To Chase they were all good fellows. There was Billy Hargood who was sailing the Belleisle, a seventy-four that had been captured from the French, and Jimmy Morris of the Colossus and Bob Moorsom of the Revenge. ‘Now there’s a fellow who knows how to train a ship,’ Chase said warmly. ‘Wait till you see her in battle, Sharpe! She can fire broadsides faster than anyone.’
‘The Dreadnought’s faster,’ Peel suggested.
‘The Revenge is much quicker!’ Haskell said, irritated by the second lieutenant’s comment.
‘The Dreadnought’s quick, no doubt of it, she’s quick.’ Chase tried to mediate between his senior lieutenants. He pointed out the Dreadnought to Sharpe, who saw another three-decker. ‘Her guns are quick,’ Chase said, ‘but she’s painful slow on the wind. John Conn has her, doesn’t he?’
‘He does, sir,’ Peel said.
‘What a good fellow he is! I wouldn’t like to bet a farthing on which of them is swifter with their guns. Conn or Moorsom. Pity the enemy ships that draw them as dancing partners, eh? Look! The Orion, she was at the Nile. Edward Codrington has her now. What a good fellow he is! And his wife Jane’s a lovely woman. Look! Is that the Prince? It is. Sails like a haystack!’ He was pointing to another three-decker that thumped her way northwards. ‘Dick Grindall. What a first-rate fellow he is.’
Behind the Prince was another seventy-four that, even to Sharpe’s untutored eye, looked just like the Revenant or the Pucelle. ‘Is she French?’ he asked, pointing.
‘She is, she is,’ Chase said. ‘The Spartiate, and she’s bewitched, Sharpe.’
‘Bewitched?’
‘Sails faster at night than she does by day.’
‘That’s because she’s built of stolen timbers,’ Lieutenant Holderby opined.
‘Sir Francis Laforey has her,’ Chase said, ‘and he’s a capital fellow. Look, there’s a minnow! Which is she?’
‘The Africa,’ Peel answered.
‘Only sixty-four guns,’ Chase said, ‘but she’s under the command of Harry Digby and there isn’t a finer fellow in the fleet!’
‘Or a richer,’ Haskell put in drily, then explained to Sharpe that Captain Henry Digby had been monstrous fortunate in the matter of prize money.
‘An example to us all,’ Chase said piously. ‘Is that the Defiance? By God, it is! She was badly cut about at Copenhagen, wasn’t she? Who’s her captain now?’
‘Philip Durham,’ Peel said, then silently mouthed Chase’s next four words.
‘What a fine fellow!’ Chase explained. ‘And look, the Saucy!’
‘The Saucy?’ Sharpe asked.
‘The Temeraire.’ Chase dignified the vast three-decker with her proper name. ‘Ninety-eight guns. Who has her now?’
‘Eliab Harvey,’ Haskell answered.
‘So he does, so he does. Odd sort of name, eh? Eliab? I’ve never met him, but I’m sure he’s a prime fellow, prime! And look! The Achille! Dick King has her, and what a splendid fellow he is. And look, Sharpe, the Billy Ruffian! All’s well if the Billy Ruffian is here!’
‘The Billy Ruffian?’ Sharpe asked, puzzled by the name that was evidently attached to a two-decker seventy-four that otherwise looked quite unremarkable.
‘The Bellerophon, Sharpe. She was Howe’s flagship at the Glorious First of June and she was at the Nile, by God! Poor Henry Darby was killed there, God rest his soul. He was an Irishman and a capital soul, just capital! John Cooke has her now, and he’s as stout a fellow as ever came from Essex.’
‘He came into money,’ Haskell said, ‘and moved to Wiltshire.’
‘Did he now? Good for him!’ Chase said, then trained his glass on the Bellerophon again. ‘She’s a quick ship,’ he said enviously, though his Pucelle was just as fast. ‘A lovely ship. Medway-built. When was she launched?’
‘’Eighty-six,’ Haskell answered.
‘And she cost £30,232 14s and 3d,’ Midshipman Collier interjected, then looked ashamed for his interruption. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he said to Chase.
‘Don’t be sorry, lad. Are you sure? Of course you’re sure, your father’s a surveyor in the Sheerness dockyard, ain’t he? So what was the threepence spent on?’
‘Don’t know, sir.’
‘A ha’penny nail, probably,’ Lord William said acidly. ‘The peculation in His Majesty’s dockyards is nothing short of scandalous.’
‘What is scandalous,’ Chase retorted, stung to the protest, ‘is that the government permits ill-founded ships to be given to good men!’ He swung away from Lord William, frowning, but his good spirits were restored by the sight of the British fleet’s black and yellow hulls.
Sharpe just gazed at the fleet in awe, doubting he would ever see a sight like this again. This was the majesty of Britain, her deep-sea fleet, a procession of majestic gun batteries, vast, ponderous and terrible. They moved as slowly as fully laden harvest waggons, their bluff bows subduing the seas and the beauty of their black and yellow flanks hiding the guns in their dark bellies. Their sterns were gilded and their figureheads a riot of shields, tridents, naked breasts and defiance. Their sails, yellow, cream and white, made a cloud bank, and their names were a roll call of triumphs: Conqueror and Agamemnon, Dreadnought and Revenge, Leviathan and Thunderer, Mars, Ajax and Colossus. These were the ships that had cowed the Danes, broken the Dutch, decimated the French and chased the Spanish from the seas. These ships ruled the waves, but now one last enemy fleet challenged them and they sailed to give it battle.
Sharpe watched Lady Grace standing tall beside the mizzen shrouds. Her eyes were bright, there was colour in her cheeks and awe on her face as she stared at the stately line of ships. She looked happy, he thought, happy and beautiful, then Sharpe saw that Lord William also watched her, a sardonic expression on his face, then he turned to gaze at Sharpe who hastily looked back to the British fleet.
Most of the ships were two-deckers. Sixteen of those, like the Pucelle, carried seventy-four guns, while three, like the Africa, only had sixty-four guns apiece. One two-decker, the captured French Tonnant, carried eighty-four guns, while the other seven ships of the fleet were the towering triple-deckers with ninety-eight or a hundred guns. Those ships were the brute killers of the deep, the slab-sided gun batteries that could hurl a slaughterous weight of metal, but Chase, without showing any alarm at the prospect, told Sharpe there was a famous Spanish four-decker, the largest ship in the world, that carried over a hundred and thirty guns. ‘Let’s hope she’s with their fleet,’ he said, ‘and that we can lay alongside her. Think of the prize money!’
‘Think of the slaughter,’ Lady Grace said quietly.
‘It hardly bears contemplation, milady,’ Chase said dutifully, ‘hardly bears it at all, but I warrant we shall do our duty.’ He put his telescope to his eye.