The flying squadron nd-11

by Ричард Вудмен

  Volubly protesting, Vansittart's valet Copford had scooped up his master's silver-mounted mirror and brushes, his jade pomade pot and writing-case, together with his books, papers and dispatch box, before the coarse hands of the seamen threw them unceremoniously into a spare chest Mr Gordon, just then officer of the watch, had thoughtfully sent down. The chest of drawers and washstand vanished before Vansittart's eyes and he was left contemplating two huge, 24-pounder cannon of whose existence he had only hitherto been vaguely aware. At that moment, sent from the quarterdeck above, Mr Midshipman Porter had plucked at his sleeve.

  'Captain's compliments, sir, and would you care to join him on the quarterdeck.'

  It sounded neither complimentary, nor a question; beneath its formal veneer it was a command and it irritated Vansittart. He had only just mastered sea­sickness; now the wretched comforts of what passed at sea for civilization had been rudely snatched from him and this greasy, red-faced boy was dancing impatiently round like an imp.

  'Damn it,' he began, choking the protest off in a masterly effort to retain his sang froid before Porter. He had nowhere else to go and he was now being rudely jostled as the powder monkeys ran about the place and the seamen round the guns stretched tackles and hefted rammers and sponges. Mr Gordon appeared, his hanger bouncing belligerently upon his left hip, gesticulating, Vansittart observed, with a hand wanting two fingers. The normally mild officer had a gleam in his eye that lent force to his 'If you please, sir ...' which dissolved into a shout at his gunners. 'Clear away there, starbowlines, look lively and beat those lubbers to larboard.'

  'Careful, damn your eyes,' snarled Porter at a passing landsman who slopped water from his pail over Vansittart's feet. 'This way, sir...'

  And Vansittart bowed to the inevitable and allowed himself to be drawn, squelching miserably in sodden shoes, on to the quarterdeck.

  For three-quarters of an hour he wondered what all the fuss had been about. On deck, he could no longer see the main batteries properly, though he caught glimpses of activity beneath the boat booms in the waist. The upper-deck gunners manning the quarterdeck 18-pounders seemed to squat idly round their guns for some time while a tirade of shouted orders in which the clipped voices of Frey and Gordon, each in charge of a 24-pounder battery on the gun deck, were interspersed with shouted exhortations from Mr Metcalfe.

  The first lieutenant's most offensive weapon was a silver hunter which he consulted with maddening and incomprehensible regularity, dictating numerous time intervals to Porter who ran after him with a slate as he went from waist to quarterdeck and back, pausing now and again to make some remark to Captain Drinkwater.

  The captain appeared to take very little interest in the proceedings but stood by what Vansittart was now able to identify with some pride as the mizen weather rigging, addressing the occasional remark to Mr Wyatt, whose face bore a sort of disdain for the present activity. Vansittart knew Wyatt was specifically charged with the frigate's navigation and supposed it was some esoteric point on this to which he and Drinkwater referred.

  Periodically there was an awful rumbling from below which Vansittart felt most through the soles of his feet, but it did not appear to affect the men on the upper deck. Quite mystified as to what was happening and ignored by all who might otherwise have enlightened him, Vansittart was compelled to wait foolishly for an explanation.

  In the event he was saved the trouble, for after half an hour Metcalfe ran up from the waist, stared at his watch, referred to Porter's slate, muttered something to Drinkwater, and turned his attention to the quarterdeck guns.

  Silence was called for and the 18-pounders that had been cleared away earlier were brought to a state of readiness. Metcalfe excitedly called out a stream of orders at which the gunners, with varying degrees of verisimilitude and enthusiasm for so dumb a show, leapt around their pieces. The cause of the rumbling was swiftly revealed as the 18-pounders were run out through their open ports. On the command 'Point!' the gun-captains kneeled beside the breeches of their brute black charges, squinted along the sights and ordered the carriages slewed, adjusting the elevation at the same time. Vansittart looked in vain for a mark, concluded correctly that it was a sham since no boat had put out from the ship, neither had she been manoeuvred, and watched with increasing fascination. Each gun-captain drew away from his gun, raised one hand in signal while the other grasped the lanyard of his fire-lock. When the row of hands had all gone up, Metcalfe yelled 'Fire!' and there was an anti-climactic click as flint sparked ineffectually against steel.

