Dewey Lambdin - A King`s Trade

"I tell him, sah," Andrews replied, knuckling his brow.

"Mister Hedgepeth?" Lewrie called, whirling about. "Might you indulge me with a boat ride out to your ship?"

H MS Jamaica was a hard-worked ship and looked it as Lewrie was rowed to her starboard entry-port, noting the much-faded paintwork on her side, the dribbles of tar and oakum showing between the outermost planking of her gunwales and bulwarks. A laconic rural American would have said of her that "she'd been rode hard, and put up wet," Lewrie could imagine. If there had been shiny gilt to brighten her, it had been worn off long before; and it appeared that there wasn't enough of a supply of linseed oil, tar, or pitch to spruce up her hull to Navy standards, especially the standards of admirals closer to Europe. But, Lewrie also noted that Jamaica 's yards were mathematically squared, her standing and running rigging well set up and tautly blocked or belayed. Her gun-ports stood open for a cooling breeze on both decks, red paint faded, too, on the inboard faces, but the cannon muzzles' tompions were still bright, and every piece squatted in the same exact position as its mate. Up alongside, Jamaica 's boarding battens, main-chain platform, and dead-eyes for the main-stays were sound, and her man-ropes strung shallowly through the outboard ends of the batten steps were white and fresh, served with Turk's Head knots. The battens were clean, sanded, though the two-decker's waterline was a gently waving garden of weed, despite her coppering.

And, despite her obvious long and hard service, Lewrie could, on his way up to the starboard gangway, note that the smell of her that wafted from those opened gun-ports on both decks wasn't the reeky fug that one could expect aboard such a small line-of-battle ship, crewed by several hundred men pent in such close quarters for so long, either. Her captain surely put a great stock in cleanliness, Lewrie imagined.

He attained the gangway, taking the salute from clean and well-dressed Marines and sailors, from hands scattered about her decks who doffed shiny black tarred hats, pausing from their labours for a bit.

"Lewrie, of the Proteus frigate," he said to a sober, gangly officer. "Your captain requested me to attend him, and why waste time on notes back and forth."

"Of course, Captain Lewrie," the man replied. "Welcome aboard, sir. Allow me to name myself. Suddarth… First Lieutenant." "Glad t'make your acquaintance, Lieutenant Suddarth." "I will inform Captain Leatherwood you've come aboard, sir. He is aft, at the moment…" Lt. Suddarth offered, but such task was not necessary, for his own captain emerged from his great-cabins beneath the poop to the aft end of the quarterdeck, still shrugging his way into a rather shabby undress coat and hat, without summons. Suddarth made the introductions as Leatherwood approached.

"Yer servant, sir," Lewrie said, doffing his hat in salute. "And welcome you are, Captain Lewrie," Leatherwood genially said in reply, waving an arm aft in invitation. "Do join me in my cabins, where we may get down to business, sir."

Capt. Leatherwood's private quarters were a lot more spacious than Lewrie's, the painted canvas deck chequer as bright as the true tile that it imitated. Only 6-pounders marred its interior to give it a martial air. And, whilst his deal partitions and panelling gleamed with paint or polish, Leatherwood's furnishings were rather plain and spartan, and well-used. Instead of a formal interview with Leatherwood seated behind his desk, and Lewrie in a chair before it, he was led to a folding settee on the larboard side of the day-cabin, with Capt. Leatherwood taking a padded wood-frame chair on the other side of the ivory-inlaid low table between, which rested on a brass-trimmed ebony folding frame. The small carpets which livened both the day-cabin and the dining-coach were of a set, both of Hindoo manufacture, and most-likely bargains obtained in Bombay or Calcutta. Within a few breaths, a cabin servant in nattily tailored sailors' togs appeared with a tray that held a bottle of hock, and two short-stemmed glasses.

"I trust you don't mind hock, Captain Lewrie," Leatherwood said with an easy smile on his weathered face, "but I've always been partial to white wines, 'stead of claret. This one's what the Germans call the spaetlese variety. A touch sweet, but spicy. And, we will not ask how it was exported past the French, hmm?"

"Honoured, sir," Lewrie replied as he accepted a glass and took an appreciative sip, liking it rather well. Appreciative, too, of Capt. Leatherwood's welcome. Many captains senior to him, he'd found, would play their little games of self-importance, forcing him to wait on the quarterdeck in foul weather, or stand and stew before their desks while they pretended to frown sternly over charts or paperwork, kneading their brows as if the war's turning hinged completely on them, alone. Others, Lewrie thought with a hidden grimace, who knew him, would act much the same, but their motive was mostly personal dislike!

Leatherwood looked to be a pleasant sort. He was about an inch taller than Lewrie, in his early fourties or so, sunburned to a mellow colour by years under tropic skies, care-worn and over-worked, but with merry brown eyes. He wore his own hair, with a short beribboned queue atop his collar, his hair salt-and-pepper and receding at his temples; slimly framed, and perhaps the victim of some tropic illness, for his uniform fit rather looser than his tailor might have originally sewed it.

"Quite good, and spicy," Lewrie adjudged.

"The Cape Squadron informs me that your frigate is free to join me," Leatherwood began, after a few sips of his own, and a shift in his chair to a more comfortable nigh-slouch. "Haven't much to spare, else. They also told me you've just finished some repairs? Ready for sea?"

"In all respects, sir," Lewrie assured him, giving Leatherwood a thumbnail sketch of the convoy battle, his rudder problems, his reduced and altered gun battery, along with being a few hands short.

"Sounds about as good as we can expect," Capt. Leatherwood said with a resigned grunt and nod. "I should have six hundred and fifty-odd aboard Jamaica , but what with sickness, accidents, and desertions, we're about fifty people short, as well. And, badly in need of refit. You noted my 'decorative water garden' as you came alongside, sir?"

"Your, ah… weed, sir?" Lewrie agreeably said.

"Damned tropics," Leatherwood said with a sigh. "The seas are so rich with marine growth, and whatever they feed upon, that I might as well have dunged and fertilised, deliberately. Four years, we have spent out here, Captain Lewrie. Saint Helena to Calcutta or Bombay, and back again, with but two careenings when we could be spared to fire and scrape her clean in all that time. Too few warships, too much of a threat from the French, too many convoys, and never enough time off.

"But, that's about to change!" Leatherwood perked up. "We are bound for home, at long last, to pay off. 'Twill be a slow passage, I fear… slow, but steady, as they say. Jamaica might attain a knot or two more than our Indiamen,

and that on a stout wind, mind. Your own quickwork, sir. You said you re-coppered at Halifax?"

"Last year, sir, that," Lewrie had to tell him, "so my one weed has grown apace, but, on our short test sail after the new rudder was in place, Proteus seems fairly fast, still. And, that new rudder is a tad broader than an English yard might install, so she's very quick on the helm… more manoeuvrable."

"Good," Leatherwood declared, sounding relieved. "For our slow plod North, I'll place you astern of the convoy, and will take the van position myself, do I not work out on a flank, now and again. You'll bear the onus, should the French have a go at us. With the winds from the Sou'east, and with the Agulhas Current shoving us along, even the Indiamen could make enough sail to out-foot a beam approach…"