Cole Peabody was far from happy – not that many would have known, given he had been miserable for months now – before he had even been brought aboard HMS Semele as a pressed hand. Prior to coming a cropper he and his mates had enjoyed what they saw as an enviable life.
When in the Low Countries’ port of Gravelines they had money to spend on pleasure, and did so lavishly. Time at sea, while dangerous given they were engaged in cross-Channel smuggling and the excise-used cannons and muskets, tended to be of short duration; once their illicit goods were landed and sold it was home to Ramsgate where Cole was treated as a man of parts.
Life had not been all roses; working for the Tolland brothers, who owned the ship on which they carried their contraband, had never been easy. The older brother Jahleel had a temper to make Old Nick cautious. If his younger sibling Franklin had seemed more sensible he was yet a fellow of whom to be wary. Not that he held either in regard now: the pair had abandoned Cole and his mates to the press, no doubt buying themselves off HMS York, a receiving hulk into which John Pearce had dumped them all.
‘Can’t be worse than what we had, Cole.’
‘Who knows, Cephas? You was flogged on a whim by that sod Barclay and who’s to say where we’s going won’t be worse?’
Over the months since they had been sent from the hulk, Peabody had come to exert a semblance of control over his equally unfortunate mates. Cephas Danvers, Fred Brewer and Dan Holder were, like him, ruffians and they looked and acted it. They had held themselves apart from the rest of the crew of Semele as being of a different stamp to men they saw as dupes. What fool would sign up for the King and a pittance when they could be free spirits and rake in money by running smuggled goods?
Even men forced to serve, and there were a number aboard the seventy-four, they disdained as too low to consort with. Only a chump would allow himself to be taken up by the press, a fact known to the whole quartet, who had spent their lives either avoiding such gangs or when they could not do so, fighting them to a standstill with knives and clubs to remain free.
They knew themselves to be hard bargains and behaved like it. They would have been pleased to know that the men watching them over the side were glad to see their backs, for they had been nothing but trouble to the lower deck as long as they had slung their hammocks there. Their divisional officer was likewise relieved; it would have been hard to admit the truth to anyone, but he had been cautious of men he reckoned were no strangers to dark deeds and he knew he should have been harder on them.
‘That ship we’re headed to has an admiral’s flag aloft, Cole, do you note that?’
‘So it has, Fred,’ Cole replied looking up, before calling to one of the oarsmen. ‘What’s the name of the barky, mate?’
‘Britannia,’ came the whispered reply as the mid in charge of the cutter, young and fresh-faced, loudly called for them to be silent.
‘Happen that nipper might need a midnight swim,’ opined Danvers.
‘Belay that talking there or your first sight of the flagship will be a grating.’
‘Beggin’ your indulgence, young sir,’ Cole called, ‘we’s new to your ways.’
‘By damn you’ll learn soon enough.’
‘And so might you, baby face,’ Cole whispered to himself.
A lieutenant was waiting to list them in the muster book and to assign them to individual mess tables but that did not hold. A word here and there, plus the odd threat, soon got them messing together as a group. Their table was hard by the lower deck 32-pounder cannon that they would work in battle. Following on from that, the next task was to so intimidate the other members who shared their mess as to ensure that most of the mundane duties required to be carried out fell on them.
A ship of the line that had been at sea for two years was a settled place; the wardroom officers knew their compatriots’ foibles and had learnt to live with those they found annoying. On the lower decks there had been jockeying when first assembled, sometimes coming to blows but those too had long been resolved; a new draft revived old problems and none more than a quartet so clannish and determined.
‘There’s one or two eyeing us up to put us in our place.’
Cephas said that to three lowered heads as the four conversed in undertones. What he was relating they expected; a first rate, supposed to have an eight hundred strong crew, had its hierarchy on the lower deck and some of them would not take kindly to the notion of the ex-smugglers muscling in.
There were two ways to deal with such a problem: by handing out a good hiding to the top dogs or, and this Cole favoured, by never upsetting them and pointing out that they were prepared to fight their corner, so harmony served everyone best, for bloodshed was certain.
