‘I’m sure you understand the nature of the request, sir, and the service you would be doing the nation by agreeing.’
Raising his speaking trumpet, Ralph Barclay replied: ‘I am minded to agree, sir, but from your words am I to understand you wish to strip the convoy of all of its escorts?’
‘That is the admiral’s wish.’
It was damned uncomfortable having this shouted conversation, something everyone on both crowded decks could hear, for Ralph Barclay was forming a notion that would aid him in another way, namely the chance to detach himself from Davidge Gould and HMS Firefly. He could not be sure that the simultaneous examination of his and Gould’s logs would not set off an inquest into his recent behaviour but if he could stagger their joining, with Gould doing so after he had reached Gibraltar, that possibility would be diminished, if not actually killed off. And if Hotham wanted frigates and sloops in the Mediterranean, there was not much point in Gould raising the Rock then coming all the way back to Lisbon.
‘Captain Blackstone, you may have observed that we took a prize on the way south, a French barque. I am loath to leave the convoy entirely unprotected, so I will order Captain Davidge Gould, who has HMS Firefly, to stay with her, and I will set a course with said prize for Lisbon, once I have given the requisite orders.’
‘Admiral Hotham will be most grateful, sir, and may I wish you joy of your capture.’
‘You may, sir, you most certainly may.’ Then Ralph Barclay turned to the master, Collins, and ordered him to work out a course for Lisbon. ‘Mr Digby, signal to both escort vessels to close with Brilliant, if you please.’
Henry Digby was as happy as his captain, for what was being proposed offered the prospect of adventure. Convoying merchant vessels was dull, frustrating work, made doubly so by the cantankerous, nay downright perverse, behaviour of the people they were tasked to protect, the merchant captains.
‘Lisbon,’ said Lutyens, who had been invited to take coffee in the captain’s cabin by Emily Barclay. ‘I daresay we shall take some pleasure there.’
‘Dry land will be a pleasure.’
‘Amen to that.’
‘And,’ Emily added, carefully pouring a second cup for the little surgeon to avoid spillage due to the swell, ‘it will do Lieutenant Roscoe no end of good to be ashore and still, will it not?’
Lutyens smiled, for Emily was, he knew, teasing him. ‘I had not forgotten Mr Roscoe, Mrs Barclay, and you are right. And just so I am aware of what you are truly thinking, it will also do him good to be under the care of more competent medical practitioners.’
‘I thought no such thing,’ protested Emily, loudly.
‘What?’ asked her husband, entering the cabin and removing his hat.
‘Mr Lutyens was being unfair, husband.’
It was a very jovial Ralph Barclay who responded. ‘A flogging offence if you are involved, my dear.’
‘I merely alluded to the better care that Lieutenant Roscoe would receive in Lisbon, sir.’
‘No, sir,’ said Emily, jabbing his arm in a coquettish way that betrayed her youth. ‘You did not, sir, you made a most cruel allusion that I thought you incompetent.’
‘Then in the face of such dire punishment I must withdraw it, unreservedly.’
‘Coffee?’ asked Ralph Barclay, who followed that with an irritable look at Lutyens. The surgeon quite mistook it, not knowing that the captain was thinking that if he had removed one fly from the ointment of his career with the notion to detach Davidge Gould, then he still had one firmly stuck in his sick bay.
‘It was a jest, Captain Barclay.’
‘Of course,’ Barclay replied, aware that he was frowning. ‘Forgive me, I have many matters to consider.’
Complex, thought Lutyens, looking at Barclay’s slightly puffy, broken-veined face, now relaxed and smiling as he took the small coffee cup from his wife. His uniform coat gave him an air of command, but his fluctuating moods tended to diminish that. Her I can read, for she is all innocence, but her husband, that is a man with many strands to his being. If they anchored at Lisbon his workload would decrease – the wounded would be sent ashore and for the rest, the crew would be too busy trying to catch the pox for him to worry about treating them. This would allow him time to collate the observations he had made so far on this voyage and begin, perhaps, to draw some conclusions. Not enough to begin to write a paper, but pointers to which way his research should proceed. The title of the eventual dissertation he had already decided upon: An Enquiry into the Stresses of Life at Sea for the Seamen & Officers of His Majesty’s Navy and certain conclusions on the mental heath thereof.
