A Flag of Truce

by David Donachie

  ‘Poor lad,’ said Neame, without conviction.

  ‘HMS Weazel has made her number, sir,’ said the midshipman sent from the quarterdeck of HMS Victory with the message, ‘and she has in her possession a prize.’

  ‘Has she, by God!’ exclaimed Admiral Lord Hood, his heavy grey eyebrows shooting up and his prominent nose following. ‘If he has, then I think that Captain Benton has disobeyed his quite specific orders.’

  ‘That is the other thing, sir. The Officer of the Watch made it my duty to tell you that her own ensign is upside down.’

  ‘Benton dead, then?’

  ‘He fears so, sir, though he had no knowledge of who is in command.’

  ‘Signal to HMS Weazel. Captain to repair aboard immediately.’

  ‘Sir.’

  The lookout on HMS Victory was not the only one to see that prize, and the sight of their own navy’s flag flying above that of the enemy, and a signal that a Master and Commander was dead, probably killed in action, set any number of hearts racing. It had every lieutenant in the fleet who was not ashore and unaware looking to their seniority and their relationship to Lord Hood. There was nothing callous about this; it was the way of things. War brought death as well as the chance of glory, and advancement in King George’s Navy, unless an officer had impeccable connections, generally came through one or the other. Of course they would mourn for a dead comrade, that was only fitting, but his demise meant promotion for someone to fill his place, and that would ripple down through the fleet, affecting dozens of officers who would move up a place.

  It caused as much excitement below decks on the seventy-four gun warship, HMS Leander, as the news filtered down, yet there was anxiety too. The fact that the captain was dead did not mean that others had been spared the same fate. Common seamen went on deck as little as possible, especially in a strong clothes-tugging wind that chilled even on a September day, so it was rare to see such figures as Michael O’Hagan, Charlie Taverner, Rufus Dommet and old leathery-faced Latimer leaning over the rail peering at the incoming vessels. If John Pearce had known his friends were so arrayed he would have abandoned his dinner, as well as his Hermitage wine, and gone on deck to wave, but he did not do so until the message came that the ‘flag’ had made his number and he was summoned aboard.

  ‘A bad idea, sir,’ said an even ruddier-faced Neame, ‘to appear before Lord Hood with too much drink in your belly.’

  John Pearce smiled as he rose to gather his despatches and put on his best, and dry, uniform coat. ‘I take that as a hint, Mr Neame, that you and Mr Ottershaw should finish that bottle, around which neck you have your horny sailor’s hand.’

  The purser, Ottershaw, slurred slightly in response. ‘Would not want it to go to waste, your honour, it being such a pretty drop, not the least troubled, it seems to me, by being shaken all about afore the cork was drawn.’

  ‘You do not think to keep a drop for young Harbin?’

  ‘It might not hold its true flavour,’ Neame insisted.

  ‘Be my guest, both of you. I shall treat Harbin to a capital dinner, if a besieged Toulon will run to such a thing.’

  ‘Rufus,’ said Michael O’Hagan, ‘clamber up them there shrouds and see what’s what.’

  ‘Why me?’ demanded Rufus.

  ‘Sure, did I not say please, boyo, what with you being the lightest and most nimble?’

  The words might be polite, even close to jocular, but the tone was less so, and Rufus Dommet, faced with the muscular bulk of his Irish messmate, was quick to move. With HMS Victory laying inshore of the anchored 74, they saw John Pearce come on deck, hat in hand, as both of the smaller warships sailed slowly by. The cheer that greeted him was spontaneous, and not to be outdone, all the ships within the roadstead took it up. Pearce looked over to the rail of HMS Leander and, sighting the agitated figures, waved to his companions. The world turned upside down, right enough, he thought. Three of those on that deck were the men with whom he had been pressed into the Navy, the men he had sworn to get free.

  ‘Belay that damned noise.’

  ‘Get down, Rufus, quick,’ hissed Charlie Taverner, himself letting go of the hammock nettings and dropping back onto the deck. Michael O’Hagan did likewise, while Latimer, much older, his lined face a mask of worry, had to ease himself down.

