Havoc's Sword

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Uhm, aye, sir!” Burns parroted, gulping in dread before going to the entry-port to converse with the barge. “Mister Pendarves, man side-party for a Lieutenant! Turn out the duty watch.”

  “And we’ll discuss your nodding off right after, Mister Burns,” Lewrie said, glowering. “You, Mister Pendarves the Bosun, his strong right arm, and the ‘gunner’s daughter,’ for being so remiss.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Burns miserably said, his lower lip quivering.

  “Hmm…quite the uniform, sir,” Peel took note with a smirk, as he came to Lewrie’s side. “All the ‘go,’ is it? Of your own devising, I trust?”

  “It was!” Lewrie snapped back, trying to ignore him.

  His experiment with light cotton uniform coats instead of hard-finished wool in the tropics had been an utter failure. The dark blue coats had dyed waist-coats, shirts, breeches’ tops, and anything else they brushed against, including upholstered great-cabin furniture; and the gold-lace pocket trimmings and ornate cuff detailings, even detachable gilt epaulets, had turned a suspiciously bright greenish tinge at the edges. Now, with most of the offending dye leached from them (and the major damage done to his wardrobe) Lewrie was left with a brace of coats of a disturbing light blue, which could still bleed faint tints if caught on deck in a driving rain. It was use them or admit to one and all his serious error, so Lewrie perversely clung to them, though their use was severely limited to clear-weather days far from shore or those rare days at anchor when he had no shore calls to make, and expected none in return.

  “And you paid your tailor, in full, I s’pose, before uhm…?” Peel whispered in mocking amusement.

  “Yess!” Lewrie hissed back, disgruntled.

  “Oh, dear,” Peel commiserated.

  Whatever surly rebuke Lewrie had in mind was squelched by the arrival of an officer at the lip of the entry-port, saluted by a small side-party requisite for the welcome of a Lieutenant, whichever navy claimed him…excluding the French, of course.

  Lewrie had thought he had seen the uniforms of the new American Navy when he had been dined aboard USS Hancock, but this fellow looked like a relic of their defunct Continental Navy, which Lewrie could but briefly recall from one brisk encounter in his midshipman days in ’82.

  White stockings, dark blue breeches, dark blue coat with bright red turnback lapels and cuffs, a red waist-coat with gilt edging; and doffing a very old-fashioned tricorne hat to the saluting sailors and Marines as the bosun’s calls shrilled and twittered.

  “Permission t’come aboard, sirs,” the strange officer called.

  “Permission granted,” Lewrie allowed with a “captainly” grunt.

  “Allow me t’name myself t’you, sir,” the man went on, sweeping his hat low in a greeting bow, though with a confused look on his phyz. “Lieutenant Ranald Seabright, of the United States Armed Ship Thomas Sumter. I bring an invitation from Captain Douglas McGilliveray to your captain, and such officers as he may wish t’bring, to dine aboard the Sumter this ev’nin’, sir. Might I enquire if your captain is now aboard?”

  “One of the Charleston McGilliverays, is your captain?” Lewrie asked, stepping forward with a surprised grin.

  “He is, indeed, sir,” Lt. Seabright declared, taken aback, perhaps, by the sky-blue apparition before him. “And you are, sir?”

  “Alan Lewrie, captain of his Britannic Majesty’s frigate, the Proteus, sir,” Lewrie told him, doffing his own hat and making a bow.

  “Oh! D’lighted t’make your acquaintance, Captain Lewrie, sir,” Seabright said, in what Lewrie recognised as a Low Country Carolinas accent; Seabright’s “sir” was more akin to “suh.”

  Damme, Lewrie thought, still eying the old-fashioned uniform in some suspicion as to whether the United States Navy actually had one…or did they let their officers wear whatever was handy; Last time, that Captain Kershaw and most of his officers were from the Carolinas. Are there any Nor’east Yankees at sea?

  Lt. Seabright, though, was eying his own uniform coat with just as much dubious suspicion, as if of half a mind that Lewrie was “having him on,” and the nape of his neck was actually turning red.

  “He really is, ye know,” Peel said, tongue-in-cheek.

  “Once made the acquaintance of a Mister McGilliveray,” Lewrie said, “one of your merchant adventurers among the Indians to the West. Might your captain be kin, d’ye think, Mister Seabright?”

