Rocks and shoals, p.27
Rocks and Shoals, page 27
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Carlisle had been uncomfortable with the prospect of meeting his father the next morning. He wasn’t prepared for the almost fawning way in which the elder Carlisle deferred to him. He was clearly enormously attached to his namesake grandson and missed no opportunity in calling him by name. Carlisle was jealous as well because little Joshua was evidently at ease with his grandfather while he was still wary of his father. Perhaps it was too much to hope that he could mend the absence of nine months in a day, but still, it hurt.
‘Oh, he’ll scowl, but he’ll do nothing,’ said Joshua when Carlisle raised the subject of Charles Carlisle. ‘He’s jealous because you have everything and he has nothing, at least nothing that he now values. The plantation is mine, although he manages it.’
He looked reflective for a moment.
‘Aye, he manages it well enough, but it’s rooted in the past. There are plantations that produce far more tobacco for each acre under cultivation. I can’t do it, I’m too old, and Charles is unwilling.’
He gave Edward a curious, conspiratorial smile.
‘We live in separate parts of the house you know. We barely talk except for business. I hardly know what pleases him any longer. It’s strange, isn’t it? I’m the one growing old, contemplating my mortality as it were and yet I have so much to live for,’ he said bouncing little Joshua on his knee, ‘so much to live for,’ and he smiled down at his grandchild.
Carlisle didn’t follow up on the conversation. It was the wrong time, but he could hardly fail to catch the hint that the inheritance may not be as settled a matter as he’d imagined.
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‘See how the morning sun floods into the sitting room,’ said Chiara, ‘and the back of the house will catch the evening sun.’
‘It’s a beautiful house,’ Carlisle agreed. ‘Perhaps the coach house is a little inconvenient, but it doesn’t matter as we’d only need a coach for the governor’s palace and that’s so close that it would hardly be worth wheeling it out; we could walk.’
Chiara didn’t dignify his remark with either a word or a look. She knew that he was amused by her insistence on using a coach for even the shortest trip when she was in her finery. For the governor’s palace, she would use a coach even if she lived next door, and this house was almost next door. She was so certain that in this matter her husband was absurdly wrong, that she had stopped rising to this frequently offered fly.
‘Well, if you like it and if you are determined to live in Virginia, then certainly there’s no financial reason why we shouldn’t buy it outright. I know an attorney who will act for us – it’s a pity that George is already acting for the seller otherwise I’d have asked him – and I have no doubt that you can handle the affair here in Williamsburg in my absence.’
Chiara maintained a dignified silence in front of the young man who had opened the house for them, but inside her heart leapt. Carlisle wondered what he’d committed himself to and how on earth he could reconcile a home in Virginia with continued service in the navy. But then, he thought, this war wouldn’t last forever, and the chances were that he’d be cast ashore on half-pay in a year or two. Suddenly that prospect didn’t seem so dreadful.
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26: The Wide Ocean
Monday, Fifth of November 1759.
Dartmouth, at Sea. Bishops Rock, east by north 500 leagues.
Arthur Beazley swayed with the rhythmic motion of the Atlantic swell, his feet well apart and his eye fixed on the sight vane of his octant. He held the instrument in his right hand while with deft, minute movements of his left he followed the sun’s image as it ascended toward its zenith. He rocked the instrument from right to left as he swept the image of the sun in an arc across the horizon.
Midshipman Young stood behind the master with a slate and chalk, ready to record the altitude. By tiny increments, Beazley pushed the sight arm away from him until, for a few breathless seconds, the sun hung motionless in his view. Then, almost imperceptibly, it required the smallest backward movement of the arm to keep the sun on the horizon. It would rise no further today.
‘Noon,’ the master declared. He held the index of the octant up to his eye and studied the markings on the inlaid ivory scale.
‘Twenty-six degrees, twenty-five minutes, just a hair over.’
Horace Young carefully marked the sun’s altitude on the slate.
‘Eight bells!’ called Lieutenant Gresham to the mate of the watch.
The marine sentry was already at the belfry on the fo’c’sle. He struck the bell eight times in four groups of two: ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding.
It was indeed noon, both legally and astronomically. The watch was changed, and the off-going hands jostled down the main hatch to their dinner.
Beazley consulted a copy of the tables that he kept in his pocket and made a few secretive runes on the slate. He checked his figures then turned towards Carlisle who had been watching the way that the fore-tops’l tended to bag in the foot. He was considering whether the sailmaker should be asked to improve it.
‘Noon, sir,’ Beazley said, removing his hat. ‘Forty-seven degrees, fifty-two minutes north. By dead reckoning, we’re forty-six degrees west of Greenwich. A hundred and eighteen nautical miles run, noon-to-noon, sir.’
‘Thank you, Mister Beazley.’
‘That puts us at the latitude of the Île de Sein, sir, eight leagues south of Ushant. Our course is east-by-north a half east which will bring us to the Chops of the Channel in five hundred leagues or so.’
