HMS Aurora: A Charles Mullins Novel (Sea Command Book 3) (15 page)

The secrecy provisions in Mullin’s orders were becoming more flagrantly violated every day. There being no Church of England priest on Madeira that Mullins was aware of, it was necessary to call for one of the Roman persuasion. The first, who appeared in answer to a request addressed to a local church and delivered by a bumboatman, brought a priest who absolutely refused to marry two English heretics.

A second note to a different parish, brought a humbly dressed priest, who agreed to marry them, especially after Mullins handed the cleric his well-filled purse. It was a simple ceremony, conducted in Latin on the quarterdeck, with the entire crew witnessing the event. Since Mullins thought he had bent all of the rules as far as he could, that very evening, Aurora stood out of the harbor enroute to Cape Colony, with his new wife and child aboard. Perhaps a chance existed some of his misbehavior might be overlooked.

In the ship’s log, no mention of a marriage was documented. Instead, the log referred to the reports of a survey conducted on the beef taken aboard in the Baltic. Pronounced inedible by the surgeon, it had been carried to Funchal, where it was brought to the attention of the British consul.

That official grimaced in disgust upon being led to an open cask which had been swayed up on deck. He agreed to sign a statement the beef was rotten but refused to provide funds for replacement beef. Mullins bought the replacement provisions using his own money.

The next days were delightful. Although some of the crew were skeptical about the wisdom of bringing two women on board, forecasting doom and disaster, in the end, the baby brought the crew around. Whenever the infant came on deck with one of the women, any crewman who thought he could get away with it, approached and admired the child. Soon, the long-prevailing lower-deck wisdom that women brought bad luck on a ship was becoming modified. The muttering ceased and the men began competing with each other, making little toys and trinkets for the baby.

The carpenter produced a finely crafted box, padded with cushions to hold the child. Bars across the top secured the infant and provided a place for these trinkets to swing. He also constructed a hanging bed for Mrs. Cooper which swung in the captain’s former office.

No one on the ship had a word to say about a couple being married while a newly born child was present. The pair was wed, and that was the important matter. There was the matter of the wedding certificate, furnished by the priest, which was in Latin, unable to be read by anyone, until Hudson saw it and translated. He assured the couple that the certificate furnished proof the couple had indeed married and the child was not a bastard.

Doris had delayed naming the child until Charles was present, wanting him to help select the name. She proposed Charles Alfred, after her new husband and her father, long in his grave. Mullins thought it might be too confusing, having two males named Charles in the same household, and suggested reversing the order of the names. This was done and the baby became Alfred Charles Mullins.

The weather since leaving Madeira had been settled, but now the winds were becoming troublesome and it was necessary to sail far out into the Atlantic, before catching a slant of wind that would take them south, then east.

The lookout was the first to see the vast dust cloud approaching from the African coast. Mullins came on deck and ordered the ship be stripped down to reefed storm canvas.

The women were ordered to remain below and warned what they might expect. The ship was almost prepared when the gale hit them, but still the fore topsail blew out with a loud report when the first shocking blast hit. A replacement was hoisted with extreme effort, with only a small corner showing to the wind. The gale mattered not a lot to the experienced seamen, they had seen worse. It was the dust that could have finished them.

When the blast of the storm hit them, they were struck by suffocating quantities of driven sand and dust. Only by wrapping layers of wet cloth around their faces were they able to breathe.

The ship might not have survived had not the storm been seen approaching. With the advanced warning though, there had been just enough warning to make the necessary preparations. When the storm finally died, quantities of the dust remained on the ship. It would be days before all traces of it were removed.

The women had spent the hours of the storm below on the orlop deck, to keep the child as far away from the choking dust as possible. Even so, their clothing was filled with the tiniest of dust particles. The storm died as dusk came and the hands spent the night cleaning the ship as best as they could.

It was an exhausted crew that saw the sun come up next morning. Normally, Mullins would have cleared for action at dawn, as he did most mornings. This day, he had intended to give the men some respite from their labor. This day, however, did not go exactly as he might have wished.

Hardly had the masthead lookout gained his post, when the call came down. “Deck there, ship’s tops’ls hull-down, to the southeast.”

Few were concerned at this point. The ship was undoubtedly a ship coming up the trade route to Europe, most likely a British ship. Reports from the lookout continued as the ships closed and details became more apparent. When the lookout reported he thought the ship to be a French frigate, Mister Hardinger went aloft with his glass.

After a quick look, Hardinger reported the ship to be the French National frigate Algae, of 32 guns. Mullins called his first officer down and asked him if he was sure of the ship’s identity.

“Yes sir, as a midshipman in ’93, I was commanding a prize my ship took. Aglae ran us down in the western Med and I was taken. I was aboard her for two weeks before they sent me ashore and I was exchanged. She mounts twenty-six 12-pounders and six six-pounders.“

Mullins was not unduly concerned. He had defeated ships as large as this before and perhaps could again. However, the presence of his wife and son on the ship caused him to take a more moderate view of the prospects for action. He ordered the ship cleared for action and changed course to a more westerly route. If the stranger wished to avoid combat, this would give him a good excuse to do so. The frigate might well wish to continue on course rather than pursue an unknown vessel farther out to sea.

Unfortunately, the enemy frigate seemed determined to get to grips with the British sloop of war. Captain Marcel Leclerk of the French National ship Aglae had reason to wish to take this British warship. He had been fortunate when he had been sent to the French East Indies as a young officer.

The Terror had been in full swing then, and some members of his family had aristocratic blood, if much diluted. Most of them went to the guillotine. His ship had left Bordeaux before any of this was discovered. In India, he had left the ship and found employment in one of the large trading houses there.

