by Jay Worrall
“Goddamnit to hell.” Charles spat out the words as he raced past an astonished Bevan. He threw himself down the ladderway three steps at a time and ran across the deck, furious that the orders just given had so blatantly been ignored. “Get back,” he shouted at a man just entering the fray. He grabbed the man’s jacket and pulled him aside. “Stand down! Stop it!” He forced himself between two more men, pushing them apart. He saw the topman who had started it grappling with the able seaman at close range, exchanging blows. “You will cease fighting immediately,” he roared at them, grabbing the younger man by his wrist with one hand and pushing against the seaman’s shoulder with his other.
The two men paused, surprised at their captain’s appearance. “Stand back,” Charles snarled. “Stand back, or by God you’ll wish you had. Put your hands down and step back this instant.” The men grudgingly separated. Charles was aware that the marines from the quarterdeck were hurrying toward him, pushing men to one side or the other with the butts of their muskets. Ayres, Bevan, Winchester, Beechum, even Sykes had waded into the mass, pulling men apart.
“You, what’s your name?” Charles said to the topman.
“Andrew Nicols, sir,” he answered reluctantly.
“When I ordered that there be no further fighting, was that unclear to you?”
“No, sir.”
“Your spirits are stopped for one week. You will go below to your mess table to await Lieutenant Bevan’s displeasure. He will doubtless have further punishments.” Both Bevan and Ayres arrived to stand beside him.
“But, sir,” Nicols protested. “He murdered Stimson.”
Close up, Charles recognized the able seaman as Thomas Sherburne, one of the men he had interviewed earlier in the day. “Is this true?” he demanded.
“Not me, sir,” Sherburne answered indignantly. “This little shit . . .”
“Shut up,” Charles said. “You may speak only when spoken to, and then only a direct answer.” To Nicols he said, “Do you have any evidence of this?”
“Well, no, sir. But if it weren’t him it were one of his like.”
“I’ll not have any wild accusations of that kind. Go to your mess and stay there. Lieutenant Ayres,” he said, “send one of your men to accompany Nicols below and see that he stays put.” He turned on Sherburne. “Your spirits are stopped as well for starters. Go to your mess and wait until Lieutenant Bevan sends for you.”
“He bumped me on purpose, he did. Nicols started it.” Sherburne seemed genuinely aggrieved.
“The same as you did to him before the burial. I’ll not have it. I don’t hold with floggings unless they’re necessary, but by God, Sherburne, you’re pushing me. Now go below.” To Ayres, he ordered that another marine be sent to accompany him.
The remainder of the crew stood in a large circle, watching. “This must stop now,” he said in a loud voice, turning as he spoke to include all of them. “Do you hear me? If there is one further incident of fighting or provocation I’ll stop the entire ship’s company’s grog until we reach Cape Town. That’s two months at least. And I’ll put the offenders in irons on bread and water until we get there as well. If you don’t think I’ll do it, just try me.”
In the following days, Charles remained acutely aware that he commanded a tense, unhappy ship, riven with conflicts. Watch and work bills were adjusted to keep quarrel-prone men apart. The petty officers responsible for maintaining discipline were ordered in the strongest terms to prevent arguments and fisticuffs and to report offenders to the captain. He felt himself to be responsible. They should have been an experienced, capable crew. Instead, they were inattentive in their duties, sullen, and resentful toward one another and their officers, with frequent contemptuous looks and harsh words just short of coming to blows. Practice with the guns or aloft in the yards was equally unsatisfactory. The men walked through the evolutions with the barest minimum of effort, gibing at each other as they did so. Charles ordered that the guns be run in and out only; there was no point in wasting good powder and shot. He hoped upon hope that in time the situation would work itself out. So far it hadn’t.
His other concern was the overall shortage of men. This made for more work for each watch and undersized gun crews. He ordered an eye kept out for any passing merchantmen off of whom he might press additional hands, but the seas remained empty. He wrote in his report on Stimson’s death, that the seaman had been murdered by a person or persons unknown and left it at that. He would forward the document to the Admiralty when they reached Cape Town.
