The King's Coat

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Believe you me, you shall know something of the sea before I’m done with you, even if it kills you. England needs her Navy, now more than ever. I wouldn’t count on our Army to pull a drunk off its sister, much less save the nation. And the sea is a fine calling for a man. I shall not allow you to abuse that calling.”

  “May I be honest with you, sir?” Alan asked.

  “You had better not ever be anything else, boy,” Bales replied, picking up a shiny pewter mug of something dark and aromatic.

  “I am indeed banished, sir,” he began, hoping he could win the man over. He could charm when it was necessary. There were even some addled old fools back in London who considered him a manly, upright young gentleman! “I realize that I know nothing, sir, and I shall endeavor to learn, with all my heart. If this is to be my life, then how can I succeed without knowledge?”

  “Hmm.” And Bales nodded, studying him over the rim of the mug. “I tell you this, Lewrie. If you apply even a tenth of yourself, we can beat you into some sort of sailor. We can do that with anyone.”

  “Aye, sir.” Saying it only once sounded a little more English to his ear; saying it twice was like … “higgledy-piggledy.”

  “Your Mister Pilchard goes on to state that you show some promise as a student … some Latin … Greek … a little French … mathematics … had good tutors. If you throw yourself wholeheartedly into your work and your studies, you may make someone much better than your background suggests. And your bottom won’t get half as sore.” Bales grinned.

  “I shall try, sir,” Alan responded heartily, all but piping his eyes and breaking into a chorus of “Rule, Brittania.”

  “Yes,” Bales said, setting his mug down. “You are seventeen.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “You are much too old for the gun room. And I doubt if we want our younger midshipmen corrupted by any habits you might have picked up in London,” Bales said, almost mellowing toward him. “Pity we did not get you sooner. Most midshipmen come aboard at ten or twelve and spend six years before being examined for a commission. At least that is what Master Pepys laid down, though it is not much followed in these times. But since I doubt you have much influence with our Lords Commissioners of The Admiralty, we’ll assume you have six years. We will put you in the cockpit with the older midshipmen, where you may pick up their knowledge the quicker with people closer to your own age. When you see Mister Swift, give him my compliments and that you shall shift your dunnage to the cockpit on the orlop.”

  Damn, there’s that word again, he thought. “Aye, sir.”

  “Bevan has given me your per annum allowance.”

  “Aye, sir?” Alan perked up.

  “A hundred guineas is quite a sum—too much, really. I shall hold it for you, and should you have any need for it, you shall request of it through my clerk, Mister Brail. I have deducted five pounds for schooling with the sailing master, and another five pounds for your initial mess charge. As a midshipman you do not receive pay, so I shall ration you to one pound ten shillings per month of your allowance. That should be more than enough at sea.”

  “Aye, sir.” Not paid? Nobody told me that!

  “Then be so good as to sign to that effect.”

  Alan bent over the desk and placed his signature to a sheet of paper that banked his money and allowed the deductions.

  “That will be all for now, Mister Lewrie.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Dismissed.”

  Alan saluted and got out quickly. He stopped by the first officer’s door and knocked. Swift bade him enter.

  “Ah, Lewrie. Ready to sign aboard now?” Swift asked.

  “Aye, sir. Um, the captain presents his compliments and suggested that I be assigned to the cockpit on the orlop, sir.”

  “Thought he would,” Swift said, presenting him a large bound book. There were many names entered, many with X’s for men’s marks.

  “Here. Copy of The Articles of War. Make sure you learn them. I am assigning you to the lower gun deck should we go to Quarters. Sail-making stations shall be the mizzenmast for now. Brace tending will be on the poop with the afterguard.”

  I know it must be English, he thought. I can make a word out now and then.

  “See Lieutenants Roth or Harm and get a copy of your quarter bills so you may memorize all the names of the hands in your larboard division, and for the afterguard and lower gun deck, especially your quartergunners and gun captains. Got all that?”

  “If not now, then I shall by morning, sir.”

  “Don’t be flip with me, Lewrie. You’ll live to regret it.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Alan said, on his guard again.

  “That’s all, then. Dismissed. Get below.”

