‘Yes . . . my Lord,’ replied the unfortunate Gillespy who was quite under Walmsley’s thumb, isolated as he was in the launch.
The lesson in leadership was greeted with a few weary grins from the men at the oars, but few liked Mr Walmsley and those that were not utterly uncaring from the monotony of their task and being constantly abused by the senior midshipman of their division, resented his arrogance. Of all the men in the boat there was one upon whom Walmsley’s arrogant sarcasm acted like a spark upon powder.
At stroke oar William Waller laboured as an able seaman. A year earlier he had been master of the Greenland whale-ship Conqueror, a member of the Trinity House of Kingston-upon-Hull and engaged in a profitable trade in whale-oil, whale-bone and the smuggling of furs from Greenland to France where they were used to embellish the gaudy uniforms of the soldiers they had so recently been cannonading upon the cliffs of Boulogne. It had been this illicit trade that had reduced him to his present circumstances. He had been caught red-handed engaged in a treasonable trade with a French outpost on the coast of Greenland by Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater.
Although well aware that he could have been hanged for what he had done, Waller was a weak and cunning character. That he had escaped with his life due to Drinkwater’s clemency had at first seemed fortunate, but as time passed his present humiliations contrasted unfavourably with his former status. His guilt began to diminish in his own eyes as he transferred responsibility for it to his partner who had been architect of the scheme and had died for it. The greater blame lay with the dead man and Waller was, in his own mind, increasingly a victim of regrettable circumstances. When he had been turned among them, many of Melusine’s hands had been aware of his activities. They had shunned him and despised him, but Waller had held his peace and survived, being a first-rate seaman. But he had kept his own counsel, a loner among the gregarious seamen of his mess, and long silences had made him morose, driven him to despair at times. He had been saved by the transfer to the Antigone and a bigger ship’s company. Among the pressed and drafted men who had increased the size of the ship’s company to form the complement of a frigate, there had been those who knew nothing of his past. He had taught a few ignorant landsmen the rudiments of seamanship and there were those among the frigate’s company that called him friend. He had drawn renewed confidence from this change in his circumstances. He let it be known among his new companions that he was well-acquainted with the business of navigation and that many of Antigone’s junior officers were wholly without knowledge of their trade. In particular Lord Wamlsley’s studied contempt for the men combined with his rank and ignorance to make him an object of the most acute detestation to Waller.
On this particular morning, as Waller hauled wearily at the heavy loom of the stroke oar, his hatred of Walmsley reached its crisis. He muttered under his breath loudly enough for Walmsley and Gillespy to hear.
‘Did you say something, Waller?’
Waller watched the blade of his oar swing forward, ignoring his lordship’s question.
‘I asked you what you said, Waller, damn you!’
Waller continued to pull steadily, gazing vaguely at the horizon.
‘He didn’t say nothing, sir,’ the man occupying the same thwart said.
‘I didn’t ask you,’ snapped Walmsley, fixing his eyes on Waller. ‘This lubber, Mr Gillespy, needs watching. He was formerly the skipper of a damned whale-boat . . .’ Walmsley laid a disparaging emphasis on the two words, ‘a bloody merchant master who thought he could defy the King. And now God damn him he thinks he can defy you and I . . .’
Waller stopped rowing. The man behind him bumped into his stationary back and there was confusion in the boat.
‘Give way, damn you!’ Walmsley ordered, his voice low. Beside him little Gillespy was trembling. The oarsmen stopped rowing and the launch lost way.
‘Go to the devil, you poxed young whoreson!’ Waller snarled through clenched teeth. A murmur of approval at Waller’s defiance ran through the boat’s crew.
‘Why you God-damn bastard!’ Walmsley shoved Gillespy aside and pulled the heavy tiller from the rudder stock. In a single swipe he brought the piece of ash crashing into the side of Waller’s skull, knocking him senseless, his grip on the oar-loom weakened and it swept up and struck him under the chin as he slumped into the bottom of the boat.
