Sails on the Horizon: A Novel of the Napoleonic Wars (26 page)

Reasonably satisfied in the end, Charles rose to leave. “By the way,” he said out of curiosity, “what ship took my new twelve-pounder guns?”

Cavendish looked at him strangely, “What ship? No ship. The admiral had ordered new guns from the Ordnance Board, but they were condemned, something about defective casting. They were returned to the foundry only three days ago.”

“Thank you,” Charles said. He left Cavendish and walked thoughtfully down to the wharf, where he signaled a waiting wherryman. He hastily scribbled a note and gave it to the man. “Take this to the
Louisa
and give it to Lieutenant Bevan. Wait a bit. He’ll want to send a party back with you so he can collect our ship’s boats.”

The wherryman, a former sailor himself, knuckled his forehead and then pulled on his oars. Charles checked his purse, then hired a chaise and directed that he be taken to the coach station on Millbay Road. He found the one-armed seaman Poole sitting on his wheelbarrow by the doorway to a nearby inn.

“Mornin’, Cap’n.” Poole rose as Charles approached. “How do ye find yer new
Louisa
?”

“You’ve a good memory,” Charles answered with a smile. “She’s coming along.” Getting straight to he point, he ventured, “You mentioned you have a friend doing the dockyard accounts?”

“Aye,” Poole said cautiously. “Is there somethin’ ye wants to know?”

Charles took him by his one arm and walked him a little away, where they wouldn’t be overheard. “Yes,” he said. “I want to know what happened to twenty-two new twelve-pounder cannon that were set aside for
Louisa.
They were apparently condemned as defective and returned. There’s twenty pounds in it for you if you can find out what’s happened to them and why. Fifty if you bring me the paperwork.”

Poole whistled. “I might be able to do that, sur. I also know some boys in the ordnance yard. Don’t know what it’ll come to, though.”

“I knew I could count on you,” Charles said, opening his purse and counting out ten pounds. “This should get you started. And, Poole, not a word to anybody who might talk to the admiral.”

“’Course not, sur,” Poole replied.

THE NEXT TWO
weeks passed in a flurry of barely controlled confusion. One hundred two hands, overwhelmingly raw landsmen, had been delivered by the lighters. The ship’s requirement was one hundred seventy-five, not counting the marines. Charles sent Winchester, with two of the master’s mates and the newly printed handbills, recruiting throughout the port and nearby towns and villages. Winchester had obviously labored long and hard over the wording and Charles was pleased with its understated appeal:

BRITONS!

HEARTS OF OAK!

Here is your opportunity to join

CAPTAIN CHARLES EDGEMONT,
the
HERO of St. Vincent,
and
HM Frigate LOUISA
to fight your country’s enemies!

Captain Edgemont
is renowned for

PRIZES
taken and prize
MONEY
paid among his crews!
Steer to
GLORY!

Sign on today while positions are still available.

No impressments, Charles told Winchester; but he could offer extra cash bonuses for experienced sailors. Charles would pay for it out of his own pocket.

The remainder of
Louisa
’s warrant officers arrived in ones and twos: George Black, the purser, a rail-thin, cadaverous-looking man; Keswick the bosun; the sailmaker, the cooper, the armorer, and Mr. Mahone the quartermaster. Several midshipmen ranging in age from ten to thirty-four also dribbled in, and on a Friday afternoon thirty red-coated marines and their sergeant arrived on board and were promptly marched to their quarters. All of the men had to be read in, entered in the ship’s books, assigned to watches and stations (there were two watches, termed “starboard” and “port,” and while
Louisa
was on active duty they would normally man the ship in alternating shifts). Each of them also had to be assigned a berthing space, twenty-eight inches by six feet where they could sling their hammock—two men assigned to each space, to be used by whichever was not on watch. Finding space was not yet a problem, since
Louisa
was still seriously undermanned, but with her full complement on board every inch would be at a premium.

