The Invasion Year (22 page)

But, he could not do that. Once clear of the vicinity of the convoy, the privateer surely would head West for some American port to sell her off quickly, and trying to cut a course Westerly in hopes of stumbling across her and the privateer by mid-day tomorrow would be equally bootless. Besides, were there other privateers waiting to strike, he could not abandon the other helpless ships. He had to stay with the trade.

“Thankee, Captain Quarles! If the privateer schooner’s gone, ye may be safe for the night!” Lewrie called over.

“Ain’t you going after her?” Quarles demanded.

“I must stay with the convoy!” Lewrie shouted back. “And damned well ye know it … or should,” he whispered for his own benefit.

“Oh, too bad,” the Sailing Master said with a sigh. “But, we ain’t like that chap from the Bible … the Good Shepherd?”

“If we aren’t, Mister Caldwell, you can be damned sure that our Chaplain, Reverend Brundish, will
remind
us of it in his next homily,” Lewrie said with a groan.

“How did it go?” Caldwell maundered on. “He went after the last wee lamb, instead of being satisfied with protecting the rest of his flock?”

“A parable, sir,” Midshipman Houghton supplied. “It was one of Lord Jesus’ parables.”

“
Bugger
parables!” Lewrie snarled, stomping off aft before he fed his urge to strangle someone.

*   *   *

When it came time to round up the convoy at dawn, and chivvy them back into their proper columns after a long and fruitless night of wary patrolling, with the hands at Quarters and everyone sleepless and reeling, they could count up their losses.

Three ships had been plucked from the convoy during the night, by what was evidently a full three privateers, all of them schooners. The masters of a few ships that had escaped close encounters and had manoeuvred clear related breathless tales of being hailed and ordered to fetch-to by men who had declared their ships sailed with Letters of Marque and Reprisal issued by France. Some of those who had demanded surrender sounded French, but some sounded as English as plum duff!

Those losses had been galling enough, but to add to the misery there were the ones that had been damaged during the convoy’s panicky stampede to windward. The columns had shredded, wheeling away from the threat, bearing up towards the next column to starboard, and order had turned to shambles.

Another six vessels had gone aboard each other, tangling bow-sprits and jib-booms in another’s shrouds, or slamming hulls together and smashing chain platforms, which loosed tension on upper masts, and bringing them down in rats’ nests of sails, rigging, and spars. Those half-dozen not only had to be found, limping along astern of the rest, but rendered aid from sounder ships, or from the escort ships’ stores, as well.

“A very rum show, by Jove,” Captain Blanding mournfully said to his gathered captains early that next afternoon. “A rum show, I must say! And just how the deuce did they ever
find
us? Comments?”

No one wanted to touch
that
one. The sound of Captain Blanding stirring his cup of tea, that metal on china tinkling, was the loudest thing in
Modeste
’s great-cabins. Lewrie, Stroud, and Parham sat primly on collapsible chairs round Blanding’s settee, where their commander sprawled in untidy, and un-characteristic, gloom.

“Ehm…,” Captain Stroud finally broke the silence with a hesitant noise. “Might they have known to be on the lookout for a Summer trade, sir?”

“Uhm, possible, but…,” Blanding rejoined with a long sigh.

“Possibly the ‘runners,’ sir,” Lewrie felt just bold enough to add. “They were cruisin’ the likely course a trade’d take,
somewhat
close to Hatteras, and most-like stumbled into one of our ships that had broken away for Savannah or Charleston, asked a few questions of her master, and stood out seaward t’find us.”

“From leeward … on a night as black as my boots,” Blanding mused most miserably.
Tinkle-tinkle-tinkle,
went his spoon, though he had yet to lay it aside and take a sip. His cup and saucer rested on his substantial midriff. “And not one of our ships laid eyes on
any
of them, not even once!”

“Well, sir, once they’d taken a prize, they doused her lights,” Captain Stroud said. “As they had come in with all
their
lights out. Now, I thought I caught a
glimpse
of something standing Nor’westerly, but … by then I was caught up close to the convoy, too busy searching for a much closer threat … and, it was only a fleeting glimpse of something darker than the night … far off.”

Oh, I doubt that!
Lewrie sarcastically thought, about to snort and scoff out loud. Stroud
would
have something to say that would make him look industrious and alert, even if the others weren’t!

“After all the honour and glory we’ve won since sailing from Portsmouth last Spring, too,” Captain Blanding said, with another of those long, theatrical sighs. “It is just too bad!”

“Well, sir,” Stroud spoke up again, “we’ve taken rather a long jog East’rd since last evening…”

“Forced to,” Captain Parham stuck in, grimacing.

“… and our convoy will be East of the usual track, so if any more privateers are lurking about, that will make their hunt for more prizes much harder,” Stroud soldiered on, with a quick squint of impatience directed at Parham. “It’s good odds that we may escort the rest all the way to England with no more loss, sir.”

Bloody toady!
Lewrie thought;
He
had
to have been, t’be First Officer under that twit Fillebrowne
in Myrmidon!

“That very likely may be true!” Captain Blanding said, perking up a bit. “Thank you for the thought, Captain Stroud.”

