A Hard, Cruel Shore

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Ah, that’s better, thankee, Mister Yelland,” Lewrie said as he went up to the poop deck for a long look about. Bisquit, the ship’s dog, emerged from his shelter under the starboard ladderway, sniffed at the odiferous Sailing Master, then trotted up to join Lewrie.

  Lewrie heaved a sigh of relief; all four prizes were still with them, just beginning to make more sail, no longer heaving and rolling about like flotsam. Peregrine and Undaunted were within a mile of his two-decker, too, in-line-ahead off Sapphire’s larboard side, and with hands aloft in the rigging, re-roving strained lines and manning their yards to free brailed-up canvas.

  “Oh, how heavenly!” Lewrie said, looking down at the dog. “Do ya smell that, boy? Know what that smoke means? The galley fires’re lit, and there’ll be a hot breakfast, at last.”

  Bisquit whined and licked his chops, as if he understood, shuffling his front paws in eager anticipation.

  Or, is it supper? Lewrie asked himself, pulling out his pocket watch to find the time, discombobulated by his too-brief nap, and his mind-numbing lack of sleep. To his delight, he discovered that it was nearly six in the morning, and it would be breakfast. Upon that discovery, his innards growled so loud that Bisquit jerked his head up.

  “Mister Spears,” Lewrie called aft to the Midshipmen by the taffrail lockers. “Make up a signal to all ships … Make All Plain Sail.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Spears replied.

  And after breakfast, Lewrie thought, I’ll send two more. One to alter course right back to the coast, and the second for a Make and Mend Day. And, if the weather stayed clear and calm, he’d have his deck chair shifted back to the poop deck, too.

  As ravenous as he felt, he could not take the time to delve into his personal stores for a wee sausage or two. There was still too much to be seen to; the charts for a guess at their position by Dead Reckoning, overseeing the hands making sail to his satisfaction, then a welcome quart of hot water for a sponge-off and a shave, then a hot and hearty breakfast, before retiring to his bed-cot for a long, long sleep. He felt his head drooping and his eyes glazing over, and shook himself all over. He had to do something productive.

  “Hoy, Bisquit, want to play?” he offered. One of the dog’s toys lay abandoned nearby and he picked it up and waved it back and forth. Yes, Bisquit was up for fetching!

  Yelland’ll tell me where he thinks we are, Lewrie thought.

  * * *

  With no one important to worry about, Lewrie allowed himself a loud belch after his last bite of breakfast, as he dabbed his lips and contemplated another cup of coffee. His cook, Yeovill, had done him proud, producing a cheesy three-egg omelet riddled with onion and sliced mushrooms, with hashed potatoes and fried sausages taken from his stash of finger-sized links usually reserved for Chalky and the dog, and with the last of the stale shore bread slices dipped in egg batter and drizzled with treacle.

  “Another cup, sir?” Pettus offered, nodding towards the saidboard.

  Lewrie felt his eyes getting heavier, and his head nodding.

  “I think not, Pettus,” he told him. “Unless something comes up, I intend t’try and catch up on my sleep. You and Jessop try to putter quietly once I turn in.”

  One last chore, he told himself, getting to his feet and going out to the quarterdeck. The watch had changed just minutes before, so Lt. Westcott had the deck.

  “Good morning, sir,” Westcott said, tapping the brim of his hat in a casual salute.

  “Good morning, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie replied, “and it is a good’un, ain’t it. Course and speed, and Mister Yelland’s best guess?”

  “We are on Nor’east by North, with the winds out of the West, Nor’west, and the last cast of the log showed seven and a quarter knots. Mister Yelland reckons that we’re about seventy miles Nor’east of Santander, or thereabouts.”

  “Hmm, at that rate it’ll take at least ten hours or more to fetch the coast, again,” Lewrie surmised. “I’d admire did you hoist a signal to all ships to put about to the Sou’east and maintain all plain sail. No tearin’ rush,” he added with a shrug. “After we’ve all come about, show them Make And Mend. If our ship’s anything to go by, I’m sure most of our sailors’ll go for a long caulk. Laundry and hobbies, bedamned.”

  “Aye, sir,” Lt. Westcott said, agreeing. “Once my watch is up, I’d be glad to do the same.”

  “Carry on, then prepare to put the ship about,” Lewrie bade, going up to the poop deck for one last look about before he could retire to his bed-space.

  It’s almost too nice a day t’sleep through it, he thought.

  The rains along the Spanish coast they’d encountered before discovering the French convoy could almost be fancied to be a good, hard washing, and the fierce clear-air gales could also be deemed a final cleansing. This morning, the skies were a lovely azure, only broken by a few fleecy clouds, and the sea glittered as it heaved in peaceable slumber, with the waves no more than three or four feet high, and long set between. It was the sort of morning that he would normally take his ease in his deck chair here on the poop deck, with a book to read, and the dog to pet, now and again.

  “The signal is acknowledged, sir!” Midshipman Ward reported to the First Officer.

  “Very well, Mister Ward,” Westcott shouted aft. “Bosun, pipe hands to stations to come about. Ready about? Strike the signal, Mister Ward. Helm up, wear away!”

  Hauling down the signal was the Execute, and Lewrie took idle pleasure in watching how efficiently the other warships came about, then how his own ship fell off the wind, the yards wheeling round to keep way on as she took the wind more and more on her quarters, then across the wind to starboard tack. The spanker whooshed from one beam to the other over his head, and he paced to the forward edge of the poop deck to be out of the way of the Afterguard’s work.

  “Steady on Sou’east, sir,” Westcott reported from the quarterdeck.

  “Very well, Mister Westcott, you have the deck,” Lewrie said, fetching up another tasty belch, then allowing himself a wide yawn. “I’ll be aft. Send for me just before the change of watch.”

  He entered his great-cabins, stripping off his coat and his waistcoat, undoing his neck stock, and sat on a chest to tug off his boots. It would be a warm day, but for now the breeze through the transom sash windows was pleasantly cool. He rolled into his bed-cot, plumped up his pillows, and let out a grateful sigh. Chalky hopped up to join him, sat down near his pillows, and gently pawed for some attention. All Lewrie could spare before swooning was some stroking down the cat’s back, some cheek rubs, and his hand dropped away as he fell into a deep sleep. Chalky pawed a time or two more, leaned in to touch noses, and uttered a few wee meeps, then realised there was nothing for it. He turned away, padded down to Lewrie’s thigh, and stretched himself out against him for a nap of his own.

  * * *

  A little more than three hours’ sleep before Noon Sights, and another three hour nap after gunnery drill and cutlass drill, exercises of a loud nature, and Lewrie felt restored enough to welcome his supper guests aboard. Captain Chalmers and Commander Blamey were in good spirits, despite their own lack of sleep during the days of gale winds, though Lewrie noticed that Blamey was a bit more subdued than Chalmers, who was still clapping his hands and crowing over his destruction of the bulk of the convoy.

  “A toast with you, sirs,” Lewrie posed once all had been handed glasses of espumante, “To our gale of wind … may we never see its like again.”

  “Amen to that, sir,” Blamey quickly agreed after draining his glass.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Chalmers countered, looking puck-ish and amused, “it was God-sent, and saved me a deal of shot and powder! Death to the French, I say … however it is achieved.”

  “Pity, though,” Blamey opined, studying his empty glass. “Now, were they French warships driven ashore, I’d dance you all a little jig. They signed aboard on their own and knew the risks, didn’t they? Merchant sailors, though. Probably paid as little as our civ
ilian mariners, or less, well. I doubt they got a bonus for hazard pay. I feel no joy in drowning the poor beggars.”

  “Perhaps when word reaches their brother matelots, the others will think twice before risking a voyage along this coast,” Chalmers said with a whimsical shrug, “or, strike for better wages? That might be a thing to see … Bonaparte’s police and soldiers would have to read them the Riot Act, then gun them down if they still refused. And that would put the lie to all that Froggish bumf about Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, haw! No more rights than an Ottoman Turk!”

  “After supper, Blamey,” Lewrie said, “I’ve a penny whistle. I’d admire to see your dancing skills.”

  “You liquour me well enough, Captain Lewrie, and I just might, at that!” Blamey brightened up. “Ah, more espumante, please do.”

  “Ahem, sirs,” Yeovill said from the door to the dining coach, “your supper is ready to be served.”

  That’d be a sight, Lewrie thought as they went to their places at the table; almost as entertainin’ as a dancin’ bear.

