While happy onshore to get drunk with friends, he nevertheless did not find companionship was required, being quite content with his own company and the grog he had accumulated. Sat in the sail locker, sure with the ship sailing easy on the big Atlantic swell nothing would blow out and need replacement, he was alone with his own thoughts, which turned to talk as the drink took hold.
Happiness, as most men understood it, was not a concept Devenow would have been able to comprehend: he was a bully who used his fists to get his way and only ever gave ground to superior force.
That was what Ralph Barclay had, his rank and the power it gave him. Some men saw him as a hard horse, Devenow saw him as fair. Labouring on a farm when news came that a war was in the offing, he had gathered up his belongings and made his way to where he could find out who was getting what in the article of a ship, and he never doubted that Ralph Barclay would be in line. Was he not a fine seaman and a fighter? HMS Brilliant was a tad smaller than he had anticipated but a berth was a berth; if he noticed, when he came aboard as a volunteer, the greeting was not entirely wholehearted from his hero, it did nothing to dent his pleasure in once more serving a man he admired.
Of course he got flogged, as he had been on previous commissions, and by damn he deserved it, for if he had gathered enough he was a bad bastard who might start to imbibe in secret, but would want to let the world know his thoughts when the drink took effect. For Devenow the navy was home – in truth, the only one he had ever truly had, having been raised in a workhouse in which he had learnt that punishment went with offence and the level of both that and the wrongdoing was to be decided by others; that was the way of the world and not to be gainsaid by the likes of him.
Steadily he drank, feeling the warmth spread through his body as fast as the thoughts raced through his mind. The singing started softly enough, a reprisal of all the old ditties he knew, those he had learnt as ship’s boy, crude songs that when sung ashore had passing womenfolk covering their ears. Slowly but surely the memory went from happy recollection and started to cloud with anger: the remembrance of how he had grown to take his vengeance on those who had mistreated him when he was nothing but a skinny nipper with his ribs easy to see, running back and forth alongside the thick, slimy anchor cable, tying it to the messenger that led to the capstan, sliding, slithering and sometimes coming to a tumble on the soaking deck, which would earn him a backhander or a clout with a starter.
He had run cartridges for the gunner too, priding himself on being the fastest lad between the handling chamber and the guns he was tasked to serve. Not that he got away without blows then either, for however swift he was it was never fast enough. Some of those old sailors had treated him hard, the marines being worst, none of them taking a liking to his lip when berated, and many a swipe round the ear he had got for his cheek. But he had grown to make them suffer, drawing blood for every remembered blow.
‘That’s what I did, see,’ he said, slurring to the lantern he had filched. ‘They whacked me good an’ proper when I were little but lived to regret it bad when I grew to a height.’ Then he laughed. ‘I made them buggers bleed and serves ’em right, I say.’
This recall was made even if it flew in the face of his own habit of clouting nippers if they annoyed him. In fact, Devenow would clout anyone who got his goat; right then he saw in the guttering tallow the face of Michael O’Hagan.
‘That Irish bastard not excepted, an’ all. He might think he bettered me bare-knuckle but he got lucky, that’s all. Next time I’ll knock that Paddy grin off the stupid papist bugger’s face.’
O’Hagan’s face was only an image and one distorted by rum, but the fist that swung broke it in half, and the fact that it went on to smash into the planking of the sail locker was not felt even if it broke the skin. Looking at his hand, Devenow saw it was bleeding at the knuckles, but to his addled mind that was Irish blood, not his. Pulling himself upright, though struggling to stop swaying, Devenow began to take apart an image of every man he had never bested in the one fight they had engaged in.
Devenow was no longer in the sail locker, he was in a dozen places where his fists had been employed: taverns, back alleys, ’tween decks where he had set out to punish. He had no memory of hitting the lantern or of it falling over so hard the door flew open and the tallow dropped out. Nor did he see or smell the flame begin to singe the bone-dry canvas. It might have been fine if the flame had not also got to some of the rum he had spilt, which flared up quickly, creating enough heat to allow the fire to spread. It was only when the smoke made him cough he realised what was happening, and all he did then was flee, leaving the fire to turn from a hazard, with the aid of the air from an open door, to an inferno.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
John Pearce was in the wardroom, sitting on a locker, trying to read Voltaire in the French, not easy since his contemporaries seemed intent on annoying him with loud and distracting conversations. Heinrich Lutyens was writing too, copying into his large ledger the notes he had made of the mayhem of music and carnality he had witnessed as the ship lay off Gibraltar, while a few feet away, but out of sight, Emily Barclay was embroidering a sampler. Michael, Rufus and Charlie were jawing away at a mess table while Cornelius Gherson was with the purser, who was getting increasingly impatient with his enquiries as to the value of his stores, this while Ralph Barclay lay in his cot dozing, having just been dosed with his pain-relieving tincture.
Captain Daws was at his logs, bringing them up to date from the hastily made notes off which he and his officers would work, each one ensuring that they tallied, so that those nosy buggers at the Navy Office would not spot some anomaly to excite their interest, especially in the article of stopping at Lisbon, this put down to the need to examine the rudder – feeble, for sure, but enough to avert even the most remote chance of censure.
