THE GUN KETCH

'Well, of course she's here, Lieutenant Lewrie!' Silver-Buttons snapped. 'Else how would I have this paperwork, hey? Came in Tuesday last. As to her material condition, I haven't a clue, though. I cannot be expected to keep track of everything! Aha. Docked and breamed last week, her coppering redone, and is now lying at anchor, awaiting turnover.'

'And does that say how many hands stayed aboard, sir?' Lewrie continued. 'Any Discharged I must recruit to replace, or will the men turn over entire?'

'Portsmouth's full o' willin' hands, sir,' Captain Palmer said after masticating a last, fetching bite of bacon. 'I'll be that able to fulfill yer ev'ry desire. Bahamers, is it to be, did y'say? Then y'd rest easy to know there's Cuffy sailors aplenty, awishin' the hot o' their tropics. Mister Powlett's Marine Society o' London's sent down a draft o' their very best, and were ya able to deem 'em Ordinary Seamen, seein' as how they know their knots an' can box the compass good as a hand a year at sea, then half yer problem's solved, I say!'

'I see, sir,' Alan nodded. West Indies sailors were as good as any he'd seen in his limited experience, though most English captains would not take them. They were better behaved, more religious, and a lot less likely to cause trouble as long as they were treated fairly. He didn't know squit about any Mr. Powlett's Marine Society of London, but it sounded very much like some Poor Relief for street urchins. If they'd gotten any instructions at all, they'd stand head and shoulders higher than truculent, ignorant landsmen from a debtors' prison.

'I must confess ignorance as to my needs for personnel, Captain Palmer,' Lewrie said, finally getting his documents slid back to him, and into his pocket once more. 'I shall go aboard Alacrity and read myself in at once, determine my lacks, and get in touch with you, sir.'

'Afore the Admiralty changes its mind, hey?' Palmer cajoled.

'Quite, sir,' Lewrie smiled bashfully. Captain Palmer had hit the nail directly on its head.

'God, she's lovely,' Alan breathed as he beheld the gun ketch which lay at anchor before him as he was rowed out by a bargee.

'Ever' ship be, sir,' the bargee grunted over his oars.

Alacrity was a saucy thing. Seen side-on, which view disguised her wide beam, she possessed a lovely, curving sheer-line to bulwarks and gunwale, and the jaunty, upward thrust of her jib boom and sprit yard made her appear eager and lively. She was about seventy-five feet on the range of the deck, and ninety feet overall from taffrail to the tip of her bowsprit. She was rigged as a two-masted ketch, a bomb ketch of the older style with equally spaced masts, the after mast by the break of the quarter-deck railings shorter than the mainmast forward. Her principal motive power would be those two courses rigged fore-and-aft on the lower masts, hoisted like batwings from gaff yard atop and long booms below. She sported crossed square-sail yards for tops'ls on both masts, and stays forrud for outer-flying jib, inner jib and fore-topmast stays'l.

Her hull below the black chainwale was linseeded or oiled a dark brown with a glossy new sheen, while her gunwale and bulwarks, all her upper hull was a spritely blue several shades lighter than royal blue, and her rails, transom carvings, quarter-galleries, beakhead and projecting strips above and below the gunwale were done in a yellow deep enough to at first be mistaken for giltwork. Her crowned-lion figurehead at the tip of the beakhead, below the thrusting jib boom, was the only place true gilt appeared.

'Boat ahoy!' one of the harbor watch shouted in query.

'Alacrity!' the bargee bellowed, and raising several ringers in the air to indicate the number of side-boys due their visitor; and with his shout telling them that their new lord and master had arrived. He stilled his oars and let the rowboat coast to give them time to sort out a proper welcome.

The boat at last thudded against the hull by the boarding battens and dangling manropes. Alan hitched his hanger out of the way, set his hat firmly on his head, and stood. He reached out, took hold of the manropes and heaved himself onto the wide and deep shelf-like battens to ascend to the entry port cut into the bulwarks above. He heard the sweet trills of bosun's pipes squealing his first salute as a captain of a man of war, and once through the entry port and standing on the starboard sail-handling gangway (his gangway, he relished!) he doffed his hat in reply. Surprised as they were to see him, he was as much surprised to see a Commission Officer standing before him with a sword drawn and presented in salute.

'Welcome aboard, sir,' the young man said once the ceremony was done, and he had sheathed his sword.

