“Your pardons, sir,” Elmes said, surrendering his spot to his Captain, who owned the windward side of the quarterdeck when he was up.
“No matter, Mister Elmes,” Lewrie genially told him. “Is that Beachy Head yonder?”
“Aye, sir,” Elmes answered with a smile. “Three points off the starboard bows, and about eleven or twelve miles off.”
“A long, slow passage, so far, aye,” Lewrie commented, trying to spot the first glow of the lights that marked it. He looked aloft and forward at the set of the sails and how they were drawing, to the long, gently-fluttering commissioning pendant to gauge the strength of the winds, and found that the beginning of sunset in the West was going reddish.
“Sign of a calm night,” Lewrie said, rapping his knuckles on the bulwark’s cap-rail for luck. “If the wind holds out of the Nor’east, if the seas don’t get up, and the French keep to their side of the Channel t’night. Eleven or twelve miles, d’ye say?”
“Aye, sir,” Lt. Elmes agreed.
Lewrie looked round the deck and found the Sailing Master, Mr. George Yelland, making his way up a ladderway to the quarterdeck, his coat off, and his head bare in an idle, Dog Watch casualness.
“Ah, Mister Yelland,” Lewrie called out. “A lovely early evening, hey? You will be using your sea cabin tonight?”
“Thought I might, sir, just in case.” Yelland told him.
“Let’s take a peek in the chart space, if you don’t mind, sir. I’m thinking that it may be necessary t’come a point more Westerly, so we don’t get trampled by a home-bound trade in the middle of the night,” Lewrie suggested. “Hug the coast a tad closer?”
Once in the chart space, the Captain’s clerk’s former office, and a small lanthorn lit, they both pored over the charts.
“Uhm…” Yelland mused, sucking on his teeth in thought. “We could espy Saint Catherine’s Point light round midnight, aye, sir, if we alter course. With any luck at all, we might be in sight of Portland Bill by dawn, and about twelve or so miles off.”
“At which point, we’ll alter course to West by South, Half-South or West-Sou’west, depending on wind and weather,” Lewrie decided, “and clear Start Point and Prawle Point by a wider margin.”
“Looks good to me, sir,” Yelland agreed, tentatively making a few pencil marks on the chart.
Christ, does he ever have a wash? Lewrie asked himself. Their Sailing Master’s body odour was almost as rank as the smells from his clothing. Lewrie dreaded spending too much time in the chart space, conferring with Yelland, in future. Not with the door shut, anyway.
He stepped back onto the quarterdeck and into the fresher air, clapped his hands in the small of his back and rocked on the balls of his boot soles, allowing himself a brief moment of feeling pleased. Comus out ahead had lit her taffrail lanthorns for the night, and the transports astern of her were doing the same. The column was ragged, not the beads-on-a-string perfection of a seasoned naval column, with some transports off each of Comus’s stern quarters, or HMS Sapphire’s stern quarters, but they looked to be only one cable, or a bit more, apart and managing decently enough.
This may not be as bad a prospect as I feared, Lewrie thought.
“Beg pardon, sir,” Lt. Westcott said, coming up from the waist with a sheet of paper in his hand. “Defaulters, I’m afraid. Damned near a dozen for Captain’s Mast in the morning.”
That was more than they had seen in a month aboard their old ship, and in the Reliant frigate, most of the sailors brought up on charges had been guilty of minor or trivial misdeeds, punished with deprivations less than the use of the cat-o’-nine-tails.
“How many serious defaulters?” Lewrie asked with a gloomy sigh.
“One fist-fight, one pissing on the lower gun deck, two quarreling or showing dis-respect to a Midshipman or petty officer, one who was trying to pilfer some jam from the galley, and the rest are either drunk, or drowsing on duty, sir.”
“Christ on a crutch,” Lewrie gravelled. “So much for a happy ship. Gun drill, weather permitting, in the Forenoon. Live powder and shot, for a change, then I’ll hold Mast after Noon Sights.”
“Very good, sir,” Lt. Westcott said with a rueful look, and a heavy, commiserating shrug.
Then again, things may not turn out well, Lewrie thought.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The winds swung more Northerly for a day or two, allowing their column to make their way West-Sou’west, almost on a beam wind, which was grand for the soldiers cooped up in the transports to accustom them to a ship’s motions, giving them their “sea legs”. It was good for maintaining the proper order of sailing, too, as they stood out beyond the Lizard and into the open Atlantic. Both Comus and Sapphire wreathed themselves in spent powder smoke for at least one hour each Forenoon to bring their gun crews back up to scratch, Lewrie’s hands most especially. For a warship in commission the better part of a year, her gunners were very rusty, and initially slow to run out and fire, or reload, nowhere near Lewrie’s, and Westcott’s, exacting standards. Westcott confided that the other officers had commented that former Captain Insley had been more than frugal with the expenditure of shot and powder, perhaps in worry that Admiralty might send him a harsh note for wasting too much of the stuff.
In the beginning, it seemed that the roars and explosions from the muzzles was so alien and terrifying a din that the guns crews were addled by it, stunned into confusion, and the proper steps of drill blasted from their heads, standing round stupefied, or fumbling like complete new-comes at their first exposure, without a clue as to how to perform the simplest task, afraid of their great charges.
It took a whole week before the 12-pounders on the upper gun deck and the 24-pounders on the lower gun deck could run in, load, run out, and fire somewhat co-ordinated broadsides. Aiming was what worried Lewrie after that. If he ordered the launch or pinnace away to tow an empty cask—on a very long tow-line!—it was good odds that his gunners would sink the boat! The best he could do was to fire off a 6-pounder and order a broadside fired at the feather of spray where the roundshot struck the sea, at once, and hope for the best. And that proved to be a very ragged second-best, with roundshot soaring off half a mile beyond, and raising splash pillars along half the length of the convoy.
Lieutenant-Colonel Fry had much better luck with his musketry, dumping empty kegs overside and having his Fusiliers volley at them in ripples of platoon fire. Of course, his soldiers were not expected to hit anything much beyond seventy-five yards!
Lewrie would have kept them at it more often, but for the wind and weather. Further out in the Atlantic, as they strove to attain at least the 15th Longitude, the winds came more and more Westerly, and at least twice a day all ships had to wear about from one tack to the other, then make long boards for at least six hours, making progress Westward on larboard tack, steering Nor’west, then wear about to sail on starboard tack to the Sou’-Sou’west to make progress Sutherly.
Some days were just too boisterous to call the hands to Quarters and cast off the bowsings and lashings, as the winds piped up and veered or backed, and the seas got up, and the decks were soaked with rain. At least it was warm rain. On those days, Sapphire’s crew was exercised on muskets and pistols, on cutlasses, boarding axes, and pikes. The ship’s Marines, much better shots, would fire a volley to create a rough point of aim in the sea close alongside, and the sailors would shoot at it before the myriad of shot-splashes would subside.
Discipline was another matter. There were some violations that had to be met with the “cat”. When holding Mast—almost every other day, it seemed—Lewrie tried to deal with the petty stuff by awarding the defaulters with deprivations; no tobacco for a week, no rum for a week, or putting men on only bread and water. Most sailors depended on those little things to make their lives the slightest bit tolerable, and being denied their grog or “chaws” usually raised groans of real pain from the condemned. Fighting, insubordination, showing dis-respect to petty officers and Mids, though, had to be punished to drive the point home and make the hands fearful of violating the stern discipline necessary aboard a King’s Ship.