The Invasion Year (15 page)

“The frigate captain’s back alongside his ship, sir,” Warburton reported. A minute later, and he could inform them that that worthy, whoever he was, was back on his quarterdeck, and his gig led round to be towed astern.

“Mister Westcott … just t’be on the safe side, we’ll continue on this course perhaps a whole minute after the ‘Execute,’ ” Lewrie said to his First Officer in a close mutter. “Get a bit more separation to the South as they wear about. The rest of our ships
should
stand on in line-ahead astern of us. Mister Warburton, send to
Modeste
 … ‘Submit,’ then ‘Alter Course In Succession, Lead Ship First’ and ‘Query.’ ”

“Aye aye, sir!”

He won’t like me for that,
Lewrie told himself, peering aft to see what the flagship would reply … if she
could
at that moment; I’d
not care t’be second-guessed, publicly, either, but …

“Signal’s struck, sir!” Warburton cried, even before he could sort out the proper flags and bend them onto the halliards. He and his signalmen jumped to hasten it along.

“The lead sloop is wheeling to leeward, sir,” Wescott said.

Sure enough, the brig-sloop was swinging to take the Nor’east Trades right up her stern, then swinging even wider to the West, with the winds on her starboard quarters, whilst the frigate and the trailing sloop stood on. The leading sloop could not complete a full turn over her own wake, but would harden up on almost Due North for a bit so the others could wear in succession, putting their helms over as they reached her disturbed patch of water where she’d begun her turn. All would stand on for a spell, then tack, in succession again, to end up with their bows pointed Sutherly for Jérémie and Cape Dame Marie, and passing well astern of
Modeste
’s column of ships.

“New hoist, sir … our number … ‘Alter Course in Succession.’ ”

“Let’s give it yet another minute, Mister Westcott,
then
we’ll come about,” Lewrie directed. “One one thousand … two one thousand … three one thousand…”

It was only when the second ship in the lee column swung away to wear about that Lewrie ordered his frigate to alter course. Like a pack of those strange beasts, elephants,
Pylades, Cockerel,
and
Modeste
changed course in
Reliant
’s swash, as if holding the tail of the first with their trunks, and plodding single-file round a bend of a narrow juggle trail.

“Your sextant, sir,” Pettus said, after getting permission to mount the quarterdeck, again. His assistant, the fourteen-year-old waif of a cabin servant, Jessop, carried the precious box which contained Lewrie’s personal Harrison chronometer, clutching it with both arms close to his chest as if it was part of King George’s royal paraphernalia.

“Almost forgot all about it,” Lewrie admitted as his chronometer was set beside the Sailing Master’s and those of the few officers who could afford their own. He barely got his sextant out and held up to his eye, and drew the image of the sun down to the horizon, when the ship’s bell began to chime at the last trickle of sand through all the hour, half-hour, and quarter-hour glasses up forward by the belfry.

“Time!” Mr. Caldwell snapped. “Lock, and record, sirs.”

With sextants stowed away, the people on the quarterdeck broke apart into singletons or “syndicates” of two to figure out their readings with chalk on small slates, or with pencils on scrap paper. The Midshipmen huddled together, helping each other (or cadging solutions on the sly when they seemed more probable), to show the Sailing Master when summoned.

“Uhm … about here, sir,” Mr. Caldwell said, making a mark on a chart pinned to the traverse board by the binnacle cabinet. Lewrie compared his own, as did Westcott, Spendlove, and Merriman, to the latitude and longitude discovered. Captain Alan Lewrie, he had to admit to himself, was only a
fair
navigator; the mathematics involved had not come to him as easily as it had to his contemporaries aboard his first ships. His feelings, and his bottom, had suffered daily during his time as a Midshipman ’til the right way had been “beaten” into his brain. Today, he was pleased to note that he was only a
few
minutes off in both longitude and latitude. Nonetheless, he quickly folded up his scribbled cyphering and shoved it into a coat pocket, nodding and harrumphing as if pleased to be in “agreement” with Caldwell, who
was
indeed a dab-hand navigator, worthy of Trinity House.

“Mister Munsell?” Caldwell asked. The lad offered up his slate with the air of a puppy about to be whipped for leaving piddles on the best Turkey carpet. “Oh, now
this
is novel, young sir. Your latitude is right, but, my
word
, sir … you have us nigh ashore on the coast of Cuba … round the Bay of Guantánamo! Better than yesterday, but…”

“Mister Westcott, sir … I relieve you, sir,” Lt. Spendlove was intoning as he took over the watch.

“Mister Spendlove, sir … I stand relieved,” Westcott replied, both doffing their hats.

“I’ll be below,” Lewrie announced, once Pettus and Jessop had his instruments secured.

“Signal from
Modeste
, sir!” Midshipman Rossyngton, who had replaced Warburton on watch, reported. “All numbers, and, ‘Captains Repair On Board.’ ”

“Well, no, I won’t,” Lewrie said with a sigh. “Be careful with ’em, lads. Mister Spendlove, pass word for Desmond and my boat crew.”

He’ll tear a strip off mine arse, see if he won’t,
Lewrie told himself;
In public, too
 …
with
all
of us present!

*   *   *

“If you’ll come this way, sirs,” Lt. James Gilbraith bade them, once all had been piped aboard. Lewrie had learned in the span of almost eleven months in Captain Blanding’s squadron that Gilbraith was a weather vane for his superior’s moods and intentions, so he watched him closely, and was relieved to note that Gilbraith was grinning so much like a “Merry Andrew” that it might mean there would be no storm of petulance coming his way.

“Welcome, gentlemen, welcome aboard!” Captain Blanding said as they were led into his cabins below the poop. He stood swaying to the motion of his ship with a glass of wine in hand, beaming most cherubic and happy, and Reverend Brundish stood off to one side, grinning, too.

