Fletcher's Fortune

by John Drake

  But though their effort might be futile, their seamanship won cries of admiration from our crew. It was a wonderful thing to see them come bounding across the waves as if bent on collision, then go about in a roar of canvas, their top-men nimble as monkeys in the rigging, to bear away on the opposite tack. Much has been said about the poor seamanship of the Republican French Navy and it’s mostly true. The professional officers who’d run King Louis’ Navy had all been murdered or exiled. But there was not a damn thing that any Englishman could have taught the crews of those two vessels. And I say it who hates the French like poison. I suppose they had volunteer crews and were at sea often enough to learn their trade.

  Finally, they tried a new tactic. At wildly long range, one of them had the cheek to run out his guns and give us his piddling, pop-gun broadside.

  At first their shot fell nowhere near us. We didn’t see so much as a splash. But their fire was steady and regular with each gun sounding separately across the waves as it fired in turn.

  “Hmm!” says Sammy with interest. “That’s not like the Frogs. Looks like they’ve got their best man pointing each gun. Wonder how good he is ... ” Not everyone took this so calmly, especially when there came a horrifying SHOOOSH! of shot streaking between our masts, no more than ten feet over our heads.

  I felt a sudden shock of fear, as if I’d been hit, and an audible gasp rose from our gun-crews.

  “Why don’t we give it to them buggers?” says a voice, to a growl of agreement.

  “Silence!” cries Lieutenant Seymour. “I’ll fire when I know I can hit something! They’re just burning powder.” But they were burning it for our special benefit and it made the crew uneasy. It was the first time we’d been under fire and, after all, there was always the chance of a lucky hit. Midshipman Percival-Clive seemed particularly to hold this view. He leaned out of our port, gulping at the puffs of smoke bursting from the lugger’s guns, and bit his lip and chewed his nails.

  “Can they hit us?” says he. “Is there a chance, is there a chance?” He muttered and moaned and spread anxiety like the plague from gun to gun. Mr Seymour should have shut him up, but he didn’t. All his attention was given to judging the range to the Frenchman. I could see that Sammy was bursting to say something but recent experience had made him wary. Then Johnny Basford, in all innocence, copied Percival-Clive.

  “Here, Sammy,” says he, “can them Froggies hit we? Is there a chance?” Sammy beamed at him and answered in a voice loud enough to be heard from end to end of the deck.

  “Is there a chance?” says he, “Johnny lad, they’ve got about as much chance of hitting us from there ... as you have of ramming half a pound of butter up a cockatoo’s arse with a red-hot needle!”

  There came a roar of laughter at this, more than the joke deserved perhaps, which pricked the tension and made us feel better.

  Mr Seymour had the sense to see the value of it and laughed with the rest. Then he looked at Sammy, and once again across to the Frenchman, and leaped up the companionway to the quarterdeck. He touched his hat to Captain Bollington and said a few words. The Captain nodded and Mr Seymour called down from the quarterdeck rail.

  “Number eight crew! Run out the larboard bow-chaser! Lively now!”

  “Aye aye, sir!” says Sammy, in great delight. “Come on, lads!” and he led the rush to the long bronze guns on either side of the bowsprit. Being slow-firing they were not run out as a matter of routine when we went to quarters, but left under their tarred-canvas jackets to protect them from the spray. Each gun-crew was practised with them but Sammy was their master.

  “Train to larboard, Mr Bone!” says Lieutenant Seymour, but the order was superfluous. We had already cast off the gun’s tackles and were hauling it through ninety degrees to secure it to the empty gun-port waiting in the quarterdeck bulwark. The gun was a beautiful thing, over twelve feet from muzzle to cascabel, gleaming golden bronze with leaping dolphins cast in metal above the trunnions. It was an Italian piece, nearly a hundred years old, with the gun-founder’s name inscribed at the breech: Albertus Ambrosius me fecit, it said.

  Through the bulwark gun-port the bronze gun glared at the lugger now about half a mile away on our beam. To give urgency to our actions, the lugger fired again. White smoke with a stab of orange, followed by a flat “thud” and the howling shot, then ... CRASH! By luck or judgement she found us and splinters flew from our hull.

