Patrician jibbed up into the wind and the foreyards were swung on the word of command.
Unless, Drinkwater mused, those merchantmen were waiting for something more puissant than a pair of brigs; something like a Russian line-of-battle-ship! Not for the first time Drinkwater cursed the brevity of his aptly-styled briefing from the Admiralty. Again he felt that sense of abandonment by Lord Dungarth, the very man from whom he would have expected the most comprehensive elucidation of the state of affairs in the Pacific. He knew his orders originated from British spies in the Russian service, agents whose access to the most secret intentions of the Tsar had been preserved at a prodigious cost, as Drinkwater had good reason to know.
Supposing, he reasoned, he had been utterly mistaken in that glimpse of another man-of-war off Cape Horn. Suppose that brief spectral image had magnified itself in his imagination and the vessel had been, at worst, a Spaniard. He knew that the Russian-American Company, under whose auspices Russian ships traded down the coast from Alaska, had armed vessels at their disposal. He knew, too, that at least one frigate had been built on the Pacific coast of North America for the purpose of reinforcing Russian claims upon the shores of what Drake, Cook, and now the Admiralty, were pleased to call ‘New Albion’.
Patrician forged ahead, gathering increasing way on the new tack. The hands were busy coiling the braces on the pins and on the fo’c’s’le the weather fore-tack was hauled down to the bowing bumpkin. Shafts of sunlight fanned down through the clouds, dappling the surface of the sea with brilliant patches of dancing water. Off on the quarter a school of dolphins abandoned the chase of a shoal of bonito and gambolled in their tumbling wake. Neither the brightening weather nor the appearance of the cetaceans lightened Drinkwater’s gloom. All his ponderous considerations were of little consequence now. Marsden’s report postponed them indefinitely. The leak and its cause superseded all other matters and it did not help his temper to realise that the trap he had baited by towing out of San Francisco Bay would now be useless. His nearest dockyard was in the West Indies, with the Horn to double to get there. He had only one course of action open to him: Hobson’s choice of a careenage.
‘Well?’
As Marsden came aft Drinkwater stopped at the after end of the starboard gangway, his cloak flapping round him in the wind, his hands clasped behind his back. The carpenter’s face was still clouded by concern.
‘She’s still makin’ water, sir . . . perhaps a little less, but ’tis bad enough, sir.’
‘Damn! Very well, Mr Marsden, very well. I’ll be below myself shortly. Mr Fraser!’
‘Aye, sir?’
‘Steer east-nor’-east and fetch me the coast directly.’
Below the waterline the hull was a vast stygian cavern of noise. He followed Marsden and his two mates with their lanterns guttering in the stale, mephitic air, trying to shut out the natural noises of the creaking and groaning space to hear those unnatural sounds the better. It was a hopeless task, one that he was less qualified than Marsden to execute, yet one which demanded his attention. How far below the waterline was this leak? Any remedial action he took depended upon some rough location. To careen Patrician properly would render her utterly defenceless should she be taken by surprise, for all her guns and stores would have to come out of her and be safely landed. Drinkwater had himself led an attack on a French frigate in such a supine state, and carried her safely out to sea from her bolt-hole on the Red Sea coast of Arabia. To be served himself in similar fashion, dished-up to an enemy without the chance of defending himself sent worms of apprehension crawling about his belly. But he had to know the worst and he stumbled along the carpenter’s walk, a narrow space maintained free of stores just inside the ship’s skin, by which access was provided to plug shot-holes and maintain the water-tight integrity of the ship.
‘Mind, sir, this grating be a bit loose . . .’
‘Yes, thank you . . .’
In the yellow pools of lamp-light he could see the ship’s inner skin, discoloured with the traces of mould. The thick air was heavy with the multiple smells of this great warehouse of the cruiser’s wants. Here powder and shot were stored in magazines and lockers; locked store-rooms housed spirits and flour, fish and dried peas. Tier upon tier of barrels stowed bung up and bilge-free, held the potable sweet-water; casks of dubious age contained the salt-pork and cheese provided by a munificent Victualling Board; the oats and dried fruit, the wood-store and oil-room, all fitted below the waterline, above, abaft or forward of the hold proper. The platformed section of the orlop along which they worked their way showed no ingress of water. Amid the creaks and groans of the ship’s timbers, the slosh of bilge-water and the hiss of the sea beyond the inner and outer wales and the massive futtocks, they strained their ears for sound of a roar, a spurt, even a trickle of incoming water. But all they could make out above the working of the ship, was the squeal of disturbed rats.
