It was not long before Drinkwater had made arrangements to warp Virago alongside the Gun Wharf, but he was desperate for want of men to undertake the labour of hoisting and mounting the eight 24-pounder carronades and two 6-pounder long guns that would be Virago's armament. They received a small draft from the Guardship at the Nore and another from the Impress service but still remained thirty men short of their complement. By dint of great effort, by the second week in December, the carronades were all on their slides, the light swivels in their mountings and the two long guns at their stern ports in Drinkwater's cabin. The appearance of the two cold black barrels upon which condensation never ceased to form, brought reality to both Mrs Jex and to Drinkwater himself. To Mrs Jex they disturbed the domestic symmetry of the place, to Drinkwater they reminded him that a bomb vessel was likely to be chased, not do the chasing.
Virago had been built as one of a number of bomb ships constructed at the beginning of the Seven Years War. She was immensely strong, with futtocks the size of a battleship. Though only 110 feet long she displaced 380 tons. She would sit deep in the water when loaded and, Drinkwater realised, would be a marked contrast to the nimble cutter Kestrel or the handy brig Hellebore. She was reduced to a tender by the building of a newer class of bomb vessel completed during the American War. Normally employed on the routine duties of sloops, the bomb vessels only carried their two mortars when intended for a bombardment. For this purpose they loaded the mortars, powder, carcases and shells from the Royal Artillery Arsenal at Woolwich, together with a subaltern and a detachment of artillerymen. The mortars threw their shells, or bombs (from which the ships took their colloquial name) from the massive wooden beds Drinkwater had left in place on Virago. The beds were capable of traversing, a development which had revolutionised the rig of bomb vessels. As of 1759 the ketch rig had been dispensed with. It was no longer necessary not to have a foremast, nor to throw the shells over the bow, training their aim with a spring to the anchor cable. Now greater accuracy could be obtained from the traversing bed and greater sailing qualities from the three-masted ship-rig.
Even so, Drinkwater thought as he made one of his daily inspections, he knew them to be unpopular commands. Virago had fired her last mortar at Le Havre in the year of her building. And convoy protection in a heavily built and sluggish craft designed to protect herself when running away was as popular as picket duty on a wet night. So although the intrusion of the stern chasers into the cabin marked a step towards commissioning, they also indicated the severe limitations of Drinkwater's command.
However he cheered himself up with the reflection that Virago would be sailing in company with a fleet, the fleet destined for the 'secret expedition' mentioned in every newspaper, and for the 'unknown destination' that was equally certain to be the Baltic.
Even as Mr Matchett belayed the breechings of the intrusive six-pounders, muttering about the necessity of a warrant gunner, Drinkwater learned of the collapse of the Coalition. The Franco-Austrian armistice had ended, hostilities had resumed and the Austrians had been smashed at Hohenlinden. Suddenly the Baltic had become a powder keg.
Although Bonaparte, now first consul and calling himself Napoleon, was triumphant throughout Europe, it was to the other despot that all looked. Sadistic, perverted and unbalanced, Tsar Paul was the cynosure for all eyes. The thwarting of his ambitions towards Malta had led to mistrust of Britain, despite the quarter of a million pounds paid him to which a monthly addition of £75,000 was paid to keep 45,000 Russian soldiers in the field. When Napoleon generously repatriated, at French expense, 5,000 Russian prisoners of war after Britain had refused to ransom them, Tsar Paul abandoned his allies.
The Tsar's influence in the Baltic was immense. Russia had smashed the Swedish empire at Poltava a century earlier, and Denmark was too vulnerable not to bend to a wind from the east. Her own king was insane, her Crown Prince, Frederick, a young man dominated by his ministers.
When the Tsar revived the Armed Neutrality he insisted that the Royal Navy should no longer be able to search neutral ships, particularly for naval stores, those exports from the Baltic shores that both Britain and France needed. The Baltic states wanted to trade with whomsoever they wished and under the double-headed eagle of the Romanovs they would be able to do so; the British naval blockade would be rendered impotent and France, controlling all the markets of Europe, triumphant. With one head of the Russian eagle ready tensed to stretch out a talon to cripple impotent Turkey, the effect of the other's influence in the Baltic would finish Britain at a stroke.
So, inferred Drinkwater, argued Count Bernstorff, Minister to Crown Prince Frederick. And though Russia was the real enemy it was clear that the Royal Navy could not go into the Baltic leaving a hostile Denmark in its rear.
Drinkwater coughed as clouds of smoke erupted into the cabin from the bogey stove.
'I beg you, Mrs Jex, to desist. I would rather sit in my cloak than be suffocated by that thing.' He leant helplessly on the table, covered, as was usual, with papers.
''Twill not draw, Mr Drinkwater, 'tis the wind. For shame I will perish with the marsh ague if I do not freeze first.' She sniffed and snumed with a streaming cold.
'Perhaps madam, if you wore more clothes…' offered Drinkwater drily.
She gave him a cold look. Her early attempt to flirt with him had ceased when she learned of the bargain he had driven with her husband. He bent once more to the tedious task of the inventory, almost welcoming the interruption of a knock at the door, though the blast of icy air made him swear quietly as it blew papers from his desk.
'Beg pardon, sir…'
'Mr Willerton, come in, come in, and shut that door. What can I do for you?'
'We needs a leddy, sir.'
'A leddy? Ah, a lady, a figurehead, d'you mean?'
'Aye sir.'
Drinkwater frowned. It was an irrelevance, an expensive irrelevance too, one that he would have to pay for himself since he had spent the rest of Mr Jex's contribution on barrels of sauerkraut. He shook his head. 'I'm afraid that ain't possible, Mr Willerton. We have a handsome scroll and, in accordance with regulations, as I have no doubt you well know, ships below the third rate are not permitted individual figureheads. Most make do with a lion, we have a handsome scroll…' He tailed off, aware that Mr Willerton was not merely stubborn, but felt strongly enough to oppose his commander. Mr Willerton's almost bald head was shaking.
'Won't do sir. Bad luck to have a ship without a figurehead, sir. I was in the Brunswick at the First of June, sir. Damned Frogs shot the duke's hat off. We lashed a laced one on and sent the Vengeur to the bottom, sir. Ships without figureheads are like dukes without hats.'
Drinkwater met the old man's level gaze. There was not a trace of humour in his eyes. Mr Willerton spoke with the authority of holy writ.
'Well, Mr Willerton, if you feel that strongly…'
'I do, sir, and so does the men. We've raised a subscription of fifteen shillings.'
'Upon my soul!' Drinkwater's astonishment was unfeigned. Together with the realisation that his financial preoccupations were making him mean, came the reflection that the carpenter's request and the response of his motley little crew somehow reflected credit on the ship. He suddenly felt a pang of self-reproach for his tight-fistedness. If that shivering huddle of men he had seen on deck the morning he had read his commission at the gangway had enough esprit-de-corps to raise a subscription for a figurehead, the least he could do was encourage it. He tried to suppress any too obvious emotion, but the brief silence had not gone unnoticed. Mr Willerton pressed his advantage. 'I have ascertained, sir, that a virago is a bad tempered, shrewish woman what spits fire.' Drinkwater watched a slight movement of his eyes to Mrs Jex, who sat huddled in sooty disarray over the smoking stove. As the former madame of a brothel she would have had a choice phrase or two to exchange with the men in One of her less ladylike moods.