Dewey Lambdin - Reefs and Shoals

“Damn my eyes!” someone whispered loud enough to be heard, for there off the frigate’s larboard quarter, in the East, the sun burst like a bombshell above the horizon. It was weak, watery, and hazed by clouds, but the first up-most loom of the sun shone yellowish in promise of a clearing day! Everyone with a pocket-watch snatched it out quickly, to note the minute of the sun’s rising; Mr. Caldwell’s ephemeris had tables which could give them a clearer idea of their position.

With much hemming, hawing, and throat-clearing, the Sailing Master played “shaman” for a bit, consulting his ephemeris, scribbling with chalk on a small slate, uttering a “damn” or two when the damp slate and damp chalk refused to co-operate, then ordained that they were a full fifteen minutes of a degree further West than they had initially reckoned. “Now, perhaps the discrepancy is due to being further South than our Dead-Reckoning guesses, sirs,” Caldwell went on. “A decent shot at the sun at Noon Sights should reveal all,” he concluded as he made an X mark on the chart a tad West of their first estimate. It was only a few miles, but…

The rippling horizons were clear, and the disturbed seas were empty of threat. “Secure the hands from Quarters, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered at last. “Have the galley fires be lit, and pipe the hands below to breakfast. I may dare to shave this morning.”

“Aye, sir.” Westcott replied. “And I must say, sir, that you would decently resemble a pirate, do you give the stubble another day or two more.”

“Arrh,” Lewrie sham-growled, returning to the starboard side, daring also to smile for the first time in days.

Conditions did not prove quite as hopeful as they might have wished, though. By the middle of the Forenoon Watch, fresh banks of grey clouds loomed up from the Nor’east, destroying any hope of a sun-sight. They were feeling the fringes of the benign, the dependable Nor’east Trade Wind, yet it only brought more gusts, and a raw and chill rain! The winds settled on Reliant ’s starboard quarter as she was driven South by West, ploughing and hobby-horsing through the swells. Lewrie at least had enough rainwater with which to sponge-bathe, for a rare once, and a ship steady enough under him to lather up and shave!

It was two more wary days of scudding South by West ’til the sky showed even a hint of blue, still mostly lost in blankets of clouds-clouds paler and whiter than any they had seen since leaving Portsmouth, which at least were promising. Gradually, ragged holes and clear-sky streaks appeared in those clouds, like ripped and torn curtains, or an old blanket that the rats and moths had been feeding upon. Shadows appeared, and here and there round the ship, in large patches, waves glittered in actual sunlight!

Lewrie was aft in his great-cabins, as the Forenoon of the third day of their South by Westing wore on, pacing to peek out the transom sash windows, then go forward to the door to the weather deck to stick his head out and scan the sky. The ship’s drummer and fifers began to “play” the rum cask up at Seven Bells, and it began to look promising, at last. His sextant and Harrison’s chronometer were safely stowed in their protective boxes in the chart-space, and he gave them an intent look. Hoping for the best, he clapped his hat on his head and picked the boxes up by their brass carrying handles.

“Cap’m’s on…!” the Marine sentry cried, for the tenth time since Lewrie’s first peek, turning his head to see if Lewrie would appear for real this time. “Cap’um’s on deck!” he cried in full.

Lewrie trotted up the windward ladderway to the quarterdeck, to discover that the Sailing Master, his officers, and Mids had brought up their own sextants, slates, and paper scraps for reckoning.

“Damned nice,” Lewrie said, after a good look about and a sniff of the wind. The Trades no longer gusted, but were steady, and this late morning’s temperature, while still nippy, was pleasant enough to be stood without shivering. “Good Lord, what’s that in the sky?” he japed. “What should we name it? Should we worship it, d’ye wonder?”

“There’s still thin clouds and haze, sir, but… we’ll soon see,” Lt. Merriman said.

“Close enough for naval work,” Lt. Westcott snickered.

They compared chronometers, then waited for the last grains of sand to trickle through the hour, half-hour, and quarter-hour glasses at the forecastle belfry, bringing their sextants up to their eyes as ship’s boys turned those glasses, and chimed the first stroke upon the ship’s bell. Then, as Lt. Spendlove relieved Lt. Merriman, they wrote down their sights and began their calculations. A few minutes later, the officers covened to compare, results, which caused smiles all round, and a communal gathering by the now-ragged chart.

“Twenty-five degrees, twenty minutes West,” Mr. Caldwell summed up with un-accustomed glee, “which places us about… here. Five hundred miles Sou’west of Cape Saint Vincent, and only a few minutes North of the thirty-third latitude,” he said, making a tentative X upon the chart.

“Do we stand on this course a few days more, we could fetch the Madeiras,” Lt. Westcott pointed out. “Anyone thirsty for some wine?”

“Or, we stand on West-Sou’west a bit longer ’til we strike the thirty-second latitude, then follow it the lubberly way, right across the Atlantic to Bermuda,” Lewrie countered. “Perhaps thirty-two degrees twenty minutes, just in case.”

He and the Sailing Master had pored over another chart of Bermudan waters for hours, the night before, and both of them had gloomed in unison to note how quickly the Atlantic’s abyssal depths shallowed and shoaled, the nearer one got to shore. Even more fearful were the many and great expanses of rocks, shoals, flats, and banks indicated all round the North, Northwest, and West of the chain of islets that made up the wee archipelago… and the ovals that marked the wrecks of ships that had gone down on those myriad underwater perils. It was not a place to approach unwarily; Bermuda’s old name among sailormen was “The Isle of the Devils”!

“Now your results, young gentlemen,” the Sailing Master asked of the Midshipmen. Some showed blase calm, one or two even beamed in confidence, whilst the two youngest, Munsell and Rossyngton, displayed more trepidation.

“Uhm-hmm, very good, Mister Eldridge,” Mr. Caldwell droned on as he studied each slate or sheet of foolscap. “A few minutes out, Mister Warburton, but close. Uhm-hmm, Mister Entwhistle, Mister Grainger. Well, well, Mister Rossyngton, despite the First Lieutenant’s jape, we are not as close to the Madeiras as you make us. Now then, Mister Munsell,” Caldwell said, expecting the worst, as usual, with a grave phyz on, and a demanding hand out for the lad’s slate. “Well, my word. My word, indeed!” the Sailing Master marvelled, glancing quickly from Munsell to his slate and back again, so “all-aback” that he looked as if he would inspect the backside of the slate, or turn it upside down.

“Mister Eldridge has been tutoring us, sir,” Munsell said with joy. “Me in particular, really,” the lad confessed.

“Not half a degree out, either in longitude or latitude!” Mr. Caldwell exclaimed, holding Munsell’s slate for all to see, to prove it. Even Lewrie, who had struggled for ages with the formula, and admittedly still not a dab-hand navigator, could see that Munsell had worked it properly, with very few side-scribbles, and had not cribbed it from the others. He was all but gape-jawed in amazement, too; Midshipman Munsell could usually place them on the far side of the ocean from where they really were, or somewhere in the jungles of the Amazon when in West Indies waters!