The King's Commission Read online

  THE

  KING’S

  COMMISSION

  The Naval Adventures of

  Alan Lewrie

  Dewey Lambdin

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Foreword

  Acknowledgments

  I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  II

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  III

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  IV

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Epilogue

  Also by

  More praise for Dewey Lambdin and his hero, Alan Lewrie

  Afterword

  Notes

  Copyright Page

  This One’s For

  Marrin & Mary Delle Fleet in Memphis

  We shot our way through Memphis for years when we were all in television production, and sailed our way into more “white-knuckle” experiences than I can shake a stick at. By now they must feel like part-owners in Wind Dancer, one long splice at a time.

  And to both my ex-wives;

  Don’t flatter yourselves—neither one of you is in this.

  “He rises fastest who knows not whither he is going.”

  —attributed to Oliver Cromwell

  Foreword

  Before diving fight into Alan Lewrie’s latest naval adventure (if one may do so without besmirching one’s own fine sense of honor by exposing it to such a rogue), it might be a good idea to discover just exactly who in the hell this Alan Lewrie character was.

  Of course, for those of you with a taste for stirring action and some salacious wenching, you may plunge right on to Chapter One and elide this brief curriculum vitae. But for the more inquisitive reader unfamiliar with the previous accounts about our nautical hero, a reader not entirely taken in by splashy dust jackets and titillating blurb copy, believe me, this chronicler understands your plight. You have found this tome, and it sounded as though it might contain scads of blood and thunder, shivering tops’ls and timbers (as in shiver me timbers, mate), lots of derring-do, and some naughty bits tucked into the odd corner, but it’s a wrench trying to pick up on the middle release of a whole series of nautical adventure in mid-tack, as our protagonist has learned to say at this stage of his career.

  So allow me to condense this young Corinthian’s past for you before getting into all the sex, swords and sailing ships (not necessarily in that order). I look upon it as a public duty. After all, did C. S. Forester do this for you? No, you had to wait for The Hornblower Companion. Did Sherlock Holmes ever have a biography, or did you have to search for clues in the works themselves?

  Alan Lewrie was born on Epiphany, 1763, in St. Martin’s In The Fields Parish, London. His mother Elizabeth Lewrie passed away soon after this “blessed event” and he began life a bastard in the parish poor-house (quite appropriately, since the sobriquet of “you little bastard” was said about him by quite a few people in his life).

  1766—Rescued from the orphanage and poor-house, ending a promising career of oakum-picking and flax-pounding, for no apparent good reason by his true father, Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby of St. James Parish, St. James Square (unfortunately not the good side), Knight of the Garter, ex-captain 4th Regiment of Foot (The King’s Own), member White’s, Almack’s, Hell-Fire Club and the Society for the Diminution of the Spread of Venereal Diseases.

  There is a long biographical gulf between 1766 and 1776 for lack of information, but since most childhoods are wretchedly uninteresting, who bloody cares?

  1776—The American Colonies rebel. Alan Lewrie discovers what a goose-girl will do for a shilling, and chamber-maids and mop-squeezers may do for free if one can only run fast enough to catch them.

  1777—Entered into Westminster School, obviously to get him out of the neighborhood, instead of being tutored at home with his half-sister Belinda and half-brother Gerald. Expelled same year for licentious behavior, though he did post some decent marks.

  1778—Entered Eton, expelled Eton, see above.

  1779—Entered Harrow, expelled Harrow. As above, but with the codicil that he was implicated in a plot to blow up the Governor’s coach house in youthful admiration for the Gunpowder Plot. There was no mention in the school records of licentious behavior this time, so we must assume that such goings-on were not taken as seriously at Harrow as at other places in those days.

  1780—Nabbed in flagrante delicto with his aforementioned half-sister Belinda Willoughby. For once, this incident was not his fault (well, not totally, anyway). Booted from the bosom (so to speak) of his family with one hundred guineas a year and told never to show his face in Society or the family digs again. Turned over to an officer of the Navy Impress Service and entered the Royal Navy as a midshipman, in Portsmouth.

  January 10, 1780, signed aboard HMS Ariadne, 3rd Rate, sixty-four guns, Capt. Ezekiel Bales. Seven months Atlantic convoy duties. During this time, he became, believe it or not, a passably competent midshipman, which says volumes for the return of corporal punishment in schools and flogging as a spur to proper naval discipline.

  July 1780—Ariadne fights a bloody battle with a disguised Spanish two-decked ship, and upon arrival at Antigua in the Leeward Islands is adjudged too damaged to repair. Her captain and first officer are court-martialed for her loss, the third officer for cowardice. None of this was Alan Lewrie’s fault, either. In fact, he acquitted himself well under fire on the lower gun deck and won some small fame for his coolness in action (though readers of The King’s Coat remember his behavior differently, especially his wish to go below and hide among the rum casks).

  August 1780—Appointed midshipman into HM Sloop Parrot, Lt. James Kenyon master and commander. There followed five months of enjoyable duties wenching and swilling all over the Caribbean and Atlantic coast.