*****.
Charles lifted his sextant to one eye and leveled its scope on a clear stretch of horizon. He found the sun in its smoked mirrors and swung the index arm to bring the reflected image down until it exactly overlapped the line between sea and sky. He tightened the clamp screw on the arc. Satisfied, he lowered the device and glanced at its vernier scale. There had been a sea fog earlier in the morning which still lingered in patches, particularly to the north. The sky was overcast, though thinly so, and the sun shone through hazy and indistinct. These were not ideal conditions for a noon sighting, but it would be a good experience for his younger officers to practice under varying conditions.
Around him on the quarterdeck the others stood in a similar pose with similar instruments to their eyes, except for Mr. Cromley, who preferred to employ an older quadrant for his navigational sightings. Charles raised his instrument once more and saw that the sun’s reflection had separated from the horizon as it continued to rise. He loosened the screw and re-adjusted the arm to bring the points together again. He watched carefully for any further movement, but saw none as the light hung briefly motionless in place.
“There,” Winchester announced. “I make it to be noon.”
Charles re-tightened the clamp screw and lowered his sextant. He nodded to a master’s mate by the binnacle who immediately turned the half-hour glass then loudly rang the ship’s bell eight times to announce the official beginning of a new day. “Now, where are we?” he asked, looking at the others. In particular, he was interested in the progress of the three “young gentlemen”—his midshipmen—already busy studying their vernier readings and chalking calculations on their slates. Charles quickly made his own jottings to determine that Cassandra was at twenty-six degrees, forty-five and a half minutes latitude, which was about what he would have expected. At this time the day before, they had been approaching the Canaries, its westernmost island of La Palma almost indistinguishable on the horizon. In twenty-four hours they had gained about a hundred and fifty-five nautical miles southward in a moderate northeasterly breeze. That was about the same distance they had managed daily since departing Chatham dockyard three weeks before. It was a respectable distance, but it had become clear that Cassandra was not as fast as he might have hoped.
“May I see your computations, Mr. Sykes?” Charles said. Receiving the slate he saw that the mathematics were neatly and accurately done. Sykes’ result matched his own, close enough, at forty-five minutes even. “Very good,” he said. “I judge that to be acceptable. Mr. Hitch?”
Thomas Hitch held out his slate with a confident smile. “Here you are, sir,” he said. “I think you’ll find it satisfactory.”
Charles saw that the results were indeed satisfactory. Hitch had not only reached exactly the same result as Sykes, but the calculations had been made in an identical fashion down to the spacing of the figures on the board and a double underlining before the final expression of their latitude. He remembered that Hitch had been standing just behind Sykes as the work was done. He made no immediate comment on this.
“Mr. Aviemore?”
The very young midshipman was still struggling with his numbers. He hurriedly wiped at a spot on his slate with his sleeve then chalked a new figure. With his tongue pushing out the side of his cheek, he handed his effort over.
Charles took the merest glance at the jumble of scribbled digits. “There is no 5,283rd parallel on this earth, Mr. Aviemore,” he said pati
ently. “You will please attend to your text on navigation once more. I shall expect a better result tomorrow.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Aviemore answered with an unashamed grin.
Charles turned to Hitch, standing idly with a superior smile. “And tomorrow, Mr. Hitch, you will place your person next to Mr. Aviemore in the event he requires assistance.”
Hitch’s smile faded.
“If that is all, gentlemen,” Charles said, “I suggest we may return to our duties.” He noticed that Aviemore had become distracted with his sextant and was peering absently through its scope at random objects—that moment at a bird that had lighted on the taffrail at the stern end of the quarterdeck. “Mr. Aviemore,” he said sternly. “I will thank you to attend to me when I am speaking.”
“Sir,” the child said excitedly as he lowered his instrument. “I seen something what’s there.”
“Terns are of no particular interest to us at the moment,” Charles said. “Your attention to your captain is.”
“No, sir, I seen something other, afar on the sea.”
“No, you didn’t. All right, what?”
“I dunna know. A speck yonder, just on the edge of that cloud like.”
