On a Making Tide (14 page)

1774

Captain George Farmer, commanding officer of HMS
Seahorse,
was not a man lacking in influence. He had a ship in peacetime, unlike the majority of his peers. His 28-gun frigate had been attached to the squadron being assembled by Commodore Sir Edward Hughes for duty in the Indian Ocean, a commission that would certainly last three to four years. But when a senior captain like Maurice Suckling, with connections that heavily outweighed his, asked for a berth for his nephew, a positive response was in order.

The letter that had arrived with the boy a week before alluded to the experience he gained on his West Indian trip. It also told him that Midshipman Nelson had spent a year in the guardship
Triumph
;
that he had newly returned from a voyage of scientific exploration to the polar ice cap, an attempt to find a passage through the northern ice that would take vessels from the Atlantic into the Pacific. Subsequent enquiries addressed to the officer who had commanded that expedition placed certain question marks over Nelson’s suitability, which left George Farmer wondering, as he sat perusing the replies, whether he had been right to take him on board.

‘Message from Mr Durrand, your honour,’ said his steward, softly, holding out his hat. ‘Hands are mustered to witness punishment.’

‘Very well.’

His Majesty’s frigate
Seahorse
was crewed by peacetime volunteers, but once they had signed up for service they belonged to the Navy. This was something the frigate’s commanding officer was determined they should not be allowed to forget. There was no shore leave on a ship preparing for sea, which was frustrating when Portsmouth harbour was visible from their mooring, as was St Helen’s on the Isle of Wight. But with so many parties bringing in stores a certain amount of absenteeism was inevitable, and so was the punishment if the offender was caught.

‘Seize him up, Mr Caldwell,’ said George Farmer, the minute he came on deck.

Nelson stood by the mainmast between two other midshipmen, Bertie
and Troubridge, not sure in his heart if he wanted to witness what was about to happen. Bertie, small, plump, with a bland countenance, was the same age as Nelson, a Londoner with all the cockiness of that breed. This was his first ship, but few would know it from his attitude, though the prospect of watching a flogging silenced him somewhat. The oldest of the trio, Troubridge, dark complexioned with a hooked nose and hooded eyes, was muttering indistinct imprecations under his breath, leaving Nelson unsure if he was cursing those who would administer the punishment or the man who would receive it.

Called aft to witness punishment, the crew were lined up behind them along the gangways and behind the hammock cranes that cut off the waist. Even those in the boats had been called on deck so that they would not miss this example. The bosun, Caldwell, and two of his mates had grabbed the offender, a tough-looking individual called Mallory, and hauled him forward to lash him to the upright grating, placed above a square of canvas laid to protect the deck from dripping blood. Above him, the marines lined the poop, their red coats and white belts a bright slash even under the grey March sky. The second lieutenant, Stemp, who headed Mallory’s division, was invited forward to speak on his behalf, so that punishment might be mitigated.

Nelson had heard that Mallory was a hard bargain, a bit of a brawler who had little time for officers and scant inclination to hide his attitude from them. It seemed obvious that Stemp didn’t like him. His voice lacked conviction as he put forth the defence that Mallory had been tempted by drink, that if he had not been fetched back by the Portsmouth watchmen, he would have returned in due course of his own volition.

Captain Farmer was an avuncular looking creature with a benign face and pastel blue eyes, rather slight and stooped even in his full dress uniform. He responded in a voice as mild as his appearance. ‘We really cannot have men running around Pompey, Mr Stemp, drinking and whoring when they should be attending to their duty. The Commodore berates us daily for our want of readiness. We must, in some measure, pass that on to the hands.’

As Stemp replied, ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ Nelson wondered whether a rousing speech and a call to responsibility might not achieve more than the use of the cat.

‘Carry out the sentence, Bosun.’

The petty officer nodded to one of his mates, who opened the red baize bag. The other bosun’s mate forced a leather strap into the prisoner’s mouth to stop him biting off his own tongue. Every eye, Horatio Nelson’s included, was on the cat as it came out and was flicked sharply to open it out. The nine slim tails, each with several knots along its length, hissed even at such a slow pace, making him shudder. He suppressed a gasp as the second bosun’s mate stepped forward again and, adding a further indignity, ripped Mallory’s shirt from his back, exposing flesh that bore the serrated scars of previous floggings.

