The Privateersman (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 1)

by Andrew Wareham

  They cast off and sailed for Antigua, making a quick passage; the Admiralty Court obligingly condemned their prizes and assumed the slaves to have been on board the largest, for, strictly speaking, a Letter of Marque conveyed to its holder the right to take maritime traders and thus could be argued not to authorise expeditions on land – but there was a shortage of labour on the plantations, for freemen would not work alongside slaves, no matter what wage was offered, and so the taken field hands were too valuable to be the subject of mere legal quibbling.

  A single share came out at twenty-five pounds.

  Tom sat on deck after the pay-out and looked at the ninety-five golden guineas and the five shillings in silver he had just received, then tenderly felt his face; it was worth it, he supposed, but only just. He tucked the coins into his purse and tied the string in a double knot before hanging it round his neck; this money was too hard earned to be thrown away on whores and rum.

  Later in the day he discarded the bandages to his face and nerved himself to look in a mirror, dreading what he might discover – he was still only seventeen, after all. His left eye drooped a fraction at the corner and a clean-edged scar broadened to the width of a finger across his cheek, tapering down to his mouth, which turned up a little now in a lop-sided grin. It was not as bad as he had feared, made him look older, a man not a boy, harder perhaps, but not dreadfully disfigured; he had not shaved in three weeks, for obvious reasons, and was sprouting a moderately respectable ginger fuzz, streaked with white immediately over the scar. He dug out his razor, shaved partially, leaving a pair of mutton chop side whiskers, concluded he looked like a prat and finished the job except for much longer sideburns than had been his wont; he decided that casual acquaintances from Dorset – and he had no other – would be very hard pressed to recognise him now, which was not too bad a thing, as he had no wish ever to be known again in England.

  Smith called the boarders to report on the following day, the little boy messengers earning their pennies and bringing twenty of the two dozen back with them. It had been intimated to him that the crew approved of the freemen, believed they had pulled their weight and more and felt they should be asked to sail again on a regular basis as single share men with a leading hand selected from their number at one and a half.

  Joseph led the nineteen who had come back with him, quite naturally taking the front; Smith welcomed them and told them of their new status and money, to their surprised pleasure. Their twelve pounds ten apiece had made them cash-rich in their community, especially when added to their initial five guineas – now they could hope to more than double that over the next few months. The four who were staying ashore had all had girls with a claim to a piece of land, were now settling with their wives and the pair of goats and seed and shovel and prong and hoe and table and chairs for their hut that their wealth had procured for them; those who sailed again had wider ambitions – the stock for a small trade store or the purchase of a few fertile acres on which they could raise a sugar crop of their own, the foundation for a respectable future - if they lived.

  Four more young men stood on the quayside, hopefully.

  “They’s the brothers of the four who gone, Master Tom,” Joseph explained.

  Smith waved them aboard, acting in the absence of the captain who had used his personal share of the prize money to progress from gin to smoother white rum and who could be heard occasionally, shouting or singing in his cabin. The ship’s share had been set aside in a more sober moment, remained in an account at the prize-agents, disbursed against Smith’s signature for stores.

  Brief discussion sent them south again – the northern waters had proved barren once, would most likely do so in future, there was no point going there. They decided to touch at Guadeloupe first, poorer though it was as an island, then by-pass Martinique and make for the Spanish waters off Trinidad and the Main before looking at the Dutchmen in their little islands; Martinique, obviously rich, might nonetheless be a little hot for them, though they would keep an eye wide open as they crossed its sea-lanes.

  Tom set to train up his boarders – he had given a little thought to their performance on the schooner, had decided they had been much too casual and disorganised – even half a dozen men with muskets and pistols firing from concealment could have killed them all. It was an unlikely event, but it might be better not to regret their bad luck afterwards and explain that it really should not have happened. He had discovered four big old horse-pistols in their armoury months before, had put them to one side as too clumsy to bother with, a foot in the barrel and slightly greater than one inch bore, more like small blunderbusses than true hand-guns, but they could be useful he decided, used properly. He selected the four biggest of his men and showed them how to load with three-quarters of an ounce of black powder and two ounces of buck shot, eight big slugs of lead to each charge; they kicked like a mule, but strong men using both hands could keep them horizontal and fired together they would discourage any armed opposition in the narrow confines of a ship’s decks.

  The boarders talked the matter over and agreed that the four pistoleers should stand at Tom’s shoulder, should fire at his command then fall back to reload and be directed by Joseph as needful thereafter. The remainder would be held in three groups, two of six and one of seven, generally speaking to take bows, midships and stern respectively unless they were given other orders as occasion arose. They liked the idea of knowing exactly what they must do – it made them feel like proper fighting men, sea-soldiers rather than amateur roughs hired on for the occasion.

  They circled Guadeloupe, saw nothing other than a tiny schooner fleeing south, twenty tons at most, too small and too fast to attract their attention. Smith thought it might have been a government boat, a small despatches carrier, the sort they sometimes called an aviso; no profit in it at all. The cloud was thick, the night pitch-black and they hove-to in deep water, preferring to close the shores of Martinique in daylight – they had to pass the island on their way south and it seemed only sensible to take a look at the shoreline as they went by; additionally, Smith was not entirely certain in his dead reckoning – they had no access to naval charts and could only guess at the nature or speed of any local current between the islands.

  Dawn brought a small sloop into their waiting arms, a national ship they thought, for she had a three pound chase gun and a dozen swivels on the beam, although she had only a crew of six, on passage perhaps, transferring from one command to another; she was no more than a forty tonner, but might well be a useful tender in the islands, able to poke her nose into the shallowest of inlets. The officer in command was a young man, a lieutenant at most, maybe a warrant officer, and slack in his duties to be taken by surprise at first light. Be that as it may, he surrendered instantly, put up no fight at all, and told them of a half a dozen or so of island boats becalmed in a small bay just north of Diamond Rock, all waiting for the wind to turn sufficiently for them to weather the headland and make their final leg into the safety of the harbour. He spoke very good English and they could understand him easily.

  Smith clapped on all sail, left the sloop with a prize crew of four aboard and instructions to follow in their wake.

  They found seven vessels in the bay, six of them heavily laden island brigs and schooners; the seventh, also a brig, inshore of them all and sheltered by them, waited a few minutes until Star was committed and actually in the horns of the bay before clapping on all sail, at least fifty men appearing in the rigging, and heading directly towards the Star. Belatedly, Smith noticed that the wind seemed quite strong just here, and even the clumsiest of merchant hulls could have held a southerly tack. The Frenchman pointed up a little more and disclosed seven portlids rising and a broadside of eight or nine pound cannon running out.

  Star could not tack without opening her quarter to that broadside; there was insufficient room in the bay to wear; if she tried to cross the brig’s bows she was as likely as not to be rammed, for being too slow. Blaine staggered on dec
k, assessed the situation and shouted a series of meaningless orders, hopelessly gone.

  Smith ignored his captain, called the chaser to shoot and the larboard broadside to run out, hoping to cause enough damage to slow the French sufficiently to scrape past and away, to run, although he doubted it was possible. They had no grape – it had been too expensive – and could not really hope to cut up her rigging sufficiently to slow her, but he could see no alternative. They were unlikely to come out of this alive he feared – the Coles’ activities on shore guaranteed that they would be treated as pirates and hanged out of hand if they were taken.

  Their own broadside did very little harm that they could see, while the French fired seven aimed shots into their foremast, high and precise and bringing down the foretopsail yard. They slowed instantly.

  “Helm over, Jack,” Tom called, “ram ‘er, get on board before they can hit us. We might do a bit more damage that way.”

  Smith shrugged. “All hands to board!”

  He swung the helm hard over, sails flapping in confusion, crabbed down on the French bows a couple of minutes before her own boarders expected to be in action.

