The Perils of Command (7 page)

Such a transfer of personnel could not be accomplished without attracting attention, not least from those vessels whose number had not been raised on HMS
Semele
, the same ships not being in receipt of this gift.

On the deck of HMS
Agamemnon
Horatio Nelson was standing with Dick Farmiloe, his officer of the watch and now risen to the position of fourth lieutenant. It did not take too long to get the sense of what was happening.

‘I smoke a touch of favouritism, sir. Nothing seems to be coming our way.’

‘I daresay you are right, Mr Farmiloe, but do not let it make you gloomy.’

Nelson produced a large handkerchief, for he was suffering from a cold; indeed when not in such a state he seemed to be prone to afflictions of one sort or another. Only activity cured him and being stuck in San Fiorenzo Bay was not efficacious.

It was far from a secret that he was not Hotham’s favourite subordinate, being a client officer of Lord Hood and much cherished by him in the past. How many times had the fleet watched as
Agamemnon
weighed to depart on some cruise, one in which Nelson was free to seek opportunities?

‘We are as short on hands as anyone.’

‘True,’ Nelson replied, smiling through a loud sniff. ‘But would we want men who are not Agamemnons? Are we not like King Hal’s happy few at Agincourt, not wishing for any to share our glory? We will do very well as we are.’

If the transfer of hands was a cause for grumbling, the sight of HMS
Semele
hauling herself over her anchor multiplied that on many a quarterdeck, the most vocal that same HMS
Agamemnon
, for she had been listed as the next vessel to revictual.

If one or more captains were upset, Ralph Barclay was not. As soon as he cleared Cape Corse, well out of sight of his peers, he gave orders to his master to set a course for Naples, which obliged the premier to ask for confirmation. That got him a cold look from his captain.

‘Please understand, Mr Palmer, that I enjoy the confidence of Admiral Hotham or we would not be at sea at all. Now we want sharp eyes in the tops, do we not, for it would be a damn shame to let opportunity go begging.’

‘Why did you forbear to tell me of this before, John?’

‘I did not wish you to worry and it was something I felt I could deal with on my return.’

‘My husband is close by—’

‘Hardly that, Emily, he is in a Corsican bay and likely to be stuck there.’

‘How can you know that?’

‘The purpose of the fleet demands it. They are there to fight the French, not to pursue private affairs, and that applies to your husband’s ship as much as anyone.’

‘And you do not see it as coincidence that he is in the Mediterranean?’

‘I would admit to you one thing, my wonder as to how he has achieved it, but that serves little. He has, and if you agree to my suggestion then I would say his being so close is fortuitous. With the Chevalier’s aid I can be with the fleet in a matter of days, wind permitting and, once there – well you know what might be possible.’

‘You cannot believe he will simply allow himself to be persuaded, John. If he has come this far he will scarce desist in his pursuit of me.’

‘I have the means to put pressure on him.’

‘Those court martial papers,’ she sighed. ‘How I now regret stealing them.’

‘How can you say that when they have kept you safe?’

She exploded then. ‘I am not safe and I never will be as long as I am with you.’

‘That, I am bound to protest, is cruel.’

Emily’s shoulders slumped then and Pearce knew, even if he could not see them, the tears had begun to flow. He closed with her and took her in his arms, to sob on his shoulder while he uttered what he thought were meaningless platitudes. Should he tell her that it was not only the court martial papers that might make Barclay hesitate? John Pearce had good grounds to believe he had been party to the conspiracy that had sent him and Henry Digby into such danger on the coast of Dalmatia.

That accepted, Ralph Barclay was a minor player. The real culprit in the matter was Hotham and he intended to put pressure on that sod to ensure that HMS
Semele
never got close to the Bay of Naples. As Emma Hamilton had said, given time he might dissuade Emily from what he considered an act of pure madness. If he could guarantee she was safe
here it would give him a basis with which to argue.

‘All I ask,’ he said, after a while, ‘is to be allowed to try. If I fail, well …’

‘Divorce requires an Act of Parliament.’

Thankfully she was not looking at Pearce when she said that for she would have seen him suddenly discomfited. If he had not actually lied when he intimated that as a way out of their dilemma, Pearce had no illusions as to the possibility of getting a bill of divorce even before the legislature. Besides the sheer amount of effort required there was the cost, which he could not hope to meet.

