The Friendly Sea (The Duty and Destiny Series, Book 1) Read online

  A farm labourer in Frederick’s parish would earn eight to ten shillings a week, more in the harvest and spring ploughing when he was working an eighteen hour day, less through the winter months after threshing was done. With payments in kind – bread, milk, a little meat, his tied cottage – his income might, just, total fifty pounds in a good year, with a kind, paternalistic employer. Compared to this, prize money was a massive fortune, even to a man like Frederick, by naval standards well-off.

  Frederick’s father was second son to Viscount Alton and had inherited his mother’s portion, an estate made up to three thousand a year; he kept his own second son in uniforms and made him an annual allowance of a hundred besides, more than doubling the pay he received since becoming master’s mate. Frederick had expectations as well, the maternal uncle after whom he was named, his godfather, his mother’s only brother, a pederast of long standing and old habit; Frederick was natural heir to the small house and estate in Sussex and twenty or so thousands in the Funds, but a young favourite might well usurp his place in the Will. Frederick had met his uncle quite frequently, though always well chaperoned by his father, and liked him much – a charming, disgusting old man - and could not wish him to an early grave or a solitary end, felt it impolite to him to live on the offchance of his thousand or so a year, had resolved to make his own way. Now, moderately competent in his trade but well aware that he was not a natural born seaman, he hoped the war would make him; the Anemone was a good start. He wondered, very privately, just how he would react to real peril; he had passed through many a storm, but weather was impartial, a danger but not an enemy, was not the same as a nasty-minded Frog deliberately pointing a great big cannon at him.

  “No doubt I shall find out one day,” he reflected, on deck to greet the dawn.

  “Mr Denby, two hands to the swivels, load and slowmatch lit, if you please. Lookouts aloft! Small arms on deck.”

  Megson stood at a loose attention at his side, gave his opinion that they had made good between three and four knots during the night with an unvarying light southwesterly. It had clouded up a mite, visibility might be a problem, but he thought they were within a touch of their rendezvous.

  The light increased slowly, rain bands in sight, a grey day, autumn in the Bay.

  “On deck!” The mainmast lookout. “Sail on the starboard bow!”

  “Inshore of us, Megson?”

  “Could be the wind was a bit stronger out here, sir, blew her a mite further than they reckoned in the night hours.”

  “Perhaps.” Frederick was unconvinced. “Set fore and main courses. See if they give this old tub anything like a turn of speed.”

  Megson obeyed instantly, gave the orders, mentally shrugged, ‘the boy was twitchy, it seemed, a pity.’

  “On deck! Sail is ship-rigged!” From the mainmast.

  “On deck! Pallas on the larboard quarter at three miles, sir.” The foremast lookout was able to estimate the distance away of his own ship, knowing her mast height from long familiarity.

  “Up you go, Megson! What is she? Point up towards Pallas, quartermaster, just a fraction, gain us a few fathoms without it noticing.”

  “Aye aye, sir. Unobtrusive-like it is.”

  Megson shouting a commentary as the ship grew clearer against the land in the east that had obscured vision in the dawn light, within a few minutes was able to report that she was a corvette, a national ship, of sixteen or eighteen guns.

  “On deck, please, Megson.”

  “Heavy crew, sir,” Megson commented for Frederick’s private ear. “I could see men at both broadsides. Got to be a hundred and fifty aboard.”

  Working her own coastal waters, never more than a day or two from port, it was possible to carry a very substantial complement, drinking water no problem. No British ship ever carried hands enough to man both sides fully, could only fire both by setting the men to run between them, never a popular policy with the crews.

  “Get the bulk of the men out of sight, Megson, us and four visible, that’s all you would think to see on a coaster like this.”

  “The corvette’s badly sailed, sir. Too much packed on the fore and pushing her bows down – she’ll tack like a pregnant cow in a thunderstorm. We might match her against the wind even in this thing.”

  “Wait for the captain, Megson. I would expect him to try to slow her, just to be certain she won’t catch us. He’s got the gage of her, and I think he’ll look to cross her bows at a distance, cut her up a little and then shepherd us away. They said at Gib that the Revolution had hit their navy hard, officers and even warrants going to the guillotine if they was so much as suspected of being unreliable, and replaced by foremast jacks and politicians who said the right things. That’s why she’s being sailed badly, I expect.”

  “There needs be some reason for it, sir. It ain’t no seamanlike way of doing things, that’s for sure.”

  “Wear ship, Megson.”

  The slow, safe manoeuvre, typical of an undermanned merchantman, would show her anxious to clear the scene of combat while in process making so slight a progress as to leave her in a position to offer such aid to Pallas as she could.

  ‘Perhaps the boy ain’t so twitchy, after all,’ Megson observed to himself, glancing at the short, upright figure at the starboard rail, eyebrows a rigid bar of concentration, swarthy, tanned face, hooked nose, pursed lips showing strongly as he scowled at the Frenchman.

  “Oh, Christ!”

  Frederick spun round at the exclamation, saw the Pallas in sail-flapping confusion. She had missed stays, failed to make her tack with her weakened crew, was crabbing helplessly across the corvette’s bows, the range closing uncontrollably. She fired a single broadside before she fell aboard the Frenchman, rigging entangled.