‘Another shilling for the bloody purser,’ said one of Mallory’s mates, as the garment came apart.

‘Silence there!’ shouted Durrand, the first lieutenant, pockmarked and bellicose, turning round to glare. ‘Any more talking and the culprit will join Mallory at the grating.’

There had been plenty muttering when the sentence had been announced. Nelson had heard his mates say that Mallory would certainly have come back aboard – he was a man with no place else to go sobered up, ‘’ceptin his own hammock’. But there were others who opined that he should have known he was dealing with the Ploughman. In the few days he had been aboard, Nelson had learnt that Farmer, for all the bland look and relaxed manner, was a taut captain, a mite free with the cat, in which he was ably supported by his premier, Lieutenant Durrand.

The buzz of dissent had been silenced, but the gist of it, to the boy’s ears, had been the same as the original complaints. ‘Forty lashes might be due for running in wartime, and that for doing so foreign, but for a Pompey volunteer who liked a jug, it was comin’ it too damned high.’

‘Carry on,’ said Captain Farmer.

Nelson closed his eyes after the first blow, which covered Mallory’s back in thin red weals, but he couldn’t shut his ears to the sound of the second. He forced himself to think of John Judd, to recall the way that seaman had discussed flogging, his opinion being that it was the way of the world and that there was nothing to be done to gainsay it. As each blow was completed he could hear the whispered responses from the men behind him.

Crack! ‘Right on the same spot as three.’

Crack! ‘Skin’s gone.’

Crack! ‘I bet that blood he’s spillin’ reeks of gin.’

Crack! ‘There’s a rib, I swear.’

‘Concentrate on John Judd,’ he said to himself, trying to block out the sounds with his old mentor’s imagined voice.

Crack! ‘Knees goin’, though he held for a dozen.’

Crack! ‘But never a sound out his lips.’

‘You got to reckon,’ Judd had insisted, ‘what would be the result without the cat being let out of the bag. In a Navy ship there be ten times the crew of a merchant ship, an’ that means twenty times the trouble. Thievin’, men beaten half to death below for a sideways look, hard-case sodomites buggering the boys at will, and when you get into a sea fight no man prepared to stand by his gun. You got to have rigour, lad, or else you get Paddy’s Market.’

Crack!

Nelson couldn’t help himself. He opened his eyes and shut them again as he observed the minced condition of Mallory’s back. But it wasn’t that image which stayed with him: it was the calm look on the faces of the officers, allied to the naked, near greedy interest of the majority of the crew.
He had seen the same expression on Troubridge’s face. Try as he might, he could not shift that image from his mind, or the words and sounds he was hearing from his ears.

Crack! ‘Wondered when that bastard Caldwell would begin to tire.’

Crack! ‘He’s been layin’ to, an’ that’s for certain.’

Crack! ‘Feart to lose his rating if he fakes it.’

Crack! ‘Bollocks. He’s showing away to the Ploughman.’

Crack! ‘A word in his shell-like might be handy later. If he lays into me like that, I’ll chuck the bugger overboard.’

Crack! ‘Look out!’

Crack! ‘Mr Foster, take that man’s name who was talking.’

Even with his eyes shut Nelson recognised Durrand’s voice, but which of the three to his rear who had been talking was a mystery. One eye cast behind revealed only a row of blank faces, with eyes set to the middle, innocent distance.

Crack! ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

Crack! ‘Poor bastard’s passed out.’

Farmer could stop it, he had the right, but Nelson knew that would never happen.

Crack! ‘An’ he’s still got more’n a dozen to take yet.’

Sailors to their fingertips, men who had probably endured an even worse existence before joining the Navy, they were the same stamp of men as John Judd, if not bred to the sea so accustomed to it that no other life would suit them. Once more he thought how much he admired them and wondered at the justice of the world he lived in. There was supposed to be honour in naval rank, but in the face of such butchery he wondered if natural distinction lay before the mast.

Nelson jerked fifteen more times before he heard the bosun say, ‘Punishment complete, sir.’

‘A damn fine flogging that!’ stated Troubridge, emphatically.

