Richard picked up a long glass from its becket by the desk, stepped out of his cabin, and ascended the short oaken ladder to the weather deck. There he was greeted by members of the twenty-two-man crew and steady northeasterly trades that ruffled his hair and tugged at his shirt. He squinted northward. The hull of the approaching vessel was just now coming into view: she was thus about three miles away. He glanced up.
Lavinia
was still rigged for night sailing. Her flying jib and jib were furled at their tacks on the jib boom, and her single mainmast topsail was furled tight on its yard. Nevertheless, she was making fair speed close-hauled under fore topmast staysail and the large trapezoidal fore-'n'-aft sails on her foremast and mainmast.
Richard did his best to appear nonchalant as he walked toward the bow of the schooner, his slight limp the result of taking a musket ball in his thigh at point-blank range at Yorktown five years earlier. At the starboard foremast chains he raised his glass and trained the lens on what was now unmistakably a Royal Navy cutter. She carried three square sails from mainsail up to topgallant on a single mast, plus a large fore-and-aft gaff-rigged spanker set out full on her larboard quarter in a following ten-knot breeze. Lunging out from her prow on a line parallel to the deck was a long, black bowsprit that appeared from this distance to be an arrow pointing directly at
Lavinia
; above it a huge white jib billowed out, arced taut as a bow prepared to fire the arrow. She was a fast ship. Too fast for Richard to consider flight.
Suddenly a gun barked on the cutter, the white patch of smoke shooting out to larboard whipped back in front of her by the brisk trades. In the distance a ball whined, increasing to a screech as it shot past ahead of the schooner and slapped the sea, skipping twice before disappearing in a swirl of white water. A 6-pounder, Richard mused. Oddly, despite the threat implicit in such a warning shot, he found himself wondering how so small a vessel could carry so great a press of sail. She could not
be more than sixty or seventy feet in length, a good deal shorter than
Lavinia.
Must have a deep draught, Richard surmised, and be heavily laden with ballast.
“Shall I order the crew to heave to, sir?” Geoffrey Bryant asked from his side.
Richard nodded. “Yes, do, Mr. Bryant. Any other response would arouse suspicion. And we certainly wouldn't want to do that, would we?” The smile he gave his mate belied the dread that had begun creeping into his belly with the firing of the gun.
The cutter swept past, shortened sail, and wore around under jib and spanker. As she feathered up in and off the wind to lie close a-starboard to
Lavinia,
Richard walked slowly aft toward the helm. Lowering the tip of his tricorne hat to shield his eyes from the sun, he stood glowering at the cutter, his arms folded across his chest, his square jaw set, everything about him the image of a ship's master outraged at being forced to stop at sea.
For a brief span of time the two vessels drifted side by side within pistol shot, each silently contemplating the other across a short, jewelspattered stretch of water. Then, through a speaking trumpet, the crisp, confident tones of an English patrician shattered the early morning peace.
“What vessel is that?” he demanded to know.
“The schooner
Lavinia,
” Richard promptly called back through his own speaking trumpet. “Out of Bridgetown.”
“Bound for where?”
“Saint Kitts.”
“Your cargo?”
None of your damn business!
Richard wanted to shout back, realizing at once that such bravado would be both futile and foolhardy. This British naval captain not only had license to challenge any merchant vessel under sail, he clearly had the wherewithall to enforce his will.
“Rum and molasses,” he replied.
“Are you the ship's master?”
“I am.”
“Your name, sir?”
“Richard Cutler.”
There was a pause as this information was digested aboard the cutter. Then, in a voice rock hard with purpose: “Mr. Cutler, you will accompany this vessel forthwith to English Harbour. We are sending over a pilot to assist you. Please make ready to set sail.”
Richard's tone in reply was equally insistent. “Sir, this vessel has British registry. On whose authority do you act?”
The answer that came back was a thunderbolt. “On the authority of the senior naval officer of the Northern Division of the West Indies Station: Captain Horatio Nelson.”
