The Leeward Islands Squadron, page 14
part #2 of Carlisle & Holbrooke Series
‘Captain Carlisle, will you come on board, sir?’ Godwin was leaning forward over the hammock netting to get his message across as soon as possible. He looked tense, unsmiling, vulnerable. Carlisle had not, until now, seen the dour first lieutenant in anything but an incipient rage, and this was a new aspect of this strange man. Carlisle paused for a moment. His immediate instinct was to ask why. But surely this concerned Jermy and therefore was not a fit subject for a public discussion. No, he would have to go, with the loss of at least a few hours on their passage and a probable soaking in this brisk breeze.
‘Very well. Follow my movements, we will lie-to.’
He turned to his own first lieutenant. ‘Mister Holbrooke, let’s keep this simple. Bring the longboat alongside to leeward; I’ll have no ceremony, and the regular boat’s crew will do.’
It was an easy thing to say, but there was a heavy swell and getting the boat safely alongside, and fendered was no simple task. There was a deliberate and barely concealed tardiness in getting the boat ready for the captain. He may have wanted no ceremony and may well have been happy with a boat’s crew from the watch on deck, but his own coxswain and his own boat’s crew were having none of it. When eventually the longboat was ready for his embarkation, it was manned by the captain’s boat’s crew, led by Jackson, correctly dressed, if not shaved, and prepared to make a proper impression on Wessex.
***
Carlisle’s first impression on entering the makeshift cabin was the smell. It was a noxious odour, a little akin to gangrene, which like any sailor who had entered a sick bay a week after a hard-fought battle, was quite familiar to him. But gangrene wasn’t quite right – there was a musty smell overlaying it, the smell of sick older people. The surgeon looked even more worried than usual. He made no attempt to control his actions as he wrung his hands together in anguish and uncertainty. He started to speak, but Carlisle waved impatiently for silence and, overcoming his nausea, approached the cot which was swinging gently as the ship moved to the long Atlantic swell. He was shocked at what he saw. Jermy had been critically unwell when he last saw him the day before, but his decline since then had been rapid. The flesh had fallen away from his face leaving a grotesquely prominent nose and sunken eye sockets. The skin on his forehead was stretched tight, and his cheeks had developed discoloured spots; dark spots, almost black. He was barely recognisable as the pink, well-fed man that he first met in Sheerness a scant few weeks ago.
‘He looks dead!’ thought Carlisle, ‘have they been concealing it, waiting for me to make the discovery?’ He leaned into the cot and once again put his ear close to Jermy’s mouth. Nothing. He waited. The cabin was in complete silence, the normal workings of the ship were hushed in respect and shock – the ship’s company well knew the significance of Carlisle’s visit. After twenty seconds or so of patient stillness, he could just detect the very faintest sound of the man’s slowly beating heart and the sluggish expansion and contraction of his lungs. It was so slight that he could not feel any hint of the breath leaving his mouth or nostrils, nor see any rise and fall of his chest. Yet, the commodore still lived.
‘Make your report Mister Green,’ said Carlisle, without taking his eyes from the dying man, for he needed no medical opinion to tell him that Jermy was close to the end. At times of great drama or pathos, in the intervals between any decisions he had to make, Carlisle’s mind was apt to wander. His early education had largely been wasted, but sometimes a few choice examples of poetry and prose rose to the surface, more-or-less as daydreams. The presence of imminent and unpreventable death was both pitiful and frightening, and Carlisle thought Hamlet’s analogy for death most apt and suitably sombre, perfectly composed for occasions such as this, the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns.
The wretched surgeon stammered out his report. It was of little value, but the death of a post-captain was a solemn occasion and required to be recorded. He detailed the commodore’s decline, accelerating over the last twenty-four hours, his opinion that death was very close. But he refused to speculate on how much more time remained for the decaying semi-corpse before them. There was nothing he could do.
‘Very well, Mister Green. Then I will stay here with the commodore. You should continue to attend him, and if any appropriate treatment comes to mind, then you must apply it.’ There was a seat beside the cot, lashed to the ring bolts in the deck that were ordinarily used for the tackles of the six-pounder, but the gun had been shifted aft into the remains of the great cabin.
‘Mister Godwin!’ The first lieutenant was startled out of his reverie. Whether he was contemplating that undiscovered country or whether he was fretting about his fate under the command of a man to whom he had been so openly insolent, was not clear. But Godwin was a worried man, that much was certain. ‘Mister Godwin,’ he repeated. ‘Send my boat back to Medina. Tell the coxswain that I will remain in Wessex for the time being and then signal the squadron to get underway.’
The first lieutenant nodded wordlessly. ‘And Mister Godwin,’ Carlisle called softly to him, ‘let there be silence abaft the mainmast. No carpenters, no holystoning. Orders are to be given in a whisper. Is that clear?’
‘Aye-aye, sir.’ Carlisle noted that Godwin’s reply was the first that he had addressed to Carlisle without an ugly sneer.
‘And send the commodore’s clerk to me.’
***
Carlisle settled to his lonely vigil. Inevitably – and very soon, he judged – he would have to formally take command of the squadron until they should meet Admiral Frankland, and that could be anything from a few days to a few weeks. In that time, they could be chasing enemy merchantmen, grappling with privateers or fighting for their lives against the French West Indies squadron. Carlisle knew all about Medina, and he had a good idea of the capabilities of Wessex, but he still had the feeling that there was something disjointed about the larger ship, something odd about the way the officers spoke to each other. It wasn’t that there was any open hostility, just a lack of that human contact that made for a cohesive leadership team. He suspected that Godwin was in some way either actively responsible or the unwitting propagator of this sad situation. Either way, he intended to get to the heart of the problem, and he would start with the written records. Jermy’s clerk had brought the fair log for him to inspect, a certain delicacy preventing him asking for the captain’s own journal, not while he still lived and breathed.
To a landsman, the log looked like a soulless record of the ship’s activities. Here were compiled the daily doings of this floating family; courses steered, winds and weather, beef and water casks opened, sails sighted, punishments administered. There was nothing about the feeling in the ship and even fewer personal reflections on its officers. But even in this factual catalogue, this wasteland of the finer senses, some inferences could be drawn. There had been several complaints about the food, that first and sure sign of dissatisfaction. Cross-referring to the record of casks opened, Carlisle was satisfied that there was nothing unusual about them. The beef and pork casks had all been salted and packed very recently at the victualling yard at Deptford and presumably shipped down to Sheerness in the weeks before Wessex sailed. The other provisions were likewise fresh – at least by naval standards. The record of punishments was less encouraging. The impression that Carlisle gleaned from the logs was that Wessex was not precisely a flogging ship. There was nothing in the log that could be described as excessive, but there was a steady, almost daily drip of punishments for minor offences. Half a dozen lashes had been administered to some unfortunate seaman nearly every other day, and stoppage of grog or wine was commonplace. Carlisle was proud of the fact that the cat had only been out of the bag on one occasion in Medina – and that for theft by one of the quota men who had yet to understand the moral values of his new community. Punishment on this almost-moderate scale was no indication of dysfunctional leadership, and yet ….
It was more difficult to come to any conclusions about the state of the officers. Very little was ever committed to writing, and none of the commission or warrant officers could legally be punished without a court martial, requiring a gathering of captains, and that was quite impossible on a deployed ship. But Carlisle made a habit in his own frigate of glancing at the log slate every time he passed by the binnacle. This was a transient record of the orders that the captain or the master gave to the officer-of-the-watch. In a ship with free communication between the officers, the slate log would merely record navigational data to be transcribed into the fair log at the end of the watch, with a few orders that required emphasis – he occasionally used it for the purpose himself. But Carlisle had noticed that the open right-hand side of the slate was well-used in Wessex, filled with a barrage of orders to the officer-of-the-watch as if to compensate for lack of verbal communication.
Carlisle walked softly onto the quarterdeck and took up the slate from its hook on the side of the binnacle. Sure enough, it was teeming with orders from Godwin, not just to the officer-of-the-watch, but also to the sailing master. He had written small, but even so, the script was crammed in, running up against the wooden frame of the slate and filling every space.
Carlisle walked thoughtfully back to the dining cabin and resumed his seat bedside Jermy. There was no change. The surgeon was still in the cabin, fussing ineffectually around the cot, tweaking pillows and feeling the commodore’s pulse. At a questioning look from Carlisle, he shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, desperately unwilling to admit verbally that his ministrations were to no purpose.
Sitting in the chair beside the fading commodore, Carlisle thought over what he had learned. He was now convinced that there was something wrong in the command structure of Wessex. Not only was the bond between the wardroom and the lower deck fractured – that essential understanding that kept three hundred and fifty men at sea, away from their homes and families, with a unified purpose – but it appeared that the bond between the captain and the officers was also severed. It was the first lietenant’s role to be a bridge between the great cabin and the wardroom, but Godwin had chosen to establish himself solely on the captain’s side of that divide. How much of that was a response to Jermy’s failing health, Carlisle couldn’t say, but he was now sure that there was no active communication between Godwin and the remainder of the wardroom officers. The ship was outwardly efficient; he had seen for himself how well the guns had been served, and how purposefully the two-decker had been sailed in the second attack on Port Louis. But without the stress and immediacy of action, a problem was brewing. He could see it in the sloppy way that work was carried out, in the sullen looks of the people.
Carlisle remained in the cabin. The squadron tacked at one bell in the first dog watch, a little later than he had planned, to compensate for the time lost in boat transfers when they had made no way to the north. Barbados lay right ahead, and if the northeast trade wind remained true, they would make it without any further tacking. The light faded, and the night watches were set. There was nothing else that required his immediate attention, and he felt that he could better address himself to whatever ailed Wessex once Jermy had passed away. That would provide a definite point from which he, as the new commander of the squadron, could start to make some changes.
The ship was unnaturally quiet. Sure, there were the usual noises of the wind in the rigging, the slapping of the waves against the hull and the working of the timbers as Wessex bullied her way to the southeast. But there was no sound of human activity – none. Like him or loathe him, the death of the captain of a man-of-war was a grave moment for all on board, from the oldest warrant officer to the youngest boy. It was like losing the head of the family, and it affected everyone. Even the bells had been silenced, substituted by a low murmur as the news of the turn of the half-hour glass was passed across the deck. Every few minutes the surgeon left his place at the far side of the cabin to confirm that the commodore still lived but he had not attempted any kind of medical intervention for many hours. Carlisle lost track of time. It was at some point towards the end of the middle watch – the graveyard watch as sailors called it, and not without cause – that Green looked up from one of his regular inspections and with a shocked face slowly shook his head. Carlisle felt for a breath, but there was nothing. There was no change in the commodore’s features at all. He had looked like death since the afternoon, but now Carlisle could detect the loss of body heat. Jermy had passed away, cut his moorings and sailed to that undiscovered country.
‘Mister Green, please call for the first lieutenant and the commodore’s clerk and ask the master for our latitude and longitude.’ The surgeon left the cabin gratefully, apparently happy to turn over responsibility now that the fateful moment had passed.
***
14: Carlisle Bay
Sunday, twenty-sixth of December 1756
Wessex, at Anchor, Carlisle Bay
On the Friday evening after Jermy died the wind veered two points, forcing the squadron to follow it around until they could no longer fetch Carlisle Bay on the larboard tack. They spent Christmas day tacking to the north, all hands called at the turn of each watch to bring the ship about and maintain their line for Barbados. Then, when they had made their northing, to their great frustration the wind backed a full four points, and they had a fair sail into the anchorage, two points free, presenting a truly noble sight to the watchers on the shore. But Frankland was not there, just a small cutter commanded by a lieutenant who brought the news that the ships-of-the-line of the Leeward Islands Squadron were in English Harbour only three days earlier, and by his understanding were not planning on any operations against the French until they were reinforced. There was no homeward bound convoy scheduled until June, and although there was a constant threat to the island traffic from the French at Martinique, there was no need to be wearing out the small battlefleet until either it could achieve something against the enemy or there was a convoy to be protected. It was only nine months ago that Warwick, a sixty-gun ship, was taken by French seventy-four and two frigates off Martinique. Unable to open her lower gun ports in the heavy seas, with a hundred of her crew sick and without any other of Frankland’s ships on hand, she had been forced to strike to the overwhelming force.