  Having repeated this procedure with both quarterdeck batteries and then the half-dozen 42-pounder slide-mounted carronades on the forecastle, Metcalfe trotted back to Drinkwater.

  'Very well,' Vansittart overheard the captain say, 'you may load powder.'

  For the next few minutes Vansittart's ear-drums were assailed by the battering thunder of the guns. Clouds of acrid grey smoke swept over him and he was dimly aware, through the sudden, bright flashes that pierced the smoke, of dark objects hurled from the guns, first to starboard and then to larboard. At last they fell silent and Drinkwater turned towards him, the infuriatingly amused yet somehow attractive smile playing about his mouth.

  'The noise disturbs you, Mr Vansittart?'

  'A little, I confess,' Vansittart said, feeling more than a trifle foolish.

  'They were only half-charges, don't you know, to conserve powder. I get no allowance from the Navy Board, damn them.'

  'And you fired them at no mark?' Vansittart asked in an attempt to appear knowledgeable. 'I mean you did not intend the shot to hit anything?' He thought of the black dots he had seen in the centre of the discharges.

  'No, no, no, we fired at no mark and shot off nothing more offensive then the wads

  'But I saw ...'

  'Oakum wadding, nothing more. The only ball you see, they say, is the one heading directly towards you, and I hope it won't come to that, eh?'

  'Oh.' Vansittart's tone was crestfallen.

  Drinkwater felt sorry for the diplomat.' 'Tis too lively to try at a target. If the wind falls light I will put out a boat, but the men are untried, a mixture, rough and uncoordinated as is usual at the beginning of a commission. At first it is essential, a moment please ...'

  Drinkwater broke off his explanation to attend to Mr Belchambers. Vansittart could not hear what passed between them, but the midshipman's face was dark and Drinkwater's bore a look of disquiet when he turned back to resume.

  'At first it is essential to ensure the gun-crews operate in a disciplined manner and serve their guns correctly. One cannot afford mistakes in the heat of battle. You have doubtless seen an excited sportsman loose off a ramrod at game birds, well the same thing may happen here. Perhaps worse. A new charge thrust hastily into an unsponged gun may result in a premature discharge in which the carriage recoils over a gun-captain engaged in clearing a vent.' He paused, then added, 'As it is, one man is suffering from crushed fingers.'

  'Mr Belchambers ... ?'

  Drinkwater nodded. 'Yes, he brought me word of it. I ordered the powder largely to gratify the hands. Prolonged dumb show is useful, but nothing makes 'em concentrate like gunpowder. Now I'm doubting the wisdom of my own action.' A rueful expression crossed the captain's face and he smiled. 'A pity,' he concluded.

  Drinkwater turned away. Metcalfe was hovering with his insufferable watch, demanding the captain's attention. Vansittart cast about him. Already the guns were resecured and the pipes twittered at the hatchways with their appalling raucous squealing. Suddenly, as the cry 'Up spirits!' went round the ship, Vansittart was aware of a strange buzz, as of a swarm of bees, and realized it was the ship's company, mustering for their daily issue of grog. For the first time since he had stepped on board, Mr Vansittart felt inexplicably easier about his situation.

  He went below. Miraculously his cabin had reappeared. Copford was laying his toiletries on the chest of drawers. He looked white and drawn.

  'Where the devil were you?
' Vansittart asked.

  'With the surgeon, sir. In what's called the cockpit. Full o' knives and saws it were, an' they brought some young cully down with his hand all bloody ...'

  It was not with the intention of holding a post-mortem that Drinkwater invited his officers to dinner that afternoon. It occurred to him that the time was ripe, both on account of the weather and the fact that the gunnery exercise had been a corporate act different from the heaving and hauling, the pumping and sheer drudgery necessary to clear the chops of the Channel. Whatever its failings, it had been the first step in shaking his crew together as the ship's company of a man-o'-war.

  Looking at his officers as they silently sipped their soup, nervously adjusting to the unaccustomed luxury of his cabin, Drinkwater wondered what they feared about him, for their lack of chatter was awesome. Frey might have lightened the mood with his familiarity, but Frey had the deck and Drinkwater had not invited any representatives from the gunroom. He would break his fast with the midshipmen tomorrow morning. For the nonce it was his officers with whom he wished to become better acquainted and their present quiescence was vaguely worrying. Did he intimidate them?