“A glass for all, if you please,” Blanding said to his leading steward, “and take seats, all. We’ve wonderful news. An arduous new task before us, but … wonderful news, all the same.

“Gentlemen … we’re bound for Kingston,” Blanding went on once wine had been supplied. “Captain Farquwar and his three ships are to replace us on the Hispaniola coasts, and we are to replenish,
then
 … sail for England!”

“Well, I’ll be…!” Parham began to cheer, then thought better of “I’ll be damned!” and clapped his mouth shut. “Huzzah!” came from Captain Stroud. “At last!” was Lewrie’s contribution.

“Don’t be too excited, sirs,” Blanding went on, “for on our way, we shall be the escort for a ‘sugar trade’ of better than an hundred merchantmen. Some will make for American ports, of course, but most will make for home. A thankless business, but…”

The great trades usually departed the Caribbean near the end of February, or the first week of March, two hundred, three hundred ships or more. It depended on the end of hurricane season, the richness of the sugarcane harvests and pressings for sugar, molasses, and rum; the indigo and dye-wood were second thoughts, as were the various spices of the West Indies, like nutmeg and allspice, and the ground peppers of various heat.

This would most-like be the last late trade assembled, before the weather turned hot and the Fever Season began, nowhere as grand as the first, but it would still be a bugger to manage, as all convoys from the smallest to the largest were.

The merchant ships must be corraled together, all sailing from various ports to a pre-announced rendezvous. All must be herded into a loose pack, round which the escorting ships had to prowl, with some serving as “bulldogs” and “whipper-ins” to
keep
them together and in sight of each other, with all ships limited to the best speed of the slowest. Even before then, those ships departing Jamaica would have to be bonded, each master putting up the refundable sum, and signing articles promising to obey all instructions from the escort vessels, swearing that they would not break away and swan off until they were near their destinations.

The route would be arduous, too; beating into the wind through one of the passages out into the Atlantic, then heading Northerly to run up the East coast of America, taking advantage of the Gulf Stream current and the prevailing winds that swept clockwise round the basin of the Atlantic. Some ships would break away at the latitude of Savannah or Charleston, to enter the Chesapeake for Baltimore, or Delaware Bay for Philadelphia, whilst others would be bound for Boston or New York to trade their cargoes for Yankee goods. Cotton, tobacco, and rice predominated, along with hemp, tar, pitch, turpentine, and naval stores. Once a ship left a trade, it was on its own, whilst the rest would still be under escort all the way to various Irish, Scottish, or English ports.

It would be weeks and weeks of frustration, anger, and the urge to fire into the lot of them, for most merchant ship masters were used to going about their own ways, second only to God in their authority once out of sight of land, all as intractibly stubborn as mules. It was worse than herding witless sheep … or cats!

Merchant masters would balk at the restrictions, the slow going, and act as if there
weren’t
a war on that required the Royal Navy that would always come to be thought of as tyrants, oppressors, martinets, or bullies…’til some French privateer or warship hove up over the horizon, at which point they’d follow their instincts to scatter like headless chickens, and blame their capture on the Navy’s failings!

Despite how many French island colonies that had been taken after their return to French possession during the Peace of Amiens, there
were
still a few French warships lurking round the West Indies, and many privateers which sheltered in neutral harbours, re-victualled and fitted out before sortying for fresh plunder.

With Spain neutral, French privateers could operate from Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, Cuba, and Spanish Florida with impunity. And the Americans…! The damned Yankee Doodles still thought that the French “hung the moon,”
years
after they’d helped them win their Revolution, despite the brief Quasi-War between France and the United States over the U.S. right of free trade with any nation, favouring none; and despite the bloody excesses of the French Revolution which should have appalled them. There were many Americans who counted their years by the French Directory calendar, with 1789 as the Year One, and harboured a Jacobin, “Sans Culottes” wish to address the inequities between “Common Men” and their richer, patrician leaders.

The Yankee Doodles nursed a continuing dislike for anything British (except for luxury goods) long after their freedom and independence had been won, too, and there were many who would turn a blind eye to a French privateer in their harbours between raiding voyages. After all, America had cut its baby teeth on privateering; their own captains and seamen might be envious of French privateersmen’s success! Perhaps a blind eye might even be turned to prizes brought in and the cargoes sold as legitimate imports, and the ships auctioned off outside of the jurisdiction of formal Prize Courts!

This’ll be a bastard,
Lewrie gloomed.

“Has anyone an estimate of how large a trade it may be, sir?” Captain Stroud enquired, looking ready to be energetic.

“All things considered, perhaps prowlin’ Hispaniola wasn’t all
that
bad,” Lewrie japed. “It’s very … picturesque.”

“Oh, tosh, sir!” Captain Blanding gleefully disagreed. “We’ve been away far too long, and none of us have any real wish to stay through Fever Season … whether your suggestions for citronella candles and oil lamps counter the fever miasmas or not. As to your question, Captain Stroud, I’d not expect much over an hundred ships, or so.”

They tossed round the placement of their ships; would Blanding’s larger and heavier-gunned
Modeste
lead, or trail; would it be best for
Reliant
or one of the 32-gunned frigates to serve as “whipper-in” astern; was the seaward flank of the convoy the place of most threat, or was the land side, should French privateers lurk in American ports as they sailed up that coast? And, would there be any re-enforcement to their four-ship squadron, perhaps even a brig-sloop?

It appeared that Captain Blanding would not be offering them a mid-day meal this time. After a last glass of wine in celebration the meeting broke up, and the frigate captains prepared to depart.

“Oh, Captain Lewrie … bide a moment, would you?” Blanding bade him.