A King's Trade

by Dewey Lambdin

  Coughing into his fist, he lowered his gaze to the desk, again, lifting the letter that the Rev. Wilberforce had sent him, wherein he offered much the same sort of spiritual comfort for HMS Proteus’s tars, both Black and White. Wilber-force had even proposed placing an eager young chaplain aboard her, his pay and his keep to be supplied by the Evangelical Society! Could the young man he had in mind be able to go aboard before Proteus sailed…could Lewrie “vet” him once he arrived at Portsmouth…and, was he not suitable to Captain Lewrie’s complete satisfaction, perhaps there might be time enough for Wilber-force and his associates to select another?

  Well, he’d done as Caroline had bid him; he’d written to both of his sons, Hugh and Sewallis, had even penned a loving letter to his little daughter Charlotte… all done into the wee hours of the final night in the inner harbour at Portsmouth, long past the Master At Arms’ official “Lights Out” at nine of the evening. Though, what good that letter would do Lewrie rather doubted, since Charlotte was still with her mother, home-tutored, not schooled, and exposed to all the grumbles of his wife and in-laws, who’d never thought him quite “up to chalk.”

  There’d been that letter from his father, who had mentioned one Sunday after Services, in the churchyard, when the vicar of ivied old St. George’s had preached a homily on Sinners, and little Charlotte had so taken it (and other things she’d heard) to heart that she had loudly told one and all present in the churchyard that “my father is a Sinner… and a filthy beast!” His father’d found it delightfully droll at the time, even if Lewrie hadn’t, and God knows what poisons had been poured into her ears, since!

  Children, well…there had only been a few years on half-pay ashore to get to know them, then the war with France had erupted back in ‘93, and he was back in Navy harness, and there hadn’t been a whole month with them since then. Sewallis, Hugh, and Charlotte had become more the concept of children, just as he had felt himself merely the shadow of a father, and every reunion had presented him with sprouted strangers, and little Charlotte the most unknowable of all. To whom he wrote platitudes… well-meaning platitudes, but no matter how he reminded himself that he, indeed, loved them, he still felt so oddly disassociated.

  There came the heavy thud of the Marine sentry’s musket on the deck outside, and the cry of “Mister Midshipman Grace, SAH!”

  “Enter!” Lewrie called out, sitting up straighter, and shoving his letters into the desk drawer.

  “Captain, sir…Mister Langlie’s duty, and he wishes to shake out to second reefs in courses and tops’ls. He said to tell you that the winds are moderating, sir,” the lad said. Grace, the son of Nore fishermen, who had come aboard a ship’s boy in company with his father and grandfather, who had risen to “Gentleman Volunteer” Midshipman once Proteus had been won back from the mutineers. He was upwards of sixteen, now, and shaping well to become an extremely reliable and tarry lad. His grandfather, whom they’d dubbed Elder Grace, was gone, lost to the Yellow Jack, and his father, Middle Grace, was now rated an Able Seaman, and bore the shipboard rate of Captain of the Afterguard, the petty officer in charge of the mizen-mast.

  “Very well, Mister Grace,” Lewrie said in agreement. “Give to Mister Langlie my respects, and permission. I’ll come up, directly.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Lewrie had himself a paternal sigh, then got to his feet, gathered up his hat and mittens, and went on deck, pausing to give Toulon and Chalky a chin and ear rub or two.

  At least on deck, the nippy wind was much fresher than what he breathed in his great-cabins, and the Channel was calming, too. Where agitated green rollers and white-spumed crests had been, there were now darker green or steel-grey waves, though the “chops” still made Proteus ride like a brick mason’s dray on a cobbled street. Her heel had altered to a mere fifteen degrees from vertical, according to the clinometer by the compass binnacle and chart cabinet, as well.

  “We’re making a better way, sir,” Lt. Langlie reported, with a sketchy salute tossed up to the brim of his cocked hat. “The coast is completely under the horizon, and Mister Winwood thinks we are nearly twenty miles to the good, East’rd, and about the same to seaward.”

  “Came up early, did you?” Lewrie asked.

  “A bit fuggy, below, sir,” Langlie allowed with a wry grin. “I was in need of fresh air, and…”

  Eight bells chimed slowly, in pairs, from the foc’sle belfry as a ship’s boy turned the watch glass: four in the afternoon, and an end to the Day Watch, and the beginning of the First Dog.

  “Carry on, Mister Langlie,” Lewrie bade, and his First Officer went through the ritual of relieving Lt. Adair and his watchstanders. The men of the larboard division shuffled up to take the place of the hands in the starboard division, the men going off watch lingering to savour fresh air, themselves.

  “Very well, sir, I have the watch,” Langlie intoned, saluting Adair with a doff of his hat. “All hands!” he bellowed not a moment later. “Mister Pendarves, Mister Towpenny, mast captains! Trice up and lay aloft to make sail to the second reefs!”

  Lewrie paced up to the larboard, windward, quarterdeck bulwarks to watch things done, as spry topmen and older yard captains climbed the ratlines in the weather shrouds; out to the mast-tops’ edges and for a time upside down on the futtock shrouds before some scampered up higher to the tops’l yards, whilst others scooted out the course yards, carefully balanced on the foot-ropes with their chests pressed to the canvas-bound main and foremast course yards.

  Lewrie thought to remind Langlie to overhaul the spiral set of the yards once more sail had been made, but forebore; that would just be “gilding the lily,” an unwanted intrusion on a competent officer’s performance. Good and trustworthy lieutenants could almost make his job irrelevant, at times, which suited Lewrie’s well-hidden lazy nature right down to his toes.

  “Sails, ho!” the mainmast lookout cried, pointing up to larboard. “Deck, there! Ships in comp’ny…nine, ten, or more! Three points off th’ larboard bows, an’ hull-up!” he sang out as the clutch of ships appeared from the misty rains.

  “Glass, please,” Lewrie called over his shoulder, and thought of going aloft as high as the futtock shrouds, but decided not to; it was already too crowded aloft, and he’d just be in the topmen’s way. Midshipman Larkin fetched him a day-glass, and he had himself a good and long look at them.

  “Deck, there!” the lookout far aloft wailed. “Eight Indiamen, a frigate, two sloops o’ war, and a Third Rate in the van!”

  “Our ‘John Company’ trade, sir?” Lt. Langlie took time from his duties to enquire, with excitement in his voice.

  “Unless they’re running more than one a month, aye, sir,” Lewrie told him. “And, on the leading seventy-four, I do b’lieve I can make out a flag with yellow-red-yellow stripes…East India convoy in the code book they gaveus. Mister Larkin! ‘East India’ flag to the foremast, the Union flag to the mainmast halliards, where they can see it, and know we’re not a Frenchman. And hoist our number to the peak of the mizen signal halliards.”

  He counted off the massive East Indiamen, admiring their glossy and rich hulls and fresh canvas, so big and impressive that they could be mistaken for 74-gunned ships of the Third Rate, though the 74-gunner leading that “elephants’ parade” was the genuine article, and could be discerned as such after close inspection, for her own sails were worn, mildewed, and parchment tan by comparison, and her hull did not glisten as the others did; too much wear, salt water, and not enough linseed oil or tar and paint, and that not refurbished lately. By comparison, his frigate, relatively fresh from the Halifax yard, gleamed like a bright, new-minted penny.

  A flurry of flag signals from the lead 74 created an answering blizzard of bunting from the frigate on the forward Southern quarter of the convoy, was repeated by the trailing sloop of war to seaward of the trade’s stern quarter, and answered by the other Third Rate that brought up the rear, which, after a long moment, made a new hoist that the lead frigate rep
eated as she wore a bit off her “soldier’s wind” and started to come down nearer Proteus.

  “Can’t read ‘em, sor…sir, sorry,” Midshipman Larkin said as he stood atop the bulwarks by the mizen shrouds, a telescope to his own eye. “They’re streamin’ right at us, but I think she’s askin’ just who we are, I do! ‘Tis in the private signals for this month… I think.”

  “Must believe we’re a French fraud,” Lewrie agreed. “Mine arse on a bandbox, we’ve our Number aloft, already. Can you read his?”

  “Er, aye, sor…sir,” Larkin, the Bog-Irish by-blow, replied, drifting back into brogue as he always did when flustered. “She’s ah, HMS Stag… Fifth Rate, thirty-eight-gunner, Captain John Philpott,” Larkin stammered, fumbling through his bundle of lists and almost losing both his telescope overside and his grip on the shrouds.

  “Last Stag would know, we’re still in the Caribbean, sir,” Lt. Langlie commented by Lewrie’s side. “A good ruse for a French raider.”

  “Aye, Mister Langlie,” Lewrie said. “Mister Larkin, hoist that we are ordered to join the escort. Perhaps the latest signals book’ll convince them. ‘Tis only three weeks old, after all.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  A long minute or two passed as Larkin and his “bunting tossers” made their hoist, which was acknowledged by Stag; then, they had more minutes to wait ‘til Stag made a reply, for she had to pass the message back to the repeating sloop of war, which passed it to the trailing 74-gunner, which was obviously the flagship. More time was taken for the flagship to hoist a new order, which had to come down the chain to the sloop, to the frigate, to Proteus.

  And, all during that time, the convoy was plodding along under reduced plain sail, bound roughly West, Sou’west, while Proteus still was on larboard tack, heading about Sou’east by East and drawing apart slowly.

  “Wear her about to West, Sou’west, Mister Langlie,” Lewrie told his First Officer. “Nothing more convincing than showing leery people your arse. Like a dog rollin’ over on his back.”

  “Aye, sir. All hands! Stations to wear, ready…!”

  “What did they ask that time, Mister Larkin?” Lewrie asked.

  “Order, sir. ‘Come Under My Lee,’ the flag said t’do,” Larkin puzzled out at last. “HMS Grafton, seventy-four. Captain Sir Tobias …Trey…Gwees? Triggers?”

  “Truh-Gewz,” Lewrie corrected him. “An old captain of mine, me lad. Damme, they didn’t do him too proud, did they? Grafton was commissioned in 1771. Why she hasn’t been hulked…or rotted apart…”

  “Ready to wear, sir,” Langlie reported.

  “Very well, Mister Langlie. Once about, reduce sail so we may fall astern of Grafton yonder, then come up under her lee. With winds full astern, I s’pose he means come alongside her inshore beam. Might be, either’d do,” Lewrie said with a shrug. “Mister Larkin, alert yon suspicious frigate that we’re wearing about. Try not to make it look like an order to Captain Wilkinson, hmm?”

  “Aye aye, sor,” Larkin sheepishly replied.

  “Wear about, then, Mister Langlie.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Perhaps half an hour later, HMS Proteus had fallen far enough towards the tail-end of the trade to make a bit more sail so she could angle in towards HMS Grafton. When she was close enough, it was an easy matter to duck under her high, old-fashioned stern and make a brief dash before the sails were reduced once more, so that she ended up off the 74-gun ship’s starboard quarter, about half a cable inshore of her.

  Lewrie left the details to Langlie, busy with his telescope by the larboard bulwarks to study the people gathered on Grafton’s quarterdeck. Officers, sailors of the afterguard, some gloomy-looking corn stalk of a fellow in drab, dark clothing, and…a woman? An officer, perhaps Grafton’s First Lieutenant, lifted a brass speaking-trumpet to his mouth to shout across. The swash of the sea between the two ships, the wind, and the normal creaks and groans of Proteus’s hull made what he shouted quite un-intelligible.

  “Croror? Is’ll pot?” Lewrie mimicked, cupping a hand behind an ear and shrugging at that worthy. “What the Devil does he mean by that, I ask you? Must be a Welsh insult,” he japed to his own officers.

  “Come…up…to… pistol…shot!” Grafton’s senior officer cried, again, all but screeching this time, and waving an arm to direct them to sidle up alongside Grafton, almost hull-to-hull.

  “Ease a spoke or two o’ lee helm, Mister Langlie,” Lewrie said, tossing back his boat cloak so the single gold epaulet of his rank on his right shoulder could be seen, as Proteus tentatively angled a bit to larboard, closing the distance between the ships to about twenty or so yards. “Ah, there’s the bugger,” he muttered under his breath.

  Capt. Sir Tobias Treghues, Baronet, had thrown back the wings of his own cloak, to display his pair of epaulets, with his chin high, as if he’d smelled something rank. Treghues had always been lean and tall, and so he still was, though his aristocratic face was thinner in the cheeks than Lewrie recalled, and there was a hint of the beginning of a gotch-gut ‘tween groin and chest that strained his pristine white waist-coat, the sign of good living, Lewrie surmised, once Treghues had inherited his father’s estates and title… though Lewrie also could recall that Treghues was the first son from a poor holding, forced to sea to earn the better part of his living.

  Lewrie lifted his cocked hat to doff it in salute, and after a moment, Treghues lifted his in response, revealing that his formerly dark brown locks had receded above his temples, and were now streaked like a badger’s pelt with grey.

  “Captain Alan Lewrie, is it?” Treghues shouted across, after he had replaced his hat on his head. “Will wonders never cease!”

  “To the life, sir!” Lewrie shouted back, wondering what sort of answer one could really make to that opening sally. He would have said that it was good to see Treghues, again, but didn’t have a clue whether the man was in the proper half of his wits to accept it.

  “You are late, sir!” Treghues primly said.

