The King's Marauder

by Dewey Lambdin

  Lewrie went back up to the poop deck with his glass to see what else was transpiring. Knolles in Comus was still pursuing the second French corvette, though that ship was making a rapid exit from the scene, even setting stun’sls for more speed. The two transports following Knolles seemed glued to his stern, though much slower.

  As swiftly as the terrified Frenchmen were fleeing, it appeared that it would take ’til sunset before Comus could catch them up and bring them to action, and if those two transports fell further and further behind, they’d be left on their own, defenceless should another raider stumble across them.

  Bird in the hand, Lewrie thought with a shrug as he closed the tubes of his glass, and went back down to the quarterdeck. He waited for a lull, when he could speak with Lt. Westcott without interfering with his orders.

  “Ah, Geoffrey, would you like to take charge of our prize?” he asked in a low voice. “If Gibraltar has enough spare sailors to make up a crew, there may be a Commander’s epaulet in her. She’s sure to be bought in after the Prize-Court’s done with her valuation.”

  “Trying to get shot of me, sir?” Westcott said with a mock grimace. “That cuts sore! No, sir. I’d rather stay aboard and see what you’re up to, next.”

  “‘His men would follow him anywhere … if only for the entertainment’, d’ye mean?” Lewrie japed. He leaned closer to whisper his next question. “If not you, who d’ye recommend? Who can we best do without?”

  “I’d send Harcourt, and hope it’s permanent, sir,” Westcott was quick to say.

  “My thoughts exactly,” Lewrie said with a secretive smile, and turned to the Mids assigned to the quarterdeck. “Mister Fywell, pass word for Mister Harcourt, with my compliments.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” the lad said, doffing his hat and scampering.

  Lt. Westcott saw to boats to be brought up from being towed astern, and spare hands told off to man them and form part of the prize crew. Lewrie spoke with Marine Lieutenant Keane for at least twenty of Sapphire’s fifty private Marines to go aboard the prize to guard her French crew, sure to be larger than normal in expectations that she would have taken prizes of her own. Sapphire’s tall and skeletal Surgeon, Mr. Snelling, and his Surgeon’s Mates would have to go over to tend to any French dying or wounded, if the prize didn’t carry a doctor of her own, or if the casualty count was too high for that one to see to by himself.

  “You sent for me, sir?” Lt. Harcourt reported, doffing his hat.

  “Aye, Mister Harcourt,” Lewrie replied, “I wish you to take charge of the prize, and see her safely to Gibraltar. Best done in company with the rest of us, but, she’s sure t’have a large crew who won’t take kindly to bein’ slung into a prison hulk.”

  “Very good, sir!” Lt. Harcourt agreed with his first sign of joy since Lewrie had come aboard.

  “Take whom ye will,” Lewrie offered.

  “I’ll have Midshipman Hillhouse, sir,” Harcourt said.

  Thought ye might! Lewrie told himself; Birds of a feather!

  “Former Cox’n Crawley, and a few others from his old boat crew, too, sir,” Harcourt added.

  “I can’t assure you it’ll be permanent,” Lewrie cautioned, “but she’s French, so her captain’s wine stores should make up for it.”

  “I’ll see to my kit, if I may, sir?” Harcourt asked, eager to be off.

  “Carry on, then, sir, and the very best of good luck,” Lewrie told him in dismissal.

  And oh, wouldn’t it be sweet if it was permanent! he told himself, feeling whimsical; Harcourt gone, Hillhouse, and from what I’ve heard from my lads belowdecks, Crawley and his pack are the hardest of holdouts from Captain Insley’s days, too.

  He took another look towards Comus with his telescope, and it looked as if the other French corvette was showing Ralph Knolles a clean pair of heels.

  “Mister Britton, make a signal to Comus,” Lewrie ordered with a sigh. “Her number, and Discontinue The Action.”

  “Aye, sir,” Midshipman Britton replied, sounding as if all of his hopes were dashed.

  Mine, too, lad, Lewrie thought; Still, it’s been a good day.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  HMS Sapphire’s convoy skirted within twelve miles of Cape Trafalgar as they entered the Straits of Gibraltar’s approaches, keeping enemy Spain, and Europe, to their larboard side, close enough for the crews and passenger-soldiers to see and marvel over, near where the famous battle had been fought not quite two years before. The coast of Africa and the Barbary States appeared on their starboard side as they began the transit, and wary eyes were cast in that direction, for though the United States Navy had humbled the infamous corsairs from Tangier and other lairs, the sight of a British convoy ripe for the plucking might be too tempting for those bloodthirsty pirates who had terrorised European coasts, even in the English Channel, for hundreds of years.

