Into Uncharted Seas

by E. C. Williams

  Sam joined the other two men in murmuring appreciation for the ingenuity of this solution, but it called forth for Sam a mental image of a truck careering wildly down a sandy track through the bush, a dozen or more militiamen hanging on for dear life; an image so comical he barely restrained an urge to laugh aloud.

  The Governor rounded off the conference with a concise summary of the impact of the war on Nosy Be's economy, It was a sobering subject, but with some bright spots. “Despite the pirate raids on shipping, trade continues at nearly peacetime levels, both local trade and that with Home,” the Governor concluded. Like many Kerguelenian settlers, even those born abroad who had never so much as visited the Rock, he often referred to Kerguelen as “Home”.

  They adjourned soon after, and Sam made some notes in his pocket diary while being transported back to the harbor, his handwriting jagged and spiky from the jolting of the limousine however much care he took. The activity reminded him again of the need for a staff. He also came across a note to himself from some days previously: the single word “Munro”. He had completely forgotten his rage at the young officer over the damage to the motor sloop's 75mm rifle and the death of her gunner. Something else to take care of.

  Once back aboard the Albatros, he quickly shifted into comfortable at-sea slops and passed the word for the XO. He would have liked very much to pace off his dinner in the late-afternoon breeze while doing some thinking, but no rest for the wicked, as his mother used to say, both of her own work and his childhood chores. He remembered wondering, when a small child, if that meant she thought he – and herself – were wicked, and if so why that meant they should never get any rest. In any event he had another conference coming up, one he was to chair and for which he had the responsibility of providing an agenda.

  Al Kendall quickly appeared, and came prepared with a draft agenda – God bless an efficient XO, Sam thought gratefully.

  Most of the items had to do with the normal administrative responsibilities of the SOPA, made more complex by the fact that, for the first time, all four vessels of the squadron were in port at the same time. Mundane but necessary things like the honey barge schedule; the liberty boat schedule – both operations and crewing (the Albatros's motor sloop was always the liberty boat, since it was the most suitable small craft, but the vessels in port took it in turn to man it); delivery of stores; in-port drills; the usual reminder about security and the need to vet all visitors to vessels from ashore. There was also a warning that the Flag XO intended to test the in-port security of the squadron with his own secret agents, who would pretend to be contractors, vendors, or the like in order to gain access to a vessel; XO's who didn't want a rocket from Flag had better be sure to check the bona fides of all strangers seeking to come aboard. Sam thought that last was a nice touch.

  “All good stuff, Al. I have a few things to add. Put me down for a briefing on the current state of play. Most of what I learned at His Nibs' today was warm wind, but I did pick up a few interesting tidbits of hard news.

  “Main thing: it was decided that Joan will get top priority in the dock for installation of the new propulsion machinery – we have to schedule that. She'll need to borrow some extra hands for the dead shift into the dock, but you and Mike Christie can work that out between you.

  “Then, once we've seen Joan into drydock, the Albatros and one of the 'little sisters' needs to get underway and sweep for pirates on the southern approaches. We can't leave the sea lanes unattended for long. We've said it before but it bears restating: there's some ratio of losses we can't tolerate – say, one out of five or six merchantmen captured or sunk. If losses rise to that point, owners will stop risking their vessels in the IO trade, and the economies of the tropical settlements will start to die. That will mean victory for the pirates. But we all know that.

  “Anyway, we have to decide which of the 'little sisters' to take with us, and which to leave to patrol local waters. I'm leaning toward taking the Roland – she's bigger and faster – but Scorpion has the advantage of looking like a Caliphate vessel, and could suck in a pirate raider fooled by her innocent appearance. It may boil down to which of the two is readiest for sea in terms of stores, manning, and so forth. We'll discuss that tomorrow, and set a sailing date and time.”

  Kendall was busy taking notes, and Sam paused to allow him to catch up. After a moment he went on, “Last thing: I've decided I need a flag staff. It needn't be very big, but I need at least one officer. We'll talk about who that ought to be during the conference, maybe come up with a draft summary of staff duties.”

