The Invasion Year (17 page)

“Christ, what a
shitten
business!” Lewrie groaned.

“Could be worse, sir,” Lt. Westcott said, chuckling. “Do we not get a good lift as we pass through the belt of Variables, we could end set upon Cape Hatteras.” He rapped his knuckles on the cap-rails atop the larboard bulwarks to ward off such a fate.

“You are
such
a joy, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said, groaning in mock dread, turning to cock a brow at his First Officer.

“As all the ladies say, sir!” Westcott quickly replied with an impish expression on his hatchet face, baring his brief style of grin.

“As
Mademoiselle
du Plessis said, sir?” Lewrie teased.

“Oh, well, sir … for a time, then tears … tears and lamentations,” Westcott said with a dismissive shrug. “I fear my purse was all but empty after our last, short bout, and all I had to leave her was a five-pound note, but … she’ll find another protector. Her sort will always survive.”

“Another reason Lieutenants should
not
marry, or…,” Lewrie began to say.

“
Marry,
sir? Perish the thought!” Westcott said, shivering with mock terror, and uttering a
Brring
noise. “ ’Tis the ruin of many a man, in the Navy or not. No, no, sir! Not ’til I’ve been made Post. Even then I’d give it a long look and a hard try before committing myself to the
one
mort.”

“Well, at least I can keep you out of woman trouble, so long as we’re at sea, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said, chuckling at his second-in-command’s irrepressible lust. “Once in England, though…”

“A ‘temporary wife’ in every port, sir … thank Jesus!”

“And Admiralty,” Lewrie reminded him.

The watch bells interrupted them; eight of them struck in four pairs to signal the end of the Day Watch, and the start of the First Dog Watch, at 4
P.M.
Up forward in the limited open space between the cross-deck hammock nettings at the forward edge of the quarterdeck, and the binnacle cabinet and double-wheeled helm, Lt. George Merriman was relieving Lt. Clarence Spendlove of watch-standing duties. Happy Spendlove, who would only have to stand a two-hour watch ’til the beginning of the Second Dog, and then have “all night in” and a long rest this evening, if the weather co-operated and no crisis arose.

“You have the Middle?” Lewrie asked Westcott.

“I swapped with Merriman, sir. Just the one night,” Westcott replied. “If you have no more need of me, sir, I would wish to take a nap ’til supper is served out.”

“Carry on, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie allowed him.

Once he was alone, Lewrie peered over the taffrails to see if the cutter had been secured to a towing line, along with the launch and his gig. Convoying demanded the ship’s boats be ready for service at all hours, if a merchantman needed warning or assistance.
Blanding,
more to the point, demanded prompt and plentiful use of the boats!

Lewrie put his hands in the small of his back, chiding himself to look stern and “captainly” as he paced forward up the starboard side of the quarterdeck, then further onwards up the starboard sail-tending gangway, towards the bows, only halfway noting the neatness of the yard braces that were belayed and hung on the pin-rails, how the excess rope was flemished in neat coils on the gangway planking. His right hand idly rapped the main-mast stays as he passed them, satisfying himself that they were properly taut … and fighting a grin of pleasure as he told himself that he was fortunate to have Mr. Sprague as Bosun and Bosun’s Mate Mr. Wheeler, who were so particular and attentive to such things.

Lewrie went onto the forecastle and peered round the tautly bellowed inner, outer, and flying jibs at their convoy … their awful and
bloody-minded
convoy.

They had left Kingston, Jamaica, with eighty-odd merchant ships for the Yucatán Passage, arranged in eight columns of roughly ten apiece, with a cable of separation between ships in-line-ahead, and a cable of separation between columns, a nice, neat travelling box that, to your lubberly layman meant … once he was told that a cable was 120 fathoms in length—the convoy spanned a width of 1,920 civilian yards, and extended 2,400 yards from front to back. Easily guarded?

If only it was that simple!

Merchant masters naturally despised other ships getting anywhere close to their own vessels, and the tendency was to shy off, widening the gaps between columns to nigh two cables, and the distance between ships in-column about twice the desired space as well.

Going West from Jamaica had been the easy part, with all ships riding a stern wind, or a wind on their starboard quarters, but once they had turned Northerly to beam reach round the tip of Cuba, it was the leeward-lying columns, and the ones in the centre that had begun to fall behind, for the very good reason that the columns lying closest to the wind stole it from the others, and made better speed, pulling ahead despite frantic signals to reduce sail to conform with the rest, and the laggards ordered to crack on!

Then had come the long, slow slog to windward cross the top of Cuba and into the Florida Straits, and it was a wonder that Captain Blanding, or any officer in the escort, had a hair left on their heads, or voices left after screaming all the daylight hours in frustration.

To make way against the wind, a sailing vessel had to make long boards to either side of the prevailing breeze, and none but the few fore-and-aft rigged schooners or hermaphrodite brigs could point into the winds closer than sixty-six degrees off true. Any closer to “the eyes of the wind” and square-rigged ships risked luffing up and coming to a ruinous stop with their yards flung a’back.

The Trades were funnelled down the Straits from roughly the East-Nor’east; the convoy had to stand on larboard tack to the Sou’east to make progress, but sooner or later there was the Cuban coast and its shallows and shoals to consider, requiring that the ships come about, tacking to take the winds on starboard tack and steering North by East ’til the equally dangerous shallows of the Florida Keys loomed up, and they would have to go about, again.

In a perfect world experienced merchant mariners could perform that trick all at the same time, as soon as the Preparative was struck. But, first one had to get their bloody attention, make sure that every ship
acknowledged
that they
were
paying attention and was ready to come about, then do it together … which half of them were
not
and
did
not! The resulting stampede and chaos would have been hilarious, were it not hellish-dangerous.

