Dewey Lambdin - Reefs and Shoals

“I take it that your early days with this fellow were not all that jolly, sir?” Lt. Westcott asked once Lewrie had read the orders aloud to him.

“Forrester and the Desperate, and Commander Treghues… ah, what splendid memories!” Lewrie said, the sarcasm dripping. “Well, it’s of no matter, Mister Westcott. We’ve a squadron. Don’t know what sort, yet, but it’s a start.”

“I asked about when I was ashore yesterday, sir,” Lt. Westcott told him with a sly look. “People in the taverns, civilians and Navy sorts alike, say that Captain Forrester’s Mersey has been at anchor so long, she’s not aground on beef and pork bones, but he’d have to send people overside to chip her off the coral reef that’s built up under her keel!”

“If he don’t much care for Nassau or its lacks, ye’d think he’d at least put to sea and sail round the islands,” Lewrie supposed, as he tossed the letter atop his desk. “But that might take him too far off from his fresh tucker. Hmm… while you were ashore, you didn’t pick up anything about Thorn and Firefly, or their commanding officers, did you, Mister Westcott?”

“No sir, sorry,” Westcott told him with a shrug. “Didn’t know we’d be getting them, so…”

“Oh, well. I s’pose I should go call upon Lieutenants Darling and Lovett and introduce myself… before Forrester changes his mind and snatches ’em back,” Lewrie said with a short laugh. “You see to an hour’s drill on the great guns, then the rest of the Forenoon with cutlasses and boarding pikes, and I should be back aboard by the start of the rum issue.”

“Very good, sir,” Westcott replied, preparing to rise and leave the great-cabins. “Uhm… not live firing, sir?” he japed.

“And wake all of Nassau’s drunks? Lord no, sir!”

Lewrie had himself rowed over to HMS Thorn, first, assuming that a 12-gun ship would rate the senior of the two. As his gig came to a stop under her boarding battens, he could see that Thorn was alert and ready to greet him with the proper side-party. He had served in a schooner, a ketch, then three-masted ships, but never aboard an hermaphrodite brig, which was neither a real brig-rigged vessel, nor the usual fore-and-aft-rigged schooner or cutter, but a bit of both.

“Welcome aboard, sir,” her “captain” said once the salutes and the Bosun’s calls were done. “Lieutenant Peter Darling, sir, commanding. My First Officer… the only’un, really… Lieutenant Child…”

“Your servant, sir,” Lt. Child said, doffing his hat once more.

“Alan Lewrie, sir… Mister Child,” Lewrie said, naming himself. “You’ve received Captain Forrester’s orders, transferring you and your ship to my squadron?”

“I have, sir,” Darling replied. “Might I ask if our transfer may involve some special duty?”

“You may, and I will gladly reveal all to you over supper this evening, say… half past six?” Lewrie offered. “Ye never can tell who might blab in the meantime if allowed ashore. Nassau’s bung-full of un-trustworthy people, so I’d feel more confident did your people see to last-minute victualling if they don’t know much right now.”

“I see, sir,” Darling said, looking a bit happier that his new duties might bode of some mystery, and the prospect of action.

“Tell me a bit about your ship, sir,” Lewrie said, “and give me a brief tour, if you would.”

“Gladly, sir!” Darling said, leading the way forward. “ Thorn was Spanish, a merchant ship taken as prize off Mayaguana just after we learned of our declaration of war against Spain. The previous officer on station decided that she’d make a useful cruiser. We think she was built by an American yard, for the split rig’s rare back in Europe, so far. Quite handy, though, sir, on almost every point of sail.”

And how’d you find favour enough t’have her? Lewrie wondered, suspecting that Darling might be one of Forrester’s proteges, pets, or cater-cousins. They certainly resembled each other. Lt. Darling was two inches shorter than Lewrie’s five feet nine, but outweighed him by at least two stone. Lt. Darling had a round, cherubic face, a stout upper body, and short bandy legs; he had an odd, scissory strut when he walked about his decks.

Lewrie looked aloft at Thorn ’s masts. Her foremast was rigged with course, tops’l, royal and t’gallant yards, and a large pair of gaff booms so she could set a fore-and-aft lugs’l behind that mast, or hoist a very large main topmast stays’l in its place, depending upon whether she was working to weather, or sailing large off-wind. Her main mast, aft, featured a very large spanker, the equivalent of a schooner’s main sail, but had no yards crossed above.

“You’ve carronades?” Lewrie asked, noting the short, stubby guns mounted on slides ranged down either beam of her deck.

“We’ve two six-pounders for bow chasers, but twelve eighteen-pounder carronades, sir,” Lt. Darling said with a wry moue. “It will be quite the shock to anyone our size who closes with us and offers us a fight, sir,” he hopefully declared.

“Unless he has nine-pounder long guns, hangs back and shoots you to pieces,” Lewrie dryly replied, pulling at an earlobe.

Carronades were much lighter than long guns of the same calibre, required smaller gun crews to man them, and threw much heavier shot… unfortunately, not all that far; anything over three hundred yards was iffy.

If he’s one o’ Forrester’s pets, he didn’t get all that much of a plum command, Lewrie thought; Still, beggars can’t be choosers, and she might’ve been the best Forrester could offer him.

“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?