Company Of Spears

the Duke of Wellington, under Mr Canning’s instructions, had signed a protocol in St Petersburg by which Russia, France and Great Britain would mediate in what to all intents and purposes had become war between the Greeks and the Ottoman Turks. The prospect of a new government had brought the future of the protocol into question; until in the middle of April the King had sent for Mr Canning and asked him to assemble a new administration. This had cheered the more active of the occupants of both the Admiralty and the Horse Guards, for although Mr Canning’s manners were to the liking of few of them, his vigorous policies called for strong naval and land forces, welcome counterweight to the mood of retrenchment which had settled on Whitehall since Waterloo. The only problem seemed to be that hardly a man of repute would agree to serve under him: no fewer than seven members of the Cabinet had resigned, including the duke himself, as well as Mr Peel and Lord Bathurst. However, through the accommodation of the Whigs, Canning had been able to form his government, and instructions followed for the protocol to be ratified by formal treaty – on which news the Admiralty restored its plans for the reinforcement of Sir Edward Codrington’s squadron.

And so Captain Sir Laughton Peto R.N., in undress uniform – closed double-breasted coat with fall-down collar, and double epaulettes denoting his post seniority – with his India sword hanging short on his left side in black-leather scabbard, and furnished with his letter of appointment, was now within a cable’s length of another great milestone of his life. He had wondered long when it would come, or if; at their dinner at the United Service Club he had told Hervey he was certain it would not. ‘There will be no more commissions,’ he had predicted. ‘I shan’t get another ship. They’re being laid up as we speak in every creek between Yarmouth and the Isle of Wight. I shan’t even make the “yellow squadron”. Certainly not now that Clarence is Lord High Admiral.’ For yes, he had been commodore of a flotilla that had overpowered Rangoon (he could not – nor ever would – claim it a great victory, but it had served), and he had subsequently helped the wretched armies of Bengal and Madras struggle up the Irrawaddy, eventually to subdue Ava and its bestial king; but it had seemed to bring him not a very great deal of reward. The prize money had been next to nothing (the Burmans had no ships to speak of, and the land-booty had not amounted to much by the time it came to the navy), and K.C.B. did not change his place on the seniority list. The Admiralty not so many months before had told him they doubted they could give him any further active command, and would he not consider having the hospital at Greenwich?

But having been, in words that his old friend Hervey might have used, ‘in the ditch’, he was up again and seeing the road cocked atop a good horse. The milestones would now come in altogether quicker succession.

What a sight was Rupert! Even with all her sail furled she was the picture of admiralty: yellow-sided – ‘Nelson-style’ – gunports open (he much approved of that, letting fresh air circulate below deck), the crew assembling for his coming aboard (he could hear the bosun’s mates quite plainly). What could make a man more content than such a thing? He breathed to himself the noble words: gentlemen in England, now abed, will think themselves accurs’d they were not here.

There was one thing, of course, that could make a man so content: the love, the companionship at least, of a good woman (the love of the other sort of woman was all too easy to be had, and the contentment very transitory). And now he had that too! For in his pocket was Elizabeth Hervey’s letter.

Why had he not asked for her hand years ago? That was his only regret. He felt a sudden – and most unusual – impulse: he wished Elizabeth Hervey were with him now. Yes, this very place, this very moment, to see his ship as he did, to appreciate her beauty and her possibilities – their possibilities! Oh, happy thought! Happy, happy thought!

‘Boat your oars!’ came the reedy voice of the young midshipman as the barge neared the lowered gangway on Rupert‘s leeside, calling Peto back to the lonely state of captain of a first-rate.

Peto glanced at him, studied him for the first time – a mere boy still, not sixteen perhaps, but confident in his words of command and boat handling. He had blond curls and fine features – so different from the Norfolk lad of fourteen that he himself had been as midshipman in the early years of the ‘never-ending war’. He had never possessed such looks as would delight both fellow officers and females alike nor earn the seaman’s habitual esteem of the patrician. Big-boned he was: ‘hardy-handsome’ his mother had called him, which was not handsome at all in her reckoning (or so he had supposed). But Elizabeth Hervey had not rejected him. No; not at all. Indeed he thought that Miss Hervey had once actually made eyes at him – in Rome, many years ago. Oh, how he wished he had recognized that look (if look it had been – preposterous notion!).

