With the wind abaft their beam the pitch of the vessel eased. Men who had survived in the choppy waters of the Dover Straits and stayed upright in the English Channel were struck down by the change in motion. But it was an easier movement, which served Nelson well: he lost the yellow look of fast-approaching death, and got some colour back in his cheeks. Now that the sails were set true he could attend to the needs of his watch, most of whom now struggled to walk on a deck that was not only rising and falling but canted like a gentle slope.
‘Giddings,’ he ordered, ‘get some food into any man who has not eaten.’
‘That’ll do the decks no good, your honour,’ said Giddings, crossly. ‘Let them lay till the weather clears. ‘Sides, you could use some victuals yourself.’
What colour he had gained disappeared as he paled with anger. ‘Two men have died already. If we leave them there’ll be more. Do as I say, and any man who refuses food, force some well-watered rum and ship’s biscuit down his throat.’
‘Permission to set some of them upright to act as swabbers. There’s shit all over the lower decks from them that know no better.’
‘Make it so,’ Nelson replied, heading for the wardroom. That matter would have to be sorted out before divisions on Sunday. He couldn’t blame the lubbers who had had no chance to be educated, but they must be told to use the heads, on fear of some punishment, otherwise the ship would stink throughout the whole commission.
Little did he know that Giddings was below, telling his sickening charges just how lucky they were. ’Cos if it had been any other officer than Mr Nelson, you stupid cunts would be had up already. And I tell you, one more steaming turd found between the hammocks and it won’t be the grating you’ll get, it’ll be my fist down your throat.’
As soon as he entered the wardroom Nelson accosted the purser, his pinched face pink from sitting near the stove. ‘How soon can we issue the new hands with some proper clothing?’
Like all pursers, Abel Corman had a sleek appearance, although he was personally of slight build. Perhaps it was the quality of his clothes, and that he had been below all the time they had battled their way down the Channel. The bottle of claret, secure in the rack by his left elbow, might also have added to his overwhelming appearance of well being.
‘Best left till the weather moderates a trifle, Nelson. We can’t go laying out good canvas on a wet deck. And with all this heavin’ and hoin’ there’d be no end of waste in the cutting.’
‘We’ve lost two men already.’
Corman sniffed, pulled out his bottle of wine and hinted, with a forward push, that Nelson might like some. ‘Happens every commission, young fellow. They come aboard with every manner of disease in their frames. It’s the hovels they live in, of course, and the salt water and air does for them. I remember when I was assistant in HMS Ardent we lost a round two dozen, most of them overboard, between Harwich and Leith.’
Even sick with fever Nelson had gone out with press gangs until the ship had its complement. The purser’s air of complacency riled him, but he controlled it, albeit with difficulty. ‘Would it surprise you, Mr Corman, that having gone to great trouble to acquire them, I’d be mighty loath to lose any more.’
Corman blinked then: the tone had been polite enough but the ice-cold blue eyes and the pale drawn face hinted at deep anger and frustration. ‘And I think that men dying of wet and cold might be more wasteful than a few shreds of canvas.’
‘Spoken like a fellow who has no need to account for it,’ Corman said, sitting forward, skinny chest puffed out, his tone pompous. ‘But I do, sir, and to men who can spot the waste of a farthing fraction.’
‘Nevertheless,’ Nelson hissed.
Corman held up his hand, aware that the youngster was close to losing his temper. ‘It is the Captain’s decision, Nelson, not mine. I suggest that you eat and drink something yourself, or perhaps you will be the one to expire.’
Waddle, in oilskins, entered behind them. ‘Mr Nelson, we shall be returning to normal watch keeping, now conditions are somewhat eased.’
‘Sir.’
‘Which means that, if I were you, I should get some sleep. I’ve set Midshipman Latimer the first dog-watch. You are due to relieve him in less than two hours.’
‘I asked Corman if we could issue some clothing to the landsmen.’
