The Corvette

elbow.

'Quarter, give quarter, Mr Q!'

Drinkwater's own opponent was proffering his broken sword, hilt first as Tregembo, his cheek hanging down like a bloody spaniel's ear, the teeth in his lower jaw bared to the molars, pinned him against the rail.

Drinkwater was aware of the hull of the enemy drawing slowly astern as the foresail pulled Melusine clear. The French began to retreat to orders screamed from her deck and the two ships drifted apart. As they did so the enemy swung her stern towards the retiring Melusine. Drinkwater could see his opponent's name: Requin, he read.

Drinkwater bent over the table and pointed at the sketch he had drawn. The cabin was crowded. With the exception of Mr Rispin, who had been wounded, and Mr Gorton, who had the deck, every officer, commissioned and warrant, was in the room, listening to Drinkwater's intentions, offering advice on technical points and assisting in the planning of the rigging of a jury rudder.

For eight hours Melusine had run dead before the wind under a squared fore course which was occasionally clewed up to avoid too heavy a crash as she drove helplessly through the ice. There was no way they could avoid this treatment to the ship. His own cuts and scratches he had dressed himself, the wound in his thigh no more than an ugly gash. Since the action Drinkwater had had Singleton question Meetuck. It had been a long process which Singleton, exhausted after four hours of surgery, appalled by the carnage after the fighting and strongly disapproving of the whole profession of arms, had accomplished only with difficulty. But he had turned at last to Drinkwater with the information he wanted.

'Yes, he says there are places from which the ice has departed at this season and which our big kayak can come close to.'

But Drinkwater could not hope to close a strange coast without a rudder. In order to refit his ship with a rudder capable of standing the strain of a passage back to Britain he had to have one capable of allowing him to close the coast of Greenland. It was this paradox that he was engaged in resolving.

He straightened up from the table. 'Very well, gentlemen. If there are no further questions we will begin. Mr Hill, would you have the fore course taken in and we will unrig the mizen topmast without delay'

There was a buzz of conversation as the officers filed out of the cabin. Drinkwater watched them go then leaned again over the plan. How long would it take them? Six hours? Ten? Twelve? And still the masthead lookout reported the Requin in sight to the east-north-east. He wondered what damage they had really inflicted on her. How seriously had her commander been wounded? Would his wound deter him, or goad him to resume the pursuit? The action had ceased by a kind of mutual consent. Each party had inflicted upon the other a measure of damage. He was certain the Requin was a letter-of-marque. It would be an enormous feather in the cap of a corsair captain to bring in a sloop of the Royal Navy, particularly one that was a former French corvette. First Consul Bonaparte might be expected to find high praise and honours for so successful a practitioner of la guerre de course. But his owners might not be pleased if it was at the expense of extensive damage to their ship, or too heavy a loss amongst their men. Privateering was essentially a profit-making enterprise. The Requin had clearly been built on frigate lines intended to deceive unwary merchantmen entering the Soundings. Certainly, ruminated Drinkwater, it argued that her owners had not spared expense in her fitting-out. He sighed, hearing overhead the first thumps and shouts where the men began the task of rigging the jury rudder.

Sending down the mizen topmast was a matter of comparative simplicity, a standard task which the men might be relied upon to carry out in a routine manner. Melusine lay stationary, rolling easily upon a sea dotted with floes, but comparatively open. After an hour's labour the topmast lay fore and aft on the quarterdeck and was being stripped of its unwanted fittings. The topgallant mast was removed from it, but the cross-trees were left and the upper end of the topmast itself was rested on the taffrail. It was lashed there until the carpenter's mate had added a notch in the handsome carving. Meanwhile the carpenter had begun to build up a rudder blade by raising a vertical plane on the after side of the mast, coach-bolting each baulk of timber to its neighbour. In the waist the forge was hoisted up and a number of boarding pikes heated up to be beaten into bars with which to bind the rudder blade.

