By the Mast Divided (16 page)

Kemp’s face showed a deep curiosity, an eagerness to know what this John whatever-his-real-name-is wanted to buy. Pearce had no intention of obliging him.

A whistle blew several notes, followed by a shouted command. ‘All hands, stand by to weigh anchor.’

Kemp’s rattan twitched. ‘Time to shift.’

Pearce, holding the man’s gaze, had felt his heart jump at the command to weigh, and cursed himself for missing what Kemp had said earlier. The frigate was about to depart the Nore anchorage; if he was going to go it had to be now, but standing, he found himself swept along with his own messmates as well as others, all heading for the capstan.

The Pelicans arrived to find most of the crew assembled round its bars, ready to bring the ship’s boats on board. A rope ran forward along the deck, through a series of heavy blocks up to the deck above. At the command, the newcomers copied the action of the experienced seamen and took hold of the bars. On another command they began to heave, some fifty souls digging their feet into the planking and pushing with all their might to get the boats out of the water. Lanterns were lit as the boats were placed over booms that ran across the waist, for they blocked nearly all of the available light, dripping water on to the deck from bottoms that were green from time spent in the river.

Next the order came to ‘Hove short,’ followed by, ‘Rig the messenger cable.’

That command saw the rope on the capstan cast off, to be replaced by one that was a huge continuous ring. Looped over and set in the capstan groove, the free end was taken forward to where a party of men and the ship’s boys gathered by the thick cable that disappeared out of a hole in the side. One sailor started singing, which was taken up by the others, a rhythmic chant designed to maximise the effort they were making.

‘Who would be a sailor, I would me, go, go, go-Jack-Go.’

The last go had everyone applying pressure at once, and Pearce felt the first easy movement as the capstan responded, only to realise that all they had done was take up the slack on what the sailors called the messenger. The chant was repeated over and over again, but there was no quick speed gained, just tiny increments accompanied by the creaking of the rope that made it sound as if it were going to part. Ahead men were attaching cords both to the thick cable and the messenger that ran round the capstan.

‘Why is not the damn thing moving?’ said Michael, red-faced with pushing.

‘The cable weight, pudding head,’ gasped a sailor, ‘without we raise it from the water and get it taut we’ll be here all day.’

‘Sure that would suit me fine, friend,’ Michael replied. ‘God alone knows why I am pushing this pole, since I have no desire to go anywhere, at all.’

‘You’ll push it,’ called Kemp, moving towards him with his rattan raised, ‘or you’ll feel this.’

‘I am thinking,’ the Irishman said with a huge grin designed to infuriate Kemp, ‘that such a thing as that would fit very neatly in your arse.’

‘Well said, Paddy,’ cried a voice, ‘though I’ll tell you he has the tightest arse on the ship.’

‘Short arms and deep pockets, that’s Kemp,’ hailed another.

‘God in heaven, these craturs are human,’ Michael scoffed, looking at Pearce with raised eyes. ‘They speak, and here was me thinking they was dumb beasts of burden, not much above being donkeys.’

‘Stow it, you cheeky sod.’

‘Now who was that a’braying?’

‘Happen you’ll find out when we’ve won our anchor.’

Kemp jabbed at Michael’s back with his cane. ‘Meet Samuel Devenow, Paddy, who loves to bruise, and I wish you joy of the acquaintance.’

Pearce looked to where Kemp was pointing, into a scarred face going red with the effort of pushing, and a look in the eye, aimed at Michael O’Hagan, that was enough to kill on its own. He recognised it as the face he had observed haranguing a silent mess table as they had had their dinner, and decided it was even less prepossessing closer to than it had been before.

‘What’re you grinning at Paddy?’ Devenow snarled.

‘Sure, I have not had the honour to see such ugly features since last I looked to that grand and ancient church at Canterbury town.’

‘Never met a Paddy yet that talked sense,’ Devenow replied, a remark which was greeted by a degree of gasping assent.

Pearce, beside Michael on the capstan bar, could see the look in Michael’s eye too, and for all the cast of amusement on his face, and the jocular tone of the voice, there was none in the gaze. For the first time since the Irishman had tried to clout him in the Pelican he saw something of the man that Charlie Taverner had identified as a bruiser.

‘I suppose,’ Michael continued, ‘you’re too much the heathen to go near a place of worship, even a blaspheme Protestant one. But I think the masons who built Canterbury were good Papists, and had the likes of you in mind when they fashioned their gargoyles. The ugliest one I reckon, demon-like and nasty, was an outlet for the privy, which suits, since what comes out of the hole of its mouth is not so very different to what issues from yours.’

That made a few of the men laugh, but a sharp bark from Devenow
killed that, which underlined for Pearce what he had suspected before; they were in the presence of someone the crew treated with caution. As he pushed he was full of thoughts as to what that would mean – every shade of humanity would be on board the ship, and there would likely be a tyranny below decks to match or even surpass the one that existed abaft the mast. There was little doubt that Michael O’Hagan knew that too, and was prepared to challenge it.

They were moving now, not fast but at a very slow walk, and as they came round Pearce could see the thick cable coming in, covered in slime, dripping gallons of water on to the deck as it was fed through a hatch to be stored on the deck below. The boys detached the lengths of cord before the hawser disappeared, then ran back to the seaman who lashed them speedily onto the moving hawser. He could not help but examine the method, which was clever – the messenger was only that, a continuous rope that acted as means to get the much thicker hawser inboard. That itself was too thick to wrap round any kind of device, and clearly too heavy to be hauled aboard by humans.

‘Anchor cable hove short, sir.’ A voice called from above.

Roscoe’s voice gave the response. ‘Stand down half the men on the capstan.’

Another voice called then, ‘All hands to make sail,’ a cry that was repeated throughout the ship. Everyone bar the marines and the hawser party ran up to the deck, Kemp driving his charges before him to the quarterdeck, where they were ordered to ‘clap on that there fall, and stand by to heave on command’.

Topmen were speeding aloft, spreading out along the yards and as soon as they were in position the order came to let fall the topsails. The pale brown canvas dropped, snapping like a wild animal, filling the air with noise as it rattled in the wind. As soon as the ropes attached to the lower ends were tied off, with much shouting as to how they should be eased or tightened, the sails boomed out with a life of their own, stretching taut, the frigate creaking as the pressure began to move the hull forward.

The whole exercise was accompanied by a huge amount of shouting, some to the men and boys aloft, more to those manning ropes, even more to a party they could see atop the buoy to which the frigate had been moored, men struggling with crowbars to free the other end of the hawser where it was looped around the great ring on the crown. As it came free it splashed into the water and disappeared – then the frigate took on a life independent of the shore. Barclay stood by the wheel alongside a fellow
dressed in black, who looked to be hanging on to a spoke rather than applying pressure to it. All were looking aloft to see the billowing canvas against the now grey sky.

Pearce was impressed despite himself, aware that no one, least of all he, could watch such a majestic sight, the three great sails high on the masts, taut now, and not be moved by it. But more moving still was a sight of the shore, the increasing distance between it and the ship; for him the certain knowledge, and a sinking feeling to go with it, that getting free had just got more difficult.

HMS
Brilliant
won her anchor with ease, if not with elegance, thrilling the captain’s wife, who had been allowed to take up a central position on the poop. From there she could look at the groups of sailors hauling on ropes, from the waist to the very deck on which she stood. The ultimate snap as the wind took the mainmast sail, it being so loud, made her laugh and cover her ears. Ralph Barclay knew that what appeared impressive to her would be seen as less so by those of his professional peers watching the frigate depart, for it had been a laboured performance. Like his fellow captains he had seen true crack ships weigh, seen the topmen aloft in seconds and the whole manoeuvre fulfilled in two minutes, a good twelve minutes less than his crew had managed. Once more he swore to himself that he would make this a ship to be proud of, and in his mind’s eye he could see and feel the admiration that would come his way when it was.

Bleary eyed, looking left and right, the black-clad fellow muttered instructions to the two men on the wheel, watched by a very anxious master and an equally troubled ship’s captain. Ralph Barclay had been in and out of the Little Nore anchorage dozens of times, and reckoned he knew it as well as this drunken buffoon who was hanging on to his wheel. There was plenty of water around them, but Barclay knew how narrow was the gap between the twin banks of the Sheerness Middle Sand and the Cheyney Spit, both now hidden by the height of the tide, but with not much more than a fathom of water to cover their mud. The deep-water channel was even narrower. Ships had gone aground here before, to be left high, dry and a laughing stock as the tide receded.

‘Would you care for a leadsman in the chains?’ he asked.

The pilot turned dark purple in the face, which was already heavily cratered with the after effects of smallpox, and snorted. ‘I daresay you knows your job, sir. Allow that I know mine.’

