A palate-cleansing salad with oil and vinegar came next, then Darling’s steward set out the second course of baked ham with apple sauce, roast potatoes liberally garnished with grated cheese and bits of bacon, with green beans in fresh butter. Lewrie’s claret was set out to wash it down, and there were sweet bisquits and port to polish the meal off. All quite filling, though Lewrie found that Darling’s personal cook could not hold a candle to his own man, Yeovill, when it came to saucing and seasoning.
* * *
Leaving Darling to his cigar and brandy, Lewrie took a long turn on deck, then returned to the lee corner of the taffrails to muse and savour the coolness of the night and look up and marvel over the myriad of stars to be seen on such a clear evening. He found himself smiling, breathing in the fresh scents of the ocean.
For a time, at least, he was free, and happy.
At last, he bade the watch good night and went below, poured himself a goodly measure of whisky, and sat at the dining table as he slowly sipped it. In his absence, Darling’s steward had rigged the hammock in which he would sleep, though to clear the tabletop, it had been hung rather high. Lewrie undressed after his whisky was gone, stood on the rickety dining table, and carefully rolled himself into the hammock. He hadn’t slept in one since his Midshipman days long ago, and the entry, and the strangeness, kept him awake longer than he wished.
Darling turned in, too, dousing the last wee glim to plunge the cabins in darkness, and the gentle, regular swaying of the hammock gradually lulled Lewrie to sleep.
Except for one minor, niggling thing: Lt. Peter Darling snored. Loudly!
Chapter 4
Lieutenant Bury and HMS Lizard departed for Crooked Island and the Bight of Acklins to make enquiries, with orders to meet up with HMS Thorn either in the Mayaguana Passage entrance, or Nor’east of the isle of Mayaguana, where Lewrie hoped to be after a quick dash down as far as the Turks Island Passage in search of their Spaniard.
Lieutenant Darling spent half his waking hours on deck, pacing duck-like, which left his cramped cabins to Lewrie, who could awaken later than his normal wont, breakfast alone after Darling had finished his, and undertake the heavier burden of a senior officer—to wit, pondering where the foe could be found, and what to make of the tale that Captain Martin had spun. As Lt. Darling’s cabin steward did his daily putterings, Lewrie mused long and hard over the most recent charts of the lower Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos charts. He was delighted to find the notice that the chart was printed by “R. Sayer & J. Bennett, No. 53 Fleet St., as the Act directs from survey done by HMS Alacrity, 1787”!
So long ago, when the world was new and young, Lewrie recalled with a long sigh, when he and his bride, Caroline, had come to the Bahamas, before the first of their three children had been born, their eldest son, Sewallis, birthed at Nassau. Life seemed so much simpler then. Now Caroline was three years gone, and Sewallis had forged his way into a Midshipman’s berth aboard an old family friend’s two-decker seventy-four.
Lewrie shook himself to shed those thoughts, then used a spoon to show the direction of the steady Nor-east Trades, and did some more pondering.
Crooked Island Passage, Mayaguana Passage, the Caicos Passage, and Turks Passage all faced directly into the teeth of those Trades for vessels leaving the West Indies, requiring them to make a series of long boards to weather to reach the open Atlantic. It would make perfect sense for an enemy privateer to lurk high up to windward near the mouths of those passages—well, Crooked Island Passage was too narrow to allow much room for tacking to windward, or the commonest civilian manner of going to weather, wearing about in circles to get to the opposite tack. The other passages, on the other hand, were much wider and had bags of room for either tacking or wearing about. Crooked Island Passage was best for entering the West Indies waters. Lewrie was tempted to write off close surveillance of that’un and concentrate on the rest.
“Ships leavin’ Jamaica would…” Lewrie muttered to himself, then cocked his head in puzzlement. British ships departing Jamaica likely choose a way round Spanish Cuba to the Florida Straits, under escort in wartime, or use the Windward Passage ’twixt Cuba and what had been Saint-Domingue, now the independent Black slave Republic of Haiti, in times of peace. Then they’d opt for the Turks, Caicos, or Mayaguana passages to reach the open ocean for England! The rest of British “sugar” colonies in the Leeward and Windward island chains would have direct access to the Atlantic already. Merchant vessels bound for Jamaica would enter the Caribbean much farther South, then shape course to strike Jamaica from the South, avoiding enemy privateers and any reason for nearing enemy coasts, so…
“So what’s a Spanish privateer doin’ in the lower Bahamas?” he grumbled, half to himself and rubbing his unshaven chin. “Sugar, rum, and molasses—the Dons already have those for export. There’s easier pickin’s nearer the Windward Passage, if they want more.”
Once seized, raw British exports, except for the distilled rum, wouldn’t fetch decent prices for a privateer; only the value of the captured ships would put a privateer’s books in the black. Oh, was there a cabal like the late and un-lamented Treadwell’s Tybee Roads Trading Company still doing business, America would be the best market for looted goods, delivered in re-registered Yankee bottoms, but…
“Damme, it ain’t the exports that’re worth the effort, it’s the imports!” Lewrie realised with a sharp, inward breath, rapping a fist on the dining table.
“Need somethin’, sir?” Darling’s cabin steward asked, startled.
“No, no, I’m fine,” Lewrie told him. “Just thinkin’ out loud.”
In wartime, Spanish colonies, and the few remaining French ones, would be dying for carriages, clocks, chinaware, harpsichords and the new pianofortes, for wines, brandies and liqueurs, bolts of cloth for new suitings and ladies’ gowns, medicines, scented soaps and perfumes, buttons, laces, packets of pins and sewing needles, razor sets, new hats, and God only knew what-all imported to British colonies to be intercepted, stolen, and flogged on sellers’ markets! And, if the goods could be landed in the United States, priced below legitimate British imports, the privateers could earn a perishin’ pile of “tin” as well.
We might be lookin’ for this Spaniard in the wrong place, he thought. He might be lurkin’ to the lee of the passages!
Referring to the chart again, he looked for a convenient place to lie in wait were he the hunter, and found an area that looked promising. Sou’-Sou’west of Mayaguana Island and to windward of Little Inagua, one could cover both the Mayaguana Passage and the Caicos Passage, and beam-reach cross the Trades from within landfall of Acklins Cay to un-inhabited West Caicos Island, and not a hundred miles from one end of that stalking line to the other, easily done in two days to each leg! Yes, civilian merchant masters could enter through the narrow Crooked Island Passage, but most of them were a cautious lot and would prefer the wider, deeper, and safer passages. The Spanish privateer might even loiter alee of Great Inagua, where all courses through the passages led towards the Windward Passage, and well to windward of his competition!
Lewrie felt like dashing on deck that instant to convey his discovery to Lieutenant Darling, but only half-rose from the chair before plunking back down.