Gentleman Captain (24 page)

I scanned the sea around us and saw
Royal Martyr,
in the distance, steering for the cape of Kintyre. Judge was following our orders to the letter. He would go under the walls of Dunaverty Castle, where the king maintained a signal station, and there hoist a flag: this was the prearranged signal for a regiment to be dispatched from the royal fortress at Dumbarton. There was no need for us to anchor or back our sails, Judge had told me; the
Jupiter
was to sail on and begin the task of showing herself and the king's ensign along the shores of Kintyre, Islay and Jura. We had a rendezvous appointed at Craignish, at the head of the Sound of Jura, and Malachi Landon was dismissively confident, declaring it an easy course in all but the strongest northerlies or southerlies. Our pilot concurred. He was a little, pungent man with a lazy right eyelid, who spelled his name Ruthven and yet pronounced it Rivven, if for no reason other than to confuse the English it seemed to me. But he knew his trade, and agreed that in the light westerlies that now prevailed, our passage to Craignish would be the easiest of sails.

It was a glorious morning. To the north, I could see mountains shrouded in low cloud, and Ruthven announced these to be the heights of Islay, beyond Ardbeg and Ardmore. I stood at the rail taking in the view and filling my chest with the uncommonly fresh air, then went over to the master's open waggoner and studied the chart. I now knew what many of the numbers scattered across the sea meant; they were soundings, and they told me we had ample deep water, almost up to all the shores we could see.

Kit Farrell came on deck at that moment, to Malachi Landon's evident annoyance. Just then some whim, some strange conceit, took hold of me. I still remember the feeling: it was like the need to impress old Mervyn, my schoolmaster, with a correct answer; or to please Uncle Tristram by demonstrating that I had listened properly to his latest tale. Cornelia would have chided me for my foolishness and presumption, quite rightly, but she was far away, probably seeking excuses to avoid another awkward morning of needlework in the brooding company of my mother. Untrammelled, I looked around once more, saw only the tiny shapes of Kintyre fishing boats and a few small vessels of the Antrim shore, and decided that surely, there would never be a better moment.

'Master Landon, Master Ruthven,' I said. 'We need not steer directly for the rendezvous, for we would be there early. You will please set our course for this headland on Islay, called the Oa. You will inform me when we are within five miles of land, when I would have you alter course to the north-east, towards the rendezvous.'

Kit Farrell looked at me with astonishment, but that was as nothing to the dumbstruck horror that contorted the face of Malachi Landon.

'Captain,' he spluttered at length, 'would that be by way of
an order?

I smiled. 'Yes, Mister Landon. That is my order.'
The first true sea-command of my life.

Landon was a poor dissembler; his features betrayed every jot of the hatred that he felt towards me. He stepped close and said, barely able to shape the words, 'And after the warning I gave ye from the charts? To what purpose should I take this ship out of our way, Captain?'

I could have been conciliatory to him, but in that instant his arrogance and presumption decided me to bring this to a reckoning. 'As for your charts, Master Landon, I care not for Mars ascendant or descendant, only for
Jupiter
transient and
Jupiter
preserved. As for my reasons, a captain of a king's ship needs give reason to two authorities alone on this earth, namely the king and the Lord Admiral. And I see neither on this deck, Mister Landon. It is for me to decide what is and is not out of our way, and I have a purpose in taking us toward that shore. My purpose, and mine alone.'

With that, I left the quarterdeck. The miserable rogue was forced to salute me at my going.

I went below and fell heartily upon the breakfast of fish, eggs and bread that Janks had sent to my cabin. As I ate, I felt the ship begin her slow and gentle turn, a few degrees of the compass towards the north-west. With the turn came doubt, and I began to half-regret my impetuous order. What if I had misread the charts and missed the presence of some great rock, toward which we were now inexorably bound? It was with great relief that I was interrupted by a knock at the cabin door. Musk went to open it and announced waspishly that 'school had begun', whereupon Kit Farrell bounced cheerfully into the room.

'You have made Mister Landon more than a little irate, sir,' he said happily.

'Good. Ships have but one captain, Mister Farrell,' said I between mouthfuls, concealing my self-doubt. Then added, 'Even if they are wholly ignorant of the sea-trade.'

