“There is always the off-chance that a laminate replacement mast could be fashioned, Sir Alan,” Captain William Lobb told him as they stood in the bustle of the Gibraltar Dockyards. Lobb had taken up his predecessor’s task of building 36-foot gunboats for the defense of the vast anchorage, even though the many larger and better-armed Spanish gunboats that had lurked over at Algeciras and up the rivers were no longer a threat, and if a French army showed up to lay siege it was a given that the Spanish would burn them before surrendering.
“Laminated,” Lewrie repeated. “I am not familiar…”
“One constructs several courses of vertical timbers round some much lighter and slimmer core, sir,” Lobb expounded, “much like the Romans formed their fasces … the bundles of axes on long shafts as a symbol of power, and justice. One shaft would snap when put under strain, but a bundle would be as rigid as a single thick mast or spar. It could be made, but, as you can see, suitable planking long enough to reach from the keelson and partner timbers to the height of the main top are simply not readily available, even less so than a one-piece replacement mainmast, unfortunately.”
“And all those pieces would have to be nailed together, toed I suppose, then bound with iron hoops?” Lewrie asked.
“Exactly so, Sir Alan,” Lobb sadly agreed, “and, as you can see, most of the lumber here in the yards run about twelve feet long, so it would require a special order from a home yard for pieces of the proper length.”
“So, I’m stuck here ’til the bottom rots out of her, is that what you’re saying, Captain Lobb?” Lewrie despaired, even allowing himself a slight audible groan, and a tooth-baring wince.
“I fear so, sir,” Lobb said with a sad shrug of his shoulders. “In my last report to Admiralty, I expressed my frustration, and I do trust, your frustration as well, that I do not see a timely solution. You might have better luck sailing her home and placing yourself at the mercy of Portsmouth’s artificers.”
“Mercy, sir?” Lewrie scoffed. “They have none!”
“We’ve done the best we could…,” Lobb began.
“I know you have, sir, and I’m grateful,” Lewrie told him.
“We’ve scarfed in and bound … plugs, as it were, to stiffen your lower mainmast,” Lobb said, taking off his hat to mop himself with a pocket handkerchief for a moment, “and I daresay that they, along with your bracing anchor stocks and rope woolding, will hold up well enough, so long as you don’t put too much sail pressure aloft. It would be a slow passage home, but…”
“Oh, believe me, Captain Lobb, we’re used to slow in Sapphire,” Lewrie hooted without much mirth. “I doubt we’ve logged nine knots the last two years, and that with a clean bottom! The best I could expect would be a thrice-reefed tops’l, bare upper masts, and a stays’l or two … perhaps no tops’l and a thrice-reefed main course.”
“Ehm, perhaps stays’ls only, sir,” Lobb suggested. “I share your feelings, Sir Alan. I would much prefer a sea-going command, not this stint of shore duty. My predecessor, Captain Middleton, I believe, has a ship, after his term here was done. I bitterly envy the man.”
“Well, I suppose I should write Admiralty of my intentions to return home, then do it,” Lewrie said, feeling as if he was giving it all up, trapped into doing so. “My Purser will be ashore to prevail upon you for stores in a day or two. Then, wind and weather permitting, I’ll be out of your hair, at last.”
“Whatever you need, Sir Alan … within reason that Admiralty will allow,” Lobb said with a light touch, to make a jape of it.
“Good day, then, sir,” Lewrie bade him, doffing his hat.
“And a good day to you, Sir Alan,” Lobb responded in kind.
God-dammit! Lewrie fumed on his way to his waiting boat; Just dammit to bloody-fucking Hell! Bloody damned French gunners, as blind as so many bats … couldn’t hit a beer keg with a bloody sledgehammer but their wild shots’ve done for us! The cack-handed, cunny-thumbed … snail-eatin’ sonso’bitches!
He reached the top of the floating landing stage ramp, paused to take a deep breath and try to calm himself so that he could face his boat crew with the proper equanimity required of Post-Captains in the Royal Navy. He found that the fingers of his left hand had a death grip on the hilt of his hanger, and he let go to flex his fingers back to life.
And there was his ship, anchored fore-and-aft about half a mile off, with the morning sun gleaming upon her fresh-painted hull, upper works, and gunn’ls, as bright and fresh as a new-minted shilling. The sun and somewhat still harbour waters in-shore of her reflected her on the bay, sparkled winking flashes of sun dapples all down her length, and made a rippling mirror image like something seen through a rain-streaked pane of glass. Sapphire was as pretty, and as trig, as her namesake gem, and even the lack of gasketed sails on her mainmast yards could not, at that distance, detract from her perfection.
Her gun-ports were open for welcome ventilation on her lower decks, and every now and then, in unison, the black iron muzzles of her guns jerked into sight as the crew practiced play-loading, running out, then simulated recoil; three pretend rounds every two minutes, as they had since he’d taken command of her in 1807, even the lower deck 24-pounders. His exacting standards, which his crew had learned to perform, and the cutting of crude sights on the upmost breeching rings and muzzles, had produced the smashing broadsides, and a fair amount of accuracy, that had turned Sapphire from a lumbering ugly duckling to a killer, a world-striding conqueror manned by proud, skilled men as invincible as an armada of ancient Vikings.
And she would limp home to become a dray waggon, and all that experience would be strewn to the wind like chaff to man other ships in need of hands—twenty there, a dozen here? It was disgusting!
