Britannia’s Son (The Duty and Destiny Series, Book 4)

by Andrew Wareham

  “Is there another sort of chaplain, my lord?”

  “Unbeneficed priests, unable to secure even a curacy in England – embittered, incompetent or enthusiastic. The Navy is rarely well served by them.” The First Lord’s expression changed, became veiled, formal. “By the way, Sir Frederick, that reminds me – Gibraltar, I believe, some two years since but still unresolved, three chaplains, assaulted by black men at your command?”

  “Beg pardon, my lord, but I believe the incident to have occurred at Port Mahon. An unfortunate misunderstanding, orders carried out to the letter, but with greater zeal than discretion. I felt the three gentlemen would be happier on another ship and my people assisted them to leave.”

  The First Lord searched in his desk, drew out a long letter.

  “Bacchanals: fornication, lewdity, nudity and crudity on the foreshore. Drunken bawdiness: public copulation, buggery, sodomy and fellatio!”

  “Beg pardon, my lord, but Lord Nelson was certainly not present.”

  “No, Sir Frederick, not Horatio, though not an inappropriate name for the Admiral!”

  “The crew had a feast, my lord, an evening of fun and gig, and, with prize-money in their pockets … well, my lord, sailors will be sailors, after all!”

  “The chaplains were deeply offended.”

  “Perhaps they should have been invited, my lord?”

  “It would, no doubt, have done them good. Might I recommend a modicum of discretion in future, Sir Frederick, possibly a more secluded spot, a place other than the foreshore immediately adjacent to the Cathedral?”

  “Of course, my lord, I am aware that I was at fault, both in the location of the men’s jollities and in my subsequent treatment of the reverend gentlemen, but I did not then know that Bosomtwi had been raised a Mohammedan!”

  “Your man, that is, he who made a name for himself aboard Hercule, I remember. One can make allowances for such misunderstandings, I believe. Fortunately the Archbishop seems also to have been unaware of that fact, for his very long, and otherwise finely detailed, letter makes no mention of it. I shall send him a reply, eventually, informing him that the incident has been investigated and the culprits reprimanded, but please take more care in future, sir!”

  Frederick apologised again, did his best to appear suitably chastened,

  “One last point, Sir Frederick – no chaplain has been appointed to Trident. Would you wish me to remedy that omission?”

  “With respect, my lord…”

  “And so, my love, two weeks this day takes me to Bursledon, a bare eight miles from Long Common. From the yard, at some time, to Pompey to victual and make up a crew. Quota-men, gaol delivery and the Press, the bulk, inevitably – there will be few volunteers this time – an unknown ship and a captain whose name has not lately been in the newssheets or the street songs. Landsmen, idiots and felons, all to be brought together and made into sailors – God help them!”

  Baby Robert was far too young to travel and Elizabeth, having chosen to feed him herself – her mother having been scandalised at even the consideration of a wet-nurse – was unable to leave Abbey. Farewells would be made in Dorset.

  The news spread through the valley in hours – Squire was off to sea again, off to make another fortune, no doubt. Threadbare young men, bellies full after harvest but well aware that a hard winter was coming, looked again at Ablett and Bosomtwi, assessed once more their shop-bought clothes – no home-spuns for them – their soft leather boots, their air of comfort and ease, and wondered if they might not get a share of this prize-money. Several made their minds up to make their way to this Pompey place and join up. Kent waited on Frederick within a couple of days, a silent twelve year old in tow.

  “My third son, Sir Frederick – he has always wanted the sea, so I sent him to get some schooling and I could put him onto a coaster out of Poole or Bridport, but there’s small future in that for the boy and I have no in with John Company or any respectable merchant house.”

  Left unsaid was the near-certainty that Kent had had past connections with the more disreputable elements of the maritime community. He had made enough money to set up as a respectable tenant farmer, two thousands at a minimum, and no sailor saved that from his wages. Evidently he did not wish his son to tread the paths that he had followed, and that was as it should be too.

  “I’ve got a few pounds put by, Sir Frederick, enough that I could outfit the boy and pay him an allowance till he got made and received a living wage of his own. Twenty six a year, I have promised him.”

