The bucklers had been removed from the hawse holes, the thigh-thick cables fetched up from the tiers, and bent onto the best bower and second bower anchors, and to the stern kedge anchors, in preparation for coming to anchor in Gibraltar Bay, and for the unfortunate accident of Gibraltar’s dangerous wind shifts which might leave them at the current’s mercy and sweep them past Europa Point and past the anchorages, forcing them to struggle, perhaps even towing themselves with ships’ boats, onto the Rock’s Eastern shore ’til a favourable slant of wind arose that could carry them back round Europa Point and into the bay proper, off the Ole Mole or the New Mole and the ancient Tuerto Tower, or, hopefully, right off the small town itself, which would be right handy for Lewrie’s shore visits.
“Should we enter ‘Man O’ War’ fashion, sir?” Lt. Westcott asked as the heights of the Rock hove into view, and Pigeon Island appeared off their larboard bows.
“Christ, no, Mister Westcott!” Lewrie quickly objected, laughing at the suggestion. “I’m not so sure of our people’s seamanship, yet. To go in ‘all standing’ and muff it’d be a hellish embarassment … not t’mention a good way t’run aground. I’ll leave that to the flashy fellows.”
Extremely well-drilled, and sometimes lucky captains, could go in “all standing”, then reduce every stitch of sail in a twinkling and coast to a stop to drop the best bower in one smooth operation, but there was “many a slip ’tween the crouch and the leap” as the old adage said.
“There they are, Mister Snelling,” Mister Yelland, the Sailing Master, pointed out to the Ship’s Surgeon. “Gibraltar to the North, and the high headland of Ceuta to the South.”
“The Pillars of Hercules,” Mr. Snelling marvelled, “that led to Plato’s fabled kingdom of Atlantis!”
“Beyond which the ancients would not go,” Yelland reminded him.
“But, they must have, Mister Yelland,” Snelling objected, “for how else did the Atlantic ports of Spain and Portugal, Roman Iberia and Lusitania, get their goods to the rest of the Empire? And, back in those days, were there not Roman provinces round the shoulder of North Africa, like Mauretania Tingitania? Did not Roman seafarers know of the Canaries?”
“Well, perhaps it was only the Greeks who feared to go beyond the Pillars, sir,” Mr. Yelland replied, looking a bit nettled for the landlubber to know more than he did.
“Aye, Mister Yelland,” Lewrie said, hiding his amusement. “The Romans held the Greeks in low regard, in all things. Though, no seafarers in the ancient world liked t’get too far out of sight of land.”
“Did that Mister Gibbons say much of that in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, sir?” Lt. Westcott slyly enquired, taking a moment from his strict watchfulness. He knew that Lewrie had found it slow going.
“Haven’t gotten t’that chapter yet, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said with a harumph to indicate that he’d been “gotten” for fair.
“And, there is Cabreta Point, just now becoming visible past Pigeon Island, sir,” Yelland pointed out.
“Do the latest charts show Spanish batteries, there, Mister Yelland?” Lewrie asked. “I’d admire to stand into the inshore variable currents as close as we can, and shave Cabreta Point, so we don’t get swept right past the bay’s entrance.”
Yelland looked to the commissioning pendant high aloft, then to the thin clouds that crowned the heights of the Rock, squinting in thought. “I cannot recommend a closer approach to Cabreta Point than two miles, sir,” he said at last, “which is very close to the usual entry to the bay.”
Lewrie paced aft a few steps to the double wheel helm, and the compass binnacle cabinet under the poop, to double-check their course. He then took a long look at the chart, pinned to the traverse board. The convoy still sailed in column on East by North, with a gentle wind from out of the West-Nor’west.
“Mister Yelland, I’d admire did we alter course a point to larboard. Do you concur?” he asked.
“Hmm,” that worthy silently mused for a long moment. “That puts us into the variable currents, but we’d have to abandon the main current within a few more miles, sir. And, closer to where we may safely go about North, into the bay. Aye, sir.”
“Signal to all ships, Mister Carey,” Lewrie called out to the signals Midshipman on the poop deck. “Alter Course In Succession, One Point To Larboard.”
“Aye, sir!”
An hour and a bit more, and I’m shot of all this shit at last, he told himself; If we can’t make a showy entrance, then we’ll make a safe one … and our prize can make up for “flashy”.
He found himself crossing the fingers of his right hand, most “lubberly” with his hand in a trouser pocket. He would not anticipate fresh victuals, clothing, or bedding washed in fresh water for a change, nor a long stroll ashore, nor a meal and a mild drunk in one of Gibraltar Town’s many taverns. To do so might jinx it, yet!
* * *
Once safely anchored by bow and stern, Lewrie had to keep mental fingers crossed against possible disaster, for the bay and the anchoring grounds were not the most secure sort of sea bottom, and Gibraltar was infamous for gales that seemed to whip up out of nowhere, sending many a ship ashore to pound themselves to pieces on the rocks. Lewrie had ordered 9-pounder guns dis-mounted and used as weights to keep the anchor cables from straining in a sudden blow, to keep the flukes of the anchors from dragging free.
He’d had sailcloth awnings rigged over the poop deck and the quarterdeck and forecastle, too, for protection from the harshness of the sun, and the rare rains. It might have been late Spring back in England, but it was already a warm Summer in these latitudes. There was no protection from the warmth, though, when he took the 25-foot cutter ashore to the town quays, wearing his best-dress uniform made of wool broadcloth, long stored away at the bottom of one of his sea-chests. That required the sash and star of his knighthood, since he would be reporting his presence to the local senior Navy officer, the Governor, Lieutenant-General Sir Hew Dalrymple, and, most likely, the spy-master Thomas Mountjoy. He also took his sack of laundry, leaving it to Pettus to find a washerwoman.
“Doesn’t look like much,” Lewrie commented as the cutter neared the quays. “Almost typical Spanish, or Italian.”
“Seems all soldiers, sir,” Pettus said, taking the view in and sounding a bit disappointed to see so many troops strolling the quayside streets, some of them Provost men on patrol. Gibraltar Town had no civilian mayor, but a Town Major.
“Some of ’em drunk’z Davy’s Sow,” Liam Desmond pointed out as he tweaked the tiller. “Ease stroke.”
“That sounds promisin’,” Patrick Furfy snickered, turning on his thwart to steal a quick peek ashore, a huge grin on his face.
“Wimmen,” Desmond added, looking expectant and hopeful.
Gibraltar Town appeared a jarring, civilian appendage to the Rock, for everywhere Lewrie looked, there were row upon row of troop barracks, storehouses, and a very busy parade ground, perhaps the largest flat place available. Regimental bands were at practise in a cacophony of tunes, and soldiers “square-bashed” by companies, scattered from one end of the parade ground to the other. Not all that far off to the Northern end of Gibraltar, where the land narrowed to a long and skinny neck, were the immense fortifications. Walls with parapets on several levels, bristling with cannons of all calibres, with loopholes for musketry, the famous towers and redoubts known to all Englishmen as the Devil’s Tower and the Round Tower, where British Marines, grossly out-numbered, had fought off the Spanish and the French during the War of The Spanish Succession in 1704, they all gave the impression of a titanic giant’s castle. From up there came the faint crackling-twig sound of musket volleys as some regiment or other practiced live-firing. The Lines, as the fortifications were known, would be defended as stoutly should the Spanish come against them again, as they had been in 1704.