Waddle staggered as Lowestoffe pitched over in the wake of a large wave. ‘In this? Are you mad?’
‘No, sir, but I am concerned for the condition of the men.’
The round face, red from wind and rain, still seemed smooth, though the eyes, red-rimmed and tired, were less so. ‘Take it as a blessing, Nelson. Weather like this weeds out the weaklings for you. Saves you the trouble of having to deal with them for the rest of the commission.’
‘Quite,’ put in Corman. ‘The weeds usually end up at the grating, and if they expire from that it causes ill feeling in the crew. If it’s not that, the sods tumble overboard for no reason.’
Nelson glared at him. ‘I must ask again, sir.’
‘And I must refuse.’
‘Sir,’ Nelson protested.
‘You mistake your position, Mr Nelson, which I attribute to the influence of your connections. Let me remind you that we are at sea now.’
‘Permission to see the Captain.’
‘Denied!’ barked Waddle. ‘He is even more exhausted than you look. The men will be issued with their ducks when the sun is out and the deck even. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Aye, aye, sir,’ Nelson replied, pushing past the premier.
‘Where the devil are you going man? I told you to get some sleep.’
He was sick of Waddle and his attitude that men were lower than the animals cosseted in the manger, and expendable. He was even more tired of deferring to his malice.
‘I do believe, sir, that even in the bounds of naval discipline, that is beyond your remit.’
‘Damn you, sir.’
‘And damn you Mr Waddle.’ Nelson’s blue eyes were blazing with passion. ‘We have the good fortune to live in a country where opinions may freely be stated, and these are mine. That your actions are a disgrace to human decency. Worse, they are more likely to sink us than save us. You, sir, are nothing short of a bully, and while you may instruct me in many respects I will never obey an order that forces me to emulate what I consider base behaviour. I will earn respect, not enforce it.’
‘How dare you?’ Waddle spat, his knotted starter raised to strike.
Nelson didn’t flinch. ‘Use it, Mr Waddle, and I’ll call you out.’
There was a moment when it looked as if Waddle was going to succumb to temptation. He was bigger, stronger and healthier than the man challenging him. But he lacked the strength of will to impose himself on a personality that he must have known would never buckle. As soon as the moment of danger had passed, Nelson spun round and left the wardroom. He heard Waddle curse as he departed, then the words, faint but clear, addressed to the purser: ‘There’s a lily liver in that breast, Corman, mark my words. He thinks me blind, thinks I can’t tell the odds between a proper blow with a starter and a dumb show. I’ve come across the type before, who’re soft on the hands. It would not surprise me to learn that Mr Nelson would rather bed them than work them. No doubt he thinks to win their affection, but I know it to be as true as the nose on my face that when the time comes, and there’s death flying about, they won’t follow him.’
‘He certainly has a great deal to learn,’ Corman replied.
Waddle’s reply had real venom in it. ‘No, he doesn’t. Not with his uncle so well placed that every senior officer will grovel to appease him.’
Was that true? Would he be favoured even if he was useless? The way Waddle continued certainly meant he thought so. ‘That whey-faced pup will rise like well-mixed dough in warm air and, no doubt, have a ship of his own, while I am still some other captain’s whipping boy.’
Eventually the weather did ease, though the sun didn’t make an immedia
te appearance. Badgered on a daily basis by Nelson, Corman finally relented and hauled the necessary bolts of canvas from the sail locker. Each man was issued with enough to make a set of trousers and provided with cloth to knock up a shirt. Then, amid much grumbling, the better-qualified hands were set to teaching them how to sew their ducks, with Mr Nelson prowling on the main deck to ensure that none of the usual jokes were played. He wanted no three-legged men in his division.
Easier weather provided a chance to train the men rather than drive them. And once they had a uniform appearance, and had been fed for a week on plain but proper food that they could keep in their stomachs, they began to look like a reasonably healthy bunch of hands. Those with hair long enough had already begun to plait it, taking in good heart or ill the taunts of the long serving, pigtailed topmen.
