Several fresh bottles of claret had been uncorked to breathe, so re-fills were quickly done. Blanding held up his glass on high. “Sirs, I give you confusion to the French!”
“Sloth to the French!” Captain William Parham amended. “Sloth and timidity!”
“But not too much timidity, Parham!” Lewrie added, “Else they never come out!”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
They dashed roughly Nor’west past Montserrat, Nevis, and St. Kitts, passing far alee of St. Martin, Eustatius, and almost within sight of Saba, then turned North for a time on a close reach to thread through ’twixt Anguilla and the eastern-most isle of the British Virgin Islands—Anegada, which gave name to the passage from the Caribbean to the Atlantic once more. From there, it was “wind on the starb’d quarters” again, with stuns’ls boomed out on either side of the main course and tops’l yards, the fore courses of all four warships partially reefed to take downward pressure off their bows and allow them to spear their bluff entries through the sea instead of pressing too deep and snuffling, robbing them of half a knot or more per hour. The Nor’Easterly Trade Winds were strong and steady, despite it being almost late July, never varying more than a point from Nor’east, and only fading lighter after dusk as the squadron ran down the line of the 20th Latitude, due West. There were spells of late afternoon rain squalls now and again, through which they drove onwards without reducing sail; there were grey and charcoal-dark storms on the horizon, so dense they resembled island mountains, but far away and unthreatening, though they were well into hurricane season, when any mariner in those waters continually looked over his shoulder and watched the cabinet barometer leerily.
Spanish Puerto Rico passed alee, as did the Mona Passage, their squadron plunging along at an impressive rate of knots, and HMS Modeste proving Captain Blanding’s boast that she was very fast for a 64-gunned two-decker. Drill on the great-guns, drill with small arms and edged weapons filled both Forenoon and Day Watches, under a warm sun, white clouds, and the occasional afternoon rains that sluiced off the sweat the hands had worked up, sometimes lasting long enough for a thorough scrub-down with a stub of soap and a wash-rag.
Then came the coast of Spanish Santo Domingo, the eastern half of Hispaniola, the long northern coast looming up to larboard, forcing them to alter course a point or two . . . and Lewrie was back in his old hunting grounds in the Proteus frigate, and his memories of that time in Hispaniolan waters. When he had been more carefree.
“Monte Cristi . . . ten miles off the larboard beam, sir,” Lieutenant Westcott said, lowering his telescope. “And Cape François about fourty miles to the West.”
“The rebel slaves tried to blow us to Kingdom Come, round about here, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie recalled aloud. “And the lone survivor we picked up after the last of their boats sank slit the throat of one my hands tryin’ t’haul him up the battens. Fanatics, all of ’em.”
Kit Cashman and his regiment ashore outside Port-au-Prince; a night in a restaurant-cum-brothel; the blind shelling they’d fired over the heads of British troops at Mole St. Nicolas; his intense dislike of Sir Hyde Parker’s staff-captain at Kingston, “the wine keg,” aye, and that Captain Blaylock, too. The duel he’d seconded for Kit against that Beauman “git,” Ledyard, and his cousin, and how they had cheated and gotten gunned down. The Yellow Jack that had decimated Proteus’s crew and officers; the “theft” of Beauman slaves to replace some of them. Matching wits with Guillaume Choundas, cooperating with the American Navy, finding he had a bastard son . . .
“It’ll be ‘Beat to Quarters’ in the next hour or so, Westcott,” he said, shrugging off his memories.
“At long last, sir!” his First Officer said with eagerness.
“If they’re here. If!” Lewrie replied, staring at the impossibly green mountains of Santo Domingo. So far, all their landfalls had been French islands; only one of them, Guadeloupe, he had been at all familair with. Here, though . . . ! Here were islands he’d known at coasting distance, every bay, fishing port, inlet, and shoal, close to an host of other places he’d known at first-hand; the Turks and Caicos isles to the North, and the Bahamas further North of them. And when he was prowling these shores, it had been Antigua, the Danish or British Virgins, Kingston, Jamaica, the coast of Cuba, Apalachicola Bay in Spanish Florida so long before . . . they all sprang to mind in a flood of remembrance, from his Midshipman days in 1780, the hired-in Parrot schooner, the Desperate Sloop and half-mad Capt. Tobias Treghues, then old HMS Shrike and Lieutenant Lilycrop and all his damned cats, and his first, the sullen William Pitt, the best mouser in the Fleet! And when he’d gone to the Far East, India and China in Telesto under Capt. Ayscough, he’d left Pitt with Caroline to care for him, long before their wedding in Anglesgreen when he returned in . . .
