The Flying Squadron (25 page)

‘Well, yes, yesterday. I meant to try for a ship . . .'

‘My dear James, I have no time, forgive me . . . ma'am,' he bowed curtly to Catriona who had come into the room from the kitchen beyond, with an offer of tea, ‘can you spare your husband?'

‘You have a ship for me?' broke in Quilhampton, nodding to his wife and ignoring her silent protest.

‘Not exactly, James. As a lieutenant I can get you a cutter or a gun-brig, but nothing more. I am, however, desperate for a first luff in
Patrician.'
He paused, watching the disappointment clear in Quilhampton's expression. ‘It ain't what you want, I know, but nor is it as bad as you think, James. I am to be the senior captain of a flying squadron . . .'

‘A commodore, sir?'

‘Aye, but only of the second class. They will not let me have a post-captain under me, but I can promise you advancement at the first opportunity, to Master and Commander at the very least . . .'

‘I'll come, sir, of course I will.' Quilhampton held out his remaining hand.

‘That's handsome of you, James, damned handsome,' Drinkwater grinned, seizing the outstretched paw. ‘God bless you, my friend.'

‘He was mortified you sailed for America without him last autumn, Captain Drinkwater,' Catriona said quietly in her Scots accent, pouring the bohea. Drinkwater noticed her thickening waist and recalled Elizabeth telling him the Quilhamptons were expecting.

‘My dear, I am an insensitive dullard, forgive me, my congratulations to you both . . .'

Catriona handed him a cup. The delicate scent of the tea filled the room, but cup and saucer chattered slightly from the shaking of her hand. She caught his eye, her own fierce and tearful beneath the mop of tawny hair. ‘My child needs a father, Captain. Even a one-armed one is better than none.'

‘Ma'am! . . .' Drinkwater stammered, ‘I am, I mean, I, er . . .'

‘Take him,' she said and withdrew, retiring to her kitchen.

Drinkwater looked at Quilhampton who shrugged.

‘When can you be ready?'

‘Tomorrow?'

‘We'll post. Time is of the essence.'

‘Talking of which, I have something . . .' Quilhampton turned aside and opened the door of a long-case clock that ticked majestically in a corner. He lifted a dark, dusty bottle from its base.

‘Cognac, James?' Drinkwater asked, raising an eyebrow, ‘How reprehensible.' Quilhampton smiled at Drinkwater's ill-disguised expression of appreciation.

‘It is usually Hollands on this coast, but I can't stand the stuff. This', he held up the bottle after lacing both their cups of tea, ‘the rector of Waldringfield mysteriously acquires.'

‘Here's to the confinement, James. Tell her to stay with Elizabeth when her time comes.'

‘I will, and thank you. Here's to the ship.'

‘What is it, Mr Gordon?' Drinkwater emerged on to the quarterdeck and clapped his hand to his hat as a gust of wind tore at his cloak.

‘Hasty
, sir; she's just fired a gun and thrown out the signal for a sail in sight.'

‘Very well. Make
Hasty
's number and tell him to investigate.'

‘Aye, aye, sir.'

Fishing for his Dollond glass Drinkwater levelled it at the small twenty-eight gun frigate bobbing on the rim of the horizon as they exchanged signals with her over the five miles of heaving grey Atlantic. Then he cast a quick look round the circumscribed circle of their visible horizon at the other ships of the squadron.

The little schooner
sprite
clung to
Patrician
like a child to a parent, while two miles to leeward he could make out the thirty-eight gun, 18-pounder frigate
Cymbeline
, and beyond her the topsails of
Icarus
, a thirty-two, mounting 12-pounders on her gun deck.

‘Hasty
acknowledges, sir.'

Drinkwater swung back to Gordon and nodded. ‘Very well. And now I think 'tis time we hoisted French colours with a gun to loo'ard, if you please, Mr Gordon.'