Later, when the Aglae came into port, he learned the Terror in France was about over and nobody was pursuing young merchants who had had aristocratic relatives. He had met the captain of the frigate at a party, and the captain, who had recently lost a young officer to sickness, invited Leclerk to come back into the French navy. Leclerk did so, and advanced as the European officers sickened from the native diseases over the next few years. Soon, Leclerk was the senior officer except for the captain, and when that officer fell from malarial fever, Leclerk assumed command.

As captain, Leclerk had the same trouble with his seamen as with the officers. Many of the original European seamen had fallen from various tropical diseases, and there was no source of other European replacements. He compensated by taking on native seamen who proved to be willing and skilled, but there was the problems of diet and language. The seamen of the region were mainly Hindu or Muslim, and there were problems with feeding them the salt pork and beef that had nourished his original European crew.

He could feed his crew salt fish but the language problem was not easily solved. The crew of a modern sailing ship used skills that men used to fishing from small craft did not have. Many of the petty officers that might have taught these skills to the new hands were gone. It was difficult for a French petty officer to teach the skills needed to a recruit that did not understand the language,

When Leclerk received orders to return the ship to France, he was of two minds. France was the place to be for an ambitious officer who wished to advance. However, those guillotines that had executed his family, were still there, ready to be oiled and put back into service should the political climate change

Leclerk reasoned, if he could only bring back this British sloop-of-war in triumph, any of the past political problems left over from the past would likely disappear for good. Possibly, he might get command of a better ship.

Aglae was not an old ship in years, but her time in the Orient had left its mark. Needed repairs had either not been done, or had been done poorly. Left free to make his own decisions, Leclerk would probably let this British warship go, but there was the thought one of the remaining Frenchmen aboard might choose to curry favor by reporting his lack of Revolutionary fervor. Leclerk was sure if his ship was in good repair, with a proper crew, he should have no trouble taking this weaker warship.

He decided, despite the ship’s outstanding problems, she was still the more powerful, and the match should be decided within minutes. He made the decision to fight, if the chase would only oblige.

Looking at the enemy from his post on his quarterdeck, Mullins saw the frigate settle in behind him in chase. It appeared Aurora was very slightly faster, probably due to her cleaner bottom. Still, it would be wise to sink this fellow’s tops’ls under the horizon as soon as possible. The gale had strained the spars and rigging to an uncomfortable degree, and it was always possible that something could break loose.

The thought had no sooner crossed his mind than something did. With a resounding ‘Crack’, the main topsail yard split. That topsail was providing much of their driving force and if not repaired immediately, there could be unpleasant consequences.

Mister Whitbread slid down the backstay at a deadly speed, shedding layers of skin on his palms as he did so. Doubling back to his captain, he reported, “Sir, I think the storm started a crack in that spar. When the wind filled the sail, it pulled the crack apart.”

Despite his own problems, Mullins was able to decide that Whitbread was really shaping up nicely, despite his unpromising beginning. Never mind, here was the bosun, with his own report.

The bosun reported a spar of the proper dimensions was on board and would be sent up shortly. To compensate for the loss of the topsail, the main course was set. As the ship increased speed though, the enemy frigate also set hers and soon the situation was as before.

As Mullins watched the heavy spar being sent up vertically through the rigging, he occasionally took a look at their pursuer. The frigate was overtaking hand over fist. His crew might be able to get the yard aloft and rigged, but by then he thought the enemy would be upon them. With no other option left to him, he must fight.

Observing the overtaking enemy frigate, he could see signs the ship had not seen the best of care recently. Her canvas appeared to be composed more of patches than whole cloth. Probably returning from the French colonies in the Orient, perhaps she had not visited a dockyard recently. She was fast though. Maybe she had had her bottom cleaned recently.

With the enemy creeping closer, ever so slowly, Mullins decided to test their seamanship. Warning his own crew of his own intentions, he waited a few minutes before he ordered the ship put on the starboard tack.

This went smoothly enough, with the bow turning past the eye of the wind and the sails cracking as they caught the breeze on the other tack. With all well on his own ship, Mullins shifted his attention to their pursuer. For an unusually long moment, the enemy continued blithely on her original course, separating steadily from her prey.

At length, she attempted to emulate Aurora’s tacking maneuver, failing when her bows refused to cross the wind, and she was taken aback, her sails being pressed against the masts by the wind. Aurora continued to gain as her enemy struggled. Eventually, the frigate’s captain decided to wear ship instead of tacking. This, of course, required the ship turn through nearly 270 degrees, before the frigate resumed its pursuit, much farther astern, by this time.

Having got the measure of his enemy by this time, Mullins was faced by a quandary. Of course, if he followed the sense of his orders faithfully, he should use his own skills and those of his crew to evade this enemy and escape into the vastness of the Atlantic. He doubted this enemy captain and crew had the skills to cause him serious harm. The topmen overhead were now replacing the damaged yard, and the ship would soon regain her former speed.

The thoughts, of actually taking this enemy, were beginning to intrude on his conscious. A major difficulty was his wife and child on the ship. Immured on the orlop deck as they were, they should be relatively free from harm. With confidence in himself and crew, he decided to see what he could do with this opponent.

Consulting with his master gunner and the first officer, it was decided to transfer two of the after nine-pounder long guns to new ports built into the stern windows in the cabin. The panes with their glass were removed and struck below. New tackle was installed and the guns themselves were transferred. Mullins ordered his most capable men to man the guns and as soon as the enemy ship closed a bit more, a trial shot was fired. It dropped close, but a bit to starboard, Captain Mullins ordered the gunners to continue the bombardment on their own, while he tended to his ship.