  “Move! Move! Move!” cries Sammy, as we strained to make ready the gun. “Nimmo! Get me a full charge from the magazine ... Run!” The boy raced away, his leather cartridge box bouncing on its strap, as Sammy and Obediah screwed the gun’s firelock in place by the touch-hole. The boy was back in seconds, and we loaded and primed in record time. All was ready and we had only to aim and fire.

  Captain Bollington, Mr Williams and a crowd of others had joined Mr Seymour to watch the fun and every eye was on Sammy. Most men would have quailed at this but Sammy loved it. Careful fire at long range with a good gun was meat and drink to him.

  Beside Sammy, Lieutenant Seymour hopped from one foot to the other in his excitement. Both were small men, but Sammy was thin as a stick where the Lieutenant was short legged and heavy. And Sammy was neat in his dress where the other was untidy to the point of comedy. At that moment he was bobbing his head from side to side, judging distances and looking at the gun and itching to do the thing himself. Captain Bollington guessed his mood.

  “Will you not lay the gun, Mr Seymour?” says the Captain. The Lieutenant sighed and straightened up.

  “With respect, sir, I’ll leave it to Bone,” says he. “Now then, Mr Bone, let’s see if you can’t knock a spar off that ship.”

  Then they all stood clear of the recoil and Sammy took command. He gave the gun two degrees of elevation, and trained it to his satisfaction. Meanwhile, thud! The lugger fired again, the shot going God knows where as she pressed closer under bulging sails, still keeping safely out of range of our main-deck guns.

  Sammy took his sight, tightened the trigger-line ... an instant of intense concentration ... and ... BOOM! The gun plunged back and we fell upon it like demons. Sponge-powder-RAM! Shot-wad-RAM! Heave-heave-heave! To run her out and point. Calmly Sammy took aim and fired, and our second shot shrieked across the water. Again we leapt to our drill, but in the middle of it came a great roar of cheering and all those about us were thundering Sammy on the back with expressions of enraptured joy.

  He’d done it. And with only two shots. The lugger was dragging the wreckage of her foremast across her port bow, destroying the skilful balance of wind, sail and hull that had sent her flying across the waves. I could see her crew running like ants in panic to get her clear again.

  But Captain Bollington was yelling orders at the top of his voice as he ran back to the quarterdeck followed by Lieutenant Williams. And in an instant we were securing the bow-chaser as Phiandra came through wind on to the larboard tack to fall upon our victim. By the time we were back at our main-deck gun, Phiandra was bearing down on the lugger with every sail set and the wind on her quarter, her best point of sailing, and she thrashed onward like a racing stallion. Every line sang and we leaned through the gun-ports cheering madly in the thrill of the brief chase.

  The lugger had no chance of escape. She was barely making way. We were alongside of her in minutes, with topsails backed to take the way off our ship. Her consort sensibly ran downwind and left her to her fate. There was nothing they could have done. The pair of them together was no match for us with their pip-squeak guns.

  With no more than ten yards between us and the Frenchman, our crew stood laughing and joking and slapping each other on the back. We were already guessing at the value of our fine prize and wondering how much we’d each get for her. Some of us were even calling out to the Frenchies, friendly as could be. After all, we’d won, hadn’t we? We could afford to be jolly.

  None the less, on both sides, every gun was primed and loaded, and far too close to miss. In fact we were so clo
se that we could see faces staring and hear them chattering French at one another. They couldn’t hope to fight but they hadn’t hauled down their flag yet and they were cram-full of armed men.

  Captain Bollington called across in French, which he spoke fluently. I presume he was calling on them to surrender ... silence ... and their flag stayed at the maintop. He called out again, but in the middle of it some infernal bloody maniac on their side yelled a command and their guns roared out in a deafening bank of flame and fire. Splinters flew, a burning wad whooshed over my head and, in the corner of my eye, I saw number seven’s powder monkey smashed into a pile of steaming meat.

