Reefs and Shoals

by Dewey Lambdin

  I think I’m beginnin’ to regret this, Lewrie thought in trepidation as the pilot, Mr. Warrick, conned Reliant across Murray’s Anchorage towards Grassy Bay, two days later, after the winds had come fair. The Bermuda Islands lay too far North of the tropics to own reliable Trade Winds, and too far South of the North Atlantic Westerlies, in the belt of the Variables, to trust from which quarter the wind would blow, two days running.

  Likewise the islands’ weather, the garrulous Mr. Warrick imparted in the idle moments between dashes to either beam of the deck, and many consultations of the ship’s binnacle-mounted compass. One could count on fairly mild weather, even in high summer, with temperatures rarely above the low eighties, but only a few degrees of relief after sundown. It could rain at least twice a week, and blow up a stronger quarter-gale at least every ten days to a fortnight. All that precipitation was welcome, though, for Bermuda was not blessed with all that many springs, and the rain was funnelled down into stone cisterns from the rooves, which every private house possessed, for later.

  Taking pity on a new-come, Warrick piloted Reliant along the North Channel, which was deeper and more open, rather than the South Channel, which even Warrick admitted could be very tricky. Even so, Lewrie felt it quite enough un-nerving to look overside and see just how clear the waters were, and how close they were to the Three Hill Shoals, and how gin-clear and knee-deep the flats to the North were!

  Near the Chimneys Shoal, Warrick directed the frigate into a turn to the Sou’west to stand well away from Devil’s Flats, then into a welcome “lake” of deep water, before threading a channel through the White Flats, a passage even narrower than The Narrows, which had been harrowing enough, just thankee! Well West of the vast expanse of Brackish Pond Flats, and with North Ireland Island off the starboard bows, Warrick reckoned that they could round up into the wind and safely anchor just about anywhere; they were in Grassy Bay.

  There was only one other vessel in sight, a two-masted sloop anchored off Long Shoal to the Sou’east, with a rowing gig idling at the edge of the shoal.

  “They don’t seem to be paying much attention to our arrival, sir,” Lt. Westcott said, after a long look with a telescope. Upon his face there sprang one of his brief, feral, tooth-bearing grins, in anticipation of somebody getting a strip torn off his arse. “Perhaps we should fire a gun to wake them up?”

  “Bring my gig up from astern, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie decided, “and pass word for my boat crew. I think I want t’see what this Bury fellow’s like in his own element. Who knows, he might offer me a fine fish.”

  * * *

  Someone had been awake aboard HMS Lizard, for a small jolly boat had set out for the shoal and the gig a bit before Lewrie’s gig began to row over. There was a flurry of activity, a scramble of people into the far-off gig, and a furious row back to Lizard before Lewrie’s boat could arrive.

  “Permission to come aboard?” Lewrie shouted up to the deck as his boat crew hooked on to the sloop’s main chains and began to ship oars.

  “Aye aye, sir!” a flummoxed Lieutenant, a fellow in his early twenties, quickly replied, whilst hastily mustering a side-party fit enough to receive a Post-Captain. Feeling devilish, Lewrie did not stand on ceremony, but scrambled up the battens and man-ropes before the sloop’s Bosun could even begin a call.

  “Captain Alan Lewrie, the Reliant frigate,” he said, doffing his hat to the flag and the young officer.

  “L-lieutenant Rainey, sir. Welcome aboard the Lizard. The captain, ehm, Lieutenant Bury, is aft at the moment, sir, if you’ll pardon…” the young fellow babbled.

  “We could be seen entering the bay from quite a way off,” Lewrie casually commented.

  “Harbour watch, sir, and a ‘Make and Mend’ day, and some of the people off with the Captain, and … a thousand pardons for being so inattentive, Captain Lewrie,” the lad replied, all but wringing his hands. “Normally, we … but here’s the Captain, sir!”

  HMS Lizard’s Captain, Lt. Bury, appeared from an after hatchway between the transom and the helm, looking anxious … and guilty. He was also sopping wet, dressed in faded and stained old breeches, with the knee buttons open and no stockings on his lower legs. He had not had time to don a fresh shirt, tie a neck-stock, or find a waist-coat, and had hurriedly donned a plain undress coat that had seen better days. Lt. Bury also sported a straw hat, much like pilot Warrick’s, which he quickly doffed in salute.