‘Had words with some,’ added Brewer. ‘No chance of coin in this bugger lest we bring John Crapaud’s fleet to a contest.’
‘You might get more’n coin if that occurs, Fred, you might get a bit of round shot up your arse.’
‘Only happen if he was running away, Cole.’
‘Which, Cephas, we must set our mind to do first chance presented. This is a new berth and they knows us not well. Word is we goes regular to Leghorn for victuals.’
‘Where in the name of Christ is Leghorn?’ Dan Holder asked.
‘How would I know?’
‘We’s a long way from home, of that I is certain.’
‘Its land, mate. Put my feet on good earth and I’ll find a way to my hearth, even if we ’as a rate of miles to cover.’
That did not produce much in the way of enthusiasm, even if it had been a constant theme ever since their misfortune at Buckler’s Hard, where Pearce had outfoxed the Tollands and taken them prisoner. They had vowed to desert at the first opportunity, only such a thing never occurred. Ralph Barclay had been a mean sod with liberty even to those he trusted, and they were few. The chances of these four ever getting ashore on leave had been nil.
Added to that they had missed out on the prize money paid out for the First of June battle, which had lined the purse of every man on the seventy-four from the great cabin to the meanest nipper, and that rankled. Fate was a cruel mistress, as Cole Peabody had seen the need to constantly remind them.
‘An’ she has set us on the ship with not a pot to piss in.’
That led to talk of bloody revenge on the Tolland brothers for dragging them into this situation in the first place and then leaving them to their fate, braggadocio and distance allowing them to forget that they had lived in mortal fear of Jahleel. Even that paled when the name John Pearce was mentioned; if the Tollands would shed his blood, these men intended – should they ever meet Pearce again – to skin him alive and then burn what was still breathing.
‘Pity, seems to me,’ Cole would remind them, hissing through lips lacking in teeth. ‘There’s as much chance of coming across that bastard as a pig flying to the masthead on its own fart.’
‘They says God provides, Cole.’
‘Not any one we worship, Dan.’
There being a constant stream of coastal traffic between Naples and the other ports of Italy, finding a vessel to take him to Leghorn posed no problem for John Pearce. From there he could get aboard any of the ships sent for revictualling and thus on their return back to San Fiorenzo Bay. The tiny cabin he got on the trader was filthy, which annoyed him, he now being accustomed to the cleanliness of a British warship, but he comforted himself that it would not be a journey of long duration.
Like all ships it creaked and groaned as timbers moved and ropes stretched, perhaps being old and poorly cared for more than most, especially when changing course. Carried out with none of the efficiency of a king’s ship, this tended to be a noisy and shouty affair – certainly enough to wake him from his slumbers and to wonder why what he was hearing seemed to have a note of alarm about it.
In a stilted conversation with the master the following morning he learnt that, under a clear sky and near full moon, a large warship had been spotted sailing south under full sail. Fearing it to be French and afraid to risk being taken as a prize, the course had been rapidly altered to close with the land but the vessel had shown no interest in the small trader and had sailed on without itself altering course.
‘Probably Neapolitan,’ was John Pearce’s opinion, which once it had been understood got him a shrug.
The drill on board HMS Semele was that set by the standing orders. The crew were roused out before dawn to man the guns, which were loaded and run out. Ralph Barclay was on deck as the sky lightened to range around the seascape with a telescope resting on a midshipman’s shoulder. He was not alone; every officer on the ship was likewise alert, for this was ever seen as a time of vulnerability in hostile waters.
Sure that no enemy had snuck up on them in the hours of darkness – the moon state made no difference – he waited till he could, as the mantra had it, ‘See a grey goose at a quarter mile’. There being nothing in sight but the odd fishing boat he could give the order to Mr Palmer to carry on, which began the job of worming and housing the cannon, then swabbing the decks before they were flogged dry.
