A King's Commander

by Dewey Lambdin

  A clumsy old Provence bilander already lay far astern, a prize easily snatched up from the clutch of odd vessels assembled in convoy. No matter that she’d sported a massive lateen mains’l on her after, or mainmast, the compromise of her foremast crossed with course, tops’l, and t’gallant yards, had made her slow to windward. Taken with but one warning shot fired cross her bows, and a long ten minutes of nail-biting frustration as a boat was gotten down, and a prize crew under Wheelock, the master’s mate, rowed over to secure her. Then Jester was off once more, lumping and drumming into wind, spray flying high to either beam, with a bone in her teeth.

  They’d spotted the convoy at dawn, on east-to-west patrol sixty miles north of Corsica; a gaggle of tartanes, bilanders, and pole-acres to their south. Lying-to, hardly moving, as if awaiting the coming of dusk before closing the coast in the wee hours, when they might stand a chance of sneaking past other patrol ships. Immediately, Jester had hardened up, beat to quarters, and taken off in pursuit. Now the motley collection of ships had become what were termed “Chases.”

  The nearest Chase, Mister Buchanon informed them, was a tartane, a single-masted coastal trading vessel with a fore-and-aft lateen mains’l and a bowsprit that allowed her to set jibs and stays’ls to go closer to the True Wind than Jester could ever hope to. She might have made an escape, outpointing them, if she’d been longer, or been less heavily laden. She merely ploughed along, burying her bows whenever she met the rolling chops, and flinging clouds of spray and foam over herself, as if trying to hide in it.

  “Starboard foc’s’le carronade!” Lewrie shouted to the gun deck. “One shot across her bows!” They’d overhauled her rapidly, striding up to within half a cable—one hundred-twenty yards—of her larboard side, as she labored to flee.

  A sharp bark, a quickly dissipated bloom of smoke, sulfurously bitter and smelling of rotten eggs as it whipped past the quarter-deck, and then a great splash and pillar of spray as the ball struck short and a little to the right of “across her bows.” Under them, was more like it. The eighteen-pounder round-shot, five inches and four parts across, caromed up from first graze like a goosed dolphin, smashed into the underside of the hapless tartane’s bows, shattering the jib boom and bowsprit, amputating it just beyond the cutwater!

  “Sofort! Ja!” Quarter-gunner Rahl could be heard to exult as he saw the results of his handiwork. “Genau!” Exactly!

  Without jibs to balance her helm, she sagged alee, veering away to starboard under the press of that great lateen sail and yard, showing her weeded quick-work as she heeled precipitously.

  “Helm a’weather, Quartermaster! Ease us a point free!” Lewrie snapped, so Jester would surge up even with her, still on her lar-board quarter, showing her there would be no escape. “Number one gun, ready!”

  He waited until she rolled more upright, so he wouldn’t lose her by putting a ball through her hull, too far below the water-line to be repaired. “No more warning shots, Mister Crewe. Show her we mean it.”

  A quick fiddle with the quoin for elevation, a tug on the side tackles, then the crew scrambling back from the line of recoil. Bang! the nine-pounder erupted. At one hundred yards, the ball’s strike was immediate, a crash of timbers, the squawk! of rivened wood as a star-shaped hole three feet across was blasted into her side, just before her mast, and the tartane shook and rolled alee once more to the impact. Then, down came her long lateen yard, crashing to the deck as halliards were cut, instead of handed. Eight or nine men—perhaps her entire crew—appeared at the rails, hands flailing, arms raised in prayerlike pleading, and jabbering away fit to bust in French!

  “Mister Hyde, she’s your prize, sir,” Lewrie crowed. “Mister Tucker the quartermaster’s mate, and six hands to go with you. Hoist what sail you may, once you’ve secured her crew, and follow along aft of us as best you’re able. Take the jolly boat. Move yourself, sir! Mister Knolles, fetch us to, to lower away the boat.”

  Two prizes, already, and it had barely gone eight, he exulted. Why, we might take all of ’em, by the end of the forenoon! And not a single other sail in sight to share with! Any other British warship, with even her royals ’bove the horizon, “in sight” at the time that a prize surrendered, shared in the prize money adjudged by an Admiralty Court. This morning, Lewrie was feeling particularly greedy. Hungry for more than his breakfast!

