Sailor of liberty, p.1
Sailor of Liberty, page 1
Sailor of Liberty
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Characters
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
PART TWO
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
HISTORICAL NOTE
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by J. D. Davies
Copyright
Cover
Table of Contents
Start of Content
For Wendy, for twenty glorious years!
Hep stourm ne vezer ket trec’h
(There’s no victory without fighting)
Old Breton proverb
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Throughout this book, the French characters use the words ‘English’ and ‘British’ interchangeably, as French people (and, of course, many other nationalities) often do to this day. Some of the names and words used by characters to describe different nationalities and races reflect the common, and in some cases universal, attitudes of both educated and uneducated people in the Western world in the 1790s.
Before the introduction of metric weights and measures in 1799, France had a byzantine and bewildering system of measurements with perhaps a quarter of a million different units in everyday use across the country. Derived from the system introduced by Emperor Charlemagne and loosely equivalent to that used in Britain, matters were complicated by the existence of (in some cases) several hundred names for the same unit across the different regions of France, while the amounts represented by the name of one unit might be wildly different between one province and another. Fortunately, the main units had names roughly similar to their English equivalents, and in most cases represented broadly similar weights, areas or distances: the pied, foot, was closer to thirteen inches than twelve, the toise, fathom, consisted of six pieds, the pouce was the equivalent of an inch, the livre, consisting of sixteen onces, was equivalent to a pound weight (but with many local variations), and so on. An exception was the pinte, which, confusingly, was more nearly equivalent to an English quart. There was nothing even roughly close to the English gallon, so I have used the French word velte, which corresponded to roughly 1.7 imperial gallons.
Characters
(Real historical personages are indicated by an asterisk)
The French
Philippe Kermorvant
In Saint-Malo and on the road west
Didier Larsonneur, seaman of the privateer Le Quatorze Juillet
Andre Defargues, innkeeper
Jean-Baptiste Carrier*, représentant en mission (representative on a mission) of the National Convention of the French Republic at Saint-Malo and then at Nantes
Etienne Pennec, old seaman
Gaspard Anquetil, lieutenant in the republican (Blue) army
Serge Retaillou, sergeant in the Blue army
At the Chateau de Brechelean and, later, in Paris
Alexandre Kermorvant, Philippe’s illegitimate half-brother
Leonore, Alexandre’s wife
Jacques Penhouet, steward of the estate
Martha, his wife, housekeeper of the chateau
Roland Quedeville, revolutionary
Madame Guitard, widow from Amiens
In Brest
Jeanbon Saint-André*, représentant en mission of the Committee of Public Safety at Brest
Justin Bonaventure Morard de Galles*, admiral commanding the French Atlantic Fleet in 1793
Valentine Hauchard, prisoner
Olivier and Roman, child beggars
Aboard the frigate Le Zéphyr
Martin Roissel, lieutenant de vaisseau, first lieutenant
Juan Ugarte, enseigne de vaisseau, second lieutenant
Claude-Marie Fingal, enseigne de vaisseau, third lieutenant
Jerome de Machault, lieutenant of Marines
Yves Guillaumin, maître d’equipage, sailing master
Marcel Garrigues, Marine sergeant and master gunner
Guy Payen, boatswain
Guillaume Fouroux, master carpenter
Valery Saint-Jacques, steward (purser)
Fabian Vaquin, aspirant (midshipman)
Jean-Jacques Lievremont, aspirant (midshipman)
Armand Carabignac, aspirant (midshipman)
Max Driaux, valet
Pierric Korbell, seaman
Arnaud Lucas, seaman
Morgan Launay, seaman
Gaston Mougenot, caulker
Paul Herbin, Marine
Aboard Patrie and at Nantes
Ama (Amandi), slave boy
Yves-Pierre Mercier, official
The Russians
Natasha, Philippe’s late wife
Ivan, his son
Count Bulgakov, Natasha’s brother
Pavel Chichagov*, admiral
Dmitri Kharabadze, naval captain
Grigor Ustinov, naval captain
The British and Americans
Edouard Kermorvant, Verité, Vicomte de Saint-Victor
Bridgetta Kermorvant, Philippe’s mother
Thomas Jefferson*
Captain Paul Storr, alleged spy in Brest
Edward, Lord Wilden, junior lord of the Admiralty
The Honourable John Wyndham Prentice, captain of HMS Chester
Lieutenant Humphrey Bloodworth, commanding officer of HM prison hulk Agincourt
Andrew MacCaughan, sergeant of Marines
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
To whichever high, eminent and no doubt virtuous, etcetera, dignitaries of the new-fangled French Republic who read (or, indeed, are able to read) these words, this letter serves to introduce Captain Philippe Kermorvant, and to recommend him for a command in your navy. By birth he is a man of honour, by upbringing a mongrel who somehow fetched up in Reval and then Saint Petersburg some years ago in the wake of that eminent and famous sailor, Admiral John Paul Jones. I understand that Kermorvant’s father has something of a name in your country as a ‘philosopher’, an odd trade, which I believe carries more weight in France than here in Russia. Thus his often strange opinions are apparently in accord with those of your republic, namely liberty, etcetera, equality, etcetera, etcetera, and he has an unaccountable urge to serve the cause of what he describes as his fatherland, especially since the unimaginable tragedy that I am sure he will relate to you. I have now sailed with him and fought with him for several years. He is a fine seaman, etcetera. A gallant warrior, etcetera. A loyal and dependable friend, etcetera, etcetera. You will not regret it if you employ him, for he is a good fellow despite not being Russian. If you reject him, though, I beg you to remember that he owes me money and implore you not to employ your fascinating new beheading machine to cut off his head.
