Perilous Shore

by Chris Durbin

  ‘Very good, sir, very good. Now, our clients, our more successful clients, generally keep a certain amount lodged with us for expenses and emergencies. In your case I suggest that fifty guineas would be an appropriate amount…’

  Holbrooke nodded, agreeing with each new proposition that Hammond made as though these sorts of decisions weren’t new to him. He felt as though he was sinking deeper and deeper out of his depth. Yet in the end it was concluded, and he was assured that the funds would be transferred to his bank by the end of the week. In the meantime, Hammond graciously gave Holbrooke a sum to keep himself in London, ‘for this is an expensive city, sir, if you don’t mind me advising you.’

  ◆◆◆

  ‘I’ll leave you to your visit to the Admiralty,’ said Chalmers, ‘and we can meet again at the lodgings. How long do you think you’ll be?’

  ‘I can’t tell. My appointment is for two o’clock, but it would be unusual if I’m seen on time. I expect to be with the admiral no more than half an hour.’

  He hailed a passing hackney carriage; it wouldn’t do to arrive with mud splattered all over his white stockings.

  Holbrooke felt alone and vulnerable again. Somehow his friend Chalmers gave him strength simply by his presence, and now he felt his confidence evaporating with each yard that the carriage made towards Whitehall. That familiar feeling of being an imposter was returning at full strength.

  A porter showed him into the well-remembered waiting room. He couldn’t tell whether it was the same man as the last time he was here; they had all grown to look alike by their shared calling. He had an unreasoning suspicion that he could read his fate in the porter’s demeanour, that the old man knew already what would be said to him by the admiral. Each smile, each familiar or condescending gesture had significance, or so Holbrooke thought. But if that was true, then the signals were obscured and unreadable, like a flag hoist seen from dead to windward through wisps of powder smoke.

  There were half a dozen other sea officers in the room. He knew only one of them, a classmate of his at the naval academy. His old friend had his passing certificate and was hoping for a lieutenant’s commission. It was slightly embarrassing to be chatting with him while waiting to see whether he’d been made a post-captain. The gap between the two men who had started their naval career as equals had grown to a huge chasm, one that was unlikely to be bridged in this war.

  He’d spent some time deciding how best to conduct himself, what was the best attitude to take. It all depended upon what Forbes was offering him. He could be posted today, and his name could appear in the gazette tomorrow. He could return in triumph to Wickham to claim Ann as his bride and then to Portsmouth to the unimaginable splendour of a frigate. On the other hand, he could be told that their lordships had no present employment for him, and he could be facing the prospect of half pay for months or years, perhaps until this war was over. Then there would be no hope in the doldrums of peace. It largely depended on what Commodore Howe had said in his report, and despite the hint from Holburne, and his furtive reading of the porters’ expressions, he really had no clear idea of where he stood.

  On the whole, it was better to wait until the admiral had given his news, then he could choose whether to exult or take offence. But what would be the good of taking offence? No, better to put a brave face on whatever fate had in store for him in the hope of better days to come.

  The clock ticked. It chimed the quarters, and every ten minutes a hopeful left the waiting room for his own personal appointment with destiny. Two o’clock came and went, then half-past two. His nerves were well and truly rattled when eventually he was called.

  ‘Ah, Captain Holbrooke, welcome. Take a seat.’

  Forbes was as bluff and hearty as ever, and surely this Captain Holbrooke was a hopeful sign, or was it nothing more than ordinary politeness?

  ‘You’re recovered, I hope?’

  ‘Yes, sir, completely well thank you,’ Holbrooke lied. He still had trouble walking long distances and his nights were interrupted by pain when he rolled onto his bruised ribs. ‘I’m ready for any duty now, sir.’

  Holbrooke regretted that last sentence before it was complete. The phrase any duty opened a plethora of appointments that didn’t require a post-captain in command of a frigate. But it was too late, the words were said.

  ‘I’m pleased to hear that, because the board has in mind a most extraordinary commission for you.’