  “I beg your pardon, sir, I have no excuse,” he baldly said.

  “Alan Lewrie, the Reliant frigate,” Lewrie told him, doffing his own hat in reply. “I’ve come to summon you from your duties here in Bermudan waters, Mister Bury. I am to lead a small squadron able to go into shoal waters, and hunt and harry French and Spanish privateers, off to the West, and am in need of vessels such as yours.”

  Lt. Bury looked at him most solemnly, blinking his pale blue eyes a time or two, as if stunned by that announcement, or pondering whether such duty might cut into his soundings and fishing.

  “We would be delighted, sir!” Bury said at last, beginning to display a slow, equally solemn grin. “Ehm … might I offer you some refreshments, Captain Lewrie?”

  “Lead me to it, sir,” Lewrie agreed.

  Down the steep ladderway through the square hatch they went, with Bury offering the usual caution to mind the overhead deck beams. His quarters were tiny, almost a cuddy. There was a transom settee beneath the stern sash windows, piled with books, piles of foolscap notes, and a wood-and-twine fishing net. There was an open chest of clothing, a wee desk hooked to the larboard side to serve as his day-cabin, a slung hammock (not a bed-cot) to starboard, and a wee dining table right forward with only six wobbly old collapsible chairs. The rest of the cabin was draped with things hung on pegs. Most of the deck was taken up by wooden tubs made from cut-down kegs. They were full of fish!

  “Pardon the mess, sir, but even were I expecting company, there is only so much room,” Bury said, going to a wee wine-cabinet for two glasses, then fetching a bottle of hock from out of one of the tubs, where it was slightly cooled in water. “If you will take a seat, ah … there, Captain Lewrie,” he added, indicating a chair by the dining table. Lewrie sat down, noting that the top of the table bore a few odd, and wet … things.

  “My viewing devices, sir,” Bury explained. “None of them all that effective so far, but one hopes to discover a solution someday.”

  “Viewing devices?” Lewrie asked, picking one of them up. It was an odd sort of spectacles, with two round glass lenses set into a wood frame, each lens as round-about as a mug, with tarred canvas attached, much like an executioner’s hood, with some light line so that it could be bound behind the head and knotted.

  “At first, I thought it possible to slip the hood over my head and bind the spectacles snug enough to allow me to float face-down in the water and see the marine life,” Lt. Bury slowly explained, “but I found that the salt water still gets into my eyes … and the tarred canvas makes it hard to draw a breath whenever I turn my face up to the surface, do you see. Now the other…”

  This one was a rectangular box with an eight-inch piece of window glass set into it, without the canvas hood. Lewrie picked it up, eying it most dubiously.

  “The box frame cannot be bound snug enough to my face to keep out the salt water, either, sir, though when I turn my head, I am able to draw breath,” Bury said with a shrug, and a look of disappointment that his inventions had so far not been of much avail. “For now, the bucket with the windowpane in the bottom works best, though after a minute or so, it fills with water and has to be emptied out, else the view is no better than peering down from above the surface, alas.”

  Christ, who still says ‘alas’? Lewrie sourly thought.

  “Just no way to tar it waterproof?” Lewrie idly asked, just to see what else Lt. Bury would say; he was an odd bird, indeed! “Maybe an iron or brass coal scuttle would work better.”

  “Perhaps one might, sir, thank you,” Bury said, ri
sing to the suggestion. “Now, the best solution might be to construct a glass ball, much like the one that Alexander the Great was reputed to use to look at the sea-bottom, though my readings of the classic histories shed no light on how to construct one.”

  Bury looked sad that he could not conceive a way, either, as he took a morose sip of his wine.

  “Have t’be a big’un,” Lewrie commented, “else you run out of enough air.”

  Is he daft as bats? Lewrie asked himself, half appalled.

  “Perhaps a helmet of some kind, that could be strapped under the armpits to keep it in place, with soldered and tarred glass panes set into it,” Bury enthused a tad, “with a flexible canvas hose led to the surface to renew one’s air, sir? I’ve sketches, but…” Bury broke off with a sigh, and took another abstemious sip of his hock.

  Must live on his Navy pay, Lewrie thought, after a sip of his own, for the hock was really the usual thin and slightly sour purser’s issue white wine, dismissed as “Miss Taylor”.

