A Divided Command (17 page)

‘I think, if you and Admiral Hotham could put your heads together, a workable solution would lead to a compound solution.’

‘I don’t know if you have noticed, Gherson, that such a thing is impossible. He’s off Corsica and I am off Torbay.’

‘It has always been my habit to treat one problem at a time.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Somehow, sir, you must get a posting to the Mediterranean and there you will be in a position to confront your demons in a way that might just provide an outcome that solves all your problems in one fell swoop. I can see no other manner in which to proceed.’

‘Then that merely establishes, Gherson,’ Barclay shouted, ‘that you are a damned fool!’

That being as good as a dismissal, Gherson left the cabin, knowing he had planted a seed. That was what you had to do with the likes of Ralph Barclay, as he had with many of the other supposed men of success he had dealt with in his time. It made him wonder, for Barclay was not alone, how the Royal Navy enjoyed so much success when it was officered by people of such turgid reasoning.

His solution had not gone unacknowledged, but since Ralph Barclay had not thought of it himself he was damned if he was going to praise Gherson for saying it. The problem, once he had accepted the premise, was how to proceed in such a way as to gain the end he required. He could relinquish the command of
HMS Semele
at any time; God knows there were enough men of post rank
who would be eager to take his place.

But that meant funding a trip out to the Mediterranean without a ship or any seeming purpose, which was no more desirable than giving up a command he had worked hard and schemed to get. If he did relinquish
Semele
, how hard would it then be to get another ship and what effect would that have on his future in the service?

Survive long enough and he would get his flag, but it was no good being an admiral if you were without employment. The country was full of so-called ‘yellow admirals’, flag officers who held the rank but were either not trusted or lacked the influence to get any kind of posting. The notion of being one of those was anathema.

If sailors loved to talk of battle and prize money, they dreamt, whatever their present rank, of being a flag officer on a profitable station, the West or East Indies being at the pinnacle of the dream. Three years on either of those, with your inferior commanders bringing in prizes by the dozen! What followed were riches; you could purchase a country pile of real distinction with high gables, numerous rooms, stables full of horses and a coach house big enough to accommodate more than one carriage.

It would have surprised Ralph Barclay to know that Cornelius Gherson harboured the same vision. He knew who was above his employer on the captain’s list and who would rise to a flag before him. Not that all would get there, disease or infirmity would take some and there was always room for an accident or two on a musket ball or cannon shot from the enemy, war being the best thing to thin ranks. This one with the Revolution looked as if it might go on for years.

If Barclay realised his ambition then his clerk, on whom
he was dependant, as long as he stayed with the man, would likewise reach his. An admiral on station or in command of a fleet was presented with chances to line his pockets that were stupendous if properly handled and he saw himself as just the man to do the necessary peculating. It might not amount to a coach and four and a grand country residence, but it would mean independence, which was for Gherson craving enough.

‘Sir?’ Gherson asked, when Barclay called him back in.

‘I need to write to the Duke of Portland.’ That required Gherson to again hide a smile; clearly Barclay had thought on his proposal and seen the sense of it. ‘It will have to be carefully worded, for he is an arrogant sod, and I will require you to hand-deliver it to him and him alone.’

‘Am I presuming, sir, if I ask, that the contents might spell trouble for the present administration?’

‘We may have to work on it to make it so, without it being too obvious. If the Duke is upset in any way he can cause us a great deal of nuisance.’

‘Perhaps if I prepare a few drafts, sir, templates that you can consider?’

‘Good idea, but it needs to be quick. God knows the French fleet may exit from Brest again and if they do we will be got out to engage them. Once we are at sea, or as long as they are seen as a present and immediate threat, nothing will get us posted elsewhere.’

‘Might I suggest, sir, that you write a letter to Lord Howe, in which you allude to the way he missed the grain convoy.’

‘He is as aware of that as anyone.’

‘I would be inclined to say that you have, from your own resources, suppressed a pamphlet which questions the glory
of his achievements and was due to be circulated widely.’

‘No such pamphlet exists.’