‘I will not say it will be easy. All I will say is that I will bend my best efforts to it, for it is a case of my heart being broken or kept whole.’

‘And if you fail?’

‘Then I shall seek for some occupation in Frome so that I can be close to you and our child.’

‘Even if I would not wish it so?’

‘You have made it plain how hard it is to command you, Emily. Believe me when I say I will be ten times more tenacious.’

Cole Peabody was far from happy – not that many would have known, given he had been miserable for months now – before he had even been brought aboard HMS
Semele
as a pressed hand. Prior to coming a cropper he and his mates had enjoyed what they saw as an enviable life.

When in the Low Countries’ port of Gravelines they had money to spend on pleasure, and did so lavishly. Time at sea, while dangerous given they were engaged in cross-Channel smuggling and the excise-used cannons and muskets, tended to be of short duration; once their illicit goods were landed and sold it was home to Ramsgate where Cole was treated as a man of parts.

Life had not been all roses; working for the Tolland brothers, who owned the ship on which they carried their contraband, had never been easy. The older brother Jahleel had a temper to make Old Nick cautious. If his younger sibling Franklin had seemed more sensible he was yet a fellow of whom to be wary. Not that he held either in regard now: the pair had abandoned Cole and his mates to the press, no
doubt buying themselves off HMS
York
, a receiving hulk into which John Pearce had dumped them all.

‘Can’t be worse than what we had, Cole.’

‘Who knows, Cephas? You was flogged on a whim by that sod Barclay and who’s to say where we’s going won’t be worse?’

Over the months since they had been sent from the hulk, Peabody had come to exert a semblance of control over his equally unfortunate mates. Cephas Danvers, Fred Brewer and Dan Holder were, like him, ruffians and they looked and acted it. They had held themselves apart from the rest of the crew of
Semele
as being of a different stamp to men they saw as dupes. What fool would sign up for the King and a pittance when they could be free spirits and rake in money by running smuggled goods?

Even men forced to serve, and there were a number aboard the seventy-four, they disdained as too low to consort with. Only a chump would allow himself to be taken up by the press, a fact known to the whole quartet, who had spent their lives either avoiding such gangs or when they could not do so, fighting them to a standstill with knives and clubs to remain free.

They knew themselves to be hard bargains and behaved like it. They would have been pleased to know that the men watching them over the side were glad to see their backs, for they had been nothing but trouble to the lower deck as long as they had slung their hammocks there. Their divisional officer was likewise relieved; it would have been hard to admit the truth to anyone, but he had been cautious of men he reckoned were no strangers to dark deeds and he knew he should have been harder on them.

‘That ship we’re headed to has an admiral’s flag aloft, Cole, do you note that?’

‘So it has, Fred,’ Cole replied looking up, before calling to one of the oarsmen. ‘What’s the name of the barky, mate?’

‘
Britannia
,’ came the whispered reply as the mid in charge of the cutter, young and fresh-faced, loudly called for them to be silent.

‘Happen that nipper might need a midnight swim,’ opined Danvers.

‘Belay that talking there or your first sight of the flagship will be a grating.’

‘Beggin’ your indulgence, young sir,’ Cole called, ‘we’s new to your ways.’

‘By damn you’ll learn soon enough.’

‘And so might you, baby face,’ Cole whispered to himself.

A lieutenant was waiting to list them in the muster book and to assign them to individual mess tables but that did not hold. A word here and there, plus the odd threat, soon got them messing together as a group. Their table was hard by the lower deck 32-pounder cannon that they would work in battle. Following on from that, the next task was to so intimidate the other members who shared their mess as to ensure that most of the mundane duties required to be carried out fell on them.

A ship of the line that had been at sea for two years was a settled place; the wardroom officers knew their compatriots’ foibles and had learnt to live with those they found annoying. On the lower decks there had been jockeying when first assembled, sometimes coming to blows but those too had long been resolved; a new draft revived old problems and none more than a quartet so clannish and determined.

‘There’s one or two eyeing us up to put us in our place.’