Drinkwater escaped to the upper deck, scanning the horizon and again finding the sea bereft of any sign of a ship. A mile to leeward a whale fluked, slapping the water with its gigantic tail before sliding into the depths of the ocean. Somehow that brief appearance of leviathan only served to emphasise the emptiness of the scene.
Slowly Patrician approached the coast; the yellow line of Punta de los Reyes spread across the horizon ahead, the clouds hanging over the coastal mountains fused into mist and falling rain. Drinkwater crossed the deck to where Fraser, his odd, sandy features wearing a comic expression that bespoke his anxiety, waited to hear what Drinkwater had to say with as much patience as he could muster.
‘Hae ye any luck, sir?’
‘Little enough Mr Fraser.’
‘No, I couldna find anything either. I thought it might be the hood-ends . . .’
Drinkwater considered the suggestion. The hood-ends were where the butt ends of the strakes, or planks, met the timbering of the stem. Here, the constant working of the sea round the bow could disturb the fastenings and loosen the planks. Leaking about the stem was very difficult to determine at sea and was increased by the ship continuing to make headway.
‘That’s an informed guess, Mr Fraser. Whatever the cause we cannot ignore the matter. I intend to get the ship into sheltered water and lighten her. We may have to careen, which will mean the devil of a lot of labour. Whatever expedient we are driven to we’ll require a boat guard. If there is a Russian battle-ship in the offing we had better lie low. God help us if we are caught.’
‘Amen to that sir.’
‘For heaven’s sake it’ll be like being caught in a whore-house on Judgement Day . . . begging your pardon, Mr Henderson.’
‘I appreciate the strength of your metaphor, Mr Mylchrist, and deduce therefrom that we can expect an exceedingly great wrath to descend upon us should the event come to pass.’
‘Well we can’t ignore the matter. Three feet in the well ain’t a lot, but it came in damned quick and I think something fell out, a trenail, perhaps,’ said Quilhampton, leaning on the wardroom table, his head in his hands, ‘that’s the only logical explanation.’
‘D’you think we’re up against logic, James?’
‘What the hell else d’you think we’re up against?’ Quilhampton jerked up.
Mylchrist shrugged. ‘I didn’t get my wound from an enemy . . .’
‘No . . . no more you did . . .’
Mylchrist’s gloomy implication chimed in uncannily with Quilhampton’s superstitious foreboding.
‘A nail from the hull – another in our bloody coffins . . .’
‘Oh, for God’s sake Johnnie . . .’
‘Gentlemen, perhaps a prayer is apt while we wait for the first lieutenant.’
‘What are you going to pray for, Mr Henderson?’ asked Mylchrist sourly. ‘Three hundred pairs of feet enabled to walk upon the water?’
‘Mr Mylchrist, I am outraged! If God abandons us in our extremity, your blasphemy will give him cause enough . . . happily His mercy is infinite and able to accommod
ate a miscreant as wretched as you.’
‘Ah, I forgot the quality of mercy,’ remarked Mylchrist sarcastically, ‘the recollection comes as a great relief to me.’
Henderson drew from his nose the spectacles he kept in almost permanent residence there, a habit which intimated he was never far removed from the devout perusal of Holy Scriptures. Such a deliberate and portentous gesture augured ill for the bantering inhabitants of the wardroom as they lounged about, waiting for their orders from the first lieutenant.
‘Johnnie, what exactly did you mean just now?’ Quilhampton interjected, a preoccupied look on his lean face.
‘About what?’
‘About the leak. Did you mean to imply someone may have had a hand in the matter?’
‘Well, yes, of course . . .’