God in Heaven, Gherson thought, how slow can this man be?

‘I thought I might draw one up, to be included in the correspondence. It seems to me that if Lord Howe was amenable to you being shifted to the Mediterranean Fleet, it would be in our favour.’

Barclay was as aware as his clerk that he had missed a trick, so his response was, as was his habit, to be brusque. ‘Then can I suggest you get on with it, man!’

Letters travelling to and from the Mediterranean ran many risks and not just from foul weather. The Admiralty used postal packets to send fleet despatches on from England and vice versa. That such missives rarely contained anything approaching decisions of a strategic nature did not dent their value. In addition, packets carried everyday mail, the letters of sailors and soldiers penned to their loved ones. These could be a mine of information and that made the ships that carried them prime targets.

Given the route by which they travelled was a certainty, it was a miracle that more were not intercepted; but the ocean is vast and not every day is sunny and clear, especially in the Atlantic, so the privateers and the occasional roving vessels of the French state had to be lucky to even see one, never mind effect a capture.

In addition they were up against crews that virtually lived at sea and had a well-honed nose for risk, serving under captains of real ability, in command of craft designed for
speed as well as heavy seas. Still, it was a long game and many a despatch would be sent by more than one boat to ensure its safe arrival.

The letters received by Lucknor, the London attorney acting for John Pearce, were replies to missives he had sent out months previously and it was an indication of the parlous state of Revolutionary naval warfare that they had made both journeys without encountering a hint of danger. The pair from Farmiloe and Digby answered the simple question he had posed; where were they on the night in late March the previous year in which Captain Barclay had gone out to press seamen?

Lucknor had been careful in his enquiry to underline that such a question posed no risk to them; all he asked for was a single sentence answer. Farmiloe confirmed he had been with Barclay and the young man was clearly bright enough to add no more to that, which indicated that he knew about the illegality, but being of the rank he was then and under orders, no blame could be laid at his door. Digby confirmed that on the night in question he had stayed aboard
HMS
Brilliant
at Sheerness.

It was the third letter, the one from Toby Burns, that niggled Lucknor, in which the youngster implied that he could not be expected to remember where he had been on a night so far in the past. John Pearce had left with his lawyer, if not the whole transcript of Ralph Barclay’s court martial, at least the bones of the testimony each person had given. That of Toby Burns stood out, given he could provide for that hearing a clear account of the very same night.

There was also a nagging question in regard to the composition of the communication; somehow, to a man with
a nose trained to spot the way witnesses tended to dissemble, it smacked of a hand with more scholarship than that of a young and threatened midshipman. In short, it was too well assembled in the way it made its excuses. Yet the real problem was that it did nothing to advance his client’s case by providing even a sliver of criminality upon which he could act.

Still, that very same fellow would be in the Mediterranean by now and he should be in a position to find out more than anyone based in London. All Lucknor could do was write to John Pearce and appraise him on the frustrations evident in the results of his enquiries. Once he had composed the letter, he was careful to immediately list the act in his ledger, adding to the growing bill, which made up the sum necessary to reward his work.

Was it necessary to send a statement of account to Alexander Davidson, Pearce’s prize agent and the guarantor of the expenses? Looking at the accumulated sum Lucknor decided not: he was still just within the bounds of what his client had paid in advance.

Toby Burns was at a stand, with no idea what to do. If Admiral Hotham was polite to him, and he was in a distant sort of way, he was showing none of the obvious regard that had preceded his incarceration in Calvi, merely urging, on the rare occasions the midshipman could not get out of his way, that he prepare himself for a lieutenant’s exam. Thus Toby lived in a perpetual state of limbo: was he about to be transferred to some dangerous duty? What had his high-ranking nemesis in mind for him? The one certainty in the young midshipman’s mind was that there would be something and it would not be to his advantage.

Atmosphere aboard a ship of war, as it was in any closed community, had an acute nature that did not apply in normal surroundings. In a ship such as
HMS Britannia
, due to the nature of the flag officer, it was almost something you could touch. If Hotham was aware of how his moods permeated the vessel there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that he would take pleasure from it. Right as of this moment there was a great deal for the man to be moody about.

The news that Lord Hood was going on leave and Hotham would succeed to the command had flown from ship to ship within no more than a day. It was almost as if the lower deck had a signalling system that transcended and was better than that of the fleet in which they served. Soon it was the subject of hushed speculation in the wardroom and the midshipmens’ berth as well as the main-deck mess tables.

The frustrations of the last period of what Hotham saw as servitude were harder to bear than anything that had gone before. He could not wait for
Victory
to weigh and he saw it as typical of the departing C-in-C that he was vague about when his departure would be, his response to any guardedly put enquiry being that ‘matters would be resolved when he was happy with the arrangements he must leave behind’.

Yet Hood could not just up anchor and depart without he included his successor in all the myriad problems that crossed his desk, so a boat set off from Hood’s flagship with copies of the correspondence Old Sam had been engaged in with the various potentates who held power in the sea which the combined British and Spanish fleets sought to dominate. These were in numerous chests, and along with them, to answer any questions that arose, came the man who had aided Hood in all his activities, the executive officer and captain of the fleet.

Hotham, as he read of the latest exchanges between Hood and his opposite number, Admiral Lángara, scoffed in a rather theatrical fashion, ‘Lord Hood is excessively polite to our so-called Spanish “allies”, Parker, given where they are stationed.’

After the debacle at Toulon, the Spaniards had retired to Minorca and were hardly, at that distance, in a position to readily engage the French and they showed no sign of being willing to put to sea to guard against the eventuality.

Besides such a concern, the suspicion was rampant, and not just in the mind of Hotham, that the Dons had not put in a full effort during the evacuation of Toulon. If they had worked hard to destroy the arsenal, they had been suspected of hampering the British efforts to get all the useable warships of the French navy out of the port before it fell.

This meant a goodly number of capital vessels, mainly those partly built, in need of repair, or just stripped of their masts and laid up in ordinary, had to be left behind to be remanned and made effective by those who took over the port. For the Spaniards it made sound strategic sense: a Royal Navy fleet twice its present size threatened their own position in a sea they saw as their preserve.

‘I cannot say having them on my side makes me feel secure.’

If Hotham was expressing a forthright opinion it was one much shared by his officers as well as, to a man, the lower deck and even Parker would admit to reservations. Spain had been an enemy since before the Armada and had fought against Britain, usually in alliance with France, in numerous wars since; having them in support and as allies was strange indeed.

There was also the underlying truth, based on sheer greed, that when it came to an enemy vessel you wanted to capture, a Spanish Plate ship en route from the Americas was held to be the pinnacle of achievement, it being the way to instant wealth. This was a fact well attested to by the number of silver-laden galleons that had been taken in previous conflicts. How could anything of that nature be accomplished when they were fighting alongside you?

‘I have to say, Parker, that if they are ever off my beam I will keep an eye open for slippage. Spain could change sides in a flash.’

‘I grant they do not run their affairs as we would do in England, sir, but they are a monarchy and I think we can place some faith in their good intentions. After all, our joint enemy is dedicated to decapitating all monarchs.’

‘Their sovereign is a feeble idiot. It is the Queen’s lover, Godoy, who runs Spain.’

Parker would love to have said to Hotham, thank you for telling me something I already know only too damned well. But he kept his counsel; he too had a residual suspicion of the Dons for the very name and nature of the man just mentioned. The Bourbons of the present day were a sorry lot, nothing like, in stature and cunning, their predecessors of yesteryear; they were either feeble-minded as Hotham had said or too easily manipulated by court favourites, the latest of which was Manuel Godoy, rumoured to share the Queen’s bed.

‘I think, sir, we have to take the situation as we find it, which if you look at Lord Hood’s correspondence you will see is the state of affairs with whomsoever you deal.’

Hotham went back to the pile and he had to look
enthusiastic then; he did not want Parker reporting back to Hood that he found the task before him daunting, but it was. As well as fighting the warships of the Revolution, the Mediterranean Fleet was tasked to protect the vital and very lucrative trade that came from the East.

