Touch and Go (3 page)

“A hundred, sir?”

“A hundred and twenty-one in theory and much the same, I believe, in fact. And for what work is she designed?”

“Fighting French corvettes, sir, and capturing enemy merchantmen.”

“If we are lucky, Mr Stock! More of our effort will go into protecting our own merchantmen, you'll find.”

Delancey watched from the King's Bastion until the
Merlin
dropped anchor and then, an hour later, went aboard, where he was greeted by the first lieutenant, Mr Waring, who, he knew, had once been master of a collier out of Sunderland. At a bellow from Waring the ship's company stood to attention and doffed hats as Delancey read his commission. Then they were dismissed and Delancey had time to meet the other officers: Will Langford, master's mate; Sam Bailey, the boatswain; Tom Helli-well, the gunner and Nathaniel Corbin, the carpenter.

There were two midshipmen, the senior being the Hon. Stephen Northmore, while the junior, Edward Topley, was generally regarded as more or less useless. Delancey was puzzled at first to find the son of a lord in a sloop rather than in a smart frigate of the larger (38-gun) class, with another aristocrat as captain. The boy, who could have been no more than eighteen, seemed bright, intelligent and pleasant, his personality as well as his birth clearly foreshadowed a quick promotion. It seemed, however, that the lad's father, Lord Bleasdale, was impoverished and apparently in disgrace, cashiered from his regiment and expelled from Brooks's following an incident at the card table. As merely the fourth son, young Northmore would inherit nothing but the breath of scandal, so that the
Merlin
offered him as good a berth, perhaps, as he could expect; one owed, apparently, to the fact that Delancey's predecessor was distantly related to the boy's mother.

The
Merlin
's establishment provided for two lieutenants and the other one, filling a vacancy, reported for duty the following afternoon. He was a quiet young man called Nicholas Mather, slight and dark and had first gone to sea from Whitehaven. He was of Cumberland stock, his father being employed in the management of Lord Lowther's estates. He was unmarried but a good brother to several sisters with whom he corresponded. He confessed to being a keen chess-player, a reader of poetry and a diarist. Within the next few days Delancey came to the conclusion that Mather was a very fine seaman and navigator, a perfectionist in his calling and a man to be relied upon in any weather.

The
Merlin
was in harbour for another ten days while her convoy assembled and Delancey had time to study his officers and men. Waring knew his trade as a seaman but his loud voice and blustering manner gave Delancey an odd impression of weakness. When stores were being shipped a barrel was lowered carelessly and was found to have started a leak following a bump on the hatch covering. “Who did that?” bellowed the first lieutenant. “Come here, that man—yes, you, Brown!—Didn't you hear me say ‘handsomely'? Do that again and you'll be flogged, sir! Don't argue with me, sir! I saw what happened, Brown, and I've seen your carelessness before.” Witnessing the incident, Delancey knew that the seaman's real name was Wilcox and that the delinquent had been another man called Withenshaw who was sniggering in the background. While he still had the deck, Waring went on to bawl at young Topley, calling him “Mr Bottomley” and looking to the seamen for a laugh. That Waring was a good man in some ways might be true but he was unimpressive as a disciplinarian and leader. He should have known every man's name by now and he should have known better than to weaken what little authority Topley had. Looking back, Delancey could remember the difficulties of being a midshipman, ranking as a petty officer but seen as a potential lieutenant, knowing too little and yet responsible for much. Without some support from the commissioned officers the midshipman's life was impossible. He decided, then and there, to put Topley in the larboard watch, where Mather would train him properly.

Watching when Mather had the deck, Delancey realised that he had in Mather an officer who knew every man in the ship. He took endless trouble in teaching Northmore the elements of navigation. Mather was wonderfully patient with men who were doing their best. “Better,” he would say quietly, “but not good enough. Now, Ainsworth, show them again how to do it. We must do it quickly but we must also
do it right.”
He came to be known as “Do-it-right” and Delancey could see that the larboard watch was improving all the time. Waring might bellow and bully, being called “Blaring” behind his back, but his men never seemed to improve. With Mather on board, Delancey began to have more confidence in the crew as a whole, knowing that any discontent or friction would be reported to him at once.

