A King's Cutter

by Richard Woodman

  Drinkwater noted the helm relieved, the two men leaving the tiller, flexing their arms with relief and seeking shelter beneath the lee gig. A sea crashed against the hull and foamed brutally over the rail, sluicing the deck white and breaking in eddies round the deck fittings. They would be clearing the Molen Gat now, leaving the comparative shelter of the Haakagronden.

  Again he peered to windward seeking a light from the frigate. Nothing.

  The Dutch would never come out in weather like this, thought Drinkwater. It was going to be a long, dirty night for the British blockaders and there was little glory in such a gale.

  They reached the admiral at ten in the morning. The gale was at its height, a low scud drifting malignantly across the sky reducing the visibility to a monotonous circle of grey breaking waves, streaked with white spindrift that merged at its margins with the lowering clouds. In and out of this pall the pale squares of reefed topsails and the dark shapes of hulls streaming with water were all that could be seen of the blockading battleships. Even the patches of the blue ensigns of Duncan’s squadron seemed leeched to the surrounding drab.

  Kestrel had come up under Venerable’s lee quarter like a leaping cork, or so it seemed to the officers on the flagship’s quarterdeck, and the admiral had had his orders sealed in a keg and thrown into the sea.

  With great skill Griffiths had manoeuvred in the flaship’s wake to recover the keg. ‘Orders for the fleet, Mr Drinkwater, excepting for Russell, Adamant, Beaulieu, Circe, Martin and two cutters, ah, and Black Joke, the fleet’s for Yarmouth Road.’

  ‘And we’re to tell ’em?’

  Griffiths nodded. ‘Very good, sir, we’ll bear away directly.’ Dipping her ensign in acknowledgement of her instructions Kestrel turned away.

  As she steadied on her course Drinkwater returned to Griffiths’s side. ‘What about us, sir?’

  ‘Active and Diligent to remain, the rest of us for Yarmouth.’

  Drinkwater nodded. The nagging notion that they had unfinished business off the Texel caused him to catch Griffiths’s eye. Griffiths held his gaze but said nothing. Both of them were thinking of the shrivelling body of their friend.

  They were running downwind now, closing Vice-Admiral Onslow in the Monarch. Passing their message they reached down the line of Onslow’s division, watching the lumbering third rates, Powerful, Montagu and Russell, the smaller sixty-four’s Veteran and Agincourt with Bligh’s Director. Next they passed word to the obsolete old Adamant, she that so gallantly supported Duncan’s deception off the Texel. They found Circe and Beaulieu and both the luggers hanging onto the frigates like children round their mother’s skirts. It was dark before they returned to Venerable and sent up a damply fizzing blue rocket as a signal to the admiral.

  Drinkwater scrambled below, jamming himself into a corner of the cabin and gratefully accepted a bowl from Meyrick. The skillygolee was all that could be heated on the galley stove but it tasted excellent laced with molasses and he wolfed it, aware that Appleby was hovering in the doorway.

  ‘D’you want me, Harry?’ Drinkwater asked, nodding to Traveller who was groping his way into the cabin, bracing himself against the violence of the cutter’s motion, also in search of something to eat.

  Appleby nodded too. ‘A word, Nat, if you’ve a moment . . .’ He plucked at Drinkwater’s sleeve and drew him towards his own cabin.

  ‘By God, that skilly was good . . . Hey! Merrick! D’you have any more?’ Fresh from the deck and very hungry Drinkwater found Appleby irritated him.

  ‘Nat, for heaven’s sake, a moment of your time. Listen, while you and Griffiths have been busy on deck I have been increasingly aware of unrest in the ship . . . nothing I can pin down, but this miserable blockade duty at a season of the year when no self-respecting Dutchman is going to emerge into the North Sea when he has a bed ashore, is playing the devil with the men. No, don’t dismiss me as a meddling old fool. I have observed glances, mutterings, listened to remarks dropped near me. Damn it, Nat, you know the kind of thing . . .’

  ‘Oh come now Harry, I doubt now that we’re going back to Yarmouth that anything will materialise,’ Drinkwater bit off a jibe at Appleby’s increasing preoccupation with mutiny. Blockade duty in such a small vessel was playing on all their nerves, even those of the men, and it was doubtless this irritation that had manifested itself to Appleby. ‘What seaman doesn’t grumble, Harry? You are worrying for nothing, forget it . . .’

