The Privateersman (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 1) (3 page)

“I heard about that,” Smith interrupted. “There was
a big fight when they jumped a set of smugglers, Excise and dragoons both. They
said a man grabbed a sabre and laid about him, killed three of them with it, a
really big bloke. Half a dozen of them got away but they chased down four who
had taken pack-horses and tried to run on them. They didn’t catch the big
bloke, though.”

“So I heard,” Tom said.

They had all noticed the fading bruises he carried,
chose to say no more.

They closed the French coast, somewhere off
Brittany, Tom understood, although as he wasn’t entirely certain where Brittany
was, this helped him very little. They worked their way south through empty
waters, not so much as a fishing boat in sight. Smith decided, belatedly, that
he should make sure his boarders knew what they were about – he was not used to
taking command, still wanted an officer to give him the initial order.

The Coles brothers had sailed with him twice before
and sat back and watched the exercise. Neither Dick nor Luke had handled a
pistol, but both knew how to load a scatter gun and quickly mastered the
essentially similar smaller weapon; accuracy was of little concern, all they
needed do was point and pull the trigger as they would never be more than the
width of a deck from their target. Tom took his pistol, loaded quickly and
expertly, hardly looking at what he was doing, and took a snap shot at a gull
flying ten yards off their quarter, reducing it to a heap of bloody feathers on
the waves.

“Christ, nipper! Just ‘ow did you do that?”

“Dunno, Luke. I could do that first time I ever
picked one up. Dad had a pair on the boat, just in case of trouble, he always
said – the Channel’s full of Frogs and you never know… So long as I can see it,
I can hit it.”

“What about with a musket, Tom?” Smith asked.

“No good at all, sir,” Tom replied. “It’s all I can
do to hit a barn door at twenty paces with a long gun.”

They laughed and shook their heads, said they had
all heard of stranger things, but not many.

Smith ferreted about in their little armoury, came
up with a wide leather belt with a diagonal bandolier attached, passed it
across to Tom with instructions to put it on, right shoulder to left hip. Half
an hour’s fiddling fixed six holsters, one to each hip on the belt and four to
the bandolier across his chest, one left and three to the right. Two more hours
and between them they had selected the six best pistols and checked their
springs and flints before handing them across to Tom.

“Good thing you’re a big bloke, Tom,” Smith
commented. “With a cutlass as well it will make a fair old load. By the way,
have you ever handled a blade, Tom?”

A furious outbreak of coughing from Luke led him to
withdraw the question, very apologetically.

Tom spent the rest of the day sat on the deck with
rags and oil, painstakingly cleaning the heavy pistols and then rousting
through the gunnery chest to find the tools to file down the sears and reset
the triggers to a lighter pull. They were still clumsy brutes at the end of his
labours, but he would trust them not to misfire and to put their ball more or
less where he expected. He liked hand-guns, always had; he had never used one
in earnest but he expected he would now, it was not as if people mattered, not
like he had always thought; the Excisemen had taught him that.

While Smith gave brief training to the larboard
boarding party Dick and Luke, both possessing farm skills, set up the
grindstone and put an edge to the fifty or so of cutlasses and tomahawks they
could find. The Coles sat down with their own oilstones and sharpened their
knives until they could shave with them; they did not offer to assist any of
the others.

Next day Tom was set to the great guns, to check and
set the lock on each, one flintlock being much the same as any other. He did
his best, replacing two springs and balancing the others as well as he could,
but he strongly recommended Smith to find slow match and water tubs for each
gun as an almost certainly needed back up.

By the end of their second day on the French coast
they were ready for custom, if only they could find it.

The luck changed a couple of days later, off the
Isle de Re and the approaches to Rochefort, the Star on a rare north-easterly
wind making a comfortable five knots under courses alone, not wanting the
increased visibility of topsails, far less the high pyramid of topgallants,
never carried by merchant hulls – the small sails added only a little to a
ship’s speed but required extra, expensive hands to set them. Tacking slowly
and laboriously from the south came a fat, slow, round-bowed ship, some four or
five hundred tons at a distant estimate. Anxious inspection by telescope showed
no row of gun ports – she was not an ancient fifth or sixth rate of the French
navy.

“Set topsails,” Blaine shouted, wheezing and hacking
under the strain of raising his voice.

Their speed rose to eight knots, closing a mile
every six minutes until their prey should wake up and try to flee. The Star’s
crew was too small to consider raising topgallants or studding sails in a
hurry, but they did succeed in setting a second jib.

“Hands to chaser!”

Five men ran to the six pounder, cast the gun loose
and slowly loaded it.

“Mr Smith, French colours to fore and main, if you
please.”

They had been flying no flag, private men of war
generally did not, in common with most merchantmen; there was always the chance
that a commercial sailor might see what he wanted to – three or four hours of
flight down wind, even if they escaped, would leave perhaps two extra days of
tacking to make their port – and would believe the Star to be a French national
ship.

The boarders armed themselves and waited in their
two parties, six from the starboard watch and five from the larboard, Smith at
their head and giving a running commentary, nervously twitching like a
racehorse waiting for the off.

“Blind, credulous, bloody stupid! If we was Frog
navy we would be looking to give them sea room, stand at least two, better
three, cables off. Surely to Christ he can see we’re at a dead run for him! Two
miles distant. He’s left it too late, it’ll take him at least ten minutes to
change tack and we’ll be closing him before he’s round. Ready at the chaser!”

They acknowledged.

“First round across her bows. If you fire a second
then hull her, no messing about.”

The gun captain raised his hand in agreement – no
naval saluting or ‘aye-ayes’ on a privateer.

