The shadow of the eagle

Now, in the late afternoon of 24 April, they were well within sight of Calais. To the southward the chalk lump of Cap Gris Nez jutted against the sky; closer the gentler, rounder and more pallid Cap Blanc Nez marked the point at which the French coast turned east, becoming flat and, apart from the church steeples and towers, featureless as it stretched away towards Dunquerque and the distant Netherlands. The little fishing village of Sangatte was almost abeam as the squadron breasted the first of the ebb tide and carried the breeze which had freshed during the day. An hour, an hour and a half at the most, would see them bringing up to their anchors in Calais Road.

Drinkwater examined the roadstead ahead of them, then lowered his glass; he looked once more at the irregular formation of the squadron. It was, as Marlowe had said, a pretty sight.

'Flag's signalling, sir ...'

Drinkwater's attention was diverted by the necessity of obeying the signals of His Royal Highness. As they came up towards Calais, the cannon of the squadron boomed out in yet another round of salutes, impressing upon the fishermen and townsfolk that the dangerous days of republican experiment and alternative, bourgeois monarchy, were dead.

'Sir, may I formally present Captain Drinkwater?'

Blackwood's introduction had an ironic content, since he had met the Duke of Clarence the previous afternoon, but the scene in the great cabin was stiff with formality and Drinkwater made his obeisance with a well- footed bow. Apart from the Jason's captain, he was the last of the allied commanders to be presented. The prince appeared to notice him as an individual for the first time. Drinkwater was some four years the prince's senior, his long grey-brown hair clubbed at the nape of his neck, the scarred cheek and faint blue powder burns on the lean face with its high forehead marking him as a seasoned officer.

This seemed to surprise Prince William Henry, whose genial, full-lipped and rubicund, pop-eyed features broke into an affable grin as he studied the taller post-captain.

'Well Drinkwater,' he almost shouted, 'what d'ye think of Andromeda?'

'She's a fine ship for her class, sir,' Drinkwater remarked.

'She's good enough to have taken the Odin, ain't she, eh what?'

'Indeed, sir ...'

'Drinkwater ... Drinkwater ... Ah-hah! I have it! Ain't you the fellow that took a Russian seventy-four in the Pacific?'

'Captain Drinkwater makes a habit of taking superior ships, sir,' Blackwood put in, bending to the royal ear and lowering his voice, 'but it might be tactless to mention it this evening sir.'

'Of course, of course,' boomed the prince, 'I recall, 'twas the Suvorov, what, what?' Drinkwater caught Blackwood's eye and saw the Impregnable's captain roll his eyes resignedly at the white painted deck-beam over his head. 'Well, well, we're allies now, eh, damn it. And now the war's over, so 'tis all history, eh what?' The prince looked round beaming, as though he had just carried out a major diplomatic coup and Drinkwater was aware of two officers in the dark green full dress of Russian captains, standing stiffly, their bicorne hats tucked beneath their elbows.

'But you didn't do that in Andromeda, eh?'

'No sir, the razee Patrician ...'

'So what the devil d'you do in the Andromeda, sir? Are you a jobber, or what?'

Despite a supreme effort at self-control, Drinkwater felt himself colouring at the prince's tactless imputation, unaware of the bristling of his fellow officers, manifested by a slight shuffling of feet and a stir as they waited for the presentations to cease and the conversation to become general.

Mercifully, Captain Blackwood was equal to the occasion, 'Captain Drinkwater is a most experienced cruiser commander, sir, he was off Cadiz with me, and Nelson had especially picked him for the Thunderer, but he could not get out from Gibraltar before the action.'

'By God, Drinkwater, that was damned bad luck, what? Picked by Nelson, eh? Wish to God I'd been, instead of being left to rot on shore! By Heaven there's no justice in the sea-service, damned if there is, eh, what?'

The moment of embarrassment passed, the insult turned neatly by Blackwood without the need to reveal Drinkwater's long association with special services, by way of an explanation why so senior a post-captain had yet to tread the quarterdeck of a line-of-battle ship, and why he commanded an obsolescent thirty-two gun frigate that should rightfully have been broken up. Drinkwater moved thankfully aside, leaving young Maude of Jason to His Royal Highness's mercy. As he moved aside, the bubble broke and conversation rose about him like a tide. Perhaps, he thought, taking a glass from a silver tray borne by a pig-tailed and stripe-shirted steward, it had been simmering all the while.

'We are neighbours at table, Captain Drinkwater,' said an austere, hollow-eyed man in the plain blue coat with the red collar and cuffs of an Elder Brother of the Trinity House. 'May I introduce myself? Captain Joseph Huddart, late of the Honorable Company's service.'

'Nathaniel Drinkwater ...' The two men shook hands and lapsed into small talk, moving eventually to sit amid the glittering silver and glass of the Duke of Clarence's white-napered table. Drinkwater's other neighbour was a Russian, the captain of the forty-four gun frigate Gremyashchi. He spoke a thick English. Try though he might, Drinkwater had difficulty understanding anything beyond three references to the Suvorov and these, he deduced, were far from complimentary. After a few moments, the Russian turned to his farther neighbour, the French captain of the Polonais who, after a few exchanges, leaned forward and asked Drinkwater in faltering English:

'Capitaine Rakov, he ask if you are English officier who capture Russian ship Suvorov?'[2]

Drinkwater looked from the French officer to the Russian. Rakov was watching him closely.

'I am,' he replied, holding the Russian's gaze. Rakov muttered something, then turned pointedly away and settled to natter in French to the Russian on his left. Drinkwater fell into easy conversation with Huddart, whose bald head and wispy side drapes of hair hid an astute and enquiring mind. They talked of many things, discovering mutual acquaintances from Drinkwater's brief period in China, his escort of a convoy of the Company's East Indiamen and from his earlier service aboard Trinity House buoy yachts. In this vein the evening passed very pleasantly until at last, the prince, having called upon Blackwood to propose the first toast to his royal father, initiated a succession of these in which, at least so it seemed, every crowned head in Europe was thus honoured.

Eventually His Royal Highness prevailed and made some general remarks about his sensibility to the honour of commanding an allied squadron at this happy time of peace, alluding to the restoration of legitimate monarchy in France. He related an anecdote of the king, whom he had escorted ashore earlier in the day.

'His Majesty,' said the prince, perspiration and the tears of emotion upon his florid cheek, 'upon landing on the sacred soil of his native land, embraced the Duchess of Angoulême and said, 'I hold again the crown of my ancestors; if it were of roses, I would place it upon your head; as it is of thorns',' and here the sweating prince waved his hand above his head,' 'it is for me to wear it.' Most moving gentlemen, most moving, what?'

A murmur of loyal assent ran round the table.

'It seems our Billy has learned a thing or two from La Belle Jordan, remarked Huddart drolly, referring to the prince's former mistress who was also a renowned actress.

'Well gentlemen,' resumed their host, 'the merchant and the mariner have now nothing other than the dangers of the elements to encounter, what? And so the prosperity of their pursuits is by consequence more probable, don't you know. What! And therefore I propose a final toast to the sea-services!'

Like the preceding bumpers, they drank this final one sitting down, their faces perspiring from the heat of the candles, the warmth of their conversation and wine. To Drinkwater, chatting amiably to Huddart in the full flush of drunken fellowship, the prospect of peace, of retirement from the demands of active service and all its alarums, risks and hazards, seemed as rosy as the face of Admiral of the Fleet, His Royal Highness, the Prince William Henry, Duke of Clarence and Earl of Munster.

And just as fulsome.