Reefs and Shoals

CHAPTER ELEVEN

HMS Reliant ’s landfall at Bermuda was hardly an auspicious occasion. The lookouts aloft, and the watch officers, spotted a few dim lights from far offshore, in the wee hours near the end of the Middle Watch, Unfortunately, those few low-on-the-horizon lights were spread to either side of the bows. A quick peek at the chart, and a hidden gasp later, and Lewrie ordered an immediate turn-about to stand away Sou’east, into deeper water; there to stand off-and-on ’til daylight.

“What I feared,” he told Lt. Merriman and the Sailing Master, “that we’d fetch the bloody place too far North of it, and end up on the reefs and rocks. Once we can see where we’re going, we’ll come to anchor in Five Fathom Hole… assumin’ we can find it without rippin’ her bottom out.”

The previous day’s Noon Sights had placed their position close to Bermuda, close enough for Lewrie to order the t’gallants to be reefed and gasketed, the tops’1s reduced to the second reefs, and the fore and main courses shortened down to first reefs. After a light supper, a most informal one with Lt. Westcott, the Sailing Master, and a chart spread over the dining table, Lewrie had taken a three-hour nap, then had gone on deck at the beginning of the Middle Watch, at midnight, to slouch in his collapsible canvas deck chair, pace the deck, and fret for the first cry of “land ho”, hoping that their navigation was accurate enough, their course correct, so that they would fetch the islands to their Sou’east, well clear of Kitchen Shoals, Mill Breakers, Great Breaker Ledge Flat, the Nor’east Breakers, and Sea Venture Shoals, so named for the Sea Venture, which had wrecked upon them, setting the first English colonists on Bermuda… whether they wanted to be, or not. They had been bound for Virginia, but, once succoured with fresh victuals, most had stayed to make the best of a dangerous serendipity!

“I daresay we’ve been bitten by the mysterious magnetic variations hereabouts, sir,” Mr. Caldwell said with a scowl. “Bermuda’s infamous for them, sometimes up to six degrees or so, and no explaining why. They’re not seasonal, nor tied to the phases of the moon, tides, or weather.” Caldwell shrugged and gloomed in perplexity.

“Sounds spooky,” Lt. Merriman commented.

“Let’s not let the ship’s people hear any of that, hey?” Lewrie muttered to Merriman, laying a finger upon his lips for a moment. “We have enough superstitions amongst ’ em already. Carry on Mister Merriman. Now we believe we’re in deeper, safer waters, I’ll take a short ‘caulk’ in my deck chair.”

“Very good, sir, aye,” Merriman replied.

The dawn did not bring an auspicious landfall, either. As the Forenoon Watch began at 8 A.M., the winds began to freshen once more, and the inshore waters fretted and chopped in white caps and white horses, with ruffling cat’s paws over the surface. There was a heavy, scudding overcast that made the early morning shadowless and gloomy, and there was a strong smell of rain in the offing, to boot.

Oddly, though, Bermuda could not have been a more welcome sight if they had stood in in bright daylight, for, as their frigate cautiously neared St. David’s Head, the shoal waters turned lighter and clearer blue, the shores fringed in aqua green with pure white waves breaking upon almost pinkish-tan beaches, beneath the ruddy limestone headlands. And the island was so brightly green! There were trees, some fronded or spiky like palms or palmettos, flowering bushes, and open grassy spaces, perhaps lawns or croplands, and all the flora lush and verdant in an entire palette of green. Quite unlike some islands in the West Indies that could look brown and shrivelled in the sun and talced with dust, Bermuda appeared as if everything had been freshly watered and washed for their arrival.

The Sailing Master, his Mates, and the trusted senior Midshipmen busily plied their sextants to take the measurements of the known heights and prominent sea-marks, working out the distances from shore, and the known dangers of the shallows and submerged reefs noted on the charts.

“Do we stand on as we are, sir,” the Sailing Master said after a long, grim musing over the chart pinned to the traverse board, “we will enter Five Fathom Hole. There is an anchorage area just North of there, where we can find six or seven fathoms, and firm sand and rock holding ground… or so the chart promises.”

“Right there?” Lewrie asked, pointing a finger at the chart. The area that Mr. Caldwell was recommending lay close to the infamous Sea Venture Shoals… uncomfortably close, to his lights! He took a long look about to judge the wind direction, worrying that it might be foul for entering St. George’s Harbour proper. “Mister Westcott? Best bower and stern kedge, the kedge to be let go first as we crawl on. Unless a pilot takes pity on us.”

“Aye, sir,” the First Officer replied.

“Speak of the Devil, sir,” Mr. Caldwell said, pointing towards Town Cut, the very narrow entry channel into harbour. “There’s one of the harbour pilots coming to us, just now.”

Lewrie fetched his telescope and spotted a singled-masted boat coming out of the channel ’twixt St. George’s Island, tiny Biggs Island, and St. David’s Island which formed the Southern shore of the harbour. Its jib and gaff-headed mainsail did an uncertain shiver as it left the Cut, a sure sign to Lewrie that it would be a right-bastard set of swirls and back-eddies in there, too uncertain a wind to risk Reliant, this day at least. Once clear, the boat’s sails cracked wind-full, and she began to bound over the choppy inshore waters like a running stag, bound for his ship. As she drew closer, Lewrie could espy three occupants; a lad about twelve or so to handle the sheets, one even younger at the tiller, and an older man in the boat’s amidships.

“I say, that looks fun,” Midshipman Munsell tittered. “Should we ever have the time, we could stage boat races.”

The pilot boat-if that was what it was-passed ahead of Reliant, swung about in a wide turn, and jibed about to swan close to the starboard main chains, and the opened entry-port.

“Hoy, what ship, there?” the older man shouted up, using an old brass speaking-trumpet.

“The Reliant frigate, Captain Alan Lewrie!” Mr. Caldwell called back for them. “You are a pilot, sir?”

“Warrick, and I am!” the fellow replied, beaming broadly under a wide-brimmed straw planter’s hat. “Shall I come up, sir?”

“Aye! Come alongside.”

The lad at the tiller, no older than ten, deftly put the tiller over and brought the boat to within inches of the channel platform as the slightly older boy hooked on with a gaff. A second later and Mr. Warrick was scrambling up the boarding battens, and the boat sheered off to stand alee.

“Good morning, all,” Warrick said, doffing his hat to the officers gathered on the quarterdeck.

“Good morning, Mister Warrick,” Lewrie said, stepping forward and doffing his own hat in salute. “Your servant, sir.”

“Nay, I’m more yours, Cap’m Lewrie,” Warrick replied, “if you wish to enter port. Though the wind’s not good for that, today. We can find you a good anchorage, just off yonder, ’til the morrow, and guide you in then. What’s your draught, sir?”

“About eighteen feet, right aft,” Lewrie supplied.

“Good, long scope, to a bower and kedge, I’m thinking? Good,” Warrick said, noting that the hawse-bucklers had been removed, a kedge was already attached to a stern cable, and the best, larboard bower anchor was swinging free of cat and fish lashings. “There’s many the cautious masters that’ll anchor out, anyway, and send their boats in through the Cut for provisions. Do you not have need of lading cargo, or landing goods, the anchorage’ll suit you fine.

“Mind, sir, my fee’s the same for either,” Warrick said with a smug grin, naming a goodly sum for his services, one which made every officer, and Lewrie, wince. “These are dangerous waters, gentlemen, more so than most. Without a pilot aboard, you’d be lost and wrecked in a twinkling.”

“Carry on, Mister Warrick,” Lewrie said. “Do you require cash, a note of hand, or an Admiralty chit?”

“Cash is topping fine, Cap’m Lewrie,” Warrick breezed off, then turned his full attention to the sails, the course, and the sea-marks. “Hoy, lads. A half point loo’rd, if you will,” he said to the men on the helm, bypassing the watch officers. Reliant was now wholly in his hands.

The frigate swung off to starboard a bit as she came level with Little Head, standing out to avoid a shoal noted as the Spit. To the West was revealed a maze of islets; Paget and Biggs, the larger Smith’s Island, and behind that, in the harbour proper, little Hen Island, all in clear green waters as shallow as six to nine feet, and even the Town Cut entrance looked suspiciously shallow, to Lewrie.

Damned right I’ll not move without a pilot aboard, he vowed to himself; no matter how much they charge me!