  There was a thumping crash and the bulkhead behind them trembled. From the lobby outside a torrent of Welsh oaths mixed with Anglo-Saxon expletives ended the conversations. Appleby threw open the door to reveal Lieutenant Griffiths lying awkwardly at the foot of the ladder. His face with contorted with pain.

  ‘My leg, doctor . . . By damn I’ve broken my leg!’

  Chapter Fourteen

  5th–7th October 1797

  A Private Insurrection

  ‘Can you manage the cutter, Mr Drinkwater?’

  Drinkwater looked at the admiral. Duncan’s eyes were tired from a multitude of responsibilities. He nodded. ‘I believe so, sir.’

  ‘Very well. I will have an acting commission made out immediately. You have been acting before, have you not?’

  ‘Yes sir. Twice.’

  Duncan nodded. ‘Good. If you discharge your duty to my satisfaction I shall see that it is confirmed without further ado . . . now sit down a moment.’ Duncan rang a bell and his servant entered the cabin. ‘Sir?’

  ‘My secretary, Knapton, and my compliments to Captain Fairfax and will he bring in his lordship,’ he turned to Drinkwater. ‘It’ll not hurt you to know what’s in the wind, Mr Drinkwater, as you are to occupy an advanced station. Were you not part of the prize crew that brought in Santa Teresa to Gibraltar in ’80?’

  ‘Yes sir. She was commanded by Lieutenant Devaux, Lord Dungarth as is now, sir.’

  ‘Aye, I remember your name now, and here is his lordship,’ Duncan rose stooping under the deckhead to motion Lord Dungarth and Captain Fairfax to chairs.

  Drinkwater covered his astonishment at the earl’s sudden appearance with a bow. He remained standing until the admiral motioned him to sit again.

  ‘Now gentlemen, Mr Drinkwater is to remain. Under the circumstances he ought properly to be informed of our deliberations and can convey their substance to Trollope. I have given him an acting commission. Now, my Lord, what have you to tell us?’

  ‘You could not have made a better choice, Admiral,’ put in Dungarth, smiling at Drinkwater. ‘Now when are you able to sail?’

  The old admiral passed a hand over his face. ‘I must have a few more days to recruit the fleet. Yes what is it?’ Duncan paused at the knock on the door. A large man with a saturnine face entered. He was in admiral’s uniform. ‘Ah, Richard, come in, you know Fairfax of course, this is Lord Dungarth, from the Admiralty . . .’ Onslow’s eyebrows lifted, ‘. . . and this is Lieutenant Drinkwater of Kestrel.’

  Drinkwater rose and bowed. ‘Your servant, sir.’

  ‘What happened to Griffiths?’

  Duncan said, ‘Broke his leg and I’ve promoted Drinkwater, he kens the crew and I’m not one to be fussing about with officers on other ships with the situation as delicate as it is now . . .’ He looked significantly at Onslow who nodded his agreement. Drinkwater realised there were doubtless a score of passed midshipmen who might regard their claim on the first available commission as better than his own.

  ‘Congratulations, Mr Drinkwater,’ said Onslow. ‘Are you familiar with Psalm 75? No? “Promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south, but God is the judge; he pulleth down one and setteth up another.” ’

  The little group chuckled. Onslow was well-known for his Biblical references so that signals midshipmen had to keep a copy of the Bible alongside Kempenfelt’s code.

  ‘Most apposite. But to business. My Lord?’

  ‘Well, gentlemen, since the regretted loss of Major Brown,’ Dungarth paused and there was a
deferential murmur as death passed his grim shadow across their council, ‘I have learned from our people in Paris that Capitaine Santhonax has been seen there. However, his stay was not long and he was seen in The Hague last month. It is confidently expected that he is now back at the Texel breathing down De Winter’s neck. We were under the impression that enthusiasm for another attempt upon Ireland had dwindled since the death of General Hoche. But Austria has reached an accommodation with this new General Buonaparte at Leoben and it seems likely that troops will be available for other enterprises.’ He paused and accepted a glass of wine from Knapton who appeared with silent ease, bearing tall glasses on a silver salver.

  ‘Most of you will know of the Directory’s raid last February on Fishguard. It was American led . . .’ a murmur of anger went round the listeners. ‘Although it was an ignominious failure the Directory learned that it was perfectly possible to land on our soil.

