A Continuing War Read online

  A Continuing War:

  At Home and at Sea

  1803-1804

  by

  John G. Cragg

  ©2017 John G. Cragg

  A Continuing war: at A t Home and at A t Sea – 1803-1804

  Book 2 of the series The Napoleonic Wars: At Home and at Sea

  Copyright © 2017 by Beach Front Publishing House

  [email protected]

  All rights reserved.

  Dedicated to

  My most encouraging and helpful critic

  Olga Browzin Cragg

  Special Thanks to

  Eric Bush

  Joan Lundell

  Dawn McDougall

  Preface

  This is a work of fiction which follows on from the first volume in this series, A New War: at Home and at Sea, 1803. It is available at Amazon.com and other Amazon sites by searching for my name or the title. This tale takes place in 1803 and 1804. A great many things have changed in the two centuries that have elapsed since wince then, including items and phrases that may be unfamiliar to many readers. To help those who are curious, a glossary is provided at the end of the book. Items which appear in the glossary are flagged on their first appearance in the text by a * as in, for example, taffrail*.

  Chapter I

  The coach rumbled along the coast road from Brighton to Portsmouth. It swayed alarmingly, especially when the road was open on both sides where it could be buffeted by the full north-east gale and be lashed by rain. Inside the coach, Captain Sir Richard Giles sat on the right hand side, staring out at the bleak countryside and idly comparing the uses of the land here with what he hoped for on his own estate. In the opposite corner sat his wife, Lady Daphne Giles, staring at the bushes, brush and hedgerows that usually prevented her from seeing the English Channel. When the sea could be seen, it was laced with whitecaps that speckled the water, even though the waves were being blown away from the land. Neither traveler seemed able to take the first step in talking about the separation that would soon be upon them nor to spend the time that they still had recalling the joyous times that had marked the start of their life together.

  Across from the married pair sat Elsie, Daphne’s maid. This trip was the first time she had been away from Dipton and it was the only time she had ridden in a coach. She was a bit scared by the way the coach swayed in the gusts. She couldn’t help thinking of stories of how coaches could turn over. She was very thankful that Miss Moorhouse – no, Lady Giles – she must get used to calling her by her new name – that Lady Giles had let her ride inside. She knew from other lady’s maids that most mistresses would have had her riding on the box with the coachman. That was typical of Lady Giles; she always thought of others, no matter what their status.

  She hoped that Lady Giles had not made a mistake in marrying Captain Giles. – It was odd the way he liked to be called simply Captain Giles rather than Sir Richard, and then had insisted that Miss Moorhouse’s new name was to be ‘Lady Giles’ and not ‘Mrs. Giles’. Elsie knew that it would not have mattered to Miss Moorhouse what name she assumed. She had hardly known him when he asked her to marry him. Of course, that seemed often to be the way with the gentry, but this had not been a marriage formed as a business alliance. Lady Giles had known the Captain only for a day before he had had to leave Dipton for some ship and then he had only returned for a few more days – with a broken head to make matters worse – before he proposed to her and she had accepted him. And they had been together for less than a week in terms of the number of days in which they had actually seen each other, before she married him. There had been letters between them and Elsie was still surprised how often Miss Moorhouse had reread the ones she received. Even so, Lady Giles hardly knew the Captain when she married him. They had certainly made up for lost time in Brighton. They took long walks in which Elsie knew that they talked constantly. And they had been together every afternoon in the room they shared. But now they weren’t talking. Elsie wondered if Miss Moorhouse should have waited until she knew Captain Giles better. Of course, Elsie thought, she had known Mr. Carstairs, Captain Giles cox’un, for even less time than Miss Moorhouse and Captain Giles had known each other, and she and Mr. Carstairs hadn’t exchanged any letters. Nevertheless, Elsie was sure that she would marry him in a flash if he asked her. Of course, they were different from Miss Moorhouse and Captain Giles, though Elsie couldn’t have said how, exactly. Mr. Carstairs wasn’t even with them on this journey since he had gone ahead to make arrangements for a late luncheon in Chichester and for an inn in Portsmouth. She could day-dream about him. She knew that he wanted to have a pub when his days at sea were over. Tom, the landlord of the Dipton Arms, was complaining about how heavy his work was, and how hard it was on his back, and how he would like to sell up. The Dipton Arms would be ideal for Mr. Carstairs and, of course, he would need a wife.

  Elsie’s daydream was interrupted by Daphne’s jerking to attention and turning to her husband. “Is that the sort of ship you will have?” she asked the Captain.

  Giles turned from looking at rain-soaked haystacks to glance out the left hand windows. The Channel was visible in this stretch and there was a frigate beating* to windward.

  “Yes, my love, though mine will be bigger and that ship is English built while mine is French.”

  “Isn’t it too rough out there for the ship?”