Blaine’s voice rose again as they came within a mile.

“Strip topsails.”

The small crew needed a full five minutes to comply
with the order, as he had estimated.

“Lower French flag. Shoot, Mr Smith!”

The flags dropped and the chaser fired the moment
legality was restored – to fire under false colours would make them pirates,
the navy might risk shaving it, they dared not.

A quick series of helm orders, Blaine seeming alive,
alert suddenly, and the Star swooped ponderously onto the merchant’s stern as
she hovered, irresolute.

“Thinks we might be navy, ready to put a full
broadside into her if she tries to run, expects fifty men in the boarding
party, so be quick! Grapnels!”

The hooks were thrown up onto the taller ship and
they scrambled up the four feet and over her rails. There was the normal thin
merchant crew, most of them with weapons in their hands, waiting for orders;
the bulk of them very obviously hoping the command would be to surrender.

A minute and it became clear that there was only the
small party of a dozen on their deck and a voice called sharply in French. Just
three of the armed men jumped forward, unwisely eager for a fight.

Tom fired three shots in less than as many seconds
and the remaining Frenchmen froze, then, as one, dropped their blades and
raised their hands, each trying to look innocent of intent, unthreatening,
demure.

Ten minutes sufficed to disarm all of the crew and
make a quick search for any hiding. Half an hour more and their one boat was
lowered and they were thoroughly searched and then crammed aboard it, the
master relieved of all of his keys and the ship’s papers.

“Take her back to Poole, Mr Smith, starboard
boarders as prize-crew. Keep in company.”

They were too thinly manned to do anything else, and
it was wiser to keep enough men aboard Star to man the broadside if necessary,
pointless to spread the crew out and have too few men to fight either vessel.

Smith glanced at the ship’s papers and manifest,
hopefully asked whether anybody could read French, was not surprised to
discover that none could, tucked the papers carefully away for the benefit of
the prize-agent in Poole.

It seemed possible that they had been observed from
shore or from fishing boats, and the French crew would be on land and raising
Cain by evening, so they took a course south west to make as great a distance
from the coast as they could. The French would not know their home port, would
have no clues on which to base a pursuit, so it was most sensible to make their
way deep into the Bay and out of sight before turning their head towards Poole.
They set the courses and then the topsails, one by one, the minimum set of
sails that they could manage, just, and maintain a steady five knots. The wind
was veering, gaining an unusual amount of easterly, much to their satisfaction,
but they told each other that when the luck changed it generally did so
thoroughly, made a whole-hearted job of it.

They took a glance into the holds, came away quite
satisfied with the loading of naval stores for the Atlantic Fleet in Rochefort
that filled the fore, not unhappy with the commercial cargo of sheet lead,
sacks of flour and beans and rice and barrels of olive oil stored dry in the
main hold.

“Could have done a lot worse,” Smith commented.
“Naval stores will always sell – cables, ropes, cordage, canvas, spikes and
nails, pitch and turpentine and tar, powder paint – all will go in Poole or
even be bought up by contractors to the navy to send to Portsmouth. Foodstuffs,
always in demand just before harvest when the store cupboards are thin. Don’t
know about the olive oil, foreign muck, don’t seem the sort of thing English
folks are likely to have any truck with – though they might sell it in London,
they’re queer folk up there.”

Five slow days brought them into Poole and saw
Blaine at the office of his prize-agent who was as surprised as he was pleased
to see him. After two anxious days the prize-agent confirmed that the Bills of
Lading showed that all of the cargo had loaded in Bordeaux, having originated
in France, and was consigned to French ports; the ship’s papers stated that she
was registered in Bordeaux and was French owned – there were no neutrals
involved and no reason to suppose that the Admiralty Court would not condemn
her as fair prize.

The local officials of the Prize Court had been
notified of the capture and had, provisionally, agreed that it seemed to be
legitimate and that some or all of the cargo might be perishable; they had
therefore authorised the prize-agent to set the cargo to immediate auction and
to disburse the funds so generated, the proviso being that, should unforeseen
circumstances supervene, the Court might find against him and he would then be
personally liable for the whole value of the cargo and hull and for demurrage
and damages, not to speak of prosecution for unlawful killing of the crew
members. In time the prize-agent would sue the captain of the prize-taker to
recover his losses, but the law tended to be very slow.

The net effect was that any prize-agent was very
unwilling to pay out more than fifty per centum on cargo and hulls generally
remained unsold prior to official condemnation. A prize taken in one year might
well not be fully paid for another two, and if, for example, some part of the
cargo transpired to be neutral then the process could drag on for ten years and
the lawyers’ fees would eat up the whole of its value before judgement was ever
given. It was not unknown for privateers who discovered they had unwittingly
taken a neutral to quietly sink ship and crew and sail off to another part of
the ocean, claiming innocence and sometimes being believed.

Whatever the end result, a couple of thousand was
very welcome to the Star, half going to the ship, half to the crew’s shares. It
put seven pounds ten into Tom’s pocket, which was a good start to making up his
losses, but it was only fifty shillings for each man he had shot – life was
cheap, it seemed, but it was their own fault, they had asked for a fight and
had no business complaining that they had got more than they asked for. It was
surprising, really, just how easy it had been, how little it had mattered; he
noticed that the others in the crew treated him with an overtly cautious
respect now, recognising him as a ‘bad’ man – one who should
not
be
crossed; heady stuff, for a sixteen-year-old.

The Star tied up at the quayside and took in stores;
Tom counted ten crates of two dozen bottles of gin going into the captain’s
cabin. Four cannon were wheeled out of a chandlery and set to the empty ports
on the broadside.