A King's Cutter

by Richard Woodman

  ‘Go on,’ he said, content to let Appleby have his head for once.

  ‘Look, Nat, this cutter’s an exception, small ships usually are, but you are well aware to what I refer, the denial of liberty, the shameful arrears of pay, the refusal of many captains to sanction the purchase of fresh food even in port and the general abuses of a significant proportion of our brother officers, these can only have a most undesirable effect.

  ‘Take the current rate of pay for an able seaman, Nathaniel. It is twenty-four shillings, twelve florins for risking scurvy, pox, typhus, gangrene, not to mention death itself at the hands of the enemy . . . d’you realise that sum was fixed in the days of the Commonwealth . . .’ Appleby’s indignation was justly righteous. To be truthful Drinkwater did not know that, but he had no time to acknowledge his ignorance before Appleby continued his grim catalogue of grievances.

  ‘To this you must add the vast disparity of prize money, the short measure given by so many pursers that has added the purser’s pound of fourteen ounces to the avoirdupois scale; you must add the abatement of pay when a man is sick or unfit for duty, even if the injury was sustained in the line of that duty; you must add deductions to pay for a chaplain when one is borne on the books, the deductions for Greenwich Hospital and the Chatham Chest . . .’ Appleby was becoming more and more strident, counting the items off on his fingers, his chins quivering with passion.

  ‘And if that were not enough when a man is gricomed by the whores that are the only women he is permitted to lie with, according to usage and custom, he must pay me to cure him whilst losing his pay through being unfit!

  ‘The families of seamen starve in the gutters while their menfolk are incarcerated on board ship, frequently unpaid for years and when they do return home they are as like to be turned over to a ship newly commissioning as occasion demands.

  ‘I tell you, Nathaniel, these are not facts that lie comfortably with the usual canting notions of English liberty and, mark me well, if this war is protracted there will be trouble in the fleet. You cannot fight a spirited enemy who is proclaiming Liberty, Equality and Fraternity with a navy manned by slaves.’

  Drinkwater sighed. Appleby was right. There was worse too. As the prime seamen were pressed out of homeward merchant ships the Lord Mayor’s men and the quota men filled the Press Tenders, bringing into the fleet not hardened seamen, but the misfits of society, men without luck but not without intelligence; demagogues, lower deck lawyers; men who saw in the example of France a way to power, to overturn vested interest in the stirring name of the people. With a pot so near the boil, was the purpose and presence of Capitaine Santhonax at Sheerness to stir it a little? The proximity of Sheerness to Tunbridge occurred to him. A feeling of alarm, of duty imperfectly performed, swept over him.

  ‘Aye, Harry. Happen you are right, though I hope not. It might be a bloody business . . .’

  ‘Of course, Nat! When it comes, not “if”! When it comes it could be most bloody, and the authorities behave with crass stupidity. See how they handled that Culloden business,’ Drinkwater nodded at the recollection but Appleby was still in full flood.

  ‘Half the admirals are blind. Look how they ridiculed John Clerk of Eldin because he was able to point out how to win battles. Now they all scrabble to fight on his principles. Look how the powdered physicians of the fleet ignored Lind’s anti-scorbutic theories, how difficult it was for Douglas to get his cartridges taken seriously. Remember Patrick Ferguson’s rifle? Oh, the list of thinking men pointing out the obvious to the establishment is endless . . . what the deuce are you laughing at?’

  ‘Your inconsistent consistency,’ grinned Nathaniel.

  ‘What the devil d’you mean?’

  ‘Well you are right, Harry, of course, these things are always the same, the prophet unrecognised in his own land.’

  ‘So, I’m correct. I know that. What’s so damned amusing?’

  ‘But you yourself objected to Sir Sydney Smith meddling in your sick bay, and Sir Sydney has a reputation for an original mind. You are therefore inconsistent with your principles in your own behaviour, whilst being comfortingly consistent with the rest of us mortal men.’

  ‘Why you damned impertinent puppy!’

  Drinkwater dodged the empty tankard that sailed towards his head.