Midshipman Belchambers had anticipated the order, for it had long been known that they would close the American coast under an equivocal disguise. The red, white and blue bunting spilled from his arms as the assisting yeoman
tugged at the halliards. Clear of the wind eddies about the deck, the tricolour snapped out clear of the bunt of the spanker and rose, stiff as a board, to the peak. The trio of officers watched the curiosity for a moment, then Drinkwater held his pocket-glass out to the midshipman.

‘Up you go, Mr Belchambers. Keep me informed. We should sight land before sunset.' He hoped he sounded confident, instead of merely optimistic, for they had not obtained a single sight during the week the gale had prevailed.

The boom of the signal gun drowned Belchambers' reply, but he scampered away, tucking the precious spy-glass in his trousers and reaching for the main shrouds. Drinkwater stared at
Hasty
again as she shook out her topgallants. Captain Tyrell was very young, younger than poor Quilhampton, and he was inordinately proud of his command which, by contrast, was grown old, though of a class universally acknowledged as pretty. Drinkwater suspected a multitude of defects lurked beneath the paint, whitewash and gilded brightwork of her dandified appearance. Yet the young man in command seemed efficient enough, had understood the signals thrown out on their tedious passage across the Atlantic and handled his ship with every sign of competence. Perhaps he had a good sailing-master, Drinkwater thought, again turning his attention to the
Sprite
: they must be damnably uncomfortable aboard the schooner.

Sprite
's commander was a different kettle of fish, a man of middle age whose commission as lieutenant was but two years old. Lieutenant Sundercombe had come up the hard way, pressed into the Royal Navy from a Guinea slaver whose mate he had been. He had languished on the lower deck for five years before winning recognition and being rated master's mate. There was both a resentment and a burning passion in the man, Drinkwater had concluded, which was doubtless due to his enforced service as a seaman. Maybe contact with the helpless human cargo carried on the middle passage had made him philosophical about the whims and vagaries of fate, maybe not. His most significant attribute as far as Drinkwater was concerned was his skill as a fore-and-aft sailor. His Majesty's armed schooner
sprite
had
been built in the Bahamas to an American design and attached to the squadron as a dispatch vessel.

As for the other frigates and their captains, the bluff and hearty Thorowgood of the
Cymbeline
and the stooped and consumptive Ashby of the
Icarus
, though as different as chalk from cheese in appearance, were typical of their generation. With the exception of Sundercombe and his schooner, in whose selection Drinkwater had enlisted Dungarth's influence, the histories of the younger men were unremarkable, their appointment to join his so-called ‘flying squadron' uninfluenced by anything other than the Admiratlty's sudden fright at the depredations of Yankee privateers. None of them had seen action of any real kind, rising quickly through patronage or influence, and had been either cruising uneventfully in home waters or employed on convoy duties. Tyrell on the Irish coast where, in the Cove of Cork, he had been able to titivate his ship to his heart's content; and Thorowgood in the West Indies, where rum and women of colour seemed to have made a deep impression upon him. Ashby looked too frail to remain long in this world, though he possessed an admirable doggedness if his conduct in the recent gale was anything to go by, for
Icarus
had carried away her fore topmast shortly before sunset a few days earlier and had been separated from the rest of the squadron. The last that had been seen of her as she disappeared behind a grey curtain of rain was not encouraging. The violent line squall had dragged waterspouts from the surface of the sea and the wild sweep of lowering cloud had compelled them all to look to their own ships and shorten sail with alacrity.
Patrician
's raw crew, once more decimated by idleness and filled from every available and unsuitable source, had been hard-pressed for an hour.

Captain Ashby had fired guns to disperse a spout that threatened his frigate and these had been taken for distress signals. When the weather cleared, however, there was no sign of the
Icarus
, and though the squadron reversed course until darkness and then hove-to for the night, the dawn showed the three remaining frigates and the schooner alone.

‘I suppose', Drinkwater had remarked as David Gordon returned to the deck shaking his head after sweeping the
horizon from the masthead,
‘our
still being in company is a small miracle.'

