – wouldn’t his old dad stare if he could see him now!

  In the nature of things Rogers dispossessed the master of his cabin and, two days later, idly poking around off watch, he made to open a locker, found it to be a false front for an iron safe. The Spanish captain said he had no key for it – the safe was opened and loaded by the owners in Maracaibo and cleared by the agent in Trinidad, its contents small and, he imagined, precious.

  The door was hung on pintles, three heavy hinges capped over and probably proof against a crowbar, but not against naval greed. Three bandannas knotted and packed with gunpowder and worked in behind the hinge bars, a few inches of match, Rogers and the prize crew at a distance from the cabin door, gleefully waiting.

  Three coughing explosions followed by a rattle and a thump as of a sheet of iron hitting the deck.

  “Three counted?” Rogers formally enquired, had his hearing confirmed – pedantic, perhaps, but so much safer – the beach at Pompey always had one or two armless beggars who had been sure they had all blown.

  They crowded into the cabin, now regrettably glassless in the light in the deckhead.

  “Rig a sail on battens across that, if you please, no sense in getting rained upon.”

  The safe was gaping open, smoke rapidly dissipating in the through draught, displayed four shelves, three empty, the last carrying a small wooden box and a washleather bag.

  The box was no bigger than Rogers’ hand, two fingers thick, contained a thick black velvet bed on which rested six uncut greenish stones, each the size of a thumbnail, quite rough and dull.

  “They mine emeralds up in the mountains, sir, green stones.”

  “And these must be valuable – they don’t look like much until they’re cut and polished, do they?”

  They shook their heads, waited for him to open the bag, breathed a great sigh of wonderment.

  “Pearls, they look better, don’t they!”

  Twenty two bright, shining, pea sized globules, pink or blue in tint, the pick of months of harvesting the beds.

  “Comes from the Great South Sea, sir. Brought overland as being quicker and safer than a passage of the Horn.”

  “You’ve sailed these waters before, Carter?”

  “No, sir – but I have read my books, sir – I was apprentice to a bookseller in Devizes, sir, and he had daughters, sir, and one thing led to another and I left for Portsmouth and the sailor’s life.”

  “You might have been better off to have married her, Carter!”

  “Beg pardon, sir, but the vicar would not have let me wed all three.”

  “My word, Carter, I see you are a man of parts – most of them private!”

  They turned back to the spoils of the safe, wondering what was best to do with them.

  “Six and twenty two, we agree the count?” Rogers asked.

  The six, all able, had been picked for their reliability, agreed the figure, each a surety for the other.

  “Back in the box and bag and tie them up, I suppose. Nothing else we can do.”

  “Beg pardon, sir, but I could run up a ditty bag out of canvas, two thicknesses and double seams, and we could sew them inside.”

  “I did not know you was a hand with a needle, John Totton.”

  “No, sir, I did get tired of being sailmaker’s party, so I never said when I came on board of Magpie, but I been a needleman since I were a little boy. My mum, she was sempstress to m’lady up at the big ‘ouse. Many and many was the day I sat cross-legged at ‘er side, sewing seams, three rows, neat and tiny and so straight as a die, sir. Curtains wi’ a twenty foot drop for they big old windows or dresses for m’lady’s daughters, velvet or dimi
ty, ‘twas all one to I. Then I ran off to sea, sir, when mum died and they said I was to go to the parish, and I joined the sailmaker’s party on the old Duke of York, 90, second rate, at the beginning of the American War.”

  “Do it then, John Totton.”

  The news and the prize crew were waiting when Magpie made English Harbour, ushering in a little flotilla of brigs, schooners and a lugger.

  “Dutch, sir, originally, they tell me – prized and sold and taken by pirates and reappeared again as a Spanish trader – outlandish looking in these southern waters. It was in a group, sir, in a small port at the north of the Isle of Tobago which don’t seem to appear in our charts, sir.”

  Farquhar peered at the chart, raised an eyebrow in query – there needed be an explanation for such a thing – the naval charts were always wholly reliable in established areas.

  “It seemed to me, sir, that a battery and small barracks, the beginnings of a fort, had recently been raised there, where a river comes to the sea and the coral reef is broken. There was a small fisher village there already, and maybe a shipyard, a timber yard certainly, so they had built some protection in case of the English coming.”

  “Seems a sensible thing to do.”

  “Yes, sir. Word had gone out of an English heretic pirate – we took the barquentine in sight of the forts, sir – and the traders had run for protection of the battery. Just a little earthen bank, sir, with a platform for four guns, two twenty four pounders and a pair of eighteens all that were there yet. Stonework going up for something bigger, been at least a year in the building – you know what the Spanish are like for delay, sir. Too much for us to handle, sir, so we made a show of running away, and came back in the boats in the dark of the moon, Mr Fraser in one – very efficient, too – myself in the other, Jackman holding the ship. Come moonrise we went over the wall from the front, the soldiers left over the back wall as fast as we came in, one seaman dead, half a dozen of Dons, and there we were.”

  “You preferred Jackman to stay in the ship?”