  “About my luggage, sir?”

  “Yes?” Swift smiled, almost pleasant for once.

  “Could you give me some men to help carry it, sir?”

  “Think it might be worth a penny for me, Lewrie?” Swift asked.

  “Oh … I wouldn’t presume…”

  “Take care of it yerself, fer God’s sake! Dismissed!”

  Alan staggered out onto the quarterdeck, glad to have escaped without a physical attack or something direr. Damme, it’s hellish-bad enough just being on this filthy ship. Do they have to be so hateful?

  He looked about the quarterdeck but did not see anyone exactly menial. It was inhabited by a few people in blue coats, red waistcoats, cocked hats and breeches. It was only below the quarterdeck rail that he saw men in checked shirts and red-and-white-striped ticken trousers, or short blue jackets, some wearing flat tarred hats. He descended to the ship’s waist, into that stirring crowd of men, determined to give as good as he had gotten lately.

  Let’s see if this junior warrant power works, he thought, bracing the first man he saw. “You there. What’s your name?”

  “Bostwick, sor,” the man replied, startled and suddenly on his guard. “Oim a larboard waister, sor.”

  “Grab another hand and go down to the gun room. I shall want my … dunnage shifted to the orlop,” Lewrie ordered, hunting for the right words.

  “Roight away, sor!” The man nodded, relieved that the new midshipman only wanted something trifling done. “Here, George, bear a hand, laddy.”

  Had Alan not followed them below closely, he would have been lost. They hoisted his heavy chest and he followed them back to the companionways, down another ladder to the orlop deck, and slightly aft to the cockpit. If the gun room had been gloomy, then the cockpit was the netherpit of the deepest, darkest hell. There were two deadlights of Muscovy glass that let in weak beams of light from God knew where. Glims burned in paper holders here and there to relieve the darkness. There was a long mess table with chests down both sides as furniture. Four minuscule cabins not much bigger than dogboxes were set two abeam. The headroom between the thick beams that supported the lower gun deck over his head could not have been much over five-and-a-half feet. There were several midshipmen lounging about, obviously bored, dressed any-old-how. The air was thick with the smell of pipe tobacco, bilge odor, sour clothing, mildew, salt, tar, and a generation of pea-soup farts. All in all, it was a damned sight worse than Harrow even on the worst days Alan could remember.

  The hands set his chest down with a crash at an open space near the far end of the table. “Er … beggin’ yer pardon, sir,” the fellow known as George asked, knuckling his brow. “Does yer want me ter be yer ’ammockman, sir?”

  Am I being put on, or does that mean what I think it does? he wondered. I heard the Navy was a bunch of bum wallopers, but I thought it was illegal.

  “Keep yer togs all spiffylike, sir,” George explained.

  “You already do for the ward-room, Jones,” the young midshipman named Ashburn said. “Lieutenants do not get dirty, but midshipmen do. You’d have Mister Lewrie looking like a ‘tag, rag, and bob-tail’ in a week. Off with you, now.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Thank you, Mister Ashburn,” Lewrie
said as soon as they were gone. “Should I have tipped them something?”

  This drew a chorus of hoots and laughs from everyone.

  “Christ, no. They’re more used to a rope’s end on their fundaments,” one young man said, looking up from a book he was trying to read in the light of a small candle.

  Lewrie peeled off his coat and hat and found a spare peg on which to hang them. He also unfrogged his new dirk, an especially showy one with an ivory grip and what the shopkeeper had assured him was a heavily gold plated lion pommel.

  “Pretty little sticker,” Ashburn idly commented.

  “Anyone ever use one of these things for real, or just prying open jam pots?” Lewrie asked.

  “I’d sooner have spent the money on a letter opener,” Ashburn replied. “Take off your neckcloth and make yourself to home. Pass that toddy down here before this newly gets his death.”

  “Thank you,” Alan said, getting comfortable on top of his chest, arms resting on the scarred mess table.

  “Let me do the honors,” Ashburn said, pouring a battered pewter mug full of steaming toddy. “The bookworm over there is Harvey Bascombe. This is Alan Lewrie, I believe. Bascombe is a total waste of time, and doesn’t even have a sister, so he’s not worth knowing.”

