Reefs and Shoals

halliards over the canvas. When it appeared that the barge would pay off and begin to be taken by the river current, Lewrie stood and took hold of the two stern-most oars in their tholes, and began to row, himself, just to keep them in place. It was not a task at which he could claim even modest expertise, but that stopped their drift.

“Ship oars!” Desmond ordered. “Take th’ tiller, sor?”

“Bows-on between those two two-masters, if there’s not room to land starboard side-to,” Lewrie suggested, trading places.

Their arrival, with a British Union Jack slanted over the transom on a short gaff-a rare sight in an American port!- and the sight of a Royal Navy officer plying not one oar but two, seemed to have drawn a gap-jawed crowd on the piers of Dock and Water Streets!

Should’ve brought one or two more hands, Lewrie chid himself as he put the tiller over, once all four oarsmen were stroking hard; This could look damned awkward and lubberly!

“Toss oar, Hartnett,” Desmond snapped, “an’ be ready with th’ bow line.”

“Should I do something, sir?” Mr. Cadbury asked.

“Why, aye, Mister Cadbury,” Lewrie exclaimed. “Stop sittin’ on the starb’d dock line; and be ready t’toss it to the nearest helpful soul on the pier! Mind that the bitter end’s still bound to the boat!”

Now, there’d been an embarassing mistake Lewrie had made, the first time he’d been given charge of a ship’s boat, not a week into his naval career; he’d been sitting on the dock line, too, and had almost put the bow man arse-over-tit into Portsmouth harbour trying to come alongside a stone quay at the victuallers’, claw the line from under his arse, and steer at the same time! The grizzled old wild-haired seaman’s words came back to him: “ Thal’t never make a sailorman! ”-making him blush anew.

“Toss oar, Pat,” Desmond whispered to his long-time mate.

There were men on the pier who took their lines and whipped them expertly round bollards or posts, and they were safely at rest.

“Wahl, hoy th’ boat, thar,” a stout man on the pier drawled. “Has Adm’rl Nelson hisse’f come callin’?”

“Looking for an old friend with a pot of ale,” Lewrie said, grinning back despite the man’s derision.

“Will I do?” Christopher “Kit” Cashman interrupted, coming from the front doors of the establishment which partially bore his name. “Hallo, Alan, old son. Welcome to America!”

* * *

They went back a long way, to a failed expedition to carry, then escort, a diplomatic mission to woo the Muskogee, the Lower Creek Indians, to side with England and make war against Rebel settlers in 1782, when Lewrie was a Lieutenant, and Cashman a Captain of a Light Company of an un-distinguished regiment, the both of them expendable. A few years later, when British forces had invaded Haiti, then the French colony of Saint- Domingue, they had met on Jamaica, when Lewrie was Captain of the Proteus frigate, and Cashman had become a plantation owner, then the Lt. Colonel of an island-raised volunteer regiment, “hired on” in essence by the rich Beauman family, the bane of both Lewrie’s, and Cashman’s, existence. Lewrie had been Cashman’s second in a duel with the unfortunate younger son, Ledyard Beauman, who had been the Colonel of the regiment, who had lost his nerve in battle in the hills outside Port-Au-Prince, shrilling for the regiment to retreat, then galloping off with his cronies in terror, and laying the entire blame for what could have been a rout and massacre on “Kit”.

It had been Cashman who’d arranged Lewrie’s “theft”, or “liberation”, of a dozen prime Black slaves from a neighboring Beauman plantation before he’d sold up and removed to the United States, and the one who’d sent a supporting (frankly lying!) affidavit to England which had gone a long way in getting Lewrie off at his trial years later for that theft, once the Beaumans had figured out who had done it.

Christopher Cashman had not changed much in the years since. His hair had thinned a bit, and civilian living and the accumulation of wealth had thickened his waist, but it only took a few minutes to remake their friendship, as cozy as an old pair of shoes.

“Now, what in the world brings you to Wilmington?” Cashman asked in amusement, over glass mugs of cool beer.

