The Invasion Year

once!”

“Well, sir, once they’d taken a prize, they doused her lights,” Captain Stroud said. “As they had come in with all their lights out. Now, I thought I caught a glimpse of something standing Nor’westerly, but… by then I was caught up close to the convoy, too busy searching for a much closer threat… and, it was only a fleeting glimpse of something darker than the night… far off.”

Oh, I doubt that! Lewrie sarcastically thought, about to snort and scoff out loud. Stroud would have something to say that would make him look industrious and alert, even if the others weren’t!

“After all the honour and glory we’ve won since sailing from Portsmouth last Spring, too,” Captain Blanding said, with another of those long, theatrical sighs. “It is just too bad!”

“Well, sir,” Stroud spoke up again, “we’ve taken rather a long jog East’rd since last evening…”

“Forced to,” Captain Parham stuck in, grimacing.

“… and our convoy will be East of the usual track, so if any more privateers are lurking about, that will make their hunt for more prizes much harder,” Stroud soldiered on, with a quick squint of impatience directed at Parham. “It’s good odds that we may escort the rest all the way to England with no more loss, sir.”

Bloody toady! Lewrie thought; He had to have been, t’be First Officer under that twit Fillebrowne in Myrmidon!

“That very likely may be true!” Captain Blanding said, perking up a bit. “Thank you for the thought, Captain Stroud.”

Stroud bowed his head in acknowledgement, with a taut, pleased grin on his face. Lewrie couldn’t abide that.

“There is the problem, though, sir,” Lewrie countered, “for our ‘runners’ bound for New England ports. If there are any more privateers on the hunt for prizes, our East’rd jog means the ships leaving the protection of the convoy have further t’sail on their own to reach the safety of an American port.”

“There’s that, aye,” William Parham was quick to grasp. He all but winked at Lewrie as he continued. “Might it be necessary, sir, for the ‘runners’ who’ll be leaving us… given the circumstances… to provide at least one frigate to see them safe?”

“Break up the escorting force?” Captain Blanding exclaimed in surprise, sitting erect and thumping his boots on the deck cover, loud as a gun. “Detatch a fourth of our hard-pressed squadron? No no! It is simply not done! Should more privateers find us, where would we be, then, sir? Admiralty’d lop off my testi-”

“Ahem,” Chaplain Brundish admonished with a wee cough. The task of keeping Blanding from blasphemy, Billingsgate language, and scandalous foul words surely had been a chore, the last few weeks. Brundish’s warning sounded as if he sleep-walked through his watchfulness.

“You know what I mean, sir!” Blanding said, instead, harumphing and slurping tea to cover his slip.

No one eared for convoying, the Navy most of all, and there was many an officer charged with the thankless task who had become so frustrated and impatient with the snail’s pace and the un-ending “herding” and “droving” that they had just flown a bit more sail than their wallowing charges and sprinted clear of them… if only for a few precious hours of dash and wind in their faces. Some few had actually kept on over the horizon, leaving their convoys un-defended! And, had been put before a board of court-martial.

“Bedad, those dashed Americans!” Captain Blanding grumbled, and slumped back into his settee. “Lewrie. You say the one privateer was reported to you, she put about and hared off Sou’west?”

“Aye, sir.”

“For Savannah, Charleston, or a port in Spanish Florida, dash it,” Blanding decided. “Where, with the collusion of the Dons, or the Yankee Doodles, her prize will be sold… where the French privateer may re-victual, perhaps re-arm herself, in perfect safety! Bah!”

“Damn all conniving neutrals, I say!” Captain Stroud snarled.

“Ahem,” came a lazy admonishment from Brundish.

“Pardons,” from Stroud, equally perfunctory.

“Bless me, for I do not understand the sea, and the ways of a ship upon it as thoroughly as you gentlemen,” Reverend Brundish said with a shake of his head, “but… was there no way to chase after the privateer… privateers, pirates, whichever… and reclaim those three vessels they took from us, sirs?”

“Not without abandoning the rest to what could have been even greater loss, Reverend,” Blanding said for them all.

“Best would be some of our cruisers to lurk off every neutral port to stop and search in-bound ships,” Parham suggested. “Inspect their papers and seize every ship revealed as an enemy privateer, or a British ship they’ve made prize.”

“Impossible, unfortunately,” Blanding told him, sounding as if he was about to sink back into the Blue-Devils. “That would require a fleet twice as large as our present one… and would risk war with every nation that takes umbrage.”

“There’s risk enough of that, already, sir,” Lewrie added. “We stop and search every ship we come across that sails independent, and press suspected Britons from their crews.”

“Oh, that is simply too bad,” Reverend Brundish said with a sigh. “I expect shepherds and drovers the wide world over face this sadness over the loss of their cattle, their camels, or sheep…”

No, don’t let him speak o’ sheep! Lewrie qualled inside.

“… and puts me in mind of one of our Lord and Saviour’s best-known parables…”

Damme, here it comes! Lewrie thought; I bloody knew it!

“… the one about the Good Shepherd, who…”

Do I throw something at him, will that stop his gob?

“Best not,” Captain Blanding said, making Lewrie gawp at him as if Blanding could read his thoughts. “Such can only assure me all the more of our failure.”

“Oh. My pardons, sir,” Brundish said, demurring.

Thankee, Blanding! Lewrie gratefully thought; By Jove and By Jingo, and Bedad! But, bless ye for it! Dash ye!

“We’ll lose no more, gentlemen,” Captain Blanding sternly told them. “We will keep all our ships together, with no detatchments for any reasons. And, we will see all our charges safely to port in England… or else!”

That promised an arduous, sleepless, and long task!

And I won’t have a speck o’ fun ’til it’s over, Lewrie thought.

Though he still had his cats, and his penny-whistle.

BOOK III

Let us be master of the Straits (of Dover) for

six hours and we shall be masters of the world.

~NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

Baby, baby, naughty baby,

Hush, you squalling thing, I say;

Hush your squalling, or it may be,

Bonaparte may pass this way.

Baby, baby, he will hear you

As he passes by the house,

And he, limb from limb will tear you,

Just as pussy tears a mouse.

~BRITISH NURSERY RHYME