A King's Cutter

by Richard Woodman

  ‘What is it, sir?’

  ‘You . . . you are to sail as master, your acting commission will be revoked. As we are no longer on special service only one commissioned officer is required.’ Griffiths lowered the letter. ‘I am very sorry.’

  ‘But we are operating under Dungarth’s orders,’ said Drinkwater bitterly.

  Griffiths shook his head, ‘Nominally we’re part of MacBride’s squadron now, clerks, Mr Drinkwater, the bloody world is run by clerks.’

  Drinkwater felt a terrible sense of disappointment. Just when Kestrel’s fortunes seemed to offer some promise after the long sojourn in the dockyard this news came.

  ‘No matter, sir. What is to be our complement?’ he asked hurriedly, eager for distraction.

  ‘Er, myself, you as sailing master, two mates, Jessup, Johnson the carpenter, a warrant gunner named Traveller, a purser named Thompson and a surgeon named Appleby.’

  ‘Appleby?’

  ‘God, man, we’re going to be damned cramped.’

  The six men sent from the Royal William were a pathetic group. They were not, by any stretch of the imagination, seamen. Even after three days on board Short’s starter and Jessup’s rattan had failed to persuade them that they were in the navy. Above his head Drinkwater could hear the poor devils being roundly abused as he discussed the final stowing of the cutter’s stores and powder with Jessup. Already he forsaw the course events would take. They would be bullied until one of them would be provoked into a breach of discipline. The flogging that would inevitably follow would brutalise them all. Drinkwater sighed, aware that these things had to be.

  ‘Well, Mr Jessup, we’ll have to conclude these arrangements in the gunner’s absence. I just hope he’s graced us with his presence by the time we’re ready to sail.’

  ‘Aye sir, he’ll be here. I seen him last evening Gosport side, but Jemmy Traveller is like to be last to join. His wife runs a pie shop near the ordnance yard. Jemmy’s always busy counting shillings and making guineas.’

  ‘So you know him?’

  Jessup nodded. ‘Aye with him in the Edgar. With Lord Rodney when we thrashed the Dons in eighty.’

  ‘The Moonlight Action?’

  ‘Aye, the same.’

  ‘I remember . . .’ But Drinkwater’s reminiscences were abruptly curtailed by a shout on deck.

  ‘Hey, sirrah! What in God’s name d’you think you’re about! Instruct the man, thrashing him is of no use.’

  ‘What the devil?’ Drinkwater leapt up and made for the companionway. He reached the deck as a portly man climbed awkwardly down from the rail. The familiar figure of Appleby stood scowling at Short.

  ‘Ah, Nathaniel, I’m appointed surgeon to this, this,’ he gestured extravagantly round him and gave up. Then he shot a black look at Short. ‘Who’s this damned lubber?’

  The bosun’s mate was furious at the intrusion. Veins stood out on his forehead as he contained his rage, the starter dangling from his wrist vibrated slightly from the effort it was costing Short.

  ‘This is Short, Mr Appleby, bosun’s mate and a first-class seaman.’ Drinkwater took in the situation at a glance, aware that his reaction was crucial both to discipline and to those petty factions that always cankered in an over-crowded man o’war.

  ‘Very well, Mr Short, if they cannot yet splice you must remember it takes time to make a real seaman of a landlubber.’ He smiled at Short, who slowly perceived the compliment, and turned to the new hands who were beginning to realise Appleby might prove an ally. Drinkwater spoke sharply but not unkindly. ‘You men had better realise your duty is plain and you’re obliged to attend to it or take the consequences. These can be a deal more painful than Mr Short’s starter or Mr Jessup’s cane . . .’ He left the sentence in mid air, hoping they would take heed of it. Comprehension began to spread across the face of one of them and Drinkwater grasped Appleby’s elbow and propelled him aft. He felt the surgeon resist then succumb. Reaching the companionway Drinkwater called forward, ‘Mr Short! Have those men get the surgeon’s traps aboard, lively now!’

  Appleby was slightly mollified by this piece of solicitude and his natural sociability gave way to Drinkwater’s distracting barrage of questions.

  ‘So what happened to Diamond? How’s the squadron managing without us? How much prize money has Richard White made? What on earth are you doing here?. I wondered if it was to be you when Griffiths mentioned the name, but I couldn’t see you exchanging out of a frigate for our little ship.’ Appleby felt himself shoved into a tiny box of a cabin and heard his young friend bawl for coffee. Drinkwater laughed as he saw the expression on the surgeon’s face. Appleby was taking in his surroundings.