  Thus it was that they rubbed along together while things went from bad to worse for British arms. Sir John Jervis evacuated the Mediterranean while Admiral Morard de Galles sailed from Brest with an army embarked for Ireland. That he was frustrated in landing General Hoche and his seasoned troops was a piece of luck undeserved by the British. The south-westerly gale that ruined the enterprise over Christmas 1796 seemed to the Irish patriot, Wolfe Tone, to deny the existence of a just God, while in the British fleet the gross mismanagement of Lord Bridport and Sir John Colpoys only reduced the morale of the officers and increased the disaffection of the men.

  Again only the frigates had restored a little glitter to tarnished British laurels. And that at a heavy price. Pellew, now in the razée Indefatigable, in company with Amazon off Brest, sighted and chased the Droits de l’Homme returning from Ireland. In a gale on a lee shore Pellew forced the French battleship ashore where she was wrecked. Indefatigable only escaped by superlative seamanship while Amazon failed to claw off and was also wrecked.

  In the North Sea, action of even this Pyrrhic kind was denied Admiral Duncan’s squadron. Maintaining his headquarters in Yarmouth Roads, where he was in telegraphic communication with London, Duncan kept his inshore frigates off the Texel and his cutters in the gattways through the Haakagronden, as close as his lieutenant-commanders dared be. Duncan’s fleet was an exiguous collection of old ships, many of sixty-four guns and none larger than a third rate. The admiral flew his flag in the aptly named Venerable.

  The Dutch, under Vice-Admiral de Winter, were an unknown force. Memories of Dutch ferocity from King Charles’s day lingered still, forgotten the humiliation of losing their fleet to a brigade of French cavalry galloping over the ice in which they were frozen. For like the Spanish they were now the allies of France, but unlike them their country was a proclaimed republic. Republicanism had crossed the Rhine, as Drinkwater had predicted, and the combination of a Franco-Dutch fleet to make another attempt on Ireland was a frightening prospect, given the uneasy state of that unhappy country.

  Then, as the wintry weather gave way to milder, springlike days, news of a new kind came. The victory of St Valentine’s Day it was called at first, then later the Battle of Cape St Vincent. Jervis had been made an earl and the remarkable, erratic Captain Nelson, having left the line of battle to cut off the Spanish van from escape, had received a knighthood.

  The air of triumph even permeated Kestrel’s crowded little cabin as Griffiths read aloud the creased copy of the Gazette that eventually reached the cutter on her station in the Schulpen Gat. Drinkwater received an unexpected letter.

  My Dear Nathaniel, he read,

  I expect you will have heard the news of Old Oak’s action of St Valentine’s Day but you will be surprised to hear your old friend was involved. We beat up the Dons thoroughly, though I saw very little, commanding a battery of 32’s on Victory, into which ship I exchanged last November. You should have been here, Nat. Lord, but what a glorious thing is a fleet action. How I envied you Rodney’s action here in ’80 and how you must envy us ours! Our fellows were so cool and we raked Salvador del Mundo wickedly. The Dons fought better than I thought them capable of and it was tolerably warm work . . .

  Drinkwater was envious. Envious and not a little amused in a bitter kind of way at Richard White’s mixture of boyish enthusiasm and sober naval formality. There was a good deal more of it, including the significant phrase Sir John was pleased to take notice of my conduct. Drinkwater checked himself. He was pleased for White, pleased too that his old friend, now clearly on the path to success, still considered the friendship of an obscure master’s mate in an even more obscure cutter worth the trouble of an
informative letter. So Drinkwater shared vicariously in the euphoria induced by the victory. The tide, it seemed, had turned in favour of British arms and the Royal Navy reminded her old antagonists that though the lion lay down, it was not yet dead.

  Then one morning in April Kestrel rounded the Scroby Sands and stood into Yarmouth Road with the signal for despatches at her masthead. Coming to her anchor close to Venerable her chase guns saluted the blue flag at the flagship’s main masthead. A moment or so later her boat pulled across the water with Lieutenant Griffiths in the stern.

  When Griffiths returned from delivering his message from the frigates off the Texel he called all the cutter’s officers into the cabin.

  Drinkwater was the last to arrive, late from supervising the hoisting of the boat. He closed the lobby door behind him, aware of an air of tense expectancy. As he sat down he realised it was generated by the frigid gleam in Griffiths’s eyes.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said in his deep, clear voice. ‘Gentlemen, the Channel Fleet at Spithead is in a state of mutiny!’

