For King or Commonwealth (9 page)

It would be weeks before anyone considered the
Amity
missing, whaling being such a speculative business and the season so little advanced, that Faulkner decided to continue north, taking two London vessels off the Lofoten Islands, both outbound for Archangel. Both were richly laden and he estimated the damage done to the Muscovy Company by their loss to be upwards of £2,000. Three days later he took a small Dundee ketch also heading for the Gourlo and the White Sea beyond. Holding his course to the north he lay off the North Cape of Norway in expectation of a further outward-bound ship or two, but was rewarded instead by taking a large timber-laden ship, also under charter to the Muscovy Company, which had been nipped in the ice before she could escape the previous winter.

They say a man makes his own luck and thus far Faulkner's provision of extra men to act in the event of success as prize-crews had paid off. The only clouds on his horizon in those high latitudes were his two cavalier officers whose desire to fight the King's enemies was assuaged by this succession of easy capture of under-manned merchantmen. Indeed, the ease with which the unsuspecting vessels fell into their hands, added to the brilliance of the weather, made the whole affair look so like child's play that they began to murmur. They had, of course, overcome their seasickness and were anxious to prove themselves and Faulkner, aware of their chafing, had threatened to send them away as prize-masters. This suggestion they embraced with enthusiasm until he sardonically told them they needed some knowledge of navigation to reach the Haringvliet and must not, under any circumstances, let their charge be recaptured unless they wanted to hang as pirates. Sobered, they enthusiastically directed the guns when a few shots were thrown at the approaching ships, forcing them to lower their colours.

By August the
Phoenix
was headed south. Most of the Dutchmen and the English ragamuffins had been sent away in prizes, the former in charge of them as masters under their own ensign, and Faulkner was making his way south, intending to fall upon the coastal trade between the Tyne and the Thames. They made their landfall off Flamborough Head and within hours had taken six collier-brigs all sailing in company. Faulkner had sent off Lazenby as prize-commodore, with orders to keep his little flock together for fear of losing any of them. That evening White came to him with the muster-list.

‘Given our run of luck it pains me to say it, sir,' he said, ‘but another prize will leave us damnably short-handed.'

He had hardly uttered these words, indeed Faulkner was in the very act of pouring out a glass so that the two of them could discuss matters, when Hervey burst into the cabin.

‘Captain Faulkner, a ship is coming up from the south-east. The quartermaster advises me that she looks like a man-of-war!'

Faulkner and White exchanged glances and put down their wine. ‘Damnation!' White expostulated. ‘And us with our men all away in prizes.'

‘A bold front. Hervey, you and Digby into seamen's clothes.'

‘
What
?'

‘Do as you're told. Mr White, English colours. Pass word to the men that we are a merchantman.' He turned to his satchel, searching for the papers of the ice-nipped vessel. ‘The
Nancy
of London and we have spent a weary winter in the ice. What news is there of the war . . . you can guess the rest.'

‘Aye, sir,' White responded, his eyes aglow with admiration at Faulkner's quick-witted resource.

‘And Mr White!'

‘Sir?'

‘Make sure those two popinjays understand.'

White grinned and was gone.

Faulkner made some swift dispositions in the cabin. He hid the papers of the other captures and congratulated himself on having the
Phoenix
's name removed from her transom whilst she was in dock. It would not fool an intelligent observer who gave the matter some thought, but it might buy them time. At the last minute he remembered to stow his armour, sword and pistols away in his chest and then, casting a last look round his cabin, he went on deck.

It was a man-of-war, all right, and a big ship of forty or fifty guns. Faulkner needed only a glance to tell him that. It was more important that he had his own ship in order. He cast his eyes about the deck and aloft. The men were idling, White having clearly passed word of the intended deception among them. White himself was casually staring at the approaching man-of-war through his battered glass. At the peak the red ensign of England jerked at its halliards in the breeze. The watch tended the wheel and lookout; only Digby and Hervey looked out of place.

‘You two,' he snapped, ‘aloft and overhaul the main topsail buntlines. Stay up there until I call you down.' The two looked aloft, at each other and then at Faulkner. He swore then, seeing the junior seaman, a lad of no more than fifteen summers, coiling down a rope. He called his name.

‘Jackson!'

