A Sloop of War Read online

  ‘Your father’s plantation sounds unusually liberal in its regime,’ said Linfield. ‘If it is as well run as you claim, it would be quite the exception. But why does it require the plantation workers to be slaves? If the plantation is so attractive, let the slaves go free and work for your father voluntarily.’

  ‘That will not answer. I have always understood slavery to be the natural condition of the blackamoor,’ replied Faulkner. ‘Back in Africa it is quite endemic. Most of those that are transported to the West Indies are handed over to the slave traders by their black masters.’

  ‘Oh come, sir!’ said Linfield, becoming angry. ‘You cannot truly believe such things to be correct. It is your fellow man you speak of! Just because he may have been ill treated in Africa by leaders ignorant of all notions of civilisation cannot be justification for further ill treatment by we that claim to be civilised. No, the whole trade should be stopped without delay.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Sutton, with considerable relief. ‘Here is our dinner at last. Might we perhaps move the conversation on to a less contentious subject, gentlemen, before words are said that might be regretted later? Mr Linfield? Mr Faulkner? A glass of wine with you both.’

  *****

  ‘Good morning, Sedgwick, please come in,’ said Linfield, rising from his chair in the cramped little cabin that served as a dispensary on board the Rush. ‘What is it that ails you?’

  ‘Mr Green said I was to come and see you, sir,’ said Sedgwick, his frame filling the dispensary door. ‘It’s them wounds from my flogging. Most are healing just fine, but I have one that keeps opening. Mr Green says he is done with me coming on duty with blood on my shirt. He says he will have me flogged again, if I don’t get it seen to.’

  ‘Yes, I imagine that would vex most petty officers, even one who is less particular than Mr Green,’ smiled Linfield. ‘Come in, Sedgwick. Take off your shirt, and let me have a look at this deficient wound.’

  Sedgwick stripped off this shirt and Linfield looked again at his scarred back. In the light of the single lantern each ridge and trough of scar tissue was thrown into sharp relief, making the former slave’s back look even more disfigured than it had when he had last examined it on the main deck.

  ‘Yes, I believe I can see where the problem may lie,’ said Linfield as he ran a hand over the rutted flesh. ‘The cat has cut a little more deeply here, and with so many previous wounds the skin has failed to renew itself. I shall apply a brace of sutures to close the wound. That should answer.’ Linfield reached for a bottle and a cloth.

  ‘I shall first swab the area with some spirit of wine. It may hurt a little,’ the surgeon warned.

  ‘I doubt it, sir,’ said Sedgwick over his shoulder. ‘I don’t really feel much in my back anymore.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose you do,’ said Linfield, reaching for his needle and gut. ‘Which may be most fortunate, for my needle’s prick generally hurts rather more than the spirit. You would be surprised which burly stoics among the crew squeal when they feel it press.’ He applied the stitches to the wound, his patient quite inert as the needle went in. ‘You really cannot sense this at all?’ he asked.

  ‘I can feel the tug, sir, but nothing more,’ said his patient.

  ‘Well I’ll be damned,’ muttered Linfield. ‘It is as if I was mending a shoe.’

  Once Sedgwick had pulled his shirt back on, and had thanked the surgeon, he started to leave.

  ‘Sedgwick, come back for a moment,’ urged Linfield. ‘Take a seat again, I would talk with you.’ The sailor returned and perched on the edge of the cot.

  ‘I wanted to say how sorry I was for your punishment,’ said Linfield. Sedgwick shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Wasn’t your fault, sir, nor the captain’s,’ he said. ‘I started the fight with Hawke, so I needed to be punished. Captain had no choice in the matter.’

  ‘But I could have prevented it,’ said Linfield. ‘When I examined your back, I should have told the captain not to go ahead.’ Sedgwick shifted himself uncomfortably on the bed.

  ‘I don’t blame you for that, and certainly not the captain, sir,’ he said. ‘I owe him everything. If he had not taken me when Mr Robertson asked him to, I would have been handed back to Haynes, and that would not have ended well. He is as cruel a man as the devil. Twelve lashes is a cheap price to escape what that bastard would have had prepared for me.’

