The Baltic Prize

Chapter 10

He’d been aboard Tyger for just a few days but she had taken him to her and he had responded willingly. The serene lift and heave of her deck, measured and regular, was at one with the rise and fall of his mother’s breast as she had held him as an infant, the sturdy enfolding bulkheads and decks now a comfort and refuge from the harsh world without. He knew it was romantic nonsense, but Christopher Rowan felt without question that Tyger was bearing him on, taking him to adventures and perils that would, in the end, make him a man.

She was graceful and handsome – the sweet curves of the deck-line, the lofty spars wreathed in an intricate tracery of rigging against the sails, taut and bellying, that urged her on in a forceful swash of bow-waves. There was something artistic in the tints and colours that gave her character – the black spars with their white tips against yellow masts, the scarlet inner bulwarks, against which rested gleaming black guns on their red and green carriages, the rosin bright-work, and everywhere the scrubbed purity of the decks.

He tried not to be noticed as he watched her company go about their shipboard routines, for these were not the pressed men of Brunswick – Captain Kydd would never have need of such. Instead these were a higher breed, all volunteers into the most famous frigate of the age. Hard, capable and the picture of deep-sea sailormen, they were the fighting core of Tyger and looked the part. They moved lithely, their motions sure and confident, no petty officers spluttering in frustration as officers blared at them: these men were aboard Tyger because they wanted to share in her honour and acclaim, and he quailed again at the impossible vision of taking charge of them.

It had to be faced, though. He would soon be expected to do just that, for there could be no passengers in a first-rank frigate, and if he failed …

His eyes caught activity further forward by the starboard side. Gilpin was taking charge of a party of seamen to leeward. They were preparing to pull on a rope, some kind of sail trimming. He was standing back, hands on his hips, looking up, gauging times. As each fell due he barked the order and the men flung themselves into it, hauling low and hard. It was impressive: the young man’s voice had broken and there was a crack of authority in it that had them sweating at their work.

The seamen completed the task to his satisfaction and, dismissing them, he sauntered back to the watch group near the helm and reported languidly. Although he was only a couple of years older than Rowan, there was a gulf of experience and knowledge between them that Rowan couldn’t hope to bridge.

The ting-ting of the ship’s bell brought him back to earth. It was time for the young gentlemen’s instruction.

This was in the coach, part of the outer captain’s quarters where the master’s mates would correct charts, the ship’s clerk do his bookkeeping and the first lieutenant spread out his watch and station workings.

At this appointed hour all were elsewhere while the midshipmen took their daily instruction. Teague was there ready and Gilpin eventually arrived, his look of boredom barely concealed.

‘You’re all leagues astern of station in the article of navigation,’ Lieutenant Bowden pronounced dismissively. ‘You’ll take inboard what the master gives you today or it’s double tides into the dog-watches. Clear?’

The sailing master bustled in with books and papers, his brow furrowed. ‘Celestial navigation.’

There was a groan from Gilpin.

Ignoring him, the master continued, ‘I want to see y’r workings for Canopus, should we observe him at this time, and at this hour-angle and declination thus. Height of eye twenty-three feet. Now, first, what’s y’r apparent altitude? Mr Gilpin?’

Holding his breath in fascination, Rowan heard the two stumble through the process, the patient master reminding, reproving and encouraging – but it meant not the tiniest thing to him.

‘Use your almanac, Mr Gilpin! It’s all there. And ye’ve forgotten y’r refraction correction again. That’s to say, pi divided by a hundred and eighty as multiplied by y’r apparent altitude, the tan whereof …’

While it droned on, Rowan snatched a quick look in a well-thumbed volume: Nories Nautical Tables. It seemed to consist of nothing more than a dense thicket of numbers in endless tables. Applying the sun’s total correction to the observed altitude of a limb of the sun? Meridional parts and haversines? The augmentation of the moon’s semi-diameter – what did it mean?

Mr Perrott’s robust art of the arithmetic was not up to this, and Mr Partington’s mathematics had all been Greek triangles. The more he plucked at the pages the worse it got until he guiltily slid it away. He didn’t know where to start and it was plain he was expected to catch up to the others. How could he do it?

Eventually the master got around to him. ‘Why, Mr Rowan, is it? We’ve been neglecting ye. Now, these gennelmen should know their reckonings and we need to have ye up with them. An’ I’ve the very medicine right here. Hamilton Moore, bless him, The New Practical Navigator, which contains all y’ need to know. Take it, an’ for the first, learn out all y’r definitions.’

Rowan gingerly carried the book to the corner of the coach. It was old – over forty years, according to the title page – but lovingly cared for. The ancient typeface, with its f for s, was not an obstacle, for many of the navy school’s texts were of a past age, but what made him hesitate were the assumptions.

He knew as well as any fool what a mile was, but apparently they used a different mile at sea. The New Practical Navigator explained: ‘If AB is an arc of the meridian which contains O and subtends an angle of 1 minute at K, the length of AB is the length of a nautical mile at O.’ Did this mean a ship sailed a different distance, depending on where it was?

In despair, he discovered that if he wanted to take the shortest distance between two ports separated by an ocean, it was no use simply finding a ruler and drawing a straight line on the chart. Bizarrely, a looping great circle was more to be desired.

It was noisy and distracting, the exciting things happening on deck evident by occasional cries and rushing feet, but he’d promised his father he’d diligently apply himself in the calling he had chosen.

‘Mr Joyce,’ he asked the sailing master, in a small voice, ‘would you lend me this book that I can go away and read it quietly?’

‘O’ course, m’ lad. Look after it well. I wants it back, mind!’