Reefs and Shoals (17 page)

“You came off
Mersey
?” Lewrie asked, trying to make that sound mere idle curiosity.

“Oh
no,
sir,” Lt. Darling countered. “I was Fifth Lieutenant aboard our previous senior officer’s two-decker sixty-four,
Aquila.
Mister Child was her senior Midshipman, and we scrounged up a brace of lads off other ships for
our
Mids.”

Lewrie took late note of the presence of two young Midshipmen; that meant that
Thorn
had at least one hundred crew altogether; one Mid for each fifty hands was the norm.

“What’s your draught, Mister Darling?” Lewrie asked.

“We draw ten feet, sir,” Darling said, looking as if he hoped that would be useful. “She’ll go very close inshore, if needed.”

“That’ll be most satisfactory, sir,” Lewrie told him, smiling with delight at that news. His smile engendered one upon Darling’s face, too. “She handles well?”

“Quite well, sir,” Lt. Darling proudly said. “Under fore-and-aft sails, with stays’l and jibs only, she’ll go about quick as one can say ‘Jack Ketch’, and she’s tolerably fast, to boot.”

Lewrie put his hands in the small of his back and went stoic and silent for a moment, taking in
Thorn
’s material condition, as if judging her. In reality, he was counting up supper guests:

Me, the Sailing Master, Mister Westcott, Bury, Darling and his First Officer, that Lovett fellow yonder on
Firefly,
that makes seven,
Lewrie tallied up;
Whoops, there’s
Lizard
’s other Lieutenant, Rainey, that’ll make eight. I’ll place him or Child at the foot, “below the salt
”. Somebody
junior’s got t’give the King’s toast!

“I’d admire did you and Lieutenant Child both dine with me this evening, Mister Darling,” Lewrie said, as if coming up from the depths of a serious musing.

“Delighted to accept, sir!”

*   *   *

Lt. Oliver Lovett’s HMS
Firefly
would be the smallest of their squadron.
Thorn
was about ninety feet on the range of her deck,
Lizard
about eighty-five, whilst
Firefly
barely managed to attain seventy feet. She was fore-and-aft rigged, with only one crossed yard on each upper mast to spread square sails. Her armament was made up of eight old 6-pounders, with only 2-pounder swivel guns on stanchion brackets for bow or stern chase guns. Unlike
Thorn
or
Lizard,
which had a Commission Officer to assist their captains, Lt. Lovett had only one Midshipman, and was his own sailing master or purser. None of them rated a Marine complement, either, and all had but two small ship’s boats, a gig and a jolly boat each. That would have to be rectified, somehow, Lewrie determined, if they came across a privateer encampment, though he did not know how to whistle up suitable boats at short notice, right off. He could not afford them out of his own purse, might spend years explaining issuing Admiralty chits, and doubted if Forrester would allow them a spare bailing bucket. Could he
steal
some, he wondered?

Lt. Oliver Lovett was another “odd bird”, though nowhere near as solemn as Lt. Bury. Lovett was an inch taller than Lewrie, slimly built, but leanly muscular. He had a large “beak”, as big and cranked as a Cornishman, dark brown hair that he wore long and curly on both sides of his head, in an un-manageable mop over his forehead, with the “surplus” bound at the nape of his neck in an old-time sailor’s queue as thick as the tail of a border collie. When Lewrie went aboard, Lt. Lovett was dressed in stained breeches, Hessian boots, and a weather-tanned linen shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Give him a waist sash and an eyepatch, and Lovett could do a fair impersonation of a pirate; the young fellow nigh-vibrated with pent up, and boundless, energy.

“Bless you, Captain Lewrie, sir, for you bring deliverance from utter drudgery!” Lovett loudly exclaimed, with such eagerness that he seemed impatient that they would not be off, instanter. He would also be delighted to be dined aboard
Reliant
this evening, though he did make apologies for how shabby his turn-out might appear, and hoped he would not disappoint.

“It’s more a working supper, nothing grand, Mister Lovett,” Lewrie assured him. “Come alongside a bit before half past six.”

