Chapter 15: Rewards (June, 1860)

On the morning of June 2, Charles woke early, mostly due to the uncomfortable hammock to which he was no longer accustomed. Around him, men were sleeping on deck or in hammocks, and he took care to swing his legs out and onto the deck without making noises. He had slept in his shirt and trousers, and he only had to close the waistband and slip into his boots to be ready.

On the quarterdeck, the officer of the watch saluted him smartly to which he responded with a silent nod. He found a glass and scanned the city of Palermo for signs of unrest or fighting, and finding none, he sighed with relief. Obviously, the armistice was holding.

In the evening before, Don Ferdinando Lanza had agreed to a capitulation under honourable terms in Martin’s cabin, witnessed by Charles, Mr. Beaumont, and his own aide-de-camp. Lanza and his ADC had even accepted Martin’s dinner invitation, and had toasted the agreement with a seemingly satisfied smile whilst Mr. Beaumont’s smile was rather of the cynical sort.

The British agents had soon after headed for the shore to inform Mr. Garibaldi of the agreement, but Charles had returned to Colossus before an answer was returned. Arriving after dark and with the crew sleeping on their stations, Charles decided to keep the crews at quarters for the night and have a hammock slung for himself.

It was close to six bells in the morning watch — 7 a.m. landlubber time — and Charles decided that having a fire in the pantry would be a prerequisite for a decent breakfast. He therefore addressed a runner.

“My compliments to Captain Burlington, and will he join me on deck!”

Burlington, like Charles, had slept in his clothes, and appeared on deck only minutes later.

“Good morning, Captain! We reached an agreement with the Neapolitans yesterday, and they will surrender under terms. I believe we can all stand a hot breakfast.”

Burlington understood and smiled.

“Aye-aye, Sir Charles! Mr. Howard, call all hands! Let’s get this ship back to normal!”

Restoring the bulkheads and restoring the cabins to normalcy took a little longer than clearing the ship for action, but by seven bells, a fire had been built in the pantry and Winslow, with the help of the cook Angelo, was busy preparing Charles’s breakfast. Steaming coffee, the best available hardtack, and a selection of cold cuts made for a very satisfying meal, and Charles was pleasantly sated when he sat down at his desk to study the reports from his captains, something he had postponed during the last days.

He was about finished when a runner knocked at the cabin door.

“Sir Charles! Signal from flag: ‘Report to flagship!’”

“Very well! Have my barge readied! Winslow, my coat and hat!”

Not ten minutes later, the barge with Charles in the sternsheets was approaching the towering Marlborough. By now, he had practice climbing up her side, and he was received by the honour watch and led aft to Martin’s cabin.

Martin was at breakfast, likely having slept a bit longer than Charles.

“Morning, Sir Charles! Care for a bit of breakfast?”

“Good morning, Sir William. A coffee, please. I already broke my fast.”

“We just received a note from the shore. Lanza was not blowing smoke when he talked about reinforcements. There’s a sizeable force, at least ten thousand strong, that arrived at Palermo last night. Veteran troops, too, not the rabble he had at hand. If Lanza decides to ignore our agreement, Garibaldi will be lost.”

“Likely, Sir William,” Charles agreed.

“I want you to go ashore under truce and see Lanza. Tell him that I hold him to the agreement he signed yesterday, and any deviation will be treated as a breach, to which we shall respond forcefully.”

“I shall play the fire eater again, Sir William?”

“Yes. Do whatever it takes to make him honour the agreement!”

A half hour later, Charles’s barge was nearing the shore under a flag of truce. The boat hove to a cable length from the shore and waited until an officer appeared at the landing site, incidentally the same colonel who had come out to the Colossus to complain. Charles fortunately remembered the man’s name. The barge then closed the distance.

“Colonel Santangelo!” Charles greeted the man.

“Almiral Tolliver! What can I do for you?” Santangelo asked with a sneer.

“I have an urgent message for Don Ferdinando from Admiral Martin,” Charles answered curtly.

“I do not believe that Don Ferdinando can receive you, Almiral,” Santangelo replied.

Charles gave the man a smile. “Colonel, you had better lead me to your superior or you will be responsible for the consequences.”

“What consequences I ask, Almiral?”

With a shrug, Charles pointed at the ships. Colossus and Goliath were cleared for action, and their guns were run out, whilst the rest of the fleet were steaming closer to the shore, also evidently in a state of battle readiness.