'Lewrie,' Alan announced. 'Alan Lewrie. And you are?'

'Ballard, sir,' the trim little officer replied. 'Arthur Ballard.' He pronounced it Ball-ahhrd, emphasizing the last syllable.

'Are you temporary, or…?' Alan quizzed.

'First officer, sir,' Ballard informed him with a slight raise of his eyebrows. 'A bomb would normally rate but one Commission Officer as master and commander, sir, but rerated as a sloop, sir…'

'Ah, I see!' Alan nodded with a smile. He would have someone else to help with the navigation, and the watch-standing, which suited his indolent nature perfectly! 'Did you turn over with her, sir, from her previous commission?'

'Came aboard to join four days ago, sir, just after she left the careenage,' Ballard rejoined.

'Right, then,' Lewrie said, digging into that side pocket for his precious orders. 'Assemble ship's company, Mister Ballard.'

'Aye, aye, sir,' Ballard intoned with a sober mien.

It was thin audience Lewrie had to witness his reading-in. Two gangly midshipmen of fourteen or so, hopefully salty enough from being at sea since the usual joining age of ten or twelve; eight or nine boys dressed the usual 'Beau-Nasty' he took for servants and powder monkeys; twenty or so hands from fifteen to forty dressed in blue and gray check calico and slop-trousers, plus the older men who affected cocked hats and longer frock coats with brass buttons who would be her holders of Admiralty warrants; the bosun, carpenter, cooper, sailmaker and gunner, and their immediate mates who were the ship's career professionals.

Alan read them his orders, savoring every mellifluous, ringing phrase which directed him 'to take charge and command' of His Majesty's Sloop Alacrity. Finished at last, he rolled up the document and retied the ribbons, wondering if he should say else.

'I am certain,' he began, looking down at their hopeful faces peering back up at him from the waist amidships, 'that many of you came up on blood and thunder in the recent war, as did I. Service in a ship in peacetime may not hold the ever-present threat of battle. We may have more time for 'make-and-mend,' more 'Rope-yarn Sundays.' But that is only after we've drilled and trained to be ready to fight, and I am satisfied. And our old friend the sea is still a demanding mistress. I deem peacetime service no less rigorous than war. Mind you, I'm no Tartar nor a slavedriver. But I am a taut hand, and a taut ship where every man-jack works chearly for me, our ship, his mates, and our Fleet is a happy ship, I've found. And that is what will satisfy me, and that is what will bring us safely home from the fiercest gales or the hottest fight, should they come to us. Fair enough?' he asked, expecting no answer. 'That'll be all for now. Dismiss the hands, Mister Ballard.'

'Aye, aye, Captain,' Ballard replied, using that honorific for the first time now that Lewrie's assumption of command was official. 'Ship's company, on hats and dismiss! What next, sir?'

'Introduce me to the warrants and mates, Mister Ballard.' Once more, Lewrie felt he was standing outside himself like some theatregoer, judging his own performance on the Navy's stage. He had almost reddened with embarrassment as he uttered those trite-but-true phrases he'd borrowed from other, and whom he considered, better, men.

I've six years in the Navy; why do I still feel like such a low fraud? he asked himself.

He knew his own preferences for peacetime service would be to cruise like a hired yacht, sip claret and dine well, perhaps carry some doxy in his cabins for sport. Yet he wore the King's Coat, and perforce had to live what felt like a great sham; a sham which he was sure others would someday recognize.

'Mister Fellows the sailing master, sir,' Ballard said as Alan's senior mates gathered round. Fellows was short, wiry, ginger-haired, and seemed like a timorous store clerk. 'Mister Harkin the bosun, sir.' Harkin was built like a salt-beef barrel with arms as thick as hawsers, and a round hard face. 'Mister Maclntyre the surgeon's mate. This is Mister Taft, the sailmaker, Mister Fowles the master gunner…'

'Fowles?' Lewrie interrupted. 'Ariadne, winter of '80. You were but an able seaman then. My first ship as a newly.'

'Aye, sir, I were. Thankee fer 'membrin' me, Cap'n, sir,' the clumsy older salt bobbed happily. 'An' that 'appy I be t' be a'servin' unner 'Ram-Cat' Lewrie, sir.' The introductions finished, Lewrie plucked at his uniform. 'I meant to pay my respects to the Port Admiral, else I'd have dressed more suitable for a first-day's inspection, men,' he said