The situation looked a little brighter two days later, when HMS Vigilance entered port, and Lewrie could go aboard her just as soon as she was anchored by bow and stern, and her Bosun and Mates could be rowed round to see that her yards were squared away. Things would have been sunnier had his new ship not looked dowdy and worn down by several months on the blockade of the French Biscay coast. Paint had been scoured nigh to bare wood by the clash of heavy seas and winds, and what little gilt her present Captain had trimmed her with was about gone. As his hired boat came alongside her main channels, Lewrie saw that the man-ropes along her boarding battens had faded dull grey and were slimed with green on the lowermost steps.
It was with some misgivings that Lewrie took hold of the man-ropes, tucked his everyday hanger behind his left leg, and began a careful ascent to the entry-port, and a hurriedly-gathered side-party.
“Captain Alan Lewrie, to see your Captain,” he announced after the last notes of the the Bosun’s silver call had died away.
“Oh!” Vigilance’s First Officer cried in surprise. “Captain Lewrie! Welcome aboard, sir!”
“Mister Farley?” Lewrie exclaimed in like surprise. “I haven’t seen you since Thermopylae paid off. Good to see you, again.”
“And you, sir, ehm…,” Farley replied, returning to a proper Sea Officer’s sternness. “Captain Nunnelly is aft, sir. We were not told who his relief would be. This way, sir. I am sure he will be delighted to greet you.”
“Ill is he, Mister Farley?” Lewrie asked as they crossed the quarterdeck to the door to the great-cabins.
“Barely able to walk, or anything else, sir,” Lieutenant Farley told him with a sad shake of his head. “Our Surgeon, Mister Woodbury, says it’s the worst rheumatism he’s ever seen, but then, Captain Nunnelly has been almost continuously at sea nigh on fourty years, by now.”
Damme, just thinkin’ of it makes me feel creaky! Lewrie told himself, happy that his own thirty years in the Navy hadn’t crippled him, too.
“Enter,” a voice from within bade after the Marine sentry had bellowed to announce their presence; a weak, weary voice that was followed by a bout of coughing and throat-clearing. Once inside the great-cabins, Lewrie beheld a shambling, bent-over stick-figure of a man who was taking a long time to ease himself to his feet behind his day-cabin desk, a haggard, lined face of a wizened ancient, wincing in pain with every movement. Captain Nunnelly’s hair was completely grey, long, and unkempt, fluffed out from the sides of his head as if combing was too much of a bother any longer.
“Lewrie, is it?” Captain Nunnelly rasped. “You’re to be my replacement?”
“I am, sir,” Lewrie told him, “but this is more of a courtesy call today. I’ll not read myself in ’til you’ve completed your arrangements. No real tearing rush.”
“Harumph,” Nunnelly replied to that, more of a gargle of phlegm, followed by several more throat-clearing coughs. Nunnelly wiped his mouth with a handkerchief before speaking again. “No matter to me, sir. I cannot get off this ship fast enough. Already halfway packed up and … harumph. I’m old, I’m tired, and so crippled that I’ll leave her by Bosun’s chair, and might need another to leave the boat for the top of the landing stairs. I tried to hold out, but…,” but he had to break off to cough into his handkerchief for a moment.
“We’ll see you safe ashore, sir,” Lieutenant Farley promised.
“Coffee, Captain Lewrie?” Nunnelly asked once he was in control of his voice, again, and came round his desk to shake hands, resting his other hand on the desk-top to support himself.
“That would be welcome, sir,” Lewrie agreed, though wondering if Nunnelly would make it to the settees and chairs without falling down.
Captain Nunnelly called out to his cabin steward, a man about as ancient as himself, to fetch coffee and the makings, then finally eased himself down into a shabby wing-back chair, wincing and sucking his teeth in pain, even grunting before he got settled.
“Damned fool, me, Captain Lewrie,” Nunnelly said with a first glimmer of mirth, which was as quickly gone. “So many years as a Mid, ages as a Lieutenant in peace and war, and at least I can boast that I never spent more than a Dog Watch on half-pay ’tween ships. I made Commander and got a sweet Sixth Rate in 1805, and I was feeling the first twinges then, and I should have faced the truth, but they offered me promotion to Post-Captain, and Vigilance, a year and a half ago, and I couldn’t refuse. Too much thick-headed pride, d’ye see. Make the Captain’s List, at last, after a whole life spent trying for it?”