  ‘What in the name of the Lord Almighty do you think you are about?’

  ‘We’s cheering in the taking of a prize, sir,’ said Rufus, too innocent to know that saying nothing was best when dealing with Lieutenant Taberly.

  ‘Silence, damn you,’ Taberly yelled, before turning round and shouting at a midshipman who had been part of the watch. ‘You, sir, how can you stand to witness such behaviour?’

  He eased himself up onto the hammock nettings and looked out to see John Pearce in plain view, and it took only seconds for Taberly to realise that the swine was actually in command of both vessels, the despatch case in his hand finishing off the image. On the other ships they were still cheering, which made his blood boil; that a charlatan like Pearce, with whom he had exchanged words already, should receive such accolades was intolerable. Very well, those aboard this ship he had dared to name as his friends would pay.

  ‘You, sir,’ he yelled at the midshipman again, ‘are a disgrace to your coat. You cannot control the men.’

  ‘With respect, sir, they are not on watch.’

  ‘Not on watch, sir? They are not fit to be on watch, just as they are not trusted to be sent ashore without they would run, but they are fit to be punished, sir. Take their names and let us see them at defaulters tomorrow, then, with luck, they will taste at the grating. Let us see, sir, how keen they are to cheer then.’

  John Pearce was still looking at the side of the ship, wondering why his companions in misfortune had disappeared so quickly, but that thought had to be put aside as Neame, slightly drunk but still competent, let fly the sheets, and rudder hard down, brought the ship in a wide sweep, to rest under the bulk of HMS Victory. He then ordered the boat lowered that would take his acting captain aboard the flagship.

  Chapter Two

  Standing on the quarterdeck of HMS Victory, waiting to be summoned below, Pearce looked inland to the shore and beyond, the sound of continuous cannon fire louder now. There was fighting going on around Ollioules, at the head of a valley which provided the western gateway by which the port and town could be invested. There was another to the east, narrower and more difficult but it was Mont Faron and its companion hills, studded with forts, now being reinforced by hastily built redoubts, which provided the main defence to landward. Below the ring of hills lay the town, an old and jumbled mass of narrow alleys around the outer harbour, more up to date past the Vauban-designed fortifications, a star-shaped, moated bastion. Beyond that lay the newest buildings, which had housed the hub of a formidable part of what had been the Marine Royal, the Arsenal and the Fleet Commander’s headquarters.

  Toulon had fallen, first to revolutionary fervour, and secondly, to fear. Again his mind went back to Paris, to the certainty of that place two years before, after the Battle of Valmy, the centre and driving force of all that had happened in France. No doubt existed in most Gallic minds regarding the rightness of the ’89 Revolution; the destruction of the Bastille had been an event waiting to happen in a bankrupt nation stuck in an outmoded monarchical system that saw the rich prosper while the poor starved. That it had been humbled was now seen as inevitable, though Pearce suspected few were so certain of the outcome at the time. What had happened since created enclaves like Toulon, where the citizens saw the strictures and actions of radical Parisian-based politicians in a less acquiescent way.

  In the capital, factions fought for control, and sought to outdo each other in the purity of their revolutionary ideals, using the mob to ratchet up the tone of revolution. Yet even at the epicentre many a mind was sceptical of the direction in which events were moving. Worse, it had become impossible to object; to do so risked at best incarceration – the fate of
his own father, who had spoken out against excess – at worst the guillotine, the ultimate fate from which his son had been unable to rescue him. In the countryside the actions of politicians constantly driven on by the excessive demands of a Paris mob were viewed with alarm; worse still, the penalties deemed necessary to keep the Revolution alive. Having got rid of a monarchical tyranny, the majority of Frenchmen, especially those of some education or property, were not keen to see the power of the Paris radicals extended to replace it.

