Reefs and Shoals

“Welcome back aboard, sir,” Lt. Westcott said once Lewrie had taken the salute from the side-party and the hands on deck. “And how was Savannah?”

“Just ever so jolly, Mister Westcott, and thankee for askin’,” Lewrie drawled in broad sarcasm. “In point of fact, it was just too infuriatin’ by half. Didn’t learn a blessed thing, and our Consul in Savannah is as useless as teats on a bull. Oh, Mister Cadbury found a few things on your and the Bosun’s list, and there’ll be a barge to come alongside tomorrow, just after Noon, if tide and current will serve. I need an ale… badly. I’ll be aft and below.”

“Very good, sir,” Westcott said, looking a bit mystified.

“I’ll fill you and the other officers in later, sir, after I get comfortable,” Lewrie promised. “An informal conference in my cabins, after supper?”

“I will inform them, sir.”

* * *

Pettus and Jessop were caught unawares by Lewrie’s quick return to the ship, so there was no pitcher of cool tea brewed for him. His cook, Yeovill, had to scramble to whip up a supper, too, expecting that Lewrie would spend the night in Savannah; he popped into the cabins just long enough to enquire if an omelet with hashed potatoes, toast, and a slice off a cured ham would suit, then loped off for the galleys.

Pettus drew him a tall mug of pale ale from a five-gallon barricoe stowed aft under the transom settee, as Lewrie shed his shoregoing uniform and flopped on the settee to accept his cats’ welcome.

“Ah, that’s good,” Lewrie said after a deep quaff. “Had some in the boat on the way back down-river, and that made me thirsty for beer.”

After gathering Mr. Cadbury, Desmond, and Furfy, and the boat crew from their prowl through the chandleries, Lewrie had hired two open carriages for that promised tour, which had put everyone in jolly takings. The tall houses with their ornamental iron-railed gardens in their fronts, the raised foundation homes with their high stoops, and the lushness of the gardens that were railed in, had struck them all as simply grand, as grand as anything in the West End of London, indeed… but, that was nothing to the many squares. Each was a miniature park, overshadowed by tall, twisting, twining live oaks draped with Spanish Moss, planted flowering bushes in every colour, palmettos rustling spiky leaves to the light wind to add a touch of the exotic set against the brick walks and well-tended lawns. There were even fountains in the middle of some, and their sprays, along with the shade provided by the oaks, obliterated the heat of the day each time they reached one.

Following that, they had returned to the docks and loaded their barge with what goods that Mr. Cadbury deemed essential, then visited the street vendors for a mid-day meal, getting hard-boiled eggs, fried chicken, cheese, bisquits, and small, sweet fruit turnovers to eat once they were under way down-river. Since the boat crew would miss their usual mid-day rum issue, a disaster to Navy sailors, Lewrie had to sport everyone to a small two- gallon barricoe of beer, and purchase enough wooden mugs for all. Once tapped, it had been pronounced good beer, stronger than the weak small beer served aboard ship, which was little more than beer-flavoured water, which kept much longer in cask than water.

They shoved off and rowed out far enough from the docks until they could hoist both lugs’ls and a jib. Once all sheets were belayed, Desmond and Furfy led the hands in the ancient game of “who shall have this’un, then?” to share out legs, thighs, and wings. Lewrie, Cadbury, and Midshipman Entwhistle had had to settle for the dryer, less desirable white meat breasts. All in all, even counting the rent of the carriages, it cost Lewrie less than board and lodging overnight.

With their boat under sail, and the river current wafting them on, there was little for the crew to do but admire the sights of the journey, over the foreign-ness of the birds, the salt marshes that seemed to stretch to the horizon in every direction, rarely broken by small groves of trees on the islands, or on higher, dryer, hammocks, and the other river traffic. If a barge or lighter coming up-river neared them and it had a woman aboard, the sailors shouted greetings and cat-calls, no matter how old or ugly.

