Sails on the Horizon: A Novel of the Napoleonic Wars (18 page)

PRIVATEERS—PRIVATELY OWNED
warships legally authorized to fight on their country’s behalf by the contrivance of a letter of marque—were an all-too-common menace up and down the Irish Sea. Little better than semilegal pirates, they were usually small, fast craft designed for the twin purposes of capturing enemy commercial shipping and avoiding enemy warships. French, Dutch, and Spanish raiders, among others, prowled the waters in search of fat, slow British merchantmen and coastal traders. It was a potentially lucrative profession. A hull full of furs or tobacco from North America would bring far higher prices in trade-starved Amsterdam, Brest, or Bordeaux than in Liverpool, and the privateers didn’t have to go through the inconvenience of paying for them.

By day Charles had the
Lomond
hug the verdant Irish coast, alive with the new greens of spring. He had lookouts posted in both masts and to port and starboard at the bow and stern. They looked carefully into every fishing village, inlet bay, and cove for ships that might be sheltered there: Bray, Greystones, Wicklow, wearing around Wicklow Head, Arklow, Kilmichael, Courtown, Riverchapel, and so on. Two hours before dusk, they would stand out to sea and run down any strange sails they spied. They spied many: fishing boats of all descriptions, coastal scows, large and small merchant vessels from twenty different countries, even “blackbirders,” the dark, fast, foul-smelling slave ships hurrying to or from Africa, the Caribbean, or the United States with their precious and perishable cargos. Slavery constituted the single most important commodity on which Liverpool was said to have built its fortune.

Each even remotely promising bottom was boarded, its papers and hold inspected, and in every case sent on its way. Every master they encountered had proper papers showing they were British, allied, or neutral craft, and their cargo more or less matched the bill of lading. One or two Charles suspected were smugglers on their way to France or Spain, but he couldn’t prove it, so he let them go.

On the sixth day out, cruising in the empty sea off Greenore Point, Charles reluctantly decided that he had just about stretched to the limit the time he could keep the
Lomond
at sea. A quick sail across St. George’s Channel, then northward along the coast of Wales, stopping only to challenge the most suspicious craft, would take three or four days, wind permitting, and bring him back to Liverpool very nearly at the end of the promised month of his command. There would be questions, he knew, about taking nearly three weeks for a simple voyage to Dublin and back, but he could answer those. He’d broken no orders, he told himself, nor endangered any British shipping or other interests by his absence from port. Besides, no commander in these circumstances was likely to be disciplined for excessive zeal in searching for his country’s enemies. Or at least he didn’t think so. Still, it would go better if he had a prize or two to show, or at least could report that he had sighted and attempted to engage an enemy.

“Wear ship if you please, Mr. Tillman,” he said, trying to keep any hint of disappointment out of his voice. “Make the course east by northeast.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Tillman answered. “It’s too bad about the privateers, that we haven’t found any, I mean. I’d have thought we’d do better.”

“We’re not home yet,” Charles responded.

Tillman gave the orders for the wheel to be put over and the yards braced around. The
Lomond
heeled moderately as she turned on the calm blue sea, then righted when the wind came over her quarter.

“Deck there!” a cry came unexpectedly down from the fore masthead. “Sail off the port bow. Mebbe four, five leagues.”

“What rig?” Charles called up, little interested now in some slaver or merchantman.

“Can’t tell, sir,” came the reply. “She’s standing toward us. I can only see her t’gallants. They’re in a line.”

It was good work for a lookout to spot a ship at that distance. “Well done,” Charles yelled back. “Let me know anything you see as she closes.” Turning to Tillman, he said, “Take note of that man’s name. I’d consider him for promotion if I were you.”

Tillman nodded thoughtfully. “That’s Wilkins. He has uncannily good eyes. He’s already been promoted twice and twice disrated soon after. He has a penchant for sneaking young girls aboard and hiding them in the cable tier.”

“Ah,” Charles said.

The lookout on the foremast called down again. “She’s signaling. Can’t make it out yet. She’s a frigate, I think.”

This was something different. Signal flags meant another British warship. “Send the signals midshipman up into the rigging with a glass,” he said to Tillman. Turning to Wilson by the wheel, he ordered, “Stand toward her. We’ll see what this is about.”