  Lyon, the second city of France, was in full-scale revolt and there were rumours of a priest-led war going on in the Vendée. Marseilles too had risen, and had tried to act in concert with Toulon; they had even invited Lord Hood and his fleet to take over the protection of the city, but he had deemed it indefensible. The great port had fallen only weeks before, and the exactions of revolutionary revenge had begun as soon as it was captured: rape; murder, both judicial and spontaneous; robbery and arson; all the trials that since time immemorial had been the fate of a city under sack. Toulon, fearing a similar fate, had asked for protection and Hood, because of its topography easier to defend, had obliged and the task now was to hold the place. Pearce, before he left on his cruise, had heard both opinions advanced: that Toulon was impregnable, as well as the opposite; it could not be held without an army the defenders did not have. He had no idea who was right and who was wrong, lacking, as he did, the knowledge to make a judgement.

  ‘Lieutenant Pearce.’

  He turned round to face Capitaine de Vaiseau, le baron d’Imbert, an English-speaking French officer he had come to know well in the period leading up to the British take-over. Pearce had been Hood’s emissary in the delicate negotiations, a reluctant one certainly, but left little choice, being in need of the admiral’s support in his dispute with Ralph Barclay. The French captain had been instrumental in bringing about the surrender of town, forts and fleet. No man could claim more than he, given that his superior, Rear Admiral Trogoff, had vacillated mightily, avoiding decisions with a cunning that, had it been applied at sea and in battle, would have been hailed as genius.

  ‘I hear I am to congratulate you,’ said d’Imbert, his weary eyes sad, hardly surprising; he was a French officer and HMS Weazel had taken a French ship.

  ‘Good fortune, sir, rather than competence, and not without loss.’

  ‘Ah yes. Your captain…’

  Pearce did not want to talk about Benton, the man he had been obliged to replace, who had died right in front of him. He might have been a drunk for most of the voyage, and damned rude with it, but he had shown real pluck in the decision to disobey his orders, which were to merely reconnoitre the Corsican anchorages and stay away from trouble. Had he lived he would have come aboard instead of John Pearce, no doubt in anticipation of a fitting reward for his bravery and application. As it was Benton was in a canvas sack at the bottom of the Mediterranean, with a cannonball at his feet, food, eventually, for the crabs.

  ‘How are relations with Admiral Hood, sir?’

  D’Imbert produced a wan smile. ‘They are those of a junior officer, Lieutenant.’ Seeing that Pearce did not comprehend, he added, ‘Rear Admiral Trogoff has seen it as his duty to take the task of dealing with your admiral upon himself.’

  There was a terrible temptation to say, ‘He has a damned cheek.’ Trogoff had done everything he could to avoid making a decision regarding the state of matters in the town, had failed utterly to control his junior admiral, a dyed-in-the-wool revolutionary called St Julien, and managed to absent himself when finally it came time to act. Indeed he had even stated his intention to escape via Italy with a view to joining the royal émigrés and the anti-French coalition armies under the late King Louis’ brother, le comte d’Artois, at Coblenz, only failing to do so because there was a rag-tag French army on the Italian border blocking his way.

  ‘Naturally,’ d’Imbert added, ‘when he needs my advice and my ability to translate, as he does on a day like today, I am summoned.’

  ‘So I surmise today we have a difficulty?’

  ‘You will recall our problem with the sailors who supported St Julien.’

  ‘I suspect from your tone they are still a problem.’

  ‘They are. Most of them were recruited from the Atlantic ports, so they were never truly content to be in the Mediterranean, far from home, long before the matters came to a head here. Now our admirals are trying to decide what to do with them. We cannot just kick them out. Five thousand strong they would only swell the ranks of the besieging force, nor can we keep them here, either locked up or on parole, since they would then present an internal danger.’

  ‘The people of Toulon?’

  The French captain shook his head. ‘Not every Toulonnais citizen is in agreement with our rapprochement with you. Combine them with those sailors and they represent too much of a threat in a place so feverish with rumour and dissent.’

  ‘I seem to recall there were officers too.’

  ‘I think, Pearce,’ d’Imbert said, smiling properly for the first time, ‘what you actually recall is my saying to Lord Hood there were none, that the men were leaderless.’

  ‘You no doubt saw that as a necessary deceit.’

  ‘You are more understanding than your admiral, who mentions my dissimulation frequently, and never without a black look to accompany his strictures.’ From below came the sound of stamping marine boots, and d’Imbert began to move. ‘I must hurry, or my admiral will depart without me, so far have I fallen from grace.’

