King, Ship, and Sword Page 4

  Next went the artillery, the 18-pounder main guns, the lighter 12-pounder bow chasers, the 32-pounder carronades, and the quarterdeck 9-pounders, along with their truck-carriages, gun-tools, flintlock strikers, and all breeching ropes and handling tackle blocks. Heavy barges from Gun Wharf spent two days rowing back and forth to bear all the guns away, leaving Thermopylae high in the water, and her weather decks, the foc’s’le, the quarterdeck, and Lewrie’s great-cabins yawningly bare and empty.

  By the end of the first week of December, there was no more need of crew, for there was nothing left to remove with muscle power, and no reason to keep her manned. Clerks and paymasters from the Port Admiral came out to muster the hands to issue them their pay chits. That required another chestful of paperwork, for every sailor owed the Navy something, right from the moment he’d been pressed or had taken the Joining Bounty. Deductions had been carefully kept by the Purser, Mr. Herbert Pridemore, and his Jack-in-the-Breadroom clerk of every quid of tobacco issued, each wool jacket, blanket, each pair of shoes and stockings, each broken plate or mug, each worn-out shirt or pair of trousers. The Surgeon, Mr. Harward, offered his own list of treaments beyond the usual; a dubious Mercury Cure for venereal disease was fifteen shillings, to be deducted when the rare chance for pay to be issued occurred. Surgeon Mr. Harward and the Purser had their own accounts to square, for though they might hold Admiralty Warrant, they could be considered as independent contractors, to be reimbursed for goods, medicines, or services expended; were they not allowed a profit, it would be almost impossible to lure anyone to the posts!

  As Thermopylae’s captain, Lewrie was held to the most acute accounting, with reams of forms to be filled out and Admiralty satisfied that each item marked as Lost or Broken, each cable of rope rigging used up, each sail blown out or torn in heavy weather, each back-stay shifted since the moment he’d read himself in—all tallied with what he’d received and what remained to be landed ashore at the instant of his frigate’s de-commissioning, at the instant of his surrender of command, with penalties deducted from his own pay owing if he had been remiss.

  The weather was cold, there was a faint swirl of snow falling, so the mustering-out was held below on the gun-deck. Each man came forward as his name was called; there was much hemming and ahumming ’twixt the Purser, the Surgeon, and the shore clerks, before a chit was filled out and a final sum announced, carefully noting whether a sailor had dependents to whom he’d authorised a deduction already for their support whilst he was away at sea.

  “They’ll be cheated, of course, poor devils,” a senior clerk from the Port Admiral’s offices muttered to Lewrie as they watched the proceedings from the door to the officers’ gun-room.

  “The Chatham Chest, deductions for Widows’ Men . . . the jobbers,” Lewrie sombrely agreed.

  “Most of them will never see the Councillor of the Cheque, but will sell off their chits for half their value to the first jobber they meet,” the senior clerk said with a sniff of disdain for the practice.

  Selling them off was cheaper and more convenient than travelling to London for the whole sum owing; a wad of paper fiat money and a hefty handful of real, now-rare solid coin was simply too tempting to a tar who hadn’t seen money—real money!—since his ship had set sail years before, even if was but a pittance of what a man earned.

  “Aye, and they’ll drink up half o’ that the first ev’nin’,” Lewrie added. “Find a whore and a tavern . . . and end up ‘crimped’ on a merchantman. Only trade most of ’em know, really . . . the sea.”

  “Aye, poor fellows,” the senior clerk said with a grave, sad nod and another sniff. “Though,” he added with a wry grin, “if the war begins again, they’ll be much easier to find, and press back into the Fleet, hmm?”

  “Uhm, Captain Lewrie, sir,” a fubsy official from the dockside warehouses interrupted. “Your pardon, gentlemen, do I intrude upon a conversation, but . . . I do not see these iron stoves listed as naval property, and I must have a proper accounting of everything aboard.”

  “They aren’t Navy issue, sir,” Lewrie informed him. “Captain Speaks, whom I relieved when he fell ill, had purchased them for the crew’s comfort for service in the North Sea winters.”

  “Most charitable and considerate of him, I vow, sir, but . . . I cannot accept them into Admiralty possession, these two . . .”

  “There are four, actually,” Lewrie further informed him. “One in the gun-room here, and one in my cabins as well. Mostly to keep his pet parrot from freezin’ t’death, I imagine.”