  ’Sides, there’s my bloody expenses to make good, he sighed, as the jolly boat was swung high off the cross-deck beams that spanned Jester ’s waist from gangway to gangway, even before she came to a full halt in a welter of foam and a calamitously windy din from aloft.

  “Come on, come on, damn yer eyes!” he muttered under his breath at how long it was taking. Take in fore and main courses, so they’d not be torn; topmen aloft to trice up yard tackles with clew jiggers, hook on burton purchases from the tops to the yardarms, jump a triatic stay between the stay-tackle pendants, and send the falls to the deck; lift the jolly boat off the cross-deck beams that spanned the waist, with stay tackles; swing her outboard with the yard tackles, and six guy lines for preventers; then lower away together. Then, even before the boat crew was down overside, take in all the hoisting gear, which was in the way aloft, ungasket the course-sails and clew them full of air once more . . . !

  His own gig was away to the bilander, with Andrews in charge of it. Now the jolly boat. There was only the one twenty-six-foot cutter left, which took eight hands to row, and one to steer. Only one more prize taken, before he ran out of conveyances for prize crews? he groaned. Surely, not!

  “Cony!” He decided. “Half a cable’s worth of messenger line to the jolly boat, as a painter. Once she’s alongside the prize and empty, walk the painter aft and use it as a towline. We’ll keep her with us!”

  What seemed an hour later, they were off again, this time chasing what looked like an Egyptian dhow; high-pooped, two masts with lateen sails, a sweet curve to her sheerline, almost saucy—almost too cute to frighten. But a prize was a prize. Like the tartane, she was too short on the waterline to make any speed.

  But beyond . . . !

  Spreading out now, hauling their wind to escape individually, all order gone, were three rather substantial, and rewarding-looking ships. One, the nearest, heading sou’west, and another pair farther off bearing sou’east, still almost in company, dodging away with the boisterous wind abeam. Three-masted poleacres, with lateen rigs upon their fore and mizzenmasts to take the place of spank-ers or jibs, but oddly, and downright gruesomely, square-rigged on their much taller mainmasts, with courses, tops’ls and t’gallants towering over their decks, as bastardly appearing as “hermaphrodite” brigs!

  They fetched the dhow-looking coaster up to their starboard side in a brief quarter-hour. Up close, she was scarred, weathered, faded, and neglected, as stained and dull as an old dishcloth. She labored within close musket shot, about fifty yards off, her few crewmen stock-still and hangdog at the rails. No warning shot was even required!

  Down came her lateen yards, collapsing those triangular ellipses to her decks, and Jester fetched-to once more. The jolly boat was led around to the entry port by its towline, and Midshipman Spendlove, with Quartermaster Spenser and six seamen, rowed over to take charge of her; the jolly boat hauled back to Jester afterward for further use.

  “Hardly seems worth the effort, Captain,” Lieutenant Knolles remarked, laughing in scornful appraisal. “A dowdy old tub, she is.”

  “Well, let’s hope she’s a decent cargo aboard, to pay for our efforts, Mister Knolles.” Lewrie shrugged. “Mains’l haul, and let’s be going.”

  Now their problem was that of a single staghound that had come across an entire herd of deer—which to pursue next. The nearest to them was running due west by then, about two miles off. The other two poleacres had fallen off the wind to east-sou’east, were closer together, but had at least another mile lead on Jester before she got back to full speed of nearly eleven knots.

  “Mister Buchanon?” Lewrie called to his
sailing master.

  “Aye, sir?”

  “Those two masters yonder know something we don’t, sir? Current around the east’rd of Corsica?” Lewrie inquired. “Seems silly, to run east-sou’east, closer to the Bastia peninsula.”

  “North-set current, Cap’um, aye,” Buchanon agreed, pointing to a chart. “Runs up past Cape Corse, ’tween ’ere an’ th’ Isle of Capraia . . . an’ in shallower water, too. Nought t’dread, ’tis deep enough even for a 1st Rate, but . . . do they get into its . . . fan, I s’pose, an’ with this southerly wind, ’ey’ll fly like a pair o’ pigeons. One an’ a half, mayhap two knots, more, ’ey’d gain.”

  “ If they may weather Cape Corse!” Lewrie intuited, at once. The poleacres had run far enough south, within forty or so miles of Corsica, that flight in that direction could come to an end, hemmed in by bluffs and shoals. If they stayed somewhat on the wind, as they still were.

  “Sir, starboard Chase is altering course!” Knolles cried out to warn them.