“One hopes that time ashore will ease you, sir,” Lewrie said as the coffee came.
“Hahl” Captain Nunnelly spat. “Death will ease me. Laudanum, brandy, mustard poultices, hot flannels … nothing else has worked, harumph.” He took a moment to wipe his mouth. “Maybe a summer spent in front of a roaring fire might help, but I doubt it. I don’t envy you having Vigilance, Captain Lewrie, not at all, and God help you.”
“Sir?” Lewrie tentatively asked, with a brow up in wonder.
“They say that officers with any sense pray, or curse, to get out of serving on sixty-fours,” Nunnelly sourly growled. “They’re all old, half worn-out, too slow to act like a frigate, and too weak to stand in the line of battle. The blockade is all they’re good for, unless you’re in the Far East, and that’s a death sentence in itself. Foreign fevers will carry you off before you can get your cabin furnishings settled.”
“Oh, I don’t know, sir,” Lewrie said. “My last ship was a fifty-gunner Fourth Rate, and we accomplished rather a lot with her.”
Nunnelly scowled at him as if he’d just spouted moonshine, and Lewrie’s lack of sash and star, or his medals made him appear as just one more Post-Captain who would accept any active commission at sea as a God-given favour.
“If you say so, Captain Lewrie,” Nunnelly said, waving an idle hand in response. “At any rate, I’m halfway packed up, as I said, and intend to leave the ship Wednesday at Eight Bells of the Morning Watch. We can hold the change-in-command then, if you’re eager, or you could read yourself in Thursday.”
“Whichever you prefer, sir,” Lewrie offered.
“Hmm, since it is the end of my naval service, I suppose that I might as well go out in style,” Nunnelly gruffly allowed, “so, let’s make it Wednesday.”
“Happy to oblige you, Captain Nunnelly,” Lewrie said. He sipped his coffee in silence for a bit, and Nunnelly seemed to feel no need to speak further. “Ehm … how does she sail, sir? How fast has she been?”
“On the way to her station, or on the way back to port, she’ll turn a fair ten or eleven knots on a beam or quartering wind, and she’ll go to windward as well as one can expect. A heavy, steady sea-boat in a gale, too. Fourteen hundred tons. They took her lines off a French sixty-four, though I still think her entry’s not as fine as it could be, like the French design them. But, she’s stouter and stiffer than any of theirs. The French build too light, with too few frame timbers. I think you can find her … tolerable, for as long as you’re saddled with her.”
Her officers, her petty officers? The experience, or lack of it in her crew? How many pressed men, County Quota Men, or petty criminals dredged up from gaol? Any to be cautious of? Nunnelly was just too soured on her use on blockade work, but he had no real complaints except for the general low morale that that dull duty engendered.
Nunnelly thought that her First Officer, Lieutenant Farley, was able, but too much of a wag. Her Second, Rutland, was fool enough to marry, and moped to be apart so long from his young wife, but a good officer for all that. The Third, Lieutenant Greenleaf, was a bluff and hearty “bulldog”, too loud and profane for Nunnelly’s taste, and prone to be stricter with the hands when on duty, and her Fourth Officer, Mister Grace, was only twenty-five or so, able, but shy, according to the wardroom, and perhaps a bit too popular among the hands.
“Mister Farley served under me in the Thermopylae frigate, sir, and Mister Grace was a volunteer when I was fitting out my first ‘Post’ ship, the Proteus frigate, at the Nore during the Mutiny. I made him a Midshipman and gave him his first ‘leg up’,” Lewrie related with a happy grin on his face.
“Came up through the hawse-hole, did he?” Nunnelly queried with a grunt. “No wonder his lack of polish, or social poise. Not that this ship will ever have call for showing off to her betters, hah!”
“Came from the Nore fisheries, he did, sir,” Lewrie told him, “his father and grandfather, too, after their boat foundered. Good men, all.”
Nunnelly coughed into his handkerchief again, after nigh strangling on a sip of his coffee. Lewrie wondered where Nunnelly had come from, and what his family’s social status was, for it was rare to find people in the Navy who made light of “tarpaulin men” who had risen from the lowest rates; perhaps he was just sour on the whole world after a thankless climb from Midshipman to Post-Captain himself, only to see it snatched away.