  “Only got our orders yesterday, sir, and had to wait on the wind in Saint Helen’s Patch!” Lewrie replied, his own hands cupped to make a trumpet. “I thought I’d catch you up, at sea, once the wind arose from the East.” I’m tryin’ t’be jolly, he told himself.

  “You should deal with your signals midshipmen, Captain Lewrie!” Treghues instructed. “They are…slack in their duties!”

  “Dead downwind of you, sir, all signals were edge-on to us!” he explained, “The leading seventy-four did not repeat them!”

  “Just like the old days!” Treghues seemed to scoff at that. “As I recall, you always had glib and ready answers!”

  And bugger you, too, ye prim turd! Lewrie silently fumed.

  “Take station out yonder, sir!” Treghues cried, pointing off to the Southwest corner of the convoy. “Tell Captain Hazelhurst, of the Chloe sloop, that he is to re-position himself ahead and to larboard of Horatius!”

  “Just asking, sir, but my orders did not list all the ships in the escort!” Lewrie yelled over to him. “May I assume Horatius is the van sevety-four?”

  “Aye, she is!” Treghues shouted, sounding both impatient and petulant together. “You will learn them soon enough! Make all haste to your proper station, Captain Lewrie! It is growing dark, sir!”

  “Aye aye, sir!” Lewrie replied, doffing his hat once more, in sign of departure; and, hopefully, that his “joyful” rencontre with a shipmate of old was mercifully at an end.

  “Clew up, Mister Langlie…Spanish Reefs, to slow us. Helmsmen, helm hard up and slew a knot or two off us,” Lewrie snapped.

  Proteus swung wide away, acting as if she’d been stung by the flagship. Course sails were briefly gathered up in their centres to spill wind, until she’d fallen far-enough astern of Grafton to avoid a collision when she swung Sou’-Sou’easterly, putting the wind on her larboard quarter to fall down towards the distant sloop of war, clews freed, and her course sails now drawing taut and full.

  �
�Me pardons, sor,” Midshipman Larkin meekly muttered, wringing his hands over his supposed faults. “But I really couldn’t read ‘em.”

  “No one could,” Lewrie gently told him. “Not your fault.”

  “Uhm, not a horrid beginning, was it, Captain?” Langlie queried in a soft voice at his captain’s elbow. “After what you said of…”

  “But not a good’un, either, Mister Langlie,” Lewrie resignedly replied, turning to look astern at the flagship in the gathering dusk. “I fear this’ll be a hellish-long voyage. And feel twice as long.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Signal from the flag, sir… our number!” Midshipman Gamble sang out, with a heavy brass day-glass to one eye.

  “Damn it!” Capt. Alan Lewrie spat, and thumped a fist on the cap-rail of the larboard quarterdeck bulwark for good measure, bleakly muttering under his breath, “What the bloody flamin’ Hell does he want this time?” Before turning to face Midshipman Gamble he took a moment to re-collect the proper nautical stoicism, heaving a deep sigh.

  “Aye, Mister Gamble?” Lewrie enquired, with what a disinterested observer might mistake for bland and idle curiosity. His play-acting was wasted on Midshipman Gamble, for that young worthy had clapped the telescope back to one eye, and had screwed the other shut, intent upon the distant HMS Grafton’s hoists. Lewrie was, therefore, allowed to scowl, taking note that the First Lieutenant, Mr. Langlie, and Bosun Pendarves, with whom he was discussing the renewal of chafing gear to save the currently-strung running rigging, both lifted their eyes in sympathy, and pointedly looked away.

  “Take Station…Alee, no…Ahead,” Mr. Gamble interpreted, after a quick peek at the sheaf of unique signals that Capt. Treghues had composed whilst they were hammering their way Sutherly across the dangerous Bay of Biscay, just in case the French raiders had managed to snag a copy of that month’s code book. To simply obtain their copy of the convoy’s code had required them to go close-aboard Grafton and put a boat down to fetch them; into Proteus’s captain’s hand, only, in the middle of a roaring Westerly winter gale! Once soaked to the skin and nigh-drowned, Lewrie had clambered up Grafton’s side to the entry-port whilst the line-of-battle ship had ponderously rolled, pitched, heaved, and even seemed to “wiggle,” only to be greeted by the First Lieutenant who had given him the signals, wrapped in oil-skin, then sent right back into his swooping boat, with nary a sign of Treghues to be seen! Lewrie didn’t imagine that Capt. Treghues had meant for him to perish…but, the sight of his demise might have fetched their senior officer up from below to do a little “what a pity” horn-pipe!