A Fine Retribution

by Dewey Lambdin

  *   *   *

  Hmm, that seemed to go well, Lewrie told himself as he landed ashore and turned to look seaward at the Boston frigate one more time. With hopes that Captain Middleton had turned up at least one suitable transport ship, he returned to the George Inn for a late-morning pot of coffee and a scone, drenched in jam. He spotted Middleton in the dining room, hailed him, and went to join him.

  “How’s the hunt going, sir?” Lewrie asked as he sat down, waving for a waiter.

  “I have discovered just one ship, Captain Lewrie,” Middleton glumly told him. “She’s about three hundred tons burthen, full-rigged, and just returned from carrying troops to Lisbon. She’s named the Bristol Lass, and there’s the problem.”

  “Hmm?” Lewrie commented over the rim of his coffee cup.

  “Her owners and ship’s husbands are at Bristol, and any offer on her purchase must be done by mail, if her owners decide that to sell at the price I may offer is preferable to her continuing being leased at the top rate per ton from the Transport Board. And if they do wish to sell, they’ll surely haggle, which may take weeks of negotiating back and forth, by mail, before we could get her.”

  “Oh,” Lewrie grunted, wondering why he had imagined that things were going well. “Damn. Nothing else available?”

  “Oh, there are nigh sixty merchantmen in port, of which the men at the local Transport Board offices tell me there are at least seven which might suit,” Middleton gravelled, looking morose. “Unfortunately, they are all spoken for, and loading to sail in an escorted convoy to Spain and Portugal, so they would not come free ’til they return from overseas, d’ye see. Weeks? An entire month?”

  “Oh, shit,” Lewrie groaned, setting down his cup before the urge to fling it cross the dining room struck him. “Christ, what’ll I do with Boston’s crew, then? They’re available now, and if they have to sit idle that long … Oh, God! Her scrapping’s scheduled, and their pay and rations might be stopped before we could get ’em off her!”

  “Lodging them ashore would be impossible,” Middleton said. “If we even found an empty barracks or warehouse, half of them would take ‘leg bail’ and desert before we could get them aboard the new ships.”

  “Or a Captain recruitin’ for a new ship doesn’t steal ’em,” Lewrie griped. “Needs of the Service … mine arse on a band-box! And here I thought we had orders, writs t’wave under people’s noses to smooth the way! Surely, you can find something available in port!”

  “Well, I’ve only been at it one morning,” Middleton said, with a touch of “don’t blame me!” snarl.

  Lewrie’s scone arrived, along with a jam pot and a butter dish, and he split it and slathered it, though he had suddenly lost his appetite. “Not every ship in port is hired on by the Transport Board,” he suggested. “There must be some available.”

  “I would imagine there are, Captain Lewrie,” Middleton gloomed, as if an inspection of every hull in Portsmouth might be necessary. “How many, though, are fitted for troop berthing, large enough, able to be converted?”

  “Blackbirders?” Lewrie tossed out.

  “Slave ships?” Middleton scoffed. “Only if you plan to chain the soldiers belowdecks. Most of them are smaller than what we need, can’t accommodate your large Navy crews, or berthing space for soldiers who expect to be able to stand upright and walk about. And, most of the slavers work out of Bristol and Liverpool, anyway. Not exactly ready to hand.”

  “Hmphf!” Lewrie commented. “I suppose it’d take half a year to get the stink out of them, too,” and Middleton nodded an amen. Both men had encountered “blackbirders” at sea, and the reek of their West-bound wretched cargo could never be forgotten, and could even put rats and roaches off their feed.

  “Insult the Army, too,” Middleton agreed.

  “Well, what’d they expect, passage in an East Indiaman?” Lewrie scoffed. “Here now, you went aboard this Bristol Lass, spoke to her master?”

  “Spent a couple of hours at it, aye,” Middleton informed him. “She’s already fitted out for troops, though her four-man cabins will have to be rebuilt. You know how soldiers are, Lewrie. Give them a cabin, and built-in cots, and they’ll knock down the in-board partitions and sleep on the decks, and you show them hammocks, and they’ll riot. She’s leased at twenty-five shillings per ton per month, and currently under a six-month contract.”

