"Six months this day, Sir Frederick."
"Lady Harris was some three months with child when we left, Mr Murray."
Murray made no comment, having enjoyed his own weeks of indulgence on Antigua.
"It is possible to experience a guilty conscience, Mr Murray - but extremely futile!"
They said no more - they could only wait for a letter, which might arrive in two months, or six, or never, lost at sea.
The squadron reversed its tracks, made its way east again, Nimble sent off to Antigua with a detailed report from Captain Murray under a covering despatch from Frederick. When the fleet from England arrived the information would be to hand, and Nimble would rejoin in barely a week.
"A formal blockade is not appropriate, Mr McPherson, for lack of ships to interdict so great a coastline. We can only show willing and must now ignore neutrals such as American traders, for lack of time. They will, of course, be aware that we are actively seeking out deserters and so will avoid us wherever possible, and that will at least reduce trade along the Main. For the meantime, we must be an irritant to the Dutch, I fear me."
Frederick called his captains to conference.
"We are to make a nuisance of ourselves along the coast, gentlemen, raiding the harbours as we come to them and endeavouring to persuade the military to garrison every small port and spread their forces in penny packets along their whole shores. When the time comes to invade it will be easier to make a first lodgement if there is no more than half a battalion anywhere."
"Should we not add Wallsend to the squadron again, sir?"
"Probably not, Captain Jackman - it is in my mind to make the raids swift and, dare I say it, superficial. We are not to indulge in the reduction of forts and whole towns, some of which may be of a good size in a colony such as we are discussing. A landing at night, perhaps, an attack on a battery by all means, but intended as pinpricks that may cause the Dutch, and their French masters, to scatter their forces rather than concentrate them. The fleet when it arrives will no doubt add Wallsend to its number - and will find the men from its own resources, a matter of some difficulty to us."
Captain Murray stirred anxiously in his seat, seemed, for once, a little unwilling to make a contribution which was nonetheless necessary. Frederick caught his eye, nodded to him to take the floor.
"It occurs to me, Sir Frederick, that to scatter their troops, the Dutch must first find some way of transporting them. I cannot imagine that there is a road along the whole of the coast, sir, on which they could easily march. To be brief, sir, they must send their soldiers by sea, which, one sincerely trusts, our squadron will command."
They contemplated that hole in Frederick's logic in loyal silence. None of the captains present were willing to say that Murray could possibly be right; nor would one stand and disagree with him.
"You have, as so often, used your penetrating intellect to our great advantage, Captain Murray. While I could wish that you had not, purely from the aspect of the blow to my self-esteem, I am forced to admit that you are certainly right! Captain Jackman - in your three weeks on this coast, I do not imagine that you observed a turnpike, bright and shiny and new, running the length of the shore?"
Jackman regretted that he had not; he had, however, observed any number of swamps and mangrove patches that made a road a very unlikely undertaking.
"How very annoying! It seemed so fine a strategy! The purpose of our little congress has changed, gentlemen - what are we to do to, as the saying goes, 'to annoy our enemies and amuse our friends'?"
They could not imagine, for lack of knowledge; at the end of two hours all they could come up with was to make a visit to Georgetown and seek intelligence of the governor there.
The Governor was pleased to see them; he had a harbour that was, in his own terms, 'full' of merchantmen who dared not sail, to the great dismay of his planters who wanted their sugar sold this year rather than next and were bending his ear in the Council.
Frederick counted four island schooners, a pair of brigs and two small ships. Less than a thousand tons burthen added together.
"Very little, Sir Frederick, and not filled wholly with sugar - there is indigo and logwood as well - yet each ton will bring in up to two hundreds of guineas at auction. That is no small sum, sir!"
"I cannot disagree with you, Mr Baring. I confess, I had not attempted the arithmetic and am more than a little surprised by it. It is far too great a cargo to be hazarded. What is the problem particularly, sir? Privateers?"
