Hostile Shores

*   *   *

Later that morning, wandering the small town’s streets to shop for his personal needs, and have a look-see, Lewrie felt a rare and odd out-of-sorts malaise take him, almost a light-headed separate-ness he could not blame on three glasses of Gilbao’s excellent light wine. He stopped in the shade of a row of trees, facing the waterfront to watch bum-boats and barges plying between the shore and the transports with loads of bagged grain and bales of hay, kegs of water, and beer.

There was an iron bench with wooden slats, and he sat himself down. The English-language Portuguese newspaper crinkled as he did so, and he pulled it from his coat side-pocket to re-read the account of the battle. It was a sketchy article, since no news writer had been on the scene, and was likely based on third- or fourth-party word of mouth. If a Royal Navy ship had put into Lisbon or Oporto, one which had participated in the battle and was in need of firewood and water, or light repairs, that might explain how twenty enemy ships had been reportedly taken, not some vague number like “dozens” or “many”. Not all had been kept, for the winds and seas had gotten up after the hard fight was over, and several prizes had been wrecked on the shore about Cádiz, and some re-taken by their own crews.

Even so, Nelson’s victory was a death-blow to French hopes for their long-expected invasion of the British Isles. Without their fleet to cover the crossing of the Cha

Bonaparte had sent Missiessy and Villeneuve to the West Indies and back to lure the Royal Navy away from the defence of the Cha

Thank God Boney’s a soldier, Lewrie thought with a snort of derision; They’re not the sharpest wits, and know nothing of the sea.

Nelson, though … dead and gone.

Nelson’s gone.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

News of the grand victory off Cape Trafalgar was heartily welcome aboard Reliant, though tempered by a sense of grief that Nelson had been slain. The victory was given three cheers aboard the transports, too, and perhaps some soldiers of the 34th might have felt some sadness over the Admiral’s loss, but while Nelson had been a national hero, he had not been an Army hero, so it did not affect them as sorely. Now, if they had heard that Jim Belcher, Tom Cribb, or Daniel Mendoza, their favourite champion boxers, had died, they would have mourned.

What really made the Army officers unhappy was Lewrie’s estimate that their passage South would be much longer than the first leg from Portsmouth. Once round the same latitude of Cape Verde, they would lose the steady Nor’east Trade winds, and would face winds from the Sou’east, requiring all ships to make many tacks, going “close-hauled to weather”, to make ground. They found it hard to fathom that beating to weather would take one hundred and eighty or two hundred and ten miles veering back and forth to make sixty or seventy miles South each day. Making their passage even longer were the currents; there was an Equatorial Current that would be favourable all the way round the Western coast of Africa ’til the Ivory Coast, but then they would meet both the South Equatorial Current, which would smack them square on their bows, and the counter currents which could swirl them into the Gulf of Guinea, and be foul against them whenever their course had to be seaward, or waft them shoreward and onto the shoals. The quickest course, he told them, would lie closest to shore, emulating the ancient explorers such as Vasco da Gama. Further out to sea lay the Doldrums, the Horse Latitudes, where there were confusing, swirling currents, and no wind for weeks at a time; so named for the complete loss of horses carried by earlier expeditions, when the food and water ran out.

*   *   *

“I wonder what the soldiers will do when we cross the Equator, sir,” Lt. Westcott mused as the peaks of Madeira shrank and shortened astern. Westcott looked in merry takings, quite chipper in point of fact. A brief half-day ashore at Funchal, and a visit to that highly recommended brothel, had done him wonders.

“Have a group, ceremonial vomit, I’d imagine,” Lewrie chirped back, rocking on the soles of his boots with his hands clapped in the small of his back, and relishing the fresh breezes and the easy motion of their frigate. “Why change routine just because they’ll be crossing the line?”

“I was just wondering how they would welcome King Neptune and his Court aboard, sir,” Westcott said with a laugh.

“I doubt they’d do anything,” Lewrie mused, tickled by an image of riot. “Who’d enforce the rites? The transports are ma

“I have, sir,” Westcott replied with a stern nod.

“Having been ‘anointed’ once, myself, and a ‘shellback’ several times over, I intend to stand and watch and enjoy the ceremony. But, Mister Westcott?” Lewrie teased with a leer. “You have not yet said if you have ever crossed the Equator. Have you, sir?”

“Ehm … I fear that my naval career has taken me no further South than Trinidad, sir,” Westcott hesitantly confessed.

“A ‘Pollywog’ are ye, sir?” Lewrie purred, leaning a tad closer to grin. “Oh, how jolly this will be!” Then, to Lt. Westcott’s consternation, Lewrie strolled off to the weather rails, his step jaunty, and humming a gay air. Now there was something to look forward to!

*   *   *

The first few days out of Funchal, they still had the Nor’east Trade winds, so the going was good as they sailed past the Spanish Canary Islands with the isles only fifty or sixty miles East of them.

The next few days were also passable as Lewrie led the convoy almost Due South across the Tropic of Cancer, the 20th Latitude, then down the wide strait between the Portuguese Cape Verde Islands and Cape Vert on the shoulder of Africa, where the Equatorial Counter Current, the swirling eddies off that, and the Sou’east Trades began to greet them.

Round the 10th North Latitude, though, the perverse Sou’east Trades forced them to stand Sou’-Sou’west, close-hauled towards eventual shoaling waters, which were badly or sketchily charted, and then all four ships would have to make a heart-breaking turn to the East-Nor’east and sail back towards Africa, losing ground ’til the shore could be seen from the cross-trees, and they would tack and bear off Sou’-Sou’west once more, and safely out to seaward. To make matters worse, it was growing hotter, even though they were well into early December, and the sun, so friendly round Madeira, began to feel brutal, and Surgeon Mr. Mainwaring had little in the way of balms to ease unwary sailors’ burns when they worked shirtless.

A little South of the 5th North Latitude, on a shoreward tack, they raised Cape Palmas, the Southwestern limit of the Western bulge of the African continent, and stood away Sou’-Sou’west once more.

At least the next time they had to tack shoreward, there would be hundreds of miles of sea-room before they fetched the coast again, deep into the Gulf of Guinea.