Reefs and Shoals

course. The fore course and fore and main tops’ls were close-reefed, and the jibs up forward had been replaced by the fore topmast stays’l. Above the quarterdeck, the spanker had been reduced, and the mizen stays’l had been rigged.

Leave the tops’ls, for now, Lewrie speculated; they’re higher up than the wavetops, and can still catch wind. The fore course’ll get us round the quicker. Send up the main topmast stays’l, again? Hmm. Oh God, all these bloody years at sea, and I still feel like a total fraud!

He’d not wished to go to sea and be all “tarry-handed”, but his father had seen to that, “crimping” him into the Navy at seventeen, and years behind his peers in experience-for God’s sake he could not even swim!-and even the ten-year-olds in his first mess had known bags more than he had, and his bottom had paid the price for not “knowing the ropes” from expasperated officers; and all his career he felt as if he had never quite caught up.

There had been a series of small ships, where things were much simpler, where little was expected of a lowly Midshipman. Surely, he had had no business at all becoming old Lt. Lilycrop’s First Officer in the Shrike brig, where his first few months had been an embarassing pot-mess of ignorance and re-learning of his trade. There had been a whole year of shore idleness between the end of the American Revolution and his assignment aboard Telesto, and the jaunt to the Far East and China in ’84, and when he’d come back and gotten his first command, the little Alacrity, in ’86; just enough time to forget almost everything! By 1789, after paying Alacrity off, there had been years of bucolic peace ashore, with wife and children on their rented farm at Anglesgreen, and once more all he’d learned of the sea had sloughed away ’til 1793 and the war with France. When he’d reported aboard the Cockerel frigate as her First Lieutenant, he’d felt as overawed and unready as the rawest fresh-caught landlubber, unable to recall the proper names for things without long hours secretly poring over his frayed, illustrated copy of Falconer’s Marine Dictionary, just as he had done when first aboard a warship in 1780!

God help ’em all, he thought; lookin’ to me t’keep ’em safe!

“All hands are on deck, sir,” Lt. Merriman reported.

“Very well, Mister Merriman, have Bosun Sprague pipe ‘Stations for Wearing Ship’,” Lewrie said, after a deep breath and shrug into his foul-weather rig. “Let’s be about it. The men are getting cold.”

“If I may, sir?” the Sailing Master, Mr. Caldwell, intruded before Lt. Merriman could raise his speaking-trumpet to his lips. “I’ve been studying the set of the waves, and believe they’re coming in sevens, with the seventh the most forceful. Once that one is past, we’ll have an easier go.”

“Very well, Mister Caldwell. Carry on, Mister Merriman, but do you wait to issue your first order ’til the seventh has passed, as the Sailing Master directs,” Lewrie said.

“Here it comes, Mister Merriman,” Caldwell warned.

“Stations to Wear!” Merriman bawled out the preparatory orders. “Main clewgarnets and buntlines… spanker brails, weather main and mizen cro’jack braces! Haul taut and stand by!”

Reliant butted through a creaming, humping wave at a slant with a thrum and groan, surging upward toward its crest as the wave billowed under her keel, hobby-horsing upwards, then pitching bows-down into the trough with a roar.

“This is the one, sirs!” Caldwell shouted excitedly, as if he enjoyed heavy-weather sailing. His seventh wave marched down to the frigate, humping higher like a steep hill, its crest fuming white and its lee slope mottled with rippling circular eddies. “Whoo!”

“Up mains’l and spanker!” Lt. Merriman screeched once the ship had staggered up, over, and down into that great wave’s trough. “Clear away after bowlines! Up helm!”

Reliant fell off quickly, shoved by wind and waves to lie abeam the sea for a bit, slowly, so very slowly falling alee and taking that howling force on her starboard quarter.

“Overhaul the weather lifts! Man the weather headbraces! Rise, fore tack and sheet!” Merriman cried.

Further, further off the wind, ’til it was coming just about dead astern, and…

“Clear away head bowlines!” Merriman howled. “Shift over the headsheets, and lay the head yards square!”

Now the wind was clawing at their ship’s larboard quarter, and she was coming round, wallowing and rolling, but on larboard tack.

“Man main tack and sheet! Clear away the rigging! Spanker outhaul! Clear away the brails!”

“Haul aboard! Haul out!”

“Mind yer helm, there!” Lewrie cautioned as she swung up closer to the wind and seas.

“Brace up head yards!” Lt. Merriman ordered, looking and sounding calmer than when he began the evolution, now that Reliant had crossed from one tack to the other. “Overhaul weather lifts, and haul aboard!”

“Nicely done, sir!” Mr. Caldwell congratulated.

“Thankee, sir,” Merriman replied, quite pleased and relieved, then turned to deliver his last trimming-up orders. “Steady out the bowlines! Haul taut weather trusses, braces, and lifts!”

“And, here comes the bloody seventh wave, again,” Lewrie said just as the larger, fiercer wall of water humped up before them. The ship heaved up and over, then down into the trough, where she wallowed as the wave stole the wind from the tops’ls for a moment before bowling astern.

“Clear away on deck, there!” Lt. Merriman ordered.

“Mister Westcott,” Lewrie bade. “Let’s go forrud and see to the shrouds. Rhys, how’s her helm, now?” he asked the Quartermaster of the watch at the wheel. “Can you hold West-Nor’west?”

“Aye, sir. Fair balanced, she be. Not too crank, nor griped.”

“Very well,” Lewrie said with a firm nod. “Full and by, and none to loo’rd. Ready, Mister Westcott?”

“Aye, sir,” Westcott replied with a brief flash of teeth. “I’m as wet as I’ll ever be. Bosun Sprague? Hands to the lee bulwarks.”

The shrouds, the main portion of the standing rigging, ran from the outboard channel platforms down the sides of the ship, the thick and stout oak “anchors” that jutted out to ease the steep angle of support to keep the masts standing, and un-moving. Each thick rope shroud was further supported below the channel platforms by metal fittings bolted into the hull, called the chains. For each shroud there were two massive blocks, the dead-eyes, with lanyards running between them in four-part purchases. To ease or tighten the dead-eye lanyards, sailors had to go overside-the steeply angle lee side-where the heaving waves that creamed down Reliant ’s flanks could surge up over the channels, turning every hand-hold or precarious foot-hold ice-slick with chill water. Even with the slackened starboard shrouds now eased by being on the lee side, it would require gruelling manual labour to set the tension to rights. For every man going over the side, there were two to anchor a shipmate with safety lines.

“Handsomely, now, lads, and have a care,” Lewrie urged them as the first clambered over the gangway bulwarks to work on the foremast shrouds. In better weather, they might have seen to all three masts at once, but not now.

Lewrie was shivering with cold, his clothing soaked with spray, and his face felt like a bad shave with a dull razor as the icy droplets kept stinging. Despite a wool scarf, cold water trickled under his tarred canvas coat, too, but he was determined to remain on deck as long as the work took; if the ship’s people were miserable, then he would be, too. At least he could comfort himself with the thought that he was on the gangway, not on the weather deck below, where the icy surging waters showered down each time the bows soughed deep into the sea, and left shin-high floods sluicing from beam to beam with each roll of the ship!

* * *

“Think that’s got it, sir,” Lt. Westcott reported, at last, an hour later.

“Very well, Mister Westcott. Dismiss the working party below,” Lewrie replied. “Let ’em thaw out, and dry out, as best they can.”

“Aye, sir.”