HMS Reliant’s brief idyll ended shortly after that fete champetre (which indeed did feature flung food!) as the squadron prepared to sail off to prowl round Hispaniola once more. The Easy pendant was lowered, the outright whores and declared “temporary wives” were sent ashore in their jobbers’ bum-boats, and the frigate scoured with vinegar, then smoked with clumps of smouldering tobacco to cleanse her of smuts, odours, and shore bugs. The last fresh water was pumped aboard from the clumsy, ark-like hoys; the last livestock and salt-meat casks stowed away on the orlop, and the officers’ gun-room stores and captains’ personal stores were replenished to the final crock of jam and the last pot of ink.
As with all the holidays, Reliant and the others would be at sea for Easter, as well, though the Reverend Brundish assured the captains that he’d planned a bang-up series of homilies for the occasion.
Not three weeks later, though, barely at the end of their second circumnavigation of Hispaniola, a group of three warships-one lighter frigate and two brig-sloops-intercepted them off Cape St. Nicholas with fresh orders.
“Any idea what they’re speaking of, sir?” Lt. Westcott wondered aloud as Lewrie stood by the starboard mizen shrouds, one arm hooked round a stay to steady his day-glass.
“The frigate made Modeste’s number, after the private signals, then ‘Have Despatches,’ ” Lewrie replied, intent on the mute flag-play between ships. “Modeste then made ‘Captain Repair On Board’ to her, and the frigate’s gig is settin’ out to her. Other than that?” There was a shrug to show his ignorance of matters beyond that. “Oh, here’s a new’un… General to all ships… ‘Course Sou’-Sou’west’ and… ‘Make All Sail Conformable To The Weather.’ No, wait a bit… here comes another!”
“Captain Blanding runs off at the halliards, again, sir?” Lieutenant Westcott dared to jape, in a low voice meant for the two of them.
“Afraid so,” Lewrie said with a snicker. “It’s ‘Form Two Columns’ and… I s’pose that’s the frigate’s number… ‘Take Station To Leeward.’ Ready to come about to Sou’-Sou’west, Mister Westcott. I assume we’re t’be the windward column.”
“Aye aye, sir. Bosun, pipe hands to Stations! Helmsmen, ready to come about to Sou’-Sou’west!” Westcott ordered. “Man the braces and sheets!”
The frigate and her consorts had already hauled their wind for the meeting, to leeward of Modeste’s column of four warships, so the evolution was easily performed. Reliant, the leading ship, swung her bows no more than three points more Sutherly, braced the yards round, and eased the tautness of jibs, spanker, and stays’ls to take the Trade Winds on her larboard quarters.
“A reef in the main course, sir?” Westcott asked, looking aft to see Pylades falling astern a bit further than the required cable of separation. “We’re striding away from Pylades.”
“We’re ‘Conformable’ to the weather, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie laughed, hands on his hips and looking up at the set of Reliant’s sails. “Let Captain Parham clap on more canvas! It’s a nice day t’let her step lively.”
“Permission to mount the quarterdeck, sir?” Pettus asked Lieutenant Westcott, who had the watch. “Cool tea’s up!”
“Aye, Pettus… come,” Westcott agreed.
“Oh, good!” Sailing Master Caldwell chimed in, rubbing his paws together in expectation that he’d get a glass, too, as was the custom that had developed aboard, as Spring, and its heat, advanced.
In this manner, nearly fourty-five minutes elapsed. The ship’s bell struck Seven Bells of the Forenoon, and Marine Lt. Simcock’s favourite tune, “The Bowld Soldier Boy,” was heard as the rum keg came from below. The Master’s Mates, and the Midshipmen, came up with their sextants and slates to prepare for Noon Sights, to be taken when the bell struck Eight Bells to end the Forenoon and begin the official Noon-to-Noon ship’s day.
“One hopes you’ll place us in the West Indies, today, Mister Munsell,” Lewrie teased the thirteen-year-old Middy. “Should be very easy… what with Cape Saint Nicholas still in plain sight. And not in the middle of the Caicos Bank, hey?”
“Closer than usual, sir… he’s improving,” Mr. Caldwell said with a wink. Mr. Munsell was an eager, and tarry, lad, but still iffy when it came to the mysteries of celestial navigation and sun sights.
