The Old Vengeful

Americans who built the best frigates—Father called them 'pocket-battleships'—he thought the President was the finest frigate ever built, but we didn't capture her until 1814 . . . By then we were actually cutting down ships-of-the-line—battleships— to take on their frigates, after what had happened to the Guerriere and the Java and the Macedonian.'

'But HMS Shannon took USS Chesapeake, I seem to remember?'

'Yes—but the Shannon was our best frigate—Broke was gunnery-mad—and the Chesapeake was their worst one—'

Elizabeth halted her enthusiasm in mid-flow, aware that it was Father who was speaking out of her mouth, and that dummy3

none of it had anything to do with the Vengeful anyway.

'I once wrote a very bad essay on the War of 1812, you know.' He seemed to catch her incomprehension. 'Or, it was about Anglo-American relations in the early nineteenth century actually, only it got bogged down with the war of 1812 . . . But, of course, the Vengeful was at the bottom of the sea a month before the Yankees stabbed us in the back, wasn't she?'

He was putting her at ease again, decided Elizabeth. And that was something she no longer needed. 'You wanted to have a word with me, Mrs Audley said—?'

He focussed on her. 'Yes—that's right, Elizabeth. Now . . .

this was the chapter your father was re-writing—the one about the seventh Vengeful—you made a guess about it, but you don't actually know?' He held up the original chapter, all her beautiful typing, without a single erasure.

'No. But there ought to be something in his notes.' She looked quickly at the suitcase.

'Yes . . . maybe. But I'd like to get the original details clear first.' He smiled. 'So . . . Number Seven was coming back from Gibraltar, via Lisbon, for a major refit—or maybe to be condemned as unfit— when she met the Fortune off Ushant ... in the early summer of 1812?'

'May 5th.' Her eyes were drawn to the typed pages. 'It's all down there.'

'Uh-huh. That was the usual route home, was it?'

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'What d'you mean—usual?'

'Well, if they were going to run into trouble, it would be most likely close to the French coast, wouldn't it?'

'Trouble?' Now she could smile back—at his innocence. 'I expect that's what Captain Williams was hoping for. Frigate captains were always on the look-out for trouble—and prize-money. One good capture could make him rich . . . like a French Indiaman. There were still one or two of them around, even as late as 1812.'

'Instead of which he met the Fortune, though—'

'That would have done almost as well. Prize-money and glory!'

'But the Fortune was much bigger—44 guns and 1200 tons to his 36 guns and 975 tons . . . and the French crew was substantially bigger too, and the Vengeful was desperately under-strength—' he started to riffle through the pages '—

it's here somewhere, the figures—'

'It doesn't matter—he wouldn't have thought twice about any of that.'

He frowned. 'Why not?'

'It isn't in there, but Father had me draw up an appendix about frigate losses during the whole war, from 1793 to 1815—

he liked appendices.' Elizabeth switched on her memory, and the neat columns of figures came to her photographically. 'We lost eighty-two of them altogether, but only nine of those were by enemy action—and that includes dummy3

wars against practically every country in Europe, plus the United States . . . the rest were wreck or accident, and mostly wreck, like the Vengeful. But in the same period we sank or captured . . . oh, I think it was nearly 250 enemy frigates—

238, it was.' The way he was looking at her, she had to shrug modestly. 'I remember the numbers because Father made me total them all for him.'

'I see . . .' He grinned lop-sidedly. 'Now I understand what Rule Britannia meant! So Captain Williams thought he was on a statistical winner, in fact?'

'He'd have expected to win.' Elizabeth shrugged. 'He'd have been court-martiallcd if he hadn't fought, anyway.'

'But the Frenchman fought better than he expected, apparently?'

She had to shrug again. 'They probably did more damage to the Vengeful than he expected. But that was because she was in such a rotten condition, Father thought—and that came from the testimony of the survivors from the prize-crew on the Fortune, after she sank . . . The French always fought bravely, though.' She looked at him curiously. 'What's the object of all this?'

'Nothing really . . . The Fortune couldn't have been waiting for the Vengeful, could it—she, I mean?'

'No.' She shook her head decisively. 'That's quite out of the question. With sailing ships in those days ... no way. It's quite out of the question.'

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'I see ... So they met by accident, and they beat each other to a pulp . . . And after the surviving officer in the Vengeful had sent across his prize-crew to take over the