  ‘I might have stopped even that punishment,’ said Linfield. Sedgwick saw the frustration in the young surgeon’s face, and smiled at him.

  ‘Thank you for that, sir, but I am doing just fine,’ said Sedgwick. ‘My new life grows on me, and I have some mates now amongst the crew. All I truly want is to be accepted as part of the lads. Some of those around me are mates because they pity what has been done to me, like you did when you saw my back. Others they hate me because of my race like Hawke does. But I want to just be seen as me, once a slave, yes, but now a sailor and a fellow Rush. That has to mean no special favours. When I do wrong, I need to take my punishment like one of them too.’

  ‘God bless you, Able Sedgwick,’ said Linfield. ‘That was very well said indeed. You make me feel quite humble.’ He paused for a moment as another thought came to him. ‘The eloquence with which you speak has put me in mind of what an asset you could be for the abolitionist movement. You might tell me your story, and I could write it up as a pamphlet. It could be most effective in influencing the debate.’

  ‘Perhaps later, sir, once I feel I truly belong among the crew,’ replied Sedgwick. ‘In truth, being closeted with an officer writing away at books and the like won’t answer for doing that at all. May I go and rejoin my muckers now?’

  Chapter 6

  Chase

  The Rush had just gone about on the other tack when the sail was first sighted. She had ploughed up and down the same empty stretch of sea for several weeks now, like a prison guard patrolling a section of wall. St Lucia was over the horizon and the clouds that sat above the island were visible from deck most of the time. More concrete evidence of land came from the numerous frigate birds, hanging like black crucifixes in the sky, which drifted far out to sea on the wind to inspect the lonely little sloop. Occasionally the tops of St Lucia’s highest green hills were just visible as tiny green teeth, proud of the horizon at the extreme end of one run.

  ‘Deck there! Sail ho!’ bellowed the lookout.

  ‘Where away?’ yelled Sutton as he craned his head back to look up at the sailor standing high up on the royal yard.

  ‘Two points forward of the larboard beam,’ came the reply. ‘Royals just proud of the horizon, sir.’

  ‘Mr Preston,’ said Sutton to the midshipman of the watch. ‘My complements to the captain, and a ship is in sight off the larboard beam.’

  Clay came on deck, and sniffed at the air. The wind had been dropping for most of the morning, and now only a gentle breeze remained.

  ‘Any sign of her from the deck, Mr Sutton?’ he asked.

  ‘Not yet, sir,’ replied the lieutenant.

  ‘What do you make of her, O’Neil?’ Clay yelled up at the masthead.

  ‘Royals of a man-of-war for certain, sir,’ the lookout replied confidently. ‘A big one I should say, her being so clear this far away an all.’

  ‘Hmm, a large warship,’ muttered Clay. ‘Probably one of ours, Mr Sutton.’

  ‘Shall I put the ship about to close with her?’ asked his lieutenant.

  ‘No, we need to maintain our position watching Micoud,’ he replied. ‘Besides, on her current course we will learn more presently.’

  After an hour, the sail of the ship was visible from the deck. Slowly it grew as the two ships converged, the Rush slowly hauling herself into the wind, while the strange ship flowed towards them with the wind behind her. As more and more sails lifted over the horizon it became clear that the ship was moving as fast as she could in these light airs.

  ‘What do you make of her now, Mr Sutton?’ asked Clay as the two men studied the approac
hing ship.

  ‘Warship for sure, sir,’ said Sutton.

  ‘Which means nine chances in ten she is one of ours,’ said his captain, ‘what with most of the French and Dutch navies bottled up in their home ports by our squadrons.’

  ‘Unless she is a blockade runner, sir,’ suggested Sutton. ‘She might be a lone ship that has broken out in poor weather perhaps and headed across the Atlantic?’

  ‘She might indeed,’ said Clay. ‘What makes me a little nervous, Mr Sutton, is what will follow if you are correct and she proves to be a more powerful enemy. Let us be frank, to our tiny little Rush almost all enemies are more powerful. In which case how will we evade her with this damned foul bottom of ours?’