“Cap’m sir,” Warrick said at last, “do you let go your kedge and let it pay out half a cable about here, then you’re good to swing up to windward, go flat a’back, then drop the bower on a short scope for the nonce, ’til you’ve balanced between them, you’ll find good holding ground.”

“Very well, sir, and thankee. Mister Westcott? Let go the kedge, half a cable scope.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Do you wish to enter port proper tomorrow, sir, it’s good odds that the wind’ll shift astern of you, and you can trust your kedge to hold you at full scope whilst you take up the bower,” Warrick suggested. “Then, it’s smooth sailing right up the Cut, holding Sugarloaf Hill fine on your bows. You hoist a flag for a pilot, and me and my boys’ll see you right.”

“I’d not try it on without you, Mister Warrick,” Lewrie said, which seemed to please the man. “Once we’re anchored, might I offer you a glass of something, and ask you a few questions about Bermuda? This is, I believe, the first time any of us have put in here.”

“That’d be right kindly of you, sir,” Warrick replied.

It lacked half an hour ’til “Clear Decks and Up Spirits” by the time Reliant was safely anchored, and all her sails at long last brailed up in harbour gaskets or handed and stowed. The crew would get the rum issue a bit later, but Lewrie’s wine cabinet was open, and he kept a stone crock of rum for just such a purpose.

Warrick’s boat had come alongside, and the two lads, his sons, had scrambled aboard to peer about and josh Munsell and Rossyngton, the ship’s youngest Mids. They were bronzed by the sun, bare-legged and shoeless, in faded old breeches with the knee buttons long gone, open and sleeveless linen shirts, and straw hats much like their father’s.

“Ah, but that’s fine,” Warrick said after a tentative sip from his glass of rum. “Navy issue’s stronger than most, Strong enough to make a man’s ears itch, har!”

“We noted some compass variation,” Lewrie began to probe, and Warrick let go with a plethora of local lore. “Mistifying, that.”

There was no explaining the variations, for one thing. With a chart spread on the dining table, Warrick went over the string of islands. Some were so close to each other, like North and South Ireland, Boaz, Somerset, and Watford Islands on the West end of the chain, that if the Crown ever thought to spend money on bridges, the distances between could easily be spanned. Inside the shoals to the Nor’east there was a vast expanse of deep, somewhat sheltered water, Murray’s Anchorage, and there were at least two good deepwater channels that led to a very good sheltered anchorage in Grassy Bay, and the Great and Little Sounds, out to the West.

“During the Peace of Amiens, the Leavder anchored there, sir,” Warrick said. “She’s an old two-decker fifty gunner, and draws more than you. But, there’s not much in the way of provisions, or entertainment, for your sailors from Somerset, or Sandys Parish, either. Nor is there much joy in Hamilton, do you send your ship’s boats through Two Rocks Passage into Hamilton Bay. ’Tis a sleepy little place. You can send your people ashore with little fear of desertion, though. You will note there’s several forts, and a sizeable garrison, on Bermuda.

“Not that there’s much call for them,” Warrick went on, holding out his glass for a top-up. “Keeping order, and rounding up the drunken sailors, mostly.”

“Is Leander still here?” Lewrie asked. “Is her captain senior officer present?”

“Depends on who’s in port, sir,” Warrick said with a laugh at that notion. “Right now, you’re senior naval officer present. Does one of the brig-sloops come in, then it’d be a Commander in charge of the island for as long as he’s at anchor. If both brig-sloops are out at sea, then it might be one of the Lieutenants on the small sloops. There’s no real dockyard, no Port Admiral or much organisation.”

“How many warships are there, then?” Lewrie further asked.

“Like I said, two brig-sloops, and two smaller sloops, more like two-masted tops’l schooners, around eight or ten guns apiece,” Warrick prosed on. “Much like the Bermuda or Jamaica sloops that the old pirates like Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet sailed in the long ago. Ever hear of Stede Bonnet?”

“No, I haven’t,” Lewrie replied, pouring a tot of rum for himself to be companionable.

“Oh, he was a ‘fly’ fellow,” Warrick happily related. “He was a gentleman, an officer in the island Army garrison, married with two or more children, respectable as anything. Came of a French Protestant family, what they call Huguenots, that were massacred or expelled long ago? Well, upright as he seemed, one day he up and boarded ship for Nassau, the old pirate haven, and turned sea rover! S’truth!”

“A total ‘lubber’? I’d not imagine there’s much future in that,” Lewrie said, chuckling.

“Now, no one ever said he was anything close to a ‘tarpaulin’ sailor,” Warrick went on, “but he was a gentleman, and a leader, a man with some style about him, so he ended up captain of a small ship faster than you can say ‘Jack Ketch’. Ran with Blackbeard, ‘Calico Jack’ Rackham, Mary Read, and Anne Bonny, and so long as he could keep order and be backed up by experienced mates, he did right well.

“They caught him, though, in the end,” Warrick added, turning wistful-somber, as if telling of the end of a tragic hero. “Got him at anchor in the mouth of the Cape Fear River over in the North Carolina colony… 1715 or so? They took him down to Charleston for his trial. Now here’s the oddest bit: Were there women aboard a prize he took, they took up with him, husbands, lovers, and families bedamned, and in all his captures, there never was a single murder, nor even all that much resistance, so… the judge says since Bonnet’s hands are clean of killing, he’s of a mind to pardon him, so long as he swears to give up piracy and return to his family. Know what he said?”

“Pray, do tell,” Lewrie urged, encouraging the pilot, whether he really cared or not; it sounded promising, though, for Mr. Warrick was almost wheezing with impending wit.

“Bonnet says to the judge, ‘Well my lord, if that’s my only option, you might as well go on and hang me!’ Damned if he didn’t, hee-hee!”

“She must’ve been a real shrew,” Lewrie said, laughing.

“And damned if they didn’t… hang him, that is,” Warrick said. “They say Stede Bonnet went out with style, pirate or not.”

“No piracy round here, since, I trust?” Lewrie japed.

“We don’t get the great trade convoys to attract much of that,” Warrick said with a shrug, sounding as if he might wish that there was some piracy to liven a sleepy mid-Atlantic island’s days.

“Privateering?” Lewrie asked.

“Ours, mostly, preying on the French and the Dons, but after the war began again two years ago, not much of that, either, Cap’m Lewrie,” Warrick admitted, sounding as if that was a let-down, too. “Our two brig-sloops prowl round the island, an hundred or more miles off, and stay out nigh three months before coming back in to provision. The small sloops patrol closer in, but it’s rare that any enemy ship turns up, and they’re mostly bound for more important places.”

Can’t commandeer the brig-sloops, just in case the French do turn up, Lewrie thought; I need small ships t’make squadron; it’ll have t’be one of the little’uns.

“None of the small sloops are around, at present?” Lewrie asked, making free with the crock of rum. While rum was not his preferred aged American corn whiskey, it was a decent substitute. Lewrie was one of the few officers in the Navy who would even admit to liking a spirit issued to the common seamen.

“Well… there might be Lieutenant Bury,” Warrick told him, a scowl on his face.

“Berry?”

“Bury, like a funeral. B-U-R-Y,” Warrick corrected him. “He’s the Lizard sloop, though a fish name’d suit him more. Fellow might as well be covered in scales and fins. An odd bird, altogether is Bury.”

“How so?” Lewrie asked, topping up both their glasses.

In vino veritas, he thought; He knows the truth, and I don’t.

“He likes hydrog… hydrography,” Warrick carped; perhaps it was the rum that was tangling his tongue. “Swans about the shoals and reefs, taking soundings and making charts. Bury’s got it into his head there’s channels through the flats that nobody’s found yet, or wants found!”

Which’d cut into yer trade, and yer earnings, Lewrie cynically speculated to himself.

“And, when he’s not doing that, he’s out in a small boat with a bucket on his head,” Warrick scoffed.

“Beg pardon? A bucket?” Lewrie gawped.

“Had himself a bucket made, with a glass-pane bottom,” Warrick explained, shaking his head in wonder. “Like an old tavern tankard in the old days? Wants to see the bottoms, watch the fishes, study the coral and such, and catch samples so he can gut them and pick them to pieces and draw pictures of them. Spends more time in the water, upside down as a feeding duck, hee hee! Last anyone saw of him and the Lizard, he was off for Grassy Bay, dropping Vickers, one of the other pilots, soon as he got out of The Narrows and into the South Channel cross Murray’s Anchorage, the silly sod!” Warrick huffed up like an adder in revulsion, and in defence of his “guild”. As dangerous as Bermudan waters were, the pilots had been making a killing for years, and anything that threatened their income was stealing food from the mouths of their children!

