Chapter 13: Starting Classes

August, 1802

Thomas and his fellow scholars woke from the sound of the boatswain’s pipes sounding through the building. He took a deep breath. The day would finally start his schooling. Throwing back the blanket, he stood and walked out into the hallway in his shirt.

“Up, everybody! Rise and shine!” he yelled along the hallway to roust those not yet accustomed to waking so early. Seventeen cadets had to shake the cobwebs from their sleepy heads, whilst Thomas was already dressing quickly and methodically. He washed his face and combed his hair before plaiting it into a queue. Then he straightened his cot and stepped into the hallway. Soon, more than half the cadets stood in the doors of their cabins, their cots straightened, their hair combed and plaited, and dressed as befit future officers. Yet, seven of their numbers were still missing.

Thomas walked along the hallway, banging on the doors.

“Listen up, stragglers! Dress and get ready!” he yelled. “The others, keep still tongues in your heads!” He opened a door, seeing a fellow scholar still sitting on his cot in his shirt.

“You, Carver! Why are you still in bed? Mum won’t come and kiss you awake!”

“What’s going on, Mister Grey?” a voice from Thomas’s side sounded. It was Ackroyd.

Thomas shook his head in mild disgust. “Most are ready. It’s the lubbers that were foisted on us at the last minute.”

Ackroyd raised his voice. “Listen, you lubbers! Anybody not ready in five minutes will get their first mark! Anybody not dressed properly, too!”

That actually increased the chaos and made the noise swell again.

“Quiet!” Thomas roared now, being embarrassed in front of the head boy.

Fortunately, sixteen of their numbers stood ready by now, and before the five minutes were over, they all stood in front of their cabins, giving Thomas reproachful looks. He set them straight right away.

“That was pitiful! Your little sisters could have dressed faster! You call those cots straight? Mertens, fix your bloody buttons. Your mum isn’t here to do it! You there, Clarke! Don’t you own a comb? You’re a disgrace!”

“Bloody whippersnapper!” somebody cursed. It was Croker. Thomas’s eyes became hard.

“That from you, Croker? Sorry, but your nanny isn’t here to lay out your clothes for you, and it shows.”

That caused some chuckles and Croker looked back furiously, but before he could answer, Ackroyd raised his hand.

“Don’t ever talk back to your prefect, d’ye hear, Croker? You just earned your first mark. Twelve marks, and you’ll be gone. Understood?”

Croker stared back at Ackroyd, obviously trying to come up with a defiant answer.

“You understand that, Croker?” Ackroyd bellowed.

“Yes.” Croker hissed.

“What?”

“Yes, Mister Ackroyd.”

“Careful, Croker. There are way too many of you in the 6th class, and it won’t take much to get culled!”

“You wouldn’t dare!” Croker gave back, his anger overcoming any reason.

“Let’s find out then,” Ackroyd said coldly. “Come along, Croker! Let’s see the housekeeper!”

“I’m not coming along! You cannot make me...”

“What the blazes is going on here?” a new voice sounded. It was Mister Peabody wearing his lieutenant’s coat. “Problems, Mister Ackroyd?”

“Mister Croker is insubordinate, Sir.” Ackroyd answered, standing at attention. “He cursed the prefect and threatened me, Sir.”

“Did he now? I believe we can fix that, can’t we? Follow me, Croker!”

By now, Croker had lost his colour and he drew back.

“No!”

“What was that?” the lieutenant asked, blatant disbelief in his voice.

“I won’t come. You can’t do this! My uncle’s Admiral Croker.”

“He’ll be right devastated learning that you were shot for insubordination, Croker,” the officer replied in a cold voice. “For the last time: come along!”

His shoulders hanging, Croker now shuffled forward. The lieutenant looked at Ackroyd.

“Come along! Mister Grey, establish some order here and lead your class to the mess hall!”

“Aye-aye, Sir!” Thomas rapped, embarrassed and angry.

He ordered the 6th class to form a line and marched them to the mess hall. Once there, they received their morning rations along with a hot peppermint tea and sat to eat. Thomas had barely started, when a servant showed in the mess hall.

“Mister Thomas Grey!”

‘What now?’ Thomas asked himself as he stood. “Yes?”

“Mister Bayly’s compliments and will you see him in his office!”

Cursing under his breath, he followed the servant up to the third storey. Here, the headmaster had his lodgings, and they were richly appointed, Thomas noticed. The servant led him to a closed door and knocked. When a ‘yes’ sounded from within, he opened the door.

“Mister Grey, Headmaster!”

“Come in Mister Grey. Mister Croker claims that you cursed your fellow scholars. Is that true?”

Thomas was a little taken aback, but he rallied.

“No, Sir. I was only admonishing those who were tardy in getting up after reveille. It took us far too long to get ready, Sir. I also admonished scholars for improper clothing and hair. That’s when Mister Croker insulted me, Sir.”

Bayly looked sharply at Croker before he addressed Thomas again.

“He insulted you?”

