An Eye of the Fleet

'Bravo medico.' laughed Devaux sardonically. 'Such a simple deduction scarcely becomes a man of science whose profession descends from such self-same intellectual quest; who would be an indigent fellow without it and whose mind has such a high regard for its own opinions.'

'I cannot escape my time,' replied the good surgeon whose tragic tones were not ennobled by his pudgy frame.

'You sound like a God-damned Wesleyan, Appleby.'

'Maybe I have some sympathy with the man.'

'Hah! Then I'm damned if ye'll get any more coffee at my table. Yes, Drinkwater?' This last was addressed to the midshipman who had appeared at the gunroom door.

'Beg pardon, sir, but boats approaching.' The gleam in Devaux's eye was an eloquent endorsement of the accuracy of Appleby's forebodings.

'Thank you, Drinkwater.' The midshipman turned away. 'Oh, Drinkwater!'

'Sir?'

'Sit down, cully, and listen to some good advice,' said the first lieutenant indicating a vacant chair. Drinkwater sat and looked at the two lieutenants with a bewildered expression on his face. 'Mr Appleby has something to say to you, haven't you Appleby?'

Appleby nodded, marshalled his facts and began cannonading the midshipman.

'Now young man, the first lieutenant is alluding to a contagion which is best and successfully avoided by total abstinence…'

For a second Devaux watched the look of horror cross Drinkwater's face, then, clapping the tricorne on his head and waving Price out behind him, the two lieutenants quit the gunroom.

'… total… abstinence to which end I do earnestly implore you to bend and address your best endeavours…'

The arrival of the women brought all hands on deck. Men craned over the hammock nettings, leaned from gunports and ascended the lower rigging to leer at the wherries bobbing alongside.

The hands gave no thought to the fact that what was to follow was no substitute for proper shore leave, something they could not have for fear they might desert. The immediate preoccupation was a debauch.

Women and gin were aboard.

Whilst Wheeler and his marines made a token effort to maintain order the usage of the service permitted all classes of women to board and all offences of drunkenness and fornication to be ignored. It was inevitable therefore that the greater part of the women were whores and that the mess-deck deteriorated instantly into an inferno of desperate debauchery. The women were of various ages: tired, painted and blowsy doxies in worn and soiled dresses whose vernacular was as explicit as 'Jolly Jacks', and younger molls, their youth blown on the winds of experience, their eyes dull with the desperate business of survival.

Some few were bona fide wives. The older among them used to their sisters in trade, the two or three younger astonished and shocked at the dim squalor of the gun-deck. Where, perhaps, a poor counting-house clerk had been pressed into the service his wife, possessing some slender claim to gentility, found her husband living in the vilest conditions. Such women instantly became a butt for the others to vent their coarse wit upon, which was a double tragedy since their husbands had probably just managed to live down their genteel origins. Legitimate wives were quickly recognised by their demeanour at the entry port, for they waved chits and passes at the marine sentries.

These genuine spouses looked earnestly for their husbands and avoided the leering and grasping propositions of others. For several such wives their journey ended in battle royal. Not expecting their spouses, men were engaged in coupling with whores. One enormous creature, the churched wife of a yeoman of sheets, found her man thus occupied between two twelve pounders. She belaboured his heaving buttocks with the tattered remnants of a parasol. A stream of filthy invective poured from her and she was quickly surrounded by a mass of cheering seamen and harlots who egged the trio on. The wife ceased her beating and took a long pull at a gin bottle someone held out to her. In the interval her husband finished his business and, to a cheer, the girl wriggled out from beneath him, hastily covering herself. She held out her hand for money but changed her mind when she saw the expression in the wife's eyes. She dodged under the barrel of the adjacent cannon as the offended lady screeched at her, 'Try and take the money that's mine ye painted trollop, why, ye don't know y're business well enough to axe fur it fust!'

At this remark the yeoman caught his wife's arm and slapped her across the mouth with 'And how in hell's name ud youm be knowin' that, my Polly?'

The crowd melted away for this was now a domestic matter and not the common property of the gun-deck.

All day the ebb and flow of liaisons took place. What little money the men had soon found its way into the pockets of the women. Mr Copping, the purser, in the manner of his race, set up a desk at which the eager men could sign a docket relinquishing a portion of their pay or prize money for an advance of cash. Many thus exceeded the dictates of prudence, the favours of a woman being a most urgent requirement. Thus were pursers a hated breed, though rarely a poor one.

Meteor rowed a dismal guard around Cyclops. Occasionally a bottle or a woman's drawers would be thrown out of an open gun-port to an accompaniment of cheers and shrieks. The cutter's crew visibly smouldered and at one point she ran in and hailed the quarterdeck. The master's mate in charge of the boat was livid.

'Sir,' he yelled at Lieutenant Keene. 'Yer men show no respect. There are three of them baring their arses at me from yer gun-ports…'

Appleby joined the chuckling lieutenant who disdained to reply.

'Sure you did not bare yours at Mahon, mister?' enquired the surgeon.

There was no reply. 'That found its mark, eh lieutenant?' said Appleby as the man looked sulkily away.

'If the ship offends ye, sirrah, row guard round the rest of the fleet. Ye'll get little pickings from this lot!'

The master's mate spat overside and snarled at his boat's crew, 'Give way you damned lubbers.'

During the forenoon the wife of the man Sharples made her appearance at the entry port. She was very young and, though few knew it, had made the journey from Chatham purely on the chance of seeing her husband. The journey had taken a week and her expectant condition had made of it a nightmare.

But Sharples had seen her board and embraced her at the entry port amid the sentimental cheers of his messmates. No one had seen the sour look on the face of Mr Midshipman Morris who happened to be passing at the time. No one, that is, except Tregembo who, by another coincidence, was in search of Morris.

As Sharples and his wife, clasped together, stepped over the prostrate, active bodies, oblivious of the parodies of love enacted all about them, Tregembo stepped up to Morris and touched his forelock.

'Beg pardon, Mr Morris,' said Tregembo with exaggerated politeness, 'Lieutenant Keene's orders and will ye take the launch over to flag for orders.'

Morris snarled at Tregembo then a gleam of viciousness showed in his eyes. Calling a bosun's mate known for 'starting' he strode forward. As he went he called men's names. They were the least desirable of Cyclops's company. A few, otherwise engaged, told him to go to the devil, one or two he let off, the rest he left to the bosun's mate.

At the forward end of the gun-deck Morris ran his quarry to earth. Sharples and his wife lay on the deck. Her head was pillowed on his hammock and her face wore a look of unbelieving horror. Her man, father of her unborn child whose image she had cherished, lay sobbing in her arms. The whole foul story of Morris had poured out of him for there was no way he could be a man to her until he had unburdened himself. Sharples was unaware of the presence of Morris until the author of his misfortune had been standing over the pair for a whole minute.