The expression on the faces of the launch’s crew were of disbelief. Astern of them the towline drooped slackly in the water.
Drinkwater sat in the cool of his cabin re-reading a letter he had recently received from his wife Elizabeth, to see if he had covered all the points raised in it in his reply. The isolation of command had made the writing of his private journal and the committing of his thoughts to his letters an important and pleasurable part of his daily routine. Cruising so close to the English coast meant that Keith’s ships were in regular contact with home via the admiral’s dispatch-vessels. In addition to fresh vegetables and mail, these fast craft kept the frigates well supplied with newspapers and gossip. The hired cutter Admiral Mitchell had made such a delivery the day before.
He laid the letter down and picked up the new steel pen Elizabeth had sent him, dipping it experimentally in the ink-pot and regarding its rigid nib with suspicion. He pulled the half-filled sheet of paper towards him and resumed writing, not liking the awkward scratch and splatter of the nib compared with his goosequill, but aware that he would be expected to reply using the new-fangled gift.
Our presence in the Channel keeps Boney and his troops in their camps. Last week he held a review, lining his men up so that they presented an appearance several miles long . . .
He paused, not wishing to alarm Elizabeth, though from her letters he knew of the arrangements each parish was making to raise an invasion alarm and call out the militia and yeomanry.
It is said that Boney himself went afloat in a gilded barge and that he dismissed Admiral Bruix for attempting to draw a sword on him when he protested the folly of trying an embarkation in the teeth of a gale. What the truth of these rumours is I do not know, but it is certain that many men were drowned and some score or so of barges wrecked.
He picked up his pen and finished the letter, then he sanded, folded and sealed it. Mullender came into the cabin and, at a nod from Drinkwater, poured him a glass of wine. He leaned back contented. Beyond the cabin windows the Channel stretched blue, calm and glorious under sunshine. Through the stern windows the reflected light poured, dancing off the deckhead and bulkheads of the cabin and falling on the portraits of his family that hung opposite. He became utterly lost in the contemplation of his family.
His reverie was interrupted by a shouting on deck and a hammering at his cabin door.
Drinkwater sat in his best uniform, flanked by Lieutenant Rogers and Lieutenant Fraser. The black shapes of their three hats sat on the baize tablecloth, inanimate indications of formality. Before them, uncovered, stood Midshipman Lord Walmsley. Drinkwater looked at the notes he had written after examining Midshipman Gillespy. The boy had been terrified but Drinkwater and his two lieutenants had obtained the truth out of him, unwilling to make matters worse by having to consult individual members of the boat’s crew. Gillespy had withdrawn now, let out before Walmsley was summoned to hear the surgeon’s report.
Drinkwater had once entertained some hopes of the midshipman but this episode disgusted him. He himself had no personal feelings towards Waller beyond a desire to see him behave as any other pressed seaman on board and to see him treated as such. Walmsley knew of Waller’s previous circumstances and Drinkwater assumed that this had led to his contemptuous behaviour.
He looked up at the young man. Walmsley did not appear unduly concerned about the formality of the present proceedings. Drinkwater recollected his acquaintance with Camelford and wondered if Camelford’s presence had set a portfire to this latent insolence and arrogance of Walmsley.
The silence of waiting hung heavily in the cabin. Following the incident in the launch
, Drinkwater had had the boats hoisted inboard. Their progress to the west was no longer necessary since their chase, a lugger holding a breeze inshore, had long ago disappeared to the south-west. There was a knock at the door.
‘Enter!’
‘Come in, Mr Lallo. Pray take a seat and tell us what is the condition of Waller.’
The surgeon, a quiet, middle-aged man whose only vice seemed to be a messy reliance upon Sharrow’s snuff, seated himself, sniffed and looked at Drinkwater. His didactic manner prompted Drinkwater to add: ‘In words we all comprehend, if you please, Mr Lallo.’
Mr Lallo sniffed again. ‘Well, sir,’ he began, casting a meaningful look at the back of Lord Walmsley, ‘the man Waller has taken a severe and violent blow with a heavy object . . .’
