Tall Orders (The Duty and Destiny Series Book 10) Read online

  “Quite, Sir Frederick!”

  “Is it possible to determine whether we are at war with Russia, My Lord?”

  “No. War has been declared, but is hardly being prosecuted by either party. If the Russian navy should offer a threat, Sir Frederick, then it is to be destroyed, and I shall support you in so doing. But, if it is possible, you should simply ignore their presence. If you are of the opinion, for example, that the ships in question are simply sailing west in order to reach the Atlantic and then pass into the German Ocean before making their way to St Petersburg in the spring, after the Baltic thaw, then you may allow them to pass you by. Sooner or later, the Tsar will turn upon Bonaparte; we must not provoke him if we can avoid so doing.”

  For a politician, it was a clear and honest statement, but it left room and to spare to place all of the blame on Frederick’s shoulders if the policy went awry.

  “Thank you, My Lord. A clear exposition of the situation. May I enquire what ships I shall have in my squadron?”

  “Certainly, Sir Frederick; sailing even now to Chatham are Waldeman, 80; Norge, 74; Perlen, 38; Iris, 36. They must be regunned, as goes without saying, and there may be some need to rework their rigging, or so I am told. Your Winchester and Fair Isle are to go respectively as a prison hulk and to the breakers. A number of sloops have been made available to us by the Danes; should either of yours prove to be in need of repair then you may call upon the new vessels. I expect the yard to require some two months to complete their necessary work, and it may be seen as appropriate to use your existing crews to make up the deficiencies in other ships in the fleet. You will be well manned, however, when you sail. You will be at liberty to give me the names of your captains, Sir Frederick, after discussion with Mr Barrow, and you will wish to recruit officers from among your followers.”

  The First Lord was being remarkably generous, Frederick thought, giving an almost free hand in terms of patronage.

  “I presume I am to raise my broad pendant in Waldeman, My Lord?”

  “You are, Sir Frederick. I hope Sir Iain will wish to remain as your captain?”

  Sir Iain, silent heretofore, ventured to speak.

  “I shall be honoured to do so, My Lord.”

  “Very good! Sir Iain Farquhar remains in command at Malta and you may well find yourself working with him on occasion.”

  Frederick was surprised by that statement, made apropos of nothing; he wondered whether there had been speculation about Sir Iain’s parentage, but he could say nothing.

  “Your ships will be in the hands of the yard for one month at least before you can reasonably expect to exercise command, gentlemen. I would much recommend you to return to Chatham to make your hand over and then to take yourselves home for four weeks!”

  “How kind and generous a gentleman, Sir Frederick!”

  “One can only feel grateful to him, Sir Iain – and deeply suspicious, of course!”

  Sir Iain had little experience of the politician, looked his puzzlement.

  “The First Lord has given me three captaincies and up to a dozen of lieutenants. Sir Iain. Fifteen, perhaps, of families who could have been sweetened by the offer of a place at sea. That is no small gift! Why? Add to that, two of new two-deckers, one of them of eighty guns, and a pair of heavy frigates; the sloops are to remain in the squadron, and, being sent to work the Spanish coast, there must be smaller vessels as well. It smells of politics! And that is all very well, while I am in favour, but what if there should be a falling-out in Whitehall?”

  Sir Iain showed comprehension.

  “Then, sir, you will quite possibly be granted the privilege of escorting the convict convoy to Botany Bay, in a clapped-out Fourth-Rate shepherding a dozen of ancient merchantmen on a six-month crawl to the Antipodes, followed by a visit to Canton to pick up the tea-wagons and bring them home. Probably with a crew of mutinous cripples and idiots, officered by drunks and incompetents who have just failed to be court-martialled!”

  “Precisely, Sir Iain! Politics is a wonderful game, but only for the winners! I think that we might be well advised to pay a call on my Uncle Alton while we are here in London.”

  Lord Alton was at home and delighted to welcome the sea-faring pair; he sat them in his study and called for wine.

  “Sir Iain Jackman! I have wished to make your acquaintance for some little time, sir, having heard much that is good about you!”

