What we did today isn't the usual. More skulduggery, like whist or chess, creeping…'
'God, I hope
'No, you don't, Mister Mountjoy.' Lewrie sighed. 'You serve me, at my pleasure. And, eventually, yours. You're
'I am, sir. Completely,' Mountjoy said, with fervent certainty.
'Very well then, Mister Mountjoy,' Lewrie said, offering a hand to the young man. 'I'll accept your letter of resignation. And may God protect you in your new career. You may go ashore with Peel at Genoa.'
'God
Wish I was that certain, Lewrie thought; of anything. With France holding almost all of the Genoese Riviera now,
He was just bone-weary enough, though, to suspend disbelief, to feel a small, heretical sense of hope that things would work out, in his, and
'The sea!' he'd shouted in the heat of pursuit; look at the
'A seal, Cap'um, I
Me, lucky ashore, Lewrie wryly mused; now
Still, he went to the bulwark to gaze out at the swelling, dark sea, and raise one hand, almost in supplication, as eight bells began to chime up forrud, so blissfully routine, so fragile, thin but brassy-mellow.
And the night wind breathed in the shrouds, as if in a soft and sympathetic, assuring response.
Afterword
It wasn't the usual thing for individuals to be awarded medals in the eighteenth century; those were reserved for successful campaigns or battles, given only to the few. Quite unlike today's 'medals for migraines.' So Lewrie wasn't recognized for his small part at The Glorious First of June. Admiral Howe's Flag Captain, Sir Roger Curtis, created a storm of controversy by recommending only those few of his personal favorites who had closed the foe, and the rest of the ship captains went without, which put them into a snit fit. There is a large group portrait of Howe and others at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England, showing Howe (suffering too-tight shoes in asperity), the wounded Captain Sir Edward Snape Douglas with his hand to his head, distracted as if he was hearing some phantasmic voices, and at the extreme left, Sir Roger, who looms like a Nixon White House aide. The Lt. Edward Codrington went on to fame with Nelson at Trafalgar, and once he made flag rank, commanded the victory at Navarino, the last sea battle fought completely under sail in 1827.
Yes, Hotham was just about as huge a drooling idiot as I wrote of him. He was one of those people who could literally snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Not that he tried very hard, mind. He was replaced in the Mediterranean by Admiral Sir John Jervis, 'Old Jarvy,' the following year. Jervis was a bit on the grumpy side, a disciplinarian whose harshness saved the Mediterranean fleet from the rot of the Great Mutiny in '97, even if he had to hang a few conspirators to keep his fleet functioning. Do you imagine, gentle reader, that Lewrie and Jervis will get along like a house afire? Hmm…
As for those shocked that Captain Horatio Nelson could be portrayed as angry, crude in his speech, even blasphemous, or that the man I wrote about isn't the marble demigod atop that pillar in Trafalgar Square (I mean, I've heard of putting people, women especially, on pedestals, but that'un rather takes the cake, doesn't it?) let's remember that it's a long way from his father's rectory at Burnham Thorpe to a harsh life in the Royal Navy, and Nelson spent the greater part of his childhood and all his adult life around… sailors.
Drawing principally upon Oliver Warner's
To further cite Oliver Warner's work on Nelson, Warner used the earlier work of James Harrison, who wrote a biography with the Lady Emma Hamilton ('That Woman!') as his source, who claimed that:
'Nelson… only had two faults; venery and swearing. Harrison said of him that 'it is not to be dissembled, though by no means ever an unprincipled seducer of the wives and daughters of his friends, he was always well known to maintain rather more partiality for the fair sex than is quite consistent with the highest degree of Christian purity.' ' Hmm… sounds rather like Lewrie, in that respect. Further, ' 'Such improper indulgences, with some slight addition to that other vicious habit of British seamen, the occasional use of a few thoughtlessly profane expletives in speech, form the only dark specks ever yet discovered in the bright blaze of his moral character.' '
And, I'd imagine that Lewrie was the sort who could get so 'up his nose,' as to rouse a saint, much less a Nelson, to intemperance.
The Lt. Thomas Hardy of
Cockburn, hmm… There may be some who could say that I have not been exactly charitable to him. He
There was no raid on Bordighera that I know of. I made it all up. That's what writers tend to do when things get slow. Same as 'Surfs Up!' when the plot broke down in all those old 'beach movies' with Annette Funi-cello; 'Beat To Quarters!', do twenty or so rather easier pages and let the good guys slaughter a s… load of Frogs.
Yes, the Austrians did win the Vado Sweepstakes. General de Vins acted like Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg