'It is usually Hollands on this coast, but I can't stand the stuff. This', he held up the bottle after lacing both their cups of tea, 'the rector of Waldringfield mysteriously acquires.'
'Here's to the confinement, James. Tell her to stay with Elizabeth when her time comes.'
'I will, and thank you. Here's to the ship.'
CHAPTER 12
David and Goliath
July-November 1812
What is it, Mr Gordon?' Drinkwater emerged on to the quarterdeck and clapped his hand to his hat as a gust of wind tore at his cloak.
'Hasty, sir; she's just fired a gun and thrown out the signal for a sail in sight.'
'Very well. Make Hasty's number and tell him to investigate.'
'Aye, aye, sir.'
Fishing for his Dollond glass Drinkwater levelled it at the small twenty-eight gun frigate bobbing on the rim of the horizon as they exchanged signals with her over the five miles of heaving grey Atlantic. Then he cast a quick look round the circumscribed circle of their visible horizon at the other ships of the squadron.
The little schooner Sprite clung to Patrician like a child to a parent, while two miles to leeward he could make out the thirty-eight gun, 18-pounder frigate Cymbeline, and beyond her the topsails of Icarus, a thirty-two, mounting 12-pounders on her gun deck.
'Hasty acknowledges, sir.'
Drinkwater swung back to Gordon and nodded. 'Very well. And now I think 'tis time we hoisted French colours with a gun to loo'ard, if you please, Mr Gordon.'
Midshipman Belchambers had anticipated the order, for it had long been known that they would close the American coast under an equivocal disguise. The red, white and blue bunting spilled from his arms as the assisting yeoman tugged at the halliards. Clear of the wind eddies about the deck, the tricolour snapped out clear of the bunt of the spanker and rose, stiff as a board, to the peak. The trio of officers watched the curiosity for a moment, then Drinkwater held his pocket-glass out to the midshipman.
'Up you go, Mr Belchambers. Keep me informed. We should sight land before sunset.' He hoped he sounded confident, instead of merely optimistic, for they had not obtained a single sight during the week the gale had prevailed.
The boom of the signal gun drowned Belchambers' reply, but he scampered away, tucking the precious spy-glass in his trousers and reaching for the main shrouds. Drinkwater stared at Hasty again as she shook out her topgallants. Captain Tyrell was very young, younger than poor Quilhampton, and he was inordinately proud of his command which, by contrast, was grown old, though of a class universally acknowledged as pretty. Drinkwater suspected a multitude of defects lurked beneath the paint, whitewash and gilded brightwork of her dandified appearance. Yet the young man in command seemed efficient enough, had understood the signals thrown out on their tedious passage across the Atlantic and handled his ship with every sign of competence. Perhaps he had a good sailing-master, Drinkwater thought, again turning his attention to the Sprite: they must be damnably uncomfortable aboard the schooner.
Sprite's commander was a different kettle of fish, a man of middle age whose commission as lieutenant was but two years old. Lieutenant Sundercombe had come up the hard way, pressed into the Royal Navy from a Guinea slaver whose mate he had been. He had languished on the lower deck for five years before winning recognition and being rated master's mate. There was both a resentment and a burning passion in the man, Drinkwater had concluded, which was doubtless due to his enforced service as a seaman. Maybe contact with the helpless human cargo carried on the middle passage had made him philosophical about the whims and vagaries of fate, maybe not. His most significant attribute as far as Drinkwater was concerned was his skill as a fore-and-aft sailor. His Majesty's armed schooner Sprite had been built in the Bahamas to an American design and attached to the squadron as a dispatch vessel.