  Sir Iain smiled his thanks for the compliment.

  “We are living in a new world, gentlemen! The navy is reinvigorated; there has been an injection of South American bullion into the Treasury; the war with Spain is petering out; Russia’s new embrace for Bonaparte is showing signs of becoming very half-hearted; the Ottoman Empire is less hostile than it was becoming; India is producing more in the way of revenue; the Cape of Good Hope shows signs of becoming a source of much profit from wool and wines. The outlook, in short, is far more hopeful this year than it has been for many. It will not last, of course, because Bonaparte is yet to be defeated, and he has great strength behind him, but it is reasonable to suggest that the worst that may eventuate will be a peace on far more favourable terms than were achieved at Amiens, and victory is far from impossible.”

  They were relieved to hear such good news of the country, for prospects had looked much less pleasing just two years before.

  That was not the whole of Lord Alton’s good news.

  “I may well see some slight degree of temporal promotion in the near future, and there is every prospect of the family as a whole prospering. Mr George Hackett, for example, brother by marriage to you both, has been invited to accept a place on the Navy Board; he will not be especially active, but the salary and fees and emoluments are not to be sneezed at – coming in at more than a thousand a year. I believe the Archbishop of Canterbury has begged his father, Lord Partington, to play some role in the governance of the Church of England, again receiving a more than respectable recompense for his efforts.”

  It took Frederick a few seconds to appreciate all he had heard; Lord Alton to become an Earl, it seemed, and George put in the way of picking up a handsome little fortune – for the Navy Board placed some very large contracts among the victualling merchants, and its members tended to receive substantial presents from those they favoured. Exactly what Lord Partington was to gain was less clear, but the Church of England did not number poverty among its many failings.

  “So, gentlemen, you have returned at a most propitious time in our nation’s affairs. How long are you to remain in England?”

  A month was hardly long enough to do all that might be desirable and they must therefore be seen in London for the whole of that time – they must not disappear into the wilds of rural Dorsetshire!

  “With your permission, gentlemen, I shall send an Express to your ladies, begging them to make all speed to London while you deal with your business at Chatham. The house in Mount Street may be opened, Sir Frederick, I doubt not – I shall send my people to deal with that. You have staff in residence, do you not?”

  Three days must suffice to bring Mount Street into order – it was always possible to acquire servants for a month, there was an Agency that dealt with such matters.

  “You will wish to attend a Drawing Room, I believe, displaying your ladies on your well-known arms, and I believe a dinner or two may not be impossible of arrangement. A pity that it is not the true Season, but many of the genteel are to be found in Town in late autumn and early winter now – they are calling it the Little Season, I believe. We shall bring you to the attention of the world, I think. Both of you, of course – your name is not unknown, Sir Iain, and you will be very welcome in our great houses.”

  “I had hardly expected such, Lord Alton… I am not of the fashionable sort, I believe.”

  “To be blunt, Sir Iain, you carry on your face the marks of a martial career, which will fascinate the foolish while reminding the men – and ladies – of affairs that we are at war and owe much to our sailors and soldiers. The denizens of Mayfair hardly notice the conflict with Bonaparte, and it is as well to shake them on occasion.”

  The scars on Sir Iain’s cheeks still showed sufficiently clearly for the purpose – he was a man of war.

  “A pity in some ways, Sir Frederick, that you display no visible marks; there is much to be said for a missing arm when one is displaying the warrior to the gaping public.”

  “A shame indeed that Lord Nelson is no longer with us – he bore so many marks of his noble service, sir.”

  “A truly great man. He died in a way that many might envy – at the very pinnacle of his career. There can never be another Trafalgar, you know, and any further achievements must have been lesser. For a man who loved glory as he did, any later service must have seemed anti-climax, Sir Frederick.”

  Frederick was much struck by the point, and was inclined to wonder for himself – what was he to do when the wars ended, assuming he survived them. What was there for a fighting sailorman when there was no convenient foe?