  Tom led his party over the rail, hauling out his pistols and firing into the sixty or seventy men milling in the waist, sorting themselves out into an organised defence. He heard the horse-pistols cough beside him and a four-pounder fired from Star’s deck. He had just enough time to close the gap, to run into the French before they could get onto the front foot and start to press forward with their superior numbers. He drew his hanger and gripped it in both hands, swinging it like a butcher’s pole-axe and roaring.

  There was an officer at the head of the French, sword held in classical fencing mode; Tom slashed and missed, ducked, twisted to one side and kicked him between the legs as he lunged and swiped down at his head as he doubled over, a great meaty crunch rewarding his efforts. To his left another swordsman was offering a high parry to Joseph’s cutlass; a slash at waist height opened his guts, left him screaming. A matelot not a foot away, a head butt into his face and knee up, brawling, gutter fighting, kick him as he dropped then lunge with his hanger at the half-turned back of another who was cutting at one of the freemen. The French were navy, regulars who knew the correct ways of doing things and expected to be met by formed ranks with cutlasses properly opposed; they were taken aback by the gutter rats swarming over them.

  Pushing forward, never letting them get organised, driving them back so that they thought they were losing; kicking, screaming, gouging, clawing just as much as using their swords; never letting them use their numbers and discipline and training.

  The horse pistols fired again, from the side, cutting into the French from an unexpected angle, disconcerting them a little more as well as knocking down three men. Another officer, the captain maybe, flashily uniformed with lace and braid, his sword scoring across Tom’s ribs as he frantically dodged to his left, hurting; the hilt of his own sword up and into the man’s mouth, breaking teeth, him recoiling with the pain, hand going up to his agony, a great wheeling slash cutting him almost in half, blood in a huge gout, men jumping back on either side, horrified. A few hands dropped; one terrified man, his face covered in his captain’s blood, blinded by it, shouted for quarter; a dozen others realised they had lost, they must have, joined in the cry, and suddenly the fighting had stopped.

  Tom glanced about him, immensely weary, the fight had used up a day’s energy.

  “Joseph, get them below! Quickly, push them into their wardroom, cram them together so they can’t move.”

  He turned, picked out sailors from the Star, sent them in pairs to take the huddled merchant hulls who had stayed to watch the fun, had been promised a grandstand view of the hangings and now were too frightened to run.

  Ten minutes of frantic action, pushing and shouting and chasing their captives into safe custody.

  The Star had torn loose from the Frenchman, was threatening the merchantmen, John Murray stood by the wheel and apparently in command; as he watched there were a dozen of splashes at her side – it seemed that some of the French had managed to board her and had been killed there.

  They took half of the crew from each of the merchants and set them under guard on the Star’s deck; the island boats were almost always crewed by a family together, fathers and sons and brothers and cousins side-by-side and now hostage for each other’s good behaviour. They left one man from the Star aboard each as a prize-master, having too few uninjured bodies to do more, and turned their heads northwards. Tom found he was in command, for Blaine and Smith and the two prize-masters had died at the front of the fight, leading their men, as was only right. John Murray told the tale of what had happened behind him on the Star’s deck.

  “Me and they Coleses was towards the stern when you went over the bows, Tom, and before we could get up to join you there was a couple of dozen Frogs on board. They killed the captain straight off, because ‘e didn’t know ‘is arse from ‘is elbow, ‘e was that pissed. Smithy got one in the guts at the same time. They Coleses went in with cutlass in one ‘and, those bloody knives of theirs in t’other and one of the Frogs shoots George down in the first rush; Joby went bloody mad then. Just run in to ‘em, ‘e did, swinging knife and blade and going straight through ‘em; they stuck ‘im with a cutlass before ‘e’d made a yard and ‘e didn’t take no bloody notice, just kept goin’. I reckon ‘e killed a dozen before ‘e dropped with no blood left in ‘im. Dick and Luke was with me, and we all three got our pistols and a blade and we went in behind ‘im and finished off the job. Come the end of it there ain’t no more than the three of us left on Star, and it don’t look like you lot came out a lot lighter, do it?”

