Command a King's Ship Read Online Free PDF

to the Undine more to get him away from England than to further his naval advancement, Bolitho sus- pected. He was the senior midshipman, and if he survived the round voyage would probably return as a lieutenant. At any rate, as a man.
    â€œMy boxes are yonder, Mr. Keen.”
    He saw Allday standing motionless in the sternsheets, his blue coat and white trousers flapping in the wind, his tanned features barely able to remain impassive.
    Theirs was a strange relationship. Allday had come aboard Bolitho’s last ship as a pressed man. Yet when the ship had paid off at the end of the war Allday had stayed with him at Falmouth. Servant; guardian. Trusted friend. Now as his coxswain he would be ever nearby. Sometimes an only contact with that other, remote world beyond the cabin bulkhead.
    Allday had been a seaman all his life, but for a period when he had been a shepherd in Cornwall, where Bolitho’s pressgang had found him. An odd beginning. Bolitho thought of his previous coxswain, Mark Stockdale. A battered ex-prizefighter who could hardly speak because of his maimed vocal cords. He had died pro- tecting Bolitho’s back at the Saintes. Poor Stockdale. Bolitho had not even seen him fall.
    Allday clambered ashore.
    â€œEverything’s ready, Captain. A good meal in the cabin.” He snarled at one of the seamen, “Grab that chest, you oaf, or I’ll have your liver!”
    The seaman nodded and grinned.
    Bolitho was satisfied. Allday’s strange charm seemed to be working already. He could curse and fight like a madman if re- quired. But Bolitho had seen him caring for wounded men and knew his other side. It was no wonder that the girls in farms and villages around Falmouth would miss him. Better though for Allday, Bolitho decided. There had been rumours enough lately about his conquests.
    Then at last it was all done. The boat loaded, the idler and servants paid. The oars sending the long launch purposefully through the tossing water.
    Bolitho sat in silence, huddled in his cloak, his eyes on the distant frigate. She was beautiful. In some ways more so than Phalarope , if that were possible. Only four years old, she had been built in a yard at Frindsbury on the River Medway. Not far from Herrick’s home. One hundred and thirty feet long on her gun deck, and built of good English oak, she was the picture of a shipbuilder’s art. No wonder the Admiralty had been loath to lay her up in ordinary like so many of her consorts at the end of the war. She had cost nearly fourteen thousand pounds, as Bolitho had been told more than once. Not that he needed to be reminded. He was lucky to get her.
    There was a brief break in the scudding clouds, and the watery light played down along Undine ’s gun ports to her clean sheathing as she rolled uneasily in the swell. Best Anglesey copper. Stout enough for anything. Bolitho recalled what her previous captain, Stewart, had confided. In a fierce skirmish off Ushant he had been raked by heavy guns from a French seventy-four. Undine had taken four balls right on her waterline. She had been fortunate to reach England afloat. Frigates were meant for speed and hit-and-run fighting, not for matching metal with a line-of-battle ship. Bolitho knew from his own grim experience what that could do to so graceful a hull.
    Stewart had added that despite careful supervision he was still unsure as to the perfection of the repairs. With the copper re- placed, it took more than internal inspection to discover the true value of a dockyard’s overhaul. Copper protected the hull from many sorts of weed and clinging growth which could slow a ship to a painful crawl. But behind it could lurk every captain’s real enemy, rot. Rot which could change a perfect hull into a ripe, treacherous trap for the unwary. Admiral Kempenfelt’s own flagship, the Royal George, had heeled over and sunk right here in Portsmouth just two years ago, with the loss of hundreds of lives.