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The Jamaican Affair of 1805
A new Horatio Hornblower adventure
by John Mahon
Chapter One
He, Hornblower, was a captain. A real captain, posted on the list of captains in His Royal Majesty’s Navy, 601st on the list, and junior to all the other 600 names. His three uniform coats (good, better, best) were hung carefully on padded hangars on the rod in his little closet. He kept the door open so he could see them. Four beautiful gold stripes on each sleeve. The bright gold testified that they had never seen salt water. That would come soon enough. In only a few days if Lord Barham, First Lord of the Admiralty, approved of Hornblower’s plan to carry out the project they had just started.
The essentials were already falling into place. A forged letter to the French Admiral, Villeneuve, had been completed by Claudius, an accomplished (and convicted) forger, who had saved himself from the gallows by agreeing to forge the name of the Emperor of the French and deadly enemy of everything English, Napoleon Bonaparte, to the letter. He and Hornblower, and Admiral Barham’s secretary, Mr. Marsden, and a Spanish Count, Maridova, had spent a full afternoon getting the wording just right. Napoleon was not a seaman so the text could not be too nautical sounding, but it must leave no doubt as to what Villeneuve was to do, and that required some nautical terms. They wrote and struck out and wrote again. Finally, they thought it right.
Villeneuve was ordered, in strong words, to cease his cowering in Ferrol, on the Spanish northwest coast, and take his considerable fleet to sea. They were to threaten, just threaten, the English blockaders of the channel ports under Admiral Cornwallis, and then lure all of them out into the Atlantic. English navy captains and admirals were aggressive. Surely they would follow up this grand chance for prize money and glory. Then the barges and boats now gathering in the French Channel ports could cross the channel and descend upon England.
Hornblower weighed the possibilities in his mind. Yes, it just might work. Work for Villeneuve, of course. He knew Admiral Cornwallis, the commander of the blockade force. In fact, it was Cornwallis who had taken him off his little inshore blockader, HMS Hotspur, and recommended him for promotion to Captain. He must be warned of the deception, of course, especially now that rumors were flying that Admiral Calder might be courtmartialed for not being bold enough in his attack on Villeneuve’s fleet when it was heading in to Ferrol. No matter that Villeneuve’s fleet outgunned Calder by a large margin — twenty ships of the line, including some of the biggest ships at sea. That was Barham’s affair, not Hornblower’s.
There was one little chore before he could go to the Admiralty Chart Room and continue his preparations for this very complicated and dangerous assignment. There was no hope of putting it off. He was a married man now. He picked up his pen, and inkwell, and blotter, and plain white paper, and started it. He could not procrastinate. He believed the saying, already an old one, ‘If t’were to be done, t’were best it begin now’.
“My Dearest Maria,” wrote Hornblower. It was a lie, of course. He knew it was a lie. What was dearest to him at this moment where those four new gold strips which he had just been admiring, and the gold-fringed epaulet, now on his left shoulder. They marked him as a real captain, not just a Commander called captain because he actually commanded a ship. Second in his affections was a concept hard to put into words, but just as real: his duty — to England in general, and in particular England’s Navy, which had just bestowed upon him such a singular honor. Singular, in spite of being the last name on the list. In the whole vast English Empire, there were only 601 captains.
These had first and second place. Maria was a distant third. But he would never tell her so; it would pain her terribly. It would completely break her heart. And Hornblower, who had caused the death of two dozen Frenchmen less than a week ago, and killed one of them himself, would never do that.
“I have the pleasure to report,” he wrote, and then crumpled up the paper and threw it across the room. That was the way he would start an official report. This was to his loving wife and child, and Maria was a simple girl, who must be written to in a simple way.
“I am sure you will be pleased to learn,” he started again, “that the Lords of the Admiralty have concurred in Admiral Cornwallis’s recommendation and posted me as a Captain. Of course, that is pleasing to me, not only as it indicates approval of my last appointment, but for the pleasure it will give to you, recipient of my love and mother of my child, and child-to-be.” Hornblower blushed, even in the privacy of his room, at such an indelicate reference, but judged it acceptable, since this was a private message, to be read by no one but Maria.
Totally unsuspected by the new Captain, Maria was neither so simple nor so uninformed as he imagined. There were dozens of Navy officers’ wives in Plymouth, and their intelligence network rivaled, indeed sometimes bettered, the Admiralty’s. That Hornblower had been made post was known in less than 24 hours, and that there was a child-to-be was openly known and commonly discussed in the women’s circles, only, of course, when no men were present.
Those times were all too often. Maria was one of the lucky ones. After all, she had seen her husband twice in less than three months, even though for only hours, or, just days ago, only minutes. Many of the Plymouth wives had not seen their husbands for three years. Letters were few, all the more to be treasured and shared.
There was little, Hornblower could tell of the events that had led to his posting, and still less of the adventure he was about to undertake. Marsden had said “Nothing written, oral only,” even for his detailed plan to submit to the Admiralty. But he could imagine her thrill when she read that he was to have a shore command, the Portsmouth Sea Fencibles, and that he would send for her as soon as he could make the necessary arrangements. That was just in case the letter was opened and read by the wrong parties before reaching Maria. He warned her that the shore assignment was likely to be short, but that was as far as he could go. That he would have been a week or more in Spain, flirting with death by the dreaded garrote, before returning to Portsmouth, if he ever did return, he could not even hint. He did not like outright lies to Maria, but it could not be helped.
How often he had faced that realization, he reflected. The Navy was a stern taskmaster and ‘duty’ was its rod. When duty demanded, he could not hold back, any more than he could disobey a plain command.
Finishing the letter with a series of slightly formal but nevertheless endearing compliments, he folded and sealed it, and called for the landlady to get a hire-chaise for his trip to the Admiralty chart room. Hiring a chaise for the short trip to the Admiralty, instead of walking, was a mark of his new-found affluence. His Sea Fencibles command gave him full pay. He really should have moved out of these mean quarters into something more suitable for a post-captain, but for a day or two, at most three, it was not worth the trouble. The time-table he had mentally composed was extremely tight.
In the few minutes ride to the Admiralty, he reflected on it. It galled a bit, that his appointment was not all in return for his months successfully flirting with the rocks and tides and shallows of the French Channel coast, but had considerable political underpinnings, a subject in which he did not feel highly competent. Perhaps he should learn it. As a captain he would be exposed to that side of Navy life, more and more. Well, he would do his best. That was all he could do.
