On the Lee Shore, page 3
Chapter 2
Lines
Lines and yet more lines, everywhere I look, thought Clay, as he stood by the rail at the front of the quarterdeck of His Majesty’s frigate Titan. To his left was a solid line, the arrow-straight column of the main mast soaring upwards. The space all around him was full of the black lines of stays and shrouds, like the mesh of a cage against the grey overcast Plymouth sky. Then there were the softer hemp lines of the running rigging, attached at regular intervals along the quarterdeck rail next to him that rose up above his head like the parallel strings of an enormous harp waiting to be plucked.
There were lines of men too. The line of largely unknown officers he had been introduced to moments earlier when he arrived, a river of names that had flowed past him. Only the last of them provided any warmth to his welcome, and he had gripped Lieutenant Thomas Macpherson’s hand with genuine pleasure. The Scotsman’s bristling dark sideburns and erect figure had spoken to him of calm confidence, but he had gone now to resume his place beside the triple line of his marines that stood on the quarterdeck behind Clay, leaving him alone at the rail.
The main deck below him was packed with the members of the crew, arranged in their divisions. He could see no one familiar here at all, apart from the solid figure of Sedgwick who stood to one side at the bottom of the companion ladder. None of his sailor followers had joined the ship yet. He scanned the lines of men and saw a mixture of surly and resentful expressions. Some faces were full of anger, others were contemptuous, while most of the rest seemed to be simply indifferent. He felt fear knot in his stomach. I have never seen such a sullen crew, he thought. He could feel the hostility in their gaze like a force throbbing in the air as they stared up at him. He reached into the inside of his coat and drew his orders from his pocket. He paused for a moment to let the trembling in his hand still a little, and to make sure that his voice would hit the right note. He swallowed hard in the hope that he could lubricate a throat which was now suddenly dry, and then he started the formal process of taking command of the ship.
‘Orders from the Lord Commissioners of the Admiralty, addressed to Captain Alexander Clay of His Majesty’s Navy,’ he bellowed. ‘You are hereby requested and required, immediately upon receipt of these orders, to take command of His Majesty’s ship Titan.’ Clay read through the rest of the words that were his authority for his new position. He knew that once he had reached the end of the brief document, he would have legal authority over all the men gathered around him. And yet it was only a piece of paper, he thought, and would protect him as little as it had his predecessor.
By the time he reached the end of his commission, he had decided what he would do next. He turned towards his new first lieutenant.
‘Mr Taylor, I shall now inspect the crew. Kindly accompany me, if you please.’
‘Do you really think that is wise… ’ began the lieutenant, before he saw the look of determination on Clay’s face. ‘Aye aye, sir,’ he concluded.
Clay started with the marines. They all stood upright at attention, their immaculate red coats contrasting with the white pipe clay of their cross belts. He moved along the line of faces, each frozen into stillness and all staring past him at something high in the foremast. Which of you can I trust? wondered Clay, as he strode along the line and looked at each man in turn. None of you were much help to Captain Sheridan, but which of you were active in opposing him, and which just stood aside and did nothing?
‘You have a fine body of men there, Mr Macpherson,’ he said, as he reached the end of the line. The marine officer swept his sword out in salute.
‘Aye, they shall be, once I have had the leisure to lick them into shape, sir,’ he replied. Clay returned the salute, and then walked down the companion ladder and out onto the main deck.
The men’s hostility was all around him now. He could sense the animal power of it as if he had stepped into the centre of a bear pit. He took his time as he advanced down each line. Suppressed rage, unhappiness, indifference, he could see it all on the faces of his new crew. Not one of them bore any trace of welcome. He studied each with care, held their gaze and searched for clues. Which of you led the mutiny against Sheridan, and which of you was just swept along by the tide of anger, he asked himself. Whom can I trust, and whom must I watch? He stopped at one sailor who had a large rip in his shirt.
‘What is your name?’ he asked.
‘Prince, sir,’ replied the man, after a pause. ‘Ordinary seaman in the afterguard.’
