HMS Hazard, page 1
HMS Hazard
HMS Hazard
David Donachie
Guilford, Connecticut
An imprint of Globe Pequot, the trade division of
The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Blvd., Ste. 200
Lanham, MD 20706
www.rowman.com
Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK
Copyright © 2021 by David Donachie
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Donachie, David, 1944– author.
Title: HMS Hazard / David Donachie.
Description: Guilford, Connecticut: McBooks Press, [2021] | Series: A John Pierce novel; #16 | Summary: “Can John Pearce resist the lure of a valuable capture and risk his ship in a dangerous battle to gain it, or will his duty come first?”—-Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021020671 (print) | LCCN 2021020672 (ebook) | ISBN 9781493060658 (hardcover; alk. paper) | ISBN 9781493063383 (epub)
Subjects: GSAFD: Sea stories. | Adventure fiction. | LCGFT: Sea fiction. | Action and adventure fiction.
Classification: LCC PR6053.O483 H63 2021 (print) | LCC PR6053.O483 (ebook) | DDC 823/.914—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020671
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020672
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
To my grandson Alex Donachie, a boy with a mind of his own
Chapter One
If anyone had suggested to a young John Pearce he would come to appreciate routine, he would have laughed at the notion. With nothing even approaching domesticity in his early life, such a thing had never been possible, while not very much had occurred since to alter matters. He’d spent his early years wandering the highways and byways of Britain in the company of a politically radical father, known to the world, or at least within the British state, as the Edinburgh Ranter.
A polemical orator, Pearce senior was intent, through fiery speeches and rancid pamphlets, on changing the living conditions of the politically disenfranchised, poor folk on whom an indifferent society bore down with endless hard knocks or total indifference. It was impossible, outside riot, for their voices to be heard, but Adam Pearce sought to convince them a change in their blighted lives was theirs to take, certain it would never be given.
Too many times, in a peripatetic existence, which had taken them all over the country, where they would lay their heads and take food was continually varied, no preparation for a future in which the business of the day was endlessly repetitive. Yet here was the very same John Pearce, in the early summer of 1796, in command of the 14-gun brig HMS Hazard, steeped in the constantly recurring and content to be so.
No ship of war could be run any other way, especially with a raw crew consisting mainly of so-called quota men. Every municipality in the country had been legally obliged to provide bodies in order to man a wartime fleet sorely short on numbers. It was hardly a surprise to find the citizens who ran these electorates despatched from their locality those least upright or naturally competent. Supposed to be leavened throughout the fleet, mixing the new with the experienced, malice had landed Pearce with too many of the former and too few of the latter.
New to the life and resentful, they had to be moulded into a crew able to sail the ship, while being willing to also fight and subdue Britannia’s enemies. It was the job of John Pearce and his officers, petty, warranted, and commissioned, to teach them their duty where it was appropriate, or force them to it when it was essential. A process begun in the calm waters of the Thames estuary only served to show the alarming depth of the task. The number of flaws this exposed was endless, while not enough time was afforded for remedy.
Obliged by the mission of which they were employed to weigh anchor, Pearce had finally put to sea, assured by the ship’s master of good weather. In doing so, Mr Williams had sailed HMS Hazard into a full North Sea gale that, by luck, Pearce and his crew had managed to come through unscathed. The experience had gone some way to blooding them, engendering a communal feeling of gratification in having survived what had been a true tempest. Only those with more knowledge of the sea knew how close they’d come to disaster.
His novices had, in the loosest possible sense, then participated in the taking of a merchant ship of indeterminate nationality. Here was a vessel that flew no flag and lacked a name on its stern, this having been dropped overboard on Hazard’s approach. It turned out to be an English vessel engaged in smuggling, sailed by a pair of vicious criminals called the Tolland brothers.
A coincidence almost too uncanny to accept, they were no strangers to John Pearce or his close companions, being men who laid, at his door, the theft of a ship and cargo, of which he was innocent. Given nothing could convince them they were mistaken, and the real culprit had disappeared, in revenge, they had tried to kill him on more than one occasion.
Both Tollands, along with those serving under them, had been decanted as pressed seamen into HMS Bedford. The 74-gun ship of the line, part of Admiral Duncan’s North Sea Fleet, was on blockade duty off the Texel, set to contain the Dutch, now allied to France. Given the conditions of the navy, when only peace would see them freed, it was as good as a prison, one which relieved Pearce of the burden of their presence.
What then to do with their unnamed ship, full of a valuable contraband cargo, without anything to identify the owner. It was assumed any documents it carried had been dropped over the side as soon as they identified who was approaching. So, with a degree of subterfuge, if not downright chicanery, Pearce had taken the nameless vessel in to Ramsgate, declaring it to be an enemy merchant ship and thus a prize.
