‘We carry nine lootenants,’ Bulkeley said, breaking the spell, ‘and a company of eight hundred and fifty – being short about thirty o’ that.’
Getting on for a thousand men within the confines of one ship. ‘Er, how many decks does she have?’ Bowden asked, for something to say, as they mounted the poop ladder.
‘Well, three gun-decks, o’ course – twelves, twenty-fours and thirty-two-pounders – but if you’re counting there’s seven under us, including the hold platform.’
He went on to explain the layout of the carronades on the quarterdeck and fo’c’sle, and signal handling on the after end. Moving to the break of the poop, he leaned over to point out Victory’s great double wheel, taller than the men who steered her, and the near fifty-foot sweep of quarterdeck abaft the main-mast.
Bowden said in wonder, ‘She’s a grand lady, Richard – must be a few years old now?’
‘Yes,’ chuckled Bulkeley. ‘Laid down for the Seven Years’ War in ’fifty-nine. Seen a few admirals too since then – Keppel in your American war, poor old Kempenfelt later and, o’ course, Jervis at St Vincent.’
Bowden blinked. She had started life in a very different age: halfway through the last century, before Captain Cook had charted the unknown regions, before Harrison’s chronometers, before even copper bottoms for warships. And now she was the most famous flagship in the world.
They went below to discover vast gun-decks, the gloomy orlop and forward, giant bitts for the anchor cable. ‘Twenty-four-inch cables, no less, so at a hundred and fifty pounds in every fathom and a four-ton anchor on the end, pity the capstan crew!’
Then it was up through the decks once more to the winter sky and dark complexity of rigging. The vast bellying main-course was the largest sail Bowden had ever seen – fully a hundred feet across and with an area on its own much the same as a respectable London townhouse. There were others and more, three masts in a towering pyramid of sea-darkened canvas, urgently drawing.
‘Everything’s on quite another scale,’ Bulkeley admitted, ‘and those grand sails are why we have near a thousand ton o’ ballast – that’s the weight of a whole frigate in our guts just to hold us upright.’
Pleased with Bowden’s expression, he continued, ‘The bo’sun says there’s twenty-six miles of rigging and a thousand pulley-blocks to go with it. She’s a hull nearly three feet thick at the waterline yet she’s the sweetest sailer on a bowline, eight or nine knots and I’ve seen eleven going large. Why, when the fleet’s at exercise—’
The visceral thunder of drums and the flat bray of a trumpet interrupted him.
‘Quarters!’ he said abruptly. ‘You’d better go.’
Bowden flew down the broad stairways among racing men to find his place in the lower gun-deck. Already the gun-ports were open on the weather side and the guns had been cast loose. It seemed an impossible seething mass of people impatiently crowding into the low-beamed space, the sharp shouts of petty officers the only sound apart from the fearful rumbling of the huge iron beasts.
It settled as gun-crews were mustered, taking their implements and standing expectantly with handspike, ram-rod or tackle-fall to serve the three-ton monster. These were the smashers, the greatest guns in the fleet, which could send a ball as heavy as two men could lift through a yard of solid oak at a mile.
And this was his station in battle.
‘Bowden, sir,’ he said, to the lieutenant standing by the fat trunk of the mizzen-mast. ‘I’m assigned here at quarters.’
The officer waited until the warlike bustle had subsided into disciplined silence, then said, ‘Stand by me, Mr Bowden, and mark well how things are done. You may learn something.’
Falling back respectfully, Bowden watched as gun-crews limbered up, fourteen to each gun, all looking to their gun-captain, stripped to the waist and deadly serious. And there beyond each gun another and another – sixteen of the great guns on this one side alone. When they spoke in anger surely none could stand against them.
The practice began. Brute force and corded muscles to run out the chest-high black gun; quoin, crow and handspike to aim it; a ballet of movements to sponge, wad and charge it before the deadly ball was cradled to the muzzle.
It was precision work of a high order: wielding six-foot rammers, heavy handspikes and the sharp, curled worm in the narrow working space between the cannon, the sequence of powder, priming and shot exactly timed – a fumbled thirty-two-pound ball rolling around could cause chaos on a crowded gun-deck.
After the sweating gun-crews were stood down, Bowden reflected that if this was what it was like in drill, how would it be when Victory went into battle in earnest?
Lieutenant Pasco chalked on the watch slate and handed it to the oncoming quartermaster-of-the-watch, ignoring Bowden until the set of the sails was entirely to his satisfaction. At night it was difficult to see aloft to catch the angle of the yards and he had his night-glass up to inspect the results of the trim carefully.
To Bowden this small act spoke so powerfully of what the Navy had become with, at its core, a professionalism that was second nature to every officer and man. There was no one about on the upper deck besides the watch to appreciate it on this cold night, no admiring or critical audience, but at this moment Victory was trimmed to perfection, as though the eyes of the world were upon her.
The watch settled down, in time-honoured fashion finding a lee and engaging in swapping yarns that grew taller with every telling. The men at the wheel would be relieved every turn of the glass and join them for a few hours.
Lieutenant Pasco, as officer-of-the-watch, was now the supreme commander of the three-thousand-ton fighting ship. If he was awed by the notion he showed no sign of it. ‘Right, then, young Bowden, tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself in His Majesty’s finest.’
He understood what was going on: this was a long watch and he was a new face, hopefully with a repertoire of anecdotes to hand. He answered modestly, ‘I started as a reefer in Tenacious, sixty-four, Captain Houghton . . .’
It was well received. All officers shared a common experience in aspiring to the quarterdeck and tales of the quirks and eccentricities of those set in authority were many. Later Bowden told at some length of his adventures in Minorca with an amusing account of one of their lieutenants a-spying with an improvised signalling system.
Pasco suddenly demanded, ‘What was the name of that lieutenant again?’
‘Kydd, sir.’
‘Thomas Kydd?’
‘That’s right.’
‘The same as was commander of Teazer brig-sloop, lately boarded both sides, fought ’em off but then foundered? We do hear of such in the Med,’ he added sardonically.
‘I was with him when he first commissioned her,’ Bowden said proudly.
‘Were you indeed? Then I’m to tell you he’s been something of a hero to me, we both coming aft by the hawse as we did. A hard horse, at all?’
‘We had our days,’ Bowden admitted. ‘Knows all the tricks, if you get my meaning. But I’ll allow he’s the very kind of officer I pray I’ll be one day.’
‘If we be spared. Now, look, where’s your post at quarters, younker?’
‘Lower deck, thirty-two-pounders aft.’
‘The slaughter-house. I’m l’tenant of signals – would it grieve you much should you leave ’em and join me on the poop-deck as signal midshipman? I’ve a place for a quick thinker brought up in the right ways.’
‘I’d be honoured, sir.’
Chapter 5