Inshore Squadron

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

BY
D
EWEY
L
AMBDIN
The French Admiral
The Gun Ketch
Jester's Fortune
What Lies Buried

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
ULIAN
S
TOCKWIN
Mutiny
Quarterdeck
Tenacious
Command
The Admiral's Daughter

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

BY
D
UDLEY
P
OPE
Ramage
Ramage & The Drumbeat
Ramage & The Freebooters
Governor Ramage 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
F
REDERICK
M
ARRYAT
Frank Mildmay
OR
   The Naval Officer
Mr Midshipman Easy
Newton Forster
OR
   The Merchant Service
Snarleyyow
OR
   The Dog Fiend
The Privateersman

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
D
UFFY
Sand of the Arena
The Fight for Rome

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

BY
R.F. D
ELDERFIELD
Too Few for Drums
Seven Men of Gascony

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

BY
C.N. P
ARKINSON
The Guernseyman
Devil to Pay
The Fireship
Touch and Go
So Near So Far
Dead Reckoning
The Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower

BY
N
ICHOLAS
N
ICASTRO
The Eighteenth Captain
Between Two Fires

BY
D
OUGLAS
R
EEMAN
Badge of Glory
First to Land
The Horizon
Dust on the Sea
Knife Edge
Twelve Seconds to Live
Battlecruiser
The White Guns
A Prayer for the Ship
For Valour

BY
D
AVID
D
ONACHIE
The Devil's Own Luck
The Dying Trade
A Hanging Matter
An Element of Chance
The Scent of Betrayal
A Game of Bones
On a Making Tide
Tested by Fate
Breaking the Line

BY
B
ROOS
C
AMPBELL
No Quarter
The War of Knives

1
W
E HAPPY FEW

A
DMIRAL
Sir George Beauchamp held his thin hands towards the blazing log fire and rubbed his palms slowly together to restore his circulation.

He was a small, stooped figure, made fragile by his heavy dress coat and gold epaulettes, but there was nothing frail about his mind or the sharpness of his eyes.

It had been a long, tiresome ride from London to Portsmouth, the journey worsened by autumn rain and deeply rutted roads. And Beauchamp's one night's rest in the George Inn on Portsmouth Point had been ruined by a fierce gale which had changed the Solent into a raging mass of white horses and made all but the largest vessels scurry for shelter.

Beauchamp turned from the fire and surveyed his private room, the one he always used when he came to Portsmouth, like many important admirals before him. Now the gale had receded and the thick glass windows shone like metal in sunlight, a deception, because beyond the stout walls the air was chilled, with a hint of winter to come.

The little admiral sighed aloud, something he would never have done if company had been present. Late September
1800,
seven years of war with France and her allies.

Once, Beauchamp had envied his contemporaries, at sea in every quarter of the globe, in their fleets, squadrons or flotillas. But in weather like this he was more than satisfied with his office of Admiralty where his shrewd mind as a planner and strategist had won him much respect. Beauchamp had sent more than one flag officer to ignominy, and had placed his confidence in other, more junior men whose experience and ability had been previously overlooked.

Seven years of war. He turned the thought over in his mind. Victories and defeats, good ships left to rot until the enemy was almost at the gates, brave men and fools, mutinies and triumphs. Beauchamp had seen it all, had watched new leaders emerging to replace the failures and the tyrants. Collingwood and Troubridge, Hardy and Saumarez, and, of course, the public's darling, Horatio Nelson.

Beauchamp gave a thin smile. Nelson was what the country needed, the very stuff of victory. But he could not see the hero of the Nile enduring the work of Admiralty like himself. Sitting at endless policy meetings, smoothing the fears of King and Parliament, guiding those less eager towards positive action. No, he decided, Nelson would not last a month in Whitehall, any more than he would in a flagship. Beauchamp was over sixty and looked it. He sometimes felt older than time itself.

There was a discreet tap on the door and his secretary peered warily in at him.

“Are you ready, Sir George?”

“Yes.” It sounded like
of course.
“Ask him to come up.”

Beauchamp never stopped working. But he enjoyed seeing his plans come to fruition, his choices for leadership and command rising to his severe standards.

Like his visitor, for instance. Beauchamp looked at the polished doors, the sunlight reflecting on a decanter of claret and two finely cut glasses.