The
Merlin
left Gibraltar on February 20th with a convoy for Palermo. The thought had struck him, in the Admiral's office, that Gibraltar is a sort of theatre. The same idea crossed his mind as he gave orders to weigh anchor. In bright sunshine with a stiff breeze, the
Merlin's
manoeuvres would be clearly visible from the ramparts and office windows, from the foreshore and the lower town, from the upper batteries and from the ships at anchor. He had a wonderful opportunity to make a good impression but there could be no more public place in which to make an error. Taking charge of the deck, he shouted the orders through the speaking-trumpet: “Man the capstan! . . . Bring to! . . . Heave taut! Unbit! Heave round!” The capstan revolved as the petty officers shouted “Heave, my lads! Stamp and go!” They had been in shallow water and there soon came the cry from the forecastle “Anchor's a-weigh!”—to which Delancey responded “Pall the capstan!” Now came Waring's orders from forward: “Hook the cat!” “Haul taut!” “Away with the cat!” “Pass the stoppers!” At the right moment Delancey shouted “Haul taut and bitt the cable!” and then “All hands, make sail!” The sloop was alive with activity as Delancey called “Away aloft!”—”Man the topsail sheets!”—”Let fall—sheet home!” “Down from aloft!”—”Man the topsail halliards!”—”Haul taut!” and “Tend the braces!” With a few turns of the wheel the sloop was heading out of the bay, leaning gently to the breeze, her sails golden in the sunlight, the foam white round her stern. “Mr Northmore,” called Delancey, “signal the convoy to up anchor and make sail.” Without a pause he added “Mr Helliwell—one gun!” A quarterdeck carronade boomed out, the puff of smoke going downwind in the breeze and the sound re-echoed from the Rock. Slowly and clumsily the eight merchantmen put to sea and began to assume the formation which Delancey had explained to their skippers the evening before.

The convoy had formed line with the
Merlin
in station to windward. They would not be able to hold this formation for long, least of all after dark, but Delancey wanted to start the voyage with a flourish. He could not expect smart sail-drill from the merchantmen—they were undermanned for that sort of thing—but it was vital that they should be able to form line of battle. Seen from the Rock, the merchantmen looked like fat sheep being chevied by a well-trained collie. The trouble was that the ships were unequal to each other in speed, some clean and some foul below the waterline, some well manned and some with hardly a real seaman aboard. They began to straggle as the Rock fell astern and Delancey, who had gone below, could sense Waring's exasperation as light began to fail. Sails were being backed and filled, signals were being made and repeated and guns were being fired at short and shortening intervals. Another gun spoke as he came on deck, the smoke streaming away to leeward. “Look at that damned floating haystack!” shouted Waring. “Did anyone ever see such a parcel of lubbers? Can't they see? Can't they read a signal?” The first lieutenant was beside himself and Delancey knew that the moment had come to intervene. “Mr Waring,” he said quietly, “signal the convoy to shorten sail. Heave to now until that last brig catches up.” The necessary orders were issued and the tension relaxed.

It was during this first voyage, that Delancey found his feet as a naval captain. He had so far suffered from a feeling of unreality, as if he were a boy pretending to be a man. The captains under whom he had served had been godlike and remote, saying little but knowing exactly what to do. Now he was himself a captain, commanding a real man-of-war, not an anachronistic fireship, and he felt at first neither remote nor godlike. It was with a great effort that he assumed the role, becoming less human, more silent, less accessible, more decisive. He made one or two minor mistakes—being too lenient, for example, with certain offenders—but he tried to avoid making the same mistake twice. All the time, moreover, he was working his crew up to a higher standard of gunnery and seamanship. It was a matter, as he found, of continual effort and thought. He had to study the work of each gun captain, deciding in each case of apparent failure, whether the man should be retrained, reprimanded, encouraged or replaced. He had to time the topmen in making or shortening sail. He had to know the exact state of the ship in terms of spare sails and cordage, provisions and water. He had to work out a tentative pattern of possible promotion. Who would take the boatswain's place if he were killed? Who would be the next boatswain's mate? Who was there to replace the sail-maker or cooper? In these and a hundred other ways Delancey was learning the captain's art.