Carlisle had heard before he sailed that Rear Admiral Coates was being sent out to relieve Townshend at Jamaica and that Frankland would benefit from some modest additions to his force. Indeed, Wessex was part of that intended reinforcement, as was Medina. It was part of the reasoning that contributed to Carlisle’s decision to attack Port Louis a second time; he didn’t relish the idea of delivering Frankland’s new two-decker in a partly-destroyed state with no damage to the enemy as compensation. The privateer that dutifully followed them into the anchorage would be a visible confirmation that the French maritime effort had been meaningfully reduced. For Carlisle thoroughly understood the situation. The French battle fleet may threaten, and their frigates may cause sleepless nights for Townshend, but it was the commercially-funded men-of-war, the privateers, that caused the most considerable economic damage to Britain.
Carlisle was anxious to be on his way north, but Jermy must be decently buried first. The body certainly could not be held on board for the additional three days that it would take to reach Antigua – a minimum of three days and only if the trade wind didn’t back northerly. A burial at sea briefly crossed his mind, but that could be justified only in the heat of a desperate action or when a friendly port was many days away. He would rightly be treated as a pariah in English Harbour if he handled the body of his commodore in that fashion.
…
To sailors of the navy, there are few more sombre sights than a ship in mourning for its captain. Wessex lay a bare half mile off Bridgetown in full view of Forts James and Willoughby to the north and Charles Fort to the southeast, her yards all acockbill and her ensign at half-mast. To see a King’s ship in that state was terrible, and even the soldiers of the garrison were moved. From the promenade on the foreshore, she was stared at by the idle occupants of the town, and this being the day after Christmas day and a Sunday, there was no shortage of citizens with nothing better to do.
Jermy was rowed solemnly ashore to Charles Fort by his own boat’s crew, bare-headed even in this tropical heat and keeping a slow time to the beat from a drummer in the following boat. All the boats of the squadron followed, filled with the officers of Wessex and Medina and as many sailors from Wessex as could be carried. The army had risen to the occasion. Jermy’s coffin was lifted onto a gun carriage and trundled the few yards to the small cemetery behind the chapel, followed by all the officers of the garrison. A gun salute was fired from the fort, answered by the squadron in the bay, and to a final fusillade of small arms, Robert Jermy was laid to rest in the sandy soil of Needhams Point.
***
15: Passage to Antigua
Tuesday, twenty-eighth of December 1756
Medina, at Sea, Dominica west 20 leagues
It was good to be back at sea. Carlisle had felt compelled to stay an additional day at Barbados to satisfy the proprieties around the burial of a commodore. He had to call on the governor, drink sherry with his wife, relay the latest news from home to the garrison officers and be seen by the townspeople, for reassurance in these nervous times. Although well garrisoned, Barbados had every reason to feel nervous. The principal French West Indies base was an easy day’s sail away, and the nearest British naval help was more than twice that distance. Any assistance from the Leeward Islands Squadron had a built-in week’s delay, and by that time a determined French landing force could have overcome the forts and taken Bridgetown. Then, secure against anything other than a regular army, which didn’t exist this side of the Atlantic, they could thumb their noses at Frankland’s squadron. Anson certainly understood the necessity of a regular flow of wealth from the Colonies to pay for this war. However, in this first year of the conflict, he was at a loss to find the resources to adequately defend them while at the same time maintaining a sufficiently strong Western Squadron in the Channel to prevent the invasion of England.
