Dewey Lambdin - King`s Captain

Lewrie looked at the faces glaring back at him, most wearing an utter blankness, a weariness beyond all reckoning of the opportunity he offered. Here and there were younger, fitter faces, men with straight backs and clean limbs, a few who'd retained their clothing and tried to keep themselves in better order. He hoped some of them might step forward.

"God, what a pot-mess!" Ludlow sniped, ready to spit on deck and be done with the lot of them. "Not one of 'em better than what a crop-sick hound'd spew up!"

"Their issue slops, sir? Where are they?" Lewrie asked.

"Lord, sir"- Sandwich's lieutenant sneered then, in a loud voice, to their faces-"gutter scum such as them? Improvident drunkards such as them sir? Sold or gambled 'em away with no thought for the morrow, like all their lot do, 'thout you'd beat some sense into 'em. Weaker'uns… well, mayhap the tougher stole 'em blind, Captain Lewrie. Be the first to admit such happens." The officer shrugged, as if it was of no matter to him what these "recruits" did amongst themselves. "Real sailors are so rare now, sir… we have to settle for the hopeless shit, such as these! Who'd rob shipmates, hey you lot? No more dawdling… let's have some of you step forward and volunteer 'fore we choose you by throwin' rocks."

"A moment, sir…" Lewrie snapped, his neck burning with anger at the lieutenant's choice of words, of being such a cruel bastard. "I would like to address them. Your surgeon has cleared them, I trust?"

"Aye, sir… I s'pose," the lieutenant allowed.

He'd not thought to fetch his own surgeon, Mr. Shirley, along. He had not expected, however, to be presented with a spectacle, such as these poor wretches.

"You men…" he began, "those sailors among you. Far back in the rear there… suspicious, I'd imagine." He chuckled. "Proteus is a frigate, and you know what that means. She's fast, well-armed, and has more deck space and mess space than other ships. So you won't be living with two other bastards' elbows in your eyes, off-watch. And a frigate means prize-money. To the Devil with ships-of-the-line like Sandwich. She'll never catch anything, but a frigate will. I've been lucky with prize-money in my last ship, and so my people've been too! There's frigate-men come home so rich they bought new pocket watches, then fried 'em in lard in public just for the Hell of it! Proteus is a spanking-new frigate too! Just come down from the Chatham yard. Not a month in commission. You lubbers, you know what that means, do you? She doesn't stink! Fresh, clean paint and tar, sweet-smelling timbers, nothing rotting in the bilges… and as pretty as a brand-new house. A fast ship, a proud ship…"

"I will, sir!" someone in the back called out, though several sneered at him for sounding so eager. He came forward, a slim, young man with a nervous smile that showed he had most of his teeth. "Mash, sir. Topman, sir. I'll volunteer for her."

"Very well, Mash." Lewrie beamed. "Any mates of yours able to hand, reef, and steer… serve a gun, back yonder? Any others wish to ship with Mash, then?" he called out.

He saw a pair of likely men shrug and pick up their seabags to shuffle through the press of men and also volunteer.

"Martyn, sir," one husky brute said. "Ord'n'ry Seaman, sir."

"Lucas, sir," said a blond-haired teen. "Topman, sir."

"Bannister, sir," claimed a whip-thin, dark, ferrety lad. "I done a voy-age'r two, but ain't rated Ord'nary yet."

"Good, though, we can use you, and thankee, Bannister," Lewrie said, clapping him on the shoulder as he passed to stand to one side. "Any other sailors or watermen of a mind to get out of this hell-ship? Get clean again? Eat decent rations again?"

"Me, sir!" A wee lad about Sewallis's age and size piped up in a falsetto. "Come on, Da!" he said to the man who stood behind him with his hands on his shoulders. "Be t'gether?"

"What's your name, lad?" Lewrie grinned. The boy didn't look like much of a sailor, but at least he was enthusiastic, and he hoped that enthusiasm might spread.

"Grace, s'please ye, sir." The boy tentatively smiled back.

"You're kin?" Lewrie asked the elder man behind him, hoping that the lad wasn't the grownup's "plaything."

"Grace, sir," the man said. He was withered, ropy, and wiry, and looked as if he'd spent his life on the water somewhere. "Had us our own fishin' smack outa Whitstable; but she went down back durin' the winter, an'…"

All they'd owned, most-like, Lewrie surmised; and once lost, they had laboured for others, for a tenth of the income they'd made on their own bottom. For friends, neighbors, or no!

" 'Tis me grandson, Cap'um, sir," the elder admitted with pride. He was grey-haired, missing some teeth, but appeared sound in wind and limb. "Never sailed 'board a big ship all me born days, sir. Me an' me son too, here," he said, indicating a third possibility. "But…"

"Young Grace… Middle Grace, and… Elder Grace, aye." Lewrie nodded. "Three pay certificates for the one household then, men?"