Cephas said that to three lowered heads as the four conversed in undertones. What he was relating they expected; a first rate, supposed to have an eight hundred strong crew, had its hierarchy on the lower deck and some of them would not take kindly to the notion of the ex-smugglers muscling in.

There were two ways to deal with such a problem: by handing out a good hiding to the top dogs or, and this Cole favoured, by never upsetting them and pointing out that they were prepared to fight their corner, so harmony served everyone best, for bloodshed was certain.

‘Had words with some,’ added Brewer. ‘No chance of coin in this bugger lest we bring John Crapaud’s fleet to a contest.’

‘You might get more’n coin if that occurs, Fred, you might get a bit of round shot up your arse.’

‘Only happen if he was running away, Cole.’

‘Which, Cephas, we must set our mind to do first chance presented. This is a new berth and they knows us not well. Word is we goes regular to Leghorn for victuals.’

‘Where in the name of Christ is Leghorn?’ Dan Holder asked.

‘How would I know?’

‘We’s a long way from home, of that I is certain.’

‘Its land, mate. Put my feet on good earth and I’ll find a way to my hearth, even if we ’as a rate of miles to cover.’

That did not produce much in the way of enthusiasm, even if it had been a constant theme ever since their misfortune at Buckler’s Hard, where Pearce had outfoxed the Tollands and taken them prisoner. They had vowed to desert at the first opportunity, only such a thing never occurred. Ralph Barclay
had been a mean sod with liberty even to those he trusted, and they were few. The chances of these four ever getting ashore on leave had been nil.

Added to that they had missed out on the prize money paid out for the First of June battle, which had lined the purse of every man on the seventy-four from the great cabin to the meanest nipper, and that rankled. Fate was a cruel mistress, as Cole Peabody had seen the need to constantly remind them.

‘An’ she has set us on the ship with not a pot to piss in.’

That led to talk of bloody revenge on the Tolland brothers for dragging them into this situation in the first place and then leaving them to their fate, braggadocio and distance allowing them to forget that they had lived in mortal fear of Jahleel. Even that paled when the name John Pearce was mentioned; if the Tollands would shed his blood, these men intended – should they ever meet Pearce again – to skin him alive and then burn what was still breathing.

‘Pity, seems to me,’ Cole would remind them, hissing through lips lacking in teeth. ‘There’s as much chance of coming across that bastard as a pig flying to the masthead on its own fart.’

‘They says God provides, Cole.’

‘Not any one we worship, Dan.’

There being a constant stream of coastal traffic between Naples and the other ports of Italy, finding a vessel to take him to Leghorn posed no problem for John Pearce. From there he could get aboard any of the ships sent for revictualling and thus on their return back to San Fiorenzo Bay. The tiny cabin he got on the trader was filthy, which annoyed him, he now
being accustomed to the cleanliness of a British warship, but he comforted himself that it would not be a journey of long duration.

Like all ships it creaked and groaned as timbers moved and ropes stretched, perhaps being old and poorly cared for more than most, especially when changing course. Carried out with none of the efficiency of a king’s ship, this tended to be a noisy and shouty affair – certainly enough to wake him from his slumbers and to wonder why what he was hearing seemed to have a note of alarm about it.

In a stilted conversation with the master the following morning he learnt that, under a clear sky and near full moon, a large warship had been spotted sailing south under full sail. Fearing it to be French and afraid to risk being taken as a prize, the course had been rapidly altered to close with the land but the vessel had shown no interest in the small trader and had sailed on without itself altering course.

‘Probably Neapolitan,’ was John Pearce’s opinion, which once it had been understood got him a shrug.

The drill on board HMS
Semele
was that set by the standing orders. The crew were roused out before dawn to man the guns, which were loaded and run out. Ralph Barclay was on deck as the sky lightened to range around the seascape with a telescope resting on a midshipman’s shoulder. He was not alone; every officer on the ship was likewise alert, for this was ever seen as a time of vulnerability in hostile waters.

Sure that no enemy had snuck up on them in the hours of darkness – the moon state made no difference – he waited till he could, as the mantra had it, ‘See a grey goose at a quarter mile’. There being nothing in sight but the odd fishing boat
he could give the order to Mr Palmer to carry on, which began the job of worming and housing the cannon, then swabbing the decks before they were flogged dry.

