Sea of Grey - Dewey Lambdin

By God, but she is big, though! he thought, daunted by the idea of having to fight her. With a two-decker's much stouter lower timbers and deck beams, she might be able to carry 24-pounders below, and even 12-pounders on the upper gun-deck.

"Razeed ships are rarely successful; though," Mr. Winwood droned on, "for they tend to 'hog' at both ends from the weight of their guns. And without the thick upperworks of a proper ship of the line, there's not enough linear support to prevent it. A long cruise or two is about all one may expect before they're due a serious, and prolonged, refit. In our own Navy, we've experienced such failures as-"

"Signal hoist, sir!" Midshipman Nicholas interrupted. "I make out this month's private signal!"

"So she is a Yankee," Lieutenant Langlie said, managing not to sound much relieved at that news. "Shall we stand down from Quarters, sir?"

"Close the ports, but I'll reserve judgement 'til I hear them speak us, Mister Langlie," Lewrie demurred. "Not 'til I hear a nasal Yankee twang. We will let her close us, though."

"Aye, sir."

And there goes any government reward for re-takin' Bantam, he sourly imagined; not with a Yankee frigate to escort her away. My God… damn!

The big American frigate sailed past, alee of them, taking advantage of the "wind-shadow" from Proteus's sails to reef in and reduce canvas; then rounded up and tacked, once in clearer air. She was well drilled and handled, belying any slurs on Yankee seamanship, and seemed "handy" despite her great length, and the greater freeboard exposed to the wind from her higher sides. Under mostly tops'ls and jibs, as if accomodating the smaller British ship, she angled up to within a cable alee and abeam, at last.

"This is his Brittanic Majesty's frigate Proteus!" Lewrie called first, through a speaking-trumpet. "Captain Lewrie! And whom do I have the honour to address, sir?"

"The United States ship Hancock… Captain Joshua Kershaw! How-de-do, Captain Lewrie. I see you been busy!"

Hancock! Lewrie thought, smirking despite the occasion; sounds like masturbation! Aye, he's a Yankee, right enough. Not Downeast… more like the Carolinas, or Virginia.

Which connexion reminded him too much of his wife, making him hunch his shoulders and wince to dismiss such idle interruptions.

"Buy me a drink, Captain Kershaw, and I'll boast most immoderate on it!" Lewrie shouted over.

"Done, sir! Well met, and let's fetch to!"

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Captain Joshua Kershaw, U.S. Navy, was a hearty older fellow, a tall, bluff, and stout man in his fifties, and in his youth might have been a most handsome and impressive physical specimen. His waistcoat strained over a rounded abdomen, and his thighs were as thick as standing rib roasts. His jowls were round, and he wore a white side-curled wig that was much too small for a head that large, yet he appeared elegant, and well turned out. Though Lewrie did find the American Navy uniform a bit too like the French to suit him.

The turn-backs, lapels, collar, and cuffs of Kershaw's dark blue coat were French-style red, as was his waistcoat, nicely trimmed with gold lace and gilt buttons. His breeches were dark blue, though, not French red, or the usual white.

"Such -a fine ship, sir!" Captain Machias Wilder off the Bantam, Kershaw's other supper guest, exclaimed for at least the tenth time in as many minutes on their abbreviated tour of the Hancock, as he looked over the sumptuous decor of the great-cabins. "Aye, ye're fortunate, sir, t'be appointed into her."

"You are, indeed, Captain Kershaw," Lewrie agreed, keeping professional appreciation-nigh awe!-to a minimum.

"Just goes t'show what American know-how can do, Cap'um Lewrie," Wilder boasted as a cabin servant took their hats and swords. "I pity the French frigate that tries t'cross hawse with her."

Wilder, by contrast, was a wizened little fellow dressed in somber black "ditto," a civilian suiting, and eschewed a cocked hat for a narrow-brimmed "thimble" of a thing, much like what Lewrie's Marines of late were issued. Wilder was a Downeaster, a very brisk, older, classic Yankee from Connecticut, with the stereotypical nasal twang and fast speech that the London stages so delighted in twitting.

Unlike most folk, he wore grizzled grey whiskers and-from the way he had pranced about, all but stamping his feet and clapping hands in paroxyms of wonder on their abbreviated tour of the ship-had made Lewrie think of him as a short-haired terrier puppy, like to soil the deck if he got any more excited.

"For a poor old man from South Carolina, I s'pose I am lucky at that, Captain Wilder," Kershaw said with a proud and pleased simper. "Sit, gentlemen, sit. We'll have us a pre-prandial, before our supper is ready."

