Command a King's Ship

Selected Historical Fiction Published by McBooks Press

BY
A
LEXANDER
K
ENT
The Complete Midshipman Bolitho
Stand Into Danger
In Gallant Company
Sloop of War
To Glory We Steer
Command a King's Ship
Passage to Mutiny
With All Despatch
Form Line of Battle!
Enemy in Sight!
The Flag Captain
Signal–Close Action!
The Inshore Squadron
A Tradition of Victory
Success to the Brave
Colours Aloft!
Honour This Day
The Only Victor
Beyond the Reef
The Darkening Sea
For My Country's Freedom
Cross of St George
Sword of Honour
Second to None
Relentless Pursuit
Man of War
Heart of Oak

BY
D
OUGLAS
R
EEMAN
Twelve Seconds to Live
The White Guns
A Prayer for the Ship
For Valour

BY P
HILIP
M
C
C
UTCHAN
Halfhyde's Island
Halfhyde and the Guns of Arrest
Halfhyde to the Narrows
Halfhyde for the Queen
Halfhyde Ordered South
Halfhyde on Zanatu

BY
J
AMES
D
UFFY
Sand of the Arena
The Fight for Rome

BY
C
OLIN
S
ARGENT
Museum of Human Beings

BY
D
UDLEY
P
OPE
Ramage
Ramage & The Drumbeat
Ramage & The Freebooters
GovernorRamage R.N.
Ramage's Prize
Ramage & The Guillotine
Ramage's Diamond
Ramage's Mutiny
Ramage & The Rebels
The Ramage Touch
Ramage's Signal
Ramage & The Renegades
Ramage's Devil
Ramage's Trial
Ramage's Challenge
Ramage at Trafalgar
Ramage & The Saracens
Ramage & The Dido

BY
A
LEXANDER
F
ULLERTON
Storm Force to Narvik
Last Lift from Crete
All the Drowning Seas
A Share of Honour
The Torch Bearers
The Gatecrashers

BY
J
OHN
B
IGGINS
A Sailor of Austria
The Emperor's Coloured Coat
The Two-Headed Eagle
Tomorrow the World

BY
D
OUGLAS
W. J
ACOBSON
Night of Flames

BY
D
AVID
D
ONACHIE
The Dying Trade
A Hanging Matter
An Element of Chance
The Scent of Betrayal
A Game of Bones

BY
C.N. P
ARKINSON
The Guernseyman
Devil to Pay
The Fireship
Dead Reckoning

BY
J
ULIAN
S
TOCKWIN
Kydd
Artemis
Seaflower
Mutiny
Quarterdeck
Tenacious
Command
The Admiral's Daughter
The Privateer's Revenge

BY
B
ROOS
C
AMPBELL
No Quarter
The War of Knives
Peter Wicked

BY
D
EWEY
L
AMBDIN
The French Admiral
The Gun Ketch
A King's Commander
Jester's Fortune

BY
V.A. S
TUART
Victors and Lords
The Sepoy Mutiny
Massacre at Cawnpore
The Cannons of Lucknow
The Heroic Garrison
The Valiant Sailors
The Brave Captains
Hazard's Command
Hazard of Huntress
Hazard in Circassia
Victory at Sebastopol
Guns to the Far East
Escape from Hell

BY
J
AMES
L. N
ELSON
The Only Life That Mattered

BY
J
AN
N
EEDLE
A Fine Boy for Killing
The Wicked Trade
The Spithead Nymph

BY
F
REDERICK
M
ARRYAT
Frank Mildmay
OR
The Naval Officer
Mr Midshipman Easy
Newton Forster
OR
The Merchant Service

A
lexander
K
ent

Command a
K
ing's Ship

the
B
olitho
novels: 6

McBooks Press, Inc.
www.mcbooks.com
I
THACA
, NY

First published by McBooks Press
1998

Copyright ©
1973
by Alexander Kent
First published in the United Kingdom by Hutchinson
1973

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or any
portion thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
without the written permission of the publisher. Requests for such
permissions should be addressed to McBooks Press, Inc.,
ID Booth Building, 520 North Meadow St., Ithaca, NY 14850.