Don’t sound like the sort I need, Lewrie thought.

“And the other small sloop, and her captain?” he queried.

“ Primrose? Lieutenant Percy’s more sensible, but he’s been out the last two months, entire, and most-like won’t come back to harbour ’til the rum runs out… another month or so,” Warrick speculated.

Damn! Lewrie thought; I may be stuck with ‘Mister Minnow’ after all! Not much choice, really.

“Well, then. I intend to idle at anchor at least a whole day, through tomorrow. Give the hands a well-earned rest after the voyage we’ve had. Allow the chandlers and bum-boats alongside?” Lewrie idly said. “After that, the wind permitting, I’d be much obliged to you, did you pilot us up through, The Narrows, and into Grassy Bay, so that I may speak with Bury.”

“You have it, Cap’m Lewrie!” Warrick quickly agreed. “Now… if you’ll be ready, and if there’s not a scramble over a new ship coming in, there’s no need to make a hoist, asking for a pilot, see?” The man actually winked at him! “I’ll come out to you, and we’ll be off!”

“That would be most agreeable, Mister Warrick,” Lewrie replied.

Once Warrick and his sons had tumbled down the battens into the boat and had set off for Town Cut, Lewrie returned to the quarterdeck.

“We’ll be entering port, sir?” Lt. Westcott asked.

“I think not, Mister Westcott, sorry,” Lewrie told him. “We’ll hoist the Easy pendant to whistle up the bum-boats, and let the Purser go ashore for fresh victuals, but Saint George’s doesn’t look that promising. Did they send out all the doxies, I doubt they’d make a corporal’s guard.”

“I see, sir,” Westcott said, sounding a tad disappointed.

“I doubt there’s more than a half-dozen decent-lookin’ girls on the whole island, and the men of Bermuda most-like guard ’em like the bloody Crown Jewels, anyway,” Lewrie told him, smiling and chuckling. “We’re ordered to visit all the major ports in America, from Cape Fear to Savannah, Mister Westcott, and Nassau, to boot, so you will have your… opportunities, hmm? Take joy o’ that!”

“Oh, very good, sir!”

“Anything needful t’see to, sir?” Lewrie asked, turning back to ship’s business.

“Over the last few days of decent weather, sir, we’ve re-rove all the frayed or snapped rigging, patched or replaced all the torn sails, and replaced the odd broken spars in the topmasts, so there’s not that much to see to, really,” Westcott reported, more crisply.

“Summon all hands, if you will, sir,” Lewrie ordered.

Bosun Sprague plied his silver call, piping the hands up from below, summoning the on-deck watch to gather in the waist or on the sail-tending gangways. Lewrie stepped to the top of the starboard ladderway to the waist to address them.

“Men, we’ve reached the first stop of our voyage, and it’s been a hellish chore t’get here, as well you all know, hey?” Lewrie began. “We’ve put the ship to rights, as the First Officer informs me… and now it’s time to put your things to rights.

“We’ll not put the ship Out of Discipline, but we will allow the bum-boats alongside for fresh fruits and victuals,” he went on. “By tonight’s mess, I hope to obtain fresh meat and shore bread for your suppers, too. Right, Mister Cadbury?”

“Right, sir,” the Purser, who was standing by to go ashore in one of the ship’s boats, heartily agreed; though how much it would cost him out of his slim profits he would not express, even by a tiny frown or wince.

“We’ll have ‘all night in’, tonight,” Lewrie continued, noting the smiles breaking out, “and the second rum issue for the day will be ‘splice the main-brace’. Tomorrow…”

Lusty cheers interrupted him for half a minute.

“And tomorrow will be ‘make-and-mend’ to dry out and repair your kits,” Lewrie concluded. “Mister Westcott? Dismiss the hands.”

“Aye aye, sir!”

And I’ll sleep the bloody clock round, myself, at long last! Lewrie promised himself.