  “Not as bad as it looks, John. Three of my boys are dead and five more are chopped up a bit, but the buggers knew how to fight, mate – they’ve earned their money.”

  They made Antigua in convoy, six merchant hulls and two national vessels making an impressive display and bringing any number of sour comments from the navy, all of whom were stretched to the full on convoy duty and had not had the chance to go cruising for a year and more. The admiral bought in the two national ships and crewed them with promoted young men from his favourites’ ships and sent them off to work the small islands and cays, theoretically to suppress the pirates who hung about the shallow waters, but he too was missing his prize money. The cargos of sugar and molasses sold, as ever; the foodstuffs went to the plantations and the hulls themselves were bought up by local merchants, they having lost too many of their own boats to the French in past months.

  It took only three weeks to condemn and dispose of the prizes, it being one of the rare occasions in which celerity was to the advantage of the lawyers. None of the few attorneys-at-law on the island specialised exclusively in the Admiralty Court, there was not enough business for them to make a living thus, so they all had clients wanting to purchase the cargo or prizes and whose interests would be best served by speed and who might not continue to patronise a lawyer who caused delay. They were close to the hurricane season and the West Indies convoy to England was due to sail very soon; the merchants wanted their sugars to sell in London this year and the Law, servant always to the rich and powerful, obliged.

  Tom, as senior survivor, was forced to deal with the prize agent, an experience which stretched his literacy to its utmost limit and introduced him to the practices of trade, something which he found to be fascinating. He had to give the final approval to every sale of prize goods and accept the price negotiated; it was not easy to calculate what discount should be given for rapid payment or what was the correct valuation to be given to foreign weights and qualities of molasses and rum. He had to learn quickly, and to take advice from the agent, accepting the responsibility for decisions that he did not fully understand. He enjoyed himself.

  There were a number of problems to face, not least being that Blaine had left no instructions to apply in case of his death. The prize agent believed Mr Blaine to have been the sole o
wner of the Star, but he did not know this certainly to be the case and, as well, had no directions for his heirs and assigns.

  “It is unusual, Mr Andrews, for the master of a privateer to be sole owner, indeed, it is unique in my experience – normally they have no more than eight of the sixty-fourths - and it will take years to have enquiries made in England. Do you know if Blaine had family?”

  Tom was certain Blaine had been alone in the world, such kin as he might have had having dropped off when he was discovered to be an embarrassment rather than a dashing young frigate captain. He knew that Blaine had never married, said as much and added some interesting extra information.

  Tom had been thinking hard over the few days since their lucky encounter with the French navy and had decided, amongst other things, that he was too young to die. He had a scar across his ribs now, as well as that on his face, and wondered just how lucky he might be next time – he had got away with it twice now, he told himself and that meant either that he was fireproof or that he was bloody fortunate. He would be eighteen later in the year and wanted to celebrate his birthday, not be the centrepiece at a wake; it was time to say farewell to privateering, which left the question of what to do next. He had a solution, wondered if he could get away with it.

  “I believe, Mr Johnson,” he tentatively offered the prize agent, “that is, I am pretty much certain from what the captain told me when he was talking, which he did a lot.” The prize agent knew that Blaine had been a drunk and that bottle-hounds could never keep their mouths shut, nodded understandingly; he liked young Andrews, a brave and open-faced lad and very bright, too young yet to have learned habits of roguery.

  “Go on, Mr Andrews.”

  “Well, sir, from what he said, the captain wasn’t the owner as such, he was the front man, you might say, on a big share, maybe, for three gentlemen who didn’t want to be known to be in the business of letters of marque. The Earl, an admiral and a right reverend gentleman, I was told. The Earl thought he should not be getting his hands dirty with our trade, and the admiral and the bishop aren’t allowed to, not in public.”