  Forbes paused for effect. Holbrooke waited, he didn’t much like the sound of that extraordinary commission.

  ‘We need a man who understands boats, a commander with experience…’

  ◆◆◆

  No, his words couldn’t be unsaid, and in any case, it would do no good. Their lordships only changed their minds on appointments under the most intense political pressure, or very occasionally in the case of a senior and valued admiral. A commander had no hope; it was quite literally a case of take it or leave it, and Holbrooke knew that declining this commission would end his career here and now.

  Holbrooke’s mind was in such a turmoil that he could hardly take in all that Forbes was saying. It was an expedition into the wilderness of North America. There was a fort to be captured that would cut the French off from their settlements on the Great Lakes, that would open the interior to the English colonists. It was of the utmost importance strategically and Mister Pitt had a personal interest in the outcome.

  An army had to be taken from New York up the Hudson River to Albany and then westward, across the wilderness to Lake Ontario, far beyond the limits of English settlement. There were rivers to navigate, and that meant there were boats to be built. There was at least one French sloop on the lake. The army had asked for a sea officer to command the boats and deal with the French navy.

  ‘Are you following me, Holbrooke?’

  ‘Y…yes sir. It’s just such a surprise…’

  Forbes pushed away the paper that he’d been referring to.

  ‘You know, Holbrooke, I was a commander once, and I know what’s going through your mind. You feel you’ve sufficiently proved yourself to be posted. Am I correct?’

  Holbrooke studied the table for a moment, he was starting to be wary of sentences that started I was a commander once… Then he squared his shoulders and looked up at the admiral. This was probably the only opportunity he’d have to state his case.

  ‘Yes sir, you are. May I explain myself?’

  Forbes nodded cautiously. He was reckoned an impatient man, but that was by people who had not heard him sit through the sixth sea officer that day explaining himself.

  Holbrooke took a deep breath. He guessed the danger of what he was doing.

  ‘I had Kestrel for nearly a year, sir, and before that I had temporary command of Medina for two months. I commanded Medina at Cape François and I destroyed a frigate and took prizes. In Kestrel I took more prizes, I blockaded Emden, captured the enemy’s guns and I took a large Dunkirk privateer. I commanded a division of flatboats alongside post-captains and I fulfilled my duty by seeing the last soldiers off the beach at the cost of my own skin and my own freedom. Now I’ve come home to find Kestrel given to another and yes, sir, I had hoped that my actions would speak for me. I had hoped to be posted…’

  Holbrooke finished with a helpless wave of his hand. He didn’t know whether he’d helped his case or destroyed it, but it was done.

  Forbes fiddled with the paper before him. Unlikely though it was, he appeared embarrassed.

  ‘There’s no frigate for you,’ he stated bluntly. ‘Whether you deserve one or not, there are none available and you can’t be posted without a ship.’

  There was a pause while Holbrooke took that in.

  ‘Now, don’t think that we haven’t considered your case. If we put you ashore on half pay, then you run the risk of being...’ he thought for a moment, ‘…not exactly forgotten, but there’ll be new officers with their own claims that are fresh in the minds of the members of the board. You run a grave ris
k as a commander on half pay during a war.’

  Holbrooke heard all that and he’d known it before he’d walked through the door. He also knew, and he could see it in Forbes’ eyes, that the admiral was being disingenuous. Ships were becoming available. New sixth rates were being built and there were older ships whose captains were being moved up to fourth or fifth rates, or to flagships. But there was a long list of commanders and junior post-captains with far, far more interest than Holbrooke, with many more influential friends.

  As though reading his mind, Forbes continued.

  ‘You suffer from a lack of patronage, Holbrooke. With the best of intentions, the board can’t ignore the cries from important men demanding that their friends be noticed. That’s how the war is carried on, by people in power supporting the navy, and they demand something in return. This appointment is in your best interests. It’s an important position and when you come back, you’ll have some more solid achievements to claim the board’s attention.’