Fabricating the jury rudder and stock was comparatively easy. What exercised Drinkwater's ingenuity was the manner of shipping it so that it could be used to steer the ship. After some consultation with the warrant officers, particularly regarding the materials available, it was decided that an iron ring to encircle the masthead could be fabricated from the head-iron at the top of the mizen lower mast. This was of a sufficient diameter to encompass the heel of the mizen topmast so, by fitting it to the lesser diameter of the topmast's other end, there was sufficient play to allow the mast to rotate. The head-iron also had the advantage of having a second ring, a squared section band, which capped the mizen lower masthead. To this could be secured two chains, made from the yard slings from the main yard and elongated by those from the foreyard. These could then be led as far forward as was practical and bowsed taught at the fore-chains. This iron would thus become the new heel-iron for the rudder stock, a kind of stirrup.

The first part of the work went well. Some considerable delay was experienced in driving the head-iron off the mizen lower mast, but while Bourne and the bosun were aloft struggling with wedges, two stout timbers were prepared to be lashed either side of the vertical mizen topmast when it was lowered upside down, over the stern. A large pudding-fender was also slung over the side and lashed against the taffrail. The jury rudder stock would then turn against this well-slushed fender, restrained from moving to left or right by the side timbers.

There remained two problems. The first was to keep tension on the heel arrangement which it would be impossible to attend to once the thing was hoisted over the side. And the other would be to fabricate a method of actually turning the rudder.

Drinkwater estimated that Melusine's forward speed would contribute greatly to the first as long as her alterations of direction were small, such as would occur while steering a course. Terrific strain would be imposed if large rudder angles were necessary, as would be the case with tacking or wearing or, God help them, if they had to fight another action with the Requin. To this end Drinkwater had the mizen topgallant mast slung over the stem and lashed below the level of his quarter galleries. From here tackles were led to the mizen topmasthead which would, of course, be the heel of the rudder stock when rigged. The cross-jack yard was similarly readied across the upper taffrail from quarter to quarter and lashed to the stern davits. From here two tackles could be rigged to the upper end of the topmast which would extend some feet above the rail and give good leverage to steady the spar.

The problem of rigging some steering arrangement proved the most difficult. The idea of lashing a tiller was rejected owing to the great strain upon it which would almost certainly result in the lashing turning about the round mast. In the end it was found necessary to bore the mast, a long task with a hand auger that occupied some four hours work. Into the mortice thus made, the yard arm of the mizen royal yard was prepared to go to become a clumsy tiller.

While these works were in progress Drinkwater frequently called for reports from the masthead about the movement of the Requin. But she, too, seemed to be refitting, although her inactivity did not remit the anxiety Drinkwater felt on her account, and he fumed at every trivial delay.

His impatience was unjust for, as he admitted to himself, he could not have been better served, particularly by Hill, Bourne, Gorton and Quilhampton. Comley, the bosun and Mr Marsden, the carpenter were indefatigable, while the men, called upon to exert themselves periodically in heaving the heavy timbers into position, in fetching and carrying, in the rigging of tackles and the frequent adjustment of leads until all was to the demanding exactness Drinkwater knew was the secret of such an operation, carried out their multifarious orders willingly.

There were considerable delays and a few setbacks, but after eight hours labour the timbers assembled on the quarterdeck looked less like a lowered mast and more like a rudder and stock. In one of these delays Drinkwater took himself below to attend the wounded.

Melusine had suffered greatly in the action, not only in her fabric, but in her company. As Drinkwater made his way below to the cockpit he refused to allow his mind to dwell on the moral issues that crammed the mind in the aftermath and anti-climax of action. No doubt Singleton would hector him upon the point in due course and Drinkwater felt a stab of conscience at the way he had been instrumental in turning little Frey from a frightened boy to a murderous young man who had killed in the service of his King and Country. Still, Drinkwater reflected, that was better than fulfilling that mendacious platitude: Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori.