“Honest t’God, sir, that’s the last I saw of ’em,” Lewrie told the older fellow as they sat in Reliant’s great-cabins with a pitcher of cool tea before them on the low brass Hindoo tray table before the starboard-side settee. “What Pridemore did with ’em’s his doin’, and I haven’t a clue where he, or the stoves, are now.”
“Thermopylae was sent off to the East Indies last May when the war started up again,” Captain Speaks gravelled, “and Pridemore, one of her Standing Officers, went with her. What the Devil anyone would need heating stoves in Calcutta or ‘Sweatypore’ boggles the mind, but someone owes me for them,” he doggedly insisted.
“It’s possible that Pridemore leased a couple to the Standing Officers of other laid-up ships, sir,” Lewrie speculated, “or sold ’em outright, expectin’ that you’d not recover? They could’ve gone to a scrap-iron monger, or the dockyard offices, on the sly, but I… you have been in touch with my solicitor in London, Mister Mountjoy?”
“All stand-offish petti-fogging and legalese,” Captain Speaks said, almost snarling. “Look here, sir… we can settle this like gentlemen. They’re worth fifty pounds each on today’s market…”
“They were worth thirty-five pounds when you bought ’em, sir,” Lewrie gently objected, sure he was getting gouged.
“Noted there’s a war on, sir?” Speaks snapped back. “The price of iron’s up, and civilian iron goods are in shorter supply, so did I wish to replace them, that’s the going price. You give me a note-of-hand for two hundred pounds, and we’ll call it quits, and it’ll be up to you to redeem the sum from that sharp-practiced ‘Nip-Cheese’ Pridemore. Sue him in a Court of Common Pleas!”
I am bein’ gouged! Lewrie felt like yelping.
“And how’s your parrot, sir?” Lewrie asked instead, to delay his agreement, which he would have to make. “Still gabbin’ away?”
“Hellish-fine, and of no matter, sir!” Captain Speaks rejoined. “I hate to state it this way, Captain Lewrie, but I am senior to you by five years on the Navy List, and your immediate superior in this endeavour with the torpedoes, so consider how much better we will rub along with each other with the debt settled… without my having to take you to Common Pleas, hey?”
“But it wasn’t my fault!” Lewrie insisted, immediately thinking how lame that sounded, as if he was back at a school from which he was not yet expelled.
“You trusted the wrong person, and yes, it is,” Speaks growled.
“Oh, very well,” Lewrie said after a long moment and a great, resigned sigh. He could afford it, after all; it wasn’t like the loss of two hundred pounds would leave him “skint.” He took a long sip of cool tea to slake a suddenly-parched throat, rose, and went over to his desk to scribble out a note-of-hand to Speaks. “You’ll still have to send this on to Mountjoy, in London. He’s my shore agent and estate agent,” he told the testy older fellow. “There’s not a jobber who’ll give you full value in Portsmouth… they’re all retired Pursers,” he wryly japed. He fully expected that Speaks would hand his note to a local banking house, get his money in full, then they would send the thing on to Mountjoy, who’d turn it in to his bankers at Coutts’, and everyone would be square. “Here you are, sir,” he said as he returned to the settee. Captain Speaks took it, squinted hard at it as if suspecting a ruse, then grunted, nodded in satisfaction, and shoved it into a side pocket of his uniform coat.
“You’d done that at the very beginning, Captain Lewrie, and we would have each saved a pretty penny on stationery and postage,” the heavyset chap commented, baring his teeth for a moment in a triumphant grin. “Now, sir… you know what a torpedo is?”
“We’ve just finished a round of trials with cask torpedoes, as designed by a Mister Cyrus MacTavish, sir,” Lewrie told him. “And an awful waste o’ time and materials they were.”
“Good, then, you understand the basic concept,” Speaks replied. “What we will deal with are catamaran torpedoes, a different kettle of fish, entirely.”
“Catamarans,” Lewrie said, sounding highly dubious. Catamarans were work-stages used alongside a ship’s hull to scrub, clean, or paint, to tend to the maintenance of channel platforms, dead-eye blocks, and mast shrouds. They were little more than two great baulks of timber for buoyancy, with planking nailed across them.
“Much bigger than the casks of which you speak, sir, and with much more powder aboard than that upstart American, Mister Fulton’s, copper sphere torpedoes,” Speaks informed him. “That’s why we’ve the Penarth. She’s all sorts of capstans, windlasses, and standing jib-arms for unloading tons of coal in cargo nets at one go. She’s an old and ugly bitch, but she’ll suit my purposes. Our purposes, rather.”
“What the Devil are they like, sir?” Lewrie enquired, hoping to get down to business and put the money out of mind; and that Captain Speaks would be fair-minded enough to consider the matter over and done as well. When he’d replaced him, Thermopylae’s officers and warrants had spoken highly of him, and his concern for the hands’ welfare. The fellow was touted as the typical “firm but fair” sort.
“Are all your officers and Midshipmen aboard at this minute, Captain Lewrie?” Speaks asked, instead.
“All but my First, sir, Lieutenant Westcott,” Lewrie told him.
“Damme! Recall him at once,” Speaks ordered. “It’d be better were they all on hand for a demonstration, all together, so we do not have to go over it in dribs and drabs.”
