By the Mast Divided

by David Donachie

  Bleary eyed, looking left and right, the black-clad fellow muttered instructions to the two men on the wheel, watched by a very anxious master and an equally troubled ship’s captain. Ralph Barclay had been in and out of the Little Nore anchorage dozens of times, and reckoned he knew it as well as this drunken buffoon who was hanging on to his wheel. There was plenty of water around them, but Barclay knew how narrow was the gap between the twin banks of the Sheerness Middle Sand and the Cheyney Spit, both now hidden by the height of the tide, but with not much more than a fathom of water to cover their mud. The deep-water channel was even narrower. Ships had gone aground here before, to be left high, dry and a laughing stock as the tide receded.

  ‘Would you care for a leadsman in the chains?’ he asked.

  The pilot turned dark purple in the face, which was already heavily cratered with the after effects of smallpox, and snorted. ‘I daresay you knows your job, sir. Allow that I know mine.’

  ‘Mr Roscoe,’ said Collins, the master, ‘I think a reef in the main and fore topsails would be prudent.’

  ‘Sound, Mr Collins,’ said the pilot, ‘the wind demands it. I feel an increase.’

  If the wind had strengthened, Ralph Barclay failed to notice it, and judging by the look on Roscoe’s face neither had he. Looking more closely at Collins it was possible to see his glassy eyes, which meant that he too had been at the bottle, no doubt in the company of this rascal of a pilot. The comment about sails and wind was nothing but professional complicity, an attempt to tell the commissioned fellows on the deck that their blue coats and braid counted for nothing; that when it came to sailing a ship it would be best to leave it to those who thoroughly knew their business.

  Convinced or not, Roscoe called out the orders. Aloft, the men bent over the yards and began to gather in the sail, hand over fist, reducing the overall area drawing on the wind, using long lines of ties stitched into the canvas to lash off what they had drawn up. Ralph Barclay hated this, the one time when he was not in command of his own vessel, and to stop himself from showing his frustration he went to join his wife on the poop. His master would set what sail was necessary – the pilot would con the ship – and Roscoe would convey his orders. He was not required.

  ‘I have seen a ship at sea, Captain Barclay,’ Emily cried, ‘from a distance and looking enchanting, but nothing can compare with this.’

  ‘You will observe better, my dear, when we get aloft a full suit of sails in anything of a blow.’

  ‘Look husband, there is an officer there raising his hat to us.’

  Ralph Barclay followed his wife’s finger, towards the Great Nore anchorage, dotted with line-of-battle ships. The raised hat came from one of the smaller vessels of a mere sixty-four guns.

  ‘That, my dear, is HMS Agamemnon, Agymoaner to the common seamen, and the fellow giving us the salute is Captain Horatio Nelson.’

  Emily picked up the tone in her husband’s voice – not dislike so much as disinclination – and looked at him with some curiosity. Then she saw him smile as he recalled that Nelson had once been grounded here in HMS Boreas, set on the sand so high and dry that crowds had come from all round the Medway to parade round the ship and jeer. The thought cheered Ralph Barclay immensely, a touch of comeuppance for a fellow over-full of himself.

  ‘Did you not meet him last night at the Assembly Room dance? It was he who mentioned to me how much you enjoyed yourself. You may well come across him in the Mediterranean, my dear, for he has orders too for that station. Should you do so, beware, for I have sailed in his company before, and he is a terrible bore.’

  And a proper tittle-tattle, thought Emily.

  If the men looked for respite as they sailed down the north shore of the Isle of Sheppey, past all those settled and silent ships of the line, they were disappointed. Roscoe had laid out a list of tasks to be carried out and training to be undertaken, and that applied to the seamen as much as the landsmen and ‘volunteers’. As soon as the pilot had set his course in the deep-water channel he set his plans in motion. Mess number twelve, being mere lubbers fit only to haul on lines, were being shown the use of a belying pin as a cleat. A line of pins sat in drilled holes, pushed down for a tight fit. If a rope was lashed to it with a double round turn it became a quick and secure knot, but by merely removing the pin the knot was released and with it the sail to which it was attached.