  “Bastards!” yelled Lieutenant Seymour, “FIRE!” And Phiandra shook to the recoil of the larboard battery and four carronades. The carnage on the decks of the lugger was indescribable. That one broadside was all they got off and their vessel was reduced in minutes to a collection of wallowing wreckage stained and running with the produce of the slaughterhouse.

  God knows what the Frenchies thought they were doing in firing on us. Perhaps they thought the surprise would even up the disparity of force. As it was they maddened our gun-crews and we did not cease firing until Captain Bollington and the Lieutenants pulled each gun-captain physically from his work.

  Pierced through and through, the lugger went down in minutes; one of the few ships I ever saw sunk by gunfire in all my years at sea. Of all the men she had aboard, we managed to save about fifty. Some were killed by our fire or dragged below with their ship, but many drowned miserably, gulping and throttling within reach of our ship. We threw them lines and hauled them aboard as fast as we could, but there were so many of them and the water was cold and, like our own tars, hardly any of them could swim. They might have been enemies but it was a dreadful thing to see.

  And then we had them to feed and to guard for the next few days until we caught up with the convoy and could pass them into the charge of one of the seventy-fours that had more room for prisoners than we did.

  But a few of the prisoners stayed aboard for a while under the care of our Surgeon, Mr Jones. He was a good surgeon, unlike many that went to sea, and if he hadn’t been a Wesleyan Methodist, who’d made a nuisance of himself with his Bible-thumping, he’d doubtless have carved out a good practice ashore. As it was, we had him and had given him little chance to exercise his skills so far.

  Thus when the Frog prisoners came aboard, he and his mates were waiting to pounce on those that were wounded and whisk ’em down to the orlop where the knives and saws were laid out ready. And a merry time they had of it too. There was nowhere you could go to get away from their patients’ screams. But Mr Jones surprised everyone and managed to save three men who were so badly wounded as to be despaired of when they entered the ship. It wasn’t until some time after we’d rejoined the convoy that these three finally appeared on deck.

  They were dressed all neat and clean in Phiandra rig and heavily swathed in bandages. They blinked in the sunlight as Mr Jones brought them aft to show them off to the Captain. In all fairness, he’d done a fine job of stitching them together and I suppose he wanted his pat on the back. Also, the word had gone round that the Frogs had something to say of their own, and most of the ship’s company gathered round to see what this was. What happened next showed a side of Captain Bollington’s character that I don’t think would strike too many echoes today. But it was common enough in those days.

  The Frogs were taken to the quarterdeck and were received by the Captain and his Lieutenants. A murmur of surprise went round as we saw that the Frogs saluted just the same way as we did, and the Captain said a few words of praise to Mr Jones. Then one of the Frogs stood forward and launched into a flowery speech in English. He covered all the expected ground about how grateful they were and then struck out on a new tack about how the three of them were Bretons, loyal to King Louis, and wanted no part of what those damned rascals of Paris were doing.

  “So, Monsieur le Capitaine,” says he, “we shall have no more revolution and we ask only that we shall be taken into your ship, to serve under that flag!” And he pointed dramatically at the big ensign flying from the jack-staff astern. There was a silence and we turned to see how Captain Bollington would respond. He said nothing for a while, but his face went white and he trembled like a boiling kettle.

  “Monsieur,” says he, “never in all my service have I received so disgraceful a proposition! Don’t you realise that you’d serve against your own folk and your native land! Don’t you remember your shipmates who fell in action against my ship, and now lie dead in the bosom of the sea? I pray God that your own mothers should never hear of this!” He choked with the strength of his emotions, caught a grip of himself and continued. “Mr Williams!” says he. “Get ’em out of my ship this instant! Take them to the Flagship and let the Admiral decide on them.”

  And that was that. Over the side they went in double-quick time. But if you ask me, he was a bit hard on them. You’ll not be surprised to learn that I take no cognisance whatever of French politics, but even I knew that some of the Frogs were loyal to their dead King and wanted to overturn the revolution. In any case, as far as I was concerned, if the Frogs wanted to fight one another, then the very best of good luck to ’em! All I’d ask is the pleasure of handing ’em the muskets to do it with. But I kept this opinion to myself because Sammy and the others thought the Captain had done right. In fact he’d touched precisely the right chord with Phiandra’s people and they loved him for it. That’s the sort of daft thing that marks out a leader.