As for the other frigates and their captains, the bluff and hearty Thorowgood of the Cymbeline and the stooped and consumptive Ashby of the Icarus, though as different as chalk from cheese in appearance, were typical of their generation. With the exception of Sundercombe and his schooner, in whose selection Drinkwater had enlisted Dungarth's influence, the histories of the younger men were unremarkable, their appointment to join his so-called 'flying squadron' uninfluenced by anything other than the Admiratlty's sudden fright at the depredations of Yankee privateers. None of them had seen action of any real kind, rising quickly through patronage or influence, and had been either cruising uneventfully in home waters or employed on convoy duties. Tyrell on the Irish coast where, in the Cove of Cork, he had been able to titivate his ship to his heart's content; and Thorowgood in the West Indies, where rum and women of colour seemed to have made a deep impression upon him. Ashby looked too frail to remain long in this world, though he possessed an admirable doggedness if his conduct in the recent gale was anything to go by, for Icarus had carried away her fore topmast shortly before sunset a few days earlier and had been separated from the rest of the squadron. The last that had been seen of her as she disappeared behind a grey curtain of rain was not encouraging. The violent line squall had dragged waterspouts from the surface of the sea and the wild sweep of lowering cloud had compelled them all to look to their own ships and shorten sail with alacrity. Patrician's raw crew, once more decimated by idleness and filled from every available and unsuitable source, had been hard-pressed for an hour.
Captain Ashby had fired guns to disperse a spout that threatened his frigate and these had been taken for distress signals. When the weather cleared, however, there was no sign of the Icarus, and though the squadron reversed course until darkness and then hove-to for the night, the dawn showed the three remaining frigates and the schooner alone.
'I suppose', Drinkwater had remarked as David Gordon returned to the deck shaking his head after sweeping the horizon from the masthead, 'our still being in company is a small miracle.'
But two days later Ashby's Icarus had hove over the eastern horizon, her damage repaired and a cloud of canvas rashly set, proving at least that she was a fast sailer and Ashby a resourceful man with a competent ship's company. Now, as the gale blew itself out and they closed the lee of the American coast, Drinkwater chewed over their prospects of success and the risky means by which he hoped to achieve it. His orders gave him wide discretion; the problem with such latitude was that his judgement was proportionately open to criticism.
'A sail, I hear, sir,' said Quilhampton, coming on deck and touching the fore-cock of his hat at the lonely figure jammed at the foot of the weather mizen rigging.
Drinkwater stirred out of his brown study. 'Ah, James, yes; Tyrell's gone to investigate and Belchambers is aloft keeping an eye on the chase.'
'I see we've the frog ensign at the peak ...'
'You disapprove?'
Quilhampton shrugged and cast his eyes upwards. 'I comprehend your reasoning, sir, it just feels damned odd ...'
'Any ruse that allows us time to gather intelligence is worth adopting.'
'Has Icarus gone off flying the thing, sir?'
'If he obeyed orders he has, yes.'
'Deck there!' Both officers broke off to stare upwards to where Belchambers swung against the monotone grey of the overcast, his arm outstretched. 'Land, sir, four points on the starboard bow!'
'What of the chase?' Drinkwater bellowed back.
'Looks like a schooner, sir, to the sou'westward. Hasty's hull down but I don't think he's gaining.'
'He won't against a Yankee schooner,' Drinkwater grumbled to his first lieutenant. 'Though Belchambers can't see it yet, she'll be tucked under the lee of the land there with a beam wind, damn it.' Drinkwater sighed, and made a hopeless gesture with his hand. 'I really don't know how best to achieve success…'
'I heard scores of Yankee merchantmen left New York on the eve of the declaration with clearances for the Tagus,' remarked Quilhampton.
'Aye, and we'll buy their cargoes, just to keep Wellington's army in the field, and issue licences for more, I daresay.
' He thought of the boasting finality he had threatened Captain Stewart with, calling up the iron ring of blockade to confound the American's airy theories of maritime war. Now the government in London showed every sign of pusillanimity in their desire not to interfere with supplies to the army in Spain. 'I wish to God the government would order a full blockade and bring the Americans to their senses quickly.'
'They misjudged the Yankee's temper,' agreed Quilhampton, 'thinking they would be content with the eventual rescinding of the Orders-in-Council.'
'Too little too late,' grumbled Drinkwater, 'and then David struck Goliath right betwixt the eyes…'
No further reference was necessary between the two men to conjure up in their minds the humiliations the despised Yankee navy had visited upon the proud might of the British. Before leaving Plymouth they had heard that Commodore Rodgers' squadron had sailed from New York on the outbreak of war and, though the commodore had missed the West India convoy, his ships had chased the British frigate Belvidera and taken seven merchantmen before returning to Boston. Furthermore the Essex had seized the troop transport Alert and ten other ships. They knew, too, that the USS Constitution had escaped a British squadron by kedging in a calm, and finally, a week or two later, she had brought His Britannic Majesty's frigate Guerrière to battle and hammered her into submission with devastating broadsides.
The latest edition of The Times they had brought with them from England was full of outrage and unanswered questions at this blow to Britannia's prestige. The defeat of a single British frigate was considered incomprehensible, outweighed Wellington's defeat of the French at Salamanca and obscured the news that Napoleon had entered Moscow. On their passage westward, Drinkwater had plenty of time to mull over the problems his discretionary orders had brought him. They contained a caution about single cruisers engaging 'the unusually heavily armed and built frigates of the enemy', and the desirability of 'drawing them down upon a ship-of-the-line', an admission of weakness that Drinkwater found shocking, if sensible, had a ship-of-the-line been within hail. Yet he had been under no illusion that with 'so powerful a force as four frigates' great things were expected of him, and was conscious that he sailed on detached service, not under the direct command of either Sawyer at Halifax or his successor, Sir John Borlase Warren, even then proceeding westwards like themselves.
Drinkwater had been close enough to Admiralty thinking in those last weeks before he sailed, when he cast about desperately for men to make up his ship's company again and the Admiralty dithered, to know of their Lordships' concern over Commodore Rodgers. The news that Rodgers had sailed with a squadron and had not dispersed his ships, added to the rumour that he had been after the West India convoy and had sailed almost within sight of the Scillies, had caused consternation at the Admiralty. To defend so many interests, the convoy routes from the West Indies, from India and the Baltic, the coastal trades and the distant fisheries and, by far the most important, the supply route to Lisbon and Wellington's Anglo-Portuguese army, meant the deployment of a disproportionate number of ships spread over a quarter of the world's oceans. Until Warren reached Halifax and organized some offensive operations with the inadequate resources in that theatre, Captain Drinkwater's scratch squadron was the only force able to mount offensive operations against the Americans. With a thousand men-of-war at sea the irony of the situation was overwhelming.
Drinkwater had twice posted up to London for consultations, briefings and last-minute modifications to his orders. Suddenly the fact that he was a senior captain fortuitously on hand to combat the alarming situation was not so flattering. Imbued with a sense of urgency, the difficulties the Admiralty experienced in scraping together the exigous collection of ships they had at last dignified with the name of 'flying squadron' seemed trivial; Drinkwater was more concerned with his lack of manpower.
Now, however, after the most pressing problem had been at least partially solved, the Admiralty's concern was understandable.
Byron of the Belvidera had reported well of the American squadron's abilities, though outraged he had been attacked without a warning that hostilities had commenced. His escape he had attributed to superior sailing, not knowing the true cause was the explosion of a gun in which Rodgers himself had been wounded. Drinkwater did not share the overweening assumption of superiority nursed by young bloods like Tyrell and Thorowgood. He was too old or too honest with himself not to harbour doubts. Even ship for ship, his squadron matched against a squadron of Yankees could, he admitted privately to himself, be bested.
If Stewart was anything to go by, the American navy did not lack men of temper and determination, young men, too, men with experience of waging war in the Mediterranean, three thousand miles from their nearest base.
'I think we should not regard the Americans with too much contempt, James,' he said, in summation of his thoughts.
But any concurrence from Quilhampton was cut short by Belchambers hailing the deck again.
'Hasty's broken off the chase, sir!'
'Where away is the chase herself?' Drinkwater shouted.
'Can't see her, sir.'
'He's lost her, by God,' snapped Quilhampton.
'She's fast, James,' Drinkwater said consolingly, 'don't blame Tyrell; I tell you these damned Yankees are going to give us all a confounded headache before we're through.'