"A frigate and an accompanying sloop, carrying the colours of this damned Batavian Republic. I much preferred the old Orange flag, I must admit, Sir Frederick."
Frederick considered saying that he did not give a damn for any piece of cloth - but there was a deal made of flags and jacks, when one considered the matter - they must have some importance, to certain folk.
"Was they still able to fly Orange at the main they might well not be our enemies, sir. Have they taken many ships, do you know?"
"None, to my knowledge, Sir Frederick, though they may have been active off Trinidad, perhaps. They appeared off the harbour here and discovered that we have emplaced a pair of forty-two pound guns this year. I was none too impressed with the practice of the artillerymen - I do not believe they actually achieved a single hit - but they quite obviously gave the Dutch captain to change his mind on forcing an entry."
"I suspect I would do the same in like circumstance, sir. I will convoy your vessels, sir. In the first instance should they go to Trinidad or to Antigua to join up with the great bulk making the Atlantic crossing?"
"The smaller ships will offload at the Trinidad, Sir Frederick, their cargoes spoken for by the West India Company. The two larger will join the convoy there, if you will be so good as to escort them."
It had to be done - the Navy must always protect the mercantile interest, for England lived by trade.
"Can you suggest where the Dutch ships might be found, Mr Baring? It would be sensible to seek them out and end their menace to your daily business. Convoy first, as goes without saying, I trust!"
"I have no information, Sir Frederick. All I can offer is that no coastal trader has made port for the last two weeks."
"Taken or sheltering from them, in all probabilities, sir. They may well still be on the coast, necessarily to the south and east - for we have come from the north-west and must have met them otherwise. I will give your convoy a proper escort, sir, for one cannot be certain of these matters, after all, but we shall also seek out the enemy, as is only proper."
"There is a frigate and sloop in these waters, Captain Jackman, and a convoy that must be protected - the Governor talks of hundreds of thousands aboard!"
"The Sugar Islands are rich, sir! Though the bulk of the local folk see little enough of that wealth."
"Of course, they are your birthplace, are they not. I had forgotten to ask - to my shame - whether you had found your mother at home, Captain Jackman."
Jackman shook his head.
"Left Antigua, sir. A message with my Auntie Eleonora that she was wed to an American master of a trader out of Baltimore and gone with him. Her thanks for the moneys I had transmitted and best wishes to her dear son!"
Thinking on the matter, she had ever been an enterprising lady, Frederick remembered. The existence of Captain Jackman testified that she had tended to be of a roving persuasion.
"Baltimore schooners have a name for prosperity, Captain Jackman - hard-nosed traders wherever they are to be found."
"True indeed, Sir Frederick. I would have liked to have seen her though. To know of only one parent leaves one a little alone in the world."
"Perhaps you might consider creating your own family, Captain Jackman. You are, after all, not quite poverty-stricken!"
"No, sir, I am not. Your man had discovered a very pretty little property not so far from Weymouth, sir, and may well have completed the purchase for me by now. A wife would make very good sense, sir, provided no objecti
on was to be made on grounds of lineage."
"Why should there be, Captain Jackman? Both myself and Sir Iain Farquhar can testify to your family."
"To my gratitude, of course, sir. I have occasionally remarked on the coincidence of names there - my Christian name being Iain as well, sir."
"Yes, well, there is only a limited number of names in the world, you know. Half the first sons in England must be George, and the Lord knows how many second sons are loyally named Frederick! In the Sugar Islands the Scottish influence is very strong and Iains and Alexanders are to be found by the score!"
It was not a particularly convincing response, but the effort had to be made.
"We come back to the traders in port, Captain Jackman. They must go to Trinidad, and quickly, so as to join the convoy there. Arnheim and Raven to take them - I think the two should do while Trident works the coast slowly, looking into every anchorage and rousting out every privateer in passing while hunting for the Dutchmen. We shall crawl, heaving to at night, the aim being that nothing shall creep past us before you rejoin. When you are in company we shall form our patrol line again and hunt more actively. We know nothing of the Dutch - except that fleeing island schooners report 'a frigate and a sloop' - which could mean forty of nine-pound guns between them or sixty including twenty-fours!"
