1805

1805 Richard Woodman

For Liz and Brian Bell

***

PART ONE Blockade

'Let us be master of the Channel for six hours and we are masters of the world.'

NAPOLEON TO ADMIRAL LATOUCHE-TRÉVILLE July 1804

'I do not say, my Lords, that the French will not come. I only say they will not come by sea.'

EARL ST VINCENT TO THE HOUSE OF LORDS 1804

Chapter One The Club-Haul

March 1804 

'Sir! Sir!'

Midshipman Frey threw open the door of the captain's cabin with a precipitate lack of formality. The only reply to his urgent summons from the darkness within was the continuous creaking of the frigate as she laboured in the heavy sea.

'Sir! For God's sake wake up, sir!'

The ship staggered as a huge wave broke against her weather bow and sluiced over the rail into her waist. It found its way below by a hundred different routes. Outside the swinging door the marine sentry swore, fighting the impossibility of remaining upright. Frey stumbled against the leg of a chair overset by the violence of the ship's movement. He found the cabin suddenly illuminated as a surge of white water hissed up under the counter and reflected the pale moonlight through the stern windows. Mullender, the captain's steward, would catch it for not dropping the sashes if one of the windows was stove in, the boy thought irrelevantly as he shoved the chair aside and groped to starboard where, over the aftermost 18-pounder gun, the captain's cot swung.

'Sir! Please wake up!'

Frey hesitated. Pale in the gloom, Captain Nathaniel Drinkwater's legs stuck incongruously out of the cot. Still in breeches and stockings they seemed appendages not consonant with the dignity of a post-captain in the Royal Navy. Frey reached out nervously then drew back hurriedly as the legs began to flail of their own accord, responding to the squealing of the pipes at the hatchways and the sudden cry for all hands taken up by the sentries at their unstable posts about the ship.

'Eh? What the devil is it? Is that you, Mr Frey?'

The cot ceased its jumping and Captain Drinkwater's face, haggard with fatigue, peered at the midshipman. 'Why was I not called before?'

'I had been calling you for some time…'

'What's amiss?' The captain's tone was sharp.

'Mr Quilhampton's respects…'

'What is it?'

'We've to tack, sir. Immediately, sir. Mr Quilhampton apprehends we are embayed!'

'God's bones!' The sleep drained from Drinkwater's face with the dawning of comprehension. Beyond the bulkhead the ship had come to urgent life with the dull thunder of a hundred pairs of feet being driven on deck by the bosun's mates.

'My hat and cloak, Mr Frey. On deck at once, d'you hear me!' Drinkwater forced his feet into his buckled shoes and tugged on his coat, stumbling to leeward as the frigate lurched again. He shoved past the midshipman and swore as his shin connected with the overset chair-leg. He swore a second time as he bumped into the marine sentry sliding across the deck in an attempt to avoid part of the larboard watch tumbling up from the berth-deck below via the after-ladder.

By the time Frey had collected the captain's hat and cloak he emerged onto an almost deserted gun-deck. The purser's dips glimmered, casting dull gleams on the fat, black breeches of the double-lashed 18-pounder cannon and the bright-work on the stanchions. A few round shot remained in the garlands, but most had been dislodged and rolled down to leeward where they rumbled up and down amid a dark swirl of water. Mr Frey paused in the creaking emptiness of the berth-deck.

'All hands means you too, younker. Get your arse on deck instanter, God damn you!'

Frey doubled up the ladder with a blaspheming Lieutenant Rogers at his heels. The first lieutenant had only roused himself from a drunken slumber with the greatest difficulty. He did not like being shown up in front of the whole ship's company and Frey's belated appearance served to cover his tardiness.

The first thing Drinkwater noticed when he reached the upper deck was the strength of the wind. He had gone below less than two hours earlier with the ship riding out a south-westerly gale under easy sail on the larboard tack. Hill, the sailing master, had observed their latitude earlier as being ten leagues south of the Lizard and the ship was holding a course of west-north-west. Even allowing for considerable leeway Drinkwater could not see that Mr Quilhampton's fears were justified. He had left orders to be called at eight bells when, with both watches, they could tack to the southward and hope to come up with the main body of the Channel Fleet under Admiral Cornwallis somewhere west of Ushant.

Quilhampton's face was suddenly in front of him. The strain of anxiety was plain even in the moonlight; clear too was the relief at Drinkwater's appearance.

'Well, Mr Q?' Drinkwater shouted at the dripping figure.

'Sir, a few minutes ago the scud cleared completely. I'm damned certain I saw land to leeward… or something confounded like it.'