  “No. It’s only just blowing a gale. We don’t seek harbor for this sort of wind. You have to remember that we can’t usually go into port when a storm comes. I wonder how much wind those hay stacks can take.” Giles nodded towards the hay stacks near a barn on his side of the coach. This led to a discussion between Giles and Daphne about how to make hay stacks, what was the best land for growing hay, whether and how hay should be part of a crop rotation, where in their own holdings hay should be grown, and finally what livestock they should raise and how many of them to keep over the winter. Elsie was delighted to see them diverted from brooding about their imminent separation. They had discussed many of these items in Brighton, she knew, and usually neither of them had a tendency to return to old topics without much new to add to them, but this conversation was for diversion from grimmer thoughts, not exchanging information and making plans.

  The arrival in Chichester, where luncheon would be served at the posting inn, presented Elsie with a good change of activity as she ate in the common parlor, but she noted that Giles and Daphne had reverted to their glum silence by the time they were on the road again. However, before long Daphne made some observations about how the cottages seemed to be different from those around Dipton, and a lively discussion ensued about regional differences even in common items, the difference in climate in different places, and then how the appropriate agricultural practices differed so one could not just follow a treatise based on one area in planning improvements in another. Hedging got particular attention until the coach arrived in the outskirts of Portsmouth, when they started to talk loosely about the fate of the many seamen who had settled there when their time in the navy was over.

  Arrival at the inn was met with a bustle of activity, as Carstairs directed Giles and Daphne to a private dining room while he arranged for the luggage they would need immediately to be taken to their room before he sent the rest of Captain Giles’s things to the quay to be transferred to Impetuous, Giles’s frigate. Lady Giles had whispered to Elsie that after she had arranged her things in the room, Elsie was free to go for the evening, but Lady Giles would need her help first thing in the morning. Elsie kept a straight face even as she thought of the implications of Lady Giles’s not needing any help to undress. Her mistress would have a difficult time getting out of her clothes without help, so she must be expecting Captain Giles to assist. The Captain must
be what Elsie’s mother would term a “randy rascal.”

  Elsie was not at a loose end for long after she had finished her duties. Carstairs was waiting for her – it was strange how everyone called him ‘Carstairs’ while surely below stairs Mr. Carstairs would be more appropriate – and whisked her off to a private dining room. There was laid on a meal of pea soup, excellent roast beef and a quince blancmange. There was a large jug of ale from which Carstairs happily refilled her beaker whenever needed. The conversation began with news on what had transpired since Carstairs had had to leave to arrange for their stops, and went on to various matters about people living in Dipton, both masters and servants. But just as Elsie was beginning to doubt the wisdom of consuming so much ale with a man she hardly knew, the conversation took a quite different term.

  “Look Miss Elsie,” said Carstairs – his calling her ‘Miss Elsie’ was one of the things about him which appealed to Elsie -- “I don’t want to be a sailor all my life. I has a good berth now with Captain Giles, though he does produce more action than most captains. But I would like to have a wife and maybe children, and the sailor’s life is not all that good for family life. Captain Giles gets us more prize money than most other captains and I has a good stake set aside—I’m not one to spend it all in the tavern when we gets ashore.”

  Carstairs broke off at that point and lapsed into silence, staring at a point somewhat above Elsie’s left shoulder. She realized that if she didn’t intervene, she might never find out what else he might be thinking.

  “Yes. Mr. Carstairs. You were saying that you were thinking of coming ashore. Where did you have in mind to live?”

  “Why Dipton, of course. That’s where Captain Giles will be and others who I now know. Yes, I thinks I told you that I want to have a pub, or an inn or something, to manage and provide me with a living. I has set aside just about enough money. And I hears that Tom Arbuckle at the Dipton Arms may be thinking of selling and I might just have enough to buy it. So what do you think of the idea?”

  ‘It is a grand place. But how can you manage it if you are at sea? And Tom won’t wait very long. His back is hurting more and more and there are some strenuous bits to being the landlord of a pub that he says are getting beyond him.”

  “I suppose. I would need someone to manage it while I was away at sea.”

  “And who might that be?”

  “Oh, Miss Elsie, I have gone about this all wrong. But it is not something a man gets any practice at. Miss Elsie, I wants to marry you. Oh, how I wants to marry you! But I knows you cannot stay with Lady Giles if you are married, and certainly not if there are children on the way. And I can’t just quit Captain Giles now, and as long as I am a sailor, I knows that I would have to be able to look after you, even if I was killed. So that is where the Dipton Arms comes in. You could manage it while I was away.”

  “So, Mr. George Carstairs, you only want to marry me so that you can get someone to manage your public house.”

  “No. No. It’s not like that. I wants to marry you, no matter what. And if you don’t want to run the pub, I’ll just have to find someone else. But I wants to marry you in any case. Please, Miss Elsie, will you marry me?

  “Well, I don’t know. Don’t they say that a sailor has a girl in very port? How many other wives do you have?”

  “I’m not like that. I don’t spend my money on women. I don’t have any other girl at all. Never had. You are the only one who interests me. I’ve dreamed about you ever since that first day at Dipton Manor when you was trying to find out all about Captain Giles.”

  It was Elsie’s turn to be flustered. “I wasn’t doing that,” she blustered, but her deep blush gave away just how accurate had been Carstairs’s appraisal of their meeting.

  “Doesn’t matter. When I told Captain Giles, he laughed and said that Miss Moorhouse was quite capable of getting all the information about him that she wanted. But that isn’t the subject here. Will you, please, marry me?”