“Signal from Modeste, sir!” Midshipman Warburton piped up. “It is General…” Sure enough, two guns were fired aboard Modeste, to all to gather their attention, and precede a new signal to all seven ships. “Ehm… the frigate captain’s gig is rowing back to her, sir,” Warburton added, swinging his telescope down from the peak of the signal halliards to Modeste’s side.
“Oh, here it is, sir… ‘Windward Column… To Alter Course to… West-Sou’west, Half West… Leeward Column…’ ”
“That’s wordy, even for Captain Blanding,” Lewrie commented.
“ ‘… the Leeward Column Will… Wear About to Due South,’ sir,” Warburton read out slowly.
“Confusing, too, sir,” Westcott pointed out. “Do both columns alter course together, when the hoist is hauled down, the lee column yonder had better be quick about it, or it will be us who tangle our bow-sprit with yon lead sloop!”
“Hoist the ‘Query,’ Mister Warburton, not ‘Acknowledged,’ and be quick,” Lewrie snapped.
“Aye, sir.”
“Lord, sir… he can’t explain with a fresh hoist, without he lowers the one now flying, and that’d be sign for ‘Execute’!” Lieutenant Westcott further worried aloud.
It appeared that Captain Blanding realised his unclear error, for yet another series of flags went up probably the last spare halliard aboard the flagship; it was “Leeward Column First.”
“Now you may reply with ‘Acknowledged,’ Mister Warburton,” Lewrie directed, letting out a whoosh of relieved wind. “And, thank God he had enough spares in his taffrail lockers t’say ‘Leeward Column’ twice!”
“The frigate captain’s back alongside his ship, sir,” Warburton reported. A minute later, and he could inform them that that worthy, whoever he was, was back on his quarterdeck, and his gig led round to be towed astern.
“Mister Westcott… just t’be on the safe side, we’ll continue on this course perhaps a whole minute after the ‘Execute,’ ” Lewrie said to his First Officer in a close mutter. “Get a bit more separation to the South as they wear about. The rest of our ships should stand on in line-ahead astern of us. Mister Warburton, send to Modeste… ‘Submit,’ then ‘Alter Course In Succession, Lead Ship First’ and ‘Query.’ ”
“Aye aye, sir!”
He won’t like me for that, Lewrie told himself, peering aft to see what the flagship would reply… if she could at that moment; I’d not care t’be second-guessed, publicly, either, but…
“Signal’s struck, sir!” Warburton cried, even before he could sort out the proper flags and bend them onto the halliards. He and his signalmen jumped to hasten it along.
“The lead sloop is wheeling to leeward, sir,” Wescott said.
Sure enough, the brig-sloop was swinging to take the Nor’east Trades right up her stern, then swinging even wider to the West, with the winds on her starboard quarters, whilst the frigate and the trailing sloop stood on. The leading sloop could not complete a full turn over her own wake, but would harden up on almost Due North for a bit so the others could wear in succession, putting their helms over as they reached her disturbed patch of water where she’d begun her turn. All would stand on for a spell, then tack, in succession again, to end up with their bows pointed Sutherly for Jeremie and Cape Dame Marie, and passing well astern of Modeste’s column of ships.
“New hoist, sir… our number… ‘Alter Course in Succession.’ ”
“Let’s give it yet another minute, Mister Westcott, then we’ll come about,” Lewrie directed. “One one thousand… two one thousand… three one thousand…”
It was only when the second ship in the lee column swung away to wear about that Lewrie ordered his frigate to alter course. Like a pack of those strange beasts, elephants, Pylades, Cockerel, and Modeste changed course in Reliant’s swash, as if holding the tail of the first with their trunks, and plodding single-file round a bend of a narrow juggle trail.
“Your sextant, sir,” Pettus said, after getting permission to mount the quarterdeck, again. His assistant, the fourteen-year-old waif of a cabin servant, Jessop, carried the precious box which contained Lewrie’s personal Harrison chronometer, clutching it with both arms close to his chest as if it was part of King George’s royal paraphernalia.
“Almost forgot all about it,” Lewrie admitted as his chronometer was set beside the Sailing Master’s and those of the few officers who could afford their own. He barely got his sextant out and held up to his eye, and drew the image of the sun down to the horizon, when the ship’s bell began to chime at the last trickle of sand through all the hour, half-hour, and quarter-hour glasses up forward by the belfry.