The master was in his hutch off the quarterdeck, plotting the ship’s position with his charts, having taken a reading from the slate and employing his protractors, noting down the rate of sailing, making allowance for the currents acting on the deep hull and thinking that, given the state of the ship’s timbers, her progress was as good as could be expected and that he was heartily glad they had missed the eye of that recent storm.
The carpenter and his mate were making their way, crouched down, for the passage was low, along the walk that ran round the hull of the ship, bearing tarred rope, bolsters and mallets, as well as a bucket of pitch to hammer into and seal off the seams that were opening excessively – he too, like the master, thanking his own God for having missed what must have been a typical tempest for the time of year, while at the same time worrying about the waters they were now sailing through, the notorious Bay of Biscay.
All heard the cry of ‘Fire down below’, the one most dreaded by all on a ship at sea. Daws was out of his cabin in a flash, in time to hear the orders being given by the officer of the watch to get out and rig the fire engine, one which was carried out quickly, the hose going over the side to suck up seawater while the engine was taken to the seat of the blaze which was right under the gunroom. All over the ship there were men running, some carrying messages of how bad it was, others, who were by nature pessimistic Jonahs, rushing to where their kit was stored to gather up any money left over from the recent debauches, this while the marine guard was doubled on the spirit room to make sure they did not break in and drink themselves senseless.
The terror of fire in a wooden ship was not hard to fathom, but there was a drill to deal with it, one that was practised as often as running the guns in and out and, had the blaze been caught quickly, it could have been contained. But it had been given time to take hold, and that on timbers seasoned by years of use. The lower holds might be damp, but that did not truly apply to the higher decks.
The gunner had rushed to his place of work, and had the ship’s boys taking any filled cartridges to the upper deck, where, if the fire got out of hand they could be chucked into the sea. He knew that the order had gone out
to stop pumping and indeed he wondered if the captain was already taking steps to scuttle the lower decks, which would flood the magazine and render harmless the stores of powder, a wise precaution to avoid them all being blown to perdition.
The fight was not going well: from the sail locker it had spread to the bread room, in reality dry, hard biscuit, but with enough oil or lard in its consistency to make it highly inflammable, and already it had come through the planking to fill the gunroom with such dense smoke as to make seeking to contain it from above impossible.
Above, the rest of the crew were working just as hard. As a precaution, while also being part of the well-rehearsed drill, the four ship’s boats were being hauled off the battens on which they lay across the waist, while at the same time men were working below and on the deck to gather provisions of water and portable food, seen at this stage as a precaution. That took time: the boats were heavy and required hard work on the capstan to get them aloft then over the bulwarks so they could be lowered into the water, held in place long enough for what stores had been gathered to be loaded aboard, the whole slower than perfect with the ship being short-handed.
By the time they were in the water the upper deck had begun to burn, a clear indication that, below, it was out of control despite the hard work being done by the fire engine, backed up by what men could be mustered passing every bucket the ship carried. Several hands had suffered burns and were being attended to where they lay, by the surgeon. Captain Daws, also as part of his duties in a drill, but now beginning to appear a necessity, had gathered up the ship’s papers, his logs and the book of recognition signals for British vessels on service.
He was enough of a gentleman to have alerted Emily Barclay early on to be prepared to depart the ship. One of the first things Emily had learnt at sea was the need to be tidy: with constant drills, added to the possibility, always, of sudden action, her clothing had to be kept in its chest, as did all her other belongings not in use, outdoor garments always to hand. So she was able to grab quickly her heavy, hooded cloak, a comforter of some length to wrap around her neck and enough of her possessions that she could decently carry with an emphasis on warmth, it being February in the Atlantic.
The midshipman who had told her to prepare had gone – he had other duties to perform – and Lutyens’ cabin was empty, given he was occupied. At some point one of his assistants might come to remove his medical chest but that had not happened yet. It was so easy to enter, less so, for a person well brought up, to open his instrument chest and lift out those papers. Emily did hesitate, unsure why she wanted them, only aware that she did, while also conscious that what she was doing was morally wrong. She bit her lip hard as they went into the bag with those items she held dear.
Ralph Barclay, still light-headed and obviously nauseous from being so rudely awakened, was now being helped from his cot in a smoke-filled cabin by a less than steady Devenow, a man whose breath stank so much of drink that even the half-comatose captain recoiled from the blast. Gherson, irritated, if not near to panic, was helping too, his efforts, because of his agitated state, doing more harm than good. The arrival of the man’s wife to supervise his care, as well as to oversee the gathering of what possessions he needed and could be carried, was seen by Gherson as hypocrisy and he made no secret of his disdain.
‘Both of you, leave him be. He’s in more pain with your handling—’
‘Who are you to tell us what to do, Mrs Barclay?’ Gherson spat, cutting right across her. ‘The way you treated him.’
Emily responded with equal ferocity. ‘His wife, and I will say it once: if you force him to choose between us, you will be swabbing the decks in an hour. Now let go of him.’
Bleary eyed, Devenow looked at her, swaying back and forth in a manner that had nothing to do with the motion of the now stationary ship. Then he touched his forehead and slurred, ‘Savin’ your presence, ma’am, it needs a strong hand to aid him.’
‘It needs a steady one, get away from him.’
‘My dear,’ Barclay said, his eyes glazed.
‘Don’t speak, husband,’ she said, with a gentility to which he had not been exposed for months, this while she got his cloak round his shoulders. ‘Let us go, but slowly, there is as yet no need to panic.’
‘Gherson, my papers.’
‘I have them, Captain Barclay,’ he replied rushing out the door.
The sound of retching had Emily concentrating on Devenow, who was now bent over, one hand on the bulkhead, no doubt affected by the smoke and voiding his gut, so she missed that exchange. Another look around established that Gherson had fled from a place in which it was now becoming painful to breathe. Slowly she helped Ralph Barclay to move forward, leaving Devenow to follow if he wished, vaguely aware that somehow the attitude of those they passed on their way to the deck had changed.
‘Mrs Barclay, you must make your way to the entry port and get aboard the pinnace at once.’
‘How are—?’
She never got to finish the question, for Daws’ reply was too swift. ‘Bad, Mrs Barclay, very bad.’ Then he turned to a midshipman, a youngster trying and failing to look brave beside him. ‘Give orders to scuttle the lower deck.’
It was clear from the way the men below, who included the Pelicans, were retreating from the flames, that the fire was winning the battle, not them. The heat was spreading the flames as much as any sparks, and any water thrown on them was immediately turned to scalding steam. Few could stand more than a minute or two at the face of the conflagration, some retiring of their own volition, others requiring to be hauled back as they fell from the effects of the ferocious temperature. Behind them Lutyens was on his knees, trying to ease burns with salve, while his assistants used some of the water in the buckets to douse clothing that was singed and smouldering.
To Pearce and those with him, officers, warrants and hands all toiling without distinction, the world had reduced to that before them: the red and orange inferno crackling as flames jumped forward to set alight timbers, barrels, cannon trunnions and the tools required to work the guns that had what little moisture they contained sucked out by the heat. They took turns on the handles of the fire engine, pumping up and down to keep flowing a jet that could only delay, not douse out, the flames, backing up time after time as the fire forced retreat.
The point of no return was not the smouldering deck planking, with some of the upper-deck caulking already burning: it was when flames licked out of the upper scantlings. The carpenter’s walk, that narrow, low passage that ran right round the ship near the waterline, now slowly sinking under that, was, unknown to those fighting the fire amidships, acting like a funnel to progress it, taking it past them time and time again.
Eventually it set alight to those newly hammered-in pieces of pitch, and that acted on the scantlings, fire breaking through to the battens that held not only the shrouds, but also the blocks on which the falls were lashed. Then they caught the rigging, which began to burn quickly, the ropes being heavily impregnated with tar so that they went up like Roman candles, the flames snaking up towards the now flapping sails. The master, as soon as the alarm was sounded, had ordered the sheets let go, and brought HMS Grampus up into the wind to reduce a draught that was bound to feed the fire.
With the whole of the mid-to-stern area alight, the flames beginning to lick at those sails and the ship settling into the water as her lower deck was flooded, it was obvious HMS Grampus was in dire peril. The order to abandon did not come at that time: men, officers included, were sent to get what they could from a wardroom cleared by their servants, their sea chests now on the open deck. Especially needed was warm clothing, boat cloaks, and if they could manage it, foul-weather gear. Just as vital were the instruments by which they would navigate, the last thing of importance their personal possessions and logs. The captain’s servants had moved steadily back and forth to the cutter throughout the past half hour, carrying the things their master deemed necessary to aid them to survive.
/> John Pearce, blackened, as was every man who had been fire fighting, found his own chest, thankful to whoever had retrieved it, and flung it open, grabbing Hood’s letter, the order releasing his friends from the navy, as well as the tin of Parisian earth. Then, with his boat cloak bundled in his arms, he set off for the upper deck at a run, intent on trying to get to the other side of the fire and Lutyens’ quarters.
He wondered if he was too late as soon as he emerged onto the upper deck, and was shocked by the speed at which the fire, no longer being fought, had spread, aided now by gun ports opened to allow men to exit to the boats; flames were shooting up the nearest companionway, as well as billowing smoke, making his aim look impossible. But he tried anyway, glad to see that Michael, Charlie and Rufus had waited for him as he had asked. They inched along the walk that bordered the waist now empty of boats, with flames rising and licking at them, seemingly with a life of their own as they sought out flesh to burn.
The most forward companionway was clear of fire and so they moved down together, aware of the increasing heat, making for the next set of steps that would take them down to the Orlop deck. All around them men were running for safety and it was clear that, marine guards notwithstanding, some of them had got into the spirit store and purloined the contents: they were drinking as they ran. Suddenly a bolt of fire shot up from below; clearly the fire had touched something that acted like a torch.
‘It’s no good, John-boy,’ Michael yelled.
‘Barclay’s court martial papers are down there,’ Pearce shouted back, edging towards the companionway.
‘So is Old Nick,’ Charlie bawled.
An Ill Wind Page 17