All was as calm and easy and pleasant as a slow drift on the upper Thames in mid-summer, as a punt among the swans at Henley. That early in the season, the vast, wind-ruffled seas of reeds and marsh grasses were new- shoot green and pleasing to the eyes, not the cured-tobacco-leaf or old-parchment brown of late Autumn. Two or three of the sailors had begun a soft crooning song. The return journey was so close as any of them would get to the royal leisure of “yachting” that they could conjure that they were sailing to the legendary sailors’ Eden, Fiddler’s Green, where the beer and rum never ran out, all the doxies were beautiful, and the publicans never called on them for the reckoning, and the landing to that Paradise was just round the next bend in the river.

Except for Lewrie.

After eating, a mug of beer, and a dip of his hands into the river to wipe them and his mouth of grease, he had turned quiet and sombre, pondering upon all that he still did not know of enemy privateers’ activities, or American involvement in support… and upon how short a time he had remaining to “smoak” them out.

Once Reliant weighed anchor and set sail from Tybee Roads, he could not linger off the coast of Georgia to look into the sounds, or put in to tiny Brunswick, without exciting the American authorities and provoking a diplomatic incident upon suspicion that he was “blockading” a neutral nation! He could not play the innocent “we’re just fishing” ploy again, so soon after employing that ruse off Port Royal, or lying at anchor for two days in Tybee Roads, which was just a hop, skip, and jump from the Sea Islands and their sounds! From the mouth of the Savannah River, it was but half a day’s slow sail to Cumberland Sound, and the mouth of the St. Mary’s River, where Spanish Florida began.

The only thing he could do would be to admit failure and join Lizard, Firefly, and Thorn off St. Augustine. He had grimaced, nigh- winced, as he’d thought of how he’d word a fresh report to Admiralty. The only slightly cheering idea that had come to him was his estimation of Consul Hereford, which he would also send to the British Ambassador in Washington. If he needed a good excuse, “His Excellency” R. L. E. Hereford would do quite nicely!

* * *

Idly stroking the cats, now they had calmed down from frantic welcome, and lifting his mug now and again for a sip of beer, Lewrie tallied up what little he did know, so far.

Firstly, he could safely rule out any privateering activity from North Carolina. Their hired Consul, Mr. Osgoode Moore, and his old friend, “Kit” Cashman, had an eye on things, from Topsail Island to Lockwood Folly Inlet. What might transpire North of Topsail Island from Beaufort, or the Albemarle or Pamlico Sounds, was beyond their ken, but… most British convoys made sure that they were well out to sea, and clear of any risk of being driven onto the Hatteras Banks, the Graveyard of the Atlantic, and his orders from Admiralty had not mentioned any losses from those convoys that far up the American coast.

Secondly, Mr. Cotton at Charleston had established good relations with the trading firms and chandleries in South Carolina waters, and was fairly sure that Georgetown and Winyah Bay, where so many rivers joined, dealt mostly in rice exports.

Charleston had the Ashley and the Cooper Rivers, but the only traffic on them was barges and small boats, and Charleston was not so far up-river from the sea. It was the most important seaport in the American South, but it was open, garrisoned by American troops, with Revenue cutters and Navy gunboats, and even if there were major shipyards, and many chandleries and trading firms that could be in collusion with enemy privateers, Cotton had left Lewrie with the impression that, but for the presence of Mollien’s privateer schooner, the problem lay elsewere. If there was indeed a problem!

Lewrie felt that he could have been hunting leprechaun’s gold, for all the good of it, so far, yet… Mollien had been there, sure sign that he was hunting British ships somewhat close to Spanish Florida. He might have put into Charleston to flaunt his country’s flag, or to call upon a decent tailor.

Stono Inlet had been a bust, as had Edisto, too. Port Royal, and the other Beaufort (in North Carolina it was “Bo”; in South Carolina is was “Bew”) had seemed intriguing, but had little in the way of ship chandlers or trading houses, little shipbuilding beyond large fishing boats, and no one they had encountered could recall French or Spanish vessels of any description entering the sound in ages, so Lewrie might be able to