This made no sense to Charles, but he saw that Beechum had snatched up a long glass from its place at the base of the mizzen and was training it toward a low-lying bank of mist in the far distance to windward. “There is something on the horizon,” the lieutenant said. As Cassandra's stern rose on the crest of a swell he added, “It’s someone’s royals, I think.”
At that moment a shout came down from the mainmast tops, “Sail ho, north by northeast out of that fog. There’s two of them.” Charles looked up angrily. The lookout should surely have reported the sighting before Aviemore.
“Mr. Beechum, if you would take your glass up to the mizzen tops and report back what you see.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“And tell the lookout that I expect him to keep a sharper eye out in the future. No, on second thought, send him down to me.”
Beechum touched his hat and departed for the shrouds.
Charles went to stand beside Bevan. “What do you make of it?” he said.
“The sails? I don’t know, could be anything—Indiamen, men of war, slavers, or just your average merchant bottoms. I’d guess Indiamen outward bound, so you can’t press any men off of them, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Charles knew that any ships of the East India Company or other friendly merchant shipping would be making to round the Cape of Good Hope, the same as he. British captains were strictly prohibited from enlisting, by coercion or otherwise, men off them when they were in transit. Once they returned to home waters, however, they were fair game so long as enough were left on board to make port. Slave ships, to his mind, were another matter. He would have little hesitation about taking what men from them he wanted. It would be a long time before he returned home, and any complaints their captains made would receive no great sympathy at the Admiralty in any event.
He saw that Beechum had reached the tops, and watched as the seaman stationed there swung out onto the futtocks and started down.
“What are you going to do with that one?” Bevan said, nodding toward the descending lookout.
Charles frowned. “I’ll know the reason he was late in reporting. I can’t just let it pass. This kind of sloppiness has gone on too long. “Hell,” he said in frustration, “I should flog him. I should flog them all.”
“Yes,” Bevan said. “But you won’t.”
“No.” Charles fell silent as the man crossed the quarterdeck toward him. “You’re Jenkins, aren’t you?” he growled.
“Yes, sar.” He touched his forehead.
“Tell me, Jenkins, why you failed to spy that sail aft before I saw it from the deck.”
Jenkins did not seem particularly cowed. “She must of just emerged from that bit of fog, sar. One minute there was nothing there; when I looked back again, I saw ‘em.” It was a plausible explanation, and Charles’ anger drained away. “Thank you for your report. Keep me informed,” he said. “You may return to your station.”
“There’s one thing more,” Jenkins said.
“What is it?”
“Them’s Frenchies, sar. Both of ‘em,”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Them are two warships to windward, sar,” Jenkins repeated. “One larger than t’other. Mebby a frigate and a ship o’ the line. I could see them’s French by the roach in the cut o’ their sails. I made ‘em out just afore I came down.”
“Christ.” Charles glanced up at the mizzen shrouds where Beechum was just beginning to descend. He had enough problems without having this put on his plate. Something like twenty miles to windward of him were two enemy ships on a detached mission to somewhere. Where? It didn’t matter. The French, and whatever their intentions might be, were no concerns of his. He immediately dismissed any notion that he might engage them. Even if it were a lone frigate he would not entertain it. It was no part of his orders and his crew were not sufficiently practiced—not even near to sufficiently practiced. He also knew too well that the relatively frail Cassandra was no match for a line of battle ship with thirty-six-pounder cannon on her lower gun deck.
Beechum arrived breathlessly from his hurried descent of the shrouds. “There’s two, a frigate in the fore and a bigger one following about a mile or two behind. They’ve seen us by now, I’m sure of it.”
“I imagine they have, Mr. Beechum. What can you tell me of the battleship?”
“Don’t know for sure, sir. She’s hull down, a two-decker I should think. Possibly a seventy-four from the size of her masts.”
That seemed probable. It made little sense to send a lumbering three-decker far from home in the company of a single frigate. A seventy-four-gun warship would be powerful enough to deal with anything they might be likely to encounter, but with sufficient speed to almost keep pace with a swift-running frigate. “Thank you,” he said.
