Reefs and Shoals

before midnight cautiously satisfied that they were making decent progress West’rd.

When he rolled out at 4 A.M. on the fourth day, though, his hopes were dashed, for the winds had veered ahead into West by North, half North, and Lewrie had to lay his ship onto a close-hauled “beat to weather”, steering no closer to the wind than Sou’west by South, heeled hard over onto her larboard “shoulder” with the bows rising and plunging and shipping great bursts and avalanches of cold white water over the forecastle to swirl and pool and slosh from bow to stern almost knee-deep, before gurgling and gushing out the lee scrappers, and every seam in the deck planking, no matter how firmly packed with tarred oakum, then paid over with more tar with iron loggerheads, dripped chill misery onto the off-watch hands on the mess-decks.

* * *

“One would think that some damned fool was whistling,” Mister Caldwell, the Sailing Master, gruffly muttered as he peered at their pencilled-in track in the chart-space in Lewrie’s cabins. “Or, someone’s snuck a woman aboard.”

The Westerly winds had churned up the sea nigh to a slow boil, with vast grey-green rollers nearly as tall as the main course yard, a sickly snot-green sea that shed stinging blizzards of spray pellets from every wavecrest, even foamy dollops that tumbled and flew from wave to wave like fleeing rabbits. The smell of fresh fish was prominent, the reek that came from storm-wrack, as if the sea below them was stirred right to the bottom.

“Bosun Sprague didn’t sneak his wife aboard, did he?” Lieutenant Westcott asked, striving for amusement, though his lean, harsh face and four days of stubble showed nought but grimness and a lack of real sleep; especially so in the eerie, swaying glare of the overhead lanthorn which cast long shadows over the chart.

“I have it on good authority that the official Mistress Sprague resides in Chatham… and the Bosun can’t abide the harpy baggage,” Caldwell told Westcott with a nasty cackle. “So, whoever that doxy was he had aboard as his ‘wife’ in Portsmouth, she was young enough to be one of his daughters.”

“Mistress Sprague’s presented the Bosun with nothing but girl children, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie stuck in. “Half a dozen now, or so I heard. No wonder he stuck with the Navy so long. Hmmm… we are in need of a backin’ wind. Does the current one veer into Due West, we’ll be on a good course for Spain.”

From the moment that their frigate had cleared the Isle of Wight into the Channel, while they still had clearly visible sea-marks, the chip log had been cast each half-hour, and an officer of the watch had pencilled in the course and the rate of knots recorded. The skies had been solidly overcast when they departed England, and they hadn’t seen even a brief glimpse of the sun since, so their progress and position were pretty-much By Guess and By God, all by Dead Reckoning.

The recorded course was a staggering, stuttering series of X’s strung along a jagged line, some close together, some X’s further off from each other where they’d had a good run and turn of speed.

“Not to borrow trouble, sir,” Westcott glumly said, “but does the wind veer close to a Sou’wester, we may have to wear, even in this, else we fetch up somewhere East of Corunna and Cape Finisterre.”

“It could go Sou’westerly, sir,” Caldwell cautioned. “So long as this Arctic gale rules, another day or so with any luck, we’re making ground West’rd, but does it blow out, a Sou’westerly’s not unknown in Biscay.”

If that happened, Reliant would have no choice but to wear. A Sou’westerly would smack them right in the mouth, and paying off would drive them even deeper into the “sack” between the long right-angled trap of the French and Spanish coasts. Square-rigged ships could not sail closer than sixty-six degrees to the true wind.

“We’re too far North at the moment to meet Sou’westerlies,” Lewrie said after a long moment, in which he used a ruler to measure from their latest cast of the log to the edge of the chart. “We’re still round the fourty- seventh latitude, so we’ve bags of sea-room, but it’s longitude that’s wanting. Now if…”

Their frigate smacked into yet another wave with a deep hollow boom, and rolled back onto her larboard side, then rose up, shedding tons of seawater, and wriggling a bit more upright with a sickening twist, making them all cling to the flimsy chart table and shuffle their feet to keep upright.

I won’t gag, or spew, Lewrie commanded himself, though he had a feeling that he was damned close to doing so. He tried to recall when it was that he had been in such foul weather, and in such a predicament, and realised that it had been years.

I’m worried… worried and scared, he admitted to himself, alone; I wouldn’t trust mine arse with a fart, right now. Nor a gag, either! Why didn’t Father shove me into the bloody Army, instead? Oh, aye… ’ cause he was too cheap!

Lewrie looked to his liquid barometer for inspiration, but the blue-dyed water in the fat lower flask was still rather high up the upper tube, about as high as his last peek at it an hour before, when he had made a chalk-mark slash upon it. The storm’s pressure was still low, allowing the fluid to creep upwards; no higher yet, thank God!

“About all we may do for now, sir, is ride this out and hope for the best,” Mr. Caldwell concluded.

“Even with bare yards and storm trys’ls,” Lt. Westcott added.

“Midshipman Grainger, SAH!” the Marine sentry outside the door to the great-cabins shouted, his usual piercing cry almost swallowed by the din of wind, rain, and the working of the hull. With luck, he might have been allowed a tarred tarpaulin coat with which to tolerate the elements.

“Enter!” Lewrie shouted back, louder than usual, too. He and the others staggered out from the tiny chart space, clinging to light deal-and-canvas partitions. Grainger entered, sopping wet and looking as miserable as a drowned rat.

“Mister Merriman’s duty, sir, and I am to report that several of the fore and main-mast shrouds are slackening,” Grainger said.

“Well, damn,” Lewrie spat. “It seems we must wear, after all.”

There was no safe way to adjust the necessary tension of the mast shrouds unless the immense load was taken off them, even on good days. Their weather shrouds must become lee shrouds, if they wished to keep the masts standing.

“Aye, sir,” Lt. Westcott regretfully agreed.

“My compliments to Mister Merriman, Mister Grainger, and he’s to have ‘All Hands’ piped,” Lewrie ordered. “With your able assistance, of course, Mister Westcott… Mister Caldwell?”

“Of course, sir.”

“I’ll fetch your foul-weather rig, sir,” Pettus, his cabin steward, offered, staggering from one piece of furniture to the next, and looking a tad green. Lewrie looked aft into the gloom of his cabins. His cats, Toulon and Chalky, were curled up on his bed-cot’s coverlet, like two furry loaves of bread, bristled up and moaning in misery. To larboard, his young cabin servant, Jessop, was on his knees inside the quarter-gallery toilet, with only his shoes and shins showing, bent over the “seat of ease” and making offerings to Neptune; rather loudly.

“Carry on, Jessop!” Lewrie called out.

“Ah… aye, sir,” the lad muttered back, between gags.

Once bundled into tarred canvas coat and hat, Lewrie staggered forward, steeling himself for a second or two before opening the door to the weather deck. When he did so, it was like barging out into utter chaos: the force and howl of the wind, the sudden chill of it, and the stinging volleys of sea spray that pinpricked his hands and face. Here, too, was the full sound of the storm, and the hiss and thunder of the waves, and the alarming groans of the hard-pressed masts, and the booming of the hull as the frigate fought the sea.

Off-watch sailors were swarming up from the relative warmth and security of the gun deck where they berthed and messed, adding to the sense of confusion as Lewrie managed to clamber up to the quarterdeck.

“Sorry about this, sir, but we must wear,” Lt. Merriman said, his mouth close to Lewrie’s ear.

“Aye,” Lewrie shouted back. “If you think the weather shrouds will hold ’til we’ve got her round on larboard tack!”

“I believe they will, sir,” Merriman hopefully replied.

At present, their frigate laboured heavily, even though the mizen tops’l had been taken in, as had the main