  “Yes, Mr. Carstairs. Yes, I will!”

  Carstairs response was to take Elsie in his arms and a lengthy period of kissing and hugging ensued, but when Carstairs tried to slip his hand into Elsie’s bodice. She roughly shoved him back even though she was panting quite loudly. “None of that, Mr. Carstairs, not until we are married. I won’t risk becoming with child, not until we are married, and if we go any farther down that lane, I don’t know if we could stop. I’m a good girl and I need my position with Lady Giles.”

  Somewhat to Elsie’s surprise and disappointment, this was enough to get Carstairs to withdraw to the other side of the table. He poured them more ale and they continued talking until they realized that it was getting late and that they had to rise early in the morning, well before those whom they served.

  Dawn revealed that the weather had little improved. Daphne found herself wrapped in a large boat cloak and almost carried into Captain Giles’s boat. Carstairs had already seated Elsie in the sternsheets*, having gotten permission from the Captain to have her visit with her mistress. After they had shoved off, the boat pitched and rocked rather alarmingly in the short, choppy waves of the anchorage, and Daphne was amazed at how easily the boat’s crew seemed to adjust to the gyrations of the craft, keeping a steady pace, with the oars dipping gracefully into the water to be pulled smoothly through the water, even though the boat was rocking and bouncing.

  Daphne had no way of recognizing which of the many ships tugging at their anchors was her husband’s. They were of different sizes, but several looked to her eyes as being identical and their names were too far away to be read. However, Carstairs and the midshipman who nominally was in charge of the boat – Mr. Stewart, whose name, luckily, Captain Giles had mentioned, since Daphne recognized the face from their wedding but couldn’t recall his name – seemed to have no problem selecting the proper one toward which to head. It was confirmed when a hail from the ship produced a bellow from Mr. Stewart of ‘Impetuous’, which would have been more impressive if his voice hadn’t broken on the fourth syllable.

  When they came to the side of Impetuous, Daphne was alarmed about how her husband would safely board the large ship, but the operation seemed to give him no problems as he scaled the side of the ship as if he were climbing a ladder on land. It surprised her that this was accompanied by the most unmelodic of whistles whose origin she could not see. Just as she was wondering how she could possibly emulate Captain Giles transfer to the ship in her petticoats and with the boat’s arbitrary rocking, the problem was resolved by the ship lowering into the boat a contraption that looked like a cross between a chair and a swing seat. Mr. Stewart and Carstairs helped her into it, and then she was pulled up until she was above the deck of the ship, whereupon they swung her across the side of the ship and lowered her to the deck in a flounce of petticoats. Giles was on hand to help her out of the chair and he then presented her to the officers, even though they had all been introduced to her at their wedding a few days before. Daphne was glad for Giles’s naming them since some names had slipped her memory.

  At the end of the line was a young midshipman in what was obviously a new uniform. “You must be Mr. Dunsmuir. I see your father got you kitted out. Welcome aboard,” said Giles. Daphne recalled that in Brighton they had encountered an older naval captain who had introduced himself to Giles while she and her husband were out walking. Giles had spent some time talking with him, at the end of which the captain had asked, very shyly, if Giles might have a berth for a midshipman or a servant. It developed that the older captain was trying to secure a place for his son. Giles had agreed at once to take the boy, provided he could get to Portsmouth with his gear before Impetuous had to sail. Daphne was still too inexperienced with naval ways to realize how very rare it was for a captain to grant such a request to any but a very close friend when there was no hope of getting any favor in exchange.

  With the introductions made, Giles called for the ship’s company to be gathered so that he could read* himself in. As he pronounced the
words that gave him command of the ship, and effectively the power of life and death over those who sailed in her, Daphne was astonished to realize how great a responsibility the orders placed on her husband. She also noticed that the officers and crew were actually paying little attention to the words; they had all heard them before and, when sailing with Captain Giles, they had no reason to fear the highly arbitrary authority he had been given.

  When the ceremony ended, Giles ordered that the hands be dismissed to go about their duties and took Daphne on a tour of the ship. She was amazed at how neat everything was, and how little space there really was for all that had to be kept on hand and for all the men who were aboard. They completed their somewhat abbreviated tour in the Captain’s cabin. While, by the ship’s cramped style, it might be considered a huge space, Daphne was conscious that it was smaller than any of the rooms Giles or she herself would regularly use in Dipton Hall. Also, how plain were the furnishings. That wouldn’t do! She couldn’t do anything about the space, but she would make it a priority to get Edwards to supply furnishings more suitable for her Captain.

  They didn’t linger long over the refreshments that had been laid on. Daphne knew that Giles was impatient to start the business of getting to know the ship better, as well as to get her under way as soon as possible, and Daphne herself had a lengthy trip to make to return to Dipton. She was surprised and delighted that when the time came for her to use the special chair to get into the boat, Giles came as well. She had presumed that he would simply see her safely into the boat before turning to his many duties on a new command, but she found that he had no desire to part from her any sooner than was absolutely necessary. He seemed more relaxed than on their trip out to his frigate, and spent the naming the ships as they came into sight and pointing out the landmarks on shore.