Man Of War

In Rupert’s lee the water merely lapped at the towering wooden walls. With oars now vertical the midshipman steered the barge deftly to the side, and Peto stepped confidently onto the lowered gangway as yet she ran in. He would have been content to scramble up the ladder to the entry port on the middle deck, as many a time he had, for he fancied himself as agile still as when he had been a midshipman; but he was pleased nevertheless to come aboard this way, with less chance of missing a footing or losing his hat in a sudden gust of wind. He glanced at the decoration above the port, handsomely carved dolphins gilded as freshly as the ship’s name had been whitened. The lieutenant had evidently been active since they had put in to port three days before. Peto marked it with some satisfaction. He did not know the lieutenant, Lambe, except that he had a good reputation. A bit of sea-greening on the stern counter and dulling of the carving gilt he could have endured (who knew what repairs the Biscay weather had occasioned?), but Lambe had chosen to smarten these presents. If they were not meant merely to distract, it augured well.

And now the piping aboard, the shaking hands with officers and warrant officers – he had done the same before, several times; but never on a first-rate. To be sure, he had hardly set foot on a three-decker since he was a young lieutenant. He had decided not to address the crew, as he had when taking command of Nisus, for whereas his frigate’s complement had been but two hundred (and he could know every man by name and character), Rupert’s was in excess of eight – far too many to assemble decently for the sort of thing he would wish to say. Command of a first-rate was perforce a rather more distant business. Strictly speaking, command even of Nisus was properly exercised through his executive officer, the lieutenant, and to some degree by the master, but in a ship of two hundred souls the captain’s face was daily – at times hourly – known to all. His own quarters were on the upper deck: he had to climb the companion to the quarterdeck, and in doing so he might routinely see half the crew. As captain of Rupert he would merely step from his cabin under the poop: descending to any of the gun-decks was an ‘occasion’. His world was changing even if he were not. He could no longer be the frigate-thruster. But his nature was by no means aloof, and he now must find some happy middle channel between his own inclination and the customs of the service. He did not expect it to take long, or even to try him; but meanwhile – as any prudent captain – he would take up the command firmly yet judiciously. He passed the assemblage of officers with but a nod here and there.

In an hour or so His Majesty’s governor of Gibraltar would pay a call on him, and then, if the westerly continued to freshen, Rupert would make sail for Syracuse to take on the pure water of the Arethusa spring, just as Nelson had before the Nile. Peto knew that a long blockade of the Peloponnese – if blockade were what Codrington intended – would be thirsty work. He knew it from long experience, though not perhaps as much in the eastern as the western Mediterranean, and also from recourse to that most faithful of teachers, history. For he had with him – and had been reading most assiduously since leaving England – Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War. And in that latest edition of Dean Smith’s translation he was reminded of the necessaries of such a course, for the Athenians at Pylos, blockading the Spartans on the island of Sphacteria, had been reduced to scraping away the shingle on the beach to get relief for their thirst. He could at least make sure his men had the sweetest water (and there was none sweeter or more plentiful than from the spring of that patron-goddess). Thence, from Syracuse, he would set a course for Codrington’s squadron in the Ionian. For the time being, however, he would withdraw to his quarters, hear the reports, read the signals, sign the returns.

Flowerdew, his steward of a dozen years and more, was waiting. The sentry presented arms – more sharply, thought Peto, than even the well-drilled marines on Nisus. The red coat, the black lacquered hat, the white breeches and pipeclay – Peto suddenly felt himself a little shabby by comparison in his sea coat. But that, he reminded himself, was how it should be: a marine sentry was by his very turnout a powerful aid to discipline, whereas a captain’s attire must be weather-seasoned. He might put on his best coat for His Majesty’s envoy (his dunnage Flowerdew had brought aboard earlier in the day); there again he might not.