He steered them to some wingback chairs done up in red leather and nailheads, and puttered about at his cherry-wood and brass-trimmed wine cabinet.

Lewrie shot his cuffs, settled the tail of his handsome new cotton dress coat, and crossed his legs at the knee, surreptitiously eying the great-cabins, measuring worth; again, he was impressed. There were good figured carpets on the deck, atop a painted canvas covering of a solid colour. Despite the artillery bowsed to the ports, it was an elegant place, agleam with wax on the overhead deck beams and wainscotting. The furniture was mostly cherry or oddly pale washed oak, and was awash in brass, coin-silver, or gilded fittings. On one bulkhead in the dining-coach was a portrait of the ship's namesake, the Hancock of Revolutionary patriot fame. Lewrie dimly recalled that he had done, or said, something in the large way, but the circumstance escaped him.

This Kershaw was obviously not so poor as he bemoaned, he decided. This was the baronial suite of a rich shipowner or merchant trader.

"In honour of our guest, Captain Wilder, we'll partake of a good Englishman's favourite claret," Kershaw announced, turning back to them with a decanter in one hand and three stemmed glasses nested together in the other. He did the honours of pouring them all a brimming glass.

Wilder went along, though a little irked that stronger spirits such as corn-whiskey or neat rum were not served.

"To your rescuer, Captain Lewrie," Kershaw proposed. "Cap'um Lewrie!" Wilder enthused, before tossing his wine back in one neat slug. Lewrie hoped, for his sake, that it would be a short night! "Captain Wilder is right, ya know, Captain Lewrie," Kershaw said as he topped them up once more. "I was fortunate in getting orders to Hancock. All our major seaports raised subscription money to build or buy suitable ships for this French fracas. Had I depended on waiting for the Charleston, Georgetown, or Beaufort ships t'be built, I'd still be running up and down the banks of the Ashley or the Cooper. Like the joke that's told back home… 'bout the old boy who's flat-broke. If Indiamen went for a shilling, he'd still be running up and down the bank cryin', 'why ain't that cheap'!"

"Man of your reputation, though, Cap'um Kershaw," Wilder scoffed, "t'be left on the beach when the United States needs ev'ry experienced man o' war man, why…"

"It helps that most of the really experienced men were of age in the Revolution," Kershaw chuckled, "Too old now to strap back on the harness. I was only a midshipman in 78. Only served in our old Continental Navy 'til '80, and then resigned my commission to be first mate aboard a privateer."

"That would have paid better, for certain," Lewrie said after a sip of his wine. Kershaw's claret was of a piece with Jean-Pierre's wines at Port-Au-Prince… hellish-good! "And more exciting, too."

"Made my fortune by '83, true, sir!" Kershaw replied, booming for a moment with a burst of laughter. "Your Royal Navy tied us up in knots. Fifty ships in the old Navy, and I doubt more than three were in our hands, in any shape to sail, by the end of the war. Burned or took, or blockaded the rest so long, they rotted at their moorings. In our ports, or in France. Privateers, though… we could always get to sea. And have a high old time of it."

"Always find hands, when no one'd go aboard a ship o' war."

"Quite true, too, Captain Wilder," Kershaw allowed.

"Diff rent now, I take it?" Lewrie asked. "Now that your nation is all but at war with France?"

"Can't beat 'em off with a stick, sir," Kershaw boasted. "Down below New Hampsire, of course. Our Southern states are a bit more hot for it than others. Like some of your neighbours, Captain Wilder?"

"It's our ships the French are takin'… like mine a few days ago, Captain Kershaw," Wilder grumbled, squirming a bit in his chair as if mildly stung or twitted. "It's our trade and livelihood they're harmin'. We're all in it together, North and South, the coasts and the over-mountain folk."

"Most of our skilled officers come from above Virginia, do you see, Captain Lewrie," Kershaw explained, "though Georgia and the Carolinas have thriving ports and build a fair number of good ships. That far from the centre of power, though… this new swamp they bought up on the sly, then turned into our new capital, what they've named Washington City? Oh, a power of money made on that transaction, by people in government who knew about it beforehand, or had a hand in enacting the placement! We poor Southerners feel a bit… overlooked."

"Worse, when the capital was in New York or Philadelphia," the terrier-like Capt. Wilder all but bristled. "Even further away. And wasn't it a whole pack o' Marylanders and Virginians who profited from it?" he slyly asked, laughing to prove that he meant nothing by it, all of which mystified Lewrie. It sounded like a visit to a country house for a weekend, and gossip about neighbours one had never laid eyes on, or a family spat only slightly alluded to before strangers.

