A Sloop of War Read online

  ‘Upon my word, this is capital fish, sir,’ enthused the ship’s master. ‘Why this is better than a plate of Torbay joeys.'

  ‘I am glad to hear you say it, Mr Appleby,’ said Clay. ‘That sounds like high praise indeed, although I confess I am not familiar with the expression.’

  ‘Baby mackerel, sir,’ explained Appleby, through another mouthful of fish.

  ‘It seems strange to be dinning without any music,’ said Sutton. ‘On the Agrius we had the benefit of four Italian string players of some repute who served amongst our idlers. They would play most agreeably during dinner.’

  ‘How did they come to be on board?’ asked Faulkner, his interest piqued.

  ‘Well, we had had the good fortune to capture a privateer off the coast of Normandy, and among the crew were these four,’ explained Clay. ‘The captain of the privateer had a considerable passion for music, and had placed them on the ships books. They carried out no maritime duties, but instead performed for him. When we captured them, they offered to join the Agrius on the same terms, and the late Captain Follett agreed. They are still aboard her now, doubtless performing for Captain Parker.’

  ‘We could always call for O’Malley with his fiddle, and one of Mr Macpherson’s marines with his drum,’ suggested Sutton. ‘Although I fancy it would not quite answer.’

  ‘Speaking of captured ships, gentlemen,’ continued Clay. ‘We must toast the health of the conquerors of the Olivette.’

  ‘Hear him!’ called out Appleby, raising his glass. The four conquerors sat modestly by while Clay, Appleby and Faulkner drained their glasses.

  ‘It was a most savage fight, I collect, Mr Sutton?’ asked the master, deftly moving the conversation along.

  ‘It was indeed, Mr Appleby,’ answered the first lieutenant. ‘She had a prodigious large crew for such a vessel. Mr Macpherson and I were struggling to board her, for they matched us in force, and the crew were alert and waiting. It was fortunate that Mr Preston was able to enter via a gun port and catch them at a disadvantage.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Clay. ‘We have our next toast. The endeavour of Mr Preston, may we long be blessed with it.’ The others drank the midshipman’s health noisily as the wine started to take effect.

  ‘In truth, sir, it was actually Sedgwick who came up with the idea,’ said Preston.

  ‘I call that very handsome on your part to say so, Mr Preston,’ said Clay smiling at the young officer. ‘But it is still to your credit that you made such good use of Sedgwick’s valuable suggestion. There are many officers who might have thought themselves too superior to take advice from a rating.’

  ‘Would Sedgwick be the new negro volunteer, sir?’ asked Macpherson. ‘The hand who joined us in Bridgetown?’

  ‘That is so, Mr Macpherson,’ said Clay carefully. ‘He was recommended to us by a friend of Mr Linfield’s, and it would seem he is fast becoming a valuable addition to our crew.’

  ‘A word of caution, sir,’ said Sutton. ‘Sedgwick has just been reported to me by the Master at Arms. It would seem he was caught earlier today fighting with Hawke. There is some suggestion of provocation, but it appears that it was Sedgwick that initiated the disturbance.’

  ‘Well, that is a pity,’ sighed Clay. ‘Just as I am resolved to praise Sedgwick, I find I must now punish him. I make no doubt that Hawke was behind this. He was at the top of a list of potential troublemakers among the crew that Captain Parker left me. But let us not allow such matters to ruin our appetites, I pray gentlemen, for here comes our main course.’

  Hart came into the cabin at that moment, bearing a huge steaming pie.

  ‘It may not be as exotic a remove as flying fish,’ continued Clay, ‘but it is a favourite of mine. Hart does a very tolerable steak and kidney pie.’

  ‘Shall we attack Micoud again, sir?’ asked Appleby, accepting a large slice. ‘I understand there was other shipping still in the port, including a brace of schooners.’

  ‘Well, Mr Appleby, we must be a little cautious there,’ replied Clay. ‘I am as fond of a prize as the next man, but I fear the French will be rather better prepared for us next time. Having just stuck our hand into the hive and robbed it of its honey, it might be best to let the swarm settle before we do so again.’