Carlisle knew all this. But he had no objection to such a thorough noon report. The latitude was certain; no competent sailing master in fair weather with a clear sky could mistake that. However, the longitude, he knew, was speculative at best. They were eighteen days out of Hampton Roads, and although they’d caught the Atlantic Drift within a day of clearing Cape Henry, the wind had proved baffling, and they’d made poor progress. They’d had fog off the Banks and no sight of land.
It was understood that when the master gave an opinion of the longitude, it was little more than a guess based on his estimate of the ship’s speed through the water, the strength of the ocean currents and the leeway that the stout two-decker made as the wind tried to push her sideways. They could easily be a hundred miles out in the longitude without the master feeling any shame, and it was only by running down the latitude that they could safely approach the Chops of the Channel in anything other than clear weather and daylight. And with the year grown so old, the chances were good that they’d sight neither the Scillies nor Ushant on their way up the channel.
‘I think we’ll continue to follow the great circle for now, Mister Beazley, and when we reach the height of Guernsey, we’ll run the latitude down.’
‘Aye-aye sir,’ replied the master, touching his hat. Carlisle had said just what Beazley expected him to say. They’d continue slanting northwards following the shortest distance between the two points on a sphere and then, for safety, follow the line of latitude until they struck soundings with the deep-sea lead. It was a tried and trusted method of navigation. It only needed a sight of the sun every few days to be as safe as any navigation could be, until a solution was found for obtaining longitude at sea.
Carlisle glanced at the traverse board. Then with a word to the second lieutenant who had just relieved Gresham as officer-of-the-watch, he dropped down the quarterdeck ladder and into the great cabin.
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Well, he was behind time, but his conscience was clear, or very nearly so, near enough for naval purposes in any case. He’d overstayed in Hampton Roads by a day so that his attorney could give him a statement of the asking price for the house on Governor’s Green. It still caused him to gulp whenever he looked at that enormous figure. It was less than a similar house in the home counties, but not by nearly as much as he had thought. He could afford it, certainly, but he was concerned at whether it would hold its value. On the face of it, the war was going well, and when the French threat of encirclement was gone, and the lands of the Virginia colony stretched across the vast continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific, surely the value could only increase. Or would that huge glut of land depress the price on the eastern seaboard? It was the toss of a coin, but Carlisle was nervous about gambling with the fortune that he had amassed. With the war likely to end in the next few years and with his free-roving days in a frigate behind him, he didn’t believe that he could make a second fortune quite so readily.
He couldn’t keep his mind on one thing. If some sharp-eyed admiralty clerk compared the ship’s log to his written orders, the day’s discrepancy would be noticed. He’d been careful to write a few words about delays in obtaining wood and water in Hampton Roads, and that would probably cover him. However, the fact remained that if their Lordships wanted to break a captain, they could always find something in his conduct, some misdemeanour brought to light in the log. And then there were his officers. They were all aware of the stolen day, and he didn’t yet know them well enough to be sure of their loyalty.
Enough! It was a fruitless line of thought. He was being altogether too careful. And yet…
‘Mister Halsey’s compliments, sir,’ said the nervous midshipman at the door, ‘the wind’s shifted a point to the west and he believes he can set the fore topmast stuns’l, sir.’
‘Have the people finished their dinner?’
‘Yes, sir, just five minutes ago.’
Carlisle stared at the youngster. He knew that Lieutenant Halsey was tender with the men’s welfare. Probably he’d concluded that the stuns’l could be set soon after Carlisle left the deck, but he’d waited until dinner was over. In principle, he had no objection to his officers thinking of the men’s welfare, but when it came to something as important as the speed with which they’d make an ocean passage, the decision should have been his. He’d have to lay down the law to Halsey one of these days.
‘The master’s on deck, sir,’ added the midshipman.
Now he knew he was being managed. Halsey had told the damned midshipman to mention the master if the captain looked as though he was hesitating whether to come on deck. The master’s presence was intended to keep him in his cabin.
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Without another word and with a look of thunder, he strode up onto the quarterdeck. The startled officers shrank back from him, hiding their guilty countenances by suddenly becoming busy in some matter that kept their eyes down; the compass, a strand of cordage on the deck, anything. Carlisle went straight to the traverse board. It told the story to one who knew how to read it. At one bell in the afternoon watch, thirty minutes after noon, the wind had veered a point, and since then he could see with his own eyes that it had veered another point. The stuns’l could have been set forty-five minutes ago. It wasn’t much, it was the loss of perhaps half a mile, but it was unforgivable.
‘Mister Halsey!’
‘Sir?’
‘Call the hands and set the fore topmast stuns’l. This instant Mister Halsey.’
‘Aye-aye sir.’
And Mister Halsey…’
‘Sir.’
‘The decision to defer the setting or reducing of sail is mine and mine alone. I will decide whether to delay so that the hands can finish their dinner. Is that quite clear?’
Carlisle was standing in the centre of the quarterdeck for full effect. He was heard by all the officers: the quartermaster, the steersmen, the marine sentry and the messenger boy. Another hundred or so observed the drama from the waist and the fo’c’sle but didn’t hear the words. They soon would. A ship was like a village in its appetite for gossip, and before long the whole ship’s company would know that the second lieutenant had been hauled over the coals.
