Free Across to America: A Tim Phillips Novel (War at Sea Book 9) by Richard Testrake Page A

and had been given relatively loose rein, but now the growing tensions between the differing groups required the healthy Americans to be battened below decks on the two ships.
    It was with much relief when the convoy they were searching for slid over the horizon just north of Bermuda.
     
    There was some suspicion at first from the escorting ships of that convoy. Andromeda’s brown sides and the threadbare sails did not induce confidence in the escorts, especially the Titan 64, commanded by Captain Raton, a very senior officer near the top of the post captain’s list.
    Phillips found himself standing in front of Raton’s desk explaining Andromeda’s appearance. The frankly dubious Raton finally dismissed him but required he search for a convoy member which had come missing after an attack by a pair of Yankee privateers.
     
    Raton was unwilling to give more information, but once back on deck, an old friend from Resolve, now fourth lieutenant aboard Titan, gave him the hurried story.
    In the teeth of a blow two days back, a pair of big Yankee schooners had come out of a rain squall and pounced on the convoy. Titan remained at her station to windward of the leading column. There were two other escorts, a non-rated brig in the rear and an armed cutter midway up the lee column. One schooner made a feint against the shipping to the rear and was fended off by the brig. Another came to the center and burst into the column, scattering it. The cutter attempted to send that predator off but was dismasted in the exchange and left behind. Both schooners then pursued a single brig, carrying general cargo and a few passengers that had separated from the main flock. Caught up in a new rain squall, neither the merchantman nor the privateers had been seen again.
     
    Phillips was pulled back to Andromeda and told his officers of his chastening from the liner’s captain. One positive development he was able to inform them. He was to leave his prize and the captive crew in the charge of Captain Raton. Head money would be due to the Andromeda’s crew for the captive crew taken from the Lawrence, Five pounds a head. Phillips suspected Raton would try to fiddle matters so Titan would get the head money and perhaps make a try at the prize money also. At any rate, that was a matter for the future. Now he had a missing brig to search for, plus a pair of privateers.
    With the captured American ship safely in the middle of a convoy, Phillips felt he could remove some of his prize crew, being confident the American’s would not make a bid for escape, while surrounded, as they were.
     
    Reasoning that the brig, if still free, would likely make for the nearest port, in this case Halifax, Phillips set a course for that port. He felt he had followed his orders thus far. He had taken a Yankee privateer, found the convoy, and had been sent away from that on what he regarded as a fool’s mission.
    He decided he would run down the latitude line to Halifax to see if he could find the missing brig. Should that not work, he would work against the Gulf Stream to the south, checking into the possibility that the brig had been taken by the schooners and sent into Boston.
     
    Finding nothing, he went south. Finally, down in American waters, he ran her down. The Sarah Hayes, a British brig had been taken shortly after she had left the convoy. The brig was now alone, with just her American prize crew and some of the original crew aboard. Sending his own crew aboard, he had everyone else brought on Andromeda. Interviewing the American crew, nothing important was learned. The American prize crew refused to divulge any information of the parent schooners or where they might be patrolling.
    Phillips ordered them below, and had the brig’s original crew brought in. Two were missing, and reported by their former captain to have joined the Americans. Asked for their ideas, all were forthright.
    As Captain Lawton explained, “They had us for a while in a little hole