After a quick tour of
Firefly,
Lewrie had himself rowed back cross the roadstead to the deeper anchorages in the West Bay, and his mid-day meal, feeling quite satisfied, so far. He had two vessels of ten-foot draught, and one,
Firefly,
that only drew nine, all of them able to prowl quite close inshore, or into the many inlets and rivers too shallow for his frigate. He had a slew of 6-pounder guns available, did they operate together, and even if
Thorn
’s carronades could not reach out very far, or aid in the bombardment of privateers’ shore camps, when put up against the light wales of a privateer at the usual range, Lt. Darling and his stubby guns could shoot clean through them!

Lewrie turned his attention back to his oarsmen, instead of musing on the shore, and noted that they seemed … antsy, constantly looking over their shoulders towards
Reliant.

“Anything wrong, lads?” he asked.

“Oh, no sir!” one replied.

“Well…” Patrick Furfy carefully spoke up. “If ye wouldn’t moind, sor, might ye be tellin’ us th’ time?”

Lewrie pulled his watch from his pocket and opened it, grinning as he twigged to their concern. “It’s twenty minutes past eleven … and I do believe we’ll all be back aboard in time for ‘Clear Decks and Up Spirits’. If we get a goodly way on, that is.”

“Hear the Cap’m, lads?” his Cox’n, Liam Desmond, snapped. “Git a way on, ye lummoxes. Set a hot stroke, Pat.”

“Pull!” Furfy cried, digging in with his oar. “And … pull!”

All in all, a good morning’s work,
Lewrie happily told himself.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

With his cook’s, Yeovill’s, help Lewrie aimed to make the supper a succulent and filling affair to introduce his new subordinates to each other, and to himself. Though the various courses were toothsome, he had promised a working supper, so, over the spicy shredded chicken broth soup, the grilled shrimp and vegetable medley, the mid-meal vinaigrette salad, and the requisite roast beef, roast potatoes, and peas, he quizzed them on their backgrounds and past experiences. Darling was the most loquacious and amusing, Lovett gruffer and more modest, and Bury the most enigmatic, but Lewrie was secretly satisfied that all three younger men had come up from the orlop cockpit at slow paces with years as Mids or Passed Mids before gaining their Lieutenancies. Both of the Lieutenants off
Thorn
and
Lizard,
Child and Rainey, mostly kept proper and deferent silence, much like Midshipmen allowed to dine aft with their superiors; though they did tuck the victuals in heartily, and knew enough to laugh or smile when past merriment was mentioned.

“Clear for the sweets, sir?” Yeovill asked, taking note of the empty plates and crossed tableware. “’Tis a key-lime jumble, though I fear the meringue’s a failure.” Yeovill gave Pettus and Jessop the nod to begin serving the light white wine to accompany dessert.

“Thankee, Yeovill, aye,” Lewrie agreed, dabbing at the corners of his mouth with a napkin. “Now we’ve come t’know a bit about each other, gentlemen, I think it’s time to fill you in on what we’re to do together. One hopes ye’ll find it more exciting than patrolling the Bahamas.”

“Anything would be, sir,” Lt. Lovett exclaimed.

“Come across many French or Spanish privateers among the islands, do you?” Lewrie asked.

“Uhm, hardly any, sir,” Lt. Darling said, “for there’s not all that much to prey upon, with the bulk of the shipping American or neutral.”

“Not much in the way of really valuable cargoes, either, sir,” Lovett added.

“There’s not much prize-money in hunting privateers, but somebody’s got t’do it,” Lewrie said, after a sip of his wine. “Head or Gun Money on crew and armament, and perhaps, if a vessel’s big enough and in good shape, she
might
be bought in after surveying, to do the sort of duties
you’re
performing, but … there’s little profit in it. Which explains why our Navy doesn’t put much effort into chasing them,” Lewrie said with a faint grimace.

“More glory in close broadsides, frigate to frigate,” Lt. Bury almost gloomily agreed with a slow nod.

“Why even stir out of, port, if there’s not fame in the offing?” Lt. Darling cynically asked, and Lewrie noted the secret grins shared between Darling and Lovett, and their junior officers.

Can’t
abide Forrester either, can you?
Lewrie thought;
It’s no wonder!

“Unless one guards something precious?” Lewrie posed, tongue-in-cheek. “Protection being the greater duty than seeking battle, and letting the foe come to you?”

Lt. Lovett could not hide a wry snicker.

