Reefs and Shoals Read online

  They passed a few landmarks that Lewrie remembered, like Orton Pond and the magnificent house at Orton Plantation to larboard, the New Inlet and Federal Point to starboard, the other riverfront manses further up-river whose names he had never learned, or forgotten, and Desmond, Furfy, and the other hands marvelled and jested as they had a snack of fresh-baked and buttered corn dodgers and small beer.

  “There’s Wilmington, proper,” Lewrie pointed out at last, “and that’s the Dram Tree, that big cypress on the right bank. Sailors take a toast for a safe arrival, or at the beginning of an outward voyage, for good luck. Let’s steer for the nearest docks, the ones in front of the Livesey, Seabright and Cashman Chandlery, Desmond.”

  “Take a dram, did ye say, Cap’m sor?” Patrick Furfy piped up. “An’ an’t it a foine tradition! Might be we…?”

  “For our departure, Furfy, sorry,” Lewrie had to tell him. “But, if the chandlery has a keg of ale handy, we’ll take a ‘wet’.”

  “Hand the jib, Hartnett. Pat, your and Thomas see to lowerin’ the lugs’ls,” Desmond directed. They were far above the reach of the making tide, in fresh water, which made Wilmington a welcome harbour where saltwater marine growth would die whilst at anchor, but a goodly current was running. Lewrie tapped Mr. Cadbury on the shoulder, and they both fetched a pair of oars from the barge’s sole, ready to be put into the tholes to maintain steerageway while the sailors saw to wrapping the lugs’ls round their gaff booms and lashing the sheets and halliards over the canvas. When it appeared that the barge would pay off and begin to be taken by the river current, Lewrie stood and took hold of the two stern-most oars in their tholes, and began to row, himself, just to keep them in place. It was not a task at which he could claim even modest expertise, but that stopped their drift.

  “Ship oars!” Desmond ordered. “Take th’ tiller, sor?”

  “Bows-on between those two two-masters, if there’s not room to land starboard side-to,” Lewrie suggested, trading places.

  Their arrival, with a British Union Jack slanted over the transom on a short gaff—a rare sight in an American port!—and the sight of a Royal Navy officer plying not one oar but two, seemed to have drawn a gap-jawed crowd on the piers of Dock and Water Streets!

  Should’ve brought one or two more hands, Lewrie chid himself as he put the tiller over, once all four oarsmen were stroking hard; This could look damned awkward and lubberly!

  “Toss oar, Hartnett,” Desmond snapped, “an’ be ready with th’ bow line.”

  “Should I do something, sir?” Mr. Cadbury asked.

  “Why, aye, Mister Cadbury,” Lewrie exclaimed. “Stop sittin’ on the starb’d dock line; and be ready t’toss it to the nearest helpful soul on the pier! Mind that the bitter end’s still bound to the boat!”

  Now, there’d been an embarassing mistake Lewrie had made, the first time he’d been given charge of a ship’s boat, not a week into his naval career; he’d been sitting on the dock line, too, and had almost put the bow man arse-over-tit into Portsmouth harbour trying to come alongside a stone quay at the victuallers’, claw the line from under his arse, and steer at the same time! The grizzled old wild-haired seaman’s words came back to him: “Thal’t never make a sailorman!”—making him blush anew.

  “Toss oar, Pat,” Desmond whispered to his long-time mate.

  There were men on the pier who took their lines and whipped them expertly round bollards or posts, and they were safely at rest.

  “Wahl, hoy th’ boat, thar,” a stout man on the pier drawled. “Has Adm’rl Nelson hisse’f come callin’?”

  “Looking for an old friend with a pot of ale,” Lewrie said, grinning back despite the man’s derision.

  “Will I do?” Christopher “Kit” Cashman interrupted, coming from the front doors of the establishment which partially bore his name. “Hallo, Alan, old son. Welcome to America!”