  ‘Whether the target is Ireland or the mainland we do not know. However it seems certain that the Directory, in the person of Santhonax, will exert great pressure upon De Winter to sail. If he prevaricates he will be superseded and possibly more will be struck down than his flag. Jan De Winter is a convinced republican but a soldier by training. I think Santhonax is at his elbow to overcome his misgivings. So you see, gentlemen, De Winter must come out and you must stop him. A junction with the Brest squadrons would be disastrous for us on all fronts.’

  There was an awkward shuffling of feet as Dungarth finished. The collection of ships that made up the North Sea squadron was far from the crack units of the Channel fleet, the Grand Fleet as it was commonly called.

  ‘I must have a few more days,’ said Duncan, looking anxiously at Onslow for support.

  ‘I agree Adam. You’ll have to inform Government, my Lord, we must have time, this squadron is cranky enough. Look, even its commander-in-chief has to endure this sort of thing . . .’ Onslow pointed to the strategically located buckets in Duncan’s cabin that had been placed to catch water from the leaks in the deckhead.

  Drinkwater listened to the deliberations of his seniors with one ear and turned over Dungarth’s news in his mind. So, his instinct had been right. They were not yet finished with the Texel. And he was not yet finished with Santhonax. He began to see that Ireland was probably the key. At least the paralysis of the British Fleet and combination of the republican navies for some expedition had been the mainspring of Santhonax’s actions. And Brown had taken an interest in Wolfe Tone on the beach at Kijkduin. Yes, Santhonax’s actions were clear now: the suborning of the British Fleet that had so nearly succeeded, the urgency to get Dutch support before the collapse of Parker’s resolve. When that failed a last thrust from Brest with the combined fleets to force aside a Royal Navy weakened by mutiny, and then a descent on the naked coasts of Britain by a French army under this new general, said to be more brilliant than Hoche or Moreau, this General Buonaparte . . .

  ‘Mr Drinkwater? . . . Mr Drinkwater!’

  He came to with a start. ‘I beg your pardon, sir. I, er, I was just digesting the implications of Lord Dungarth’s . . .’ he tailed off flushing scarlet.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Duncan testily, ‘I will have written orders within the hour, please make yourself at home in the wardroom. You will convey my despatches to Trollope then station yourself as close to Kijkduin as ye can. I want to know the moment the Dutch move. D’ye understand, man?’

  Drinkwater rose. ‘Aye sir. Thank you for taking me into your confidence. Your servant gentlemen.’ He bowed and made his way back on deck.

  ‘You two are in collusion, damn you both,’ Griffiths muttered, sweat standing out on his pale forehead, his pupils contracted by the opiate administered by Appleby.

  ‘No sir,’ said Drinkwater gently, ‘that is really not the case at all. Admiral Duncan’s orders, sir. If you will permit us we will have you ashore directly and into the hospital.’ He motioned Short and a seaman into the cabin to lift Griffiths onto the stretcher. As they struggled through the door Appleby mopped his forehead.

  ‘Phew! He took it from you like a lamb, Nat my boy. He’s been tearing the seat out of my breeches this hour past.’

  ‘Poor old fellow,’ said Drinkwater, ‘will his leg mend?’

  Appleby nodded. ‘Yes, if he keeps off it for a while, his constitution is remarkable considering the Gambier fever.’

  ‘He’ll miss his bottle in hospital.’ They followed the stretcher up on deck where Jessup was preparing to lower the lieutenant into the waiting boat.

  ‘Mr Drinkwater,’ croaked Griffiths, trying to raise his head.

  ‘Sir?’ Drinkwater took the extended hand.

  ‘Good luck to you Nathaniel bach, this may be your opportunity, see. Be vigilant and success will be within your grasp. Good luck now. Lower away you lubbers and handsomely, handsomely.’

  Drinkwater saw the old man, wrapped in his wood and canvas shroud, pulled away from the cutter. He watched the gig curve away for the shore and found his eyes misting. He dismissed sentiment from his mind and turned his attention inboard.

  ‘Mr Jessup!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Pipe the hands aft.’

  His heart beat with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. His elevation to command might only be that of an officer ‘acting’, unsubstantive and very temporary, but for as long as it lasted he held power over the men who crowded round the remaining gig amidships, and was accountable for every movement of the cutter, the duty and mistakes of his subordinates. He reached into his pocket and withdrew the roll of paper.