  “When you’re not … studying sea-life,” Lewrie posed, “what is Lizard up to?”

  “We patrol about fifty or so miles offshore, sir,” Bury said, “doing circumnavigations of the islands. The brig-sloops, able to be on station longer, usually scout an hundred or more miles beyond our range. Several laps, if you will, before putting back in to victual.”

  “Sounds dreadful boresome,” Lewrie commented.

  “Oh, it is, sir,” Bury agreed, lighting up in agreement. “We rarely see anything but for vessels bound to or from Bermuda, and with so little trade hereabouts, there’s not much to entice French or Spanish attention. And when not patrolling, there are my secondary duties of hydrography—taking soundings, up-dating the old charts, and making new ones from scratch. Trying to mark the known channels, but I’ve run into a lot of opposition to that, sir.”

  “The local pilots,” Lewrie said, nodding in understanding.

  “At any rate, I’ve no funds for such, and my letters to Admiralty go un-answered on that head, sir,” Bury said, looking miserable, again. “I’ve tried using painted empty wine bottles, bound with tarred line to stones for the most hazardous spots, such as the narrows through the White Flats, which you just entered, sir, but … damned if they don’t disappear a day or two later … completely.”

  “I knew officers in the Bahamas who tried to erect buoys and range-line pilings,” Lewrie said, chuckling. “Soon as they sailed away, the local wreckers and salvagers tore ’em down, so they could keep their livelihoods.”

  “Much of the same thing, sir,” Lt. Bury sadly agreed.

  He seemed completely at ease to sit there and dry out in his wet clothing, with his shins bare. Lewrie pegged Bury as one inch taller than his own five feet nine inches, very slimly and wirily built. With his straw planter’s hat set aside, Bury wore his pale blond hair as short as a fellow who feared bugs in his wig, snipped to within a quarter-inch of his scalp. He had a round head, but a long, lean horse face, a prominent upper lip that dwarfed the lower, and a receding, weakish chin. He didn’t look like the sort to serve in the Royal Navy; he was more the don or tutorial type, more suited to the library. Could he count on him, Lewrie wondered?

  A fish flopped in one of the tubs, drawing their attention.

  “They don’t live long, poor things,” Bury mourned, “and it is a pity, but … at least I’ve been able to dissect them once they pass, and make coloured sketches of their anatomy. I’ve amassed quite a lot of interior drawings, as well as to-the-life paintings of them as they would appear in the water. Would you like to see some of them, sir?”

  Hell, no! Lewrie thought.

  “Aye, I would,” he lied, instead, steeling himself to display great interest, and cautioning himself not to yawn, or let his eyes glaze over.

  “Damme, Mister Bury, they really are remarkable,” Lewrie had to admit after a few minutes, though Bury’s explanations of what the fish were named, both in local argot, dry scientific Latin classification, and general terms went right past his ears, heard and flown in an instant. “You should get together with my First Officer, Mister Westcott. He’s a dab-hand artist, and draughtsman. The two of you could produce good, up-dated charts to send to Admiralty, and copies for our use while here. Have you always been interested in marine life?”

  “Since I was a wee lad, sir,” Bury shyly confessed. “We lived near Plymouth, close enough to go down to the water and the beaches to fish almost daily. There, and the fish-markets, well … I always was curious about what it was like under the sea, and how they lived before being landed.”

  “You eat ’em, too? You don’t feel…?” Lewrie posed.

  “A good fish is more toothsome to me than roast beef, sir,” Bury said, coming close to laughing in real amusement for the first time. “The crew think my interests, odd, sir, but they eat well as a result. Might I send you over something for your table tonight, sir? Grassy Bay’s shallows abound in pompano.”

  “My cook and I will be delighted, thankee!” Lewrie enthused. He had not had more than two fresh suppers of anything since leaving Portsmouth, and those only in the last two days. Fresh fish had not been among them, and the idea made him salivate.

  “So, we shall be off soon, sir?” Bury enquired.

  “As soon as dammit,” Lewrie told him, “and bound for Nassau in the Bahamas, to beg, borrow, or scrounge up a few more shoal-draught vessels. I’d suppose you must victual, and take on firewood and water at Saint George’s, before we can do so?”