“Yes, Sir. He called me a bloody whippersnapper, Sir!”

“Is that true, Mister Ackroyd?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Bayly shook his head. “In your papers is says that you served in the Ramillies second rate, Mister Croker. Have you not learned how to address superiors?”

“He’s not my...” Croker stopped, aware of the risk he was running.

“I see. Mister Peabody, kindly write a short report of the incident for the Lieutenant Governor. Mister Croker will be in detention until Sir Henry will convey his pleasure in the matter.”

Captain Sir Henry Haversham was the lieutenant governor of the Academy, and in charge of discipline.

“What ... why?” Croker stuttered, very much alarmed.

“Captain Haversham will have to decide whether to dismiss you from the Royal Naval Academy or convene a court martial for wilful insubordination. Let us hope for the former.” Bayly answered with a touch of glee in his voice. “Mister Ackroyd, Mister Grey, please return to the mess hall and attend your duties!”

“Aye-aye, Sir,” they chorused before beating a hasty retreat.

“Think he’ll be tried?” Thomas asked.

Ackroyd shook his head. “No. Wouldn’t help anyway. Haversham will have him expelled, and good riddance!”

Mister Henry Johnson, Second Mathematical Master, spent the morning hours acquainting them with the principles of basic Arithmetics. He was a gifted teacher and made things obvious to Thomas which had always been a riddle to him, back in the Latin school where Reverend Wayne had dispensed his limited knowledge of Mathematics. The way Mister Johnson taught things, they just seemed more logical.

After a short break, Mister Sheen, master shipwright of the Dockyard, started the classes about how ships or boats were constructed and why they floated. He continued until noon time, and after their tiffin, he took the class to the dock and onto a moored sloop, where he deepened his teaching by pointing out the various parts of a ship and how they were joined.

When he was finished, the Master Attendant of the Navy Yard, Mister Edward Folger, had them climb the rigging of the moored sloop, and he began to explain the positions and functions of the standing and running rigging.

They had supper in the mess hall with the older scholars. Ackroyd, the head boy, supervised them together with Samuel Carlson, the 4th class prefect. It was obviously assumed that the 6th class constituted no problem, since Thomas was not summoned for help. This was all the same for him, and he rather enjoyed sitting in peace with his mates and eating a marjoram-flavoured pea soup with a hefty slice of fresh bread. The Academy saw to it that the cadets were well nourished, Thomas knew already, and the youngsters had a quart of small ale from the Academy’s own brewery, to wash down the food.

After supper, they were encouraged to go outside and take a walk to settle the food. Lights out was at 2 bells — nine p.m. — and their curfew was at eight-thirty. This gave them an hour to roam the dockyard. Returning to the Academy, Thomas had to make certain that his class was back in the building by 1 bell. Thomas took a while to fall asleep after lights-out. It had been quite a day for him, and he dreaded the next morning a little already, wondering what problems would come up then.

Obviously, Croker’s fate had shaken the 6th class scholars sufficiently. When the ship’s bell in the tower sounded four times — four bells in the morning watch, or six o’clock — and the pipes shrilled, the cadets fairly bolted from their cots. Some were still lagging, not organised enough yet, but nobody dawdled, and before Ackroyd came to inspect them, they were standing at their open doors. The few misplaced buttons or neck cloths had also been quietly corrected by then, and Thomas could report his class ready.

“Nothing like shakin’ them up a bit,” Ackroyd remarked. “Lead them to the mess hall, Mister Grey!”

“Yes, Mister Ackroyd,” Thomas responded, who had by now figured out the correct address for the head boy. Strictly speaking, the ‘Mister’ address was overdone, as none of them held warrants yet, but Thomas had no problems overdoing the politeness, seeing how helpful and fair Ackroyd was.

As usual, the breakfast was ample and well made. There was even a pinch of sugar in the porridge they were served and some fruit jam for the freshly baked bread. Thomas mused that most of his fellow cadets would have a rough awakening when having their first breakfast in a man-of-war at sea.

That morning, they had English dictation for two hours, where Mister Willets, their French master, taught them proper English spelling and writing. This was an easy lesson for Thomas, who had been taught to read and write from his sixth year, with additional teaching coming from Mister Clifton in the Cormorant.

Mister Willets then switched to free writing, and they had to describe in less than fifty words a painting showing the Battle of Saint Vincent. Here, too, Thomas was one of the better cadets. His father’s secretary had shown him how to write simple reports, and he could draw from those lessons in the Cormorant. Other cadets were at a loss or too meandering, needing way more than the fifty allowed words, and still others had problems counting to fifty. Mister Willets than led them through the effort again, explaining how to use the best-fitting words and form proper sentences from them. He was certainly a gifted instructor.

The same could not be said about Mister Aloysius Oxfoam, their fencing and dancing master. The 6th class had few lessons with him, haphazardly distributed between the lessons deemed more important, but he seemingly did not care which lesson he taught and when. He owned a well-used and poorly tuned fiddle which he used to accompany their first stumbling dance steps, or to demonstrate different types of music. As for fencing, he deemed them too young for the small sword, but let them practice the basic strikes, lunges and parries using wooden practice weapons.