The lad looked up, startled, wondering what he had done to catch the captain's attention. ‘Sir?' he answered, his eyes wide.

‘Take the young gentlemen aloft, Jackson, and show them how to overhaul buntlines. Mind you tell 'em why we do it too!' The lad was bright, and caught the captain's meaning. He grinned widely at the enormity of the trust vested in him and, seeing the two foppish youths in what they thought passed for seamen's clothing, fell in with the charade.

‘Get them shoon off, m'lads and follow me oop the wind'ard rigging.' There was a moment of inactivity and then, aware that just for a moment all eyes had forgotten the approaching vessel but were laid upon their collective discomfiture, they complied. They had hardly got up on the starboard rail before the boom of a distant gun turned Faulkner's attention to their predicament.

‘Clew up the courses!' Faulkner roared. ‘Hands to the mainbraces! Back the main topsail!' That would shake the young gentlemen as they made their unsteady way aloft in the wake of the monkey Jackson now was as he led them upwards.

‘Rise tacks and sheets!' White called the supplementary order as Faulkner himself quietly gave the helmsman an instruction as the men ran to the pin-rails and belaying pins. The large lower fore and main courses were drawn up like a milkmaid's skirts, the yards on the mainmast creaked in their greased parrels and swung to bring the wind on the forward surface of the main topsail and main topgallant. In consequence,
Phoenix
ceased her onward rush and jibbed to a standstill, her bowsprit bobbing up and down as she drifted slowly to leeward.

Faulkner stared at the man-of-war and thought he knew her, though he could not yet see her name. She too hove-to and a few moments later a boat, its oarsmen toiling at their looms, was dancing across the sparkling sea towards them.

‘Oh for a thick North Sea pea-souper,' White muttered beside him, ‘and we might have got away with it.'

‘Hold your tongue, Mr. My name is Bavistock and I command the
Nancy
of London. Go and meet the officer in the boat and pass the word.'

White moved off without a word, but his face bore a grimace that might have been a smile had not their situation been otherwise.

A moment later and a young officer in a plain buff-leather jerkin, a small round hat and a crimson sash of rank girt about him, threw a booted leg over the
Phoenix
's rail. White brought him aft and introduced ‘Cap'n Bavistock'.

‘Good day, Lieutenant,' Faulkner said pleasantly. ‘Is that the
Unicorn
yonder?'

‘Er, yes, it is.'

‘I thought so, didn't I say so, Mr?' he said to White, not waiting for a response before continuing to the Commonwealth officer, ‘Come, sir, I imagine you wish to see my papers.' He began walking towards the cabin under the poop, drawing the lieutenant after him, throwing a conversational remark over his shoulder. ‘We half expected to be stuck in that damned ice forever and a Russian winter is not to be recommended . . .'

In the cabin he went straight to his satchel and drew out the
Nancy
's papers. ‘A glass of wine while you . . .?'

The lieutenant held up his hand. ‘Thank you, no.'

Faulkner restored the stopper in the neck of the decanter, affecting a certain discomfiture. ‘I beg your pardon, lieutenant, I should not have offered and, had we not come to rely upon it in the ice, it should not have become habitual.'

‘Quite so, Captain . . .' The lieutenant was looking at the
Nancy
's manifest; the most dangerous moment was upon Faulkner for he had no cargo of timber to show a curious stranger.

‘What news is there?' he asked.

‘Mmm?' the other responded abstractedly.

‘What news? We have heard nothing, being stuck in the ice.'

The lieutenant looked up. ‘You know the King was tried and executed?' he remarked, his interest diverted from the papers, distracted to see the effect this intelligence had on a man whose ignorance of so momentous an event was a curiosity in itself.

‘The devil, I did not!' Faulkner blew through his lips and shook his head. ‘Well, well, that is marvellous. So, the tyrant is dead! Ha! I lost a son under Essex at Edgehill. Good riddance! When did the Malignant meet his end?' To his intense relief the officer lowered the
Nancy
's papers.

‘He was beheaded in Whitehall on thirtieth January last. The Parliament governs a quiet country as a Commonwealth in which godly men may prosper.'

‘Heaven grant that,' Faulkner said piously. ‘'Tis difficult enough at sea without a war of bloody faction.'