  * * *

  They went back a long way, to a failed expedition to carry, then escort, a diplomatic mission to woo the Muskogee, the Lower Creek Indians, to side with England and make war against Rebel settlers in 1782, when Lewrie was a Lieutenant, and Cashman a Captain of a Light Company of an un-distinguished regiment, the both of them expendable. A few years later, when British forces had invaded Haiti, then the French colony of Saint-Domingue, they had met on Jamaica, when Lewrie was Captain of the Proteus frigate, and Cashman had become a plantation owner, then the Lt. Colonel of an island-raised volunteer regiment, “hired on” in essence by the rich Beauman family, the bane of both Lewrie’s, and Cashman’s, existence. Lewrie had been Cashman’s second in a duel with the unfortunate younger son, Ledyard Beauman, who had been the Colonel of the regiment, who had lost his nerve in battle in the hills outside Port-Au-Prince, shrilling for the regiment to retreat, then galloping off with his cronies in terror, and laying the entire blame for what could have been a rout and massacre on “Kit”.

  It had been Cashman who’d arranged Lewrie’s “theft”, or “liberation”, of a dozen prime Black slaves from a neighboring Beauman plantation before he’d sold up and removed to the United States, and the one who’d sent a supporting (frankly lying!) affidavit to England which had gone a long way in getting Lewrie off at his trial years later for that theft, once the Beaumans had figured out who had done it.

  Christopher Cashman had not changed much in the years since. His hair had thinned a bit, and civilian living and the accumulation of wealth had thickened his waist, but it only took a few minutes to remake their friendship, as cozy as an old pair of shoes.

  “Now, what in the world brings you to Wilmington?” Cashman asked in amusement, over glass mugs of cool beer.

  “Admiralty orders, to look for French and Spanish privateers fitting out in neutral ports,” Lewrie told him. “Show the flag, consult with our consuls … be tactful and diplomatic.”

  “Tactful and diplomatic,” Cashman gawped, “you? A bull in the china shop’s more your style, as I recall.”

  “The Smithville pilot said our consul here is a local fellow?” Lewrie asked. “Who is he?”

  “Mister Osgoode Moore, Junior,” Cashman told him. “Esquire. An attorney, like his father, Osgoode Moore, Senior, who was a noted patriot during the Revolution … joined the Corresponding Society in the early days, the Sons of Liberty, got slung into the prison under the old Burgwyn house by the King’s agents, Fanning and Cunningham, and got treated rather cruelly. Lucky to have survived it, unlike a few others. The father took arms when the local militia marched on Governor Tryon’s house down at Brunswick to rebel against the Stamp Act.… He was said to have been one of the rebels who went aboard HMS Viper, seized the chests of stamps, and took back the papers of the ships held from trading for refusing to use them. Just like the Boston Tea Party, as they say, this side of the Atlantic, but years before Massachusetts revolted. He’s a good-enough fellow, is young Moore, but … perhaps not all that enamoured of the post. It pays a tidy annual sum, without too much work to do, since Wilmington’s not a major trader with England any more.”

  “Hmmm … just a paid agent,” Lewrie gloomed. “His heart ain’t in it … enough t’turn a blind eye?”

  “Oh, he’s a stickler, or would be, if anyone laid an information of someone aiding the French or the Spanish,” Cashman countered. “The interests of Britain, and the strict neutrality of the United States, are the same thing to him, I’m certain.

  “Besides, Alan,” Cashman continued, “I’ve my ears to the ground, and my own eyes on the chandleries, and the port. I can’t give you a guarantee that the French or Spanish might put into one of the many inlets for wood and water, but from Lockwood’s Folly to Tops’l Island, I’m pretty sure that there’s no collusion going on.”

  “The pilot told me there’s a Frenchman here as their consul,” Lewrie asked. “Could he be up to something?”

  “Monsieur Jean-Marie Fleury?” Cashman scoffed, rising to go to the keg of beer at the back of his office for a refill. “I’m certain he’d love t
o … anything for La Belle France, and the Emperor Napoleon. Just so long as it doesn’t drag him from his bed too early in the morning, involve a long, secretive horseback ride, or cost him a single dollar. I’m not sure why the French waste the money to keep a consul here, at all. There haven’t been more than a dozen of their merchant ships calling here since the war began again two years ago.”

  “Though the Americans still think the French ‘hung the moon’?” Lewrie posed. “Damned nice beer. I think I’ll have a top-up, too.”

  “Oh, there’s many who still adore them, no matter how bloody the French Revolution was, compared to theirs,” Cashman scoffed as he refilled Lewrie’s mug, too. “Our good president Jefferson’s in love with them, and so are all the newspapers. You came up-river with but four sailors, and nothing but your sword and their knives? Quite the risk for a bloody Brit, after dark, when the patriotic drunks spill out of the taverns on a hoo-raw.”