The hull would be assessed by an Admiralty Court prior to a sale and the cargo auctioned, with the value of both going to the ship’s company. This held out a promise of hard coin for everyone aboard HMS Hazard, helping, amongst his so-called “volunteers,” to mitigate the feelings of a malignant fate.
If the money was not yet in their purse, it would be waiting for them when arrangements could be made to pay it out. This stood as a rare example of the promise of riches, always touted as there to be gained by joining the King’s Navy, being met. Too often it was nothing but a recruiter’s lie.
Beating down the English Channel into the prevailing westerly wind produced signs of improvement in some. Yet too many failed to rise above the downright clumsy, showing little natural aptitude for anything requiring dexterity. Given so few could be rated as competent, everyday tasks, outside the most simple, tended to require double the number usually employed: those to carry it out, overseen by the men who could instruct or correct matters when things went awry.
Pearce had hardly been off the deck the whole time since they’d weighed, his presence and aura of command necessary to ensure instructions given were fully carried out. That said, he had absolute trust in his two lieutenants. Hallowell and Worricker were both competent seamen, which left him well aware he would have been at a loss to run the ship without their equally tireless endeavours.
Other responsibilities went by the wayside. The commanding officer’s logs were left as rough notes, given there was too little time for accurate record keeping. As a captain lacking a schoolmaster, he was supposed to undertake the education of Hazard’s midshipmen. Gifted four raw youths, all of Scottish parentage, equally new to their occupation, meant there was much they required to be taught. All four would be required, in time, to assume positions of authority, which would include command of a section of the crew. Added to this was the responsibility that went with their role as inferior officers when it came to the standing of a watch.
If he could have spared the time to do so, Pearce would have enjoyed teaching these youngsters things at which he reckoned he enjoyed some competence: manners, deportment, plus the use of firearms and swordsmanship. Similarly, he would have been at home with sails, knots, and rigging. At one time as new to the profession as his tyro seafarers, time at sea had made him truly familiar.
He was less sure of his ground when it came to subjects in which it was unwise to delay the instruction of a putative naval officer. This was especially true when it came to mathematics, use of the sextant, and the kind of nighttime star mapping necessary to provide competence in the article of celestial navigation. This task was undertaken by his rather uninspiring master, he who had so badly misjudged the weather when they’d first cleared the Thames. Williams felt himself under a cloud and had offered, as a form of recompense, to devote two hours a day to this serious scholastic burden.
Bouts of seasickness were an obvious and serious impediment to efficiency, the “chops” of the English Channel being notorious in this regard. Even in reasonably good weather, the short, vicious waves, added to their uncertain impact, so unlike deep-sea rollers, had a deleterious effect, even on those long accustomed to the sea. Blue-water tars of many years’ experience could be reduced to misery. For the kind of landsmen who made up Hazard’s crew, the debilitating novelty was even worse.
Being an affliction that se emed never-ending, this rendered the wretchedness doubly hard to bear. Yet no allowance could be made for anyone suffering the malady; the ship and the duties required to sail her had to be carried out and completed regardless of the state of the crew. This led to some harsh but necessary treatment, not something John Pearce, at any stage in his life, would ever have foreseen himself imposing. But apply it he did, caring not if it endeared him to his crew or led them to curse him as a tyrant.
It was with palpable relief they made their pre-arranged landfall at Falmouth. In the calm waters of the Carrick Roads, once at anchor, the required flag saluted and a berth designated, the afflicted could begin to recover. The ship, the deck especially, could also be put to rights, and John Pearce could write a long letter to his lover, Emily Barclay, the mother of their infant son. Another was penned to his friend Heinrich Lutyens, a final missive to his prize agent, Alexander Davidson, repeating the details of the capture of the Ramsgate “prize.”
While this was happening, HMS Hazard was cleaned from stem to stern with diluted vinegar, especially below decks, where the effects of the last seven days were most obvious, while hammocks were washed and aired. Only when Mr Hallowell, the premier, was satisfied, was it passed as fit for a full inspection.
The fellow Pearce knew as Samuel Oliphant, his partner in the mission on which the ship was engaged, had gone ashore as soon as they made their berth. His task was to collect any last instructions sent down to Cornwall by Henry Dundas, the Minister of War in the Pitt government. It was on his need for information they were both employed, the task to assess the security of what had become a possibly less-than-solid Spanish alliance.
As captain, John Pearce was likewise obliged to go ashore, his duty demanding he visit the port admiral and pay his respects, though in no way was he obliged to state his business. Sailing under Admiralty orders, he had no requirement to be open about the mission that, on its own, would have rendered any meeting awkward. Senior officers, when probing for information, were unaccustomed to being stonewalled by a mere lieutenant, even if he was rated as a master and commander.
The nature of the officer dodging these enquiries made it doubly so, the name of John Pearce not being one to elicit much joy in any naval breast. Having got his step from midshipman to lieutenant on the express orders of King George, without a proper examination, he’d run a coach and horses through what the service saw as the proper way to promotion. The royal gift had been awarded for conspicuous bravery, but this did not, in any way, mitigate service hostility.