“Time!” Mr. Caldwell snapped. “Lock, and record, sirs.”
With sextants stowed away, the people on the quarterdeck broke apart into singletons or “syndicates” of two to figure out their readings with chalk on small slates, or with pencils on scrap paper. The Midshipmen huddled together, helping each other (or cadging solutions on the sly when they seemed more probable), to show the Sailing Master when summoned.
“Uhm… about here, sir,” Mr. Caldwell said, making a mark on a chart pinned to the traverse board by the binnacle cabinet. Lewrie compared his own, as did Westcott, Spendlove, and Merriman, to the latitude and longitude discovered. Captain Alan Lewrie, he had to admit to himself, was only a fair navigator; the mathematics involved had not come to him as easily as it had to his contemporaries aboard his first ships. His feelings, and his bottom, had suffered daily during his time as a Midshipman ’til the right way had been “beaten” into his brain. Today, he was pleased to note that he was only a few minutes off in both longitude and latitude. Nonetheless, he quickly folded up his scribbled cyphering and shoved it into a coat pocket, nodding and harrumphing as if pleased to be in “agreement” with Caldwell, who was indeed a dab-hand navigator, worthy of Trinity House.
“Mister Munsell?” Caldwell asked. The lad offered up his slate with the air of a puppy about to be whipped for leaving piddles on the best Turkey carpet. “Oh, now this is novel, young sir. Your latitude is right, but, my word, sir… you have us nigh ashore on the coast of Cuba… round the Bay of Guantanamo! Better than yesterday, but…”
“Mister Westcott, sir… I relieve you, sir,” Lt. Spendlove was intoning as he took over the watch.
“Mister Spendlove, sir… I stand relieved,” Westcott replied, both doffing their hats.
“I’ll be below,” Lewrie announced, once Pettus and Jessop had his instruments secured.
“Signal from Modeste, sir!” Midshipman Rossyngton, who had replaced Warburton on watch, reported. “All numbers, and, ‘Captains Repair On Board.’ ”
“Well, no, I won’t,” Lewrie said with a sigh. “Be careful with ’em, lads. Mister Spendlove, pass word for Desmond and my boat crew.”
He’ll tear a strip off mine arse, see if he won’t, Lewrie told himself; In public, too… with all of us present!
“If you’ll come this way, sirs,” Lt. James Gilbraith bade them, once all had been piped aboard. Lewrie had learned in the span of almost eleven months in Captain Blanding’s squadron that Gilbraith was a weather vane for his superior’s moods and intentions, so he watched him closely, and was relieved to note that Gilbraith was grinning so much like a “Merry Andrew” that it might mean there would be no storm of petulance coming his way.
“Welcome, gentlemen, welcome aboard!” Captain Blanding said as they were led into his cabins below the poop. He stood swaying to the motion of his ship with a glass of wine in hand, beaming most cherubic and happy, and Reverend Brundish stood off to one side, grinning, too.
“A glass for all, if you please,” Blanding said to his leading steward, “and take seats, all. We’ve wonderful news. An arduous new task before us, but… wonderful news, all the same.
“Gentlemen… we’re bound for Kingston,” Blanding went on once wine had been supplied. “Captain Farquwar and his three ships are to replace us on the Hispaniola coasts, and we are to replenish, then… sail for England!”
“Well, I’ll be…!” Parham began to cheer, then thought better of “I’ll be damned!” and clapped his mouth shut. “Huzzah!” came from Captain Stroud. “At last!” was Lewrie’s contribution.
“Don’t be too excited, sirs,” Blanding went on, “for on our way, we shall be the escort for a ‘sugar trade’ of better than an hundred merchantmen. Some will make for American ports, of course, but most will make for home. A thankless business, but…”
The great trades usually departed the Caribbean near the end of February, or the first week of March, two hundred, three hundred ships or more. It depended on the end of hurricane season, the richness of the sugarcane harvests and pressings for sugar, molasses, and rum; the indigo and dye-wood were second thoughts, as were the various spices of the West Indies, like nutmeg and allspice, and the ground peppers of various heat.
This would most-like be the last late trade assembled, before the weather turned hot and the Fever Season began, nowhere as grand as the first, but it would still be a bugger to manage, as all convoys from the smallest to the largest were.
