Reefs and Shoals l-18

by Dewey Lambdin

  There were light articles of cargo on the barge’s deck, containing live chickens and layer hens, some squealing piglets, and sides of fresh-slaughtered beef in jute sacks, sacks of flour and cornmeal, and casks of spirits, along with wooden cases of goods for the officers’ wardroom, the Mids’ cockpit, and the captain’s cabins.

  Lewrie stood idle by the mizen mast shrouds to look down into her. The barge was closer to fifty feet on the range of the deck than his earlier estimate of fourty, very wide-beamed, and flush-decked with a single cargo hatch between her masts, and smaller crew hatches at bow and stern. Her master was White, as was her helmsman, though the rest of the small crew were Black, most likely slaves.

  “We’ll have the light goods, first,” Bosun Sprague bellowed to the barge crew. “Lines comin’ down, and we’ll drag them up the loading skids.”

  “Is she about the same size as the barges you saw at Savannah, Mister Cadbury?” Lewrie asked the Purser as he stood on the quarterdeck with a ledger book and a pencil, to cheek off each bought item as it came aboard.

  “About average, sir,” Cadbury told him. “There are some smaller, thirty or thirty-five feet or so,” Cadbury told him. “I would say that this one is representative of the bulk of the barge trade. Many of them serve plantations and hamlets up the river, as well. As for the barges you noted leaving port last evening, sir, they may have been bound for the Sea Island plantations landings, for the channels behind the islands.”

  “Out to sea just long enough to enter Wassaw or Ossabaw Sounds, then go up the other rivers?” Lewrie asked, leaning most “lubberly” on the bulwarks where the quarterdeck ended and the larboard sail-tending gangway began, with his arms crossed.

  “Very likely, sir,” Mr. Cadbury agreed with a primly happy expression, glad to be of assistance. “While I am not a ‘scaly fish’ of experienced seamanship, this barge does strike me that its upper rails are tall enough to weather a stiff beat to weather, well heeled over, long enough at least for a short sea journey from one sound to the next.”

  “As beamy as a Dutch lugger, aye,” Lewrie judged, “so she’d be quick to make leeway. And, from here, it doesn’t look as if her hold is all that deep. She might not draw much more than seven or eight feet. Mister Rossyngton? Are you ready, sir?”

  “Aye, sir,” their slyest and cheekiest Midshipman eagerly said.

  “Then pray do go on and be all boyish curiosity,” Lewrie told him. Rossyngton dodged a crate of chickens and several sacks of meal to the open larboard entry-port and did a quick scramble down the man-ropes and battens to hop aboard the barge, ostensibly to oversee the ship’s working-party who would strap up the heavier items of cargo and prepare them to be hoisted aboard with the main course yard as a crane.

  “And when you were on the docks, Mister Cadbury, did you see or hear anything odd?” Lewrie further asked, turning to face the Purser once more.

  “Well, not really, sir,” Cadbury replied, half his attention on the goods coming up in a cargo net, and eager to go down to the waist to check items off. “I saw no war-like goods, beyond a few kegs of gunpowder in the chandleries, a brass swivel gun or two, but nothing in sufficient bulk to draw any suspicions. Of course, even in peacetime, merchant ships of any worth carry some armament for their protection.”

  “How very true,” Lewrie replied, though thinking that it was a rare ship’s master who would put up much of a fight if he found that he could not out-run or out-sail a pirate or privateer.

  “Compared to the reception we got in Charleston, sir,” Cadbury happily burbled on after checking off two more crates, “I found that Savannah’s merchants were much more agreeable.”

  “No French ships anchored in port, most-likely,” Lewrie said. “No one to show off to.”

  “I gather that it has been a month of Sundays since any Royal Navy ship has called here, so I and my party were looked upon as something of a raree, sir,” Cadbury told him. “The gentleman with whom I arranged these goods, sir, a fellow named Treadwell, when he heard that a British Navy shore party was in his establishment, came out to speak with me, personally, and was hospitality itself, even treating me to a glass of Rhenish, and when he heard that you had requested me to find you a crock of aged corn whisky, he was that eager to turn up five gallons of what he assured me was the very best Kentucky!”

  “Not too dear, I trust,” Lewrie said.