In addition to the general lack of organisation in his lessons, he more mumbled than spoke to them, making it hard to comprehend his teachings. Needless to say, he was their least liked instructor so far, and they were happy to escape to the mess hall after he let them out.

Tiffin was a brief affair of less than thirty minutes, and then the scholars had to assemble at the training mast. They spent the next two hours setting a topsail, reefing it, bracing the yard, and lastly furling it. All the while, the mast, mounted on solid ground, swayed only minimally, making the tasks ridiculously easy. Even in the anchored Duke, there had been some gentle swaying. Still, one of the new cadets was sent packing when he simply would not climb around the fighting top on the futtock shrouds, and only seventeen cadets went to sleep that night in their dormitory.

Five days after the start of the lessons, Mister Bayly accepted three late entries, all of them volunteers whose ships had been laid up and who had no interest in Parliament to place them in one of the remaining active ships. Those were certainly youngsters with whom Thomas could sympathise, and contrasting with most other cadets, they had seagoing experience. None of them could rival Thomas’s 27 months — the Duke had counted as seagoing appointment — giving Mister Bayly no pretext to replace him as prefect. Thomas knew that he had not ingratiated himself to the headmaster in the Croker affair, but he was the most experienced sailor in the 6th class, and the Commander-in-Chief had insisted on him to be the class prefect.

After a few days, the new arrivals had integrated themselves seamlessly, and Thomas saw to it that they were given help catching up with the lessons. Geoffrey Gurr and Gareth Edwardson were his acknowledged sidekicks, but a new entry, Robert Bryce, the son of a Scottish Lowland laird, was soon part of the inner circle. He was a half year older than Thomas, but a shade smaller and, like Thomas, had started as cabin boy, but in the Hebe frigate commanded by his uncle, where he had eventually helped out all over the ship as a 1st class volunteer.

As late summer turned into autumn, the 6th class boys settled into the developing routine of class work and outdoor exercises. Some of those latter exercises were held in the laid-up 16-gun sloop, HMS Inspector. Her standing rigging provided a much better training aloft for the cadets, and her boatswain, Mister Martin, taught them practical seamanship much better than Mister Folger of the dockyard. They also learnt to handle the ship’s boats, both at the oars and at the tiller.

Come December, the activities in the Inspector ceased, and their only outdoor activities were now marches around the Dockyard and tug of war games. Apart from those, they were given classroom lessons, some boring, some taxing, and some even exciting. Education at the Academy, as Thomas learned from a fellow scholar, who had briefly attended Eton, was not very different from public schools, with the exception that Thomas’s tutoring costs came out of Royal Navy funds.

Twice, Thomas was visited by his family on Sunday afternoons. It was sad for him to see how gout and old age were taking a toll on his grandfather. In a private moment, his father told Thomas that he had taken over the running of the estate, given how weak the old captain had become. A caretaker would have been a solution, but skilled and honest caretakers were hard to come by, and Theodore Grey had considerable prize monies to invest and planned to make their estate more profitable.

“Will Gramps get better again, Father?” Thomas asked anxiously.

“There’s no cure for old age, Thomas. Even good old Cubah in Port Royal would tell you that,” Theodore Grey answered sadly. “Don’t pity him. He’s led a good life, had a successful Navy career and a good marriage. It’s a pity that my mother died so young, but you have been making him proud in his old age.”

“I want him to see me commissioned,” Thomas answered with moist eyes.

“He’d want that, too, Son, but...” He shrugged. “It’s not in our hands, and four or five years is a long time for a sick old man. He’s proud of you anyway.”

“I’m proud of being his grandson, too, and proud of being your son, Father.”

“You’ll be the fourth Grey to command ships, Thomas. I know it. You have what it takes, and I’ll be very proud to call you ‘Sir’ one day, after you’ve been posted.”

Four days before Christmas, the scholars were released to spend time with their families if possible. For those whose families lived too far away or who were orphans, the dormitories and mess hall stayed open over the holidays, but most of the youngsters left to spend the days with their parents or other relatives.

Robert Bryce would have to stay, seeing how the travel to Kilmarnock and back would account for most of the leave. He and Thomas had become good mates, and rather than leaving him behind, Thomas had asked his father for permission to invite Robert to spend the holidays in Guildford with the Greys. A week before leave started, Thomas made that offer, and Robert gratefully accepted.

Thus, the two youngsters found transport with a wagoner, wedged between the cargo and wrapped in wool blankets against the cold. The wagoner, a gruff but friendly man named Peter James, made frequent stops at roadside taverns to ‘warm up’, meaning getting a tot of rum every two hours. As far as the two boys could see, it did not affect him much, for he was a mountain of a man, able to hold his spirits with ease. Thomas and Robert had their mugs filled with hot tea at those stops, and they had cold meat pies for sustenance, too.