What lucky bastard made her prize, and when? Lewrie pondered as he took the hastily-gathered side-party’s salute, doffed his hat, and scrambled down to the waiting cutter; We spent a month prowlin’ and saw nothing, and one of the others had a good, brisk fight? Damn!
* * *
“Ah, Captain Lewrie!” Commodore Popham cried in apparent good humour as he entered the flag officer’s great-cabins. “Have a pleasant cruise, did you … all fair winds and claret?”
“Good weather for the most part, sir,” Lewrie replied, warily. He was waiting for the criticism to come. “Nought t’show for it, unfortunately. Quite unlike the fortunate fellow who nabbed that Frog frigate.”
“Come, have a glass of wine with us, and the tale will be told, sir!” Popham hooted with delight, waving Lewrie to take a seat with the others at his long, gleaming dining table.
Captain Josiah Rowley of Raisonnable was there, Commander Joseph Edmonds of Diomede, her Acting-Captain; beside him was Captain Robert Honyman of the Leda frigate and Captain Ross Donnelly of the 32-gun Narcissus frigate. At the foot of the table, “below the salt”, sat Lieutenant James Talbot of the 14-gun Encounter.
“It is everyone’s prize, and it is no one’s prize,” Popham said with a playful air of mystery, as if telling ghost stories to a pack of children, “for she came into Table Bay, the fourth of March, just a few days after you sailed, Lewrie, with no idea that we had taken the place.”
“There were enough Dutch flags flying on the shipping in the harbour to mis-lead her,” Captain Rowley said with a snicker.
“Aye, and I quickly ordered all our warships to hoist false colours ’til she had let go her best bower and taken in most of her sails,” Popham said, beaming with glee, “then hoisted our true colours and ordered her to strike. She’s the Volontaire, of fourty guns, and was part of their Admiral Willaumez’s squadron, bound for Mauritius and Fort-de-France. The sweetest part is that she and other ships of her squadron had captured two of our troop transports somewhere in the Bay of Biscay, and had over two hundred soldiers from the Queens’ Regiment and the Fifty-fourth Foot aboard, whom we liberated, ha ha!”
“Who may prove useful to General Baird’s garrison force, once re-armed and re-equipped,” Captain Donnelly suggested. “What does the Army call such a rag-tag and motley gathering, sir?”
“A Battalion of Detachments,” Popham quickly supplied, He had a reputation of getting on with the Army better than most Royal Navy officers. “They might make four companies … hardly a full battalion, really, but, as you say, Donnelly, they may be useful to Sir David … or at other endeavours.” And there was the enigmatic smile, again.
He’s goin’ cryptic, again, Lewrie thought with a silent groan; At least his wine’s good, even if it is local.
“You said you saw nothing of enemy activity on your cruise, Lewrie?” Popham asked him. “How far did you go?”
“As far as the longitude of Madagascar’s Southern tip, sir, makin’ long boards to either tack, then zig-zagged North to sight of Madagascar and the Mozambique Channel,” Lewrie summarised. “We saw a ‘John Company’ trade, some Yankee Doodle whalers, and some neutral merchantmen, but no French or Dutch warships. I was wondering why the Dutch didn’t have more than one warship here at the Cape when we arrived, sir, and, given how important the Cape Colony is to both the French and the Dutch—”
“So, except for one or two French frigates and several large French privateers working out of Réunion and Mauritius, our new possession is in no danger from that quarter. Good!” the Commodore said energetically, all but clapping his hands together in delight. “Now, before we sailed here, the last time I was up to London and had the honour of dining with the Prime Minister, we did discuss this operation, and other … possibilities for future action once the Cape was successfully carried.”
No one rolled their eyes exactly, but all had heard, perhaps once too often, of Captain Sir Home Riggs Popham being all but cater-cousins and a close confidant to William Pitt, the Younger. He did trot out his excellent connexions, the way some wealthy wives would tell one just how expensive was everything in their parlours, at the drop of a hat!
“Whilst I was in London, I was introduced to a Spanish gentleman, one Colonel Miranda,” Popham continued, “most un-officially, of course … all back-channel and sub rosa, do you see, so no firm promises could be made to the man by anyone in the Prime Minister’s administration, nor by anyone in His Majesty’s Government. This Colonel Miranda declared himself to be a representative of a nationalist movement in Spanish South America, from Buenos Aires in the Argentine, in point of fact. He came seeking aid to bolster his cause, which would be a local, popular rising to throw off Spanish rule and gain the Argentine total autonomy and independence!”
“God, another bloody revolution,” Captain Rowley said with a grim little laugh. “But, will it be like the Americans’, or more like the one in France?”
“Aye, out come the guillotines, and chop chop!” Captain Honyman sneered. “The Americans, now … at least they were of British stock, and British common sense. Once they won, they didn’t go to massacres and reprisals like the French. They spent their bile writing their Constitution. Rule of law, what? But, what may one expect of fiery-hot Spaniards, I ask you? Hey-ho, and huzzah the Inquisition for anyone on the losing side!”
“The possibilities, though, gentlemen!” Popham interrupted in some heat. “Great Britain, by her very position, commands the approaches to the Baltic trade, and the Channel. Our presence at Gibraltar controls access to the Mediterranean, as will our holding the isle of Malta. Now, we have taken the Cape of Good Hope, and may deny any other world power the India and China trade.
“Just think what the taking of Buenos Aires and Montevideo and the Plate Estuary would mean, sirs! There would in time of war be no trade round Cape Horn but for neutrals and our, and allied, shipping! Port Stanley and the Falkland Islands could never support a squadron of ships sufficient to dominate the Cape Horn passages, but the Plate could,” Popham insisted, half-cajoling, half-battering down any argument to the contrary; smiling wide but talking loud and quickly as he bestowed beaming good will.
“Aye, but how would we go about that, sir?” Diomede’s captain asked, frowning. “Other than that Colonel Miranda you met, what are the odds that he represented a real rebel movement, and not just some pack of malcontents meeting in some coffee house? Is there really a sizable portion of the population all that eager to throw off Spanish rule, and welcome us?”
“We are godless Protestant heretics, don’t ye know,” Lewrie had to say, with a snicker. “Good Papists, rebel or no, would rather cut our throats. Hated us for ages!”
“When in London, Colonel Miranda gave firm and believable assurances that his nationalist movement is widespread, and popular with all classes in the Argentine,” Commodore Popham countered. “He came to Protestant England to ask for our aid, and was authorised to grant us basing rights, in exchange for local rule, and civil autonomy, sirs.” Popham paused and brought out a stack of newspapers from a drawer in his sideboard. “I obtained these quite recently from a Captain Waine, of the American merchantman Elizabeth, just come to anchor in Table Bay. They are in Spanish, of course, but my clerks and some of Captain Downman’s officers read and speak Spanish, and they are in full consensus that these papers speak of civil unrest, complaints about Spain taking hands with godless, heretical Jacobin France, the rules by which the Argentine trade is crippled by far-off decrees limiting shipping to Spanish ships only, with no inter-colonial trade allowed, and et cetera and et cetera. No local merchantmen may trade with America, with Portuguese Brazil, for one instance.