  “A most equitable price, sir,” Cadbury replied, naming a sum that didn’t make Lewrie wince or suck his teeth. “A very striking man, is Mister Treadwell. Most fashionably dressed in the latest new London style, much as we saw back home before sailing, and… he’s no older than you, sir, but has the most remarkable head of silver-white hair. I took it at first for a wig, but, upon closer inspection, it proved to be his own… very full and curly. All the more striking, given his deep tan. Well set-up, of a lean but muscular build, almost six feet in height.”

  “White hair?” Lewrie asked with a puzzled frown. “Did he get scared out of his wits once, d’ye imagine, Mister Cadbury?”

  “When he noticed me looking, Mister Treadwell explained that he had once been pale blond, but, spending so much time at sea or upon the rivers hereabouts, bare-headed in the sun, when he was making his fortune, it gradually turned silvery-white, and there’s no one that could explain it for him.”

  “Uhmm, how many o’ these barges does he own, d’ye expect, Mister Cadbury?” Lewrie asked, thinking that the only youngish people whose hair had turned white so early were pink-eyed albinos, and most of those in the circuses.

  “A fair parcel, I would expect, sir,” Cadbury answered. “For I think there were at least half a dozen lading or un-lading at his wharf whilst I was there, and, on our way down-river, I spotted several others. All fly a white burgee with a blue star, like a company house flag… just as this one does, sir.”

  “The barging trade ’twixt Tybee Roads and the city,” Lewrie mused aloud, “up-river to the inland towns. Perhaps out to sea for the island plantations?”

  “Very possibly, sir,” Cadbury agreed. “Excuse me, sir, but if you will spare me, I must see to the kegs as they come aboard.”

  “Very well, Mister Cadbury, carry on,” Lewrie allowed, pushing off the bulwarks and pacing down the gangway to look more closely into the barge’s hold, which looked to be a tad deeper than his first estimation, suitable for bulk cargoes such as rice or cotton or tobacco in loads large enough to make each barge able to carry several tons at a time… so it would not take dozens of them to service one vessel. And, he surmised, that to own too many barges to do the work would be too expensive to maintain, with too many masters and crewmen to hire, or slaves to clothe and feed, to make the trade pay.

  A working-party of Reliant ’s sailors were grouped round the entry-port and the stout loading skids forward of that, crowding the gangway impassable, so Lewrie stepped back out of their way and slowly paced to amidships of the quarterdeck, where Mr. Caldwell, the Sailing Master, was taking the air and using a wee pocket-knife to sharpen a set of lead pencils.

  “Seen their like, Mister Caldwell… the barges?” Lewrie asked him.

  “In almost every port in the world, sir,” Caldwell jovially replied. “Or, something akin. Boats the size of the one alongside could fit into the coasting trade back home quite easily, even serve as water or supply hoys to the Channel Fleet ships on the French blockade. Stout, slow, and clumsy, but sea-kindly even in a good blow.”

  “So, one like this ’un could make a passage from here to the sounds, or Brunswick, with no trouble?” Lewrie posed.

  “I wouldn’t think so, unless they were caught on a lee shore in a full gale, sir, or a hurricane, which are known to strike these shores,” Caldwell said, sure of his conviction, and, since the question had nothing to do with Reliant ’s work on the open sea or guiding her up the Savannah River, did not draw upon his chief duties. Then, he would be much more cautious in his conclusions. The prospect of a whole day more at anchor was just gravy to Mr
. Caldwell, with nothing to do, and lots of idle time to catch up on his sleep. “I gather you suspect that Savannah is the likeliest port you’ve seen so far, sir?”

  “It is,” Lewrie said, clasping his hands in the small of his back. “It has the most extensive barge traffic, a lot more than Wilmington. Charleston’s wharves are so handy to the sea that there’s no need for them, and ’twixt here and Charleston, there’s not enough big ships puttin’ in that need ’em, either. All the sounds, inlets, and rivers South of here, though… so many islands and back channels… all the way to the Saint Mary’s and the Saint John’s rivers in Spanish Florida, that, if someone didn’t mind takin’ French or Spanish gold, he could keep ’em supplied, on the sly, very easily.”

