“I didn’t know whether the new-come column would wear about as they did, sir,” Lewrie rejoined. “Or, whether they’d luff up and lie bows to the wind to wait for us t’pass, or… Were they the windward column-”
“Your signal hoists made me look foolish, more the point, sir,” Blanding snapped, cutting him off. “Now, perhaps I did err in placing them to loo’rd for our rendezvous, and perhaps my instructions were a touch confusing, but… a sensible course of action would have been to deem yourself the burdened vessel and hold your course, no matter, and let the other fellows figure out the best way round us without impeding us! Since I had no clue that Captain Farquwar would be relieving us on station, and would have to be the windward column to carry out his orders, it only made perfect sense to take them under our lee, on the most direct course from Jamaica.
“You take too much upon yourself, Captain Lewrie,” Blanding admonished with a grave shake of his head.
“Sorry, sir,” was all Lewrie could say in response. It would be pointless, and insubordinate to belabour the issue.
“Too many years of ‘independent orders’ and one-ship missions, I expect,” Captain Blanding mused, suddenly sounding as if that was a sorrowful lack. “Just pay attention to my signals from now on, sir, and intuit my intentions from your experience of me. Some obedience… prompt obedience… would be preferable to discussion, especially after we pick up our trade. Its protection is vital, and I intend that not a single ship shall be lost to enemy action. Right, sir?”
“Aye aye, sir,” Lewrie could only say; he’d found that the Navy preferred dumb reassurance with that phrase.
“I will second a pair of my lieutenants and my clerk to aid you once we reach Kingston, Captain Lewrie,” Blanding said, his anger gone in an eyeblink, as if the matter hadn’t arisen. “I will place you and Reliant as the principal vessel to whom the merchant masters pay their bonds and sign agreements. I’ve also a brace of Midshipmen who possess legible handwriting skills, should you have need of them, you have but to ask.”
“Very good, sir.”
“That’s all, Captain Lewrie, you may depart,” Blanding told him, remaining in his “seat of power” as Lewrie hoisted his hat aloft in a salute, looking in vain for acknowledgement of his gesture.
Wasn’t too bad, Lewrie told himself once seated in the stern-sheets of his gig near Cox’n Desmond; Not too much was torn off mine arse, ’cause I can still sit on it! It still felt galling, though. He hadn’t been reprimanded like that in years, no matter how mild!; Damme, his signals were confusin’!
In Blanding’s place, Lewrie admitted to himself that he would’ve let the new-comers take station to leeward, too, but… when the time came, he would have ordered them to cross his column’s stern in a very simple hoist. He shook his head, showing a grim smile.
Should I have tugged my forelock to the “lord of the manor” like a cottager? he asked himself; or fluttered my sleeves and banged my head on the floor in a Chinee kow-tow like the “coral-button-men” did in Canton to the Emperor’s trade minister?
Lewrie imagined that being made Knight of the Bath and Baronet might have put paid to Captain Blanding’s grand sense of humour and boisterous bonhomie; he was beginning to take himself seriously.
Was he in danger of doing the same thing? Lewrie rather doubted it; not even if he’d been elevated to the peerage. He had always had a feeling that he could stand outside himself and sneer at the poses that Society demanded of him, knowing that he was a fraud… and suspecting that sooner or later he would be caught out at it. He knew himself too well, warts and all, and was able to be frank about his lacks, and was able to laugh at his pretensions.
Trouble was… could Captain Blanding? It would be a pity if he could not, for, even after his reprimand, Lewrie still liked him!
BOOK II
England is a nation of shopkeepers.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The trade ended up consisting of 109 merchant ships, some of them arriving from the minor, renewed traffic with the neutral Spanish Empire in the Americas, from New Granada on the Northern shoulder of South America, and from the Portuguese Empire of Brazil; from New Spain’s ports of Tampico and Veracruz; and from the now-American port of New Orleans, in addition to the merchant ships departing Jamaica and the other British islands.
The route chosen was tortuous, leaving Jamaica on the Nor’east Trades westwards for the Yucatan Channel, round the westernmost tip of Cuba into the Gulf of Mexico, then beating up eastwards through the Florida Straits, strung out like a long, weaving python and tacking to either beam for days on end, making no more than five or six knots an hour, hobbled by the smallest and slowest at the tail-end. There was absolutely no way to protect them if a privateer sortied out of Havana or a Florida bay. In the Straits, and later on going North on a beam reach in the even narrower deep-water channel between Spanish Florida and the British Bahamas, the trade extended over five miles long, and if a foe attacked the tail-end, it would be only Captain William Parham’s HMS Pylades that would be able to respond, and hours before any of the others could come about and dash to her aid.
Once North of the Bahama Banks, the trade made its best effort to stand Nor’easterly, to get as far out into deep waters as possible… where yet another parcel of merchant ships joined them from island colonies in the Windwards and the Leewards; ships from Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, St. Vincent, and St. Lucia, ships from Antigua and St. Kitts and Nevis. They had been escorted by a lone frigate and a much older three-masted Sloop of War, but, damned if those two didn’t turn round and toddle off home once they’d delivered their charges to Captain Blanding’s, and the squadron’s, care!
Those new arrivals had to have their bona fides certified, that their bonds had been paid and their signed agreements to the rules of convoying had been stamped and initialed “all tiddly”… by Lewrie and his officers!
It appeared that Captain Blanding’s revenge was endless!
Had Alan Lewrie had his d’ruthers, and had Reliant been sailing alone, he’d have preferred the much shorter route Easterly and North-Easterly through the Windward Passage, but that decision had been made by the trade’s Commodore, the senior-most and most experienced civilian master, elected by all the rest, and given the titular rank just a step below Captain Blanding for the length of the voyage.
And for each of those new arrivals, Reliant’s people had to make up fresh signals books to replace the ones they had been issued by the former escorts from Antigua, which kept Lewrie’s clerk Faulkes, Mister Cadbury, the Purser’s clerk, and the Midshipmen with good penmanship, scribbling away ’til every ship had a copy of Captain Blanding’s orders.
“What was her problem?” Lewrie asked Lt. Westcott as he returned from one of the slower vessels at the tail-end of the convoy. Modeste had hoisted Reliant’s number, then sent Number 465, directing her to “enquire the reason for the ships astern, or those whose distinguishing signal is shown herewith, why they do not make sail agreeable to their situation.” Number 465 also directed them to impress a man from each of the offending ships as punishment, but… Lt. Westcott had returned alone.