  He could hardly become a diplomat, an ambassador for Britain – his talents did not lie in that field. A colonial governor, juggling the interests of navy, army and merchants as he had seen in Bombay? Not his greatest strength, perhaps. A member of one of the boards, such as George had become? Possibly; he would at least have some idea of what he was doing. Lord Lieutenant of a county? That demanded relatively little in time of peace, and offered small reward as well.

  Perhaps he could seek continued employment at sea – there would be some small amount of work to be done. The far eastern seas needed to be policed to make them safe from pirates and the heathen Chinese, who apparently were unhappy that the East India Company was trading with them in a fashion hitherto unknown. The slave trade must be suppressed wherever it might be found. Not especially interesting – little more than an extended form of blockade.

  It was not impossible that he could find an interest in the new manufacturies in the North Country… but that would involve the company of the underbred, of the ‘self-made’ men such as his one-time sword tutor, Mr Chalfont, the brother by marriage of Hartley, his agent at Abbey, and now a rich man, or so he had been told. Not entirely a pleasant prospect.

  He must take advice, but not until the wars were over. He could be busy enough for the while.

  “We must be off to Chatham, my Lord, if we are to arrive in daylight. I presume it is possible to hire a passage on some sort of vessel?”

  “I do not know, Sir Frederick, but I do not have to. What are butlers for, after all?”

  The port admiral at Chatham was not at his best in the early morning; his head hurt and he was a good half of a bottle wine short of effective functioning. He was busily engaged in bringing himself up to normal when Frederick was ushered into his office.

  “Your squadron, Sir Frederick? What of it, sir?”

  “Waldeman, Norge, Perlen and Iris, sir, are to be made over from their current condition. New guns and necessary amendments to their rigging to meet the navy’s standards, sir. The First Lord wishes me to sail not later than the first week of January of the Year Eight, sir. The guns from Winchester will serve some of our needs, as you may appreciate, but there will be a need for more of thirty-two and twenty-four pound long guns, and of carronades, which should be set aside for the purpose. There will as well be the question of manning the ships. I believe that the complements of Winchester and Fair Isle will be made available to your immediate needs, sir, but others must replace them barely eight weeks from now. I think it would be as well, sir, to set schedules with the yard and the Impressment Service against our needs.”

  Mention of the First Lord was necessary but not wholly tactful; the port admiral had been appointed by his predecessor and was much inclined to Whiggishness, to the extent that he was disinclined to cooperate with a known Tory protégé of Frederick’s stature. To weigh against the consideration of party, the port admiral was at an age where he did not believe that he could expect any further appointment – Chatham was his last, and was in fact one of the most profitable of positions available to an admiral. The purveyors of naval stores in Chatham were remarkably open-handed, possibly because competition among them was fierce, so close as they were to London. Chatham was generally thought to be worth as much as the Sugar Islands or Malta and the admiral was not a rich man and wished to amend that state before he retired to half-pay.

  The desire to tell Frederick to go to hell lost out to the need to fatten his purse; the port admiral smiled his best and called for the Master Intendant of the Dockyard to come to him. The First Lord’s wishes were made abundantly clear, and the needs of Frederick’s squadron were set firmly at the top of his list. The Captain of the Dockyard, in the office the whole morning but so far silent, was bidden to bear in mind the squadron’s need for men; he must present Frederick with ships that at minimum were sufficiently manned to sail.

  “After that, of course, Sir Frederick, the problem is yours to solve. What of officers, sir?”

  “The First Lord has given me a free hand, sir, but if you have two or three lieutenants on your list, then I shall be glad to speak to them.”

  There were always lieutenants on shore who would much prefer to be at sea, and some of them would see the port admiral as a patron; it was a generous offer.

  “Good of you, Sir Frederick. It does so happen that I have two young men who look to me and who are ashore at the moment. I will bid them to show their faces to you when you read yourself in.”

  “Four weeks on Monday, is my expectation, sir. So the First Lord instructed me. Sir Iain Jackman will be my captain, sir, and may attend the dockyard earlier if you find a need for his presence. Captain Vereker of Fair Isle will take one of the frigates, Perlen, most likely, and I shall find captains for Norge and Iris; they will arrive probably a week or two before me. Should there be need to make contact with me, then a messenger will find me at my house in Mount Street if you do not wish to go through the Admiralty.”

