An Eye of the Fleet (2 page)

Nathaniel Drinkwater was forced to endure a brief, hard schooling. He lay aloft with the topmen, shivering with cold and terror as the recalcitrant topgallants billowed and thundered about his ears. There was no redress when an over-zealous bosun's mate accidentally sliced his buttocks with a starter. Cruelty was a fact of life and its evils were only augmented between the stinking decks of an overcrowded British man o'war. Worn out by a week's incessant labour in conditions of unaccustomed cold; forced by necessity to eat indifferent food washed down by small beer of incomparable badness; bullied and shouted at, Drinkwater had broken down one night.

He wept into his hammock with bitter loneliness. His dreams of glory and service to a grateful country melted into the desperate release of tears and in his misery he took refuge in thoughts of home.

He remembered his careworn mother, desperate to see her sons maintain their station in life; her delight when the Rector had called with a letter from the relative of a friend, a Captain Henry Hope, accepting Nathaniel as midshipman aboard
Cyclops
, and how jubilant she had been that her elder son at least had reached the respectability of a King's officer.

He wept too for his brother, the carefree, irrepressible Ned, who was always in trouble and whom the Rector himself had flogged for scrumping apples: Ned with whom he used to practise single stick on Barnet common, of whom his mother used to say despairingly that only a father's firmness would make of him a gentleman. Ned had laughed at that, tossed his head and laughed, while across the room Nathaniel had caught his mother's eyes and been ashamed for his brother's callousness.

Nathaniel had only one recollection of his father, a dim,
shadowy being who had tossed him in the air, smelled of wine and tobacco, and laughed wildly before dashing his own brains out in a riding accident. Ned had all his father's reckless passion and love of horses, while Nathaniel inherited the mother's quieter fortitude.

But upon that miserable night when fatigue, hunger, sickness, cold and hopelessness lay siege to his spirit, Nathaniel was exposed to the vicissitudes of fate and in the surrounding darkness his sobbing was overheard by his neighbour, the senior midshipman.

At dinner the following day as eight or nine of
Cyclops
's dozen midshipmen struggled through their pease pudding, the president of the cockpit, Mr Midshipman Augustus Morris rose solemnly from his place at the head of the filthy table.

‘We have a coward amongst us, gentlemen,' he announced, a peculiarly malevolent gleam in his hooded eyes. The midshipmen, whose ages varied between twelve and twenty-four, looked from one to another wondering on whom the wrath of Mr Morris was about to descend.

Drinkwater was already cringing under the onslaught he instinctively felt was destined for him. As Morris's eyes raked over the upturned faces they fell, one by one, to dumb regard of the pewter plates and tankards sliding about before them. None of them would encourage Morris neither would they interfere with whatever malice he had planned.

‘
Mister
Drinkwater,' Morris sarcastically emphasised the title, ‘I shall endeavour to correct your predilection for tears by compelling your arse to weep a little—get over that chest!'

Drinkwater knew it was pointless to resist. At the mention of his name he had risen unsteadily to his feet. He looked dumbly round at the indicated sea chest, his legs shaking but refusing to move. Then a cruel fate made
Cyclops
lurch and the tableau dissolved, Drinkwater was thrown across the chest by the forces of nature. With an unnatural eagerness Morris flung himself on Drinkwater, threw aside the blue cloth coattails and, inserting his fingers in the waistband of Drinkwater's trousers, bared his victim's buttocks to an accompaniment of tearing calico. It was this act more than the six brutal stripes that Morris laid on his posterior that burnt itself into Drinkwater's memory. For his mother had laboured on those trousers, her arthritic fingers carefully passing the needle, the tears filling
her eyes at the prospect of parting with her elder son. Somehow, with the resilience of youth, Drinkwater survived that passage to Spithead. Despite the pain in his buttocks he had been forced to learn much about the details of handling a ship under sail for the westerly gale compelled the frigate to wear and wear again in a hard, ruthless fight to windward and it was the second week in October 1779 before she brought to her anchor in St Helen's Roads under the lee of Bembridge.

Hardly had
Cyclops
gathered sternway, her main topsail aback, and the cable gone rumbling through the hawse than the third lieutenant was calling away the captain's gig. Morris acted as the gig's coxswain. He ordered Drinkwater to the bow where a grinning seaman handed the youth a boat-hook. The gig bobbed alongside the wooden whales of the frigate's side, the hook lodged in the mainchains. Above him, but unseen, Drinkwater could hear the thumping of the marines' boots as they fell in at the entry port. Then came the twittering of the pipes. He looked up. At the entry port, fingers to his hat, stood Captain Hope. It was only the second time Drinkwater had seen him face to face since their brief interview. Their eyes met, the boy's full of awe, the man's blank with indifference. Hope turned around, grasped the manropes and leaned outboard. He descended the side until a foot above the gunwhale of the boat he paused waiting for the boat to rise. As it did so he jumped aboard, landing with little dignity between stroke and second stroke. He clambered over the intervening thwart from which the seamen deferentially drew aside and sat himself down.

‘Toss oars!' yelled Morris.

‘Bear off forrard!' Drinkwater pushed mightily against his boat-hook. It caught in the iron work of the chains; he tried to disengage it as the boat's head fell off but it refused to move, its shaft drawing through his hand and sticking incongruously outwards from the ship's side. He leaned further outboard and grabbed the end of the handle, the sweat of exertion and humiliation poured off him. He lunged again and nearly fell overboard.

‘Sit down forrard!' roared Morris, and Drinkwater subsided in the bows, his cup of agony overflowing.

‘Give way together!'

The oars bit the water and groaned in the thole pins. In minutes the men's backs were dark with perspiration. Drinkwater
darted a glance aft. Morris was staring ahead, his hand on the tiller. The captain was gazing abstractedly at the green shores of the Isle of Wight away to larboard.