  “Hello.”

  “That’s Chapman, our senior midshipman,” Ashburn said, indicating the older man who Alan had rubbed shoulders with on deck. “We all toe the line when Chapman speaks, don’t we, lads?”

  Chapman was a carrot-haired lout with not a sign of intelligence behind his eyes, but seemed kindly. Lewrie got the idea that Ashburn was japing the fellow with his comment, a comment that went right over the man’s head.

  “The mathematical genius over there with the slate is Jemmy Shirke. Do not trust his sums, ever. And never let him navigate any boat you’re in. Young Jemmy, on the other hand, has three sisters in Suffolk, all willing tits, or so he tells us.”

  “What a reception you got,” Shirke said, putting aside his slate and coming to the table to sit down next to Lewrie. “Were you really wandering about adrift without reporting to the first officer?”

  “Yes, I got soaked coming aboard,” Alan said, feeling at his ease for the first time of the day. “Had to go change.”

  “What was your last ship?” Chapman asked as he helped himself to the battered rum pot, pouring a larger tankard than the others.

  “Uhm … there wasn’t one,” Alan had to admit.

  “You don’t mean you’re a true Johnny Newcome,” Bascombe guffawed.

  “Right in here with us practiced sinners,” Shirke added. “Not a whip jack, much less a scaly fish. Now what got you here at your age?”

  From hard experience with the cruelty of youth (and he had dished out his share of it, so he ought to know), he realized that he was in for a rough time if he did not establish some sort of standing in their order at once. He was totally ignorant of their chosen trade, while they could sport years of experience at sea. If knowledge could not help, perhaps bravado could win the day, letting them know that he was wise to their games and not to trifle with him … much, anyways.

  “It was a bit of a scandal, really,” he said with a knowing leer. “There was a young lady I knew who turned up with a jack-in-the-box and all sorts of hell to pay for it. When I refused her, her brother came for me and I had to duel him. Everyone was happy I left.”

  “And did you kill your man?” Shirke sneered.

  “Honor was satisfied. She and her family weren’t,” Alan told them cryptically. “Next thing I knew I was buying my kit.”

  “But you’ve never actually been to sea?” Ashburn asked.

  “Well, no. Not until necessary,” Alan said with a bluff smile.

  “I think this is going to be fun, don’t you?” Bascombe grinned cunningly at the others, and Lewrie realized the game was blocked at both ends. I don’t think I’m going to enjoy the next few weeks …

  Chapter 2

  For nearly a month more, Ariadne heaved and tugged at her anchor while the business of commissioning continued. Warrants were put aboard by the various Navy Boards, powder and shot came aboard to be stowed below, sewn up into cartridge bags. The holds were filled with new casks for fresh water, barrels of salt-pork and salt-beef, barrels of rum, tobacco, purser’s supplies, slop clothing, large bags of ship’s biscuit, galley implements, muskets, cutlasses, boarding pikes, miles more of cordage for spare anchor and towing lines, standing rigging and running rigging—all the needs of a ship of war that would allow her to be free of the land for months at a time. More hands were recruited, most willingly, but some gathered in by the press-gangs and allotted to the vessels in harbor in need of men, a few at a time.

  For Alan, it was a time of learning. He was not going to be allowed ashore, and the ship had no amusements other than reading, so he read, mostly his Falconer’s. And if the descriptions seemed vague or made no sense, then he found practical examples in the ship.

  He learned the names of the sails and masts, how they and their yards were raised and lowered. He found out what most of the running rigging did, tracing lines from pin rails to blocks to where they were terminated aloft. He prowled the length of the ship, plumbing secrets of cable tiers, carpenter’s walks, bread rooms, spirit rooms, where the surgeon plied his trade, where the firewood was kept. He learned a bit about how Ariadne was constructed from the carpenter. He learned how to actually sleep in a hammock at night, and how to wrap it up in the required seven turns so it would be snug enough to pass through the ring measure each morning and be stowed along the nettings on the bulwarks. He also learned how to tell if one of his mess mates had taken liberties with how it was slung; one fall had been enough, as well as one good blow on the ears that had left Shirke sneezing.

