Sails on the Horizon: A Novel of the Napoleonic Wars

by Jay Worrall

  “A lot of Mollies—wayward women, beggar children, foundling infants.”

  “Only until all the problems and inequities of the world are ended,” she said happily and kissed his chin.

  “Fine,” Charles mumbled and drifted into sleep.

  When he awoke he saw Penny asleep beside him, her head resting on his arm. He moved slightly and her eyes flickered open.

  “I am very tender toward thee,” he whispered, mimicking what she had said when he proposed, and she snuggled closer to him.

  “How shall we be married?” she mumbled, her voice still thick with sleep.

  “How do you mean?” he asked lazily. “In a church, of course. I was thinking of St. John’s at the New Gate by Chester. It’s a beautiful old place and the parson was an acquaintance of my father’s. I could inquire about Chester Cathedral if you like.”

  Penny’s eyes opened wide and she pushed herself up on one elbow. “I cannot be married in a church by a hireling priest,” she announced abruptly. There was alarm in her voice.

  Charles sat up and stroked her hand to reassure her. “Why not?”

  “Because, because…Oh, thou dost not understand! Because God does not bide in buildings made by the hand of man, despite their pretentious spires and their paid clergy. And God does not speak through those hireling priests!”

  Charles struggled to digest this latest roadblock to their union. “What then, a Quaker marriage in one of your meetinghouses?”

  “Thank thee,” she said thoughtfully, “but we cannot. My meeting, any meeting, will not sanction my marriage to you, much less celebrate it. No, we must find another way.”

  “What other way? There is no other way,” Charles sputtered, his voice rising in timbre. “We could go to Scotland. They’ll marry anyone. But it’s still by a clergyman, only the Church of Scotland. It would be much easier in a local church. We could avoid all the traveling.”

  “I cannot marry thee in a church in Scotland or elsewhere,” she repeated as she sat upright. “It’s unchristian.”

  Charles’s mouth worked as he tried to fathom the opposition between church and Christianity. Finally he said, “How, then? Do you want to go abroad? I’m told they permit civil ceremonies in Rhode Island.”

  Her eyes grew thoughtful and she fell silent, her mouth in a firm line. “There must be another way,” she said at length.

  “Not in England, there isn’t,” he said quickly. “It’s either in front of a clergyman or nothing.”

  “Would it be possible to stand before a clergyman in a place other than a church?”

  Charles noted her use of the term “clergyman” in place of her usual “priest,” which she generally used with the same inflection that others did with “pederast” or “procurer.” He took it as an offer of compromise. “It might be possible,” he said carefully. “It would cost something extra, of course. Something for the parson’s trouble.”

  “How much extra?”

  “I don’t rightly know,” Charles answered. “Twenty-five or fifty pounds perhaps. A trifle.”

  “It is less dear to marry in a chapel?”

  “I should think so, yes. It’s the normal way of doing things. It’s what they’re accustomed to.”

  “All right,” Penny said as if the words were being dragged from her by horses. “In a small chapel, by a priest, with a very inexpensive ceremony.”

  “Thank you,” Charles answered. “I will write to the vicar at St. Alban’s in Tattenall. That should serve.”

  DURING THE REMAINDER of their time in Portsmouth they were only able to see each other sporadically, usually at dinner. Charles needed to be with the Louisa, watching the work done on her and seeing if he could get one or two other small changes made at the same time. Almost all of one day he was busy at the dockyard superintendent’s office signing invoices. At the victualling yard he prepared requests for stores. At the ordnance yard he was informed that the Louisa’s armament was to be augmented by four snub-nosed thirty-two-pounder carronades, two each for the fore- and aftercastles. The carronades were brutally powerful short-range weapons mounted on traversable slides rather than carriages, and did not count against the Louisa’s rating of twenty-eight guns. He eagerly agreed to it and the paperwork took a good part of that day.