  “Certain of it, sir!” Seabright replied, more at ease suddenly. “That’s exactly what my captain’s people did, before the late war.”

  “Then I shall accept Captain McGilliveray’s kind invitation in good expectation of resuming, as well as making, the acquaintance. Um, how many of my officers, Mister Seabright?” Lewrie asked, still trying to dredge up the Christian name of the McGilliveray he’d met in Spanish Florida towards the end of the Revolution; he thought it was something Scottish, clannish…Highlander-ish? Unpronounceable?

  “Yourself, plus three others, sir,” Seabright answered. “Whomever you choose. The captain will have one midshipman at-table, sir. Kin,” he explained, with a shrug, “So…”

  “Ah! Very well, sir,” Lewrie said, asking the time to be expected. “Two Lieutenants, and one younker to keep yours company at the foot of the table, then. ’Til then, Mister Seabright, and thankee.”

  “Was that wise, Captain Lewrie?” Mr. Peel said after departure honours had been paid, and the barge was being stroked back over to a sleek frigate-like three-master about half a mile farther up the roads. “The Yankee Doodles…recall what Mister Pelham told you, sir. They are more competitors than allies. Other than our signals book, we do not share information with them. It might be taken as, uhm…by our superiors, that is…”

  “Oh, rot, Mister Peel,” Lewrie breezed off. “If anything, it’ll prove t’be a harmless diversion. We get a chance to see if the smaller American warships are built as stout and novel as their new forty-four gunned frigates. I told you ’bout them, didn’t I? You told me they’ve established anchorages in Prince Rupert Bay on Dominica, and in South Friar’s Bay on Saint Kitts. Much closer to Guadeloupe, mind, and what they know of these waters, and French activities, might be fresher than our information. We could learn more from them than they from us.”

  “If played right, I s’pose, sir,” Peel dubiously said.

  “And we, without actually saying that we’re here on a specific mission,” Lewrie slyly hinted, “discover to them who and what Choundas is. Now, do they feel like making the effort to stop his business as the best way to protect their own trade, we’d have more eyes and ears at sea helping us run him to ground, and all unwitting, too! They’re a spankin’ new navy, just itchin’ t’beat the Be-Jesus out of the Frogs. T’gain fame and honour, t’lay the foundation for a permanent fleet not subject to the whims o’ their Congress’s parsimony. Damme, Mister Peel, they’d best whip somebody…soon!”

  “So eager for a victory or two that they’d go after Choundas in our stead, Captain Lewrie?” Peel snickered as he saw the sense of this piddling little revelation to their supper hosts.

  “Damme, they divert him from his plans, or do they really corner him and beat the stuffing from him, I shan’t cry,” Lewrie vowed. “However the deed’s done, hey?”

  “And there is always the possibility that, should they meet up with Choundas, and lose to his greater cleverness and skill,” Mister Peel said with a quizzical brow up, “well, perhaps their Congress and voters decide having a national navy, instead of a gaggle of revenue cutters, and thirteen state militias at sea, is a bad idea. Hence, no competition in the Caribbean, and their trade protection put into our good hands, Captain Lewrie. Hmm…int’restin’.”

  “Which’d please your Mister Pelham, and his masters in London, right down to the ground,” Lewrie realised, beaming at just how devious Peel could be. “Sending him home wearin’ the laurel crown, gettin’ him off my back…and you, promoted and feted, or whatever it is they do in the Foreign Office to ‘good and fait
hful servants’?”

  “They mostly came from privateersmen, smugglers, and pirates,” Peel seemed to agree, “…our Americans.”

  “Set a thief t’catch a thief, you’re saying?” Lewrie laughed.

  “Something like that, Captain Lewrie.”

  “And it’ll be amusing, too, Mister Peel,” Lewrie brightly told him, already shuffling through his mental “muster book” for people to take with him that evening. “The McGilliveray I met was half-Scot and half-Muskogee Indian…whom the Jonathons call Creeks. The longer we spent up the Apalachicola River in Spanish Florida, the more native he went, ’til he got so guttural I couldn’t understand half of what he said…and made me feel for my scalp ev’ry morning. Is his kinsman even close to the same bare-arsed, buckskin sort, you’ll be able t’dine out on the tale the next five years!”

  “You’ll wig and powder, for safety’s sake, or wear your own hair then, Captain Lewrie?” Peel proposed, chuckling.

