"Helm over, Quartermasters," he cried. "Lee tops'l braces, lee jib sheets! Hoist the inner jib, hoist spanker!"
Proteus began to swing to the right, taking the faint breeze on her larboard side, the tops'ls wheeling about and filling once more as the winds found them, the mizzen tops'l creaking as it pivoted, and the spanker filling and whooshing from left to right above the quarterdeck. There was a chuckle of water 'neath her stern, 'round her transom post and her rudder, as she began to gather way, faster than the tide could draw her.
Missed you by a bloody mile! Lewrie crowed to himself, seeing the barge captain waving a fist (and making some very English gestures) in his direction as Proteus bore off and began to rumble downriver… at least two musket-shots clear of collision with barge or lighters.
"Quartermasters, a full point to weather… mid-channel," Lewrie instructed. "Once abeam the wind, allow nothing to loo'rd."
"Aye, aye, sir… nothin' t'loo'rd," Mr. Motte the senior said.
There's one tricky bit over, Lewrie congratulated himself; now… only four or five more t'go 'til we're safe as houses. He gave his First Officer, Ludlow, another searching glance; but he was huddled in his coat, round-shouldered and enigmatic once more. Lewrie turned to spy aft at Peacham and the afterguard, but could find nothing amiss in that direction either. Some hurt feelings, a touch of sulkiness…?
Well, do I have potential trouble aboard, he assured himself, I have time to get it sorted out at the Nore. Cure some newlies' ignorance fore sailing further, sort out the truly stupid, and.. .
"Three-master in the main channel, sir!" Mr. Winwood hailed with some urgency. "Breastin' the tide under all plain sail."
"Making leeway of course?" Lewrie winced, leaning over the larboard bulwarks to peer out.
"Afraid so, sir."
"Well, we'll try to pass alee of her," Lewrie said, hands firm in the small of his back as he strode back towards the wheel, with more confidence in his voice than his innards. "She's the pilot's so-called bags of room to weather. Quartermaster, maintain course, but give us a point alee when I call for it. No more than a single point, mind."
Brace up, you bastard, he thought, else! Make leeway like a wood chip, and we'll surely collide, you…!
Shit! Just, shit!
BOOK THREE
Fit fragor, aetheris ceu Iuppiter arduus arces
Impulerit, imas manus aut Neptunia terras.
There is a crash, as though Jupiter had risen in might
and overthrown the citadels of heaven,
or Neptune 's arm had rocked the foundations
of the world.
– Argonautica, Book V, 163-64
Valerius Flaccus
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Gloomy damn' place, Lewrie sighed to himself, as he emerged on the quarterdeck by his private after-companionway ladder, abaft of the great-cabin's coach-top. It had rained during the night, after they'd dropped anchor, and though it was now mid-May, the wind had a bite to it. He'd allowed himself a full bottle of burgundy with his solitary supper, a stout brandy before, and two glasses of a good aged port out of that ten-gallon barricoe he'd bought at Fortnum Mason's… to celebrate a safe arrival off Sheerness. To settle his nerves. In point of fact, his nerves had gotten so steady-somewhere following cheese and sweet biscuits-that he'd been temporarily immobilised! Aspinall and Andrews had had to pour him into his hanging bed-cot! But he felt he'd more than earned his over-imbibing.
Proteus lay safely anchored just off Garrison Point, her heaviest "best-bower" down, with a stream-anchor astern to keep her from fouling another ship should the wind or tide take her. Before going aft to his lone celebration, he'd summoned the crew to gather 'round the break of the quarterdeck, had congratulated them for a safe passage downriver, had joshed them gently on things that had gone wrong, and had pointed out how to improve. Then, he had ordered a bullock slaughtered for their supper and had ordered "Splice The Main-Brace," to make an extra issue of rum. "Won't always be thus," he'd cautioned them; "once at sea, we won't make such jolly distinctions. Proper performance of duty will be expected as commonplace. Then we'll only celebrate surviving a storm the taking of a rich prize… or beating the Be-Jesus out of the French!"
Depressing he griped to himself, wringing the already thick sheaf of official paperwork between his hands-meaning both his "head" from taking aboard his load of spirits the previous evening and the sight of Sheerness and the tossing Nore besides. They were about equal for depressing.
Low, muddy, shoaling, and windswept, and even a bright day of sunshine probably couldn't make Sheerness any fairer a prospect. It was a garrison town, a warehousing and dockyard town, ringed with forts which usually fell early to any foe who tried to enter the Thames or Medway. Stopping them was the job of the more-substantial forts at the many tight bends in the Thames or Medway further upriver. The ships assembled here were not organised in a proper fleet, flotilla, or squadron. They were just here, because the Nore and Sheerness were at the mouth of the Thames and Medway, near enough to London and the many shipbuilding and armaments industries in the capital's environs to supply them at little cost in shipping.
Dozens of ships, he noted, taking a deep breath of clean air, as he waited for his gig to be reported ready; dozens of warships, he corrected himself. There were night on an hundred or more merchantmen close at hand waiting for a suitable wind and tide to proceed up the Thames to the Pool of London and the thousands of cargo-handling docks. Or waiting for a wind-shift to carry them seaward, to join a convoy forming in the Downs. Full-rigged ships, ocean-going vessels deep-laden with treasures, the lofty Indiamen or packets from the Caribbean. Coasters and colliers filled with fish, coal, timber, pig iron, tin, wool, bales of manufactured clothing, or shoes from other small ports in the British Isles. And trading smacks loaded with oysters or poultry, eager to be first to market for a hungry city-they were all here or off on the horizon, streaming dense as poured treacle from night anchorages off the Leigh Sands, the Warp, and the Maplin Sands, up the Queen's Channel along the Yantlet Flats… even the short way 'round from the Whitstable oyster beds, up the shallow, narrow Oaze to the Swale, from Faversham behind the Medway Boom, to Queenborough.
He'd prefer (had he his indolent druthers!) to sleep in, nurse his indulgent "head," and curl up with a good book and a warm cat, but there were "duty calls" he must make this dreary, nippy morning; upon Vice-Admiral Charles Buckner, for one, the "Officer In Command of HM Ships and Vessels in the River Medway and At The Buoy of The Nore," to give his full title-who had promised to solve his manpower shortage. And upon the Commissioner of HM Dockyards at Sheerness, Captain Francis John Hartwell, to arrange the lading of the tons upon tons of supplies due Proteus to put her in full fig: bags of biscuit, kegs of salt-meats, waxed cheeses, dried peas, ground flour by the boatload, the powder and shot and cartridge cloth to fill her magazines… and whatever his Purser, Mr. Coote, might wish to stow below for later. She was even short of rum, wine, and small beer at the moment, and afloat above her load waterline.
"De boat be ready, sah," Andrews reported at last.
"Very well, let's be going." Lewrie sighed, stuffing his paperwork into a sewn sailcloth haversack slung over his shoulder beneath his boat-cloak and wishing he'd had time for another restoring pot of coffee!