Tide of War (16 page)

Friday March 28th: At four o'clock this evening an order was brought us from Spithead by a cutter to proceed to sea under the command of Commodore Pasley in the Bellerophon but a thick fog coming on forced us to remain at station off St. Helens for the night.

Sunday March 30th: Fresh gale and cloudy. At six a.m. split our foresail. Got it down and got up a new one; lost contact with squadron.

Monday March 31st: Heavy seas, wind SSW. Lost man overboard later reported as John O'Driscoll, landsman. Not possible to launch ship's boats. Saw coast of Normandy on our weather bow.

Nathan skipped to the more recent entries which described the series of disasters that had befallen the
Unicorn
since the incident off Ship Island but they were so sparse in their detail—and so dry in their style—that had Nathan not met the gentleman who had written them he would have suspected him of irony.

Monday August 11th: Old Bahama Channel, off Cayo Coco. Flat calm. Heavy cloud to NE. Close reefed maintopsail and reefed foresails. Set course NNW to clear islands. P.M. Heavy rain. Visibility very poor. At half past twelve p.m. strong winds with heavy squalls: carried away larboard main-brace and starboard maintopsail
sheet; foresail blown to pieces, mainsail split and blowing from yards; got it down and set storm staysails. Heavy gale with squalls. At 3 p.m. tookjn staysl. Running before wind under bare poles. A prodigious high sea which threatens and endangers the bow. Carpenter reports four inches water in well.

Wednesday August 13th: a.m. Continuing heavy wind and seas. Carried away the chain-plate of the foremost main shroud. Mainyard sprung. Mizzenmast sprung in consequence of vangs of the gaff giving way. At half past eleven struckwith a sea on the starboard quarter, stove in four of the main-deckjports, filled the waist and stove in the launch. Lost two men overboard later reported as John Doyle and James Plant. Carpenter reports lower-decktimbers sprung. Eighteen inches water in well. AH hands at pumps. Six men injured in falls, one severe.

Friday August 15th: a.m. Storm abated somewhat. Lowered fore course under double reef and hoist staysls. At eleven sighted Ragged Island off starboard bow. At half past eleven ran upon uncharted reef …

A tale of unmitigated disaster told by a pedant. Had Pym endured the ordeals of Ulysses on his return from Troy Nathan suspected that his account of them would have read something like this and the Odyssey consigned to oblivion, if it was ever written.

He took up the next document:
Ship's Log of the Frigate Unicorn, 32 guns, Captain Lawrence Kerr, kept by Robert Baker, ship's master, March 17th to October 31st, 1794.

This was a typical ship's log with little to recommend it to a reader wishing for some insightful comment save that it was written in a legible hand. Baker had divided the pages into three columns for
Course, Winds and his Notes. The latter were scanty and reflected Pym's view of events, even to using the same words at times: “prodigious” being a particular favourite. Nathan suspected collusion but this was by no means unusual aboard a ship of war.

“We must stick together,” James Johnston used to tell his officers on the
Hermes,
“or be hanged together.” Accompanied by his great booming laugh.

Nathan put the document to one side, meaning to study it in more detail when he had the time, and took up the last of the documents. Captain Kerr's log, dated from the ship's commissioning in Chatham in late February to the fateful day in July when he was taken by the mutineers.

From the first few days it was clear that the captain was not a happy man, nor the
Unicorn
a happy ship.

Kerr's first cause for concern was with the crew. Inevitably, with a newly commissioned ship in the second year of the war, it had been difficult for him to find experienced seamen or even to man the ship at all. He had been obliged to accept “the sweepings of the jailhouse … and in consequence the ship is very poorly crewed, with nothing approaching a full complement and above a third of the people landsmen—with a good many Irish among them.”

Here was the first mention of that race that was to so aggravate him in the ensuing weeks and months. But why was he so opposed to the Irish? There was no real clue in the early pages of the captain's log, save that he found them “ill-disciplined in their appearance and manner, much inclined to idleness and disorder.”