  “Four, sir? Four? My word, he was profligate!” the fubsy old fellow vowed, scratching his scalp under his wig with a pencil stub. “And the coal, well! Why, there must be at least two hundredweight bagged up, to boot. What am I to do with it all, sir?”

  “Leave ’em for the Standing Officers,” Lewrie hopefully suggested, “t’see ’em through the winter?”

  Once Thermopylae was officially de-commissioned, Mr. Pridemore the Purser; Mr. Dimmock, the Bosun; Lumsden, the Ship’s Carpenter; the Master Gunner, Mr. Tunstall; and the Ship’s Cook, Sauder, would watch over her in the Sheerness Ordinary, along with a small crew of other ship-keepers to manage her maintenance, paid by the dockyard at their full pay-rate for as long as their frigate sat at anchor, for as long as Admiralty deemed her valuable enough to keep in reserve. Wives and children would accompany them, of course. Unless those worthies asked for transfer to a new construction, wangled an exchange with another ship-keeper in a Navy port more desirable to them, or outright retired from service, they had full employment ’til Thermopylae rotted away or was stricken and sent to the breakers. Indeed, they’d been assigned to Thermopylae even as she had been constructed on the stocks, and were “hers” for the ship’s entire life.

  “Quite impossible, Captain Lewrie,” the dockyard offical pooh-poohed, “for, without a regular issue of coal with which to stoke them . . . absent the kindling and firewood issued for the galley . . . they’re useless, and His Majesty’s Dockyards are not responsible for the cost.”

  “Stow ’em on the orlop, then, and let the next captain sort it out,” Lewrie replied, sensing that there was bad news coming.

  “Franklin-pattern iron stoves are not carried on our books as naval property, sir, and must be removed ashore,” the official pressed. “If, as you say, the former captain purchased them at his own expense, then they remain his property, and should quite properly be sent on to him, wherever he may be.”

  Oh, good God! Lewrie thought, wondering how much that’d cost, for he had no idea whether Captain Speaks had survived his pneumonia, or where he resided if he had. Lands’ End, John O’ Groats? Lewrie speculated, worrying what the carting fee would be for four heavy metal stoves all that way. His own carting charges would be steep enough, to bear away all his furniture, wine and spirits remaining, his tableware, chests, and boxes . . . and, there were all the luxury goods, the dainties that those Russian counts, Rybakov and Levotchkin, had left aboard when he’d landed them close to St. Petersburg. They’d bought as if preparing for a six-month voyage to China on an Indiaman, not a two-week dash up the Baltic, and Devil take the cost, to boot. There were two-gallon stone crocks, five-gallon wooden barricoes, and costly cased bottles of vintage wines and champagnes, crocks of caviar, bags of coffee beans, cocoa beans, and assorted caddied tea leaves by the ten-pound lot, . . . along with lashings of vodka and gin, of course; so much that he might clear a nice profit in selling most of it off once he got to London. Why, the brandies, the rarely seen, expensive liqueurs could fetch a—

  “Shall we say, for now, sir, that the stoves are of a piece with your personal stores, and will be removed when yours are landed, sir?” the rotund older fellow decided for them with an oily little smile.

  “Just damn my eyes,” Lewrie muttered, but had to nod an assent. Were the stoves still aboard a week from now, after his own departure, there’d be Hell to pay, and a full two years’ worth of angry letters flying back and forth ’til some
one claimed them.

  “Most satisfactory, sir!” The dockyard official beamed.

  “I’ll be in my cabins,” Lewrie announced. “I leave it to you, sirs, to continue the mustering-out. Pray inform me when you’re done, and I’ll say a few last words. The boats will be alongside by . . . ?”

  “By Two Bells of the Day Watch, sir,” the Port Admiral’s senior clerk assured him.

  “A final ‘Clear Decks and Up-Spirits,’ ” Lewrie decided. “Later than usual, but . . . later, gentlemen,” Lewrie decided, meaning a last issue of rum, full measure for all with no “sippers or gulpers,” given to his crew to “splice the main-brace” just one last time.

  CHAPTER SIX

  As if things weren’t gloomy enough! No sooner had Lewrie gotten to his cabins, now almost stripped of all his goods, and filled with piles of chests, crates, and boxes, than he had to deal with Pettus, his steward, and Whitsell, his twelve-year-old cabin boy.

  “Hot coffee and a dollop of brandy with, sir,” Pettus offered, his own canvas bag, his tight-rolled bedding and hammock, and his sea-chest before the door of the wee pantry.

  “Thankee, Pettus,” Lewrie replied, taking a welcome sip.