“An hour from now, I shall have spoken to Don Ferdinando. If not, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies will suffer the loss of more than half of its navy. Another hour later, those two forts will be gone, too. Let us meet Don Ferdinando, shall we?”

Santangelo’s eyes almost bugged out in impotent rage and he had problems maintaining his calm. In the end, he took a deep breath.

“If you insist!” he hissed through his clenched teeth. Without a further word, he turned on his heel and walked towards the eastern harbour fortification, and Charles followed him silently.

They entered the fort through a small sally port, and then Charles followed his guide to a low building in the rear.

“Wait, please!” Santangelo said curtly before he entered the building that was guarded by two soldiers.

If Santangelo had been supercilious and brusk, General Lanza’s wrinkled face showed his unrest when Charles was led inside and into a comfortable office.

“Good morning, General!” Charles greeted the man with faux friendliness.

“Good morning, Admiral,” Lanza answered with some hesitation. “To what to we owe the honour of your visit?”

“It has come to Admiral Martin’s attention that you received reinforcements over night. Of course, Admiral Martin is convinced that you will adhere to yesterday’s agreement, but he wishes to know what, if any, consequences the arrival of your fresh troops will have.”

Charles was proud of this sentence. He did not imply in any way that they distrusted Lanza but would force the old general to put his cards on the table.

“You are indeed well informed, Admiral. We have now over ten thousand fresh troops, well trained and loyal troops, at our disposal. That changes the situation, don’t you agree.”

“That indeed changes the situation, but it does not change our agreement, General,” Charles returned. “After all, the word of a gentleman is immutable and not influenced by circumstance, is it?”

“However, the situation is reversed today, and you cannot expect me to...”

“Keep your word? Yes, I assure you that Admiral Martin expects that. A violation of the armistice and of the conditional surrender will be seen as an insult and belligerent act by Admiral Martin. You would not want to report the loss of ten ships of the Navy of the Two Sicilies to your King Francis, would you? You would not want to expose this ancient fortification to the fire of over 800 guns, would you? And lastly, you would not want certain details of our agreement to become public knowledge, would you?”

Lanza turned pale. “Mr. Beaumont promised confidentiality!”

“And you, General, agreed to an armistice and a conditional surrender. Breaking your word would free our side from any obligations, explicit or implied. Now, General, time is precious. What answer may I convey to Admiral Martin?”

Lanza looked at his shoes, he looked at the wall, he looked at his ADC, but no inspiration seemed to come forward. In the end he looked at Charles.

“I shall abide by the terms on which we agreed.”

Charles gave the man a measured nod. “Perfect! I predicted you would, and I am very pleased that my trust in you is rewarded. It only remains to have both belligerents meet under Admiral Martin’s mediation. He suggested his flagship, HMS Marlborough, which you already know. Perhaps you and Colonel Santangelo can be persuaded to meet Signore Garibaldi there? I am certain that we shall all profit from a speedy conclusion of this situation. Will two o’clock be convenient for you?”

Lanza nodded mutely.

“Thank you for seeing me then, General! Colonel, always a pleasure! I shall find my way back to the landing and leave you gentlemen to your planning.”

In the ensuing silence, Charles left the building and headed for the sally port where the sentry opened the gate for him. Ten minutes later, the barge was heading for Marlborough, which was now anchored two cable lengths from the shore, and another twenty minutes later, he had informed Martin and Beaumont of Lanza’s response. Two of Beaumont’s agents were dispatched to the city to find Garibaldi and to invite him to join the meeting at two o’clock, to discuss the modalities of the surrender and of the Neapolitans’ retreat towards Messina and then onwards to Calabria.

A week later, HMS Colossus and her sister ship HMS Goliath finally weighed anchor to return to Malta. Martin, with the main body of the fleet, had left Palermo three days earlier, escorting the ten Neapolitan men o’war to Naples, whilst Charles had watched over the final stages of Lanza’s retreat from the city. Now that those troops were gone, Garibaldi had declared himself Dictator of Sicily under the rule of King Victor Emmanuele. In the evening before their departure, Charles and his captains had been invited to a dinner in Garibaldi’s quarters, to celebrate the conquest and to drink to each other’s health and success. His host made it a point to thank Charles for his decisive stance against Lanza on two occasions and promised to acknowledge his role in the reports to the Piedmontese court.

For Charles, leaving Palermo mostly offered the promise of seeing his family again after almost four weeks, but he also made use of the two-day passage to have the ships’ crews drilled in every regard.

