A King's Cutter (19 page)

Drinkwater
was
envious. Envious and not a little amused in a bitter kind of way at Richard White's mixture of boyish enthusiasm and sober naval formality. There was a good deal more of it, including the significant phrase
Sir John was pleased to take notice of my conduct
. Drinkwater checked himself. He was pleased for White, pleased too that his old friend, now clearly on the path to success, still considered the friendship of an obscure master's mate in an even more obscure cutter worth the trouble of an informative letter. So Drinkwater shared vicariously in the euphoria induced by the victory. The tide, it seemed, had turned in favour of British arms and the Royal Navy reminded her old antagonists that though the lion lay down, it was not yet dead.

Then one morning in April
Kestrel
rounded the Scroby Sands and stood into Yarmouth Road with the signal for despatches at her masthead. Coming to her anchor close to
Venerable
her chase guns saluted the blue flag at the flagship's main masthead. A moment or so later her boat pulled across the water with Lieutenant Griffiths in the stern.

When Griffiths returned from delivering his message from the frigates off the Texel he called all the cutter's officers into the cabin.

Drinkwater was the last to arrive, late from supervising the hoisting of the boat. He closed the lobby door behind him, aware of an air of tense expectancy. As he sat down he realised it was generated by the frigid gleam in Griffiths's eyes.

‘Gentlemen,' he said in his deep, clear voice. ‘Gentlemen, the Channel Fleet at Spithead is in a state of mutiny!'

‘Listen to the bastards!' said Jessup as
Kestrel
's crew paused in their work to stare round the crowded anchorage. The cheering appeared to come from
Lion
and a ripple of excitement ran through the hands forward, several staring defiantly aft where Jessup, Drinkwater and Traveller stood.

Yarmouth Roads had been buzzing as news, rumour, claim and counter-claim sped between the ships anchored there. The red flag, it was said had been hoisted at the Nore and Duncan's ships vacillated between loyalty to their much respected admiral and their desire to support what were felt to be the just demands of the rest of the fleet.

The cheering was enough to bring others on deck. Amidships the cook emerged from his galley and the knot of officers was joined by Appleby and Thompson. ‘Thank God we're anchored close to the flagship,' muttered the surgeon. His apprehensions of mutiny now having been confirmed, Appleby feared the possibility of being murdered in his bed.

Kestrel
lay anchored a short cannon shot from
Venerable
. The battleship's guns were run out and the sudden boom of a cannon echoed flatly across the anchorage. A string of knotted bunting rose up her signal halliards to jerk out brightly in the light breeze of a May morning.

‘Call away my gig, Mr Drinkwater,' growled Griffiths emerging from the companionway. Admiral Duncan was signalling for his captains and when Griffiths returned from the conference his expression was weary. ‘Call the people aft!'

Jessup piped the hands into the waist and they swarmed eagerly over the remaining boat on the hatch. ‘Gentlemen,' said Griffiths to his officers, ‘take post behind me.'

The officers shuffled into a semi-circle as ordered, regarding the faces of the men. Some open, some curious, some defiant or truculent and all aware that unusual events were taking place.

‘Now hark you all to this, do you understand that the fleets at Spithead and the Nore are in defiant mutiny of their officers . . .' He looked round at them, giving them no ground, despite his inner
sympathy. ‘But if any man disputes my right to command this cutter or proposes disobeying my orders or those of one of my officers,' he gestured behind him, ‘let him speak now.'

Griffiths's powerful voice with its rich Welsh accent seemed to come from a pulpit. His powerful old body and sober features with their air of patriarchy exerted an almost tangible influence upon his men. He appeared to be reasoning with them like a firm father, opposing their fractiousness with the sure hand of experience. ‘Look at me,' he seemed to say, ‘you cannot rebel against me, whatever the rest of the fleet does.'

Drinkwater's palms were damp and beside him Appleby was shaking with apprehension. Then they saw resolution ebb as a sort of collective sigh came from the men. Griffiths sent them forward again.

‘Get forrard and do your duty. Mr Jessup, man the windlass and inform me when the cable's up and down.'