  The conversation was now flowing around the table, allowing Clay to look over his officers as he spread his portion of pie out to cool. He was reasonably satisfied with what he saw. Sutton was talking to Macpherson about backgammon. Both men, it would seem, had a passion for the game, but had been unaware that the other had any interest before now. Appleby was talking to the two midshipmen, telling them a story from his time in a merchantman before the war. All his guests seemed animated, except for the purser who was sitting aloof, sipping at his wine. Clay sighed to himself. It was time for him to be the good host.

  ‘Mr Faulkner!’ he called. ‘A glass of wine with you.’

  ‘Why thank you, sir,’ replied the purser, coming out of his reverie at the sound of his name, and draining his glass.

  ‘So tell me, Mr Faulkner, how did you come to be in the navy?’ asked Clay.

  ‘I am but a recent member of the service,’ he explained. ‘By the time I decided to go to sea I was already in my late twenties, so rather too old to follow the tarpaulin route of learning to reef and splice and what not. Could you imagine my abiding in the gunroom with Mr Preston and Mr Croft?’

  ‘No, I am not sure that I could,’ said Clay, exchanging glances with Sutton. Clay wondered if the purser was aware that this was precisely the route that they had both followed. He listened for and thought he heard a hint of distain in Faulkner’s voice.

  ‘I have always had a facility with numbers,’ he continued. ‘So my father bought me a bond as a purser, and I joined the Rush two years ago.’

  ‘I collect then that your father is a man of substance?’ asked Sutton. ‘I had wondered why your uniforms were so excellently tailored. It will be a relief to find that they have not been funded at the expense of the ship’s finances.’ The others all laughed at this, and after a moment Faulkner joined in.

  ‘He is tolerably well off, to be sure,’ he said, as the laughter died away.

  ‘Well, I am delighted to have you on board, Mr Faulkner,’ said Clay with a smile. There is more to you than meets the eye, Charles Faulkner, Clay thought. I wonder why you really came to sea?

  Chapter 5

  Punishment

  It was raining. In a steady patter it drummed on the sails and collected in beads of silver that flowed down the lines of rigging. It dripped down onto the normally gleaming white deck and turned the planking to a dull shade of grey. It fell on the ranks of sailors, rolling off their tarpaulin hats and soaking their pig tails as they stood in a box around the upturned grating that had been lashed to the main mast. It splashed off the officers’ oilskin coats.

  Clay stood by the quarterdeck rail, staring towards the horizon. The low cloud that hung over the ship had turned the sea from its usual deep blue to jade. Over the horizon was St Lucia, and the bay of Micoud. The Rush was once more positioned just below the horizon, out of sight of land, but ready to pounce on any shipping that tried to enter. Assuming they could catch them, Clay reminded himself, glancing down towards the weed that still encased the hull below the waterline. Sutton marched up to him and saluted smartly.

  ‘All hands assembled to witness punishment, sir,’ he said. Clay looked at his friend, his expression blank.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Sutton,’ he replied. ‘I shall come directly.’ With a final glance out to sea, Clay turned from the rail and walked past the scarlet lines of the marines drawn up at the front of the quarterdeck. He went down the ladder way and out onto the main deck. In the centre of the box of men stood Hawke and Sedgwick, each between a pair of marines. The master at arms stood to one side, together with Miller, one of the boatswain’s mate. Clay noticed with distaste he was fingering the red cloth bag that held the cat-o’-nine tails.

  ‘Carry on, Mr
Honeyman,’ said Clay.

  ‘Joshua Hawke, ordinary seaman and Able Sedgwick, landsman, sir. Both men are charged with fighting contrary to article twenty two of the Articles of War,’ bellowed the master at arms, as if his captain was somewhere high in the rigging, rather than three feet away.

  ‘Will you be so good as to read that article to the accused, if you please,’ said Clay.

  ‘If any person in the fleet shall quarrel or fight with any other person in the fleet, or use reproachful or provoking speeches or gestures, tending to make any quarrel or disturbance, he shall, upon being convicted thereof, suffer such punishment as the offence shall deserve.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Honeyman. What have you to say for yourself, Hawke?’ asked his captain. Hawke stared out past Clay’s shoulder. His lip had been cut badly, and one eye was closed and purple with bruising.