  January 1781—A new personal best of two older ladies in Kingston, Jamaica, in two days, but, during a week on passage for Antigua, he (1) became second officer when almost everyone senior went down with Yellow Fever; (2) saved the ship from a French privateer brig, burning her to the waterline in the process; (3) saved a titled Royal Commissioner and his lady who were their passengers; (4) almost had the leg over the lady; and (5) came down with Yellow Fever himself (a damned trying week, in all).

  February—March 1781—Recovering on Antigua, then staffserf to Rear Adm. Sir Onsley Matthews. Met, wooed and fell in thrall with the admiral’s niece, Miss Lucy Beauman. Fought a duel for her honor (her family was awfully rich), killed his opponent, and was posted to sea before he could say “Jack-Ketch.”

  April 1781 to present—Midshipman into HM Frigate Desperate, 6th Rate, twenty guns, Comdr. Tobias Treghues (one of God’s own cuckoos). Several successful raiding cruises, raid on the Danish Virgin Islands, many prizes taken. Battle of The Chesapeake, Siege of Yorktown (from which he escaped, or we wouldn’t be following his career any longer, would we?). Evacuation of Wilmington, North Carolina, November 1781 (see The French A
dmiral). Made acting master’s mate, confirmed in December 1781.

  One might just mention in passing a smallish theft from a captured French prize, a trifling sum, really, of, oh, some two thousand guineas, more ren contres with young ladies of the willing or commercial persuasion just to keep his hand (so to speak) in, and one surprisingly chaste bout of amour with a penniless young Loyalist, a Miss Caroline Chiswick. Chaste perhaps because he had served ashore with her two Tory soldier-brothers and knew what he could expect if he ever ran into them in a dark alley; chaste perhaps because there’s damned few places to put the leg over even the most obliging female aboard a man o’ war; or chaste perhaps because he had seen The Light, become a better person for his service in the Navy, and really did like her and through her found a new respect for Womankind and—but no, we have deduced a pattern here, and a man’s usually true to his nature when the blood’s up, damme if he ain’t.

  One more annoyingly minor matter of biographical minutia before we proceed to the flashy stuff (and I promise broadsides before you can say “Jack-Ketch”). The alleged rape of his half-sister was discovered to be a theatric staged by his father Sir Hugo to gain unlimited access to a positive shower of guineas from the Lewrie side of the family, but Sir Hugo was diddled in return by Alan’s grandmother who obstinately refused to go toes-up at the proper moment, and Alan Lewrie ended up smelling like Hungary Water with two hundred pounds per annum remittance. Since this last involves so much stupendously boresome legal mustification, we hope the reader will appreciate the chronicler cutting that short, as he goes bleary pondering the matter himself.

  Acknowledgments

  It would be impossible for me to begin an Alan Lewrie adventure without the assistance of the U.S. Naval Institute and its reference books—such as John Harland’s Seamanship in the Age of Sail, to mention one of many—and the staff of the History Department of the U.S. Naval Academy. To them, my many thanks

  For details about Turk’s Island and Horatio Nelson I am grateful to Mr. lain MacKenzie of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, who was kind enough to dig up lieutenants’ journals and material from contemporary accounts, such as Schomberg’s Naval Chronology and Beatson’s Naval and Military Memoirs.

  I would also like to thank Derek Rooke of Memphis, Tennessee, who culled a lot of material for me. I had to repay him by being his only crew when he wanted to race his thirty-three foot sloop, which is the sort of long, painful and humiliating tale I’d rather not go into, ever, even if we did come in seventh in a class of twenty-eight boats.

  Clenell Wilkinson’s biography, Nelson, provided good insight into the famous admiral’s personality. Thanks also to Mr. Herbert Sadler of Grand Turk Island, The Turks and Caicos, who serves as historian to the islands.

  John Richard Alden’s The South in the Revolution and Gloria Jahoda’s Florida, A History provided details on the role of the Southeastern Indian tribes in the Revolution. A debt must be expressed as well to Charles Hudson’s excellent one-volume treatise, The Southeastern Indians, for the wealth of information on the social life, customs and language of the Creek and Seminole tribes.

  I

  “It is confessed by all that from his youth he was of a vehement and impetuous nature, of a quick apprehension, and of a strong and aspiring bent for action and for great affairs.”

  Life of Themistocles

  —Plutarch

  Chapter 1

  The French fleet made a brave sight to leeward, twenty-nine massive ships of the line bearing up toward the smaller British fleet on a bow and quarter line, their gunports gaping and filled with hard iron maws, the white-and-gold battle flags of Bourbon France streaming in the moderate winds, and their halyards bedecked with signal bunting.

  “If this is going to be anything like the Chesapeake battle, we’re about to get our arses knackered,” master’s mate and midshipman Alan Lewrie observed sourly, comparing the twenty-two English vessels against that bellicose spectacle to the west.

  “Frogs like ta fight ta loo’ard,” said Mr. Monk, the sailing master, shrugging as he worked on a bite of half-shriveled apple. “But we got ’em this time. Cain’t work ta windward of us ta double.”

  Monk waved a stray hand at the shore close aboard to the east past which they barely scraped. Nevis Island ghosted by, crowding the disengaged-side frigates such as Desperate up close to the battle line.

