Richard Woodman - In Distant Waters

Drinkwater was sick at heart at the circumstances that had conspired to set Stanham before his shipmates in these last few moments of his life. Antigone had returned from the Baltic with the most momentous secret of the entire war. In order to preserve the source of this news, no one connected with the ship was allowed leave, a proscription that included Drinkwater himself. But the Antigone had suffered mortal damage to her hull when the Dutch cruiser Zaandam had exploded alongside her. As a result she had been condemned and her remaining company transferred to the razee Patrician , just then commissioning as a heavy frigate at Sheerness. The tedious and often protracted business of closing a ship's books had been specially expedited on the express instructions of John Barrow, the all-powerful Second Secretary of the Admiralty. Behind this obfuscation, Drinkwater knew, loomed the figures of George Canning, the Foreign Secretary, and Lord Castlereagh, the Secretary for War. Even Lord Dungarth, the Director of the Admiralty's Secret Department, had apparently condoned Barrow's severity and expedition. It only added to Drinkwater's present mortification to consider his own personal interest in this cloak of secrecy.* (* See Baltic Mission .)

But there were other agencies at work conniving against the unfortunate Stanham. Even as the Admiralty clerks examined Antigone's books and discovered the rubric R against the name of Thomas Stanham, a letter arrived at Whitehall appraising Their Lordships that acting upon information laid before them, the Norwich magistrates had apprehended Thomas Stanham, a deserter from His Majesty's Service. There was not the slightest doubt to contest the information, affidavits had been sworn accordingly by reliable persons and, to compound the matter, the said Stanham had caused an affray in resisting arrest in which he had maliciously caused one of the constables to be gravely wounded. The magistrates desired to know Their Lordships' pleasure.

Drinkwater knew the scuttlebutt well enough: Stanham had been betrayed by the man who had made him a cuckold. He read on, pitching his voice against the gale.

'Whereas it has been enacted under the several laws relating to the sea-service…'

Quite apart from the necessity to get the former Antigones to sea, the Admiralty were increasingly worried about desertions from the ships of the Royal Navy. The long war with the French Empire was dragging on. Russia was no longer an ally, the Prussian military machine perfected by Frederick the Great had been smashed in a single day by Napoleon at Jena and Davout at Auerstadt, while Austrian defiance seemed likely to be the next object of Napoleon's indefatigable attention. It suited Their Lordships to visit the utmost extremity of the Articles of War upon the wronged Stanham, and no plea in mitigation had been allowed.

'… Every person in or belonging to the Fleet, who shall desert, or entice others to desert, shall suffer Death …'

Drinkwater paused to look up again. That phrase 'in or belonging to the Fleet' bound Stanham like an iron shackle. It ran contrary to the common, canting notions of liberty so cherished by rubicund Englishmen up and down the shires. His eyes met those of the prisoner. Stanham stopped shaking at that terrible final word and his gaze held something else, something unnerving. Drinkwater hurried on.

'And the court hath adjudged the said Thomas Stanham to suffer death by being hanged by the neck at the yardarm. You are hereby required and directed to see the said sentence of death carried into execution upon the body of the said Thomas Stanham.'

There followed the languid flourish of the presiding admiral's signature. Drinkwater lowered the paper and crushed it in his fist.

'Do you wish to say anything, Stanham?'

Again their eyes met, the gulf between them immense. Stanham nodded and coughed to clear his throat.

'Good luck to me shipmates, sir, and God save the King!'

The sudden upward modulation of Stanham's homely Norfolk voice struck Drinkwater as having been the accent of the late, lamented Lord Nelson. He nodded at Stanham as a low rumbling came from the hands.

'Silence there!' Fraser's voice cut nervously through the wind.

'Master-at-Arms! Do your duty!'

Behind Drinkwater there was a snicker of accoutrements at a low order from Mount. The marines' muskets came to the port, forty thumbs resting upon forty firelock hammers. The drummer hitched his snare-drum, brought his sticks up to the chin and then down, to beat the long roll as the master-at-arms led Stanham to the starboard gangway. With a lugubrious expression that Drinkwater found revolting the chaplain brought up the rear. The shamefaced hanging party moved aside to let the grim procession pass.

A short ladder had been set against the rail and the hammock nettings removed just abaft the forechains. Stanham was halted at the foot of the ladder and the chaplain moved closer. While the master-at-arms drew the noose down over Stanham's head and settled the knot beneath his left ear, Drinkwater watched the chaplain bend forward, his lips moving above the open prayer-book, a thin strand of hair streaming out from his almost bald head. Even at a distance Drinkwater felt the inappropriateness of another stilted formula being deployed. He saw Stanham shake his head vigorously. The chaplain stepped back and nodded, an expression of exasperation on his gaunt face. Drinkwater found his revulsion increase at this untimely meanness.

A dark cotton bag was pulled down over the prisoner's head. Stanham's face was extinguished like a candle and a gasp ran through the ship. There was a muffled thump as a small midshipman fainted. No one moved to his assistance; it was Mr Belchambers's third day in the Royal Navy.

Stanham was guided up onto the rail. Beyond the lonely figure Drinkwater could see the rigging of the neighbouring ships dark with their men, piped to witness the example of Their Lordships' remorseless justice being carried out on board Patrician .

Drinkwater nodded his head and Wickham saw the signal. The report of the carronade rolled across the water, the brief white puff of smoke alerting the other ships of the solemnity of the moment. Again the sharp stench of powder-smoke stung their nostrils and Drinkwater caught a glimpse of the flaming wadding as it disintegrated in the wind. Beside him the marine drummer stopped his ruffle.

'Prisoner made ready, sir.'

With the gale blowing aft the master-at-arms's voice carried with unnatural loudness. He had done his duty; it extended thus far. To launch Stanham into eternity waited for Drinkwater's own command.

'Mr Comley!' Drinkwater's voice rasped with a sudden, unbidden harshness.

'Sir?' The boatswain stood with his rattan beside the hanging party.

Drinkwater could no longer take refuge in formulae, his honest nature revolted against it. To instruct Comley's party to 'carry out the sentence' would have smacked of cowardice to his puritan soul. The awful implications of power were for his shoulders alone, it was to him that the death warrant had been addressed. In this was some small atonement for his own part in this grisly necessity.

'Hang the prisoner!'

The hanging party moved as though spurred by the vehemence in Drinkwater's voice There was no time for thought, no cause for apprehension to the watching Mount, ready to coerce the party with his muskets.

Comley's men leaned to Stanham's sudden weight as his body rose jerking to the starboard fore-yardarm.

Amidships another man fainted as all watched in terrible fascination.

Stanham kicked with his legs, tightening the noose with every desperate movement in his muscles, arching his back as he fought vainly for air. He was a strong man with a powerful neck that resisted the snapping of the spinal cord and the separation of the vertebrae that would bring a quick, merciful end.