Lewrie and the Hogsheads Read online

  Lewrie and the Hogsheads

  An Interlude

  Dewey Lambdin

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: www.us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  Contents

  Copyright Notice

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Excerpt from Hostile Shores

  Chapter 1

  “Damme, but this is boresome,” Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet, muttered to himself as he took the morning air on his quarterdeck, at anchor in West Bay of Nassau Harbour. Being the temporary, and most unwilling, Senior Naval Officer Present in the Bahamas was turning out to be a dullity, and a constant round of paper shuffling and ink smudges, to boot. His fine 38-gun Fifth Rate frigate, HMS Reliant, had been anchored and idle since the Admiral commanding at Antigua far to the South, had sent orders appointing him to the command.

  Reliant, in point of fact, was anchored just about where HMS Mersey, the former flagship of the recently disgraced Commodore Francis Forrester, had been, atop Mersey’s reef of beef and pork bones and all her ordure…. For God’s sake, Reliant was so idle that she had awnings rigged over the quarterdeck, and it was his inherited brig-sloops and small vessels Below the Rates which were doing the interesting work patrolling for enemy privateers or the first sight of the rumoured French squadron under Admiral Missiessy, said to be raiding the isles down South.

  “For tuppence, I’d weigh anchor and go lookin’ for him, come Hell or high water,” Lewrie told Bisquit, the ship’s dog, which padded along beside him. “What say ye t’that, hey?”

  Bisquit perked his ears erect and nuzzled Lewrie’s left knee.

  “Didn’t think so,” Lewrie said with a sigh. “I leave harbour, and all Nassau’d shit their breeches.”

  He looked shoreward to the town, which hadn’t changed one whit since the night before, then peered North over low-lying Hog Cay to the glittering open channel, where he really longed to be. The local fishing boats were out, and there was a brig-rigged vessel just visible, hull-down, sailing down the Nor’east Providence Channel, bound for port. No enemy, no threat, no excitement.

  Lewrie had done several time-killing laps of his ship, from the stern taffrails to the forecastle and back, but loath as he was to go below and deal with the day’s paperwork, there was no avoiding it. Perhaps when he was done he could take a good long nap.

  * * *

  “Well, the expenditures seem above-board, sir,” Reliant’s Purser, Mr. Cadbury, allowed after hemming and hawing over the chits submitted by the Pursers of several other ships of the squadron. Loath as he was to speak ill of a fellow Purser, Mr. Cadbury had become, willing or not, the final arbiter of his peers’ honesty in their dealings. Pursers were not universally demeaned as “Nip-Cheese” for nothing, or people who could “make dead men chew tobacco.” Few of them died in debtors’ prisons or poverty—only the honest ones.

  “Rather a lot o’ salt-beef for such a wee ship as Squirrel, though, ain’t it?” Lewrie asked, squinting dubiously. “And where on Eleuthera did they find that much?”

  “Several of her casks had gone over, sir, and were condemned,” Cadbury explained. “The tropic heat? To obtain fresher, they had to pay dear.”

  “And sell the bad on the sly to planters t’feed their slaves?” Lewrie posed with a quizzical brow up.

  “Well, sir, I don’t know the final disposition of…” Cadbury began to quibble, but he was interrupted by a shout from the Marine sentry guarding the great-cabin door.

  “Midshipman o’ th’ watch, Mister Grainger, SAH!”

  “Come!” Lewrie called back, eager for anything to bring him to full wakefulness; all the “bumf” had half-glazed his eyes over.

  “Sir!” Grainger said as he entered the great-cabins, hat under his arm, and approached the desk in the day-cabin. “Fulmar is entering port, sir, and she’s flying ‘Have Survivors Aboard.’”

  “Survivors of what?” Lewrie gawped, sitting more erect. “Send her ‘Captain Repair On Board,’ Mister Grainger, and I will be on deck directly.”

  “Aye, sir!”

  “That’s enough for today, Mister Cadbury,” Lewrie said, rising from his desk. “Enough for a fortnight, more-like. Perhaps you should only report the worst, and most suspect, expenditures to me from now on. I trust you with the King’s Shillings.”