  “Uhm, sir . . . might you be needing my services ashore once the paying-off is done?” Pettus asked rather tentatively.

  “I do need a man, aye, Pettus, are you of a mind,” Lewrie told him. “Couldn’t ask for a better, really.”

  “Well, sir, I’d rather not, if you could find another,” Pettus replied, looking cutty-eyed. “For I was of a mind to go to Portsmouth . . . to look up Nan, if she’s still employed there. I’ve a fair amount of pay due me, enough to keep me for a time before taking service with some household, and . . .”

  “And take up with the girl where you left off, aye, I see. If you need a letter of recommendation . . . ,” Lewrie said.

  “That’d be most welcome, sir, thank you,” Pettus said, perking up with relief. “Sorry to let you down, sir, but . . .’twas only drink and the Press Gang that made a sailor of me, an accident, that, not in my usual nature. If it’s peace, I don’t intend to go to sea again.”

  “I’ll write it for you right now,” Lewrie said, going to what little was left of his desk in his day-cabin. There to find Whitsell, idly playing with Toulon and Chalky, and looking hang-dog miserable.

  “C . . . could ye pen one fer me, too, sir?” Whitsell plaintively enquired. “I’ll need a place, meself, without the Navy.”

  Wee Whitsell was an orphan, a street waif who’d been begging on the streets of Yarmouth when Captain Speaks’s recruiting “rondy” in a pier-side tavern had scooped him up almost two years before. Whitsell had eat his best meals, his only regular meat, aboard ship, and had no prospects in civilian life except for poverty, starvation, and exploitation. “Aye, one for you as well, Whitsell,” Lewrie promised.

  “Back to Yarmouth, Will?” Pettus asked the lad.

  “Well, I dunno . . . ,” Whitsell waffled, looking down at his scuffling shoes.

  “Might come to Portsmouth with me,” Pettus suggested, grinning. “A gentleman’s servant, and a page or link-boy, together. Or Mister Nettles.”

  “Nettles?” Lewrie asked, intent on his writing.

  “He’s a standing offer as head cook for a posting house in his old town, sir,” Pettus told him. “In Ipswich. Nettles might have need of an assistant . . . an apprentice, Will. Learn to be what the French call a chef? It ain’t a bad life, head of a grand kitchen, with grub on either hand, whenever you like, hey?”

  “Aye, I’d like that!” Whitsell exclaimed, beaming with joy and avarice for hot vittles. “Ya kin stay warm in kitchens!”

  “He’ll be missed, by God,” Lewrie told them. “I’ve never eat so well aboard any ship at sea in my life.”

  There came a rap on the deck outside his cabin door. Lt. Eades and his Marine detachment had departed days before, so one of the Ship’s Corporals, either Duncan or Luck, now stood guard over his privacy.

  “Th’ Cox’n an’ Landsman Furfy t’see th’ cap’m, sir!”

  “Enter!” Lewrie bade in a loud voice.

  In came Liam Desmond, a dark-haired, blue-eyed “Black” Irishman, and his long-time mate, the overgrown great pudding Patrick Furfy. Both were turned out as fresh as Sunday Divisions in taped short sailors’ jackets, flat tarred hats in their hands, clean chequered shirts, snowy white slop-trousers, and their shore-going best blacked buckled shoes and clean stockings.

  “Beggin’ th’ Captain’s pardons, sor,” Liam Desmond, easily the sharper of the two, began with a bright-eyed grin on his phyz, “but me an’ Furfy, here, we’re a’wond’rin’ if ye’d have any need o’ us ashore, sir, oncet th’ auld girl’s paid off, d’ye see? I’m minded that ye’ve a farm, where a brace o’ stout, hard workers’d be welcome. If ye’ve beasties, Furfy here’s yer man, sor. He could charm a chargin’ bull to a kitten, for so I’ve seen him done, sure, sor . . .”

  “You wouldn’t enter a merchantman, Desmond?” Lewrie asked as he sat back in his chair and took a sip of his laced coffee. He felt an urge to smile, for Desmond was laying on “the auld brogue” thick, as he usually did when “working a fiddle,” or talking himself, or Furfy, out of trouble. “Or take the opportunity to go back to Ireland for a spell? See your home folk?” he asked with a solemn face, instead.

  “Faith, sor, dear as we’d desire t’see Erin, agin, well sor . . . ,” Desmond said with a brief appalled expression and a disarming shrug, “they may be, ah . . . some back home who’d take exception t’th’ sight o’ us . . . do ye git me meanin’, sor, so that might not be a good idee.”