‘By God, yes,’ added Bertie, speaking with little conviction. ‘Almost up to a Tyburn jig.’

Horatio Nelson’s stomach churned and he said nothing.

‘Cut him down and take him below to be attended to,’ said Durrand.

Nelson forced his eyes open, made himself look at the ripped skin and white bones, as well as the blood that ran down Mallory’s legs. The bucket of seawater they used on him made it flow on to the canvas beneath his bare feet, which was already dark red. Caldwell, chest heaving, stood with the cat in his hands, oblivious to the shards of skin that hung off it, and to the blood that ran round his own feet. Mallory was dragged towards the companionway, the strap dropping from his mouth. Even at this distance the boy could see how deep were the bitemarks in the hard leather.

‘Mr Nelson,’ called Durrand, ‘a party, at the double, to get this deck cleaned up.’

Farmer had already departed so Nelson didn’t see how he had reacted to
the sight of Mallory’s back. But he knew, even after only a week aboard, that what had taken place would not have affected the Captain at all.

‘Everyone else, return to your duties.’

Nelson called together a party of seamen and set them to sluicing the mess off the deck. As he watched the water thinned blood run into the scuppers the excitement he had felt at joining a ship due to go on active service abated. It seemed now to be something to regret rather than celebrate.

Durrand’s voice cut into his thoughts, and he turned to face him. ‘Captain Farmer wishes to see you in his cabin in ten minutes.’

‘Nelson,’ Farmer said, then he paused, mouth slightly open. ‘Yes.’ He rubbed his hand over his chin as though he had lost any idea of why he had called the boy into his cabin.

He picked up a creased piece of parchment from his desk. ‘I had this letter from Captain Skeffington. You served with him on his polar voyage?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The blue eyes held his, seeming to see into his soul, causing Nelson, for reasons he couldn’t understand, to blush.

‘Remind me,’ he said, dropping the letter. ‘What were you rated as?’

‘Captain’s servant, sir, aboard HMS
Carcass
.’

The stare from those pastel blue eyes was disconcerting, giving no clue to what the Captain was thinking. Farmer had heard about the trip to the northern ice cap a month before the two ketches had set out, and the stipulation had been quite plain. No boys! Yet this youngster before him had got himself aboard, no doubt through the intervention of his uncle. Now Suckling had exercised that same influence to get his nephew another prized posting.

They would be the only King’s ships in the Indian Ocean, a small fleet of four 74-gunners and half a dozen frigates. It was bound to be a long commission, in an area where the peace that held between Britain and France in Europe was tenuous. Sir Edward was an active officer, who, six thousand miles and several months away from direct instructions, would respond with vigour to any transgression he perceived against Britain’s interests in the Far East, be it from the French in southern India, or from the Dutch in the Spice Islands. There might even be a chance of some action, which would do this youngster’s prospects no harm at all.

‘I require you to tell me about it.’

Farmer, for all his benign and absent minded air, proved a keen interrogator, his enquiries so searching that Nelson felt the ground shift on several occasions, as he dug deep in his mind for the answer to questions he had never even considered. He soon discovered that this was unproductive, a simple admission of ignorance serving better than bluff. He answered questions regarding the crews and their behaviour, the changing colour of the sea related to the tidal flows. Which wind blew and at what strength to
free
Carcass
from the encroaching ice? Did the penetrating cold have any effect on the ship’s instruments of navigation?

Nelson described the journey north, the day they woke, sure by the change in the smell of the air that they were close to ice. Soon they were upon it, great sheets that glinted in the sunlight and turned green through the long Arctic night, itself punctuated with several sights of the
aurora borealis
, fiery and awe inspiring. Shifting winds and dropping temperatures that turned salt water solid so quickly it seemed like magic to the naked eye. Farmer was a good listener, only interrupting Nelson’s tale when the boy waxed too lyrical.

‘A decent war would put an end to all that stuff and nonsense. I’m all for a spirit of enquiry, Mr Nelson, if the purpose is sound, but a route to India past the glaciers is mere fancy. Any vessel that enters those waters is bound to become stuck fast in an ice sheet, which is precisely what happened to you. You were lucky to get out. Many before you, including experienced Greenland traders, have had to take to their boats.’