"Aye, reckon it'd help, sir. We'll volunteer f r yer frigate," the middle one allowed, as he gathered up his few pitiful possessions.

More began to come forward, though some Lewrie and Ludlow had to turn away. They were too spindly, too weak and hacking with coughs, or covered with sores, some just too shifty and cutty-eyed-too old, too young, even for ship's servants. And how the Impress Service had hoped to justify dredging them up, Lewrie couldn't begin to fathom.

"Bennett, sir." Then, Peacock and Thornton, Humphries and Inman and Slocombe and Sugden, Grainger and Brough. Only half were sailors or could even charitably admit they were on a first-name basis with a basin of water… but every sound man was more than welcome.

Spooner signed aboard, then Richard, then Brahms…

"German, are you, Brahms?" Lewrie asked.

"Crikey, me a Dutchie, sir?" The East End Londoner guffawed.

Two older fellows came up, both with hard hands of common labourers now fallen on hard times, drink, or a faint brush with the law.

"Smyth, sir," one said, cloaked in a blanket and little else. "With a 'wye,' sir. Ess-Emm-Wye-Tee-H'aich."

"Rumbold, sir," the other announced, this one almost bald with but a monkish fringe of white-ish hair above his prominent jug ears. "I was a waggoner, sir. Know some 'bout ropes an' such…"

"Better than those who don't know ropes or knots, Rumbold," Lewrie assured him, steering him towards the growing clutch of men by the lower entry-port.

Some smaller, younger lads just into their teens volunteered; fit for servants now; later they could train them aloft as budding topmen. Soon as they fed them back to where their ribs didn't show, that is, and hosed them down under a wash-deck pump so they would no longer resemble a pack of chimney-sweep's apprentices.

"A frigate, d'ye say, sor?" a man dared to ask from the middle of the remaining horde. "Them as go swift as th' very birds, sor?"

"A frigate, aye," Lewrie responded, put a bit on his guard by the man's deep Irish brogue. As if he didn't already have enough of those on his books already. He'd hoped, in the far east of England, to scrape up mostly English sailors.

"Lord!" Ludlow sneered in harsh voice, "Paddies! All brawn and no wits. Can we not be a little choosier, Captain, sir?"

"Furfy, I am, sir, and that proud I'd be t'get off this prison-barge, Yer Honour… me an' me mates too," Furfy boasted, elbowing at some others near him. "We ain't sailors, nossir, but we're strong, as yer officer says, and fit, sir… eager t'learn?"

"Of a mind to join your mate, Furfy, are you, men?" Lewne asked.

"Kavanaugh, sor. Aye, that I be," one piped up quickly.

"Cahill, sir." Then, "Ahern, sir. Aye, I'll stick wi' Mick."

"Sir, ya feed Mother Desmond's boy Liam three meals a day, and I'm yours f r life, so I am!" another chortled, doffing a ragged, and shapeless, farm hat, a Black Irishman, with ebon hair and blue eyes.

"Mind your manners, you boggish cur!" Ludlow snapped. "Not him, sir, beggin' yer pardon. Too much the sky-larkin' sea-lawyer to me."

"Any skills, Desmond?" Lewrie enquired, despite the caution.

"I read some, write some… taught others some, sir. Fiddler, play nil-lean pipes… songs an' stories. Figure cyphers an' numbers. And a strong back, when all else fails me, sir. Bit o' th' auld harp?"

"A sea-lawyer, as I said, sir," Ludlow sneered. "One step shy of the gallows, I'll warrant. A hopeless drunkard too, most-like."

"Faith, sir," Desmond began to protest, with a smile on his face, "but what man alive'd say 'no' to a drop o' th'…"

"I'll go into her, sir!" someone from the far side announced as he clambered up from below, dragging his possessions in a hammock-roll and a seabag. He stepped forward to doff a tarred, round, flat-brim sailor's hat. This one, at least, had kept the bulk of his issue kit and was dressed in worn, faded, mended, but clean seaman's clothes, and looked to be a real tarpaulin hand in his middle thirties. He wore a full beard and mustache, despite the fashion for being smooth-shaven-perhaps to conceal the hint of a dark red scar which sketched his left cheek and the tinge of blue-blackness which stained his face-a flare-up from a powder charge or a burst from a gun's barrel as the fellow had sponged out in a previous battle.

"Bales, sir," the bearded fellow reported crisply, standing at an easy attention with his head up, quite unlike the remaining volunteers' hunched, hopeless shiverings. "Able Seaman, sir. And a middling good gunner, sir."

"Bales, hey?" Lewrie grinned in pleasure. "Had an old captain named Bales. How'd the other recruiters miss you, Bales?"

"Just come aboard last evening, sir, is why," the man replied. "Turned over from Hussar-28, sir-paid off at Deptford."