  Ten shillings a week, an adult farm labourer’s money, generous in his circumstances, but half of what the boy actually needed.

  “That would cover his mess fees, Kent, and leave him with nothing to keep his end up.”

  Kent shook his head, he could not fairly spend more on the one boy out of the seven children still at home.

  “What is your name, young man?”

  “John Kent, Sir Frederick.”

  The boy was clearly spoken, some accent, but not too much to be unacceptable. He stood well, upright but not arrogant, looked the part.

  “What have you learnt at school, Master John?”

  “To read and write, Sir Frederick, and, because I wanted the sea, extra mathematics from the Dame’s brother.”

  “He was a lieutenant, Sir Frederick,” Kent interposed. “He lost his left hand and never regained his strength, is still sickly, helps out in the school as best he can.”

  “Good! You know your trigonometry, Master John?”

  “I have started, Sir Frederick. I can use the tables and fix a position from a sextant reading, sir. I have worked some of the lessons from Norrie, as well, sir.”

  “Then you must come to sea, Mr Kent. I will rate you midshipman and advance your mess fees, to be repaid from prize-money, if we should be so lucky as to take any prizes. My clerk, Mr LeGrys, who you will know, will be senior of your mess, so go to him now, please, to tell him you will be joining.”

  They watched the boy march away, very evidently not running like a child.

  “I am obliged to you, Sir Frederick. Thank you.”

  “Not at all, Kent! The boy has the makings of a sea-officer, I think – I could not refuse him. Besides,” he smiled, “he is one of us, is he not?”

  Kent nodded – he had accepted Sir Frederick’s patronage, had changed their relationship from the distance of landlord and tenant to squire and dependant. It had been necessary, but he did not have to like it.

  “What will the boy need, Sir Frederick? I have in mind to provide two uniforms, one pair of half-boots – his feet are growing so fast there’s no point in two – a change of shore clothes, his dirk, a pair of heavy pistols and a hanger.”

  “Not a hanger, Kent, I like my mids to get into the use of a heavy cutlass – the exercise puts muscle on them and they can always snatch one up, will never be left with just that damned silly dirk between them and some Frog swinging an axe or thrusting with a bayonet. Pistols are always sensible, better not to rely on Sea Service brutes. Make them twelve or ten gauge – there will always be ball for them, twelve is standard and I know that Ablett has a mould for his own pair of tens. As for the rest – keep him warm! A big woolly of some sort, towelling to wrap round his neck, half a dozen lengths of it, thick socks that will hide in his boots and keep his feet from freezing, thick flannel unmentionables. Soap, in quantities, it always runs short in a long commission. We should not fetch far northern waters in this commission, so there is no great need for gloves and hats and fleece waistcoats this time round. Sextant and a set of tables and a dozen pencils of his own – always useful, saves him having to borrow. A hussif, with button polish, needle and thread, boot-blacking – he must present himself smartly. If you can, send him along with a cheese or a flitch of bacon, a roll or two of butter, a bag of apples – the sort of little luxuries they can all share in his mess and which boys love. Not so much as to be flash but enough that they can all value having a farmer’s son in their
midst.”

  Kent nodded, realising the thrust of Frederick’s advice – John was not a gentleman’s son, needed to make a place for himself.

  “One other thing, Kent – you know this means you are going to lose him?”

  “Aye, Sir Frederick, I know that well. If he becomes lieutenant, Master and Commander even, gets to be called ‘captain’, then he becomes a gentleman in his own right, and cannot easily be son to a tenant farmer!”

  “That is the way of our world, Kent.”

  “So be it! I’ve come from gutter to farmhouse, and that was a long step. He’s got all that I ever had – he’s the best of my boys by a long chalk, Sir Frederick, not that I would ever tell him so! I never went back to the rookery to see if my old Ma were dead or alive, nor I ain’t never going to, Sir Frederick, Bristol shall never see me again, that’s for sure. He’s got it in him, too, Sir Frederick – and if I never see him more I shall be sorry, as goes without saying, but I shall be glad, too, and proud of the boy!”