  ‘I manage to fit,’ grinned Drinkwater, ‘but a gentleman of your ample build may find it something of a squeeze. This is my cabin, yours is across the lobby.’ Drinkwater indicated the doorway through which the landsmen were just then lugging Appleby’s gear. Appleby nodded, his chins doing a little rippling dance eloquent of disappointment. ‘Better than that claustrophobic, blasted frigate,’ he said rather unconvincingly. ‘All that glitters is not, etcetera, etcetera,’ he joked feebly.

  Drinkwater raised his eyebrows. ‘You surprise me. I thought Sir Sydney a most enterprising officer.’

  ‘A damned eccentric crank, Nathaniel. The frigate was fine, but Sir William festering Sydney had a lot of damned fool ideas about medicine. Thought he could physic the sick better than I . . . used to call me a barber, confounded insolence, and me a warrant surgeon before he was a midshipmite. Ouch! This coffee’s damned hot.’

  Drinkwater laughed again. ‘Ah, I recollect you don’t like intruders, no more than we do here, Harry,’ he said pointedly. For a minute Appleby looked darkly at his friend, stung by the implied rebuke. Then Drinkwater went on and he forgot his wounded pride. ‘By the way, d’you remember that fellow we brought ashore wounded at Plymouth?’

  Appleby frowned, ‘Er, no . . . yes, a Frenchman wasn’t he? You brought a whole gang of ’em out, including a woman if I recollect correctly.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Drinkwater paused, but Appleby brushed aside the memory of Hortense.

  ‘I take it from your self-conceit the patient survived?’

  ‘Eh? Oh, yes, but he succumbed to assault in the streets of London.’

  ‘Tch, tch, now you will appreciate my own despair when I exhaust myself patching you firebrands up, only to have you repeatedly skewering yourselves.’

  They sipped their coffee companionably but it was not difficult to see that poor Appleby had become a most prickly shipmate.

  ‘And what is our commander like?’ growled Appleby.

  ‘Excellent, Harry, truly excellent. I hope you like him.’ Appleby grunted and Drinkwater went on wrily, ‘It is only fair to warn you that he is quite capable of probing for a splinter or a ball.’

  Appleby gave a sigh of resignation then wisely changed the subject.

  ‘And you, I mean we, no longer poach virgins off the French coast, I assume? That seemed to be the opinion current in the squadron when this cutter cropped up in conversation.’

  Drinkwater laughed again. ‘Lord no! It’ll be all routine stuff now. We’re fleet tender to Admiral MacBride’s North Sea Fleet. It’ll be convoys and cabbages, messages, tittle-tattle and perhaps, if we’re very lucky, a look into Boulogne or somewhere. All damned boring I shouldn’t wonder.’

  Appleby did not need to know about Dungarth’s special instructions. After all he had only just joined. He was not yet one of the Kestrels.

  ‘Your standing at Trinity House must be high, Mr Drinkwater,’ said Griffiths, ‘they have approved the issue of a warrant without recourse to further examination. The Navy Board have acted with uncommon speed too,’ he added with a significant glance at Drinkwater implying Kestrel should not suffer further delay. ‘Now Mr Appleby?’

  ‘These new men are infested, sir,’ complained the surgeon, referring to the draft received from the Royal William. Griffiths looked wearily back a
t the man.

  ‘Aye, Mr Appleby and that won’t be all they’ve got. What d’you suggest we do, send ’em back, is it?’

  ‘No sir, we’ll douse them in salt water, ditch their clothing and issue slops . . .’ He trailed off.

  ‘Now Mr Appleby, do you attend to your business and I’ll attend to mine. Your sense of outrage does your conscience credit but is a disservice to your professional reputation.’

  Drinkwater watched Appleby sag like a pricked balloon. No, he thought, he is not yet one of us.

  The keen clean Channel breeze came over the bow as they stood down past the guardship at the Warner and on through the anchored warships at St Helen’s, their ensign dipping in salute and the spray playing over the weather rail and hissing merrily off to leeward. Apart from an ache in his heart at leaving Elizabeth, Drinkwater was glad to have left Portsmouth, very glad.