  The last two days in port passed in a rush of activity that lasted from before dawn to well after dark for Charles and everyone else connected with the Louisa. As soon as she was kedged back into the water, a long patch of bright new copper over the repair to her hull, her crew was transported back on board. The wharf at the victualling yard was next for a long day of sorting, inspecting, positioning, and repositioning the ninety tons of water casks, sixty tons of provisions, and thirty tons of fuel that would provide drink and food for her crew at normal rations for ninety days. That night Charles staggered back to the George for a late supper with Penny, then returned to his cabin on board his ship to collapse into exhausted sleep.

  The next morning, the Louisa transferred to the gun wharf, where her twelve-pounders, nine-pounders, and four new carronades were swayed aboard one by one, delicately lowered into position, and secured. Only then were the nearly fifty tons of shot, hundredweight barrels of powder, and other ordnance stores brought aboard and stowed away. Louisa slowly returned to her normal routine at anchor, ready to sail on the morning tide.

  Charles spent his last evening with Penny in a small parlor at the inn. He had arranged for a special dinner for the two of them to celebrate together in private, but instead ate in strained conversation with many long, awkward silences.

  “When thou next returns, will we have sufficient time to marry?” Penny asked at one point.

  “I’ll request leave,” Charles answered. “I don’t know what Jervis will say.” He was thinking that if he disposed of the Santa Brigida, leave was much more likely to be granted than otherwise. But he had carefully avoided mentioning anything about the Spanish frigate to her, and he wasn’t about to bring the subject up on their last day together.

  “Thou wilt write to me?” Penny said.

  “Every day,” Charles answered. “But I don’t have many opportunities for posting my letters.”

  “I know,” she said, “like thou didst with Ellie. I will write to thee of my love also.”

  After very hard and repeated good-byes, Charles made his solitary way back to his ship.

  AT FOUR BELLS in the morning watch in the first tentative light of day, the Louisa swung her bow with the turning tide and started toward the harbor mouth and the broader waters of Spithead beyond. As they eased past the point, Bevan nudged Charles and called to Winchester, gesturing to port.

  Charles looked and saw Penny and Ellie standing among a half-dozen others in the half-light, waving handkerchiefs. He waved back, his heart breaking. As the Louisa nosed into the Spithead channel, he said to no one in particular, “All normal sail and set a course to weather Ushant.”

  ELEVEN

  THE LOUISA BEAT DOWN PAST CAPE PRIOR ON OCTOBER 7, 1797, under double-reefed topgallants. The wind shrieked through the rigging in capricious gusts, sweeping cold rain in sheets across the decks. Charles stood, wet and uncomfortable, in his tarpaulin rain gear on the quarterdeck, his feet wide apart and his legs compensating unconsciously for the movement of the ship. He could just make out the Dientes del Diablo, a surging froth of white surf against the steel-gray seas, transforming into billowing towers of spray as the Atlantic rollers crashed down on the rocks at metered intervals. “Beechum!” he shouted to the signals midshipman huddled in the lee of the binnacle fifteen yards away.

  “Yes, sir?” the boy answered after hurrying to him.

  “Run up the foremast and report back what the lookout sees,” Charles ordered. There would be no shouting back and forth to the tops in this weather.

  “Yes, sir,” the boy said, and glanced dubiously at the upper masts oscillating wildly as the ship crested a large wave at an oblique angle, corkscrewed, and started down into the tro
ugh.

  “Tell him I want to know the whereabouts of the Spanish frigate and anything else he sees in the Ferrol yards.”

  “Yes, sir.” The midshipman repeated his instructions: “Report back to you the location of the frigate and other activity in the yards.”

  “Very good. Get along.” The boy departed.

  “Any guesses?” Charles said, turning to Bevan.

  The lieutenant shrugged almost imperceptibly under his bulky oilskin. “Difficult to say. Depends on how badly we hurt her and whether or not they have the parts on hand for repairs.”

  “I’m betting they don’t,” Charles said. “I’ll bet she’s still moored in the yards.”

  “You always were an optimist,” Bevan replied dryly.