  It had come upon him, on recent mornings as he shaved, that he was ageing. He had no idea why this sudden realization of the obvious had struck him so forcibly. Perhaps it was the return to the cares and concerns of command after months of indolence, perhaps no more than the half-light that threw his face into stark relief as he peered at his image in the mirror. Whatever the cause, he had had a glimpse of himself as others saw him. Did that grim visage with its scarred cheek and the powder burns tattooed into one eyelid intimidate?

  In repose he wondered what expression he habitually wore. Elizabeth had told him that his face brightened when he smiled. Did he not smile enough? Did he wear a perpetual scowl upon the quarterdeck?

  He looked down the twin lines of officers, bending over their soup, concentrating on their manners lest it slop into their white-breeched laps. At the far end of the table Metcalfe laid his soup-spoon in his plate and Mullender loomed up at his shoulder. Others followed suit, the chink of silver upon china the only sound in the cabin, if one set aside the wracking groans of the frigate's fabric, the low grind of the rudder and the surge and hiss of the sea beneath the windows.

  The handsome Gordon and the thin-faced chaplain, Simpson, the ruddy Wyatt, the elegant Moncrieff, the purser and the surgeon remained disappointingly unanimated.

  'Well, gentlemen,' Drinkwater said, laying down his own soup-spoon, 'what is your judgement of the temper of the men following our exercise at the guns this morning?'

  If he had hoped to bring them from their tongue-tied awkwardness by the question, he was sadly disappointed. He sensed an invisible restraint upon them, a disquieting influence, and looked from one to another for some evidence of its source.

  'Come, surely someone has an opinion? I never knew a wardroom where criticism of one sort or another was not lavished upon someone.' His false attempt at levity provoked no wry grins. He tried again. 'Mr Gordon, how did the men at your battery respond?'

  'Well, sir,' Gordon faltered, shot a glance at the other end of the table and coloured, coughing. The blond lick of his hair fell forward and he threw it back. 'Well, sir, they were well enough, I believe.' He was oddly nervous. 'Their timing improved. According to the first lieutenant...'

  'They did well enough, sir, for our first exercise,' broke in Metcalfe stridently. 'The starbowlines were faster than those on the port side and loosed both their broadsides in seventy-nine seconds…'

  Drinkwater was fascinated. The riddle, if he judged aright, was solved by the presence of Metcalfe. Yet these younger men were not intimidated by the first luff, merely silent in his company, as if to speak invited some response. Belittlement perhaps? A mild but persistent humiliation? Did they simply choose not to speak in Metcalfe's presence? Was the man a tyrant in the wardroom? He was clearly a fussy and fossicking individual. It was interesting, too, to hear Metcalfe trot out the word 'port' instead of larboard. True, its usage was gaining ground in the Service, but something in Metcalfe's tone endowed the word with fashionable éclat, and more than a little bombast.

  'But did you mark any change in their mood, Mr Gordon?'

  'You mean after the exercise as compared with before, sir?'

  'Yes, exactly.' Drinkwater was aware of a faint air of frustration in his tone.

  'They were…'

  'A damned sight smarter at the conclusion.' Metcalfe finished the sentence and Drinkwater detected the corporate affront passing through the officers like a gust of wind through dry grass. Moncrieff, resplendent in the scarlet of the marines, threw himself back in his chair. It might have been for the benefit of Mullender, just then serving them all with thick slices of roast pork, but conveyed a different significance to the vigilant Drinkwater.

  'I thought them to be much more cheerful, don't you know. As though they enjoyed loosin' off the cannon.'

  Drinkwater turned to the speaker, Henry Vansittart, sitting on his right-hand side and whose presence Drinkwater had ignored in his preoccupation. He might, he thought with sudden guilt, have prompted a conversation with poor Vansittart whom, he knew, felt gauche among these tarpaulin jacks. Vansittart's assessment was exactly what he had hoped Gordon would say, and judging from the mute nods of concurrence, was at least sensed by most of them.

  'Oh, they like their bangs, all right, sir.' Wyatt's contribution fell like a brick into a still pool and Drinkwater was glad of it, inapproriate though it was. 'They'll give the Yankees something to remember, never you fear.'

