Dewey Lambdin - The French Admiral

"It's going to be hard work," he whispered to himself in the privacy of his little cabin. "But I've learned enough to handle hard work. I can do this. But damme if I can see how I can have much fun in the next few months."

Was it unspoken displeasure at Desperate ? It was hard to figure out, but, with the passing of the equinox, the Leeward Islands Squadron had to go back to the West Indies, or winter on the American coast, so they sailed. Desperate , however, was left behind, to replace artillery at first, refit and restock provisions, and then be sent off with some lighter ships for Wilmington, North Carolina. Lord Cornwallis had taken most of the good troops in the south up to Yorktown, and they were lost forever. Charleston was still strongly garrisoned but had no men to spare for the minor ports. Wilmington would be evacuated, and Desperate would take part in the evacuation flotilla, the strongest ship in their little gathering. With Monk, Alan spent hours off watch, poring over the Cape Fear charts, for it was the very devil of a place to enter safely.

South of Onslow Bay and a former pirate's lair known as Topsail Island, there was a long peninsula that hooked south like a saber blade, narrowing at the tip to a malarial spit of sand which held Fort Johnston to guard the entrance inlet to the Cape Fear River. There were dozens of low islands and seas of marsh and salt grass gathered around the mouth of the river, and only one safe, deep pass. The lower reaches of the river were pretty desolate, except around Brunswick, a town gradually losing out to Wilmington sixteen miles further upriver, and now almost taken back by the weeds and scrub pine. Wilmington was on the east, or seaward, bank of Cape Fear, hard to get to but a safe harbor in storms and a bustling trading center. For a time it had been Cornwallis's headquarters before he had marched off to disaster in Virginia. Now the garrison that had been left behind, the troops and guns at Fort Johnston, were to be evacuated. Along with them would come the hundreds of Loyalists from the south-eastern portion of the colony, who had already fled the wrath of their cousins up-country.

Alan's prophecy about using his cabin so seldom had come true on the way down from New York. If he was not on the orlop deck supervising the proper stowage of provisions and munitions, then he was standing night watches, fully in command of Desperate as her real officers slept. He kept log entries, saw that the glass was turned on the half hour and the bells were struck; that the course was steered as laid down and that the quartermasters on the wheel stayed awake. He toured below decks when he could to see that all lights were out and the hands were behaving, that the lookouts were attentive, that the night signal book was close at hand, and signal fusees ready for emergencies. He saw that the fire buckets were full, that the bosun of the watch and his hands were trimming the sails for best efficiency, that there was no navigational hazard in their path and no ship on a course for an imminent collision, that the knot log was cast to determine their speed at regular intervals and that in soundings along the coast the leadsmen regularly plumbed the ocean depths.

He also had to keep a weather eye out for privateers or some part of the French fleet, which had not been reported leaving the American coast yet and could still be somewhere nearby.

It was such a quantum leap in duties and responsibility that he almost (but not quite) swore off strong drink, and there was no rest, not for a moment on deck. At first he was too embarrassed to have to summon Railsford, Monk, or the captain at the slightest hint of doubt, and got cobbed for waiting too late. On the other hand, when he summoned them too often, he got cobbed for that, too, and developed a slightly haunted look after one week of his new duties.

There was some reward, even so; to stand on deck when everything was running smoothly, hands behind his back and rocking on the balls of his feet, feeling Desperate surge along with a tremble and hum of wind and sea on her rigging and hull, totally under his control. Four hundred and fifty tons of warship, worth more than twelve thousand pounds; aboard were twenty pieces of artillery, over one hundred fifty lives, and it was, for intervals, all his to command.

Another joy was to simply finish the middle watch, see the first hint of dawn, pipe up hands from below, sign the log, and turn things over to Railsford without incident. There might be a single grunt of satisfaction that he had done what was required without killing anyone, or sinking the ship in the process, or tearing the masts right out of her. Usually, there would be a quick conference aft as the hands knelt to scrub decks forward, and Railsford or Treghues would give him a critique on the night's work—what he had done right and what he had done wrong. And so far, there had been enough right things to counterbalance the few wrong.

Another change was in the way he was remonstrated; no more being bent over a gun for a dozen strokes of a stiffened rope starter, no more tongue lashings. The cobbings were short, to the point and were couched as admonitions from a senior officer to a junior officer, done out of hearing from the hands so his authority with the crew would not suffer.

When he began, he thought he had been prepared for standing watch by his stint in the schooner Parrot but he realized that that period had been all play and schoolwork. Lieutenant Kenyon, Parrot's master and commmander, had assigned Lewrie and the late Thad Purnell together to do the work of a single adult, with senior bosun's mates or quartermasters to act as a safety net should they run into trouble someone to prompt them into the right answer, keep them out of real difficulty, and keep their playfulness in check.

Desperate was not schoolwork, and there was no one to turn to as tutor in the night watches; he was the lone man with no one to backstop him. If he failed at this, he would never get another chance, so he took a round turn and two half hitches, as one said in naval parlance, and tried to begin to act like the sea-officer they expected him to be, and the sea-officer he aspired to be.

They sweated blood to make it in past Cape Fear (it was not named Fear for nought, after all) and into the river between the true coast and the long peninsula. If anything, it looked even more desolate than most stretches of the southern American coast, low barrier islands with only sea oats and dune grass, low forests of wind-sculpted pines on the banks, and the salt-grass marshes stretching off to either hand, with only swamp behind. Desperate could, by staying to the middle of the channel, just barely make it upriver, and that took real skill. With a tide running in, they could ride the flood, but would have no control over the helm. They had reefed tops'ls, jibs and spanker set, with a light wind off the great curve of Onslow Bay that gave them just enough forward momentum to give the rudder a bite, but not so much speed that they could run into trouble before dropping a kedge-anchor from the stern if they took the ground on the mud and sand shoals.

"Point ta starboard, quartermaster, put your helm ta loo'ard, handsomely, now," Monk cautioned.

"Five fathom, five fathom to starboard!" the bosun's mate in the foremast chains chanted.

"Sonofa…" Monk growled, wanting to stand on, but worried about shoaling. Off to larboard, there was an eddy that swirled as though the tidal flood was caressing something substantial, which he had just altered course to avoid.

"That's a back eddy, Mister Monk," Alan said, remembering how the current would spin about in the Cape Fear River from his earlier voyages in Parrot . "Lieutenant Kenyon said there was no harm in it, and we stood in quite close to it."