Ships of War

CHAPTER 1 

THE WAITING ROOM

The Admiralty waiting room weighed with a rotted stink. It was an aroma any naval officer knew all too well, the examination for lieutenant. The hopefuls had been suffering since the early hours of first light. Not that they knew it, but it was now well past noon. As convalescent as a barge full of river rats they hoarded themselves into a small pile, slinking and slithering as they rolled carelessly stewing in their own muck. They filled the floors and they sank into the chairs, slouching and baying. Haunting their every breath, an unmitigated angst billowed, despair and the curse of uncompromised anxiety a fitting bedfellow. It was a brutal scene. Rather than affording the able bodies of the finest midshipmen of the Royal Navy, burdened the room was, stifled within the squalor of absolute hopelessness. The cramped lower decks of a first-rate ten weeks into the doldrums, with only a balmy desolate sea upon the horizon, would have offered nothing less than a welcome respite. It seemed more than a few candidates had now passed out, such was the affordability of fresh clean air.

Another midshipman bustled out the examination room door, the offence of unqualified mortification hazarding his young face. His chin was down, the result abundantly clear. He managed a quick shake of the head, confirmation of his utter disappointment. It was not well received. The entire gathering could not have looked more horrified should they all be shackled wasting hopelessly in a small gibbet, each verily awaiting turn by turn to be slowly ground to death, legs first.

‘Good gracious!’ the nearest lad sighed, eyeing with hopelessness the predicament. ‘That’s another one Holt, another bloody one, foundered and summarily broken! That’s eighteen in a row now. Upon my soul, has anyone chanced to pass?’

‘Not since I have been here,’ Holt promptly returned, keeping it short, very much attempting to allay any inward feelings of trepidation or alarm. And why should he worry he rightly considered. He had been to battle on over thirty occasions, acted as first officer aboard a line of battle third-rate and against impossible odds had taken down the flag of the fleet, Queen Charlotte, albeit a game of war. He likely had more nous in the tip of his pinkie finger than the entire group nestled before him. ‘Indeed Peters, quite disconcerting, I assure you.’

‘It’s been more than six hours, maybe even eight bloody hours. The last fellow didn’t say a damned word either, not a coherent one anyway. For the love of Mary, they must have put him through the wringer. But I did get something from the chap before him, just so you know. He mumbled something about how they ain’t normal captains. No, no, no, reckoned there was an admiral in there, not to mention a commodore! And bloody hell if that ain’t enough, he said the third was some jumped-up nasty captain, some legal man. Just great ain’t it!’

‘We must do our utmost, nonetheless,’ he encouraged. ‘But Peters, if I may, might I recommend you belay the cursing, or at least tone it down a notch. Of course I know it is commonplace aboard ship, but the panel may come to think you’re half seas over.’

‘Drunk, ’ey? Ha, that would not do. I suppose you are right of course. Thank you Holt, life upon shore is an adjustment, to be sure.’

‘Quite.’

‘In all honesty, I cannot wait to get back to sea,’ Peters lamented, as if a fish out of water. He looked thoughtfully upon Holt, a young midshipman he had only just met. Something had definitely caught his attention. It was something he just couldn’t shake, the throes of silent contemplation finally urging forth a quiz ever so strange. ‘If you do not mind me asking,’ he lightly probed. ‘But, how bloody old are you? Pardon, what I meant to say is, how old are you?’

‘Mind?’ Holt cleverly responded, leading the conversation away from the subject of his age. ‘Well, it’s not that I mind, but these are personal questions. It’s always the way of course, usually some nosy long lost cousin, you know, trying to assert their rank in the family pecking order. Oh, don’t worry, I know you’re not about that. Nonetheless, I imagine I am perhaps a tad younger than yourself of course.’

‘I’m not sure how that can be though?’ Peters returned unconvinced. ‘It’s just that you don’t look old enough to have served your six years, unless you’re some son of an admiral and got in when you turned eleven? And still, even at that gate, you hardly look seventeen? If you got in earlier than eleven, don’t worry, I can keep a secret. I just turned nineteen you know, got in right on thirteen and have timed my run here to perfection. But alas, if I don’t come out of those doors an officer, my master will skin me alive.’

‘You are orphaned?’

‘Aye,’ he openly nodded, Holt immediately appreciating his angst. ‘I have nowhere else to go, which is why it must be a sailor’s life for me now, no looking back.’

‘Let us keep our eye on the prize, ’ey? It seems likely that age will not be the determining factor. Moreover it is our mind and, of course, our wits which we bring before the panel.’

‘I suspect you are right. My apologies, I was just curious.’

‘In course, I have a young face,’ smiled Holt, knowing full well it was no lie because he had barely turned sixteen. Of all the midshipmen, he really did appear a duck out of water. The minimum age was strictly set at nineteen. There were exceptions to the rule, but only for the privileged, albeit rare, allowing the ripe age of seventeen.

‘You know, I feel somewhat touched in the head by all this. It’s all this waiting. I wonder, do you think they’ll pose any questions about battle? I mean, after all, it is peacetime.’

