'Excellent. That will do very well, Mr Drinkwater. I desire you to wait in the ante-room. I shall fill out your certificate and you may present it to the Comptroller's clerks at Somerset House. I would not be too sanguine of an immediate appointment in a sixth-rate with the war ending, though.' Calvert smiled and held out his hand.
'I am not anticipating any such luck, Captain Calvert,' Drinkwater replied, taking Calvert's hand. 'I shall seek a berth in a merchant ship. I am anxious to marry and have been advised that opportunities in Liverpool are more likely.'
Calvert nodded. 'A fellow like you would be of considerable use in a slaver, no doubt of it. Well, good day to you. Pray wait a moment next door and I shall have my clerk bring you your paper.'
Drinkwater gathered up his documents as Calvert left the room. He returned to the ante-room and picked up his hat. He would go home to Barnet tonight, and see his mother and brother, then write again to Elizabeth with the news. He could afford to visit her before he went to Liverpool in search of a ship. Though greatly tempted, he forbore from winking at the pot-bellied mariner still gazing sternly down into the room. He was well pleased with himself and promised that before he made for Barnet, he would indulge himself with a meat-pie and a bottle in one of the eating houses nearby.
The clock ticked and the minutes drew into a quarter of an hour.
He supposed Calvert had been distracted on some important matter and settled himself to wait. After another quarter of an hour, he found himself incapable of sitting still and instead rose and began to study the wreck of the Ramillies under Bolt Head, but even this did not absorb him and he started to pace the carpet with mounting impatience.
At last, after what seemed an interminable delay, the clerk reappeared, but he bore no paper, only a summons that Drinkwater should wait a few moments more. After a further interval of ten minutes, Calvert reappeared.
'Mr Drinkwater,' Calvert said solemnly, so that Drinkwater imagined the very worst, 'the damndest coincidence, don't ye know ...'
'You have the advantage of me, sir.'
'I have kept you kicking your heels, Mr Drinkwater, because news has just come in from Gravesend that the Buoy Warden requires the services of a mate in the Argus. It occurred to me that, were you so inclined and bearing in mind your intention to marry, the post might have fallen vacant at a providential moment.' Calvert paused, allowing Drinkwater to digest the fact that he was being made an offer of employment.
'The inordinate delay, I'm afraid, was occasioned by the urgent necessity to establish whether or not another officer, who had been half promised the next vacancy, still wished to take up our earlier offer. Happily, in view of the Peace, he has declined, and sails a week hence in a West Indiaman.' Calvert smiled. 'So there, sir. What d'ye say, eh?'
Drinkwater stammered his delighted acceptance.
Nathaniel Drinkwater and Elizabeth Bower were married in her father's parish church on a warm, late autumn day in 1783 during a short furlough taken by the groom. The Peace of Paris had been concluded two months earlier in September, and Drinkwater settled to his work in the service of the Trinity House, rising rapidly to mate. His wife stayed with her father for the first eighteen months of their marriage until his death in 1785. She then removed to London and took rooms in Whitechapel where she interested herself in a charitable institution. Drinkwater maintained a correspondence with Richard White, whose promotion to lieutenant and appointment to a frigate on the Halifax station he learned of in the summer of the following year.
Drinkwater also remained in contact with Lord Dungarth who on several occasions asked Drinkwater to dine with him in his modest town house. The two men were both interested in hydrographical surveying and Lord Dungarth had been asked by the Royal Society to evaluate the quality of charts then available to the Royal Navy and British merchant ships.
His Lordship moved in illustrious circles compared with the indigent and struggling Drinkwater, but he entertained his guest without condescension, increasingly appreciating his judgement and acknowledging his professional skills. As for Drinkwater himself, he gradually forgot his naval aspirations.
PART TWO
High Water
Without careful and patient observation, the culmination of the tide is a moment so fleeting that it is soon gone, leaving only the mark of its passing as it falls.
The White Lady
The passing of the Vestal's paddles had thrust Drinkwater astern, tumbling him in the pitiless whirling of the water so that the pressure in his ears seemed like lances thrust into his skull, and the ache of his held breath had translated itself into a mighty agony in his lungs. Within the strange compass of this pain appeared to teem a plague of memories, each passing in such swift succession that they seemed agents of his destruction, tormenting him to stop holding his breath and let his lungs inhale ...
There was a vague lightening in the darkness and as it grew the memories faded. As his ribs faltered and could no longer contain the desire to breathe in, he struck upwards and the light was suddenly all about him. He was overwhelmed by it and gasped with the shock. The pain in his lungs seemed far worse now, as he broke the sea's surface and sucked in great gulps of air.
As mate of the Vestal, Mr Forester had run up from the boat-deck to the bridge the moment he heard the cries of alarm and knew something was wrong. Poulter turned from the bridge wing above the starboard sponson, his face ashen.
'I have run over the boat... The telegraph failed ... The engines could not answer ...' Poulter's voice barely carried over the noise of the wind and the thrashing of the paddles.
'I will clear away the other boat,' said Forester, casting a quick look in their wake where, for a brief second, he thought he could see something bobbing, but then the counter lifted and a wave intervened.
'I could not stop the ship ...', Poulter went on as Forester turned and saw Potts staring at the captain. It was clear neither man could quite believe what had just happened. Forester hesitated for a moment, then said, 'We must stop, sir. Stop and turn round.'
'Yes... Yes, of course.' Poulter made a visible effort to shake off the effects of shock and Forester moved swiftly to the charthouse and, quickly opening the log-slate, scribbled against the time: Telegraph failure. Unable to stop engines. Ran down port cutter.
Then he leapt for the bridge ladder, shouting orders as he went. 'Call away the starboard cutter!' he yelled. 'Boatswain, post a man in the foretop with orders to keep a lookout! We've run the port boat down!'
Notwithstanding the badly shaken Captain Poulter, Forester consoled himself with the thought that they had successfully rescued men from the water before. As for Captain Poulter, the Vestal's master pulled himself together with the need to react to the emergency. He quickly passed word that the men on the foredeck should remain as additional lookouts. Then he ordered a chain of men to pass his orders verbally to the first engineer. Having slowed his ship, Poulter began to turn her, to comb her wayward wake and relocate his lost boat, all the time hoping that the people in her had clung together and had not been the victims of Vestal's huge and lethal paddles.
Such arrangements took time to effect, but within fifteen minutes Poulter had brought his ship's head round and had closed the estimated location of the disaster. Calling down for dead slow speed, he scanned the sea ahead of the ship. Up at the base of the bowsprit and aloft in the rigging, his men were doing likewise. One of the men at the knightheads called out and pointed at the very instant he saw something himself. He was joined by the seaman in the foretop. Poulter focused on the object as Vestal neared it.