‘Gentlemen, I have your orders . . . pray pay attention. You may require to make notes . . . we’re in for the devil of a hard time.’ Fraser’s burr ended the conversation as the worried Scotsman hurried into the wardroom and waved aside the negro messman and his coffee pot. ‘Nae time for that, King, nae time at all . . .’
It was not ground of his own choosing. A light mist trailing in the wake of a rain shower was clearing as they closed the coast. Patrician stood shorewards under a single jib and her three topsails, a cable bent to her sheet anchor and a leadsman chanting from the forechains. Balanced on the rail, braced against the mizen shrouds, Drinkwater scanned the littoral ahead. He sought an anchorage beyond the flats that extended northwards from Punta de los Reyes. A long, comparatively low-lying spit of land extended for fifteen miles northward of the headland, behind which, his charts suggested, lay an inlet running deep into the countryside. He had little real knowledge of its suitability, but the preoccupation of a worried mind convinced him that to delay, to seek a more ideal spot, would be foolish.
Ahead of him the mist had resolved itself into a low cloud of spray that hung over the pounding white of breakers where the long Pacific swells toppled and thundered on the sands of the Californian foreshore. Behind the beach low sand-dunes ran to the southward and, somewhere beyond the horizon, terminated at Punta de los Reyes. At intervals along this sand-spit higher eminences rose and, at the distal point, a low but prominent hill marked the termination of the land. The white of breakers pounded on the low bar around which Drinkwater hoped to work Patrician and seek an anchorage beyond the spit, in the safety of the long lagoon of Tomales Bay.
The wind had fallen light, a gentle onshore breeze that ruffled the sea. The promise of sunshine earlier in the day had failed and cloud had closed off the heavens and given the sea’s surface a leaden colour, as it lifted itself to the easy motion of the incoming swells.
‘Noooo bottom!’ The leadsman’s chant had become monotonous, though they were within a league of the shore and then, sharply insistent: ‘By the mark twenty!’
The breakers were suddenly nearer, drawing out on the starboard bow. The gentle pitch of the ship was steepening as she reacted to the shortening of the heaving wave-length compounded of the rise of the sea-bed and the back-swell, beating seawards from the rampart of the land.
‘By the mark thirteen!’
Worms of anxiety were crawling in Drinkwater’s belly. Hill came across the deck and stood below him. Without words they shared their apprehension. Tomales Point was opening all the time. A guano-stained rock had detached itself from the land as it changed its appearance with their close approach.
‘Bird Rock, sir,’ Hill remarked, though Drinkwater knew the comment was an expression of caution, not topographical interest. He felt a swell gather itself under Patrician’s stern, lifting it and thrusting the ship forward so that her bow dipped sharply. The sudden elevation and clearer view ahead alarmed both captain and sailing master. They were in shoal soundings now, the leadsman chanting the deeps of nine and eight fathoms. Behind the smoking barrier of the long sand spit, the narrow placid opening of the lagoon stretched away to the southwards. On its far shore the low-lying land rose gradually, hazing into the distance and the rain covered mountains. But across the entrance to Tomales Bay lay the whitened fury of the thwarted Pacific, roaring and thundering upon the sand-bar that blocked their intended refuge.
Then the swell rolled under them, the stern dropped and the bow reared up, the long bowsprit stabbing almost vertically. Drinkwater felt himself jerked by the mast-whip shaking the mizen shrouds. Ahead of them the smooth back of the swell culminated in a great arch of water, soon to disintegrate in hundreds of tons of roiling water as one more breaker on the coast. It entirely blotted out their view, but both Drinkwater and Hill had seen enough.
‘Stand by the braces!’ Drinkwater roared, leaping from the rail. ‘Down helm! Larboard tack! Hands aloft, let fall the courses and t’garns’ls! Lively there! Afterguard, leggo spanker brails! Haul aft the spanker! Come Mr Mylchrist move those lubbers smartly there . . . Fo’c’s’le . . .’
‘Sir?’ Comley stood, four-square, facing aft expectantly.
‘Hoist your jibs, sir!’
Hill had moved across the deck to stand by the binnacle. He shot glances at the compass, then aloft at the masthead pendant and at the larboard dogvane.
‘Full and bye, Mr Hill . . .’