“Well, I thank you for the coffee, Captain Nunnelly,” Lewrie said as he set his cup and saucer aside at last, and prepared to rise and depart. “I’ll be alongside at Six or Seven Bells of the Morning Watch this Wednesday for the change-in-command.”
“I’m looking forward to the relief, do believe it, Captain Lewrie,” Nunnelly replied. “You’ll pardon me if I do not rise or see you to the quarterdeck, sir, but I ache hellish-bad this morning.”
“Of course not, sir.”
“Need any cabin furniture, Captain Lewrie?” Nunnelly suddenly offered. “Should I leave anything other than the bed-cot behind?”
“Well,” Lewrie said, taking a long look round the cabin, and spotting the table in the dining coach. “I did leave my old eight-place dining table and side-board at my house, else I’d deprive my wife, so … may I look at yours, sir?”
Captain Nunnelly waved him leave to go inspect it, too busy at hocking up a lung full of phlegm, and Lewrie walked over to find that Nunnelly possessed a twelve-place table and set of chairs, sturdy and non-collapsible, made of highly polished oak, and much too fine to take to sea. The side-board was fine, too, elaborately carved and inlaid with contrasting woods on the doors and top.
“I would admire your dining coach furnishings, sir,” Lewrie told him as he returned to the day-cabin. “Name your price.”
“Hell’s Bells, Captain Lewrie,” Nunnelly gargled and wheezed. “I doubt I’ll have any need of it six months from now. Say, twenty pounds, enough to buy me a good coffin, and pay the parish sexton his fee to plant me, and that’ll do.”
“Surely you jest, sir,” Lewrie gently protested. “Some time to rest, thaw out away from the sea? Twenty pounds is more than fair.”
“Done and done, sir. See you Wednesday … if I live that long, that is,” Nunnelly grumbled.
* * *
“Grace,” Lieutenant Farley said with a sly grin as he entered the wardroom a deck below. “You’ll never guess who’s to be Captain Nunnelly’s relief.”
“Who?” Lieutenant Grace asked, looking up from his hand of cards. “Admiral Hosier come back from ghosting?”
“Who do you recall who likes cats?” Farley gaily hinted.
“No! It can’t be!” Grace perked up. “The ‘Ram-cat’?”
“Can’t abide cats,” Lieutenant Greenleaf hooted. “Too damned sneaky for my taste. Gimme hounds, anytime.”
“Well, you’d better get used to them, Charles,” Farley said in glee, “the last time I served with him, he had two.”
“Captain Lewrie, really?” Grace marvelled. “Good Lord!”
“Who?” Greenleaf demanded.
“Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet,” Farley announced, “knighted for bravery, and they call him the ‘Ram-cat’ for the way he goes after the enemy, too.”
“One of the fightingest, most successful scrapers in the whole Royal Navy,” Grace told him. “Oh, he’s a wonder!”
“An honest-to-God fighting Captain here, in Vigilance?” Charles Greenleaf scoffed. “What a waste!”
“Just about to say, Tom,” Farley said to second Grace’s opinion. “I could tell you stories, Charles. Whatever brought Captain Lewrie to this old barge, I doubt it’s his skill at blockade work that sent him to us. We might just have a shot at seeing some action, for a change.”
“Oh, God, please let him take us anywhere but back to the coast of France!” Greenleaf exclaimed, looking aloft to the overhead, so piously that even gloomy Lieutenant Rutland laughed.
“Just you wait,” Grace assured them, “I’d wager a month’s pay we’ll be choking on powder smoke before the winter’s out. Captain Lewrie will find a way. He always does.”
* * *
A change-in-command ceremony was something new to Lewrie, all of his previous ships had been newly commissioned or re-commissioned from a spell in-ordinary. Even when he’d replaced Thermopylae’s Captain at Great Yarmouth, that man had already left the ship. He showed up at the appointed time in his best dress uniform, wearing the sash and star of the Order of the Bath, both his medals, and his fifty-guinea presentation sword. Captain Nunnelly, though, emerged from his great-cabins in much the same state as when Lewrie had first met him, though someone in his retinue had combed his hair, and his steward and senior servant took him by the elbows to support him, in addition to his walking-stick, making Lewrie wonder how long the poor fellow had stubbornly endured his affliction.