  Frederick nodded – Kent was right in many ways, hard man that he was.

  ‘Bristol’, Frederick mused later. ‘Black ivory, probably, not all the slavers have moved to Liverpool, I know of at least one registered in Chepstow that would realistically work out of the larger harbour. Cabin boy, deckhand, then mate on a share, I suspect. Maybe shifted into privateering in the American War, he would be about the right age. Married a farmer’s daughter, his first wife, learned the land, and improved his reading and writing from her, took out a tenancy on a few acres, all he could get, starting out without experience, moved up to Abbey on his second. My gain.’

  Book Four: The Duty and Destiny Series

  Chapter Five

  Trident was afloat, had been relaunched a fortnight before and was sat high in the water at the wharfside, copper showing a full fathom of bright new, shiny, untarnished plates. She was fresh painted, a yellow band on the hull with black portlids, looked all a ship should be, from a distance.

  Frederick stood with LeGrys on the roadside on the low river terrace twenty feet higher than the yard on the bend, where the deeper water came close to the shore. The river was less than a cable wide here, but the angle of the bend gave room and to spare to slowly move a ship in and out. There would be no need to set the boats to tow her, especially if he used the ebb tide, just after high, flowing but not too fast.

  “No ballast, no stores; guns aboard still, but no shot or powder; no water in the butts. Riding high. Gives a view of her lines underwater. Clean, too fine to have been English, I would have thought.”

  “According to my reading, sir, she was copied from a French ship captured in the Fifties. Built at Buckler’s Hard.”

  “Good – so often better, the French designs. Pity they can do so little with them. That is, in some ways a pity, now I think about it.”

  They paid off the post boys at the top, walked down the steep path directly to the wharf, Frederick stopping part way to make a play of taking off his cloak and adjusting hat and uniform coat, shooting cuffs and advertising his presence as well as he could without actually shouting a warning.

  “They know I’m due to take command this forenoon, David, should surely to God have seen that.”

  “There is a party at the side, sir – they have seen you.”

  Frederick squared his shoulders, marched forward to the gangplank. He had not wanted to arrive unannounced, to take a working ship by surprise, to cause an unnecessary embarrassment of his officers, the very few there might be aboard.

  Only the First Lieutenant and Master were there, accompanied by a party of twenty men, the Carpenter and Sailmaker included, judging by the tools about them. No obvious boatswain could be seen – perhaps he was elsewhere in the yard.

  “Backham, Sir Frederick, premier. Mr Nias is the Master.”

  Backham appeared old for the rank, fortyish at a glance, greying, very lean, gaunt almost, harshly lined. He was a head taller than Frederick, eyebrows a single, black, bad-tempered bar over a hawk nose, pale grey eyes and thin lips. He looked a hard, ungiving man, possibly too hard – all Firsts needed be feared as disciplinarians, but he might well be hated, could need a strong hand on the reins.

  Nias was shorter, equally lean but naturally spare, a small man rather than one thinned by harsh circumstance. He showed a friendly, easy smile on introduction.

  The ceremony of reading in was briefly completed – in front of so few people it would have been silly to try to make an occasion of it – and Backham made his preliminary report. He said that he and Nias had served in Trident on her final commission and had been invited to accompany her through the refit, a not unusual procedure, much preferable to half-pay for the poorer officer and giving a degree of freedom on shore, putting up at an inn at the Admiralty’s expense, it being impossible, normally, to sleep on board. For an unmarried officer, whose leaves, such as they were, would be spent in a cheap boarding house, a refitting ship was probably the nearest thing to true comfort he would experience in many years of war.

  “The normal problem with timbers, Sir Frederick. Straight, seasoned and knot-free wood no longer seems to exist in England, but we salvaged all that we could when she was cut down and our decks and bulwarks are, in fact, quite respectable. The standing rigging was at the end of its life, sir, and has not been replaced in anything like a satisfactory fashion – and no amount of complaining has served us. Likewise ballast – I have refused to accept shingle, have insisted on stone block or pig iron, neither of which has been forthcoming.”

