A Divided Command Page 4

  All this was related before he was drawn into describing the successful battle in the English Channel that had seen him promoted at the hand of King George himself from midshipman to his lieutenancy. What he feared was approaching and Pearce knew there was no avoiding it: a raft of questions would follow his deliberately dull recounting as these young men, and they were all that, Furness included, plied him with enquiries as to the details he had left out.

  They wanted to know to the final dot the calibre of guns on the Valmy, a seventy-four, and how efficiently they had been plied by the revolutionary sailors working them. How by his actions had he saved the fifty-gun HMS Centurion from the certainty that she must strike her flag? Details of wind and the run of the sea and how that affected the encounter were deemed essential to make a full picture and these he would have to invent, for, in truth, these were facts he could not recall and was too ignorant at the time to note.

  With deliberate intent he moved the conversation on to the recent battle in which Lord Howe had trounced the French in the Western Approaches, news of which had set the bells ringing in England, which had been named, since there was no land nearby to provide one, as the Battle of the Glorious First of June.

  Yet, in truth, Pearce was in no position to add any more than could be gleaned from a study of the newspapers. To cover for that he milked the fact that he had been on the periphery of the action, albeit without a shot being fired, having inadvertently sailed through a convoy of American vessels bringing much needed wheat to France only days before Howe’s victory.

  ‘Sailed through them, Mr Pearce?’ Furness asked, his brow creased. ‘How so?’

  Damning his own stupidity, Pearce was drawn into telling of his recent mission to the rebels of the Vendée, though he was able to name it as something less than a success, given the people fighting the Revolution on the western coast of France did not, to his mind, have either the means or the will to impose a check on the madmen of Paris.

  There was much, too, that had to be left out, not least that in the encampment occupied by the Vendéean rebels he had come across a woman who had, at one time, been his mistress. Questioned on that would reveal their liaison had taken place in Revolutionary Paris, albeit before the outbreak of war, and that was a time and a place to which he had no desire whatsoever to go.

  Likewise he could not mention that in sailing with his despatches, he had, without permission, detoured to Leghorn, and there dropped off his present mistress, Emily Barclay. She being the estranged wife of a serving naval officer and a post captain to boot would not sit well in such a gathering.

  So he stuck to the bare bones of his mission, yet there was no escape from seeming enterprising as he outlined the parameters of the Vendéean assignment and what had happened ashore, nor of the favour he continued to enjoy by being entrusted with such a mission.

  ‘But the grain convoy?’ Furness insisted, when Pearce thought he had said enough.

  ‘I found myself right in the midst of that by accident, given we were sailing away from the approaches to Nantes without lights, while they were likewise in darkness, seeking to avoid detection by Howe’s inshore frigates.’

  ‘Could you not have sunk a few?’ asked a marine lieutenant.

  ‘Not without alerting the French escorts, added to which, we had an important envoy aboard and could not risk capture. We had a couple of close shaves when it came to collisions, but I was able, by calling out in French, to get us clear without the escorts knowing of our presence.’

  ‘You speak it well enough to fool them?’

  ‘I was talking to Jonathans, but yes, I do, so had they been French the result should have been the same.’

  ‘Must be a fine thing to be able to speak French.’

  This was mouthed, and gloomily so, by one of the more junior members of the wardroom, no doubt a midshipman freshly promoted to lieutenant, a fellow who looked so fresh of face as to be barely breeched, while one or two of his companions gave their guest a look, quickly masked, that hinted that the ability to speak the tongue of the enemy so well might amount to treason.

  Other reasons for disapproval lay, in some cases, very shallow under the surface of good manners and Furness, well able to read an atmosphere that had ceased to be as perfect as he wished, quickly covered that as he ordered the glass before Pearce to be refilled, following with a question designed to fully concentrate the minds of his inferiors.

  ‘I don’t think you have fully entertained us with the story of the Valmy, Mr Pearce, and if I admire your desire to be modest regarding your achievements, a fuller account of the action would not go amiss.’

  ‘Hear him, hear him,’ cried the assembly.

  A young fellow, very flushed, who had clearly run all the way from the quarterdeck to deliver his message, rushed in after a very perfunctory knock and, in addressing Furness, saved him.

  ‘Compliments of the officer of the watch, sir, but Admiral Hotham’s barge has set off from Britannia.’

  Looking around the faces, all seeming disappointed that this gathering would be required to break up and they would miss the nub of a good story, he was sure they were silently damning Hotham. They would not do so openly and vocally, that would be too disrespectful, yet their pinched expressions underlined to Pearce just how unpopular that particular flag officer was, especially aboard this ship. Not that he was too concerned; the sod had got him off the hook and now he could return to Larcher.

  ‘Mr Furness, I need my boat crew to be brought to their duty.’

  ‘Of course, but you must come and visit again, Mr Pearce, given we are agog to hear more of the good fortune you have enjoyed.’

  ‘Hear him, hear him,’ was, this time, accompanied by the majority of hands slamming hard on the table.