“Yayss, one never can tell when a mighty Spanish armada comes up over the horizon,” Lewrie derisively said, dismissive of Forrester’s dread of invasion. “But, perhaps do we go nip at the invaders’ heels, stir up a spot o’ bother, the Spanish’d be too busy with us to try it on. Mister Caldwell, you’ve brought the chart I requested?”

“I did, sir,” his Sailing Master said.

“Then, soon as we’ve had seconds of this marvellous jumble, we will spread it on the table top and get down to business,” Lewrie said with a grin.

*   *   *

They had to stand to gather round the dining table and the sea-chart, taking their sweet biscuits and shelled nuts from bowls on the sideboard, and passing the port bottle hand-to-hand for top-ups in a larboardly direction.

“Do we sail directly from Nassau to Spanish Florida, past the Berry Islands and Bimini, it’s good odds the Gulf Stream’d sweep all of us as far North as Saint Augustine,” Lewrie sketched out, using a dessert fork for a pointer. “Better we head South, down the Tongue of the Ocean past Andros, and prowl our way down close to Cuba to see what we can see, before heading West up the Old Bahama Channel, into the Florida Straits, where our large trade convoys pass.”

“Ehm, where Spanish merchantmen pass, too, I’ve heard, sir,” Lt. Lovett stuck in with a wolfish, expectant look. “Then, do we just happen to come across one…?”

“I’d think that Spanish trade would’ve dried up,” Lewrie said with a frown. “We shall keep our eyes on the main chance, of course, Mister Lovett, but the reason we’ll be going the long way round is so we may scout the Florida Keys,” he went on, tapping the tines of the fork on the string of cays. “I lost a prize to Creole pirates out of New Orleans a few years ago, and it always struck me that the Keys’d be a capital place for pirates or privateers t’lurk … like Blackbeard did behind Topsail Island in the Carolinas, waitin’ for passin’ ships. We’ll probe into the bays behind the Keys, from Key West up to this ’un called Islamorada, then into this great bay … the Tamiami, or something like that. The chart shows a huge natural harbour. Have any of you ever been there, or had a look inside to see if there were settlements?”

None of them had; once ordered to the Bahamas, their duties had leashed them to the island chain’s inner waters.

“If I may be allowed to opine, sir,” Lt. Bury said in his usual solemn mien, “I was given to understand that the Spanish settlement system of
encomiendas,
the awarding of land grants to the original
conquistadors,
required their farms, mines, or
rancheros
to be profitable, and the native populations to be their slaves. Yet … from what I’ve read of Florida, it does not appear there’s anything
worth
settlement South of Saint Augustine. No mines, no riches, no gold and silver as there are in New Spain, or Mexico, or whatever one may call it. And, no natives to enslave, either.”

“Hence, no settlements?” Lewrie asked. “Damme, we know that the Dons are a lazy race, but
that
lazy?”

“During the brief time I was allowed ashore, sir,” Lt. Westcott spoke up, “I asked the locals of what they knew of Florida. Despite the strict rules the Spanish have about trading only with Spain, only in Spanish bottoms, and very little inter-colonial trade, there
was
an illicit trade ’twixt Bahamian merchants and Florida, so long as Spain was neutral.”

What I
should’ve
done,
Lewrie chid himself;
but I was sunk deep in the Blue-Devils, lookin’ up the past!

“In the twenty years that we owned East and West Florida after the Seven Years’ War,” Lt. Westcott went on, “most of the aristocrats and wealthy landholders moved out, to Cuba or other Spanish colonies, leaving only the poor to remain. And, even after Spain got it back at the end of the American Revolution, not all that many returned. What remains are gathered round Pensacola, Mobile, perhaps a few in Tampa Bay, and Saint Augustine and San Marcos. If you will note this great swamp on the chart, sir? There’s a huge shallow lake, the … Okeechobee,” Westcott had to lean close to read the name, then made a stab at its pronunciation. “Below that, is the Everglades. The local Bahamians told me there’s not ten Spanish to the square mile above the lake, and but one or two along the coast. A Catholic mission, a pig farm, and a few wild cattle or so, and all of them as poor as church mice. Spanish trade monopolies’d support them, did the system really work. Traders from here ship over shoddy goods, and the Spanish settlers in Florida are glad to get them, for they’ve little else.