  Al Kendall rolled his eyes and rasped, “Commodore, we're short-handed as it is. Where are we going to find you a staff officer? Any lieutenant with those capabilities is already essential where he is.”

  “We're just going to have to suck it up and make it happen, Al. With four vessels in the squadron, I have to have a staff, however small. This is as much for your benefit as mine. Right now, you're in effect the flag chief staff officer as well as XO of the flagship. It's too much for one man.”

  “Aye aye, Commodore,” – in a resigned tone.

  “One last thing, Al, and this isn't for the conference agenda. What about Munro? Have you finished your investigation and report?”

  “Oh, yes sir – finished that days ago.”

  “Well, why the hell haven't you given it to me?”

  “Because I've been waiting until I can be sure you've cooled off enough to give the kid a fair shake, Commodore,” Kendall replied coolly, meeting Sam's gaze as he did so. Sam saw no defiance in Kendall's look – just calm determination.

  “Okay. Fair enough. I'm calm now. Just give me the gist, and I'll read it later.”

  “In the recent action, Lieutenant Munro complied with your verbal orders to the letter, as he understood them and as you related them to me: to stay at the extreme range of the pirate's guns and attack it with the 75 mm rifle. The motor sloop – more precisely, the rifle and its gunner – were struck by a spent ball fired at extreme range, a ball that may very well have skipped off the sea surface, based on the testimony of an eyewitness among the sloop's crew. Doctor Girard confirmed that, to the best of her knowledge and belief, the gunner's mortal wound was inflicted by a nearly-spent three-inch ball.

  “I might add that, in qualifying the Doctor as a witness, I brought out the fact that, in the course of her two cruises on the Albatros she has treated or examined in post-mortem no fewer than seventeen wounds inflicted by three-inch balls.

  “On losing the 75 mm rifle, Lieutenant Munro continued the action to the best of his now-limited ability, closing with the pirate dhow and peppering her with small-arms fire in an attempt to distract her gunners. I want to underline here something we discussed earlier, Commodore: using the motor sloop as a gunboat in action on the open sea has inherent risks, not just from enemy action but from the weather. A sudden squall could swamp the open sloop in an instant. We've been lucky in the weather so far, and in encounters with the enemy at sea. That can't always be the case.”

  “What about the gunner – Munro left the poor man's dead body hanging in the lashing!”

  “Again, my interviews turned up no fault there. The crew of the sloop made every effort to render first aid to the gunner until it was clear that he was quite dead. They stated that they didn't cut him down because to do so was, in their unanimous opinion, to make it very likely he would fall into the sea instead of the boat. The motor sloop was in action all the while, engaged with the pirate dhow, trying to dodge in and out of the range of the enemy's guns in order to annoy the dhow with rifle fire: Munro's attempt to continue the fight – to render some aid to the flag.

  “My final recommendation is that Lieutenant Munro, and the crew of the motor sloop, should be commended for their conduct during this action.”

  There was a long silence as Sam digested this. Lieutenant Commander Kendall waited calmly, reflecting that, from the look on the Commodore's face, he was about to administer the rocket of al
l rockets; that Al was about to be 're-calibrated' to within an inch of his life. He was prepared – he knew he was right – but he considered ruefully whether the suggestion that Munro be not just forgiven but commended might be the spark that ignited the rocket.

  But to Kendall's great relief, when he finally spoke Sam only said, “Very well, Al. Good job with the investigation. Send me a copy of your findings, and file the original. I'll have to consider the commendation, however.”

  “Sir.”

  “This is just the sort of job for a staff officer, Al – I served you up this steaming pile of merde when your plate was already overflowing as usual with all the stuff you have to do as flag XO. I'm more convinced than ever that what I need is a staff – that I'm not just whining about my workload.”

  “I agree, sir – and I'm not just whining about my workload! It's just that every suitable officer is irreplaceable in his current billet, given our shortage of officers.”

  “We'll figure it out. It won't be a problem in the short run, because only two vessels are going to get underway anytime soon – we can appoint one of the lieutenants from either of the other two ships to temporary duty as afloat staff until we can solve the officer shortage.”

  “There's that, sir. But it would be only a temporary solution.”

  “I wonder if I could get by with a senior midshipman in that role? Staff officer, I mean. Be good training for the mid. We could make one of the more-promising young petty officers an acting midshipman to take his place.” Sam was by now just thinking out loud, with Al as a sounding board, as was his habit.

  “'Acting midshipman' is a dead-end billet for a sailor without a license, Commodore. He can't expect to ever get a commission – can only go back to his previous rank, however good a job he does.”

  “I've been thinking about that, Al. Maybe it's time we started growing our own officers. Why did we require a mate's license for a commission in the first place? Just because the Navy was brand-new and we had no training courses, no syllabi for shipboard training, no notion of what we needed in an officer beyond seamanship and navigation.

  “After all, we're not merchantmen and we don't have insurance – who'd cover a naval combatant anyway, at any premium? – so why do we need to comply with KBS rules as if we were merchant vessels?”

  “Well, a mate's license – or better yet, a master's ticket – is a good indication that at least a man has knowledge of navigation, seamanship, ship construction, and so forth adequate to be a naval officer,” Al replied, re-stating their original rationale.

  “We can teach 'em all that ourselves, on the job, and use the KBS written exams to measure progress – I know I can talk Captain Lee into sharing them with us. And think of the advantages in recruiting, Al! An intelligent young seaman will know that the sky's the limit in the Navy – he can aspire to a commission, command at sea – even flag rank!”

  The executive officer mulled over that statement for a minute or two, then said, “You're right about that, Commodore – a smart young man, with some education, may see the Navy as a better career than most, if he knows he can rise through his own merits, the same as any trade ashore.”

  “Add that to the recruiting specs issue on the agenda, Al – let's talk about it during the conference tomorrow.

  “And now I think it's time we had a nightcap and turned in.”

  They had the nightcap, Sam turned in, and Al went away with, as usual, at least another hour's work to do before he saw his own bunk. His rough notes had to be transformed into a neatly-organized agenda, typed up by the clerk (who would be surly at this after-hours assignment) with clear carbon copies for every attendee. And it had to be typed error-free – Sam was picky about things like strike-overs in typewritten documents – something bound to make the schooner's single clerk even surlier.

  Ah, well. The life of an XO.

  - 14 -

  The next morning, shortly before it was time for the daily liquor issue, Sam stood on the Albatros's quarterdeck and watched boats fan out from her sides, returning their commanding officers and executive officers to Joan, Roland, and Scorpion. He felt a bit smug at his ability to chair a meeting briskly enough to deal satisfactorily with a rather long agenda in the interval between breakfast and “up spirits”.Especially in comparison with the Governor's interminable conferences.

  At the starboard ladder amidships, the sideboys and honor guard were just dispersing. To please Bill Ennis, the author of the Navy's ceremonial practices, Sam had told Al to pull out all the stops. Each captain had boarded that morning to the shrill twittering of bosun's calls, the salutes of sideboys, and a squad of landing party gunners at present arms, all immaculately turned out in white gloves and liberty uniform. Once the meeting had been brought briskly to a close, the officers departed amid the same pomp and circumstance, this time in reverse order of seniority.

  Now the Boatswain mustered a dozen hands with no ceremony at all and departed in the motor sloop in the wake of the Joan's boat, to help her make the dead shift, under commercial tow, into the drydock. Once they had seen her safely high and dry, settled into the blocks, they had orders to proceed as a formed body to the shop of master gunsmith Kwek, to pick up the Albatros's 75 mm recoilless rifle, now, Sam was assured, as good as new.

  In the meantime, the same tug that had seen Joan into drydock would assist Albatros to a berth, where she would take on stores, water, and ammunition for her next cruise. All in all, a busy day for the Old Bird. Especially for her XO, who had to oversee it all.

  But there was something that needed doing that Sam couldn't delegate, something he had made up his mind to do before the meeting had been half over.

