The Flying Squadron (5 page)

In repose he wondered what expression he habitually wore. Elizabeth had told him that his face brightened when he smiled. Did he not smile enough? Did he wear a perpetual scowl upon the quarterdeck?

He looked down the twin lines of officers, bending over their soup, concentrating on their manners lest it slop into their white-breeched laps. At the far end of the table Metcalfe laid his soup-spoon in his plate and Mullender loomed up at his shoulder. Others followed suit, the chink of silver upon china the only sound in the cabin, if one set aside the wracking groans of the frigate's fabric, the low
grind of the rudder and the surge and hiss of the sea beneath the windows.

The handsome Gordon and the thin-faced chaplain, Simpson, the ruddy Wyatt, the elegant Moncrieff, the purser and the surgeon remained disappointingly unanimated.

‘Well, gentlemen,' Drinkwater said, laying down his own soup-spoon, ‘what is your judgement of the temper of the men following our exercise at the guns this morning?'

If he had hoped to bring them from their tongue-tied awkwardness by the question, he was sadly disappointed. He sensed an invisible restraint upon them, a disquieting influence, and looked from one to another for some evidence of its source.

‘Come, surely someone has an opinion? I never knew a wardroom where criticism of one sort or another was not lavished upon someone.' His false attempt at levity provoked no wry grins. He tried again. ‘Mr Gordon, how did the men at your battery respond?'

‘Well, sir,' Gordon faltered, shot a glance at the other end of the table and coloured, coughing. The blond lick of his hair fell forward and he threw it back. ‘Well, sir, they were well enough, I believe.' He was oddly nervous. ‘Their timing improved. According to the first lieutenant . . .'

‘They did well enough, sir, for our first exercise,' broke in Metcalfe stridently. ‘The starbowlines were faster than those on the port side and loosed both their broadsides in seventy-nine seconds . . .'

Drinkwater was fascinated. The riddle, if he judged aright, was solved by the presence of Metcalfe. Yet these younger men were not intimidated by the first luff, merely silent in his company, as if to speak invited some response. Belittlement perhaps? A mild but persistent humiliation? Did they simply choose not to speak in Metcalfe's presence? Was the man a tyrant in the wardroom? He was clearly a fussy and fossicking individual. It was interesting, too, to hear Metcalfe trot out the word ‘port' instead of larboard. True, its usage was gaining ground in the Service, but something in Metcalfe's tone endowed the word with fashionable
éclat
, and more than a little bombast.

‘But did you mark any change in their mood, Mr Gordon?'

‘You mean after the exercise as compared with before, sir?'

‘Yes, exactly.' Drinkwater was aware of a faint air of frustration in his tone.

‘They were . . .'

‘A damned sight smarter at the conclusion.' Metcalfe finished the sentence and Drinkwater detected the corporate affront passing through the officers like a gust of wind through dry grass. Moncrieff, resplendent in the scarlet of the marines, threw himself back in his chair. It might have been for the benefit of Mullender, just then serving them all with thick slices of roast pork, but conveyed a different significance to the vigilant Drinkwater.

‘I thought them to be much more cheerful, don't you know. As though they enjoyed loosin' off the cannon.'

Drinkwater turned to the speaker, Henry Vansittart, sitting on his right-hand side and whose presence Drinkwater had ignored in his preoccupation. He might, he thought with sudden guilt, have prompted a conversation with poor Vansittart whom, he knew, felt gauche among these tarpaulin jacks. Vansittart's assessment was exactly what he had hoped Gordon would say, and judging from the mute nods of concurrence, was at least sensed by most of them.

‘Oh, they like their bangs, all right, sir.' Wyatt's contribution fell like a brick into a still pool and Drinkwater was glad of it, inapproriate though it was. ‘They'll give the Yankees something to remember, never you fear.'

‘I do hope it doesn't come to that, Mr . . ., oh dear, forgive me . . .' Vansittart floundered and Drinkwater hoped his diplomatic skills were not demonstrated by his inability to remember the master's name.

‘Wyatt, Mr Vansittart, Wyatt.'

‘Of course, of course, how foolish . . .'