He snapped to. Belay the thought! For he could hear the bosun’s call.

The piping aboard, the shaking hands with officers and warrant officers – he had done the same before, several times; but never on a first-rate. To be sure, he had hardly set foot on a three-decker since he was a young lieutenant. He would not address the crew, as he had when taking command of Nisus, for whereas his frigate’s complement had been but two hundred (and he could know every man by name and character), Rupert‘s was in excess of eight – far too many to assemble decently for the sort of thing he would wish to say. Command of a first-rate was perforce a rather more distant business. Strictly speaking, command even of Nisus was properly exercised through his executive officer, the first lieutenant, and to some degree by the master, but in a ship of two hundred souls the captain’s face was daily – at times hourly – known to all. His own quarters were on the upper deck: he had to climb the ladder to the quarterdeck, and in doing so he might routinely see half the crew. On Rupert he would merely step from his cabin: descending to any of the gundecks was therefore an ‘occasion’. His world was changing even if he were not. He could no longer be the frigate-thruster. But his nature was by no means aloof, and he must find some happy middle channel between his own inclination and the customs of the service. He did not expect it to take long, or even to try him; but meanwhile – as any prudent captain – he would take up the command firmly yet judiciously. In an hour or so His Majesty’s governor of Gibraltar would pay a call on him, and then, if the westerly continued to freshen, Rupert would make sail for Syracuse to take on the pure water of the Artemis springs, just as Nelson had before the Nile. And from there he would set course for Codrington’s squadron in the Ionian. For the time being, however, he would withdraw to his quarters, hear the reports, read the signals, sign the returns.

Flowerdew, his steward of a dozen years and more, was waiting. The sentry presented arms – sharper, thought Peto, than even the well-drilled Marines on Nisus. The red coat, the black lacquered hat, the white breeches and pipeclay – Peto suddenly felt himself a little shabby by comparison in his sea coat. But that, he reminded himself, was how it should be: a Marines sentry was by his very turnout a powerful aid to discipline, whereas a captain’s attire must be weather-seasoned. He might put on his best coat for the governor (his dunnage Flowerdew had brought aboard earlier in the day); there again he might not.

He took his first, portentous steps aft of the sentry, followed by his executive officer and Flowerdew. At once he saw how much bigger were his quarters – bigger, appreciably, than any he had occupied before. He saw the little oil landscapes on the bulkheads which he had had on Nisus, and the furniture, over and above what their lordships provided, which he had bought from the previous captain (who, transferring to half pay, had been only too happy to strike a bargain and thus save himself the expense of shipping home). He could be confident, too, that his cherished silver, china and glass would be safely stowed.

‘Coffee, sir?’

‘Thank you, yes, Flowerdew.’

‘With your leave, sir,’ said the first lieutenant.

Peto took off his hat and placed it on the dining table (Cuban mahogany reflecting the sun through the stern gallery like a mirror). ‘By all means, Mr Lambe. A half-hour’s recollection, and then, if you please, you may give me the ship’s states.’

‘Ay, ay, sir.’ The executive officer replaced his hat, touched the point and withdrew.

When Flowerdew came with coffee he found his captain sitting in his favourite leather camp chair. Peto had had it made many years before in Minorca, with pouches fixed on each arm: the left side for his clerk to place papers for attention, and the other for Peto himself to place the papers after his attention. But rather than attending to his clerk’s paper, Peto was staring out of the stern window, and with a look of considerable contentment. Flowerdew could not be surprised at this: if his captain mayn’t have a moment or two’s satisfaction in his new command then what did it profit a man to be in the King’s service? ‘Coffee, sir.’

Peto nodded, and raised his hand in thanks.

Flowerdew had no wish to intrude on the moment; there would be time enough to get back into the old