Stroud bowed his head in acknowledgement, with a taut, pleased grin on his face. Lewrie couldn’t abide that.

“There is the problem, though, sir,” Lewrie countered, “for our ‘runners’ bound for New England ports. If there are any
more
privateers on the hunt for prizes, our East’rd jog means the ships leaving the protection of the convoy have further t’sail on their own to reach the safety of an American port.”

“There’s that, aye,” William Parham was quick to grasp. He all but winked at Lewrie as he continued. “Might it be necessary, sir, for the ‘runners’ who’ll be leaving us … given the circumstances … to provide at least one frigate to see them safe?”

“Break up the escorting force?” Captain Blanding exclaimed in surprise, sitting erect and thumping his boots on the deck cover, loud as a gun. “Detatch a fourth of our hard-pressed squadron? No no! It is simply not done! Should more privateers find us, where would we be, then, sir? Admiralty’d lop off my testi—”

“Ahem,” Chaplain Brundish admonished with a wee cough. The task of keeping Blanding from blasphemy, Billingsgate language, and scandalous foul words surely had been a chore, the last few weeks. Brundish’s warning sounded as if he sleep-walked through his watchfulness.

“You know what I mean, sir!” Blanding said, instead, harumphing and slurping tea to cover his slip.

No one eared for convoying, the Navy most of all, and there was many an officer charged with the thankless task who had become so frustrated and impatient with the snail’s pace and the un-ending “herding” and “droving” that they had just flown a bit more sail than their wallowing charges and sprinted clear of them … if only for a few precious hours of dash and wind in their faces. Some few had actually kept on over the horizon, leaving their convoys un-defended! And, had been put before a board of court-martial.

“Bedad, those dashed Americans!” Captain Blanding grumbled, and slumped back into his settee. “Lewrie. You say the one privateer was reported to you, she put about and hared off Sou’west?”

“Aye, sir.”

“For Savannah, Charleston, or a port in Spanish Florida, dash it,” Blanding decided. “Where, with the collusion of the Dons, or the Yankee Doodles, her prize will be sold … where the French privateer may re-victual, perhaps
re-arm
herself, in perfect safety! Bah!”

“Damn all conniving neutrals, I say!” Captain Stroud snarled.

“Ahem,” came a lazy admonishment from Brundish.

“Pardons,” from Stroud, equally perfunctory.

“Bless me, for I do not understand the sea, and the ways of a ship upon it as thoroughly as you gentlemen,” Reverend Brundish said with a shake of his head, “but … was there no way to chase after the privateer … privateers, pirates, whichever … and reclaim those three vessels they took from us, sirs?”

“Not without abandoning the rest to what could have been even greater loss, Reverend,” Blanding said for them all.

“Best would be some of our cruisers to lurk off every neutral port to stop and search in-bound ships,” Parham suggested. “Inspect their papers and seize every ship revealed as an enemy privateer, or a British ship they’ve made prize.”

“Impossible, unfortunately,” Blanding told him, sounding as if he was about to sink back into the Blue-Devils. “That would require a fleet twice as large as our present one … and would risk war with every nation that takes umbrage.”

“There’s risk enough of that, already, sir,” Lewrie added. “We stop and search every ship we come across that sails independent, and press suspected Britons from their crews.”

“Oh, that is simply too bad,” Reverend Brundish said with a sigh. “I expect shepherds and drovers the wide world over face this sadness over the loss of their cattle, their camels, or sheep…”

No, don’t let him speak o’ sheep!
Lewrie qualled inside.

“… and puts me in mind of one of our Lord and Saviour’s best-known parables…”

Damme, here it comes!
Lewrie thought;
I bloody knew it!

“… the one about the Good Shepherd, who…”

Do I
throw
something at him, will
that
stop his gob?

“Best not,” Captain Blanding said, making Lewrie gawp at him as if Blanding could read his thoughts. “Such can only assure me all the more of our failure.”

“Oh. My pardons, sir,” Brundish said, demurring.

Thankee, Blanding!
Lewrie gratefully thought;
By Jove and By Jingo, and Bedad! But, bless ye for it! Dash ye!

“We’ll lose no more, gentlemen,” Captain Blanding sternly told them. “We will keep all our ships together, with no detatchments for any reasons. And, we will see all our charges safely to port in England … or else!”

That promised an arduous, sleepless, and long task!

And I won’t have a speck o’ fun ’til it’s over,
Lewrie thought.

Though he still had his cats, and his penny-whistle.

BOOK III

Let us be master of the Straits (of Dover) for

six hours and we shall be masters of the world.

~NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

Baby, baby, naughty baby,

Hush, you squalling thing, I say;

Hush your squalling, or it may be,

Bonaparte may pass this way.

Baby, baby, he will hear you

As he passes by the house,

And he, limb from limb will tear you,

Just as pussy tears a mouse.

~BRITISH NURSERY RHYME

CIRCA 1803–1805

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Lewrie felt like breaking out his stock of champagne when some of the merchantmen departed the trade for the New England ports of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, or the mouth of the St. Lawrence river to land their goods in British North America. And when those vessels resumed passage to Great Britain, he was cheered by the thought that it would be warships of the North American Station based in St. John’s or Halifax that would be the ones to herd them.