  “What if we offered thirty shillings per ton?” Lewrie wondered. “Surely that’d be cheaper than buyin’ her for nine or ten thousand pounds. That’d be uhm…” He had to scribble with a finger on the tablecloth. “That’d be five hundred and twenty-five pounds per month and … three thousand one hundred and fifty pounds for a six-month contract. A whole year’d be double that. Christ, why sell for nine or ten thousand, when her owners are makin’ ‘chink’ hand over fist, already!”

  “It would save the Navy some money,” Middleton said, stroking his chin. “What would we do with her Master, Mates, and skimpy crew, though? And if she’s only hired, not bought in, she can’t exactly be called a King’s Ship.”

  “Don’t we have armed transports in service?” Lewrie pressed.

  “Aye, we do, with Navy crews, Lieutenants’ commands, but they are meant to carry troops independently, or carry troops but act as escorts to the convoy they’re in,” Middleton pointed out. “The merchant crews are left ashore, able to run the owners’ other ships.”

  “We could hire them as armed transports,” Lewrie enthused, “but leave the guns off, and that way, they would be King’s Ships, in name only. Offer the owners a year’s contract up front, a note-of-hand by mail or courier, and we just might have ourselves a ship!”

  “Good morning, sirs,” Midshipman Chenery cheerily said as he entered the dining room, after running some early morning errands for Middleton. “My, the scones look good! Here, waiter?”

  “Take half of mine,” Lewrie offered, peering at Middleton who was mulling the idea over with several Harumphs and Hmms.

  “Thank you kindly, sir!” Chenery said, quickly snatching half a scone and gobbling it down before he could ask for a coffee cup.

  “You know, Lewrie, it just might work, at that,” Captain Middleton slowly said, at last. “We should go speak with her Master, again, and let you have a look over her.”

  “No time like the present,” Lewrie declared, slapping a hand on the table top.

  “Aye, let’s go, this instant,” Middleton agreed.

  “Ye wish t’look over a trooper, Mister Chenery?” Lewrie asked as he rose and dug out his coin-purse to settle the bill.

  “Ehm, aye sir,” Chenery replied, getting up, too, and casting a longing look at the other half of the scone, and his lack of coffee to wash down what he’d devoured. He was still chewing and probing with his tongue for crumbs as they stepped out into the street.

  *   *   *

  “Thirty shillings a ton?” Bristol Lass’s flint-faced Master said after they made the offer. “Bless my soul, thirty? This very minute, sirs? Well, now, that’d be up to the owner and his partners. She is already under hire, only two months into a six-month contract, ye know. And an armed transport, ye say? With a Navy crew? Ye trying to put me and my Mates out of work?”

  “The owner has other ships in which you could serve, sir?” Lewrie asked him.

  “Nigh a dozen, all hired by the Transport Board, even cavalry ships,” the Master boasted, “and more building all the time. Aye, we could … but we’d have to coach to Bristol or Liverpool to go aboard one of the new ones. Lost wages ’til we do.”

  “We could offer to pay your fares, with per diem to cover meals and lodging atop that, sir,” Captain Middleton said to sweeten the pot. “Your sailors…”

  “Bugger them!” the Master scoffed, looking about to see if any of his crew could hear. “A sorry pack of sulky ‘sea lawyers’ and lack-wits I’d as soon see the back of. A touch of the lash would keep them on the hop, but I can’t, not like you in the Navy, more’s the pi
ty. We tell them they’re paying off, they’ll drink and fuck their money away, and find new ships the next morning, as easy as ‘kiss my hand’.”

  “So, if we continue their pay ’til your owners agree to the new terms, you could remain in port?” Middleton asked him.

  “Makes no matter to me,” the transport’s Master spat. “Even if you offer them their pay, half of them would jump ship before the ink’s dry on a new contract. We were supposed to take a fresh draught of soldiers aboard, but, if you tell the Transport Board Captain that there’s a better offer, I’ll sit here at anchor ’til the next Epiphany!”

  “I will do that this very afternoon, sir,” Middleton vowed. “And write your owners with the new offer by the evening post.”

  “I’d like to take a look below,” Lewrie said.

  “Why, then, let me give you the ten-pence tour, sir!” her Master almost whooped in glee, leading them below while boasting that Bristol Lass was built to be a trooper, that she was only three years old, and her copper-clad hull had been scoured of weed and barnacles only two months earlier, and how she could turn a fair ten knots on a quartering wind, made little leeway, and didn’t “gripe”.

  Down either beam of the lower deck there were dog-box-styled cabins, rather tiny in all, with room for only four private soldiers each, and as Captain Middleton had described, the deal-and-canvas partitions had been torn down to leave the cabins open to the midships, for air circulation most-likely, so the soldiers who would idle and sleep in them would not feel cut off from the world and crammed into a wee, dark box. The foremost and aftermost cabins either side were usually for Corporals and Sergeants, while gentleman officers, subalterns, and Captains would be berthed right aft where the wardroom for Master and Mates lay. As in any ship, the overhead was low, and here where cargo would usually be stowed, there were no gun-ports that could be opened when at anchor to allow circulation; only grated hatch covers for air.

  Stores, water, salt-meat rations, and other victuals were stored on the orlop, along with whatever the troops needed ashore, but not at sea, like their tentage and camp cook pots.

  “Be a tight fit for your sailors,” Captain Middleton pointed out as they went up one deck. “And, I’d suppose the galley is big enough to feed sixty or so crewmen, plus soldiers.”

  “About an hundred and fifty troops, all told,” the Master told them, “with officers and servants included. Thick as cockroaches!”

  Lewrie puzzled over how many seamen he could assign to the ship, considering that the six rowing barges would require at least fifty-four oarsmen and tillermen, the bulk of the sixty-five or seventy available for each transport from Boston’s crew. Once anchored, the nets lowered, and the boats manned, there wouldn’t be a complete Harbour Watch still aboard, should anything go smash, the anchor dragged, or the weather suddenly piped up foul!

  Christ, can we take the risk? he asked himself; Now I see the reality of it, can it really work? Looked fine on paper, but … I’d be better off back home with Jessica!

  “Will she do, sirs?” the ship’s Master asked once they were all back on the weather deck.

  “Looks suitable to me, sir,” Lewrie grudgingly allowed, loath to sound too eager.

  “Splendidly,” Captain Middleton declared, though, “and I shall communicate with her owners this very day!”

  In for the penny, in for thirty shillings a ton, Lewrie thought as Middleton shook hands on the prospective bargain.

  “And if your owners have other ships like her available, I shall contract for them, as well,” Middleton said, in happy takings. “Whilst we wait to hear what the owners think of the arrangement, you just may speak with other Masters in port, sir, who have similar ships under contract. Never can tell,” he said with a wink to one and all. “The higher fee might tempt them, too!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The situation looked a little brighter two days later, when HMS Vigilance entered port, and Lewrie could go aboard her just as soon as she was anchored by bow and stern, and her Bosun and Mates could be rowed round to see that her yards were squared away. Things would have been sunnier had his new ship not looked dowdy and worn down by several months on the blockade of the French Biscay coast. Paint had been scoured nigh to bare wood by the clash of heavy seas and winds, and what little gilt her present Captain had trimmed her with was about gone. As his hired boat came alongside her main channels, Lewrie saw that the man-ropes along her boarding battens had faded dull grey and were slimed with green on the lowermost steps.

  It was with some misgivings that Lewrie took hold of the man-ropes, tucked his everyday hanger behind his left leg, and began a careful ascent to the entry-port, and a hurriedly-gathered side-party.

  “Captain Alan Lewrie, to see your Captain,” he announced after the last notes of the the Bosun’s silver call had died away.

  “Oh!” Vigilance’s First Officer cried in surprise. “Captain Lewrie! Welcome aboard, sir!”

  “Mister Farley?” Lewrie exclaimed in like surprise. “I haven’t seen you since Thermopylae paid off. Good to see you, again.”

  “And you, sir, ehm…,” Farley replied, returning to a proper Sea Officer’s sternness. “Captain Nunnelly is aft, sir. We were not told who his relief would be. This way, sir. I am sure he will be delighted to greet you.”

  “Ill is he, Mister Farley?” Lewrie asked as they crossed the quarterdeck to the door to the great-cabins.

  “Barely able to walk, or anything else, sir,” Lieutenant Farley told him with a sad shake of his head. “Our Surgeon, Mister Woodbury, says it’s the worst rheumatism he’s ever seen, but then, Captain Nunnelly has been almost continuously at sea nigh on fourty years, by now.”

