The French Admiral l-2 Read online

  The French Admiral

  ( Lewrie - 2 )

  Dewey Lambdin

  Alan Lewrie is a scandalous young rake whose amorous adventures ashore lead to his being shipped off to the Navy. Lewrie finds that he is a born sailor, although life at sea is a stark contrast to the London social whirl to which he had become accustomed. As his career advances, he finds the life of a naval officer suits him.

  From Library Journal

  This second novel in a new sea adventure series continues the story of Alan Lewrie, the reluctant British midshipman. This time, Alan finds himself involved in the battle of Yorktown during the American Revolution. His unhappiness with the Royal Navy also begins to be replaced by a sense of dedication and duty. The story is technically correct and historically accurate, but sea genre fans will be disappointed that so much of the action takes place on land. Though Lewrie observes the battle of the Chesapeake, he is on duty with the defenders of Yorktown and barely sees his ship during half the novel. Still, this is an excellent and exciting adventure in what promises to be the best naval series since C.S. Forester.

  The French Admiral (Alan Lewrie #2)

  by Dewey Lambdin

  Published by McBooks Press 2002

  Copyright © 1990 by Dewey Lambdin

  First published in 1990 by D.I. Fine, New York

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission of the publisher.

  Requests for such permissions should be addressed to McBooks Press, Inc., ID Booth Building, 520 North Meadow St., Ithaca, NY 14850.

  Cover painting by Dennis Lyall, courtesy of Tall Ships Books.

  This one's for

  DEREK ROOKE

  Former Lieutenant, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve

  A "Wavy Navy" fighter pilot, who first "got my feet wet" in '76 aboard Seafire off Gulfport and Biloxi.

  See what you started?

  And for your good lady Louise, and Chris

  and Charlotte Rooke of Rooke Sails, Memphis.

  But didn't we look grand

  touched mahoghany by the sun

  with sweat salt and sea salt grit

  in that millpond quiet harbor,

  everything bagged and furled

  and the motor grumbling the pier

  with white eyes and white teeth beaming

  in the last glimmer of a scarlet sky

  as we laughed to finish fifth in class?

  Didn't we share a conjurement

  a God-hell knockdown wonder

  And weren't we so alive?

  Coelum non animum qui trans mare currunt.

  Those who cross the seas change climate but not their character.

  —Horace, Epistle I.xi. 27

  PROLOGUE

  The French were out. Somewhere on the high seas, on their way to some deviltry in the Colonies, Admiral Comte de Grasse and as many as fourteen sail of the line were assembled. For the British, the Leeward Islands Squadron under Admiral Samuel Hood and the Saint Lucia group under Rear Admiral Francis Drake were already at sea in pursuit. Perhaps just over the horizon, the enemy could be found, and perhaps the British fleet was just hours away from one of those epic sea battles that would decide the fate of the Crown. Or, Midshipman Alan Lewrie thought sourly, we could fuck around out here 'til Doomsday.

  There had been a concerted rush to get under way from Antigua, and for a while it had been exciting to see so many ships gathered together with one fell purpose, but after a few days the iron grip of naval routine had canceled out the thrill. Scouting frigates could find nothing of the enemy, and there were damned few frigates to go around to begin with.

  Alan began to get the sneaking suspicion that their own fleet was ahead of the French. De Grasse had started from Martinique, south of their own bases in the Caribbean, which might have taken him longer, which was all to the good, if they were to counter any action with the French and the Rebels in combination, allowing them to get to the hinted scene of battle in the Chesapeake or Delaware bays first.

  At noon sights, after almost, but not quite, finding a reasonable guess as to their position (and hurriedly fudging a more accurate fix from Avery's slate), Alan had a chance to examine the sea chart pinned to the traverse board by the wheel binnacle cabinet.

