A Fine Retribution

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Ehm … perhaps you should tell Mister Farley, first, sir,” Severance suggested after a quirky look. “He’s a grand fellow, but I’ve found he’s not one who likes being blind-sided.”

  “Ah, perhaps you’re right, Mister Severance,” Lewrie agreed. “As you depart, pass word for him to come see me.”

  “And the ship’s office off the quarterdeck, sir?” Severance asked.

  “That’ll be the chart room,” Lewrie said. “I found that arrangement worked well on my last ship, handy to officers of the watch.”

  “Very good, sir,” Severance said, “and thank you again for the promotion, and the trust you put in me, sir.”

  “Good, then,” Lewrie said, rising from behind his desk to see him out. “Take joy of it, and the stir it’ll cause in the cockpit with your former fellow Mids. Mister Chenery will take your place, there. I’d admire did you take him aside and let him know all the cautions a newcome needs to know of doings in your old mess.”

  “That I will, sir!”

  A brief meeting with Lieutenant Farley five minutes later, and Lewrie was free of demands for the rest of the afternoon. As Eight Bells of the Day Watch chimed and the First Dog Watch began, he opened a desk drawer to get some of his new bond paper and his steel-nib pen; he’d not yet written Jessica today, but he’d barely gotten past My dearest darling Wife when Deavers interrupted.

  “Slipped my mind, it did, sir, to brew any more of your cold tea, but would you be wanting anything instead, sir?” Deavers asked.

  “Hmm, a mug of ginger beer from that anket I bought’d suit,” he told him.

  “Aye, sir. I’ll fetch it directly,” Deavers replied. He was back in a trice with a bright pewter mug. “Ehm, sir.”

  “Aye, Deavers?” Lewrie asked, just after How I long to see you.

  “I’ve been speaking to Yeovill, sir,” Deavers hesitantly began, “about the dining arrangements?” and Lewrie laid his pen aside to hear him out. “Well sir, with more officers aboard to dine in, and if we’re going to be dealing with Army people come aboard for meetings and such, Yeovill thinks Dasher and I might need some help at-table, and keeping your cabins tidy, sir.”

  “Another cabin servant?” Lewrie asked, frowning a tad.

  “Aye, sir,” Deavers replied, a little more at ease since Lewrie had broached the topic. “There’s a young fellow we’ve spoken with that might suit, name of George Turnbow. He’s a seventeen-year-old lad, as neat as anything, a waiter from a good chop-house here in Portsmouth who got swept up in the Press, and he knows his way about a fine table. He even showed me how to lay out the forks and such proper, sir. Not that Pettus didn’t before.”

  “Full time, or just when we dine in more company?” Lewrie asked.

  “We were thinking full time, sir,” Deavers said. “He’s no good at ‘pulley-hauley’, or knows the first thing about what even a Landsman lubber should when it comes to seamanship. We think he needs to be either fish or fowl, sir.”

  “Well, I suppose,” Lewrie said with a sigh, recalling how many servants some Captains had in their retinues. “We’ll give him a try and see how he works out.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Deavers said, grinning.

  I s’pose I can afford a second servant, Lewrie told himself; but I still miss Pettus, and Jessop. And Furfy, and a lot of people. And Jessica most of all. Ah, well. Times change.

  He took a deep sip of ginger beer, but in setting the mug down on his desk, he slopped some of its contents on the letter he’d begun.

  “Oh, damn,” he growled, balling the sheet of paper up and tossing it cross the cabins, which was just fine with Chalky, who sprang from a sprawl on the settee, where he had been “decorating” the red cushions with white fur, and happily began to football it round the day-cabin.

  My dearest darling Bride,

  One of the many Joys of being your adoring Husband, which I miss terribly, is sitting close with you in pleasant Intimacy as our day ends, snugly embraced and sharing either our mutual Cares, our Successes, or our Frustrations. Imagine me holding your hand, at long Distance, and relate to you what a perfect Hell this day has been. First off …

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “No barges available?” Captain Middleton asked, looking as if he would tug at his hair as he faced yet another hurdle, and it was too early in the day, and his breakfast from the kitchens at the George Inn had been, ’til that news, too good to be ruined. “You will put me off my feed, sir,” he grumbled.