  “Very well, sir,” Cadbury replied, sounding much relieved.

  I don’t, really, but Pursers will be Pursers, Lewrie thought; and there’s little I can do about their ways.

  “Hat and coat, Pettus,” Lewrie bade his cabin steward. “Then, we’ll see what Fulmar’s turned up.”

  Chapter 2

  HMS Fulmar, a handsome brig-sloop of 16 guns, had barely come to anchor when her cutter set out for Reliant. Taking a surreptitious peek with a telescope, Lewrie could make out her captain, Commander Ritchie, in the boat’s sternsheets. With him was a civilian clad like a merchant ship master and looking none too natty. The cutter came alongside quickly, and Ritchie mounted to the starboard gangway right spryly, pausing to lend a hand to his passenger as the side-party of sailors and Marines rendered welcome-aboard honours.

  “Commander Ritchie, welcome aboard,” Lewrie said, doffing his hat.

  “Sir. Allow me to name to you Captain Israel Martin, formerly master of the American brig Santee, out of Charleston,” Ritchie replied, doffing his own hat in salute. “Captain Martin, this is Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet, captain of the Reliant frigate and Commodore of the Bahamas Squadron.”

  “Cap’m Lewrie,” the American master said, doffing and nodding.

  “Captain Martin, … honoured, sir,” Lewrie replied in kind. “You are a survivor, I believe Commander Ritchie’s signal said? Did your ship founder? And where, sir?”

  “Taken by a big bastard of a Spanish privateer, sir, and sent off in our ship’s boats with nought but the clothes we stood up in,” Martin shot back, sounding as if it was the Royal Navy’s fault.

  “Well, damn my eyes,” Lewrie exclaimed in surprise. “Let us go to my great-cabins, where you may relate all to me.”

  * * *

  Lewrie offered cool tea with sugar and lemon juice, which Commander Ritchie accepted. Martin would have Rhenish and would not further explain ’til he had downed one glass and got refilled, as if his ordeal had happened the day before, not weeks.

  “We were bound Sou’west for the Crooked Island Passage when the bastard hove up ahead of us and chased us back out to sea, and we couldn’t make much way ’gainst the winds,” Captain Martin finally said, somewhere between snarling and hand-wringing. “They brought down our main course yard with their bow-chasers, then come up alongside, and we had no choice but to give up. I’ve lost my ship, my cargo, and all my passage money and belongin’s, and so did my crew. They forced us to take to the boats with barely enough bisquit and water to keep a bird alive, and sailed off, damn ’em! Wouldn’t even let me keep the ship’s papers or manifests!”

  Santee, so Martin further explained, had been bound for Crooked Island and Acklins Cay with a general cargo of rice, salt-meats, farm tools, cloth, and such for the cotton and sisal plantations there.

  Lewrie looked at Commander Ritchie as Martin prated on, finding a dubious expression on Richie’s face. He’d only met Ritchie the once, and that briefly, but he’d deemed the fellow to be intelligent and quick.


  “I thought the plantings on Crooked Island were failing. The bugs and thin soil,” Lewrie said. “Cotton plays it out quickly.”

  “Nigh fourty plantations at one time, Cap’m Lewrie,” Martin insisted, “but most’re still thriving, and there’s still over a thousand slaves that need food and clothing. It’s a good market.”

  “Just where did the Spanish privateer take you, sir?” Lewrie asked. “Did you get her name and her captain’s name? And, when you were set adrift, in what direction did she sail?”

  “As to where, Cap’m Lewrie, we were ’bout sixty miles East of Watling’s Island, slap on the Twenty-Fourth Latitude, when we fetched to,” Martin spat, as if insulted by the questions. “She was the Caca Fuego, out of Cuba, I reckon, and her bastard cap’m was called Reyes, I think. So he named himself. Last we saw of our ship, she was off to the East-Sou’east, maybe to hunt off Mayaguana or something. Damn it all, Cap’m Lewrie, an American ship, a neutral in your damned war, has been taken, and your Navy didn’t do a damned thing about it!”

