Free Hostile Shores by Dewey Lambdin Page A

1783, with no mention of how the rashly assembled attempt to oust the French invasion force had failed so miserably; at Toulon, France, at the conference just before the evacuation of Coalition forces; ashore on Corsica just after Nelson had lost the sight of his eye (with no mention of Lewrie’s mistress of the time who had dined with them!), then serving under his command along the Genoese and Ligurian coasts when Napoleon Bonaparte had invaded the Italies.
    “Last I saw of him was the night before the Battle of Copenhagen,” Lewrie reminisced.
    “You were there, sir?” a brewer of note asked.
    “I was, though there was no ‘tin’ handed out for Copenhagen,” Lewrie replied. “We were not officially at war with the Danes, so…”
    Lewrie told them of taking HMS Thermopylae into the Baltic, all alone, to scout the Swedish and Russian harbours, and the expanse and thickness of the ice that kept their fleets in port (again, with no mention of the Russian noble he carried who tried to murder him over the love of an Irish whore in London!) and of how he found him when he re-joined the fleet on the night before the battle.
    “The great-cabins had been stripped for action, but for a brazier, some lanthorns, and Nelson’s bed-cot,” Lewrie described, sensing a hush round his part of the table as people leaned closer to listen in rapt interest. “It was cold, windy, and raw, just perishin’ cold in the cabins, and Nelson was tucked into his bed-cot, fully dressed, and with a chequered great-coat over his uniform, wrapped in blankets, propped up on pillows. His long-time servant, Tom, kept him supplied with hot tea, cocoa, and soup whilst Nelson dictated his orders for the morning. No notes, just from the top of his head, listing each ship under him in order of battle, assigning each which numbered ship in the Danish line to be engaged. It was uncanny! As I left, with my assignment with the frigates under Commodore Riou—a grand man and a fine seaman!—I saw the Midshipmen in the outer cabin, seated on the deck with candles, taking down Nelson’s dictation from a Lieutenant, so each ship should have written orders. I was never so awe-struck than that night, for we were anchored just out of gun-range from the Danish line of battle, and I could stand and look at their ships all lit up as they ferried shot, powder, and volunteers from shore … like Caesar must have looked upon the campfires of an enemy army, the other side of the battlefield.”
    Up the table, Commodore Grierson gave him an exasperated squint.
    “And did the gallant Admiral really put his telescope to his bad eye, Sir Alan?” a younger woman asked.
    “I was not aboard his ship to witness it, ma’am, but I’m sure he did, just as all of us were aghast to see Sir Hyde Parker’s signal to ‘Discontinue The Action’, when we were winning,” Lewrie assured her. “We with Commodore Riou had finally forced our assigned opponents to strike, and were engaged with the Trekroner Forts. One could look astern to see that we were already victorious.”
    As for that rumoured French fleet under Villeneuve that sailed for the West Indies, Lewrie could put them at ease. “I got a letter from my youngest son, Hugh, who is serving aboard a seventy-four under Admiral Nelson, informing me that Nelson and the entire Mediterranean Fleet were setting off in pursuit. Long before the French may achieve any mischief, they will be hotly engaged and utterly defeated, and the Corsican Ogre, Boney, will have lost most of his navy!”
    That raised a hearty cheer, and a toast to Nelson, followed by one to the Royal Navy, followed by one waggish proposal for Napoleon to be hanged at Tyburn, and his tiny body hung in a bird cage on London Bridge!
    “He’s not all that tiny,” Lewrie japed. “It might take a larger cage … much like the ones used to hang pirates on display.”
    Wonder of wonders, Lewrie had met Bonaparte, face-to-face?
    Up-table, Commodore Grierson