  “And no help in that direction from the Portsmouth Dockyards, either,” Lewrie had to tell him, feeling a tad guilty to impart such news, and equally bad news almost every morning.

  Lewrie had already had a fine breakfast of his own aboard HMS Vigilance, but Middleton’s fried eggs, pork chop, and mound of spiced hashed potatoes looked too tempting; he snatched a slice of toast off the bread barge and began to butter it.

  “The yard suggested that we’d do best issuing a contract for ’em with one of the independent builders ‘back of the beach’ somewhere along the hard,” Lewrie added hopefully. “What does a fir-built barge cost, d’ye imagine?”

  Middleton’s response was a heavy sigh, and a hard frown at his plate, with both hands nigh-balled into fists either side of it. “It may be about an hundred pounds for each, labour included.”

  “We did save on leases versus purchases on the transports, so … wouldn’t we be under budget?” Lewrie pointed out. “Assuming that we even have a budget, that is.”

  “It’s rather nice, being a Commissioner Without Special Functions, you know, Lewrie,” Middleton said. “Well, it was. Breeze in at a decent hour, read some paperwork, ring for a pot of tea and the newspapers, go out for a good dinner, then pack up and be home with my feet up before supper. Now, though. Ah, me. Getting you to sea is become akin to the Labours of Hercules.”

  “Sorry, sir,” Lewrie pretended to apologise. “But, this is all new, and nothing we need is in the cupboard, ready to go.”

  “Oh, I know, dammit,” Middleton griped, then took a sip of his coffee and resumed with his knife and fork. Between bites he said, “I was going to inspect a promising ship this morning, and speak with her owners, who keep offices at Southampton, but … if you don’t mind, we could do that together, then prowl about the minor shipbuilders’.”

  “I am at your complete disposal, sir!” Lewrie vowed.

  “Just as I seem to be at yours, sir,” Middleton said rather frostily. “I think all that can wait ’til I’ve had my breakfast … don’t you, Captain Lewrie?”

  “But of course, sir! Bon appétit!”

  *   *   *

  They took Lewrie’s cutter out into the harbour to inspect the ship in question, just come in from the American Chesapeake. Once in the holds, she was still redolent of kegged tobacco, West Indies rum and molasses, and the dry, musty smell of baled cotton which she had just landed. The Lady Murray was not fitted out with many small cabins like a trooper, but she was more than big enough belowdecks to carry at least one hundred and fifty soldiers, and constructing the partitions and berths would be an easy task. She was bigger than Bristol Lass, too, longer and beamier, and of four hundred and fifty tons. In all respects she would more than suit their purposes, and she was in very good material shape.

  “If her owners are amenable, we might contract with the people who’ll build our barges to do the conversion, sir,” Lewrie suggested, once they were back on deck

  “Hmm, we’ll see,” Middleton said with a shrug as he thumped on her larboard main stays. “If they’re amenable, depending on how many other ships the owners have, and how lucrative their trade has been. Cotton, is it?” he asked, looking at a wad of cotton lint that had come loose from a bale.

  “I’m told it’s the coming thing, sir,” Lewrie told him. “Finer feel for bed linens and undergarments. Not as scratchy as flax.”

  “If you say so,” Middleton said, rubbing the boll about in his hand. “Looks more like the dirty lint one finds
under furniture, in its natural state. Well, let’s go keep our appointment with Lady Murray’s owners, and see if thirty shillings a ton will tempt them.”

  *   *   *

  Thirty shillings a ton per month for an entire year was tempting to the ship’s owners, a dour pack of money-grubbers who struck them as impoverished counting house clerks. The West Indies trade with British colonies was alright, both for exports and returning import cargoes, but the American trade was getting harder and harder to deal with, and Lewrie got an earful about the Royal Navy’s enforcement of the embargo of American ships bound for Europe and the predations of man-starved warships stopping and inspecting, then pressing, sailors suspected of being British deserters, even the ones with legitimate declarations of US citizenship, which practices had enraged the Americans and engendered bad feelings and hard dealings in American ports. The motto “Free Trade and Sailor’s Rights” was becoming widespread. And even British ships were not immune to being stopped and robbed of crewmen once in Soundings of Great Britain, either!