Wyatt pronounced the name like ‘fancy-tart' and thereby brought a smile to the faces of the diners. Drinkwater was sorry for Vansittart, but glad of the joke. ‘I agree with Mr Vansittart,' he said, trying not to make the
pronounciation of the name too obviously correct. ‘As for their fighting ability, we shall see, depending upon our luck. However, we may try them at a mark if we are becalmed, which reminds me, Mr Moncrieff, your marines must be put to some target practice. Tomorrow do you let 'em loose on the bottles we empty today.'

Moncreiff opened his mouth to reply but was prevented.

‘Capital idea, sir.'

‘I'm glad you approve, Mr Metcalfe,' Drinkwater replied, and was delighted at catching the exchange of hastily suppressed grins between Gordon and Moncrieff. He had certainly learnt more about them than they about him.

‘Perhaps, Mr Vansittart, you could enlighten us all as to the current state of relations between ourselves and the United States of America. Do I take it from your reaction to Mr Wyatt's bellicose assertion that we are anxious to avoid a conflict with our quondam cousins?'

‘Damme yes, sir. Most emphatically. Whilst I don't doubt for a moment the temper of your men, it would place an insupportable burden on the Ministry to engage in hostilities with them.'

‘I think it might place an insupportable burden on His Majesty's Navy,' Drinkwater added, thinking of the difficulties they had experienced manning
Patrician
.

‘Aye,' put in Metcalfe, ‘we have squadrons in almost every corner of the world in addition to the Channel Fleet. To raise another, or reinforce the ships at Halifax . . .'

‘Plans are afoot to send Rear-Admiral York out with four seventy-fours and a brace of frigates, I believe,' Drinkwater said, ‘though I agree that this would be insufficient for a blockade, and if we contemplate war then we must enforce a blockade.'

‘What force is the American navy?' Moncrieff derided.

‘Small, lad,' said Wyatt, helping himself to more wine, ‘but they will issue letters-of-marque and have privateers shoaling like herrings.'

‘Oh, come Wyatt, privateers . . .'

‘Enough of 'em and they'll pick our bones clean, snap
up our trade. Don't despise the Yankees. Remember the
Little Belt
 . . .'

‘That was a damned outrage,' protested Metcalfe vehemently, alluding to the unprovoked attack made by the American frigate
President
upon the smaller British sloop, ‘a deliberate provocation . . .'

‘What tommy-rot and nonsense, it was a case of mistaken identity . . .'

‘The principal aim of British policy', Vansittart broke in, aware that his lecture, hitherto the only means of ascendancy he had gained over the frigate's officers, had been seized by his audience, ‘is to avoid provocation. That is why the offence committed by the
President
was allowed to pass . . .'

‘To our eternal shame,' interrupted Metcalfe.

‘Sometimes it is necessary to swallow a little pride, Mr Metcalfe,' Vansittart said, ‘in order to guide the conduct of affairs. Some sea-officers consider themselves so far in the vanguard of matters that they rashly compromise our endeavours. Take Humphries of the
Leopard
, for instance, when he engaged the
Chesapeake
; he scarcely endeared us to the Americans.'

‘Oh, damn the Jonathans,' snapped Wyatt, out of patience with the pettifoggings of diplomacy. ‘They poach our seamen and must be made to spit 'em out again, given a . . . what the deuce d'ye call it, Bones?' Wyatt turned to the surgeon.

‘An expectorant, I think you mean,' Pym answered drily, adding, ‘ 'tis all very well to take men out of Yankee merchant ships, God knows we do it enough to our own, but to attempt to do so out of a foreign man-o'-war and then fire into her when she won't comply . . .'

The allusion to Captain Humphries' action provoked Wyatt further: ‘That's what the buggers deserved! You call 'em foreign, by God! They were no more than damned rebels!' Wyatt protested, dividing the camp. There was a rising tide of argument into which Vansittart plunged.

‘They are most certainly not, Mr Wyatt! You'll please to recall they are a legitimately established sovereign state,
what ever memories you older gentlemen have of the American War.'

Drinkwater's grin was still-born; he was one of those ‘older men'.

‘The whole business was a shameful affair,' Vansittart went on, ‘the
Chesapeake
was not in fighting trim, half her guns were not mounted and she had no cause to expect an attack . . .'