  “Un you’ll note, young Lewrie, the wind’s a prodigy ta loo’ard of an island,” Monk went on. “Got a kink in the Trades here that’ll bear us along on a nice quarter wind. Too close into shore yonder an’ we’d be winded by the hills o’ Nevis. Too far out as well, but winds come slidin’ down the hills and touch water out here where we are. See how yon French are luffin’ and fillin’ ta keep station further out? Too far out for this little river o’ wind we’re ridin’. Second lee.”

  “If the battle line crowds us much more, we’ll be winded, sir,” Alan observed, noting the strip of azure waters that was shoaling and shallows close aboard to starboard. “Even if we don’t run her aground we’ll end up in the island’s lee under those bluffs. Last in line of the repeating frigates. Last in line for pretty much everything since Yorktown, too.”

  “Can’t go spoilin’ the admiral’s dinner with our stink, Lewrie,” Monk spat—literally and figuratively, for he wandered over to the binnacle to fire a dollop of tobacco juice at the spit kid. How the man could eat and swallow fruit, and reserve his quid in the other cheek, almost made Alan ill just contemplating the feat.

  “Wasn’t our fault we escaped, Mister Monk,” Alan said, going to the wheel to join him and peer into the compass bowl.

  “Lord Cornwallis give us verbal orders we could try sailin’ outa York River, nothin’ in writin’, see, Mister Lewrie?” Monk smiled with a weary expression. “Whole army goes inta the sack, titled gentlemen imprisoned’r on their parole for the duration. America lost, and us come out with a whole skin. A damn fine feat o’ seamanship gettin’ down river an’ outa the Chesapeake under Cape Charles, even on a fine day’d be cause fer praise, if you’ll allow me t’boast a mite. Night as black as a boot, a whole gale blowin’, it’d get most young captains a bloody knighthood. But them dominee-do-littles up in New York sat on their hands an’ swore what a damn shame it was losin’ the army an’ all our other ships, well … it’ll take a piece o’ time, er somethin’ ta rub the shite off’n our boots fer their likes.”

  “For what we are about to receive, may the Good Lord make us grateful,” Comdr. Tobias Treghues, Desperate’s master and commander said as the French fleet began to open fire at long range. With the wind carrying the sound of cannonading to leeward, it sounded no more dangerous than the thumping of pillows, and the sour grey-tan wall of smoke climbed above the bulwarks and lower masts of the enemy ships, to be ragged away to the west. Admiral Hood’s ships began to return fire, and their view of the proceedings was obscured as great billows of expended powder blotted out the sky.

  “Now we’ll give those French, and this de Grasse, a proper English quilting,” Treghues prophecied with a tight, superior grin.

  Not bloody likely, Alan thought. They had been at the Battle of The Chesapeake, where this self-same Admiral de Grasse had snatched victory from a budding disaster, and the British admirals, including Hood who now commanded their fleet, had stood about in stupefaction until there was nothing left to do but call if off. Hood had kept back the strongest division of the combined Leeward Islands and North American fleets, never even fired a ranging shot all day, and Desperate had been trapped in Chesapeake Bay at the siege of Yorktown, and Alan nearly lost his life ashore; had stood with the Army expecting the Navy to return and break the siege and save the men before they had been forced to surrender. It need hardly be said that Alan Lewrie had a low opinion of Admiral Hood’s reputed fighting qualities. In point of fact, he also had a rather low opinion of a naval career, since it wasn’t his choice in the first place, but everyone knew that by now, which took the bite
out of any carping he might have done in the privacy of his midshipmen’s mess.

  They had had a hard dash south under a full press of sail for Barbados to carry word to Hood that the island of St. Kitts had been invaded by de Grasse and the French on the eleventh of January. Hood had sailed for Antigua to pick up seven hundred or so troops, all that could be spared, and then made a fast passage to round the southern shore of Nevis, the twin island to St. Kitts, to confront the French, dragging Desperate in the fleet’s train like a barely tolerated relative.

  Yesterday had been thought to be the day of decision, but all they had accomplished by their presence was to draw this massive Frog fleet out of its anchorage out to sea off Basse Terre. Rumor had it that Hood had wanted to sail right in and fire into the anchored ships, as they should have at The Chesapeake, but that had been postponed.

  Once more, this de Grasse had been given a heaven-sent chance to escape the massacre of his fleet. The last time, he had destroyed any last chance to recover the Colonies. Would his luck hold, and would they begin to lose the fabulously wealthy Sugar Islands now?

  “They’s a gap!” Monk pointed out with alarm in his voice.

  “Oh my dear Lord,” Treghues whispered, more a short prayer than a curse, for he was a fanatic when it came to quelling the English sailor’s easy penchant for blasphemy. “Prudent’s never been a fast sailer.”

  Prudent, a seventy-four-gunned 3rd Rate, fourth from the rear of the British line, had not been able to keep up to the speed of her consorts, and the ships behind her were backing and filling to avoid running her down and tangling their yards in collision. Part of the French line, led by the massive three-decker flagship Ville de Paris, de Grasse’s own ship, bore up to close in and penetrate. It would be the beginning of a disaster.