Patrick O'Brian: Post captain

Post Captainby Patrick O'Brian

At first dawn the swathes of rain drifting eastwards across the Channel parted long enough to show that the chase had altered course. The Charwell had been in her wake most of the night, running seven knots in spite of her foul bottom, and now they were not much above a mile and a half apart. The ship ahead was turning, turning, coming up into the wind; and the silence along the frigate’s decks took on a new quality as every man aboard saw her two rows of gun-​ports come into view. This was the first clear sight they had had of her since the look-​out hailed the deck in the growing darkness to report a ship hull-​down on the horizon, one point on the larboard bow. She was then steering north-​north-​east, and it was the general opinion aboard the Charwell that she was either one of a scattered French convoy or an American blockade-​runner hoping to reach Brest under cover of the moonless night.

Two minutes after that first hail the Charwell set her fore and main topgallants - no great spread of canvas, but then the frigate had had a long, wearing voyage from the West Indies: nine weeks out of sight of land, the equinoctial gales to strain her tired rigging to the breaking-​point, three days of lying-​to in the Bay of Biscay at its worst, and it was understandable that Captain Griffiths should wish to husband her a little. No cloud of sail, but even so she fetched the stranger’s wake within a couple of hours, and at four bells in the morning watch the Charwell cleared for action. The drum beat to quarters, the hammocks came racing up, piling into the nettings to form bulwarks, the guns were run out; and the warm, pink, sleepy watch below had been standing to them in the cold rain ever since - an hour and more to chill them to the bone.

Now in the silence of this discovery one of the crew of a gun in the waist could be heard explaining to a weak-​eyed staring little man beside him, ‘She’s a French two-​decker, mate. A seventy-​four or an eighty: we’ve caught a tartar, mate.’

‘Silence there, God damn you,’ cried Captain Griffiths. ‘Mr Quarles, take that man’s name.’

Then the grey rain closed in. But at present everyone on the crowded quarterdeck knew what lay behind that drifting, formless veil: a French ship of the line, with both her rows of gun-​ports open. And there was not one who had missed the slight movement of the yard that meant she was about to lay her foresail to the mast, heave to and wait for them.

The Charwell was a 32-gun 12-pounder frigate, and if she got close enough to use the squat carronades on her quarterdeck and forecastle as well as her long guns she could throw a broadside weight of metal of 238 pounds. A French line-​of-​battle ship could not throw less than 960. No question of a match, therefore, and no discredit in bearing up and running for it, but for the fact that somewhere in the dim sea behind them there was their consort, the powerful 38-gun 18-pounder Dee. She had lost a topmast in the last blow, which slowed her down, but she had been well in sight at nightfall, and she had responded to Captain Griffiths’s signal to chase: for Captain Griffiths was the senior captain. The two frigates would still be heavily outgunned by the ship of the line, but there was no doubt that they could take her on: she would certainly try to keep her broadside to one of the frigates and maul her terribly, but the other could lie on her bow or her stern and rake her - a murderous fire right along the length of her decks to which she could make almost no reply. It could be done: it had been done. In ‘97, for example, the Indefatigable and the Amazon had destroyed a French seventy-​four. But then the Indefatigable and the Amazon carried eighty long guns between them, and the Droits de

l’Homme had not been able to open her lower-​deck ports the sea was running too high. There was no more than a moderate swell now; and to engage the stranger the Charwell would have to cut her off from Brest and fight her for - for how long?

‘Mr - Mr Howell,’ said the captain. ‘Take a glass to the masthead and see what you can make of the Dee.’

The long-​legged midshipman was half-​way to the mizentop before the captain had finished speaking, and his ‘Aye-​aye, sir’ came down through the sloping rain. A black squall swept across the ship, pelting down so thick that for a while the men on the quarterdeck could scarcely see the forecastle, and the water ran spouting from the lee-​scuppers. Then it was gone, and in the pale gleam of day that followed there came the hail. ‘On deck, sir. She’s hull-​up on the leeward beam. She’s fished her. .

‘Report,’ said the captain, in a loud, toneless voice. ‘Pass the word for Mr Barr.’

The third lieutenant came hurrying aft from his station. The wind took his rain-​soaked cloak as he stepped on to the quarterdeck, and he made a convulsive gesture, one hand going towards the flapping cloth and the other towards his hat.

‘Take it off, sir,’ cried Captain Griffiths, flushing dark red. ‘Take it right off your head. You know Lord St Vincent’s order - you have all of you read it - you know how to salute. . . ‘He snapped his mouth shut; and after a moment he said, ‘When does the tide turn?’

‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said Barr. ‘At ten minutes after eight o’clock, sir. It is almost the end of slack-​water now, sir, if you please.’

The captain grunted, and said, ‘Mr Howell?’

‘She has fished her main topmast, sir,’ said the midshipman, standing bareheaded, tall above his captain. ‘And has just hauled to the wind.’

The captain levelled his glass at the Dee, whose topgallant-​sails were now clear above the jagged edge of the sea: her top-​sails too, when the swell raised both the frigates high. He wiped the streaming objective-​glass, stared again, swung round to look at the Frenchman, snapped the telescope shut and gazed back at the distant frigate. He was alone there, leaning on the rail, alone there on the holy starboard side of the quarterdeck; and from time to time, when they were not looking at the Frenchman or the Dee, the officers glanced thoughtfully at his back.

The situation was still fluid; it was more a potentiality than a situation. But any decision now would crystallize it, and the moment it began to take shape all the succeeding events would follow of themselves, moving at first with slow inevitability and then faster and faster, never to be undone. And a decision must be made, made quickly -at the Charwell’s present rate of sailing they would be within range of the two-​decker in less than ten minutes. Yet there were so many factors . . . The Dee was no great sailer close-​hauled on a wind; and the turning tide would hold her back - it was right across her course; she might have to make another tack. In half an hour the French 36-pounders could rip the guts out of the Charwell, dismast her and carry her into Brest - the wind stood fair for Brest. Why had they seen not a single ship of the blockading squadron? They could not have been blown off, not with this wind. It was damned odd. Everything was damned odd, from this Frenchman’s conduct onwards. The sound of gunfire would bring the squadron up. . . Delaying tactics.

The feeling of those eyes on his back filled Captain Griffiths with rage. An unusual number of eyes, for the Charwell had several officers and a couple of civilians as passengers, one set from Gibraltar and another from Port of Spain. The fire-​eating General Paget was one of them, an influential man; and another was Captain Aubrey, Lucky Jack Aubrey, who had set about a Spanish 36-gun xebec-​frigate not long ago with the Sophie, a 14-gun brig, and had taken her. The Cacafuego. It had been the talk of