“Good God, though, sir!” Knolles almost goggled in amazement, raking the fingers of his left hand through his hair, “how do we get four civilian merchant masters to sail in an orderly column and maintain proper separation in the first place, much less convince them to play-act as warships? Do they sail into battle, they’d be as helpless as kittens! What are their burthens?”
“One’s three hundred tons, the other three are of three hundred and fifty tons,” Lewrie told him, calling that up from memory.
“That’s only fifteen men and some ship’s boys aboard one, and only a couple more hands in the other three, sir,” Knolles pointed out. “I suppose they’re armed, after a fashion … but with what? Four- or six-pounders, and some swivels? And, I very much doubt if their masters have pulled the tompions or cast off the lashings on those guns in the last year, except to look for rust.”
“There are soldiers aboard all four,” Lewrie said whimsically. “Perhaps Colonel Fry can be convinced that they’re only really big muskets, and man them on their own?”
“Oh now, sir!” Knolles countered, then broke out laughing.
“Only a thought,” Lewrie said, shrugging and waving a hand in the air. “Let’s get out to the fifteenth Longitude, ever further from France, form ’em all in column, and if we’re approached by the enemy, we’ll hoist the Blue Ensign and trust that Shakespeare was right … that ‘the play’s the thing’. How do you like the quail?”
“Quite savoury, indeed!” Knolles said, uttering a little moan of appreciation. “What does your cook do to make it so flavourful?”
“I fear that’s Yeovill’s secret spices and sauces,” Lewrie said with a sly grin, “and it’s rare that he tells me how he does it, but I wouldn’t trade the man for a keg of gold.”
“Mmumm!” Knolles agreed, then dabbed his mouth with his napkin and took a sip of wine. “If we do get out to the fifteenth Longitude, sir, I’d serve no purpose standing alee. Perhaps I should place Comus no more than one mile ahead of the column.”
“Aye, that makes sense,” Lewrie agreed. “Now, if the French don’t come from the East, but are discovered ahead of us, that’d be another matter … or, from windward. Do they appear North of us, it will be a long stern-chase, and we can wheel out of line and interpose our ships ’twixt the French and the transports, who can escape South as fast as their little legs’ll carry them.”
“You wouldn’t wheel us all about and challenge them, would you, sir?” Knolles asked with one brow up.
“Might depend on the odds, hey?” Lewrie joshed.
They spent the better part of the next hour enjoying their meal, right through the berry and cream cobbler, port, and sweet bisquits, sketching plans against every contingency. By the time Pettus poured them coffee, and Jessop cleared the table, they had filled two sheets of paper with their thoughts.
“Now, the only thing left is to introduce you to the masters of our transports, Knolles, and convince them that daring, and fraud, is their best bet,” Lewrie concluded. “I bought them Blue Ensigns, just in case.”
“I rather thought you already had, sir,” Knolles said, grinning.
“Shall we go, then? We’ll take my launch,” Lewrie offered.
On the quarterdeck, waiting for Lewrie’s boat crew to bring the launch round from astern, Bisquit came frisking up, whining and yowing for attention. Lewrie dug into his coat pocket for a strip of Indian-style pemmican, which made the dog blissful.
“What do you feed your Tyge, Captain Knolles?” Lewrie asked.
“Table scraps, cook extra, sir,” Knolles told him.
“Before we sail, have your Purser go ashore to Rutledge’s,” Lewrie suggested. “He has preserved, dried meats. American-styled jerky strips, pemmican with grains and dried fruits pounded in, and an host of wee sausages. Bisquit here, and Chalky, thrive on ’em. And they come in handy when I feel peckish ’tween meals, too. I’ve laid by a couple of hundredweight.”
“You think of everything, sir,” Knolles said. “But then, you always did.”
“I did?” Lewrie said, pulling a wry, dis-believing face. “You do me too kind, sir! Think of everything? Hah!”
BOOK TWO
Your course securely steer,
West and by South forth keep!
Rocks, lee-shores, nor shoals
When Eolus scowls
You need not fear
So absolute the deep.
“TO THE VIRGINIAN VOYAGE”
MICHAEL DRAYTON (1563–1631)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sunday’s weather was foul, but the winds came fair for sailing that Monday, and Lewrie at last got his small convoy to sea, beating out into the North Sea for a time to make a wide offing from the coast before turning South, then Sou’west to stand into the Channel and its chops well clear of Dover and the Goodwin Sands.
It was not an auspicious beginning, though. The masters of the transports, already leery of Lewrie’s dispositions, and loath to agree with the Navy—they were civilians, after all!—brought the expression about herding cats to mind, along with many a stifled curse. Comus led, followed in some sort of order by two of the transports in trail, sort of. Warships sailing in column were used to trimming and adjusting sail to maintain separation, and had large crews to perform the work. The thinly-manned transports, though, were either too slow or too quick, barging up alarmingly close to the ship ahead before taking in a reef, or too slow off the mark to spread more sail or shake out a reef, in danger of having the ship astern of them ploughing up their transoms!
“Two columns perhaps, sir?” Lt. Westcott muttered to Lewrie after Sapphire’s topmen and line-tenders had clewed up the main course once more. “A nice, tidy square formation?”
“Nice? Tidy? Mine arse on a band-box!” Lewrie growled, just about ready to howl in frustration. “The cunny-thumbed, clueless…!”
A single cable’s separation didn’t look as if it would work. He considered having a signal bent on to change it to two cables, allowing 1,440 feet between ships.
One’d think seven hundred and twenty feet’d be all the room in the world, but … no! Lewrie thought; The cack-handed … bastards! And we’re barely into the Channel, yet!
“Cast of the log, sir,” young Midshipman Ward reported to Westcott. “Seven and a half knots.”
“Just blisterin’ speed, by Gad,” Lewrie sneered. “Even we are able t’rush up and trample somebody. No, Mister Westcott, I’m not yet ready t’give up. If the winds hold direction, they just might catch on how to do it by the time we’re off the Lizard.”
Midshipman Ward was a youngster; he couldn’t help but grin, and let out a stifled titter.
“Ain’t funny, lad,” Westcott glumly told him.
“Sorry, sir,” Ward replied, only slightly abashed, moving away.
“What’s worrisome to me, sir, is what happens when the weather turns foul, and we have to go close-hauled,” Westcott went on. “They just might end up weaving Westward on opposing tacks, like so many wandering chickens. And, they’re civilians. They won’t tack, they’ll wear from one tack to the other, like they usually do, with so few hands aboard. That’ll be fun to watch. In a morbid way.”
“This’ll turn into a smaller version of our infamous ‘sugar trade’ a few years ago, is that what you’re sayin’, Mister Westcott?” Lewrie muttered to him, groaning in sour remembrance. That had been a disaster, from Jamaica through the Florida Straits then North ’twixt the Hatteras Banks and Bermuda, especially when ships bound for ports in the United States had tried to leave the seaward side of the convoy, through the lee columns!
“Just keeping my fingers crossed, sir,” Westcott gloomily said. “And trusting that the transports’ masters are professional seafarers.”
Then God help us all, Lewrie thought in dread.
* * *
They did begin to get the hang of it, after a few more hours, with a steady following wind, and a less-than-boisterous sea to steady all ships, making between seven
or eight knots. By Two Bells of the Day Watch, one in the afternoon, Lewrie felt confident enough that he could cease trotting up and down the ladderways from the quarterdeck to a better view from the poop deck and back again over and over. He went to the forward edge of the quarterdeck and saw Yeovill coming aft from the galley with his covered brass food barge, and decided that he would go aft and eat his delayed dinner.
“I’ll be aft, Mister Harcourt,” he told the Second Lieutenant, who had the Day Watch.
“Very good, sir,” Harcourt replied, “I have the deck.”
Harcourt’s reply was a formality, perhaps too much so, stiffer and cooler than Lewrie liked. During their time in port, he had had his officers and Mids in to dine, to get to know them and take their measure, and he had noticed that Lt. Harcourt had held himself in a strict reserve, as if he privately resented the arrival of a new Captain and the loss of Sapphire’s first one. For certain, Westcott’s arrival as the new First Officer, which had kept him in his place as the Second Officer, was resented, Lewrie had surmised, and that senior Midshipman, Hillhouse…! They had both been in the same group at-table one night, and Lewrie had noticed some enigmatic shared looks between them, as if Harcourt and Hillhouse were allied in some way.
The Third Lieutenant, Edward Elmes, seemed a decent sort, as did most of the Mids, especially the younger ones, but a couple of the older ones, like Hillhouse, Britton, and Leverett, had struck Lewrie as much of the same frame of mind as Lt. Harcourt … a tad sulky and disappointed.
Thankfully, Lewrie had his “spies”. Pettus, Jessop, Yeovill, and Desmond and Furfy all berthed below among the common seamen, with their ears open, and he had Geoffrey Westcott in the wardroom to pick up on the mood of his officers. All were “Captain’s Men”, who could not pry too overtly, round whom disgruntled, larcenous, even mutinous sailors would not gripe or complain too openly, but, by just listening, the people of his entourage could glean information and pass on should it sound dangerous. Lewrie’s only lack was below in the Midshipmen’s mess, since he had brought no one beholden to his patronage or his “interest” aboard with him, and despised the practise of favouring young “cater-cousins” or the nepotism of placing one’s own sons in one’s vessel.
“’Vast there, damn yer eyes,” Lewrie snapped as Bisquit tumbled down from the poop deck, where he’d been barking and chasing after the many seagulls that wheeled and hovered out of his reach, and pressed his way past Lewrie’s legs into the great-cabins. The dog dashed about and made a rapid circuit of the day cabin, sending Chalky scrambling from the comfy settee cushions to the top of the desk, in a bristled-up and spitting huff. Bisquit trotted to the edge of the desk, snuffled at the cat, dangerously within clawing distance, and wagging his bushy tail in glad greetings, before padding to the middle of the canvas deck chequer to sit down, tongue lolling as if he was late to dinner.
“Ye know ye don’t belong in here,” Lewrie sternly said.
Bisquit whined and did a little dance with his front paws, with a grin on his face, his stand-and-fall ears perking up.
“Got spoiled ashore, sir,” Pettus said with fondness in his voice. “Allowed the run of your father’s house all winter when you were healing up? Warm fires, and treats in the kitchen, and he learned to go out to do his business. Jessop and I taught him. Put him out of the cabins, sir?”
Bisquit didn’t think that his case was made, for he whined some more and rolled over onto his back, wriggling back and forth to invite someone to come rub his belly.
“Oh, Hell,” Lewrie gave in, kneeling down to oblige the dog, sending Bisquit into paroxyms of delight. “You bloody pest. Aye, ye are, d’ye know that?” But he said it with a coo.
Yeovill came in with his food barge.
“Now just look what you started, Yeovill,” Lewrie accused with mock severity. “All your warm kitchen fires, and treats.”
“Me, sir?” Yeovill gawped. “Wasn’t just me, sir!” He peered about, as if looking for support from his co-conspirators. “But, ehm … should I put out an extra bowl, sir?”
“Aye,” Lewrie said with a sigh as he got back to his feet. “A few sausages cut up, to go with his gruel.”
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays were “Banyan Days” when boiled salt meats were off the menu, replaced with oatmeal, cheese, bisquit, pease pudding, portable soup, butter, and beer. But, no one with a heart could begrudge Bisquit or Chalky their jerky, sausages or pemmican. Except for when Lewrie had supper guests, Chalky got his in a bowl at the foot of the dining table. Poor old Toulon, who had died the year before, had had his bowl there, too, but it proved to be too small for Bisquit. He got a chipped soup bowl on the deck to hold his food. After they’d eat, Chalky nervously peered down at the dog, let out a warning hiss, then did a prodigious leap far past him to bound into the starboard quarter gallery right aft and take a perch atop the stores packed in the un-used toilet. Bisquit padded about for a time before circling round on the Axminster carpet by the low, brass Hindoo tray table in front of the starboard-side settee and flopping down to take a nap.
“Spoiled, indeed,” Lewrie commented to Pettus, as his steward served him a steaming-hot cup of tea with goat’s milk and sugar. “Do you keep an eye on him, though, if he looks in need of … going.”
“Yes, sir,” Pettus said with a sly look. “Hear that, Jessop?”
“Aye, I do,” the servant said with a much-put-upon sigh.
* * *
Try as he might to stay aft in his cabins and write letters or read, and appear calmly confident—he thought of practicing upon his penny-whistle, but that was out, for every tootle made Bisquit howl along!—there was no helping it. Lewrie went back on deck by Six Bells of the Day Watch, had his collapsible wood-and-canvas deck chair fetched to the poop deck, and spent the last hour of that watch, and the first hour of the First Dog, pretending to loll unconcernedly, or pace about without appearing to fret, as his little convoy made its slow way down-Channel. The following winds from the Nor’east remained steady, and the Channel, which could be a right bitch three days out of five, stayed relatively calm, with only long rollers and waves no greater than four or five feet high, in long sets.
Even in a time of war, with French merchant trade, and the trade of her allies, denied passage, the English Channel was still one of the busiest bodies of water in the known world. It was also a body of water where French and Dutch privateers preyed upon the great convoys bound out overseas, or returning with their riches. Lewrie had cautiously ordered that his charges would hug closer to England than to the middle, just in case, but then so did every other ship with a master with a lick of sense. If the enemy could not pounce upon rich prizes fresh from India or the West Indies, they’d settle for vessels from the coasting trade, or the many fishing craft, which made the waters even more crowded. Fortunately, the Nor’east wind precluded vessels bound up-Channel for the Dover Straits from making much progess close-hauled, forcing them further out from the coast to make their tacks in more-open water, and this day’s traffic was mostly out-bound off the wind, so Sapphire and her convoy went with the flow, their own advance blunted for half the day by the stiff currents up-Channel.
Lewrie waited ’til the second rum issue of the day had been doled out, folded up his chair and bound it to the bulwarks, then went down to the quarterdeck. Lt. Elmes had the watch, and was standing by the starboard bulwarks, peering shoreward with his telescope when Lewrie appeared.
“Your pardons, sir,” Elmes said, surrendering his spot to his Captain, who owned the windward side of the quarterdeck when he was up.
“No matter, Mister Elmes,” Lewrie genially told him. “Is that Beachy Head yonder?”
“Aye, sir,” Elmes answered with a smile. “Three points off the starboard bows, and about eleven or twelve miles off.”
“A long, slow passage, so far, aye,” Lewrie commented, trying to spot the first glow of the lights that marked it. He looked aloft and forward at the set of the sails and how they were drawing, t
o the long, gently-fluttering commissioning pendant to gauge the strength of the winds, and found that the beginning of sunset in the West was going reddish.
“Sign of a calm night,” Lewrie said, rapping his knuckles on the bulwark’s cap-rail for luck. “If the wind holds out of the Nor’east, if the seas don’t get up, and the French keep to their side of the Channel t’night. Eleven or twelve miles, d’ye say?”
“Aye, sir,” Lt. Elmes agreed.
Lewrie looked round the deck and found the Sailing Master, Mr. George Yelland, making his way up a ladderway to the quarterdeck, his coat off, and his head bare in an idle, Dog Watch casualness.
“Ah, Mister Yelland,” Lewrie called out. “A lovely early evening, hey? You will be using your sea cabin tonight?”
“Thought I might, sir, just in case.” Yelland told him.
“Let’s take a peek in the chart space, if you don’t mind, sir. I’m thinking that it may be necessary t’come a point more Westerly, so we don’t get trampled by a home-bound trade in the middle of the night,” Lewrie suggested. “Hug the coast a tad closer?”
Once in the chart space, the Captain’s clerk’s former office, and a small lanthorn lit, they both pored over the charts.
“Uhm…” Yelland mused, sucking on his teeth in thought. “We could espy Saint Catherine’s Point light round midnight, aye, sir, if we alter course. With any luck at all, we might be in sight of Portland Bill by dawn, and about twelve or so miles off.”
“At which point, we’ll alter course to West by South, Half-South or West-Sou’west, depending on wind and weather,” Lewrie decided, “and clear Start Point and Prawle Point by a wider margin.”
“Looks good to me, sir,” Yelland agreed, tentatively making a few pencil marks on the chart.
Christ, does he ever have a wash? Lewrie asked himself. Their Sailing Master’s body odour was almost as rank as the smells from his clothing. Lewrie dreaded spending too much time in the chart space, conferring with Yelland, in future. Not with the door shut, anyway.
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