A Hard, Cruel Shore Read online

  “Come on, Chalky,” he called out, “Beddy-by!”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Has everyone had a good run ashore?” Lewrie asked the officers of his squadron, summoned by the Captain(s) Repair on Board hoist the third day in port. “Good. No problems with the Army Provosts, or the Portuguese? Also very good,” he amiably said, looking down the length of his dining table where Chalmers, Yearwood, Teague, and Blamey sat, sipping tentatively at glasses of Lewrie’s cool tea, a novelty to them.

  “The Prize-Court, sir,” Capt. Yearwood grumbled, “have you any idea when they’ll get round to certifying our captures?”

  “When pigs fly, is my guess, sir,” Lewrie said with a shrug. “We all know how slowly they go about their business, as bad as the Court of Common Pleas back home. The only way I know to spur them is to swamp them with even more work. Are we all provisioned, and ready for sea in all respects?”

  “Common Pleas, sir? Oh, please!” Commander Teague hooted, “More like Chancery Court!”

  “Aye, I’m ready,” Capt. Chalmers spoke up, looking eager, which prompted agreeing sounds from the others.

  “Then let’s set sail tomorrow’s dawn, and take advantage of the ebb in the Tagus,” Lewrie announced, which raised another roar of agreement, and some fists thumped on the table. “Now,” Lewrie added as the din died away, “I suppose you’ve all heard that the French have taken Oporto? It’s good odds that their Marshal Soult is at the far end of the supply lines leading from the North coast of Spain, lines which are very vulnerable to partisan raiders, and through very rough mountain country, too, so … it’s also good odds that Oporto might be supplied by sea up the Douro River mouth. If no other ships of our Navy are blockading Oporto, we should take a long look at the place on our way North, and do the same off Vigo, before we get back to our proper patrol stations.”

  “Ehm, sir,” Commander Blamey said, raising a hand, “what if there are good prizes off Oporto and Vigo? Might we have to part with one of the squadron to see them back to Lisbon?”

  “Hmm, good point,” Lewrie replied, mulling that over for a bit. “If we meet with rich pickings, we may have to, though I would prefer that we all keep together ’til we’re off Northern Spain, then break up into pairs, as we did before.”

  “We could sail what prizes we take off those ports close in so all the Frogs could see them, and set them alight, sir,” Yearwood suggested. “Let them know who rules the seas, and who controls their victuals. When they’re reduced to eating rats and such, hey?”

  “Well, if they’re not worth much,” Capt. Chalmers gruffed.

  Yearwood’s suggestion was a sly’un, but it evidently cut raw to see valuable ships and cargoes go up in flames with nary a penny awarded for their taking. Tossing away perfectly good prizes was an anathema to aspiring naval officers!

  “Well, it’s only a possibility the French would dare supply their armies by sea, that far from Bayonne,” Lewrie allowed, “but if they are, for the moment, a few prizes paraded under their noses, set afire or not, will make ’em think twice about tryin’ again. And, if there are ships in harbour, I’m certain the French have taken over the shore forts, or erected new batteries to protect them, so they’d be un-reachable. We’ll simply have to see, sirs.

  “Once off Galicia, I intend that we split up into the same pairs we had before.” Lewrie went on. “Undaunted and Peregrine will take the Eastern sector, as you gentlemen did before, and Captain Yearwood and Commander Teague patrol to the West, off Ferrol and Corunna, then work your way East along the Costa Verde, reap what you can, then meet me out to sea at the same ‘rondy’ and report all you’ve encountered. I’ll cruise ’twixt Avilés and Santander, should any of you meet up with opposition.”

  “There’s a good possibility of that, sir,” Commander Teague said, sounding as if he relished the idea. “I don’t know how many ships the French employ, but we took a substantial bite out of them, so it stands to reason that they’ll have to provide escorts from now on, or give up on supply by sea altogether.”

  “Hmm, it may be that you’re right, Commander Teague,” Lewrie replied, idly stroking a patch of beard he’d missed when shaving that morning, “all the more reason to work in pairs, this time. On our third return, we may have t’sail all together, spread out to the limit of signalling. Hah!” he added as an amusing idea sprang up. “Then, I can truly justify flying a broad pendant, instead of just cruisin’ by myself, with no one to impress!”