Carlisle waited to see the stuns’l set, and he deliberately held his pocket watch in his hand to show that he wasn’t taking this routine drill for granted. It hadn’t needed both watches to be turned out, but he wanted to make the point about authority quite publicly. He was discovering that the command of a two-decker required a quite different leadership style to a sixth-rate frigate. He needed to be more aloof, the person who the lieutenants – and there were three of them rather than the one he was used to – turned to when a situation was beyond their competence. So much was clear, but what was also becoming clear was that the lieutenants needed to understand the limitations of their authority. This would be a salutary lesson.
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The sun was setting over their larboard quarter and, for the first time since Carlisle took command, Dartmouth was really showing her paces. Towards the end of the afternoon watch the wind veered another point westerly, and the fore topmast stuns’l had been joined by its counterpart on the mainmast, this time without any delay. Now the ship was bowling along with a bone in her teeth and a broad straight wake stretching far astern. The log showed nine knots, which was a little disappointing but probably all that could be expected of a two-decked fifty-gun ship that hadn’t seen a dock for nine months. A British third-rate with her longer waterline and taller masts would eat the wind from her and a Frenchman – well, a French third-rate would sail her under the horizon in little more than a watch.
‘Who has the first dog, Mister Halsey?’ Carlisle asked.
He could tell that the second lieutenant was still smarting from his admonishment; he walked stiffly, and his habitual smile was absent. Well, it was unfortunate, but an example had to be made, and Halsey had chosen the wrong moment to attempt to manipulate his captain.
‘Lieutenant Wishart, sir,’ he replied tonelessly.
‘Very well. My compliments to Mister Gresham and the master, and I’d be grateful if they would meet me in my cabin.’
‘Aye-aye sir,’ Halsey replied just as Wishart came onto the quarterdeck. Even he, the sole survivor of Carlisle’s little band of followers, couldn’t muster a friendly smile for his captain of four years. Almost the sole survivor, because at that moment Able Seaman Whittle came sauntering onto the quarterdeck to take his trick at the wheel. Whittle was impervious to Carlisle’s occasional tantrums, as he described them to his messmates.
‘Good day, your honour,’ he said as he passed. Carlisle forced a smile in return.
There were some crosses, Carlisle thought, that were easier to bear than others, and Whittle, for all his subversive good fellowship, could at least bring a smile to his face.
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How magical a smile was, thought Carlisle as he called for sherry for his two officers. If it wasn’t for Whittle, he’d be greeting his second-in-command and his sailing master with a grim, forbidding face. But the smile that he forced for the able seaman had lasted all the way down the quarterdeck ladder and into the great cabin. There, the sight of the sunset through the stern windows completed the transformation. Few people were immune to the restorative effect of seeing the sun kiss the horizon through the stern windows of a ship-of-the-line, and certainly not Edward Carlisle. Each and every time it reminded him of the impulses that had driven him to sea, the play of the light through the windows of the chapel in the College of William and Mary, and the feeling that there was a better life outside the schoolroom and the courthouse.
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Matthew Gresham had the physique of a prize-fighter or a travelling strongman of the sort that had occasionally visited Williamsburg in Carlisle’s youth. He had a dark complexion, unruly black hair and at some point, his nose had been broken, giving him a dangerous appearance. He’d been Captain Downey’s second lieutenant since the ship had been re-commissioned, but in those years, Dartmouth had seen little real fighting. She’d mostly been employed in protecting the more important convoys – the East Indiamen and the Smyrna trade – but only down as far as the Line or the Gut. Gresham, for all his seniority as a lieutenant, had never been to the Mediterranean, the West Indies, or the Baltic, let alone the East Indies or the Cape. There was nothing about his career that would suggest to their Lordships that he should be plucked out of the ranks of lieutenants and made a master and commander, no significant actions, no notable family and no spark of exceptional ability. Or almost none. From what Carlisle had seen so far, and from the hints dropped by the warrant officers, Gresham was quite an exceptional seaman. He was one of those rare officers for whom the proverbial dismasting on a lee shore held no terrors and who could give a ship an extra knot merely by judicious adjustment of the sheets and braces. In all other respects, he was a run-of-the-mill lieutenant and probably resigned to end his days at that rank.
That all being true and well known to Gresham himself, he had high hopes of his new captain. Word of Carlisle’s fighting ability had preceded him, and he had a reputation as a consummate and fortunate taker of prizes. Where Carlisle went, so the rumour ran, trouble followed, and victory was hard on its heels. For Gresham this opened two opportunities: first, that Carlisle might lead him into a famous fight that would make his name or, failing that, he would become moderately rich from prize money and could snap his fingers at the navy and its nepotistic ways.
So it was that Gresham looked eagerly at Carlisle as he came into the cabin. Zeal was written all over his pugnacious face as his massive paw enveloped the dainty sherry glass.
‘Your health, gentlemen,’ Carlisle said and raised his glass.
It was a decent sherry, not great, and Carlisle still missed his Madeira, but it had travelled well from its birthplace in the Andalusian hills behind Cadiz and was a suitable drink for the occasion.
‘Your best bet now, Mister Beazley, if you please. When will we reach Spithead?’