Cover painting by Geoffrey Huband

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kent, Alexander.
Command a king's ship / by Alexander Kent.
p. cm. — (Richard Bolitho novels ; no. 6)
ISBN 0-935526-50-1 (trade paper)
1. Great Britain—History, Naval—18th century—Fiction.
I. Title. II. Series: Kent, Alexander. Richard Bolitho novels ;
no. 3.
PR6061.E63 C64 1998
823'.914—dc21

98-040950

Visit the McBooks Press website at
www.mcbooks.com.

Printed in the United States of America

9

1
THE
A
DMIRAL
'
S CHOICE

A
N
A
DMIRALTY
messenger opened the door of a small anteroom and said politely, “If you would be so good as to wait, sir.” He stood aside to allow Captain Richard Bolitho to pass and added, “Sir John knows you are here.”

Bolitho waited until the door had closed and then walked to a bright fire which was crackling below a tall mantel. He was thank- ful that the messenger had brought him to this small room and not to one of the larger ones. As he had hurried into the Admiralty from the bitter March wind which was sweeping down Whitehall he had been dreading a confrontation in one of those crowded waiting-rooms, crammed with unemployed officers who watched the comings and goings of more fortunate visitors with something like hatred.

Bolitho had known the feeling, too, even though he had told himself often enough that he was better off than most. For he had come back to England a year ago, to find the country at peace, and the towns and villages already filling with unwanted soldiers and seamen. With his home in Falmouth, an established estate, and all the hard-earned prize money he had brought with him, he knew he should have been grateful.

He moved away from the fire and stared down at the broad roadway below the window. It had been raining for most of the morning, but now the sky had completely cleared, so that the many puddles and ruts glittered in the harsh light like patches of pale blue silk. Only the steaming nostrils of countless horses which passed this way and that, the hurrying figures bowed into the wind, made a lie of the momentary colour.

He sighed. It was March,
1784,
only just over a year since his return home from the West Indies, yet it seemed like a century.

Whenever possible he had quit Falmouth to make the long journey to London, to this seat of Admiralty, to try and discover why his letters had gone unanswered, why his pleas for a ship,
any
ship, had been ignored. And always the waiting-rooms had seemed to get more and more crowded. The familiar voices and tales of ships and campaigns had become forced, less confident, as day by day they were turned away. Ships were laid up by the score, and every seaport had its full quota of a war's flotsam. Cripples, and men made deaf and blind by cannon fire, others half mad from what they had seen and endured. With the signing of peace the previous year such sights had become too common to mention, too despairing even for hope.

He stiffened as two figures turned a corner below the window. Even without the facings on their tattered red coats he knew they had been soldiers. A carriage was standing by the roadside, the horses nodding their heads together as they explored the contents of their feeding bags. The coachman was chatting to a smartly dressed servant from a nearby house, and neither took a scrap of notice of the two tattered veterans.

One of them pushed his companion against a stone balustrade and then walked towards the coach. Bolitho realised that the man left clinging to the stonework was blind, his head turned towards the roadway as if trying to hear where his friend had gone. It needed no words.

The soldier faced the coachman and his companion and held out his hand. It was neither arrogant nor servile, and strangely moving. The coachman hesitated and then fumbled inside his heavy coat.

At that moment another figure ran lightly down some steps and wrenched open the coach door. He was well attired against the cold, and the buckles on his shoes held the watery sunlight like diamonds. He stared at the soldier and then snapped angrily at his coachman. The servant ran to the horses' heads, and within sec- onds the coach was clattering away into the busy press of carriages and carts. The soldier stood staring after it and then gave a weary shrug. He returned to his companion, and with linked arms they moved slowly around the next corner.

Bolitho struggled with the window catch, but it was stuck fast, his mind reeling with anger and shame at what he had just seen.