‘And why is your shirt in such a state?’ he continued. He saw fear in the sailor’s eyes.
‘I just tore it on the pump, sir,’ he stuttered. ‘Earlier today, like.’
‘As we have only now encountered each other, Prince, I shall let it pass on this occasion; but in future I will expect you to appear at divisions properly dressed,’ he said. ‘Mr Taylor, see that the purser issues Prince with a new shirt.’
Another line and another row of hostile faces. Clay had almost reached the end when at last there was a change. A man was smiling, the gesture as welcome to him then as rain in the desert.
‘I know you,’ said Clay, his eyes narrowing with the effort to remember the long forgotten name. ‘Davis!’ he said at last. ‘Foretop man in the old Marlborough. You taught me how to long splice when I was just a nipper.’
‘That’s right, sir,’ replied the man. ‘And look at you now, a captain and all, beggin’ your pardon, sir.’
‘Good to have you on board, shipmate.’ Clay held out his hand, delighted at the opportunity to make some connection with his new crew. Davis shook his hand, and Clay carried on the inspection. There was still hostility, but at least he could now see a spark of interest on a few of the faces.
At the start of the final division he came upon a sailor who stood with legs apart and tattooed arms folded. He was a tall man, almost as tall as Clay, heavily built with a thick brown pigtail and piercing blue eyes. He stared at his new captain with an air of complete contempt. Clay stopped and held his gaze for a long moment.
‘What is your name?’ he asked.
‘Richard Sexton,’ a pause, ‘sir.’
‘Mind your manners, Sexton,’ muttered Taylor.
‘Aye aye, sir,’ said the seaman, not taking his eyes off Clay.
‘Do your duty, Sexton,’ he said, ‘and you shall have nothing to fear from me. Do you understand?’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ repeated the sailor, with no less contempt than before.
Once Clay had returned to the quarterdeck, he stepped forward again and rested both hands on the rail, where the whole crew could see him.
‘Men, I have seen your petition that you sent to the Admiralty,’ he began. ‘It was shown to me by Admiral Sir Charles Middleton himself, so you can be assured that it has been received at the highest level. Captain Sheridan has been relieved of his command, and I have been asked by Sir Charles to tell you that the allegations made in that petition will be investigated.’ A murmur of talk rolled around the main deck till it was hushed into silence by the petty officers. When it was quiet again, Clay continued.
‘In your petition you stated that you were all loyal to the King, and I have seen that loyalty in your eyes today. Now it is time for you to make good on that pledge. This fine ship has skulked in Plymouth long enough. We must go and do our duty to our King and our Country, and to return to join the rest of Sir Edward Pellew’s Inshore Squadron blockading Brest. We shall complete our stores today, and we weigh anchor tomorrow.’ He turned away from the rail.
‘Mr Taylor! Dismiss the men below, if you please,’ he ordered.
*****
‘What manner of salt pork is this that you’re trying to palm me off with?’ asked George Haywood, raising his face from the top of the hogshead. He had been sniffing with care along the seam between the wooden staves of the barrel, holding his nose close to the brine-soaked wood. ‘I am not taking this trash. It has been in the barrel at least three year if it has been a day. Why, I can smell the corruption through the very wood.’ The purser of the Titan wagged a warning finger in the direction of the Superintendent of the Plymouth Victualling Yard. ‘You must hold I was new born yesterday, to play such a base trick on me. If you have some rotten provisions you need to move, go and find yourself a vessel with a fool for a purser. Kindly replace these with something fresher. I have a tide to catch, and much work to do to get all this lot stowed away onboard.’
Although he spoke of his impatience to get away, the purser showed no immediate signs of hurry. He was stood on the quayside at Plymouth with his book of indents tucked under one arm and surrounded with various ship’s stores. Haywood was a small, intense man with lank ginger hair that hung down around his bald crown. Years of work as a purser, poring over manifests in the gloom of too many ships’ holds, had weakened his small hazel eyes so he now had to wear a pair of steel-framed glasses to read. But there was very little wrong with his sense of smell, either for finding rotten provisions or for detecting an opportunity to make some extra profit on the side.