Lewrie went on down the ramp to the floating stage and into his waiting cutter, one long stride over the gunn’l to a thwart with a hand on an oarsman’s shoulder for a moment, then aft to take a seat by his Cox’n, the “Black Irishman”, Liam Desmond, who’d been with him since the Nore Mutiny in ’97, and the Proteus frigate.
“Back to the ship, Desmond,” Lewrie growled.
“Aye, sor,” Desmond replied. “No help from the yards, sor?”
“No, not a damned bit,” Lewrie told him.
“Pity, for she’s lookin’ like th’ belle o’ th’ fair, today,” Desmond commented with a jerk of his chin towards Sapphire. “Hoist oars, lads. Out oars, larb’d, cast off lines, shove off, bowman an’ starb’d stroke oar … out oars, starb’d, and … stroke.”
The cutter surged forward, bows lifting as eight oarsmen put their backs into it, then a second stroke, a third, and seawater began to hiss and burble, with a chuckling sound under the stern transom, and a slight judder to the tiller bar under Desmond’s arm.
* * *
Once aboard in the privacy of his great-cabins, Lewrie stripped off his coat and waist-coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and loosened his neck stock and sat down at his desk, ready for a long afternoon of ink smudges and finger cramp as he wrote letters to prepare people in England for his ignoble return. Lewrie wondered if a letter for Admiralty would really be necessary, for it was good odds that he and his ship might arrive at Portsmouth days before, if not the day of, the letter’s reception; there was not a mail packet in port at the moment, and he might as well carry it himself, post it once moored in the Solent, a surprise to everyone.
The necessities, really, was a much shorter list; his father, his sons, his sneering brother-in-law, Governour Chiswick at Anglesgreen, his solicitor, Mr. Matthew Mountjoy (in hopes that some prize-money might have been sent on from Lisbon in the meantime), and … Miss Jessica Chenery. That one would be the most enjoyable, the one left for last like a sweet dessert after an indifferent supper. And he would see if she could work him into her schedule to paint him that promised portrait!
“Cool tea, sir?” Pettus asked as he began to write the one to Admiralty. Long ago, Lewrie had developed a taste for at least one quart of tea to be brewed for him each morning, allowed to cool, and served with sugar pared off a cone kept in his locking caddy, and if available, a generous squeeze of lemon juice, and those who thought it daft could go to the Devil.
“Aye, Pettus,” Lewrie said, not even looking up. “Have we any lemons?”
“Yes, sir, a fresh dozen came off shore yesterday morning, and Dasher’s already sliced one into quarters,” Pettus replied.
Lewrie looked up to see Dasher making a puckery face as if he had sucked one.
“Tangy, sir,” Dasher commented, “wif a dash o’ sugar, or salt.”
“Salt? My word,” Lewrie commented, with a pucker and a shiver. “Never would’ve thought o’ that combination. Something closer to lemonade’s best.”
“Never had lemonade, sir,” Dasher said with a shrug.
“Then we’ll see to it that you try some,” Lewrie promised, and the imp’s face lit up in anticipation.
So much like Jessop, Lewrie’s former cabin servant, who had been killed in the boarding action with the big 40-gun French frigate, one more street waif who had signed aboard as a volunteer ship’s boy for eight pounds pay a year, shoes and slop clothing, three meals a day, and a safe place to sleep instead of wherever one could doss for the night without harm.
Jessop had been sixteen or seventeen when he’d fallen, dirty-blond, sharp-eyed, and wiry, aspiring to be more than a servant, who had learned his knots, had become a hand on one of the carronades, and had been learning how to go aloft as a budding topman. Jessop had also learned how to drink, chew tobacco, gotten tattooed, and taken runs at the whores when the ship was put out of Discipline.
Perhaps Dasher won’t go that way, Lewrie thought, giving the lad a closer look as he fetched a tall china mug of cool tea.
Tom Dasher—which couldn’t be his real name—was darker-haired with odd green eyes, only thirteen or fourteen, and, until he came to the great-cabins, was as dirty and smudge-streaked as the “duck fucker” who tended the forecastle manger, or the usual Midshipmen’s mess steward, the filthiest to be found aboard any man-o’-war. A good hosing down, new slops, an attempt at a haircut, and iron-buckled shoes with stockings (for once) had spruced Dasher up considerably, but he was still learning his trade, after a shiftless life on the streets of London, or so he said, and when pressed, the details of what he’d done to survive were damned thin.
“Oh, one other thing, Dasher,” Lewrie told him.
“Aye, sir?”
“I wish you to go forrud and find my cook, Yeovill,” Lewrie bade him, “and tell him I intend to dine in the First and Second Officers, Marine Officer, Purser, Acting-Sailing Master Mister Stubbs, and the senior Mid this evening at Seven P.M.”
“First Officer, Second, Mister Keane, an’…” Dasher said with a frown of concentration, ticking them off on the fingers of one hand.
“Six guests plus myself,” Lewrie supplied. “Seven, in all.”
“Seven t’eat, at Seven in th’ ev’nin’, aye sir.” Dasher said, then, emulating his name, dashed off, slamming the door to the quarterdeck on his way.
“Early days, sir,” Pettus commented.
“He’ll come round … I hope,” Lewrie said with a shrug and a lift of his eyebrows.
Aye, dine ’em in, and tell ’em we’re sailin’ for home, Lewrie told himself; with our tails ’twixt our legs.