  Ellison, the sailing master, loaned him a book on trigonometry so he could get a head start on solving navigational problems, at the least learning how to handle the numbers obtained from the daily sights they’d take once at sea.

  It was indeed fortunate that he had not joined a ship ready to go to sea. Safe in harbor, or fairly so, and with none of the daily activity of working the ship to be done in his first few weeks, he had a chance to pick up enough knowledge without killing himself in the process. And he was spared most of the officers’ disgust with an ignorant newly—officers did not stand harbor watches except to supervise loading and storing, and what drills or exercises were ordered.

  Alan was fortunate, too, that Keith Ashburn was deputized to be his unofficial mentor, since they were both London boys and had come from a station above the usual squirearchy.

  When they were not working for the purser, the bosun, the sailmaker, carpenter, cooper (and to be honest, the work was either clerical or merely standing around appearing like they knew what they were doing), Ashburn delighted in his duties as guide, for it kept them out of trouble from senior warrants who detested the sight of a midshipman with idle hands.

  Not that Ashburn didn’t have a cruel streak, himself.

  * * *

  “You’re going aloft, Lewrie,” Ashburn told him, leaping for the mainmast chains.

  “Could we not wait until tomorrow?” Alan asked, looking up at the incredible height of the mast. It was one thing to stand on deck and follow lines to understand their use. He was hoping that midshipmen would stay on deck and supervise, or something.

  “Up you go.” Ashburn wore a shark’s expression.

  The first part wasn’t so bad, going up the ratlines of the larboard mainmast shrouds, for they were angled in toward the maintop; not much worse than the ladders down to the holds. It was at the mast that it got frightening, where the shrouds crossed to either side of the top. Marines might get to go inside the crisscrossing and proceed through the lubber’s hole to the top platform—real sailors had to grab hold of the shrouds that were now over their heads and angled out to the edge of the top, actually hang on with fingers and toes, and scramble up the outside angle before gaining the top platfo
rm.

  “Well, that was exciting,” Alan said after getting his breath back. “Nice view. We can go down now, right?”

  “Up.” Ashburn laughed.

  The next set of shrouds were much narrower and set closer together, and they did not lead to another platform where there was much room to stand, but to the small cap and trestle-trees that supported the topmast. Ashburn thrust an arm between the topmast and the halyards and stood on the cap, while Alan gripped the mast with both arms and held on for dear life. It seemed a terrifying distance down to that very substantial deck, far below. And the ship was still moving, and the masts swayed a considerable distance with each slow roll, heave and pitch, plus the snubbing jerk as she tugged at her anchor. And the mast seemed to hum and vibrate on its own in the steady wind.

  Alan’s heart was thudding away in his chest and his limbs felt cold. There was a tingling emptiness in the pit of his stomach, but not in his bladder, and he knew that if he did not get down from that precarious position, he was going to fall and kill himself, or piss his breeches.

  “Now we’ll lay out on the t’gallant yard!” Ashburn shouted to be heard over the wind. “Do what I do!”

  Ashburn reached up and scrambled like a monkey onto the small crosswise yard that rested on the cap, and rapidly went out to the end of it.

  “Oh God, you have to be joshing me,” Alan said, feeling sick at the very idea.

  “Be a man, for God’s sake, Lewrie! Come on!”

  The yard seemed like a toothpick. “To hell with your nautical humbug, I can’t—”

  “Can’t? No such word in the Navy, Lewrie. I promise you you’ll spend half your life in the rigging. Might as well learn now.”

  “I would very much like to go down.”

  “And what do you think Mister Swift would do with anyone who had no courage … refused to go aloft because he was frightened?” Ashburn asked, swarming back to the mast, and Lewrie’s shaky perch on the cross-trees. “Dis-rating, three dozen lashes, put forward with the common rabble! There’ll be some dark night when it’s blowing a full gale and you don’t want to go. They’ll drive you aloft and the best thing you can do then is jump and die, because if you don’t have bottom, every hand’ll be turned against you! Or they could just hang you for refusing to obey a direct order—”