Lewrie and Bosun Terrell took one last tour of the ship, from the cable tiers up forward to the “lady’s hole” right aft down below the orlop; into the empty powder magazines, the fish room, the tiller flat, the yawning wardroom, Midshipmen’s cockpit, and down the lower and upper gun-decks that now seemed vast and echoing with no guns or carriages fitted, no mess tables lowered, and not one sailor still aboard, but for the few people who made up the Standing Officers, who would live aboard her in-ordinary ’til she was hulked and broken up, became a floating prison for enemy sailors, or was made into a receiving ship—which would be a prison, of a sort—for new-come volunteer British sailors, or the unfortunates dredged up by the Press.
Everything useful for a ship at sea had been landed ashore with the store houses, every spare block and tackle, sand-glass, miles of rope, and all manner of Bosun’s Stores but for what Terrell and the men of the Standing Officer party might need. Even the Ship’s Cook’s, Mr. Tanner’s, galley had been reduced to what implements, pots, and steep tubs were necessary to feed no more than a dozen, not hundreds; though it was a surety that the Standing Officers would move their wives and children aboard to be maintained on Navy largesse.
“Lanthorns, oil, and candles, sir,” Terrell said, checking off the last items on his massive sheaf of lists. “And that’s the lot, at last. Poor old cow. Beg pardon for sayin, Cap’m sir, but she was a fine ship, and we had a grand time in her.”
“That we did, Mister Terrell,” Lewrie said in equal gloom. “I still think she could’ve rendered good service, but the Navy thought otherwise. It’s all Third Rate seventy-fours or thirty-eight-gun frigates these days. Even the sixty-four-gun two-deckers are being laid up … like there’s still another Trafalgar or two the Fleet has to be ready for.”
“With who, sir?” Terrell growled as they made their way up to the weather deck and waist. “The Roosians, the Chinese? The French’ve had it, at sea. Gawd, but this’ll be damned dull duty!”
How right you are, Terrell, Lewrie thought as they emerged into sunshine, gave that damned lower mainmast yet another scathing glare, a mast now struck “to a gantline” with all topmasts and yards stored under the sail-tending gangways, no long, lazy-whipping commissioning pendant flying, no Union Jack waving over her taffrails, and only the lone harbour jack showing on her bowsprit.
He, Terrell, and Sapphire’s people might have fought the last great squadron fight, unless the French, England’s last remaining foe, suddenly became much better sailors than they had been in the past, and sallied forth all the ships they had built over the years. What would it be like for Terrell and the rest of the watch-tending crew in harbour, seemingly forever, serving their boresome duties ’til the war ended, or Sapphire’s bottom rotted out of her? Even sailing on the equally boresome blockades would beat that all hollow!
“All’s in order, Sir Alan?” a clerk from the Dockyard Commissioner enquired at the foot of the starboard ladderway to the quarterdeck, where he had set up a tall desk.
“Aye, and her rats are now bold enough to romp free,” Lewrie sourly japed. “They’re holding Fiddler’s Green on the orlop.”
“Then if you will sign here, Sir Alan, and initial here … and here … and here,” the clerk said, opening a ledger which accounted for every jot and tittle of Navy Issue goods either landed ashore or retained aboard. Within two minutes of pen-scratching, it was done, and Sapphire belonged to someone else. Copies for Admiralty, for the Dockyards, for Lewrie, and for Terrell to keep up with now that he was the master of a lifeless hulk, were proof that her former Captain owed not one penny for any item lost or un-accounted for.
The clerk packed up his traps, folded up his desk, and he and his assistant fussily prepared to depart.
“Well, that’s it, then, Mister Terrell,” Lewrie said as he made his way up to the gangway and the open entry-port. “I sincerely wish that the Navy finds some use for her, and you can get back to sea. It would be a sorry waste of a good man to leave you here swingin’ idle.”
“Thankee for sayin’ so, Cap’m sir,” Terrell replied, doffing his hat in parting salute. “Same could be said for you, as well, sir, for a good Captain, and a fightin’ Captain, is too rare to waste, either, and when ya get a new command, I’d admire did ya send for me and Nobbs and Plunkett.”
“Wish I could, Mister Terrell,” Lewrie earnestly told him. “Now, mind the water and sand buckets round the galley. If Tanner gets into his cups, he’ll burn more than the rations.”
“Aye, I will, Cap’m sir!” Terrell said with a laugh, then stood to one side of the entry-port as Lewrie swung out to take hold of the man-ropes. Terrell brought his silver call to his lips to pipe Lewrie over the side one last time as he descended the boarding battens to a waiting civilian boat.
“King’s Stairs, sir?” the head waterman asked.
“Aye, King’s Stairs,” Lewrie gruffly told him.
A boat boy, perhaps the boatman’s son, hoisted and trimmed the lugs’l and the boat set off for shore. Once under way, Lewrie looked back at his ship for a long, longing minute or two, then shrugged his shoulders and stared without really seeing at the landing.
Now what the Devil do I do? he asked himself.
He would have to coach to London, of course, report to Admiralty and turn in the last paperwork, see the Councillor of the Cheque and receive his own back-pay, then list himself as a half-pay officer, but also lay a strong case for another active commission. He should make a brief detour to Anglesgreen and his father’s country house for a day or so to collect his chest of civilian clothing. That, though, would force him to confront his daughter, Charlotte, who still lived with Governour Chiswick, his wife Millicent, and their children, delaying his search for London lodgings.