  ‘Very well, Mr Drinkwater . . .’ It was Jeremiah Traveller, a mirror image of Jessup, who, as gunner took a deck watch releasing Nathaniel from the repressive regime of four hours on deck and four below which he and Jessup had hitherto endured. They called the hands aft as eight bells struck and then, the watch changed, he slid below.

  In his cabin he took out his journal, turning the pages of notes and sketches made in Portsmouth, a myriad of dockyard details, all carefully noted for future reference. He stared at his drawing of the centre plates. Beating out of Portsmouth they had already felt the benefit of those. Opening his inkwell he picked up the new steel pen that he had bought at Morgan’s. Kestrel was already a different ship. With a cabin full of officers at meal times the old intimacy was gone. And Appleby had driven a wedge between Drinkwater and Griffiths, not intentionally, but his very presence seemed to turn Griffiths in upon himself and the greater number of officers increased the isolation of the commander.

  Drinkwater sighed. The halcyon days were over and he regretted their passing.

  Autumn gave way to the fogs of November and the first frosts, these periods of still weather were linked by a dreary succession of westerly gales that scudded up Channel to force them to reef hard and run for cover.

  They had no luck with Dungarth’s commission though they stopped and searched many coastal craft and chased others. Drinkwater began to doubt his earlier convictions as ridiculous imaginings. The wily Santhonax had disappeared, or so it seemed. From time to time Griffiths went ashore and although he shared fewer confidences with Nathaniel now, he did not omit to convey the news. A brief shake of the head was all that Drinkwater needed to know the quarry had gone to earth.

  Then, during the tail of a blow from south-west, as the wind veered into the north-west and the sky cleared to patchy sunshine, as Drinkwater dozed the afternoon watch away in his cot, the cabin door flew open.

  ‘Zur!’ It was Tregembo.

  ‘Eh? What is it?’ he sat up blinking.

  ‘Zur, cap’n compliments, an’ we’ve a lugger in sight, zur. She’s a big ’un an’ Lieutenant Griffiths says to tell ’ee that if your interested, zur, she’s got a black swallowtail pendant at her masthead . . .’

  ‘The devil she has,’ said Drinkwater throwing his legs over the cot and feeling for his shoes. Sleep left him instantly and he was aware of Tregembo grinning broadly.

  Chapter Nine

  December 1795

  The Star of the Devil

  Drinkwater rushed on deck. Griffiths was standing by the starboard rail, white hair streaming in the wind, his face a hawk-like mask of concentration on the chase, the personification of the cutter’s name. Bracing himself against the scend of the vessel Drinkwater levelled his glass to starboard.

  Both lugger and cutter were running free with Kestrel cracking on sail in hot pursuit. Drinkwater watched the altering aspect of the lugger, saw her grow just perceptibly larger as Kestrel slowly ate up the yards that separated them. Almost without conscious thought his brain was resolving a succession of vectors while his feet, planted wide on the planking, felt Kestrel’s response to the straining canvas aloft.

  Drinkwater could see a bustle on the stern of the lugger and was trying to make it out when Griffiths spoke from the corner of his mouth.

  ‘D’you still have that black pendant on board?’

  ‘Yes sir, it’s in the flag locker.’

  ‘Then hoist it . . .’

  Drinkwater did as he was bid, mystified as to the significance of his actions and the importance of Brown’s bit of ‘Celtic nonsense’. But to Griffiths the black flag of the Breton held a challenge to his heart, it was he or Santhonax and he acknowledged the encounter in single combat.

  There was a sound like tearing calico. A well-pointed ball passed close down the starboard side and Drinkwater could see the reason for the bustle aft. The lugger’s people had a stern chaser pointing astern. Through his glass he could see her gun crew reloading and a tall man in a blue coat staring at them through a telescope. As he lowered the glass to address an officer next to him Drinkwater saw the face in profile. The dark, handsome features and the streaming curls, even at a distance, were unmistakably those of Santhonax.

  Beside him Griffiths breathed a sigh of confirmation.

  ‘Now Mr Traveller,’ he said to the gunner, ‘let us see whether having you on board improves our gunnery.’