Charles stood by the weather rail in the bright sunshine, feeling the fresh wind and pondering what the approaching warship might want. He could see the distant speck of her upper sails, white against the deep blue sky. The signals midshipman should have been able to read her flags by now. Indeed, he saw the young man starting down from the tops with his glass pressed firmly under his arm.

“She’s the
Foxhound,
sir, thirty-six. Captain Pierce,” the boy reported. “Pass within hail, he asks.”

“Thank you,” Charles answered. “Acknowledge, then get aloft again and watch out for any further signals.”

The distant specks slowly became a sleek gray-painted frigate wearing a full suit of tightly braced canvas. As the two ships came within hailing distance she put her helm down, turned cleanly into the wind and through it, all the while her sails braced around in perfect unison. As she settled on a parallel course, a figure on the
Foxhound
’s deck raised his speaking trumpet and called across. “
Lomond,
there, who’s in command?”

Charles put his own speaking trumpet to his lips and yelled back. “Commander Edgemont, sir, job captain while Freemont is ill. We’re on our way back to Liverpool.”

“From where?” Pierce asked.

“Er, from Dublin, sir.”

“Bit out of your way, aren’t you? Get lost?” Charles could hear laughter from the
Foxhound
’s quarterdeck. Then Pierce called out, “Don’t answer that, I can guess. When are you expected back in port?”

“A week ago, possibly,” Charles answered. “Why?”

“There’s a pair of French privateers hereabouts,” Pierce replied. “I’m searching for ’em. Thought you might help.”

“I’ve just been looking at the Irish coast from Dublin south. We found nothing.”

“I thought that’s why you were late,” Pierce said with a chuckle. “How about this? You take your time sailing up the coast of Wales and I’ll try further south. Keep a sharp lookout for anything suspicious. If they ask in Liverpool why you were delayed, you can say it was by my order. I’ll note it in my log.”

“Yes, sir,” Charles responded. Then he added, “Thank you, sir.” He saw Pierce gesture to his lieutenant to get under way. As the frigate’s sails were braced around to catch the wind, Pierce called, “Good luck, Edgemont, and good hunting.”

“The same to you, sir,” Charles called back, then turned to Tillman to get under way. “Set course due east, if you please. We should raise the Welsh coast by nightfall. We’ll heave to well offshore and look into Fishguard Bay first thing in the morning. Maybe our luck will change.”

“Then north, sir, back to Liverpool?” There was a note of exasperation in Tillman’s voice.

“Yes, north and home for you. The end of this command for me, and with likely nothing to show for it,” Charles said a little bitterly. “But we may take our time. What’s your hurry, anyway? Do you have a girl waiting for you?” He meant it as a joke, but Tillman blushed bright red. “My fiancée, sir, Mary—we’re to be married this summer.”

“Oh,” Charles said. The mention of Mary made him think of Penny. He didn’t want to be reminded of Penny and hadn’t thought about her for days, or at least hours, and now there she was again. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” he said.

“Would it have made a difference if you had, sir?”

“Probably not,” Charles answered.

___

“ ’ERE’S YOUR COFFEE,
sir,” Attwater’s disembodied voice insisted. “It’ll be dawn in ’alf an ’our. Come, sir, you asked to be wakened.” Charles didn’t want to wake up. He had been dreaming about Penny, a smiling, willing Penny. She was so close he could feel the warmth of her skin, the silken strands of her hair, smell her smell, hear her voice.

“Come, sir,” Attwater’s voice intruded. “Din’t you not tell me to get you up?”

“Oh, all right,” Charles managed, by degrees his dream and the sense of intimacy leaving him. “I’m awake.”

“ ’Ere’s your coffee. Your uniform is all laid out. Wind is moderate from the west. The ’ands will be at quarters as soon as they’ve finished their breakfast.”

“Thank you,” Charles said sleepily. Only the warmth of her nearness remained, and then that too dissipated. He took a sip of the proffered coffee.

On deck he saw that it was still entirely dark. Perhaps a shade lighter to the east, perhaps not. It was Charles’s policy when at sea—indeed, it was the usual practice in almost all the navy, but apparently not on the
Lomond
—to greet each dawn with the ship cleared for action, the crew at their battle stations, the guns loaded and run out. This was a standard precaution in case the first light of day should reveal that an enemy warship had strayed into their vicinity unseen during the night. It was unlikely, Charles knew, and it had never happened in his thirteen years at sea. Still, it might one day, and he didn’t want to have to explain how he’d lost his ship because he’d decided it best to let the men sleep in.

