Chapter 10: Volunteer Again

April, 1802

It was Mary, the chamber maid, who opened the door to Thomas’s knocking.

“Lord ‘a’ mercy! It’s you, Master Grey!”

“Yes. Can you have Patterson bring in my dunnage?”

“Yes, Master Grey, of course. Shall I notify the Captain?”

“Yes, and please alert my mother, too.”

Mary stepped to the side to let him in, and Thomas looked around. The house seemed huge to him. Across the entrance hall, Mary was heading for the stairs already, and not a minute later, Margaret Grey almost bounded downstairs, her arms outstretched and a wide smile on her lips.

“You’re back already, my lamb!” she gushed, not noticing the face her lamb made at hearing her term of endearment.

“Yes, mother. Six days ago, we cast anchor at Sheerness.”

By then, he had been enveloped in her strong arms, pressed against her bosom, her forehead against his cheek. This was new, this was different. He was now taller than his mother, and when she let go, she had to look up at him.

“You are so grown, Thomas; even more so than when you visited last. Are you well?”

“Yes, Mother, very much so. I had a grand time sailing back in the Unite frigate. Captain Matthews treated me like an officer.”

“But you’re only ... Oh, dear, you’re not a boy anymore, are you? You’re a young man come home from the war, and here I was still calling you ‘my lamb’. May I still call you my dear boy, Thomas?”

“For as long as you want, Mother. How is Grandfather?”

“He should be down for supper. He takes a nap every afternoon, and Jane is helping him to dress just now. Thomas, be honest: how is your father’s mood?”

Thomas understood the question as it was meant.

“He ... he was terribly disappointed, and for two or three days, he took to the bottle, but then he shook it off and was his old self. When Cormorant will be ordered home, he’ll stay, he said. We became quite rich with prize monies, and that consoled him after the disappointing orders. He was also wounded by a musket ball last September, and it took him a while to get hale again. He says that he wants to spend his life with you, now that the Navy won’t need him anymore.”

“Poor Theodore, to suffer such cruel disappointment! Your grandfather was beside himself when he was given the news. Mister Egerton was dismayed, too, calling the whole peace treaty a shameful affair.”

“We haven’t heard much about it, save that the Navy will be laid up.”

“They signed the final treaty last month, and the French haggled to the very end. But enough of this sorry affair. Where is your sea chest?”

“Patterson brought it up to my room.”

“Fine. Go upstairs and change into something clean. You look as if you slept under the open sky.”

“Well, Mother, I had to, going upriver in the barges. No cabins for lowly volunteers,” Thomas laughed. “I guess I look a bit rumpled.”

“We shall have to have new coats and breeches made for you. Shirts, too. You’ve grown, Thomas.”

“I have some good clothes in my sea chest, Mother. The gunroom steward in the Unite kept them clean and even pressed them.”

“Well, then, upstairs with you!”

In his small bedroom on the first storey, Will found his sea chest, with Mary already sorting through it.

“Don’t wash them all at once, Mary,” he told her. “Let me shed these first for washing. The rest will still be needed.”

“They’re not even dry and smell musty,” Mary protested.

“They were washed in seawater, Mary. The salt keeps them moist. Now, can you step outside for a spell? I must change.”

“Oh, dear, I changed your clothes for you all these years!”

“Yes, but I’ve grown, Mary. I’ll be quick.”

With the maid reluctantly leaving, Thomas quickly dropped his clothes on the old chair in the corner which served to hold his laundry. From the chest be pulled a reasonably clean shirt and sailor’s trousers. They had been made for him in Antigua, and they were still a good fit. His old slippers were still in his room but woefully small now, so he pulled on his sea boots again before returning to the ground floor.

There, at table in the dining room, he saw his grandfather, and he almost ran to the table, hugging the old man with feeling.

“There you are, Thomas, and right in time.”

“Yes, Grandfather. I can spend time with you and Mum until summer,” Thomas smiled.

“Maybe not, Thomas.”

“Why, Grandfather,” Thomas asked worriedly. “Are they rejecting me?”

William Grey shook his head with a smile.

“Do not fret, Thomas! The classes at the Academy will start in mid-August, true, but it will not do for you to be idle until then. My old friend, Captain Harrison, commands the Duke hulk in Portsmouth, Admiral Moorbanke’s flagship. Moorbanke is Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth. Harrison will accept you as volunteer. You can add four months of seagoing to your books. Who knows when this will come to pass?”

“So I shall leave again?”

“Yes. Your mother and I shall visit you, and you’ll have shore leave. My friend Harrison will have an extra hand on board, and since you won’t draw your pay, he’ll have a shilling for every day you are on the muster roll. I imagine he has more volunteers than just you.”

Thomas understood. Having volunteers from wealthy families on board was additional income for captains. He had heard of captains having a full score of volunteers 1st class in their ships, yielding them £365 per year.

“Some of them, you’ll never see. They’re just on the books and collect seagoing time without ever sleeping in a hammock.”

“Isn’t that cheating, Grandfather?”

The old man shrugged. “They all do it, and the Admiralty knows it. They don’t mind, so why shouldn’t an old captain on his last command collect all the monies he can? Rodney Harrison is not a landed man. He has just his pay. Yet, you’ll learn from him and from his officers.”

“If you think it’s good for me, I shall report in the Duke, Grandfather.”

“Good boy! Rodney will also make you known to Moorbanke. It can never hurt to have the Commander in Chief knowing you!”

“When should I go?”