  That repeated noisy and hearty chorus, which included marines, the surgeon and the master, had Pearce redden and duck his head with embarrassment. In this gathering of young men there seemed very little hint of the hidden malice he usually encountered in the company of his peers; this accolade appeared genuine and that induced in him an odd feeling, unaccustomed as he was to unfettered acceptance.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The distance between the two first rates was not great, and the men from HMS Larcher were not keen to depart, taking their time to assemble, meaning Hotham’s barge came too close to allow Pearce to take precedence over the arrival of an admiral. This obliged him to wait to one side while the men he had just dined with, plus Captain Knight, the commanding officer of HMS Victory, as well as the entire complement of marines, lined up for the ceremony of receiving a flag officer.

  Sam Hood was not there personally to greet his immediate inferior, which good manners demanded, if not actual protocol, and neither was Rear-Admiral Parker, which if it was not an insult from the executive officer of the fleet was damned close to one. Though his knowledge of admirals was slight, John Pearce had been at sea long enough to glean from gossip and a certain amount of exposure that they were more like a bunch of warring fishwives than sober and wise men able to easily cooperate; right now and before him was a living example.

  The first sight of Hotham was as a stocky silhouette in the entry port, which he remained as the courtesies due to him by the pipes and marines coming to attention were acted out. Then he stepped forward to be formally greeted by Captain Knight, with Lieutenant Furness at his superior’s elbow.

  If Hotham noticed that his fellow flag officers had declined to attend he gave no indication of being troubled by it and, after a brief exchange and the requisite inspection, he began to make his way aft, escorted by Furness. This obliged John Pearce to raise his hat in salute and the premier to make an introduction.

  ‘Lieutenant Pearce, sir, captain of HMS Larcher, newly arrived this very day.’

  The effect was immediate: Hotham, stopping abruptly before him, was too pallid a fellow to ever let it be said the blood drained from his round and unblemished face, but he was visibly shocked. ‘Pearce! What in the nam
e of the devil are you doing here?’

  His hat was held above his head and he was feeling foolish, yet the temptation to reply with mockery never occurred to John Pearce, for which he cursed himself later as several bon mots of a derisory nature came to mind. As it was, delay meant he was not required to respond at all, given Hotham barked at him.

  ‘You, was it, under that Admiralty pennant?’

  ‘It was, sir.’

  ‘Navy’s gone to the dogs, Furness,’ Hotham snorted, before stomping aft, muttering under his breath, while the greeting party noisily began to break up behind him.

  ‘Hard to disagree with that,’ Pearce said, as Furness looked at him questioningly.

  ‘Not popular in that particular quarter, I take it?’

  ‘Mr Furness, I have yet to meet an admiral in whose favour I can be said to reside. Now, if you will allow me to get into my boat.’

  ‘Of course,’ Furness replied, calling to one of his juniors to make it so, before scurrying after Hotham.

  If John Pearce, making for the entry port, could have seen into the mind of the admiral with whom he had just exchanged words he would have been gratified by the turmoil his presence had created. Toby Burns had been a bane but then the midshipman had been no more than a tool, there to be manipulated by the spite of John Pearce. This Hotham had gleaned from the letter Burns had written in reply to an attorney called Lucknor, which had been intercepted by Toomey, his clerk.

  Given the little fool had damn near confessed to perjury and named those who had encouraged his testimony, albeit with grovelling caveats, there was no way that missive could be allowed to proceed on its way. Toomey was sure that Lucknor, never having communicated with Burns, would not have any knowledge of his correspondent’s handwriting, so the clerk had composed a suitable and far from damning reply in his own hand, purporting to be from the midshipman.

  That should have put matters to rest, but the presence of the principal upset those calculations and caused the comforting feeling he had harboured earlier about the demise of Burns to evaporate; Pearce presaged a potentially much greater threat and it was a providential God that had so arranged matters that the two would not meet again – whatever disclosures Burns was willing to make had gone with him to the grave.

  Even in his present state of turmoil Hotham could not fault Barclay for what had been a questionable impressment. Such a thing was a common enough event at the outbreak of a new war and normally nothing with which to trouble anyone: such complaints as arose, and there were many, could usually be brushed off by the pressing need of the nation to get to sea a fighting fleet.

  Sense dictated that those who had connections enough to make trouble were quickly identified and let go with an apology. The rest, once they were at sea, where they would stay for the duration of the conflict, could be ignored. Yet in Pearce, clearly not a seaman and quite obviously an educated fellow – though Hotham would take exception to naming him as a gentleman – Ralph Barclay had broken that golden rule and in doing so had caught a tiger by the tail.

  The man was clever, determined and, what was worse, inside the service and a lieutenant in rank, a position from which it would be hard to divert any protest, indeed it had taken all his authority and no shortage of guile to do so at Toulon. To renege on that as matters seemed to spiral out of control, to let Ralph Barclay face the consequences of his error, was tempting, but had to be put aside for several reasons, not least because he was a client officer.

  Leaving him to swing on his own would not go down well with those who enjoyed the same standing, for if captains depended on the good opinion of admirals it was not a one-way trade; it would be a wounded superior who might struggle to rely on support should they feel one of their number abandoned. Hotham was not only honour bound to protect Barclay, he was obliged to do so professionally as well.