‘Perhaps it should be officers and seamen.’
‘Sorry?’ enquired Emily.
Lutyens had spoken, inadvertently, out loud, a trait that he would have to watch. It would never do to let on that he was researching the crew of HMS Brilliant. All in all, his decision to join this vessel was working out to his advantage. With no way of knowing if the crew were typical, he had nevertheless observed the application of discipline and its limitations, had not only watched as men went into a fight but had dealt as a surgeon with the consequences. He had seen men pressed and the way they reacted to that, many of those who had come aboard at Sheerness now seemingly resigned to a life in the Navy, just as he had seen the strivings of the likes of John Pearce and his ilk to get off the ship. That last thought made him wonder where Pearce was now; ashore probably and using to full advantage the letter, he, Lutyens had written to help him in his cause.
That made him look at Emily Barclay because, although he could not be certain, he had felt that she had been fascinated in some measure by John Pearce. Perhaps for the reason that he was so different from the run of the fellows her husband had pressed from that Thameside tavern; he had a bearing about him that made him stand out, yet there was always the chance that it was more than that. He would never know, for to ask would only offend, but it had added to his study the effect of a captain having his wife aboard, and the difference that presence made to the way that same captain went about his duties.
‘So I escape my flogging after all?’ joked Lutyens.
‘For the moment, sir. I would not wish to deny myself the right for eternity.’
‘Surely you would never flog the surgeon, husband?’
Ralph Barclay laughed, for he knew, as did Lutyens, that he had no right to do so. ‘You have my word, my dear, that he is safe.’
Lutyens, thinking of the man whose back he had just treated, said, ‘You would not extend that to the rest of the crew?’
It was a damned uncomfortable question to pose with his wife present, and Ralph Barclay had to fight to stop himself from saying so. There was a fundamental disagreement between him and Emily about shipboard punishment; she was horrified by it, he knew the need of it. Lutyens must have realised that it was a maladroit question too, for he flushed slightly.
‘I recall a little rhyme that covers my thinking on the matter, Mr Lutyens:
Tender handed stroke a nettle, and it stings you for your pains,
Grasp it as a man of mettle, and it soft as silk remains.
Tis the same with common natures – use them kindly, they rebel,
But be rough as nutmeg graters, and the rogues will use you well.’
‘It is an interesting notion to see your men as plants.’
‘Believe me, sir,’ replied Ralph Barclay, looking at Lutyens but really speaking to his wife, ‘there are men aboard this vessel who would aspire to the sense innate in a plant, and fail to achieve it. Now, let us move on to more congenial topics, like Lisbon.’
They raised Cape de Roca just after dawn the following day, making a southing before coming up nor, nor east to enter the mouth of the Tagus. Hotham had anchored his fleet opposite the city, in the Pietade Cove – half a dozen line of battle ships, including the 64-gun Agamemnon – and it gave Ralph Barclay some pleasure to know that Horatio Nelson, who commanded her, would have his eye on the barque in
his wake, with the red ensign above the French Tricolour, denoting that she was a prize. He hoped and prayed that Nelson, along with all the other ship’s captains, was deeply jealous.
Almost immediately he secured his anchorage, the flagship made his number and that required him to go aboard with his logs, his exit from the ship coinciding with that of the still comatose Lieutenant Roscoe, who was sent into a boat strapped to a piece of planking lowered from a whip on the yard. There was a moment when Ralph Barclay stepped through the entry port of HMS Britannia, to be greeted by stamping marines and a flagship lieutenant with his hat raised, when he imagined himself coming aboard such a 100-gun vessel as its captain, and that was only a short step from the notion that one day he might be greeted as the commanding admiral. He was years away from such a rank, but this war might last and take a few of those ahead of him on the captains’ list out of commission. Ralph Barclay felt no guilt at contemplating the death or serious injury of his peers; he assumed they thought likewise. Each and every one was fired by ambition for rank and wealth, not necessarily in that order. In truth he was sure all of them would forgo the former for the latter any day. Better to be rich than merely gilded.
That he was kept waiting, after such a peremptory summons to come aboard, came as no surprise; admirals liked to keep captains waiting, it reinforced their sense of superiority. That he did not have to wait long, Ralph Barclay put down to his having taken a prize. Not that Hotham would make a penny out of it; being under Admiralty orders there was no flag officer grasping for an eighth share. Relieved by the admiral’s clerk of his books and papers, he was invited to sit opposite William Hotham, reprising, as he did so, what he knew of the man. Reasonably successful, Hotham was short, pink of face and good looking for his age, a sailor who had done quite well out of the American War, but that was only part of the reason he was here. The man had connections sufficient to make him hard to refuse and since he was not utterly incompetent he had been gifted what was a most important post, albeit that he would soon be superseded by Lord Hood. There was a bowl of fruit on the table, mainly grapes, and one of nuts, evidence that one thing he had heard was true: that the man cared much for his belly.
‘I see a pretty little ship in your wake, Captain Barclay.’ Hotham sat forward slowly, selected a grape with great care, then sat back and put it in his mouth. ‘Am I to assume you have enjoyed some good fortune?’
This was said with studied indifference, as though it was of no account whatsoever. Hotham was near to lounging in his chair as he added an apathetic stare to the question, which made Ralph Barclay think that he did not like him. Mind Hotham was not alone in that; Ralph Barclay had little time for admirals as a breed, the only one he would speak of with deep respect had been his patron Lord Rodney, and he was dead.
‘Yes, sir, we took her off Finisterre, she being out of La Rochelle. Her present name is Chantonnay.’
‘I daresay you wish me to buy her in?’
‘Captain Blackstone did say you were somewhat short on vessels for long range reconnaissance.’ And, you blackguard, he was thinking, if you were due an eighth of the value, you would not hesitate. ‘I would suggest that being completely sound, we took her without a shot being fired, she would be ideal.’
Now it was the turn of the other bowl, and time was taken to crack a walnut. ‘I will think upon it.’
Ralph Barclay knew he had an ace up his sleeve, and he played it straight away. ‘I have, regretfully sir, to report some losses, particularly of officers.’
The eyebrows rose slowly. ‘Without a shot being fired?’
‘This was a different affair, sir. After an engagement with another French privateer, this time off the coast of Brittany, I lost my second lieutenant, though the Premier is still alive, albeit at death’s door.’
‘Explain.’ Hotham said abruptly, sitting forward, his chewing stopped. He stayed in that listening position as the tale was recounted, the filleted version that put Ralph Barclay in a good light.
‘My losses in crew I have made up from the capture of that barque, though I would be obliged if I could distribute them through the fleet in exchange for other seamen since I take no comfort sailing with so many Frenchmen aboard.’ Hotham nodded, and Ralph Barclay knew he would sail on with a full complement made up in the main of proper British tars. He then added, his eyes firmly fixed on the admiral’s ruddy and handsome face, ‘But in the article of officers, sir, I am of course at your disposal for advice.’
Hotham did not beam, he was too experienced to react, but his visitor knew he would be damned pleased. Of the eight lieutenants aboard Britannia, a high proportion would be there because of some connection to him, for William Hotham was the surest route to promotion. Lieutenants on flagships nearly always got first pick of anything going. Then there were captains in some of the anchored ships who had a claim on Hotham’s good offices, and they would have what they saw as lieutenants deserving of promotion. An admiral gained prestige from his ability to advance his followers and their dependants – not just commissioned officers but those holding warrants as well. So early in a war the twin creators of opportunity, sickness and death in battle, had yet to take effect, so by offering him the chance to fill Brilliant’s vacancies, Ralph Barclay was gifting the admiral a real favour.
‘Who have you put into the prize?’