  ‘Take the rope,’ said Dysart, holding a spare line dropped for the purpose, ‘fetch it under the pin, like so.’ He then made a loop with the free end under the fixed end and lashed it to the pin, saying, ‘Take a roond turn once, and loop that o’er the top, wi’ another wan the same an’ pull tight. It’s a secure horse or a clove hitch. When ye’ve done that, always mak sure ye tidy what’s left of the fall intae a neat coil, or the Premier will have yer guts.’

  Dysart looked at faces of the party of which he had been given charge, seeing comprehension in the eyes of those who had understood, and mystification in that of the others. He had them try, noting that O’Hagan knew the knot and that the man who wanted to be called Truculence, along with Taverner, learnt it quick. Not the ginger bairn, though, and the other, much older one, Scrivens, looked as though he would never manage it.

  ‘Right, and here’s the beauty,’ Dysart added eventually. ‘The order comes tae let fly the sheets, which tae you would mean them sails we have set aloft. Nae time for untying knots, so ye just haul oot the pin and, there ye are, nae knot.’

  There were parties all over the deck and aloft engaged in various tasks, mostly of an undemanding nature. But Ralph Barclay was not content to let matters rest at that – he had to get his crew to a sharp pitch of efficiency and he had no time spare for indulgence. He sent his wife back to their cabin, before calling in a loud voice, ‘Mr Roscoe, there is a fire in the manger.’

  ‘Watch on deck, fire engine forrard,’ Roscoe roared, even though he knew the alarm to be false.

  The cry taken up by the petty officers, which saw a group of sailors driven to the small engine that dealt with such an emergency, a wheeled pump with a hose attached to drop over the side into the river. No sooner had water begun to flow from the men’s efforts, drenching the animals, which bleated and lowed in distress, than Barclay presented another task.

  ‘There is a ship in the offing, Mr Roscoe,’ he said, pointing to a merchantman on the same course as they, though in another channel. ‘There, off our larboard quarter, which may be an enemy or a neutral. Pray launch a boat to investigate.’

  ‘Permission to heave to, sir?’

  Barclay allowed himself a smile then, for he was, while the pilot was aboard, only partly in charge of his ship. ‘Denied.’

  ‘Mr Burns, take charge of stowing the fire engine. Man the capstan. Mr Sykes, derricks over the side, and lash on the cutter. Mr Digby a party to man her.’

  ‘Mr Farmiloe, gather a boarding party from the foc’sle,’ yelled Digby. He added a call for the Master at Arms to issue weapons. ‘A message to Mr Holbrook, and we require a file of marines.’

  Mess number twelve, on deck to haul ropes when required, showed just how useless they were by the way they bumped into men who had what they did not, some idea of where they were going. Pearce, with Michael O’Hagan taking a lead from him, avoided the worse collisions by employing the same patient tactics he had used in the Pelican, letting matters clarify themselves before moving, which earned them both a stinging swipe from a rattan, a blow which landed simultaneously to the command to, ‘Get a bloody move on’.

  Pearce swung round, fists balled to retaliate. Dysart grabbed his shirt collar and hauled him backwards, then swore at an alarmed Kemp, which, as soon as the man saw he was safe, earned the Scotsman a rudely raised finger.

  ‘Christ, laddie, you’re well christened. Truculence by name an’ truculence by nature.’

  ‘If he swings that damn thing once more.’

  Dysart just pushed him to where he was required. ‘You’ll gie him what he wants, if ye clout him, lad
die. I’ve heard him boast what he’s got in store for you, ’cause he kens yer temper. You at the grating and him wi’ a cat in his hand. Now use yer heid and get toiling.’

  On deck, the bosun was personally overseeing the clearing of the boats stacked above the waist of the ship, and men were rigging the sling that would be used to get the cutter over the side. Below, more than half the crew were being driven back to the capstan bars, which they grabbed from their racks around the base of the mainmast, for the cutter was heavy, and needed a lot of manpower. Above their heads, as the boat was raised from its booms, other men hauled on the rigged derrick that swung it over the ship’s side. When they got level with the deck, the party that Farmiloe had gathered from the forecastlemen, the older and most experienced men on the ship, armed with cutlasses and axes distributed to them by the Master at Arms, leapt aboard, followed by four marines bearing muskets. As soon as the boat hit the water, the men fended off with their oars, and as those same oars dipped into the water to carry them to the imaginary ship, Barclay shouted.