  “Aye, sir, a few last-minute items,” Bury said, almost by rote, gazing off at the middle distance—or his foul-weather tarpaulins on a peg—to muse upon their departure. He then turned to face Lewrie with a quirky expression on his face, and said, “‘And he saith unto them, ‘Follow me, and I shall make you fishers of men’. And they straightaway left their nets and followed him’. Matthew four, nineteen and twenty.”

  “Ah … something a bit like that, Mister Bury, aye,” Lewrie managed to say, wondering what to make of the Biblical quotation, and if it might be blasphemous to be compared to Jesus.

  An odd, odd bird, indeed! he thought.

  BOOK II

  PRIVATEER a veƒƒel of war, armed and equipped by particular merchants, and furniƒhed with a military commiƒƒion by the admiralty, or the officers who superintend the marine department of a country, to cruize againƒt the enemy, and take, ƒink, or burn their ƒhipping, or otherwiƒe annoy them as opportunity offers. Theƒe veƒƒels are generally governed on the ƒame plan with his majeƒty’s ƒhips, although they are guilty of many ƒcandalous depredations, which are very rarely practiƒed by the latter.

  —FALCONER’S MARINE DICTIONARY 1780 EDITION

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Reliant’s First Officer peered upwards at the mast tops to study the winds as the frigate ghosted into West Bay of Nassau Harbour on New Providence, in the Bahamas. Satisfied, he turned to look at his captain and cocked a brow as he said, “You will not hoist your broad pendant, sir?”

  “Bugger the broad pendant,” Lewrie growled back, though in good humour. “One sloop don’t make a squadron,” he added, jerking one arm out in the direction of Lizard, which preceded them by a full cable.

  “It would seem a suitable number to justify that fellow’s broad pendant, though, sir,” Lt. Westcott pointed out, indicating the bit of red bunting which lazily curled to the light winds atop the main mast of an older 64-gun two-decker anchored between Hog Island and the town’s main piers. They were close enough for Lewrie to make out, as a faint gust spread the pendant, that the officer allowed to fly it was much like him; it displayed a large white ball, indicating that whomsoever the officer was, he was still a Post-Captain without a Flag-Captain or staff approaching admiral-hood. Further East in East Bay, Lewrie could espy at least two more Royal Navy vessels no bigger than Lizard.

  “Hmm, seems at least two will suffice, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie japed. “Give the man another pair, and he might style himself a Rear-Admiral.
If he has twice that number out patrolling the down islands, he might sign his letters as Lord Nelson!”

  “Do your orders name him, sir?” Westcott asked.

  “No,” Lewrie replied, “just ‘senior officer present in the Bahamas’. Don’t think Admiralty knew just who that was back in January.” He shrugged, as if it really didn’t matter. “The old’un t’be called home, the new’un not yet appointed? No matter. You may begin to fire the salute to Captain Thing-gummy now, sir, and be ready to round up into the wind and let go the bower, once done.”

  “Aye aye, sir! Mister Acres … begin the salute!”

  The new Master Gunner who had replaced old Rahl jutted an arm at the forrud-most 18-pounder’s gun-captain, who jerked the lanyard of the flintlock striker, and the first shot of the gun salute boomed out, creating a thick jet of yellow-grey smoke. Mr. Acres paced aft, to all outward appearance mumbling to himself before halting and jutting an arm at the second 18-pounder of the starboard battery for their second saluting shot. Acres was reciting the ancient ritual for timing under his breath; “… If I weren’t a gunner, I wouldn’t be here. I’ve left my wife, and all that’s dear … number-two gun, fire! If I weren’t a gunner…” and on aft, repeating himself ’til thirteen guns for a Post-Captain with broad pendant had been delivered.

  “Lee helm, and flat her a’back, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered. “Four-to-one scope on the cable should suit.”

  * * *

  Right in the middle of coasting to a stop, letting go the anchor, and the lowering of jibs and stays’ls, the clewing and brailing up of the squares’ls, Mr. Eldridge, their newest Midshipman, announced the appearance of a signal hoist which had soared aloft on the two-decker. It was “Captain Repair on Board”.

  “Impatient sort, ain’t he, Mister Eldridge?” Lewrie said as he settled the fit of his waist-coat and shirt cuffs. “Cox’n Desmond? My gig, d’ye please.”