A King's Trade

by Dewey Lambdin

  Lewrie looked aft, to where his own sailors had swept the quarterdeck clean of resistance, and were even then hauling down the French Tricolour, without their foes’ approval.

  “Quarter!” Lewrie bellowed, hands cupped to his mouth, to fore, aft, and amidships. “Quarter, lads, they’ve struck! Their ship is ours!” And, to the shuddery young French officer, he added, “Best ye sheath that damned sword o’ yours, m’sieur, ‘fore one o’ my men takes ye for a die-hard, comprendre?”

  Guns, pikes, and edged weapons clattered from numb hands to the decks, and physically and spiritually exhausted sailors sagged to their knees…some completely spent and wheezing, some in shame, with tears streaking clean channels through powder-smut on their faces, and some ready to weep with joy for being alive and whole. Only a rare few remained on their feet, glaring defiance—wisely dis-armed defiance, as British tars, sore losers, and spiteful victors, jeered them and spat curses that they could have killed all of them, if allowed.

  “Mister Langlie?” Lewrie called out in the relatively peaceful silence, his ears still ringing from an hour and a half of cannon fire, and with the fingers of his left hand crossed for luck.

  “Sir?” came the First Officer’s weary voice.

  “Parties to secure the on-deck prisoners, Mister Langlie. Then, Leftenant Devereux, his Marines, and a party of our Jacks to go below, and chivvy any skulkers on deck. Make sure they’re all dis-armed, not even a pen-knife on ‘em, and no arms near them, should some have a sudden change of heart. And drink, Mister Langlie! Don’t care it it’s a vintage bottle, you discover spirits, drain ‘em into the bilges. Keep a keen eye on our people, keen as you will on the French, right?”

  “Aye aye, sir!”

  Lewrie had seen defeat and victory before, both shivering losers and strutting winners, aloft and a’low, who’d use the chaos of the aftermath to guzzle themselves senseless, and did Proteus’s sailors get in drink, the French could turn the tables on them and cut their throats!

  “Mister Catter…no,” Lewrie began to call out, before remembering that he’d seen him fall. “Mister Adair?” Another crossing of his fingers. To his relief, Lt. Adair piped up, too, and came to his side.

  “Get with the Bosun and Carpenter, Mister Adair,” Lewrie ordered. “Any spare hands, you may now put them to the chain-pumps to keep our own ship afloat ‘til morning. A survey below of this’un, as well, sir. I’d admire could we get her to a Prize-Court, after all the trouble we went through t’win her.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Lt. Adair replied, performing a shaky doffing of his hat in salute.

  “And, Mister Adair…you are now our Second Lieutenant,” he added in a sombre tone as he sheathed his hanger and un-cocked his pistol.

  “Very well, sir,” Adair gravely answered.

  He felt it, then, that shuddery weakness and lassitude that he had suffered at the end of every sea-fight. There were an hundred details to be seen to before dawn, a myriad of repairs to be made aboard both frigates before he could feel sanguine, but God, he felt spent! What he most craved, that moment, was a bracing drink, a pint of water to put moisture back into his tongue and gums, then a brimming bumper of brandy or Yankee-Doodle corn-whisky… followed by a lie-down and perhaps a nap, maybe a long one since he wasn’t getting any younger, but… “Um, m’sieur capitaine?” It was the wide-eyed young officer below him on the main deck, who still stood there, looking up at him, looking a bit embarassed to bother him. “Mon épée… sword, m’sieur,” he said, offering up his small-sword, now sheathed in its scabbard, in formal sign of personal surrender.

  It was “bad form,” and un-gentlemanly, for Lewrie to accept it. The proper form would be to wave it off, tell the man whose throat one wished to slit and bowels one tried to spill what an heroic defence he had put up, so “honourably,” but, Lewrie wasn’t feeling especially charitable that evening, so he took hold of it and gave the young fellow a grave nod. Damned if he’d let any armed Frog ponce about with a sword…he might relent and give it back, once sure that both ships would float and sail. “Merci,” he said, its hilt to his face in salute.

  He stumbled aft along the enemy warship’s starboard gangway, a tangle of dead and wounded, of splintered wood, sails, rigging, and hidden ring-bolts, to the enemy’s quarterdeck, where some of his sailors were capering and laughing that particular uproarious good humour that only whole survivors could laugh, atop slain foes.

  “Cap’m, sir!” Ordinary Seaman Martyn chortled, handing him yet another sheathed sword. “‘Ere’s ‘er cap’m’s blade, sir. Won’t ‘ave a need f’r it in ‘is life no more, Cap’m, nosirree!”

  “Mus’ be worth fifty guineas, sor!” Able Seaman Clancey hooted, producing yet another. “An’ thayr First Off’cer’s sword, ‘ere, ‘tis a fine’un, too, sor. Poor feller’s not long f’r this world, neither, we reckon,” Clancey callously snickered, pointing back towards the wheel, where an officer who’d had a leg shot off at the hip, and the other one bent at an un-natural angle, was being tended by two French sailors.

  “A guinea for each of you, lads,” Lewrie told them, “but, let’s not be makin’ a career of lootin’ the dead…even Frenchmen.”

  “Thankee, sor!”

  “And, let’s stay cold sober, too, ‘fore I have ye all at ‘Mast,’” Lewrie sternly reminded them.

  Lewrie took a tour of the quarterdeck, taking in the heavy damage, the strewn corpses and dis-mounted guns, with his lips pursed in a silent whistle. Unlike most combats reported in the Marine Chronicle, where the French fired a few broadsides to salve their captain’s conscience and uphold honour before striking, this ship had fought to win…and had paid the price. It was a slaughterhouse!

  French frigates carried over-large complements compared to English warships, sometimes as many as 350 or more. For raiders such as this L’Uranie, intent on prize-taking and long cruises, they carried more officers, petty officers, and sailors to man and safeguard those ships they took, leaving enough aboard to maintain the raider at full strength if she was required to fight to keep possession of her prizes.

  But, with so many men aboard, it was no wonder that every shot through her hull or bulwarks had reaped L’Uranie’s over-manned crew as thickly as a farmer’s scythe would cut down a field of grain. Excess hands could replace gunners and sail-tenders for a time, but if battle lasted long enough…

  To Lewrie, gazing down into the waist, it looked as if half of those 350 Frenchmen lay on deck where they fell, or whimpered their lives away in those two long rows of savagely mutilated! A few more lanthorns bobbed about, fetched from Proteus, so his own petty officers could survey their own frigate’s damage from out-board, or rig thick rope mats as fenders to protect both ships as their hulls thudded together, or…to pick and hunt among the dead and wounded for their shipmates, leaving the French where they were, for now. Triage, but of a different form. From the French quarterdeck, Lewrie could look over at his own ship and shake his head at how many shot-holes and shattered planks he could count in the feeble, bobbing hand-lanthorn lights.

  And what’s me own “butcher’s bill”? he sourly wondered, feeling sick at his stomach, in addition to bone-tired; What’d Twigg tell me, back in London? Save mine arse from the gallows whilst far overseas by doin’ somethin’… glorious! He felt like spitting a foul taste from his mouth. This “glorious” enough for ‘em, hey? I slay enough Frogs, sacrifice enough o’ my people, t’keep me neck un-stretched? Price is too damned high!

  Surgeon Mr. Hodson and Surgeon’s Mate Mr. Durant would tell him the cost, soon enough, Lewrie was sure.

  He shoved himself erect from his slump on shot-gnawed railings, all but shook himself like a hound to wake himself from his lassitude. With three captured swords under his left arm, Lewrie descended an un-damaged ladderway on the larboard side to pace the main deck and waist of the French frigate, looking up at the cross-deck beams and the boat-tier, where the ruins of cutter, launch, gig, and jolly-boat sat like a pile of gayly-painted sc
rap lumber.

  “Sir …” a voice intruded, and Lewrie turned to face it. Mr. Midshipman Darcy Gamble stood there, tears in his eyes. Nearby, Mr. Midshipman Grace knelt by a still form, just rolling it over face-up. “‘Tis Mister Larkin, sir,” Gamble told him, and Lewrie looked down to see the rictus of agony on the poor lad’s face, his final expression to the fact of his own hard death, so early in life. And the flickers of Midshipman Grace’s cheap tin candle-lanthorn made the lad’s wounds even more lurid. “Oh, damn,” Lewrie softly muttered. “Poor, wee lad.”

  “Still has his pistol and dirk in his hands, sir,” Grace added, snuffling as he looked up at his captain. “He went down fighting, sir.”

  “Honourable wounds to the front, aye,” Gamble pointed out, striving for the stoicism the Navy demanded, but still on the ragged edge of open sorrow for a fallen mess-mate.

  “We cannot let him just lie here, sir, perhaps …” Grace said.

  “Time enough for Mister Larkin later, Mister Grace,” Lewrie told him, after harumphing to clear his throat. “There’s our ship, and our wounded, to see to, first. First, last, and always. Mister Gamble.”

  “Sir?”

  “Pick one,” Lewrie told him, extending the three sheathed swords to him, hilts first. “With Lieutenant Catterall fallen, you are now an Acting-Lieutenant, and Third Officer into Proteus. You, Mister Grace, are now our senior Midshipman…for now, our only Midshipman, though there may be a likely lad or two I may advance, later.”

  “I see, sir,” Grace replied, sadly thoughtful.

  “Up to you t’show ‘em the ropes of table, duties, and cockpit,” Lewrie further said, hoping new and demanding duties and responsibilities might take his mind off Larkin’s loss.

  “Hmm… a bit grand, these, sir,” Gamble said, his mouth cocked into a shy moue, selecting the plainer sword, though one with a finer and more serviceable blade. Midshipman The Honourable D’arcy Gamble came from well-to-do parents, and could, when confirmed by Admiralty, easily afford better to wear on his hip, but for now, his choice gave Lewrie an even better estimation of him.

  “Very well, Lieutenant Gamble. Seek out Lieutenant Langlie and tell him my decision,” Lewrie ordered. “My respects to him, and he is to work you ‘til you drop to make both ships fit to sail, again.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Acting-Lieutenant Gamble said, with sudden pride awakening in his eyes.

  “I’ll have Andrews see to Mister Larkin, Mister Grace,” Lewrie added. “For now, we’ve need…what?” he asked, feeling a cold chill in his innards as Grace’s face screwed up in fresh, shy grief.

  “Sorry, sir,” Grace all but wailed as he got to his feet. “We saw your man fall. Didn’t wish t’be the one t’tell you, sir, but… I s’pose I must. He…was in the main top with the other marksmen and…was shot, and tumbled out, and hit the …” Grace had to pause, and gulp, “the edge of the gangway, sir, and…!”

  “He’s gone?” Lewrie croaked, suddenly much weaker, and wearier. “Andrews is gone?” All these years, my right-hand man, Cox’n, and…? he thought, squinting his eyes in pain; How many people must I get killed? Strangers, enemies…friends? For he was…

  “They…passed him out a starboard gun-port, sir, with the…other dead,” Mr. Grace managed to relate. “Sorry, sir. Sorry.”

  Gone. “Fallen” was the euphemism of the age. It was what was done with Navy casualties in battle. The dead were put over the side, at once, to clear the decks for those who still fought, a brutal necessity to maintain their morale. In many cases, the hopelessly mangled and sure to die were “put out of their misery” by a petty officer with a heavy mallet, then shoved, un-conscious and un-knowing, out the ports, too, as a “mercy” for an old shipmate whom the surgeons couldn’t save. It was why the inner sides of the hull, by the guns, were traditionally painted red, as red as fresh-spilled or fresh-splattered blood…in the heat of action, the living might not notice.

  Lewrie looked down, not at Larkin, but at a bare patch of deck, willing himself not to weep. Andrews … Matthew Andrews!…a long-time companion, was dead and gone. No matter the gulf between common sailors and officers, how aloof and apart a captain must appear to his hands, Andrews and Aspinall had been his touchstones with reality, a pair of close friends, really, and his loss felt like an abyss, a part of his own years in-company with him, had been cut away and lost. In a way, perhaps it was best that Andrews had been put over the side…best that he was physically gone, for Lewrie didn’t think he’d be able to bear to look on many more familiar dead faces. There would surely be enough of them, already.

  Blaming himself, too, scathing himself, for Andrews had been the one to go ashore and lead his dozen “Free Black volunteers” aboard the night in Portland Bight on Jamaica when he’d stolen them from one of the Beauman family’s plantations…as a cock-snooking lark!

  Had he not, would Andrews still live? Without that act, Proteus might still be in the Caribbean, not here, in this hour, engaged with a French frigate of greater firepower. Groome and Rodney might not have run away, were there no circus to lure them, no Africa in which to die. Whitbread, the others, might not be buried at Cape Town.

  Yet, had not Andrews run from his own master on Jamaica, first? Run from the softer chains of a house slave, better fed than the field hands, garbed in wealth-flaunting livery, yet run in spite of all? As the others had run, put everything at risk for a whiff of freedom, even the Royal Navy’s harsh version. Andrews, and they, had endured sailors’ poverty, plain victuals, and unending, back-breaking work in all sorts of weather, living with the constant risk of death or disablement, the sure coming of rheumatism or arthritis, the sicknesses that arose when hundreds of men were pent together so closely in a foul and reeking wet gun-deck, for …what? To be free men, to live a wild and adventurous life as free deep sea rovers; paid for their suffering, and worthy of their hire! Freely entered into, and, in the Navy, ready to fight the enemy, the ocean itself, to live, and maybe die, free!