Westcott won’t care for that, Lewrie thought with a tiny secret smirk; He’s most-like up to his ears in some chit’s tits, by now. Did he leave his whereabouts? I can’t recall.
“I’ll see to it, sir, though it may take some time to hunt him up,” Lewrie said. “Lieutenant Westcott said he had relatives down from home, and may be showin’ them the sights.” A fib, not a lie, that!
“No later than Four Bells of the Day Watch, then, Captain,” Speaks demanded. “Or on your head be it, what?”
“Aye, sir,” Lewrie answered, thinking that this sharp-tongued and impatient man was not quite the genial and easy-going Speaks that had earlier been advertised. “Faulkes?” Lewrie asked of his clerk. “Did Mister Westcott leave his shore address with you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pass word for my boat crew, and go ashore and recall him. Do express my sincerest apologies, but he is needed back aboard at once.”
“Yes, sir,” Eaulkes replied, eager to get off the ship for two hours or so himself.
“Good taste in cabin furnishings, Lewrie,” Captain Speaks said after Faulkes dashed out. “Quite… comfortable, I’d imagine.”
That sounded like a back-handed condemnation, another way to say that Lewrie’s great-cabins were a touch too fine, not the Spartan bare-bones indifference to personal comfort expected by the Navy.
“Thankee, sir,” Lewrie said, watching Speaks rise and go aft towards the transom settee.
“You carry your wife aboard, sir?” Speaks asked, espying that wide-enough-for-two hanging bed-cot.
“I am a widower, sir… two years ago,” Lewrie told him, with a slight dis-approving edge to his voice.
“Good God, are those cats?” Speaks further growled, spotting Toulon and Chalky, curled up together on the coverlet. “Mousers, I’d hope?”
“Passing-fair at it, sir, but mostly company,” Lewrie replied. “You’ve your parrot, I’ve my cats. They’re nigh mute, but amusing.”
“I despise cats,” Speaks huffed. “Can’t abide them. Give me a good dog, now… that’s another matter.”
What else’ll he find fault with? Lewrie sourly wondered.
“Your ship, sir!” Captain Speaks said, turning to face Lewrie. “When I came aboard she looked ‘ship-shape and Bristol Fashion.’ ”
“We try t’keep her all ‘tiddly,’ sir,” Lewrie blandly said. “I find that the French make that difficult, now and then.”
“So much like my old Thermopylae,” Captain Speaks said, seeming to mellow at the mention of his last command. “Of the same Rate, and weight of metal. You were at Copenhagen.”
It sounded like a petulant accusation.
“Aye, sir.”
“Got a chance to fight her,” Speaks said with a grunt.
“We did, sir. And went up the Baltic to scout the state of the ice and enemy harbours on our own,” Lewrie answered. “We rejoined the fleet the night before.”
“Lost good Mister Ballard,” Speaks sadly mused, pacing about the cabins as if they were his own. “Arthur was an excellent First Officer to me. Would have made a fine Captain, had he lived. I liked him very much. Though you didn’t know him as long as I-”
“He was my First Officer in the Alacrity for three years, sir, in the Bahamas, ’tween the wars,” Lewrie interrupted.
He goin’ t’blame me for that, too? Lewrie angrily thought.
“I did not know,” Speaks gruffly said. “Well, sir! Be sure to be aboard Penarth by Four Bells, and Lieutenant Clough and I will show you what we’re to work with, and familiarise your people with the procedures.”
“Very well, sir. I’ll see you to the deck,” Lewrie offered as he went for his hat, which he’d left on the dining table.
“No need, sir,” Captain Speaks quickly said. “I might take one or two minutes to savour being aboard a frigate, again.”
“You’d wish a brief tour, sir?” Lewrie asked.
“No, no, don’t wish to bother your people,” Speaks insisted.
“No bother at all, sir, and since I’m goin’ on deck, too…,” Lewrie said, but Speaks was already halfway to the doors to the weather deck. He had to trot after him, then pass him as Speaks idled on the outer deck between the guns. Lewrie was at the top of the gangway by the break of the quarterdeck by the time Speaks made a slower way up the ladderway. “Side-party for departure honours, Mister Houghton,” Lewrie ordered his senior Midshipman from the corner of his mouth.
Captain Speaks paused at the top of the ladderway, hands in the small of his back and gazing forward to the forecastle, taking in all the bustle of Reliant’s hands, the mathematical exactitude of all the yards and maze of rigging. Speaks heaved a deep sigh, which came out as a throat-clearing grunt, then became all business-like as he doffed his hat in departure. The bosun’s calls tweedled, muskets and swords were presented to see him over the side, right to the last moment when the dog’s vane of his hat dropped below the lip of the entry-port.
Poor old shit’s jealous, by God! Lewrie told himself; I have a command, and he don’t… not a real’un.
Captain Joseph Speaks would have recovered from his pneumonia by April of 1801, but Admiralty had not offered him another warship, and then the Peace of Amiens had kept him ashore on half-pay. Mid-May of last year had seen at least an hundred ships put back in commission, but… none of them were his, and when finally recalled to active service, what had he gotten? Not a frigate or warship commensurate with his seniority, but a project!
No wonder he’s turned sour as crab-apples! Lewrie realised.