Fletcher's Fortune Read online

  A heavy dread settled on the ship as the savage ceremony took its course. Mr Shaw the Bosun produced his cat from a red baize bag and handed it to one of his mates. The Surgeon poked Sammy to see that he was fit, and all the colour drained from the faces of the young mids. The Surgeon nodded, Mr Williams nodded, and the two marine drummer boys beat a long roll.

  Nathan Miller, bosun’s mate, drew back his arm and laid on with all his might. Nine lengths of knotted log-line whistled through the air to land with a flat smack across Sammy’s back. A grunt was driven from Sammy’s lips by the force of the blow.

  “One!” cries the Bosun, and Miller drew back his arm again ... Smack! And red lines began to show on Sammy’s back flecked with drops of blood where the knots had bitten.

  “Ahhh!” says someone in a sick faint and one of the drummers collapsed like a corpse and his drum boomed hollow on the deck. A moan arose from Johnny Basford standing near me and I saw that he was beside himself with horror, face in his hands and retching heavily. But the other drummer kept going and Miller delivered the whole sentence of thirty-six strokes. Before he was done Johnny had joined the drummer boy on the deck and I felt as if the sky was whizzing round me in circles. Sammy’s back was raw meat and the deck was speckled red for ten feet all around.

  But Sammy never cried out from first to last, and when they took him down, he stood up swaying slightly and blinked at Lieutenant Williams.

  “Mr Bone,” says the Lieutenant, “I do hope that I shall not have to flog you again this commission.”

  “No sir,” says Sammy. “Won’t be necessary again.” Lieutenant Williams nodded in approval.

  “Mr Bone,” says he, “I congratulate you on your accurate assessment of risk from first to last of this business.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” says Sammy very carefully. Then the Surgeon took him off to attend to his back and we were dismissed. Later, Sammy was welcomed back in triumph to the lower deck, his credit raised still higher than it had been before. As for Mr McFee, he was incensed at the lightness of Sammy’s punishment and even more so by Lieutenant Williams’s remarks at the end of it, for he knew that the same offence against any other warrant officer would have seen Sammy at the end of a rope. In all truth nobody loved a Purser.

  So he kept up his games with our food and other supplies. But aboard that ship, he was a figure of fun for ever after and even the Officers called him “Judas” behind his back. We all told Sammy how clever he’d been, but he didn’t agree.

  “Bah!” says he. “‘Assessment of risk’ be buggered! I thought it’d be a dozen. Or two at the most. Bleedin’ officers; I think some of ’em likes to see a flogging.”

  10

  I have always thought it an error to place any reliance whatsoever in my little brother.

  (From a letter of 24th February 1793, from Alexander Coignwood aboard Phiandra at Portsmouth, to Lady Sarah Coignwood at 14 Dulwich Square, London.)

  *

  Lady Sarah Coignwood was forty-seven years old. But nobody would have believed it. Her women friends would have said thirty-five and her men friends never considered the matter. When they thought about Lady Sarah, which they did frequently and with glazed eyes, their minds were on other things. Consequently she could have any man she wanted including His Royal Highness Prince George, heir to the throne of England.

  She’d picked him out with the particular purpose of spiting his mistress-in-residence, Mrs Fitzherbert, since that lady had previously made it her business to remind London that Lady Sarah’s husband was in trade, thus excluding Lady Sarah from the best society after years of working her way in. Consequently, reports of the fits and hysterics thrown by Mrs Fitzherbert when she learned that her beloved “Florizel” (her ridiculous name for him) was betraying her, came as a soothing balm to Lady Sarah’s social check.

  Also, at thirty-one the Prince was tall, handsome, and partial to older women. So for a while he’d been amusing in himself. But Lady Sarah found him spoilt and immature, with a pitifully simple range of physical desires. What’s more he was growing fat and was morbidly sensitive about it. In fact he flew into a rage if anyone so much as mentioned fatness in his presence.

  This proved useful, for when Lady Sarah tired of him she was able to get rid of him with a simple note. This was sent in response to a typically gushing invitation from the Prince which she read aloud to her friends before reading them her own reply. Nobody laughed when they heard what she had written but they could hardly contain themselves when they saw it. It read:

  Lady Sarah regrets that she is unable to accept any further invitations from the Prince of whales.