  So much for my first action and my first sight of the French. I’d emerged unscathed and seen a ship sunk, but I soon found that there were far more deadly battles to be fought against enemies aboard our own ship.

  13

  In soliciting your most urgent co-operation, I beg to repeat, sir, that Mr Fletcher’s inheritance is of so enormous an extent that whosoever holds it becomes not merely rich, but one who wields power in the land.

  (Letter of 25th February 1793 to Mr Nathan Pendennis from Lucey and Lucey, Solicitors.)

  *

  In the late afternoon of Monday 4th March, a post chaise turned off the Great North Road into Lonborough. It was spattered with the mud of a long journey, and the gentleman within was invisible through the grime on the windows and the wraps that smothered him. But the horses were fresh from the last change and they came on with fire and steam, at a rattling pace. Yapping dogs chased behind, and the populace (being solid Staffordshiremen) cast a critical eye over the expensive rig and the postilion in his livery.

  “Whoa!” cried the latter, and pulled to a stop beside a group of onlookers. “Thirty-nine Market Street!” he cried. “Lucey and Lucey — firm o’ lawyers! Half a guinea for the man who leads me there!” Five minutes later he was hammering the door-knocker at number thirty-nine, to announce his passenger, before throwing open the door of the chaise and turning down the steps, to let him out.

  Awkward in his thick travelling-clothes and stiff from cold hours of sitting, the heavy figure of Mr Nathan Pendennis descended in dignity to greet the two men he had come so far to meet and who stood before him amazed at his sudden arrival: Mr Richard Lucey and his son Edward, solicitors to the late Sir Henry Coignwood and executors of his Will.

  “Mr Pendennis?” said the elder Lucey. “Can it be you, sir? Come from Polmouth?”

  “Indeed sir,” said Pendennis, pulling off his glove to shake the other’s hand. “Three hundred miles in under four days! Never in my life have I made such a journey: three nights at three different inns and thirty-one changes of horses — I counted ’em! Such fearful cost!” He shook his head in sorrow then set his jaw to the business in hand. “But considering the content of your letter of the 25th, Mr Lucey, I deemed it justified ... ” He paused and looked around him.

  “Quite so,” said Lucey, recognising Pendennis’s reluctance to say more in public. The two men exchanged glances and understanding passed between them.

  “And you,
sir, will be Mr Edward Lucey?” said Pendennis to the younger man.

  “Sir!” said Edward Lucey.

  “Now get you inside, Mr Pendennis,” said Mr Richard Lucey. “’Tis bitter cold and there’s a good fire inside.” Pendennis looked uncertainly at the chaise and its driver. “Never fear!” said Lucey. “My people shall see to your machine and your man, and you shall lodge with myself and my son. I’ll not hear of anything else.” Gratefully, Pendennis allowed himself to be led to Mr Lucey’s private office and sat before the fire. Refreshment was produced and life began to flow back into the toes that he’d not heard from for two days.

  Pendennis sighed in comfort and considered the Luceys. He liked what he saw. The son was a man in his twenties with a serious and intelligent manner. A very proper young man, of whom Mr Pendennis approved. The father was better yet: a prosperous man in his fifties, like Mr Pendennis himself, with dark clothes and just such a wig as Mr Pendennis wore. True, he was thin and grey where Pendennis was robust and ruddy but, all in all, Pendennis felt that Mr Richard Lucey presented a most admirable and dignified appearance.

  Simultaneously, Mr Richard Lucey was weighing up Mr Pendennis, and reaching similar conclusions. The result was that the two men achieved an instant rapport, which was all the more complete because the business that had brought them together was, for both of them, one of those rare occasions in life where obligation precisely coincides with inclination. For his part, Nathan Pendennis had caught the authentic sniff of vast wealth and felt it his duty to become the saviour and friend of its owner. And if he might poke the Navy in the eye at the same time, then so much the better! As for Richard Lucey, he knew exactly how things had stood between his friend Henry Coignwood and Lady Sarah, and was determined to deny her any benefit from the fortune.