‘A tiller,’ put in Rogers impatiently.
‘Just so, Mr Rogers. With a tiller, which has caused an aneurism . . . a distortion of the arteries and interrupted the flow of blood to the cere . . . to the brain . . .’
‘You mean Waller’s had a stroke?’
Lallo looked resentfully at Rogers and nodded. ‘In effect, yes. He is reduced to the condition of an idiot.’
Drinkwater felt the particular meaning of the word in its real form. That Waller and his treason were no longer of any consequence struck him as an irony, but that a midshipman should have reduced him to that state by an over-indulgence of his authority was a reflection of his own powers of command. Drinkwater did not share Earl St Vincent’s conviction that the men should respect a midshipman’s coat if the object within was not worthy of their duty. He had always considered the training of his midshipmen a prime responsibility. With Walmsley he had failed. It did not matter that he had inherited his lordship from another captain. Nor, he reflected, could he hope that the processes of naval justice might redress something of the balance. The arrogance of well-connected midshipmen was nothing new in the navy, nor was the whitewashing of their guilt by courts-martial.
‘Thank you, Mr Lallo. You do not entertain any hopes for Waller’s eventual recovery then?’
‘I doubt it, Captain Drinkwater. I believe him to have been a not unintelligent man, sir. He might be fit to attend the heads for the remainder of his days, though he is like to be afflicted with ataxia.’ Lallo glared at the first lieutenant, defying him to require a further explanation.
‘Thank you, Mr Lallo. That will be all.’
After the surgeon had left, Drinkwater turned his full attention upon Walmsley.
‘Well, Mr Walmsley. Do you have anything to say?’
‘I did my duty, sir. The man was insolent. I regret . . .’
‘You regret! You regret hitting him so hard, I suppose. Eh?’
Walmsley swallowed. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Lord Walmsley,’ Drinkwater said, using the title for the first time, ‘you are a young man with considerable ability, aware of your position in society and clearly contemptuous of your present surroundings. It is my intention to punish you as you are a midshipman. What you do after that as a gentleman is a matter for your own sense of honour. You may go now.’
‘May I not know my punishment?’
‘No. You will be informed. Whatever you appear at the gaming tables, you are, sir, only a midshipman on board this ship!’
Walmsley stood uncertainly and Drinkwater saw, for the first time, signs that the young man’s confidence was weakening. There was a trembling about the mouth and a brightening of the eyes. Walmsley turned away and the three officers watched him leave the cabin.
Next to him Drinkwater heard Lieutenant Fraser expel his breath with relief. Drinkwater turned to him. ‘Well, Mr Fraser, it is customary upon these occasions to ask the junior officer present to give his opinion first.’
‘Court-martial, sir . . .’
‘But upon what charge, Fraser, for God’s sake?’ put in Rogers intemperately and Drinkwater smelt the drink on him. ‘No, sir, he’s too much influence for that. I doubt that’d do any of us any good.’ Rogers spoke with heavy emphasis and Drinkwater raised an eyebrow. ‘Besides he’s done no more than many, and Waller was an insolent bastard at times. My advice, sir, is keep it in the ship.’
‘Not a bluidy mastheading, for God’s sake, sir,’ expostulated Fraser who was showing signs of ability and perception far exceeding the first lieutenant’s.
‘No, gentlemen,’ Drinkwater cut in. ‘Thank you both for your opinions, so succinctly put,’ he added drily. ‘You are both right. The matter should not go outside the ship, but I do not hold with officers abusing their powers. Whatever Walmsley’s expectations he is but a midshipman, and a midshipman going to the bad. It is not my intention to encourage him further. As for his punishment, we shall marry him to the gunner’s daughter.’
Drinkwater rose from the table and took up his hat. The two lieutenants scrambled to their feet.
‘Pipe all hands to witness punishment, Mr Rogers!’