‘Mr Roscoe,’ said Collins, the master, ‘I think a reef in the main and fore topsails would be prudent.’

‘Sound, Mr Collins,’ said the pilot, ‘the wind demands it. I feel an increase.’

If the wind had strengthened, Ralph Barclay failed to notice it, and judging by the look on Roscoe’s face neither had he. Looking more closely at Collins it was possible to see his glassy eyes, which meant that he too had been at the bottle, no doubt in the company of this rascal of a pilot. The comment about sails and wind was nothing but professional complicity, an attempt to tell the commissioned fellows on the deck that their blue coats and braid counted for nothing; that when it came to sailing a ship it would be best to leave it to those who thoroughly knew their business.

Convinced or not, Roscoe called out the orders. Aloft, the men bent over the yards and began to gather in the sail, hand over fist, reducing the overall area drawing on the wind, using long lines of ties stitched into the canvas to lash off what they had drawn up. Ralph Barclay hated this, the one time when he was not in command of his own vessel, and to stop himself from showing his frustration he went to join his wife on the poop. His master would set what sail was necessary – the pilot would con the ship – and Roscoe would convey his orders. He was not required.

‘I have seen a ship at sea, Captain Barclay,’ Emily cried, ‘from a distance and looking enchanting, but nothing can compare with this.’

‘You will observe better, my dear, when we get aloft a full suit of sails in anything of a blow.’

‘Look husband, there is an officer there raising his hat to us.’

Ralph Barclay followed his wife’s finger, towards the Great Nore anchorage, dotted with line-of-battle ships. The raised hat came from one of the smaller vessels of a mere sixty-four guns.

‘That, my dear, is HMS
Agamemnon
, Agymoaner to the common seamen, and the fellow giving us the salute is Captain Horatio Nelson.’

Emily picked up the tone in her husband’s voice – not dislike so much as disinclination – and looked at him with some curiosity. Then she saw him smile as he recalled that Nelson had once been grounded here in HMS
Boreas
, set on the sand so high and dry that crowds had come from all round the Medway to parade round the ship and jeer. The thought cheered Ralph Barclay immensely, a touch of comeuppance for a fellow over-full of himself.

‘Did you not meet him last night at the Assembly Room dance? It was he who mentioned to me how much you enjoyed yourself. You may well come across him in the Mediterranean, my dear, for he has orders
too for that station. Should you do so, beware, for I have sailed in his company before, and he is a terrible bore.’

And a proper tittle-tattle, thought Emily.

If the men looked for respite as they sailed down the north shore of the Isle of Sheppey, past all those settled and silent ships of the line, they were disappointed. Roscoe had laid out a list of tasks to be carried out and training to be undertaken, and that applied to the seamen as much as the landsmen and ‘volunteers’. As soon as the pilot had set his course in the deep-water channel he set his plans in motion. Mess number twelve, being mere lubbers fit only to haul on lines, were being shown the use of a belying pin as a cleat. A line of pins sat in drilled holes, pushed down for a tight fit. If a rope was lashed to it with a double round turn it became a quick and secure knot, but by merely removing the pin the knot was released and with it the sail to which it was attached.

‘Take the rope,’ said Dysart, holding a spare line dropped for the purpose, ‘fetch it under the pin, like so.’ He then made a loop with the free end under the fixed end and lashed it to the pin, saying, ‘Take a roond turn once, and loop that o’er the top, wi’ another wan the same an’ pull tight. It’s a secure horse or a clove hitch. When ye’ve done that, always mak sure ye tidy what’s left of the fall intae a neat coil, or the Premier will have yer guts.’

Dysart looked at faces of the party of which he had been given charge, seeing comprehension in the eyes of those who had understood, and mystification in that of the others. He had them try, noting that O’Hagan knew the knot and that the man who wanted to be called Truculence, along with Taverner, learnt it quick. Not the ginger bairn, though, and the other, much older one, Scrivens, looked as though he would never manage it.

‘Right, and here’s the beauty,’ Dysart added eventually. ‘The order comes tae let fly the sheets, which tae you would mean them sails we have set aloft. Nae time for untying knots, so ye just haul oot the pin and, there ye are, nae knot.’

There were parties all over the deck and aloft engaged in various tasks, mostly of an undemanding nature. But Ralph Barclay was not content to let matters rest at that – he had to get his crew to a sharp pitch of efficiency and he had no time spare for indulgence. He sent his wife back to their cabin, before calling in a loud voice, ‘Mr Roscoe, there is a fire in the manger.’