CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

By mid-day the next morning, Lewrie and his small party were on the road east-London to Chelmsford, Chelmsford to Ipswich, and east to the coastal road to Great Yarmouth, where the fleet was gathering for the Baltic expedition. It was an expensive and long trip in a hired carriage, with a carting waggon following close behind which bore all of Lewrie's stored furnishings, wine, and hastily bought supplies for God knew how long a time at sea.

Wine by the case, whisky by the barricoe, brandy by the gallons; those damned furs, which, at such short notice, Lewrie could only purchase some used items, and those reeking of badly cured hides and camphor. Whatever they were actually pelts of, he had no idea at the moment. There were dried sausages and smoked fish for the cats… the requisite keg of dry beach sand he could find for their necessary box he could buy later… his crated-up plate and pewter service, his glasses and china, the collapsible settee and chairs, a tea-caddy freshly filled with coned suger, tea leaves, along with sacks of chocolate and coffee beans, the grinder, the pots, pans, grills, and utensils, and all the myriad of easily forgotten things that made life at least tolerable at sea. Boot-black and metal polish, spare uniforms and slop-trousers, dress and undress rigs, shirts and stockings, underdrawers and neck-stocks for every occasion from a howling winter gale to a presentation ball before foreign dignitaries, Lewrie thought he'd managed to gather the important things.

There had also been Desmond's and Furfy's sea-chests and kits to re-stock, bills to be paid through his solicitor, money drafts for day-to-day voyaging expenses to be drawn, the quarterly sums to be set aside for his wife, Caroline, and his children, and the farm…

And, letters to write! He'd gotten finger-cramp before he was done, informing his father, Sir Hugo, Sir Malcolm Shockley, Lord Peter, Caroline, Hugh, Sewallis, and Charlotte, that he'd gotten a new ship, and to address future letters in care of Admiralty… and, last of all, a note to Eudoxia Durschenko, then… one to Tess, the poor chit.

And still he fretted as the coach rocked and jangled and thudded into the early evening that there might be something important that he'd forgotten, and might be unavailable in Great Yarmouth shops.

"Uhm, sir…," Liam Desmond spoke up at last, after the boredom of watching the flat and depressing countryside of Essex rolling by in the gathering twilight. "What sorta frigate is this… Therm-diddle?"

"Thermopylae?" Lewrie grunted, dragging himself back from a reverie of his night with Tess. "Ah, she's a Fifth Rate of thirty-eight guns… eighteen pounders," he explained, repeating what little he'd been told by Mr. Nepean. "They took her lines off the French Hebe, but she's British-built, a little longer than the old ones… one hundred fifty feet on the range of the deck. So many of them coming into service, they're callin' her one of the Leda class. I've heard that they're good, stable gun platforms, and handle extemely well. Over a thousand tons burthen."

"Wot's it mean, though, sir, Therm… how ye say it?" Furfy pressed.

"A very long time ago, the Persians tried to invade Greece with a million-man army, and a fleet of five hundred ships," Lewrie replied. "The Greeks acted like the House of Commons on a bad day, and couldn't agree to cooperate… They were all a bunch of city-states, not a real country then, so… the Spartans under King Leonidas set out to stop 'em. He picked a narrow pass right by the sea… high cliffs above, and a straight drop from the road, a place with a hot spring like at the resort of Bath that the Greeks called Thermopylae, which means a hot spring. And there they fought, for nigh on a week, with the Persians crammed into a narrow front, no more than twenty men wide, dyin' by the thousands 'cause they couldn't drive through the Spartans and their spears, shields, and swords. The Persian king, Xerxes, lost a tenth part of his soldiers. That gave time enough for the Athenians to beat the Persians in great sea-battles that destroyed most of the Persian fleet, and let the Greeks sort themselves out and raise their own army. Leonidas and the Spartans saved Greece… kept it from turning into a mess as bad as the Ottoman Empire, and saved the basis of our civilisation."

"Spartans, now!" Furfy enthused. "Ain't there a Spartiate in the Navy, arready? Lotsa ships named for Greeks an' Romans, both. I think there was even a Leonidas, too, weren't there, Liam?"

"Think I heard th' name, Pat," Desmond told his friend. "So, sir… once th' Spartans saved th' day, did they make this Leonidas king over all?"

"Uh, no…," Lewrie had to confess. "A traitor showed the Persians a way round the mountains that was un-guarded, and took 'em from both ends, so… the Spartans died to a man."

"Oh" was Furfy's shuddery comment. He looked as if he wished to cross himself, or spit for protection against bad geas.

"They died gloriously, mind," Lewrie added. "Famous to this day, same as Helen of Troy, Hector, and Achilles in The Iliad. Like Horatius at the bridge, and-"

"Oh, like Horatio Nelson, then!" Furfy said, perking up.

"Ain't it a pity, Pat, that there'll niver be frigates or ships o' th' line named after Irish heroes an' such," Lewrie's Cox'n said. "Like Brian Boru, or the Battle o' Clontarf."

"Cuchulain, or Conary Mцr, the high king, aye," Furfy supplied, his eyes alight, "or places like Tara."

"Conall o' th' Victories, or Finn Mac Cooal," Desmond added, in a wistful, respectful voice.

Lewrie, who knew next to nothing of Irish myths, kept his mouth shut, and even managed not to snicker, scowl, or raise a single brow, though he thought the both of them were off on a pagan religious jaunt. Just like the Irish, he thought; Swannin' off into fables.

"Pardon me more, Cap'm, but, is this Thermopylae still fittin' out?" Desmond asked him further. "Mean t'say… if she's fresh from th' gravin' docks, it might be weeks afore she's ready for sea."

"No, Desmond, she's aswim already, in full commission," Lewrie informed him. "And ready in all respects… but for the health of her captain. He's come down with the winter agues so badly, they told me, that he had to write and ask for relief, else his ship and his officers and men would miss out on things, and he thought that a worse thing than stepping aside, himself. A Captain Joseph Speaks, I think he is. Never heard of him myself, even though I imagine he's a lot senior to me, and was 'made Post' years before I was. Have either of you?"

No, they hadn't, either. Furfy went back to staring out his windows at the countryside, whilst Desmond frowned in thought. Lewrie was about to shut his eyes and try to nap, despite the jolting of the coach, when Desmond spoke up in a soft voice.

"Cap'm, sir… it might be tetchy, yer takin' over. This Cap'm Speaks most-likes been posted a year or more, an' all his people would be usedta him, by now. Here's me, yer Cox'n, replacin' his, an' sore th' fellow'll be, t'lose his 'call' an' his position, t'be certain."

"Well, there is that," Lewrie uneasily allowed. From his first ad hoc appointment to command of a converted bomb ketch in the Far East, to the Shrike brig when old Lt. Lilycrop had been invalided off, to the Alacrity, the Jester sloop, and the frigates Proteus and Savage, he had either commissioned them with new crews, or been the first appointed to them. Shrike, well… he'd already been her First Lieutenant when he had supplanted Lilycrop, so he'd been familiar with her crew, but… this would be the first time in his career that he would be stepping into someone else's shoes, off-loading one man's cabin furnishings and putting his own in place… and facing an utterly strange new set of faces and names and attitudes; a ship's company that most-likely had rubbed together for a year or two already, and might look upon him as an interloper. Much like his last First Officer in Savage, Lieutenant Urquhart, had probably felt, being appointed into a ship whose crew had turned over entire after three years as shipmates in Proteus!

And he would be going aboard without the usual entourage that a Royal Navy captain should have, too. Instead of his own cook, clerk, and steward, his own favoured boat crew; he had a mere two, his Cox'n Liam Desmond, and the hapless Patrick Furfy. Most captains rated at least half a dozen trustworthy people from previous commissions together, sometimes as many as fifteen for admirals, if one counted an extra clerk, and several more snot-nosed "gentleman volunteers" too young to qualify as Midshipmen yet, but could serve as cabin servants.

Such a coterie of long-time favourites would be upsetting to the men holding small "place" aboard a ship already in commission. Anyone who did not hold proper Admiralty Warrant could be demoted and replaced in a twinkling, and that would further foment the distrust, and dread, of the coming of a new captain, who might prove to be as big a tyrant as Pigott had been in HMS Hermione, where they'd finally mutinied, and murdered, and sailed her into an enemy port!

Better the Devil ye know, Lewrie mused; Oh, damn… servants.

There was another snag. Lewrie had depended upon the staff of the Madeira Club after Aspinall had quit to enter his new career as an author. To replace all the skills Aspinall had possessed, he'd need at least three men; a cook, a manservant, and cabin steward, combined. And, most-like a cabin servant to aid the steward! As quick as his appointment had come, though, there hadn't been time to interview people and hire a few… not if he'd had two weeks' notice!

Lewrie could only hope that within his new frigate's crew, from among the people Captain Speaks had left behind, he might discover some who at least knew their left hand from their right, could boil water or brew coffee, set plates without breaking half of them, or scribble correspondence that was actually legible.

And stay out of his wine and spirits locker!

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