The Leeward Islands Squadron, page 16
part #2 of Carlisle & Holbrooke Series
The ceremony was proceeding well until it became apparent to Carlisle that the flagship was not expecting him. There was a flurry of activity, officers scrambling for their hats and swords, man-ropes being rigged at the rush and side-boys cuffed and bullied into their stations. Carlisle was prepared to be offended. The flagship must have realised that Jermy was not commanding, his broad pennant was not flying in Wessex and the boat had come from Medina, a frigate, not the ship-of-the-line as they may have expected. ‘Could this be a deliberate snub?’ he thought. He climbed the few steps up the ship’s side and in through the entry port, stiff-necked and ready to take offence. The pipes twittered, hats were removed from heads, and a harassed-looking lieutenant stepped forward to introduce himself. Carlisle was considering whether he should turn on his heel and return to his boat. This was an unpardonable breach of etiquette. ‘Could it be aimed at me personally?’ he thought. He stood, grim-faced as the lieutenant stumbled through an apology. He explained to the stony-faced captain that the admiral and his flag captain conducted their business from an office ashore, for convenience, but the flag remained in the flagship. He was aware that this could cause confusion in a newly arrived captain, perhaps Commodore Jermy had been informed before he left England? But here his explanation tailed off as he realised that he was on the point of quizzing a post-captain about the whereabouts of a commodore, under the nervous gaze of the ship’s officers, the bosun’s mates and the terrified side boys.
Carlisle started to relax, he could see the amusing side of this misunderstanding. Undoubtedly Jermy had been warned about this unusual arrangement, probably he had told Godwin, and it would be in character for that unpleasant and vindictive officer to withhold this critical information. More bows, the pipes twittered again, and he was back in his boat heading now for King’s Yard. The rowers looked neither to the left or the right, they just rowed, their faces expressionless. The coxswain didn’t even need the formal growl of ‘eyes in the boat,’ to keep them to their business. They knew that something had gone wrong with the protocol of a call on the commander-in-chief, and no good could come from acknowledging that, by a word or a look.
***
The flag captain met him at the steps of the small house, set back a few paces from King’s Yard on the scrubby hillside. It was hardly the suitable residence of an admiral, a member of parliament and commander-in-chief all combined in a single person, but it was in tune with the general feel of English Harbour, a naval backwater and a work in progress. Frankland’s flag captain was the captain of Winchester, a few years older than Carlisle, but only a few months senior as a post-captain. Sir Edward Le Cras had spent a long time as a commander, right through the peace, and was only posted when the navy started expanding two years before. He and Carlisle had both benefited from the same opportunities for promotion that opened on rumours of war. He was a little junior for command of a fifty-gun ship, but then it was a flagship, and so he was nominally always under the eye of the admiral. Nevertheless, Le Cras’ present position meant that he was not a man whom Carlisle should treat lightly. In any case, he had quite recovered from his anger at his reception in Winchester and was inclined to be friendly.
Captain Le Cras understood the situation immediately. He politely asked about the commodore, expressed his shock and distress, but still managed to move Carlisle swiftly through to the presence of the Admiral. ‘You are to be shown in directly,’ he said as he opened the door to a large but ill-lit room. The admiral was sitting on a chaise longue positioned under the window at the back of the room, not at his desk. He had evidently been reading some papers by the last light of the setting sun, which soon would dip below the hills that enclosed the naval yard to the west.
Rear Admiral of the White Thomas Frankland was an unremarkable person. He was the second son of an East India Company director who had been governor of Fort William in Bengal at the time of Thomas’ birth. He was also the second-born nephew of a childless baronet who had been a commissioner of the Admiralty Board when Thomas entered the navy. This relationship made Thomas the Spare Dick, as naval humour would mercilessly describe him, one brotherly heart-beat away from the baronetcy. His uncle had still been in post at the Admiralty when Thomas passed for lieutenant, which explains how he had been commissioned at the very early age of nineteen, even though Britain was at that time enjoying an unusually long period of peace. He was the MP for the family borough of Thirsk, which he held in the government interest, so he wielded significant patronage. Frankland had been at sea since he was thirteen, through peace and war, and had already gathered a certain amount of both fame and infamy.
In 1742, when in command of the small frigate Rose in the Bahamas, Frankland had taken a Spanish privateer, the San Juan Bautista. The vessel was commanded by none other than Juan de León Fandiño, the man who had cut off the ear of Captain Jenkins in 1731. That action, eight years later, had given Britain the casus belli for renewed war with Spain. In 1744, Rose was again in the news, having taken the Spanish treasure ship Concepcion of twenty-four guns, bound from Cartagena to Havana. The prize had a staggeringly rich cargo – gold, silver and jewels – the dream of every sea officer. However, Frankland had not chosen to condemn his prize by legal process, and the full value was in dispute and likely to rumble through the courts for years to come. It was said that Frankland had distributed the booty by the simple expedient of dividing the gold and silver by weight. Then after the original division of the spoils, he had found two chests of specie hidden in the hold. So vast was the first haul of precious metals and gems that this additional find of 20,000 and 30,000 pistoles was regarded as trivial in comparison.