  Nias took over to officially complain that the bread-room had not been fully metal lined, zinc sheeted as it had to be to keep the rats out.

  Neither man was rich – they had probably simply been unable to come up with the grease, had had to accept the yard’s leavings as a result.

  “Mr LeGrys – my confidential clerk, gentleman, will be senior of the midshipman’s mess - would you find the appropriate bodies and seek the solution for me?”

  “Certainly, sir. Yard foreman, master carpenter and rigger on the ground, as it were. Manager or owner also. Gold to the three, more subtle if the man in charge is the owner.”

  “He is, Mr LeGrys,” Backham said.

  “Do you know him well, Mr Backham?”

  “Not well, Mr LeGrys, he is a vulgar little beast – but he has a nephew, a brother’s boy of ten or eleven years…”

  “See to it, Mr LeGrys – take him aboard, if that is the price – if worst comes to worst we can always drown the little object!” Frederick kept a carefully straight face, was matched in solemnity by LeGrys.

  “If he is unsuited to a life at sea, sir, then none could be surprised if he failed to survive it.”

  LeGrys limped away, a quiet smile almost concealed – neither Backham nor Nias had been entirely certain they had been joking.

  “Remarkably spry, sir, for a young man with only the one leg working.”

  “Very brave, Mr Nias – he fights unceasingly. Wounded as an eleven year old on Carthage with me, ball in the hip, too high to cut.”

  They winced in sympathy – had seen enough of wounds and injuries to know exactly how much pain the boy had endured, how easy it would have been to give up and sit down.

  “Who is the bos’n? I do not see him here.”

  “None, sir,” Backham replied. “Died in a foolish, trivial sort of way last week, and the word from the Admiral is that he is to be replaced in Portsmouth. It was raining, sir, and he ran from ship across to the sheds there.” Backham pointed to the open-sided stores fifty yards away. “He slipped, fell awkwardly across one of the wedges, broke his back high up, was paralysed on the instant, could not breathe and suffocated within five minutes while we watched, able to do nothing for the poor man. A stupid way to go, sir – he fought at Camperdown, came out without a scratch and yet died like that!”

  “Most unfortunate, Mr Backham – it makes one wonder, does it not. A damned nuisance, too, not to have a bos’n when fitting out. Would you
take me round the ship, please, let me see everything before young Mr LeGrys calls me to meet the owner of the yard. Is my cabin fit for habitation?”

  “Yes, sir. Your cox’n and a very quiet, smart, polite man of colour arrived first thing with trunks and stores and set about fixing it to their satisfaction. Two other black men came with them, each a fathom across the shoulders and carrying a big musket apiece, reported themselves to be forecastle hands and sharpshooters.”

  “Marc and Jean – no other names between them, book them as Harris, was used to be slaves - now work my Home Farm when not at sea with me. Are my followers, of course. They are outstanding shots with their rifles. Bosomtwi is my personal steward, was named when the Hercule was taken, is rated able.”

  Backham nodded, the message taken – some stewards were no more than body servants, but Bosomtwi would be at the captain’s side in action or in his boat.

  Nias glanced up. “Beg pardon, sir, but is he the man with the grenadoes?”

  “Yes.”

  “I remember reading the letters, sir.”

  Backham did not and Nias promised to tell him all about it later.

  The captain’s cabin occupied some thirty feet of the stern, immediately below the quarterdeck, as always in a flush-decked ship, a quarter-gallery on either side. To larboard was used as wardrobe, washroom and seat of ease; starboard was stores, pantry and wine cellar, the whole considerably greater than normal for a fifth rate, a side effect of the razee. A hanging curtain partitioned a section off for sleeping but the bulk was working space, dominated by a built-in desk and swivel chair. There were no guns in the cabin, no need therefore to clear it for action, which led to much greater comfort for its occupant. There was a padded bench below the stern windows, the sole concession to relaxation in the whole space. Dining took place at the desk, which extended at need – only some third rates, and all second and firsts, assumed to be inhabited by admirals, had separate dining-cabins – fifth rates, however large, did not warrant such a luxury.