It was the season for variable or easterly winds in the North Sea and Duncan's preoccupation was that the Dutch fleet would leave the Texel, taking advantage of the favourable winds and the state of the British squadrons. The meeting to which Griffiths had been summoned had been to determine the mood of the ships in Duncan's fleet. The small force still off the Texel was quite inadequate to contain De Winter if he chose to emerge and it was now even more important to keep him bottled up. There was a strong possibility that the mutinous ships at the Nore might attempt a defection and this was more likely to be to the protestant Dutch than the catholic French, for all the republican renunciation of formal religion. A demonstration by De Winter to cover the Nore Squadron's exit from the Thames would be all that was necessary to facilitate this and strengthen any wavering among the mutineers. It was already known at Yarmouth that most of the officers had been removed from the warships with the significant exception of the sailing masters. They were held aboard the
Sandwich
, the ‘flagship' of the self-styled admiral, Richard Parker.

For a few days
Kestrel
remained at anchor while Duncan, who had personally remonstrated with the Admiralty for redress of many of the men's grievances and regarded the mutiny as a chastisement and warning to the Admiralty to mend its ways, waited on events.

The anonymous good sense that had characterised the affair at Spithead was largely responsible for its swift and satisfactory conclusion.
Admiral Howe was given special powers to treat with the delegates who knew they had ‘Black Dick's' sympathy. By mid-May, amid general rejoicing, fireworks and banquets the Channel Fleet, pardoned by the King, returned to duty.

There was no evidence that foreign sedition had had anything to do with it. The tars had had a case. Their cause had been just, their conduct exemplary, their self-administered justice impeccable. They had sent representatives to their brethren at the Nore and it would only be a matter of days before they too saw sense.

But it was not so. The Nore mutiny was an uglier business, its style aggressive and less reasonable. By blockading trade in the Thames its leaders rapidly lost the sympathy of the liberal middle-class traders of London and as the Government became intransigent, Parker's desperation increased. The tide in favour of the fleet turned, and as the supplies of food, fuel and merchandise to the capital dwindled, troops flooded in to Sheerness and the ships flying the red flag at the Nore felt a growing sense of isolation.

At the end of May there arrived in Yarmouth an Admiralty envoy in the person of Captain William Bligh, turned out of the
Director
by his crew and sent by the authorities to persuade Duncan to use his ships against Parker's. He also brought news that four delegates from the Nore had seized the cutter
Cygnet
and were on their way to Yarmouth to incite the seamen there to mutiny.

Duncan considered the intelligence together with the mooted possibility of Parker defecting with the entire fleet to Holland or France. In due course he ordered the frigate
Vestal
, the lugger
Hope
and the cutter
Rose
to cruise to the southward to intercept the visitors. If Parker sailed for the Texel or Dunquerque then, and only then, would the old admiral consider using his own ships against the mutineers. In the meantime he sent
Kestrel
south into the Thames to guard the channels to Holland and to learn immediately of any defection.

‘By the mark five.'

Drinkwater discarded the idea of the sweeps. Despite the fog there was just sufficient wind to keep steerage on the cutter and every stitch of canvas that could be hoisted was limply responding to it.

‘I'll go below for a little, Mr Drinkwater.'

‘Aye, aye, sir.' Their passage from Yarmouth had been slow and Griffiths had not left the deck for fear the men would react, but they
were too tired now and his own exhaustion was obvious. Grey and lined, his face wore the symptoms of the onset of his fever and it seemed that the elasticity of his constitution had reached its greatest extension. Drinkwater was glad to see him go below.

Since news of the Spithead settlement the hands had been calmer, but orders to proceed into the Thames had revived the tension. In the way that these things happen, word had got out that their lordships were contemplating using the North Sea squadron against the mutineers at the Nore, and Bligh was too notorious a figure to temper speculation on the issue.

The chant of the leadsman was monotonous so that, distracted by larger events and the personal certainty that the Nore mutiny was made the more hideous by the presence of Capitaine Santhonax, Drinkwater had to force himself to concentrate upon the soundings. They were well into the estuary now and should fetch the Nubb buoy in about three hours as the ebb eased.

‘By the deep four.'

