King, Ship, and Sword

mind of a professional boxer, with massive hands and thick fingers. 'The jungle, forest, marsh, and swamp night mists. We should avoid any anchorage that does not have a sea breeze to keep land winds, and the noisome mists, at bay. And, there is the chichona bark powder, which is efficacious at combatting either of the fevers,' he explained, shifting in the collapsing chair and making it creak in an alarming way as he sipped a welcome glass of Lewrie's Rhenish.

'Once they're caught' Lewrie grumbled, 'not before.'

'The medical records show no usefulness in administering chichona bark tea to prevent outbreaks, sir… sorry.'

'And the citronella I wrote them about, sir?' Lewrie asked. 'My former Surgeon, Mister Durant in Proteus, used it in lanthorn oil and in candles, and we suffered very few cases of Yellow Jack after our initial plague. The Spanish and Portuguese colonies burn citronella candles by the ton in Fever Season, and they don't die by battalions.'

'Ehm… the uses your former Surgeon cited, Captain sir, were accompanied by keeping their houses, their windows, shut at night, to keep out the miasmas,' Mr. Mainwaring hesitantly related, with a faint scowl on his rugged face. 'Secondly, the others reckoned that the Dons and the Portuguese have, after a couple of centuries, developed a toleration, and their only mortalities are some of the newborn and those just arrived in their colonies. And, thirdly, sir… it's the cost of it. The others are loath to purchase large quantities of what may be a folk nostrum of no use. Like all their other medicaments, it comes out of their own pockets. Out of mine, sir,' he pointedly added.

'Humour me, Mister Mainwaring,' Lewrie stubbornly told him. 'Do we put in somewhere that citronella candles and oils are available, I will buy it… and we will employ it, even if the other ships do not. I've seen it work… God knows why, but it seems to. If anthing else, it seems to keep the hordes of mosquitoes at bay. We'll place tubs of candles round the hatchways at anchor, burn candles belowdecks instead of the issue glims after dark, do we cruise close ashore or in a lee of an island. And, for good measure, I'm certain you'll wish to get more chichona bark powders, do our people come down with Yellow Jack.'

'Of course, sir,' Mainwaring replied, though it was uncertain whether he was agreeing about the chichona bark powders or submitting to a captain's odd caprice; in his experience as a Ship's Surgeon, and in discussions with his fellows, Mainwaring had come to learn that Navy captains could be an eccentric lot.

Weeks later, in late June, the squadron was alee of Martinique and looking into the major naval port of Fort- de-France. Surprisingly, the windward approaches from the Atlantic, and the harbour itself, were already being watched by a slim squadron of three frigates or sloops of war, who reported that no fresh French squadron had been seen there, and what few enemy warships were present were effectively bottled up.

'Hear about Commodore Hood, sir?' the senior captain had called over to them with a speaking-trumpet. 'He's already taken their island of Saint Lucia, and the port of Castries, and is now off to do the same to Tobago! Capital, what?'

Further North at Guadeloupe, and it was much the same story off the fortified lee-side harbour of Basse-Terre. Rear-Admiral Sir John Thomas Duckworth, commanding the Jamaica Station, must have had early premonitions or secret despatches alerting him to the fresh outbreak of war, for he had sent his few warships of a peace-time squadron out to sea, just like Commodore Sir Samuel Hood of the Leewards Islands Station. They were informed that some French privateers had gotten out to prey on British merchant shipping, but there were hardly any warships in Basse-Terre, and they showed no signs of sallying.

The ships watching Guadeloupe had not seen Blanding's mythical French squadron, either, and suggested that they might try further to the North, at St. Barthйlemy or St. Martin… St. Domingue? 'And the very best of luck to you at… whatever it is you're doing!'

'Were I a cursing man, a blasphemer, gentlemen, I'd be in full cry by now! Dash it! Dash it, I say!' Captain Blanding fumed as he stomped round his great-cabins, his face going plummy whilst holding yet another officers' conference aboard Modeste. 'And why can I not engage in some raw Billingsgate, Brundish?' he demanded of his Chaplain, 'when it would feel so bloody good about now?'