  The Louisa rose on another wave, crested, corkscrewed, and slid downward, then repeated the cycle and started over again, green water crashing over her bow each time she rose. Almost against his will his eyes were drawn back to the reef, nearly fine on the starboard beam, a maelstrom of exploding foam. Charles saw Beechum climbing cautiously back down the foremast ratlines.

  “The lookout says that the frigate is tied up alongside a wharf in the yard, sir,” the boy reported breathlessly. “He thinks she may have her foremast out of her. He says it’s hard to tell in this weather.”

  “Thank you,” Charles said. “Back up you go and report anything important.”

  He had spent a great deal of time thinking about the Spanish frigate during the five weeks since their last meeting, wondering or guessing how badly she might have been damaged. Now it seemed possible that her lower foremast had been more seriously wounded than he had thought; seriously enough that it needed to be replaced. If the Ferrol yards had a replacement lower mast section, they would have done the work already. Since they apparently did not have a suitable timber available, one would have to be ordered. Such a request would probably be sent overland and word would only just now be reaching Madrid that it was required. There would be some urgency about it, Charles knew; the potential for damage to British shipping that a heavy frigate could make was great. The only source for such a made-up spar, three feet in diameter and some seventy-five feet long, would be one of the other major Spanish naval yards at Cádiz or Cartagena. A transport from Cádiz was the best bet. Anything from Cartagena would require passing through the many British warships around Gibraltar. Supply by road across Castile and the Galician mountains was almost unthinkable, especially at this time of year, when the dirt tracks would be a morass. In all probability the Spanish authorities would try to slip a transport laden with naval stores, including the mast sections, past the blockade at Cádiz. That wouldn’t be too difficult at night and in the right weather conditions. If Charles were the captain of such a ship, he would immediately stand well out to sea to avoid the naval traffic along the Portuguese coast and make a dash into Coruna Bay from the northwest, with the prevailing winds on his quarter.

  He decided he had seen enough. With high seas and nightfall coming on, his next priority was plenty of distance between the Louisa and the lee shore, especially the reef. “Wear ship and get us some sea room,” he said to Bevan, “ample sea room.”

  For the next several weeks, the Louisa sailed a regular pattern from Ferrol to Cape Finisterre, northward to a point about thirty miles northwest of the mouth of the bay, then to Cape Ortegal and back to her starting point off Ferrol. In this way Charles could note any progress on repairs to the Santa Brigida every four or five days and was in a good position to intercept whatever enemy shipping rounded the northwest Spanish coast or attempted to enter Ferrol.

  The routine of sailing in a large triangle soon became tedious. Almost all the merchantmen they ran down on were British or Portuguese. The rest proved to be from some neutral country: two from Sweden, three from the United States, and one from Russia. The Americans were, to a man, Charles thought, unreasonably indignant about being stopped on the high seas by a British warship and having their papers examined. Nor was there any change in the Santa Brigida. She remained tied alongside a wharf in Ferrol, absent her foremast. The weather varied between heavily overcast with periodic squalls and beautiful, fresh fall days when it was a pleasure to be on deck. The wooded mountainsides of Spain slowly turned brown, forecasting the coming winter. To relieve the monotony, Charles exercised the hands at the guns regularly, especially the new carronades.

  Toward the end of October, as the Louisa was nearing its turning point well out to sea from the entrance to Coruna Bay, the lookout called out, “Sail fine on the port bow.”

  “How far?” Charles yelled.

  “Mebbe fifteen miles,” the lookout shouted back.

  “What do you make of her?”

  “I think she’s a polacre, sir. I can only see her from the topsails upward.”

  “What’s her course?”

  “South by east, sir. Straight for Ferrol.”

  “Show the colors and run up to her, Daniel,” Charles said.

  The polacre hauled her wind almost as soon as the Louisa turned in her direction. She was cut off from running before the wind or toward land and had no other point of sailing in which she had any hope of outrunning the British frigate. She turned south, but in a half-hearted way, and as soon as she was in range of Louisa’s guns she ran up the Spanish flag and promptly hauled it down again.