'With respect, sir,' he said mildly, 'I think you do yourself an injustice. The captain I knew on the
Happy Restoration,
and at the start of this voyage, may have been that. But even these few days have changed you. Why, I think you learn the sea faster than I learn word-craft, Captain.'

Musk grunted. 'Not surprising, that, is it? Captain Quinton here's an educated man–his uncle's master of an Oxford college, just mark that–and he's got the natural authority that he was born with, the blood of all the Quintons back to the start of time. Not like you or me, Mister Farrell. Out of the gutter came the likes of us.'

I smiled, then turned to Kit. 'I was not wrong to speak in such a peremptory way to Master Landon?'

Musk spluttered something about the rancid paganistic hypocritical old bugger deserving everything he got, but Kit was more measured. 'You gave a command, sir. It was clear, and left no room for doubt. That is all.'

The opposite of the order I failed to give on the
Happy Restoration,
I thought, and perhaps Kit Farrell did too.

I waved Kit to a seat and set him to copying the superscription of the letter I was writing to the Duke of York. This occupied some twenty minutes, with Kit fretting over how the 'high' in 'highness' could be pronounced exactly the same as 'eye' and yet be spelt so differently. We talked for a while, then I sent Musk to bring Lieutenant Vyvyan and Gunner Stanton to me.

They had evidently both heard of my command. Vyvyan, in particular, studied me more curiously than usual. Like all of my officers, he undoubtedly felt that Kit Farrell was my evil familiar, a black cat to my crone. No doubt he saw this attempt to turn Matthew Quinton into a seaman as doomed, but he was too much of a gentleman to show it, while the squat, beetle-browed Stanton seemed too ineffably stupid to form an opinion. I shared my purpose with them, knowing that Landon would be even more offended by this. Looking back, I see my action for the childish pettiness that it was; but even now, there are few things more pleasurable than deliberately offending those who dislike you. Indeed, I have found myself doing it more often of late, for mankind excuses such behaviour in the very old.

My purpose was simple, and I had settled on it the day before, when the
Royal Martyr
had startled us so with the speed and ferocity of the salute from her broadside. We would come five miles off Islay, I told them, far away from the derisive gaze of Godsgift Judge and his crew, and there we would exercise our own great guns. I wished to see if the
Jupiter
was as much a man-of-war as our vaunted consort.

Malachi Landon was not a man to disobey a direct order, and he duly sent one of his mates with word when we were exactly five miles from the point of Oa. Then he executed the change of course to the north-east, as I had commanded. Vyvyan and Stanton were waiting expectantly for me on deck. I looked around, and saw only an empty sea, a blue sky with low, scudding clouds, and the grey-green land of Islay, with Kintyre's shore well off to the east. Of
Royal Martyr,
there was no sign.

'Very well. Mister Vyvyan, Mister Stanton,' I said. 'We shall proceed as we discussed, in exactly the same manner as
Royal Martyr
's salute. Larboard battery first, then starboard. On my command.'

They saluted. Vyvyan went to take up his position in the forecastle, while Stanton went below to exercise command over the guns of the main deck. The
Jupiter
carried a total of thirty-two great guns. Eighteen of these were demi-culverins, including the two that crowded my cabin: nine feet long, they fired a nine-pound shot. We mounted ten light sakers, which fired five-pound balls, and four minions at the bow and stern, firing four-pound shot. I watched the crews of the guns on the upper deck, especially those on the quarterdeck nearest to me, load their weapons with much bustle and some confidence. The canvas-covered charges of gunpowder were placed carefully into the gun barrels on long ladles, then rammed home and secured against the end of the breech with a wad, rammed home in like manner. If we had been firing in earnest, the shot itself would now have gone into the barrel, but this was to be a mere dumb show. Finally, the captain of each gun crew stuck an iron spike down the vent to puncture the cartridge, poured powder into the vent, and awaited my order.

These commands, at least, I already knew, for this truly was work for warriors. Indeed, I had first learned the sequence at the knee of Uncle Tristram, who in turn had learned it at the knee of his father. Earl Matthew was ever fond of recounting the orders he gave on that fateful July day in 1588, when the
Constant Esperance
sailed into the impregnable crescent of the Spanish Armada.

Thus I cried, 'Loose the gun tackles! Beat open the ports! Thrust out the guns!'