  For once, being kept waiting by Hood – normally something to induce rage – gave him time to recall the way he had arranged matters, though he had done so without even thinking that the consequences would turn out to be so troubling. The transcript of the court martial he had arranged, of which Pearce had somehow procured a copy, would not stand up to too much scrutiny and might be seen for what it was, a put-up job, especially in the light of his actions in sending away anyone who knew the truth.

  Toomey had taken depositions from three of the men with whom Pearce had been pressed and they too had been got out of the way, so that the testimony they had provided could be quietly buried. If they, in a court of law, relayed that fact to a jury it might not just be Ralph Barclay who would face censure. That train of thought, as well as the chilling possibilities it had opened up, had to be abandoned as he was shown into Lord Hood’s cabin, to find his superior standing awaiting him, a look on his craggy old face that promised added turmoil.

  The officer so troubling Sir William Hotham was waiting in the anteroom of the huge town house owned by the Duke of Portland, looking out at the rainswept square that bore his name, as well as the number of elegant, tall buildings that had been erected around the central garden. Despite his impatience he was trying to calculate how much such a slice of property was worth in terms of rents and leases; that it was not the only bit of land the Duke had developed, indeed there were several streets and squares on what had once been inherited farmland, only fed Ralph Barclay’s envy.

  The amount of time he was being kept waiting served to try his patience, that being a commodity with which he was not supremely gifted. But on this occasion he had good reason to fret as well: as a ship’s captain in an active command Ralph Barclay was obliged by the rules of the service to sleep aboard his ship: like most regulations it was one observed much in the breech but it was taken seriously.

  Being in contention with both his commanding admiral and Lord Howe’s executive officer over his own actions in the recent battle made just absenting himself from his sleeping cabin unwise. He had been obliged to request permission to do so, on the grounds of needing medical advice in London. This he had received from the captain of the Channel Fleet, Sir Roger Curtis. To ask the admiral himself was impossible: the old sod had left Torbay and his responsibilities for Bath, where he was taking the waters and no doubt wallowing equally in praise for his recent victory.

  That Portland was in the capital provided a bonus; it would allow him to catch up on certain matters with his prize agent, yet the time to do that was diminishing rapidly, which fed his irritation. To find such an elevated personage in London at this time of year, when men of property ritually decanted from the capital to their country estates, spoke volumes for the state of politics in the nation; even with a war on it was rare to find anyone in town during August. William Pitt, too, more likely to be found gardening at Walmer Castle in Kent during the high summer months, had returned to London to deal with the pressing matters that troubled his administration.

  The Duke of York had been soundly beaten in Flanders mid May, which, if it had left the royal Commander-in-Chief of the British Army open to much ridicule about marching up and down hills, had put pressure on the government over the prosecution of the war, not least because of the cost. This fiasco had been compounded by the subsequent crushing of York’s Austrian allies at Fleurus, which had left the forces of the French Revolution in control of the Netherlands, including a coast too close for England to feel secure; the memories of the Dutch Wars and their incursions up the Thames were still fresh in the minds of many.

  To counter the gloom and soothe parliament there had come news of the welcome defeat of the French fleet by Lord Howe, which removed for a time the most pressing fears of any trouble from the Netherlands, while there was hope for good news from both the West Indies and Corsica. But the most telling event was political: the sudden fall and execution of Maximilien Robespierre and an end to what had come to be called the Reign of Terror naturally led to hopes of peace.

  Such desires faltered on one simple fact: the new men in charge in Paris, too many of whom were old revolu
tionaries, had the stain of King Louis’ blood on their hands. They appeared just as keen to prosecute the war, as had been the now defunct Committee of Public Safety; indeed, several had been members of that murderous body. So feelers put out to Paris had met with a sharp rebuff and now there was a renewed clamour in the country for either a disengagement from a war that few saw as vital to Britain’s interests, or at the very least some positive means of prosecution that would bring it to an end.

  Charles James Fox, the great Whig orator, if in his private life a sybaritic character, was a wily politician, well able to exploit any political weakness, and he was snapping at the heels of the government, abetted by a Prince of Wales keen to prove his father the King was too mad to properly rule. Prinny was sure that he should be appointed Regent, and if he was then it would be Fox he would appoint to lead the government, not Pitt.

  The barrier to loss of office for the Tories lay with the Duke of Portland. He had led a section of the Whig party away from Fox and into alliance with William Pitt. This had, of course, come at a price to the administration: Portland’s supporters now held several ministries, while keeping them onside was paramount to avoid an election, the outcome of which could not be predicted in a country far from united.

  If any of this impinged upon Ralph Barclay, his only hope was that the war would go on, advancement in the navy at a time of peace being slow, whereas conflict naturally sped things along. Well into the top half of the captain’s list, he kept a sharp eye on the names of those who died and were ahead of him, mostly admirals expiring from old age. But in war there were those who perished from fighting as well; all he had to do was avoid a similar fate and one day he would top the list and have his flag.