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ he growled.

  ‘Does anyone wish to speak on this man’s behalf?’ Clay called out. No one moved. After a pause he carried on. ‘Very well,’ said Clay. ‘Your disciplinary record is poor, Hawke. In the last twelve months Mr Honeyman tells me you have been punished for fighting on two separate occasions before today. You need to endeavour to control your temper in future, is that clear?’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ replied Hawke, his face bearing not the faintest trace of remorse. Noticing this, Clay steeled his heart and added a dozen lashes to the punishment he had already decided on.

  ‘Three dozen lashes,’ he ordered, and then turned to the next prisoner. ‘Now Sedgwick, this is all very vexing. I had thought you to be adapting to your new life in a satisfactory way, and now I find you have been fighting with a shipmate. What have you to say?’

  Like Hawke, Sedgwick stared out past Clay’s shoulder. His expression was one more of sadness than anger. His face, too, was bruised and cut.

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ he replied.

  ‘Does anyone wish to speak on this man’s behalf?’ Clay called again. This time Croft left his place in front of his division and marched over.

  ‘Sedgwick is new to the service and our ways, sir,’ he began. ‘Apart from this incident, none of his officers have found him wanting in the diligence with which he performs his duty. Mr Preston also wishes me to commend his actions in the recent attack on the Olivette.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Croft,’ said Clay. He then turned to the prisoner.

  ‘As this is your first offense, and taking into account the handsome fashion in which Mr Croft spoke up for you, I am prepared to be lenient. I shall live in the hope that you will mend your ways, and I shall not find you come before me again. A dozen lashes.’

  Hawke was punished first. He was stripped to the waist, and tied by his wrists to the grating. The first few dull thwacks of the cat just reddened his already scarred back, but soon cuts began to appear, and he writhed in agony. The rain washed a steady stream of blood down his back, onto his trousers and eventually down to the deck.

  ‘Three dozen, sir,’ said the boatswain’s mate, once the punishment was complete. He stood to one side of Hawke and washed the fragments of his skin and blood from the leather tails of the cat in a bucket of sea water.

  ‘Thank you, Miller,’ replied Clay. ‘Cut him down if you please, Mr Honeyman.’ Hawke staggered a little as he made his way below, helped by two of his mess mates, but his head was held high and defiant. That punishment will have done no good at all, thought Clay.

  Sedgwick’s shirt was removed, and he too was lashed onto the grating. A gasp went up from the assembled seamen. Several men pointed, and an angry murmur rolled along the ranks.

  ‘Silence there,’ ordered Sutton, and the sound petered out. Clay strode forward to see what the men were looking at. Sedgwick’s skin was a webbed mass of scar tissue, pink and red in contrast with the brown of his arms. The wounds ran in all directions and covered every inch of his back. In all his time in the navy, Clay had never seen the like before. It was the back of a man who must have been flogged dozens, perhaps hundreds of times.

  ‘Mr Linfield!’ called Clay. ‘Kindly examine the prisoner, and confirm if he is fit to receive punishment.’

  The surgeon walked across, and ran his hands over Sedgwick’s back, looking closely at his scars. After a while he came back to where Clay stood.

  ‘Physically he is fit,’ began Linfield. ‘But surely simple Christian charity dictates that this man has been punished enough in his life...’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Linfield,’ interrupted Clay. ‘Miller, proceed with the punishment, if you please.’

  Another angry mummer rolled around the deck, quickly silenced by Sutton once more. Soon all that could be heard was the steady sound of leather on flesh.

  *****

  The wardroom of the Rush was a cramped space at the very stern of the ship. It was tucked underneath the captain’s suite of cabins on the deck above, but had no natural light at all, placed as it was on the waterline of the ship. Down each side of the space were the officers’ cabins. They were tiny dark boxes just big enough to contain a cot, a desk and a wash stand. The space that remained was filled by the wardroom table, around which the officers were now seated.

