The Bomb Vessel (3 page)

‘Empty bellies make desperate fellows,' he said, watching Rogers, who nodded grimly. Drinkwater called for coffee and sat back. He considered that Rogers's chastening might not be such a bad thing, just as in battle his violent nature was such an asset.

‘It is not exactly a plum command, Samuel, but of one thing I am certain . . .'

‘And that is?'

‘That we both need to make something of it, eh?'

Drinkwater lent Rogers ten pounds so that he might make himself more presentable. Their ship lay above Chatham and Rogers had been instructed to join Drinkwater at his lodgings the following morning. In the meantime Drinkwater had to visit the Navy Office and he left the latter place as the evening approached, his mind a whirl of instructions, admonitions and humiliation at being one of the lowest forms of naval life, a lieutenant in command, permitted into those portals of perfidy and corruption. It was then he had the second encounter of the day.

Returning west along the Strand he came upon a small but vicious mob who had pulled a coachman from his box. It was almost dark and the shouts of disorder were mixed with the high-pitched screams of a woman. Elbowing the indifferent onlookers aside Drinkwater pressed forward, aware of a pale face at the carriage window. He heard a woman in the crowd say, ‘Serve 'im bleedin' right for takin' 'is whip to 'em!'

Drinkwater broke through the cordon round the coach to where a large grinning man in working clothes held the tossing heads of the lead-horses. The whites of their eyes were vivid with terror. Rolling almost beneath the stamping hooves, the triple-caped bundle of a bald-headed coachman rolled in the gutter while three men, one with a lacerated cheek, beat him with sticks.

The offending whip lay on the road and the coachman's huge tricorne was being rescued and appropriated by a ragged youth, to the whoops of amusement of his fellows. Several hags roared
their approval in shrill voices, while a couple of drabs taunted the woman in the coach.

Drinkwater took in the situation at a glance. A momentary sympathy for the man who had been whipped faded in his angry reaction to disorder. The noise of riot was anathema to him. As a naval officer his senses were finely tuned to any hint of it. London had been wearing him down all day. This final scene only triggered a supressed reaction in him.

Still in full dress he threw back his cloak and drew his hanger. His teeth were set and he felt a sudden savage joy as he shoved his heel into the buttocks of the nearer assailant. A cry of mixed anger and encouragement went up from the mob. The man fell beneath the pawing hooves and rolled away, roaring abuse. The other two men paused panting, their staves ready to rebuff their attacker. Drinkwater stepped astride the coachman, who moaned distressingly, and brought his sword point up to the throat of the man with the whipped face. With his left hand he felt in his pocket.

‘Come now,' Drinkwater snapped, ‘you've had your sport. Let the lady proceed.'

The man raised his stave as though about to strike. Drinkwater dropped the coin onto the back of the coachman. The glint of the half-crown caught the man's eye and he bent to pick it up, but Drinkwater's sword point caught the back of his neck.

‘You will let the fellow go, eh? And set him upon his box if you please . . .' He could feel the man's indignation. ‘I'm busy manning a King's ship, cully. Do you take the money and set the fellow up again.' Drinkwater sensed the man acquiesce, stepped back and put up his sword. Threat of the press worked better than the silver, but Drinkwater did not begrudge the money, disliking the arrogant use of corporal punishment for such trivialities.

The man rose and jerked his head at his accomplice. The coachman was hauled to his feet and bodily thrown onto the box. His hat had disappeared and he put his face into his hands as the crowd taunted him and cheered. Drinkwater turned to the window.

‘Would you like me to accompany you, ma'am?' The face was pale and round in the gloom. He could not hear her whispered reply but the door swung open and he climbed in.

‘Drive on!' he commanded as he closed the door. When he had pulled the blinds he sat opposite the occupant. She was little more
than a child, still in her teens. The yellow carriage lights showed a plain face that seemed somehow familiar. He removed his hat.

‘You are not hurt?' She shook her head and cleared her throat.

