“Well, Admiralty usually pays the owners and ship’s husbands, the investors,” Lewrie explained, idly wondering if there was enough of that light white Spanish wine left in the bottle for a top-up, or did they need to open a new one. “So the pay, rations, and necessary ship’s stores come out of that, and if they get damaged, the Navy will repair them. From that sum, the master gets his passage money for unexpected expenses, and re-victualling.”
“How many troops can they cram aboard a ship that big, a three hundred fifty-tonner?” Mountjoy pressed, coming back to the sitting area to take a squint at the bottle, too, and dribble a bit into both their glasses.
“The goin’ rate’s one soldier for every two tons, ah thankee,” Lewrie told him. “Now if we only had some Swedish ice for this wine.”
“No more to be had, and it isn’t even high summer, yet, there’s a pity,” Mountjoy said, looking gloomy. “Something smaller, say, about three hundred tons, that’d be one hundred fifty soldiers … three companies? Just about what we planned for, and the lease would cost less.”
“London didn’t send you that much, did they?” Lewrie asked.
“No, they didn’t,” Mountjoy groused. “If you can’t capture one that’s suitable, and if Middleton at the yards can’t contract with a ship under Transport Board authorisation, then I suppose we’re stuck.”
“Well, don’t look longingly at me!” Lewrie said with a laugh. “I can’t speak for Admiralty, either.”
For a moment, Mountjoy had looked at Lewrie with a gleam of inspiration in his eyes, just as quickly dashed.
“I’ll have another go at it, then,” Lewrie promised. “Take on stores, re-victual, and give my crew a day of liberty, and I’ll head out to sea, again. El diablo negro might find better pickings further East, nearer Cartagena, Valencia, maybe even Barcelona.”
“El diablo negro?” Mountjoy asked.
“That’s what the people in the last vessel I burned called us,” Lewrie said, tossing the last of his wine to “heel-taps” and getting to his feet. “I’d best go see Captain Middleton at the dockyard, too, and see how he’s coming with my boats and nets.”
“Rock Soup,” Mountjoy glumly mused, then got to his feet to see Lewrie down to the street. “I suppose I should go to my offices, too.”
* * *
When first Lewrie spoke with Captain Robert Middleton about his boats, he had requested them to be over thirty feet long, more like his launch, or the wider-bodied 32-foot barges that he’d used in the Channel in 1804 when experimenting with “catamaran torpedoes”, and which he had kept (since HM Dockyards had never officially asked for them to be returned!) and used on raids along the coast of Spanish Florida in 1805, and to ferry Marines and sailors ashore at Cape Town and Buenos Aires the year before.
To get soldiers out of the boats and onto the beach quickly, he had wondered if there might be some way to square off the bows and make some sort of ramps, but Middleton and his shipwrights had laughed that to scorn. The sketches that Lewrie and Geoffrey Westcott, a dab-hand artist in his own right, brought which limned boats with high gunn’ls behind which the oarsmen would row through square ports, like ancient Greek or Roman ships, with ramps like gangways that could be extended over the bows, had made the shipwrights shiver in dread of even trying to build boats which could drown everyone aboard in a twinkling.
Of the six boats he’d requested, Lewrie found only two skeletons begun, their keels, stem posts, and stern posts and frames resting on baulks of scrap timber, with none of the planking started. They were, he was told, to be thirty-six feet in length, and very beamy. Middleton was of the opinion that if Lewrie could not employ them, they would make fine gunboats to protect shipping in the bay.
At least his sets of scrambling nets had been completed; other than that, Lewrie had been badly gulled, and all he could do was stomp off in high dudgeon!
All that was left for him to do ashore was to find some place to dine, sulk, and fume, and take a glass or two more than necessary aboard, even if he had to be hauled back onto Sapphire in a Bosun’s chair!
* * *
A few streets up from the quayside, nearer to Dalrymple’s headquarters in the Convent and the parade grounds, he discovered a chophouse that advertised itself with a large swinging signboard sporting a red lobster on yellow, by name of Pescador’s, a two-storied establishment with a tavern and common rooms below, and a roofed and trellised upper dining room which faced the harbour and provided an airy, cool respite from the mid-day heat.
A young fellow led Lewrie upstairs to that dining room, seated him at a table for two, and referred him to a large chalkboard menu on the back wall which featured standard fare in yellow chalk and daily specials in white.
“Do you have any ale?” Lewrie asked.
“Oh, yayss, señor!” the young fellow assured him. “We have the deep, cool cellars, and have several favourite English ales, porters, and stouts. The owner is the retired Sergeant-Major from Chelmsford, himself, Mister Chumley, and he always say that without English beers, he would be out of business, hah hah!”
“I’ll have a tall, pale Bass,” Lewrie decided.
“Waiter will be right with you, señor!” the lad promised.
The open-sided dining room was much of a piece with Mountjoy’s rooftop gallery, Lewrie thought, for it was awash in potted greenery, with hanging baskets of flowers round the outer balconies, and a cool tiled floor. White wood-slat chairs and tables with gay red tablecloths abounded, only partially filled with diners at that hour of the day; Army officers for most part, with a smattering of civilian men … and women.
The waiter, a swarthy fellow who looked vaguely Moorish, but who spoke in a British accent reminiscent of Lewrie’s neighbours in Surrey and Anglesgreen, brought him a pint of ale and took his order for the fritura mixta, which he rapturously described as a combination of mussels, crab, and sardines in a wine and chili sauce, with a few slivers of anchovies, fried fish, and a grilled lobster tail, which of course came with white wheat rolls, butter, and steamed asparagus. He recommended a nice Italian white pinot to accompany the meal.
The establishment would have offered a fresh green salad, but for the fact that Gibraltar had very little arable land—most of the Rock was vertical!—and what could be traded, or smuggled, across The Lines from Spain could not be counted on, day-to-day.
I think I could like this place, Lewrie told himself. He was cooler, already, his ale was crisply refreshing, and there were women in the dining room, a rare sight for a sailor; young, pretty, merry women whose scents rivalled the flowers. He rather doubted that they were wives, though. Most of the officers he saw were Lieutenants or Captains, in their late teens to mid-twenties, and men of low rank did not marry so young.
What was it that Burgess once said? Lewrie tried to dredge up from memory; Ah! “Lieutenants must never marry, Captains could marry, Majors should, and Colonels must marry!”
He realised that these chirpy, cheerful young women must be the junior officers’ girlfriends, or their mistresses. There were very few proper wives of senior military officers or Crown officials who’d risk voyaging to an overseas posting in time of war, who would have to leave their children at public schools, or with relatives, to spare them from foreign diseases. Hence, no respectable matrons present to demand that the “ladies of the evening” be shoved back into brothels, out of sight, out of mind, and be unable to corrupt the morals of the town, and lure their husbands’ subalterns and clerks from the Right And Proper Way.
These alluring young creatures in their finery were likely hired courtesans or high-priced doxies!
And here I sit with all my cundums stowed in my sea-chest! he sadly throught.