  Chalmers and Blamey had not been frequent supper guests aboard Sapphire, so the chicken broth soup with shredded quail, heavily laced with tarragon, was a surprise to them. So too was the roast rabbit ragout drizzled with a mustard sauce sweetened with honey, potato halves laden with cheese, bacon, and green onion shoots, with boiled carrots on the side. Even the beef course, come straight from one of the salt-meat casks that afternoon, had been turned into a thin-cut delight served over a seasoned rice pilaf, with boiled green peas and green beans, and with a gravy made with flour, drippings, and beer to aerate it, one of Yeovill’s trade secrets.

  After an orange marmalade dowdy laced with crushed walnuts, it was time for cheese, sweet bisquit, the port bottle, and conversation more specific to their cruise than before. Oh, Chalmers was “cherry-merry”, and a grand conversationalist, with a wealth of information gleaned from the latest London papers; dramas, music, doings of the royal family, and a novel or two.

  In point of fact, it might as well have been Chalmers’s table for most of the supper, with Blamey contributing little, and Lewrie mostly asking questions to steer things along, eliciting Chalmers’s opinions … which he had by the dozens, and all of them firm.

  “Right after we anchored at Lisbon, Captain Chalmers came to speak with me, Commander Blamey,” Lewrie casually mentioned. “Has he spoken to you of his concerns about how short a time we seem to have on station?”

  “A bit, sir, aye,” Blamey replied, slicing himself some of the soft Portuguese cheese.

  “Those ships that wrecked,” Lewrie said, with his port glass held up to the swaying overhead lanthorn for study, “it’s given me an idea … though it may prove unwelcome.”

  “Hmm?” Chalmers prompted with a mouth full of sweet bisquit.

  “Perhaps we should sink, scuttle, or burn more than we carry back to the Prize-Court.”

  “Oh, I say!” Chalmers objected, as much as he dared.

  “I’ve written Admiralty, requesting more ships,” Lewrie said, explaining how he’d proposed that one more squadron, perhaps two more, were necessary to keep the Spanish coast under constant surveillance, the French in constant fear, and the supplies to their army in Spain cut to the bare bones. “The task is far larger than Admiralty imagined when they gave us our sailing orders, admittedly larger than I imagined. Five ships can’t manage it, so long as we have to pack up and sail back to Lisbon after a fortnight for lack of prize crews. Even two squadrons in rotation could only do so much, for pretty-much the same reason. Until more ships arrive, we have to find a way to stay on-station for as long as the water, firewood, and rations allow.”

  “Well, if Wellesley takes Oporto for us, that would shorten our voyages here and there by several days,” Chalmers said, sounding confident that such an event was in the cards.

  “Even then, we’d still have to abandon the coast, sooner or later, to escort our prizes, re-provision, and allow the French to play silly buggers in our absence,” Lewrie told him. He noted that Chalmers almost winced at the word “buggers”, as if Lewrie had let go a fart. “We might be able to move our stores ship there, but would Admiralty agree to set up another Prize-Court at Oporto?”

  “Well, they would if it was profitable enough,” Blamey sneered. “So long as we keep fetching in captures, they’d follow the money.”

  “True enough, I suppose,” Lewrie agreed with a chuckle, “but, as you said earlier this evening, Captain Chalmers … putting fears into the French sailors? If we burn prizes instead of tying up our hands manning them, we could pick and choose which ones to retain. Which ones I can loose my guns upon, and hone my people’s accuracy, too. Burn them right offshore from the ports where others are sheltering. How eager would they be, then, to up-anchor and make sail?”

  “We could bring about your labour stoppages, sir,” Blamey stuck in with a snorting laugh to Chalmers. “Aye, burn them like the one that we torched off Oporto?”

  “Keep the biggest, with the most valuable cargoes,” Lewrie urged, “and torch the least valuable, and the homeward bound empty ones. Most visibly.”

  “Hmm, what about prisoners, though, sir,” Blamey asked, looking as if he would scratch at his scalp. “Do we move them all to a prison ship and take them to Lisbon or Oporto or wherever, or do we continue to turn them loose on Spanish soil?”

