He reached the open door of his coach and turned to look back up the road, and damned if Lydia was still leaning out the window and waving, so he used both arms to return a broad goodbye wave to her with a smile plastered on his phyz that he wasn’t sure what it meant.
Now, where did all that come from? he asked himself; I would’ve thought her so vexed with me that she’d write me off completely, yet … hmmm. Love, she said? Wary as she was, ’bout love and marriage, and trustin’ any man ever again … Gawd.
Did he wish to re-marry? he had to ask himself. If he did, he could do a lot worse than Lydia Stangbourne. As far as he knew, she was still worth £2,000 a year, and that much “tin” was nothing to be sneezed at! She was exciting, adventurous, nothing like the properly-mannered hen-heads and chick-a-biddies who populated most of the parlours in the nation!
Shame, though, Lewrie thought; I’m too “fly” a rake-hell for her. Sooner or later, she’d find me out and go harin’ for the hills!
“On to Portsmouth, coachman,” Lewrie said as he mounted the steps into his coach.
“Shouldn’t blaspheme, sir,” the dour stick grumbled.
“Damn me, did I?” Lewrie quipped as he pulled up the steps and shut the door. “Well, just bugger me! Whip up!”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A light and misty October rain was falling, gathering on upper yards, and the rigging, and occasionally massing into larger drops of water that plopped on Reliant’s freshly holystoned decks, on the canvas covers of the stowed hammock racks, and Captain Alan Lewrie’s hat and epauletted shoulders as he and the First Lieutenant, Mr. Westcott, and the Bosun, Mr. Sprague, made a slow inspection of both the standing and the running rigging, and the set of the top-masts and yards.
Bisquit the dog paced slowly at their heels, on the lookout for attention, or the offer of a nibble of sausage or jerky. When one of the larger drops plopped on his head, he would shy away, then look up to spot whoever it was that was pestering him.
“The cats have more sense, ye know,” Lewrie told the dog. “They stay snug and dry below.”
“Enjoying their long naps,” Lt. Westcott commented with a grin as if he could relish an hour or two of idle snoozing. No one aboard had had much rest since Lewrie returned from London. To prove his sentiment, Westcott fought to stifle a jaw-cracking yawn.
“It appears we’re back in business, Mister Sprague,” Lewrie allowed once they had reached the bow hawses for a long look at the bowsprit and jib-boom rigging.
“Spick and span clean from keel to truck, again, too, sir,” the Bosun pointed out. He was a man who ever strove for order, neatness, and cleanliness, the hallmark of his exacting trade. “She don’t smell like a mud-flat any longer.”
Despite the orders which Lewrie had waved under everyone’s noses, there simply had been no space for them in a graving dock, so the frigate had been hauled over and her bottom cleaned, re-felted, white leaded, and re-coppered in places by a civilian contractor’s yard, on a sandy and muddy hard between the tides, and the reek of the beach, and white lead paint had been a long time departing her.
There had been planking in her “quick-work” badly in need of replacing, too. Some were riddled with teredo worms, and some gnawed thin from the inside, by rats that had the run of the orlop and bilges.
Once back on her bottom and upright, the contractor had suggested that their rat problem could be solved, at least temporarily, by the introduction of a pack of terriers, as many stray cats as could be had round the yard, and let them have the run of the ship for a few days … for which he would be paid, of course, a trifling fee.
“Saw more than one merchant ship and a sloop o’ war get sunk by her own vermin, sir,” the flinty shipwright had told them. “Starving rats’d eat anything, and usually gnaw through the hull planks down low where you can’t tell ’til the water’s pouring into the bilges.”
The ship’s boys had had a field day, following the terriers on their hunts, and collecting keg after keg of dead rats. They had hot been above doing slaughter of their own with hammers and middle mauls.
That vermin-free state would not last; it never would, of course. Ships stores, ration kegs, bales of clothing, and even gunpowder had to be brought back aboard from temporary storage at the warehouses at the naval dockyard, and even more stores sufficient for six months at sea, would bring pests with them, even was the ship anchored out and not right alongside a pier where rats would have easier access.
“How are the new hands fitting in?” Lewrie asked the Bosun.
“Them, God help us, sir?” Sprague said with a weary laugh of dismissal. “Two of the four Landsmen might as well be goony birds and the other two strike me as shifty … county Quota Men. The three rated as Ordinary are passable, but we only could scrape up two Able Seamen, One’s alright, but I’m keeping my eye on Shales, and so is the foremast captain. I expect he’s a ‘sea-lawyer’, sir.”
“No help for it,” Lewrie said with a sigh. The ship’s people had had to lodge ashore temporarily, and despite all the cautions that he, his officers, and petty officers had urged, despite all their watchfulness, eleven hands had deserted. Lewrie damned Lord Gardner’s office for issuing pay chits before the ship was fully back in commission and discipline. It made no sense to him that those eleven men would take “leg bail”, obtain a civilian’s “long clothing”, and run, sacrificing their claims to the substantial amount of prize-money that Reliant was due. And all of them had been aboard since May of 1803!
“For that matter, sir,” Westcott quipped, “how do you think our new Mid, Mister Shannon, is fitting in?”
“Oh, Lord,” Lewrie said, pulling a long face which made all of them chuckle. “No helpin’ that, either. He’s a young’un, no error.”
Midshipman Entwhistle had stood his oral exams before a board of Post-Captains while Reliant was on her beam-ends in the mud, and had been rated as Passed. Out of the blue, not a week later, he had been given orders into an 18-gun brig-sloop just fitting out and he, a newly “wetted down” Lieutenant and Commission Sea Officer, was gone, replaced with a twelve-year-old chub. There had been a tit-for-tat made; the Commissioner of the dockyards, Captain Sir Charles Saxton, Bart., had a distant nephew in need of his first posting, and Lewrie had a foul bottom, and no matter his urgent orders for the South Atlantic, things would go more swimmingly should Lewrie welcome the lad aboard.
Lewrie had to give Captain Saxton his due, though; the naval dockyard had stored all his goods without pilferage, and it all had been returned in fine shape, and no condemned casks of salt-meats had been substituted for their own. Reliant had gotten all the items that Lewrie had requested, even a more than ample supply of paint for sprucing up the ship! And that in a time when captains would be treated so parsimoniously that more than one had written Admiralty to ask which side of his ship he should re-paint!
Midshipman Richard Saxby Shannon, though all puppy-dog earnest and eager, was also all cunny-thumbs, so far, and was as gullible as the day was long, wide open to all of the traditional jokes that Mids played on each other, and even a new one that Lewrie had not heard of before—they had told him that after six months at sea, even had he yet to experience a girl, he would find himself in desperate need for release, in the form of manual stimulation, or “Boxing the Jesuit” in the dark. They had sent him to the Captain to be issued his Masturbation Papers so he would have official permission!
When Shannon had made his request in Lewrie’s day-cabin, with his hat under his arm and his “serious” face on, Lewrie had laughed himself sick, unable to reply, and, wheezing, had just shooed the lad out, and he could not stop laughing for another ten minutes!
“He’ll probably not even touch his crotch to change his under-drawers,” Lt. Westcott sniggered, smiling wickedly.
“Yes, well,” Lewrie said, after another brief laugh, “I think we’re ready for sea, as soon as the wind shifts favourably. I will be below. Carry on, Mister Westcott … Mister Sprague.”
&
nbsp; * * *
“A cup of good, hot coffee, sir?” Pettus offered after he had hung Lewrie’s hat and undress coat up on pegs to dry, out of reach of the cats.
“Most welcome, thankee, Pettus,” Lewrie responded as he plucked an older, third-best uniform coat from the back of his desk chair and donned it. He sat down at his desk and went over the muster book once more to see if he fully agreed with the changes made in the assignments of hands to their various stations during the ship’s working. Men in each larboard and starboard watch had specific duties to perform when on passage, when hoisting the anchors or coming to anchor, when making sail or reducing them, when top-masts must be struck or hoisted up into place, when boats must be hoisted up and lowered overside or recovered, by day or night. Equally, each man was assigned specific stations and duties when the ship went to Quarters and it was all written down in a series of lists so that every niggling chore was covered and every slot filled by a warm body.
“Turning a bit nippy, this time of year, sir,” Pettus commented as he brought the coffee, “and a chilly damp. It will be good we are bound South.”
“Aye, with winter comin’ on, I’d expect even the heat near the Equator’d be welcome,” Lewrie agreed, stirring his mug after adding a large dollop of goat’s milk and two spoonfuls of fine white sugar.