‘Now Mr Haywood,’ smiled the superintendent. ‘I would not go so far as to say that this pork is rotten, but I will own that the casks might be a little older than is regular. One of my clerks has made a grave error, and this batch has been quite overlooked. All very vexing I am sure you agree, and a black mark against my yard if the Victualling Board was to learn of it. We have know each other for many a long year, so I thought you might oblige me with a little assistance in the matter.’
‘What did you have in mind?’ asked the purser. The eyes that peered over the top of his glasses glittered with avarice.
‘I am sure when these casks come to be opened, you will find that some of the flesh is like as not to be tolerable,’ suggest the superintendent. ‘Would you not agree?’
‘Perhaps I might be persuaded of that,’ said Haywood. ‘What proportion of the flesh do you hold to still be sweet?’ The superintendent stroked his chin for a moment.
‘I doubt that more than an eighth will prove to be inedible. I might be prepared to give you a discount of such on each barrel for your trouble. Which I would pay you in coin, now. Naturally there would be no need for such a transaction to appear on any of your ship’s indents.’ The purser of the Titan laughed aloud.
‘An eighth!’ he scoffed. ‘This meat is quite rotten, any fool can see that. I will take five eighths in coin and not a farthing less.’
‘Five eighths!’ protested the superintendent. ‘I would as soon tip the meat into the Tamar for the fish to have and then see what I can get for the empty casks.’
‘I did wonder why the fish hereabouts had such an ill savour,’ said the purser.
‘Come, Mr Haywood, it is not as if you and your fellow officers shall have to eat this pork in you wardroom! You can have it served up to those mutinous scum on that ship of yours. It will serve them back for their disloyalty to the King. I shall give you ten pounds if you will take the lot.’
‘Fifteen,’ snapped Haywood.
‘Twelve!’
‘Make that guineas, and we have a deal,’ said the purser, spitting on his hand and holding it out.
*****
The Titan left Plymouth at high water the following morning, and headed out into the green waters of the Channel. A light wind blew from the west, and watery spring sunshine sparkled off the tops of the long Atlantic rollers as they swept past the stern windows of the ship. Clay watched them go from behind his desk in the great cabin.
The room seemed enormous compared with his previous accommodation onboard the little sloop of war Rush. He had a choice of seven different windows through which to look at the sea, arranged in a sweep across the stern of the frigate, and if he should tire of the view through those, he had a further three lights in each quarter galley. The cabin’s size was further emphasised by the lack of suitable cabin furniture to fill it with. Clay’s desk and dining room table had fitted well in the little Rush, but were quite dwarfed in this space. Even the pair of massive eighteen pounder cannon that stood on each side of the cabin did little to fill the void. But if the cabin seemed empty, his desk was anything but. Piles of ship’s books and various sheets of notes in the captain’s spidery hand covered the surface, while more ledgers were laid out open on the floor in a half ring close around his chair. With a sigh Clay returned to his work, until he was disturbed by a knock at the cabin door.
‘Enter!’ he called across the room. ‘Ah, Mr Taylor, do come in and take a seat, I pray. May I offer you some of this excellent coffee? Hart! Another cup for Lieutenant Taylor, if you please.’ While the two men waited for his steward to bring the cup, Clay studied the first lieutenant of the Titan. He was a man of medium build with short, iron-grey hair, in his late-forties. His face was a kindly one, with crow’s feet that fanned out from the corners of his warm brown eyes when he smiled. His skin had been weathered to a deep shade of brown from long years of sea service, and yet he is still only a lieutenant, thought Clay to himself.
‘How many years seniority do you have in the Navy, Mr Taylor?’ he asked.
‘Three and twenty years in total, sir,’ replied the lieutenant. ‘Twenty of those as a lieutenant. I joined as a master’s mate from the merchant service at the start of the American War, and passed for lieutenant a few years later.’