  The Straits of Gibraltar were thirty-six miles long, narrowing to only eight miles wide at its slimmest point. There was plenty of depth for even Sapphire, and, once begun, the entrance to the Mediterranean was assured, even under “bare poles”, with no sails flying. The steady Eastward-running current would carry a ship through; it would be the getting out against that current that would be an arduous and slow passage.

  Lewrie ordered all ships to steer within four miles of Tarifa, and the little fortified Tarifa Island, on the North shore, almost as if taunting any Spanish gun batteries, but a safe mile beyond the range of even the biggest 42-pounder cannon. From there, the Spanish coast trended Nor’easterly, expanding the separation from shore, with all ships firmly in the grasp of the Eastward-running current, and free of the variable swirls and eddies of currents inshore.

  The bucklers had been removed from the hawse holes, the thigh-thick cables fetched up from the tiers, and bent onto the best bower and second bower anchors, and to the stern kedge anchors, in preparation for coming to anchor in Gibraltar Bay, and for the unfortunate accident of Gibraltar’s dangerous wind shifts which might leave them at the current’s mercy and sweep them past Europa Point and past the anchorages, forcing them to struggle, perhaps even towing themselves with ships’ boats, onto the Rock’s Eastern shore ’til a favourable slant of wind arose that could carry them back round Europa Point and into the bay proper, off the Ole Mole or the New Mole and the ancient Tuerto Tower, or, hopefully, right off the small town itself, which would be right handy for Lewrie’s shore visits.

  “Should we enter ‘Man O’ War’ fashion, sir?” Lt. Westcott asked as the heights of the Rock hove into view, and Pigeon Island appeared off their larboard bows.

  “Christ, no, Mister Westcott!” Lewrie quickly objected, laughing at the suggestion. “I’m not so sure of our people’s seamanship, yet. To go in ‘all standing’ and muff it’d be a hellish embarassment … not t’mention a good way t’run aground. I’ll leave that to the flashy fellows.”

  Extremely well-drilled, and sometimes lucky captains, could go in “all standing”, then reduce every stitch of sail in a twinkling and coast to a stop to drop the best bower in one smooth operation, but there was “many a slip ’tween the crouch and the leap” as the old adage said.

  “There they are, Mister Snelling,” Mister Yelland, the Sailing Master, pointed out to the Ship’s Surgeon. “Gibraltar to the North, and the high headland of Ceuta to the South.”

  “The Pillars of Hercules,” Mr. Snelling marvelled, “that led to Plato’s fabled kingdom of Atlantis!”

  “Beyond which the ancients would not go,” Yelland reminded him.

  “But, they must have, Mister Yelland,” Snelling objected, “for how else did the Atlantic ports of Spain and Portugal, Roman Iberia and Lusitania, get their goods to the rest of the Empire? And, back in those days, were there not Roman provinces round the shoulder of North Africa, like Mauretania Tingitania? Did not Roman seafarers know of the Canaries?”

  “Well, perhaps it was only the Greeks who feared to go beyond the Pillars, sir,” Mr. Yelland replied, looking a bit ne
ttled for the landlubber to know more than he did.

  “Aye, Mister Yelland,” Lewrie said, hiding his amusement. “The Romans held the Greeks in low regard, in all things. Though, no seafarers in the ancient world liked t’get too far out of sight of land.”

  “Did that Mister Gibbons say much of that in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, sir?” Lt. Westcott slyly enquired, taking a moment from his strict watchfulness. He knew that Lewrie had found it slow going.

  “Haven’t gotten t’that chapter yet, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said with a harumph to indicate that he’d been “gotten” for fair.

  “And, there is Cabreta Point, just now becoming visible past Pigeon Island, sir,” Yelland pointed out.

  “Do the latest charts show Spanish batteries, there, Mister Yelland?” Lewrie asked. “I’d admire to stand into the inshore variable currents as close as we can, and shave Cabreta Point, so we don’t get swept right past the bay’s entrance.”

  Yelland looked to the commissioning pendant high aloft, then to the thin clouds that crowned the heights of the Rock, squinting in thought. “I cannot recommend a closer approach to Cabreta Point than two miles, sir,” he said at last, “which is very close to the usual entry to the bay.”