But two days later Ashby's
Icarus
had hove over the eastern horizon, her damage repaired and a cloud of canvas rashly set, proving at least that she was a fast sailer and Ashby a resourceful man with a competent ship's company. Now, as the gale blew itself out and they closed the lee of the American coast, Drinkwater chewed over their prospects of success and the risky means by which he hoped to achieve it. His orders gave him wide discretion; the problem with such latitude was that his judgement was proportionately open to criticism.

‘A sail, I hear, sir,' said Quilhampton, coming on deck and touching the fore-cock of his hat at the lonely figure jammed at the foot of the weather mizen rigging.

Drinkwater stirred out of his brown study. ‘Ah, James, yes; Tyrell's gone to investigate and Belchambers is aloft keeping an eye on the chase.'

‘I see we've the frog ensign at the peak . . .'

‘You disapprove?'

Quilhampton shrugged and cast his eyes upwards. ‘I comprehend your reasoning, sir, it just feels damned odd . . .'

‘Any ruse that allows us time to gather intelligence is worth adopting.'

‘Has
Icarus
gone off flying the thing, sir?'

‘If he obeyed orders he has, yes.'

‘Deck there!' Both officers broke off to stare upwards to where Belchambers swung against the monotone grey of the overcast, his arm outstretched. ‘Land, sir, four points on the starboard bow!'

‘What of the chase?' Drinkwater bellowed back.

‘Looks like a schooner, sir, to the sou'westward.
Hasty'
s hull down but I don't think he's gaining.'

‘He won't against a Yankee schooner,' Drinkwater grumbled to his first lieutenant. ‘Though Belchambers can't see it yet, she'll be tucked under the lee of the land there with a beam wind, damn it.' Drinkwater sighed, and made a hopeless gesture with his hand. ‘I really don't know how best to achieve success . . .'

‘I heard scores of Yankee merchantmen left New York on
the eve of the declaration with clearances for the Tagus,' remarked Quilhampton.

‘Aye, and we'll buy their cargoes, just to keep Wellington's army in the field, and issue licences for more, I daresay.' He thought of the boasting finality he had threatened Captain Stewart with, calling up the iron ring of blockade to confound the American's airy theories of maritime war. Now the government in London showed every sign of pusillanimity in their desire not to interfere with supplies to the army in Spain. ‘I wish to God the government would order a full blockade and bring the Americans to their senses quickly.'

‘They misjudged the Yankee's temper,' agreed Quilhampton, ‘thinking they would be content with the eventual rescinding of the Orders-in-Council.'

‘Too little too late,' grumbled Drinkwater, ‘and then David struck Goliath right betwixt the eyes . . .'

No further reference was necessary between the two men to conjure up in their minds the humiliations the despised Yankee navy had visited upon the proud might of the British. Before leaving Plymouth they had heard that Commodore Rodgers' squadron had sailed from New York on the outbreak of war and, though the commodore had missed the West India convoy, his ships had chased the British frigate
Belvidera
and taken seven merchantmen before returning to Boston. Furthermore the
Essex
had seized the troop transport
Alert
and ten other ships. They knew, too, that the USS
Constitution
had escaped a British squadron by kedging in a calm, and finally, a week or two later, she had brought His Britannic Majesty's frigate
Guerrière
to battle and hammered her into submission with devastating broadsides.

The latest edition of
The Times
they had brought with them from England was full of outrage and unanswered questions at this blow to Britannia's prestige. The defeat of a single British frigate was considered incomprehensible, outweighed Wellington's defeat of the French at Salamanca and obscured the news that Napoleon had entered Moscow. On their passage westward, Drinkwater had plenty of time to mull over the problems his discretionary orders had brought him. They contained a caution about single cruisers
engaging ‘the unusually heavily armed and built frigates of the enemy', and the desirability of ‘drawing them down upon a ship-of-the-line', an admission of weakness that Drinkwater found shocking, if sensible, had a ship-of-the-line been within hail. Yet he had been under no illusion that with ‘so powerful a force as four frigates' great things were expected of him, and was conscious that he sailed on detached service, not under the direct command of either Sawyer at Halifax or his successor, Sir John Borlase Warren, even then proceeding westwards like themselves.