He had attempted to recruit more experienced seamen during the
Unicorn's
voyage to Spithead, printing off posters to display in the taverns but he had been unable to attract more than a handful of volunteers—”having but a poor record of piracy,” by which he must mean the taking of prizes. An indication that he disapproved of the practice—or was chagrined that he had not yet profited by it?

He had been obliged to resort to the press which had given the
Unicorn
something of an evil reputation during her progress along the South coast and without conferring much advantage. Kerr's gangs had seized fewer than a dozen seamen from almost as many ports and fishing villages in Kent and Sussex and the ship had arrived at Spithead with her captain complaining he was still some two score men short of his full complement of 250 … “And I doubt there is above a fifth of them that know what they are about.”

The situation improved slightly when they reached Spithead and were allocated a score of prime seamen taken by the press in Portsmouth from a recently arrived convoy. But Kerr was far from satisfied. The ship performed badly in her trials—which was only to be expected from such a new and diverse crew—but what really upset him was the ship's appearance.

Kerr had determined views on orderliness. Everything must be “shipshape and Bristol fashion”—as he asserted—although Jamaica fashion were the words that sprung to Nathan's mind for Kerr's obsession with gleaming decks and squared-off rigging was reminiscent of the most fanatical martinet on the West Indies station.

Nathan recalled that Kerr had spent some time on the station during the eighties and presumably this was where he had acquired his respect for outward show. He was most concerned that the appearance of the ship and her crew would let him down and shame him in the eyes of his superiors and fellow captains. He bemoaned the fact that he could only afford to dress the crew of his barge in uniform and that the rest “go about in all manner of slops and some with rags on their backs more appropriate to the backstreets of Dublin than the deck of a ship in the King's Navy.”

And then there was the poor handling of the ship.

He described the petty mishaps that had occurred in the Channel when the
Unicorn
was at exercise with the ships of Pasley's squadron, and though the actual incidents were described in much the same bland terms as those of Pym, it was possible to discern his underlying anger with the incompetence of the crew. Time after time he
referred to the need to “make an example of someone before the ship's company.”

Doubtless he felt himself to be under pressure. Nathan could sympathise with that. He had felt much the same when he had first assumed command. He felt it now. And he detected in Kerr much the same anxiety: the sense of impending failure—and public disgrace. But whereas Nathan was naturally disposed to blame himself—and to perceive his own inadequacies in sharp relief—Kerr was inclined to blame others. And gradually something worse emerged: a tendency to regard the failings of the crew as sabotage—a deliberate conspiracy to do mischief. To do him down.

And this had fostered a determination to break them before they broke him. It began in the second week after leaving Spithead.

Sunday April 6th: a.m. Fresh breeze and fine weather. Performed Divine Service. Read Articles of War. Afterward rigged grating. The following made example of before the ship's company: Petr Flynn, landsman, disobedience, James O'Driscoll, neglect of duty, Patr Farell, drunkenness, Neil Quinn, filthiness, Donld O'Brian, sleeping on duty, Michael Connor, drunkenness, pissing upon the deck…

And that was just the start of it. Nathan read on with increasing astonishment. In the course of the frigate's voyage—her
maiden
voyage—from Spithead to Port Royal, Kerr had listed over a hundred individual punishments. In one single day—July 25th—Nathan counted twenty-eight. There was no record of the number of lashes the men received—he would have to consult the punishment book for that—and Kerr invariably used the euphemism “made example of before the ship's company” but there could be no doubting his meaning and the fact that he chose to record it so often in his log indicated that he took some pride in the severity of his regime.

Nathan had never ordered a man flogged—in his short period of
command he had never had reason to—but he had been forced to witness many a flogging as a junior officer and he detested it. The King's regulations laid down that an individual captain—as opposed to a court martial—could not order a man to be given more than twelve lashes for a single offence—but many got round this by claiming to punish more than one offence at a time. Nathan had seen punishments of thirty-six, sixty, even one hundred lashes meted out for a whole series of offences, many quite trivial, but he had never encountered such sustained punishment as that meted out to the crew of the
Unicorn
on her maiden voyage—and apparently directed towards one sector of the crew. For almost all of the victims—or miscreants as Kerr called them—were Irish.

