The Invasion Year

scrubbed and re-filled water casks. Expended powder and shot had to be replaced from Gun Wharf, and all that would be followed by the Purser’s wares, his new bales of trousers, stockings, shirts, or neckerchiefs, short sailors’ jackets and buckled shoes, new blankets and bedding, hammocks and small rope, tobacco, mustard, jams, sauces for each eight-man mess to purchase from their pay, and…

Lewrie reckoned it would be at least three days of work before he could even think to allow the ship to hoist the Easy pendant, and put the ship Out of Discipline for the crew’s leisure. And if orders came on the fourth day, the Reliant frigate would be ready to answer them and put to sea, instanter, her people’s rest and ease bedamned.

Mine own bedamned, Lewrie told himself.

At the moment, though, all he really wished was the freedom to go below, roll into his hanging bed-cot, and be left to sleep in peace ’til this time tomorrow! Had Reliant been sailing alone, or had their squadron been sailing in-line-ahead at night, Lewrie could reasonably assume that not too much could go wrong, and could snatch as many as four hours at a stretch ’til the next change of watch, but as escort to their convoy… well! It had been so much like herding sheep that their gambolling and straying hadn’t allowed him more than a cat-nap between summons to the deck; they had done all but leap over each other in alarm, or crowd up to each other for security, then shy away to the far horizons, bleating like Billy-O!

“Ready to go ashore, sir,” Pettus reported from the entry-port.

“You’ve my list… and my latest letters?” Lewrie asked.

“Aye, sir, and your funds,” Pettus replied, looking very eager to set foot on solid land and prowl the chandleries and shops of Sheerness. The bleak naval town wasn’t London, but…!

“Off ye go, then,” Lewrie said with a cheerful wave.

Lewrie paced over to the starboard bulwarks, fighting the urge to reel like a drunken sailor; the ship was anchored and still, moving not an inch from dead-level, and what slight rising and falling from a harbour scend was negligible. What solid land would be like he didn’t dare contemplate. Pettus would be taking ashore letters penned during the last two days on-passage up-Channel.

There was that continuing fuss over the Franklin-pattern stoves that Captain Speaks had left aboard Thermopylae in 1801, left with her Purser when laid up in-ordinary, and vanished. Might Lewrie’s solicitor, Mr. Matthew Mountjoy, have news of them, or whether Speaks would be suing him in a Court of Common Pleas? Had his late wife’s uncle paid him for the house and improvements of his rented farm, yet, and if he had, what was his latest balance at Coutts’ Bank, and would Mountjoy remit him an hundred pounds to replenish his purse?

There was also his report of the voyage to Admiralty, as well as notice that Reliant was now in a British home-port, and what prize-money she’d reaped would be paid out to her crew… when?

There were long sea-letters penned a little bit each day during the long passage to be sent off to Admiralty to forward to his sons, Sewallis and Hugh, a letter to his father, Sir Hugo, a warning to the Madeira Club in London that he might be up to the city for a few days and would be needing lodging… they couldn’t turn him down; Sir Hugo was one of the founding members and financial backers! There were letters to his brothers-in-law, Governour and Burgess Chiswick, with news of his arrival home for his daughter, Charlotte, who still lodged with Governour and his wife, Millicent, in Anglesgreen.

Perhaps in a few days, he would have replies from some of them, with fresh news of doings at home, and…

“Newspapers, Pettus!” Lewrie cried, leaning out over the bulwark to shout down to the gig, which was already a pistol-shot off. “Lots of newspapers, every one you can lay hands on!”

“I’ll get them for you, sir,” Pettus promised with a cheery wave of his own.

“Dig in, t’gither, lads,” his Cox’n Liam Desmond, ordered his oarsmen. “A hot stroke, Pat,” he urged his long- time mate, Furfy, “and we’ll show these Sheerness lubbers man o’ war’sman fashion… f’r good old Reliant, hey, lads?”

“Beer, ale, an’ porter in th’ offin’!” Furfy was heard to grunt. “Stroke, and… stroke, and… stroke!”

Better not be, Lewrie thought with a smile; or not too much!

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The bum-boats had been circling like buzzards for several days before Reliant’s necessities had been seen to, and Lewrie had allowed her to be put Out of Discipline. As soon as the Easy pendant soared aloft and was two-blocked, every hand and Marine raised a great cheer, and gathered on the gangways to await the arrival of “temporary wives” and doxies.

“Ready, Mister Mainwaring?” Lewrie asked the Ship’s Surgeon.

“Well, there’s few signs of early cases of the Pox, sir, so…,” Mr. Mainwaring cautiously replied, then shrugged. He and his Surgeon’s Mates, Lloyd and Durbin, would inspect the women as they boarded for a hint of being diseased, though… unless some girl’s nose was rotting off and caving in, it was good odds they’d miss most of the symptoms of the Pox, and a week or so later, after Reliant was back in Discipline, there would be hands a’plenty in need of the dubious Mercury Cure.

“ ’Tis fifteen shillings the man you’ll earn, Mister Mainwaring,” Lewrie reminded him, tongue-in-cheek. “If some of our people aren’t poxed, already, there’ll surely be a parcel of ’em for you to treat… and profit from, by next Sunday Divisions.”

“Oh, I’m certain there are hands already poxed, sir,” the Surgeon rejoined with a wry grin, “it’s just that they dread presenting to me. Fifteen shillings is dear to them, and mercury clysters forced up the urethra are painful.”

“Even after your talks?” Lewrie asked. He’d ordered Mainwaring to give all hands a lecture on the perils of the Pox and its signs… and had nudged the Purser to think of purchasing sheep-gut cundums for the men to buy and use. They’d not be as good as the ones from the Green Lantern in Half Moon Street in London-as protective as the round dozen stowed away in Lewrie’s sea-chest-but perhaps they’d prevent some later sickness. Mainwaring and Cadbury were dubious that the ship’s people would even be interested in purchasing or employing them, just as they had been when Lewrie had ordered them to obtain the citronella candles and citronella oils for lamps in place of the Navy-issue glims for lighting belowdecks in the West Indies to counter the nighttime miasmas and tropical damps that were thought to be the cause of Yellow Jack and Malaria. At least citronella cut down the swarms of pesky mosquitoes, so the crew off-watch could sleep soundly at night, and the lamps on the weather decks kept most of them at bay, too. The ship had suffered very few sicknesses during their year in the “Fever Isles,” though Mr. Mainwaring put that down to their arrival in early Autumn, and their departure before the height of Fever Season.

It never hurt, though, for junior officers to humour the eccentricities of a ship’s captain, no matter how daft. Captain Cook’s Surgeon might have thought lemons, limes, apples, and pickled German sauerkraut daft, too, but Endeavour had had no scurvy on her long Voyages of Discovery!

“And we’ll have no gross smuggling of spirits, either, will we, Mister Appleby?” Lewrie turned to enquire of the ship’s Master At Arms, who, along with his Ship’s Corporals, Scammell and Keetch, were to keep good order-or as much as could be enforced-during the riotous doings belowdecks.

“Count on it, sir!” Appleby barked, as eager as a bulldog.

“There’s only so many places a doxy can hide a pint o’ rum, or gin, so… perhaps Mister Mainwaring may find some for you, hey, Mister Appleby?” Lewrie japed, raising a snigger from them all as they contemplated how large a woman’s “calibre” would have to be to accommodate that!

“No more than a dram vial, surely, sir!” Mr. Mainwaring countered, blushing a bit. “Else…”

“Else you find the reins t’your carriage, and ride out!” Lewrie hooted before turning away for the quarterdeck to leave them to it, and take a gentlemanly separation from the debauchery to come.

The bum-boats were butting up against the hull on both beams, despite the Bosun’s warning that only the larboard entry-port was open to business, that the pimps and dealers in shoddy goods should already know that,