  Lewrie paced aft a few steps to the double wheel helm, and the compass binnacle cabinet under the poop, to double-check their course. He then took a long look at the chart, pinned to the traverse board. The convoy still sailed in column on East by North, with a gentle wind from out of the West-Nor’west.

  “Mister Yelland, I’d admire did we alter course a point to larboard. Do you concur?” he asked.

  “Hmm,” that worthy silently mused for a long moment. “That puts us into the variable currents, but we’d have to abandon the main current within a few more miles, sir. And, closer to where we may safely go about North, into the bay. Aye, sir.”

  “Signal to all ships, Mister Carey,” Lewrie called out to the signals Midshipman on the poop deck. “Alter Course In Succession, One Point To Larboard.”

  “Aye, sir!”

  An hour and a bit more, and I’m shot of all this shit at last, he told himself; If we can’t make a showy entrance, then we’ll make a safe one … and our prize can make up for “flashy”.

  He found himself crossing the fingers of his right hand, most “lubberly” with his hand in a trouser pocket. He would not anticipate fresh victuals, clothing, or bedding washed in fresh water for a change, nor a long stroll ashore, nor a meal and a mild drunk in one of Gibraltar Town’s many taverns. To do so might jinx it, yet!

  * * *

  Once safely anchored by bow and stern, Lewrie had to keep mental fingers crossed against possible disaster, for the bay and the anchoring grounds were not the most secure sort of sea bottom, and Gibraltar was infamous for gales that seemed to whip up out of nowhere, sending many a ship ashore to pound themselves to pieces on the rocks. Lewrie had ordered 9-pounder guns dis-mounted and used as weights to keep the anchor cables from straining in a sudden blow, to keep the flukes of the anchors from dragging free.

  He’d had sailcloth awnings rigged over the poop deck and the quarterdeck and forecastle, too, for protection from the harshness of the sun, and the rare rains. It might have been late Spring back in England, but it was already a warm Summer in these latitudes. There was no protection from the warmth, though, when he took the 25-foot cutter ashore to the town quays, wearing his best-dress uniform made of wool broadcloth, long stored away at the bottom of one of his sea-chests. That required the sash and star of his knighthood, since he would be reporting his presence to the local senior Navy officer, the Governor, Lieutenant-General Sir Hew Dalrymple, and, most likely, the spy-master Thomas Mountjoy. He also took his sack of laundry, leaving it to Pettus to find a washerwoman.

  “Doesn’t look like much,” Lewrie commented as the cutter neared the quays. “Almost typical Spanish, or Italian.”

  “Seems all soldiers, sir,” Pettus said, taking the view in and sounding a bit disappointed to see so many troops strolling the quayside streets, some of them Provost men on patrol. Gibraltar Town had no civilian mayor, but a Town Major.

  “Some of ’em drunk’z Davy’s Sow,” Liam Desmond pointed out as he tweaked the tiller. “Ease stroke.”

  “That sounds promisin’,” Patrick Furfy snickered, turning on his thwart to steal a quick peek ashore, a huge grin on his face.

  “Wimmen,” Desmond added, looking expectant and hopeful.

  Gibraltar Town appeared a jarring, civilian appendage to the Rock, for everywhere Lewrie looked, there were row upon row of troop barracks, storehouses, and a very busy parade ground, perhaps the largest flat place available. Regimental bands were at practise in a cacophony of tunes, and soldiers “square-bashed” by companies, scattered from one end of the parade ground to the other. Not all that far off to the Northern end of Gibraltar, where the land narrowed to a long and skinny neck, were the immense fortifications. Walls with parapets on several levels, bristling with cannons of all calibres, with loopholes for musketry, the famous towers and redoubts known to all Englishmen as the Devil’s Tower and the Round Tower, where British Marines, grossly out-numbered, had fought off the Spanish and the French during the War of The Spanish Succession in 1704, they all gave the impression of a titanic giant’s castle. From up there came the faint crackling-twig sound of musket volleys as some regiment or other practiced live-firing. The Lines, as the fortifications were known, would be defended as stoutly should the Spanish come against them again, as they had been in 1704.

