Reefs and Shoals (28 page)

“Nicely done, Mister West— What the Devil?” Lewrie began to say.

The crew of the French schooner had burst into song, shouting the words of “The Marseillaise” to taunt them. French sailors were in the shrouds, atop the bulwarks and lowered gaff booms, shaking their fists, slapping their arses in derision, and making insulting finger signs.

“Quite a lot of them,” Lewrie pointed out, with a wry smile on his face. “Too many to be a merchantman.”

“Do you wish to salute
them,
sir?” Lt. Westcott asked, looking as if he wished that they would. Some of Lewrie’s officers and hands were scowling and cursing, already.

“Bosun Sprague!” Lewrie bellowed. “Hands to the larboard gangway!”

“Sir?” the Bosun asked, looking up at the quarterdeck, his face asquint.

“Two-fingered salute, Mister Sprague!” Lewrie ordered. “A two-fingered salute to those snail-eatin’ sons of bitches!” By example he went to the larboard bulwarks and lifted his right hand, his fore and middle finger jutted upward into a Vee, a very British insult.

And
fuck
diplomacy!
he angrily thought.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

According to the instructions from Admiralty, the British Consul at Charleston was one Mr. Edward Cotton, an Englishman, not a local man, who kept offices at the corner of East Bay Street and Queen Street, conveniently near the city wharves. Lewrie wished to go ashore at once to see him, but there was an host of things to see to, beforehand. The best he could do was to send Midshipman Entwhistle in a cutter with a quick, introductory note, and a request for an audience, though Lewrie halfway hoped that the rare appearance of a Royal Navy frigate would pique the fellow’s curiosity and lure him to boarding
Reliant
, first.

There could be no shore liberty for any of his hands, for certain: It was a risk to send too many of the ship’s boats ashore for firewood, water, and victuals, for the chance to desert would be quite a temptation, even to sailors who had been with the ship since she had been re-commissioned, and had pay and prize-money due. And, certainly, there would be many “patriotic” South Carolinians who would encourage
Reliant
’s people to flee “Limey despots” and become free Americans!

With a French schooner, most-likely an enemy privateer, present, he could not let his guard down by putting the ship “Out of Discipline” for a carouse, either. Marine Lt. Simcock already had fully uniformed men posted as sentries at the bow, stern, and on each gangway, fully armed with loaded and bayoneted muskets to prevent desertion, too.

Yet, some of his people
must
go ashore. Mr. Cadbury was eager, as were the officers, who busily invented excuses to set foot ashore for a few hours. Surprisingly, so did Yeovill and the Black ship’s cook, Mr. Cooke, who accompanied Cadbury to the foot of the starboard ladderway to the quarterdeck. Both men were turned out in their best buckled shoes, canvas trousers, clean shirts with neckerchiefs, short blue sailors’ jackets, and flat tarred hats, as scrubbed up and fresh-shaven as they would be at Sunday Divisions. Lewrie could not recall Cooke
ever
being turned out so well.

“Permission to go ashore with the Purser, sir,” Yeovill said.

“Me too, sah,” Cooke spoke up, looking puppy-dog eager.

“D’ye think that’d be … safe for you, Cooke?” Lewrie asked. “South Carolina’s a slave state. If a gang o’ bully-bucks decide to snatch you up for a quick profit, there’s little we could do about it, but complain.”

“Beg ya pahdon, sah, but I’d be with Mistah Cadbury an’ Yeovill, heah,” Cooke objected. “I’m in uniform, an’ I don’ sound like no po’ field hand. Ain’t no slavuh gonna mess with me, sah.” Like all Navy hands, he wore a clasp knife in a leather sheath on his hip. And he was big and strong.

“Hmm … it’d be best did I write you out a certificate, just in case,” Lewrie decided. “So you and Yeovill can protect the Purser, if some people try to mess with him. There may be some lingering resentment of anyone from England. Or Jamaica,” Lewrie added with a wry expression. He didn’t have to go to his great-cabins, for his clerk, Faulkes, was on deck, scrubbed up and dressed in clean clothes, hoping like all the others that he might get a few hours ashore, too. Once the certificate had been dictated, written out in Faulkes’s excellent copper-plate hand, and given to Lewrie to sign, it was given to Cooke, who read it over, nodded, grinned, and carefully folded it to stick into an inside pocket of his short jacket.

“Thankee, Cap’m, sah,” Cooke said, knuckling his hat brim.