  “Well, there’s still the matter of what the privateers do with their prizes, sir,” Caldwell mused with his head cocked over in puzzlement. “Slipping the Frogs and Dons supplies might pay well, but the real money’s won at a Prize Court. Perhaps forged American registry papers would be safer to sell than taking them into Savannah for sale as legitimately owned ships, but…”

  “Which wouldn’t be accepted by a Prize Court like Havana, and wouldn’t fetch much from Spaniards lookin’ t’buy a ship or two,” Lewrie huffed, fed up with the whole business. He didn’t know a blessed thing, and it looked most unlikely that he’d learn a whit more.

  Admiralty should’ve sent someone else, he glumly thought; in a handier ship for inshore work, and a lot more wits and guile! Did I suit ’em ’cause I could flash my bloody star and sash and awe the Yankee Doodles into confessin’?

  “Well, it all seems beyond me, Mister Caldwell,” Lewrie said as he shook his head wearily. “I think I’ll take myself below for a long ponder… or a sulk, whichever comes first!”

  “We’ll get to the bottom of it, eventually, sir, no error,” the Sailing Master said with a hopeful note to his voice.

  Pettus and Jessop were cleaning the sash-windows in the transom and both quarter-galleries when Lewrie entered his cabins, with young Jessop perched on a sill, and the upper half of one window down onto his lap, with his arse hanging over the stern.

  Lewrie thought to find some peace and quiet, but with supplies coming aboard, Reliant was echoing to various thuds, booms, screaks, and rumbles as the heavier items of cargo were swung up out of the barge and over the gangways and thumped to the deck in the waist, and then lowered down to be stowed on the orlop deck, some items lowered down steep ladderways, a deck at a time, with much stamping of feet and groans from sailors.

  After about an hour of brooding over his desk with a sheet of blank paper, an open inkwell, and a steel-nib pen in hand with nought to show for it, the din finally ceased, and the Marine sentry banged his musket butt on the deck, calling “Midshipman Rossyngton, SAH!”

  “Enter,” Lewrie gloomily answered.

  “Beg to report, sir!” Rossyngton said with a happy grin.

  “Go on, sir,” Lewrie bade him.

  “I struck up a conversation with the master of the barge and his mate, sir, the mate being a fellow not much older than me. He was curious about our ship, and what sailing round the world is like, so I struck up a good conversation. They work for a rich merchant in Savannah by name of Treadwell. He does a lot of the barge traffic, and owns more than a dozen or so, all sizes, as well as some small brigs in the coasting trade, and a brace of bigger ones that sail as far as Baltimore and Philadelphia, in season, to garner a fair portion of Northern imports to Georgia. The mate my age is looking forward to sailing in one of those someday, sir.

  “I asked if he ever got out to sea, even for a bit, or was he limited to the river trade, and he said that he’d been down South as far as Cumberland Sound, a time or two, sir,” Rossyngton went on, nigh breathlessly. “He’s put into Brunswick and most of the Sea Islands. When I asked if he’d had trouble with shoals and such, he told me that most barges, like the one alongside, only draw seven or eight feet if fully burthened, and they’re built with very stout bottoms and ‘quick-work’ so if they do touch a shoal, they can usually work off, without much damage.

  “But, when I got round to asking about Cumberland Sound and the Saint Mary’s River, the master rounded on us and ordered him to get back to work, and went ‘cutty-eyed’ on me, sir,” Rossyngton exclaimed. “Glared daggers at me, he did, and asked me flat-out what my interest was in where they went!”

  “And how did you finesse that, Mister Rossyngton?” Lewrie said, feeling a rising excitement, but crossing the fingers of his right hand under the desk, in hopes that young Rossyngton had a deal more cleverness than he had.

  “Well, sir,” Midshipman Rossyngton replied with a sly grin, “I told him that I’d heard some of the older hands speak of seeing alligators as big as cutters, white dolphins and sea cows that can walk out on land at night when they were on this coast, and how I wanted to go and have a look round, and meet the blue-eyed Red Indians said to live in the woods… and how their young women… welcome sailors.”

  Rossyngton had the good grace to blush a bit.

  Lewrie cocked his head to one side and chuckled.

