Reefs and Shoals

and her officers.”

Come a real cropper, has he? Lewrie thought, feeling like he could laugh out loud like a lunatick; How bloody wonderful!

“How awful for him,” he said, though, pretending sorrow quite well, if he did say so, himself! “Badly damaged, was she?”

“They finally got her off and fothered the holes in the hull, well enough to tow her back into harbour, sir,” Gilpin continued his tale, “but it took half the crew on the pumps and the other half at getting her lightened. They took her down to a gant-line and landed all her guns and carriages ashore, along with all her stores, before getting her into the docks. Whether she is repaired and taken on as a receiving or store ship, or condemned and burned for her fittings, had not been decided when Fulmar and Delight were ordered to return to Nassau, sir. They were, however, assembling the sufficient number of Post-Captains for a Court-Martial for her loss, and the charge of Captain Forrester abandoning his area of responsibility, sir.”

Yes, there is a God, and He’s just, t’boot! Lewrie gleefully told himself; They’ll “Yellow Squadron” the fool, at long last!

“Well, hmm,” was Lewrie’s comment. “Hah! Damn my eyes.”

“The Admiral at Antigua sent you a letter, sir,” Gilpin went on, reaching into a side-pocket of his coat. “Sorry for being remiss. Evidently, Captain Forrester must have made mention that you and your frigate were on station, or somewhere nearby, under Admiralty orders.”

“And a complaint that I refused t’join him,” Lewrie freely admitted, recalling the wording of Forrester’s last attempt to order him under his flag.

“So… both I and Commander Richie of Fulmar were ordered to seek you out at once and relay the Admiral’s request,” Gilpin said as he handed the letter over. “For so long as the strength and the whereabouts of the French fleet under Villeneuve is discovered, and their objective is determined, his verbal orders to me were to tell you that he cannot spare any ships of his squadron to take Mersey ’s place, but… as soon as he may safely do so, he will send a ship, or several, to defend the Bahamas. Until then, though, sir, you are in command of the largest ship on-station. Which makes you the temporary Senior Naval Officer Commanding the Bahamas.”

“Mine arse on a band-box!” Lewrie gawped, a reaction that Commander Gilpin did not expect from a Post- Captain, especially one of Lewrie’s repute in the Navy; wasn’t he the aggressive “Ram-Cat”, the bane of the French?

“Well, hmm,” Lewrie said after a long moment. “I suppose that Bermuda’s out for a good while. I’m glad that I’ll have you with me, Commander Gilpin… and Commander Richie, is it, of Fulmar? I don’t know what else we’ll have, beyond the two ships of the squadron that I borrowed when I arrived. If Villeneuve comes this way, there’s not much we can do to face him, but… we can give it a good try.”

I s’pose this’ll make Bury, Darling, and Lovett happy, Lewrie whimsically thought. They had all dined ashore together a few nights before, and his junior captains had all expressed glum regrets that he would be turning them over to Forrester’s control, or for Lt. Bury to sail back to the boring patrols round Bermuda. At least still in his squadron, they could look forward to exciting doings they had assured him!

“Where’s Fulmar?” Lewrie asked.

“Richie thought to seek you off Spanish Florida, sir,” Gilpin said.

“We need t’keep a partial blockade of Saint Augustine. Once you’ve re-victualled, I’ll send a sloop to find him and let him do that for a while,” Lewrie decided. “Establish a patrol line down near the Turks and Caicos on the lookout for the French, too.”

“I quite look forward to serving under you, sir,” Gilpin said with an eager grin.

* * *

Once Gilpin had returned to his own ship, Lewrie laid aside his finery and changed back to comfortable clothes once more, ready for a mid-day meal. Yeovill and Cooke had run across a Free Black woman in the Bay Street markets who had been brought as a cook to the islands by a refugee Tory family at the end of the American Revolution. She had been freed years later, and swore that she possessed the best receipt for both pecan pie and peach pie, ones that had been her mother’s back in Colonial Georgia, and this time (perhaps!) they would bake one as good as those he’d tasted in Charleston and Savannah!

Lewrie propped his feet up on the brass tray-table with a fresh glass of tea handy, and mused over, his new duties… and over what a well-deserved disaster had befallen Francis Forrester. If he knew the current locations of those few former Midshipmen of old Desperate ’s cockpit with whom he had served, he would have written them that very instant, sure that all would gloat and shout Hosannahs at the news!

He could “caulk” for half an hour or so; though the windows in the transom were open, and the smaller ones in the coach-top overhead were open, too, it was a warmish day with little breeze reaching him.

Play a little horn-pipe of commiseration? he thought, fingering the holes of his penny-whistle, and putting it to his mouth. He got started on one, but there came a howl and singing wail from above.

“Deck, there!” he bellowed to the Midshipmen who stood harbour watch in lieu of the Commission Officers. “Is Bisquit on the quarterdeck?”

“Ehm… aye, sir,” Rossyngton called down, kneeling down by the coach-top to show his face in one of the windows. The dog’s head appeared in another. “Sorry, sir. I’ll shoo him off, directly.”

“Oh… never mind,” Lewrie said with a sigh, laying his musical instrument aside. “Just make sure he doesn’t shit on the deck.”

“ Really, sir?” Rossyngton yelped in surprise. “I mean, aye aye, sir. We’ll keep an eye on him. Come on, boy!”

For a moment, Bisquit gazed down at Lewrie, matching eyes with him, panting and grinning with what looked like glee, and his triumph of the forbidden territory, at last. Then, he answered to Midshipman Rossyngton’s summoning whistles and scampered off.

It’s official, and unanimous, Lewrie thought with a shake of his head; there’s nobody who cares for my music!

AFTERWORD

Before privateering was banned by international treaty in 1856, and merchant ships no longer had to be defensively armed, every fresh war between seafaring nations brought hundreds of aspiring rovers from the woodwork with hopes of great profits, and adventure. Near at hand are the examples of the American Revolution and the War of 1812, which saw British trade attacked from the Grand Banks to the West Indies to the Irish Sea and the English Channel by an “auxiliary fleet” larger by far than the nascent Continental Navy or the U.S. Navy.

Privateering companies were formed overnight, investors bought in in anticipation of rich, quick returns, and the fastest and handiest ships were purchased, or offered by their owners as their investment share. Bold and canny sea-captains with good reputations were hired, or promoted themselves, men who could attract sailors on the strength of their reputations and the soundness of their vessels, and younger, fitter, bolder sailors eagerly responded.

Mariners’ lives from the times of Sir Francis Drake and those “Bowld English Sea Rovers” of Elizabethan years to the end of the Great Age of Sail were dismal, and consisted of low pay, foul rations, back-breaking physical labour, tyrannical and miserly officers, and a good chance of being cheated at the end of each voyage. Whenever war broke out, common sailors faced the added risk of being ’pressed into a warship, where Navy pay was even lower, and discipline and good order were enforced with physical punishment, and shore liberty was quite out of the question for years on end to prevent desertion.

It was no wonder then that sailors would rather sign articles aboard a privateer and go a’roving in search of