  He picked up a pair of dividers and measured off a passage at slow speed inside the island chains, instead of taking the outside or windward route. There's a Frog base in Haiti, he thought, and there's the Dons with a fleet in Havana. What if this poxy French admiral stopped off for supplies or more ships? We've seen nothing in the Mona Passage or any other pass through the Bahamas. Only safe route for a fleet of fourteen sail and transports would be the old Bahama Passage, then up the coast of British Florida. Deep water for the most part, good offshore winds abeam most of the way, if not a soldier's breeze north of Savannah…

  Alan realized with a small shock to his system that he was enjoying his speculations, which only confirmed his fears that he was beginning to fit into the Navy and gain a real interest in a career as a sea-officer. God, what a horrible fate that would be! he thought. Not that being in the Navy, at sea and thousands of miles from his usual haunts was not bad enough, and none of it his idea in the first place. He had been in uniform for four months shy of two years and lately had had to work at suppressing pride in his newfound skills, and in the mostly good repute he had created for himself as a young gentleman in training.

  "Wool gathering?" Commander the Honorable Tobias Treghues asked him with a lofty sniff. If Alan disliked being a seaman more than cold boiled mutton, the captain of H.M.S. Desperate felt the same low regard for him.

  "Wondering where the French were, sir," Alan answered, straightening up and tossing the dividers down on the binnacle cabinet.

  "How unlike you," Treghues said, and strolled away to the windward rail for a pace before his midday meal.

  Stap me, Alan thought sadly. It was bad enough before when he just thought me a rapist and a rake-hell. Now he's been addled by that French gunner with a rammer, he's turned Evangel on us. Probably start leaping about like a Welsh miner at a Wesley meeting next.

  Alan sidled off to leeward to stand next to his compatriot Midshipman David Avery, a dark-haired, merry Cornish lad of sixteen, almost seventeen. He shrugged in answer to the unspoken question framed by Avery's raised eyebrows.

  "Still hates you, eh?" Avery whispered with a wry grin.

  "What else is new?" Alan said.

  "Who wouldn't?" Avery shrugged.

  "Damned good question," Alan admitted with a soft laugh.

  "Signal, sir," Midshipman the Honorable Francis Forrester, their least favorite messmate, shouted from the stern rail. "Attend the flag, sir."

  "Mister Railsford," Treghues bellowed. "Hands to the braces and bear up closer to the flag."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  Desperate wheeled about and beat up to windward, within hailing distance of Admiral Hood's flagship Barfleur, rounding up alongside to leeward in a flurry of spray. No one could fault her sail tending or shiphandling, for Treghues and his officers were as smart as paint for all the gloom aboard from Treghue's new mental state.

  A gig flew across from Barfleur, and a flag lieutenant scrambled up the manropes and battens of the starboard side with a large envelope in his coat pocket. After a brief conference with Treghues, he was back over the side and flying back to his own ship.

  "Mister Monk," Treghues called for his sailing master, and that worthy made his appearance on the quarterdeck in his scruffy uniform. "Lay us on a course for Charleston, in the Carolinas. We have despatches for General Leslie."

  "Aye, aye, sir
," Monk replied, shambling his way to the charts. "Here now, Quartermaster. Lay her due west fer right now. Hands ta the braces, smartly now. The flag's watchin'."

  "Charleston," Avery said as they supervised their working parties for the mainmast braces. "We put in there once, Alan. Damned fun place, it was."

  "I remember it so as well," Alan replied, almost rubbing his hands in glee. Yes, he had remembered Charleston well, too. It was full of refugees from up-country, run to the port by their rebel cousins. Cornwallis and his troops had been there, and with them had come a great flock of camp followers, traders, whores, and ladies without their husbands. When he had been on the despatch schooner Parrot he had had a wonderful run ashore in Charleston and didn't think things had changed much in the interim. The real problem, though, was going to be getting ashore at all. Treghues might not look kindly on giving him leave.

  "Be in soundin's by tamorrer forenoon, sir," Monk said, after he had paced off the distance from their noon position with dividers on his charts.

  "Alan, did you realize that tomorrow shall be my birthday?" David told him. "And we are short of fresh meat. Now, if I talked nicely to the purser, he might find it in his heart to send me ashore with him… on King's business, of course!"