Yours, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera,
Dmitri Ivanovich Kharabadze
Captain of the 110-gun line-of-battle ship Pyotr Velikiy in the service of Catherine, Empress of All the Russias, whom God and the archangels preserve
A lucky shot.
It could be nothing else. In such a fog not even the finest gun crew on Jones’s old Bonhomme Richard, nor even on ‘Black Dick’ Howe’s flagship far to the west, could ever have aimed blind and made such a devastating hit. A carronade, probably, one of the lethal smashers that were utterly deadly at close range. But even at point blank, such carnage could only have been achieved by a lucky shot.
The quarterdeck of the privateer Le Quatorze Juillet, six days out of Gothenburg and no more than six hours away from her home port of Saint-Malo, was an abattoir. Philippe saw the remains of Caradec, the captain, propped against the mizzen mast as though he were asleep. But the left side of his torso was gone, his organs oozing through the shattered remains of his ribcage. The remnants of his other watchkeeping officers and the helmsman were strewn across the deck. Somewhere astern, towards the hostile shore of Jersey, was the ship that had fired the devastating shot, hidden within the impenetrable bank of dense summer fog. A fellow privateer most probably, a corsair running out of Guernsey or Jersey to try to mop up any merchantmen that dared to run inshore, close to the Cotentin. Unlikely to be a ship of the British Royal Navy, Philippe thought. The rosbifs were hardly going to risk even a ketch so close to the shore of France.
Philippe knelt down by the body of young Morvan, a lively, carrot-headed fellow who had been keen to hear Philippe’s tales of battles in strange navies and faraway seas. There were still signs of life, notably a barely audible groan from his lips, but as he turned Morvan over he could see the large oak splinter protruding from the
Satisfied that the enemy was, for the moment, out of range and invisible, Philippe continued to survey the slaughter before him. Even through the deck above his head, moments before, he had heard Caradec’s sudden cry of ‘Alarm!’ Other urgent voices screamed that a hull had suddenly appeared out of the fog, very close on the starboard quarter. Then there was the unmistakeable sound of a gun firing, quite a large one, not a swivel, followed by screams, followed by silence.
The silence was the strangest thing. He had been in several sea-fights during the last sixteen of his twenty-nine years – the preliminaries, the engagement itself, the aftermath – but there had always been noise. The sounds of commands being issued, men hauling on ropes and singing songs of defiance, trumpets blaring, drums beating, guns being hauled into position, the gunfire itself, the splintering of wood, the pitiful cries of the wounded and dying; all these were as familiar to him as breathing. Here, though, there was only the lapping of the water on the hull as it moved slowly through the fogbound waters of La Manche (or, as the enemy arrogantly termed it, the English Channel), the gentle creaking of the hull and the rustling of the sails, the murmuring of the men behind him in the waist of the privateer. Barely audible were the identical sounds from the enemy ship, invisible somewhere in the enshrouding fog. Silence. Or at any rate, as close to silence as one ever got at sea.
Philippe stood, turned and looked for’ard. Until a few moments before he had been reading in his tiny cabin below decks. This was not his ship and not his fight. There had to be one officer left, someone with the experience and the competence to take command of Le Quatorze Juillet. She was undermanned and underofficered, thanks to the unexpected haul of Dutch merchantmen they’d encountered off Texel and the generous prize crews Caradec had allocated to take them into Dunkirk, but surely there had to be one man left who could take acting command, fight off the enemy ship if it came to it, and give the necessary orders to see them all home to Saint-Malo. Surely not every single man capable of standing a watch could have been on the quarterdeck when the enemy opened fire?
Yet all he saw were lubbers or ordinary matelots. In turn, they would have seen a man of slightly above average height who looked older than his twenty-nine years and wore his long chestnut hair knotted behind his head, as many of his old shipmates had been wont to do. A few of the braver men were inching towards the unspeakable slaughterhouse on the quarterdeck, but most hung back, their expressions utterly terrified.