“Admiralty orders, to look for French and Spanish privateers fitting out in neutral ports,” Lewrie told him. “Show the flag, consult with our consuls… be tactful and diplomatic.”

“Tactful and diplomatic,” Cashman gawped, “you? A bull in the china shop’s more your style, as I recall.”

“The Smithville pilot said our consul here is a local fellow?” Lewrie asked. “Who is he?”

“Mister Osgoode Moore, Junior,” Cashman told him. “Esquire. An attorney, like his father, Osgoode Moore, Senior, who was a noted patriot during the Revolution… joined the Corresponding Society in the early days, the Sons of Liberty, got slung into the prison under the old Burgwyn house by the King’s agents, Fanning and Cunningham, and got treated rather cruelly. Lucky to have survived it, unlike a few others. The father took arms when the local militia marched on Governor Tryon’s house down at Brunswick to rebel against the Stamp Act… He was said to have been one of the rebels who went aboard HMS Viper, seized the chests of stamps, and took back the papers of the ships held from trading for refusing to use them. Just like the Boston Tea Party, as they say, this side of the Atlantic, but years before Massachusetts revolted. He’s a good-enough fellow, is young Moore, but… perhaps not all that enamoured of the post. It pays a tidy annual sum, without too much work to do, since Wilmington’s not a major trader with England any more.”

“Hmmm… just a paid agent,” Lewrie gloomed. “His heart ain’t in it… enough t’turn a blind eye?”

“Oh, he’s a stickler, or would be, if anyone laid an information of someone aiding the French or the Spanish,” Cashman countered. “The interests of Britain, and the strict neutrality of the United States, are the same thing to him, I’m certain.

“Besides, Alan,” Cashman continued, “I’ve my ears to the ground, and my own eyes on the chandleries, and the port. I can’t give you a guarantee that the French or Spanish might put into one of the many inlets for wood and water, but from Lockwood’s Folly to Tops’l Island, I’m pretty sure that there’s no collusion going on.”

“The pilot told me there’s a Frenchman here as their consul,” Lewrie asked. “Could he be up to something?”

“ Monsieur Jean-Marie Fleury?” Cashman scoffed, rising to go to the keg of beer at the back of his office for a refill. “I’m certain he’d love to… anything for La Belle France, and the Emperor Napoleon. Just so long as it doesn’t drag him from his bed too early in the morning, involve a long, secretive horseback ride, or cost him a single dollar. I’m not sure why the French waste the money to keep a consul here, at all. There haven’t been more than a dozen of their merchant ships calling here since the war began again two years ago.”

“Though the Americans still think the French ‘hung the moon’?” Lewrie posed. “Damned nice beer. I think I’ll have a top-up, too.”

“Oh, there’s many who still adore them, no matter how bloody the French Revolution was, compared to theirs,” Cashman scoffed as he refilled Lewrie’s mug, too. “Our good president Jefferson’s in love with them, and so are all the newspapers. You came up-river with but four sailors, and nothing but your sword and their knives? Quite the risk for a bloody Brit, after dark, when the patriotic drunks spill out of the taverns on a hoo-raw.”

“ You’re a bloody Brit!” Lewrie exclaimed in good humor. “You’re not dead, yet.”

“Ah, but I’m an eccentric Brit, and a harmless civilian trader, to boot. No threat to anyone these days,” Cashman hooted with mirth as he came back to his desk. “I doubt I could stand for public office and win, but I care nothing for such, other than joining the local militia. My army background is welcome, by most… even if I am once more back to the rank of Lieutenant, and the junior-most, at that. The militia’s more social than professional,” Cashman explained with a shrug. “When I bought into an old, established, pre-Revolutionary firm, founded by patriots, that went a long way towards acceptance. Hewing strictly to business, and avoiding politics, has gone a long way, too.

“Matthew Livesey… when it was Livesey and Son. The old man moved the family trade from Philadelphia long ago,” Cashman expounded. “Dead and gone, now, but his grandson’s still a partner. Old Livesey was part of the