Dewey Lambdin - Reefs and Shoals

“Mine arse on a band-box!” Lewrie gawped, a reaction that Commander Gilpin did not expect from a Post-Captain, especially one of Lewrie’s repute in the Navy; wasn’t he the aggressive “Ram-Cat”, the bane of the French?

“Well, hmm,” Lewrie said after a long moment. “I suppose that Bermuda’s out for a good while. I’m glad that I’ll have you with me, Commander Gilpin… and Commander Richie, is it, of Fulmar ? I don’t know what else we’ll have, beyond the two ships of the squadron that I borrowed when I arrived. If Villeneuve comes this way, there’s not much we can do to face him, but… we can give it a good try.”

I s’pose this’ll make Bury, Darling, and Lovett happy, Lewrie whimsically thought. They had all dined ashore together a few nights before, and his junior captains had all expressed glum regrets that he would be turning them over to Forrester’s control, or for Lt. Bury to sail back to the boring patrols round Bermuda. At least still in his squadron, they could look forward to exciting doings they had assured him!

“Where’s Fulmar ?” Lewrie asked.

“Richie thought to seek you off Spanish Florida, sir,” Gilpin said.

“We need t’keep a partial blockade of Saint Augustine. Once you’ve re-victualled, I’ll send a sloop to find him and let him do that for a while,” Lewrie decided. “Establish a patrol line down near the Turks and Caicos on the lookout for the French, too.”

“I quite look forward to serving under you, sir,” Gilpin said with an eager grin.

Once Gilpin had returned to his own ship, Lewrie laid aside his finery and changed back to comfortable clothes once more, ready for a mid-day meal. Yeovill and Cooke had run across a Free Black woman in the Bay Street markets who had been brought as a cook to the islands by a refugee Tory family at the end of the American Revolution. She had been freed years later, and swore that she possessed the best receipt for both pecan pie and peach pie, ones that had been her mother’s back in Colonial Georgia, and this time (perhaps!) they would bake one as good as those he’d tasted in Charleston and Savannah!

Lewrie propped his feet up on the brass tray-table with a fresh glass of tea handy, and mused over, his new duties… and over what a well-deserved disaster had befallen Francis Forrester. If he knew the current locations of those few former Midshipmen of old Desperate ’s cockpit with whom he had served, he would have written them that very instant, sure that all would gloat and shout Hosannahs at the news!

He could “caulk” for half an hour or so; though the windows in the transom were open, and the smaller ones in the coach-top overhead were open, too, it was a warmish day with little breeze reaching him.

Play a little horn-pipe of commiseration? he thought, fingering the holes of his penny-whistle, and putting it to his mouth. He got started on one, but there came a howl and singing wail from above.

“Deck, there!” he bellowed to the Midshipmen who stood harbour watch in lieu of the Commission Officers. “Is Bisquit on the quarterdeck?”

“Ehm… aye, sir,” Rossyngton called down, kneeling down by the coach-top to show his face in one of the windows. The dog’s head appeared in another. “Sorry, sir. I’ll shoo him off, directly.”

“Oh… never mind,” Lewrie said with a sigh, laying his musical instrument aside. “Just make sure he doesn’t shit on the deck.”

“ Really, sir?” Rossyngton yelped in surprise. “I mean, aye aye, sir. We’ll keep an eye on him. Come on, boy!”

For a moment, Bisquit gazed down at Lewrie, matching eyes with him, panting and grinning with what looked like glee, and his triumph of the forbidden territory, at last. Then, he answered to Midshipman Rossyngton’s summoning whistles and scampered off.

It’s official, and unanimous, Lewrie thought with a shake of his head; there’s nobody who cares for my music!

Before privateering was banned by international treaty in 1856, and merchant ships no longer had to be defensively armed, every fresh war between seafaring nations brought hundreds of aspiring rovers from the woodwork with hopes of great profits, and adventure. Near at hand are the examples of the American Revolution and the War of 1812, which saw British trade attacked from the Grand Banks to the West Indies to the Irish Sea and the English Channel by an “auxiliary fleet” larger by far than the nascent Continental Navy or the U.S. Navy.

Privateering companies were formed overnight, investors bought in in anticipation of rich, quick returns, and the fastest and handiest ships were purchased, or offered by their owners as their investment share. Bold and canny sea-captains with good reputations were hired, or promoted themselves, men who could attract sailors on the strength of their reputations and the soundness of their vessels, and younger, fitter, bolder sailors eagerly responded.

Mariners’ lives from the times of Sir Francis Drake and those “Bowld English Sea Rovers” of Elizabethan years to the end of the Great Age of Sail were dismal, and consisted of low pay, foul rations, back-breaking physical labour, tyrannical and miserly officers, and a good chance of being cheated at the end of each voyage. Whenever war broke out, common sailors faced the added risk of being ’pressed into a warship, where Navy pay was even lower, and discipline and good order were enforced with physical punishment, and shore liberty was quite out of the question for years on end to prevent desertion.

It was no wonder then that sailors would rather sign articles aboard a privateer and go a’roving in search of riches, loot from any captured ship, and a “lay”, or share, in a voyage’s profits. In port, they could leave the ship for a good drunk or two, some fresh air away from the typical ship’s reek, find “elbow room” and some precious privacy away from their shipmates, and have a run at the whores. To be a privateersman put a swagger in their step, and made seafaring a grand adventure, not a thankless chore.

When captains of any nation at war held recruiting “rondies”, they found themselves out-shone by the blandishments of privateers. In those days, there were no organised recruiting establishments, no basic training camps, and no Admiralty department responsible for assigning draughts of men to ships fitting out, or replacing men who had been killed, crippled, discharged, or lost to desertion. A Royal Navy captain had only a limited time to attract trained, experienced hands, wide-eyed young volunteers who would be deemed Landsmen, and scour the dregs offered by the Impress Service to complete his ship’s complement. If he couldn’t, he lost his precious active commission and another officer took his ship, and his place. Some warships had to sail with just enough people aboard to work the ship to sea, perhaps hundreds of men short, to save the captain’s full-pay job! God forbid that a warship and a privateer were fitting out in the same port at the same time, for it would be the privateer that would always win!

Privateers operated in every corner of the world where ships of an enemy nation traded, and no seas were immune. Some French privateer captains, mostly from St.-Malo, were spectacularly successful in the Indian Ocean against convoys of the British East India Company, which bore rich cargoes to and from China, India, and the Far East. Some even dared to engage warships, and win, though that was usually the last thing a privateer would risk. If the privateer lost, it was all up, and even if they escaped with damage, that had to be repaired in port, resulting in long down-times with no profit, and a loss of money to pay for the repairs. A fast-sailing privateer’s speed was her best defence.