Reefs and Shoals

Otarie? Catching him would be sweet! From Charleston, where he had first seen that schooner, to the Bahamas was close to the suspected aid and comfort of the lower Georgia coast.

Lewrie looked cross the quarterdeck to the shore. The coast of Spanish Florida was a thin green streak, and of late, not a very productive one. He contemplated leaving Bury in Lizard, and Lovett in Firefly, to continue the patrolling and partial blockading of St. Augustine, but… if he did run across a privateer in Bahamian waters, he would need them and their shoal draughts to chase the foe where his frigate could not dare go. Besides, if he did manage to find a real enemy, it would be unfair to deprive them of the excitement!

Long ago, he in Alacrity and his old friend Benjamin Rodgers in Sloop of War Whippet had raided on Walker’s Cay to suppress piracy, and it was Alacrity that had to strike from the West at dawn. “Lewrie, I dasn’t risk the Banks,” Rodgers had said of the treacherously shoal Bahama Banks. There was shelter for a privateer up yonder, and only a sloop of shoal draught, and the new gunboats, would be able to get at it.

Might he leave HMS Thorn? No, he rejected that, too, for there might be need of her heavier firepower closer to the shoals that ever Reliant could get. Hang it, I’ll take ’em all! Lewrie thought.

“Mister Warburton,” Lewrie said of a sudden, “pass word for my cook, Yeoviil, and hoist a signal to all ships. ‘Captains To Supper,’ at the start of the Second Dog Watch. Then, ‘Alter Course’ to Seaward.”

“Aye, sir.”

This was the sort of thing that he would have to impart to all of them, face-to-face, this change of their area of operations, and a new mission.

Now in much surer takings, Lewrie began to pace from the head of the starboard gangway to the taffrails and back again, working up his appetite for supper, and pondering just what he should serve, and what Yeoviil could come up with on short notice.

“Look at that!” Midshipman Warburton whispered to Midshipman Munsell, who shared the watch with him. Both slyly grinned, and then caught Lt. Merriman’s attention, jerking their heads in Lewrie’s direction, bringing a grin to Merriman’s face, too. “I wager he doesn’t even notice!”

The ship’s dog, Bisquit, had slunk up the ladderway to the quarterdeck, that tempting forbidden territory, had hidden by the binnacle cabinet ’til Lewrie’s back was turned, and had then begun to pace along a few steps behind Lewrie’s shins, mouth wide open in what could be construed as a grin as he looked up with his ears perked, and darting ahead of him whenever Lewrie turned about to continue his slow pacing, then “take station” off his quarter once more, and with Lewrie so lost in his thoughts that he was all un-knowing.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Reliant ’s little squadron, augmented for a while by Lt. Richmond and Squirrel, quartered the seas as they beat their way Eastwards into the Northwest Providence Channel, with the smaller ships ranging back and forth to peek in at Bimini and the Isaacs, into Cross Bay on Grand Bahama and the hurricane hole that Lewrie had used ’tween the wars, as if the frigate was the Master of The Hunt and the sloops were the fox hounds. They stopped and inspected a few schooners and small brigs in case they were French or Spanish privateers flying false colours, and “spoke” to many local fishing boats which might have seen any sign of an aggressive strange sail, or seen any British vessel being pursued by one. They poked into the Berry Islands, then dropped Squirrel off to make her way to Nassau with Lewrie’s latest reports and replies to the newly received mail, and steered for the Northeast Providence Channel and the Abacos.

The mail, well! After sorting through and filing the important letters, and sending the least important to the quarter gallery for use as toilet paper, Lewrie had had time to savour personal news from home before his captains had come aboard for supper.

There were several from Lydia, all warmly fond, chatty, and informative. Beyond all sense, her brother Percy was going to wed this mid-Summer, though people in Society thought him daft for taking a circus rider like Eudoxia Durschenko for wife! Eudoxia’s evil-looking father, Arslan Artimovich, was already looking yearningly at their vast stables of saddle horses and the racing thoroughbred, and was then at their principal estate, installing himself as Master of Horse!

There were letters from Sir Malcolm Shockley, an old ally in Parliament; his father, Sir Hugo; brother-in-law Burgess Chiswick; and reports from dour Governour Chiswick and his wife Millicent on his daughter, Charlotte’s, progess.

And, one from his youngest son, Hugh, now a Midshipman aboard HMS Aeneas under another old friend, Captain Thomas Charlton. That one was most informative, and news that Lewrie could pass along to all of his captains over that supper. Aeneas was in the Mediterranean, and a part of Admiral Lord Nelson’s fleet!

That French Admiral Villeneuve had slipped out of Toulon early in the year in a storm, whilst Nelson’s fleet had been loading supplies at Maddalena Bay on Sardinia. They had sailed as far East as Alexandria in Egypt in search of Villeneuve, fearing a second attempt at building a French empire in the Middle East and the Holy Lands, but Villeneuve had slipped back into Toulon. By mid-March, they had learned that the French had sailed again, and they had gone as far as Sicily in search of them before hearing that the French had slipped past Gibraltar and were bound for the West Indies.

… fears that Villeneuve’s ultimate Ambition is the Conquest of Jamaica, so we are off, all of us, in hot, pursuit, and Huzzah! I know not if Sewallis in Pegasus is still on the Brest Blockade, but if so, will he feel Envious! We pray earnestly that we catch up the foe and bring him to action!

“One can only hope that Captain Forrester and his brig-sloops do not cross hawses with this Villeneuve on his own, sir,” Richmond had said at supper.

“If he and the first French squadron unite, who knows how many ships of the line that will be,” Lt. Westcott had commented, looking a tad grimmer than was his usual wont.

“The entire French Toulon fleet? What’d that be, I wonder?” Lt. Darling had speculated. “And did he pick up any Spanish ships of the line with him? Twenty, twenty-five sail of the line, and at least half a dozen frigates?”

“If Jamaica’s their intent, the Bahamas will be safe,” Lewrie had told them. “And when Nelson lays into them, so will the rest of the West Indies, perhaps the Med, too, once the French have nothing left.”

“Hear hear!” Lt. Lovett had exclaimed, raising his wine glass on high. “Gentlemen, allow me to give you Nelson, and a bloody battle!”

“Nelson, and victory!” Lt. Bury had soberly amended.

All in all, it had been a cheering supper, but for the dessert, for neither Yeovill nor Cooke had been able to master the receipt for pecan pie, despite their experimentations.

* * *

Once Squirrel had departed them, the squadron had sailed on out the Northeast Providence Channel, past the lower-most tip of Great Abaco, the Hole-in-the-Wall, then up the Eastern coast past Cherokee Sound, Little Harbour, Hope Town, and Marsh Harbour, the main settlement, and seaward of the chain of cays; Man O’ War, Great Guana, Green Turtle, and Powell Cay, bound for the Northern-most end of the Bahamas where the Little Bahama Bank continued beyond Little Abaco and Fox Town and Walker’s Cay, where lay the East entrance to the inner Bank, Walker’s Cay Channel.

This should be good lurkin’ grounds, Lewrie told himself as the seventh day of their search went on with nothing to show for it.

Ships bound in or out of Nassau had to use either of the Providence Channels, and if one did not have enough ships to watch each of the channels simultaneously, the best bet would be to cruise north of the Little Bahama Bank, making long transits to the East-Sou’east to watch one channel, and to the West-Sou’west to watch the other, with a “hidey-hole” round Walker’s Cay should a warship turn up. It was the very place Lewrie would have