If Ralph Barclay saw the looks directed at him in his time on deck, or as he departed, none of them friendly, he paid them no heed. He had no desire to be loved by the crew: he wished to be obeyed and promptly, with the requisite punishments available to those who failed to meet his exacting standards.
In his absence the great cabin had been cleaned with watered-down vinegar, as it was every day, and the odour of that stung Barclay’s nostrils as he sat with a cup of strong coffee and contemplated what lay ahead, this as the hands were now piped to breakfast.
Opposite him sat Cornelius Gherson, a man who had been roped more than once into the affair of his captain’s troubled marriage. His solution to the problem of Emily Barclay and her desertion – hinted at, if never stated, but understood nonetheless – was that to seek to repair the union was a waste of time; a permanent end to the problem was the only viable answer.
‘It won’t wash,’ Barclay said, when it was once more alluded to. ‘If the whole fleet does not know what I am about then they soon will, for Hotham will have some explaining to do and I don’t see him being shy in letting on my motives.’
‘Irate captains?’
‘As I would be myself if the shoe was on the other foot.’
Gherson looked over his employer’s shoulder then, out of the salt-caked casements to the startling blue of the sea, his mind on the man’s wife. She was a beauty and would still be that, not yet twenty years old with long auburn hair, fair skin, a delectable figure and a very becoming countenance enhanced by light freckles. What she also had was a waspish tongue and he had been lashed by that more than once.
On initial acquaintance he had made it known that she was, to him, an alluring prospect. Being vain, Gherson had fully expected the woman to be equally attracted to his person – after all, he had enjoyed great success in such matters before – though he was then obliged to recall that his previous dalliance with another man’s wife had come perilously close to getting him killed.
Emily Barclay had rebuffed him in the most vicious and to him unwarranted way, not once but repeatedly, which had turned attraction into dislike and through his own anger into hate. Her husband was being weak in the head to think a woman like that would come back to him, twice her age and not much to look at either, with his heavy dark jowl and ruddy-red cheeks.
‘The task, Gherson, if we find she is in Naples, is to get her aboard the ship. Once I have her confined well, I shall make her see sense.’
‘Indeed, sir,’ came the sceptical reply; Barclay had tried to make her see sense before and failed miserably.
‘And in order to do that you must come ashore with me and put out feelers, for I cannot be seen to do so. Duty demands that I call upon our ambassador but you can act the free agent.’
‘I will be in a place where I lack the tongue of the natives.’
‘I know you will need an interpreter, Gherson, but when you charge me for his services have a care not to try and dun me as you have in the past.’
‘Money will be required to loosen tongues as well.’
‘Some of which your sticky fingers will be reluctant to part with, I daresay.’
Gherson made no protest at this growling accusation; he had long given up trying to persuade Ralph Barclay that he was careful with his money because he had never been believed. That the man had the right of it induced no guilt, yet such a response underlined what he had come to realise quite quickly in their relationship: his employer did not trust him one little bit. This was a fact not to be taken personally for the man was a stranger to dependence, his attitude being, after a life in the King’s Navy, that anyone who could would steal from him and, as long as it was within reasonable bounds, he could let it pass. He was not beyond the odd bit of peculation himself, of the kind that even sharp-eyed Admiralty clerks would fail to spot. It was easy to despise Ralph Barclay, especially for a man who applied the same to most people he met. Gherson was adroit with figures and no more honest than his employer, able to so construct accounts in a way that hid well the minor felonies while diverting some for his own purse. To be insulted, as he regularly was by the man before him, he would abide since he was a source of income that was decent now and could grow to a much more lucrative one if he ever became an admiral and a fleet commander.
Certainly in his daydreams Gherson looked forward to the day when he could tell Barclay what he really thought of him, but such a dawn was a long way off. That accepted it was common for him to ponder on things that might go some way to redress the imbalance between them and such a possibility occurred to him now.
If he found Emily Barclay in Naples, perhaps the chance would arise to take from her that which she would not surrender willingly, a thought that had him wriggling uncomfortably in his chair. Barely aware of the shouts aloft and the sound of running feet, he was brought to the cause of the commotion as a midshipman knocked and entered.
