Reefs and Shoals

mouths to feed would cause the Spaniards more trouble than it be worth to keep them ourselves. In your absence, sir, you left me in temporary command, so…”

“Quite so, Mister Darling,” Lewrie had to say after a moment to stifle his frustration; those Spaniards might have known something! “I see the sense of your reasoning. No use cryin’ over spilt milk, hey? She must be sent in to Nassau to be adjudged. I can’t send you…”

More’s the pity! Lewrie thought.

“Thank God, sir!” Darling exclaimed with a whoosh of relief.

“She might not need escort, either, for such a short voyage,” Lewrie mused aloud. “One of your Mids, and enough hands to man her?”

“So long as I may expect to get them back, sir,” Lt. Darling said, a bit worried. “I am already two hands short of full complement, and my senior Mid, Mister Bracegirdle, is rated Passed Midshipman, and quite valuable to my ship.”

“For a day or so, he may style himself Sub -Lieutenant, then,” Lovett said with a laugh.

There were so many small vessels in the Royal Navy like those in Lewrie’s little squadron that were Lieutenants’ commands, that they had, since 1804, been allowed a second Sailing Master to serve as an additional watch-standing officer, and one seasoned Passed Midshipman who would hold the temporary rating of Sub- Lieutenant for as long as he was aboard that particular ship, returning to his Midshipman’s rank when re-assigned. Most of the Navy thought that the term sounded a trifle silly and pretentious.

“You want him back, sir, he’d best not claim bein’ one,’” Lewrie hooted, “else Forrester’d poach him off you, quick as a wink! Why, with enough hands, and a Sub- Lieutenant, he might be tempted to arm and fit out a jolly boat to protect New Providence from the Dons! That’d be a fine addition to his squadron!”

“That is, indeed, what I most fear, sir!” Darling said with a mock shiver.

The rest of their doings along the Florida coast had been just as eventful, and Lewrie’s young officers were more than happy to tell him all. With the use of the larger boats they had seized at Mayami Bay-scrofulous enough to appear civilian, and harmless-they’d sailed or rowed into every inlet they could find, into every river’s mouth, in search of trouble. The few small clusters of huts they had encountered-far too small to even be called hamlets-they had raided and burned to the ground, rounding up what livestock they could catch and sailing off with it. Settlements were few, and the number of settlers even fewer, an amalgam of dirt-poor Spaniards, half-breed survivors of the original Indian tribes, and runaway Black slaves from plantations in Georgia, and the results of inter-breeding of all these who’d come to eke out a living in Spanish Florida. Only twice had they met any resistance to one of their pre-dawn landings; they had raided Matanzas Inlet, cutting out a large thirty-two-foot fishing boat, and had landed armed sailors near the mouth of the shallow Matanzas River, where they had found a ruined earthen fort, a small settlement, and little else. The inhabitants had run off, there was little to loot, and they were just about to return to their boats when a small troop of Spanish cavalry had shown up from St. Augustine, about twenty or so, who had charged them. With a low berm to raise them above the ground, and the remains of the fort’s wall, even sailors could face the terrors of a cavalry charge, and they had skirmished with them, killing two of the soldiers, wounding a few others who had reeled in their saddles, and had run the rest off back to the town.

“A hellish-scruffy lot, sir, even for soldiers!” Lt. Darling boasted. “Being Spanish, though, what could one expect? The Indians were better at it.”

During another pre-dawn landing, at Amelia Island, North of St. Augustine, and the burning of what few buildings were there, they had been hailed by an Indian in deer-hide breechclout and vest, his head swathed in what looked like a Hindoo turban with feathers… hailed and cursed out in good English, and told to bugger off if they knew what was good for them! Lt. Lovett had led the shore party, and had laughed him off… ’til the arrows had started flying and several muskets had been fired in their direction.