  “Oh, they hardly ever scalp their supper guests, Mister Peel,” Lewrie cheerfully said. “’Less they’re hellish liquored up. Let’s see…yes, Lieutenant Adair will go with me. Show ’em a real Scot for a change, not their rusticated variety. He’ll most-like bowl ’em over, might even cite whole pages of ‘guid auld Robbie Burns’ at ’em. Don’t know of him, Mister Peel? The Scot poet and songster? Oh, well. And Midshipman Grace, to pair with their ‘younker.’ Grace came up from the Nore fisheries not two years ago, common as anything, so he’ll appeal to their egalitarian ideals.”

  “Whether they really practice them or not,” Peel stuck in.

  “Catterall? No, he’d scalp somebody, does he get into his cups. And there’s sure t’be American corn-whisky. Third guest, hmm. What about you, Mister Peel? Might turn out t’be a rare treat. If not, I could take Lieutenant Langlie. He sings well, when liquored.”

  Peel and corn-whisky, though; walking on his knees and howling.

  Talk about amusing, indeed, Lewrie maliciously thought.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The USS Thomas Sumter was not a true frigate, though she looked like one at first glance; long, fairly low in the bulwarks, flush-deck at the forecastle and quarterdeck, but “waisted” between her foremast and main in conventional style, with upper gangways just wide enough for sail-handling, and service of the swivel-guns that would mount on the stanchions set atop her bulwarks.

  Though armed with twenty-two 12-pounders on the gun-deck, and equipped with two 6-pounder chase-guns on her forecastle and six more on her quarterdeck—making her a 30-gunner and a “jack-ass frigate” in any nation’s navy—she was officially rated as an Armed Ship, in temporary service. Most of the former colonies, now states, had raised subscription funds literally by the bushel-baskets with which they meant to build men o’ war, but…in the meantime, some of the funds were used to purchase likely merchant ships for arming and conversion until the real ones slid off the ways and got to sea.

  Though Sumter was all trig and “Bristol Fashion,” as clean and fresh-smelling as a spanking-new ship, meticulously maintained by her crew, and with her yards squared to a mathematical perfection, Lewrie wasn’t particularly impressed by her, in his professional appraisal.

  Sumter had very little tumble-home above her gun-deck to reduce her hull’s topweight, having been designed for maximum space in cargo holds and orlop, so he suspected that she might not be as stiff as he might have liked in a blow, since, like all American-built ships he’d seen, he thought her over-sparred, and would likely carry too much canvas aloft, making her tender. Her bulwarks and hull scantlings weren’t as thick as a proper warship’s, either, and from what short time they had had on an abbreviated tour before going aft, he saw that her beams, timbers, futtocks, and knees had been sawn to lighter civilian specifications, and spaced a few more vulnerable inches apart on their centres. She’d not withstand a long, drawn-out drubbing ’twixt wind and water, did she cross hawse with a French Fifth Rate frigate, perhaps not even a well-manned and gunned Sixth Rate corvette armed with sixteen or twenty cannon.

  Those drawbacks didn’t seem to faze Captain McGilliveray, though; he was immoderately proud of her, boasting of what a swift sailer she was, how capable of carrying “all plain sail” even in blustery weather…though with all squares’ls reduced one reef.

  Lewrie had brought Lt. Adair, Midshipman Grace, and had finally chosen Peel instead of his First Officer for the third guest; the hope of seeing Peel “three sheets to the wind” on corn-whisky was just too tempting…and, was any intelligence to be gleaned, Peel was trained for such subtle delving and discovery, after all.

  “Thought we’d begin with claret, Captain Lewrie,” Sumter’s captain announced, opening his wine-cabinet. “Claret, not rum, appears to be the lifeblood of the gallant Royal Navy.”

  “And on that head, Captain McGilliveray,” Lewrie responded, “I took the liberty of fetching off a half-dozen of claret from my lazarette stores as a gift to you.”

  “You are quite kind, sir…I am most grateful for your thoughtful present,” McGilliveray, a well-knit fellow in his late thirties, said with a wolfishly pleased look. He was not Red Indian dark, but seamanly dark, and sported an abundantly thick thatch of ginger-blond hair, too. Nothing like what Lewrie had expected. “Given our present set-to with the French, you can imagine that claret is neither readily available in the States, nor anyone’s first choice of potation, in public at least. Though what folk wish with their suppers is another matter, entirely. I fear our smugglers aren’t as capable as yours, Captain Lewrie,” he japed with a sly twinkle.

