Chapter Six #5
The army, well into its third bottle apiece, bright red in cheeks as well as coats, nodded careful agreement, their senior colonel raising his glass.
“We regard one man in ten lost as hard fighting, sir. Your figures are beyond my experience, Captain Harris – yours is a fearsome service, sir. You have my respect. I drink to you, sir! By the bye, sir, you have the look of my neighbour, Lord Alton – are you one of the Hampshire Harrises?”
“He is my uncle, sir.”
Critchel, the politician, took note of this, committed Frederick’s face to his memory. Lord Alton controlled a number of votes in the Lower House.
An hour more of increasingly incoherent anecdote, song and wit and the company rose – figuratively in most cases – and were borne away into the tropical darkness, cloaked in decent anonymity.
The tide served soon after dawn and the Master and Fraser took Magpie out of the harbour, grinning quietly.
“Good morning, gentlemen! I see we seem to have sailed?”
“Good morning, sir! In compliance with your orders, given last evening, sir, we conformed to the Admiral’s signal.”
Frederick had not the faintest idea what he might or might not have ordered before seeking sleep the previous night.
He had managed, by sheer willpower, to climb aboard unaided and to walk almost steadily to his cabin, but he certainly had no memory of saying anything to anyone.
He surveyed the two impassive faces, knew he would get no more from them, accepted the situation – they had shown an ostentatious loyalty, and he must live with it.
“Thank you. Course for Trinidad, Mr Munson. Lookouts at fore, main and mizzen and a guinea on the nob for the first man to report any prize we take – ten if it be a national ship. The men need prize money, Mr Fraser – no half-pay for them – it is their only reward in a harsh life, and we should seek it for them.”
The quartermasters, three feet away and officially deaf, unable to hear a word of their betters’ conversation, nodded gravely, much in favour.
No national ships crossed their path, for a week of quiet sailing in inconstant winds very little happened at all, other than a useful series of uninterrupted drills.
Hands were mustered and Frederick read them the Articles of War, being loth to venture on a sermon, or any religious observation more rigorous than the mandatory Lord’s Prayer; he had increasing doubts about the place of a loving God on a man of war.
He had equal doubts when hands were called to punishment for the first time – should he flog a couple, so as to demonstrate that he would if necessary, or give lesser punishment to show that he was no tyrant?
He had no particular objection to flogging on moral or philosophical grounds, but he had no liking for beating either – he had, of course, not had the appropriate schooling to inculcate the English vice in him, did not find the lash at all stimulating.
Still undecided, he listened gravely to Fraser as he presented his first ever defaulter.
“Jonas Smith, sir, landsman.”
Two years on commission and Smith still a landsman – therefore stupid, weak, clumsy or idle – inadequate or vicious, which?
“What is the case, Mr Fraser?”
“Use of vile oaths and obscenities, sir. To Mr Horrocks.”
Horrocks stood forward, green-headed spots on his chin, gravy or something like on his uniform coat, a button missing, brass on his dirk dull.
“One moment, Mr Fraser. Mr Horrocks, how dare you show yourself in slovenly filth on my quarterdeck? Get below, sir! Make yourself presentable and report to my cabin immediately after Defaulters. Bos’n, be present, please!”
The boatswain carried as a symbol of office a three-foot rattan cane.
“Mr Fraser, I beg your pardon. Please carry on, sir.”
“On being given a lawful order, sir, Smith used cruel and reproachful words to Mr Horrocks, finally saying, sir, in the presence of Mr Jackman, ‘you knows your trouble, boy? You fucks pigs, you do!’”
“Oh dear! I presume the accusation to be unfounded, Mr Fraser?”
“We have no pigs on Magpie, sir.”
“There’s a relief!”
They waited whilst an outbreak of coughing and stifled laughter was quelled, and a ship’s boy was cuffed into silence.
“What have you to say for yourself, Smith?”
“Beg pardon, sir. I were cross. Mr Horrocks got it in for me.”
“You heard the Articles on Sunday, Smith, and at least twenty times before. Your words constitute a grave breach of those Articles. I am tempted to bring you in irons to Antigua, there to stand trial.”
Indrawn breaths all round – they would hang Smith for those words, five captains not knowing Horrocks or caring for anything other than the need to support lawful authority.