In the course of a gunnery exercise Mather reported to Delancey that Number Five Gun in the larboard battery was late again.

“How late?” asked Delancey.

“Forty seconds.”

“Any excuse?”

“No. They were thirty-seven seconds late last time.”

“So there is no improvement. I should say that Fuller has had his chance.”

“I could try again with him, sir.”

“No. You could improve their time up to twenty seconds. But forty? No. We need a new gun captain. Which crew is best? Number Three?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well, then. Shift Maclean to Number Five. Promote Samuelson as captain of Number Three and make Fuller his second.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

As the weeks went by men were trained and tested, promoted or replaced, the results being measured with a standard of performance and a standard time. “Do it right,” said Mather, “Hewitt—you can do better than that.”

“Hey, you, sir, at the yard-arm—are you asleep?” bawled Waring and Delancey noted that his first lieutenant's coat seemed to be bursting at the seams. But how could he put on weight while at sea? It seemed that he could and did. Topley was putting on weight, too, but that was because he was happier in the larboard watch.

Delancey had his young gentlemen to dine with him in turn. Langford, the master's mate, was competent, stolid and dependable but would never rise higher than lieutenant. Mr Midshipman Northmore was hampered by laziness but was potentially a good officer. Topley was a different boy since he had come under Mather's influence. When Langford was asked to carve the joint Topley was now to be heard muttering “Do it right,” or “You, sir, at the yard-arm.” But the biggest change observable was in young David Stock, whose tongue-tied nervousness had disappeared and who had twice now been sent to the masthead for unheard-of insolence. David was in love with the sea and asked no more of life than canvas and hemp, knots and splices, blocks and tackle, sextant and log. But somewhere ahead lay a different test. The boy would some day have to kill the enemy. Langford would do that without the slightest hesitation, and so would Northmore; as ruthless as many another aristocrat, Topley had not even thought about it. As for David Stock, Delancey had his doubts. Boys grow into men but it was a hard fate which made Delancey teach youngsters what they had to be taught. Who was he to put cold steel into a mere child's hands and say “Now, kill!” and yet that in the end was the message he had to convey among the commissioned officers. Waring might bawl and Mather might teach but his function, the captain's function, was to kill and to see that others did the same. War was his trade and he knew no other.

D
ELANCEY faced no crisis until a wild and wintry day in early April 1799. The
Merlin
was then escorting a convoy from Minorca to Leghorn, a motley collection of nine vessels, some quite small though a few of them might be regarded as valuable. The merchantmen were supposed to be in formation but had actually straggled in the approach to Corsica, the point of greatest danger since it was within easy reach of Toulon. The wind was southerly with low scudding cloud and gleams of sunshine alternating with heavy rain and the
Merlin
lay to windward of her convoy under shortened canvas. It was Mr Waring's watch and Delancey was below when the look-out reported a strange sail. Young Northmore knocked at the cabin door a minute later. The boy made his errand consciously dramatic, his hand raised in salute, his eyes a-scare for adventure.

“Beg pardon, sir, Mr Waring's compliments and there's a ship in sight.”

Delancey was on deck in an instant with his telescope focused in the direction to which Waring pointed. The vessel sighted was not a ship but a brig, so much he could see, but she was hidden soon afterwards in a rainstorm.

“Well, what do you make of her?” he asked Waring.

“Can't see very well but she's not one of ours, sir.” Waring's thoughts were very obvious. Here was a smaller opponent, offering a chance of promotion or prize-money.

“No, not one of ours. Send a good man to the mast-head and let me know when she is more nearly identified.”

An hour later came a new summons and this time with better information. Visibility had improved and the brig was near enough for careful study.

“She is French, sir,” said Waring eagerly. “A national brig corvette under British colours and heading so as to close with us. Shall I clear for action, sir?” Waring was no coward, as Delancey had to admit, but he was too red-faced, noisy and overfed, he had no brains and, above all, no sense of
time.
He might be inwardly excited himself but this was no moment to show it.