Free Tide of War by Seth Hunter

his abilitiesas an officer, a doubt that had persisted since first obtaining his commission. He had some ability as a commander, if only in the command of detail, but he privately considered he was more suited to the role of purser. He constantly failed to measure up to his own standards of what he considered to be outstanding leadership and his skills as a navigator were far eclipsed by Tully who could take in a chart at a glance as if the rocks and shoals came leaping out at him and was possessed of an almost mystical sense of direction and their position upon the map as if sextants and quadrants were mere playthings for the less gifted. A natural born sailor he had an instinctive feel for the sea and the wind and their effect upon hull and sail which Nathan could only labour dully to emulate, struggling with the mathematics, his brain relentlessly obsessed with calculation.
    He was good with men, too. Nathan watched him covertly as he leant against the rail, conversing easily with the second mate, Jonathan Keeble. He appeared to be at ease with most of his acquaintance, whether they were old salts like Keeble, born and bred on the waterfront at Marblehead, or the Honourable Philip Whiteley, the lieutenant of marines who had joined them at Portsmouth and was the second son of a viscount.
    But perhaps this was not surprising given Tully’s own background.
    He was a Channel Islander: the son of a Guernsey fisherman who had married the daughter of a local
seigneur
and though the young woman had been disowned by her family for the offence and died soon after, Tully had been taken into his grandfather’s house to receive the education and upbringing of a gentleman.
    But some recalcitrant strain had inclined the boy to take his father’s part and at the age of sixteen he had quit the seigneurial home to become first a fisherman and then a smuggler, in which latter occupation he had been surprised by a British sloop and given the choice of serving in the Navy or assisting in the colonisation of Botany Bay. He had been master’s mate on the
Nereus
and Nathan had formed a sufficient respect for his skills to retain his services on the
Speedwell
during her covert missions to Le Havre.
    If and when he assumed command of the
Unicorn
he had resolved to make Tully up to acting lieutenant.
    â€œMr. Place, there!” Tully broke off his conversation with Keeble to fling out a rebuke to the senior of the two boys who were clowning about some fifty feet above his head in the futtock shrouds. Place had just snatched at Coyle’s cap and almost missed his footing on the ropes. “If you must contrive to kill yourself, sir, pray indulge me by doing so over the sea so we will not be obliged to scrub you off the deck.”
    The two boys grinned but climbed into the maintop where they were safer and less noticeable.
    Coyle and Place. An unlikely alliance. Nathan wondered if it would endure until they reached the Havana where, inevitably, they must part for Coyle belonged to the
Speedwell
and Place … Place belonged to King George.
    Place’s mother had by some divine process learned of Nathan’s appointment to post captain and surprised him at Shoreham with young William in tow. She was the widow of one of his father’s old shipmates who had been killed at the Battle of the Saints when his son was barely a year old and she had often been a guest at Windover. She had begged him to take her son into the service as a volunteer—for he had his heart set on it, she said—and after some feeble protests Nathan had agreed. He had been much the same age when he himself had joined the Navy, taken on by another of his father’s old shipmates: it was the way the system worked. And if Nathan did not entirely approve of it he had not declined to take advantage of it for most of his life.
    And so young William Place would join Nathan on the
Unicorn
as a captain’s servant, volunteer first class: the first