  ‘Then I suspect, sir,’ said Pearce, with real feeling, ‘that the sight of you reminds him of his own failures of duty.’

  ‘Lieutenant Pearce, Lieutenant Pearce.’

  The blue-coated youngster, a mere child in clothing too big for his slight frame, crying out his name, emerged from a companionway looking worried. The expression deepened considerably when the object of his search identified himself.

  ‘Sir, you were supposed to wait outside the admiral’s quarters on the maindeck.’

  HMS Victory was a ship at anchor, wallowing in some of its own filth, and with some seven hundred men aboard her crammed into her lower decks, it was not pleasant in terms of odours, even on the maindeck. But that was not the reason he was standing on the quarterdeck: Pearce would not say that the courtesy normally extended to a visiting officer aboard a flagship, that of the use of the wardroom and perhaps a glass of some refreshment, had not been offered, as it had when he had come aboard before. He was slightly upset that it should be so, but in no position to do anything about it, and damned sure he was not about to beg.

  ‘I like fresh air.’

  ‘The admiral secretary is in a rare passion.’

  ‘Well,’ snapped Pearce, who had crossed swords with the supercilious sod before. ‘A bit of passion might do him good. It might warm his blood enough to ensure he is still living.’

  ‘You must hurry, sir,’ moaned the midshipman, ‘for my sake, if not your own.’

  Much as he would have liked to dawdle, if for no other reason than to annoy, he had no choice but to follow at the boy’s brisk pace. The crabbed look on the face of Hood’s secretary was compensation. Normally a languid and superior sort, he looked quite put out as he followed Pearce into the great cabin, where sat Hood and the slightly more corpulent figure of Rear Admiral Hyde Parker, who held the position of Captain of the Fleet.

  ‘Pass your despatches and logs to my secretary, Mr Pearce,’ said Hood. This he did, and the secretary departed with them as the admiral added, ‘I will have a verbal report on what was plainly a piece of downright and calculated insubordination.’

  Pearce explained about the situation of the Mariette, and the apparently defenceless position in which they had found her. ‘Captain Benton saw it as too good an opportunity to pass up, sir.’

  In the face of a sceptical superior, Pearce went on to describe the action, praising, as he had in his despatch, the actions of the crew of HMS Weazel, and in particular the bravery of yo
ung Midshipman Harbin, as well as the tactical appreciation of the master, Mr Neame. He made no mention of his own wound; by now he was hardly conscious of it himself, and it was gratifying to observe, as he spoke, the look of outright hostility fade in Hood’s craggy countenance, to the point where he looked quite satisfied.

  ‘And, sir, might I point out that before deciding to act, Captain Benton asked me what he thought you, faced with a similar problem, would have done.’

  ‘And what did you tell him, Pearce?’ demanded Hyde Parker.

  ‘If I may say, sir, that I have never been comfortable with flattery, I feel I will have provided an answer.’

  ‘Well,’ said a clearly mollified Hood, ‘what is done is done, and I am told she is a fine vessel.’

  ‘She is totally deficient in powder and shot, sir.’

  Hood laughed, the first time Pearce had seen him do so with anything approaching real heartiness. ‘Then we will fill her up from the Toulon Arsenal, Pearce, but not until my own master has had a look over her to assess her value.’

  ‘The crew will be anxious to know if you will buy her in, sir.’

  The humour evaporated as quickly as it had surfaced. ‘I daresay, Pearce, just as I daresay that in their addled brains they have already spent the money she will fetch. But I must tread with care. I cannot say anything until Admiral Trogoff agrees that she is a prize, and not part of the Fleet which he commands.’

  ‘On the other matter, the one we discussed when I first came aboard.’

  ‘Remind me,’ Hood replied, but he had a look that told Pearce he knew very well the subject mentioned.

  ‘Captain Barclay’s illegal impressments in London, sir. I was a victim and so were several men now serving, against their will, aboard HMS Leander. Barclay has broken every rule in creation and I demand that he faces punishment for it.’