  “Yayss, it would seem that freeing them keeps the supplies flowing,” Chalmers drawled, busying himself with the port bottle as it was passed to him. “They just sign aboard another. If we sling them into a hulk at Lisbon, we’d be denying the French their labour.”

  “Might be doing them a favour, Captain Chalmers,” Blamey said. “That way, they can’t be dragged off into the French army, hah hah!”

  “Pity we can’t just drown them, or shoot them,” Chalmers said with a sneer between sips of port.

  “Can’t take the risk,” Lewrie said after a moment of thought. “Do we put too many of them aboard a cartel ship, they just might overpower the guards and the prize crew.”

  Shoot or drown ’em, Chalmers? he thought; My, you are a bloody minded sort, ain’t you? You should be workin’ for old Zachariah Twigg, cuttin’ throats with a dull knife!

  “As it is, we’re makin’ ’em hurt,” Lewrie went on. “They lose their pay, half their sea kits, and get landed in Spain, where odds are the partisanos’d murder ’em. If they do manage to make it to a French garrison, it takes weeks before they can take ship back to France, as un-paid hands. And, once back in France, it might take ’em even longer to find a new ship to join … if, as you say, Commander Blamey, their army doesn’t press-gang ’em, first. Any French sailor we turn loose ends up dead-broke, and the families that depend on ’em end up beggin’ in the streets. That’s hurtin’ ’em sore, in my books.”

  “Continue to let them row ashore in one of their ship’s boats,” Blamey summed up with a firm nod. “I like it.”

  “And, as long as that gale forced us to quit the coast, let’s shift further East,” Lewrie suggested, grinning. “Prowl your old hunting grounds round the French border, up to Arcachon or Bayonne. I’ve not seen them, yet. First thing in the morning, once we’ve sorted out the prizes you took, and be shot of their crews, of course. If you gentlemen don’t mind, we could sacrifice one of them, paint gun-ports on her hull, and let my gunners get some more practice.”

  “Close aiming?” Chalmers said with an amused brow up. “Well, we all have our hobbies, I suppose.”

  “Speaking of hobbies, sir,” Blamey prompted. “You said that you’ve a penny-whistle?”

  “Oh, you don’t want t’hear how bad I am at it, surely,” Lewrie begged off, and wondering if he was slyly being twitted, but at the others’ urging, there was no way to avoid, so he went to fetch it. He sat back down and after a few warm-up tootles and finger flexes, he launched into “Pleasant and Delightful”.

  Beyond the great-cabin door, Bisquit was curled up in his shelter beneath the starboar
d ladderway to the poop deck, having himself a post-supper snooze after a substantial bowl of leftovers from the Captain’s table. True to form whenever Lewrie tried to amuse himself on his penny-whistle, the dog sprang out, stood at the door, and began to bay and howl.

  Lewrie stopped and changed to “One Misty, Moisty Morning” in hopes that a faster tempo might silence the dog, but it only made it worse, for Bisquit began to scratch at the door with both paws most frantically, howling away … curiously, almost in time with the tune.

  “Sorry, gentlemen,” Lewrie said with a sigh, setting his humble instrument aside. “The critic has weighed in … critics, rather,” he added as the laughter from the watchstanders on the quarterdeck, and his Marine sentry, could be heard.

  Woof! as if to say “don’t do that anymore!” Then one more warning woof! as Bisquit went back into his shelter, followed by some jowl-lifting, grumbling whuffs as he circled round on his old blanket to settle back down.

  “I don’t suppose we dare sing, then,” Blamey said in a hammy whisper, which made them all burst out in loud laughter.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Lewrie wished that they could have landed all their prisoners further West than Tregandin-Noja, if only to deny the French their services longer. From there, though, it would be a fairly short walk to the larger port of Santoña, where they might take passage back to France, assuming that roving Spanish partisanos didn’t get them first.

  For a time, it seemed that their own people would do them in, There was a four-gun battery just outside the small fishing harbour, and the sight of three British warships fetched-to within a couple of miles offshore, launching five boats as if staging a raid, stirred the French artillerists to action, peppering roundshot all round the boats. Fortunately for the prisoners, they were miserable shots, but it was hugely amusing to the crews of all three warships to see the frantic antics of the prisoners, waving shirts or anything white for a call for truce, and one or two more fearful even jumping into the sea to swim the last quarter-mile without being shot at.