‘I . . . I am most grateful, sir.'

‘It was nothing. I think, ma'am, you should tell your coachman to be less eager to use his whip.'

She nodded.

‘Are you travelling far?' he went on.

‘To Lothian's hotel in Albemarle Street. Will that take you far out of your way? If so, I shall have poor Matthew drive you wherever you wish.' She began to recover her composure.

Drinkwater grinned. ‘I think that inadvisable. My lodgings are off the Strand. I can return thither on foot. Please do not trouble yourself further.'

‘You are very kind, sir. I see that you are a sea-officer. May I enquire your name?'

‘Drinkwater, ma'am, Lieutenant Nathaniel Drinkwater. May I know whom I had the honour of assisting?'

‘My name is Onslow, Lieutenant, Frances Onslow.'

‘Your servant, Miss Onslow.' They smiled at each other and Drinkwater recognised the reason for her apparent familiarity. ‘Forgive my curiosity but are you related to Admiral Sir Richard Onslow?'

‘His daughter, Mr Drinkwater. You are acquainted with my father?'

‘I had the honour to serve under him during the Camperdown campaign.' But Drinkwater was thinking he knew something else about Miss Onslow, something more keenly concerning herself, but he could not recollect it and a minute or two later the carriage turned off Piccadilly and drew to a halt in Albemarle Street.

After handing the young lady down he refused her invitation to reacquaint himself with the admiral.

‘I regret I have pressing matters to attend to, Miss Onslow. It is enough that I have been of service to you.' He bent over her hand.

‘I shall not forget it, Mr Drinkwater.'

Drinkwater forgot the encounter in the next few days. He became immersed in the countless details of preparing his ship for sea. He visited the Navy Board again, bribed clerks in the Victualling Office, wrote to the Regulating Captain in charge of the Impress Service at Chatham. He accrued a collection of books and ledgers;
Muster books, Sick and Hurt books, Account books, Order books, orders, directives. He had many masters; the Admiralty, the Navy Board, the Victualling Board, Greenwich hospital, even the Master-General of the Ordnance at Woolwich. Towards the end of November, he paid his reckoning, complaining about the exhorbitant charge for the candles he had burned in their Lordships' service. In company with a sprightlier Lieutenant Rogers he caught the Dover stage from the George at Southwark at four in the morning and set out for Chatham.

As the stage crossed the bridge at Rochester and he glimpsed the steel-grey Medway, cold beneath a lowering sky, he recalled the contents of a letter sent to his lodgings by Lord Dungarth. The earl had concluded, . . . 
I realise, my dear Nathaniel, that she is not what you supposed would be in my power to obtain for you, nevertheless the particular nature of the service upon which you are to be employed would lend itself more readily to your purpose of advancement were you in a bomb
. Virago
is a bomb in fact, though not in name. I leave it to your ingenuity to alter the matter
 . . .

Drinkwater frowned over the recollection. It might be a palliative, though it was unlike Dungarth to waste words or to have gone to any effort to further the career of a nobody. What interested Drinkwater was the hint underlying the encouragement.
Virago
had been built as a bomb vessel, though her present job was to act as a mere tender to the other bomb ships. That degrading of her made her a lieutenant's command, though she ought really to have a commander upon her quarterdeck. He could not resist a thrill of anticipation as the stage rolled to a halt outside the main, red-brick gateway of Chatham Dockyard. As they descended, catching the eye of the marine sentry, the wind brought them the scent of familiar things, of tar and hemp cordage, of stored canvas and coal-fired forges and the unmistakable, invigorating smell of saltings uncovered by the tide.

Despatching Rogers with their sea chests and a covey of urchins to lug them to an inn, Drinkwater was compelled to kick his heels for over an hour in the waiting room of the Commissioner's house, a circumstance that negated their early departure from the George and reminded Drinkwater that his belly was empty. In the end he was granted ten minutes by a supercilious secretary who clearly objected to rubbing shoulders with lieutenants, whether or not they were in command.

