by David McDine
There was no arguing with that. The receding tide was already uncovering the filth-strewn mud-banks allowing the familiar nauseous stench to drift ashore. It took Anson’s mind back to Dead Man’s Island and the mock funeral he had been called to witness before his Boulogne adventures. The smell had impregnated his clothing for days.
The captain eyed him sympathetically. ‘Look Anson, we’re going to be flat out until we sail and I fear we won’t be able to entertain you properly. If, as you say, you’ve been ordered to take time off, why not come with us to Portsmouth?’
The idea had already been in Anson’s mind but he had not wanted to suggest it himself in case it was not welcome. But now...
‘Well, sir, I have been recommended to get plenty of fresh air and I suppose there’s no better way than taking passage round the coast.’
‘Just so. You’ll be supernumerary, of course. No work to do and as much rest as you need. But there’d be plenty of fresh air — and fresh food, thanks to this visit to Chatham and pigs and sheep we’ll be embarking in the Downs.’
‘And I could coach it back from Portsmouth?’
‘Precisely. Not least it would be good for us all to have someone on board who can entertain us with tales of something other than our own boring ship’s routine, the weather, what we’ll do if peace comes, how many rats the midshipmen have caught so far this week, and so forth. Why don’t you give it some thought?’
It did not take Anson long to mull the offer over. He could send the old gentleman a note explaining what was afoot and Cassandra was not going to be at Ludden for a while anyway.
‘Most kind of you, sir. No need to think it over. I accept with gratitude. I will need to write to Mister Parkin, my host at Ludden, explaining what I’m up to and why, and send it via his coachman who’s waiting to find out if I’m staying on board tonight or not. I took the seamanlike precaution of bringing my dunnage with me, so I have everything I need.’
‘Very wise of you. I always say a good sailor is never parted from his kit — except when joining a cutting out expedition off the Normandy coast, eh Anson?’
‘Good point, sir, although at the time ending up wounded and a prisoner of the French was furthermost from my mind!’
‘Nevertheless, you made it home.’
‘Yes, largely because I had taken the precaution of sewing coins in the lining of my second-best coat. They opened a good many doors.’
‘If you wish to write to your host best do it here in my cabin, away from all this hustle and bustle. I need to be on deck, anyway.’
There was indeed a good deal of noisy activity going on as the ship’s stores were replenished and dockyard men helped the carpenter and his mates complete last-minute repairs.
Seated at the captain’s desk in the great cabin, Anson allowed himself to savour the thought that one day he might be there by right — or maybe captain of a ship of the line, or even flying his flag as an admiral, the nation’s destiny in his hands.
But he shook off the presumptuous thought, reached for a pen, dipped it in the inkwell and wrote:
From HMS Phryne at Chatham
My very dear sir,
I hope you will not think it ungrateful of me, but much as I was enjoying your kind hospitality, I have been invited to embark in my old ship HMS Phryne when she sails from Chatham tomorrow to remain with her as far as Portsmouth, and I have accepted.
Sea air is said to be wonderfully restorative and being back on board among my old shipmates has already lifted my spirits.
With fair winds we will reach Portsmouth within the week and while there I will take the opportunity to call upon my agent before returning to Ludden via the mail coaches. By that time I very much hope that your niece will be back from visiting her cousins and the three of us will be able to spend an agreeable time together before my sick leave is up and I return to duty.
Yours affectionately
Oliver Anson
He addressed his missive to Josiah Parkin Esquire, Ludden Hall, folded it, melted a blob of wax and stamped it with the ship’s seal.
9
Back to Sea
Settled into one of the miniscule cabins alongside the gunroom, Anson rested for a while before the evening meal which was to be a Spartan affair, he was told, owing to the need to catch up on everything before sailing.
Being a mere frigate, Phryne did not run to a wardroom as in ships of the line, and the gunroom housed all the officers excepting the captain.
