A Sea Unto Itself (15 page)

“Mr. Cromley,” he called across the deck. “We will tack presently. When that is accomplished, you will steer as close to the wind as she can hold.” Without waiting for a reply, he hurried down the ladder-way in a cold fury.

“What the hell kind of seamen are you?” he shouted angrily as soon as he reached the gun deck. The men standing by their guns looked at him in surprise. Charles kicked at an overturned bucket, sending it skittering across the deck. “I have never in my life seen such a goddamned abysmal performance. You are the sorriest excuse for a crew in the King’s Navy. Women and children would do better.” He glared at the men around him; his frustrations boiling to the surface. “I have gone easy with you out of consideration of your previous captain and for your being turned over from one ship to another. This is the goddamned thanks I get—a slovenly mob of sullen, self-pitying, over-indulged, lazy, undisciplined malcontents. Your king would be ashamed. I am ashamed that it has been my dishonor to command you. That Frenchman is at least manned by seamen who know their duty.”

He paused to think of what he could say next. Some looked back at him sheepishly, others frowned. At least he had their attention.

“We could still fight ‘em," a man nearby said. “She ain’t beaten us yet.”

“You couldn’t fight off a bumboat,” Charles snapped. “Where are the topmen? Step forward, all of you.” Tentatively, the men assigned to work high in the masts left their guns to move toward the center of the deck. “We will attempt to tack again,” he said. “If you fail this time you’ll have plenty of leisure to reflect on it in a French gaol. Get yourselves aloft and put some effort into it.” He turned and made for the ladder-way without a backward glance. Bevan met him as he stepped onto the quarterdeck.

“We will put the ship about,” Charles growled, barely trusting himself to speak. He then moved past to stand by himself beside the weather rail. Only then did he look upward. He saw the men already on the yards, genuinely hurrying out to their places. The wheel came over. He listened as the orders were bellowed out and relayed upward. Cassandra’s bow turned toward the wind once again. The yards for the foresails braced around, the sails handled and hauled with reasonable, if not exemplary, competence. The bow hung momentarily as it pointed dead into the eye of the wind, then pushed reluctantly across. Charles allowed himself a breath. He looked to port to see the French frigate, having completed her turn, on an eastward course a half-mile away and falling downwind. She had no men on her shrouds or in her yards that he could discern. He breathed again. Someone pulled on his sleeve. He turned to see that it was Midshipman Hitch trying to get his attention. “What?” he snapped.

“Begging your pardon, sir. Lieutenant Bevan’s respects. He says to tell you the frigate’s been called off, he thinks.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was signaled back by the bigger Frenchie. I seen the flags myself, sir,” Hitch said with a large smile.

“I see,” Charles said, the message sinking in. “If you will come with me.” Still seething, he moved to the fore of the quarterdeck and looked down at the men securing the guns. Every eye turned up toward him; some who had seen the frigate’s departure smiled. “Don’t you dare be pleased with yourselves,” he said loudly. “It was through no effort of yours. I assume that the Frenchman passed on after witnessing your performance and was troubled that you would lower the standards of their prisons.” He turned back to the midshipman. “My respects to Lieutenant Bevan. Tell him to reduce the canvas aloft; topgallants and topsails only until the rigging is repaired.” Hitch touched his hat and hurried off.

Bevan himself approached a few moments later. He did not speak.

Charles looked down at the men in the waist again and fumed. “We will resume practice with the guns immediately the rigging is spliced. In the mornings we will exercise the topmen aloft. See that they put their backs into it. We will continue day by day until they know what they are doing. I’ll tolerate no further slackness. If they don’t improve I’ll stop everyone’s spirits, their food if need be. By God, I’ll never have another performance like this one.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Bevan answered. He gestured toward the taffrail and over the stern.

Charles saw the departing frigate, close hauled, a mile and a half away. Beyond her, just on the horizon, the larger French two-decker sailed purposefully southwards. “Why do you think she was called off?” he asked.

“I don’t know. The captain of the seventy-four must have grown unhappy at the length of time it was taking, or that it was drawing him too far off course. It’s just possible he just didn’t want to expend powder unnecessarily or be burdened with a prize. Depends on what orders he has, I guess.”

As Bevan left to attend to his duties, Charles leaned by the rail looking out at the receding French warships. What orders could they have that called them so urgently southward?.

As a sure sign that there was a God that looked out for ships and seamen, a clear streak of blue sky showed on the horizon to the north in the early afternoon. The winds fell away to a steady northeasterly breeze and the sea surface tamed itself on the long Atlantic swells—all to the sounds of the rumble of the gun carriages as their crews labored to run them in and out, and in and out again.

*****.

“It ain’t too bad in all, zur,” Aaron Burrows, Cassandra's carpenter said, holding his lantern so that Charles could inspect the repairs to the hull where French shot had penetrated. “That’s the last. They wuz all above the waterline, do you see.”

Burrows was a stump of a man with muscular forearms and an even-tempered, agreeable way about him. After giving his report on the damage sustained, he had virtually insisted that Charles personally see that the repairs had been done properly. As one of the standing officers, he remained on the frigate from commission to commission and probably knew her peculiarities better than anyone else.

Charles dutifully bent to stare in admiration at the carpenter’s handiwork. “It seems very well done to my eye, Mr. Burrows,” he said. “I can hardly tell where the boards have been joined.” He said this even thought it was obvious enough where new wood met old.

“Thank you, zur,” the man said proudly.

There was another issue which nagged at him, and upon which he thought the carpenter might shed some light. “Tell me, how long have you been posted on board Cassandra, Mr. Burrows?”

