“Welcome, gentlemen, welcome aboard!” Captain Blanding said as they were led into his cabins below the poop. He stood swaying to the motion of his ship with a glass of wine in hand, beaming most cherubic and happy, and Reverend Brundish stood off to one side, grinning, too.
“A glass for all, if you please,” Blanding said to his leading steward, “and take seats, all. We’ve wonderful news. An arduous new task before us, but… wonderful news, all the same.
“Gentlemen… we’re bound for Kingston,” Blanding went on once wine had been supplied. “Captain Farquwar and his three ships are to replace us on the Hispaniola coasts, and we are to replenish, then… sail for England!”
“Well, I’ll be…!” Parham began to cheer, then thought better of “I’ll be damned!” and clapped his mouth shut. “Huzzah!” came from Captain Stroud. “At last!” was Lewrie’s contribution.
“Don’t be too excited, sirs,” Blanding went on, “for on our way, we shall be the escort for a ‘sugar trade’ of better than an hundred merchantmen. Some will make for American ports, of course, but most will make for home. A thankless business, but…”
The great trades usually departed the Caribbean near the end of February, or the first week of March, two hundred, three hundred ships or more. It depended on the end of hurricane season, the richness of the sugarcane harvests and pressings for sugar, molasses, and rum; the indigo and dye-wood were second thoughts, as were the various spices of the West Indies, like nutmeg and allspice, and the ground peppers of various heat.
This would most-like be the last late trade assembled, before the weather turned hot and the Fever Season began, nowhere as grand as the first, but it would still be a bugger to manage, as all convoys from the smallest to the largest were.
The merchant ships must be corraled together, all sailing from various ports to a pre-announced rendezvous. All must be herded into a loose pack, round which the escorting ships had to prowl, with some serving as “bulldogs” and “whipper-ins” to keep them together and in sight of each other, with all ships limited to the best speed of the slowest. Even before then, those ships departing Jamaica would have to be bonded, each master putting up the refundable sum, and signing articles promising to obey all instructions from the escort vessels, swearing that they would not break away and swan off until they were near their destinations.
The route would be arduous, too; beating into the wind through one of the passages out into the Atlantic, then heading Northerly to run up the East coast of America, taking advantage of the Gulf Stream current and the prevailing winds that swept clockwise round the basin of the Atlantic. Some ships would break away at the latitude of Savannah or Charleston, to enter the Chesapeake for Baltimore, or Delaware Bay for Philadelphia, whilst others would be bound for Boston or New York to trade their cargoes for Yankee goods. Cotton, tobacco, and rice predominated, along with hemp, tar, pitch, turpentine, and naval stores. Once a ship left a trade, it was on its own, whilst the rest would still be under escort all the way to various Irish, Scottish, or English ports.
It would be weeks and weeks of frustration, anger, and the urge to fire into the lot of them, for most merchant ship masters were used to going about their own ways, second only to God in their authority once out of sight of land, all as intractibly stubborn as mules. It was worse than herding witless sheep… or cats!
Merchant masters would balk at the restrictions, the slow going, and act as if there weren’t a war on that required the Royal Navy that would always come to be thought of as tyrants, oppressors, martinets, or bullies…’til some French privateer or warship hove up over the horizon, at which point they’d follow their instincts to scatter like headless chickens, and blame their capture on the Navy’s failings!
Despite how many French island colonies that had been taken after their return to French possession during the Peace of Amiens, there were still a few French warships lurking round the West Indies, and many privateers which sheltered in neutral harbours, re-victualled and fitted out before sortying for fresh plunder.
With Spain neutral, French privateers could operate from Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, Cuba, and Spanish Florida with impunity. And the Americans…! The damned Yankee Doodles still thought that the French “hung the moon,” years after they’d helped them win their Revolution, despite the brief Quasi-War between France and the United States over the U.S. right of free trade with any nation, favouring none; and despite the bloody excesses of the French Revolution which should have appalled them. There were many Americans who counted their years by the French Directory calendar, with 1789 as the Year One, and harboured a Jacobin, “Sans Culottes” wish to address the inequities between “Common Men” and their richer, patrician leaders.
The Yankee Doodles nursed a continuing dislike for anything British (except for luxury goods) long after their freedom and independence had been won, too, and there were many who would turn a blind eye to a French privateer in their harbours between raiding voyages. After all, America had cut its baby teeth on privateering; their own captains and seamen might be envious of French privateersmen’s success! Perhaps a blind eye might even be turned to prizes brought in and the cargoes sold as legitimate imports, and the ships auctioned off outside of the jurisdiction of formal Prize Courts!
This’ll be a bastard, Lewrie gloomed.
“Has anyone an estimate of how large a trade it may be, sir?” Captain Stroud enquired, looking ready to be energetic.
“All things considered, perhaps prowlin’ Hispaniola wasn’t all that bad,” Lewrie japed. “It’s very… picturesque.”
“Oh, tosh, sir!” Captain Blanding gleefully disagreed. “We’ve been away far too long, and none of us have any real wish to stay through Fever Season… whether your suggestions for citronella candles and oil lamps counter the fever miasmas or not. As to your question, Captain Stroud, I’d not expect much over an hundred ships, or so.”
They tossed round the placement of their ships; would Blanding’s larger and heavier-gunned Modeste lead, or trail; would it be best for Reliant or one of the 32-gunned frigates to serve as “whipper-in” astern; was the seaward flank of the convoy the place of most threat, or was the land side, should French privateers lurk in American ports as they sailed up that coast? And, would there be any re-enforcement to their four-ship squadron, perhaps even a brig-sloop?
It appeared that Captain Blanding would not be offering them a mid-day meal this time. After a last glass of wine in celebration the meeting broke up, and the frigate captains prepared to depart.
“Oh, Captain Lewrie… bide a moment, would you?” Blanding bade him.
“Aye, sir?”
Blanding waited ’til the others had gone, paced behind his desk in the day-cabin, and sat himself down, resting his elbows on the top.
“Dash your eyes, sir!” Captain Blanding angrily growled. That was such a change from his usual humourous temperament that it rocked Lewrie back on his boot heels! “Just dash your bloody eyes!”
“Sir?” Lewrie gawped, standing before the desk, hat in hand, and feeling like a schoolboy about to be tongue-lashed, then caned.
“Our manoeuvring today, sir… I expected that we had drilled enough over the better part of a year that you would sense my intentions, and act accordingly. Which you did, in a way, in that you stood on, realising that the new-come column must go about astern of us, to get clear for their course down towards Jeremie, and Cape Dame Marie! But, for you to hoist ‘Query’ and ‘Submit’ and make us look clumsy and cack-handed and foolish in the eyes of contemporaries, well! I’ll not have it, sir!”