Afflictions, Lewrie thought as they briefly shook hands, for Nunnelly’s hands were swollen and gnarled, his fingers permanently cupped like tree roots. When Nunnelly got to the cross-deck hammock stanchions at the forward edge of the quarterdeck, his voice was still capable of a volume that could reach the bowsprit. He then stood aside while Lewrie drew out his commission documents and read himself in. A turn, a doff of his hat, and a formal “Captain Nunnelly, sir, I relieve you,” a last shake of hands, and a call for three cheers to see the old fellow off followed, and the crew’s cheers sounded heartfelt, lasting ’til Nunnelly had suffered the indignity of being hoisted aloft in the Bosun’s chair to be lowered overside, and was deposited like an empty water cask into a waiting boat. Lewrie stood by the open entry-port, hat raised in salute ’til Nunnelly’s boat was at least two hundred yards off, then turned to his waiting officers and Midshipmen.
“Mister Farley,” Lewrie said, “how is the ship laden with stores? Enough for the next few days, at least?”
“Well, aye sir,” Lieutenant Farley replied. “We’ve salt-meat, bisquit, and victuals enough for another month and a half, and fresh bread and beef is coming from the dockyard daily.”
“Very good,” Lewrie decided. “Once all my dunnage is aboard, do you pipe ‘All Hands’ and announce ‘Make and Mend’ ’til the end of the Second Dog this evening. Tomorrow, we’ll start taking on fresh stores. I’ll also want the Master Gunner and his Mates to sort through the powder to see if any of it’s damp. I’ll want that replaced.”
“Aye, sir,” Farley agreed.
“Once we’ve fully replenished, we’ll put the ship Out of Discipline for a day or two,” Lewrie added, turning to a lean fellow in a plain blue coat he assumed was the Purser, who spoke up before being asked.
“Ship’s Purser, sir, Leonard Blundell,” he said, doffing a civilian hat.
“I’d admire did you see that the ship’s people get their back-pay before we let ’em dance and rut, sir?” Lewrie asked. “So long as you’re ashore … which I assume will be often, Mister Blundell?”
“Aye, sir,” the man replied, more formally, wondering if he was being put on notice. Lewrie rewarded him with a quick little smile, as if to do that very thing, which was always a good place to start with a civilian merchant appointed aboard a warship as an independent contractor.
“If you would be so kind as to introduce me to the rest of the officers and Mids, Mister Farley,” Lewrie said, and he went down the rows, making his own rough appraisals of Lieutenant Rutland and Lieutenant Greenleaf, then greeting young Lieutenant Grace warmly, and asking of his family, though old HMS Proteus had cost the Graces the father and grandfather before her commission had ended.
Lewrie met the Marine officers, a Captain Whitehead and a Lieutenant Webster, asking if they might be eager to do something out of the ordinary off the ship in future, and getting a warm response.
God, but there were a lot of Midshipmen, sixteen of them in all, and over half under the age of twenty, with very little time at sea, in addition to the sprinkling of older young men, and it might take Lewrie weeks to sort their names out properly. He also met the Sailing Master, Francis Wickersham, the Surgeon, Mr. William Woodbury, the Master Gunner, Mr. Carlisle, and found them suitable.
“Gentlemen, I will make no promises yet about what new duties we will be performing, or where Vigilance will be going,” Lewrie summed up their first encounter, “but I will say, and you may pass this on to the ship’s people, but we will definitely not be plodding off-and-on in the Bay of Biscay any longer, so everyone should be ready to sharpen his gunnery, musketry, cutlass work, and boat-handling.
“Now, Mister Farley, you may dismiss all hands,” Lewrie said to his First Officer, “and I’ll fill them in later. My goods are coming alongside, I see, and must be carried to my great-cabins. Upon that head, I need to speak with the Carpenter.”
“Mister Gregory, sir, aye,” Farley said, “I’ll send for him.”
“I’ll be aft, seein’ what I have t’work with,” Lewrie told them all, and went to the doors to the great-cabins, being saluted for the first time by his Marine sentry as he entered the yawningly empty cabins, peering round and pacing about, looking for a place to hang his hat from the overhead deck beams.