A voice asked, “May I help, sir?” It was the messenger again.

Bolitho replied, “I was going to throw some coins to two crippled soldiers!” He broke off, seeing the mild astonishment in the messenger's eyes.

The man said, “Bless you, sir, you'd get used to such sights in London.”

“Not me.”

“I was going to tell you, sir, that Sir John will see you now!”

Bolitho followed him into the passageway again, conscious of the sudden dryness in his throat. He remembered so clearly his last visit here, a month ago almost to the day. And that time he had been summoned by letter, and not left fretting and fuming in a waiting-room. It had seemed like a dream, an incredible stroke of good fortune. It still did, despite all the difficulties which had been crammed into so short a time.

He was to assume command immediately of His Britannic Majesty's Ship
Undine,
of thirty-two guns, then lying in the dock- yard at Portsmouth completing a refit.

As he had hurried from the Admiralty on that occasion he had felt the excitement on his face like guilt, aware of the other watch- ing eyes, the envy and resentment.

The task of taking command, of gathering the dockyard's re- sources to his aid to prepare
Undine
for sea, had cost him dearly. With the Navy being cut down to a quarter of its wartime strength he had been surprised to discover that it was harder to obtain spare cordage and spars rather than the reverse. A weary shipwright had confided in him that dockyard officials were more intent on mak- ing a profit with private dealers than they were on aiding one small frigate.

He had bribed, threatened and driven almost every man in the yard until he had obtained more or less what he needed. It seemed they saw his departure as the only way of returning to their own affairs.

He had walked around his new command in her dock with mixed feelings. Above all, the excitement and the challenge she represented. Gone were the pangs he had felt in Falmouth when- ever he had seen a man-of-war weathering the headland below the castle. But also he had discovered something more. His last com- mand had been
Phalarope,
a frigate very similar to
Undine,
if slightly longer by a few feet. To Bolitho she had been everything, perhaps because they had come through so much together. In the West Indies, at the battle of the Saintes he had felt his precious
Phalarope
battered almost to a hulk beneath him. There would never,
could
never, be another like her. But as he had walked up and down the stone wall of the dock he had sensed a new elation.

Halfway through the hurried overhaul he had received an un- heralded visit from Rear Admiral Sir John Winslade, the man who had greeted him at the Admiralty. He had given little away, but after a cursory inspection of the ship and Bolitho's preparations he had said, “I can tell you now. I'm sending you to India. That's all I can reveal for the moment.” He had run his eye over the few rig- gers working on yards and shrouds and had added dryly, “I only hope for your sake you'll be ready on time.”

There was a lot in what Winslade had hinted. Officers on half- pay were easy to obtain. To crew a King's ship without the urgency of a war or the pressgang was something else entirely. Had
Undine
been sailing in better-known waters things might have been differ- ent. And had Bolitho been a man other than himself he might have been tempted to keep her destination a secret until he had signed on sufficient hands and it was too late for them to escape.

He had had the usual flowery-worded handbills distributed around the port and nearby villages. He had sent recruiting parties as far inland as Guildford on the Portsmouth Road, but with small success. And now, as he followed the messenger towards some high gilded doors he knew
Undine
was still fifty short of her complement.

In one thing Bolitho had been more fortunate.
Undine
's previ- ous captain had kept a shrewd eye on his ship's professional men. Bolitho had taken charge to discover that
Undine
still carried the hard core of senior men, the warrant officers, a first class sailmaker, and one of the most economical carpenters he had ever watched at work. His predecessor had quit the Navy for good to seek a career in Parliament. Or as he had put it, “I've had a bellyful of fighting with iron. From now on, my young friend, I'll do it with slander!”

Rear Admiral Sir John Winslade was standing with his back to a fire, his coat-tails parted to allow the maximum warmth to reach him. Few people knew much about him. He had distinguished himself vaguely in some single-ship action off Brest, and had then been neatly placed inside the Admiralty. There was nothing about his pale, austere features to distinguish him in any way. In fact, he was so ordinary that his gold-laced coat seemed to be wearing him rather than the other way round.