“Midshipman Shannon, SAH!” the Marine sentry at the door bawled.
Lewrie looked up over the rim of his mug to see Jessop making a tube of his right hand and pantomiming a jerk-off to Pettus.
“We’ll have no dis-respect for any Mid, Jessop,” Lewrie said, striving for sternness. “Stop that. Enter!”
“Aye, sir,” Jessop answered, still looking a bit too gleeful for Lewrie’s liking.
Midshipman Shannon entered and marched to the front of Lewrie’s desk at what the lad obviously thought was a properly rapid military pace. “Mister Eldridge’s duty, sir, and I am to tell you that there is a boat approaching,” he rattled off, chin up, stiff as a soldier at “Guards Mount,” and staring over Lewrie’s shoulder at the middle distance.
“Very well, Mister Shannon, and thankee,” Lewrie replied. “Any idea of its passenger, or passengers?”
“Ehm … Mister Eldridge did speculate that it might bear an Admiralty messenger, sir,” Shannon answered, looking as if a question had thrown him off-script and nigh clueless in how to respond.
“Fine, we’ll soon see. You may go, Mister Shannon,” Lewrie bade.
“Aye aye, sir!” Shannon barked, just as loud as the sentry, and all but stamping his boots.
“Just a thought, Mister Shannon,” Lewrie said before the lad could stumble through an attempt at an about-face. “In the Navy, there is no need to emulate the Household Foot Guards, or our own Marines, for that matter. All that shouting and stamping about just frightens my cats.”
“Ehm … I was told…,” Shannon gulped, turning red.
“I would not believe all that I was told by your fellow Mids,” Lewrie cautioned, “recent pranks included, hmm?”
“Very good, sir,” Shannon replied, taking on normal posture. With a brief, shy, and much-relieved smile, he saw himself out.
“Lord, what a younker, sir,” Pettus said once he was gone.
“Believe it or not, Pettus, I’ve seen worse,” Lewrie laughed.
A few minutes later, after Lewrie had placed cheque marks beside the names of some hands whom he thought too weak, or too dense, to do the tasks assigned them, he could hear the calls of the “Spithead Nightingales” as someone was piped aboard the ship. In expectation of a visitor, he set aside the lists and waited for his Marine sentry to do his duty, which came a moment later. “Messenger t’see th’ Cap’um, SAH!”
“Enter,” Lewrie bade.
An older Midshipman from the Port Admiral’s office entered, with a canvas despatch bag hung over one shoulder. “Orders from the Port Admiral, Captain Lewrie, sir. And, Captain Niles also thought that your latest mail should be delivered aboard, as well,” the Mid said.
“Most welcome, and thank you,” Lewrie said with a happy smile as he accepted the packet of letters, and his orders. “Do I need to sign for them?” he asked, waving the slim envelope.
“No, sir,” the Midshipman said with a grin, and bowed himself out. As soon as he was gone, Lewrie broke the wax seal and opened the brief order. He already had orders from Admiralty to sail as part of Commodore Popham’s expedition, “with all despatch” and “making the best of his way”, and was just waiting for a favourable slant of wind for departure so he could fulfil Admiralty’s parlance for cracking on all sail to the royals and blowing out half his heavy-weather canvas for maximum speed. What could Lord Gardner have to say about it?
“Oh Christ,” Lewrie groaned. “Play escort?”
There were, several hired-in merchant vessels also waiting for a change in wind direction which carried a part of Popham’s expeditionary force, a troop transport, and a pair of horse transports bound for Madeira, the assembly point in the neutral Portuguese Azores Islands, and carrying two troops of the 34th Light Dragoons.
So much for “with all despatch”, Lewrie desponded; If they can make eight knots in a ragin’ gale, I’m a Turk in a turban!
He cast a longing look at the thick packet of personal mail, but got to his feet and went aft to the windows in the transom. As Lord Gardner had written, those transports were anchored near Southsea Castle … but then, so were many other vessels. Through the misty haze and sullen rain he could make out one ship which flew a large, plain blue broad pendant, the sign of the naval officer appointed by the Transport Board to be the Agent Afloat.
Bugger it, Lewrie thought; I’m goin’ t’get wet … wetter.
He asked Pettus for his grogram cloak and worst hat, turned the personal mail over to his clerk, Faulkes, for distribution, and sent Jessop out on deck to pass word for his boat crew to assemble.