Richard Bolitho, stubborn about some things, unorthodox in others, was one of Beauchamp's rewards. Just three years ago he had appointed him commodore over a handful of ships and sent him into the Mediterranean to seek out and discover the French intentions. He had been a good choice. The rest was history; Bolitho's swift actions and the later arrival of Nelson with a full fleet at his disposal to smash the French squadrons into defeat at the Battle of the Nile. Bonaparte's hopes for a total conquest of Egypt and India had been destroyed.

Now Bolitho was here, but as a newly appointed rear-admiral, a flag officer in his own right with all the doubts behind him.

His secretary opened the door.

“Rear-Admiral Richard Bolitho, sir.”

Beauchamp held out his hand, feeling the usual mixture of pleasure and envy. Bolitho looked very well in his new gold-laced coat, he thought, and yet the transition had left the man unchanged. The same black hair with the rebellious lock above his right eye, the level gaze and grave expression which hid the adventurer and at the same time concealed the man's humility which Beauchamp had discovered for himself.

Bolitho saw the scrutiny and smiled.

“It is good to see you, sir.”

Beauchamp gestured to the table. “Pour, will you. I'm a mite stiff.”

Bolitho watched his hand as he held the decanter above the glasses, steady and firm, when it should be shaking with the excitement he really felt. When he had seen his own reflection in a mirror he had scarcely been able to accept that he had made the final, definite step from captaincy to flag rank. Now he was a rear-admiral, one of the youngest ever appointed, but apart from the uniform, the gleaming epaulettes, each with the solitary silver star, he felt much as before. Surely something should have happened? He had always assumed that the move from wardroom to captain's cabin would alter a man. But the stride from it to the right of hoisting his own flag was like ten leagues by comparison.

Only in others had he seen any real difference. His coxswain, John Allday, could barely stop himself from beaming with pleasure. And when he had visited the Admiralty he had seen the amusement on his superiors' faces when he had shown caution with his ideas. Now, they listened to his suggestions, when before someone might have crushed him into silence. They did not always agree, but they heard him out. That was a change indeed.

Beauchamp eyed him severely above his glass. “Well, Bolitho, you've got your way, and I've got mine.” He glanced at the nearest window, steamy with the room's heat. “A squadron of your own. Four ships of the line, two frigates and a sloop of war. You'll be receiving orders from your admiral, but it will be up to you to translate them, eh?”

They clinked their glasses, each suddenly wrapped in his own thoughts.

To Beauchamp it meant a fresh, young squadron, a weapon to fit into the complex of war. To Bolitho it meant a lot more. Beauchamp had done everything to help him. Even to his choice of captains. All but one of them he knew well, and with good reason, and some he knew like old friends.

Most of them had something in common in that each had served with or under him in the past. Bolitho glanced around the room. In this same room, nineteen years ago, he had been given his first major command, and in many ways his best remembered. In her he had found Thomas Herrick, who had become his first lieutenant and his loyal friend. In the same unhappy ship he had also met John Neale, a twelve-year-old midshipman. Neale was in his squadron now, a captain commanding a frigate of his own.

“Memories, Bolitho?”

“Aye, sir. Ships and faces.”

That said it all. Bolitho had gone to sea, like Neale, at the age of twelve. Now he was a rear-admiral, the impossible dream. Too many times he had stood eye to eye with death, too often he had seen others fall about him to hold much confidence beyond the month or the year.

“Your ships are all gathered here, Bolitho.” It was a statement. “So there's no sense in wasting time. Get 'em to sea, exercise them as you know how, make them hate your guts, but forge them into steel!”

Bolitho smiled gravely. He was eager to leave. The land held nothing for him any more. He had visited Falmouth, his house and estate there. It had affected him in the same way as before. As if the house had been waiting for something. He had stood before her portrait in his bedroom several times. Listening to her voice. Hearing her laugh. Yearning for the girl he had married and lost almost immediately in a tragic accident.
Cheney.
He had even spoken her name. As if to bring the picture to life. When he had left to make for London he had turned in the doorway to look at her face once more.

The sea-green eyes, like the water below Pendennis Castle, the flowing hair with the colour of new chestnuts. She, too, had appeared to be waiting.

He shook himself from his thoughts and remembered the one enjoyable thing he had shared when Herrick had returned to England in his old
Lysander.

With surprisingly little hesitation Herrick had married the widow Dulcie Boswell whom he had met in the Mediterranean.