  Inexplicably, the nearest poleacre had come about to the starboard tack, as if suicidally intent upon making Calvi, after all, and arriving in late afternoon—broad daylight! Even as close-hauled as she lay to the eyes of the wind, she’d cross ahead of Jester ’s present course. Or, their courses would meet, like the two upright legs of a triangle, and Jester, of course, would shoot her to rags, and then take her.

  “Mister Knolles, ready about! Stations for Stays!” Lewrie said with a wry smile. “We’ll come to starboard tack. Make our new course east by south.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Knolles replied automatically, though sounding quizzical. “Mister Porter, pipe hands to Stations for Stays. Ready to come about!”

  “Only a purblind fool’d come about like ’at, Cap’um,” Buchanon opined. “Meanin’ her, yonder, sir, d’ye understand, no disrespect . . .”

  “My thoughts, exactly, Mister Buchanon,” Lewrie agreed with a soft laugh. “Remind you of a mother goose, leading the stoat away from her hatchlings?”

  “Flaggin’ th’ broken wing, aye, Cap’um.”

  “That pair to the east’rd, they’re hoping to get away. This’un might be their leader. A merchant poleacre, yes. But perhaps carrying a French naval officer aboard. As short of ships as they are, it might even be a well- armed poleacre, servin’ as escort. It’d be a criminal waste to send these poor vessels out to resupply Calvi without at least one warship. I’ll wager that pair has the valuable cargo.”

  “Ready about, sir,” Knolles reported.

  “Very well, Mister Knolles. Tack the ship about.”

  Half an hour on starboard tack, floating almost without visible effort, now, across the seas, on a close reach with the winds nearly on her beam. Striding closer and closer to those two poleacres, who were forced by her presence, and the threat of the so-far unseen Cape Corse to haul their wind even farther, steer due east to try and beat Jester to that underwater river of current that would speed them back up north to the French Riviera coast, where they’d come from.

  “Sail ho!” came a cry from the foremast lookout, Rushing. “ Two point off th’ starb’rd bows!”

  Lewrie twitched, almost began a quick dash to the shrouds to take a peek for himself, but checked his motion. It looked like an upright stumble, which made him blush in chagrin; chiding himself for appearing to start at the slightest omen, like a goose-girl!

  “Two points to weather, that’d be . . .” he said, instead, stalking to the chart, trying to seem deliberate, this time. “Down near the Cape, I believe, Mister Buchanon?”

  “Aye, sir. Inshore o’ Cape Corse, west o’ it, do we see her with her royals’r t’gallants ’bove th’ horizon,” Buchanon agreed.

  “Show me the Frog with any sense at all, who’d venture into San Fiorenzo Bay or its approaches by herself.” Lewrie frowned. “Surely, this new-come’s bound to be one of ours.”

  “Oh, bad luck, sir,” Knolles groaned. “Another man o’ war to go shares with, should we take these last two.”

  “Well, they haven’t a hope of our bilander, the tartane, or our dhow, at any rate, Mister Knolles. They weren’t in sight when we took those! ” Lewrie said, striving for a less than greedy pose, himself.

  “There is that, sir.” Knolles shrugged.

  “Signal, sir!” Rushing shouted down to them from far forward. “ White Ensign to the main mast truck! Number pennants! Four . . . Six . . .Repeater! . . . Nine . . . Fifteen, sir!”

  With both midshipmen, who normally were in charge of the signal flag lockers, away on prizes, it fell to Lewrie himself to delve into the binnacle cabinet drawers for the latest code combinations.

  “Ah, hum . . . right, then,” he concluded, after a long moment’s fumbling over a loose sheaf of wrinkled papers that threatened to go overside with the wind. “This month’s recognition code, to the tee, gentlemen. She’s one of ours. Mister Knolles? Do you have the White Ensign hoisted to the mainmast truck, and reply . . . uhm . . . Fifteen . . . Twenty-Two . . . Three . . . Repeater . . . Four. Got that?”

  “Aye aye, sir,” Knolles called back, snapping his fingers at a man of the after-guard, one of those literate “strikers” who assisted on the taffrails as a signalman.

  Barely had that been bent on and hoisted high on the weather side of the mizzenmast, where it could be more easily read, than the newly arrived ship up to the sou’east hauled down her original hoist, and up went another one identifying her. Then a third; this one, orders.