  “I don’t recall the Navigation Acts being repealed, Captain Martin,” Lewrie coolly told him. There was something about the tale, or Martin himself, that made him suspicious. “You took a great risk in entering Bahamian waters, where French and Spanish privateers are two-a-penny despite the Royal Navy’s best efforts, and, did Commander Ritchie come across you with a cargo bound for a British colony, in violation of the Navigation Acts, which limit such trade to British ships, he would have hauled you here to Nassau under arrest, and your ship and cargo would have been impounded.”

  “Hah!” Martin burst out. “Of all the arrogant…! I never heard the like! Think you rule the world, you English!”

  “Last time I looked, sir,” Lewrie purred back, “we pretty-much do. This side of the world, at any rate.

  “Now, we shall land you and your crew ashore, into the care of your Consul,” Lewrie went on. “Mister Stafford has his offices at the corner of West and Marlborough Streets. He will assist you with any needs, arrange lodging and such ’til you can obtain passage back to Charleston.”

  “But you’ll do nothing to get my ship and cargo back, will you?” Martin accused. “Damme, I’m ruint, else!”

  “On the contrary, Captain Martin, I shall launch a search for her and the privateer at once,” Lewrie promised him. “Though, we both know the odds of her recovery, with Cuba so close nearby, are not all that good. I may call upon you at your Consul’s residence, for more details, if you would be so good?”

  Lewrie set aside his glass of tea and rose from the starboard-side settee, where he and the others had been made welcome, signalling that the interview was over. He saw them to the deck and debarking to Fulmar’s waiting boat but bade Commander Ritchie to remain.

  “You look skeptical, sir,” Lewrie said.

  “Over thirty men in Captain Martin’s crew in two decent-sized boats, sir,” Commander Ritchie said, frowning, “adrift two days since being taken, and they were still fourty miles from Watling’s Island? If she was taken seventy miles East of there, they’d have been high and dry by then. Captain Martin did have a good compass. And when I asked him about his cargo, he acted rather vague, as he did below just now, sir. I tried having some of my people draw forth more from his crew, but they were a closed-mouth lot. There’s something queer about the whole thing. Can’t put a finger on it, but there’s more than Captain Martin is telling, I’m mortal-certain of that.”

  “Something to look into,” Lewrie said, nodding. “Along with hunting down this big Spanish privateer, if she’s still prowling the area. She’s made one rich prize and might be hungry for more.

  “How would you like to be temporary Senior Naval Officer Present, Commander Ritchie?” Lewrie asked of a sudden, beaming with glee.

  “Ehm, well sir…” Ritchie stammered.

  “You’ve had a long patrol and deserve a spell in harbour,” Lewrie decided. “I dasn’t risk Reliant down South, among all those reefs and shallows…and the locals’d go pale at the thought of her swannin’ off and leavin’ them to the French threat. Lieutenant Westcott, my First Officer, will stay here with her, ’til I get back. Should any other vessels of worth come in, allow them a spell of shore liberty, then put them back on close patrol round New Providence and the channels.”

  “You’ll see to it yourself, sir?” Ritchie gawped.

  “As Martin says, it’s a neutral American ship that’s been captured, a matter important enough t’require the utmost effort on our part,” Lewrie said with an easy smile. “A matter serious enough to warrant the attention of a Commodore, hey?”

  Now, who do I take with me? Lewrie wondered, peering round the harbour for suitable small warships, strong enough to take on a Spanish brig but shallow-enough in draught to survive.

  He determined to set off the very next morning, after another talk with this Martin fellow, once he had scrubbed up and had a good meal.

  And, how uncomfortable am I goin’ t’be? he asked himself as he looked round the harbour, espying Lt. Bury’s little Lizard schooner and Lt. Darling’s hermaphrodite brig, Thorn. They drew eight and ten feet of draught, respectively, but were small and already crowded, with no space for a senior officer.

  Damned uncomfortable! Lewrie sadly determined.

  Chapter 3

  It had been ages since Lewrie had served aboard smaller ships, like his first official command as a Lieutenant, HMS Alacrity. Cramped as were the accommodations in Lt. Darling’s cabins, where he had to sling a hammock over the dining table, rejecting Darling’s offer to use his hanging bed-cot, he spent most of his time awake on deck and out of the way, seated right-aft on the flag lockers by the taffrails, on the leeward side. He would have fetched along his collapsible wood-and-canvas deck chair, but that might have been a bit much deck space taken up from the crew’s room to work.