At dinner the first lieutenant told him, ‘Our mutual friend Ned McKenzie has gone off to the marine barracks to select some replacements. He’s gone himself to ensure they don’t try to fob us off with anyone with two left feet, or whatever.’
‘Very wise. My bosun will never live down recruiting a man who hid his wooden leg under a pub table!’
Howard laughed. ‘You’ll see McKenzie later and of course you’ve already met your replacement, Lieutenant Allfree, and young Foxe, but otherwise the gunroom inhabitants are mostly new faces. Tempus fugit, you see.’
With last-minute work continuing and stores still being loaded until late there was little chance of a convivial evening and, tired from his travels and still weak from the loss of blood, Anson turned in early.
But he was up and about early to watch the boats being lowered to pull Phryne out into Upnor Reach, to take advantage of the ebbing tide and begin her slow progress down the Medway.
Rounding St Mary’s Island, Anson looked ahead, paying particular attention to the prison hulks moored along the river below the village of Gillingham in line of sight of one another and rising only a few feet above the glutinous mud even at high tide. He knew them as overcrowded hell-holes in which French prisoners and their allies were confined.
They included famous old British warships, among them Bristol, Hero, Eagle and Camperdown, and captured ships including the Vryheid, Admiral Jan de Winter’s flagship at the Battle of Camperdown, where Admiral Duncan defeated the Dutch so decisively just after the Nore mutiny.
All masts, rigging and sails had been removed from the hulks and haphazard superstructures, erected to house prison staff and stores, cluttered the top decks.
They were bedecked overall but with washing, rather than flags, hanging from lines slung all over the deck. He had once visited one of the hulks, overcrowded floating hell-holes that he believed shamed the nation with inhumane treatment of prisoners-of-war.
But he dismissed the thought to concentrate on the frigate’s passage down river.
This was a nervous time for the sailing master, Josiah Tutt, the senior warrant officer on board responsible for setting courses, monitoring the ship’s position and pilotage. He and his fellows throughout the service were the Admiralty’s main source of hydrographic information and were charged with noting and reporting any new shoals or underwater rocks they discovered.
He and the captain shared a natural horror of running aground and were constantly checking and rechecking the chart and Tutt’s pilot’s notes, carefully recorded over many a year.
Their attention was on one of the old hands who stood in the main chains, heaving the seven-pound lead forward. The line, knotted at one fathom intervals, was vertical when it bottomed, giving him the depth of water which he reported in sing-song fashion.
A diminutive midshipman, clearly fresh out of school, stood beside Mister Tutt, noting the depths — barely three fathoms to begin with, but gradually increasing to the relief of Captain Phillips. Getting stuck on a mud-bank and having to be pulled off almost within musket shot of the dockyard would hardly enhance his reputation.
Unflappable, Tutt was comparing the depths with his chart. It was a help in determining their position but not totally reliable in a tidal river known for its shifting mud-flats.
Running seawards with the tide, they carried minimum canvas — merely enough to give them steerage.
Anson knew this stretch of the Medway well, having been rowed down it to join HMS Euphemus during the Nore
affair and helping the loyal hands on board to make a dash for freedom. It had been a nail-biting exploit, but they had come through it successfully — and thereby helped bring about the collapse of the mutiny.
Channel markers placed by Trinity House, which was responsible for the provision and maintenance of navigational aids including the Nore buoy and lightship, were of great help to river traffic. But Anson wondered if they took full account of the additional hazard: the presence of wrecks, some perhaps deadly hangovers from the navy’s shameful defeat when the Dutch raided the Medway more than a century before.
He had grounded on a mud-bank not far from here himself when taking Euphemus into Sheerness and there had been hell to pay kedging the ship off under fire from some of the mutinous ships. It was not an experience he ever wished to repeat.
But now, despite all the hazards, all went well for Phryne and before long they had left Hoo Island behind them to larboard as they entered Pinup Reach, with more than three fathoms under them.
Anson remained on deck taking a keen interest in their progress, although feeling a little frustrated at not having any proper work to do.