  Every salon in London had the pun within an hour and all the wits of the day kicked themselves for not thinking of it, and many later claimed it as their own.

  So ended the brief liaison with Prince George. But Lady Sarah never missed him for an instant. Casting aside a used lover was not the least hindrance to her life’s work of indulging her greedy appetites. The only real check to that was the infuriating problem of debt. Over the years, she’d spent a vast amount of money in the fashionable centres of London and Bath. But since she had no actual money, everything had been on credit. Until recently this had been easy, as everyone assumed that on Sir Henry’s death, she would inherit. But the old monster had been burning in hell nearly a month now, and the tradesmen were stirring. They were still polite but were beginning to present long and enormous bills.

  These bills were the main, though not the only, cause for the filthy black anger that hung over Lady Sarah today. She cursed at the thought of them and paced up and down her expensively furnished salon in her expensive new house in Dulwich Square. Usually, the salon was her special delight, but not today. She’d sent away the usual hangers-on and there was no comfort in an empty room and she couldn’t bear it a moment longer. She rang for a servant.

  Instantly there came a scampering of feet and the door opened. As Lady Sarah had expected, it was Betty the new girl, fresh from the country with plump round limbs. Now of course, there could be no question of Lady Sarah’s keeping ugly servants and, conversely had the girl been any serious competition to Lady Sarah, she’d not have stayed one second in the house. But Betty was a happy little creature with a golden smile that men were stupid enough to find appealing. And she was only sixteen.

  Betty dropped a pretty curtsey, and carefully delivered the phrase she’d been taught.

  “What is my Lady’s pleasure?” she asked.

  Her answer came quickly. In rapid succession Lady Sarah found fault with her, berated her, threatened to turn her out on the streets, slapped her face thoroughly and sent her away in tears.

  Immediately Lady Sarah felt better and found a mirror to admire herself in. She adjusted the cascade of little curls from the high Grecian coiffure and smiled at her gown. War or no war, she was ahead of the town with the next Paris fashion and it suited her very well. Translucent muslin with bare arms and a half-exposed bosom might not be comfortable in February, but what was comfort compared with fashion?

  Later, when her son Victor glided into the room, she was quite cheerful.

  “Dear boy!” she said and kissed him. “Sit beside me and tell me everything.” The dear boy fiddled with his cane with one hand and his fancy buttons with the other. He hadn’t much to tell and all of it was bad.

  “So,” his mother said, when he’d finished. “You had no more success with the lawyers than I had.”

  “No,” he said. “In principle the 1775 Will might be overturned since it denies us our rights as the natural heirs. And naming a bastard as the heir is an affront to decency which might bring our case more sympathy in the courts. But it would be a long hard fight and ... ” He paused.

  “And,” continued Lady Sarah, “none of them will take up the case without sight of ready money.”

  “No,” he said. “Our debts are public knowledge.”

  “Well,” she said, pausing deliberately to observe the effect of her words, “it
is as well that I have another son to rely upon ... ” At once, Victor’s weak little face twisted with envy and malice.

  “Damn him!” he said. “Alexander! You always did favour him over me.”

  “Not at all, my love,” she said, kissing his hand and stroking his hair, “I love you both ... sometimes one, and sometimes the other.” Victor snatched his hand away and she laughed.

  “Never mind, Victor,” she said, “I received a letter today from your brother, my dear Alexander, aboard his ship Phiandra at Portsmouth. Wouldn’t you like to read it?” She picked up the letter from a nearby table and waved it just out of his reach. She’d always played them off against each other and never tired of tormenting them, especially Victor who always rose so easily to the bait.

  “Give it here!” he said.

  “Ask properly,” she said.

  “Please,” he begged, and she let him have it. He read the letter hungrily and when he put it down his eyes were round in wonderment.

  “Merciful heavens!” he said. “The words are guarded but do they mean what I think they mean?” Lady Sarah sneered.

  “Would you rather he put it in plain words for anyone to read?” she said.