“You can read and write, Cooke?” Lewrie had to ask, surprised.

“De ol’ Sailin’ Master in
Proteus,
Mistah Winwood, taught me, sah,” Cooke said with a broader grin. “How else I follah de recipes evahbody give me fo’ somethin’ special, sah?”

“Very well, then, carry on, Mister Cadbury,” Lewrie said.

“Anything special for you, sir?” Cadbury asked.

“Yeovill will see to my wants, but thankee for asking, sir,” Lewrie told him, with a quick grin. “Oh … just as there may be some hot-blooded ‘Brother Johnathons’ ashore who think the Revolution hasn’t ended, keep a weather eye for any French sailors. If that schooner’s a privateer, as I’m sure she is, it’s good odds that her crew will be allowed more liberty than a naval vessel.”

“We will walk wary, sir,” Cadbury promised him, daunted not one whit and still eager to be off.

“Take what joy ye may,” Lewrie said, a faint scowl appearing on his face. “I will have to go below and change, to impress.”

Best, and heaviest, broadcloth wool coat,
Lewrie sourly thought;
silk shirt and all, no matter how muggy it is. And that damned sash and star!

*   *   *

Instead of his gig, Lewrie took the other cutter, with Midshipman Grainger, and his usual boat crew, with Liam Desmond, his Cox’n, stroke-oar Patrick Furfy, and seven other oarsman, all turned out in Sunday Divisions best, too, with a boat jack flying from a short staff at the stern. And, of course, his arrival at a landing stage a block or two short of Queen Street drew a fair number of gawkers, making him feel as if he was the star attraction in a raree-show. The arrival of a British frigate, Midshipman Entwhistle’s jaunt to bear his note to the Consul, then Cadbury’s mission, with a uniformed Black sailor, had brought out the idlers of all classes.

“Captain Lewrie, I presume?” a well-dressed gentleman at the top of the landing stage called out to him, thankfully in an English accent. “Edward Cotton, His Majesty’s Consul to the port of Charleston, your servant, sir.”

“Good morning, Mister Cotton, and thank you very much for coming down to meet me,” Lewrie replied as the bow man hooked onto the stage with his gaff, the oars were tossed and stood vertically, then boated smartly at Desmond’s commands. Lewrie stood, made his way amidships of the cutter, then stepped from the gunn’l to the landing stage.

They doffed hats to each other, then shook hands.

“Your note did not inform me that you were a Knight of the Bath, Captain Lewrie,” Cotton said with a probing brow up.

“Baronet, t’boot,” Lewrie said with a shrug, and a brief grimace. “Too recent t’sink in yet,” he tried to explain.

“I see, sir,” Cotton replied, seeming a tad disappointed that Lewrie didn’t take his honours as seriously as he, and others of his social level, might have. “Reward for a gallant action, may I ask?”

“For a battle off the Chandeleur Islands, near New Orleans,” Lewrie informed him. “We stopped the French from landing a regiment, and took four warships and a transport. September, two years ago. No one told
us
the French would sell Louisiana to the United States, a few months later!”

“The news of American purchase was an eight-day wonder to all here, too, Sir Alan,” Cotton told him, with a laugh. “A pity that we could not dine you out with the leading citizens of Charleston, on the strength of that … how your actions guaranteed that Bonaparte abandoned hopes of a French lodgement in New Orleans, and France in charge of the vast territories west of the Mississippi. Everyone is simply thirsting for quick expansion of settlements in such a vast virgin land. But … your ship may only stay in Charleston for three days before you must sail.”

“Hey?” Lewrie asked, confused.

“Well, Sir Alan, with a French vessel in harbour, the formalities must be strictly observed,” Cotton said. “Admiralty Law, and the neutrality of the United States might have allowed you a longer stay, but for
her
presence,” Cotton explained, jutting his chin seaward at the French schooner. “Just as your arrival will force Captain Mollien to sail. He could have kept his ship here for some time, yet, but for that.”

“She’s a privateer, isn’t she?” Lewrie snapped, his suspicions confirmed, and his eyes going from blue-grey to a colder Arctic colour.

“I strongly suspect she is,” Mr. Cotton agreed, “but … here, now. You will not make any moves against her, will you? Not right here in harbour, mean t’say…?”

Lewrie’s intensity, and those icy grey eyes made Mr. Cotton fear that Lewrie might be rash enough to attack the schooner outright!