An old and very short loup de mer, a veteran sailor with skin like a lobster who must have been fifty if he was a day, had evidently been elected as the crew’s spokesman. He took two steps forward.
‘We heard tell that you’re a seaman,’ said the oldster with surprising boldness, his atrocious French overlain with a thick Breton accent that had become slightly more intelligible to Philippe during the course of the voyage. ‘We heard tell that you’re a captain.’
‘I’m just a passenger,’ said Philippe, speaking slowly to ensure his French, still slightly inferior to his English despite everything, was absolutely precise. ‘I only took a berth with you because Captain Caradec agreed to give me a swift passage from Gothenburg.’
‘We know,’ said the old man, ‘but like I say, Captain Caradec said you were a captain, too. That you’d been captain of a man-o’-war. So we’re begging you… Captain. Take command. Get us away from those bastard English. Get us home to our wives and our children.’
Philippe cursed the fourth bottle of wine he had agreed to share with Caradec on the third night of the voyage. The Breton captain was an amiable man, and Philippe must have revealed more than he intended to. At the very least he had forgotten the old seamen’s adage that nothing aboard a ship was private and everything was overheard.
He did not want this. He had hoped that his arrival in France would be unobtrusive, the better to ease his passage through the watchful troops and functionaries of the new republic. Caradec had assured him that he could buy the silence of the right people, ensure that eyes were turned away at the appropriate moments. But Caradec’s shattered body was about to be bundled into a tarpaulin and his crew were asking Philippe to take command of his ship. No unobtrusive landing, then. Whether Philippe took command or not, Le Quatorze Juillet might be destroyed by the enemy somewhere out there in the fog bank, or she might be forced to surrender, in which case the delights of a pestilential English prison awaited the survivors. There was one alternative, though, and the more Philippe thought on it as he scanned the nervous faces and fearful eyes of the men before him, the more sense that alternative made.
‘Very well,’ said Philippe, laying his misgivings to one side. ‘You all swear to obey my commands without dispute or hesitation?’
He saw four score of nodding heads, and heard nearly the same number of mumbled Ouis or Breton Yas. Still he remained silent, assessing this crew and this situation. He thought of other ships, of other men, many of them now dead. He thought of one woman… now dead. Finally he nodded almost imperceptibly to himself.
‘Then I have the ship,’ said Captain Philippe Kermorvant.
‘So what are your orders, Cap’n?’ said the oldster, exhaling with relief. ‘Put on sail and try to outrun them? Wear away for Granville?’
Philippe considered the wind direction again, the probable position of the enemy, the state of the sails, the thickness of the fog. The likelihood was that the enemy had no idea what they had done, otherwise why would they have veered away after just one shot? The distant shape he had glimpsed through the fog seemed smaller than Le Quatorze Juillet, but it might well be nimbler, and her captain would certainly know these waters better than he did. He thought upon all these things, then came to his decision.
‘Non,’ he said, looking up at the only sails Le Quatorze Juillet bore aloft; staysails and topsails reefed to ensure they navigated the treacherous waters with utmost caution. Many a good ship had perished on the Chausey Isles, or so Caradec had said. ‘Diminuer les voiles!’
The French commands were still unfamiliar to Philippe, but he had to make the effort. After all, there would be no point in addressing this crew in Russian, or even the English of the Virginia tidewater. ‘Take in all sail, but in absolute silence, you hear me? A dozen men to cover the officers’ bodies, take them below and stow them on the orlop. With dignity, mind – with respect! Then all hands to your stations and await further orders.’
The old man assigned the detail that would attend to the dead. The rest of the crew dispersed to their stations, their definition of ‘absolute silence’ involving low murmuring and nods towards the strangely spoken unknown quantity whom they had just elected to the command of the privateer. His order to take in all sail, effectively taking all headway off the ship, had evidently caused consternation. If the enemy vessel had an entire battery of carronades, then surely Le Quatorze Juillet would now be a sitting target.
Only the old man was left in front of him. He had a few wisps of white hair left to him, roughly equal in number to the few teeth remaining in his mouth.
‘You know these waters?’ said Philippe.
‘Been out in ’em since I were six,’ said the oldster proudly. ‘First fishing with my old père and my big brothers, then on privateers or men-o’-war. Sailed with De Grasse back in the day, too, on the old Ville de Paris before she was lost. Came home after the American war finished.’
Philippe had once been under the lee of the huge Ville de Paris when she lay at anchor off Cape Henry, so he and this old Breton had probably been only a few feet from each other all those years before. But this was no time for reminiscences.
