A King`s Trade

'interlopers' could decide to run them off.

'Damned shame,' Lewrie said to the Bosun as he joined him beside the wreck, looking up at her great bulk. 'What d'ye make her, Mister Pendarves? One hundred eighty feet on the range of the deck? Perhaps fourty-eight feet abeam?'

'Summat near that, aye, Cap'm,' Pendarves said with a sage nod. 'Big as an eighty-gunner, or a Sir William Slade-designed seventy-four o' th' Large Class. Bigger'n th' Common Class for certain, sir.'

'She'll have one hell of a rudder and sternpost, then,' Lewrie surmised. 'Might take a deal of cutting and trimming down.'

'Aye, sir, but we'll do 'er, long as it's in decent condition.'

'Ah, here come our boats, I believe,' Lewrie pointed out, as a group of three rather large cutters came near them, from the docks at Simon's Town. Mr. Goosen stood in the bows of the lead boat, waving.

Talk about your book-ends, Lewrie thought with a scowl of his own, as he walked down to the hard-packed sand of the lower beach; Both of 'em bad bargains… crooked as a dog's hind leg. Still, reminding himself that beggars can't be choosers, he waved and smiled in similar enthusiastic fashion to greet Goosen's arrival.

'Ach, dere be Goosen!' Andries de Witt cried from his left side.

Book-ends, indeed; both were squat, solid, and stout, both florid of face and balding, and both sported beards so thick they looked like a brace of 'owls in an ivy bush.' All Lewrie could normally make out of their features were thick and meaty lips-which they licked with sly relish whenever he enquired about costs-and pale blue eyes.

'Gut morning, Kaptein Lewrie!' Goosen bellowed ashore, flapping his wide-brimmed hat in the air. 'You see, we heff boats! And, I am speaking vit' de leading burghers of Simon's Town, to assure them all you vish is de rudder, and they can keep the rest of the wreck, oh, ja!'

'Very good, Mister Goosen!' Lewrie shouted back, cupping hands to his mouth. 'Can we board your boat and take a look at the rudder right away, sir?'

'Ah, ja, climb aboard!'

' 'Tis big, aye,' Bosun Pendarves commented again, minutes later after the cutter had been secured under the Lord Clive's stern counter. The locally-hired Dutch crew-owner and helmsman, and two younger lads who seemed to bear an uncanny resemblance to Goosen and de Witt-found a quiet spot right-aft by the tiller and took themselves a well-earned nap, the doings of rooinek British sailors no concern of theirs.

Mr. Pendarves got out his long wooden ruler, and Mr. Garroway, Proteus's Carpenter, produced a long hank of knot-marked and ink-ruled twine. For long minutes they hemmed and ahummed over the great rudder, which hung as far over as its gudgeons and faying pieces would allow, as if the last helm order had been to put it hard-over. Thankfully, it still seemed to be in one piece, above-water at least, and all pintles and gudgeons in reach had held firm through the grounding, and still supported the rudder without evident strain.

'Four foot even, I make it,' Bosun Pendarves announced, at last. 'Four foot even allow th' hances, fore-and-aft. Oak main piece, fir sacrifice boards, an' all, Garroway. Did her builders follow ol' Navy fashion, that'd mean she'd widen t'five foot, seven inch at th' sole.'

'What d'ye make it, Buckley?' Garroway asked one of his junior mates, who had shinnied up the green-slimed main piece to the gallery above, where the upper stock entered the overhanging counter.

'Two foot, two inches wide, Mister Garroway,' the Carpenter's Mate called down. 'Two foot, four inch, fore- and-aft. An' th' tiller mortices look sound, too. Nothin' sprung, f'um wot I kin see.'

'Means the main piece would taper to four inches wide, at the sole, then,' Garroway said with a satisfied grunt and nod. 'We need a stock t'be one foot, six inches, the sole t'be three inches wide. We can plane that down, easy enough, hey?'