Down the Long Reach and Kethole Reach, with Burntwick Island to starboard, he could see ahead to the sinisterly-named Dead Man’s Island, little more than a tidal mudflat, where he had attended the fake funeral of Lieutenant Gérard Hurel, a French royalist officer from the prison hulks.
The charade had been engineered to make Hurel’s fellow prisoners believe he was dead, leaving him free to accompany Anson on a spying mission to Boulogne in the run-up to Nelson’s raid. It had been a clever plan, well executed, but, Anson mused, such a tragedy that although he and Hurel had brought back vital intelligence it was not acted upon and the raid had turned into a disaster.
Seated on a grating with nothing but the view and observing the careful working of the ship down the middle of Saltpan Reach to occupy him, Anson extended his telescope, one of Messrs P and J Dolland’s six guinea superior three-foot achromatic models paid for out of his own pocket, and surveyed the Isle of Grain to the north.
Herons and egrets stood sentinel on the banks and wildfowl of various types abounded. How Josiah Parkin would enjoy such a view.
Ahead now lay the dockyard town of Sheerness — unkindly known as ‘Sheer Nasty’ by some in the service — on the Isle of Sheppey, with Garrison Point marking their entry into the Thames estuary.
Beyond lay the Great Nore Anchorage and the North Sea, a welcome sight for all on board and a massive relief for the captain and master who could now congratulate themselves on having avoided the ignominy of running on to any of the many mud-banks.
Picking up a light westerly off the land, Phryne, now under full sail, made good progress along the north Kent coast. They passed Faversham, a few miles from Parkin’s home at Ludden, and then the small fishing port of Whitstable, the twin towers on the site of the Roman fort at Reculver, and the town of Margate, where Drake had returned from pursuing the Spanish Armada up the North Sea two centuries before to report victory.
The breeze favoured them until they rounded the North Foreland, where it backed with what Tutt called ‘a bit of south in it’ and there was nothing to be done now other than claw their way upwind past Ramsgate and Sandwich into the Downs anchorage.
It was here that not long since Nelson’s squadron had sailed for the doomed Boulogne attack and limped back, frustrated, many of the ships’ boats full of casualties — Anson among them.
Now, he leaned on the ship’s rail, looking shoreward, remembering that dreadful time as if it were yesterday. Even without a glass he could clearly see the exact spot where his Seagate gunboats had been run up on the shingle. It was there that Parkin and Cassandra had found him badly wounded and taken him to a house they had hired in the small fishing port of Deal close by.
Other wounded officers had been similarly accommodated, including Nelson’s favourite, young Edward Parker, who had commanded the division that included the Seagate boats.
The young hero, only 23, sword drawn at the head of his men, had been struck down by a blast of grapeshot and musketry.
Anson had recovered sufficiently to be taken back to Ludden Hall to convalesce, but Parker had not been so fortunate — and some weeks later Nelson had followed his coffin to Deal Church, weeping unashamedly.
10
A Fancy Dinner
A presence at his elbow startled Anson out of his reverie. It was Captain Phillips.
‘You may well gaze impotently at Deal, Anson. It’s a sight that’s going to become all too familiar by all accounts.’
‘Really, sir?’
Phillips nodded. ‘The first lieutenant just spoke to one of the fishing boats and the mackerel-hookers kindly informed him that this pestilential south-westerly will likely trap us here for several days at least, along with all the rest.’
He indicated the forest of bare masts of the warships, merchantmen and coasters sheltering in the wide anchorage framed to seaward by the Goodwin Sands.
‘At least the Deal boatmen will be smiling, sir. I’ve spent some time here recently, both ashore and afloat, and I reckon the locals must pray to the god of prevailing winds to keep them fully occupied rowing around the anchorage running errands, bringing stores, passengers and whatnot.’
Sighing, Phillips acknowledged this. ‘Frustrating for us, but not an ill wind for them then.’ He shrugged. ‘No matter, seeing as we’re trapped here and you have returned to us from beyond the grave, as it were, albeit for a few days, we must use the opportunity to celebrate.’
The first lieutenant joined them, smiling. ‘Did I hear the magic word, celebrate? A fancy dinner, eh?’
‘We may as well, since we’re going nowhere for a while and we’re not likely to be attacked or collide with anything swinging round a buoy here. It’s one of those rare occasions in the service when we don’t have to keep our wits about us and can afford to down a few wets.’ He smiled at the thought.
Howard beamed. ‘Capital! Do I take it that you are formally inviting the officers to dinner in your cabin, sir?’
Phillips, far from being the richest officer in the service — or on board his own ship, come to that, screwed his features into a rictus grin. Hoist with his own petard.
The thought of a table’s-worth of hungry and thirsty officers and gannet-like midshipmen devouring his precious private stores was alarming.
But he was not born yesterday.
Hesitating for a moment, he announced: ‘Yes, we’ll dine in the great cabin, but best send the pusser ashore to procure the necessary articles — fresh meat and suchlike — and no doubt the Deal smugglers can supply him with some decent French wine, for a price!’
Howard raised an eyebrow. So the captain was providing the venue but not the victuals, which would be paid for from other purses, including his own. But no matter, as the scion of a rich and aristocratic family he could well afford it.
*
And so the scene was set for a merry evening. The officers exercised their razors and dug out their best figs, midshipmen were instructed to wash behind their ears, a task deemed unnecessary by some as they were generally reckoned to be wet behind them anyway.
After downing an agreeable sherry they repaired to the table, resplendent in their immaculate undress uniforms and took their places as directed by the first lieutenant.
Cruikshank, the captain’s steward, ushered Anson to the seat on the left of Phillips and the only other guest, Captain Mordecai Merton, a rotund merchant navy skipper, was seated on the right.
After grace, shrilly squeaked by the youngest midshipman, Phillips engaged Merton in polite conversation for a while before turning to his former second lieutenant.
‘So, Anson, here you are — yet we’ve laid you to rest at a memorial service. Why, I unveiled the memorial plaque to you myself!’
Howard and McKenzie exchanged grins at the memory of the ensign enveloping their captain when he performed the unveiling ceremony.
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Anson smiled. ‘Kind of you, sir. I would have enjoyed being there myself, but I was detained in France at the time, of course.’
‘Tell me, was the memorial taken down when you showed up very much alive?’
‘No, sir. Apparently, in the interests of economy, my clergyman brother decided it should merely be covered up until such time as I do shuffle off this mortal coil and the date and place of death can be amended.’
The copious refills of wine were beginning to take effect and Anson’s remark provoked some jocularity among the diners.
Phillips observed: ‘Hmm, yes, I do recall that your brother — Augustine, isn’t it? — was quick to present your brother officers with the bill for that damned memorial, so I suppose we have a vested interest in what happens to it!’
Howard held up his hand. ‘Might I suggest, Anson, that you arrange to be killed somewhere with a very short name? It would save on the stonemason’s bill!’
Amid further hilarity, Anson smiled wryly. ‘Thank you, gentlemen. Your kind consideration for my well-being is much appreciated. However, I aim to outlive you all, so the memorial plaque will remain covered long after the rest of you have left the planet!’
As the laughter subsided the captain tapped his glass and Anson was invited to take wine with him.
Their glasses were quickly refilled by the hovering Cruikshank, who himself appeared to have been imbibing, and they raised them in salute and drank.
This being the first formal dinner on board for some while, the cooks had excelled themselves, wisely opting for a Kentish theme to take advantage of the ingredients that were readily available locally.
Whitstable oysters, obtained from one of the many fishing boats keeping company with Phyrne in the Downs anchorage, had set the meal off on a high note.
Next came an excellent rich, eagerly-slurped fish soup, also courtesy of the Deal fishermen’s overnight catch in return for some plugs of tobacco.