That didn’t hurt, he thought; should’ve, but it didn’t. Callous, hard-hearted bastard! Or . . . what am I feelin’?
Happy memories. Joyous recollections of past ships and former associates (for the most part, Treghues, Blaylock, and “the Wine Keg” excepted) and days like this in aquamarine and gin-clear waters, with the wind in his hair and the sun on his skin! In the West Indies!
Hmmpf! Wonder if I did pack my penny-whistle in my traps? he wondered.
“Carry on, Mister Westcott,” he said, and ambled away towards the starboard bulkheads.
Just off Cape François, with Reliant at Quarters four hours later, they encountered two ships. One was a British brig-sloop keeping an eye on the port, to which Captain Blanding sent a blizzard of flag signals, summoning her captain aboard Modeste. The other vessel was an American brigantine, just clearing the harbour and offshore by at least five miles. Blanding ordered Reliant to close her and “speak” her. “Hermaphrodite” brigs, they called them, neither one nor t’other, with crossed yards and square sails on their fore masts, and fore-and-aft, schooner-like, on the after masts. For a bit she looked as if she might wish to run as Reliant bore down on her, but, working out of port against the Nor’East Trades, she was already slow through the sea, and did she haul her wind and flee Westerly, she would never work up enough speed to escape. Lewrie could understand her master’s wish to get out of it . . . a call to fetch-to from a Royal Navy ship to have his papers and muster book read usually resulted in the impressment of some of the crew and a search for contraband that could result in seizure.
Lewrie turned the deck over to Lt. Westcott and was rowed over to her, instead of loftily summoning her master to come aboard his own ship. His only escort was his boat crew, who remained in the boat as he scaled her sides.
“Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy,” he began with a pleasant smile on his face, doffing his cocked hat to both flag and quarterdeck. “Morning!”
“Ansel Vincent,” her master sourly announced himself, with his papers already under one arm. “The brigantine Seneca, outta Mystic, in Connecticut, bound home with rum, molasses, and sugar. I s’pose ye wish t’see my papers, Cap’m Lewrie? My muster book?” he added suspiciously, almost accusingly as he glowered in displeasure.
“The muster book’s not necessary, sir,” Lewrie told him. “We’re fresh out from England with full crews, so far. I will look at your papers, however. You are part-owner?”
“Haw!” Captain Vincent rejoined. “I wish! She’s a sweet sailer, and a fast’un. I’m hired on, with a ‘lay’ of the profits, for now.”
“And her owners?” Lewrie asked.
“The Crowninshield brothers o’ Mystic, as ye can see,” Vincent said, waving at the papers in Lewrie’s hands.
“Ezekiel and Gabriel Crowninshield!” Lewrie exclaimed, delighted. “I met them at Antigua in Ninety-Eight, when America and France almost went to war with each other. Two of their trading schooners had gone missing, and I helped recover them from the French. Mohican and . . . I forget the name of the other,” he added with a shrug.
“You did?” Vincent barked in surprise, and doubt. “A Britisher helpin’ Yankees? I thought it was our navy done it.”
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“We . . . cooperated, for a time. On the sly,” Lewrie said with a grin and a wink as he handed back the ship’s papers, mostly un-read. “You’ve been in port a while now? We’re hunting for a French squadron that left Holland a bit before the war was declared. You didn’t share the harbour with them, did you? They were bound for New Orleans, to be there for the official hand-over of Louisiana to the United States . . . might have landed some troops here, as well.”
“We’re gettin’ Louisiana?” Vincent gawped. It was news to him!
“Lock, stock, and barrel, sir,” Lewrie assured him, and news of that stirred Seneca’s small crew to glad buzzing.
“Well . . . hallelujah!” Capt. Vincent exclaimed, removing his old tricorne-style hat to scratch his head. “And . . . ye wish to stop it by takin’ ’em, don’t ye?” he accused a second later.