  “Damme,” Lewrie softly spat, raising his head, at last, stiffening his spine after a long, sad sigh. Steeling himself to play-act a role of captain, second only to God. He had two ships to save, perhaps hundreds of men, his own and the enemy’s, to succour and tend to, prisoners to keep a wary eye on, and, sometime after the sun rose, another French frigate to be alert for, and possibly fight.

  And, he was mortal-certain, the first of many at-sea burials, as early as tomorrow’s Forenoon Watch, with more to follow as they sailed into the equatorial heat. There was a convoy to re-join and round back up, should anything have happened to Jamaica. Duty, that grim, demanding bitch, come to call with all her nagsome sisters, would never give a man a moment of his own! There would be a time to grieve Andrews and all his dead…once anchored in a safe harbour.

  “Very well, sirs,” Lewrie forced himself to rasp, clapping both hands together in the small of his back. “Let’s be about it, hmm?”

  Stern, now, a facade of grim stoicism back on his face, Lewrie made the shaky crossing back aboard Proteus, though his shuddery limbs threatened to betray him. There was no formal welcome from side-party or bosun’s calls, just a bone-weary man clumping awkwardly to the oak planks of the larboard gangway of a shot-to-pieces ship.

  “Sir,” Sailing Master Winwood said, doffing his hat as he came forward from the quarterdeck, limping from a leg wound upon his right thigh, his breeches cut away to reveal a thick, padded bandage.

  “Mister Winwood,” Lewrie acknowledged. “Oh. I know.”

  Mr. Winwood held in his hand a coin-silver bosun’s call on its chain, Andrews’s call, and mark of his post as Coxswain. Crushed…by the musket ball that slew him, or by his fall from high aloft?

  “So many, sir,” Mr. Winwood said in his usual mournful way. “I am told by Mister Hodson that we’ve nigh twenty fallen, and ten more in a bad way, with at least thirty others more-or-less lightly wounded.”

  “Admiralty will be so impressed,” Lewrie sarcastically growled.

&nbs
p; “Even so, it is a signal victory, sir,” Mr. Winwood said in his gravest manner. “Off to the Nor’east, Jamaica has come to grips with the other Frenchman, or so it would appear. The lights of both ships are close-aboard each other, and all gunfire has ceased, so one might assume that she has conquered her foe, as well, Captain. We have won. And, from what little I saw aboard our foe, before I sustained my own trifling wound,” he proudly alluded to his leg, no matter how stoic he wished to appear, “they must have suffered over an hundred fallen, and a like number disabled. Aye, Captain Lewrie, Admiralty should be impressed. Perhaps a quarter, or a third, of the French squadron in the Indian and Southern Oceans eliminated at one blow, too, sir? Well!”

  “Forgive me, Mister Winwood, but, at the moment…” Lewrie attempted to apologise.

  “I understand completely, sir,” Winwood replied with a knowing nod, no matter how much he didn’t really understand. “Andrews was your Cox’n for a long time. God save me, I shall even miss Mister Catterall, impious as he was, but…Andrews gave his all. As they all did. Did their best, and we shall miss them all, some more personally, d’ye see.”

  Lord, don’t give me a sermon, you…! Lewrie silently fumed.

  “… up to us to do our best to honour their memories, and take comfort from the thought that they passed over doing what they freely agreed to endure,” Mr. Winwood was prosing on. “In Andrews’ case, and the other Black volunteers, perhaps it is also up to us to shew all of Britain that they could fight, and fall, as bravely as British tars, I do believe, sir. Prove to the world the truth of the tracts from the Evangelical and Abolitionist societies declare….”

  “Aye, we could,” Lewrie suddenly decided, and not just to stop Winwood’s mournful droning, either. “They did, didn’t they. Andrews, and all our Blacks who ran away to…this. You have a point, Mister Winwood. We could…we should…and, we shall!”

  Then you wouldn’t have died for bloody nothing, Matthew! Lewrie told himself, feeling a weight depart his shoulders, a half-turn wrench of his heart tell him that it wasn’t expedience, had nothing to do with saving his precious neck from a hanging, but might become a real cause! A noble cause!