  ‘She’s a neutral, Mr Roscoe, and has shown her colours. Pray get our boat in.’

  The whole operation was put into reverse, but Barclay was not satisfied, for as soon as the cutter was inboard, dripping water once more onto the maindeck, he issued another set of orders. ‘We will need topgallants in this light breeze, Mr Collins.’

  The master jerked as his captain spoke – clearly he had been in some kind of reverie, or was still stupefied by drink. ‘I had intended to set them when we came abreast of the Reculver Tower, sir.’

  ‘I think now would be better,’ Barclay insisted.

  ‘Mr Sykes,’ called Roscoe, ‘topmen aloft and a party to fetch up the topgallants.’

  ‘Now what in the name of Jaysus are they?’ asked Michael O’Hagan, of a blue coat nearby. ‘The best looking boyos on the ship, maybe?’

  Whistles blew a different set of notes that sent the slim and agile topmen aloft once more. A set of ropes began to appear from the masthead, one end dropped down to the maindeck where these objects were apparently stored, another to the deck for the donkeys known as landsmen to haul on. They rose on the falls, long tubes of shaped timber with ends tapered to a point. Aloft, nimble topmen rigged them across the mast, seemingly suspended in thin air.

  ‘Right, you lot below, to the sail locker,’ called some strange fellow, and so inured were the volunteers now to taking orders that they followed without demur. As soon as they got to the orlop deck, Pearce, aware that the storeroom containing his possessions was on this deck made a crouching effort to try and slip away, only to be thwarted by Abel Scrivens and Rufus who tried to follow him.

  ‘You three! Where in the name of Christ are you goin’?’

  Glaring at the pair, Pearce knew in his heart that they had dogged his heels through ignorance, nothing else, but that did nothing to cheer him. Another sailor, bringing up the rear, prodded them to rejoin the rest at the barred door to the sail locker.

  From inside that room they dragged heavy folded canvas, which had to be opened out, rolled and tied in a way that aided the topmen for lifting it aloft, where it was lashed through the deadeyes to the yard they had already put in place. Ralph Barclay had his watch out, determined to let no one doubt that the whole operation was taking too long. But when the sails were rigged, though not set, he said nothing in complaint, merely informing Lieutenant Roscoe that it was time to coil up ropes and sweep decks, called early because of the fading light.

  Supper was a repeat of dinner in the quality of the food, as Mess Number Twelve contemplated a meal that varied very little from what they had had already, pork instead of beef. But if experience had made some of them fussy, toil had made them too hungry to care, and since the bread and cheese were still fresh it was not a wholly unpalatable meal, made more so by a tot of rum which, on an empty stomach, went straight to Rufus Dommet’s young and tender head. As soon as they had finished they were ordered to call on the purser to collect their hammocks.

  ‘You are entitled to what you have in your hands.’ The fat little purser said, adding, with a cock of the head, an insincere smile, and a roll and a rub of his smooth pink hands. ‘But I daresay you would aspire to a bit of decoration, like these bandanas I have.’

  He pointed to a chest that lay near to the front of his deep storeroom, with bits of black silk inside. ‘I am also prepared to advance you jackets and caps upon your mark, and of course, tobacco can be purchased against your bounty and your pay.’

  In the dim lantern-light of the orlop deck, Pearce and his fellow ‘volunteers’, stood in a snaking line. He had been given and changed into duck trousers of the type he had seen the rest of the crew wear, wide at the bottom with ties to hold them at the waist, a checked shirt, a thick rough blanket that smelt slightly of mould and a rolled hammock in a small numbered sack that, he was told, would double as his night-time ditty bag.

  ‘Should any of you wish to sell your shore clothes,’ the purser continued, ‘I will, provided they have a value, put a sum against your name for the purchase.’

  ‘Not hard money?’ asked Gherson, whose breeches and shirt, even after a dunk in the Thames and a day’s work on deck, looked to be of good quality.

  ‘Coin?’ replied a startled purser, as though such a notion was outrageous. ‘I fear you do not understand life in the Navy, man.’

  ‘Then thank Christ for that,’ snapped Charlie Taverner.