  "And if you don't take me along with you, you're a dead man, David," Alan warned him.

  "Whyever should I do that?" David queried.

  "'Cause I know where the likely whores and widows are," Alan reminded him with a simper.

  "You've missed your calling." David smiled. "You'd make a devilish grand pimp."

  "You're not the first to think that," Alan heartily agreed. "And it's still early days in my career, isn't it? Now get onto Mister Cheatham before he picks somebody else. Tell him we both volunteer."

  The next morning Desperate stood in toward Charleston, with the spires of the churches marking the safe passage as range marks. They had been painted black by the Rebel defenders in last year's siege, but if anything, they had stood out even more prominently than when painted white, so Desperate had no difficulty finding the channel. Alan was turned out in his best uniform, as was Avery, while Forrester and Carey were in their usual working rigs. A copy of de Barres' Atlantic Neptune was in Alan's hands, the sketch book of all major towns and headlands of the American coast. It had set him back seven guineas, but it had been worth it to show the sailing master and the others a keenness at the sea trade which he did not always exemplify. He tucked the book under his arm and plied his quadrant to measure the height of St. Michael's spire, which lay just above their bows. He took the height of Charleston Light to the stern and ascertained that they were in the right path for a safe passage over the bar between the forts. With some quick calculations on a slate, he could find a rough position on the small-scale harbor chart that Mister Monk had laid out on the traverse board, and it was pleasing to see that his guess was very close to Monk's quickly pencilled X.

  Cottle, Commander Treghues's coxswain, came up on deck in his best blue jacket with shiny brass buttons, his red-and-white-striped loose slop trousers clean, and his feet encased in new cotton stockings and freshly blacked shoes with silver buckles. The boat crew gathered round him and Cottle eyed them keenly so their appearance would not shame their captain or the ship when they went alongside the pier to carry Treghues to meet the port authorities with letters and documents.

  "Hawse bucklers clear, sir," Toliver, one of the bosun's mates reported after coming aft from the fo'c's'le. "Best bower ready to drop, and a kedge ready in the stern."

  "Let her swing nigh stern-first ta the town afore ya let go that kedge, mind," Monk said, almost as an afterthought. Charleston was a nasty harbor for all its size. On the way in, they had passed small islets and stretches of salt marsh where men were dredging for oysters only knee-deep in water, or loafing on sand spits that would be under water at high tide. "Safe across the bar now, sir," Monk told Treghues.

  As if in confirmation, a hail from the leadsman in the foremast chains called out a safe depth of six fathoms. His next cast was half a fathom more, and everyone could breathe easily. Desperate drew slightly less than three fathoms amidships when properly loaded and provisioned.

  "Are we getting ashore?" Avery asked after he had come aft from his duties with the ship's boats.

  "No one has told me anything of yet," Alan said softly. "But if Treghues is going ashore, we shall be here for a while at least. Surely, we would not pass up the chance for firewood and water."

  "Lord, it's hot," Avery complained, plucking at his broadcloth coat and waistcoat. "And you can smell the fever in those marshes."

  "In daytime, and with a sea breeze, we have nothing to fear," Alan told him. He had suffered a serious bout of Yellow Jack aboard the Parrot, and had picked up enough lore about tropical miasmas for a lifetime. "Our old sawbones assured us the feverish elements only rise at night, with the mists. Just pray the biting flies don't find us. Last time I was here, the wind was off the shore, and I thought I'd be eaten alive."

  "Maybe it's the flies cause fevers," Avery said.

  "Don't be a superstitious ass," Alan said, only half in jest.

  "Maggots are created in rotting meat, and I've not heard much good about maggots," Avery countered. "Except for eating pustulence in wounds."

  "My God, but you're a cheerful creature this morning." Alan exploded in a shuddery laugh.

  "A little more attention to your duties there, young sirs," Treghues said in passing, glaring at both of them evilly, with a lingering glance on Alan.