  With no say in the working of the brig, Lewrie found himself a very idle, and happy, passenger, a slab of “live lumber,” for a rare once, and able to take joy in the passage and the sights and sounds. He was at sea, away from the dull chores, and free!

  The weather and the climate was nigh-perfect, the sea an ever-changing palette of colours, from deep-ocean dark blue to pale aquamarine or light green in the shallows, as Thorn and Lizard beat up the Nor’east Providence Channel, rounded the northern tip of Eleuthera by Spanish Wells, and stood out into the Atlantic to coast down the long and narrow isle at a safe distance from Eleuthera’s reefs, but still able to make out waves breaking snow-white on her rocks and beaches with a telescope. The waters glittered like a million mirrors, and the scudding white clouds were pacific and benign, with no portents for bad weather, as the two wee ships sped Sou’east-Half-South on an easy beam reach, reeling off the miles at a steady eight knots, and even the heat of mid-day was moderated by a cooling open-ocean breeze. It was, in all, very much like royal “yachting,” and all “cruising and claret”! Lewrie had not thought to fetch along anything to read, but discovered that Lt. Darling kept a decent personal library. When the scenery palled, he could tackle Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for the third time; he might actually finish it, at last!

  * * *

  “I reckon that we should fetch sight of the North end of Cat Island by dawn, sir,” Lt. Peter Darling opined as they sat down to supper that evening. “A fairly fast passage, so far.” He rapped softly on the wood tabletop for luck.

  “And another hundred miles or so would place us just about at seventy-four degrees West, almost twenty-four degrees North,” Lewrie agreed as Darling’s steward poured them white wine. “Just about the area where that Martin fellow said he was captured. Good. Then we can begin to prowl…though when we near Crooked Island, I intend for Lieutenant Bury to put in on the island and nose about to see if the Santee has called there before or if anyone’s ever traded with her and Martin. I find it peculiar that he’d carry a cargo there unless it had been ordered. What if there was no need of his goods, or he had t�
�unload ’em for less than he paid for ’em?”

  “Just one more oddity to the tale he told you, sir,” Darling commented, taking a sip of his wine, nodding eagerly, then tossing off a goodly gulp. “Ah, capital, that! What a sweet and floral bouquet!”

  Lewrie had thought to bring some assorted bottles along from his private stocks. He had also fetched aboard a gallon of brandy, a barricoe of claret, and a gallon stone crock of his favourite aged American corn whisky, which he didn’t think that Darling would touch.

  So recently out of harbour, there was still fresh shore bread, fresh greens for a salad or two before they began to wilt and go bad, two dozen eggs, a side of bacon, and some of his rabbits and quail, all of which Lt. Darling would appreciate.

  Darling was an odd duck, two inches shorter than Lewrie but at least thirty pounds heavier, big in the upper body but with short, bandy legs that scissored when he walked or strutted, and blessed with a round, fleshy, cherub’s face. Ashore in civilian togs, one might mistake Darling for an idler or a happy tradesman, but he’d proven himself to be a tarry-handed and well-salted mariner, and a fellow eager for a fight.

  “Oh, God bless Bury!” Darling exclaimed as his steward set out the first course, rubbing his hands in anticipation of the lemoned grouper served with boiled peas. “Of course, he sketched it first.”

  Lt. Tristan Bury’s prime avocation was the study, dissection, drawing, and painting of fish, both in textbook profile and in true-to-the-life colour as they would appear underwater. To further his accuracy, Lt. Bury spent a great deal of his free time in the water, with his head submerged in a variety of personally designed devices with glass goggles or panes. None of them yet worked to his complete satisfaction, but someday…!

  “At least he eats them, once he’s done,” Lewrie japed. “Be a shame t’let ’em free…like this delicious specimen. Um-mmm!”

  “Do you imagine, sir,” Lt. Darling posed after a sip of wine, “that this Spaniard will still be lurking the area? It isn’t as if the lower Bahamas would be as lucrative a hunting ground as the Florida Straits.”