Then a thought struck Drinkwater. He had left the boat-hook protruding from the frigate's side. What in God's name was he going to use when they reached the flagship? His mind was overcome by sudden panic as he cast about the bow sheets for another boat hook. There was none.

For nearly twenty minutes as the gig danced over the sparkling sea and the westerly breeze dashed spray off the wavecaps, Drinkwater cast about him in an agony of indecision. He knew their destination was the flagship,
HMS Sandwich
of 90 guns, where even the seamen would look haughtily on the frigate's unremarkable gig. Any irregularities in the boat-handling would be commented upon to the disservice of
Cyclops
. Then a second thought struck him. Any such display of poor seamanship would reflect equally upon Mr Midshipman Morris and he was unlikely to let Drinkwater discredit him unscathed. The prospect of another beating further terrified the boy.

Drinkwater stared ahead of the boat. The low shore of Hampshire lay before him, the sun shining on the dun blocks of the forts at Gosport and Southsea, guarding the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour. Between the gig and the shoreline a long row of ships of the line lay at anchor, their hulls massive beneath the masts and crossed yards. Large ensigns snapped briskly at their sterns and the gaudy flutter of the union flags over their fo'c's'les gave the vista a festive air. Here and there the square flag of a rear or vice-admiral flew at a masthead. Sunlight glittered on gilded figureheads and quarter galleries as the battleships swung head to wind at the slackwater. The sea surrounding them was dotted with small craft. Coastal vessels crowded on sail to avoid pulling boats of every conceivable size. Small launches and gigs conveyed officers and commanders; larger long boats and cutters under pint-size midshipmen or grizzled master's mates brought stores, powder or shot off from the dockyard. Water hoys and shallops, their civilian crews abusive under their protection from the press gangs, bucked alongside the battleships. A verbal duel between their masters and anxious naval lieutenants who waved requisition orders at them, seemed endless. The sheer energy and scale of activity was like nothing Drinkwater had ever witnessed
before. They passed a small cutter aboard which half a dozen painted doxies sat, pallid with the boat's motion. Two of them waved saucily at the gig's crew amongst whom a ripple of lust passed at the unaccustomed sight of swelling bodices.

‘Eyes in the boat!' yelled Morris self-importantly, himself glancing at the lushness exhibited by over-tight stays.

The
Sandwich
was nearer now and a cold sweat broke out again on Drinkwater's forehead. Then, by accident, he solved his problem. Wriggling round to view the prospect before him his hand encountered something sharp. He looked down. Beneath the grating he caught sight of something hook-like. He shifted his weight and lifted the slatted wood. In the bilge lay a small grapnel. It had an eye at the end of the shank. It was this that saved his backside another tanning. Fishing it out he bent on the end of the gig's painter and coiled the bight in his hand. He now possessed a substitute boat-hook and relaxed. Once again he looked about him.

It was a splendid sight. Beyond the line of battleships several frigates lay at anchor. They had already passed one lying as guardship at the Warner and had Drinkwater been less perturbed by the loss of his boat-hook he might have been more attentive. But now he could feast his eyes on a sight that his provincial breeding had previously denied him. Beyond Fort Gilkicker more masts rose from hulls grey blue with distance. Drinkwater's inexperienced eyes did not recognise the lines of transports.

It was a powerful fleet; a great effort by Britain to avert the threat to her West Indian possessions and succour the ailing ships on the North American station. For two years since the surrender of Burgoyne's army Britain had been trying to bring the wily Washington to battle while simultaneously holding off the increasing combination of European enemies from snapping up distant colonies when her attention was occupied elsewhere.

That this effort had been further strained by the corruption, peculation and plain jobbery that infected public life in general and Lord Sandwich's navy in particular was not a matter to concern Drinkwater for grander spectacles were before him. As the gig drew close to the massive side of
Sandwich
Captain Hope drew the attention of Morris to something. The midshipman turned the boat head to sea.

‘Oars!' he ordered and the blades rose dripping to the horizontal.

Drinkwater looked round for some reason for this cessation of activity. There was none as far as he could see. Looking again at
Sandwich
he noted a flurry about her decks.

Glittering officers in blue and white, pointed polished telescopes astern, in the direction of Portsmouth. Drinkwater could just see the crowns of the marines' black hats as they fell in. Then a drum rolled and the black specks were topped by a line of silver bayonets as the marines shouldered arms. A pipe shrilled out and all activity aboard
Sandwich
ceased. The great ship seemed to wait expectantly as a small black ball rose to the truck of her mainmast.

Then round her stern and into view from
Cyclop
's gig swept an admiral's barge. At its bow fluttered the red cross of St George. The oarsmen bent to their task with unanimous precision, their red and white striped shirts moving in unison, their heads crowned by black beavers. A small dapper midshipman stood upright in the stern, hand on tiller. His uniform was immaculate, his hat set at a rakish angle. Drinkwater stared down at his own crumpled coat and badly cobbled trousers; he felt distinctly uncomfortable.

Also in the stern of the barge sat an old-looking man wrapped in a boat cloak. The lasting impression made on Drinkwater was a thin, hard mouth, then the barge was alongside
Sandwich
and Admiral Sir George Brydges Rodney was ascending the side of his flagship. A squeal of pipes, a roll of drums and a twinkle of light as the bayonets flashed to the present; at the main masthead the black ball broke out and revealed itself as the red cross of St George. At this sight the guns of the fleet roared out in salute.

Admiral Rodney had arrived to take command of the fleet.

A few minutes later Drinkwater hurled his grapnel at
Sandwich
's mainchains. By good fortune it held first time and, to indifferent ceremonial, Captain Hope reported to his superior.