“Uhm, I do believe that he is distant kin to Lord Melville, my lord,” Captain Niles tactfully said.

“Oh, good Lord!” Gardner snarled. “Even is he out of office, it will be some harpy in here, still, some female cousin thrice-removed, waving orders with Melville’s seal upon ’em, telling me to build a frigate for her son! The Prime Minister should never have dismissed Johnny Jervis from his post as First Lord of Admiralty. What the Devil was he thinking?”

“Given this Grierson’s connexions, then, perhaps we should put a new frigate together, for Lewrie here, hey, Niles?” Gardner wheezed.

“Would that a dockyard re-fit be possible, sir,” Captain Niles said with a whimsical air.

“Just a hull cleaning, my lord,” Lewrie reminded them. “We’ve weed as long as boarding pikes on our ‘quick-work’.”

“Recall, milord,” Niles said, leaning closer to his superior, “that we spoke with the Commissioner of the Dockyards, Sir Charles Saxton, upon the amount of work he has in hand, and the possible availability of a free graving dock for any vessel coming in damaged? He and his people are completely swamped.”

“‘Swamped’?” Lord Gardner querulously posed. “What the Devil sort of word is ‘swamped’? There are no swamps in England. Ireland, perhaps … all those bloody bogs of theirs … but not in England!”

“I stand corrected, milord,” Niles easily amended, bestowing a congenial look at Lewrie as if to say that Lord Gardner’s bark was not as dangerous as his bite, and that such word-play was natural to their working relationship. “Up to his neck in demands and needful work, rather. I fear that it may be weeks ’til what re-fit work and activation of ships now laid up in-Ordinary would admit your frigate the slightest bit of attention, Captain Lewrie. Even with specific, and urgent, orders from Admiralty, there is little we may do for you.”

“In the Careenage, Captain Niles? My lord?” Lewrie said, feeling that wheedling might suit. “As I said, we only need a bit of hull cleaning. If not the Careenage, any stretch of beach would do.”

“Lord, the beaches!” Captain Niles sadly mused. “I fear that there are now so many private contractors and shipwrights a’building ‘back of the beach’ that there may not be room. So many lost merchantmen to be replaced, new bottoms needed to expand our trade, and many smaller warships being built on speculation, not even under contract with Admiralty … I very much doubt there is a single seaport in all England where you might find the space, sir.”

Gawd, I’ve been diddled! Lewrie thought with a cringe; Sent to “Coventry” like a failure, and stuck there ’til the next Epiphany?

“What if I went up to London and sought fresh orders, my lord?” Lewrie appealed to Lord Gardner.

“You may try, sir, but even with orders, as Niles said, you do not stand a Chinaman’s Chance,” Lord Gardner told him, seemingly in sympathy with his plight. He was not snarling or roaring. “Were it me, I’d have stood on my rights, and previous orders, and given this Grierson puppy the back of my hand!”

“Then there would have been court-martial charges, my lord,” Lewrie croaked, his shoulders slumping in defeat. He puffed out his cheeks in a frustrated sigh, thinking hard.

“Excuse me, my lord, but … having just come in, I’m not yet considered part of Channel Fleet,” Lewrie schemed. “I could leave for London without being faulted for sleeping out of my ship, and see what fresh orders I might … wangle?”

“Do any of you younger sorts have the ability to speak in plain King’s English anymore?” Lord Gardner groused, slapping a fist on his desk top. “‘Wangle’, sir? Learn that word in a swamp, did you?”

“I might’ve heard it in Charleston or Savannah, sir,” Lewrie said with a shrug, “From the Yankee Doodles.”

“Both cities are famous for their surrounding swamps, milord,” Niles dared to jape in a mellow purr, tipping Lewrie a wink that the Admiral could not see.

“Aye, Captain Lewrie,” Lord Gardner grudgingly allowed, “until someone takes note of a perfectly good frigate lazing at anchor, and snatches you up, you are not under Channel Fleet, strictly speaking. If you imagine that you may discover a solution to your problem up in London, you are surely free to go … so long as you do not tarry ’mid the joys of the city.”

“Ehm … might it be best did we issue Captain Lewrie a document of some kind, milord?” Captain Niles suggested. “An order from you allowing him to seek an audience at Admiralty might not go amiss.”

“Fine, fine, scribble him out one, Niles, and I’ll sign it, if you think that’s best,” Lord Gardner said in an irritated growl. His attention had already shifted to a fresh pile of paperwork on the side of his desk. “An excuse for truancy for the headmaster … a dispensation for past sins, hey? Carry on, then. Good day to you, Captain Lewrie. Best of luck … all that,” he muttered, poring over a fresh letter, trying to find the proper “range” at which to read it.

“Good day, my lord, and thank you,” Lewrie said in parting as he followed the pleasant Captain Niles to the outer office.

*   *   *

He had not come ashore with his boat-cloak, and regretted that lack once he left the Port Admiral’s office building with his written pass safely stowed away in a dry breast pocket of his uniform coat. A sullen and misty rain had sprung up in the meantime, bringing with it a thin haze. Lewrie strolled back towards the quayside in search of a bum-boat to row him out to Reliant. He dodged several timber waggons and goods carts that trundled loudly over the cobblestones of the seaside road ’til he got to the large, mossed, and rain-slick stone blocks of the quayside, and stopped to look round. There weren’t any boats to be seen, not within hailing distance.

Dozens of warships lay in the harbour, towering Third Rate 74s and a pair of more powerful Second Rates of at least 98 guns, perhaps the flagships of admirals come in from the blockade, surrounded by frigates, three-masted older sloops of war, and the newer brig-sloops. All were hazed by the rain, those lying further out indistinct. Lewrie looked to his right and left, and peered up toward the inner harbour, and Gosport. All along the hards there were scaffoldings, and ships in the middle of them being constructed. In the stone graving docks, warships were being repaired, temporarily de-commissioned. Even more, stripped to a gantline with all their top hamper above the lower mast trunks struck, and floating high with all their stores and guns landed ashore, lay anchored just off the graving docks, waiting their turns. The soft, misty rain and the wet haze acted like a blanket upon most sounds that morning, but even from this far away, Lewrie could hear the continual din of saws and hammers, and the tinny ringing of metal artificers on anvils and iron fittings. The Admiralty, and the Royal Navy and its supporting infrastructure, was the world’s largest commercial and industrial enterprise, and Lewrie felt depressingly awed to think that the bulk of its activities was centred within eye and ear shot of where he stood, that instant. It was far too busy to ever get round to dealing with him!

Pleadin’ at Admiralty may not help one tuppenny shit, Lewrie sadly gloomed; Should I even try? Oh, why not? All they can say is no.

A wryly amusing idea crossed his mind; when his father shoved him into the Navy in 1780, Sir Hugo’s old attorney, Mr. Pilchard, had scribbled out a huge forgery. When his son Sewallis had finagled his way aboard a warship as a Midshipman in 1803, the lad had forged his father’s signature on the introductory letter to an old shipmate that had been meant for his younger son, Hugh—in point of fact, the entire letter had been forged, inserting Sewallis’s name for Hugh’s. The art of forgery seemed to run in the family, for God’s sake! Why not just sit down in some tavern here in Portsmouth with a set of orders done by the First or Second Secretary at Admiralty and write his own urgent demand for Reliant to be docked? If he waited for the wheels to clack round like a slow-running mantel clock, he’d be twiddling his thumbs ’till next Summer!