Burrows scratched behind his ear. “Neigh on five years, I think. Since ninety-four anyway. Why would you be asking, zur?”

“I was wondering, has she always been so slow a sailer?”

“Oh no, zur,” he said with a look of puzzlement. “Well, she were never what you’d call real fast, but faster than now. I can’t figure what they did to her in the yard that changed her so.”

Charles was pretty certain that they had done nothing in the yard, besides applying new copper sheathing, and that should have helped, not slowed her down. “Thank you, Mr. Burrows,” he said. “I am appreciative of your efforts.” He was also certain as to whom he should speak with next. It was something he should have looked into long before.

“Mr. Cromley, a word with you please,” he said as he regained the quarterdeck.

“Sir?”

“Might I inquire as to how you have decided on Cassandra's trim?”

The master nodded seriously. “About even fore and aft, maybe a trifle down by the head. It takes away a little of her speed, but I find most ships hold better than way.”

“I see,” Charles said. “Would it be agreeable to you if we transferred some weight aft? I am in hopes that lightening the bow will improve her way through the water.”

“I don’t know, sir,” Cromley said with a frown. “It might give her a tendency to gripe.”

“Then I shall have to insist upon it,” Charles said. “You will please see to the shifting of one-half ton of shot from the forward locker to the aft most. If that gives a beneficial result we may try an additional amount. I trust you will inform me if she shows any undue inclination to fall off in a forewind.”

“Yes, sir,” Cromley said, tight-lipped.

Cassandra did improve her speed almost as soon as a bucket brigade of men began passing nearly a ton of round shot, ball by ball and hand to hand, from the bow to the stern. She was still no race horse, but eventually gained two knots under all plain sail, by the casting of the log. Charles took a great deal of satisfaction from this, which he was careful to keep from the master.

*****.

Early in the afternoon watch on the fifth day since their encounter with the French, Charles watched Lieutenant Beechum exercise the gun crews on the quarterdeck cannon and carronades with a critical eye. The open deck baked under the midday sun, and the men worked shirtless, heaving on the relieving tackle to run the guns in and out, their progress measured by the Beechum’s stopwatch.

If not exactly enthusiastic, his crew had adopted a seriousness toward their work, perhaps a grudging acceptance that they were where they were, and any further grousing might get them killed. Cassandra plowed resolutely across the sea, propelled by the steady northeast trades. They had rounded Cape Vert, the westernmost extremity of Africa, two days before. Their noontime sighting revealed that they had already crossed the eighth parallel and might reasonably expect to make the equator within a further week. With any luck they could raise Cape Town in a scant month and a half. At present their course roughly followed the coast of the continent, just visible as an indistinct line on the horizon to port.

“Hoy, the deck there,” a familiar cry came down from the lookout posted in the mainmast tops.

“What’s your report?” Charles heard Winchester call back up.

The voice came down clear enough. “There’s a barky off the port beam, mebby five leagues. She’s schooner-rigged, like. Yankee, I’ll wager.”

Moments later, Midshipman Hicks mounted the ladderway and crossed the quarterdeck. “Mr. Winchester’s respects, sir,” he began, touching his hat.

“I overheard, Mr. Hicks,” Charles said. “My thanks to Mr. Winchester. We will take no action.” The schooner would in any event be too fast for them to catch, even with Cassandra's increased speed.

Cromley, standing nearby, observed conversationally, “Bound for the fort at Bunce Island most likely.”

“You think she’s a blackbirder, Mr. Cromley?” Charles asked. He remembered hearing that the island in the mouth of the Sierra Leone River was a common port of call for the slave trade.

“Aye,” Cromley said, a wistful tone in his voice. “Probably on her way to the Bight of Biafra to take on a cargo. Bunce is the first place after crossing the Atlantic to refill the water casks. “Or,” he added, still slowly thinking the possibilities through, “she might be calling on the fort itself, if she’s a trader out of Charleston or Savannah. It’s the rice plantations, you see.”

Charles knew that this stretch of the African shoreline was sometimes referred to as the Rice Coast, and that the grain was also grown in South Carolina. He reflected that he still had a deficit of more than thirty in the makeup of his crew. “You have called at Bunce Island, Mr. Cromley?” he asked with new interest.

“Oh, yes sir. More than once or twice. I was a mate on several slavers in former times. It lies just over to the east there.”

 
This was an aspect of Cromley’s experience of which Charles had been unaware. “And how many blackbirders do you figure might be found off the island this time of year?” he said.

Cromley squinted in concentration. “Could be any number, if I recall. Sometimes one or two; others mebby a half score. ‘Tis a fair busy place. Why do you ask, if I might inquire?”

“We will alter our course to the east, if you please,” Charles said. “I have a notion to see the island for myself.”

CHAPTER FIVE

A shimmering glare reflected off the broad waters of the mouth of the Sierra Leone River under a sweltering noonday sun. Cassandra glided easily through the entrance under her topgallants alone. The seemingly lifeless village of Freetown squatted above the mud banks to starboard. Despite the lush jungle crowding the water’s edge, the place had an air of desperation and abandonment. Near the center of the inlet lay a small finger of an island with a low rectangular fort at its western end. The fecund odors of the land and the heavy, sultry air overwhelmed the cleaner scent of the sea. Below the fort four sleek merchantmen rode at anchor.

“Hoist the colors, Daniel,” said Charles. “You may run out the starboard battery. We will come to anchor between those vessels and the sea. May as well not encourage any false hopes.”

“Aye, aye,” Bevan responded. He nodded to Sykes to send the ensign up its halyard and shouted for Winchester on the gun deck to set the cannon crews into motion.