Patrician began to swing with an infuriating slowness, bringing the swell onto her beam and rolling to leeward. As her bowsprit pointed round to the north it seemed to trace the curved shore of Bodega Bay. Drinkwater anxiously watched the thundering breakers get closer; the air was full of the roar of them, the air damp with the spray of their destruction upon the sand-bar. Beam-on, Patrician lifted on a mighty crest; the huge, oily swell passed beneath her and she rolled violently into the following trough. The sails slatted impotently, slapping back against the masts with a rattle of blocks and slap of buntlines. The wind dropped and, for several minutes, Drinkwater considered the necessity of anchoring, to avoid grounding in such an inhospitable spot. But the ship carried her way and the wind filled her sails sufficiently for her to maintain steerage. Crabbing awkwardly to leeward Patrician clawed slowly to the north and westwards, rounding Bodega Head, the far end of the bay, with a cable’s length of deep water to leeward.
As the head-land dropped astern, relief was plain on everyone’s face.
‘A damned close thing, sir,’ said Hill, shaking his head.
‘Yes,’ replied Drinkwater curtly. ‘Stand the leadsman down now. We’ll tack ship and haul to the s’uthard in an hour.’
Drinkwater saw Marsden approaching him, his hat in his hand.
‘Yes, Mr Marsden, I presume you have bad news? Troubles never come singly?’
‘Yes, sir . . .’
‘Well?’ Drinkwater could hear the slow, solemn clank of the pumps, sluicing water from below and out through the gun-deck ports. ‘How much water is she making?’
‘ ’Tis about the same, sir . . . the pumps can cope . . . it’s something else, sir?’
‘The devil it is!’
‘It’s an auger, sir . . . there’s an auger missin’ from my shop!’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Aye, sir, an’ both my mates agree, sir . . . gone missin’ recent, like.’
‘Anyone else know about this?’
‘Well . . . my mates, sir . . . that’s all at present but . . .’ he looked round helplessly. News such as the theft of a drill-bit from the carpenter’s shop following so hard on the discovery of a leak could lead to only one conclusion: the leak was a deliberate act of sabotage.
‘Very well, Mr Marsden. Tell your men to hold their tongues.’ Drinkwater was pale with anger and Marsden happy to quit the quarterdeck under the captain’s baleful glare.
CHAPTER 10
April 1808
The Labouring of Gentlemen
‘Drake’s Bay, gentlemen.’
Drinkwater laid the point of the brass dividers on the chart, a facsimile of George Vancouver’s survey supplied by an unusually obliging Admiralty whose largesse had been prompted by the desire to see
him and his frigate gone from home waters. Captain Drinkwater was, under no circumstances, to have been permitted to plead any of the customary excuses for delay. The folio of copies of Vancouver’s and Cook’s charts had arrived by special messenger with a smooth but pointed letter from Mr Barrow: Every consideration is being extended to facilitate the speedy departure of H.M. Frigate under your command . . .
Drinkwater shook off the obsessive recollection to concentrate upon the task in hand as his officers clustered round. The spur of Punta de los Reyes jutted into the Pacific, doubling back to the eastward in a distal point behind which re-entrant lagoons, sand dunes and an occasional hill formed the border of a bay within which shelter from the prevailing winds and the Pacific groundswell might be sought. Here, more than two centuries before, driven as Drinkwater now was by necessity, Francis Drake had refitted his storm-battered ship. Drinkwater had rejected the place earlier because there was a danger of its being exposed to view from the south-east, a mere thirty miles from the hostile Spaniards at San Francisco. Now, it offered them their only accessible refuge.
‘Ideal, gentlemen,’ he said with more confidence than he felt, ‘let us hope the ghosts of Drake and his people look kindly upon us, for we have much to do.’
‘Why didn’t he go into San Francisco, sir?’ asked Quilhampton, pointing at the great arms of the harbour as it wound inland amid sheltering hills.
‘Because, Mr Q, he sailed right past it, without discovering the entrance. Now, this is what I intend we should do . . .’ He paused to get their attention. They straightened up from the chart, coughing and shuffling. Fraser and Quilhampton had notebooks ready.
In Distant Waters Page 12