‘She is one of several tenders preparing to serve the bombs,' he
drawled in the languid and increasingly fashionable manner of the
ton
. ‘As you may know your vessel was constructed as a bomb in '59 whereas the other tenders are requisitioned colliers. Your spars are allocated, your carpenter's and gunner's stores in hand. The Victualling Yard is acquainted with your needs. You have, lieutenant, merely to inform the Commissioner when your vessel is ready to proceed in order to receive your orders to load the combustibles, carcases, powder and so on and so forth from the Arsenal . . .' he waved a handkerchief negligently about, sitting back in his chair and crossing his legs. Drinkwater withdrew in search of Rogers, aware that if all had been prepared as the man said, then the dockyard was uncommonly efficient.

Fifteen minutes later, with Rogers beside him, he sat at the helm of a dockyard boat feeling the tiller kick gently under his elbow. The wind was keen on the water, kicking up sharp grey wavelets and whipping the droplets from the oar blades. The sun was already well down in the western sky.

‘She's the inboard end of the western trot,' said the boatman curtly as he pulled upstream. Drinkwater and Rogers regarded the line of ships moored two and three abreast between the buoys. The flood tide gurgled round their bluff bows. Two huge ninety-eights rode high out of the water without their guns or stores, laid up in ordinary with only their lower masts stepped. Astern of them lay four frigates wanting men, partially rigged but with neglected paintwork, odd gun-ports opened for ventilation or the emergence of temporary chimneys. Upper decks were untidy with lines of washing which told of wives living on board with the ‘standing officers', the warrant gunners, the masters, carpenters and boatswains. Drinkwater recognised two battered and decrepit Dutch prizes from Camperdown and remembered laying
Cyclops
up here in '83. There had been many more ships then, a whole fleet of them becoming idle at the end of the American War. The boatman interrupted his reverie.

‘Put the helm over now, sir, if 'ee please. She be beyond this'n.'

Drinkwater craned his neck. They began to turn under the stern of a shot-scarred sloop. The tide caught the boat and the two oarsmen pulled with increased vigour as they stemmed it. Drinkwater watched anxiously for the stern of
Virago
.

The richness of the carved decoration on her stern amazed him. It was cracked and bare of paint or gilt, but its presence gave him a pleasurable surprise. The glow of candles flickered through the stern windows. The boat bumped alongside and Drinkwater reached for the manropes and hauled himself on deck.

It was deserted. There were no masts, no guns. The paint on the mortar hatches was flaking; tatty canvas covers flapped over the two companionways. In the autumnal dusk it was a depressing sight. He heard Rogers cluck his tongue behind him as he came over the rail and for a moment the two officers stood staring about them, their boat cloaks flapping in the breeze.

‘There's a deal of work to be done, Mr Rogers.'

‘Yes, sir.'

Drinkwater strode aft, mounted the low poop and flung back the companion cover. The smell of food and unwashed humanity rose, together with a babble of conversation. Drinkwater descended the steep ladder, turned aft in the stygian gloom of an unlit lobby and flung open the door of the after cabin. Rogers followed him into the room.

The effect of their entrance was instantaneous. The occupants of the cabin froze with surprise. If Drinkwater had felt a twinge of irritation at the sight of candles burning in his cabin, the scene that now presented itself was a cause for anger. He took in the table with its greasy cloth, the disorder of the plates and pots, the remnants of a meal, the knocked over and empty bottles. His glance rolled over the diners. In the centre lolled a small, rotund fellow in a well-cut coat and ruffled shirt. He had been interrupted in fondling a loosely-stayed woman who lay half across him, her red mouth opened in a grimace as the laughter died on her lips. Two other men also sprawled about the table, their dress in various states of disorder, each with a bare-shouldered woman giggling on his lap. There was a woman's shoe lodged in the cruet and several ankles were visible from yards of grubby petticoats.