  “You’re a bloody Brit!” Lewrie exclaimed in good humor. “You’re not dead, yet.”

  “Ah, but I’m an eccentric Brit, and a harmless civilian trader, to boot. No threat to anyone these days,” Cashman hooted with mirth as he came back to his desk. “I doubt I could stand for public office and win, but I care nothing for such, other than joining the local militia. My army background is welcome, by most … even if I am once more back to the rank of Lieutenant, and the junior-most, at that. The militia’s more social than professional,” Cashman explained with a shrug. “When I bought into an old, established, pre-Revolutionary firm, founded by patriots, that went a long way towards acceptance. Hewing strictly to business, and avoiding politics, has gone a long way, too.

  “Matthew Livesey … when it was Livesey and Son. The old man moved the family trade from Philadelphia long ago,” Cashman expounded. “Dead and gone, now, but his grandson’s still a partner. Old Livesey was part of the Corresponding Society with New Englanders, early on, and joined the Sons of Liberty. The Seabright part? Phillip Seabright was a Royal Artillery officer who came to survey old Fort Johnston, down near Brunswick Town … horrid folly, I’ve heard. Every time the guns were fired, it like to shook itself to pieces! Anyway, he ended up buying land and going into business with Livesey. When the Stamp Act was enacted, Wilmington, and North Carolina, almost seceded from Great Britain. Seabright and Livesey were part of the thousand men of the militia from New Hanover, Brunswick, and surrounding counties who rebelled. He married Livesey’s daughter, Bess, before the war, and when it came, Seabright marched off with a couple of pop-guns to fight the Highlander Loyalists at Widow Moore’s Creek Bridge, then served in the Continental Army against Cornwallis and Tarleton. Seabright’s in his sixties, now, but his eldest son is with the firm.

  “And … there’s the fact that I married well,” Cashman admitted, somewhat sheepishly.

  “You married again, Kit? At last?” Lewrie hooted. “Mine arse on a band-box, that is capital! A good local family, I take it?”

  “The Ramseurs,” Cashman told him. “Before the Revolution, the old patriarch was ‘Prince Dick’—Richard Ramseur—in comparison to ‘King’ Roger Moore, the grandest of the settlers who came up from Goose Creek, South Carolina, to found the borough. They’re still not sure of me, I’ll tell you. They’re nowhere near as well-off as they were in the old days, but the Ramseurs still farm … rice, tobacco, cotton? They own nigh an hundred slaves, yet here I am kin to them, despite my vow against owning another slave as long as I live, after my experiences on Jamaica. Makes for testy suppers at their place, or mine. My wife, Sarah, well … we have house servants, as few as possible in bondage, and pay wages to the rest.”

  “Round here, you are eccentric,” Lewrie said, shaking his head in wonder. “I doubt there aren’t a round dozen gentlemen in the whole state of North Carolina of a mind with you. When you sent that affidavit about my theft of those dozen Beauman slaves that got me off … did that hurt you, hereabouts?”

  “I swore it to Osgoode Moore, Junior … before he became the British Consul,” Cashman told him, looking grave. “As my attorney, he is required to keep mum about the matter, and, as I said, Moore is a stickler, and as high-minded a gentleman as his father. No one knows of it, and, pray God, no one ever will.”

  “So, should I get in my cups whilst I’m in Wilmington, I’d best not mention all that?” Lewrie asked.

  “Especially over supper tonight,” Cashman replied, grinning. “I hope to dine you in at my house, and invite Osgoode Moore and his wife. You should also lodge with us for a few days. Much cleaner, and safer, than taking public lodgings. The other officer who came with you?”

  “My Purser, Mister Cadbury,” Lewrie said. “Only the one night, Kit. I expect he’s with your clerks, purchasing fresh stores. I told him to use no other chandlery.…”

  “My, and my partners’, thanks, Alan!” Cashman laughed. “We’ll have your Mister Cadbury to dine, as well. We’ve two spare rooms.”

  “He can eat with a knife and fork,” Lewrie japed, “though, I don’t know if he snores, or walks in his sleep!”

  “Your sailors won’t mind dossing down in the coach house and stables?” Cashman asked.