Frankland had started his tenure as commander-in-chief of the Leeward Island Station by demanding that his predecessor, Thomas Pye, who was junior to Frankland, haul down his broad pennant as soon as he was superseded. This was strictly correct, but most men would have allowed the outgoing commander-in-chief to retain the symbols of his dignity as he left the station. Pye argued the point and was now awaiting court martial in Britain, a sorry affair that reflected poorly upon the brotherhood of sea officers.
This, then, was the man that Carlisle was about to meet. The man to whom he would owe allegiance for as long as Medina remained on the Leeward Islands Station.
***
‘Captain Carlisle of Medina,’ said Le Cras by way of introduction. ‘Commodore Jermy died on the passage,’ he added, rather brutally. Frankland looked up and raised an eyebrow. He stood and formally shook Carlisle’s hand.
‘Well, I’m pleased to see you, captain. We noticed the lack of a pennant but weren’t sure whether that merely meant that Jermy had been superseded and the squadron had sailed without a commodore, although the packet has been and gone since you sailed from Sheerness, with no word of such a change. Those are your reports?’ he asked, gesturing towards the thick, sealed envelope that Carlisle carried. ‘Put them on the desk, my clerk will deal with them later,’ he motioned to a seat beside his desk, ‘but I will take a verbal report now if you please. Captain Le Cras, please stay unless you have urgent business elsewhere. I suspect this will be worth listening to.’
The admiral rang a small bell at his desk, and an African servant entered. Carlisle was disorientated for a moment – the scene was so reminiscent of his home in Virginia – until he remembered that African slaves were employed at the naval yard and Sir Thomas himself was a noted slave-owner. In fact, some sea officers wondered what took most of his time, his duties as commander-in-chief or his commercial interests. ‘A glass of punch, Captain Carlisle?’
‘With pleasure sir. If I may start with the commodore’s death?’
‘Certainly, then I would like to hear what you achieved at Port Louis; I can see that you have taken a prize.’ The Duc de Choiseul was clearly visible, caught in the last rays of the setting sun. She was riding at anchor just off the careening wharf, her ensign staff proudly flying the white ensign over the French colours. Frankland could take pleasure in the sight, but he wasn’t fooled by the white ensign, he personally gained nothing in the division of prize money. Medina and Wessex had been sailing under Admiralty orders when she was taken, and the commander-in-chief of the station was not entitled to a penny.
Carlisle chose his words carefully. He had been rehearsing for this moment since they left Barbados. He had little fear of being disbelieved, but it was essential to set the chronology straight so that his own decision regarding the command of the squadron should be unimpeachable.
‘First, I should state that the cause of Commodore Jermy’s death is uncertain.’ Frankland frowned and fidgeted with a paperweight on his desk. The unexplained death of a commodore didn’t sound pleasant and would be sure to cause a great deal of correspondence with the Admiralty and with his family.
‘He collapsed during the first attack on Port Louis…’
‘Wait!’ said Frankland, holding up his hand, palm outward. ‘There was more than one attack?’ he asked, frowning.
‘Yes, sir. The first attack on the nineteenth of December achieved little, so we attacked again on the twenty-first, with better success.’
‘I see, and Commodore Jermy ordered both the first and second attacks?’ Frankland had seized on the critical point immediately, he was no fool, Carlisle would have to be careful. This was not going the way that he intended. His carefully crafted narrative had been disrupted before it had really started.
‘No sir, the commodore ordered the first attack but was incapacitated towards the end of that engagement. I ordered the second attack; the commodore knew nothing of it. He was unconscious in his cabin.’
It was vital not to dwell on the uncomfortable fact that Jermy had ordered a withdrawal before he was disabled. That would come out in the story, but Carlisle needed to frame it as a temporary withdrawal, not an abandonment of the attempt on Port Louis. Otherwise, it would appear that he had reversed a decision of his superior as soon as he was incapacitated. In all honesty, neither Carlisle nor anyone else could know what Jermy had intended. He had fallen before he could make clear to his first lieutenant or his sailing master whether the squadron’s withdrawal was merely a re-grouping for a second attack or a permanent cessation of the attempt against Port Louis. Privately, Carlisle believed it was the latter. Jermy may have been the most active and courageous of officers before he became ill, but such constant and obvious pain clouds a man’s judgement. Everything that Carlisle knew about Jermy in the last two months before his death suggested that his order to withdraw was the final act in his attempt on the French in Grenada.
Carlisle continued before Frankland had time to phrase another question. ‘The commodore collapsed on his quarterdeck immediately following his order for the squadron to retire in the face of persistent and accurate fire from the fort – twenty-four-pound heated shot and nine-pounders. He had given no orders for a withdrawal to Barbados, and I was confident that a man of Mister Jermy’s character wouldn’t have contemplated abandoning the task before it was completed.’ He looked squarely at the admiral, challenging him to disagree. ‘The commodore didn’t regain consciousness, and I considered it my duty to continue the task that he’d started and make another attack as soon as the damage to Wessex had been repaired.’