“Plan for next week. Mister Bolton, the tailor, will take your measure, and we shall send you your new coats care of the First Lieutenant,” Margaret Grey answered.

“Yes, you’ll need new coats,” the captain added. “At the Academy, they’ll provide you with uniforms, but you need a good coat in the Duke. I also found some items you’ll need when I was last in Portsmouth. A lot of gear and instruments are available for small money, with all the ships laid up and their officers on half-pay.”

“What instruments, Grandfather?”

“Well, a pair of measuring compasses, a sextant of your own, a good magnetic compass. I also found you a sturdy pocket watch and a copy of Norris’s Seamanship. Some light reading, too.”

Although Thomas wanted to groan, he replied as expected from him.

“Thank you, Grandfather.”

A supper of excellent leftover pastries, freshly baked bread, salted butter and slices of cooked ham lifted Thomas out of the doldrums, mainly because he suddenly realised that being early at the academy he would also get a head start at forming friendships and learning the ways. He might also get leave on Sundays and stroll the streets of Portsmouth around its port and shipyards, where he could expect some excitement. He also would not have to suffer through the visits of his mother’s friends, namely Petunia Paddington and her witless daughter.

After supper, the family assembled in the sitting room where a small fire was burning, adding to the comfort of upholstered chairs and a chaise-longue which Thomas selected for his use. Sitting there and sipping on a small helping of Port wine, on which his grandfather insisted, he related the last two years of his life in the Cormorant, Squirrel and Unite. He told of the engagements they had fought, of the hurricane they barely avoided, but also of the strange and exciting things he had seen in the West Indian islands. William Grey had his own remembrances of those waters and islands, which he shared as well.

At one point, Thomas talked himself into a corner, when he claimed to have learned a little herbal lore and wound treatment from the famous doctress Cubah Cornwallis. His grandfather, knowledgeable of the reasons for this, made a face and tried to insert one of his own experiences, but Margaret Grey was altogether too sharp to be fooled.

“Why were you lodging with that woman?” she demanded.

“When we had the Yellow Jack in the ship, Father sent me ashore with Wilkerson, his cox’n, to bring me to safety. Wilkerson had taken a splinter to his leg, and it was healing badly. I learnt all the things whilst I was there at Mistress Cornwallis’ house, who tended to Jimmy’s wound,” he fibbed, not telling a lie at all.

“Such knowledge can be useful,” William Grey commented, hiding the mirth over his grandson’s quickness of mind.

“But isn’t she a Negress?” Margaret Grey asked, not scandalised, but rather curious.

“Yes, Mother, but as smart as anybody, and she knows her healing. Admiral Sir William Cornwallis and even the Prince William Henry regard her with respect and fondness. Why, she even healed Lord Nelson once!”

“She did not call on heathen gods for help?”

“No, she uses herbs for good purpose, but she also keeps the wounds clean, and her tools, too. I should rather be in her care than in that of most ship surgeons.”

“Amen to that, Margaret. The boy is right. The sailors hold her for something like a sorcerer, a witch doctress, but she does little else than what a good English apothecary would do,” William Grey added with authority. “What does it matter then whence her parents came?”

“What did she make you eat?”

“Hot and spicy chicken soup, but also pork fried with fruits and the local green groceries, also hot and spicy. It is delicious, Mother, and it keeps the foods from spoiling.”

In spite of herself, Margaret Grey had to laugh at her son’s endorsement of exotic cooking.

“Well, you look healthy enough, so it didn’t hurt you.”

William Grey insisted on accompanying his grandson to the tailor’s shop in the next morning, claiming a better knowledge of uniform coats than his daughter-in-law. Nevertheless, she drove to Guildford with them, to keep an eye on things, as she said.

It was she who insisted on a new bicorne hat for Thomas, since his old one, purchased in Kingston, had suffered some damage from seawater and sun and had become unsightly. She also determined that in addition to five shirts made of durable twill as he had so far worn, he also needed shirts of fine calico. She sensibly ordered those shirts to be made for the Thomas Grey a year hence, since more growth could be anticipated for him.

With regards to the coats, William Grey brooked no dissent. They were to fit him comfortably now, not a year hence. First impressions were important, and he wanted his grandson to look like the sprig of the gentry he was, not like somebody’s poor relation.

A new sea chest was ordered to replace the old one, passed down from his grandfather, which was showing its age. There was an old joiner in Guildford who made sea chests, and he even had a cherry wood chest in store. He also agreed to carve out the initials, ‘T. G.’, in high relief into the lid, and to give it a solid linseed oil varnish.

They also visited the bank house where William Grey’s liquid assets were held and the captain established a monthly allowance of £4 to be sent for Thomas’s use via a corresponding bank house in Portsmouth. Every first of the month, come rain or shine, a bank clerk would deliver that sum of money to Mister Grey at the Academy. This was arranged in Thomas’s presence and with a strong warning against any gaming, excepting games of Whist for penny stakes. For Thomas, that meant no gaming at all, for he had learnt that game but found it boring to no end. He did not mind the restrictions at all.

At the hatter, their last stop of the day, they found a slightly used bicorne hat for Thomas. They also found Mistress Paddington there, aiming to buy a new hatband. That this was the result of a collusion between his mother and her best friend became clear to Thomas when he espied Harriet-Anne Paddington having a new hat fitted in the back of the shop. She, too, had grown into a blossoming beauty, and that rendered Thomas a stammering imbecile when he returned the Paddingtons’ greetings.