Lodging, my God! he thought.
When he and his late wife, Caroline, had been estranged, and since she had passed over, he could, in past, find lodgings for himself and his small entourage at the Madeira Club, founded by his father Sir Hugo and Sir Malcolm Shockley years before, but the last few times he had been up to London, the club was over-full, with single gentlemen two to a set of rooms, and the best he could do was dine in there, and partake of the club’s delightfully toothsome suppers, and their vast wine cellars. Lewrie doubted if the Madeira Club would have any more room for him than it had before.
The last time up, he had spent a few testy days at his father’s grand house in Upper Grosvenor Street, where even a Prodigal Son’s welcome was damned thin, and it had only been him and Pettus who’d needed a place to stay.
Now, he had Pettus, Dasher, Yeovill his cook, Liam Desmond his Cox’n, a new stroke oar, Michael Deavers, who’d taken poor old Patrick Furfy’s place after Furfy had died when taking the big French frigate, Chalky, and Bisquit, and what his father would make of them didn’t bear imagining. Plus, he had a dray waggon filled with his shipboard furnishings, personal stores, chests, weapons, and wine stores to deal with. Sir Hugo might allow him only a day or two at most before demanding that he find a place of his own.
And what, in the name o’ God, do I do with takin’ a whole house? he asked himself; And for how bloody long?
He’d written his father, giving him fair warning, and he hadn’t heard back so far, so … would he be allowed at least one night before being shooed off? At least his father’s wine and spirit stocks would be safe from Faulkes’s pilfering; the fellow had gone ashore with some of the paperwork and had returned, saying that he had found a position with the Dockyard Commissioner’s staff, a nice, safe shore billet with an increase in pay.
The boat came ghosting up alongside the wet, slimy green stone landing, as the boat’s boy handed the lugs’l and leaped ashore with a bow line, as the older boatman reached out to seize a rusted ring-bolt for the stern line. Lewrie dug into his wash-leather coin-purse and paid the fare, then gingerly made his way up the slime-slick stairs to solid ground, and his waiting entourage.
“A damned shame, sor,” Desmond said, spitting into the harbour waters. “There was life in th’ old girl, yet.”
“Aye, Desmond,” Lewrie said, turning for one last look at his former ship. “We ready to go?”
“Aye, sor,” Desmond told him. “Deavers an’ Dasher will go with the dray, all loaded an’ lashed proper, an’ th’ hired coach is ready.”
“We most-like won’t make London tonight,” Lewrie said, looking at his pocket watch for a moment, “but with any luck, we can find some posting house ’twixt here and Guildford. Not with the dray waggon to slow us down. And that’s if it don’t bog down halfway up Portdown Hill. Let’s get aboard, then, and be off.”
“Aye, sor,” Desmond said, but continued standing, looking out at Sapphire for another long moment, as if to fix her in his memory. “Ye know, sor, ships have souls, after a time. An’ all th’ people who ever serve ’em … the souls of all who … remain with ’em, d’ye see. Well…”
“Pat Furfy,” Lewrie realised what he was driving at.
“Aye, sor … poor old Pat,” Desmond gravelled. “Best place for him, I s’pose, th’ great lummox. Swore t’his Mam when we ran away to sea that I’d do me best t’keep him outta mischief … and Pat was one t’be led astray so easy. God knows what’d happen to him did he ever swallow th’ anchor an’ turn a farmer or somethin’.”
“He would have loved my father’s farm,” Lewrie said, growing sad at losing the fellow after all those years. “He was so good with the beasts and all. He would have been more than welcome to live out his days there. We owed him that. I owed him that, and more.”
“An’ he woulda been at Will Cony’s tavern, drinkin’ more than his share o’ th’ Old Ploughman’s beer,” Desmond said, smiling and chuckling without real mirth. “Lord, Pat was strong t’take a drink!”
“When we do get to Anglesgreen, we’ll drink some in his name,” Lewrie suggested. “Soon as we get settled in London, we’ll coach down.”
“Aye, a grand, peaceful place, that, sor,” Desmond sighed.
“Thinking of swallowing the anchor yourself, Desmond?” Lewrie asked, fearing that he would lose his long-time Cox’n, too, one more in a long line of departed shipmates, no matter the vast difference in their stations.
“Ah, no, sor,” Desmond said with another long sigh. “Though that girl, Abigail, who waits tables for Mister Cony? When the time comes, it’d be pleasant t’think o’ settlin’ down, at last, with someone like her. By th’ time th’ war’s done, though, sor, I expect t’be way too old for much more than tendin’ a sheep or two, an’ nappin’ in a corner o’ th’ barn! Looks like I’m t’be a sailor ’til Kingdom Come, iff’n ye’ll still have need o’ me.”
“Then let’s get you up to London, then down to Anglesgreen and see what Mistress Abigail is up to!” Lewrie said to cheer him up. “Ye never can tell … she might still be free.”
“Aye, sor, she might be, at that!” Desmond said with a real grin.
He took off his flat-brimmed straw hat, crossed himself, and whispered, “G’bye Pat … g’bye, Sapphire. God rest, th’ both o’ ya.”