A King`s Trade

Helena… just as thunder heads earlier in the voyage had been mistaken for the lonely St. Paul 's Rocks, for Cape Roque. One particularly-solid and seemingly-unmoving storm ahead of the trade's course on-passage for Recife had resembled an island so much that Grafton had despatched HMS Chloe to 'smoak' it out, sending her dashing ahead of the convoy, as if Capt. Sir Tobias Treghues might gain undying fame by discovering one of the 'long lost' isles described in early Spanish sea-charts, sometimes reported by seafarers ever since… just as 'High-Brazil' and its archipelagos were once cartographers' rumours, yet never found where others had reported them. She'd returned hours later, empty-handed.

These hills and mountains were real, though, at long last. They solidified as the convoy butted its slow way towards them against both Trades and current; other clouds scudded behind them as they got near, and even at ten miles rough details of rocks and bluffs and greenery (such as it was) could be discerned on barren, windswept St. Helena.

'Almost done,' Lewrie whispered to himself with mounting, yet wary, enthusiasm, as he studied the isle from a perch on the foremast fighting top. 'Almost there!'

Soon to be free of Sir Tobias and Lady Treghues? Pray Jesus! A break in their long, very long passage, and the bulk of the escorting warships would turn about for home. And, was God just, Proteus would be one of them.

One more circus performance, then …! Lewrie thought as he put his brass telescope to his eye. It was land, by God; it had to be St. Helena, and not another of those portable mysteries, for this was even in the correct latitude and longitude, for a wonder.

Though he still despised clowns and mimes worse than he ever did cold, boiled mutton, Capt. Alan Lewrie had come to rather like circuses and such. Or, rather, certain circus folk.

Recife had been a friendly port, a wondrous place to break their passage, go ashore, and stretch their legs. Well, for 'John Company' sailors and paying passengers, for Navy officers or working-parties under the ships' pursers to fetch supplies… but not for Jack tars.

Treghues had ordered his squadron anchored farther out, so that even the strongest swimmers might be daunted from hopes of desertion, with armed and fully-kitted Marines posted at entry-ports, sterns, and bows, round the clock. Once re-victualled, and glutted with firewood and fresh water, Treghues had allowed the 'Easy' pendants hoisted, the warships put 'Out of Discipline' for two whole days and nights; aboard-ship liberty, not shore liberty, so the local bumboats could swarm out with their wares-shoddy slop-clothing, cheap shoes, exotic parrots and monkeys for sale, fruits and ades, smuggled spirits… and whores.

What had then ensued had not been a pretty sight, and Treghues and his wife and chaplain had taken shore lodgings to spare their finer sensibilities the sights and sounds of the wild ruts that had followed.

Any sailor with the 'blunt' could hire a doxy for a tumble, for an hour or so; those who could afford more could declare to the watch officers that his chosen wench was his 'wife,' with whom he'd share his food (and whatever extra he could buy from the bumboatmen) and his rum issue with her, plus a fee to her and her 'agent' for her loaned charms.

The Surgeon, Mr. Hodson, and his Mate, the exiled former French physician, Mr. Maurice Durant, made what attempt they could to determine the women free of venereal, or other communicable, diseases. The Bosun and his mates, the Master-At-Arms, and his Ship's Corporals searched incoming goods, and the whores' underskirtings, for contraband liquour, but that was a losing proposition, and small bottles of local rum or arrack always got past them.

Watches would still be stood in harbour, and the cry to rouse a division, a watch, usually was no longer 'Wakey wakey, lash up an' stow' but 'Show a leg, show a leg.' Hairy-legged men got chivvied out of a hammock; smooth and (mostly) hairless female legs were allowed to sleep in! Everyone got as drunk as they could afford, danced as exuberantly and sang as loud as they could holler, and coupled in hammocks, or on the deck between the guns, whenever they felt the itch, with a blanket hung from the deck-head for only the slightest modicum of privacy. It sometimes required the Master-At-Arms, the Bosun, and those Marines who weren't whoring or talking-in-tongues-drunk to break up fights over a woman, a parrot, puppy, or kitten, a dram of rum or a suspect run of the cards, dice, or backgammon.