  Forbes talked on. Holbrooke acknowledged to himself that, in a way, he was being treated with more consideration than he should have expected. It was a wonder that he wasn’t thrown out of the office and damned for his presumption. Instead, Forbes was taking the time to outline the duty he was being sent on and further explaining the naval facts of life.

  ‘You’ll take passage in the Lord Halifax from Plymouth on the first of November. She’s a packet and she’ll carry dispatches for Savannah and Hampton before she reaches New York. Now, you’ll need a lieutenant to second you, a bosun and a carpenter, and of course you can have two servants. You’ll report to Brigadier-General Prideaux in New York, and I understand he’ll want to move up to Albany at the first hint of spring.’

  When Forbes ended, he passed a sealed letter to Holbrooke, his orders. With the receipt of that letter, Holbrooke became legally committed to the enterprise, the capture of Fort Niagara and the strangulation of the French lines of communication in North America.

  ◆◆◆

  30: The Packet

  Friday Third of November 1759.

  Packet Lord Halifax, at Sea. Ushant, East 66 Leagues.

  Every telescope on the deck was trained on a speck of white far to leeward, right over towards Ushant. In an innocent packet ship, that usually meant a single glass, the one owned by the master. However, today Lord Halifax boasted three telescopes, two of them quite superior instruments that had been bought with the proceeds of prize-taking.

  ‘If you’ll lend me your glass, sir, I’ll hop up to the masthead and get a better look.’

  As a bosun holding a navy board warrant, Jackson could just about get away with leaping around in the rigging of a packet. Lieutenant Lynton, as a commission officer, most certainly could not. The dignity of his station could countenance no such activity.

  ‘Please do, Mister Jackson,’ Lynton replied handing over the telescope, ‘much obliged.’

  Jackson ran up the weather shrouds as though they were library steps. He ran straight past the astonished lookout at the main top and continued to the topmast head. Seating himself comfortably on the cross-trees he drew the telescope to his eye and looked intently to leeward. From this position and with the help of Lynton’s telescope, he could see more than a flash of white; he could see two distinct t’gallants and a mizzen tops’l.

  ‘It’s a ship,’ he shouted. ‘On the starboard tack, all plain sail to her t’gallants.’

  No merchantman then, unless she was an East Indiaman. Yet she was in the wrong place to be a Compagnie Française ship and she’d hardly be a John Company ship barely out of the Chops of the Channel without an escort. In fact, this odd patch of the sea with no regular trade routes had no right to be hosting a ship at all, let alone two.

  ‘Squeeze her,’ said the master. The helmsman eased the bows closer to the westerly wind. ‘Let her shiver then drop off half a point.’

  ‘That’ll be Frere Joseph,’ the master said to Lynton, ‘or my name’s not Jonathan Harley. He chases us almost every time we poke our noses out of the channel. It appears he has the word on our sailings, which isn’t surprising. You’d think he had better things to do with his time.’

  ‘A fast sailer?’ Lynton asked.

  ‘Fast on a bowline,’ the master replied, ‘but not so fast sailing large. Much good it’ll do him today, but he’s very persistent. Last year we lost him at dark only to see him again two miles to leeward at dawn.’

  Lynton looked shocked.

  ‘How were you not taken?’ he asked.

  ‘Two frigates hove over the horizon just as he was beating into range. Another fifteen minutes and I’d have struck. I’ve never been so glad to see a King’s ship!’

  ‘This wind will veer, don’t you think?’ asked Holbrooke, wishing Fairview was here to give everyone the benefit of his weather-lore.

  ‘That’s what worries me. It’ll force us more to the sou’west. Further even, to the west perhaps, when we want to be heading sou’-sou’west.’

  Holbrooke looked non-committal. He had no right to tell the master of a packet what to do, and it would be impolite to even suggest a course of action. Nevertheless, he knew what he would do, when the night hid their movements.

  The master looked thoughtfully at the sails.

  ‘We must pinch to windward as hard as we can while the daylight holds, but after dark? well, we’ll see,’ he said.

