Foreign Mud

by Andrew Wareham

  Following a hint or two I suggested that the Navy might send its own victuallers, escorted by naval ships of war. I was slow picking up on the suggestion, deliberately so. Better to be thought dull than clever when talking business.

  Using our own ships was acceptable, was in fact exactly what was wanted by Moroccans and us. If Royal Navy ships were to be regularly present then the corsairs from along the coast would be much discouraged.

  “Would it be possible to station naval ships in Tetuan itself?”

  That was urgently rejected, most undesirable, would be as bad as the Spanish arrogance in Ceuta and Melilla. The Faithful could not tolerate such an imposition.

  It was easy to comment that it would be wise to ensure that the Spanish could not expand from their two colonies on the Moroccan shores. It might be simplest to emplace great guns where they could prevent the Spanish from venturing forth inland.

  Such guns were rare, and costly in many ways.

  “Britain has many of such guns – including long forty-two pounders, only a few of those in fact, but thirty-twos and twenty-fours are easily obtained, ready on land carriages.”

  The Moroccan gentleman showed interested, wanted to know what might be demanded in exchange for such valuable weapons.

  “Money, sir. Gold would be ideal. Then, sir, when is gold other than desirable?”

  He laughed and wondered whether England could supply perhaps more than twenty great guns?

  “Inside a week, a score of twenty-four pound long guns on land carriages. Six of thirty-twos, again on their carriages, and four only of forty-two pound cannon, mounted for siege or fortress work. These are at Gibraltar, held against need. Given six months, there could be additional guns, twenty-fours initially. A year and we could supply another battery of forty-two pound guns as well as thirty-two pounders. It would, no doubt, be possible to lay hands on carronades as well.”

  The carronades were an afterthought. I was sure they could be easily obtained, the short barrels far easier to cast.

  “Forty-two pound guns, you say? English pounds, that is?”

  “London weight, sir. Straight in the bore from our new foundries with their mechanical devices for drilling out true barrels. No other country in the world produces such.”

  “And, therefore, their price must be high!”

  “Not necessarily, sir. It might be thought to be to our advantage to protect our friends in the great Empire.”

  “One must not forget as well that the East India Company passes many ships each year close to Moroccan coasts.”

  I smiled and agreed.

  “They do, sir. Government has become aware that the French are active at sea again and no convoy to India will pass your shores unescorted. Frigates and the smaller two-deckers have been allocated for that very function, never less than four ships and often to be accompanied by lesser craft as well. The Guinea traders will also be protected by joining such convoys for part of their journey. The Levant convoy as well is to have extra vessels dedicated to its protection.”

  The gentleman was glad to hear that, he told me. He would not like to think that corsairs might pose a threat to the Empire’s good friends.

  I was sure that they would not.

  “The Royal Navy will not tolerate corsairs, sir. Indeed, it is possible that they might, if attacked, be tempted to chase them to their home port and there subject them to bombardment. That would inevitably lead to damage to the city itself, as well as its harbour.”

  I had been told to emphasise the word ‘Royal’, pointing out that the dastardly Frogs had killed their king. I had wondered whether that was so good an idea, considering that Farmer George was busily talking to the bedposts again, but Heathcote-Porter had considered that only a minor flaw in the gentleman’s character.

  “Kings are often loonies, Mr Jackson! What they ain’t is underbred presidents and such!”

  An interesting point – better a mad monarch than an elected president. I wondered why.

  Having lived through Farmer George, Prinny and Silly Billy, I still wonder.

  Not to worry! I am not to play politics at my advanced age. Mind you, senility might not be a drawback in politicians – listening to them, you would never tell that dementia had set in, their speeches as identically meaningless as those they had made in their youth.

  My Moorish gentleman took the hook – he wanted guns. More correctly, his Emperor wanted heavy cannon and my offer was better than the French. Add to that, there were no Frogs left to talk to unofficially and their ambassador had been appointed for his revolutionary zeal rather than for any consideration of intellect or education. I was told that he knew nothing but was very strong on Liberty, Equality and Fraternity – not necessarily a slogan designed to appeal to an Emperor.

  “One week, you say, Mr Jackson?”

  “A day to send a message to Gibraltar. Two days at most to find and load a ship. One day’s sailing, provided the wind does not turn foul. Five days from today, with a little cooperation from the weather, sir.”

  “Then perhaps we must discuss price, Mr Jackson.”

  “In gold, sir?”

  “In little ingots, perhaps two fingers wide and one thick and as long as the palm of my hand. Heavy for their size!”

  I smiled – there is something about gold that puts a grin on a man’s face.

  “Twenty-four pound cannon are not uncommon in our world, sir, and must fetch a lower price. On the other hand, sir, the cannon of forty-two pounds is rare! Only a few foundries in all of the world can cast them, and even fewer can produce a straight bore. The Royal Ordnance great gun will throw a ball more than a league and accurately. I have reports of the guns outside the port of Dover actually hitting French vessels at three miles.”

  I did not guarantee the accuracy of those reports.

  The Moroccan gentleman had heard of heated shot, used to set ships afire. I knew nothing of such things, I admitted.

  “It would be possible, sir, to hire the services of gunners – naval or army officers who could train up Moroccan soldiers to work the cannon.”

  This was an affront to Moroccan pride, unfortunately. They knew how to fire cannon, thank you!