Added to this burden was his very name, it being coupled with that of his father, Adam, seen as a dangerous revolutionary by a profession riven with reactionary opinions. They thought Pearce senior akin to the kind of Jacobin who’d overthrown then cut off the head of the King of France, a man who would, if given the chance, do the same to their own sovereign.
Such abhorrence fell similarly upon the son, so the admiral had been frosty in the extreme, manifestly so in the way Pearce was not offered refreshment of any kind. No wine or coffee was provided, this being a pointed and deliberate insult. Such lack of even common decency was rendered doubly galling when, back on board, he found Oliphant, while ashore, had treated himself to a capital dinner and was happy to crow on the fact.
‘And, no doubt, a pint of good wine, when I was not even offered bilge water.’
‘Don’t blame me if your name stinks.’
‘Am I allowed to say your breath could be so described?’
This barbed comment said much about their relationship. It was one of a mutual dependence, which neither took to well, this being rendered more so by the treatment Pearce had just experienced, coupled with the amusement the story had provoked.
‘While you were filling your face, I was having to bite my tongue in the face of the most aggravating condescension. I was tempted to give the old booby a slap.’
‘You clapped in irons would have served us well’ was the sarcastic response.
‘Was there anything from Dundas?’
‘A great deal.’ Oliphant pulled a packet of letters from his coat pocket and threw them over. ‘He sent a courier down with the latest intelligence he has garnered, as well as a pair of homing pigeons.’
‘What have you done with them?’
‘They’re housed in your pantry, so make sure your man doesn’t make a mistake and cook them.’
Looking at the thickness of the bundle that had landed on his desk, Pearce asked for a summary, given they already had plenty of information, brought down from London while Pearce was trying to get Hazard ready for sea. Most of it related to the terms of the Treaty of Basle, which had ended the two-year-long War of the Pyrenees, fought on both the east and west coasts of Iberia.
The Dons had made early and substantial gains, but it didn’t last. Once properly deployed, the forces of revolutionary France had pushed them back over their own borders, so the Spaniards had been obliged to sue for peace, which produced a strange outcome. It had been assumed the terms came with a price, but the territory taken by a victorious French army was given up, the previous border restored, with no financial reparations demanded.
The question of what had been traded for such a generous settlement was now solved in the letters from Dundas. The Dons had ceded the eastern two-thirds of the Caribbean island they called Hispaniola, to give Paris possession of the whole, which would now be named Saint Domingue.
‘Possession?’ Oliphant scoffed. ‘There’s nothing to give up, the whole island is probably now under the control of ex-slaves.’
‘Who, if you recall, have pledged allegiance to France.’
The French no longer really controlled their third of the island; the slave revolt five years past, led by a Toussaint l’Overture, had sent packing any planters and their families who’d not be slaughtered. Yet he had quickly made known his loyalty to France, while the revolutionaries in Paris, to accommodate his demands, abolished slavery, a move much applauded by Pearce père et fils along with a goodly section of international opinion.
Control of the island by France was an outcome to seriously affect the balance of power in the region and not in favour of Britannia. It might not be as sound as Paris would wish, but anything that advanced French interests in those waters was taken as a threat to the British Sugar Islands.
‘Dundas thinks the French have done well, possibly too well for merely withdrawing their armies, so he fears there may be other concessions. Yet there’s also an assertion by the Spanish ambassador, who is desperate for another subsidy from London, that both peace and treaty are merely a delaying tactic to buy time. He has assured Dundas the Dons will take up arms once more, when they’ve rebuilt both their army and border defences and have the funds to pay them.’
‘He could be lying.’
‘Really’ came with the requisite amount of irony. ‘It matters not. Whatever he’s telling our government will be on instructions from Madrid.’
‘Where we, too, surely have an ambassador.’
‘He’ll be getting the same story.’
‘Which leaves much up in the air.’
‘He is at us again to proceed with all speed, so when you read the correspondence, take note of the dates. This tells you how much lingering in the Thames and your shenanigans with that merchantman have cost us in terms of time. The courier and his pigeons have been waiting for ten days.’
There was an underlying sense of injustice there. Oliphant was, in reality, no more than a passenger aboard Hazard and, as such, any gains that accrued from the aforesaid capture would normally do nothing to fill his purse. As a sop, Pearce had rated him as a midshipman, which, if it granted him something, ranked as tiny compared to those with whom he shared the wardroom. It was in the nature of sailors to talk of spending their windfalls long before they had them in hand, and he dined with the ship’s officers, so the difference in anticipated reward had to be a running if unmentioned sore.
‘Which tells anyone who cares to enquire,’ Pearce insisted, ‘Dundas is no sailor. It’s not unknown for ships to take a month to get from the Thames to the Lizard.’