‘Mr Palmer’s compliments, sir, but two sail have been spotted on the horizon and the lookout reckons them to be warships by their canvas.’
‘Nationality?’
‘Not yet established, sir, all we have is a sight of their topgallants.’
The yawn from the captain was both studied and deliberately theatrical and if it impressed the midshipman as a sign of sangfroid it failed to fool Gherson. ‘Ask Mr Palmer to alter course to close and please let me know when that has been established.’
‘We know they cannot be ours, sir, given there are none of our vessels in these waters.’
Gherson saw Barclay swell up. But before he could issue a sharp reprimand to the cheeky youngster the lad was gone, with the captain saying, ‘Pound to a penny they are out from Naples.’
It took a whole glass of sand to disabuse Ralph Barclay and take him onto the quarterdeck with Devenow right beside him, for there was a fair swell and he risked a fall while using a telescope. The sightings were hull up now and many an eye was ranging over them.
He had aboard men who had served a long time in the navy and they knew the lines of the vessels they had spotted. They were French by design and, having identified HMS Semele as British, if not by name, they soon put up their helm and ran for safety, having seen her flags and reckoned on her size and armament.
Duty demanded he give chase. He commanded a well-found vessel and one that could be said to be fast for a seventy-four, being very fresh of the stocks and he commanded a crew that had already tasted prize money and were eager enough for more. If frigates, which they were, could normally outsail a ship of the line, luck might come to their aid and carry away something on an enemy vessel, canvas or a spar, perhaps one in panic bearing too much aloft.
Added to that they were running from safety; there was no harbour or bay outside of the southern French coast where they could anchor and not be vulnerable. The meanest tactical mind had to reckon that they would seek to come about and reverse the course in the hours of darkness and that, with luck and the right course, might put the seventy-four within long range of their decks.
‘An opinion, Mr Palmer?’
That made the premier blink; his captain was not one to seek the views of others.
‘We have no notion of their qualities, sir.’
That required no further explanation: were they well manned, for the French Navy had suffered much from the Revolution, most tellingly in its upper ranks? Many vessels seemed now to be commanded by men who had not previously been ships’ captains. How long had they been at sea and where had they sailed to, for warm Mediterranean waters were faster to foul a hull than the cold Atlantic?
If HMS Semele could get close enough by a well-worked chase, would a pair of frigates reckon that to fight gave them a chance of glory – not in terms of gunnery but by being able to manoeuvre more quickly and sting a larger opponent?
‘I think we know the calibre of our enemies, Mr Palmer. They are inclined to avoid battle are they not, which we can see before our very eyes?’
‘True sir.’
‘I think we must pass on what would be a fruitless chase that might take days. We shall raise Naples before we lose daylight, so let us resume our course and rue the fact that we did not come upon yonder fellows close to and at first light.’
The feeling of anticlimax was palpable and even an insensitive soul like Ralph Barclay could feel it, which had him step before the binnacle and glare along the deck as if to challenge anyone to speak or even scowl. That he held while the orders were being given to resume their original course, the sails hauled round and sheeted home, no one willing to catch his eye.
The smirk on Gherson’s face as he passed his tiny cubicle infuriated Ralph Barclay, but the reprimand died on his lips; with what he was about he needed this man too much to chastise him now.
John Pearce was landing at Leghorn by the time HMS Semele raised the channel running between the Isla Procida and the promontory of Bacoli, the sun sinking to the west, which meant any attempt to land would have to wait till morning. Such a vessel could not come close to Naples without it caused excitement and long before she dropped anchor in the wide bay word had been sent to the British Ambassador to tell him that a capital ship of his nation’s navy was in the offing.
‘Emma, my dear, we must prepare to receive the man in command.’
‘Do we know of him?’
‘How could we?’
‘A stranger, then. Let us hope that he is of the entertaining variety. Too many of these naval fellows are dullards.’
The Chevalier smiled. ‘I have known you to find one or two entertaining, my dear.’
‘One or two, yes, but no more than that.’