  Chapter Twelve

  May–June 1797

  A Flood of Mutiny

  ‘Listen to the bastards!’ said Jessup as Kestrel’s crew paused in their work to stare round the crowded anchorage. The cheering appeared to come from Lion and a ripple of excitement ran through the hands forward, several staring defiantly aft where Jessup, Drinkwater and Traveller stood.

  Yarmouth Roads had been buzzing as news, rumour, claim and counter-claim sped between the ships anchored there. The red flag, it was said had been hoisted at the Nore and Duncan’s ships vacillated between loyalty to their much respected admiral and their desire to support what were felt to be the just demands of the rest of the fleet.

  The cheering was enough to bring others on deck. Amidships the cook emerged from his galley and the knot of officers was joined by Appleby and Thompson. ‘Thank God we’re anchored close to the flagship,’ muttered the surgeon. His apprehensions of mutiny now having been confirmed, Appleby feared the possibility of being murdered in his bed.

  Kestrel lay anchored a short cannon shot from Venerable. The battleship’s guns were run out and the sudden boom of a cannon echoed flatly across the anchorage. A string of knotted bunting rose up her signal halliards to jerk out brightly in the light breeze of a May morning.

  ‘Call away my gig, Mr Drinkwater,’ growled Griffiths emerging from the companionway. Admiral Duncan was signalling for his captains and when Griffiths returned from the conference his expression was weary. ‘Call the people aft!’

  Jessup piped the hands into the waist and they swarmed eagerly over the remaining boat on the hatch. ‘Gentlemen,’ said Griffiths to his officers, ‘take post behind me.’

  The officers shuffled into a semi-circle as ordered, regarding the faces of the men. Some open, some curious, some defiant or truculent and all aware that unusual events were taking place.

  ‘Now hark you all to this, do you understand that the fleets at Spithead and the Nore are in defiant mutiny of their officers . . .’ He looked round at them, giving them no ground, despite his inner sympathy. ‘But if any man disputes my right to command this cutter or proposes disobeying my orders or those of one of my officers,’ he gestured behind him, ‘let him speak now.’

  Griffiths’s powerful voice with its rich Welsh accent seemed to come from a pulpit. His powerful old body and sober features with their air of patriarchy exerted an almost tangible influence upon his men. He appeared to be reasoning with them like a firm father, opposing their fractiousness with the sure hand of experience. ‘Look at me,’ he seemed to say, ‘you cannot rebel against me, whatever the rest of the fleet does.’

  Drinkwater’s palms were damp and beside him Appleby was shaking with apprehension. Then they saw resolution ebb as a sort of collective sigh came from the men. Griffiths sent them forward again.

  ‘Get forrard and do your duty. Mr Jessup, man the windlass and inform me when the cable’s up and down.’

  It was the season for variable or easterly winds in the North Sea and Duncan’s preoccupation was that the Dutch fleet would leave the Texel, taking advantage of the favourable winds and the state of the British squadrons. The meeting to which Griffiths had been summoned had been to determine the mood of the ships in Duncan’s fleet. The small force still off the Texel was quite inadequate to contain De Winter if he chose to emerge and it was now even more important to keep him bottled up. There was a strong possibility that the mutinous ships at the Nore might attempt a defection and this was more likely to be to the protestant Dutch than the catholic French, for all the republican renunciation of formal religion. A demonstration by De Winter to cover the Nore Squadron’s exit from the Thames would be all that was necessary to facilitate this and strengthen any wavering among the mutineers. It was already known at Yarmouth that most of the officers had been removed from the warships with the significant exception of the sailing masters. They were held aboard the Sandwich, the ‘flagship’ of the self-styled admiral, Richard Parker.

  For a few days Kestrel remained at anchor while Duncan, who had personally remonstrated with the Admiralty for redress of many of the men’s grievances and regarded the mutiny as a chastisement and warning to the Admiralty to mend its ways, waited on events.

  The anonymous good sense that had characterised the affair at Spithead was largely responsible for its swift and satisfactory conclusion. Admiral Howe was given special powers to treat with the delegates who knew they had ‘Black Dick’s’ sympathy. By mid-May, amid general rejoicing, fireworks and banquets the Channel Fleet, pardoned by the King, returned to duty.