As the stores were delivered they had to be inspected, counted and weighed, signed for and entered into innumerable ledger books before being stowed away. Each warrant officer had his own responsibility: the purser for the food, water, spirits, tobacco, and the like; the gunner for shot, powder, cartridges, and the equipment needed to work the cannon; the bosun for spare spars and canvas, paint, cordage, and cables. It all had to be stored with care in the hold, since the distribution of its weight would be of considerable importance to the handling of the ship at sea.

Late on a Saturday afternoon Mr. Cleaves, one of the master’s mates, approached Charles on the quarterdeck and touched his hat. “There’s a visitor asking for you, sir. I haven’t allowed him on board—he’s a bit disreputable-looking.”

Charles couldn’t think who it would be, then he remembered Poole. “Has he got one arm?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Show him to my cabin. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Charles found Poole standing nervously in the middle of the room when he arrived.

“I got what ye wanted, sur,” the porter said without preamble. “It were scary difficult.”

“What did you find?” Charles asked.

“It’s all here,” Poole said, holding out a collection of papers. “The admiral had yer guns condemned and then had the navy buy ’em back again, good as new. Paid for twice, they were.”

Charles took the papers and began to leaf through them—invoices, condemnation reports, more invoices. They were all signed by Grimsley. “Pocketing the difference?” he asked.

“Big difference,” Poole said. “It’s all there.”

Charles unlocked a drawer to his desk and took out an envelope he’d put there earlier—it contained forty one-pound notes—and handed it over. He put the papers Poole had brought in its place and relocked the drawer. “Why was it ‘scary difficult’?” he asked.

“I think they’re on to me, sur,” Poole said. “I had to steal them papers. If they catch me, no tellin’ what they’ll do.”

Charles thought about this for a moment. “Care to sign on?” he asked. “We’ll enter you under another name.”

Poole’s face brightened. “I loved the navy, sur, but I only got one arm now.”

“Pass the word for Mr. Bevan,” Charles shouted at the marine sentry outside his door, “and tell him to bring the ship’s roster.” To Poole he said, “Can you cook?”

WITHIN A FURTHER
week, already past the deadline set in his orders,
Louisa
was nearly ready for sea. Her yards were up and rigged, all her guns in place, and her stores as complete as they were going to get. He had long since received his orders, carried by packet from London.
Louisa
was to proceed to Lisbon with all dispatch, there to join the Mediterranean fleet. He was to report directly to Admiral Jervis for disposition at his lordship’s pleasure.

Winchester’s recruiting efforts paid off better than Charles had any right to expect, netting sixteen experienced seamen, which had cost him dearly. That, together with the warrants, petty officers, and others that had shown up over the previous month, still left the ship forty-four hands short. Charles decided it was time to visit the dockyard admiral again. Actually, with the papers he’d acquired, he looked forward to it.

The next morning he dressed carefully and allowed Attwater to fuss over him while he ate his breakfast. When he heard the ship’s bell ring twice, he called through the door to the marine sentry to have the ship’s gig readied. Then he went to his desk, removed an addressed envelope containing an unsigned cover letter and the papers Poole had given him, and slid it into his jacket pocket. As the gig’s crew pulled across the Hamoaze, he thought about Admiral Grimsley and what he might say to him.

Charles was disappointed to find the admiral away, so he went across the hall to see Captain Cavendish. The older man looked at him warily but gave him a warm enough greeting.

“Where’s Grimsley?” Charles asked.

“At the Admiralty in London,” Cavendish said with a sigh. “In front of a board of inquiry. Just between you and me, I’m afraid they haven’t got enough on him. He expects to be back in a week or so.”

“I’m sorry to have missed him,” Charles said, speaking truthfully. “But I’m here on business.”

“What do you need?” Cavendish said, looking pained.

“Forty-four experienced sailors—topmen, if you have them.”

“I don’t,” Cavendish said, “God’s truth. I have six able seamen pressed off a merchantman yesterday and a motley collection of sheriff’s quotamen.”

