Ebb tide

those gaps in his personal history that the loss of his early diaries during the sinking of the Royal George had caused by writing down his memoirs. She considered her husband's service to be of some interest to their children and, while she expected him to be deliberately reticent concerning some of the incidents in his life, she knew sufficient to want his sacrifices, and by implication her own, not to go unknown by their family. There was also a more practical consideration, and in initiating her husband's task, Elizabeth demonstrated the depth of her own understanding.

For Drinkwater the process brought back many memories. So daily an accompaniment of his life had the war become that the absence of it seemed to remove the main purpose of existence itself, and yet he learned that for Elizabeth and his household, the war had been but a distant backdrop to their own lives, lives which were more intimately connected with the ebb and flow of the seasons than the tides, of ploughing and planting, of reaping and harrowing, of tending livestock and mending fences, of buying and selling, of butter-making and fruit-bottling. Drinkwater was at first suspicious of Elizabeth's motives, suspecting her of wanting him occupied and not interfering in the business of the estate, but he quickly realized that he was guilty of a mean misjudgement. Elizabeth was only too acutely aware that the end of the war and the end of active service would confront Drinkwater himself with numerous regrets and frustrations, and that while he might say he wished to be left in peace, indeed he might desire it most sincerely, nevertheless such a desire would in time wane and, in the manner of all ageing men, he would wish for the excitements of youth and maturity. A period of reflection and evaluation would, she astutely hoped, reconcile him to a gentler, less tempestuous life.

In the first year of peace, Drinkwater bent to his task and found that it did indeed ease his transition from active command to the life of a country gentleman. He had no knowledge of either livestock or agriculture and eschewed the company of farming men, not out of snobbery but out of ignorance of their ways and their conversation. They were as great an oddity to him as was he to them. There were fewer expressions more accurate or appropriate than that of being a fish out of water. Rather than try, as many of his naval contemporaries did, to join the squirearchy, he retained the habit of command, was content with his own company and, when in need of male companionship, sought that of his friend Frey. Frey's expectation of advancement had terminated with the sudden end of the war and he had returned to painting, enjoying a continuing success. A solicitous husband, he nevertheless slipped away from time to time to laze afloat aboard Kestrel for a day or two. It seemed impossible that on these very decks had once lain the body of a mysterious Russian officer, or that they had carried off the Baroness and her children from the teeth of a French hussar detachment in the very yacht that lay at anchor beneath the hanging woods on the River Orwell.

Drinkwater received an occasional letter, written in painful and stilted English, from the young Charles Montholon. He had acquired a certain importance because his uncle, General Montholon, had been appointed to the small suite which accompanied to St Helena the man the British cabinet had meanly insisted was to be known as 'General Bonaparte'. This tenuous connection had, despite the young man's fugitive situation during the Hundred Days, encouraged an ambition to join the French army on the assumption that the glories of the past might be replicated in the future. Drinkwater sincerely hoped they would not; a world riven by battles of Napoleonic proportions was not one that he wished his own son to inhabit, but reading Charles Montholon's correspondence, it occurred to Drinkwater that his own generation had lived their lives in an extraordinary period which, seen through the younger man's eyes, was already vested with a vast and romantic significance. Not the least thread in the fabric of this great myth was the distant exile of the dispossessed emperor.

While Napoleon languished on his rock, Drinkwater completed his journals and enjoyed his quiet excursions under sail. Occasionally he and Frey would undertake a little surveying of the bar of the River Ore, or Drinkwater would submit a report on some matter of minor hydrographical detail. These, finding their way to the Court of Trinity House, in due course resulted in his being invited to become a Younger Brother of the Corporation and this, in turn, led him to accompany a party of Elder Brethren in the Corporation's yacht on an inspection of the lights in the Dover Strait. Thus, one night in the summer of 1820, anchored in The Downs close to the Severn, a fifty-gun guardship attached to the Sentinel Service, Drinkwater found himself at dinner with a Captain McCullough, commander of the Severn, who had been invited to join the Brethren at dinner.

The after cabin of the Trinity yacht was as sumptuous as it was small, boasting the miniature appointments of a first-rate. The meal began with the customary stilted exchanges of men with an unfamiliar guest in their midst. McCullough, who had joined Drinkwater and the two embarked Elder Brethren, Captain Isaac Robinson and Captain James Moring, by way of his own gig, was quizzed about his naval career and his present service.

'I made the mistake', he admitted, smiling ironically, 'of suggesting that the revival of smuggling might be countered by several detachments of naval officers and men posted along the coasts most exposed to the evil. Their Lordships took me at my word and offered me the appointment of organizing the task. The command of Severn came, as it were, as a by-blow of their decision, for she acts as storeship and headquarters of the force.'

'And as a visible deterrent, I daresay,' observed Captain Moring, who had recendy relinquished command of an East Indiaman.

'I believe that to be the case, yes.'

'How many men do you command?' asked Captain Robinson.

'The whole force amounts to only about eighty men who occupy the old Martello towers along the shore. Each division, of which there are three in Kent, is commanded by a lieutenant, with midshipmen and master's mates in charge of the local detachments. A similar arrangement pertains to the westward in Sussex. Each post has a pulling galley at its disposal, so we are an amphibious force.'

'You take your posts at night, I imagine,' Drinkwater said, 'and enjoy some success thereby.'

'As an active counter-action to the nefarious doings of the free-trading fraternity, we have enjoyed a certain advantage, yes, though this has not been achieved without loss.'

'You suffer deaths and injuries then?' Drinkwater asked.

'Oh yes, severely on occasion. The smugglers are a ruthless lot and will stop at nothing in their attempts to run their damnable cargoes.'

'Well, I confess that the odd bottle of contraband brandy has passed my lips in the past, but with the peace and the present difficulties the country faces, the losses to the revenue must be stopped,' Captain Moring put in.

'Indeed,' went on McCullough, nodding, 'and the problem lies in the widespread condonation that exists, partly due to the laxities practised during the late war, but also due to the material advantage accruing to the individual in avoiding duty'

There was a brief and awkward silence, then Captain Robinson raised his glass and remarked, 'Well, sir, I give you the Sentinel Service ...' and they drank a toast to McCullough's brainchild.

'Perhaps,' Drinkwater added, 'one might consign the magistracy to some minor purgatory. I gather that when the Preventive Waterguard were formed, what, twenty years ago now, they often threw out of court actions brought against well-known smugglers.'

'That is true,' went on McCullough, warming to his subject with the enthusiasm of the zealot, 'for the justices were usually the chief beneficiaries and how else does a man get rich in England but by cheating the revenue? But they are less able to try the trick on naval men, and besides, there was some mitigation during the war when continental trade was made difficult and it was in our interest to encourage it. The paradox no longer exists, therefore the matter is simpler in its argument. Its resolution, however, remains as difficult as ever.'

'The risks are high for those caught,' said Moring.

'Indeed. I should not wish to face transportation or the gallows, but the profits are encouraging enough and the risks of apprehension, despite our best efforts, are probably not so terrifying.'

'No,' put in Drinkwater. 'And it is not entirely to be wondered at that fellows made bold by the experiences of war and who find no employment in peace, yet see about them evidence of wealth and luxury, should turn to such methods to support their families.'

'That is true, sir,' replied McCullough, 'and there is a certain irony in seeing victims of the press remaining at sea for their private gain...'

'That is not so very ironic, McCullough,' Drinkwater responded, 'when you take into account the fact that the men who oppose you and the revenue officers are by birth and situation bred to the sea and find it the only way to earn their daily crust. I am certainly not sympathetic to their law-breaking, merely to their situation. It seems to me