Lewrie slept aboard, but wisely took his gig ashore right after breakfast, and didn't return 'til after Lights Out round nine o'clock. What he hadn't seen he wouldn't have to punish, and would usually hold a rather lenient Captain's Mast, unless relatively innocent sins turned into crimes against the Articles of War.

The Portuguese were neutral in the war against France, and the people of Recife were friendly towards most visiting seamen. Without wartime taxes, and with the higher value of the Pound Sterling, he had gone on a frenetic shopping spree. Fresh, low-tide sand by the barrel for the cats' 'necessary'; jerked meats and sausages for their feeding; hard-skinned citrus fruits by the bushel, cocoanuts for their novelty; both local and imported wines to restore his wine-cabinet and his lazarette stores; fresh ink and paper, new batches of candles and oils to fill his lanthorns; a new shirt or two; Christmas presents to ship to Caroline and his children, Sewallis, Hugh, and Charlotte, for he'd not had enough time to do so in London or Portsmouth, and here it was not only past Christmas, but almost two months into both the new year of 1800 and a new century as well!

Lewrie had bought a personal store of Jesuits' Bark, cinchona, just in case of Malaria breaking out after a shore call, along with a box of citronella candles in tiny wooden tubs, that Mr. Durant found useful to defeat the sickening tropical miasmas that had engendered an outbreak of Yellow Jack aboard Proteus when first in the Caribbean in '97. And, when they were anchored near shore, the candles seemed to shoo away the pesky mosquitoes, too, allowing one to sleep at night without diving completely under the bed-covers.

New linen or cotton bedding, too, a spanking-new and more comfortable cotton-stuffed mattress for his hanging bed-cot, since the old one had begun to reek, from both his own sweat and the odd claim laid upon it by Chalky or Toulon, most especially when Capt. Nicely had supplanted him for a time last year.

And, laundry! And hot baths!

At sea, laundry was done in a wood bucket with seawater or part-fresh, part saline, in which the lye soap the Purser, Mr. Coote, sold could barely raise a lather. The freshwater ration was a gallon a day per man, officer or ship's boy, and most of that was used to boil the salt-meat rations or rare duffs or puddings in net bags in steep- tubs in the galley. To rinse, other net bags were used to tow the washing astern in the ship's wake, so clothing smutted and stiff with tar and 'slush' stains from the skimmed fat from the galley used on all of the rope rigging to keep it supple, reeking of human sweat and fleshy oils and grease, came back aboard but a tad cleaner, and simply stiff with salt crystals, once they'd been dried. After a while, everyone, from the aristocrat to the powder monkeys, erupted in painful, suppurating salt-water boils. Lewrie included.

Laundry done in boiling-hot fresh water, though, oceans of it, then rinsed and re-rinsed in colder fresh water, churned and paddled, wrung and beaten, then sun-dried on a line of clean rope, could hold the boils at bay for weeks, months, if one carefully rationed changes of underclothes and sheets, and didn't go too potty on fastidiousness!

The officers and midshipmen had decided to go shares on fresh livestock, too, and had asked if their captain might wish to join in. They'd hunted up a nanny-goat with two kids, which could be milked for addition to coffee or tea, so sweet that even hot cocoa didn't require too much sugar stirred in. And, a good kid goat was tender eating as well! They bought chickens and new coops, so they could have eggs at least three days a week, along with a lusty rooster to quicken chicks so the flock would prosper, if the noisy little bastard did his duty. A fat duck or two, some pigs, including a pregnant sow sure to birth some roast sucklings sooner or later, and a bullock for consumption in harbour, and one for later fresh beef.

Even a permanent guard had to be put on the manger under the break of the forecastle, to help the ship's boy who tended livestock-genially known as the 'Duck Fucker'-keep the Marine's pet, the champion rat-killing mongoose, from stealing chicken eggs. By now, she was very well-fed on dead rats (which upset the midshipmen's mess no end for taking that source of meat), sleek, and well-groomed, and wore a red leather collar, and the semi-official rank of Corporal, listed in their muster book as Marine M. Cocky.

Then, after a sublime first night ashore's supper of local seafoods, fresh salad, soup, and mango pudding,