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LOCATED MIDWAY along the southern shore of Antigua's heavily indented coastline, English Harbour was the epitome of a British naval base. At its heart was Freeman's Bay, a large circular basin almost completely enclosed by promontories reaching out from the mainland like the claws of a mammoth crab. Once a vessel had gained entrance to the bay, she was protected from the forces of nature by the natural geography of the island. Protection from man was provided by a ring of multilevel stone fortresses glistening with heavy black cannon perched high up in the steep-scarped hills rising above the harbor. From such a vantage point at the core of the Lesser Antilles, the Royal Navy had long held sway over the major sailing routes to and from the rich sugar colonies of the eastern Caribbean, making adjustments in naval strategy and tactics as appropriate, meting out punishments as necessary.
Getting into English Harbour, however, was a tricky business, and it took the skills of a native sea pilot to guide a vessel through the treacherous shallows and reefs that formed the first line of defense against any would-be assailant. Once past the promontories and inside the often windless bay, the vessel would be warped in toward the quays or an anchorage by light hawsers attached to a complex series of wooden bollards and huge iron rings ashore teamed up with an array of anchored buoys.
As
Lavinia
was being hauled shoreward with her sails furled, Richard stood amidships gripping a mainmast shroud. Despite the gravity of the moment, he could not resist taking in the scenery about him. Although he had read and heard much about Antigua, this was his first visit. And he was as impressed by this British military installation as he was by others he had seen in England and the Caribbean. Above, in the Shirley Heights rising abruptly above the harbor, the austere-looking fortifications, observation posts, and army barracks kept watch over the southern approaches to the island and the goings-on in the harbor. The naval dockyards along the western reaches of the bay were abuzz with the bang of hammers; the rasp of saws; and the shouts, curses, and exhortations of foremen and laborers. In the town itself, across the
bay, army and navy personnel, and the administrators and tradesmen of empire marched or scurried through thickets of coconut palms, throngs of carriages, and individuals a-horse wending their way along the main thoroughfare and between the clusters of yellowish-brown limestone buildings typical of many West Indian ports.
His gaze swept back to the activity at the naval dockyards and lingered there. Clearly, the British government was investing serious money and manpower to renovate and enlarge these facilities. Not far from the quay to which
Lavinia
was being secured Richard noted what appeared to be a dry dock under construction, the first, he presumed, outside Kingston, Jamaica, the largest Royal Navy base in the West Indies. When that structure was completed, it would save sheathers, caulkers, riggers, and carpenters the three weeks of backbreaking and often dangerous work required to careen a stripped-down vessel over on her side to clean or make repairs to her bottom.
At precisely 3:00 in the afternoon, a chorus of ships' bells clanged pleasantly from the seven British warships anchored in the bay, six bells per ship. As if on cue, a chunky, officious officer of the Royal Navy in the glory of full dress uniform strode up the plank leading from the pier, boarded
Lavinia,
and arrogantly bade the first seaman he came across to go and fetch the ship's master. His pomposity was only slightly curbed when that tall, young, fair-haired seaman with startling blue eyes indicated that he
was
the ship's master.
“At your service, Lieutenant,” Richard said, his sarcasm evident.
With a loud harrumph and a jiggle of his bulldog jowls, the officer indicated to Richard that he was to accompany him forthwith in a longboat. Their destination was the heavy frigate anchored in mid-harbor, a ship Richard had immediately identified as HMS
Boreas
when
Lavinia
had entered Freeman's Bay. He had admired her pale yellow varnish, her sails furled on their yards in Bristol fashion, her three masts stepped with just a hint of rake, and the unblemished black bands running along her gunport strakes. By all accounts she was a magnificent fighting machine, the pride of the Leeward Islands Station. Nothing but the best for Captain Horatio Nelson, Richard thought bitterly. No sooner had that wave of hostility crashed over him, as it often did at the mere mention of Nelson's name, than Richard chided himself for harboring such sentiments. He realized they were groundless, pointless. It should be the other way around, common sense reminded him.
“Good luck, sir,” Geoffrey Bryant said as Richard made ready to disembark.