The merchant ships must be corraled together, all sailing from various ports to a pre-announced rendezvous. All must be herded into a loose pack, round which the escorting ships had to prowl, with some serving as “bulldogs” and “whipper-ins” to keep them together and in sight of each other, with all ships limited to the best speed of the slowest. Even before then, those ships departing Jamaica would have to be bonded, each master putting up the refundable sum, and signing articles promising to obey all instructions from the escort vessels, swearing that they would not break away and swan off until they were near their destinations.
The route would be arduous, too; beating into the wind through one of the passages out into the Atlantic, then heading Northerly to run up the East coast of America, taking advantage of the Gulf Stream current and the prevailing winds that swept clockwise round the basin of the Atlantic. Some ships would break away at the latitude of Savannah or Charleston, to enter the Chesapeake for Baltimore, or Delaware Bay for Philadelphia, whilst others would be bound for Boston or New York to trade their cargoes for Yankee goods. Cotton, tobacco, and rice predominated, along with hemp, tar, pitch, turpentine, and naval stores. Once a ship left a trade, it was on its own, whilst the rest would still be under escort all the way to various Irish, Scottish, or English ports.
It would be weeks and weeks of frustration, anger, and the urge to fire into the lot of them, for most merchant ship masters were used to going about their own ways, second only to God in their authority once out of sight of land, all as intractibly stubborn as mules. It was worse than herding witless sheep… or cats!
Merchant masters would balk at the restrictions, the slow going, and act as if there weren’t a war on that required the Royal Navy that would always come to be thought of as tyrants, oppressors, martinets, or bullies…’til some French privateer or warship hove up over the horizon, at which point they’d follow their instincts to scatter like headless chickens, and blame their capture on the Navy’s failings!
Despite how many French island colonies that had been taken after their return to French possession during the Peace of Amiens, there were still a few French warships lurking round the West Indies, and many privateers which sheltered in neutral harbours, re-victualled and fitted out before sortying for fresh plunder.
With Spain neutral, French privateers could operate from Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, Cuba, and Spanish Florida with impunity. And the Americans…! The damned Yankee Doodles still thought that the French “hung the moon,” years after they’d helped them win their Revolution, despite the brief Quasi-War between France and the United States over the U.S. right of free trade with any nation, favouring none; and despite the bloody excesses of the French Revolution which should have appalled them. There were many Americans who counted their years by the French Directory calendar, with 1789 as the Year One, and harboured a Jacobin, “Sans Culottes” wish to address the inequities between “Common Men” and their richer, patrician leaders.
The Yankee Doodles nursed a continuing dislike for anything British (except for luxury goods) long after their freedom and independence had been won, too, and there were many who would turn a blind eye to a French privateer in their harbours between raiding voyages. After all, America had cut its baby teeth on privateering; their own captains and seamen might be envious of French privateersmen’s success! Perhaps a blind eye might even be turned to prizes brought in and the cargoes sold as legitimate imports, and the ships auctioned off outside of the jurisdiction of formal Prize Courts!
This’ll be a bastard, Lewrie gloomed.
“Has anyone an estimate of how large a trade it may be, sir?” Captain Stroud enquired, looking ready to be energetic.
“All things considered, perhaps prowlin’ Hispaniola wasn’t all that bad,” Lewrie japed. “It’s very… picturesque.”
“Oh, tosh, sir!” Captain Blanding gleefully disagreed. “We’ve been away far too long, and none of us have any real wish to stay through Fever Season… whether your suggestions for citronella candles and oil lamps counter the fever miasmas or not. As to your question, Captain Stroud, I’d not expect much over an hundred ships, or so.”
They tossed round the placement of their ships; would Blanding’s larger and heavier-gunned Modeste lead, or trail; would it be best for Reliant or one of the 32-gunned frigates to serve as “whipper-in” astern; was the seaward flank of the convoy the place of most threat, or was the land side, should French privateers lurk in American ports as they sailed up that coast? And, would there be any re-enforcement to their four-ship squadron, perhaps even a brig-sloop?
It appeared that Captain Blanding would not be offering them a mid-day meal this time. After a last glass of wine in celebration the meeting broke up, and the frigate captains prepared to depart.
“Oh, Captain Lewrie… bide a moment, would you?” Blanding bade him.
“Aye, sir?”
Blanding waited ’til the others had gone, paced behind his desk in the day-cabin, and sat himself down, resting his elbows on the top.