  ‘We should have sold our teeth,’ said Scrivens. ‘Like Rufus said. The boy had the right of it for once.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be after selling my teeth to this spalpeen bastard,’ said Michael O’Hagan, glaring at the purser, a remark that had no effect at all on a man so accustomed to verbal abuse, including that in the Irish vernacular.

  ‘What will you give for these leather breeches?’ asked Rufus.

  Arched back to look at them, like a man being shown the contents of a particularly rank night-soil pot, the purser replied, ‘I doubt they would trouble my credit for more than a shilling.’

  ‘This is prime leather, well tanned, that I made into breeks myself.’

  The fat little fellow bent forward and made a good pretence of having a closer look. ‘I fear you have been guyed by the man who supplied you with the material, for it looks to me as if the cow from which it was skinned was diseased. As for your skill with the needle I doubt the sail maker will be seeking you out. One shilling and three pence.’

  Pearce spoke then, cutting across Rufus’s response to robbery. ‘I require a pen, ink, paper and wax.’

  ‘I too,’ said Gherson, racking his brain to think to whom he could write who would not have a connection to the man who had tried to kill him. Could he pen a plea to Carruthers’ wife, Catherine?

  ‘Certainly, and if you require the services of a scribe, I can supply that too.’

  Pearce just glared at him, which had no effect on the fat, pompous little purser, who retired into the gloom to fetch what had been requested. Pearce then had to endorse each item in a ledger. Having just declined the services of a person to write for him, he could hardly make just a mark, so he took the proffered quill and signed John Truculence. The purser turned the book to look at it, and grinned.

  ‘I am happy that you have chosen to record it thus, for that is, after all, the name under which you are entered.’

  Gherson scribbled his name likewise, and the purser blew on the ink to dry it. They moved on to allow him to make the same distribution and pitch to those behind. Pearce realised immediately that they were unsupervised, but the same problem faced him as had done already – how to get away from his messmates. He had no choice but to speak, which he did quietly, and only to Michael O’Hagan, dropping his new hammock as he did so.

  ‘Step in front of me Michael, you are broad enough to hide me.’

  The Irishman went up hugely in Pearce’s estimation then – he did not ask why, nor did he look at him – he merely squared his shoulders and half turned to cove
r Pearce, allowing him to slip away to the edge of the available light, then to the other side of the deck. He had to stop, for he had no idea where the bread room lay, or for that matter the storeroom containing his possessions. At his back he could hear the murmur of voices – ahead of him as he moved gingerly over the planking lay small pools of light and several screened-off cabins.

  This deck, he had already learnt, was home to some of the lesser officers, as well as the surgeon if Charlie Taverner had the right of it. Dysart had said the gunroom, which was where the real officers lived. That had to be at the back of the ship, under the quarterdeck – behind him, so he had been moving in the wrong direction. Cursing, for he had little time, he retraced his steps. Adopting a normal gait, as though he had every right to be where he was, Pearce walked back the way he had come until he knew he was beyond the purser’s store and the knot of pressed men outside.

  The two storerooms were marked by their difference to all the others – not barred off spaces full of solid objects or screened off cells, but proper doors in a narrow alleyway with very obvious, and very sturdy locks. There was enough light to see the traces of flour on the deck, and enough of a smell to tell him which was the bread room. Pearce turned, bending down to examine, with a sinking feeling, the big padlock on a solid looking hasp that stood between him and his possessions – one that would take a blast of gunpowder to remove.

  As he ran his fingers round the door edge, looking in vain for a point of leverage, he had no idea where it came from, the notion that he was being watched, just that it was present and it was powerful. He looked hard at the door to the rear of the after companionway, that must lead to the officer’s quarters, but that was firmly shut. He also knew that even if it was merely in his imagination there was nothing he could do faced with such an obstacle as this padlock. He recalled Dysart’s words about the tin lining designed to keep out the rats, creatures better equipped to gain entry than he; they could gnaw, he could not. With the fanciful notion that it was a clan of those watching him and hoping to gain entry, Pearce stood up and made his way back to join his fellows, just as Dysart returned to take them back to the maindeck so they could sling their hammocks, trying to recall, in all the things he had seen that day, if there had been some kind of lever, of metal rather than wood, strong enough to prise off that lock.