“In a neutral harbour?” Lewrie scoffed. “Not likely, no sir.”

Cotton was immediately and visibly relieved.

“Let us go to my offices, Sir Alan, out of the moring sun, so we may discover the reason for your port call,” Mr. Cotton offered.

“Delighted, sir,” Lewrie said, smiling again. “Mister Grainger, return to the ship. I’ll be ashore some time, ’til supper at the…”

“Your pardons, Sir Alan,” Cotton interrupted, “but I do hope you will allow me to offer you the hospitality of my house for the night, and a shore supper. Even at short notice, I could reserve a table at a public dining establishment and invite a
few
of Charleston’s prominent citizens. Show the flag, all that, what?”

“In that case, I gladly accept your kind invitation, Mister Cotton,” Lewrie said, thinking that a fresh-water bath would be more than welcome after sponge-bathing aboard ship with a meagre allotment of daily issue. “If it’s possible, there is a Mister Douglas McGilliveray with whom I should very much like to make a re-acquaintance. I met him during the Quasi-War, when our Navy and the United States worked together against the French.”

“A most excellent suggestion, Sir Alan!” Cotton enthused. “He, of one of the oldest families, and of a long-established trading firm to boot! I’ll send him and his wife an invitation, at once.”

“I’ll sleep out of the ship for tonight, Mister Grainger,” Lewrie told the Midshipman. “Return for me tomorrow, by Four Bells of the Forenoon. Warn Yeovill and Pettus.”

“Aye aye, sir!”

“Shall we go, then, Sir Alan?” Cotton bade. “It is but a short stroll to my establishment.”

*   *   *

“You are to fulfill your orders with but one ship, Sir Alan?” Mr. Cotton said, with a shake of his head, after he had read the directives from London that Lewrie had presented to him. “Such a task is quite Herculean.”

“I scraped up three smaller sloops to help,” Lewrie told him, between sips of hot tea. “They’re prowling round Saint Augustine, at present. We’ve made a small beginning, putting a wee scare into Spanish privateers on the coast of Cuba, scouted the Florida Keys, and took on two schooners in Mayami Bay. Burned ’em. Spanish privateers I expect are as thick as fleas on a hound.… You haven’t seen any o’
them
here at Charleston, have you, Mister Cotton?”

“No Spanish privateers, no, Sir Alan,” Cotton informed him. “A rare Spanish merchantman, now and again, but none have put in in the last few months. American ships, with goods from Spanish colonies, dominate the trade, though there’s little exported
to
the Dons. The Spanish crown demands a strict mercantilism. It must be imports from Spain, or another of their colonies, carried in Spanish bottoms, or nothing. There is a Spanish Consul here—
Don
Diego de Belem—twiddling his thumbs and attending parties, poor fellow, with nothing to do for his benighted country. Quite charming, actually.”

“And the French?” Lewrie asked.

“Now and then,” Cotton said with a sly nod. “Captain Mollien has put in several times,
ostensibly
on trade from the French West Indies isles, though there’s never many goods landed, or cargo taken aboard for export. She’s the
Otarie
, by the way, Sir Alan.” Seeing Lewrie’s brow go up in question, he added, “It means ‘Sea Lion’.”

“Are you able to determine what he does land, and what he buys in exchange?” Lewrie asked. “Goods looted from prizes? Powder and shot for his guns?”

“Thankfully, since my posting here three years ago, I have been able to cultivate good relations with the trading houses and the ship chandlers of Charleston, Sir Alan, so I am able to be made conversant of any violations of American neutrality. To aid on that head, there is a small United States naval presence in Charleston … one or two gunboats … and a cutter from the Revenue Service, to enforce the Customs House officials. I can assure you that no French vessel that puts into Charleston is able to purchase war-like
matériel,
or lands suspect goods.”

“Well, good,” Lewrie said, a tad relieved to hear that. That would be one more American port to scratch off his list.

“What happens in Stono Inlet or Edisto, however, is less sure,” Cotton continued. “If an unscrupulous merchant could load up a small coasting vessel and meet a French privateer, well, I have no purview, and few ways of learning of such dealings. Though, as I said, the U.S. Navy and Revenue Service do keep an eye on the possibility, but not a constant watch.”

“And Georgetown?” Lewrie asked, squirming in his chair.

“I look out for our interests in Georgetown, as well, sir,” Cotton told him, “though I do not get up there more than once every two months or so.”