  ‘Well, let us hope she is indeed one of ours, or perhaps a neutral, sir,’ he replied. ‘For good or ill we shall know soon.’ The two men settled their glasses to watch the approaching ship once more. After a while Sutton spoke again.

  ‘She carries a fair press of sail, sir,’ he said, ‘All her plain sail, as well as studding ones, aloft and alow.’

  ‘Yes. She is a big ship too,’ added Clay, ‘Judging from the spread of her canvas, and her masts look very tall.’ He called up to O’Neil once more.

  ‘Masthead there! What do you make of her now!’

  ‘Deck there!’ yelled O’Neil. ‘I can see her hull. Looks like a ship of the line to me. Two decker I should say.’

  ‘Any colours visible?’ asked Clay

  ‘None flying, sir,’ came the answer.

  ‘Kindly bring her up into the wind, Mr Sutton,’ ordered Clay. ‘I am very uncertain of this ship.’

  ‘It is curious that she shows no colours, sir,’ agreed Sutton. ‘I can’t imagine one of ours doing that.’

  Gradually the strange ship’s hull rose up over the horizon, a solid dark block beneath the pyramid of white sails. Clay studied her with care, looking at her bows. He hoped to see if she had the round bows of most enemy ships of the line, or the open beak head of a British designed vessel, but the angle was wrong. He really needed to see her in profile.

  ‘Mr Preston,’ called Clay. ‘Please make the private signal, if you please.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ replied the midshipman, hurrying over to join the rating by the mizzen halyard. A few minutes later the signal was flying.

  ‘She is taking a deuced long time to reply, sir,’ muttered Sutton. ‘Ah, here it comes. What do you make of the answer, Mr Preston?’

  ‘It’s the wrong response, sir,’ replied the midshipman. ‘I think it may have been the correct response once, but not for a good eight months. Excuse me, sir, but Wilson here thinks he knows her.’

  Clay and Sutton both turned towards the signal rating, who had Preston’s glass in his hand. He had the look of a solid, intelligent seaman.

  ‘Beg pardon, sir, but we was berthed next to her in Port of Spain last winter, when the Dons was still on our side in the war,’ he said. ‘I reckon she is the San Felipe, seventy-four guns, from her rig.’

  ‘Well that comes as a relief,’ said Sutton. ‘At least the Spanish are neutral.’

  ‘They were neutral two months ago when we were last in Bridgetown, Mr Sutton,’ said Clay. ‘I doubt if they are now. If that ship is entirely innocent, why does she show no colours, and why is she attempting to signal to us using an old private signal? No, I am quite satisfied that ship wishes us ill. Kindly put the ship before the wind, if you please.’

  The Rush paid off, turning round till she had her stern towards the approaching ship. As she settled on her new course, the boatswain’s call trilled through the ship.

  ‘All hands! All hands to make sail,’ bellowed Carver, urging the top men up the rigging.

  ‘Every sail we own in the world, if you please, Mr Sutton,’ ordered Clay. ‘Let us see if we can outpace this Spaniard in these light airs, even with our foul hull.

  Sail followed sail as the Rush gathered speed. With the wind so light, there was no risk to the ship from such a mass of canvas. The huge main courses were set below her usual topsails, requiring the combined manpower of half a watch to sheet them home. Her small topgallant sails were deployed at the top of her masts, with her tiny royal sails added above those. Finally the long studding sail booms extended out from the yard arms, adding even these sails to the profusion.

  ‘Every square sail set, sir,’ reported Carver with satisfaction when the last studdingsail was drawing.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Carver,’ said Clay. He returned to watching the Spanish ship following in their wake. She was now well up over the horizon bearing down on them under her own mountains of canvas. Clay could see her tall, wide hull, ploughing through the sea. He could now even make out where her black hull was striped with two pale yellow layers, one for each of her gun decks. Sutton joined Clay at the stern rail, and pulled out his own glass. Both men were quiet for a moment.

  ‘She’s a seventy-four for sure, sir,’ said the lieutenant. ‘Dons carry thirty-six pounder cannon on the lower deck, eighteens above. She could sink us with a couple of well aimed broadsides.’

  ‘Well, we must hope her aim is off, Mr Sutton,’ replied Clay. ‘Or keep well ahead of her. Do you believe she is still gaining on us?’ Sutton watched her for a moment.