What was going on here?

It soon became clear. According to Kerr, there was a conspiracy afoot. The seeds of rebellion had been planted in the good ship
Unicorn.
And in her captain's view they were a species native to Ireland.

As time went on he became even less circumspect in his opinions. It had become less an account of the voyage than a private diary in which he described his hopes of success in tracking down the
Virginie
—and his darkest fears of failure. Failure—and betrayal.

On July 25th he wrote:

Was approached by one of my informers among the crew with a note that he said was being passed among his fellow countrymen. It is in the form of a secret catechism, such as the Papists use, and reads:

What is that in your hand?

It is a branch.

Of what?

Of the Tree of Liberty.

Where did it first grow?

In America.

Where does it bloom?

In France.

Where did the seed fall?

In Ireland.

When will the moon be full?

When the four quarters meet.

The meaning is clear until the last two lines. I take them to indicate that some mischief is contemplated “when the four quarters meet.”But what are the four quarters? I am resolved to play a waiting game to see what I may discover.

So Kerr had informers among the crew. Irishmen by the sound of it, informing upon their fellow countrymen. It was a pity they did not inform him that the four quarters referred to the four provinces of Ireland; it might have relieved his mind somewhat. For though he was right in saying this was a form of catechism it was by no means secret. Nathan had seen it circulated in London, quite possibly in his mother's house.

But Kerr's was clearly a mind in torment. That same day—despite his suspicions and his resolve “to play a waiting game”—he had ordered twenty-eight men lashed for the usual range of trivial misdemeanours.

Two days later he was taken by the mutineers and his throat was cut.

Nathan closed the journal with a sigh and stared down the empty table. Kerr was clearly a tyrant—and he had suffered the fate of many a tyrant before him—but was he naturally predisposed to tyranny or had the conditions of the
Unicorn
brought him to such a pass?

Nathan had discovered what he could of his predecessor before leaving London. It was little enough. He had passed for lieutenant in ‘76 at the start of the American War and six years later, just before it ended, he had been appointed commander of the sloop
Shannon.
After the river in Ireland. Had
she
been unlucky for him, too? Kerr and the
Shannon
were on the West Indies station when the war ended and had stayed there until ‘86 when he brought the sloop home to be decommissioned. For several years he was ashore on half pay until the Nootka Crisis when the Navy was mobilised to meet a supposed threat from Spain and he had secured command of another sloop, the
Cormorant,
of 16 guns. The crisis had ended without war but Kerr was among those retained in service. The situation on the continent was uncertain; many expected war with Revolutionary France. In ‘93 it came. And the following year Kerr was made post and given the
Unicorn.

Why? He appeared to have done little to distinguish himself in a lengthy career and there were more promising candidates on the waiting list. Many would have shed blood for a brand new frigate—their own and that of any who stood in their way.

Nathan had asked discreet questions in the Admiralty and been informed that Kerr had family influence. Apparently a cousin had recently become a board member of the East India Company: a nabob with several parliamentary boroughs in his pocket. Votes in Parliament: the secret of many a man's success—in the service and elsewhere. But Nathan could discover little else about him, save that he was aged about forty and single. Evans, the Second Secretary at the Admiralty, whom Nathan had gently interrogated whilst in London, thought he might have been recently widowed.

The whisper of a knock upon the door and the Angel Gabriel ghosted in to inform him that the gig was waiting for him in the harbour—and they might leave as soon as he was ready.

N
ATHAN CHANGED BACK INTO CIVILIAN CLOTHES
for the walk down to the harbour, not wishing to excite the populace beyond reason in his gold lace and trappings. They made quite enough of a spectacle already, he thought, with the consul come to see them off and one of his servants pushing a handcart with their trunks and the Angel Gabriel glaring about him for fear of footpads and Imlay strolling ahead like a benevolent despot with his entourage, the inevitable cigar clenched between his teeth and his hand raised from time to time in fond farewell—or benediction—to some lady in a window. Nathan thanked his stars they were not throwing roses.