Nizams Daughters

Peto was keen, however, to press his censure. ‘But the duke’s attachment to purchase, Captain Hervey, and his favouring of fellow nobles, his promoting their sons: is that conducive to efficiency?’

Hervey sighed to himself again. What was he meant to do — defend the inexplicable, though it worked nonetheless? ‘I think,’ he began tentatively, ‘that the duke has always been in want of men in whose capability he could place confidence. It is the Horse Guards who appoint officers to command, and sometimes these appointments are inapt. I myself have served a brigadier who was both a coward and an incompetent. The duke ensures that at least his own staff are of his mind. But he’s by no means closed to the appointment of men who have recommended themselves by service.’ He paused briefly to sip his wine and crack open a claw, and he wondered to what Peto’s questioning might be tending. He thought it prudent to rehearse the duke’s opinions a little more fully. ‘And as to purchase, it has its iniquities but yet its recommendations: I think it well to have officers with a stake in the country when the army is the means of maintaining public order — and might indeed be the means of overthrowing the government.’

‘And yet the nation may entrust its wooden walls to officers with no such stake, only patriotic sentiments!’ countered Peto, unimpressed.

‘Does the navy not have its patronage too?’ asked Hervey, hoping the doubt sown might allow them to pass on to other things.

‘Not for the advancement of knaves and imbeciles, that’s for sure. Do you know our system?’

Hervey indicated that he knew it but imperfectly.

‘I was taken on as a captain’s servant at fourteen — or “volunteer” as we were by then more properly known.’

‘And how was that arranged?’ Hervey interrupted.

Peto smiled. ‘By Lord Nelson’s recommendation to Captain Blackwood, but…’

‘So influence has its place in the navy, too?’ smiled Hervey by return.

‘There must be a start somehow, Captain Hervey. All that Lord Nelson did, though, was to recommend me as from an honest family, that I was clean-limbed and eager! From volunteer, advancement is on merit alone. I was a midshipman the following year — 1805 — though in truth I had not spent the regulation four years at sea. But yellow-jack had carried off three of our mids. I passed for lieutenant at nineteen — the earliest I could do so — and was appointed to a first-rate almost at once…’

‘But again, Captain Peto,’ Hervey pressed, ‘there must be more midshipmen who pass for promotion than there are vacancies for lieutenants? How are appointments thus made?’

‘Some by favour, to be sure; but no captain would appoint an officer in whom he could not have confidence.’

‘How did you obtain your appointment?’

‘By Captain Blackwood’s recommendation. I was one of his signalling midshipmen on Euryalus at Trafalgar. But as I was saying, I was first lieutenant on Amphion at Lissa, and from that action got my command the following year. And do not forget that promotion is ever open to those of ability on the lower deck: both Cook and Benbow served before the mast.’

‘Trafalgar was hot work for you?’ asked Hervey (he intended, firmly, to deflect the conversation from purchase).

‘Not for Euryalus: we had done our work during the night, keeping contact with the French and signalling to the fleet, to let Nelson bring them to battle at daylight on terms of advantage.’

‘So you saw little of the action?’ Hervey asked, with a note of disappointment.

‘On the contrary,’ smiled Peto, ‘we saw everything. We were in the thick of things throughout.’

‘Then how might you not describe it as hot work?’ said Hervey, surprised.

‘Because in a fleet action a first-rate does not fire on a frigate unless fired upon first.’

Hervey looked puzzled.

‘Captain Hervey, do you have any conception of the firepower of a first-rate compared with that of a frigate?’

‘Well,’ began Hervey awkwardly, ‘evidently I have failed to grasp the magnitude of the difference.’

‘Just so; a first-rate has three times the guns, and her lower-deck battery has thirty-two-pounders — almost twice the weight of mine. At the Nile, there was a French frigate that opened fire on the Goliath — who was but a seventy-four. Goliath fired back, and with a single broadside dismasted her and shattered her hull so that she sank at once.’ Peto took a sip of Madeira with intense satisfaction at the thought. ‘No, from a line-of-battle ship a frigate must stand away, and she may invariably do so with ease and honour both. At Trafalgar Euryalus repeated the flagship’s signals and so on — first for Nelson, and then for Collingwood — and we helped several ships which were otherwise disabled: we towed off Royal Sovereign — she was dismasted. But we had no damage ourselves.’

‘I did not know of the convention,’ admitted Hervey, taking another long draught of Peto’s excellent burgundy. ‘But I can see its purpose, now. It is very gallant: tirez les premiers!’

‘Gallant? I tell you I would have none of it were I Admiralty. A frigate is an instrument of war as much as is a first-rate. Fighting chivalrously is always at someone’s expense — and usually those who are least able to afford it! All this tirez les premiers is so much cant. Fontenoy it began at, did it not? “We do not fire first, gentlemen: we are the English Guards!” ’ Peto made a loud huffing sound.

Hervey thought there had been something pragmatic in the Guards’ invitation but could not recall the particulars, and, in any case, it was Trafalgar he wished to discuss, not Fontenoy. It was not every day a man might hear of it from so close an observer. And so they sat well into the night, Hervey pressing him to every detail of the battle, with more burgundy and Madeira than he had ever drunk at one sitting. When at last he rose, unsteadily, to retire to his quarters, he put a final question to his host. ‘How came it about that Lord Nelson was able to recommend you to Captain Blackwood in the first instance? Are you from a naval family, sir?’

‘No, I am not,’ replied Peto with a smile. ‘Not, that is, in the literal sense. Lord Nelson’s father had the living at Burnham Thorpe, and my father was once his curate. At the time of my going to sea he had the neighbouring parish.’

‘Then,’ smiled Hervey, ‘we have something in common.’

They began comparing their relative ecclesiastical fortunes, but since the tithes were either impropriate to the patron or modest, the comparison was brief.

‘So we each must seek for our prosperity in uniform,’ concluded Peto, dabbing with a napkin at the Madeira which had found its way to his waistcoat.

‘Just so,’ smiled Hervey, ‘and at a time when there is peace on earth!’

‘Ah,’ said Peto, shaking his head optimistically, ‘but there is little goodwill towards men!’

Next day

The wind had backed, and a moderate westerly was making the air chill. Hervey had on the thinnest cheesecloth shirt, yet he was sweating. Half an hour’s brushing followed by another’s strapping would maintain his own hale condition as surely as it would Jessye’s. And he had just been struggling to remove her shoes too, for they served no purpose standing on deep straw. He looked up to see Peto eyeing his labours intently. Feeling the need to say something, for he knew the business must gravely offend the captain’s sensibilities, he thought he might express his gratitude once more. ‘I do very much appreciate what a trial this is, sir,’ he began.

Peto surprised him by his reply, however. ‘Captain Hervey, I should not have risked the regularity of my ship had I thought your horse posed any danger,’ he smiled. ‘On the contrary, a horse has a most civilizing effect. The hands feel better for seeing her. I would be chary of that, perhaps, were there not peace on earth, but I see no cause now for keeping the crew quite as tight as the bowstring they have been hitherto.’

He seemed in excessively good spirits this morning. Hervey smiled with some relief.

‘We see eye to eye, I think, on many matters. When you are quite finished with your day’s exertions join me, if you please, on the quarterdeck. I wish to apprise you of something.’

Hervey put on his cloak before leaving the shelter of the waist. Sail was stretching fuller in the freshening