And, as Reliant filled with men and boys, she filled herself to the gills with supplies. A constant stream of barges, hulks, and hoys came alongside beginning at Eight Bells and the start of the Forenoon Watch at 8 a.m. and might not cease 'til the middle of the First Dog at 5 p.m. Clean new water casks first, then thousands of gallons of water from the hoys were pumped below to fill them. Bales of slop-clothing to garb the hands; blue chequered shirts, red neckerchiefs, and white slop-trousers, cotton and wool stockings and waist-length dark blue jackets with brass buttons; bags of shoes and steel buckles; square wood trenchers or cheap china plates and bowls; bales of blankets and bed sheets, piles of thin batt-stuffed mattresses and pillows, and the canvas hammocks in which they'd be placed.
Kegs of salt-beef and salt-pork came aboard from the Victualling Board warehouses, all carefully inspected by the Purser, Mr. Cadbury, to ensure that none were spoiled, rotten, or previously condemned and the brand marks effaced. There was no guarantee, though, that the kegs actually contained eight-pound chunks of preserved meat, and not more bone and gristle than meat… or, folded scraps of old sailcloth masquerading as rations, dropped in to bring the keg up to the proper weight!
Cheeses, oatmeal, small beer (safer to drink than water after a couple of months in cask!), wine both red and white, better known among sailors as "Black Strap" and "Miss Taylor," respectively; vinegar and tobacco, dried raisins, currants, and plums for duffs and puddings, in the rare instances, came aboard as well. And bread! Each man aboard got a pound of it a day (though issued at fourteen ounces to the pound, else the Purser would not profit!) in the form of pre-baked biscuit, a tooth-breaker unless soaked when it was fresh, and a crumbling, dusty slab of cracker riddled by weevils after six months at sea. Salt and pepper, meat sauces, sugar, honey, and ever-desired mustard to liven the taste of the rations, and the flour for the duffs were solely in the cook's possession, though mustard pots could be purchased by each eight-man mess… for a fee to the Purser.
Two complete sets of sails, plus spares and acres of sailcloth for repairs, patching, or whole refashioning came to the frigate, along with tar, pitch, resin and turpentine, miles of cable and rope, from thigh-thick cables for the anchors to small-stuff twine, and enough spare yards and upper masts to totally replace any shot away in battle or lost to weather; all the sail-maker's or the bosun's vital stores, and hundreds of board-feet of lumber for at-sea repairs.
The upper masts had to be set up to Lewrie's and Lt. Westcott's standards, the miles of standing and running rigging roved, and blocks of varying purchase placed at the most efficient locations. Belaying pins in pin-rails and fife-rails had to be sent for from shore once the rigging was set up. Lewrie found that Lt. Westcott agreed with his notion that their ship would be more weatherly if the jib-boom and bow sprit were steeved at a shallower angle than the usual up-thrust boar-toothed manner, and the jibs and upper foretopmast stays'ls were made larger and deeper.
Then came the artillery. HMS Reliant rated twenty-eight 18-pounder great-guns, eight quarterdeck 9-pounders, two 12-pounders for chase guns, and eight 32-pounder carronades, all with the wood truck-carriages or pivotting wood recoil slides; the carriages came aboard first, the cannon second. Then came the kegs and kegs of black powder to fill the belowdecks magazine, all the gun tools to load, worm out, swab, or shift the united carriages and barrels, and a bale or two of empty cartridge bags for the Master Gunner, his Mate, and the Yeoman of the Powder to fill and stow away.
And cutlasses and boarding pikes and muskets with all their accoutrements, and clumsy and inaccurate Sea Pattern pistols to be put in the locked arms chests 'til needed for drill or combat… it was a never-ending series of barges, of hoisting aboard with the main-mast course yard as a crane, and human muscle power, to hoist it all from the boats over the bulwarks and gangways and down onto the deck, or into the holds just above the bilges, or onto the orlop.
And each and every bit of Admiralty's largesse, seemingly down to each pot of mustard or each shoe buckle, had to be signed for and carefully inventoried, by both Purser and Captain, the usage and depletion of which over the course of the ship's typical three-year commission was to be carefully, meticulously accounted for, as well, or the ones responsible would be at their financial peril.
Ten days it took to prepare HMS Reliant for sea, for journeys to any of the far corners of the world, for battle against the foe… and Alan Lewrie found that he revelled in it!
It was not so much that he sprang from his bed-cot each morning at the end of the Middle Watch at 4 a.m. with joy, no. It was more like being so engrossed in details, in projects, in planning and supervising the labours of stowing and arming that he had no time to brood on his children's fates, the coming loss of his rented farm and his house, or the lingering remnants of grief over Caroline's loss. He found that he could actually go an entire day without thinking of all that, so busy with making decisions that it was only in those rare hours he spent on shore purchasing things he would need three months, six months, at sea, or the evenings when he dined alone and did not invite his officers and midshipmen in a few at a time to get a better grasp of them and their personalities, that he had time, in a proper captain's solitude, for musing.
Over twenty-three years in King's Coat, he realised one evening as he sprawled on his familiar old settee, his stockinged feet rested on his low, old Hindoo brass tray-table before it, with a cat nodding on either thigh and a glass of claret in his hand; and now, this is all I am? My father's house for a home, do I ever set foot ashore again? The Navy a substitute family? Just damn my eyes… mine arse on a band-box! All these young sprogs come aboard… Middies and children of Mids from long ago? Good Christ! He supposed it was natural, and inevitable, did he live long enough. There were only so many warships and only so many officers to command them. Large as the Royal Navy had grown since 1793 and the start of the war with France, it was still a small, esoteric and arcane world of its own, and he had risen to become a somewhat senior member of that salty, tar-stained clique. He had to stumble across former shipmates sometime. Whether they were worth the time to know again, well… that was another matter.
"You ready t'go t'sea again, lads?" Lewrie whispered to Chalky and Toulon. They opened their eyes to stare at him, Chalky yawning as he stretched every muscle, front legs out straight. "By God, I think that I am! No more shore shite. Let's get orders and be about it."
Chalky took that comment as an invitation to stand, arch up, and clamber up his chest, ready to play.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The next two weeks at anchor were spent at Harbour Drill, the basic training of lubbers and Johnny New-Comes in the mystifying maze of sheets, halliards, lines, and cables, of braces, jears, and lifts, clews and brails. The proper way to tie a host of knots at sea; to go aloft and lay out on a yard; to set sail, to reef in or gasket, to strike or hoist up top-masts without being injured, maimed, or killed! Older, experienced hands got the rust scaled off their skills, as well, and were urged to take "newlies" under their tutelage. Men who had never touched a firearm or held anything more dangerous than the hoe, axe, or scythe in their civilian lives learned how to wield the cutlass and boarding pike, and were made familiar with pistol and musket 'til the loading, charging, and firing process could be done with some skill and speed; dry-firing first, then live-firing at a painted target on a scrap sail held aloft by two oars in an anchored rowboat at fifty yards' range off the ship's beam-with no one aboard it, of course, during the firing, and well clear of other ships or work-boats beyond it. The ship's people practiced with the swivel guns, as well.