  Most were polite enough to laugh, though Capt. Chalmers gave him another of those odd looks of his, as if Lewrie’s idea of wit was a trifle unseemly.

  “Up-anchor by dawn, then,” Lewrie summed up the meeting of his Captains, “and I’m sure that all of you have last-minute things to see to, so I won’t keep you from them a moment longer. By dawn, my hands will be sobred up, at least, as I trust yours will be. That’ll do it, gentlemen, you’re free to go.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Commander Blamey said, shooting to his feet. “Must say, the cool tea was refreshing.” Blamey was the only one to have finished his glass, Lewrie noted.

  Must think me a miser, t’not trot out wine, Lewrie thought.

  * * *

  “Sailing tomorrow, are we sir,” Sapphire’s First Lieutenant, Geoffrey Westcott, idly enquired after the last honours had been rendered to the departing captains, and their boats were stroking for their own ships.

  “Aye, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie agreed, “round dawn, to take the ebb down to the mouth of the Tagus. Pass word to the Bosun and his Mate, and the petty officers, Purser … I’m sure everyone’ll wish to send ashore for last-minute lacks.”

  “I’ll see to it, sir,” Westcott vowed, then yawned hugely.

  “Had a good run ashore, did you?” Lewrie teased.

  “I did indeed, sir, and thank you for asking,” Westcott said with a beamish smile. “You give me cause to boast. I learned that a grand lady, lately refugeed from Oporto, a day or two ahead of the French, had opened her grand house for the ease and comfort of British officers. Didn’t know quite what that included, but it sounded most intriguing, so I went. Out-numbered by the Army, of course, but there was music, dancing, excellent service, and good wines and things to nibble on. And, best of all, the house was simply awash with young Portuguese ladies … unfortunately not available for my … ahem … interests, but most gracious and charming, from good families.

  “My hostess, I gathered, is huge in the port and sherry trade,” Westcott went on, “and as wealthy as the Walpoles, a hellish-handsome widow by name of Georgiana Beauman.”

  Oh Christ, them again! Lewrie thought.

  “Let me guess,” Lewrie interrupted, “ash blond hair, pale green eyes, tall and slim?”

  “Uhm, aye. How did you know?” Westcott had to ask.

  “I stole a dozen Beauman slaves on Jamaica, got tried for it in absentia, and pursued to London with a sentence that would’ve gotten me hanged,” Lewrie explained. “When I finally did go on trial in Eighteen Oh-One, she and her husband, Hugh Beauman, had scampered off to Lisbon before they got tried for framin’ me and riggin’ the first trial with false evidence and a packed jury. Their ship foundered just offshore, Hugh Beauman drowned, and she inherited everything.”

  “Well, I did think it odd that she asked about you, sir,” Lt. Westcott said with his head cocked over in puzzlement.

  “She did?” Lewrie gawped.

  “As I was introduced, I named my ship and Captain, and she went all squinty,” Westcott went on. “Said she knew you of old, she did, that you were well known to the Beauman clan from long before in the West Indies.”

  “Hmm … still fetchin’ ye say?” Lewrie pondered.

  “Oh, ravishing, sir!” Westcott assured him. “Though, I did get warned off by an Army Major that the widow Beauman was a ‘fireship’ … rumoured to be poxed, and not one to mount without three cundums, haw!” After a long moment, he just had to ask, “Did you really steal those slaves, sir?”

&n
bsp; “Aye, I did, and I’d do it again,” Lewrie declared, “just to put the Beaumans’ noses out o’ joint. Her husband’s long dead, and she’s poxed to her eyebrows, so … to Hell with ’em. They deserved each other, most-like, and deserve their lots.”

  “She did wish me to offer you an invitation to call upon her, sir,” Westcott slyly told him, with a quizzing brow up.

  “An invitation I’ll ignore, Geoffrey,” Lewrie laughed off. “People who grew up in the West Indies know the best poisons, learned ’em from their slave nannies and maid servants. ‘Oh, Sir Alan, do try the she-crab soup, it’s a secret family receipt!’ and the next I know, I’m heavin’ up black bile, and my last breath. No thankee!”

  “Perhaps she meant it in gratitude, sir,” Westcott surmised. “After all, she ended up with a fortune.”

  “Still as arch and mannered as an empress, was she?” Lewrie asked.