  They had grown accustomed to speak a little louder than was normal in order to be heard. The wardroom was never quiet, and the officers were in constant competition with the groan of the ship’s timbers and the creak of the rudder positioned just behind the room. Over all was the endless churn of the ship’s wake as it boiled past them like a millstream just a matter of feet from where they sat. It was the ship’s surgeon who was trying to make himself heard today.

  ‘I still hold that Christian decency demanded that the captain should have commuted the punishment in some way,’ said Linfield to his fellow officers as they waited for their dinner to appear.

  ‘But Jacob, you gave him no choice,’ said Charles Faulkner, sipping at his wine. ‘He had already passed sentence. Once you pronounced that the blackamoor was fit to be punished, there was very little that Pipe could have done.’ Sutton looked up sharply.

  ‘Mr Faulkner,’ he protested. ‘Kindly do not refer to the captain with such a want of respect. I am aware that the crew call him by that name, but even they have the delicacy not to do so in front of their officers.’

  ‘Your pardon, sir,’ replied the purser. ‘I was not thinking.’

  ‘The point you make is sound though,’ continued Sutton. ‘Unpleasant as the state of Sedgwick’s back may have been, he was guilty of the offence. There are many ships where he would have received a much harsher punishment. I doubt if Captain Parker would have been so lenient, were he still in command. I know the captain well, and he is no friend of the cat. When he was first lieutenant on the Agrius he would endeavour when he could to use other punishments. You would be surprised how effective a couple of hours of cleaning the heads can be as a deterrent.’

  ‘Why do you hold he used the cat to punish this case then, John?’ asked Macpherson.

  ‘Because it was fighting, Tom,’ replied Sutton. ‘And a disturbance hot enough for knives to have been drawn. No captain can allow such an act to be tolerated on his ship.’

  ‘That is true,’ replied Linfield, running a hand through his sandy hair. ‘But I cannot but reflect upon the savage way Sedgwick must have been treated during his time as a slave. The state of his back bears shocking witness to that truth. I have rarely seen such a profusion of lacerations.’

  ‘Well, for better or worse it is done now,’ said Sutton, looking towards the wardroom door for the arrival of their meal.

  ‘But is this episode concluded?’ persisted Linfield. ‘I understand that it was Hawke who provoked the fight by goading Sedgwick about his past. I observed his countenance after punishment, and it did not look to me as that of a penitent determined to change his ways.’

  ‘Sadly that is probably so, Jacob,’ said Sutton. ‘Ne'er do wells like Hawke seldom respond to yet another flogging. But if it is any conciliation to you, these matters have a way of resolving
themselves on board a ship, particularly a small one like the Rush. I would not be at all surprised if I was to receive a request for a transfer to another ship from Hawke before too long.’

  ‘Really?’ said the surgeon. ‘But he has served on the Rush for years. Why would he ask for a transfer?’

  ‘I suspect he will be given little choice,’ replied Sutton. ‘I have spent most of my life among sailors. They may not conform to your notions of Christian decency, but a ship’s company can display a sense of natural justice every bit as strong. You heard the men’s reaction earlier when they saw Sedgwick’s back. They have little love for Hawke and his bullying ways - consider how not one man among them was prepared to speak up for him. They will not come to their officers for a solution, for that too would be against their code, but I expect matters to be resolved none the less.’

  ‘Well, I for one will be pleased if that poor man obtains relief,’ replied the surgeon. ‘The sooner slavery is abolished in all its forms the better, I say.’

  ‘Do you now?’ replied Faulkner. ‘Yet who will then work on my father’s plantation in Jamaica if that was the case?’

  ‘Upon my word!’ exclaimed Macpherson. ‘You have kept that very quiet, Charles.’ The purser shrugged before he replied.

  ‘Mr Linfield has very decided views on slavery,’ he said, ‘and I have not wanted to cause undue friction in the wardroom by expressing my opposition to them, but my point remains. My father does have an interest in a plantation in Jamaica. I understand that it is a well regulated concern, in which the slaves are under the protection of a kind master. It is my belief that they enjoy as great, if not even greater advantages than they would have done when under their own despotic governments back in Africa. For one thing they are exposed to Christian teaching that is like to save their souls from damnation.’