‘Beyond the fact that she had British deserters on board,' Wyatt persisted sarcastically.

‘Her captain surrendered,' added Metcalfe with a characteristic lack of logic lost in the heat of the dispute.

‘He struck, Mr Metcalfe,' Vansittart said, and Drinkwater realized he was more than holding his own; he was enjoying himself. ‘He struck, merely to avoid the further effusion of blood. It was a pity Humphries insisted on searching the
Chesapeake
 . . .'

‘He found
four
men,' Wyatt snapped, ‘four deserters.'

Vansittart turned a contemptuous expression on Wyatt. ‘The facts, Mr Wyatt,' he said with a cool detachment, ‘indicate three of those men were Americans pressed into our service. Had Captain Humphries contented himself with accepting the surrender and apologizing for the dishonour he had done the American flag by his unprovoked attack, we might have thus avoided the necessity of eating humble pie in the affair of the
President
and the
Little Belt.'
Vansittart stared round the table, a smile of satisfaction playing round the corners of his mouth which he hid by delicately dabbing at it with his napkin. He had achieved a victory over these rough sea-officers and was justifiably pleased with himself. He caught Drinkwater's eye. ‘I know many of you to be vexed by the case of Americans born before Independence and therefore theoretically British subjects ripe for impressment into the British fleet. But I hardly think one of you to be so mean-minded as to admit this a
casus belli
, eh?'

‘I do not think the Americans will go to war over the plight of their seamen,' Drinkwater said, breaking the silence of Vansittart's triumph, ‘though their politicians may make a deal of noise about it. However, there is always the danger that they may imagine us to be in a
position of weakness, as indeed we are, with the army in Spain to supply. Suppose they did let loose say five hundred privateers, as Mr Wyatt suggests, to tie up our cruisers with the burden of convoys, and suppose then they attempted, as they did in the last war, to conquer Canada. I would venture to suggest the most disloyal conjecture that they might succeed.'

‘Ah, sir, that', said Vansittart, holding up a wagging finger to add import to his words, ‘is what concerns His Majesty's government . . .'

‘Or that of the Prince of Wales,' Metcalfe interjected sententiously.

‘No, sir, the Ministry remains the King's; the Prince, in his capacity as Regent, is, as it were,
in loco sui parentis
.' Vansittart's little joke was lost. The King's supposed insanity combined with his son's extravagant and profligate frivolity and the Duke of York's corruption and malpractice at the War Office, served to cast a shadow over most political deliberations.

‘We should also remember Russia,' Drinkwater went on. ‘She has seized Finland from the Swedes and her fleet is not to be despised . . .'

‘Canada is the keystone to it all,' Vansittart said, almost waving away Drinkwater's words. ‘It all depends upon whether the hawks prevail over the doves in the Yankee administration.'

‘Let us hope', said the chaplain, speaking for the first time, ‘that good sense and Christian charity prevail . . .'

‘We always
hope
for that, Mr Simpson,' said Pym the surgeon ironically, ‘and are so consistently disappointed, that did hope not spring eternal into the human breast, there would be an end to all your piety.'

A small tribute of laughter followed this and a silence fell as Mullender cleared the table. The ruined carcass of the pig lay dismembered before them. The dinner had not been entirely unsuccessful.

‘It is the Orders-in-Council prohibiting trade with the French Empire which will provoke a war,' Drinkwater said. ‘The Americans believe it to be an unwarranted interference with their right to trade. Their grain saved the Revolution once, in '94, and they are great boys for
profit . . . they might yet prove a force to be reckoned with.'

The cloth was drawn and the decanter set before him. He held the lead-crystal glass against the heel of the ship. It had been a present from Elizabeth and he would be most upset if it were lost. He drew the stopper and sent the port on its slow circulation. An anticipatory silence fell upon the company.

When it had completed its circuit he proposed the loyal toast. ‘Gentlemen,' he said, solemnly, ‘the King.'

‘The King,' they chorused.

He raised his glass a second time. ‘His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent.'

They mumbled their responses and waited as Drinkwater again lifted his glass. ‘And to peace, gentlemen, at least with the Americans.' He bowed towards Vansittart. ‘And success to Mr Vansittart's mission.'

‘Amen to that,' said the chaplain.