  When silence fell he began to read himself in.

  At the conclusion of the solemnly formal words he added a sentence of his own. ‘I trust you will do your duty for me as you did for Lieutenant Griffiths. Very well Mr Jessup, we will weigh directly the boat returns, you may heave short now.’ Jessup shouted and the men turned away to make preparations. Drinkwater called to Hill. ‘Mr Hill! Mr Hill, I am rating you master, do you take the first watch in my place.’

  While the cutter’s sails were cast loose he slipped below. Merrick, fussing like an old hen, was lugging the last of Drinkwater’s gear out of the little cabin and settling it in the lieutenant commander’s. It was a trifle larger than his own but in the rack for glass and carafe, Drinkwater wrily noted, the two objects were in place. As he hung the little watercolour he thought of Elizabeth. They had been separated for eighteen months now. It was a pity he had had no time to let her know of his promotion and Duncan’s promise. A knock on the door interrupted his privacy. It was Appleby.

  ‘Nat, er, sir,’ Appleby rubbed a large, pudgy hand across his several chins.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Drinkwater, settling his books.

  ‘I’m damned glad to see you promoted, Nat . . . sir . . . but believe me it is imperative you are circumspect with the men. They are still in an ugly mood. Orders for the Texel will do nothing to ameliorate that. It’s nothing specific,’ Appleby hurried on before Drinkwater could interrupt, ‘but I anticipate that they will try you now Griffiths is gone, that’s all . . .’

  ‘You seem,’ said Drinkwater passing a lashing round his quadrant box, ‘to have let sedition, mutiny and all manner of lower deck bogeys infect your otherwise good sense, Harry.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Nat, damn it, sir, take my warning lightly and you do so at your peril.’

  Drinkwater felt anger rising in him. To be thwarted now filled him with horror and Appleby’s defeatism galled him. He mastered himself with difficulty.

  ‘Look Harry, we have been weeks on this tedious blockading, we are all worn with it, sick of it, but it is our duty and now, more than ever, there exists a need for cruisers off the Texel. D’you cease this damned cant at once.’

  ‘For God’s sake man, this command nonsense has gone to your head!’

  ‘Have a care Harry,’ said Drinkwater with low and furious menace in his voice. He pushed past the surgeon in search of the fresh air of the deck.

&n
bsp; Bulman met him at the companionway. ‘Mr Hill’s compliments, Mr Drinkwater, and the anchor’s underfoot and the gig approaching.’

  Drinkwater nodded and strode to the rail, grasping it with trembling hands. Damn Appleby and his pusillanimous soul. He wanted to clear his mind of such gloomy thoughts to concentrate on his duty.

  They recovered the gig and weighed, heading south east for St Nicholas Gat and the passage south of the Scroby Sands.

  Forward the last lashings were being passed over the gig, the last coils of the halliards turned onto their pins and the taut sheets belayed. Hill had the cat stoppers clapped on and was passing the shank painter to secure the anchor against its billboard. Already two men had buckets over the side and were sluicing the mud of Yarmouth Road off the planking. Traveller was walking round the guns, checking their breechings. All was reassuringly normal. He relaxed and checked the course. Ahead of him lay the challenge of the Texel.

  At midnight Appleby’s apprehensions were fulfilled. When Hill turned the deck over to Jessup the men demanded to be paid. It was an odd and impossible request but had ranked as a grievance for many months. It was now that those who influenced the grumblings of the fo’c’s’le chose to make it manifest itself. Kestrel’s complement had not been paid for over a twelvemonth. Their recent period at anchor had been marred by a refusal of further credit by James Thompson, the purser, largely because that gentleman had himself run out of ready cash. This denial had led to the men being unable to make purchases from the bumboats of Yarmouth. The consequent lack of small comforts exacerbated the already strong resentment of the hands. By an irony several bottles of liquor had found their way on board and the consumption of these in the first watch had led to the midnight revolt.

  Drinkwater was called and sleepily tumbled from his cot. But his dreams were quickly displaced by anger at the news Jessup brought him. For a minute, as he dressed while Jessup spoke he fulminated against the men, but he forced himself to acknowledge their grievance and that his own anger was unlikely to get him anywhere. But to pay them was not merely out of the question, it was impossible.