‘Ah, yes. Well, there we may have trouble for there are Royalist ships at sea.'

Faulkner frowned. ‘Royalist ships? How so?' he queried.

‘The Dutch have given them sanctuary under Rupert of the Rhine. We have had word of them . . .' he finished rather lamely. It was impossible, Faulkner calculated, that news of his spate of seizures off Flamborough Head should have reached London and the
Unicorn
sent so rapidly in quest of them. Unless, that is, they had been seen from Flamborough itself and, he recollected, there had been fishermen about, bobbing in their cobles. Even so, the news could not have travelled that fast – unless pigeons were in wider use than he supposed. The thought, incredible though it was, turned a worm of anxiety in his guts.

He shrugged. ‘We have seen nothing untoward,' he said, looking the lieutenant straight in the eye. The man held his gaze for longer than Faulkner liked. ‘Something troubles you, sir,' he observed, his heart thumping in his breast.

‘Yes. For a vessel fast in the ice, you are uncommonly well payed and oiled.'

Faulkner forced a laugh. ‘Good heavens, Lieutenant,' he said, ‘d'you think I would venture a laden voyage after a winter nipped by floes without putting the old
Nancy
in dock? A Russian dock is not to be had for the same price as one in the River of Thames, thank you, but English gold still commands in Muscovy. As for her upperworks, the minute we saw the sun and the wood was dry enough, my mate and I reckoned the men had had enough time to themselves! By heavens, I'd not have idle Jack about me, he always gets into trouble and trouble in Muscovy is treble the anxiety at home, Civil War or not. D'you know when I was first in the Company's service—'

‘Thank you, Captain, I regret my own time is at the disposal of others. I must return and report to Captain Harris. Good voyage.'

‘And a good cruise to you, sir,' Faulkner added as he followed the lieutenant out on deck where it struck him that a false or revealing remark by one of his own men might undo all that he hoped he had accomplished. But a glance at White, leaning over the rail and occupying the
Unicorn
's boat's crew in idle conversation reassured him. White would not have suffered any of their own men to interfere.

The two stood together for a moment as the boat pulled away from the ship's side. The silence between them was eloquent: the deception appeared to have worked. Unless, of course, they came under a withering broadside the moment the lieutenant reached his own quarterdeck.

‘He didn't ask to see the cargo, then?' White muttered.

‘No, thank God. Now, let's get underway.'

‘Mainbraces!' White called to the waiting men and, looking aloft, bellowed, ‘Haven't you lubbers finished up there yet. Get a move on, or I'll take a rope's end to your pink arses!' And so the
Phoenix
's men went to their stations laughing at the discomfiture of two cavalier gentlemen aloft, while their hunters returned to King Charles's old
Unicorn
, now flying the cross-and-harp colours of the Commonwealth. Half an hour later the two ships were almost hull-down from each other. There had been no withering broadside and after dark Faulkner gave orders to head for the Haringvliet.

The
Phoenix
's success had preceded her, increasing as every prize arrived at Helvoetsluys where, with none too fine a regard for the law – a circumstance which in itself was to compound the
casus belli
that caused a war between the English and the Dutch Republics three years later – they were turned into ready money. For the time being the circumstances of the losses remained unknown in London, where most were underwritten or where their ventures had been capitalized. Only when the crews were let go, to dribble back home according to their initiative and resources, was Faulkner's name associated with yet another assault on the pockets of London's merchants.

Although Faulkner's triumph further imperilled and delayed Mainwaring's intended return to his native land, he was nonetheless not displeased at his protégé's success. Indeed, he concluded, though nurturing designs of his own which included Faulkner, that Faulkner's second cruise, though frustrating for the martial Hervey and Digby, had been of benefit to several. Besides topping up the Royalist coffers, His Majesty having rapidly approved the disposals as legitimate prize whatever the sober crop-heads and their bewigged attorneys in London might say about the matter, they also brought relief to his own stretched purse. As admiral, howsoever nominal the task, Mainwaring was – like Faulkner and his men, each in due proportion – entitled to a share of the prize money. Such a consideration, far from securing his sense of obligation to His Majesty, brought a very private consolation to Sir Henry Mainwaring. As for the King, he was so delighted with Faulkner's cruise that he summoned him to an audience, the news of which was brought by Mainwaring himself.