  “Pursue . . . Chase . . . More closely . . .” Lewrie translated, as the numerals were read off to him. Feeling like a half-wit midshipman all over again, at how long it was taking him, compared to the fluency of his inferiors. And with every eye on the quarterdeck upon him, too! “To Loo’rd!” he completed, puffing out his cheeks in frustration.

  Well, o’ course, he thought with a silent grunt; that recognition code had told him that the other ship was a 6th-Rate frigate, HMS Ariadne, twenty guns. A proper, post-captain’s command, a man senior to him. Two guns, all the diff’rence in the world! Alan griped. She wished Jester to haul her wind, sail a touch north of due east, cutting off any hopes the poleacres might have of simply turning and running to the north . . . or of gaining their saving current before Ariadne had come to grips with them.

  “Haul our wind, Mister Knolles,” Lewrie snapped. “Give us two points free, to east by north. And, topmen aloft, to set royals.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Ariadne, Alan sighed; a brand-spanking new ship of war! My old ’un must’ve sunk at her moorings in English Harbor, at last. His very first ship had been HMS Ariadne, then a tired and worn old sixty-four-gunner of the 3rd Rate. Condemned after his very first action in the West Indies, too, for “hogging” at bow and stern, her back most likely broken, she’d become a guard ship, receiving ship, later just a useless hulk without a single gun, stripped down aloft to her fighting tops and gant lines.

  Captain cashiered for her loss, first lieutenant court-martialed with him; fourth and fifth killed, third lieutenant convicted of cowardice . . . oh, she’d been a miserable old hag, even before then, and a terrible place for a seventeen-year-old to begin a naval career. Autumn of 1780, it was . . .

  Damme, I’m gettin’ bloody ancient! he thought.

  He took a deep breath, clapped his hands together, and paced to the lee bulwarks with a telescope, to shrug off just how far back, in the antediluvian age, he’d really gotten his “ha’porth of tar”!

  There was their bilander, pacing along about east-southeast, four or five miles alee and off the larboard quarter. Nearer in to them was their tartane, only a mile astern, but three miles alee. And Spendlove and his dhow—or whatever else one might call it!—was, of course, the poor third, behind them all, even though she’d been the last, nearest, taken. A clumsy, udder-swinging old cow to begin with, and now directed by English tars, who’d never even clapped eyes on her like, before, much less tried to handle her lateen rig to best efficiency.

  And the polea
cre that had tried to decoy them away from her two consorts was . . .

  “Christ, shat on a biscuit!”

  She’d hauled her wind, worn about to run with the wind large on her starboard quarter, and was not three miles astern of Jester at that very moment, crossing from starboard to larboard quarter. Steering on what he took to be a course of nor’east by east. The bugger was after the prize vessels, bold as a dog in a doublet!

  “Mister Knolles, new course . . . nor’east!” Lewrie shouted. “And bend on a signal to our prizes . . . Make All Sail. And add ’Imperative’ to that! Uhm . . . they are to . . .”

  What the Devil was the clearest signal, he fumed, running through a combination of orders. Damme, yes! “Order them to Take Station to Weather’ of us!”

  Half-past ten o’clock of the Forenoon Watch, by then, the winds beginning to abate, beaten into sullen submission by the oppressive and sultry heat of a Mediterranean July. Last summer around Toulon had been a coolish fluke of nature, all that rain and nippish cold. Here in the Ligurian Sea, summer winds were fickle, at best, a morning’s gale blown out and hammered to compass-boxing zephyrs by midday. Just what they needed least, Lewrie thought. And hellish bad timin’, too!

  “Deck, there!” Rushing called from the foremast. “ Ariadne is sending . . . ‘Interrogative’!”

  “Almost polite of him, consid’rin’,” Lewrie said with a grimace. What that full-of-ginger post-captain yonder had really asked was, “Just what the Devil you think you’re playing at, you damn’ fool!”

  He raised his telescope once more to study his laboring prize ships. Yes, they’d begun to make more sail, to alter course harder on the wind to get closer to Jester ’s protective artillery. Even Mister Spendlove’s weary old dhow-thing-gummy had sprouted a mustache of foam under her bows. Not much of one, admittedly, but it was there. Lash the fore-ends of the lateen yards low to the center of the decks, and haul them fore-and-aft by brute force, though . . . she simply must sail better to windward, like a gaff-rigged cutter or sloop.