"Caution to be recommended, sir. There is no honour to a fight against apparently trivial foes, and every possibility of coming a cropper if untoward circumstance intervenes."
The squadron must be expected to snap up a mere pair of Dutchmen, and, on paper, it seemed a simple enough undertaking. Frederick had grown to dislike 'simple' tasks, they threw up difficulties far too frequently.
The merchantmen were crewed and anxious to sail, had been contemplating the risk of running without an escort; they were happy to up-anchor on the next tide.
Trident delayed for twenty-four hours, in part to give the pursers a chance at the local market, which opened at dawn. The men needed fruit and fresh vegetables, or so Frederick believed - they would move their bowels the more easily and constipated men were well-known to be less bold and vigorous than, as one might say, the free-flowing. Several surgeons had made the observation to him at different times, so he knew it to be true.
He informed McPherson of the interesting fact, was a little surprised at his lack of enthusiasm for the concept.
"I shall rig a hosepipe to the heads, sir", was his sole response.
Trident at a distance to sea, well clear of the reefs; Speedy in shoal water, keeping at least two fathoms under her keel, the lead unceasing and extra lookouts at high, peering for changes in the colour of the water or for the faintest tinge of white that might show an isolated head of coral; Nimble living up to her name, penetrating every fresh-water creek and poking her tiny bows into the coves as they opened and scanning every lagoon.
The coast was empty at first. The land was poor, marshy, mangrove-ridden at the coast and stretching low for leagues, hills barely visible, blue to the west. Possibly obscure tribes made a living there, but certainly not a settler or trader. It would have been feasible to conceal a small vessel in the overgrown swamps, but the crew would never have survived the fevers and the insects and snakes and caimans and, very probably, the bush-demons that loved such country. Frederick had been assured in the past that the bush-demons had been driven out by the priests and were no longer to be discovered in the civilised parts; logic insisted that they must have taken themselves off to the barren lands and swamps. He, of course, did not believe in demons of any variety - but if the local people knew of them, then perhaps conditions were not the same in the Caribbean as in rural Hampshire.
They huddled together out to sea each night, the low winds of the season making it easy to heave-to.
The land rose a little on the third day and became drier, colonised by coconut palms in orderly rows, the sign of the plantation. Just a little inland, away from the salt airs, could be seen the dark green mass of sugar cane.
Nimble raised a flag hoist to inform them of the existence of a jetty and wharf and a pair of small ketches tied up. There was no sign of a battery or garrison. Trident closed the shore.
"A plantation house, Mr Murray, and slave cabins. A warehouse and open-sided warehouses and a chimney that I suppose must locate the sugar boiler. The two ketches are of no more than forty tons apiece. I could land and burn them out, without resistance. I might well raise the Union flag, but to what purpose?"
"If you speak them and they do not resist, then they will be called traitors and their lives might be worth very little thereafter, sir. If you take them, then what is achieved?"
The joy of command; the decision was his and would be queried by the Admiralty whatever it was. Life had been simpler before he had put up the little bit of gold lace.
"I am not to be persecuting civilians, Mr Murray. That is not the war I wish to fight, and if I am wrong, then so be it. A gun to windward and Nimble to land and speak to the plantation owner, informing him that there is war but that he will not be placed at hazard while he keeps his nose out of military business. Words to that effect, at least, sir!"
"What of his slaves, sir?"
"They to be treated according to the English Code, unfailingly. I would set free every one if I had my way, but I do not have the power. Demand their numbers and I shall send a note of them to the Registrar of West Indian Slaves in London, though what good that may do, I know not!"
"With your permission, Sir Frederick, I shall go ashore and speak to the man myself - I may well discover a little that Mr Perlman might not."