If Ralph Barclay saw the looks directed at him in his time on deck, or as he departed, none of them friendly, he paid them no heed. He had no desire to be loved by the crew: he wished to be obeyed and promptly, with the requisite punishments available to those who failed to meet his exacting standards.

In his absence the great cabin had been cleaned with watered-down vinegar, as it was every day, and the odour of that stung Barclay’s nostrils as he sat with a cup of strong coffee and contemplated what lay ahead, this as the hands were now piped to breakfast.

Opposite him sat Cornelius Gherson, a man who had been roped more than once into the affair of his captain’s troubled marriage. His solution to the problem of Emily Barclay and her desertion – hinted at, if never stated, but understood nonetheless – was that to seek to repair the union was a waste of time; a permanent end to the problem was the only viable answer.

‘It won’t wash,’ Barclay said, when it was once more alluded to. ‘If the whole fleet does not know what I am about then they soon will, for Hotham will have some explaining to do and I don’t see him being shy in letting on my motives.’

‘Irate captains?’

‘As I would be myself if the shoe was on the other foot.’

Gherson looked over his employer’s shoulder then, out of the salt-caked casements to the startling blue of the sea, his mind on the man’s wife. She was a beauty and would still be that, not yet twenty years old with long auburn hair, fair
skin, a delectable figure and a very becoming countenance enhanced by light freckles. What she also had was a waspish tongue and he had been lashed by that more than once.

On initial acquaintance he had made it known that she was, to him, an alluring prospect. Being vain, Gherson had fully expected the woman to be equally attracted to his person – after all, he had enjoyed great success in such matters before – though he was then obliged to recall that his previous dalliance with another man’s wife had come perilously close to getting him killed.

Emily Barclay had rebuffed him in the most vicious and to him unwarranted way, not once but repeatedly, which had turned attraction into dislike and through his own anger into hate. Her husband was being weak in the head to think a woman like that would come back to him, twice her age and not much to look at either, with his heavy dark jowl and ruddy-red cheeks.

‘The task, Gherson, if we find she is in Naples, is to get her aboard the ship. Once I have her confined well, I shall make her see sense.’

‘Indeed, sir,’ came the sceptical reply; Barclay had tried to make her see sense before and failed miserably.

‘And in order to do that you must come ashore with me and put out feelers, for I cannot be seen to do so. Duty demands that I call upon our ambassador but you can act the free agent.’

‘I will be in a place where I lack the tongue of the natives.’

‘I know you will need an interpreter, Gherson, but when you charge me for his services have a care not to try and dun me as you have in the past.’

‘Money will be required to loosen tongues as well.’

‘Some of which your sticky fingers will be reluctant to part with, I daresay.’

Gherson made no protest at this growling accusation; he had long given up trying to persuade Ralph Barclay that he was careful with his money because he had never been believed. That the man had the right of it induced no guilt, yet such a response underlined what he had come to realise quite quickly in their relationship: his employer did not trust him one little bit. This was a fact not to be taken personally for the man was a stranger to dependence, his attitude being, after a life in the King’s Navy, that anyone who could would steal from him and, as long as it was within reasonable bounds, he could let it pass. He was not beyond the odd bit of peculation himself, of the kind that even sharp-eyed Admiralty clerks would fail to spot. It was easy to despise Ralph Barclay, especially for a man who applied the same to most people he met. Gherson was adroit with figures and no more honest than his employer, able to so construct accounts in a way that hid well the minor felonies while diverting some for his own purse. To be insulted, as he regularly was by the man before him, he would abide since he was a source of income that was decent now and could grow to a much more lucrative one if he ever became an admiral and a fleet commander.

Certainly in his daydreams Gherson looked forward to the day when he could tell Barclay what he really thought of him, but such a dawn was a long way off. That accepted it was common for him to ponder on things that might go some way to redress the imbalance between them and such a possibility occurred to him now.

If he found Emily Barclay in Naples, perhaps the
chance would arise to take from her that which she would not surrender willingly, a thought that had him wriggling uncomfortably in his chair. Barely aware of the shouts aloft and the sound of running feet, he was brought to the cause of the commotion as a midshipman knocked and entered.