  “Belay! Point me at her stern, Megson!”

  “Fighting sail, sir?”

  “No! All speed, as quick as may be or it’s too late to bother.”

  Frederick ran to the companionway. “Mr Denby! All hands!”

  Every man rapidly on deck, each with a firearm and a blade, looking to him for orders and reassurance.

  “All hands to board, every last one of us, lads! We’ll go over her stern, in behind the Frogs. Give ‘em a volley then go in together, shoulder to shoulder. Try to pick out her officers. Kill the buggers, every last one of ‘em, till they give up!”

  It was not a great speech, he reflected. How did others do it? He suspected, darkly, that some of them produced their battle speeches in advance on the chance that they might need one. Possibly many of them were written afterwards, what they should have said – that Shakespeare, now, ‘into the breach’, and all that – not very likely, when you thought about it.

  No matter! Every one of them, apart from Megson who had taken the wheel, and a man at each swivel, knelt behind the rail, ready, swearing, shivering, waiting like hunting dogs for the off. Fighting dying down on the Pallas, the French pushing towards her waist, swamping the defenders with their numbers. Anemone crashing into the corvette’s stern, the swivels firing, two sharp cracks and four pounds weight of musket balls sweeping across the deck, followed by all the long arms, including the blunderbuss with its load of buckshot, then a roaring knot of boarders, only two dozen of them but wholly unexpected.

  Two French officers dead on the quarterdeck, a screaming steersman with a belly full of slugs, no voice of authority organising a counterattack. Frederick led the charge to the bows and down on to Pallas’ deck, bellowing incomprehensibly and waving his sword. He was lucky – no officer had turned his men and they hit into the back of the French boarders just as they were easing down, their fight nearly over, the urgency gone. One of Pallas’ boys who had fled into the maintop pointed its swivel, triggered the flintlock.

  “Pistols, Pallas!” Frederick shouted, was rewarded by a dozen shots more or less together. “Get in there, boys!”

  They attacked, cutlasses slashing wildly, boarding axes more precisely wielded at very close quarters. A lieut
enant went down, a midshipman screamed piercingly, unendingly, trying to hold his spilling intestines together. The French wavered, began to defend themselves, backing away, looking for a leader.

  A cutlass dropped, one man with his hands up shouting for quarter, in a moment was followed by those around him, then the whole crew. The boy screamed still, on his knees now, holding himself round the middle.

  “Megson, get the corvette’s colours down! Mr Denby! Prisoners below decks into Pallas’ hold. Quickly!”

  “Mr Denby’s gone, sir, copped one in the chest, stuck ‘im through and out the other bloody side, sir. That little midshipman what’s making all the noise did ‘im, sir.”

  “Thank you, Barney! Get them below, man!”

  Frederick grabbed men at random, told them off into parties to make sail, to hold the prisoners, secure the corvette, guard the spirits rooms, get the wounded to the surgeons, form a skeleton of a crew on each of the three vessels and hold them together under steerage way. The carpenter was roused from gazing at his best wooden maul, all splintered and bloody, quite unusable, the nearest, most natural thing to hand when he had taken his mate, the two stewards and the cook into the losing fight, was set to his proper work, apologising profusely the while.

  A few minutes and it occurred to Frederick that he was alone in giving orders, that the men were all turning to him. Captain, lieutenant and master were all his seniors, should have orders for him. All were dead, the lieutenant in the waist where he had led his last few back into the French when Frederick boarded; the master by the wheel, hit early by a musket ball; Captain Johnson pistolled, nobly refusing to surrender when all seemed lost.

  “Eight dead, six more who’ll go for sure, sir, eleven flat on their backs for the next few days and the surgeon’s mate at his wits’ end, sir.”

  The surgeon had been found dead in a gutter in Gibraltar, knifed when drunk, pockets rifled. He had been no great loss, not even very good as a pox-doctor, his most normal function, but he would have been handy now.

  “Kick the bastard till he does something useful, Megson. Thank Christ that boy’s stopped screaming! Has he died?”

  “Probably, sir. Barney just heaved him over the side, finished the job he started. Great one for tidying up after himself is Barney.”

  “Quicker for the poor little sod, but I doubt we need mention it elsewhere, Megson.”

  Megson nodded, he had had no intention of making a public fuss about so minor a matter.

  “Who have we got on the quarterdeck, sir?”

  “Mr Dixon.”

  The junior of the two midshipmen, blood-spattered and close to tears, a very little boy, still a squeaker, who might one day make a very good officer, and second senior aboard.

  “He’ll have to take the Frog in, Megson, no question of that. You take Anemone, as is right and fair… and my report will say so.”

  Megson stood a good chance of a commission, bringing in a prize after an affair as chancy as this one, would certainly be well looked after in the service, but Dixon must have a strong man behind him, could not be left on his own.

  “Perhaps Mr Carter could go with Mr Dixon, sir? He’s cut about and his left arm’s in a sling so he can’t go aloft, but he’d be useful there, sir.”

  Carter was the boatswain, senior of the tradesmen aboard, skilled in seamanship and a bloody-minded, bullying tyrant, feared and hated by all.