'Stoic acceptance of frustration and misfortune are the mark of the Christian, English gentleman, I fear, sir,' Brundish calmly replied over a glass of claret. ''Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness,' all that? Spurs the mind to finding solutions, I vow.'

Blanding let out a clenched-teeth growl of displeasure.

'Best bet's Saint Domingue, sir,' Lewrie pointed out, enjoying a glass himself. 'Don't know much about Jacmel, on the South coast. Toussaint L'Ouverture took it and eliminated his rivals long ago, so I doubt the French ever got it back. But there's Port-au-Prince, if the Frogs got that far South, but it'd take a proper fleet and a big army t'go in there, if that's where they shelter. After that, there's Mole Saint Nicolas, up on the Western coast, then Cape Franзois, the main port on the North. I'm fairly sure the French still hold those.'

'By the skin of their teeth, I've heard, sir,' Captain Stroud stuck in. 'The fellow who took over from L'Ouverture when the French caught him and shipped him off to France, General Dessalines, has run the Frogs from the interior. Do they land troops, I'd think they'd be more than welcome at one of those two ports Captain Lewrie cites.'

'Mouth of the Mississippi?' Captain Parham spoke up. 'That, or French Guyana? We took it in Ninety-Eight or Ninety-Nine, I forget which, but-'

'In South-rotting-America, sir?' Captain Blanding squealed-or gave a fair approximation of a squeal. He rushed to pour himself more claret, not waiting for a cabin-servant.

'Failing Saint Dominguan harbours, sir, we might have to look into Spanish ports on the Gulf of Mexico, as well,' Lewrie said with gruff despondency, despite how amusing Capt. Blanding's outbursts were. 'Havana, on Cuba? Pensacola, Mobile in Spanish Florida? Then there's Tampa Bay, and there's a quite good deep-water harbour just above the East end of the Florida Keys… Tamiami, or something like that. No proper town, garrison, or fortification like Saint Augustine on their Eastern coast, but it'd suit.' Lewrie turned to poll his fellow captains. 'Anyone know if Spanish Florida is part of the territory to be traded to the French… and sold to the Americans, along with Louisiana?'

'God rot the…!' Blanding snapped, even further exasperated. 'Next you know, we'll be poking our noses into the Arctic! Prowling the coasts of bloody Greenland! By all that's holy, I-' He shut up quickly, admonished by a stern finger wagged by Chaplain Brundish. Captain Blanding sat himself down, heavily, into a stout chair.

Damme, but he's fun t'watch when he's explodin', Lewrie thought.

'There's ocean's of prize-money being reaped,' Blanding mused aloud, absently patting his curly blond locks and gazing upwards at the overhead. 'As we've heard on our way up the Leewards, sirs, there is fame and glory being won, and more to come when all the rest of the French West Indies islands are seized, yet we… we swan about like a pack of imbeciles let loose from Bedlam, hunting for ghosts. Ghosts, I say, who might never have sailed! Why, by the time we've looked into all the ports we've suggested, lurked off the mouth of the Mississippi, and found nothing, ah…! We'll be forced to turn ourselves over to Duckworth or Hood, for general duties. Now all know the war's on…,' Blanding trailed off, and stuck his nose into his wine glass.

It was not exactly the Proper Thing for a senior officer to express himself so freely, to doubt aloud. Well, Lewrie might've, but only in his early days, and he'd learned better since.

Lose his broad-pendant, for starters, Lewrie thought, busying himself with his own wine as the others shuffled their feet and got very silent and depressed-looking; Admiralty picked him for this hunt special, and what'll a failure do to his career… even if the French squadron never existed, and he'll have to report that? Not his fault, really, but… hmmm. When did Duckworth and Hood learn of the declaration of war? When did the Frogs?

'Look here, sir,' Lewrie said. 'Assume the French sailed before us, by a fortnight or less. Letters of Marque