  If the Navy wished to take Lady Murray over that instant, it was fine with them, and they would shift her present crew into other ships of their burgeoning line!

  Just as soon as they had the money deposited, of course!

  *   *   *

  “Bless my soul, sirs,” the owner of a small yard down-river from Southampton exclaimed after they had put in to begin their search for a boat builder. “You’ve come to the right place if it’s boats you want, and in pudding time, to boot. We’ve just finished launching a brace of fishing yawls, and I’ve been at sixes and sevens wondering where and when our next work was coming from. Fancy Admiralty barges, would it be?”

  “No sir, standard twenty-nine-foot ship’s-boat-type barges,” Captain Middleton told the fellow. “Nothing fancy, but sturdy.”

  “I’ve a twenty-five-foot cutter here, sirs,” the man said as he led them to a six-oared boat on skids, hauled out for a bottom clean. “You look at our workmanship, sirs, you won’t find better in any yard on the coast. Tight and snug, and will keep as dry as a stone crock. Sound as the pound should she be run ashore, on sand, shingle, or rock. You said barges, plural, sirs. How many did you have in mind?”

  “Twenty-one,” Lewrie told him as he and Middleton inspected the cutter, with Middleton making approving “Hmms!”

  “All at once, sirs? Well, bless my soul!” the shipbuilder said in wonder, removing his knit cap to scratch his head. “With every man working sunup to sundown, I doubt we could turn out eight a month! Kills my soul to say it, but … what do you need so many for?”

  “For troop transports,” Middleton said, not wishing to give any more clues. “To land soldiers, if docks aren’t available.”

  “Hmm, there’s another yard just down-river of mine, sirs,” the man said, “decent sort of fellow runs it, and hard as it is to throw him some business, between the two of us we might be able to build at least sixteen or seventeen a month. You’re in a tearing rush, sirs?”

  “Unfortunately yes,” Lewrie said, which earned him a glare from Middleton.

  “Well, now,” the fellow said, shrewdly rubbing his raspy chin, “I doubt between the two of us that we could turn them out for less than, oh … an hundred and fifty pounds apiece, with oars and all.”

  That made Middleton cough into his fist, and throw another glare in Lewrie’s direction. “That, ah … seems fair, sir,” Middleton said. “Your competitor down-river would be free to begin them at once, do you imagine? With the same fine quality as your yard, sir?”

  “If you can row me down there, we could see,” the fellow said with a sly smile.

  *   *   *

  “One hundred and eighty-five pounds per boat, Captain Lewrie,” Middleton complained as he and Middleton left the cutter for a moment at the King’s Stairs in the naval base hours later. “Three thousand, eight hundred and eighty-five pounds all told. You really don’t know how to negotiate, do you, sir? Paid full price for everything, haven’t you.”

  “They saw us coming, sir,” Lewrie attempted to apologise. “It’s a seller’s market? Soon as we admitted how soon we need ’em, it was out of our control. Could I dine you aboard to make amends, sir?”

  “No no, not tonight,” Middleton wearily griped. “I have to write London to tell them how much we’re costing them, write up the contract for the boats, look for the contract for Bristol Lass and Spaniel … and the contract for Lady Murray has to be laid out. I’ll be at it ’til Midnight, if I’m lucky.”

  “Well, I’ll take my leave, sir,” Lewrie said, “and call upon you in the morning.”

  “Oh, joy,” was Middleton’s parting comment.

  And, after doffing his hat to Middleton’s departing back, and a hapless shrug, Lewrie got back into his cutter and allowed himself to be stroked back to his ship in a rueful silence.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  It took an approach to a third minor shipyard for enough of the barges to be constructed as soon as possible. The contracts for the Bristol Lass and Lady Murray were signed, monies dispersed; the Spaniel came in and she was leased, at last. Finally, the crew of the Boston could leave her, be split up into lots of ninety men, and go aboard the transports, and Lady Murray rang and hummed as cabins for soldiers were built. Indeed, all three transports had their troop accommodations altered, with four-foot-high half-walls between for better ventilation, and lower berths boxed in inches above the deck and uppers three feet over the lowers. Provisions were made for weapons racks down the midships centrelines. It took some further wrangling with the Victualling Board, and that Mr. Pettijohn to provision all three ships with rations for three months, but, finally, all that was wanting were the barges. In the enforced delay, Lewrie had all long guns aboard Vigilance notched with rudimentary sights, but no amount of explanation could convince the ship’s Master Gunner, his Mates, the Quarter Gunners, or the gun-captains that aiming would ever make a lick of difference. But then, Captains were supposed to be eccentric, and a Captain who had a fish-net door was quirkier than most!