Frederick firmly believed that Captain Murray could persuade information from a stone; he was only too happy to send him off.
"I presume you will require Goldfarb as your escort commander again, Mr Murray?"
Murray did not know that he needed his hand held; he also knew that to protest was to waste his time.
"He and his picked men are very reliable, sir. I will tell him all that we require."
The plantation owner knew very little in fact; he had almost no contact with the outside world except once or twice a year when he might make his way to the chief port, which he insisted on calling New Amsterdam, not 'Libreville or whatever the bloody fools there say it is now'.
"It would seem, Sir Frederick, that his grandfather had built the plantation and that if Amsterdam had been good enough for him, then his grandson was not to object. He lives in isolation, sir, very comfortably, but he sees nothing of the world and its wars and has small wish to. He is unwed but keeps a remarkable number of maidservants in his house; they giggled as he spoke to me."
There was scope for a witticism there, Frederick was sure - something about 'maids' was straining at the back of his mind. Not to worry, the opportunity was past.
"So, we know nothing of our frigate?"
"Not a thing, sir."
"Then let us progress, Mr Murray."
The swamps and mangrove closed back in again, the plantation obviously an outlier from the main area of cultivation.
The masthead reported a fishing boat just before dusk, but it fled before them, was soon lost in the night.
"Speedy and Nimble to take station astern, Mr McPherson as normal... No, belay that!"
Frederick remained silent a minute or two, deep in thought.
"We was very near caught out in the Aegean, Mr McPherson, by an enterprising Frog in the night. Why should a fishing boat be in these waters, sir? There are no banks that I am aware of to make rich grounds for their nets. There is a chance, a possibility is all, that she was a tender working for the frigate we seek... Speedy and Nimble to close within hail."
A brief mention of his suspicions and the two were ordered to sail no more than five miles and then lay to, invisible, or as near as made no difference, under bare poles and a sea anchor.
"Should you see anything, then make all sail on whatever bearing may be convenient for the wind and fire white and red rockets. Do not close the enem
y, gentlemen. Do not venture within range of either sloop or frigate."
Unspoken he added the words, 'and do not run from one into the hands of the other'; but he could not say that and show a lack of confidence in them in a shouted set of orders that the whole crew could hear.
They sailed off into the dusk, the smaller, quicker Nimble holding inshore.
"It smacks of shyness, somehow, gentlemen, to send a smaller craft in front to draw the enemy's first fire. I do not like the price of this sort of command, I find. Far easier to run forward than to stand behind telling others to risk their necks! All hands, Mr McPherson, to sleep by the guns tonight. Load ball in the long guns first. Mr Jenkinson to me, please."
The purser trotted to the quarterdeck, stood and looked intelligent for lack of a more military option.
"A tropical night of nearly twelve hours duration, Mr Jenkinson. How do we stand for a cauldron of tea or cocoa for a warm at twice in the night, and perhaps an issue of cheese and biscuit?"
"Not out of the question, Sir Frederick, though it must demand that the galley keeps its fires lit, sir."
"A pair of men with buckets of water to hand, to douse them instantly there is action called, Mr McPherson."
"I can issue a coconut at one between six as well, sir, the flesh making a tasty nibble for them."
"Very good, sir! Mr Nias!"
"Sir!"
"Is it at all possible that we might achieve a drop of rum in the cocoa, sir?"
"Very few things are impossible, Sir Frederick."
No more was said, nor could it be as they were breaking any number of Admiralty Instructions. Purser and Master both knew that there had been a very free accounting when last they had taken a prize and enjoyed damage in action; just occasionally they must pay the price of cappabar and corruption in terms of a treat for the men.
The night crawled slowly by, the moon sho wing in the early hours as the light cloud cover blew away.
"Sir!" a low call from the lookout in the bows. "Small boat, sir!"
Sugar and Spice (The Duty and Destiny Series, Book 6) Page 14