‘The Premier of my fellow escort HMS Firefly. She is commanded by Lieutenant Davidge Gould.’ Giving Gould his true naval rank sent a message to Hotham, who hardly needed it. Gould being only a Master and Commander, not a Post Captain, could safely be ignored in whatever calculations were being made in Hotham’s mind. ‘That vessel too is mainly crewed by Frenchmen, though I hope a redistribution will take place at the Rock.’
‘We will see to that, Captain Barclay, if it is not so. Too high a proportion of Frenchmen on any vessel is hardly conducive to fighting efficiency. And who knows, some of them may elect to be taken to a prison hulk rather than serve with us.’ Hotham popped a quick grape, then added, ‘Do you wish me to give you a list of available candidates for promotion?’
‘I doubt I know them, sir, while you do, or at least the captains who serve under you do.’ And you have got three plums to give out, Ralph Barclay was thinking, which will ripple right through the fleet and do you no harm whatever; quite a bit of good fortune before Hood arrives. ‘I am therefore willing to be advised.’
The nuances of what Ralph Barclay was saying were clear to Hotham, he was sure of that. If he knew anything about Brilliant’s captain, he would know how much his career had suffered by his attachment to Rodney. Not only was the late admiral dead, but he had caused many a scandal when alive – not a problem to the likes of Ralph Barclay, who saw it only as the flawed side of genius – but meat and drink to those who loathed everything Rodney did and stood for, one of those being Lord Hood, who was close to being implacable about Barclay’s old mentor. Given the serious disagreement he and Hood had had before HMS Brilliant weighed from the Nore, first over the appointment of the frigate’s officers and then in regard to manning, with him coming out to command, Ralph Barclay was in need of some protection from Hood’s ill-will.
Hotham nailed the point, though the face, including his deep brown eyes, was a study in forced blandness. ‘I seem to recall you served with Rodney?’
‘I did, sir. I owe to him my rise within the service. He arranged my examination for lieutenant and it was on station in the Caribbean that he exercised his right as a commanding admiral to raise me to Post rank.’
‘You were with him at the Saintes?’
‘In a frigate, sir, not in the line of battle.’
Ralph Barclay had a vision then of the channel between Guadeloupe and Martinique, and the Isles de Saintes which had given that encounter its name. The hot Caribbean sun, the sparkling sea, the din and smoke as the great ships clashed, the sudden shift in the wind that had given George Rodney his opportunity, which meant that when it was all over he had smashed the enemy, take
n five French line of battle ships, and Ralph Barclay and the other frigate captains were picking dead Frenchmen out of the warm sea, not their own countrymen.
‘It was a fine victory. The nation owes the late admiral a debt of gratitude.’
‘Naturally, I agree, sir.’
Hotham sat bolt upright. ‘I shall recommend some officers to you. Please, if you object to any one of them, say so.’
‘That is handsome of you, sir.’
Hotham nodded at what was a rather obsequious remark. ‘My only question is this. Do you wish to retain whoever it is who is acting as your Premier, for that will have some bearing on my choice?’
‘Lieutenant Digby is too junior to retain the position, sir.’
‘But?’ Hotham asked, because Ralph Barclay was frowning in a way that implied that this presented a difficulty.
It did, for Digby deserved something, having carried out his duties with efficiency. He was too junior to be made up to First Lieutenant, but Ralph Barclay could imagine that his wife would be far from pleased if he got nothing. They were friendly, too damned friendly, but quite apart from that Digby had been witness to the events off the Brittany coast, as well as those to do with that pest John Pearce. Left in place he could prejudice the men Hotham promoted against their captain. The fact that Digby, like Roscoe, had been foisted on him by Samuel Hood clinched his resolve to be rid of him.
‘Might I suggest, sir, that his lot would be improved enough by a place on the flagship?’
Hotham rubbed his chin then, the slightly bulbous brown eyes looking away, his hand toying with another walnut. It was an easy request to grant; Britannia’s captain would be a fool to disagree, but convention demanded he made it look like a difficult one. Finally he nodded.
‘So be it. You will have a new suite of lieutenants, Captain Barclay. I will arrange for you to meet them this afternoon, when you come to dinner.’
A Shot Rolling Ship Page 15