‘Christ, your honour,’ said Giddings, who had taken to breaching the bounds of proper discipline by talking to an officer without permission, then doubling the offence by taking the Lord’s name in vain, ‘if I didn’t know better, I’d say they almost looked like sailors.’
‘They do that, Giddings,’ Nelson replied.
The two men exchanged grins as the clouds parted at last, and the first burst of sunshine they had seen since leaving the Downs bathed Lowestoffe’s deck.
As they sailed south to the Azores, where they would put up their helm to head west on the trade winds, faces became names, and names became people, with homes, families and problems they could always raise, providing Giddings had laid the way, with the second lieutenant. There were those who would never make seamen as long as they lived, the mere act of hauling on a rope nearly beyond their mental powers, but in some sense every man took on a role aboard ship, even if it was only as the butt of endless ribbing.
Nelson was reminded of the voyage on Swanborough in the way that relationships changed between the experienced tars and the newcomers. Except here, if there were fights and other vices, he as an officer was kept unaware of them. And in a man-o’-war the hands were allowed no idleness to brood. There was too much to do: sail drill to perfect the frigate’s ability to manoeuvre, gunnery practice to up the rate of fire – dumb show mostly, merely hauling the guns in and out so that the ten men per cannon could act as a team, powder being too expensive to waste.
There was practice in boarding with boats over the side, with one half of the crew trying to get back on the deck in the face of the others. Wounds were common, since no one wanted to play such games in a gentle fashion. Officers were not spared, and Horatio Nelson garnered as many bruises as the rest, but he handed out more, surprising and overcoming many a robust opponent with the sheer tenacity of his effort, his pike, marlinspike or sword wrapped in canvas doing sterling work.
The truth was he loved battle, even a mock one: it made his blood race in a way that he found exhilarating. Any feeling of weakness could be banished in an instant if he was offered the chance to lead a boarding party. That he sometimes ended up in the sea, thrown back by a strong defence, only occasioned laughter, both from the crew and the victim.
His problems were not on deck or with the crew, or in the sailing of the ship on watch. They were in the wardroom where the premier disparaged his actions as a futile attempt to gain popularity, a dangerous way to behave with men who, if you were an officer with a proper sense of discipline, you would have to send to the grating.
CHAPTER 20
Dinners with Captain Locker tended to be relaxed. He liked company, especially that of the younger members of the crew, and a ravenous midshipman was seen commonly on his left, usually taking little part in the conversation, but consuming as much as he could cram into his mouth.
‘Tell me Mr Bromwich,’ Locker said, with a twinkle in his eye, to the youngster who, probably because of his height, tended to put his fellows in the shade in the article of greed. ‘Does your coat have deep pockets?’
‘Yesh shir,’ the boy replied, his mouth full.
‘Then we’d best eat up, gentlemen,’ Locker whooped, aiming his knife at the great joint of roast beef in the middle of the table, ‘or there will be scant fare for the adults.’
Bromwich blushed to his roots, even though his commander was grinning at him. ‘Have you fed up the rats for consumption yet, young fellow?’
‘No, sir.’
‘You will in time, lad. A mid’s hunger knows no bounds. I remember that well. Pounded ship’s biscuit mixed with a drop of rum gives the beasts a very singular flavour.’
‘I was taught to feed them the bargemen, sir,’ said Nelson. ‘We’d hover round the mess tables and scoop the creatures up as the hands banged them loose.’
‘A bit of lobscouse does wonders for the texture,’ added Pryce, the schoolmaster, who had served on a line of battle ship, which opened up a general discussion of the best way to catch, prepare and eat rats.
‘Slow roasting over wood,’ said Waddle, ‘if you can persuade the cook to let you at his fire.’
Locker was of the opinion that they were best in a stew, as fine, any day, as chicken if you added some dried peas and a pint of blackstrap wine to the mix. Bromwich took little part in the discussion, continuing to eat his fill rather than miss the opportunity. Who cared about rats in the presence of a baron of beef? He was still at it when the conversation moved on to the American rebellion and the conflict it had caused.