Frankland rose from the desk and picked up Carlisle’s report, still sealed and unread. He appeared to be weighing it. ‘I’ll need to read your report before I make any further comment, Captain Carlisle. Meanwhile, there are three points I would like you to address,’ he counted them off on his fingers for emphasis. ‘First, when and how did Commodore Jermy die and where is his body now? Second, what damage did you inflict upon the French at Port Louis? And third, what’s the damage to Wessex and Medina? I must decide whether another expedition against Grenada is required.’
Carlisle outlined the last days of commodore Jermy, his unchanging state, his lack of response and his eventual peaceful death and burial at Needhams Point. There was nothing that anyone in Wessex – and he was thinking principally about Godwin – could do to alter the facts. Carlisle had seen the surgeon’s report. It had been reviewed and endorsed by his own surgeon, and the circumstances of the burial were uncontroversial. He knew that it had been the right decision to have Jermy buried at Barbados. In the cold light of an interview with the commander-in-chief, Carlisle could see how a burial at sea would have looked. It would have smacked of irreverence at best, subterfuge at worst.
The damage to the French required more careful explanation. It was not clear in the Admiralty orders what level of damage would be considered a success. The orders, which he had only read for himself after the first attack, spoke merely of ‘destroying the privateers lying at Port Louis.’ There had been only three vessels that were clearly and unquestionably privateers, and he had sunk two of them and taken one. All the others in the port were merchantmen, although it was impossible to know whether any of them carried a letter of marque. They could, of course, be part-time merchantmen and part-time privateers as was the standard practice for both nations when away from home waters, ready to take a weaker British ship when the opportunity arose. In any case, he had burned and sunk a good number of those, and at least half of them would never sail again. Most of that had been achieved in the second attack. All that could be said for the first attack was that they had taken the schooner laden with hay – a poor exchange for the damage to Wessex.
Frankland heard his report without further comment. He left his flag captain to probe Carlisle about specific timings and the details of the vessels that were taken, burned and destroyed. Carlisle came with relief to an end of his narrative, with the squadron sailing from Carlisle Bay for English Harbour. It had gone better than he had expected after the first few interruptions. In fairness to the admiral, this unknown post-captain’s actions had the potential to cause embarrassment. Jermy had friends in Britain, friends with political interest, no doubt. The fact of a man, even a commodore, dying in the West Indies within a few days of arriving was hardly a great surprise. Both the Leeward Islands Station and the Jamaica Station were notorious for a range of deadly diseases which were most dangerous to those newly arrived in the area. But any question of premature withdrawal, with accusations of cowardice lurking not far below the surface, could cause a political storm, and Frankland wanted none of it. Carlisle knew that his factual account of the two attacks and his assertion that Jermy had intended a second attack, would make much better reading than the alternative story, a senior sea officer incapacitated by disease, withdrawing after a pitiful attempt to obey his orders. That was not the narrative that their Lordships wished to hear.
Carlisle knew that his report, as written, would not be questioned. The attack on Port Louis and the destruction of the privateers would be hailed as a success – a modest, but significant feat of arms in the finest traditions of the service. None of the men in that room had any illusions. The three French privateers would be rapidly replaced by others; the privately funded war on British commerce was just too lucrative to be abandoned because of this irksome defeat. Grenada’s privateers had suffered a temporary setback, nothing more. Nevertheless, Jermy’s expedition would be remembered as a victory while Carlisle’s name would appear as a footnote, at best. It was a little galling to realise that Jermy would take the posthumous credit for Carlisle’s initiative and tactical genius, but that was the way of the service, and it would do no good complaining or feeling cheated. In the eyes of the British public and the political leadership, the damage to Wessex would even enhance the victory; it would be proof that the triumph had been hard-won. In any case, Wessex’s poop deck and the great cabin could be repaired by the shipwrights at English Harbour in a few weeks, while Medina could proceed to sea with only a few days’ labour to bring her back to full fighting trim.
***
Frankland seemed satisfied, relieved even. He may have guessed at the likely true nature of Jermy’s decision to withdraw, but he could be sure that it wouldn’t come out in Carlisle’s report. The admiral had one more question for Carlisle. All the previous questions had been inevitable – they were the general daily business of a commander-in-chief who would have been doing less than his duty if he had not asked them. Carlisle had hoped to avoid this last question, but he should have known, after Frankland’s first interruption, that the admiral’s intuition was keenly tuned. He missed nothing and saw through any evasions.
‘Then tell me, captain, what is your impression of the leadership in Wessex? I will have to appoint a new captain of course, but how have her officers managed in the absence of Jermy?’
Carlisle hadn’t wanted to answer this question, but he had spent more time in formulating a reply to this than he had over all the rest of his report. Long and hard he had pondered, but until that moment he hadn’t decided how he would respond. It was not in the usual traditions of the service, as Carlisle understood them, to act as an informer against his brother officers. The efficiency of the fleet depended upon mutual trust among the commission and warrant officers. And of course, he could be wrong about his suspicions. But right or wrong, his testimony could destroy the careers of officers who were merely caught off balance by the slow progress from sickness to death of their captain. If that were the case, then he should tell the admiral that all was well in Wessex.