“But, I see no reason why you should lie in idleness for a month, everyone else working for their bread. And, as well, you may just be so foolish as not to realise how perilous your words were. Mr Fraser, what can you tell me of Smith?”
“Three times before Captain Marston, sir. Admonished, grog stopped, cleaning the heads for two months. Reproachful words, sir.”
“So, Smith, you will not be admonished, nor will lesser punishments sway you from your chosen path of vice. One dozen lashes, Smith, your last chance. You will go to court-martial if you come before me again for this cause.”
No other defaulters were brought forward and punishment commenced immediately.
Some captains were known to hold men under punishment for days before the lash fell, believing that the waiting gave them time to contemplate their punishment and repent the sins that had led to it, but it seemed to Frederick to be a gratuitous cruelty, a form of malice that he rejected.
Frederick stood expressionless as the two boatswain’s mates laid on six apiece.
Smith bore the first four quietly, screamed with each successive lash, much to the disapproval of the watching crew, some of whom bore the scars of five dozen taken in silence.
When he wet himself there was a universal shaking of heads – very poor, not at all the thing, where was his pride?
“Hands to dinner, Mr Fraser. Come with me and we shall deal with this horrible young lout now.”
Twenty minutes of bellowing bad temper, Horrocks in tears before being bent bare-arsed over the breech of the aftermost nine pounder to be beaten raw by the flexible, whipping cane.
He would present himself, properly uniformed, for inspection by the officer of the watch every time he came on duty and he would be beaten for every shortfall, irrespective of excuse.
“You may be utterly useless as an officer, Mr Horrocks, but you will look the part while you remain on my ship. Do not provoke Smith again, Mr Horrocks: this is his fourth punishment for back-answering you, not any other officer, you alone. Fail in your duty again and I will disrate you and you will berth and work as a common sailor until the ship pays off, which I expect to be in Portsmouth and not for another five years! You are lazy, slovenly and probably stupid. I cannot improve your brain, but, by God! I can and will make you clean and hard-working!”
“Bos’n, do your duty by Mr Horrocks. Two dozen well laid on – two for every one Smith received.”
His words would have been heard and would be reported through the ship, well exaggerated, but the essence of the story would be known to all – young Mr Bollocks had been brought up short, Fearless Fred had stopped his farting in chapel!
The door closed behind the pair, shut out Horrocks’ sniffling.
“Repellent brat!”
“A nasty youth, to be sure, sir. Son to a friend of Captain Marston’s, sent to sea in hope of mending his ways at the age of twelve.”
“His ways will mend, or he will have no ways left, Mr Fraser. What of Smith? Can anything be made of him?”
“No, sir, not a thing! He is a poor oarsman, cannot work a splice or tie a knot, and is slow at the guns because he is frightened of them; he is too clumsy to become a topman. All he is good for is pulling on a rope, and he is not particularly strong.”
“Well, bugger him, then, Mr Fraser! If we should be involved in a boarding put him in the front rank – if he stops a blade or bullet aimed for a better man, he will have been useful for the first time ever. Now then, to important matters – I am not satisfied, not at all pleased, with our rate of fire. Three broadsides in six minutes should not be unattainable with short barrel iron guns, I believe – it is not as if we had long chasers on our sides. Two minutes should be ample to load and run out a nine pounder. Do all the gun captains know their business, one must ask?”
More drill was the answer, of course, each crew to be worked individually by Mr Jackman as well as the regular daily exercises. A shortage of powder meant that the guns must be worked in dumbshow six days out of seven, but that need not deter willing hands, the captain believed.
They raised Trinidad and their luck changed.
A strengthening southwesterly made it possible to beat up to the harbour mouth, tack across the entrance examining the port as the headlands opened and then make a rapid offing as the two forts woke up, found where they had put the keys to the powder room and finally opened fire in slovenly Spanish fashion.
Gleeson, Arkwright and Jackman had taken glasses aloft and gave their reports, tallying very closely to each other, to the amaze of all.
“Two heavy frigates, forty or forty-four guns; three small brigs of eight or ten guns and a schooner, what they call garda costas, I expect, sir. Of the private ships, four or five schooners seem too heavily armed to be innocent. Of certain merchantmen, two are ships of three hundred tons or more, and there is a mass of smaller craft of every rig, too many to distinguish. No English frigate, sir. A very busy port, sir.”