It would be safest, he decided, to move out of their way so that they might pass him by. He didn’t want to take any chance of being overhauled in the dark. “Make our course due west, Daniel,” Charles said. “We will resume southward when those two have moved on.”
Bevan passed the order to the quartermaster at the wheel, then sent the men to brace the sails around. As Cassandra settled on her new course, Charles went to the binnacle and took up his personal long glass that he kept housed there. Training the telescope aft, he soon picked out the dot on the horizon that was the enemy frigate’s upper sails clear in the lens. As the stern rose on a crest he saw her royals and a sliver of the topgallant beneath. He could see no sign of the second Frenchman from the deck. He was about to lower the glass when he thought he saw the attitude of the sail alter. Immediately a call came down from Jenkins, now back in the mainmast: “Deck! T’ Frenchies’ changing ‘er course towards us. She’s ‘anging out her stuns’ls.”
Charles’ first reaction was annoyance. Surely the French had something better to do than chase a solitary English frigate across the high seas. There was no cause for alarm. He didn’t need to outrun them, only to be sufficiently ahead when darkness came so as to lose them in the night. “Daniel,” he said, “we will hang out the studding sails as well. There’s no point in encouraging false hopes.”
“Aye, aye,” Bevan answered. He went to bellow the orders.
Charles turned to Cromley standing near the wheel. “What do you figure is our best point of sailing?”
The master cast his eyes at the set of the canvas aloft and the long pendant fluttering toward the southwest. “I figure it to be three points on either quarter, near enough, sir,” he answered, giving the conventional response.
“We will take the wind three-points off the starboard quarter then, if you please,” Charles said. He tilted his head back and watched with disapproval as the topmen started up the shrouds of the fore and mainmasts to put out the booms at the ends of the
yardarms to extend their reach. There was the barest appearance of hurrying aloft, enough to avoid a reprimand, but no real urgency about it. The studdingsails would be hung from the booms extending the yardarms and alongside the leeches of the main and maintop sails, increasing their surface. It should give them another knot or two.
Hour by hour he could see more of the distant frigate’s masts despite the addition of the studdingsails. All too soon the Frenchman’s topgallants had shown clear, then glimpses of her topsail. There was no doubt she was the faster ship. By late evening, in the last of the dying light, he climbed into the mizzen ratlines with his glass. From this vantage he could see the masts of the frigate nearly down to her deck and guessed that she would be about fifteen miles behind. For the larger warship he had to scan the horizon for several minutes before he picked out the tip of her uppermost sails, a tiny dot of lighter gray against the increasingly overcast sky. “In two hours, Daniel, wear ship to put the wind on the port quarter,” Charles said as soon as he returned to the deck.
“You hope to lose them in the dark?”
Charles nodded. “With any luck at all they will give up and go on their way. I’m thinking to loiter a bit before taking up our course again. We should be well to windward by then.”
“Aye, aye,” Bevan said. “In two hours.”
The lookout shouted down: “I think the big Frenchie has sent up signal flags, sir. It’s hard to be sure in this light.”
Charles assumed that the captain of the larger ship was recalling his frigate lest they become separated during the night. Satisfied, he made his way below to his cabin. He allowed Augustus to bring his supper, found he had little appetite, and returned to the quarterdeck where he stayed until Cassandra wore to take up her altered course.
*****.
"”Tis a half-hour to the dawn, Cap’n,” Augustus’ voice spoke from behind the small circle of candlelight at the curtain to Charles’ sleeping cabin. “Here be your coffee.”
“Bless you,” Charles said. For an instant he had a lingering sense that he could feel the warmth of Penny’s breath against his neck and smell the scent of her hair as if she had just been under the bed linen beside him. The image faded quickly. He pushed himself into an upright position and took the offered mug. With the first sips of the heated liquid inside him, he pulled on his clothing and left to go on deck. Passing along the darkened gun deck, he heard more than saw the crews gathering around their weapons and speaking in low tones as they prepared to run them out. This they were required to do when greeting every dawn at sea, in the case they should find themselves in proximity to an enemy warship. He heard less grumbling about it this morning and guessed that the appearance of yesterday’s enemy might have sparked some interest in them.
