A Divided Command Read online

  ‘If I cannot read the letter I cannot be expected to suspect anything other than malice in such an interpretation.’

  Hood responded with a scornful laugh. ‘You are as a flea on an elephant’s arse, Pearce, and not worthy of an ounce of my malice, even if you have brought me what amounts to a dismissal from my command.’

  That got a loud cough from Parker, to which Hood responded with a growl.

  ‘Oh, it is couched in polite language, Parker, and it is only hinted at by the excuse that with my years and time at sea I must be in need of some leave. But there is no doubting what has brought it on and to whose benefit it is directed—’

  ‘Milord!’ Parker exclaimed, in order to interrupt his superior. ‘It is not a fitting subject for discussion with an officer of the lieutenant’s rank.’

  ‘Don’t you think the messenger should know the stench of politics that he carried all this way?’

  The older man did not wait for a reply and nor did he seek to hide his anger as he sat forward and barked at Pearce.

  ‘In order to appease the Duke of Portland and his damned parcel of Whigs, and to secure their support for the continuation of the war, so feeble is the parliament of which I am a member, that I must surrender the command of my fleet to that dolt Hotham!’

  Pearce was not really listening; instead he was ruminating, and not happily, on how Hood’s blast was going to affect his ability to get back to Leghorn, where he had left the lady with whom he was deeply enamoured. If that was bad enough, the name Hood blurted out did little to help matters if he was not going home; if there was one admiral he was less keen to serve under than Old Sam it was Sir William Hotham.

  ‘My Lord, I must protest.’

  ‘Protest away, Pearce,’ Hood said, suddenly looking deflated. ‘Your protest will do you as much good as to do so would accomplish for me.’

  That required a touch of quick thinking. ‘Then, milord, I request permission to sail for Leghorn to make good my lack of stores.’

  ‘That,’ Parker insisted, ‘will only take place once I know what are your present levels, Pearce. So if you will fetch your logbooks aboard I will let you know once my clerks have examined them.’

  ‘Sir, I—’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ Hood responded acerbically, cutting right across Pearce. ‘You protest, which seems to me to be a permanent state.’

  ‘With good cause, sir.’

  ‘There he goes again, Parker, there’s a bit of politesse under that haughty Caledonian exterior.’

  As Pearce bristled under the slur, Parker moved quickly to lean over Hood and whisper in his ear, which, after a few seconds, had Old Sam slowly nodding, his mouth compressing and his lower lip becoming prominent, it being fairly clear he was not enjoying what he was hearing. As Parker moved away he fixed Pearce with a glare.

  ‘It has been pointed out to me, Pearce, that in my indiscreet outbursts I have obliged you with information to which you should not be privy, namely the contents of the letter you fetched from London, something I would not wish to be bandied about the fleet.’

  ‘And I would point out to you, milord,’ Pearce snapped, ‘that I take it very amiss that you doubt my ability to be discreet, which I will be, however shabbily I feel I am being treated.’

  ‘Yet,’ Parker interjected, somewhat relieved by what Pearce had just said, ‘it would be best if you were absent for a short while. I still require that you present your logs to be examined, but once they are I will issue orders to proceed to Leghorn to make up your stores.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Pearce ran into a waiting Furness as he exited the great cabin; the premier was not going to let him go, especially since it was very close to the time for the wardroom dinner. With the door closed and Furness speaking he could not hear what was said inside.

  ‘Do you think we can trust him, milord?’

  ‘Absolutely, Parker.’ Seeing a questioning look, Hood added, ‘I know my man – indeed, if he wasn’t such a touchy sod I could get to quite like him, for whatever else Pearce is, there’s not a craven bone in his body. He’s his father’s son, man, and even if Adam Pearce was pestilential in his rantings about equality and the like, he was no coward. King George might not have all his marbles, but he did not do a disservice to the navy when he promoted old Adam’s son.’

  ‘And this?’ Parker asked, waving the letter.

  That produced a particular look in Hood’s eye, one Parker had seen many times and one that implied a great deal of thought was being processed by a very acute mind.

  ‘Portland may propose, but it is Billy Pitt that will dispose. When I have his ear it will be to tell him that he is mistaken in giving way.’ The voice rose discernibly and added to that was a rasping growl. ‘I am not ready for the knacker’s yard yet.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  The party that marched out of Calvi under a truce flag had taken great care to look elegant: the French general, as if to underline that he had been a soldier in pre-Revolutionary times, wore a freshly powdered wig under his tricorn hat, while his junior officers, several of them naval, looked fit for a sovereign’s parade. The party that moved forward and down from the Royal Louis battery could not match them either in dress or carriage, General Stuart particularly looking positively ill, while Captain Nelson had a bandage under his hat that covered one of his eyes. The third member wore no recognisable garb that could be called a uniform.

  If the British officers and their lone Corsican could not match the French in dress they were quick to equal them in determination: the garrison must surrender forthwith, while the requests for the sailors to be allowed to take their own ships back to the mainland, with the soldiers as passengers, was quickly squashed. One of the vessels sheltering in the deep-water channel under the fortress guns was a very fine frigate named Melpomene; Nelson was determined it should be forfeit.

