Chapter 6: Thunder on the Water

We took Thunder out as soon as the rudder was repaired. No one still had any idea how it had gotten smashed. I wasn’t there, so I’d probably never know, but everyone involved had gotten a good lesson in being slow and careful when moving a boat or ship near an immovable object like a quay.

While Jono had gotten the crew and supplies together, I’d gotten the missile-launcher installed and its crew trained and ready. We were only carrying a dozen missiles, but they were all the same size, shape, and weight. They all had fire-hardened points and turkey feathers on the back. When we test-fired a couple into the river, they flew straight.

The Commander had put together our Marine detachment. Two of my soldiers from Small Cove were with them as corporals on the two squads, while the third one remained behind with the Guard as instructor and student. Three of the Guard’s junior officers went along as Detachment Commander and the two squad leaders.

I brought Aldo along as my assistant and as a topman-trainee. He was far more limber than most of us older men and had no problem scampering up to the yards. All of my women -I had to count Gina as one of them even though I wouldn’t sleep with her yet, with a decent diet she was growing up and filling out but she still looked twelve or thirteen to me- stayed at home so we brought a pair of the town’s youngsters as ship’s boys. They helped Cookie and were generally light-work assistants.

As before, since Aldo was my assistant he got to hang his hammock across the cabin just inside the door. Anyone who wanted to bother me while I was asleep would have to go through him first, whether he had good or bad intentions. And Aldo had been learning how to fight with a sword and knife.

I knew just about all of the crew, at least by face and maybe name or profession, but very few of them had sailed with me before. They knew that beating a pirate ship out in the ocean could be done, but they had never done it themselves. Still, most of them had participated in one way or another with the town’s defense and could be trusted to stand fast to their jobs as long as nothing went wrong.

Unfortunately, they couldn’t be trusted to stand to their jobs even in disaster until they’d ‘seen the elephant’ a couple of times. There was just no other way to turn recruits into veterans.

Thunder did seem to behave a little better on the way down the river.

One thing I’d forgotten about and didn’t think of asking until we had pulled in our lines and started down the river was “How many of the crew can swim? If the ship were to hit a snag right here and the bottom got ripped out, how many of the men would be able to get to shore?”

Jono said “I don’t know, Lord. I’ll find out.”

“Well, I don’t want to say it’s not important because it is, but this is my fault. I thought of it a while back but then forgot to ask you. I want to add it to the crew’s training. A man who can’t swim has no business on a ship out at sea.”

“I can’t swim very well. I could probably make it to shore from here, but no further. Is it something that you can teach?”

“Yes. It takes time, but I want everyone to learn how. We might ground offshore and have to swim in for help. Or even have to swim in from the wreck as it comes apart around us. A topman could fall off the yard and get dunked in the ocean. There are many reasons to learn how to swim. For now, pass the word to the officers to find out from their men who can swim and who can’t. And if you decide that you want to take the blame, you can tell the men that I asked you about this last week and you forgot to ask them.”

Jono walked away from me shaking his head. I didn’t think he had a good enough sense of humor to deal with my absurd side. Of course he didn’t want to take the blame for my failures!

We passed several of the town’s fishing boats on our way down, and every time I saw one I had to look up to verify that we still had our blue flag at the masthead. Surely Filo would be flying his. All of our ships should fly that flag. Sure, when we only had one ship it meant “Lord Jason is aboard” but now that we had multiple ships it meant what I had originally intended, “This ship is part of Lord Jason’s war fleet.” Maybe, eventually it would mean “This ship is part of Widemouth’s Navy.” Or even “This ship is part of the Hunter Island Navy.”

When we reached the sea we turned south, lowering the sideboards and raising all the sails to see how fast we could go. We had moved the main-jib to right beside the fore-jib. As long as we kept some space between them they would both catch the wind.

To a lot of the crew, it was scary. No one had ever gone that fast. It wasn’t that fast to me, certainly less than ten knots, but none of these boys had ever gone this fast unless they were trying to break their necks racing horses.

This was the first time I got to try out my telescope. I’d figured out the best distance to separate the lenses and had a fixed-focus telescope with me for the sea-trials, but it only focused well at that distance and it just gave me a headache at other distances. This time, I had the two lenses mounted in two separate tubes like they should be, and I could adjust the focal length as needed.

That helped a lot. I could zoom in on each boat, on each feature of the shoreline, and when we saw another ship I could identify it long before anyone without a telescope could.

I had lenses for two more telescopes and that was it. If I ever had to go back to Earth again I’d try to stock up, but I had no intention of doing so if I could help it. While I’d talked to the blacksmiths and the potters about making glass, it was going to be a long time before we had optical-quality glass for more lenses. And who was going to grind them, anyway?

After we’d gone south for some time, we started testing things again. We eased into the wind, taking in the windward jib and adjusting the sails until we could not go any further into the wind. We made sure that all the officers and leaders felt the wind. If you are facing the bow, you feel the wind from that direction. That’s as close to the wind as we can get.

Once we were satisfied with that tack, we walked and talked our way through tacking before we actually tried it. We’d only lost three or four of our sailors from our sea-trials so most of them knew what they were doing. When we were ready we furled the sails and dropped the jib and put the helm over to steer us through the wind and to northward and onto the starboard tack, jacking the yards around while the ship turned. We showed the sails and the starboard jib as quickly as we could once we had turned, and within a couple of minutes we were pounding through the waves on a northwest tack.

Nothing important broke, and any confusion got straightened out by the team leaders. It wasn’t as fast as a crack US Navy or Royal Navy or clipper ship crew would have been in the 1800s, but it was a lot better than the first time we’d ever tried it on Wrong Place.

Once we were comfortable that we could tell how far we could point into the wind on a starboard tack, we let the ship fall off the wind, took in the sails, and wore around to the east and then southward to continue on along the coast to Rocky Point, the Island’s southwest headland.

The fishermen told me that the water was deep along this coast, all the way down to the headland. I certainly couldn’t see any sign of offshore breakers in the telescope. Stuff like that was good to know. If we had to, we could sail right up to the cliffs. There were frequent landing places where a boat could land safely, but even they would have to steer between the rocks to get safely to shore. Mostly it was just breakers on the cliffs and a ship that got too close would get smashed against the rocks.

This was the opposite of the southeast corner of the Island, where there was a long string of mountain-tops on the Island, then offshore but sticking up out of the water, and then just barely below the surface where they could rip our bottom out. If you were careful, though, they all had gentle slopes and you could beach your ship or boat almost anywhere.

Along this western coast, unless we were really lucky and really careful, any attempt to land would destroy the ship and kill most of us. The only safe places to land on the Island’s west coast were some small protected bays and the rivers that were large enough to let you go inland, out of the waves.

Even the pirates who landed during their raid had come ashore on the south coast where any promontory of any kind sheltered the land behind it from the west wind and waves. From there they had used the road to get to Widemouth. It had taken them about three days to do it, and they’d been exhausted and starving when they arrived. Long forced marches carrying weapons and supplies just weren’t in their training program.

There was a village on that road, just a little bit farther away than where the pirates had joined it. It was called Cowford, which tells you everything you need to know about it. It was completely defenseless. If the pirates hadn’t been so intent upon pillaging Widemouth they could have gotten all the food they could have wanted from Cowford.

Once we got away from the Wide River area we stopped seeing fishing boats and the world appeared empty. No one lived on the shore. Between pirates and the rough coast, it was simply too dangerous. On Earth, the coast would be covered with houses from people who lived there just for the view.

We didn’t heave to and drift when the sun went down, that would simply push us onto the rocks, but we furled our main and lowered the jib and sailed slowly on south with just the foresail, tacking slightly so that we could stay clear of the land. That let everyone get some sleep. We’d divided the crew into three watches, and if nothing exciting was happening only one watch had to be up on deck at a time. The stars gave us enough light to see the coast and if we got too close we could roust everyone up and try to claw our way back upwind again.

Jono and I agreed that we had to know if our junior officers could handle a watch by themselves, and there would never come a better time to find out. Neither of us got much sleep, I could tell when I saw him in the morning, but we tried to leave the watches alone as they took their turns doing nothing all night.

In the morning the two of us inspected the ship, looking over everything we could reach. I didn’t think we needed to do that every day. All the historical novels I’d read showed this as a weekly evolution, perhaps being done on Sunday after the service. The junior officers should look at everything they were responsible for every day, noting any problems and reporting to me or Jono any that they needed help with. Supposedly, our weekly inspection would only find already-known issues and already-repaired problems.

While we were looking at things we assigned each watch a particular section of the ship for maintenance. During their watch they could be working anywhere, every watch had topmen and deck sailors and rowers, but we told Eric that his Watch Section One was responsible for finding and repairing any problems on the deck and hull, as well as all gear in the ship’s waist and down in the hold. Granted, a lot of problems would be deferred until we were in port or pulled out at the yard. If we found a cracked main frame we weren’t going to expect Eric’s people to fix it underway. Just notice it, tell us, and keep an eye on it.

Peter’s Section Two had the main mast, its sails, and all its rigging, as well as the gear on the quarterdeck. Garry’s Section Three had the foremast, the bowsprit, all their sails and rigging, and the forecastle. We expected both of their Sections to fix most of the problems they found.

Stem to stern, both mastheads down to the bilge. Everything seemed acceptable, although we noted several areas of concern and some stays got tightened. One thing we discovered was that many of the crew considered the bilge a good place to do their business. The bilge smelled like urine and shit, and a quick check found several bilge-trout floating back and forth as the ship rolled in the waves. That led to an all-hands cleaning effort to ensure that our bilges never became the pig-sty that Dolphin’s had been.