  “But this is ... murder!” said Victor, dropping his voice. “He incited the Captain of the Bullfrog to murder the Brat, and he’s actually killed this press-gang Lieutenant with his own hand! My God, we’ll all hang!” He fell back in the divan, trembling and dabbing at his brow with a laced handkerchief.

  Lady Sarah looked at him and frowned. With Victor it was always hard to tell whether he was truly in the grip of an emotion or simply enjoying the pretence of it. Probably even Victor didn’t know. And for all this display of feebleness she knew that he could be inch for inch as ruthless as Alexander when he chose to be.

  “What else could he do?” she said, finally. “How else can we get rid of the Brat? Do you think he’ll give up his inheritance for the asking? Do you think we should simply have gone to him and proposed that we take the fortune while he grinds his life away in trade?” Victor smiled.

  “That’s better,” said his mother. “Strong action was needed and it’s hardly Alexander’s fault if one agent failed him and another had a loose tongue. Alexander did what was necessary. He’s got the Brat into his power, into his own ship. And a ship is a dangerous place, especially in time of war: with luck a French cannonball may do the thing for us!”

  She leaned across and began to kiss his cheek, very gently, which she knew he liked. Victor sighed in contentment. She continued for a while and then, when Victor was nicely relaxed, she took the letter and made a play of reading it. She whispered softly to him.

  “Have you seen how cleverly Alexander predicts your failure with the lawyers?”

  11

  Sammy was tough as an old boot and recovered fast. Perhaps his long survival as a seaman was explained by unusual powers of recuperation. Either that or it was the fresh food we got in harbour that helped him. The one who suffered most from Sammy’s flogging was Johnny Basford. He had a deep horror of flogging and went moping around for several days, whining and mumbling about his Pa and the dreadful beltings he’d received as a child. Usually, even if you asked him, he knew nothing about any parents he might have had, so it was a singular thing for the memories to be hauled out of his mind.

  But soon enough, Johnny and all the rest of us had no time for moping, for on the 24th the Captain came aboard and preparations for sea were driven to a new and furious pace. We got the warning early that day when a new Lieutenant came out from the shore. He was a grey, dowdy little man in early middle age. He puffed with effort as he clambered over the side. Norris and I were told to haul his sea-chest aboard from the boat that had brought him out, so we saw him present himself to Lieutenant Williams.

  “Lieutenant Haslam come aboard, sir. I’m to be third. Beg to report that Captain Bollington is arrived in Portsmouth and resolved to sleep aboard tonight ... ”

  “Damnation!” says Lieutenant Williams, and a look of annoyance crossed his face. He was pondering on a thousand things not yet ready. “Wouldn’t you think he’d give a fellow more time?” says he, and over the next few hours he drove the crew into a pandemonium of effort, scouring and polishing to make the ship fit for the imminent arrival of the almighty one.

  When the great moment came, the entire ship’s company was mustered in its best clothes, gleaming and scrubbed, with the ship in a glittering state of cleanliness and a stairway with whitened ropes and shining brass stanchions, rigged on the shoreward side so that the Captain should not have to scramble aboard like a mortal.

  “Boats putting out from shore, Mr Williams!” cries the masthead and those with telescopes raised them as one, like marines giving a volley. Then we stood in silence and waited. Sammy had told me all about captains and I knew what thoughts were in his mind.

  “They can break you with their slightest whim. Some won’t have smoking and some won’t let women aboard. And some flogs for spitting, or cussing, or just for being the slowest man at drill — same for the officers too — I’ve known a captain torment a young gentleman unmerciful ’cos the lad’s father did him a bad turn years ago.” And so we wondered what was coming until there came a bumping of boats alongside and THE MAN came up the ladder to a long squeal of Bosun’s pipes from Mr Shaw and his mates. Every living thing in the ship solemnly raised its hat and Captain Bollington swept off his own in respect of the one thing present that was more important than himself: the ship.

  He was a splendid sight, from the gold of his epaulettes to the gold of his shoe buckles. His uniform was beautiful and his linen snowy white. He was in his forties with a dark-tanned face, grey hair and blue eyes that darted six ways at once with intense interest as he ran the rule over his new command.