  "Aye, aye, sir," they answered dutifully.

  "'Bout a mile off the wharf now, sir," Monk said, straightening from his latest calculation with his sextant.

  "Short enough row," Treghues said, not seeing the glum expressions of his boat crew, who faced a long, hot pull ashore. "Take in tops'ls and round her up into the wind."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  Desperate came about under reduced sails. The best bower dropped into the harbor and raised a circle of muddied silt on the surface as it bit into the mud of the bottom. She paid back from the light wind with a backed tops'l until snubbed by tension on her anchor cable. The stern kedge-anchor was let go, and hands at the capstan took her back up toward her bower until she was held with equal grip by both anchors, bow pointed outward from the town for her eventual departure.

  Even as she was making sternway to drop the kedge, Treghues's gig had been led around to the entry port, and Cottle had received his captain into her. Before the tops'l had been taken in aloft, their captain was well on his way ashore to deliver his messages and inquire about the whereabouts of the French.

  "Bosun, lead the cutter round for the purser," Lieutenant Railsford, the first officer (and only commissioned lieutenant) called. "Mister Cheatham, you'll mind my own wants, I trust?"

  "Indeed I shall, Mister Railsford," Cheatham said.

  "And I believe you mentioned the need for two of the young gentlemen to assist you?" Railsford went on, looking at his younger charges, and noting how well turned out Avery and Lewrie were in comparison to the rat-scruffiness of little Carey or the porcine Forrester. "Can't let the image of Desperate down now, can we? Mister Lewrie, you shall take charge of the cutter and assist the purser ashore. And since I believe that today is your birthday, Mister Avery, you have my permission for a short spell of shore leave. Mister Lewrie may join you in your celebrations, but they had best be damned short, if you get my meaning?"

  "Aye, aye, sir," they both answered. The captain's clerk was asked to write out two leave tickets for them, giving them until the end of the first dogwatch around sundown in which to enjoy the pleasures of the town.

  In a rush they scrambled down the battens and manropes to the barge to join Cheatham, and got the boat under way before anyone could change his mind about allowing them freedom from naval routine, even for a short while.

  "It was good of the captain to allow me to celebrate my birthday, sir," Avery said to Cheatham, once they were away from th
e ship's side and the boat crew was stroking lustily at the oars.

  "Captain Treghues does not strictly know of it," Cheatham said. "But we had to go ashore to replenish and cannot sail until the ebbing of the evening tide, which Mister Railsford informs me shall not turn until near midnight. Even immediate sailing orders could not rush us."

  "Then we should be doubly grateful to you and Mister Railsford," Alan said with a smarmy smile of thankfulness.

  "God, but you are sickening when you are in need of something," Cheatham said, but without any malice. He was not so much older than they, in his mid-twenties, and when not called by duty to be serious, could show a merry and waggish disposition. "I do not want to know what hellishness you had planned, Avery, but with Lewrie, you are in good hands for discovering it. Too good, in faith."

  "Aye, sir," Avery replied, hiding his good humor.

  "You are to return on time, properly clean and sober, or Railsford and I shall suffer for it," Cheatham instructed sternly. "Were you going ashore alone there would be no questions asked, but with Lewrie…"

  "I could attend you and return without sport, sir," Alan said after a long moment of thought. Damme, I do want to get ashore devilish bad, but not if it causes ill will for Railsford or Cheatham. They're practically the only allies I have, he thought.

  "No, I'll not turn a lone midshipman loose on the town," Cheatham said after mulling that offer over. "Where I suspect he's going, there are lower elements, and you're a stout enough buck to keep him safe. And sometimes show enough sense to avoid bad situations. Even if our captain… well." Cheatham might have said more regarding their lord and master's puritanical streak, his sudden aversion to Lewrie that no one had yet found a reason for, but that would have been open insubordination about the officer appointed by the Crown over every aspect of their lives. It also would have been injurious to good discipline, especially said in front of the hands who were now working up a ruddy sweat at the oars.