  “So long as they’ve eat well, and had some rum, no,” Lewrie replied, “though, they’d not make good supper conversation. I don’t know if Cadbury’s all that much a conversationalist, either, but…”

  “One can never tell,” Cashman mused aloud. “America is full of surprises. Planter grandees, tradesmen, and commoners … ‘mud-sills’ from the back country, as some say round here … one never knows where a good yarn can be had. Quite unlike British Society, hey? With industry, even a ‘mud-sill’ can become a grandee, and, do his sons and daughters get polished, there’s no limit on how far they can go. I am continually amazed by the open egality and aspirations of Americans.”

  “Well … so long as one’s White,” Lewrie wryly countered.

  “Well, there is that,” Cashman ruefully admitted. “Now … let me get the invitations written, and send my wife a note that we’ll have guests this evening. Moore will need a formal invitation. Anything to impress him? A medal or two, hey?” Cashman teased.

  “Battles of Cape Saint Vincent and Camperdown,” Lewrie smiled as he ticked his honours off. “Copenhagen, but they didn’t hand out any ‘tin’ for that ’un. I command a very small squadron of very small sloops, but one can’t see my broad pendant, all the way down-river to Smithville. Just say that Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet, will wish to discuss—”

  “A knightbood? A baronetcy, to boot?” Cashman gawped, pen poised above the sheet of paper. “When did that happen?”

  “Spring of 1804,” Lewrie grinned. “Fought a Frog squadron off New Orleans and took all four of ’em so the French could not invest the city before Napoleon sold it to the United States.”

  “So your wife is now Dame Lewrie?” Cashman beamed, “Grand! I never met her, but—”

  “She … passed away, three years ago,” Lewrie sadly related, “in 1802.”

  “Lord, do forgive me, Alan, I had no idea!”

  “I didn’t write you of it, you didn’t know, so there’s nought to beg forgiveness for, Kit,” Lewrie assured him. “I should’ve written, but … things happened in the meantime, and…”

  Tell him how it happened? Lewrie wondered; No, Americans adore the French. I say Napoleon killed her while trying t’have me killed, it wouldn’t be … diplomatic. And diplomatic’s what they sent me to be, ain’t it?

  “Sarah will be delighted, even so, to dine in a Baronet, in his sash and star,” Cashman breezily said, returning to his letter. “No matter America’s distaste for aristocracy, you show them a lord, and they’ll dearly love him.”

  “I left ’em aboard,” Lewrie confessed. “I didn’t know how all that might go down … how touchy peoples’ feelings about England are even this long after the Revolution. Diplomacy, hey?” he added with a cynical shrug. “No mobs pantin’ t’lynch a Tory.”

  “But you should’v
e worn them, Alan!” Cashman exclaimed. “You’re going about this ‘show the flag’ thing all wrong! You’ll be calling along the coast to other port cities? Good. When you sail into Savannah or Charleston, be sure to wear them. A sash and star will make the Charlestonians gush over you, ’cause in their hearts, they’d wish to have one, too. You know what they say about South Carolinians … that they’re the most Asiatic of all Americans? S’truth! For they eat a lot of rice, and worship their ancestors, haw haw!”

  “And Savannah, and Georgia?” Lewrie asked.

  “Of much the same mind, though nowhere near as polished, in the main,” Cashman quipped again. “People in both the Carolinas are sure that ‘all the rogues end up in Georgia’.”

  There was a knock at the office door, and at Cashman’s bidding, Reliant’s Purser, Mr. Cadbury entered. “I believe we’ve found all our needs, sir, and on good terms, as well. Mister Cashman’s clerks have been most helpful. Though, the bulk and weight of the stores exceed our boat.”

  “For a further modest fee, we’ll see your purchases down-river in one of the ‘corn-crackers’ alongside the piers,” Cashman suggested. “All our lighters are tied up at the moment, but I’m sure we can make an offer to one of the masters to make an extra run before he returns here to load his trade goods. Grains and such down the Northwest or the Northeast Branch of the Cape Fear, as far as Campbelltown or Cross Creek, and back again. Very fast and handy little vessels, even for the coasting trade from Beaufort and New Bern. Does one of them get underway by mid-day next, she could use the river current and the ebb of the tide and be off Smithville waiting for you.”

  “That’d be capital, Kit, thankee,” Lewrie said. “Oh, by the by. You’d not have some dried meats in stock, would you? Sausages, strips of jerky? For the cats, d’ye see. And, the Midshipmen have adopted a stray mongrel dog, so…”