  The transport’s captain abjectly bemoaned his ill luck at being captured by tilting back a bottle of Madeira. As its contents were already mostly drained, Charles thought it was a project he must have begun soon after he’d seen Louisa’s sails. Her cargo, interestingly, consisted mostly of powder and shot—eighteen-pound shot—as well as turpentine, pitch, and other naval supplies, but no spars. After removing some of the powder to use in practicing his own guns, Charles detached the senior master’s mate and six seamen to take her to Gibraltar along with Louisa’s mail (including his own letter to Penny) and a report to Admiral Jervis on the Santa Brigida’s situation and his activities.

  Four days later, the Louisa reached Cape Finisterre and came into the wind to start the northward leg of her triangular patrol. The blocks squealed loudly as the yards braced around, and the sails snapped with sounds like musket shots as the canvas slatted, then filled.

  “Sail ho!” yelled the lookout. “No, two sails, three!”

  “Where away?” Charles called.

  “Due north, sir,” the lookout shouted. “I see five sail, six. They’re ours, sir. One of them is the Royal Sovereign.”

  “Make the recognition signal and our number,” Charles said to Bevan. It had to be a squadron from Portsmouth sailing south to join the Mediterranean fleet. He remembered pointing out the hundred-gun Royal Sovereign to Penny from under the walls of the Southsea Castle. What was that: a month, two months ago? It seemed like a lifetime.

  There were nine men of war, their sails easily visible from the Louisa’s quarterdeck now. Charles made out four ships of the line, all seventy-fours, in addition to the towering three-decker, as well as three frigates on the wings and a small sloop of war. “Sovereign’s signaling, sir,” reported the signal’s midshipman. “‘Send boat, mail on board,’ it says.”

  “Acknowledge, Mr. Beechum,” Charles said to the midshipman. To Winchester standing nearby he said, “Hoist out the launch and collect our mail from the flagship. Look lively—I doubt they’ll even slow down.”

  Winchester returned a half-hour later and carried the mail satchel up to the quarterdeck while the launch was being hoisted inboard. “There’s good news,” he said, handing over the bag. “Admiral Duncan met the Dutch at Camperdown in the first part of October. Captured eight ships of the line and two frigates.”

  “How about that,” Charles said absently, opening the satchel. He rifled around amongst the two dozen or so letters until he found what he was looking for, an envelope addressed to him in a neat schoolgirlish hand from “Penelope Brown, Gatesheath, Cheshire.” There was also a larger Admiralty envelope for him from Jervis. He ha
nded the satchel to Winchester with the words, “Here, most of that’s for you. See that the rest is delivered.” Then he turned the quarterdeck over to Bevan and went below to his cabin. He opened Penny’s letter first.

  Ninth Month 30, 1797

  My Dearest,

  I have only just returned home from Portsmouth and already I miss thee terribly. Our return journey was a sad one both for thy sister and me (she sorrows at being apart from her love, as do I). During our travels home she told me about thy experience at St. Vincent, which thou hast never fully told me. I worry constantly about the danger thou art in.

  Molly Bridges is settled with the Attwaters in thy grand house in Tattenall. I think she is happy there. She speaks often of Daniel Bevan and I think she admires him. Molly dotes on thy horse, Pendle, and spoils him unmercifully.

  I have told my parents of our engagement. My father is pleased; I think he likes thee as a man. My mother is concerned about thy profession and my being disowned. I have not spoken to my meeting as yet but will this First Day.

  I have nothing more to say than my love, so I will say it. I am exceedingly tender toward thee, Charles Edgemont. I am thy,

  Penny

  Charles read the letter though several times, then folded it carefully and placed it in his shirt pocket next to his heart. The second envelope he opened more warily. It was written after Louisa’s encounter with the Santa Brigida but before Jervis would have heard about it.

  1 September, 1797

  HMS Victory

  Commander Edgemont,

  I have been informed of your observations concerning the Spanish Frigate Santa Brigida and of Captain Ecclesby’s return to England. I have also been informed that Captain Ecclesby has become temporarily indisposed due to ill health. I am most sorry that I am unable at this time to find a replacement to assist you.