Even the roar of one of
Modeste
’s 32-pounders would not arouse some of them. All escorts had to fire off guns in concert to awaken the worst offenders.

Once in the Straits, Captain Blanding had thought that he had the solution to the problem; his Sailing Directions issued to all merchant masters dictated that the eight columns would be narrowed to but four, and there had been several long paragraphs devoted to the evolution … which the civilian captains had not bothered to read ’til the very last moment, or were too illiterate to grasp in the first place.

It was like telling the village idiot how to re-assemble a clock, and hoping for the best! The order of sailing had gone to a width of 1,920 yards, and the length from the lead ships to the tail-ends of the columns to 9,600 yards, and to get them all sorted out into the four columns had taken the better part of a day, with ships swanning off on opposing tacks to avoid the ones astern, ahead, or to either beam to avoid collisions, with one column of twenty-odd ships thrashing along on starboard tack, Nor’east, the outer-most column to the North making a board to the Sou’east on larboard tack, and the two columns in the middle not sure whether to shit or go blind!

Lewrie was sure that Chaplain Brundish had taken himself below aboard
Modeste,
heart-sick that he had
not
cured Captain Blanding of his blaspheming, perhaps with wads of oakum and candle wax stuck into his ears so he could not hear the screams of the very best Billingsgate curses and imprecations bellowed by merchantmen and Navy officers to boot … amplified by brass speaking-trumpets!

A measure of relative calm had been restored once the trade had swung North up the narrow channel between Spanish Florida and the British Bahamas. It was only fourty-odd miles wide from the tiny Biminis and Great Isaac and Little Isaac to the Florida shores, so Blanding had left the convoy in four columns, too fearful, perhaps, of what further calamities would ensue should he try to put them back in the original sailing order. And when the Leeward Islands merchant ships had joined them above the Bahama Banks, in deeper and more open waters, they had been shepherded behind, ordered to take stations astern of the existing columns.

Lewrie extended his telescope again to look up those four long columns, then swung to the right to espy HMS
Modeste
out on the Eastern flank of the convoy. That was where the greatest threat usually would come, from seaward, and from windward, so a hostile warship or a privateer could use the wind to dash in, nip at the outer column, and snatch up a prize or two before the escorts could react.

“Usually,” Lewrie muttered under his breath as he swung about to look for the other two frigates. Parham and his
Pylades
stood far ahead of the convoy, and a bit to seaward, searching for trouble and a first glimpse of strange sail. Stroud and his
Cockerel
guarded the larboard side of the trade, about mid-way down the left flank, and a good two miles or more landward.

A glance aloft at the angle of the yards and the streaming of the long commissioning pendant confirmed that the convoy
had
found a a slight lift. The winds, which had blown mildly but steadily from the East, now had a touch of East-Sou’easting to them. Two or three days more, and Lewrie could expect them to come from the Sou’east and allow all ships to alter course to the East-Nor’east, giving them all the sea-room in the world, hundreds of miles off Cape Hatteras and its shoals, for a long, curving passage to England, far from any searching foes.

And here I am … here’s
Reliant,
the “whipper-in” at the arise-end,
Lewrie told himself as he collapsed his telescope and took a last look about before heading aft to the quarterdeck once more;
just ploddin’ along like a sheepherder. This wind continues t’back, the danger may come off our starboard quarters than abeam. It’ll be a long damn’ night!

CHAPTER TWELVE

The second rum issue of the day had been served out, Evening Quarters had been stood ’til the end of the Second Dog Watch at 6
P.M.
, and the Evening Watch took their stations on deck for the 8 to Midnight. The tarpaulins were cast off the hammock nettings and the off-watch crew’s bedding was taken below.

Sunset, a rather pleasing one replete with all the ambers and reds and golds of semi-tropic seas, was rapidly fading, and the ocean was turning ink-black to seaward, still glittering with ebbing forge-light to leeward, and the winds, after a rather warm day, were cooling and most refreshing.

“A nice time to be at sea, sir,” the Sailing Master, Mr. Caldwell, commented with a smile as he strolled the quarterdeck, puffing away on a short clay pipe. The Marine Lieutenant, Simcock, was taking the air as well, and enjoying one of his
cigaros
.

“Indeed it is, Mister Caldwell … Mister Simcock,” Lewrie was glad to agree as he paced about by the windward bulwarks. He had shed his uniform coat and his cocked hat to savour the freshness and coolness of the evening, and to sprawl in his collapsible wood-and-canvas deck chair to enjoy the sunset. “So far, so good with our hen-headed charges, too. Nothing’s gone smash, no one’s strayed off, and none of them have rammed each other.”

“Early hours, sir,” Mr. Caldwell laughed. “Our merchant captains are possessed of a
ton
of foolishness.”

“It’s rather pretty, sir, even so,” Lt. Simcock commented, and pointed with his chin forward and to starboard where the convoy lay.

And so it was; four long strings of sunset-tinted sails, with each sporting a pair of large taffrail lanthorns winking and rocking as the snail-slow hundred-odd ships gently hobby-horsed along, those lights casting shimmery patches of yellow-gold on the wave-tops. And at the change of the watch, when all ships, Navy or merchantman, had struck Eight Bells, the sound had come down to them like a faint and tinkly carillon. Much like their situation anent the bloody-mindedness of civilians, not one-tenth of their hour glasses or chronometers had agreed with each other, of course, so it had gone on for a while.

“We’ll be losing some of our charges on the morrow,” the Sailing Master was telling their Marine Lieutenant.

“Privateers? You’re sure, sir?” Lt. Simcock asked with a gasp.