  We came back to price, discussing payment and how it might best be made and how much. I took out notebook and pencil and we made our offers. A guinea came at a fraction more than a quarter of an ounce, avoirdupois – I did not want to play with Troy weight – say sixty-three guineas to the pound weight. The first offer made was of just sixty pounds weight of gold, roughly four thousand pounds sterling.

  I shook my head, hiding my amaze – it was twice as much as I had hoped for at the end of the day. I wondered if the gentleman might like to add a mite of silver as well, to make the price a little more likely.

  Silver was in short supply, I was told, being in great demand by merchants working the Silk Road east to China through Samarkand.

  “I have never taken the overland route, sir. I sailed to Canton on several occasions, out of India. The Chinese demand for silver is insatiable and where we are to find the ingot metal, I simply do not know.”

  The Moroccans were finding the self-same difficulty.

  “We do have other goods of interest to an enterprising trader, Mr Jackson…”

  I was sure we would wish to discuss them, after we had dealt with the guns.

  It came back to gold as the supply of gemstones was erratic, could not be relied upon, year on year.

  “Gold does come up from the south by caravan with a degree of regularity, Mr Jackson.”

  I did not ask where exactly it came from, much though I might have liked to. I heard word only last year in fact of the Gold Coast in West Africa, part of the Slave Coast and just where the fevers were worst. I don’t think I shall go there.

  We came to an agreement of eighty pounds weight of gold for the first delivery of the cannon, a token, we both agreed. After that, each year would see a cargo brought into Rabat or Tetuan at a price to be agreed bu
t not less than twice as much for each gun.

  The matter of personal trade then arose, of hemp by the ton particularly. I was much in favour of this. The Moroccans wanted iron, of all things, in exchange. Top quality pig iron or wrought iron in bars and rods would be bartered weight for weight against hemp – a little of iron for a lot of fibre for making ropes, or leaf for smoking, depending on one’s perception of the plant.

  I promised shiploads of the very best coke-run pig iron, to the Moroccan’s delight.

  Why?

  Unwillingly, they admitted that charcoal was in short supply in the Empire, almost all of it used for cooking. They simply did not grow sufficient trees.

  “Could I offer shiploads of coke to assist, sir?”

  They preferred to buy in iron which they could smelt to make steel or use for their own cast or wrought products. Some charcoal came along the coast, they said, and they still burned an amount of their own; they would prefer to stick to the old fuel rather than try something new.

  It was their choice and I was to make a profit from it.

  “Could we perhaps supply steel itself?”

  That, they doubted. Moroccan smiths had made steel for centuries, the finest in the world, including the products of Damascus. They would do without British imitations of their work.

  Strange, but I have found the same attitude almost everywhere I have travelled – foreign-made is inferior, so every nation believes. It has made me money in the past, so who am I to argue?

  Opium was less available in Morocco and it was suggested that I should buy directly from Persia or from the Kurds in Anatolia. I was unwilling to travel so far.

  A day saw me aboard ship for Gibraltar, a sailing galley, to be precise. We loaded a naval victualler overnight and put the huge forty-two pounders aboard as deck cargo in the dawn and I was back in Tetuan before the third full day had passed.

  Gangs of slaves came aboard and hauled on derricks and swung the thirty great guns ashore to be assessed and then drooled over by the Emperor’s soldiery. Emirs and bashaws and such – I do not know the names for them – all slapped their hands on the guns’ breeches and called upon Allah to be their witness that they would use them to drive out the kafir Spaniards. I cheered politely in the background.

  The Emperor’s man came to me, followed by a train of servants, so he called them, carrying heavy little boxes chock full of gold.

  “Mr Jackson, you have not said a word to me about slaves.”

  “I am a merchant, sir, not a member of the government. Slaves distress me, but I am not to attempt to make them free. It is not my place to do so.”

  “Very right, too, young sir. As a courtesy from my master, we shall put two score of English aboard your ship to go to Gibraltar.”

  It was good of them and I said so – slightly embarrassed that I had forgotten all about them. I am sure I would have remembered, in time.

  I used an amount of the Emperor’s gold to pay the merchant Heathcote-Porter had introduced me to. I am sure that he in turn paid Heathcote-Porter a commission. It all went round in a circle, and everybody was better off, it seemed. That by the bye; the merchant despatched cargoes of hemp for years, until he became greedy and had his head cut off and even then a son took over. It is still possible to buy Best Morocco in apothecaries all over England, mostly as a result of my initiative; I am a benefactor of my country!

  We returned to Gib and took the next despatch cutter off the Rock and made good time to Portsmouth and then overland to Micheldever, in the end away for little more than a month on that occasion.

  I sat down with Ainslie and we made a count of the proceeds and decided I was almost a thousand pounds better off on the five weeks – we should tell Mr Smith I would be happy to assist him again!

  Mr Smith himself appeared days later to tell us how pleased he was with my efforts. So delighted in fact that Sir Alexander was to be transformed into a baronet, his title made hereditary. I was too young and just a fraction too wild to be honoured in person, but my patron should shine in my reflected glory.

  “I must send a letter to my eldest son in Portsmouth, Virginia, Mr Smith. He will be amazed to discover he stands in line to inherit a title of me.”

  “A pleasure to you both, Sir Alexander.”

  “And all achieved by Mr Jackson here, who has no reward of his own, apart from mere money!”

  “Take heart, gentlemen – the opportunity will certainly arise in the future for Mr Jackson to earn his rewards. Many a time, I suspect!”