'Aye,' Pendarves agreed, lost in their own little arcane world. 'We carry a stock o' one foot, eight inch, front t'back, an' planes an' adzes'll take care o' that. Whether she's wormed, though…' he said, finding a new fret to frown over, and digging into a canvas bucket full of odds and ends, then produced a small drill-auger with which to take a few sample bores from the exposed portion of the rudder's main piece.

'Taller than we need,' the Carpenter pointed out. 'Shorten the stock, that's easy…'

'Cut new mortices for th' tiller bars, aye,' Pendarves agreed, 'a'low th' old'uns. Make me calmer in mind, d'we do that. Stronger,' the Bosun muttered, happily drilling away. 'Ship this size fits seven sets o' pintles an' gudgeons… Proteus fits five… so we'll haveta bore fresh bolt-holes, too, an' that makes me even gladder.'

'Strip the fir trailing-edge timber off, plane the main piece to a taper,' Garroway speculated, 'and might lop a bit off the sole as well, so she's even with our sternpost.'

'Uhum,' Pendarves dreamily replied.

'Salvage the copper disks 'tween pintles and gudgeon holes…'

'Goes without sayin'…'

'Our old sternpost, though…'

'Aye, there's yer bugger.'

'Take a morticed block from this'un, and shiv it into ours, or… rip this bigger post clean off, trim it down, and replace ours, do ye think?' Garroway asked.

'Be a bitch, that, but… might be stronger, all in all! Aha!' Pendarves cried, sounding very pleased. He withdrew his drill-auger and carefully cupped a palmful of oak shavings… as bright, fresh, and worm-free as the best 'seasoned in-frame' timber from an English dockyard. 'Cap'm sir… I do allow we got ourselves a sound rudder!'

'Marvellous!' Lewrie crowed, all but ready to swing his hat in the air and cry, 'Huzzah!' Though, after a long look up the rudder…

'How heavy d'ye think it is, though, Mister Pendarves?' he asked in a soberer voice. 'And, how the Devil do we get the damned thing off in one piece?'

'Well, hmmm…' from both Pendarves and Garroway. I knew it couldn't be this easy! Lewrie told himself.

Indeed, it wasn't. First off, Mr. Goosen's Javanese divers had to swim down to survey that part of the rudder that lay underwater, and in what condition the unseen pintles and gudgeons were. The locals had already taken the long, straight tillers, so temporary new ones had to be cut so they could turn the rudder while it hung at its precarious angle. Uncontrolled, when they attempted to hoist it free of the gudgeons, its great weight could crush or kill someone.

Hoisting chains had to be rigged from above, thick cables run from the chains to the after capstan, and new bars fashioned to insert into it, for the local Boers had taken those, as well.

The sacrificial trailing-edge pieces of fir had to be stripped off to lighten it, the hard and water-resistant elm dowel pins saved for later use, and that took many dives by the Javanese, too, so they could hammer them out while several feet down and holding their breath.

The triangular strips of 'bearding' elm from the centreline of the sternpost, and the forward edge of the rudder, also had to be removed with care, so they could employ them on Proteus, too.

Involving even more diving (and Lewrie's money), a hole had to be drilled through both the leading edge and trailing edge of the rudder's sole, and ropes threaded through them, led up either side of the stern to the jeer bitts, and belayed. When that massive weight was hoisted free, there had to be some way of controlling its swinging, and half of Lewrie's working-party would be tailing onto those lines while another half would be breasting to the new capstan bars. And, as Mr. Goosen explained, trying to drill underwater was a long, laborious process, where one turn on a drill-auger could rotate the worker off his feet, unless anchored with a weight on the bottom, and loops of line where he could snag his toes.

Naturally, all that took days longer than Goosen had estimated, with a resultant increase in the final cost, as did the cost of keeping Mr. de Witt's waggons, beasts, and kaffir workers idly waiting for the rudder to be recovered, and trekked back to Cape Town.