‘Aye, we live in peace, but for how long? We must be prepared for anything, lest we despair in the watery depths with those midshipmen who have verily foundered before us, poor sods.’

‘Good grief,’ he lamented, looking about at the number of midshipmen still hazarding the room. ‘The bulk of these bottle-headed sods have hardly seen any cannon fired, let alone been upon a ship that actually went into action. Oh some of them were part of Howe’s romp around the Channel in ninety, but that hardly counts, seeing how nary a shot was loosed and definitely not a one upon any Spanish. It’ll be lambs to the slaughter if you ask me. Have you been in battle yet? You know, at least I can say I have had the honour of battle, albeit only once.’

‘Oh, indeed?’ Holt complimented. ‘Which ship?’

‘Pandora.’

‘Pandora?’ Holt whispered, leaning in, now eyeing him directly. ‘You’re joking aren’t you?’

‘I wish I were.’

‘Twenty-four gun Porcupine class, sixth-rate, but a post-ship, launched May of seventy-nine. A fine history of capturing countless merchants as well as a tidy number of privateers, though laid up in ordinary at the end of the war in eighty-three. One hundred and sixty souls, a moderately swift vessel with a tidy draught of eleven feet and she boasts cannon of twenty-two nine pounders and two six pounders. She was refitted though in ninety, losing two of her nines, but she did gain four eighteen pounder carronades. I recall she was part of Howe’s romp, as you put it, until she was charged with bringing back the mutineers of Bounty, correct?’

‘Good god, how would I know?’ Peters gasped in astonishment. ‘For that matter, how would anyone know? I was still in school when she was last laid up. Although, not to correct you of course, we set sail with only one hundred and thirty odd souls, I think. Am I to understand you knew her?’

‘Oh no, never seen her.’

‘Huh? What! I served aboard her and I can assure you I don’t rightly recall her particulars that well. In course you’re dead right about the cannon. That much I know, but come now, how do you know all that?’

‘It is our duty to know not only our enemy’s ships, but those of our own fleet. And surely by now everyone has heard the tale of “Pandora’s Box”.’

‘Oh, the makeshift prison cell for the mutineers? What a tiny thing it was, only eleven by eleven. The Captain had all fourteen of the blighters tucked away in that thing. Even had ’em perched on the quarterdeck for all to see, if can you believe it?’

‘She was ordered to make Tahiti, was she not?’ Holt continued. ‘However, I understand that less than a year into her voyage she came to grief, running aground, finally foundering upon the outer edges of the Great Barrier Reef. All in all, I suspect you are most fortunate to be alive? It is also my understanding that survivors were few and far between?’

‘Aye, only just over half and may I say, what a god awful thing. I tell you, it wasn’t pretty when she sank, oh no, especially for those locked away in the box. Not all of them made it, but we did our best to save who we could. A good thing too, in the end only a select few were actually hanged, just three of ’em in fact. I’ll not soon forget that day, the horror Holt, the absolute horror. In contrast though, just as they were pulled up, oh how magnificent it was to lay eye upon the flag, Queen Charlotte standing in to make harbour. I even heard tell the King himself was aboard.’

Holt politely feigned ignorance, but in point of fact had been first officer upon Agamemnon upon making Portsmouth the very day the sentence had been carried out. Led by Queen Charlotte, she had leisurely sailed past Duke and Brunswick to the spectacle of three dangling bodies swinging from the yard. Holt had to agree, for a young officer it was hardly something so easily forgotten, a stark reminder of the strictness imposed by the Royal Navy.

‘Well, in course you have survived a wrecked ship. That is no small feat, especially upon the far side of the world. And if I am not mistaken, Pandora did in fact go around the Horn?’

‘Indeed.’

‘Well, there you have it,’ he praised.

‘Have what?’

‘Experience, you have experience. Be confident and the panel will not refuse your promotion. War is coming and England needs good officers. Good gracious, after what you have been through, they dare not refuse a valiant son of England. And you say you have seen action too?’

‘Aye, a small skirmish, nothing much, just pirates. Bloody hell, it’s been so long I can hardly remember, was over pretty quick. But oh I can recall enough to tell you some things, if you need some help?’

‘That is most generous,’ Holt thanked, immediately recalling his first moments upon Agamemnon’s quarterdeck as Solitaire and Hasard had let loose simultaneous broadsides, doubling upon his quarterdeck. ‘However, I feel prepared enough for what awaits the other side of that oak.’

‘Very well and good for you Holt,’ Peters smiled. ‘I must say, I can only but admire such confidence, especially after the drubbing the first eighteen applicants weathered. Tell me, what ship are you?’

‘Menelaus.’

‘Oh? I have never heard of her.’

‘She’s a sixty-four.’

‘A sixty-four,’ he complimented. ‘Good show, how splendid!’

‘She is to be part of a new squadron, operating the Channel. Her consorts are Achilles, ten and Helen, forty, but we ain’t exactly fitted out yet.’

‘Achilles, Helen?’ he posed bewilderedly, shaking his head. ‘I have never heard of them?’

‘Well then Peters, I shall have to remedy that. Upon returning to duty, I shall do my utmost to see that in future you do.’

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