  “He told me I was a damn-fool ‘younker’, sir, and should not be listening to old sailors’ yarns, or put any stock in them. After that, he wasn’t talkative, but I don’t think he took my questions as prying, but, who knows, sir?” Rossyngton concluded with a hapless shrug.

  “Loath to let on whether he’s been in Cumberland Sound, or up the Saint Mary’s, was he?” Lewrie responded with a hopeful smile. “On his employer’s secret business? Perhaps because he has, and that business is to stay a guarded secret. Damn my eyes, Mister Rossyngton, but, unless that master did tumble to your ploy, that was well done on your part! Well done, indeed!” Lewrie thumped a fist on his desk.

  “Thank you, sir!”

  “We might not yet know just what is goin’ on South of here, but, it sounds suspicious enough to warrant further inspection. Now we have a name, this Treadwell, one shipping company to suspect, and we might’ve narrowed our area to search to something manageable,” he told Rossyngton, who was all but polishing his fingernails on his uniform coat’s lapels in self-congratulation.

  “Most happy to have been of service, sir,” Rossyngton said.

  “Thank you, sir, and you may go,” Lewrie said, rising. “I have some scheming to do.”

  He went to the sideboard in the dining coach and poured himself a tall glass of cool tea, then entered the wee chart space to peruse the American-made chart that spanned from Savannah to the St. John’s River in Spanish Florida, looking for “hidey-holes” off the channels into the sounds, and places with sufficient depth where a privateer that drew ten-to-fourteen feet could find shelter, either a schooner or a small brig. A raider, and a prize or two that she’d taken? Any merchant ship cut out of one of the big trade convoys might draw as much water as his own frigate, fully laden, so he had to widen his search, and reject the shallow channels behind the many islands.

  Thank God for cheeky, “sauce-pot” Midshipmen! Lewrie thought, humming to himself; I can bring the squadron back here and stop that Treadwell’s business. Is he the guilty one? Must be! In league with that arse Hereford? Damme, but I wish! This could be wrapped up and done by mid-Summer.

  Lewrie felt a sudden daunting moment, though, wryly recalling that whenever he’d thought he had all the answers in the past, Dame Fortune had always found a way to kick him in the fundament.

  But, what can go wrong with this’un, this time? he asked the aether; Or, is that askin’ too damned much?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  His dreaded come-down, that “kick in the fundament” came not a day later as HMS Reliant butted her way South against the currents of the Gulf Stream to meet with the small consorts of the squadron. It came from the First Officer, Lt. Westcott.

  “Seems to me, though, sir, that strongly suspecting where the privateers are being victualled by this Treadwell fellow, if indeed it is he who is in collusion with them, and nabbing the
m in the act, are two different things entirely, sorry to say,” Lt. Westcott mused as he and Lewrie strolled the quarterdeck from the taffrails to the nettings at the fore end, and back again, with Lewrie next to the windward rail and Westcott in-board.

  “There is that,” Lewrie gloomily agreed as they halted and turned to face each other before headed aft once more. “If we keep close watch on the area, they won’t ever show up, like watchin’ a boilin’ pot, which never does ’til ye leave it be. And a close watch is sure t’raise the ire of our American ‘cousins’.”

  “Well, it may be worse than that, sir,” Westcott went on. “We haven’t a single clue as to which barge, or barges, that leave Savannah are sailing on innocent passages, and which are engaged in dealing with privateers. We can’t be certain if the ones that put into Cumberland Sound or either of the river mouths are aiding enemy raiders, or just making a tidy profit by selling neutral American goods to the Dons in Spanish Florida, which is perfectly legal. Bothersome to us, but still legal, since the United States and Spain are not at war.”

  “Good God, d’ye mean that this Treadwell is makin’ money on the sly by landin’ goods with the Dons, who can sell it or give it later to privateers, and there’s nothing we could do about it?” Lewrie exclaimed. “Mine arse on a band-box!”

  He hadn’t thought of that, and it irked to hear of it.

  “It would be a clever dodge, sir,” Westcott said with a brief, sour grin, “with no real risk to his purse, his hide, or his repute in Savannah Society. Even if caught at it, he could thumb his nose at us and just sail away.”

  I’m an idiot, Lewrie chid himself; a cack-hand, droolin’…!