Therefore, when the two ships cast anchor in Grand Harbour in the early morning of June 13, Charles instructed the captains to grant shore leave to their crews as soon as feasible whilst he himself headed for the dockyard. With Captain Waters reporting that nothing required his immediate attention, Charles then headed for the Casa Leoni and his family.

As Alice was at school until afternoon, Charles received a rather stormy welcome from Suzanne and Paulina who barely gave him time enough to clean off the sweat from the coach ride in the forenoon sun before they claimed him, and for over two hours, the lovers sated each other’s pent-up desires.

Only then was he allowed to see his children, both over a year old and starting to walk on unsteady legs. He could see that he was unfamiliar to them, and he resolved to make up for his absence and to spend more time with them in the coming weeks.

Alice returned from school a little later, and Charles spent some time with her, telling her of his last weeks facing off against the Neapolitans. He explained things such as suppression and the wish of most people for freedom, and he told her about Mr. Garibaldi and his volunteers. Through all this, Alice listened intently, asking questions and even telling him of a newspaper article she had read, also describing the situation in Southern Italy. She was rapidly growing up, Charles mused, exposed as she was to newspapers, but also to the conversations in the house. She was only twelve, but she was going through a growth spurt, and Charles realised that the time with his granddaughter living in his household would not last forever.

Over the next days, Charles brought himself up to date regarding the work in the dockyard and the victualling yard. Waters was doing admirable work, but it was time now to fit the old Druid with iron plating. A delivery of wrought iron sheets had arrived from Liverpool, and the workmen were currently busy drilling holes into them for bolting them to the ship’s hull, but also to interconnect them. Since the old frigate still shipped her lower masts and yards, no sheer hulk was necessary to lift the iron sheets into place. For the gunnery tests, she would be anchored, requiring only a minimal crew in her. After discussing certain details of the work with Waters, Charles let his able captain deal with most matters.

He was also invited to the Grandmaster’s Palace, to give the governor a briefing about the situation in Sicily and the events around the capture of Palermo. Like Martin and Beaumont, Le Marchand warned him about the fickleness of the Foreign Office and the risk of being made the scapegoat for the whole affair if things did not play out as hoped.

At least, he received an answer to his request to add a steam shop to HM Valetta Dockyard. He was advised that a Mr. Watt would arrive in short time with several transport ships carrying the equipment needed, but also the necessary construction parts. That meant another task for poor Captain Waters, as the planned steam shop needed room close to the dockyard, and quarters for the engineers and workmen.

When, ten days later, Admiral Martin returned to port with the Fleet, Charles was ready to report not only about the conclusion of the Palermo campaign, but also about the progress at the dockyard converting Druid into a target ship. Martin let Charles read a copy of the report he would send to London, and Charles had to admit that his own contributions were more than fairly acknowledged.

Martin also invited all the captains and Charles to Admiralty House for a dinner to celebrate the successful conclusion of their intervention in Sicily. The invitation was extended to those wives and daughters who had accompanied their husbands and fathers to the Malta station, and Charles was of course asked to bring Paulina, too. In a smart move, Martin also invited the governor, seeing that he had a wife and three daughters along with him, providing female table partners for almost all officers.

The evening turned out to be pleasant. Captain Danby, Martin’s chief of staff, had secured Paulina as his table partner, but according to her, he was charming and not unduly forward. His wife and three daughters had stayed back in Plymouth, and his only son was receiving naval cadet training in the training ship Brittania, a former 120-gun three-decker, now moored in Portsmouth. Most of the time, he was talking about them and barely asked questions of Paulina, of which she was glad.

After dinner, the officers retired to a smoking room where cigars and brandies were served. Toasts were offered to their host, to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, to the Royal Navy, and to their Sardinian allies. Meanwhile, the ladies enjoyed sweet sherry and a generous helping of gossip. Since most of them were volunteers in the orphanage, the opportunity was also used to coordinate their activities.

For the carriage ride home in the darkness, they were escorted by four dragoons at the governor’s insistence. Charles deemed this unnecessary as relations between the British and the Maltese were generally friendly and brigandry was not a problem. In any case, they arrived at the Casa Leone without disturbance and retired to their bedroom in a merry mood. Slightly under the influence of the sherry they had consumed, Suzanne and Paulina were disinclined to let him sleep before another hour of amorous activity, but Charles did not feel like complaining about his fate.