  “I thought he would have gone overboard, Megson.”

  “Nobody had time, sir.”

  Unpopular officers had a habit of dying in close combat, when none could tell who had fired a shot or wielded a cutlass; Carter was very lucky.

  “Good suggestion, Megson. Thank you.”

  At noon Frederick shot the sun in solitary splendour, concerned less with establishing his position – the Breton coast was still clearly visible – than with reinstating routine. The fuss and bother was over, he implied, it was time to get back to proper work, to quietly and efficiently sailing from one port to the next as sailors should. The wind was rising and the Bay showed every prospect of becoming ill-mannered and he did not fancy a lee shore with one thin crew split between three vessels; he wanted to get north of Ushant as soon as might be possible, but could not realistically demand more than topsails of the men; he was not a happy acting captain, felt this degree of responsibility to be somewhat excessive. Two hours later a blockading frigate found him, led him thankfully to the admiral to be tucked away comfortably under the wing of his great ninety gun second rate.

  The admiral made much of them, found men to temporarily flesh out the prize crews, sent them into Portsmouth under escort of his own despatch brig. Their entry in tidy line astern, Pallas followed by two prizes, national flag showing proudly over tricolour, a brig leading in a ship-sloop and a merchantman, attracted a deal of attention from the assembled ships in dock and Spithead, the more so as Pallas bore the traditional signs of a vessel mourning her dead captain and her pendant at half-mast.

  The war was less than six months old and successes had been few as yet, particularly in home waters; the navy made the most of Frederick’s offering.

  The newssheets made a great puff of the affair: sailors were heroes, everyone knew that, had known it for half a century, and everyone wanted to read what they already knew in their newspapers. More importantly, the war was young and politicians, who needed instant glory, found their yearning for surrogate heroism more than satisfied by Frederick’s act of valour and the grubby little hacks of the press, then as now, were delighted to grovel to government and kiss such parts of the body politic as were presented to them.

  As a True Son of Britannia, Frederick achieved instant evanescent fame, his commission and appointment as second lieutenant in the newly named Athene sloop – the capture of the Pallas – bought into the service and to be rearmed with thirty two pound carronades and a pair of chase guns.

  The Port-Admiral, ancient, grossly fat and generally thought to be senile, drank wine with him and the mayor took tea in his company. More importantly to him a number of post captains sought him out to shake his hand and quietly comment on his good conduct.

  The Athene was to go into dock to have her ports rebuilt and lined with sheet tin against the muzzle-flash of the short barrelled carronades, as well as to have her rigging purged of a number of uniquely French nastinesses which, it stood to reason, could not be as good as the English, and even if they was had no place in the navy. Her new captain was to join in the month, the meanwhile Lieutenant Harris should go on well-earned furlough, and, by the way, was he going to my Lord Alton’s seat?

  “No, sir, to my father’s estate at Boorley Green in Hampshire.”

  The answer did his prospects no harm at all.

  He hired a gelding and a pack pony at a livery in Portsmouth and paid for the services of a groom to ride with him and pad the horses back the next day, set out the twenty five miles north and west early in the morning. He knew his father subscribed to the Chronicle, would have read of him, would be expecting his early visit so he need not send a messenger in front of him, simply plodded off through the mud of the autumn roads on the thick clay of the Hampshire Basin, stickily by way of Fareham and Wickham to Botley and home. The roads were to be maintained by each parish they passed through, and most evaded that responsibility and its expense and then moaned that they could not get to market; if there was a brickworks then the broken bats were generally tossed into the worst puddles and sinks, but elsewhere the most would be cut brush dropped in the vague hope that it might do some good, perhaps. A strong horse might manage six miles an hour for half a day with a rider up; drawing a wain it might not be possible to make six miles in a day in wet weather.

  The villagers of Boorley Green were quite pleased to see young Mr Frederick back from the sea; many of them had been pressed in previous wars, a few had even volunteered, and they felt themselves to be in some slight way a nautical community. The more literate of them knew there was a war again, had been for s
ome months, and those who attended church or chapel – by no means a majority – had a vague idea it was because the French were Godless and had cut their King’s head off. Particularly among the Methodies this last had given rise to some deep pondering, many of them thinking that the same event in England would improve both the general level of intelligence and of sanity in the Executive. It was all very difficult: the French had risen against their Church, which was the blasphemous Whore of Rome, the font of centuries of plots against English Freedoms, and they were being told that to be Catholic was wrong, but to kill Catholic priests and kings was wronger still. Very strange, it gave a man to think, and for an ordinary man that was a very dangerous thing to do if he wanted to survive and work in a paternalistic village community.

  Still, be that as it may, the young master was at sea sinking Froggies, and that was a good thing, it was what Froggies were for, when all was said and done; no doubt it was God’s punishment on them for not being English. And, his father, up at the Big House, he was a more than fair landlord who would give a man down on his luck a helping hand, so long as it was through no fault of his own. A lightning strike on wheatfield or ricks could be the ruination of another man’s tenants, but the Honourable Mr Harris would help a man to come round again, and more than that you couldn’t ask for.