Bolitho had made the journey willingly to the small Kentish church on the road to Canterbury. The pews had been filled with Herrick's friends and neighbours, with a good sprinkling of blue and white from fellow sea officers.

Bolitho had felt strangely excluded, the feeling made harder to bear when he had recalled his own wedding at Falmouth, with Herrick beside him to offer the ring.

Then, as the bells chimed and Herrick had turned from the altar with his bride's hand on his gold-laced cuff, he had paused by Bolitho and had said simply, “You being here, sir, has made this just perfect for me.”

Beauchamp's voice intruded again. “I would like to take lunch with you, but I have business with the port admiral. And no doubt you've much to do. I'm obliged to you for many things, Bolitho.” He gave a wry smile. “Not least for accepting my suggestion for a flag lieutenant. I've had my fill of
him
in London!”

Bolitho guessed there was a lot more to the request than that but said nothing.

Instead he said, “I shall take my leave, sir. And thank you for seeing me.”

Beauchamp shrugged. It looked like a physical effort. “Least I could do for you. You have your orders. You're not being offered an easy passage, but then you'd not have thanked me for one, eh?” He chuckled. “Just keep a weather eye open for trouble.” He fixed Bolitho with a flat stare. “I'll say no more than that. But your deeds, your rewards, well earned though they were, will have made you some enemies. Be warned.” He held out his hand. “Now be off with you, and mark what I said.”

Bolitho left the room and strode past several people who were waiting to see the fierce little admiral. For advice, for favours, for hope, who could say?

At the foot of the stairs, standing near a crowded coffee room, he saw Allday waiting for him. As always. He would never alter. The same homely face and broad grin whenever he was pleased. He had thickened out a bit, Bolitho thought, but he was like a rock. He smiled to himself. At any other time an inn servant would have hurried a mere coxswain round the back to the kitchens, or, more likely, outside into the cold.

But in his blue coat with its gilt buttons, new breeches and polished leather boots he looked every inch an admiral's coxswain.

And how Allday had struggled over the past three years to call him sir. Before, he had always addressed Bolitho as captain. Now he was having to get used to a rear-admiral. Just that morning as they had left for Portsmouth from a friend's house where Bolitho had been staying for a few days, Allday had said cheerfully, “Never mind,
sir.
It'll be Sir Richard soon, and I can manage that well enough!”

Allday handed him his long boat-cloak and watched as Bolitho tugged his cocked hat firmly over his black hair.

“This is a moment, eh, sir?” He shook his head. “We've come a long road.”

Bolitho looked at him warmly. Allday usually managed to put his finger on it. Times and places, blue seas and grey ones. Danger with death swiftly on its heels. Allday was always there. Ready to help, to use his cheek as liberally as his courage in every situation. He was a real friend, although he could do much to try Bolitho's temper when he wanted to.

“Aye. In some ways it feels like beginning all over again.”

He glanced at himself in the wall mirror near the entrance, much as he had done when he had gone out to take command of the frigate
Phalarope,
younger then than any captain in his new squadron.

He thought suddenly of the country house where he had been staying, recalling one of the housemaids, a pretty girl with flaxen hair and a trim figure. He had seen Allday with her on several occasions and the thought troubled him. Allday had risked his life and had saved Bolitho's many times. Now they were off again, and Allday, because of his dogged loyalty, was being taken from the land once more.

Bolitho toyed with the idea of offering him a chance of freedom. To send him to Falmouth where he could live in peace, to stroll the foreshore and drink ale with other seafaring men. He had done more than his share for England, and there were plenty who never risked life and limb aloft in a gale or standing to the guns while the air was rent by the enemy's iron.

He saw Allday's face and decided against it. It would hurt and anger him. He would have felt the same way.

Bolitho said, “There'll be a few fathers looking for the sailor who wronged their daughters, eh, Allday?”

Their eyes met. It was a game they had learned to play very well.

Allday grinned. “My thoughts, too, sir. It's time for a change.”

Captain Thomas Herrick walked from beneath the poop and stood with his hands behind his back while he allowed his mind and body to adjust to the ship and the cold, damp wind which dappled her decks with spray.

The forenoon was almost over, and with practised eye Herrick noted that the many seamen working about the decks and gang-ways, or high overhead on the yards, were moving more slowly, probably dwelling on the midday meal, the thoughts of rum, a moment's respite in the crowded life between decks.