“Lewrie … Lewrie…,” Lord Gardner mused, working his mouth as if he’d bitten into a rotten lemon, or had dentures made by an itinerant Gypsy tinker. “Aha, sir! I recall you, now. You have not brought in any more of your secret, explosive thing-gummies, have you? Has he, Niles?” Lord Gardner snapped, turning to peer at his long-suffering senior Post-Captain aide. “Come to blow us all to Kingdom Come, has he?”
“Not this time, milord,” Captain Niles informed his master with a genial grin. “Our experiments with those infernal engines are done, and good riddance. Complete failures.”
“For which I say thank God, my lord,” Lewrie stuck in.
“His orders, milord,” Captain Niles said, efficiently whipping the single opened sheet of paper out and laying it on the desk before Lord Gardner, who picked it up and peered at it, myopically, his face in a grim and distasteful moue as if expecting the worst.
“This Commodore Grierson detaches you from his squadron, with orders for England, for a re-fit?” Lord Gardner huffed, waving those orders about. “What an impertinent, jumped-up pop-in-jay he must be, to assume that he may declare authority over His Majesty’s Dockyards, and send us whom he will!”
“Well, my lord, not a thorough re-fit, just a hull cleaning,” Lewrie offered, hoping that the lesser request would mollify him. “Reliant is very weeded, and slow after being brought out of Ordinary in April of 1803, and the bulk of her active commission has been in Bermudan, Bahamian, West Indies, and other tropic waters. The Gulf of Mexico, off Spanish Florida, and the Southern American coast?”
“He also ordered you to strike your broad pendant and sail away?” Lord Gardner gawped. “You are not sent home to face charges at a court-martial, are you, Lewrie? Under some cloud or other?”
“No, sir!” Lewrie quickly assured him. “He came up from Antigua with two sixty-fours, a Fifth Rate and two Sixth Rate frigates, and two more brig-sloops, and deemed my Fifth Rate redundant to his needs. As you will note, too, my lord, he deemed my small squadron’s duties against privateers sufficiently done, and that his new-come warships could do a much better job of keepin’ an eye on any new outbreak of raiders. And, he wanted the three wee ships under me for other duties down-islands. And, since he’s senior to me by nigh two years, there it is, my lord.”
“And you just let him order you to strike your flag and slink off?” Admiral Lord Gardner spat in astonishment.
“With the threat of privateers reduced, and their bases along the American coast eliminated, there was little I could do to argue the point, my lord,” Lewrie told him with a hopeless shrug.
“By God, but he takes a lot upon himself!” Gardner gravelled. “Henry Grierson … Henry Grierson. Who the Devil is he, Niles? Have you ever heard of him?”
“Uhm, I do believe that he is distant kin to Lord Melville, my lord,” Captain Niles tactfully said.
“Oh, good Lord!” Gardner snarled. “Even is he out of office, it will be some harpy in here, still, some female cousin thrice-removed, waving orders with Melville’s seal upon ’em, telling me to build a frigate for her son! The Prime Minister should never have dismissed Johnny Jervis from his post as First Lord of Admiralty. What the Devil was he thinking?”
“Given this Grierson’s connexions, then, perhaps we should put a new frigate together, for Lewrie here, hey, Niles?” Gardner wheezed.
“Would that a dockyard re-fit be possible, sir,” Captain Niles said with a whimsical air.
“Just a hull cleaning, my lord,” Lewrie reminded them. “We’ve weed as long as boarding pikes on our ‘quick-work’.”
“Recall, milord,” Niles said, leaning closer to his superior, “that we spoke with the Commissioner of the Dockyards, Sir Charles Saxton, upon the amount of work he has in hand, and the possible availability of a free graving dock for any vessel coming in damaged? He and his people are completely swamped.”
“‘Swamped’?” Lord Gardner querulously posed. “What the Devil sort of word is ‘swamped’? There are no swamps in England. Ireland, perhaps … all those bloody bogs of theirs … but not in England!”
“I stand corrected, milord,” Niles easily amended, bestowing a congenial look at Lewrie as if to say that Lord Gardner’s bark was not as dangerous as his bite, and that such word-play was natural to their working relationship. “Up to his neck in demands and needful work, rather. I fear that it may be weeks ’til what re-fit work and activation of ships now laid up in-Ordinary would admit your frigate the slightest bit of attention, Captain Lewrie. Even with specific, and urgent, orders from Admiralty, there is little we may do for you.”
“In the Careenage, Captain Niles? My lord?” Lewrie said, feeling that wheedling might suit. “As I said, we only need a bit of hull cleaning. If not the Careenage, any stretch of beach would do.”
“Lord, the beaches!” Captain Niles sadly mused. “I fear that there are now so many private contractors and shipwrights a’building ‘back of the beach’ that there may not be room. So many lost merchantmen to be replaced, new bottoms needed to expand our trade, and many smaller warships being built on speculation, not even under contract with Admiralty … I very much doubt there is a single seaport in all England where you might find the space, sir.”
Gawd, I’ve been diddled! Lewrie thought with a cringe; Sent to “Coventry” like a failure, and stuck there ’til the next Epiphany?
“What if I went up to London and sought fresh orders, my lord?” Lewrie appealed to Lord Gardner.
“You may try, sir, but even with orders, as Niles said, you do not stand a Chinaman’s Chance,” Lord Gardner told him, seemingly in sympathy with his plight. He was not snarling or roaring. “Were it me, I’d have stood on my rights, and previous orders, and given this Grierson puppy the back of my hand!”
“Then there would have been court-martial charges, my lord,” Lewrie croaked, his shoulders slumping in defeat. He puffed out his cheeks in a frustrated sigh, thinking hard.
“Excuse me, my lord, but … having just come in, I’m not yet considered part of Channel Fleet,” Lewrie schemed. “I could leave for London without being faulted for sleeping out of my ship, and see what fresh orders I might … wangle?”
“Do any of you younger sorts have the ability to speak in plain King’s English anymore?” Lord Gardner groused, slapping a fist on his desk top. “‘Wangle’, sir? Learn that word in a swamp, did you?”
“I might’ve heard it in Charleston or Savannah, sir,” Lewrie said with a shrug, “From the Yankee Doodles.”
“Both cities are famous for their surrounding swamps, milord,” Niles dared to jape in a mellow purr, tipping Lewrie a wink that the Admiral could not see.
“Aye, Captain Lewrie,” Lord Gardner grudgingly allowed, “until someone takes note of a perfectly good frigate lazing at anchor, and snatches you up, you are not under Channel Fleet, strictly speaking. If you imagine that you may discover a solution to your problem up in London, you are surely free to go … so long as you do not tarry ’mid the joys of the city.”
“Ehm … might it be best did we issue Captain Lewrie a document of some kind, milord?” Captain Niles suggested. “An order from you allowing him to seek an audience at Admiralty might not go amiss.”
“Fine, fine, scribble him out one, Niles, and I’ll sign it, if you think that’s best,” Lord Gardner said in an irritated growl. His attention had already shifted to a fresh pile of paperwork on the side of his desk. “An excuse for truancy for the headmaster … a dispensation for past sins, hey? Carry on, then. Good day to you, Captain Lewrie. Best of luck … all that,” he muttered, poring over a fresh letter, trying to find the proper “range” at which to read it.