  In the end it was agreed that the garrison of Calvi, having put up a good fight and in a way that left no taste of bitterness, could march out with their arms. A cartel, a British transport vessel, would be put at their disposal to take them back to their homeland. In the meantime no guns were to be spiked and nothing was to be done to the naval vessels that would diminish their immediate usefulness as they came under the Union Flag and a British crew.

  ‘Though I am damned if I know where we are going to find the hands to man them.’

  Nelson said this as he, General Stuart and the Corsican representative, made their way back to the Allied lines to prepare for the forthcoming act of formal surrender. If he had expected a cheerful and reassuring response from the red-coated bullock he was left disappointed, not that such came as much of a surprise.

  Malady was not the only thing that made Stuart a less than endearing fighting companion in this siege; his manner had been abrupt throughout and he was wont to treat any sailor, however successful, as a burden with which he was unfortunately saddled. It was generally held by those on the receiving end that his pique was caused by his discomfort at being dependent on the tars to both get him ashore and to provide and man the guns necessary to subdue the place.

  None of what had occurred could be observed from the cell shared by the prisoners, but their spirits were raised by the lack of gunfire, something that had been a constant for a whole month now. Then the French army bugles blew and Buchanan knew enough to identify the calls as signals for the garrison to stand down, donning his shirt and dust-streaked red coat as the sounds faded away.

  Silence promised freedom and that was borne out within the hour by the arrival of their sergeant gaoler, who roughly told them, more by gestures than in his halting and very bad English, to gather their possessions and be prepared to leave. Not that what they owned amounted to much, no more than the garments with which they had arrived. Buchanan immediately enquired about the prisoners in the dungeon, to be told that they would be released at the same time.

  Toby Burns had not worn his blue midshipman’s coat for weeks and, despite wh
at he had said to Buchanan about longing to be out of this cell, when he put it on now – service dignity demanding that he do so – it was with reluctance, not only for the fact that it was too hot for such an article, but for the way it underlined to him that he was back in the navy, his hat, once donned, highlighting a fact that made him miserable.

  Buchanan, full of good cheer, displayed the same level of kindness he had shown since he had crossed swords with Watson over the slops pail, singling him out for an honour. ‘Since you were first to occupy this damned cell, Mr Burns, I think it fitting that it should fall to you to lead us to freedom.’

  The glowering face of Lieutenant Watson gave the lie to the word ‘freedom’, making it hard to respond with the appropriate animation; Toby Burns now realised that this cell had represented liberty; outside these stout walls was where he was really a prisoner for here he had been safe from harm – and not only from the risk of death in fighting the French. The malevolence, which he knew animated Admiral Hotham, would once again be in play.

  Added to that there was the mad insistence, from the same person, that Burns should sit for promotion to lieutenant, an inquisition he was bound to fail. There was some hope that such an examination, to which a goodly number of senior midshipmen would have been invited, had already taken place; they would not wait upon him, but laying that minor worry to potential rest did not induce any feeling of ease.

  Hotham would volunteer him for some new and dangerous duty, just as he had already done at Toulon and twice at Bastia, once with an army column and secondly with that madcap and fearless fool Nelson, who saw nothing stupid in manning posts that were well within enemy range. He had found himself ashore here at Calvi under the command of the same fellow, who was responsible for the very action that had not only put him in mortal danger but had led to his incarceration. What would the old goat, Hotham, come up with next?

  Added to that was the situation regarding his uncle’s flawed court martial, or to be more accurate a fellow called Lucknor, an attorney employed, he assumed by John Pearce, to probe Burns about his actions in lying under oath. He claimed to have been present at the illegal impressment of Pearce and his friends from the Pelican Tavern when, in fact, he had been aboard HMS Brilliant, his uncle’s frigate, berthed at Sheerness on the night in question.

  That lie was compounded by another more serious act, taking upon himself responsibility for a navigation error that had landed the press gang and his uncle at the wrong location on the River Thames, putting them ashore in the Liberties of the Savoy, a place in which the navy was forbidden by law to operate, when the intention had been to land by Blackfriars Bridge.

  If it sounded false to his ears as he had said it, the statement had been enough to ensure the censure of Ralph Barclay was no more than a wrist slap for an act that, had it been laid at the door of the man responsible, which would have proved it to be deliberate, could have seen his uncle in serious trouble.

  Such false testimony had only been possible because there was no one present to refute the lies being peddled, and again Hotham was the villain of the piece. He had staffed the trial with compliant officers, men who looked to him for advancement and opportunity, as well as sending away on an extended mission to the Bay of Biscay anyone, John Pearce in particular, able to tell the truth.

  All these worries, easily diminished in captivity, were resurfacing to haunt him again. The letter he had sent in reply to Lucknor’s enquiries, seeking to exculpate his sin, seemed feeble in recollection, hardly enough to lay the blame where it squarely lay, with his Uncle Ralph. Composed weeks before, it would surely have arrived in Gray’s Inn by now. Would the attorney believe his excuses, that if he had perjured himself, it had been done under the duress applied by those who had coached him on how to respond to questions? And even if he did, what would happen next?