“Dash your eyes, sir!” Captain Blanding angrily growled. That was such a change from his usual humourous temperament that it rocked Lewrie back on his boot heels! “Just dash your bloody eyes!”
“Sir?” Lewrie gawped, standing before the desk, hat in hand, and feeling like a schoolboy about to be tongue-lashed, then caned.
“Our manoeuvring today, sir… I expected that we had drilled enough over the better part of a year that you would sense my intentions, and act accordingly. Which you did, in a way, in that you stood on, realising that the new-come column must go about astern of us, to get clear for their course down towards Jeremie, and Cape Dame Marie! But, for you to hoist ‘Query’ and ‘Submit’ and make us look clumsy and cack-handed and foolish in the eyes of contemporaries, well! I’ll not have it, sir!”
“I didn’t know whether the new-come column would wear about as they did, sir,” Lewrie rejoined. “Or, whether they’d luff up and lie bows to the wind to wait for us t’pass, or… Were they the windward column-”
“Your signal hoists made me look foolish, more the point, sir,” Blanding snapped, cutting him off. “Now, perhaps I did err in placing them to loo’rd for our rendezvous, and perhaps my instructions were a touch confusing, but… a sensible course of action would have been to deem yourself the burdened vessel and hold your course, no matter, and let the other fellows figure out the best way round us without impeding us! Since I had no clue that Captain Farquwar would be relieving us on station, and would have to be the windward column to carry out his orders, it only made perfect sense to take them under our lee, on the most direct course from Jamaica.
“You take too much upon yourself, Captain Lewrie,” Blanding admonished with a grave shake of his head.
“Sorry, sir,” was all Lewrie could say in response. It would be pointless, and insubordinate to belabour the issue.
“Too many years of ‘independent orders’ and one-ship missions, I expect,” Captain Blanding mused, suddenly sounding as if that was a sorrowful lack. “Just pay attention to my signals from now on, sir, and intuit my intentions from your experience of me. Some obedience… prompt obedience… would be preferable to discussion, especially after we pick up our trade. Its protection is vital, and I intend that not a single ship shall be lost to enemy action. Right, sir?”
“Aye aye, sir,” Lewrie could only say; he’d found that the Navy preferred dumb reassurance with that phrase.
“I will second a pair of my lieutenants and my clerk to aid you once we reach Kingston, Captain Lewrie,” Blanding said, his anger gone in an eyeblink, as if the matter hadn’t arisen. “I will place you and Reliant as the principal vessel to whom the merchant masters pay their bonds and sign agreements. I’ve also a brace of Midshipmen who possess legible handwriting skills, should you have need of them, you have but to ask.”
“Very good, sir.”
“That’s all, Captain Lewrie, you may depart,” Blanding told him, remaining in his “seat of power” as Lewrie hoisted his hat aloft in a salute, looking in vain for acknowledgement of his gesture.
Wasn’t too bad, Lewrie told himself once seated in the stern-sheets of his gig near Cox’n Desmond; Not too much was torn off mine arse, ’cause I can still sit on it! It still felt galling, though. He hadn’t been reprimanded like that in years, no matter how mild!; Damme, his signals were confusin’!
In Blanding’s place, Lewrie admitted to himself that he would’ve let the new-comers take station to leeward, too, but… when the time came, he would have ordered them to cross his column’s stern in a very simple hoist. He shook his head, showing a grim smile.
Should I have tugged my forelock to the “lord of the manor” like a cottager? he asked himself; or fluttered my sleeves and banged my head on the floor in a Chinee kow-tow like the “coral-button-men” did in Canton to the Emperor’s trade minister?
Lewrie imagined that being made Knight of the Bath and Baronet might have put paid to Captain Blanding’s grand sense of humour and boisterous bonhomie; he was beginning to take himself seriously.
Was he in danger of doing the same thing? Lewrie rather doubted it; not even if he’d been elevated to the peerage. He had always had a feeling that he could stand outside himself and sneer at the poses that Society demanded of him, knowing that he was a fraud… and suspecting that sooner or later he would be caught out at it. He knew himself too well, warts and all, and was able to be frank about his lacks, and was able to laugh at his pretensions.
Trouble was… could Captain Blanding? It would be a pity if he could not, for, even after his reprimand, Lewrie still liked him!