  “Mister Damon,” he said to the midshipman of the watch, a recent Nosy Be recruit who was gazing with obvious homesickness at the shore, “Go and ask Doctor Girard if she will join me in my day cabin for coffee, if she can spare the time. Be sure not to phrase it as an order, mind – it's an invitation.”

  Damon gazed blankly at his Commodore. “Doctor Girard, sir?”

  “Yes you'll find her in sick bay.” Damon now looked somewhat desperate. “Ask any sailor on deck to show you to sick bay, Mister Damon. And you need to familiarize yourself with the schooner.”

  “Yes, sir,” Damon replied, and departed, still obviously uncertain. Sam sighed to himself. The boy still didn't even know the naval form for acknowledging an order.

  In his defense, he wasn't a naval midshipman at all, but a militia aspirant whom Sam had taken aboard for a cruise on an “exchange tour”, as suggested by Colonel Dumont. Except that there was no exchange involved, since Sam had no midshipmen or junior officers to spare for what he saw as an extended period of shore leave.

  Dumont had presented Damon to Sam as “ … an intelligent, well-educated lad, of good family, whose military career will benefit greatly from this broader exposure to the conduct of war.” From what Sam had seen of Damon so far, he had concluded that the kid had been forced on Dumont by his no doubt rich and well-connected family, and passed on to Sam as a way of getting rid of him. Well, the boy would find that the life of an officer in the Navy was quite different from service as an officer in the Nosy Be militia, which from Sam's observation seemed to consist largely of a series of mess nights, dances, and dinner parties broken by the occasional field exercise, always conducted at a conveniently short distance from Hell-ville so as to interrupt the Regiment's social life as little as possible.

  Actually, that's a bit unfair. Sam had to concede to himself: Dumont was clearly a conscientious commander, hard-working, and striving to improve his professional knowledge. And the officers of the Regiment not only served without pay, but had to provide their own uniforms, and even their own sidearms and field equipment.

  But this boy Damon had never so much as been out fishing in a skiff – he had become seasick at anchor, in the harbor his first night aboard – and Sam had little hope of his becoming much use about the schooner.

  Sam sent for Ritch
ie, and ordered a fresh pot brewed. Then he waited for Marie Girard.

  It was a much longer wait than Sam anticipated. He worried that there was a medical emergency keeping her in sickbay: should he go and see himself? Surely he would have been told by now of an accident … ?

  Finally, the medical officer appeared, still in her long white coat and out of breath. “I came as soon as I could, Commodore.”

  “Were you delayed? By a patient?”

  “No, sir,” she answered, puzzled. “That child Damon told me just seconds ago I was wanted urgently on the quarterdeck – 'not a moment to be lost'.”

  Sam stared at her blankly for a moment, then laughed out loud. It was obvious that Damon had gotten turned around on the way to sickbay, and when he finally found it tried to make up for some of the lost time by re-formulating Sam's message to Marie. He explained, and she laughed in turn.

  “It wasn't the least bit urgent, Doctor, and I'm sorry if you were inconvenienced. I just wanted an opportunity to chat with you, in private, about one of your patients.” They went below, where they found that Ritchie had as usual exceeded his orders, and sat out, in addition to just-brewed coffee, a bowl of fresh fruit and a bottle of the governor's ancient rum – the latter in anticipation of “up spirits” which was indeed piped as soon as they sat down.

  “I think I can guess which patient worries you, Sam. I happened to be on deck when Commander Ennis came aboard.”

  “That's right, Marie. I'm concerned about him. I take it you share that concern.”

  “Yes, to some extent. He's made great progress, physically, but he's obviously still not his old self – his entire personality seems to have changed. But Sam, you're mistaken about one thing – he's not my patient, but Doctor Cheah's.”

  “You're the senior medical officer, and anyway I trust your professional judgment more than I do Cheah's.” At this, Girard began a stout defense of Cheah's professional competence, which Sam waved away without a response; any officer worth his – or her – pay would automatically come to the defense of a subordinate.