Havoc`s Sword

Christian name of the McGilliveray he'd met in Spanish Florida towards the end of the Revolution; he thought it was something Scottish, clannish… Highlander-ish? Unpronounceable?

'Yourself, plus three others, sir,' Seabright answered. 'Whomever you choose. The captain will have one midshipman at-table, sir. Kin,' he explained, with a shrug, 'So…'

'Ah! Very well, sir,' Lewrie said, asking the time to be expected. 'Two Lieutenants, and one younker to keep yours company at the foot of the table, then. 'Til then, Mister Seabright, and thankee.'

'Was that wise, Captain Lewrie?' Mr. Peel said after departure honours had been paid, and the barge was being stroked back over to a sleek frigate-like three-master about half a mile farther up the roads. 'The Yankee Doodles… recall what Mister Pelham told you, sir. They are more competitors than allies. Other than our signals book, we do not share information with them. It might be taken as, uhm… by our superiors, that is…'

'Oh, rot, Mister Peel,' Lewrie breezed off. 'If anything, it'll prove t'be a harmless diversion. We get a chance to see if the smaller American warships are built as stout and novel as their new forty-four gunned frigates. I told you 'bout them, didn't I? You told me they've established anchorages in Prince Rupert Bay on Dominica, and in South Friar's Bay on Saint Kitts. Much closer to Guadeloupe, mind, and what they know of these waters, and French activities, might be fresher than our information. We could learn more from them than they from us.'

'If played right, I s'pose, sir,' Peel dubiously said.

'And we, without actually saying that we're here on a specific mission,' Lewrie slyly hinted, 'discover to them who and what Choundas is. Now, do they feel like making the effort to stop his business as the best way to protect their own trade, we'd have more eyes and ears at sea helping us run him to ground, and all unwitting, too! They're a spankin' new navy, just itchin' t'beat the Be-Jesus out of the Frogs. T'gain fame and honour, t'lay the foundation for a permanent fleet not subject to the whims o' their Congress's parsimony. Damme, Mister Peel, they'd best whip somebody… soon!'

'So eager for a victory or two that they'd go after Choundas in our stead, Captain Lewrie?' Peel snickered as he saw the sense of this piddling little revelation to their supper hosts.

'Damme, they divert him from his plans, or do they really corner him and beat the stuffing from him, I shan't cry,' Lewrie vowed. 'However the deed's done, hey?'

'And there is always the possibility that, should they meet up with Choundas, and lose to his greater cleverness and skill,' Mister Peel said with a quizzical brow up, 'well, perhaps their Congress and voters decide having a national navy, instead of a gaggle of revenue cutters, and thirteen state militias at sea, is a bad idea. Hence, no competition in the Caribbean, and their trade protection put into our good hands, Captain Lewrie. Hmm… int'restin'.'

'Which'd please your Mister Pelham, and his masters in London, right down to the ground,' Lewrie realised, beaming at just how devious Peel could be. 'Sending him home wearin' the laurel crown, gettin' him off my back… and you, promoted and feted, or whatever it is they do in the Foreign Office to 'good and faithful servants'?'

'They mostly came from privateersmen, smugglers, and pirates, Peel seemed to agree, '… our Americans.'

'Set a thief t'catch a thief, you're saying?' Lewrie laughed.

'Something like that, Captain Lewrie.'

'And it'll be amusing, too, Mister Peel,' Lewrie brightly told him, already shuffling through his mental 'muster book' for people to take with him that evening. 'The McGilliveray I met was half-Scot and half-Muskogee Indian… whom the Jonathons call Creeks. The longer

we spent up the Apalachicola River in Spanish Florida, the more native he went, 'til he got so guttural I couldn't understand half of what he said… and made me feel for my scalp ev'ry morning. Is his kinsman even close to the same bare-arsed, buckskin sort, you'll be able t'dine out on the tale the next five years!'

'You'll wig and powder, for safety's sake, or wear your own hair then, Captain Lewrie?' Peel proposed, chuckling.

'Oh, they hardly ever scalp their supper guests, Mister Peel,' Lewrie cheerfully said. ' 'Less they're hellish liquored up. Let's see… yes, Lieutenant Adair will go with me. Show 'em a real Scot for a change, not their rusticated variety. He'll most-like bowl 'em over, might even cite whole pages of 'guid auld Robbie Burns' at 'em. Don't know of him, Mister Peel? The Scot poet and songster? Oh, well. And Midshipman Grace, to pair with their 'younker.' Grace came up from the Nore fisheries not two years ago, common as anything, so he'll appeal to their egalitarian ideals.'

'Whether they really practice them or not,' Peel stuck in.

'Catterall? No, he'd scalp somebody, does he get into his cups. And there's sure t'be American corn-whisky. Third guest, hmm. What about you, Mister Peel? Might turn out t'be a rare treat. If not, I could take Lieutenant Langlie. He sings well, when liquored.'

Peel and corn-whisky, though; walking on his knees and howling.

Talk about amusing, indeed, Lewrie maliciously thought.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The USS Thomas Sumter was not a true frigate, though she looked like one at first glance; long, fairly low in the bulwarks, flush-deck at the forecastle and quarterdeck, but 'waisted' between her foremast and main in conventional style, with upper gangways just wide enough for sail- handling, and service of the swivel-guns that would mount on the stanchions set atop her bulwarks.

Though armed with twenty-two 12-pounders on the gun-deck, and equipped with two 6-pounder chase-guns on her forecastle and six more on her quarterdeck-making her a 30-gunner and a 'jack-ass frigate' in any nation's navy-she was officially rated as an Armed Ship, in temporary service. Most of the former colonies, now states, had raised subscription funds literally by the bushel-baskets with which they meant to build men o' war, but… in the meantime, some of the funds were used to purchase likely merchant ships for arming and conversion until the real ones slid off the ways and got to sea.

Though Sumter was all trig and 'Bristol Fashion,' as clean and fresh-smelling as a spanking-new ship, meticulously maintained by her crew, and with her yards squared to a mathematical perfection, Lewrie wasn't particularly impressed by her, in his professional appraisal.

Sumter had very little tumble-home above her gun-deck to reduce her hull's topweight, having been designed for maximum space in cargo holds and orlop, so he suspected that she might not be as stiff

as he might have liked in a blow, since, like all American-built ships he'd seen, he thought her over-sparred, and would likely carry too much canvas aloft, making her tender. Her bulwarks and hull scantlings weren't as thick as a proper warship's, either, and from what short time they had had on an abbreviated tour before going aft, he saw that her beams, timbers, futtocks, and knees had been sawn to lighter civilian specifications, and spaced a few more vulnerable inches apart on their centres. She'd not withstand a long, drawn-out drubbing 'twixt wind and water, did she cross hawse with a French Fifth Rate frigate, perhaps not even a well-manned and gunned Sixth Rate corvette armed with sixteen or twenty cannon.

Those drawbacks didn't seem to faze Captain McGilliveray, though; he was immoderately proud of her, boasting of what a swift sailer she was, how capable of carrying 'all plain sail' even in blustery weather… though with all squares'ls reduced one reef.

Lewrie had brought Lt. Adair, Midshipman Grace, and had finally chosen Peel instead of his First Officer for the third guest; the hope of seeing Peel 'three sheets to the wind' on corn-whisky was just too tempting… and, was any intelligence to be gleaned, Peel was trained for such subtle delving and discovery, after all.

'Thought we'd begin with claret, Captain Lewrie,' Sumter''s captain announced, opening his wine-cabinet. 'Claret, not rum, appears to be the lifeblood of the gallant Royal Navy.'

'And on that head, Captain McGilliveray,' Lewrie responded, 'I took the liberty of fetching off a half-dozen of