  “Aye,” Westcott replied.

  “Her sort have no gratitude in ’em,” Lewrie scoffed. “They’re supposed t’have what they want when they want it, and whoever fetches it matters no more than a footstool. Like I said, to Hell with ’em.

  “Hmm,” Lewrie went on, looking Westcott over with, a sharp eye, “ye surely had more sense than t’top the bitch after bein’ warned, and all the young Lisbon ladies were pure and high-born … so, why d’ye say ye had a grand time?”

  “There’s more than one grand mansion in Lisbon open to provide ease and comfort to British officers, sir,” Westcott said, smirking, “and more than enough frisky courtesans grateful the French are gone, and in need of fresh income, hmm?”

  “Don’t tell me where they are, whatever you do,” Lewrie told him. “My life’s complicated enough. See you in the ‘early-earlies’.”

  “Goodnight, sir,” Westcott bade him, doffing his hat.

  * * *

  “No, I don’t think Blaze will catch her before she gets under cover of the French guns,” Sailing Master Yelland stated, telescope to one eye, stifling a curse that a rich prize would escape.

  Lewrie had ordered the squadron to stand well out to sea, and pass beyond Oporto’s latitude before turning to steer shoreward level with the coastal town of Póvoa de Varzim, so the French would not see them coming, and possibly intersecting the course of any French ship bound South, sailing close to the Portuguese coast.

  “Are there French guns?” Lewrie wondered aloud, using his own day-glass to scan the coast, and the hills either side of the mouth of the Douro River. Much closer inshore, HMS Blaze raced shoreward, with a bone in her teeth, under a great press of sail. Tantalisingly just out of gun range, a modestly-sized French brig was racing for her very life, and looked to be near enough to the Castela de Foz to make her turn into the mouth of the Douro and make her escape.

  He turned about and looked astern to see what HMS Peregrine was doing with the first prize taken, and found that they were fetched to close alongside each other, and a British ensign how flew above a French Tricolour.

  Only two wee brigs, hmm, Lewrie thought; And that’uns not worth all that much, by the look of her. Come t’think on it … He turned again for a look up the Douro to see if he could make out masts in harbour, but the hills were still blocking his view.

  “Guns, sir!” Lt. Harcourt snapped. “In that castle!”

  Distant bursts of yellow-grey smoke, followed seconds later by faint door-slamming thuds, and even longer seconds before tall pillars of water arose well short and wide of HMS Blaze. Sure enough, that French brig would make her escape, for she was already altering her course and showing her transom as she began to enter the river mouth.

  “Signal to Blaze,” Lewrie snapped, slamming the tubes of his telescope shut, “Dis-Continue the Action.”

  “Aye, sir,” Midshipman Fywell called back from the taffrail flag lockers and signal halliards.

  Lewrie paced down the larboard bulwarks of the poop deck, head down in thought, then looked seaward to his two idling frigates, and had to smile.

  Chalmers and Yearwood, he thought; They must be cursin’ me, or grindin’ their teeth in frustration that I didn’t send them after those brigs. Maybe I should’ve … they’ve longer waterlines, and they’re a tad faster. Wouldn’t’ve mattered. Small loss.

  Sapphire was slowly coming level with the Castela de Foz and the river mouth proper, prompting Lewrie to extend the tubes of his telescope once more. This time, he could begin to make out the city that sloped down from the hills to the North bank of the Douro, and the long quays of the wine shippers, but Lewrie’s flagship was still over five miles off, and there was little detail that he could make out at that distance.

  “Signal to Undaunted and Sterling, Mister Fywell,” Lewrie called out to the signals Midshipman. “Form line astern of me, and follow my movements.”

  He then descended the ladderway to the quarterdeck where Lt. Harcourt temporarily held the post at the larboard bulwarks, making that worthy swing away from his own study of the city.

  “We will alter course, Mister Harcourt,” Lewrie told him. “I wish a close look at the place. Come about to Due East, and shorten sail. Mister Yelland? Get out your slate, and inform me when we’re three miles off, where I wish us to turn North and let the French get a good look at us.”

  “Aye, sir,” the Sailing Master said, louder than normal so he could be heard over Harcourt’s orders sending men aloft to reef sail, and preparing hands to man the sheets and braces to take the wind on a new angle.