  ‘Yes, sir, I believe that she is,’ he said.

  ‘That is what I believe too,’ replied Clay. ‘Thank you for confirming it.’ He turned to Preston.

  ‘My compliments to Mr Appleby, and would you ask him to join us please,’ he said. ‘Mr Sutton, will you kindly order a cast of the log. I would like to know what speed we are making at present.’

  While the log was cast, the ship’s master came struggling up the ladder way and across to join Clay. He was even more dishevelled and breathless than usual.

  ‘You wanted me, sir,’ he asked. Clay paused to look Appleby up and down. He adopted a look of particular severity, largely to prevent himself from laughing. The master’s neck cloth was wound loose around his collection of florid chins before it hung down the front of his shirt, his hair stuck up wildly and his waistcoat had been sadly mis-buttoned, so that one was spare at the top of the garment, and a hole was spare at the bottom.

  ‘Sorry, sir, I was asleep in my cabin, and thought it best to come as quickly as possible,’ Appleby added to fill the uncomfortable silence.

  ‘In future, Mr Appleby, I would rather you appeared on the quarterdeck attired in the manner to be expected of a King’s officer,’ replied Clay. ‘I am content to wait for you a little longer if needs be.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ replied a chastened Appleby, re-buttoning his waistcoat. ‘Only Captain Parker was a rather less patient man.’

  ‘Well, I will forgive you on this occasion, then,’ replied Clay. ‘We are currently doing....’ Clay looked towards Sutton, who had just completed the cast of the log.

  ‘Two knots and one fathom, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Two knots and one fathom,’ repeated Clay. ‘I need you to lay me a course for Bridgetown, and let me have an estimate as to how long it will take us to arrive.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ said the master, raising a hand to touch his hat in salute, and realising just in time that he had neglected to put one on. After a moment of confusion he turned away and went below.

  When Appleby returned to the quarterdeck he was as well dressed as his ample frame would allow. He marched over to Clay and Sutton and touched his hat. Over Clay’s left shoulder the Spanish ship had grown noticeably closer.

  ‘The course you need is east by half south east, sir,’ he said. ‘If what little wind we have holds we should be there sometime tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Appleby,’ replied Clay. ‘Mr Sutton, make it so please. Let us see if we can outpace the San Filipe with the wind on our quarter.’

  The Rush swung towards distant Barbados, and settled on her new course. She was now broad reaching, with the wind flowing in from forty five degrees to one side, her fastest point of sailing. Like an obedient dog, the San Fili
pe turned onto the new course too.

  ‘Well, sir,’ said Sutton after a while. ‘I believe we may be going a little swifter, but I fear that the Dons are too. I am quite certain she continues to gain on us.’

  ‘Very well, Mr Sutton, let us lighten the load a little,’ said Clay. ‘Can you start the fresh water over the side. Just retain enough for two days.’ A jet of silver soon pulsed over the side as the men pumped away the excess water that the ship carried, but all too soon the jet came to an end.

  ‘Is that all, Mr Sutton?’ asked Clay, disappointed.

  ‘I fear so, sir,’ replied the lieutenant. ‘We have been on station for some ten weeks already.’ Both men turned back towards the Spanish ship. Starting the water had done little to stem the remorseless approach. She was now close enough for them to see more details, the catheads that stood out to each side of her bows like a pair of horns on a charging bull and the elaborate gilding as it winked in the sun around her figurehead.

  Clay felt a strange unreality about the situation they were caught in. All seemed well at the moment because the danger to his ship was unfolding so slowly. Yet unless he could check the remorseless approach of the Spaniard, the Rush was ultimately doomed. He trawled his memory for ideas, times in his past when he had faced similar dangers. It needed to be something that might give them an edge, something the Spanish could not respond to. After a moment he turned back to his friend.

  ‘Do you recall the time we became becalmed on the Agrius, chasing the Courageuse?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ replied Sutton. ‘We towed her for most of the day with the ship’s boats. But that will not answer today, sir. We have too much way on us to launch them, and I doubt we have enough time to hove to and do so. The Dons would be on us in a flash.’