The Corvette

'Able-Seaman Leek step forward.' The murmur from amidships as Leek stepped out in utter surprise was hostile. 'Silence there! You stand condemned by the provisions of this Article, in that you did skylark in the rigging, causing risk to yourself and to others in your rescue, and that you did delay the passage of His Majesty's sloop Melusine engaged in the urgent convoy of other ships. What have you to say?'

Leek hung his head and muttered inaudibly. He was bewildered at this unexpected ordeal. He had never been flogged, he was a volunteer, he began to tremble.

Drinkwater's eye was caught by a movement on his right.

Singleton was pushing through the midshipmen. Drinkwater turned his head and fixed Singleton with a glare. 'Stand fast there!' Singleton paused.

'I sentence you to one dozen lashes. Does anyone speak for this man?' He sought out Lord Walmsley. The young man came forward.

'Well, sir?'

'I, er… I wish to speak for the man, sir. He is a topman of the first rate and I have previously entertained no apprehensions as to his good behaviour, sir. I should be prepared to stand guarantor against his good conduct.'

Drinkwater bit his lip. Walmsley's speech was nobly touching and he had played his part to perfection.

'Very well. I shall overlook the matter on this occasion. But mark me, my lads, we are bound upon a service that will not tolerate the casual loss of good seamen. But for Mr Singleton, Seaman Mullack and Marine Polesworth, Leek, we would be gathered here this morning to send you over the standing part of the foresheet.[2] Do you reflect on that.' He turned to Germaney. 'Dismiss the men and pipe up spirits, Mr Germaney'

Drinkwater chuckled to himself. Talk at dinner over the mess kids would be about this morning's theatricals. He hoped they would conclude that he would stand no nonsense, that although he might only be a 'job captain', temporarily commanding a post-captain's ship, he was not prepared to tolerate anything but the strictest adherence to duty.

Chapter Five Bressay Sound

 June 1803

The wind held fair and they raised Sumburgh Head at daylight after a passage of three days from the Spurn Head. By previous agreement the Hudson Bay ships, usually escorted to longitude twenty west, left them off the Fair Isle. Due to the mild weather the convoy had kept together and by the afternoon all the ships had worked into the anchorage in Bressay Sound and lay within sight of the grey town of Lerwick.

That evening Drinkwater received a deputation of whale-ship masters in his cabin. It consisted of Jaybez Harvey, Abel Sawyers and another captain whose name he did not know. Sawyers introduced him.

'Captain Waller, Captain Drinkwater. Captain Waller is master of the Conqueror.'

'Your servant.' Drinkwater remembered him as having sat next to Ellerby at the meeting in Hull. He was surprised that Ellerby was not among the announced deputation. Drinkwater hoped Ellerby realised he was no longer dealing with a man of Palgrave's stamp and had come to his senses. In any event Waller seemed a mild enough character, leaving most of the talking to Sawyers.

'Well, gentlemen,' Drinkwater said when he had settled them with a glass and placed Palgrave's decanter on the table before them, 'to what do I owe this honour?'

'As thou knowest, Captain Drinkwater, since we cast anchor we have been taking water and augmenting our crews. The islanders are as eager as ourselves to avoid delay, the season already being far advanced. It is therefore hoped that within these twenty-four hours thou also wilt be ready to weigh.'

'I see no reason for thinking otherwise.'

'Very well. We have therefore to decide upon the procedures to be adopted when we reach the fishing grounds. Know therefore that we have agreed to consider ourselves free to pursue whales once we cross the seventy-second parallel. Opinion is divided, as to the most advantageous grounds, the mysticetus…'

'Mysticetus?' broke in Drinkwater frowning.

'Baleana Mysticetus, the Greenland Right Whale…' Drinkwater nodded as Sawyers continued, 'has become wary of the approach of man in recent years. There are those who advocate his pursuit upon the coast of Spitzbergen, those who are more disposed to favour a more westerly longitude, along the extremity of the ice.'

'I gather you favour this latter option?' Sawyers nodded while a silent shake of the head indicated that Waller did not. 'I see, please go on.'

'I do not think this late arrival on the grounds will inconvenience us greatly. It was our practice to spend the first month in the Greenland Sea in sealing, waiting for the ice to open up and spending the first days of continuous daylight in the hunting of seal, walrus and bear. However, those of us that have, of late, pursued mysticetus into the drift ice, have been rewarded by a haul as high as ten or even a dozen fish in a season, which amply satisfies us.'

It was clear that Harvey and Sawyers were of one mind in the matter. But if the whale-fleet dispersed his own task became impossible.

'Would you be kind enough to indicate the degree to which these options are supported by the other masters?' The three men consulted together while Drinkwater rose and pulled out a chart of the Greenland Sea. Seven hundred miles to the north-north-west of Bressay Sound lay the island of Jan Mayen. His present company, he knew, still referred to it as Trinity Island, after their own corporation.

'I think, sir,' said Harvey in his broad accent, 'that a few favour the Spitzbergen grounds while the majority will try the ice-edge.'

'Very well.' Drinkwater paused to think. He could not cover both areas so which was the better post to take up with the Melusine? During the last war Danish privateers had operated out of the fiords of Norway. Would these hardy men attempt to entrap British whaleships on the coast of Spitzbergen? The battle of Copenhagen and Britain's new alliance with Russia must surely persuade Denmark that she had nothing to gain by provoking Britain from her Norwegian territories. Drinkwater cleared his mind of these diplomatic preoccupations. His own responsibilities were to the whalers and he conceived the greater threat, as indicated at the Admiralty, to come from French privateers. Long experience of French corsairs had led Drinkwater to admire their energy. He did not share the contempt of many of his contemporaries for French abilities. The Republican Navy had given the Royal Navy a bloody nose from time to time, he recalled, thinking that even the great Sir Edward Berry, one of Nelson's Band of Brothers, had nearly caught a tartar in the Guillaume Tell off Malta in 1800. And the corsairs were of greater resource than the Republican Navy. What of those Breton ships that had sailed north? Where were they now?

He looked at the chart. The huge area of the Greenland Sea was imperfectly surveyed. Hill had added every scrap of detail he could glean but it was little enough. Drinkwater concentrated on the problem from the French point of view. If the intention of the privateers was to harass British whalers then they would probably hide in the fiords of Iceland or around Cape Farewell. The former, ice free on its southern and eastern coasts would threaten the Greenland fishery whilst the less hospitable coast of Greenland would permit a descent upon the trade in the Davis Strait. Either station would give the ships a favourable cast well to the windward of British cruisers in the Western Approaches and a clear passage back to the French coast where they had only to run the British blockade to reach safety. And given the fact that they were unlikely to be making for the great French naval arsenals this would be relatively simple. It was clear that if the Hull ships were determined to fish in the Greenland Sea he must conceive the greater threat, if it existed at all, would come from Iceland and that he should support the whalers on the ice-edge.

'I shall make known to you that I shall cruise upon the ice-edge in company with the majority of ships. I would ask you therefore that you appoint one of your number to consult and advise me as to your intentions, that we may not be at cross-purposes.'