  Jeremiah Traveller rolled forward, his eyes agleam. The Kestrels had been at General Quarters since they sighted the lugger and every man was as taut as a weather backstay. Although her ports were closed to prevent water entering the muzzles, the gun crews were ready, their slow matches smouldering in the linstocks and the breeches charged with their lethal mixture of fine milled powder and the most perfect balls the gun captains could find in the racks. Now they watched Traveller elbow aside the captain of Number 1 gun and lower himself to sight along the barrel.

  Drinkwater cast his eyes aloft. The huge mainsail was freed off to larboard, the square top and topgallant sails bowed their yards, widened by stunsails, and the weather clew of the running course was set. Kestrel, with a clean bottom, had rarely sailed better, tramping the waves underfoot and scending down their breaking crests.

  A movement forward caught his attention and he watched Traveller straighten up, the linstock in his hand, waiting for the moment to fire. Swiftly Drinkwater clapped his glass to his eye. The stern of the lugger swung across the lens, her name gold on blue scrollwork: Êtoile du Diable.

  The report of the bow chaser rolled aft and Drinkwater saw a hole appear in the chase’s mizen. Then her stern chaser fired and through his feet he felt the impact strike the hull.

  ‘Myndiawl!’ growled Griffiths beside him.

  ‘We’re overhauling him fast, sir,’ said Drinkwater by way of reassurance. He felt a sense of unease emanating from the commander and began to divine the reason. Santhonax could haul his wind in a moment. Kestrel, with her squaresails set, would take much longer.

  Traveller fired again and a cheer from forward told of success. The mizen yard sagged in two pieces, the sail collapsing and flogging. The triumph was illusory and Griffiths swore again. That loss of sail would the sooner compel Santhonax to turn to windward.

  ‘Get the course and kites in Mr Drinkwater,’ snapped Griffiths.

  ‘In t’gallant stuns’ls . . .’ Drinkwater began bawling orders. Men left each gun and swarmed aloft to handle the sails and rig in the booms. Short chivvied them up. A cluster gathered round the mast, tallying onto the ropes under Jessup’s direction, a group on the downhauls and sheets, a couple to ease the tacks and halliards. Drinkwater saw Jessup’s nod.

  ‘Shorten sail!’ Forward Traveller fired again but Drinkwater was watching the stunsails belly forward, lifting their booms.

  ‘Steady there,’ said Griffiths quietly to the helmsman. A broach now would be disastrous. The men on deck tramped away with the downhauls and sheets and the stunsails came down, flapping onto the deck like wounded gulls.

  Vaguely aware of a second thump into the hull and a patch of blue sky through the topsail Drinkw
ater ordered in the topgallant.

  ‘There she goes,’ shouted Griffiths as Êtoile du Diable swung to starboard, briefly exposing her stern. ‘Fire as you bear!’ he called to the gun captains, left by their charges as their crews shortened sail.

  But as he turned Santhonax’s stern chaser roared, double shotted. The ball skipped once on a wave top, smashed through Kestrel’s starboard rail and clove both helmsmen in two.

  Griffiths leapt to the tiller and leant his weight against it.

  ‘Leggo weather braces! Haul taut the lee! Man the sheets there!’ He pushed down on the big tiller and brought Kestrel round in the wake of the lugger.

  It was as well he did so for as he passed Santhonax fired his starboard broadside. Most of the shot plunged into the smooth, green with the upwellings from her rudder, that trailed astern of Kestrel’s turning hull. But two balls struck the cutter, one demolishing four feet of cap and ruff tree rail, the other opened the muzzle of Number 11 gun like a grotesque iron flower.

  Drinkwater had the topgallant in its buntlines and until he doused the topsail Kestrel would not point as close to the wind as the lugger. Already the alteration of course had increased the apparent wind speed over the deck. Spray was coming aboard now as Kestrel began to drop back from the chase, the angle between them widening.

  It seemed an age before the squaresails were secured. Forward Traveller and the headmost gun captains were banging away. Johnson, the carpenter, was hovering at Griffiths’s elbow. ‘He’s hulled us, sir, I’ll get a man on the pump . . .’ Griffiths nodded.

  ‘Sail shortened, sir.’

  ‘Harden right in, Mr Drinkwater, and lower those bloody centre plates.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir!’

  Kestrel hauled her wind as close as possible, narrowing the angle with the lugger. The chase ran on for an hour in a westerly direction and pointing their pieces carefully the gunners of both ships continued their duel. The Kestrels cheered several times as splinters were struck from the rail of the lugger but their hearts were no longer in the fight.