Damme, do they dislike each other that much? he had to ask himself, though; North against South, Middle against both, backwoods versus the Low Country interests? And is that exploitable, should we be at war with 'em in future? Their states don't sound that 'united'!

"Never saw much of your part of the Americas, Captain Wilder," Lewrie assayed. " Sandy Hook a time or two, perhaps a stroll ashore in New York. I'm more familiar with Savannah and Charleston. In fact, my wife is from the Cape Fear country."

"Well I never!" Captain Kershaw boomed out, which prompted one of those pleasant interludes wherein family names and places were exchanged, a sport in which this Captain Kershaw took particular delight. He had dealings with some Chiswicks who still were seated around Wilmington, and surely they were Caroline's kinfolk!

By then, Kershaw's steward appeared and announced that supper was ready, so they repaired to the dining-coach and sat down to a fine meal of fresh turtle soup, a roast chicken pan-fried in corn meal, grilled turtle steaks, and air-dryed "leather-britches" pod beans for a remove, washed down with a decent hock or a Bordeaux.

Kershaw apologised for the lack of a fish course, but there was little chance of catching anything fresh, with his frigate bowling along at twelve knots or better most of the time. The catch would have been jerked to flinders by the time they got it on deck!

"Caught us a shark, t'other day," Wilder hooted. "Didn't mean to, really. Hopin' for sea bass, dolphin, or snapper, but a shark makes good chops. My first mate calls it 'sweet revenge,' ha ha! And d'ye know, the very first thing those French sonsabitches did once we struck, was turn up their noses and heave it overside!"

"Perhaps they had no crиme fraоche in which to poach it, Captain Wilder," Lewrie snickered. "B'sides, the French may boast of being a maritime nation, but they aren't all that bold at sea. Maybe they thought the shark had dined on their poor, sunken cousins!"

"Way they go after poor, helpless merchantmen, maybe they are kin t'sharks, but too proud and arrogant t'turn cannibal!" Wilder rejoined quickly, raising his glass to clink against Lewrie's.

"You've seen no French warships, as yet, Captain Lewrie?" his host enquired.

"No, sir. My advisories tell me that there are very few true warships about," Lewrie answered, "though hundreds of privateers. I wonder, sir… perhaps we might break the old strictures, and share some, uhm… 'shop-talk?' After all, I'll be cruising north of Saint Domingue, and I gather that your frigate will be going south after we part?"

"That's so, sir… and an excellent idea." Kershaw agreed.

"Keepin' a close eye on me for the rest o' my voyage?" Captain Wilder hoped aloud.

"You may count on my support, sir," Kershaw assured him,

"I wonder, sir…" Lewrie said, putting down his glass. "Do you have any qualms about acting in concert, you and I, should we meet with a French warship?"

"I, uhm…" Kershaw waffled. "We are ordered to cooperate, in certain circumstances. America is not officially at war with France, not yet. I am not even certain that outright war is desirable. If a change in their policy towards neutral shipping-returning to the status quo ante, without boarding and demanding manifests and muster rolls-were to result from a show of determination, with the threat of force to make them change their minds, well…" He trailed off and waved one hand in a flaccid, "iffy" gesture, before busying his hands with a wine decanter. "But, do you encounter one of their privateers, in the act of pillaging an American merchant vessel, a merchantman sailing alone as a prize," Lewrie pressed, irked by the man's sudden diffidence, "or if you met one of their privateers or warships in these waters, alone…?"

"Then I would have a free hand to engage at all hazards, and I would, at once, sir," Kershaw told him, a bit more formally and stiffly than moments before. "But before we assemble a proper squadron in the Caribbean, my initial orders are to cruise, to escort convoys down as far as Dominica or Antigua… make a show of force off Guadeloupe and the other French isles, then pick up a convoy and escort them back as far as the Bahamas before returning to Boston."

"Yet," Lewrie said with a faint frown, steepling his fingers to his lips, "were we to be 'in sight' of each other, and I, unhindered by any strictures, engage a French National ship… would that allow you to cooperate in her taking? Would that be one of your 'certain' circumstances, Captain Kershaw?"

"None but a poltroon would reject a chance for action, Captain Lewrie," Kershaw intoned, making Lewrie suspect that he had in some way stung Kershaw "below" his personal sense of honour. "I doubt I'm allowed to cruise in concert with you. We may both blockade Guadeloupe, for one instance… but you run yours, and I would run mine. Our areas may overlap at times, but that would be all, since my country is not officially allied with yours. But… does the chance of a fight arise, then that's a different story. In that instance, I can see no limits on my coming to your aid… or, conversely, refuse any aid you render, should you heave up over the horizon and find my ship yardarm-to-yardarm with Monsieur."