  *   *   *

  “Swung by the boat yards yesterday,” Captain Middleton said at breakfast at the George Inn as he sawed away at a slab of ham. “They’ll be in the water, soaked, and ready for your sailors to pick up by the end of the week. They didn’t know what colour to paint them, so I went ahead and told them to make them all dark blue, with white gunn’ls.”

  “That’s grand news, sir,” Lewrie enthused between slurps of hot coffee and a large bite of jammed and buttered toast. “And dark blue’s a good choice, do we go in before dawn or a little later. Harder for the foe to see, and target if they have guns ashore.”

  “Lewrie,” Middleton said after a long moment of chewing. “I’ve come to notice a certain, ehm … reluctance on the part of the yard, the Victualling Board warehouses, everyone we’ve dealt with. In the beginning, I put it down to interrupting the usual bureaucratic laziness, but lately I have begun to suspect that it’s organised. Have you any reason to believe so?”

  “I’ve riled several people in my career, sir,” Lewrie freely admitted with a rueful grin, “and was pretty-much told why I didn’t get a ship right away after Sapphire paid off that their patrons were a lot more powerful than my patrons. But no, I thought that any lack of co-operation was just sloth, or the lack of bribes to speed the work.”

  “Hmm, I must tell you of some correspondence I’ve had with Mister Croker in London,” Middleton said with a frown, setting aside his utensils. “Early on, some influential people in Parliament, and the Navy, wrote Admiralty to disparage the project as wasteful of monies and effort … to be expected, of course, if something is too novel.

  “Lately, though,” Middleton went on, “the critics have grown more specific in the details. They’ve complained that Boston’s crew could be better employed by turning over entire into a newly-commissioned frigate. That Vigilance has spent too long idle in port when she could ha
ve returned to the blockade once another Captain was appointed into her, and they seem to know too damned much of the costs we’ve run in hiring the transports and re-fitting them, the barges, the boarding nets, small arms, I don’t know what-all. As if people here in Portsmouth are in league with these carpers, in their pay, or beholden to them for their positions.”

  “Anybody write to say that I’m a damned fool who doesn’t know what he’s doing?” Lewrie growled in frustration, wondering how far and how powerful this seeming cabal might be.

  “They’re much too subtle for an outright denunciation, no,” Middleton said with a mirthless grin. “But, if you’re ready for sea in all other respects, I’d suggest that you hoist anchor just as soon as your barges are aboard your ships, before they find a way to scotch the entire project.”

  “Christ, do they run the Navy, or do they imagine that they do?” Lewrie gravelled in growing anger. “How did we get this far along, if some spiteful people who don’t really know me from Adam can throw so much delay at me? Can they influence the Army at Malta or Sicily? Deny me decent soldiers, none at all, or a pack of cripples?”

  “I envy you, in a way, Lewrie,” Middleton said with a touch of worldly-wise amusement, “For a man your age, you’ve not had many brushes with ‘interest’, faction, or the politics of grasping men who would’ve displaced Nelson with their favourites if they could have. It’s all a game of power over others, gaining the power to enrich oneself at the expense of others. Good God, that’s the essence of Parliament and the Navy, the Army, of trade and government. All this time and you’re as innocent as a babe in the woods. Don’t you know that there are people who would strip General Wellesley of his command in Spain despite the victories he’s won, if they could put their pet protégé in his place?”

  “I’m clueless, is what you’re sayin’,” Lewrie said, groaning.

  “Wouldn’t go that far, no,” Middleton said with a shake of his head, as if what he’d said was kindly meant. “Get to sea as soon as you can, Devil take the hindmost, and prove that large-scale raids work. If only to spite your foes.”