An Eye of the Fleet

This edition published 2001 by
Sheridan House Inc.
145 Palisade Street
Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522
www.sheridanhouse.com

Copyright © 1981 by Richard Woodman

First published in Great Britain 1981 by
John Murray (Publishers) Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of Sheridan House.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Woodman, Richard, 1944-

An eye of the fleet: a Nathaniel Drinkwater novel/Richard Woodman

p.cm.—(Mariner's library fiction classics)

ISBN 1-57409-123-9 (alk. paper)

1. Drinkwater, Nathaniel (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Great Britain—History, Naval—18
^th
century—Fiction. I. Title. II. Series

PR6073.0618 E9 2001

823'.914—dc21

00-066138

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN      1-57409-123-9

1     The Greenhorn

2     The Danish Brig

3     The Moonlight Battle

4     The Spanish Frigate

5     The Evil that Men do . . .

6     Prize Money

7     The Duel

8     The Capture of the
Algonquin

9     A Turning of Tables

10     Elizabeth

11     Interlude

12     A Change of Orders

13     The Action with
La Creole

14     The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men . . .

15     . . . Oft Times go Astray . . .

16     The Cutting Out

17     Decision at the Virginia Capes

Mariner's Library Fiction Classics

S
TERLING
H
AYDEN

Voyage: A Novel of 1896

B
JORN
L
ARSSON

The Celtic Ring

S
AM
L
LEWELLYN

The Shadow in the Sands

R
ICHARD
W
OODMAN

The Darkening Sea
Endangered Species
Wager

The Nathaniel Drinkwater Novels
(in chronological order):

An Eye of the Fleet
A King's Cutter
A Brig of War
The Bomb Vessel
The Corvette
1805
Baltic Mission
In Distant Waters
A Private Revenge
Under False Colours
The Flying Squadron
Beneath the Aurora
The Shadow of the Eagle
Ebb Tide

The major incidents in this novel are matters of historical fact. Some of the peripheral characters, such as Admirals Kempenfelt and Arbuthnot, Captain Calvert, Jonathan Poulter and Wilfred Collingwood are also factual and the personalities as depicted, tally with the images they have left later generations.

The exploits of
Cyclops
, though fictional, are both nautically and politically within the bounds of possibility. The continental currency of Congress was indeed worthless to the extent of almost ruining the Revolution. Fighting in the Carolinas and Georgia was characterised by atrocities, though the Galuda River does not exist.

No nautical claim has been made which was impossible. The details of the Moonlight Battle, for instance, can be verified from other sources, though the actual capture of
Santa Teresa
is
Cyclops
's own ‘part' in the action.

Pains have been taken over the accuracy of facts concerning the life on board men-of-war during the American War of Independence and pedants may like to note that at the time Drinkwater went to sea commissioned officers messed in the gunroom, midshipmen and master's mates in the cockpit. By the beginning of the next century the latter occupied the gunroom with the warrant officer gunner exercising a sort of parental authority and schoolmasters appointed to attempt the education of the ‘young gentlemen'. By this time the officers had a grander ‘wardroom'.

I am taking all Frigates about me I possibly can; for if I . . . let the Enemy escape for want of ‘the eyes of the Fleet', I should consider myself as most highly reprehensible.

NELSON

A baleful sun broke through the overcast to shed a patch of pale light on the frigate. The fresh westerly wind and the opposing flood tide combined to throw up a vicious sea as the ship, under topsails and staysails, drove east down the Prince's Channel clear of the Thames.

Upon her quarterdeck the sailing master ordered the helm eased to prevent her driving too close to the Pansand, the four helmsmen struggling to hold the ship as the wheelspokes flickered through their fingers.

‘Mr Drinkwater!' The old master, his white hair streaming in the wind, addressed a lean youth of medium height with fine, almost feminine features and an unhealthily pallid complexion. The midshipman stepped forward, nervously eager.

‘Sir?'

‘My compliments to the Captain. Please inform him we are abeam of the Pansand Beacon.'

‘Yes, sir.' He turned to go.

‘Mr Drinkwater!'

‘Sir?'

‘Please repeat my message and answer correctly.'

The youth flushed deeply, his Adam's apple bobbing with embarrassment.

‘Y . . . your compliments to the Captain and we're abeam the Pansand Beacon, aye, aye, sir.'

‘Very good.'

Drinkwater darted away beneath the quarterdeck to where the red-coated marine sentinel indicated the holy presence of the Captain of His Britannic Majesty's 36-gun frigate
Cyclops
.

Captain Hope was shaving when the midshipman knocked on the door. He nodded as the message was delivered.

Drinkwater hovered uncertainly, not knowing whether he was dismissed. After what seemed an age the Captain appeared satisfied with his chin, wiped off the lather and began to tie his
stock. He fixed the young midshipman with a pair of watery blue eyes set in a deeply lined and cadaverous face.

‘And you are . . . ?' He left the question unfinished.

‘M . . . Mister Drinkwater, sir, midshipman . . .'

‘Ah yes, it was the Rector of Monken Hadley requested your place, I recollect it well . . .' The Captain reached for his coat. ‘Do your duty, cully, and you have nothing to fear, but make damned sure you know what your duty is . . .'

‘Yes . . . I mean aye, aye, sir.'

‘Very well. Tell the Master I'll be up shortly when I've finished my breakfast.'

Captain Hope smoothed the coat down and turned to look out through the stern windows as the door closed behind the retreating Drinkwater.

He sighed. He judged the boy to be old for a new entrant and yet he could not escape the thought that it might have been himself nearly forty years ago.

The Captain was fifty-six years of age. He had only held his post rank for three years. Devoid of patronage he would have died a half-pay commander had not an unpopular war with the rebellious American Colonies forced the Admiralty to employ him. Many competent naval officers had refused to serve against the colonists, particularly those with Whig sympathies and independent means. As the rebels acquired powerful allies the Royal Navy was stretched to the limit, watching the cautiously hostile Dutch, the partisan ‘neutrals' of the Baltic and the actively hostile French and Spanish. In their plight their Lordships had scraped the barrel and in the lees at the bottom had discovered the able person of Henry Hope.

Hope was more than a competent seaman. He had served as lieutenant at Quiberon Bay and distinguished himself several times during the Seven Years' War. Command of a sloop had come at the end of the war, but by then he was forty with little hope of further advancement. He had a widowed mother, tended by a sister whose husband had fallen before Ticonderoga in Abercrombie's bungled attack, but no family of his own. He was a man used to care and tribulation, a man well suited to command of a ship.

But as he stared out of the stern windows at the yeasty, bubbling wake that cut a smooth through the choppy waters of the outer estuary, he remembered a more youthful Hope. Now
his name silently taunted him. He idly wondered about the young man who had just left the cabin. Then he dismissed the thought as his servant brought in breakfast.

Cyclops
anchored in the Downs for three days while she gathered a small convoy of merchantmen about her and waited for a favourable wind to proceed west. When she and her covey of charges weighed they thought they would carry a pleasant easterly down Channel. In the event the wind veered and for a week
Cyclops
beat to windward against the last of the equinoctial gales.