  “Yours just have farther to go, Captain McGilliveray,” Lewrie responded in kind, accepting a glass, “whereas our bold English smugglers have but to cross ‘the Narrow Sea.’ I expect the Channel Isles’d float, for all the casks and bottles hidden in every cave and cove. As for me, though, a friend of mine…just recently removed to the Carolinas by the way…introduced me to American whisky. With such near to hand, ’tis a wonder anyone in the United States would care whether claret is available, at any price.”

  “Then in return for your kindness, sir, allow me to give a man who truly appreciates good corn ‘squeezings’ a barricoe of our ‘portable grain’!” McGilliveray exclaimed. “After all the troubles we have had regardin’ whisky, lately, I’d admire to introduce you to the best upland, Piedmont distillation.”

  “Highly gratified, sir, thankee,” Lewrie truthfully told him.

  “’Tis mellow, amber, and actually aged, much like a good brandy, in oak wine casks,” McGilliveray enthused. “None of your gin-clear or week-old ‘pop-skull,’ either. Some think it rivals the best brandy.”

  “Trouble with whisky, sir?” Lewrie asked, once glasses had been shoved into every hand, and McGilliveray had waved them into seats.

  And Capt. McGilliveray took a gleeful five minutes to describe a recent “Whisky Rebellion” by back-country settlers who had objected quite vehemently to a mere penny-per-gallon tax on whisky, possibly the major trade item in the back-country, and in most instances the only medium of exchange, a replacement money, the coin-strapped United States had. It had taken Gen. George Washington and a call-up of the various state militias to form a field army to put it down; though once the “Riot Act, ” in essence, was read, the rebellion had melted away.

  “Excuse me for asking, Captain McGilliveray,” Peel said, “but I was under the impression that your earlier Articles of Confederation, and your Constitution, prohibited your federal government from interfering with the sovereign states, especially with armed force.”

  “Aye, they do,” McGilliveray, replied, frowning, “and it was indeed troublin’. Given how much Britons distrust a large standin’ army, you can certainly understand our misgivin’s…though it had to be ‘scotched,’ else our fragile new economy’d collapse. You ask for a payment in coin back home, taxes in coin, and God knows how folk’d be able t’pay you. Alexander Hamilton and his new national bank, well…mind you, Mister Hamilton’s as patriot
ic as anyone, but it does sound so Frenchified and coin-hungry a proposition, that a great many folk hope it’ll never see the light o’ day.”

  Lewrie had taken McGilliveray’s exposition on the rebellion in mostly one ear, taking note of his surroundings, not asked for more than the occasional “do tell” and “egad” to show interest.

  Where the USS Hancock’s Capt. Kershaw’s great-cabins had been the opulent quarters of a wealthy man, those of a rich and titled man back in England, McGilliveray’s were spartan in the extreme. Lewrie knew he was related to a rich mercantile family, and obviously had been educated at considerable expense; his speech alone told him that. The decks were covered with nailed-down and painted canvas, the colour a drabbish solid brown, not the black-and-white parquet chequer of a British man o’ war. The interior panels were off-white, and not a single painting graced them. His desk in his day-cabin, his chairs and such, were crudely made, dull-finished, and almost graceless. Sailcloth curtains could be drawn to cover the transom sash-windows in the stern, but the drapes seemed an after-thought, and made from parchment-tan used sail scraps. Lewrie took a peek at the waiting dining table; dull platters and place settings of dark pewter awaited them, with but two four-hole candelabras and a lone pitcher of bright-polished pewter in the centre. The glasses were nondescript, befogged by long use and many scrubbings by clumsy servants, in seawater most-like.

  Whale-oil lanthorns hung overhead—mica panels set in lead-dark pewter or old tin, and not a single glint of brass to be seen anywhere in the great-cabins, not a single family portrait, nothing personal to Sumter’s captain. Lewrie was put in mind of the poorest village pubs and coaching inns he had ever seen. Was McGilliveray a poor relation, or as abstemious as a prelate in a poor parish, eking out his dignity on the widows’ occasional charity and ten scrimpy pounds per annum?