  There was no evidence that foreign sedition had had anything to do with it. The tars had had a case. Their cause had been just, their conduct exemplary, their self-administered justice impeccable. They had sent representatives to their brethren at the Nore and it would only be a matter of days before they too saw sense.

  But it was not so. The Nore mutiny was an uglier business, its style aggressive and less reasonable. By blockading trade in the Thames its leaders rapidly lost the sympathy of the liberal middle-class traders of London and as the Government became intransigent, Parker’s desperation increased. The tide in favour of the fleet turned, and as the supplies of food, fuel and merchandise to the capital dwindled, troops flooded in to Sheerness and the ships flying the red flag at the Nore felt a growing sense of isolation.

  At the end of May there arrived in Yarmouth an Admiralty envoy in the person of Captain William Bligh, turned out of the Director by his crew and sent by the authorities to persuade Duncan to use his ships against Parker’s. He also brought news that four delegates from the Nore had seized the cutter Cygnet and were on their way to Yarmouth to incite the seamen there to mutiny.

  Duncan considered the intelligence together with the mooted possibility of Parker defecting with the entire fleet to Holland or France. In due course he ordered the frigate Vestal, the lugger Hope and the cutter Rose to cruise to the southward to intercept the visitors. If Parker sailed for the Texel or Dunquerque then, and only then, would the old admiral consider using his own ships against the mutineers. In the meantime he sent Kestrel south into the Thames to guard the channels to Holland and to learn immediately of any defection.

  ‘By the mark five.’

  Drinkwater discarded the idea of the sweeps. Despite the fog there was just sufficient wind to keep steerage on the cutter and every stitch of canvas that could be hoisted was limply responding to it.

  ‘I’ll go below for a little, Mr Drinkwater.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Their passage from Yarmouth had been slow and Griffiths had not left the deck for fear the men would react, but they were too tired now and his own exhaustion was obvious. Grey and lined, his face wore the symptoms of the onset of his fever and it seemed that the elasticity of his constitution had reached its greatest extension. Drinkwater was glad to see him go below.

  Since news of the Spithead settlement the hands had been calmer,
but orders to proceed into the Thames had revived the tension. In the way that these things happen, word had got out that their lordships were contemplating using the North Sea squadron against the mutineers at the Nore, and Bligh was too notorious a figure to temper speculation on the issue.

  The chant of the leadsman was monotonous so that, distracted by larger events and the personal certainty that the Nore mutiny was made the more hideous by the presence of Capitaine Santhonax, Drinkwater had to force himself to concentrate upon the soundings. They were well into the estuary now and should fetch the Nubb buoy in about three hours as the ebb eased.

  ‘By the deep four.’

  ‘Sommat ahead, sir!’ The sudden cry from the lookout forward.

  ‘What is it?’ He went forward, peering into the damp grey murk.

  ‘Dunno sir . . . buoy?’ If it was then their reckoning was way out.

  ‘There sir! See it?’

  ‘No . . . yes!’ Almost right ahead, slightly to starboard. They would pass very close, close enough to identify it.

  ‘ ’s a boat, sir!’

  It was a warship’s launch, coming out of a dense mist a bowsprit’s length ahead of them. It had eight men in it and he heard quite distinctly a voice say, ‘It’s another bleeding buoy yacht . . .’, and a contradictory: ‘No, it’s a man o’war cutter . . .’

  Mutually surprised, the two craft passed. The launch’s men lay on their oars, the blades so close to Kestrel’s side that the water drops from their ends fell into the rippling along the cutter’s waterline. Curiously the Kestrels stared at the men in the boat who glared defiantly back. There was a sudden startled grasp, a quick movement, a flash and a bang. A pistol ball tore the hat from Drinkwater’s head and made a neat hole in the mainsail. There was a howl of frustration and the mutineers were plying their oars as the launch vanished in the fog astern.

  ‘God’s bones!’ roared Drinkwater suddenly spinning round. The men were still gaping at him and the vanished boat. ‘Let go stuns’l halliards! Let go squares’l halliards! Down helm! Lively now! Lively God damn it!’