Drinkwater emerged on deck some few minutes later, the punishment book in his hand. It contained few entries since Drinkwater was reluctant to administer corporal punishment for any but serious offences and had adopted such measures as stoppage of grog and the wearing of a collar as a public humiliation, finding them much more appropriate and effective for the trivial offences usually committed. This morning, however, would be different.
He took his place at the head of the officers who stood in a half-circle, their swords by their sides. Behind them in three ranks, Mount’s marines were paraded, a glittering assembly of scarlet, white and steel. The men were crowded in the waist, over the boats and the hammock nettings in the gangways. Word had got about that Walmsley was to be punished and the hands were in a state of barely suppressed glee. In the circumstances and in view of the offender’s station, Drinkwater called him forward and read the usually curtailed preamble with formal gravity.
‘Silence there!’ barked Rogers as the hands murmured their delight when Walmsley stepped uncertainly forward. He had lost his cocksure attitude and was clearly very apprehensive. It occurred to Drinkwater that Walmsley might have imagined such a thing as this could never happen to him, that it was something that affected others not of his standing.
‘Mr Walmsley, the enquiry held by myself and the officers of His Britannic Majesty’s frigate under my command have examined and condemned your conduct this forenoon and found you guilty of behaviour both scandalous and oppressive. This crime, not being capital, shall be punished according to the Custom of the Navy under the Thirty-Sixth Article of War, as enacted by the King’s most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of’, Drinkwater paused and fixed his eyes on the abject Walmsley, ‘the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in Parliament assembled.
‘You are, Mr Walmsley, to be flogged over the breech of a gun.’ He snapped the book closed. ‘Mr Comley!’ The boatswain stepped forward. ‘Two dozen strokes, sir. And lay ’em on!’
Comley put his hand on Walmsley’s shoulder and pushed him forward until he stood by the breech of one of the quarterdeck guns. A shove sent the young man over the cannon and Comley drew back his rattan. In the next few minutes the boatswain did not spare his victim.
Captain Drinkwater continued walking the windward side of the quarterdeck long after sunset. The blazing riot of scarlet had faded by degrees to a pale lemon yellow and finally to a duck-egg blue that remained slightly luminous as the stars in their constellations blazed overhead. The air remained warm although there was enough of a breeze to enable Antigone to be steered under her topsails, and she cruised slowly southwards.
Drinkwater thought over the events of the day, distressed by the incident in the boats and aware that he had dealt with it in the only just way. Walmsley had begged an interview with him which he had refused, and the sight of Waller lying inert in the care of Mr Lallo convinced him that he was right, that the longer the young man felt his punishment the better. Drinkwater sighed, worrying about the effect on the rest of the ship’s company. The internal business of the shi
p was oppressing him, already the tedium of blockade, even in this relatively independent form of cruising, was making him irritable and the ship’s company fractious. The fine summer weather and apparent inactivity of the French seemed to lend a quality of futility to their movements, although logic proclaimed the necessity of their presence, along with the other independent frigates and all the vessels of the various blockading squadrons. There was a quality of stalemate in the war and it was difficult to determine what would happen next. It seemed to Drinkwater that the equation was balanced, that even the weather, usually so impartial a player in the game, had assimilated some of this inertia and put no demands on his own skill or the energies of his people. It seemed an odd contrast to the previous summer when the changeable moods of the Greenland Sea kept them constantly about the business of survival.
He found himself longing for action. Antigone had missed the bombardment of Havre in late July and seen no more than some pedestrian chases after small fry which had achieved little. At the beginning of August had come the news that Admiral Ganteaume had attempted a break-out from Brest, but had turned back; so that the equation, showing for a moment signs of imbalance, had had its equilibrium re-established.
Drinkwater heard seven bells struck. Eleven o’clock. It was time he took himself below. Mr Quilhampton, who had been confined to the lee quarterdeck in the down-draught from the main-topsail for his entire watch, looked after the retreating figure and clucked his tongue sympathetically.
‘Poor fellow,’ he muttered to himself, taking up the weather side and ordering Gilllespy to heave the log, ‘fretting over a pair of ne’er-do-wells!’
Chapter 9
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