  Holbrooke nodded. That was undoubtedly the right thing to do for now. If the ship down there to leeward was a French privateer, and a big one by the look of her, then they needed to be cautious. With the whole day before them, it was essential to keep the weather gage and to steal every yard to windward that the packet could manage. The Frenchman would undoubtedly be a more weatherly ship, as the master said, but even so she could hardly come up with them before sunset. At this time of year in the southwest approaches a cloud-covered night sky was a safe bet – perfect weather to allow the packet to slip away.

  Holbrooke retired to his cabin, satisfied that the master knew his business. He’d been on board three days, after four on the road and two in lodgings below the Citadel. With a party of five, the navy board clerks had grudgingly agreed to a hired post chaise for the run down to Plymouth. Even then, it had been a cold and dreary trip as the chaise rattled through the brown and windswept counties. They’d picked up a carpenter in Plymouth. He was a young man by the name of Abraham Sutton and although he’d been to sea as a boy, he’d served his time at the navy yard at Plymouth Dock up the Hamoaze. He came recommended as an expert in the building and repair of boats and best of all he was a willing volunteer, looking for excitement and a taste of the new world. Holbrooke privately wondered whether he’d ever return to his native Devon. It seemed as though his heart was already halfway to the colonies.

  Lord Halifax had sailed on time, but a steady westerly wind and a natural desire to give Ushant a wide berth had meant a tack up to the northwest, past Land’s End, past the Scillies and halfway to Cape Clear at the southern tip of Ireland. This second leg was taking them over sixty leagues clear of Ushant, but apparently even that wasn’t far enough to avoid the attentions of the ever-hungry French commerce raiders.

  ◆◆◆

  The wind did indeed veer into the northwest in the afternoon and Lord Halifax obediently followed it around. As the daylight faded her course was sou’west by west, three points off her required course; no, four points now that she’d already moved so far to the west. Then, as soon as the night had fallen and the privateer just three miles under her lee could no longer see her, she veered and headed east with the wind on her larboard quarter. By daylight Frère Joseph should be out of sight to windward wondering where her prey had gone.

  Holbrooke, Lynton, Chalmers and Jackson were on deck before dawn. The faintest loom of the still-invisible sun could be seen leaching over the rim of the earth in the southeast. Not enough to see a horizon, or a privateer, but enough to give notice of the coming day.

  They stood in a com
panionable huddle watching the daily miracle of dawn and casting furtive glances for a privateer. A King’s ship would be at quarters now, possibly even cleared for action, but a humble packet with a crew pared down to the minimum couldn’t afford such profligate use of manpower.

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ said Sutton coming up the companion ladder, raising his hat to Holbrooke. ‘No sign of our friend of yesterday, I take it?’ he added to Jackson.

  ‘He’ll be far over the horizon chasing our shadow,’ Jackson replied. ‘We’ve seen the last of him.’

  The pale light in the southeast spread wider and slowly but surely figures on the deck became clearer. The light spread gradually into the west, showing the low clouds and a grey sea.

  ‘Sail ho!’ came the shocking cry from the maintop. ‘Sail to windward!’

  There was no need for Jackson to run up the shrouds. Now that they knew where to look, the vague outline of a ship could be seen plainly from the deck of the packet. The master of Frère Joseph had guessed their overnight course. He’d probably reasoned that the packet wouldn’t wish to stray too far off the direct route that took them down to Madeira and the trade winds, and he’d gambled and won. He was close, too close for comfort and he held the weather gage. He could come down and claim his prize any moment he chose. He wouldn’t wait long, not with the channel fleet at sea.

  ‘He’s put his helm up,’ said Lynton.

  Sure enough, the privateer was coming off the wind and running down to the packet.

  Holbrooke looked at the master.

  ‘All hands,’ shouted the master. ‘All hands on deck.’

  He turned to the steersman.

  ‘Helm up,’ he said calmly and deliberately. ‘Bring her before the wind. I’ll be damned if I’ll tamely strike to him. Let’s see how fast he is on a run.’

  The packet swung off the wind and the sheets and braces were checked away.