  It was possible that the Dockyard might be able to find one or two fitments for the ship that could be described as out of the ordinary; they would wish to discuss those in a less formal fashion, distant from the ears of the Admiralty.

  The port admiral smiled and nodded vigorously, despite his aching head. He would take a cut on any such transactions.

  “You will wish to lower your broad pendant, Sir Frederick, and formally hand your ships to the Dockyard; that can be done very quickly. What of your sloops, Asp and Pincher, sir?”

  “Both will benefit from a thorough overhaul, I suspect, sir. Service in tropical waters, as you will know, can be hard on the hull, particularly for the smaller, inshore craft which can brush against a reef only too easily, and often unnoticed. A sheet of copper loosened, and the worm is in the timbers quite unseen. Should either vessel be found unfit for service in the short term, then an immediate notification would be very welcome, sir. I am told that several sixteen-gun sloops have recently come to us from the Danish service and are available against need.”

  The port admiral agreed to assist Frederick in this way if necessary, seeing every chance of a profit to be made in refitting the Danish ships, for they could not yet have had a full inventory taken.

  “The Danish vessels will all have guns to bring ashore, will they not, Sir Frederick?”

  “They will indeed, sir. I do not know their nature, of course, but some may be of interest, as you will appreciate.”

  Long brass chase guns might well find their way aboard the smaller vessels, provided their calibre was acceptable; they could become a captain’s private guns to accompany him from ship to ship, and finally end up decorating his own house as ornamental pieces by the lodge gates, if he ever became wealthy.

  It took two days to bring the commission to an end and particularly to deal with the men’s pay-tickets, and the disputes regarding the last few pence payable, argued ferociously at the captain’s table. Winchester had sailed at eight o’clock of the morning, landsmen’s time, and had been declared paid-off at three o’clock of the afternoon – a matter of seven hours of discrepancy. Were these hours to be paid at all, or pro rata, or as a whole day?

  The actual sums involved were tiny, but it was a matter of what was right and fair rather than simply of the number of pennies. The men had sailed and fought for their King, as all agreed was the case; it was only proper that they should be paid, not extras, a bonus as it were, but exactly what they had earned.

  “Damned sea-lawyers, sir!”

  Frederick agreed with the purser’s summation of the business, but was forced to accept that right was right – the men had a case.

  “Correct the pay-tickets, sir. Add seven twenty-fourths of a day’s money to each.”

  More than seven hundred tickets had to be rewritten, for it was not permissible to make erasures; every literate in the ship was set to work, and then the Master and purser had to scrutinise each one, for it was only to be expected that there would be an amount of private enterprise among the writers.

  There were the normal complaints because Winchester was a Portsmouth ship, and the pay tickets could only be cashed at the home port. The men were not yet aware that their discharge from Winchester was to be followed by immediate enlistment aboard other ships soon to sail from Chatham, and thought that they would be forced to make their way penniless cross-country to Portsmouth, or sell their tickets, heavily discounted, to sharks in Chatham. Frederick intended to be some miles distant from Chatham when the Impressment Service laid its hands on the crew – he wanted no part in the near-mutiny that would ensue.

  He called the midshipmen and boys to his cabin and instructed them to go back to their homes, provided they had a place to go to.

  “Almost none of you are my people originally. Your parents placed you with other captains and may wish for you to go to another ship of their choice.” Unsaid was that Winchester had commissioned under a Whig administration and he was Tory; their parents might wish to remove them from a source of political contamination. “Should the decision be that you are to continue to serve with me, then that is wholly acceptable as far as I am concerned, and you must return to Chatham in the first week of December to be written onto the books of Waldeman, 80. Sir Iain will be her captain. We are ordered foreign, to Spain and the Mediterranean, in the first instance. Those of you who are captain’s servants may expect to be made up very quickly, as you have a long commission behind you. If you are to go to another captain, if that is your parents’ choice, then be sure that I shall send a good report of you. If you do not have the coins on you to take a stage home, then speak to the purser and all will be arranged as an advance on your prize-money.”