Lieutenant Bury slowly struck the American flag that flew over Lizard’s stern, as if, in her sham role of a neutral merchant ship, she was surrendering. A moment later, though, the Union Jack soared aloft, and Lizard’s starboard guns erupted, wreathing her in a cloud of powder smoke. The two ships were level with each other, not one cable apart. Lewrie and Darling could see the Spaniard’s masts tremble, then begin to foreshorten as she hardened up to windward for a turn away. It was too late, though, for Thorn had closed the distance and strode up off the Spaniard’s starboard quarter at two-hundred-yards range.
“Mister Child, serve her a broadside!” Lt. Darling shouted to his second-in-command up forward amidships of the gun batteries. The carronades lit off almost as one, hurling 18-pounder roundshot at the Spanish brig, and she just staggered to the metal onslaught. The Don was an armed merchantman, built for decent speed and great cargo capacity, not warfare, not built as stout as a man o’ war. When all the smoke had drifted alee, and the carronades began to squeal back out to the ports on their slide carriages, it was evident that she had been savaged, with half her starboard gun-ports and the scantlings of her upper hull riddled with star-shaped shot holes. The Spanish did manage to fire two guns in reply, but then Thorn’s carronades were roaring again, blotting her out of sight.
When the smoke cleared to a thin haze, Lewrie could see that the enemy was close-hauled to weather, even though her foremast looked a bit askew from proper uprightness. And here came Lizard, beating up a point freer to close on the Don’s larboard quarter, one of her bow-chasers yapping to plant a shot square in the Spaniard’s stern transom!
“Fire as you bear, Mister Child!” Darling yelled, exultantly. “Shoot low and hull the bitch!”
Lieutenant Child obliged him, and the carronades roared one at a time from bow to stern. Thorn was almost fully abeam of the Spaniard by then, not one hundred yards off, close enough to hear the shot striking and the groans and screams of rivened wood.
“Her foremast’s gone by the board—huzzah!” Darling whooped as the Don’s foremast, shot clean away from her main supporting stays, slowly tilted to larboard and aft by the pressure of the winds, falling against her mainmast and ripping away sails and yards and rigging.
“She’s struck!” Lewrie yelled as he saw her colours being cut away to sail off astern of her and fall into the sea. Some of her crew stood at the starboard rails with their hands up, tossing gun tools overboard to show that they had had enough.
“A nice morning’s work, Mister Darling,” Lewrie congratulated.
“Cease fire, Mister Child! Drop it, dead’un!” Darling cried as Thorn’s crew erupted in lusty cheers. “Grapnels and lines, there! Secure the guns and make ready to go alongside!”
“How’s your Spanish, sir?” Lewrie asked Darling. “Mine is nigh-nonexistent. I’ll be wanting her papers and whatever we can find of her prizes.”
“Mister Child will be your linguist, sir,” Darling informed him. “He both speaks and reads Spanish main-well.”
Very good,” Lewrie said with a satisfied smile. “Then, we may get to the bottom of all this business, at long last.”
Chapter 7
Thorn and Lizard returned to port several days later with their Spanish privateer, and the American trading brig Santee, which had been cached close to the shore of un-inhabited Little Inagua. Once all the salutes had been fired and both ships had come to anchor, Lewrie sent a signal for one of Reliant’s barges to come collect him, specifying a barge, not his usual cutter. Thorn’s signalmen also made hoists for Fulmar and Lt. Oliver Lovett’s Firefly sloop to send boats—to the American brig.
Lewrie spent little time aboard his frigate, just long enough to scrub up, shave, and dress in his best uniform coat with the sash and star of the Order of the Bath, and both his medals, then he was off ashore to call upon the American Consul and the Prize Court.
* * *
“So, you did manage to hunt down the guilty party and recover Captain Martin’s ship and cargo, did you, sir?” the American Consul, Mr. Alexander Stafford mused as he offered Lewrie a chair and a glass of Rhenish. “Quick work, I must say.”
Stafford was tall and spare, with a stand-offish air that did little to sponsor warm relations ’twixt himself and the authorities of Nassau. He was a Massachusetts “blue blood,” aloof to most people in his own country, much less the more-despised “Brits,” and, in all, a damned poor choice for his diplomatic post, making Lewrie wonder if his presence at Nassau was more a punishment for his acerbic nature, not a reward.
“Perhaps Captain Martin will be relieved to get his ship back,” Lewrie presumed between refreshing sips of his wine.
“Captain Martin, fearing the worst, has left Nassau, sir,” the Consul informed him. “I saw him and his crew aboard one of our ships bound for Charleston from Turks Island, which had broken her passage here. He wished to explain his ship’s loss to his business partners and her ship’s husbands, and try to secure his finances as quickly as possible. I am sure he will be eager to return and reclaim her just as soon as I may write and inform him of her re-capture.”
“Well, he may not, Mister Stafford,” Lewrie said, leaning back in his chair with a smile on his face. “We also recovered all of his papers—manifests, business ledgers, his personal log? Does he return to British jurisdiction, he might find himself under arrest.”
“Arrest!” Stafford barked, scowling over the possible indignity. “For what cause, sir?” he archly added.
“Trading with the enemy,” Lewrie said with a shrug, “a charge of Conveyance by knowingly purchasing and transporting stolen goods, to wit, a shipload of British goods taken by a Spanish privateer and offered on the Havana market?”
“Spain is not our enemy, sir!” Stafford snapped. “Spain is your enemy. The United States is neutral in your war, and in a state of amity with all nations!”
“Well, what else may you call a shipload of powder, shot, and naval stores—ordered from Boston, by the way, and put aboard the Santee at Charleston—then shipped to Havana with written proof in Captain Martin’s hand that he knew what he was selling to the French and Spanish privateers? Then, sir, after noting that he had made himself and his partners a very tidy profit by doing so,” Lewrie went on, “he writes in his log, and in his business journal, that with some of that profit, he purchased several hundred kegs and hogsheads of British beer, ale, stout, and porter—all plainly marked with the brewers’ marks—and listed in the cargo manifests as so many in a lot of Whitbread, in a lot of Bass, in a lot from Strangeways Brewery, and so many kegs of Irish Guinness, hmm, sir?”
“Well, I… I…” Stafford spluttered, going red in the face and looking like a hanged spaniel, which pleased Lewrie greatly.
“He almost got away with it, too, Mister Stafford, but for the bad luck of running afoul of a man more suited to piracy than privateerin’, and there was the biter bit, hey?” Lewrie told him. “Unless you wish to lay legitimate claim to the Santee and her cargo, sir, I have no choice but to turn her and my Spanish prize over to the Prize Court to be condemned, evaluated, then put up for sale. Santee might fetch a decent sum, but I expect the merchants of Nassau to snatch up the beer quicker than you can say ‘knife’! Neutral or not, she’s as guilty as your Captain Martin.”