  Damme, just thinkin’ of it makes me feel creaky! Lewrie told himself, happy that his own thirty years in the Navy hadn’t crippled him, too.

  “Enter,” a voice from within bade after the Marine sentry had bellowed to announce their presence; a weak, weary voice that was followed by a bout of coughing and throat-clearing. Once inside the great-cabins, Lewrie beheld a shambling, bent-over stick-figure of a man who was taking a long time to ease himself to his feet behind his day-cabin desk, a haggard, lined face of a wizened ancient, wincing in pain with every movement. Captain Nunnelly’s hair was completely grey, long, and unkempt, fluffed out from the sides of his head as if combing was too much of a bother any longer.

  “Lewrie, is it?” Captain Nunnelly rasped. “You’re to be my replacement?”

  “I am, sir,” Lewrie told him, “but this is more of a courtesy call today. I’ll not read myself in ’til you’ve completed your arrangements. No real tearing rush.”

  “Harumph,” Nunnelly replied to that, more of a gargle of phlegm, followed by several more throat-clearing coughs. Nunnelly wiped his mouth with a handkerchief before speaking again. “No matter to me, sir. I cannot get off this ship fast enough. Already halfway packed up and … harumph. I’m old, I’m tired, and so crippled that I’ll leave her by Bosun’s chair, and might need another to leave the boat for the top of the landing stairs. I tried to hold out, but…,” but he had to break off to cough into his handkerchief for a moment.

  “We’ll see you safe ashore, sir,” Lieutenant Farley promised.

  “Coffee, Captain Lewrie?” Nunnelly asked once he was in control of his voice, again, and came round his desk to shake hands, resting his other hand on the desk-top to support himself.

  “That would be welcome, sir,” Lewrie agreed, though wondering if Nunnelly would make it to the settees and chairs without falling down.

  Captain Nunnelly called out to his cabin steward, a man about as ancient as himself, to fetch coffee and the makings, then finally eased himself down into a shabby wing-back chair, wincing and sucking his teeth in pain, even grunting before he got settled.

  “Damned fool, me, Captain Lewrie,” Nunnelly said with a first glimmer of mirth, which was as quickly gone. “So many years as a Mid, ages as a Lieutenant in peace and war, and at least I can bo
ast that I never spent more than a Dog Watch on half-pay ’tween ships. I made Commander and got a sweet Sixth Rate in 1805, and I was feeling the first twinges then, and I should have faced the truth, but they offered me promotion to Post-Captain, and Vigilance, a year and a half ago, and I couldn’t refuse. Too much thick-headed pride, d’ye see. Make the Captain’s List, at last, after a whole life spent trying for it?”

  “One hopes that time ashore will ease you, sir,” Lewrie said as the coffee came.

  “Hahl” Captain Nunnelly spat. “Death will ease me. Laudanum, brandy, mustard poultices, hot flannels … nothing else has worked, harumph.” He took a moment to wipe his mouth. “Maybe a summer spent in front of a roaring fire might help, but I doubt it. I don’t envy you having Vigilance, Captain Lewrie, not at all, and God help you.”

  “Sir?” Lewrie tentatively asked, with a brow up in wonder.

  “They say that officers with any sense pray, or curse, to get out of serving on sixty-fours,” Nunnelly sourly growled. “They’re all old, half worn-out, too slow to act like a frigate, and too weak to stand in the line of battle. The blockade is all they’re good for, unless you’re in the Far East, and that’s a death sentence in itself. Foreign fevers will carry you off before you can get your cabin furnishings settled.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, sir,” Lewrie said. “My last ship was a fifty-gunner Fourth Rate, and we accomplished rather a lot with her.”

  Nunnelly scowled at him as if he’d just spouted moonshine, and Lewrie’s lack of sash and star, or his medals made him appear as just one more Post-Captain who would accept any active commission at sea as a God-given favour.

  “If you say so, Captain Lewrie,” Nunnelly said, waving an idle hand in response. “At any rate, I’m halfway packed up, as I said, and intend to leave the ship Wednesday at Eight Bells of the Morning Watch. We can hold the change-in-command then, if you’re eager, or you could read yourself in Thursday.”