Quilhampton's sigh of resignation was audible even above the noise of the wind in the rigging, though whether it was submission to Drinkwater's argument or his excuse for Tyrell's failure, Drinkwater did not know. He felt a twinge of pity for his friend; perhaps Quilhampton himself should be in command of Patrician, perhaps he would make a better job of the task ahead ...
Well,' Quilhampton said, breaking into Drinkwater's gloom, 'at least we've got Warren taking over from that old fart Sawyer at Halifax.'
'Yes. I knew Sir John once, when I was master's mate in the cutter Kestrel. He had command of a flying squadron just after the outbreak of war with France…'
Odd he made that distinction between war with France and war with the United States, when he knew it was all part of the same, interminable struggle.
'Warren had some of the finest frigates in the navy with him, the Flora, the Melampus, the Diamond under Sir Sydney Smith, Nagle's Artois and the Arethusa under Pellew ...'
'And look what we've got,' grumbled Quilhampton, watching Hasty approach. 'Not a bloody Pellew in sight...'
The little sixth-rate bore down towards them. They could see the French ensign at Hasty's gaff, before losing sight of it behind the bellying bunt of her topsails. As she surged past, to dodge under Sprite's stern and come round again in Patrician's wake, Captain Tyrell stood on her rail and raised his hat. Drinkwater acknowledged the salute and felt the wind nearly carry his own into the sea running in marbled green and white between the two frigates.
'Too fast for us, sir!' he heard Tyrell hail, 'A privateer schooner by the look of her. She ran like smoke!'
Drinkwater waved his hat in acknowledgement. It was no more, nor anything less than he had expected.
'The problem is, where to start,' Drinkwater said, leaning over the chart. 'It would be a simple matter if my orders were to blockade the Chesapeake…'
'I'm damned if I know why they aren't, sir,' Quilhampton fizzed.
'It isn't government policy, James, at least not yet. Warren has a damnably difficult job, but he must maintain American supplies to the Tagus. Such a policy may, if we are lucky, promote sentiments of opposition to President Madison who has to maintain at least the illusion of not coming in on the French side in the peninsula. Warren will do his best to foment this discord by appealing to American mercantile avarice and issuing licences.'
'I see,' said Quilhampton, looking at his commander and thinking him unusually well-informed and then remembering the summonses, post-haste, to London from Plymouth. 'On the other hand Yankee avarice will be fired by the vision of plundering our trade,' protested Quilhampton, coming to terms with the enormous compl
exities Madison's declaration of war had caused. 'And we know the Americans have skilful seamen aplenty, men trained in the mercantile marine...?'
'Who know exactly where to intercept our trade.' Drinkwater overrode Quilhampton's exposition. 'And our task is to sweep — an apt verb for a copying clerk to apply, if impossible to obey in practice — to sweep the seas for American privateers…'
'With a handful of elderly frigates that can't catch a cold in a squall of rain, let alone a Baltimore schooner on or off the wind.' Quilhampton's protesting asides were meant to be signals of sympathy; they only served to irritate Drinkwater. Or was he annoyed because, all unbidden, his eyes were drawn to the legend Potomac on the chart. He fell silent and, watching his face, Quilhampton knew from experience that his expression presaged an idea which, in its turn, would lather a plan. He shifted tack, moved to noises of positive encouragement.
'Of course with good visibility we can form a line abreast to cover fifty miles of sea and if we conduct such a sweep, at a local point of trade, a point at which these smart Yankee skippers will reason they can best intercept a homeward convoy...'
'Yes, but which homeward convoy, James?' Drinkwater snapped, his voice suddenly vibrant with determination.
'Well, the West India trade, sir,' Quilhampton said, riffling through the other charts on the table and drawing out a second one. 'Now the hurricane season is over, I suggest—here.' He stabbed his finger at the northern end of the Florida Strait, where the Gulf Stream favoured homeward ships, but where the channel between the coast and the Great Bahama Banks narrowed to less than sixty miles. 'With the Sprite to increase our scouting front,' went on Quilhampton, 'we could almost completely cover the strait.' He paused, then added, 'Though I suppose we need her in the centre of the line to let slip like a hound and tie down any privateers until we can come up in the frigates.' Pleased with himself, he looked up at Drinkwater.
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