  'I do hope it doesn't come to that, Mr..., oh dear, forgive me ...' Vansittart floundered and Drinkwater hoped his diplomatic skills were not demonstrated by his inability to remember the master's name.

  'Wyatt, Mr Vansittart, Wyatt.'

  'Of course, of course, how foolish ...'

  Wyatt pronounced the name like 'fancy-tart' and thereby brought a smile to the faces of the diners. Drinkwater was sorry for Vansittart, but glad of the joke. 'I agree with Mr Vansittart,' he said, trying not to make the pronounciation of the name too obviously correct. 'As for their fighting ability, we shall see, depending upon our luck. However, we may try them at a mark if we are becalmed, which reminds me, Mr Moncrieff, your marines must be put to some target practice. Tomorrow do you let 'em loose on the bottles we empty today.'

  Moncreiff opened his mouth to reply but was prevented.

  'Capital idea, sir.'

  'I'm glad you approve, Mr Metcalfe,' Drinkwater replied, and was delighted at catching the exchange of hastily suppressed grins between Gordon and Moncrieff. He had certainly learnt more about them than they about him.

  'Perhaps, Mr Vansittart, you could enlighten us all as to the current state of relations between ourselves and the United States of America. Do I take it from your reaction to Mr Wyatt's bellicose assertion that we are anxious to avoid a conflict with our quondam cousins?'

  'Damme yes, sir. Most emphatically. Whilst I don't doubt for a moment the temper of your men, it would place an insupportable burden on the Ministry to engage in hostilities with them.'

  'I think it might place an insupportable burden on His Majesty's Navy,' Drinkwater added, thinking of the difficulties they had experienced manning Patrician.

  'Aye,' put in Metcalfe, 'we have squadrons in almost every corner of the world in addition to the Channel Fleet. To raise another, or reinforce the ships at Halifax ...'

  'Plans are afoot to send Rear-Admiral York out with four seventy-fours and a brace of frigates, I believe,' Drinkwater said, 'though I agree that this would be insufficient for a blockade, and if we contemplate war then we must enforce a blockade.'

  'What force is the American navy?' Moncrieff derided.

  'Small, lad,' said Wyatt, helping himself to more wine, 'but they will issue letters-of-marque and have privateers shoaling like herrings.'

  'Oh, come Wyatt, privateers ...'

  'Enough of 'em and
they'll pick our bones clean, snap up our trade. Don't despise the Yankees. Remember the Little Belt …'

  'That was a damned outrage,' protested Metcalfe vehemently, alluding to the unprovoked attack made by the American frigate President upon the smaller British sloop, 'a deliberate provocation ...'

  'What tommy-rot and nonsense, it was a case of mistaken identity...'

  'The principal aim of British policy', Vansittart broke in, aware that his lecture, hitherto the only means of ascendancy he had gained over the frigate's officers, had been seized by his audience, 'is to avoid provocation. That is why the offence committed by the President was allowed to pass ...'

  'To our eternal shame,' interrupted Metcalfe.

  'Sometimes it is necessary to swallow a little pride, Mr Metcalfe,' Vansittart said, 'in order to guide the conduct of affairs. Some sea-officers consider themselves so far in the vanguard of matters that they rashly compromise our endeavours. Take Humphries of the Leopard, for instance, when he engaged the Chesapeake; he scarcely endeared us to the Americans.'

  'Oh, damn the Jonathans,' snapped Wyatt, out of patience with the pettifoggings of diplomacy. 'They poach our seamen and must be made to spit 'em out again, given a ... what the deuce d'ye call it, Bones?' Wyatt turned to the surgeon.

  'An expectorant, I think you mean,' Pym answered drily, adding, "tis all very well to take men out of Yankee merchant ships, God knows we do it enough to our own, but to attempt to do so out of a foreign man-o'-war and then fire into her when she won't comply ...'

  The allusion to Captain Humphries' action provoked Wyatt further: 'That's what the buggers deserved! You call 'em foreign, by God! They were no more than damned rebels!' Wyatt protested, dividing the camp. There was a rising tide of argument into which Vansittart plunged.

  'They are most certainly not, Mr Wyatt! You'll please to recall they are a legitimately established sovereign state, what ever memories you older gentlemen have of the American War.'

  Drinkwater's grin was still-born; he was one of those 'older men'.