A Brig of War Read Online Free PDF Page B

with a touching and unsolicited loyalty. He had cemented the relationship by supplying Elizabeth with a cook in the person of his wife Susan, certain that service with the Drinkwaters represented security. The personal link between them both gratified and, at that moment, annoyed Drinkwater. He snapped irritably, ‘What is it?’
    ‘Your sword, zur, ‘tis now but half a glass before quarters, zur.’
    Drinkwater looked guiltily at the half-hour sand-glass in the little binnacle and took his sword. Since they left the Mediterranean Griffiths had adopted the three watch system. It was kinder on the men and more suited to the long passage ahead of them. There were no dog watches now but at five hours after noon, ship’s time, they went to general quarters to remind them all of the serious nature of their business.
    Drinkwater turned forward and looked along the deck of the Hellebore. She was a trim ship, one of a new class of brig-sloop designed for general duties, a maid of all work, tender, dispatch vessel, convoy escort and commerce raider. He stood on a tiny raised poop which protected the head of the rudder stock and tiller. Immediately forward of the poop the tiller lines ran through blocks to the wheel with its binnacle, forward of which were the skylight and companionway to the officer’s accommodation. Beneath the skylight lay the lobby which served her two lieutenants, master, surgeon, gunner and purser as a gunroom, their cabins leading off it. Griffiths messed there too, unless he dined alone in his cabin, set right aft and entered via the gunroom. Forward of the companionway to this accommodation rose the mainmast, surrounded by its pin rails and coils of manila rigging, its pump handles and trunks. Between the main and foremast, gratings covered the waist, giving poor ventilation to the berth space below, covered by tarpaulins at the first sign of bad weather. Here too was the capstan. Just beyond the foremast the galley chimney rose from the deck next to the companionway that led below to the berth space where the hundred men of Hellebore’s company swung their hammocks in an overcrowded fug. The remaining warrant officers and their stores were tucked under the triangular foredeck. A tiny raised platform served as a fo’c’s’le, providing just enough foothold to handle the headsail sheets and tend the catheads.
    She was pierced with twenty gunports but so cluttered did she become in the eyes that the foremost were unoccupied. The remaining eighteen each sported an iron six-pounder. These guns were still a subject of frequent debate amongst her officers. Many vessels of similar size carried the snub barrelled carronades, short-ranged but devastating weapons that gave a small sloop a weight of metal heavy enough at close quarters to rival frigates of the sixth rate. But Hellebore had been armed by a traditionalist, retaining long guns each with its little canvas covered flintlock firing device. The only carronade she carried was her twelve-pounder boat guns which lay lashed under the fo’c’s’le.
    Drinkwater descended from the poop as Griffiths came on deck. The glass was turned and the people piped to general quarters. The hands tumbled up willingly enough, the bosun’s mates flicking the occasional backside with their starters more for form than necessity. But Drinkwater was not watching that; he was seeing his laboriously drawn up quarter-bill come to life. The gun crews ran to their pieces to slip the breechings and lower the muzzles off the lintels of the gunports. The port lids were lifted as the coloured tompions were knocked out and the men threw their weight on the train tackles. Irregularly, but not unpleasantly discordant, the trucks rumbled over the deck. One by one the gun captains raised their right arms as their crews knelt at the ready position. It was not quite like a frigate. There were no bulkheads to come down since Hellebore carried her artillery on her upper deck, there was no