  The law, a jilted girl, Lewrie wryly surmised; one with a bastard or two . . . or the Army, lookin’ for escaped rebels from the ’98 uprisin’?

  “As fer merchant masters, arrah, they’re a skin-flint lot, sor, nothin’ a’tall like yer foin self, sor, an’ Furfy an’ me’ve got used t’gettin’ paid an’ fed regular. So, sor, do ye have need of us, we’d be that glad t’keep on in yer service, Cap’m sor,” Desmond concluded.

  “As a matter of fact, Desmond, Pettus here just told he that he plans to ‘swallow the anchor’ and take civilian domestic service back in Portsmouth, so I do have need of a man,” Lewrie told him. “As for Furfy, though . . .”

  Desmond swelled with happy anticipation, though he got a frown on his face when Lewrie mentioned his mate.

  “You’re good with horses, Furfy? With all manner of beasts?”

  “Wi’ me Mam’s pigs an’ chickens, sor,” Furfy piped up, almost pleading to convince him, sharing a worried look with Desmond that he might be separated from him. “An’ me first job o’ work when I was but a lad was stableman, Cap’m sor. Nursed many a horse, colt, calf, or lamb through th’ bad patches, sor, an’, ah . . .” Furfy swallowed loudly, as if he’d lose Desmond, the one mate who looked after him.

  “Th’ critters follow ’im round loik a Noah, sor, so they do,” Desmond stuck in quickly, “don’t they, Pat? An’ even fightin’ dogs go puppy-sweet on ’im.”

  “Better a stableman I already know than one I’d hire blind back in Anglesgreen,” Lewrie decided, relenting with a smile. “So be it, me lads. After all, somebody has t’keep an eye out for Furfy, and keep him in mid-channel. You’ve done the work before, when we coached to Yarmouth t’join. Well, we’re off to London again for a few days at the Madeira Club, then down to Surrey. I trust that Anglesgreen won’t be too rustic for you? It’s a small and quiet place. Only the two taverns, the last I know of it, and I’m not welcome in one of ’em.”

  “They’ve a good local ale, sor?” Furfy asked.

  “A hellish-good ale, Furfy,” Lewrie assured him.

  “Fine with us, sor,” Desmond exclaimed, sealing the bargain.

  Barely had Desmond and Furfy turned to go when there came another rap outside his door. “Mister Harper, from the Port Admiral’s office, t’see the Cap’m, sir!”

  “Enter!”

  The senior official du
cked under the overhead deck beams as he clumped aft to Lewrie’s desk. “The mustering-out is done, sir.”

  “Very well, Mister Harper,” Lewrie said, taking a peek at the face of his pocket-watch just as One Bell of the Day Watch was struck up forrud at the belfry. “Coffee with a splash of brandy?”

  “That’d be most welcome, sir, welcome indeed,” Harper said with joy, rubbing chilled hands together in anticipation. No matter those modern Franklin-pattern stoves, a few feet away from them and the cold below-decks could be a damp misery.

  “Pettus, a laced coffee for Mister Harper, then pass word to the First Lieutenant,” Lewrie instructed. “He is to have ‘All Hands’ piped, then ‘Clear Decks and Up-Spirits.’ The Purser’s parsimony bedamned,” he added with a grin.

  “Aye, sir.”

  “This damnable peace with the Frogs won’t last,” Harper griped after a deep sip and an appreciative sigh.

  “Not above a year,” Lewrie sourly agreed. “The only reason Bonaparte asked for peace was to re-gather his forces, build up his Navy again, after the way we’ve savaged it since Ninety-Three.”

  “Perhaps two years, Captain Lewrie,” Harper countered. “After all, he’s a lot of building, and re-building, to do, and a proper navy is like Rome . . . not built in a single day.”

  “Aye, two years, then,” Lewrie gloomed. “Refit what he already has and get them to sea in early Spring . . . drill and train their officers and sailors at sea, for a change, ’stead of harbour drill. Send squadrons round the world to re-claim all the colonies we’ve conquered so far. I haven’t seen a newspaper, yet, regarding what we are to surrender to them. Have you?”

  “Nothing official yet, no,” Mr. Harper admitted. “Though I am sure we must restore all French West Indies islands, Cape Town and all that to the Dutch . . . the Guyanas in South America, too. Lord, when the war erupts, we’ll have to do it all over again. Senseless! Plain senseless!”