‘That is a prodigious time to spend as a lieutenant,’ exclaimed Clay. ‘I collect you have not had much fortune in the matter of promotion, then?’
‘No sir, not really,’ said Taylor. ‘In truth I have lacked the connections to have been preferred in the service, and have not been fortunate enough to gain promotion through success in battle. Between the wars I was unable to secure a post in the navy, what with so much of the fleet laid up in ordinary, so I returned to the merchant service. I was master of an east coast collier bringing coal from Newcastle to London, which may have served to hamper my prospects.’
‘Perhaps it might,’ said Clay, studying his new subordinate. But for a couple of bloody actions and a fair slice of luck, that could so easily be me, he thought. ‘Well, we are at war now, Mr Taylor, and bound for the French coast. It would be strange indeed if there were not to be some opportunities for you to distinguish yourself presently.’
‘I do hope so, sir,’ he replied. ‘The last action I saw was the Battle of the Saintes under Rodney back in eighty-two.’
‘But this war has been going on for over four years!’ exclaimed his captain. ‘Has there really been no action at all in your time onboard the Titan?’
‘Your predecessor was not, perhaps, what you might describe as an active commander, sir,’ said Taylor, avoiding his new captain’s gaze.
‘So it would seem,’ said Clay. ‘But for us to succeed in battle we must first have a well found ship, with some trust and goodwill in existence between the quarterdeck and the crew. From what I have seen so far we stand wholly in want of such a relationship. Instead we have as surly a body of men as I have ever come across.’
‘At least they are no longer in open revolt against their captain, sir,’ said the lieutenant. ‘That is progress of sorts.’
‘Not in open revolt, Mr Taylor!’ he repeated. ‘Perhaps I should be pleased that the crew have at least permitted us to weigh anchor? We are still very far from being a happy ship, and I need your assistance in helping to change matters.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the first lieutenant. ‘What can I do to aid you, sir?’
‘I would like to have the particulars of what transpired to make the men rebel in the first place?’ asked Clay.
‘By all means, sir,’ began Taylor. ‘Firstly you should understand that we had been part of the blockade of Brest for almost four months, right the way through the winter. As a part of the Inshore Squadron our role is stay close to the Brittany coast. It is a savage lee shore at the best of times, especially during foul weather. I cannot start to count the number of westerly gales we had to endure, each one trying its best to drive us onto the rocks. Conditions were very difficult on board, with long periods when the men had little opportunity to rest or to dry their clothes. Once we went for ten days together when it blew so hard the galley fire could not be lit to give anyone on board the comfort of a hot meal.’
‘Trying conditions, I make no doubt,’ said Clay, ‘Still, wet clothes and storms are a sailor’s lot. They are hardly occasion for a mutiny. Doubtless the other ships on blockade suffered the same?’
‘I dare say they did, sir,’ replied the first lieutenant. ‘We’d had a deal of grumbling from the crew over the past few months, but then we had some fresh agitation driven by other matters. Some of the complaints were of a general character, principally about low pay, while some were more specific. For example, the men were very unhappy about the clothing that was being issued. Mr Haywood, our purser, had secured some slops that were of a rather deficient quality.’
‘Had he?’ said Clay. ‘Was that why that sailor’s shirt was torn yesterday? Prince, I think his name was.’
‘Almost certainly, sir,’ replied Taylor. ‘And as the cost of the men’s clothes are taken from their wages, you can understand their concerns.’
‘So how did Captain Sheridan deal with all of this?’
‘Very robustly indeed, sir,’ replied the older man. ‘He had all those that had complained punished, and matters seemed to die down for a time. It was when we left our station to return to Plymouth to resupply that matters truly became unpleasant. We were a day out from Plymouth in a gale and we sent the men aloft to reduce sail. The captain was unhappy with the manner in which the crew went about their duties, and declared that he would flog the last man off the yard. That made them work rather more briskly, and unfortunately one man did fall to his death.’
