“Very possibly, sir,” Cadbury agreed. “Excuse me, sir, but if you will spare me, I must see to the kegs as they come aboard.”
“Very well, Mister Cadbury, carry on,” Lewrie allowed, pushing off the bulwarks and pacing down the gangway to look more closely into the barge’s hold, which looked to be a tad deeper than his first estimation, suitable for bulk cargoes such as rice or cotton or tobacco in loads large enough to make each barge able to carry several tons at a time… so it would not take dozens of them to service one vessel. And, he surmised, that to own too many barges to do the work would be too expensive to maintain, with too many masters and crewmen to hire, or slaves to clothe and feed, to make the trade pay.
A working-party of Reliant ’s sailors were grouped round the entry-port and the stout loading skids forward of that, crowding the gangway impassable, so Lewrie stepped back out of their way and slowly paced to amidships of the quarterdeck, where Mr. Caldwell, the Sailing Master, was taking the air and using a wee pocket-knife to sharpen a set of lead pencils.
“Seen their like, Mister Caldwell… the barges?” Lewrie asked him.
“In almost every port in the world, sir,” Caldwell jovially replied. “Or, something akin. Boats the size of the one alongside could fit into the coasting trade back home quite easily, even serve as water or supply hoys to the Channel Fleet ships on the French blockade. Stout, slow, and clumsy, but sea-kindly even in a good blow.”
“So, one like this ’un could make a passage from here to the sounds, or Brunswick, with no trouble?” Lewrie posed.
“I wouldn’t think so, unless they were caught on a lee shore in a full gale, sir, or a hurricane, which are known to strike these shores,” Caldwell said, sure of his conviction, and, since the question had nothing to do with Reliant ’s work on the open sea or guiding her up the Savannah River, did not draw upon his chief duties. Then, he would be much more cautious in his conclusions. The prospect of a whole day more at anchor was just gravy to Mr. Caldwell, with nothing to do, and lots of idle time to catch up on his sleep. “I gather you suspect that Savannah is the likeliest port you’ve seen so far, sir?”
“It is,” Lewrie said, clasping his hands in the small of his back. “It has the most extensive barge traffic, a lot more than Wilmington. Charleston’s wharves are so handy to the sea that there’s no need for them, and ’twixt here and Charleston, there’s not enough big ships puttin’ in that need ’em, either. All the sounds, inlets, and rivers South of here, though… so many islands and back channels… all the way to the Saint Mary’s and the Saint John’s rivers in Spanish Florida, that, if someone didn’t mind takin’ French or Spanish gold, he could keep ’em supplied, on the sly, very easily.”
“Well, there’s still the matter of what the privateers do with their prizes, sir,” Caldwell mused with his head cocked over in puzzlement. “Slipping the Frogs and Dons supplies might pay well, but the real money’s won at a Prize Court. Perhaps forged American registry papers would be safer to sell than taking them into Savannah for sale as legitimately owned ships, but…”
“Which wouldn’t be accepted by a Prize Court like Havana, and wouldn’t fetch much from Spaniards lookin’ t’buy a ship or two,” Lewrie huffed, fed up with the whole business. He didn’t know a blessed thing, and it looked most unlikely that he’d learn a whit more.
Admiralty should’ve sent someone else, he glumly thought; in a handier ship for inshore work, and a lot more wits and guile! Did I suit ’em ’cause I could flash my bloody star and sash and awe the Yankee Doodles into confessin’?
“Well, it all seems beyond me, Mister Caldwell,” Lewrie said as he shook his head wearily. “I think I’ll take myself below for a long ponder… or a sulk, whichever comes first!”
“We’ll get to the bottom of it, eventually, sir, no error,” the Sailing Master said with a hopeful note to his voice.
Pettus and Jessop were cleaning the sash-windows in the transom and both quarter-galleries when Lewrie entered his cabins, with young Jessop perched on a sill, and the upper half of one window down onto his lap, with his arse hanging over the stern.
Lewrie thought to find some peace and quiet, but with supplies coming aboard, Reliant was echoing to various thuds, booms, screaks, and rumbles as the heavier items of cargo were swung up out of the barge and over the gangways and thumped to the deck in the waist, and then lowered down to be stowed on the orlop deck, some items lowered down steep ladderways, a deck at a time, with much stamping of feet and groans from sailors.
After about an hour of brooding over his desk with a sheet of blank paper, an open inkwell, and a steel-nib pen in hand with nought to show for it, the din finally ceased, and the Marine sentry banged his musket butt on the deck, calling “Midshipman Rossyngton, SAH!”
“Enter,” Lewrie gloomily answered.
“Beg to report, sir!” Rossyngton said with a happy grin.
“Go on, sir,” Lewrie bade him.
“I struck up a conversation with the master of the barge and his mate, sir, the mate being a fellow not much older than me. He was curious about our ship, and what sailing round the world is like, so I struck up a good conversation. They work for a rich merchant in Savannah by name of Treadwell. He does a lot of the barge traffic, and owns more than a dozen or so, all sizes, as well as some small brigs in the coasting trade, and a brace of bigger ones that sail as far as Baltimore and Philadelphia, in season, to garner a fair portion of Northern imports to Georgia. The mate my age is looking forward to sailing in one of those someday, sir.
“I asked if he ever got out to sea, even for a bit, or was he limited to the river trade, and he said that he’d been down South as far as Cumberland Sound, a time or two, sir,” Rossyngton went on, nigh breathlessly. “He’s put into Brunswick and most of the Sea Islands. When I asked if he’d had trouble with shoals and such, he told me that most barges, like the one alongside, only draw seven or eight feet if fully burthened, and they’re built with very stout bottoms and ‘quick-work’ so if they do touch a shoal, they can usually work off, without much damage.
“But, when I got round to asking about Cumberland Sound and the Saint Mary’s River, the master rounded on us and ordered him to get back to work, and went ‘cutty-eyed’ on me, sir,” Rossyngton exclaimed. “Glared daggers at me, he did, and asked me flat-out what my interest was in where they went!”
“And how did you finesse that, Mister Rossyngton?” Lewrie said, feeling a rising excitement, but crossing the fingers of his right hand under the desk, in hopes that young Rossyngton had a deal more cleverness than he had.
“Well, sir,” Midshipman Rossyngton replied with a sly grin, “I told him that I’d heard some of the older hands speak of seeing alligators as big as cutters, white dolphins and sea cows that can walk out on land at night when they were on this coast, and how I wanted to go and have a look round, and meet the blue-eyed Red Indians said to live in the woods… and how their young women… welcome sailors.”
Rossyngton had the good grace to blush a bit.
Lewrie cocked his head to one side and chuckled.
“He told me I was a damn-fool ‘younker’, sir, and should not be listening to old sailors’ yarns, or put any stock in them. After that, he wasn’t talkative, but I don’t think he took my questions as prying, but, who knows, sir?” Rossyngton concluded with a hapless shrug.
“Loath to let on whether he’s been in Cumberland Sound, or up the Saint Mary’s, was he?” Lewrie responded with a hopeful smile. “On his employer’s secret business? Perhaps because he has, and that business is to stay a guarded secret. Damn my eyes, Mister Rossyngton, but, unless that master did tumble to your ploy, that was well done on your part! Well done, indeed!” Lewrie thumped a fist on his desk.