Bolitho was twenty-seven and a half years old, but had already held two commands, and knew enough about senior officers not to take them at face value.

Winslade let his coat-tails drop and waited for Bolitho to reach him. He held out his hand and said, “You are punctual. It is just as well. We have much to discuss.” He moved to a small lac- quered table. “Some claret, I think.” He smiled for the first time. It was like the sunlight in Whitehall. Frail, and easily removed.

He pulled up a chair for Bolitho. “Your health, Captain.” He added, “I suppose you know why I asked for you to be given this command?”

Bolitho cleared his throat. “I assumed, sir, that as Captain Stewart was entering politics that you required another for . . .”

Winslade gave a wry smile. “
Please,
Bolitho. Modesty at the expense of sincerity is just so much top-hamper. I trust you will bear that in mind?”

He sipped at his claret and continued in the same dry voice, “For this particular commission I have to be sure of
Undine
's cap- tain. You will be on the other side of the globe. I have to know what you are thinking so that I can act on such despatches as I might receive in due course.”

Bolitho tried to relax. “Thank you.” He smiled awkwardly. “I mean, for your trust, sir.”

“Quite so.” Winslade reached for the decanter. “I know your background, your record, especially in the recent war with France and her Allies. Your behaviour when you were on the American station reads favourably. A full scale war and a bloody rebellion in America must have been a good schoolroom for so young a com- mander. But that war is done with. It is up to us,” he smiled slightly, “
some
of us, to ensure that we are never forced into such a helpless stalemate again.”

Bolitho exclaimed, “We did not lose the war, sir.”

“We did not win it either. That is more to the point.”

Bolitho thought suddenly of the last battle. The screams and yells on every side, the crash of gunfire and falling spars. So many had died that day. So many familiar faces just swept away. Others had been left, like the two ragged soldiers, to fend as best they could.

He said quietly, “We did our best, sir.”

The admiral was watching him thoughtfully. “I agree. You may not have won a war, but you did win a respite of sorts. A time to draw breath and face facts.”

“You think the peace will not last, sir?”

“An enemy is always an enemy, Bolitho. Only the vanquished know peace of mind. Oh yes, we will fight again, be sure of it.”

He put down his glass and added sharply, “Now, about your ship. Are you prepared?”

Bolitho met his gaze. “I am still short of hands, but the ship is as ready as she will ever be, sir. I had her warped out of the dock- yard two days ago, and she is now anchored at Spithead awaiting final provisioning.”

“How short?”

Two words, but they left no room for manoeuvre.

“Fifty, sir. But my lieutenants are still trying to gather more.”

The admiral did not blink. “I see. Well, it's up to you. In the meantime I will obtain a warrant for you to take some ‘volunteers' from the prison hulks in Portsmouth harbour.”

Bolitho said, “It's a sad thing that we must rely on convicts.”

“They are men. That is all you require at the moment. As it is, you will probably be doing some of the wretches a favour. Most of 'em were to be transported to the penal colonies in America. Now, with America gone, we will have to look elsewhere for new settle- ments. There is some talk of Botany Bay, in New Holland, but it may be rumour, of course.”

He stood up and walked to a window. “I knew your father. I was saddened to hear of his death. While you were in the West Indies, I believe?” He did not wait for a reply. “This mission would have been well cut for him. Something to get his teeth into. Self- dependence, decisions to be made on the spot which could make or break the man in command. Everything a young frigate captain dreams of, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

He pictured his father as he had last seen him. The very day he had sailed for the Indies in
Phalarope.
A tired, broken man. Made bitter by his other son's betrayal. Hugh Bolitho had been the apple of his eye. Four years older than Richard, he had been a born gambler, and had ended in killing a brother officer in a duel. Worse, he had fled to America, to join the Revolutionary forces and later to command a privateer against the British. It had been that knowledge which had really killed Bolitho's father, no matter what the doctor had said.