  “Welcome aboard, sir!” says Lieutenant Williams, bowing politely, but the dignity of the moment was spoiled by the arrival on board of the Captain’s suite of followers and place-men. In rough order of precedence, these were Mr Golding the Sailing Master, Mr Midshipman Percival-Clive, the Captain’s clerk, his cook, his servant, and his band of musicians. These were half a dozen Sicilian dagos, waving their arms and gabbling (being foreigners and in the Captain’s personal service, they were excused flogging and fighting).

  When Lieutenant Williams had been introduced to those worthy of that honour, the Captain came to the quarterdeck rail and glared intently at the crew, drawn up in the splendid uniformity of our Phiandra togs, on the splendid neatness of the gleaming gundeck.

  “Hmm!” says he, and nodded. “Well enough, Mr Williams. You appear to know your business well enough.” Then he read us his commission from their Lordships of the Admiralty (which ceremony made him legally our master) and launched into a passionate speech that reminded me of what the press-gang Bosun had said on the night I was took. He damned the French comprehensively for the bloody-handed, bloody-minded, garlic-breathing, greasy, atheistical, regicidal revolutionaries that they were — God’s own truth, every word of it: couldn’t have put it better myself — then he thumped the rail and waved his fist and roared that Phiandra shall become the finest gunnery ship in the Navy and may God and all His angels just help the man who stands in his way! And he declared that his sole ambition was to smash, burn or sink everything French.

  At a well-prepared sign from Mr Williams, we gave him three cheers for this. Then, if you please, with us in our Sunday best, he had the guns run out for drill and with Mr Seymour at his elbow, came round personally to see how each crew performed. All of which most wonderfully delighted the crew. There was intense relief that Captain Bollington had no dangerous views on such vital matters as spitting, cussing, baccy or women and if he had a screw loose about gunnery, then nobody minded. He certainly was obsessed with guns. Between his arrival on board and the 27th when we set sail, tons of extra powder and shot were crammed aboard, paid for out of Captain Bollington’s own pocket for the live-firing practice that he set so much store by. He eve
n brought aboard a pair of long bronze guns for use as bow chasers. These were his own property, bored out for special accuracy at Bolton’s ironworks in Soho, who also provided a quantity of special round-shot to go with them, smoother and rounder than regulation shot.

  The actual moment of getting under way on the 27th was impressive. Phiandra’s crew was still learning, but with a core of experienced men and with over two hundred hands to the work, the whole great machine of whirring blocks, humming lines and huge grinding spars, shook out its sails and heeled to the wind in seconds. I’d seen merchantmen put out from Polmouth many times, but that had been a slow matter, with one sail at a time spread to the wind. It was nothing like the thundering cascade of canvas as a man-o-war lets go every sail at once. The transition from the naked hulk to the rushing ship under its cloud of sails was a sight to see. My only regret was that I was seeing it as a participant and not a spectator.

  We were bound for St Helens in the lee of the Isle of Wight to join a convoy and the ship’s company was kept busy for hours trimming all to rights before lines were coiled down and we were sent to dinner.

  However, not many of us wanted to eat that day. We were at sea for the first time in weeks, and it was a cold February day, with the big grey waves leading the ship in a sickening dance. The mids and the ship’s boys were already hanging over the side and even some of the seasoned tars were looking green about the gills. Of my mates, only Sammy Bone was completely happy.

  “Feeling the motion, lads?” says he to our mess. When nobody replied he produced a leather pouch and set it on the table.

  “Oh no!” groans Thomas Slade. “Not that ... ”

  “Clap a hitch on your jawing tackle!” says Sammy nastily, and continued. “Now this, my lads, is ‘the old matelot’s cure for the mal de mer’.” He undid the cord at the neck of the pouch and shook out the contents. “You ain’t never seen this, have you, Jacob?” says he, smiling at me in a fatherly fashion. He picked up the object and dangled it before my nose. It was a leather thong, about a foot long, with a hideous gob of slimy gristle lashed to one end. My stomach turned merely from the look of it, and all my mates stared at me expectantly. “Now what you do is ... you just swallow this ... and when it’s half way down, you haul it up again!”