‘The rebels have no navy, of course,’ said Locker, ‘and barring the intervention of the French, we won’t see much in the way of proper action. But there might be the odd privateer preying on our merchant ships.’
‘Yet our duties will be congenial, sir,’ replied Waddle. ‘The seditious swine are still trading into the sugar islands. Let us scoop them and turn their loss to our profit.’
Locker looked at his premier. ‘The taking of prizes is all very well, Mr Waddle, and fine for the prosperity of our endeavours, but nothing elevates a man like a sea fight with a proper warship. Ain’t that so, Nelson?’
Waddle’s face clouded and he looked hard at Locker, as though he sensed a deliberate insult. He knew that the Captain was aware of Nelson’s and his mutual antipathy, even though it wasn’t allowed to surface in his presence. On a small ship like Lowestoffe, such things could not be kept hidden. Preference couldn’t be kept secret either, and Locker clearly appreciated the company of his second lieutenant, a man keen to reprise at the table every battle the British Navy had ever fought. Waddle felt such games to be crass.
In Waddle’s opinion, Locker could bore for the nation on the subject of naval history, especially regarding Hawke, his own personal hero. The actions off Quiberon Bay and Brest were a constant refrain and the captain always concluded with a statement so frequently expressed that, to his premier’s way of thinking, repetition had rendered it fatuous: ‘Always lay a Frenchman close,’ he would exclaim, his hand invariably thumping the table top, ‘and you will beat him!’
Nelson would always applaud the sentiment, which damned it as even more stupid in Waddle’s eyes. But Locker’s story telling wasn’t confined to his own years of service: he could recount the details of every sea battle since ancient times and, encouraged by Nelson, did so. Waddle put this down to the fact that Locker came from a long line of naval folk: grandfather, father and numerous sea-going uncles. He had even married the daughter of a naval officer, which hinted at a damaging degree of inbreeding. Nelson might not be cast from the same mould, but he behaved as if he was.
Waddle, with his more classical turn of mind, thought they exhibited a damning degree of simplicity rather than any deep knowledge. The Latin poets quite foxed them and any mention of Greek tragedies inevitably prompted a return to the naval battle of Salamis between the Athenians and the Persians. Waddle also saw Nelson’s flattery of the Captain, his continual questions and enquiries regarding naval folklore, as nothing but the crawling of an officer determined upon advancement. What was even more galling to the bored observer was that it clearly paid dividends.
‘It certainly
did my uncle Maurice no harm, sir,’ Nelson responded, when Locker reprised his mantra about beating the French. He had not looked at the premier as he spoke, so that he was unwittingly sailing into stormy waters.
‘You cannot claim it is mere battle that has made him what he is,’ Waddle growled. ‘From what I know of your uncle, which I admit is only hearsay, he is a man of some culture, an avid reader and a presence at the cultural life of the nation. He has, of course, the advantage of being a bachelor without issue, which gives him time to indulge his wide variety of tastes.’
It was a finely balanced insult to Maurice Suckling, who lived alone, had never married and was known for a fussy attention to cleanliness and tidiness. Nelson had no knowledge of his sexual orientation, but he knew that to reply harshly to Waddle, to demand that he withdraw what was only an insinuation would reinforce rather than kill it.
‘I think he applied the same abilities you mention to the proper running of a ship, sir.’
‘What does this imply, Nelson? That the other officers who successfully fought the enemy during the Seven Years War did not?’
‘That’s certainly an accusation you could level at some of the admirals,’ Locker joked, the only person at the table who could advance such a jest. He was trying to lighten the atmosphere, though one glance at Waddle was enough to tell him he had failed. ‘They were not all like Hawke. At Quiberon Bay he risked his entire fleet to sail in after the French. If they’d guessed his purpose, and run their own ships into shoal water, the whole English fleet could have been lost.’
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