All along the larboard side of the ship, gun ports swung open, and our cannon protruded beyond the ship's side. I watched the gun crews, waited, judged my moment, and finally cried, 'Gunners, prepare to give fire!' The call was repeated along the decks.

'Give fire!'

My intention and hope was that the larboard broadside would fire simultaneously, one great blaze of flame and smoke, just as
Royal Martyrs
had the previous morning. Instead, a few of the guns on the upper deck, and perhaps three on the main, went off at approximately the same time. Thereafter came a ragged series of firings, rather like an inept fireworks show, followed by the scream of each gun's recoil. One gun on the upper deck did not fire at all, and one on the main deck broke its carriage during the recoil, or so I was told. A great pall of gun smoke drifted over the quarterdeck, its acrid stench tearing at my nose and throat. When it cleared, I looked upon the faces of those around me, and wondered if my own expression was such an unguarded mixture of horror and embarrassment.

'Dear Christ in Heaven,' said Phineas Musk, now fancying himself an authority on gunnery, 'the Dutch fleet will be shitting itself all the way to Amsterdam. Shitting itself with laughter.'

A calm and relatively sober Francis Gale advanced along the quarterdeck to my side. 'Captain,' he said sadly, 'I know gunnery. I faced the guns of General Deane himself, so I've seen the best. With all due respect, sir, I have now also seen the worst.'

I stood stock-still, looking out over this calamity. The Jupiters were nervous now, even of the reaction of their ignorant captain, and were reloading the guns with as much alacrity as they could muster, their countenances serious. The barrels were scoured with prongs and then cooled with sponges before the business of replacing the cartridges began. When the gun captains seemed ready, I gave the order to fire once more. This time, a few more guns fired on my word of command, but the interval before the last went off was even longer. Another gun on the main deck misfired. The guns that remained were reloaded once more, and this time we attempted to fire in sequence, as
Royal Martyr
had done, bow to stern. The ensuing cacophony of incompetence echoed accusingly around the Scottish sea. Several guns on both decks fired out of turn, and two did not fire at all. Smoke drifted away from the
Jupiter,
accusing wisps upon the wind.

Kit Farrell had been keeping the time. 'Almost half a glass, sir,' he said in hushed tones. 'Three broadsides, of a sort, in twenty-five minutes or so.'

'Christ God,' I exclaimed, 'even the French can do better than that.' Roger Le Blanc, who stood in the ship's waist attending vaguely to some torn canvas, raised an amused eyebrow. I thought for a moment. We had several hours until the rendezvous. I made some quick calculations, then called to Vyvyan and sent an order below for Stanton. We would attempt the task thrice more, once on the larboard side and twice to starboard.

The dispiriting display that followed confirmed what was abundantly obvious to all. We would have difficulty holding our own against a hulk drifting on the tide, let alone against a Dutch man-of-war commanded by a competent captain like my good-brother Cornelis. It was with relief that I at last gave the order to desist and returned the men to their watches.

I summoned Vyvyan and Stanton to my cabin. I wanted keenly to know how this calamity could have been allowed under such a renowned and capable captain as James Harker. The two officers looked at each other nervously, and Stanton began to explain that Harker had never set much store by exercising the great guns. James Vyvyan listened for a few seconds, then leapt to the defence of his uncle.

'Captain Harker believed in the old ways, sir. Fire your battery by all means, but bring your ship in fast, lay her thwart the hawse if you can, and board your enemy. It's the way the Cornish like to fight. Hand to hand.'

Like the pirates you all are beneath the skin,
I thought. I had seen the Cornish in action that night in Portsmouth when I first joined the
Jupiter.
I had no doubt they could board and fight with aplomb. Yet in modern warfare, the fashion called for enemy fleets to approach each other in long lines of battle, lay up parallel at the closest range possible, and blast each other to hell. The old method that Harker had favoured still had its advocates–notably his patron, Prince Rupert–but the new, scientific reliance on weight of gunnery had proved its worth in the Dutch war, when the smaller enemy vessels had been pounded to pieces by the heavy broadsides of our stronger-built English ships. Godsgift Judge–who had held a command in many of those battles–and his men were adept in this new kind of war, and its endurance to this day is proof of its superiority. The Jupiters and their late captain were throwbacks to an older time, my grandfather's time; and that day was done, it seemed.