The Flying Squadron (36 page)

‘Well, sir?'

‘One draught of a sheer-plan, one chart and three or four sheets of paper that looked like accounts. I was quite unaware that Shaw had an intimate knowledge of nautical matters and it suddenly struck me the chart was of Brest.'

Quilhampton was frowning, then he shrugged and waited for Drinkwater to supply the explanation.

‘You see, James, the Americans have plenty of men, trained naval officers like Stewart and Tucker plus their own considerable mercantile marine to draw from. Their problem is insufficient naval vessels. I stumbled on the first part of their strategy after we encountered the whaler,
Altair
. The news her master, Orwig, brought of an
American frigate at large made me realize the Americans could increase the size of their fleet at a stroke by operating their own flying squadrons of a heavy frigate and a swarm of Baltimore schooners, d'you see?'

‘Aye, by heaven, I do . . .'

‘Then, when we interrogated Tucker, he mentioned a
French
frigate in the offing and I began to consider the implications of a revival of the old alliance, a combination of American seamen manning French-built ships. You may not be aware, James, but the French and their allies, in every suitable port between the Baltic and the Mediterranean, have been building men-o'-war of every class, including ships-of-the-line. If such ships ever got to sea and combined with additional flying squadrons of these damnable frigates and schooners . . .'

‘They would have had us by the throat,' Quilhampton said in a tone of appalled wonder and growing comprehension. ‘And was this all to be paid for by John Company's profits from India and China?'

Drinkwater nodded, ‘I believe so . . .'

‘It's a diabolically clever notion,' Quilhampton said appreciatively, then frowned. ‘What was Shaw's part in all this?'

‘No more than a hook upon which my suspicions were obstinately pegged. Like Stewart, I couldn't get rid of the notion of the fellow. Shaw was obviously tied up with American diplomacy and foreign policy by his very solicitude for Vansittart and the fact that Stewart had us anchor in the Potomac. Then there were those papers and so forth. Finally . . .' Drinkwater tapped a sheaf of documents lying on the table behind him, ‘there was Stewart aboard a French frigate in the South Atlantic after a mid-ocean rendezvous, with this bundle weighted about his waist. No wonder the poor fellow succumbed to Caldecott's tomahawk.'

‘The papers implicate Shaw?'

‘Yes, he was, as it were, the broker between the French and the Americans. In concert with the French invasion of Russia the consequences of the success of this joint venture are not to be contemplated.'

‘It would have compelled us to raise the blockade of
Europe and let the French fleet out . . .'

‘It really doesn't do to think of such an eventuality,' said Drinkwater, suppressing a shudder. ‘Come, fill your glass again.'

He had not told Quilhampton the whole story, but enough of it to make sense. Besides, how could he tell his friend of what he had learned from Arabella in her boudoir, another Parisian dress discarded on her bed, that curious moment of reticence followed by her wholesale condemnation of men and their scheming? Was that why providence had made them lovers, so he might divine these things? He threw aside the thought, discarded it with the sense of relief flooding through him. He smiled at Quilhampton.

‘I make you a toast, James: to the ladies.'

‘God bless 'em!'

‘Johnnie? Can you hear me?'

Lord Moira bent over the man in the sick-bed. The grossness had fallen away, leaving a face that seemed twenty years younger but for the yellow pallor of approaching death.

‘Frank, is that you?' Lord Dungarth opened his eyes.

‘Yes. How are you today?'

‘As you see, failing fast . . .'

‘Come, you mustn't give up hope.'

‘Damn it, Frank, don't cozen me. The quacks will kill me with their nostrums and leeches quicker than this damned distemper. I'm as good as dead.' Dungarth paused, catching his breath. ‘Listen, there's something I want you to do for me.' He raised a trembling hand to his throat. The skin was translucent, the blood vessels below, ribbed and dark, writhing over the stretched tendons. Parting his nightshirt, Lord Dungarth withdrew a key, suspended from his neck by a thin black ribbon. ‘Help . . . me.' He gasped with the effort.

Moira assisted Dungarth to raise his head and eased the ribbon over the bald skull.

‘It is the key to my desk at the Admiralty. You are to make sure Captain Drinkwater receives it. Upon your word of honour, d'you understand?'

‘Upon my word, Johnnie, I promise.'

Dungarth sighed and sank back on to his pillow. ‘What news of the French?'

‘The Russians are approaching the Rhine and Wellington the Pyrenees.'

‘And from America?'

‘Not so good . . .'

‘Is there news of Drinkwater yet?' Dungarth broke in feebly.

‘We shall learn something in a few days,' Moira disembled.

‘I shan't last a few days, but he's the man, Frank. He has the ability . . . the
nous
.'

Despite himself, Moira smiled at the use of the Greek word, then wondered if the man Drinkwater, in whom Dungarth had such faith, really had the intuition his friend thought. A diseased man was, in Moira's experience, no very reliable judge.

‘Tell him about the bookseller in the Rue de'laaah . . .' Pain distorted Dungarth's face. Moira reached for the bottle beside the bed and poured the neat laudanum drops into a tumbler of water.

‘Here, old fellow,' he said, putting an arm about Dungarth and lifting his shoulders. With his other hand he held the glass to his friend's lips.

‘You still pull strings, then?' Moira said admiringly.

‘To the end,
mon ami
, to the end the puppet-master. Don't forget Drinkwater . . .' Dungarth whispered as his eyes closed. ‘Your word upon it, Frank, your word . . .'

The depredations of privateers are largely unrecorded in purely naval histories, but ‘letters-of-marque and reprisal' were issued in copious numbers by both the French and American governments at this time. Indeed, most American merchant ships carried them, so the distinction between the dedicated privateer and the opportunist cargo-carrier is somewhat blurred. However, the astonishing successes of the corsairs in the war against British trade were far from insignificant and the most interesting of the vessels used by the Americans was the Baltimore clipper schooner which possessed a revolutionary new hull form, with hollow entry and run, the antithesis of the frigates and sloops sent against them. Nevertheless, many were captured and, like the fast French frigates before them, adopted and copied by the Royal Navy.

The lengths to which the British went to keep Wellington's army in the Iberian peninsula supplied were often devious. American traders were quite happy to supply both sides, no matter their government was at war with one of them. Much of the investment available for the later expansion of nineteenth-century America originally came from this source.

Napoleon assiduously worked on an American rupture with Great Britain, seeking to embroil his implacable enemy with an opponent who had designs on Canada and posed a very real threat at sea.

Henry Vansittart is my own invention, though a King's
messenger was sent to Washington at the time Drinkwater first arrived in the Potomac. The surplus of American naval officers is also a fact; many brilliant young men were unable to find employment in naval vessels and were driven, like Stewart, to find other ways of demonstrating the fervour of their patriotism.

The value of the frigate actions between the Royal and United States navies was much exaggerated and had little real effect. In America they provided the foundation for a tradition of glory; in Britain they were taken as a sign that the Royal Navy was in decline. The Americans assumed that, like schoolboys with a triumphant conker, the victor accrued to itself the triumphs of its victim. This was plainly nonsense. The value of a navy rests on its strategic power and the fate of its individual parts is only significant if it materially affects this. The Royal Navy suffered such damage in the early years of the Second World War, not between 1812 and 1814. The defeat of a handful of British cruisers did not diminish the great and wearying achievement of continental blockade and when this was extended to America, the balance swung back in favour of the British. Nevertheless, it rattled the British public at the time, and was thought to be of greater importance than the destruction of the Grand Army in the cold of a Russian winter.