The sentry announced the presence of the Ship’s Carpenter, and a round, red-haired fellow of middle years entered, a shapeless felt hat clasped to his chest.
“Ye sent for me, Cap’m sir?”
“Ah, Mister Gregory!” Lewrie warmly replied. “There’s a few things I need done, if you’d be so kind. First, a wider bed-cot, say, thirty inches across? I’m prone to toss and turn. Next, I need a box made, about eight inches deep and two feet on a side, open-topped, for my cat’s ‘head’, with very snug-fitted bottom boards so his sand don’t dribble out.”
“Bed-cot and a box, aye, sir,” Gregory said, nodding sagely.
“Lastly, the door to the stern gallery,” Lewrie said, crossing to the rear of the day-cabin and the lazarettes either side of the glazed door. “On warm days, I like to leave it open, and the cat will try to get out and chase sea birds, so … I need a door frame hung in addition to the real one, with twine strung like a fishing net across it, good and taut, so fresh air can get in, but he can’t get out and drown his silly self.”
“Bed-cot, a jakes for a cat, and a twine door,” Gregory said, screwing up his brows and forehead. “Got it, sir. Be at it directly, sir,” he said, bowing himself out with a knuckle to his forehead, in a tangle for a moment with seamen bearing in the first of Lewrie’s sea chests, and his folded-up collapsible wood and canvas deck chair.
It would be far too cold and rainy, or snowy, to set it up on the poop deck above, not ’til Vigilance had made a goodly Southing nigh to the latitude of Cádiz; for now, the sailor who carried it in raised his brows in puzzlement as if he bore a set of golf clubs.
Familiar faces entered next; his new steward, Michael Deavers, his servant, Tom Dasher, and his cook, Yeovill, fetching Chalky in his wicker cage, and more chests.
“Ah, good,” Lewrie said, glad to see them. “You all know where things go, so I’ll be out on deck, and out from underfoot, for now. If you’ve any questions, Deavers, give me a shout.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Deavers said with an easy grin, “but, between the three of us, I think we can sort it out. Wash-hand stand in the sleeping cabin, plates and glasses in the side-board, and your wine-cabinet to larboard, right, sir?”
“Got it in one, Deavers,” Lewrie said, clapping his hat back on and going out to ascend to the poop deck. He took in the view, looking round the vast anchorage, the many warships present, and the flotillas of rowing or sailing boats working between them and the shore. Birds swirled in the hundreds, a fairly insistent wind out of the Sou’east snapped flags and pendants, and made his boat cloak flail about his legs. At least, though, it was a sunny and clear day, a perfect one for reading himself in to take command of a new ship, and for a Winter day, it was not too chilly, and the sun felt good.
An auspicious sign? he wondered. That hopeful idea lasted just as long as he peered outward. When he turned his gaze inboard and saw the length of his new ship, nigh one hundred seventy feet on the range of the deck, and the sight of hundreds of men in her crew, some idling, some scurrying on duties, on her sail-tending gangways and in the ship’s waist, Lewrie felt a qualm of trepidation. Most of those sailors, boys, and Marines peeked aft at him, as if wondering what sort of a Captain they’d gotten this time round. He spotted the Carpenter, Mister Gregory, and his crew making their way aft with tools, lumber, and with fresh, white storm canvas with which to line his bed-cot, sharing quick comments with crewmen as they passed, who looked up again in response to those comments, most with quizzical looks on their faces.
A bed-cot almost wide enough for two, a twine door, and a box for a cat’s relief? Who was this new’un, anyway? he was sure they were asking themselves. Most sailors were mortal-certain that Captains were a quirky lot, but … how much quirkiness and eccentricity could they abide? And would it be good for them, in the long run?
Me to know, Lewrie told himself; and you to find out.
He paced the poop deck, from the hammock stanchions at the edge overlooking the quarterdeck all the way aft to the flag lockers and the taffrail lanthorns, back and forth, impatient to at least have his desk set up in the day-cabin. He had only written Jessica twice since they had gotten to Portsmouth, whilst she had written him a brief, one-page letter almost every day, and he felt guilty for being remiss.