  ‘How in the name of the devil can you look so gloomy, young sir?’ Buchanan demanded.

  Toby Burns, when he felt threatened, had one trait that never failed him and that was the ability to produce quick and easy-to-believe excuses, often ones that expressed worthwhile sentiments utterly at odds with his true feelings. Out on the battlements now he made a point of looking at the town of Calvi, which lay below the fortress, destroyed by endless bombardment so that hardly a single building stood and none intact; given that aspect he could conjure up words to cover his apparent misery.

  ‘How many died or were maimed for this place, sir, and was it worth it?’

  ‘Worthy lad, very worthy,’ Buchanan replied, gravely. ‘Does you proud to think that way. But that is war and there is no gainsaying that folk, innocent and guilty alike, suffer in any conflict.’

  ‘How right you are, sir,’ Toby replied, not thinking of Calvi but himself.

  The arrival of an armed cutter sailing under an Admiralty pennant did not go unnoticed aboard HMS Britannia, being unusual enough to cause much comment on the quarterdeck, given most despatches came by civilian packet from Gibraltar. The flag officer aboard being a stickler for things being done proper – and he was the sole arbiter of what that might be – obliged the officer of the watch to send a midshipman to the great cabin to appraise the occupant of the approach.

  Vice Admiral Sir William Hotham saw no need to stir, given it would head for Hood’s flagship, not his own, while whatever messages it bore would only be passed on to him if and when his superior thought it necessary. Yet such an arrival could do naught but stir unhappy thoughts: no job was as thankless as that of being second in command of a fighting fleet, made doubly disagreeable when the man to whom you must defer was one of questionable tactical skill, as well as being a commander unwilling ever to listen to sound advice.

  In his darker moods, William Hotham felt that the only way he would get a proper hearing, or have his notions of strategy adopted as policy, Hood being so contrary to him both personally and professionally, was to propose the precise opposite of what he truly believed. These were grievances he had often penned and sent home to his Whig friends and supporters in London, most potently his patron, the Duke of Portland.

  Hotham had doubted, and still did, the present siege of Calvi, for the very same reason that he had opposed that popinjay Nelson’s assault from the sea on Bastia, for Corsica was not worth the wax off a candle. Such adventures were unnecessary, the soldiers were against them and it stood to reason that they knew more about such matters than sailors. What was the point of asking the general in command of the troops for an opinion on an operation then utterly ignoring it, which is precisely what Hood had done?

  Success at Bastia had not dented his belief that the whole endeavour had been in error, not an act of supreme military necessity, more a sop, and a bloody one, to please the Corsicans, as well as the King’s proposed viceroy of the island, Sir Gilbert Elliot. Yes, Calvi too would fall, but at what cost and to whose advantage when all the fleet needed was the bay they already occupied?

  At least he had gained something from the farce, finally having got rid of an irritation that had caused him concern, namely Midshipman Toby Burns. The youngster had gone out on a night raid on the fortifications of Calvi and had not returned, so he was assumed to have perished, a satisfying result given the trouble Hotham had gone to in getting the lad into harm’s way. Time and again, since the siege of Toulon, he had volunteered Burns for service where the shot and shell flew, only for the little sod to emerge, if not unscathed, with wounds nowhere near fatal.

  What had the world come to, he wondered and not for the first time, when a man of his rank, age and experience had to worry about a lowly creature like Burns? Yet the little toad had impinged on his consciousness for the very simple reason that he had the power to cause serious trouble.

  In the process of cracking a walnut, the thoughts on which he was ruminating made him apply too much pressure, which shattered the kernel as well as the shell. Thus the same midshipman who had knocked earlier, to enter on his command, found his admiral crouched down and picking up pieces o
f nut from the carpeted floor.

  ‘Signal from Victory, sir, requesting that you repair aboard.’

  If the position in which Hotham found himself could be described as humiliating, the thought could not be avoided that he was being invited to suffer yet more of the same.

  ‘Acknowledge,’ he snapped with clear irritation, which sent the lad, a mere stripling, thirteen years of age, scurrying out.

  If John Pearce had serious reservations about the King’s Navy and his place in it, there was no gainsaying the fact that they could be a hospitable lot. His boat crew were on the lower deck, having been handsomely looked after, chinwagging with their fellow tars and no doubt boasting away about the action they had taken part in off Portugal, in which they had saved a postal packet from being taken by privateers.

  If their commanding officer was sure they would be gilding it, turning what was a skirmish, albeit a satisfying one, into a great and deadly battle, he was equally certain he was not, for when it came to recounting his own exploits, weariness of repetition was added to a determination not to show away.

  He had eaten well and drunk of wine better than that aboard most naval vessels, for the town of San Fiorenzo had been under French control and they never stinted on the supply of such luxuries, which had naturally been taken over wholesale. He was likewise much taken by the fact that, since the last time he had dined in this very wardroom, there were so many new faces among the fifteen lieutenants present, one more being on watch.

  Polite enquiry informed him of those who had been promoted out and to where – not that he truly recalled their names or their faces – as well as the fellow who had died of the bloody flux after a marathon session to taste as many of the bottles as possible that had been looted from the French stores.