  Despite it being Harcourt’s watch, and Sapphire had not been called to Quarters, Lt. Westcott and Lt. Elmes were on deck and up against the larboard bulwarks with their own day-glasses extended. Indeed, so were half the Mids who should have been off-watch, and a parcel of curious sailors.

  Back up to the poop deck Lewrie went for a look astern for what his brig-sloops were doing. Blaze was sulking her way out to sea, and further off to the Nor’east, Peregrine and her prize were just getting under way.

  “Another signal to the brig-sloops, Mister Fywell,” Lewrie called aft. “Form line, astern of Undaunted and Sterling.”

  “Aye aye, sir!” Fywell shouted back, as he and men of the Afterguard dug into the flag lockers one more time as the two-decker began to sway and heel a bit to starboard as she slowly came round to her new course, sails rustling and slatting, yards groaning as they were re-angled, and blocks squealing as the squares’ls were drawn up to the first reef points.

  “Due East, sir!” Lt. Harcourt reported. “Almost square-on to the mouth of the river.”

  “Hmmph! I wonder, Mister Harcourt, if the French fancy that we’re goin’ t’sail right in and lay waste to ’em?” Lewrie japed.

  “Could we, sir?” Lt. Harcourt asked, looking up at him with his head laid over in consideration of the idea.

  “No, sir,” Lewrie told him, “we’ll just parade past and take a good, long look at how things stand.”

  Temptin’, Lewrie thought, though; Rash, pointless, sure t’end in tears, but … it might be hellish-fun!

  As Sapphire got her way off, the two frigates were cracking on sail and catching her up, beginning to form line, both of them already near the required one cable distance from each other. The two brig-sloops were racing to cross Sapphire’s stern, timing the right moment to wheel about and fall in line-astern of the frigates.

  “A mile more, I make it, sir,” Mr. Yelland announced, “before we have to come about North.”

  “I leave it up to you and Mister Harcourt, Mister Yelland,” Lewrie replied, leaning far out to see anything that wasn’t masked by the foresails. “General signal, Mister Fywell … Prepare to Alter Course in Succession. Due North.”

  “Aye, sir!” Fywell replied, and the lids of the flag lockers slammed open once more.

  The closer to the mouth of the Douro the squadron got, though, the less-appealing the idea of a seaborne attack right up the river appeared. The mouth of the river was nowhere near as wide and welcoming as was the Tagus at Lisbon, and once past the Castel
a de Foz on its tall, steep headland on the North bank, and the village of Afurada on the South bank, the Douro narrowed to only a few hundred yards’ width, too narrow to sail in, firing, and turn about in succession.

  Lewrie could make out the famous wine shippers’ warehouses and shops on the South bank opposite the city proper, the Villa Nova de Gaia, and what was left of that infamous bridge of boats which had broken, somehow, drowning thousands as they had fled the French invasion of their city. As for shipping, Lewrie could espy the same sort of boats he had seen harvesting seaweed at the Spanish town of Ayamonte the year before … molicieros he recalled they were named … and large wine barges to bring the great casks of fresh wines down from the Alto Douro vineyards, where the great export houses would blend them with brandy to stop the fermentation process and retain the sugars that made ports or sherrys sweet. He wondered if his London club, the Madeira Club, would run short even of ruby port, much less the aged vintages, the tawny, aged tawny, select vintage, or the precious “Rainwater Madeira”.

  Lewrie licked his lips without thinking.

  “Three miles off, sir!” Mr. Yelland called up from the quarterdeck. “Time to turn North.”

  “Very well, Mister Yelland. Alter course, Mister Harcourt,” he ordered, raising his telescope again for a good long look.

  Once Sapphire was settled on her new course, with her yards re-angled to take the offshore wind abeam of her larboard side, Lewrie spotted the small French brig that had escaped them, now anchoring close to the Cais de Ribiera under the city’s quays on the Northern bank, stern-on to his view to breast the flow of the river, the last sails being handed and harbour gasketed.

  “I don’t think we’ll have to linger off Oporto,” Lewrie announced to his officers below on the quarterdeck. “But for her, there aren’t any other ships of worth in sight. I don’t think the French get supplied by sea, here.”

  “Well, there’s always Vigo, up North, sir,” Lt. Harcourt said with a whimsical shrug. “Maybe the French dare send their cargoes that far.”