  Desmond conned the cutter alongside a large floating catamaran landing stage. Starboard side oars were tossed, the new bow man, Deavers, got his gaff hooked to a bollard, and the cutter glided to a stop alongside the landing stage. Desmond whipped a light line round a second bollard near the stern, and Lewrie and Pettus prepared to dis-embark.

  “You first, lad,” Lewrie had to prompt his cabin-steward. He had mostly gotten used to the Navy’s ways, but needed reminding that senior officers were “first in, last out”.

  There was a wide gangway leading to the top of the stone quay, but it was immediately swarmed by several men and women, all shouting their wares, some in broken English or heavy foreign accents, as bad as the London barkers who stood outside their masters’ shops to hawk their goods.

  “Vino! Blackstrap, two pence a pint!”

  “Preeties’ girl een town, all kind! Young, clean!”

  “Orange, leemon, pomegraneta, fresh from Tetuán!”

  “Scatter, you! Keep the gangway clear, there!” a Sergeant of the Provosts bellowed, waving his halberd to shoo the hawkers off.

  “Two pence th’ pint, arrah, Liam!” Furfy chortled.

  “Sorry, lads, back to the ship,” Lewrie told them. “I’ll take a bum-boat back, later. But, there will be shore liberty!”

  That mollified them, somewhat.

  “I’d best ask that Sergeant if he knows a good laundry, sir,” Pettus decided.

  “Aye, do so,” Lewrie agreed.

  “Captain Lewrie!” someone called from the head of the gangway. “Hallo to you, sir!”

  “Mister Mountjoy!” Lewrie replied, looking up and recognising his old clerk. “Have you come to collect me, right off?”

  Lewrie shooed Pettus up the gangway, quickly following, to take Mountjoy’s outstretched hand.

  “Thought it best, sir,” Mountjoy said. “My word, but it’s good to see you, again. It’s been what, six years, since I saw you off to the Baltic, at Great Yarmouth?”

  “About that, aye,” Lewrie said, recalling how Mountjoy had saddled him with those two Russian aristocrats to be landed as near to St. Petersburg as possible, after scouting the thickness and breadth of the winter ice in Swedish and Russian naval harbours before Admirals Sir Hyde Parker and Horatio Nelson sailed for Denmark, and the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801. The mad Tsar Paul had pressured Sweden and Denmark into his bellicose League of Armed Neutrality, ready to close the Baltic to British trade, s
eizing hundreds of British merchant ships and marching their crews off to Siberia. It could not be stood while England was still at war with France and her allies, resulting in a massive naval expedition to destroy the League’s navies, hopefully one at a time before the ice melted.

  That arrogant, skeletal sneerer, Zachariah Twigg, had been in charge of Secret Branch then, and the nobles had been sent on with a hope that they could aid the rumoured assassination plot against the Tsar. They arrived in St. Petersburg a touch too late to take part, and the youngest one had tried to have Lewrie killed, all for the affections of a Panton Street whore.

  “Now, what may I help you with, sir?” Mountjoy offered.

  “First off, ye can tell my man here, Pettus, where he can find a reliable laundry,” Lewrie told him with a grin.

  “There’s a very good one that I use, quite near my residence,” Mountjoy told him. “It’s not too far uphill. Let us go there.”

  “Ehm, shouldn’t I be calling upon Sir Hew Dalrymple, first?” Lewrie asked as they set off.

  “I very much doubt it he can spare you the time,” Mountjoy told him. “Just send round one of those new carte de visites with a short note. He’s much too busy, of late, hunting down foreign spies and enemy agents.”

  “A lot of those around, are there?” Lewrie wondered aloud.

  “Strong rumours, as far as I can determine,” Mountjoy imparted, “but nothing solid, and no names named. Anonymous tips about French or Spanish agents scouting the defences, some dis-affected Irish officers plotting to raise a mutiny and hand the Rock over to the Spanish, and of course, our anomymous tipsters will have us believe that there’s a cabal of Jews at the bottom of it. Pure balderdash. The worst problem are the traders who’d sell grain and foodstuffs to the Spanish, who aren’t eating all that well, these days, with the government in Madrid sending so much off to support Napoleon’s larders.”

  “It’s like a foreign town,” Pettus said, gawking as they made their way uphill along a narrow stone street lined with stone-front and stuccoed houses, shops, and lodgings, with stout wood doors set into the fronts atop narrow stone stoops, and the windows mounted high and rather small, iron-barred for security, and fitted with wood shutters inside. “There’s little English about it.”