“No, sir,” Lewrie told him. “The last thing the United States or Great Britain wishes is to have the French Empire in the Americas. If they have everything west of the Mississippi, how would your nation continue to grow? My country prefers the French not have a large army present for the ceremony of exchange, but . . . more power to you, and the best of good fortune for your acquisition.
“So . . . did a French squadron put into Cape François while you were here?” Lewrie asked again. “Or were they here and re-victualling before sailing for New Orleans? Even from here, I can spot the masts of a number of ships in port. I don’t ask if they’re ships of war. . . . They’re not my pigeon at the moment.”
“Aye, there’s a lotta ships in port,” Vincent reluctantly said. “Two-deckers and frigates and Indiaman-sized transports. Don’t have all their guns, though. They come from France en flute without ’em or landed ’em t’buck up the defences. Gen’ral Rochambeau won’t let any sail. He needs ’em all if he has to surrender to the Blacks and get as many of his people away before they all get massacred—men, women, and kids t’gether. Gen’ral Noailles over to Mole Saint Nicolas is in the same straits. Dessalines—he took over after the French captured L’Ouverture and took him away—has ’em hemmed in damned close. The Mole and ‘Le Cap’ here is all the French have left on the island.
“You Brits had an ounce o’ Christian mercy, ye’d leave off yer hunt for that squadron an’ fetch as many ships as ye can to help the French get away before the Blacks slaughter ’em all,” Captain Vincent groused.
“I trust Rear-Admiral Duckworth, on Jamaica, is aware of that and will do all he can to help,” Lewrie said, hoping that was so. His brief exposure to the savagery of the rebel slaves, and the atrocities the French had dealt out in reply, had been spine-chilling. He wished he could help, but . . .
“Believe it when I see it,” Capt. Vincent drawled, though his anger was growing. “There weren’t no cause for you to make war on the French again! Napoleon wanted peace! But I reckon your country just can’t abide republics, where the people have rights and freedom, ’stead o’ kings, queens, and titled fools tellin’ folk what to do!”
“I’ll not debate the whys, sir,” Lewrie said, stiffening a bit, though striving to keep a peaceable and agreeable expression and air. “Did General Rochambeau keep the squadron from sailing? Or were they sent to Mole Saint Nicolas to help the evacuation over there? Landed fresh reenforcements . . . here or there, we were told they would. Or have they already sailed?”
“Ye’ll not cotch ’em, Admir’l!” a sailor who’d been listening to the conversation hooted. “They’s off an’ gone! Two day ago!”
“Stop yer gob, ye . . . !” Vincent roared, rounding on the fellow, but it was too late. Pleased astonishment over the gain of Louisiana, and New Orleans, a chance to insult the despised Royal Navy and send a tyrant packing before he could press some of them were all just too tempting.
“Cap’m Decean, he’s got two big frigates and a seventy-four . . . guns as big as tree trunks . . . a whole reg’ment o’ soldiers!” the crew of Seneca jeered before their master bellowed them to truculent silence.
“I’ll thankee t’git off my ship, whoever ye are,” Vincent demanded. “Safer for ye . . .’less ye have all yer Marines at yer back.”
“My regards to the Crowninshield brothers, Captain,” Lewrie said as he doffed his hat to the ship’s master, then to one and all as he made his way to the entry-port. “Have a good voyage.”
“Oh la, maman, ce sont les Anglais!” came a child’s wail of fear, drawing everyone’s attention to the companionway that led below. Two children appeared briefly before being snatched away by a pale-faced woman.
“Gonna seize ’em ’cause they’re French, too?” Vincent snapped.
“How many did you manage to evacuate, sir?” Lewrie asked him in a softer tone.
“ ’Bout nineteen is all we’ve room for,” Vincent told him, with real fear now that Lewrie, a dread “Brit,” would do that very thing. “Daddies, wives, and kids, mostly. Some whole fam’lies, but most the kin o’ men who haveta stay behind.”
“Paying passengers?” Lewrie wryly asked.
“Ain’t chargin’ full rates, but . . .”
“Why, had you an ounce o’ Christian mercy, sir, I’d expect you would make room for more . . . for free . . . sir,” Lewrie drawled as he began to descend the battens to his waiting boat.