“Good morning,” he said to Tillman. “Anything to report?”

The lieutenant touched his hat and replied, “Morning, sir. Nothing at all. Been as quiet as a graveyard. Be light soon.”

The dawn was already starting and the outline of Strumble Head could just be seen to the east, the sea dark as ink beneath.

“The hands are at quarters?” Charles asked, just to fill the silence. He had already heard them clamoring up the ladderway after their breakfast, and if that weren’t enough, the rumble of the carriage trucks as the guns were run out.

“Yes…” Tillman began.

“Deck, deck there,” a call came from the foremast top, clear and loud in the morning air. “Ship off the starboard bow, I think. Might be two ships. Maybe seven, eight miles.”

“What bearing?” Charles shouted back. “Can you see anything of their rigging?”

“Two points to starboard. And no, sir, it’s too dark. I can only see the sticks. Might be three ships, sir.”

They would know soon,
Charles thought; the light was coming fast. “The sticks” meant bare masts with sails furled or brailed up. Two ships, possibly three, laid to during the night. It could be a small convoy of merchantmen sailing together, but Charles didn’t think so. Merchantmen would more likely seek the comfort of a cove or bay—Fishguard Bay, just beyond the headlands, for example. “All the plain sail she’ll carry, Mr. Tillman. Let’s see what we have.”

Men swarmed up the shrouds and out onto the yards, loosening the sails and letting them fall one by one. “Braces there,” Charles heard Tillman shout, and in a quieter tone to the quartermaster, “Steer east by southeast.” The canvas filled with loud snapping sounds and the
Lomond
began to surge ahead, sailing large, with the wind neat on her starboard quarter.

“It’s three ships,” the lookout shouted down over the noise of the wind in the taut rigging, the filling sails, and the straining yards. “Two cutters, it looks like, and a fat brig. The cutters are hoisting sail. You might see ’em from the deck soon. The brig’s following.”

The freshening wind and the current kicked up a small chop on the sea, more blue now as the sky lightened. The
Lomond
raced at an angle across the waves, throwing spray outward from her bow. Charles crossed to the binnacle for his glass, then back to the lee rail. He scanned the horizon as best he could dead ahead, at first finding nothing but empty sea against the dark loom of the Welsh coast. And then he saw them, two gaff-rigged single-masted ships with a brig between them, slicing across the wind to the south in an attempt to round Strumble Head. That answered one question. Any ships that hurriedly ran up their sails and set off at the sight of a warship in the Irish Sea were most likely no friends of Britain. And the brig, what was she, a third privateer or a prize? It was an important question: The
Lomond
could outgun the two cutters, but not all three if the brig were armed. They’d know soon enough.

“Run up the colors,” he said to Tillman, “and keep to windward.”

The
Lomond
churned south by southeast on a converging course with the officially unidentified but highly suspicious trio of ships. She had a much better point of sailing with the wind on her quarter. The distance closed quickly, and it soon became evident that they would be within range of even the
Lomond
’s six-pounders well before the other ships could clear the point. Within half an hour Charles, and everyone else on deck, could see the full set of the enemy’s sails and not long after the tops of their hulls. He estimated they were less than five miles off.

“We’re reaching on them,” Tillman offered conversationally.

“Yes,” Charles answered. The cutters in particular were not sailing across the wind anywhere near as quickly as he thought they could, while the brig was struggling unsuccessfully to keep up. “What do you make of them?” he asked, turning to the lieutenant. “Is the brig a warship or a prize?”

“Oh, a prize for certain, sir,” Tillman said immediately. “True, she’s pierced for guns, but she’s beamy and Liverpool-built. Both cutters were built in French yards, I’ll wager my pay on it. They’d fly without the brig.”

Charles could see their hulls to the waterline now. What Tillman said made sense. “Do you think she’s armed?”

“Probably a couple of popgun four-pounders on either side, I’d guess,” Tillman answered, squinting across at the brig. “But she won’t fight. She’ll only have a prize crew big enough to sail her. Whoever commands those cutters must be too obstinate to give her up.”