‘Sommat ahead, sir!' The sudden cry from the lookout forward.

‘What is it?' He went forward, peering into the damp grey murk.

‘Dunno sir . . . buoy?' If it was then their reckoning was way out.

‘There sir! See it?'

‘No . . . yes!' Almost right ahead, slightly to starboard. They would pass very close, close enough to identify it.

‘ 's a boat, sir!'

It was a warship's launch, coming out of a dense mist a bowsprit's length ahead of them. It had eight men in it and he heard quite distinctly a voice say, ‘It's another bleeding buoy yacht . . .', and a contradictory: ‘No, it's a man o'war cutter . . .'

Mutually surprised, the two craft passed. The launch's men lay on their oars, the blades so close to
Kestrel
's side that the water drops from their ends fell into the rippling along the cutter's waterline. Curiously the Kestrels stared at the men in the boat who glared defiantly back. There was a sudden startled grasp, a quick movement, a flash and a bang. A pistol ball tore the hat from Drinkwater's head and made a neat hole in the mainsail. There was a howl of frustration and the mutineers were plying their oars as the launch vanished in the fog astern.

‘God's bones!' roared Drinkwater suddenly spinning round. The men were still gaping at him and the vanished boat. ‘Let go stuns'l halliards! Let go squares'l halliards! Down helm! Lively now! Lively God damn it!'

The men could not obey fast enough to satisfy Drinkwater's racing mind. He found himself beating his thighs with clenched fists as the cutter turned slowly.

‘Come on you bitch, come
on
,' he muttered, and then he felt the deck move beneath him, ever so slightly upsetting his sense of balance, and another fact struck him.

He had run
Kestrel
aground.

Kestrel
lay at an alarming angle and her sailing master was still writhing with mortification. Used as he had been to the estuary while in the buoy yachts of the Trinity House the situation was profoundly humiliating.

Lieutenant Griffiths had said nothing beyond wearily directing the securing of the cutter against an ingress of water when the tide made. It was fortunate that they had been running before what little wind there was and their centre plates had been housed. The consequences might have been more serious otherwise. An inspection revealed that
Kestrel
had suffered no damage beyond a dent in the pride of her navigator.

Below, Griffiths had regarded him in silence for some moments after listening to Drinkwater's explanation of events. As the colour mounted to Drinkwater's cheeks a tired smile curled Griffiths's lips.

‘Come, come, Nathaniel, pass a bottle from the locker . . . it was no more than an error of judgement and the consequences are not terrible.' Griffiths threw off his fatigue with a visible effort. ‘One error scarcely condemns you,
bach
.'

Drinkwater found himself shaking with relief as he thrust the sercial across the table. ‘But shouldn't we have pursued sir? I mean it
was
Santhonax, sir. I'm damned sure of that.' In his insistence to make amends, not only for grounding the cutter but for his failure earlier to report the presence of the French agent, the present circumstances gave him his opportunity. For a second he recollected that Griffiths might ask him how he was so ‘damned sure'. But the lieutenant was not concerned and pushed a full glass across the table. He shook his head.

‘Putting a boat away in this fog would likely have embroiled us in a worse tangle. Who ambushes whom in this weather is largely a matter of who spots whom first,' he paused to sip the rich dark wine.

‘The important thing is what the devil is Santhonax doing in a warship's launch going east on an ebb tide with a crew of British ne'er-do-wells?'

The two men sat in silence while about them
Kestrel
creaked as the first of the incoming tide began to lift her bilge. Was Santhonax a delegate from the Nore on his way to Yarmouth? If he was he would surely have used the Swin. Their own passage through the Prince's Channel had been ordered to stop up the gap not covered by
Vestal, Rose
or
Hope
. And it was most unlikely that a French agent would undertake such a task.

If Santhonax's task was to help suborn the British fleet he had already achieved his object by the open and defiant mutiny. So what was he doing in a boat? Escaping? Was the mutiny collapsing? Or was his passage east a deliberate choice? Of course! Santhonax had attempted to kill Drinkwater. Nathaniel was the only man whose observation of Santhonax might prejudice the Frenchman's plans!