The Admiralty's chosen name was to be Proteus, a Greek sea-god, but, came the day when the bands, the crowds, the dignitaries, and the Church representatives had turned out for the celebration, a retired Rear-Admiral who, at the moment, had been filled with more brandy than sense, and at the nagging of his myth-laden wife, who had been simply besotted with the newly popular tales published by the blind Irish poet O'Carolan and an host of others, cried out, "Success to his Majesty's Ship… Merlin!" as he hoisted his glass to her and drained it off, just as the last restraining props had been sawn through, and a gasp had arisen, and the band nigh-stumbled to a cacophonous halt.
One simply didn't name a Protestant Christian King's ship, one specifically built to kill Catholic Spaniards and atheistic Frenchmen in the most efficient manner, after a pagan wizard and heathen Druid… even if Merlin had been such a boon to fabled old King Arthur!
HMS "Merlin" had begun to slide down the greasy ways into the Medway, 'til another senior officer in better mental takings, and relative sobriety (perhaps one without a termagant wife in tow!), quickly got to his feet, seized a full glass, and corrected things with a loud cry of "Success to His Majesty's ship Proteus!"
At the instant, the frigate had stuck quite solidly on the ways!
Talk of greater consternation! It was not until an Irish sawyer who'd helped build her, with his little boy at his side, had gone down the slipway and had stood under the ship's bows, right beside her cutwater; had whispered something to her to this day unknowable, then the wee lad had given her the tiniest shove, more like a love pat, in point of fact, before Proteus/Merlin had given out a soft groan, then had allowed herself to be launched, sliding into the river, as sweet as anything!
Newly "posted" Alan Lewrie was, in fact, her second captain. A bit after her launch, whilst still completing rigging, her first commanding officer and his cousin, her Chaplain, both Anglo-Irishmen landowners in the big way over hundreds of poor Irish cottagers, rowed back from shore one dead-calm night. Not a breath of wind stirred, with not a ripple to disturb the Medway's surface, yet Proteus had heaved a slow roll starboard, steepening the boarding battens to dead-vertical, and the first captain and her Chaplain and been heard to utter shouts, as both suddenly lost their grips-both were abstemious, and sober as judges, so it was reported later. The Chaplain well…
He fell backwards, striking his head on the gunnel of the ship's boat. He sank out of sight at once, and his body was never found, and, while her first captain had managed to cling to the boarding batten steps, he had claimed that it felt as if the man-ropes had stung him or bit him as hurtful as wasps!
And, not a week after, said captain was found raving and crying in his nightshirt, dashing about the quarterdeck, or cowering in sheer terror in his cabins, swearing that Proteus had murdered his cousin, and was out to kill him, too! Were his family not rich, he could have ended up in Bedlam in London, supplementing his half-pay (it took rather a bit of doing for a senior officer to be struck off the Navy List for any cause other than dropping stone-cold dead in those days!) off the poking-stick and water-squirt concessions offered those who toured the place and wished to stir the inmates up from catatonia.
At that point, enter Capt. Alan Lewrie, lucky, again, to get himself such a fine, spanking-new frigate. Or, so he had thought, for not a fortnight later, Proteus had fallen down the snaking Medway to the Nore anchorage, right into the heart of the Mutiny! One mutineer in particular, whom Lewrie himself had recruited off the receiving ship (he'd turned out to be a former Midshipman Rolston back in 1780, when Lewrie first donned King's Coat as a "Mid," a little fiend who had been responsible for a sailor's death and broken to Ordinary Seaman), stoked Proteus's own rebellious cabal of mutineers, and had tried to arrange the murder of all her officers, warrants, and gentlemanly Midshipmen.
In the end, Capt. Lewrie, kept from being sent ashore as the other officers and captains were by the rebellious committee, had won enough loyal sailors and Marines to launch a rebellion of his own… with the rather embarrassing help from the roughly two dozen prostitutes fetched out to the ship by the bumboatmen-pimps, who'd usually serve as temporary "wives" by sailors with money for their "socket fees," supporting them on shares of their rations, rum issues, and smuggled spirits. The mutineer committee had declared that all women must stay aboard the rebelling warships, long after the sailors' last coins had been, spent, so the doxies had been feeling a touch rebellious themselves!
Indeed, HMS Proteus was one of the few warships that had managed to escape, under fire from mutinous ships of the line, to join up with Adm. Duncan's much-reduced squadron, which kept watch on the Batavian Dutch Republic's coasts to daunt the Dutch Navy from leaving port to join with a French fleet… after dropping off the whores, and those mutineers they'd made prisoners. It had been reckoned notorious that Capt. Lewrie had sent letters to both Admiralty and Parliament asking that the women receive monetary rewards and letters of thanks for the patriotic and courageous aid they'd offered!
The Captain had also sent a note-of-hand to his London solicitor, ordering that each of the prostitutes be paid a more-than-decent sum "for services rendered!" and what the Crown, Society, and Capt. Lewrie's wife thought of that, well…
And when that Rolston had died, now that was eerie, too…
A transfer from Proteus to a coaster they'd met, hired to take prisoners to the authorities at Sheerness; Rolston coming on deck in chains and shackles, cursing Lewrie for his luck-there it was, again-for how else could one explain how Rolston could swing his cutlass for a killing, beheading blow, but damme if the Captain hadn't deflected it with his tinpenny-whistle! and if the Good Lord, or the pagan sea-god Lir, hadn't been looking out for him, then please explain it!
Then, when Rolston had started down the boarding battens, with man-ropes in hand, damme if Proteus hadn't heaved a slow roll to windward, and Rolston had cried out, hands springing open as if something had stung his palms, and had fallen into a round pool of lanthorn light 'tween both vessels, surfacing one last time, and looking as if he was floating in a circle of odd yellow-green light, as if sinking into the very eye of a great sea-monster, then had seemed to be sucked down, and howling a final shriek of utter horror!
After a collective shudder of recalled awe, the bottle of port made another quick circuit of the table, all of them feeling as dry as dust, of a sudden.
"After that, we played the Dutch a merry jape, sir," Lt. Devereux of the Marines told Urquhart. "We spent weeks close inshore of the Texel, hoisting false flag signals to the fleet they feared was just over the horizon, and pretending to reply to questions… even if Admiral Duncan had barely a handful of old sixty-four gunners present, 'til the Nore Mutiny was settled, and he was re-enforced."
Urquhart certainly knew what had happened, once the winds had come fair; the Dutch fleet had sailed, but had been caught upon a lee shore and nearly annihilated, and Proteus, it seemed, had played her own significant part in the battle, engaging a larger Dutch frigate and forcing her to strike after a boarding action. Capt. Lewrie had been seriously wounded in the arm, but had lived. His uncanny luck had held once more, for his arm had not required amputation, as most broken-bone wounds would have done. And that was why the gold medal for the Battle of Camperdown hung on his chest alongside the one for Cape St. Vincent!