“I think their first volleys were more dire warnings than any real attempt to kill us, sir,” the piratical Lovett imparted. “He just popped out of the brush, about a long musket-shot off, said that he and his people were Seminoli, and that we were scaring off the deer, and we should go away, for there was nothing of value to loot, sir. We never got a clean shot at any of them, the way they only stayed in sight long enough to shoot at us, then disappear again. I considered that discretion the better part of valour, and ordered the men to make their way back to the boats, in parties of ten. When they saw that we were going to leave, they stopped shooting, and it was only once we were headed out to the ships that they stood up and showed themselves.”

“ Met some Seminoli, long ago,” Lewrie was happy to reminisce. “During the Revolution, when we went up the Apalachicola River in West Florida to treat with the Muskogee. The Seminoli are Muskogee, and the new tribe’s name means ‘Wanderers’. With the original tribes wiped out by the Spanish long ago, I s’pose this land’s empty enough t’suit ’em. They let you off easy, Lovett. I once saw a Muskogee bowman take down half a dozen Spanish soldiers and their local Indian allies in half a minute. Notch an arrow, draw, aim, shout ‘ Yuuu! ’ and down they went! Flick, flick, flick! ”

“Bows and arrows seem so… crude and ancient, though, sir,” Lovett pooh-poohed, raising a laugh among the other supper guests. “Damned near in-elegant!”

“You’d think so, ’til skewered by one,” Lewrie drolly rejoined.

“There hangs a grand tale, I should think, sir,” Lt. Westcott, who had been listening to the derring-do of the others, and, most-like grinding his teeth in envy, spoke up at last. “What you were doing in Florida regarding Indian tribes… I believe that you made brief mention at Charleston that you had first made the acquaintance of that gentleman, Mister McGilliveray, with whom you dined ashore, during the Revolution? Something to do with the what-ye-call-’ems, the Muskogee?”

“A kinsman of his, a younger fellow, was the family firm’s agent to the Muskogee… half-Indian, himself, though educated at Oxford,” Lewrie told them all. “He and a Foreign Office fellow went with us to get them to agree to raiding Rebel lands, with the weapons and powder we brought along. It didn’t turn out well. And, it may be a better tale for another night. Don’t wish to turn into one of those maundering old bores who talk yer legs off over brandy; bad as a soused uncle, hey? What I wonder about, sirs, is what sort of boats did you decide to keep? And, what did you do with those captured carronades?”

“Well, I got a better, sir,” Lt. Bury said with a shy smile.

“A hollowed-out log canoe would have been better than that old ark you took, Bury!” Lovett declared with a laugh. “Never saw a worse excuse of a boat, or such a sorry splotch of paint! Bury gave it the ‘deep six’, soon as he snatched up a proper cutter, sir!”

“It was a tad sick-making, to look upon,” Lt. Bury agreed.

“Hammered together by a poorly-skilled house carpenter, with not a clue beyond right angles!” Lt. Darling further teased.

“It was ‘an ill-favored thing, sir, but mine own’,” Bury quoted the Bard, showing a faint hint of amusement at their camaraderie and japing.

“To Bury’s sadly departed boat!” Lovett cried, raising his wine glass in toast. “Long may it frighten bottom- feeding fish!”

“Seriously, though,” Lewrie said after they had toasted that ugly old scow, “we did keep the carronades? And two larger boats?”

“One is a thirty-two-footer, about the size of an eight-oared barge, sir, fitted with but one mast,” Lt. Darling told him. “T’other is a about twenty-eight feet, rigged the same. Both are very beamy and of shoal draught. Quite roomy. Before we burned the privateer, we took off her guns and parcelled them out between us as ballast in our holds. We still do have the carronades, and their swivel mounts, along with all her two-pounder swivel guns and iron stanchions.”

“Hmm… sounds to me as if they might make passable gunboats for future shore landings,” Lewrie decided. He sopped the last bite of his fresh-baked cornbread through the spicy juices of roast pork, popped it into his mouth, and chewed as he mulled things over. “They were usin’ the carronades as swivel guns as well as bow chasers?”

“The wooden slide mounts were mounted on swivelling platforms to either bow, sir,” Darling said. “That might have made the privateer a tad bow-heavy, but all in all, it was a rather neat arrangement.”