“They’re in deep, dire trouble ashore, sir,” Lewrie told Capt. Blanding after he had reported aboard Modeste, even as the squadron got under way Westerly for the Old Bahama Channel and Florida Straits. “Low on rations, powder, and shot, just about everything, and hangin’ on by the skin o’ their teeth. I gather that the Black General Dessalines has demanded their surrender already. If Duckworth is late in arriving here, if he plans to come at all, it’ll be worse than a Red Indian massacre, sir. Might we consider offering this Rochambeau an alternative? Surrender to us instead, and escape the ex-slave’s vengeance? The prize-money for so many ships, warships, and merchantmen would be astronomical . . . not to mention the ‘head and gun’ money on thousands of French soldiers,” he beguiled. “It’s a Christian—”
“Stay here?” Blanding countered, sounding shocked by the suggestion. “Dash it, Captain Lewrie, they’re only two days’ sail ahead of us! The French squadron’s real, it ain’t a myth! Some Admiralty clerk, some sneaking spy, didn’t weave them out of moonbeams! By all that’s holy, sir . . . this . . . Decean, is it? This Captain Decean has his orders, just as I have mine . . . his to reach New Orleans no matter what, and mine to catch them up and bring them to battle. No, sir, I will not let them get away, now we know how close we are on their tail and where they’re bound. Right, Brundish?”
“Well, sir,” his Chaplain said with his head cocked over to one side, “it would be Christian to assist the French and avoid a blood-bath, yet . . . we are at war with France.”
“There you have it, Captain Lewrie,” Blanding barked. “Ah ha! We’ve a grand battle in the offing, by Jingo! So let’s be at it!”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The first three days of urgent pursuit were sunny and clear as they made a rapid transit from St. Domingue West-Nor’west, crossing the Windward Passage and rushing along the northern coast of Spanish Cuba, squeezing between that shore and the Great Bahama Bank, then up the narrow deep-water throat of the Old Bahama Channel.
After they threaded the narrowest part ’twixt Cayo Cruz and Cayo Lobos, though, the weather turned foul and boisterous, with fretted and mounting seas, rain squalls, and rising winds, forcing them to reef courses, tops’ls, t’gallants, and royals, and stow away the stuns’ls. Pressed by winds fine on the starboard quarters, all four ships rolled and pitched and heaved, and gun-drill or small-arms drill had to be put aside for constant sail-tending. Rain hissed down by the bucket-fuls, seething on the upper decks and gangways, sluicing to either beam, or fore and aft, with every jerking motion, so much at times that it gurgled out the scuppers. No matter how snugly the deck planks were payed with sealing pitch over the pounded-in oakum, water seeped through the gaps to drip and drizzle be
lowdecks, and plop cold on hands trying to sleep in wildly swaying hammocks at night, onto the mess tables during meals, and making everyone thoroughly miserable. To be “caught short,” to stumble forrud to the beakhead rails and the “seats of ease,” resulted in a complete soaking—from fresh-water rain, and salt water spray pitched up by the bows as they plunged and rose. No matter the watchfulness of the Midshipmen, the Master-At-Arms, and Ship’s Corporals, it was dryer simply to piss in the odd corner of the mess-decks, shit in a wood bucket, and hope to pitch it overside when no one was looking. And the hands who got caught at it ended on report before “Captain’s Mast.”
“Rrrow!” Toulon complained as a dollop of water caught him on the head as he tried to eat his supper from his dish by Lewrie’s place setting. “Mrrf?” was his mournful plaint as he looked aloft to seek the source of his annoyance.
“I trust the wardroom’s dryer,” Lewrie commented to his First Officer as they supped together, along with the Sailing Master, Mr. Caldwell, and Midshipmen Grainger and Munsell. “A deck above you, and I catch all the rain intended for you,” he drolly pointed out.
“It seeps through, eventually, sir,” Lt. Westcott replied with a brief, tooth-baring grin. It was well that he wore his napkin tucked into his shirt collar, for a drop of water raised a shot-splash in his pea soup, spattering the napkin, not his uniform. Grainger and Munsell thought it amusing. “We keep tarpaulins on our bedding, same as you, I fear.”
“No need to dampen the tablecloth, I vow,” Mr. Caldwell sniggered. “No plate’d dare slide tonight.”
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