"Good, we'll take you, Bales," Lewrie decided. "Join with the others yonder. Now, Desmond…" Lewrie said, turning back to the Irishman. "Any useful skills?"

"Strength for th' hard labour, sir," Desmond admitted, still chipper even under Ludlow 's glare, "but wit enough t'learn a sailor's trade. A stout an' willin' heart, sir, an' ever a cheery disposition for any task ye put me. Fell in with Furfy an' th' lads, an' I'd hate t'part from 'em, sir. Be left behind a'mournin'? Like th' auld song goes, Cap'um… 'one sword, at lea-est, thy right shall guard… o-one faithful har-up shall praise thee,' " Desmond actually sang out in a high, clear tenor.

"Which old song is that you cite, Desmond?" Lewrie chuckled.

"Why, 'tis th' auld 'Minstrel Boy,' sir!" Desmond replied.

"Well, 'Minstrel Boy,' you don't wish to part from your mates; then I'm not the one to turn my nose up at a real live volunteer. Go join 'em and be ready to transfer over to Proteus."

"I thankee from th' bottom o' me heart, sir, that I do!" volunteer Desmond boomed, doffing his hat once more and bowing from his waist. He plucked up his small bundle of belongings tied up in a thread-bare shirt and dashed to rejoin his friends before Lewrie could change his mind, despite Lt. Ludlow's grunts of disapproval.

They winnowed a few more and came within five hands of the full number of ninety-one seamen, or young teens who could be trained as seamen, and made up most of their lack in lubbers, waisters, and servants-those stout but stupid, too old to send aloft. They could use anyone who could serve on the gangways to haul in teams on halliards, braces, lift-lines, clews, buntlines, or jears; or serve the guns on the run-out tackles to drive them up a sloping deck to the gun-ports.

There were no others aboard Sandwich even remotely healthy, or suitable, and more than a few that even made Lewrie feel a twinge, now and then, of suspicion of a criminal background.

He'd done what he could to man his ship and get her ready for sea. Now, according to Captain Hartwell, he might have as long as two weeks before receiving orders to sail and join some squadron of ships, where Proteus, like all fast frigates, was all too rare and desperately needed. It would be up to his officers and petty officers from here on out to drive, lead, drag, or harangue them into a crew.

All three of his ship's boats were working, as were a brace from Sandwich, to ferry the new hands over to her. Lewrie stood by the rail with a faint smile on his face, thinking how discomfited his Purser, Mr. Coote, would be. He'd have to issue the most of the new-comes a fresh set of slop-clothing, plates, spoons, shoes, blankets… when they'd already lost, gambled away, or sold a first issue; and his books would be as badly out of joint as his nose, Lewrie was mortal-certain!

As he made his way to the entry-port to take a salute from HMS Sandwich's, side-party, he felt he had good reason for another celebratory indulgence with his supper that evening. For one, he'd missed his midday meal for all his errands; for a second, he'd succeeded at one more vital step in making Proteus a serviceable warship, safeguarding his precious commission into her; and third… he'd found a way to put a "pusser" in a bad mood!

Not bad, for a day's work! he decided.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Bloody, gloomy damn'place, Lewrie thought even more grimly the next morning. It was overcast, a touch windy, and both seas and skies were fretfully grey. Sheerness hadn't blossomed overnight either-it was still the same low-lying pile of crowded warehouses, manufacturies, and houses, crammed together any-old-how. Only the sea walls and the bulkheads which elevated it above the high tide made it look substantial and fortified.

And he already had a discipline problem.

He had barely shaved and scrubbed his face and neck in a liberal basin of shore water, sat down to his breakfast of fried eggs, a hash of bacon and shredded potatoes, and fresh-baked shore bread, when he heard a commotion without the gun-deck entry to his quarters. He slurped up a scalding portion of coffee, took a morsel of jammed and buttered toast and chewed quickly before the marine sentry's musket butt thundered on the deck planking.

"First off cer… SAH!"

"Enter," Lewrie managed to mumble past his tasty quid, allowing himself as much bile into his voice as he wished for such an ill-timed interruption of his few moments of morning calm.

'' 'Morning, sir," Ludlow grunted, ducking his head to clear the overhead deck beams, with his hat under his arm. "Beg t'report, Captain… three men on charges. One for theft, sir… T'other two for the fight that resulted."

"Who are they then?" Lewrie sighed, scowling over the rim of his cup.

"Thief was Landsman Haslip, sir. Caught dipping into Landsman Furfy's seabag. Landsman Desmond caught him at it, and they both lit into him, sir."

"God help the poor bastard then." Lewrie shrugged, remembering that this fellow Haslip was a puny, shifty runt with the air of a practiced gaolbird, whilst the new-comes, Furfy and Desmond, were burlier, younger; and Furfy had fists the size of middling pot roasts! "Haslip still breathin', is he… there's a wonder, Mister Ludlow?"