“Thank you, Mr. Bryant,” Richard replied. “You have command. Keep the men occupied. The tide turns within the hour and I intend to be sailing with it.”
The row over to the flagship was a short one. Richard sat in the sternsheets next to the lieutenant, watching intently as the frigate loomed ever larger. During the war he had been on one much like her in Plymouth Harbor when he was interrogated by British authorities following Captain Jones' raid on Whitehaven. So he assumed that
Boreas
was another Fourth Rate carrying fifty guns, not counting the swivel guns mounted on Y-brackets on her bulwarks and tops, or the murderous carronades affixed to iron slide carriages along her weather deck and quarterdeck, their stubby barrels now becoming visible through gunports cut through the bulwarks. Richard had learned of these newly issued lightweight weapons from his brother-in-law, Hugh Hardcastle, a flag lieutenant in the Royal Navy. First cast in the town of Carron, Scotland, they looked and loaded much like mortars. When fired at close range, Hugh had assured him, their 32-pound shot could wreak bloody havoc. At the time, he was relating to Richard the glory he had witnessed from Admiral Rodney's flagship during the Battle of the Saintes, and the high-pitched tones of excitement and defiance with which he had described the gore and mayhem inflicted by these “smashers,” as he referred to the carronades, had seemed very much out of character for that normally staid British naval officer.
At the entry port of the frigate, Richard was turned over to a heavyset master-at-arms sporting a prominent red handlebar mustache. As he was escorted aft to a hatchway and ladder leading below, he glanced again at the short-barreled iron guns bowsed up tight against the bulwarks. He longed for an opportunity to walk over and inspect them, to see for himself what all the excitement was about.
The scarlet-jacketed marine corporal standing guard belowdecks banged the butt of his musket on the deck to recognize the master-at-arms approaching the after cabin. Once the official had stated his business, the marine rapped gently on the oaken door.
“What is it?” queried a gentle voice from inside.
The corporal opened the door a crack and nodded at the master-at arms to answer.
“Mr. Turner, Captain. I have with me the ship's master of the American schooner
,
just arrived.”
“Very good, Mr. Turner. You may show him in.”
The door opened wide and Richard was ushered into a spacious and well-appointed cabin. Sunlight streaming in from open stern windows reflected off the thick glass of the quarter-gallery windows of the dining alcove on the starboard side aft. In the center of the space was a gilt-edged, freshly polished mahogany desk resting on a lush Persian rug laid over the dark red deck, a color intended to mask the splatter of blood in battle. In front of the desk, their high wingbacks blocking much of Richard's view, were twin chairs of impeccable taste, their yellow-floral-on-blue upholstery matched by the thin pad on the settee running athwartship in front of the stern windows. Oil paintings of ships and seascapes graced the walls between rows of books clutched in tight by what must have been specially designed bookshelves. Completing the décor was a curved-front ebony sideboard with gilt handles on the drawers. On its top, among other items, was a silver-sided tray holding cut-glass decanters of various wines and spirits.
“Would you have me stay, sir?” the master-at-arms inquired.
Horatio Nelson rose from the desk, shook his head. “Thank you, no, Mr. Turner. Please leave us. You may close the door on your way out.”
After the door clicked shut, each man stood in silent contemplation of the other. They had not seen one another since 1774, twelve years ago, on the quays at Bridgetown when Richard was seeking the whereabouts of Nelson's close friend and former shipmate, Hugh Hardcastle. At the time, Nelson was serving as a senior midshipman aboard HMS
Seahorse
in the Windward Squadron, his age just fifteen, a year older than Richard's fourteen. His meteoric rise through the ranks had become the stuff of legend, and Richard was well aware that it was not just “interest” in Whitehall that had propelled Nelson from a midshipman at the age of twelve to a post captain at the age of twenty. One did not achieve such prominent rank in the Royal Navy at so tender an age unless his superiors saw in him something unusual.
“Well, Mr. Cutler,” Nelson said. “It appears Fate has played her hand in our lives once again.”
“It would seem so,” Richard replied cautiously. Nelson's cheerful greeting had caught him off guard.