Failure to do so, leading to a steep rise in insurance rates on any of the routes that fed the wealth of the country, always led to questions in Parliament for the commercial interests were exceedingly powerful. Their disquiet then became bolts of disapproval sent down to the responsible commanders, and removal, if matters got out of hand, was not unknown.

Hood may have contained the main battle fleet, but the French had frigates and smaller warships roaming the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Adriatic and the Levantine trade route, with private ships as well, sailing under letters of marque, not that such official documents had to be granted. In short, any French trading ship that thought it a good idea to turn to licensed piracy, in place of their constrained natural function, was free to do so and that took no account of the corsairs of Barbary and Greece.

Before Hotham were letters to representatives of Britain who resided all over the inland sea, ambassadors in Naples and Istanbul, consuls or some kind of presence in every major trading port in Italy from Genoa round to Venice. Deys and beys dotted the shoreline from Algiers, through Cairo to the numerous entrepôts of the Levantine coast.

Then there were the Greek Islands and the Adriatic, which if nominally ruled by the Sultan and the Ottoman Empire seemed, from what could be read, to act as separate satrapies with scant control from the centre. Here, especially in the Adriatic and Peloponnese, Britain seemed to have very little
leverage with the local pashas and a severe lack of knowledge of what was happening there, which, if it was not a pressing problem, would become one with French agents as active as those of their enemies.

‘You will find,’ Parker added, as Hotham alluded to this, ‘that the government in Paris, if it can be so flattered by such a term, are adept at finding common cause with those who see opportunity in a disruption of the status quo, which is why Lord Hood has expended so much effort in keeping them neutral through a system of subsidies and threats. The last thing that will serve our purpose is that our enemies should be granted innumerable ports in which to shelter, places we dare not attack.’

‘As well as being able to read, Admiral Parker, I have the wit to see where our problems lay.’

But not the grace, Parker thought, to say so in any way that could be called polite. He did not like Hotham, few people he knew did, but the man was well connected. The notion that he might make plain his distaste was therefore doubly unwise.

‘I am here to assist you if you wish it, sir.’

The need for Hotham to acquaint himself seemed endless; as one chest was emptied and refilled another was opened yet there was, very obviously, one set of papers thinner than they should be, and that was the ones relating to correspondence between Samuel Hood and William Pitt, a deal of which, Hotham suspected, must relate to him and his actions. Such letters would not be flattering but there was nothing he could do about it, so he sought to put it out of his mind.

‘Who is this Mehmet Pasha?’ Hotham asked, lifting an
especially thick pile of letters. ‘Am I to judge by the amount of correspondence that he is a particular nuisance?’

‘A Turkish governor, though one who pays no attention to the grand vizier in Istanbul. He controls the coast of Illyria and more vitally the Gulf of Ambracia. That is an ideal anchorage, with access to the deeper waters of the Med, in which any raiding vessel can take refuge, as long as they do not draw too much water under their keel. He is, as you have so rightly discerned, a singular menace.’

‘We cannot check him through the Porte?’

‘The writ of the Istanbul caliphate tends to run very low at the extremities of empire, and Mehmet Pasha ignores what he chooses to and obeys very little. A bloodthirsty cove, by all accounts, arbitrary with what he calls his “justice”. The officer we sent to treat with him was of the opinion he was quite insane.’

‘Naples?’ Hotham replied after a long pause, indicating he had moved on, that followed by a pause as he read the latest communications. ‘Sir William Hamilton is eager, I see, that we should place a squadron there.’

‘He has a point. The narrows between Calabria and the coast of North Africa present an acute danger, added to which many of our merchant vessels en route to Gibraltar head for Naples and the Sicilian ports to trade, drop off passengers or take on water and stores, that being the only safe place at present to do so. It makes for a happy hunting ground for our enemies.’

That had the aspirant commander peering at another document, a copy, like many, of the items he had already perused. ‘I see, Parker, by this last despatch, that Lord Hood was minded to oblige him.’