Chapter 4
It didn’t seem like a spell of the dirty, even if Twigg had a hand in influencing the captain’s decision.
Ayscough had explained it to him. Lieutenant Choate, as first officer and his most reliable man, would be the one first in line to take the job, normally, but he would be needed to take command of whichever suitable vessel they hired in Calcutta while Telesto was refitting.
To fill his vacancy, he had to draw upon his next-most experienced and skilled officer, Lieutenant Percival, to remain aboard Telesto to advance to first officer in Choate’s absence. Lieutenant McTaggart had to remain aboard Telesto, at least to Calcutta, and go as first officer for Choate in his new captaincy.
Captain Ayscough could advance the midshipmen-in-disguise now serving as master’s mates to Mr. Brainard into acting lieutenants, but they would be slender reeds upon which to depend to command the escort north with Lady Charlotte.
“As I said in my journal about this matter, Mister Lewrie,” the captain had told him, “that leaves only you, but you have shewn yourself to be more than reliable, competent and daring, but not too daring. I also made note that you only of the remaining commission officers, had, no matter your lack of seniority, commanded a King’s ship even briefly. The chore is fairly simple, if you do not exceed your brief and go off chasing pirates too rashly. If they don’t kill you, then I shall.”
* * * *
Lewrie got command of Culverin.
She had started life in 1778 as a bomb-ketch, laid down in Calcutta once the last war had spread from the Colonies to a world-wide conflagration against the Spanish, the Dutch and the French. To be a bomb-ketch, she had to be solid and heavy enough to absorb the kick of two twelve-inch mortars firing at high angle, so she was made of teak, as overbuilt as a 1st Rate line-of-battle ship, though her sides did not need to be as thick. She would never have been required to stand in the line of battle, anyway. She was further stiffened with riders that were scarfed from her frames as cross-members, to the keelson up to the deck beams, making her interior a maze totally unsuitable for large cargoes, with much of her centerline length taken up below deck as magazine and shot racks for her former weapons.
The huge mortars were gone, though the wells where they had sat remained, one forward of her main-mast, and one forward of her shorter mizzenmast. Culverin had been sold out of naval service once the war in the Far East had ended in 1783. Bombs were too easily replaced if war broke out again, the Admiralty decried the expense of maintaining many of them in-ordinary and their usefulness was limited to those occasions where high-angle explosive shells needed to be hurled into harbors and fortifications along a hostile coast.
She would have seemed like the perfect answer to an enterprising captain for coastal trading. About ninety feet on the range of the deck, roughly the length of a trading brig, about twenty-six feet in beam, and shoal-drafted to let her get within firing range of coastal forts. Her rig was only two masts instead of three, making for less crew, and ketches sported large gaff-rigged fore-and-aft sails on the rear of her masts, making sailing, tacking and wearing ship even simpler.
All of which—her ease and cheapness of operation, rigidity and stout construction, and shallow draft—had convinced young Captain Dover to buy her and put her to work on the Bencoolen-Calcutta run, contracted to service the needs of that fearsome settlement, with the occasional jaunt to Macao running opium lurking somewhere in the back of his mind as well.
The only trouble was that she was not particularly weath-erly; even with fore-and-aft sails she could not go close-hauled against the wind. She could point closer to the wind, yes, but her shallow draft made her slip to leeward too much, unlike a deeper-bellied ship with more grip below the waterline. And then, there were those riders in her innards, that limited the amount of cargo she could carry. They could not be removed without dismantling Culverin completely, bolted as they were from the outside of her hull, right through planking, her beams and frames, keelson and futtocks. But at four thousand pounds sterling, she had seemed a bargain, so he had bought her, and had been losing money on the deal ever since, scrimp as he might to make her pay.
Which was why Captain Dover had leaped at that chance not simply to hire her out, but sell her outright, even if Twigg had only offered three thousand pounds. Neither was the enterprising Captain Dover quite so enterprising or ambitious as to remain aboard as part of the venture, so he took passage for Calcutta aboard Telesto, along with his first mate and four of his small crew that hadn’t decided to cut his gizzard out yet.
Most of the remaining crew were just as happy to see the last of Captain Dover, though he left their pay in arrears, so when Ayscough harangued them to sign on at civilian pay rates, with a golden guinea for a joining-bounty, and the promise of untold loot, they had agreed to stay with her.
* * * *
He would have no surgeon or purser, no sailing master—none of those excess warrants who made an officer’s life easier. Lewrie suspected he’d have to swot up on how to lance boils, issue biscuit and rum, do his own navigation and almost serve as his own bosun. He did get Mr. Hogue, promoted to acting lieutenant, to serve as his first mate, which helped immensely. And Ayscough gave up Hodge and Witty as senior hands, Owen, the quarter-gunner, Hoolahan and some of the lower deck carronade gunners, Murray, the forecastle captain, to serve as bosun, and Cony to come along as cabin-servant/ cox’n/seaman. All in all, he had, including himself, only sixty-five people aboard, thirty of them her original crew. Not exactly inspiring circumstances, but she was a command, and she was all his. And once Ayscough had delivered new paint and bosun’s stores to put to rights the neglect she’d suffered, he had to admit that Culverin looked almost saucy.
Fresh red paint inboard, bright blue upper bulwarks and the rest of her hull freshly varnished, and some yellow paint to touch up her transom, beak-head, entry port, quarter-galleries and railings.
And fresh black paint, grease and varnish for her guns. She had once been outfitted with ten six-pounders, in addition to those two monstrous mortars, but they were gone now. They had been replaced with ten twenty-four-pounder carronades, another sign of her recent civilian nature. The carronades were lighter to mount, only took two men per gun to fight them (which required fewer paid hands) and their recoil was lighter. Most merchantmen were switching over to carronades for those reasons, and Captain Dover had swapped the original battery for them in Madras.
* * * *
Finally, four days after her purchase and refitting, with her new crew sorted out into a semblance of naval discipline, her holds, former magazines and shot-racks crammed with edibles and her mortar wells so crowded with livestock that she resembled the original Ark, they got under way.