“I’ll be back later, before Seven Bells, I hope,” Lewrie said to Pettus. “Have Yeovill keep my dinner warm. I have to see a man about a horse.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Though he was irked at Lord Gardner’s meddling, and the necessity of rowing over in the rain to meet with the masters of the vessels he was to escort, Lewrie was a tad curious. He had dealt with civilian convoys in the past, but had never seen troop ships or the specialised “cavalry” ships.
Before 1794, the Navy Board had done the hiring of ships to bear soldiers, artillery, ammunition, and supplies overseas. In 1794, a six-man Transport Board had been established to handle the task. The Navy Board had been, and most-likely still was, rife with corruption, so it was good odds that the new Transport Board would be no more honest, but somehow the job had to be done on those so-far rare occasions when the small British Army went overseas, mostly to the East or West Indies, or to garrisons in Canada, Gibraltar, and the Mediterranean.
“Arrah, now there’s a homey smell,” Cox’n Liam Desmond said in appreciation after a deep sniff of the wind. “Horses, barns filled with hay an’ straw … all that’s needin’ is a warm peat fire on such a day as this. Ahh!”
“That, an’ a pint of stout right under yer nose whilst yer warmin’ at that fire, Liam,” Patrick Furfy, the stroke-oar, said with a wistful sigh of missed pleasures.
“Make for the one flying the blue pendant,” Lewrie bade them.
There were three ships in all, according to Lord Gardner’s set of orders: the Ascot, the Marigold, and the Sweet Susan. The one with the blue pendant turned out to be the Ascot, the only one named in any connexion with horses or horse races, and she was the troop transport.
Lewrie was welcomed aboard her, not piped, by an Navy officer, a much older Lieutenant with a slight limp who named himself as Thatcher.
“You are the Agent Afloat?” Lewrie asked.
“I am, sir,” Thatcher glumly told him, “and the only naval officer aboard any of the ships. You are to be our escort, the one named in Lord Gardner’s orders? Happy to meet, you, Captain Lewrie. This ma
y take a while, so why don’t you call your boat crew up so they can take shelter from the rain, and we can go aft. Look out!”
“What?” Lewrie gawped, just before Thatcher snatched him by the arm, clear of a charge by an angry ram.
“What the bloody Hell’s that?” Lewrie snapped.
“The mascot of the Thirty-fourth Light Dragoons, sir,” Thatcher spat in a weary tone. “Cornet Allison? Come fetch your bloody … beast!”
A lad of sixteen or so, resplendent in the silver-trimmed, blue-cuffed short red coat, dark blue breeches, and high, knee-flapped boots of a cavalry regiment, and with a leather-visored helmet bristling fore and aft with black fur plumes, came to stumble after the ram, take him by the collar and one large curved horn, to lead him away.
“Sorry, Leftenant Thatcher, sir,” Cornet Allison added and shifted his grip on the ram so he could raise his right hand and press it palm outward to the visor of his helmet in salute to Lewrie. “I was sure he was tethered, but—”
“Make sure he’s tethered,” Lt. Thatcher insisted. “Else, we’ll find what fresh mutton tastes like.”
“Yes, sir,” Cornet Allison assured him, then pulled a face. “I so wish that we’d voted for a mastiff, or a greyhound, but the Colonel insisted, and so … Come on, you,” he said to the ram, trotting it to the far side of the deck.
“It has no name, d’ye see, Captain Lewrie,” Lt. Thatcher said. “The Colonel of the Thirty-fourth, Colonel Laird, also insists that it is always referred to as the Regimental Ram. Though most of the troopers call it ‘that vicious bastard’. ‘Cantankerous’ is a mild word to describe its temperament, and there’s not a soldier aboard that hasn’t been rammed when he wasn’t expecting it. Will you join me for a coffee, sir?”
“Gladly,” Lewrie heartily agreed.
Aft and in the shelter of the ship’s master’s great-cabins, now divvied up into small cabins with deal-and-canvas partitions, there was a long mess table down the middle. Ascot’s master, a gruff older man by name of Settles, stuck his head out of what was left of his formerly spacious quarters just long enough to grunt a gloomy greeting to Lewrie, then shut his door on the lot of them.
Hostile Shores Page 13