The sheriff’s men, Charles knew, were the rawest landsmen, recently culled from the region’s prisons and jails: poachers, vagrants, thieves, and other petty criminals. “I’ll take them,” he said without hesitation, “and be gone on the next tide.”

Cavendish leaned back in his chair and smiled. “I envy you,” he said, “just starting out on your first command. I wish I had mine to do over again.”

Charles felt the bulky envelope in his pocket. “May I speak to you in confidence?” he said.

Cavendish nodded, looking at him curiously.

“If I were you, I might think about distancing myself from Grimsley,” Charles said. “Things might become difficult soon.”

“Your cannon?” Cavendish said.

“Something like that,” Charles answered.

On his way out of the building, he passed a box set there to collect navy mail and dropped his envelope into it.

NINE

“W
EIGH ANCHOR, MR. BEVAN. AS SOON AS WE CLEAR THE
sound you may set a course to weather the Eddystone light” were the first seagoing instructions Charles uttered as
Louisa
’s commander, and he said them with as much gravity as he could summon. The
Louisa
was already one week past the time laid down in his orders for leaving harbor. Charles watched with silent displeasure, tending to alarm, as the crew, the preponderance for whom the term “inexperienced lubbers” might seem a compliment, were sent into the yards or to the capstan or the starboard braces for the delicate maneuvers that would sail
Louisa
slowly over her own anchor so that it could be pulled directly upward out of the ooze of the harbor bottom. At Bevan’s shouts of “hands to the fore and mizzen topsails” and “man the larboard braces,” some of the crew ran to the left, others to the right. A few started up the shrouds of the wrong masts. In the confusion of swearing petty officers and bewildered landsmen, a furious Lieutenant Bevan bellowed, “Belay! Silence fore and aft!”

The ship slowly fell silent and movement ceased except for those asking what “belay” and “fore and aft” meant. All eyes turned to the quarterdeck. Charles stood alone by the weather rail, trying to look unconcerned while Bevan fumed. He thought that the worst thing he could do would be to intervene. That would be taken as lack of faith in his officers, especially his first lieutenant. He also knew from experience that marshaling a new crew into a disciplined, efficient organization took time and patience, and neither he nor Bevan had ever seen a ship’s company with such a high proportion of utterly inexperienced hands before.

“Petty officers, assemble your men by divisions on the deck,” Bevan ordered in a disgusted tone. When the crew had sorted itself, after some directing and shoving, into the appropriate groups on different parts of the maindeck, Bevan sent the topmen into the rigging, then the waisters (the mostly landsmen whose station was in the waist of the ship) to haul on the braces, and finally those who were to man the capstan to their places. Step by step he paced them through the process until the anchor was up and catted home and the ship under way. There was some further confusion as
Louisa
cautiously wore at Devil’s Point and tacked around Drake’s Island at the entrance to the sound, but apart from the ship’s almost coming ashore at the foot of Mount Batton, there were no major mishaps. They added sail at the approach to Penlee Point, and when the long rollers of the Atlantic came under
Louisa
’s hull Charles finally spoke. “Mr. Bevan, please call the hands aft. I wish to address them.”

Charles watched the men assemble in the waist of the ship, then stepped to the forward rail of the quarterdeck. All chatter and idle conversation on the maindeck below ceased. Some of the crew he knew well: his midshipmen, the various warrant officers, the masters and their mates, mostly. Two or three he recognized from the old
Argonaut.
He hardly knew any of the rest of their names. A half-dozen were lascars, and there were several blackamoors. The experienced sailors he could easily identify by their clothing and casual, expectant attitudes. He guessed they were mostly wondering what kind of captain he would be—harsh, lenient, capable, petty, stupid. The others, far too many others, were watching him anxiously. To them he would be one more new face in a confusion of new faces, tasks, living arrangements, food, and punishments. The first few months on board could be very hard for new hands, seemingly without reason or coherence, and all with the almost unlimited power of the captain and his officers hanging over them.