a master and commander was an officer one rank below a full captain. He usually commanded a vessel smaller than a Royal Navy post ship, one that carried fewer than twenty guns. A post captain, however, was a full-grade officer entitled to command a post ship. He held a place on the navy list, which ranked and promoted officers by seniority; a master and commander did not.—Editor's note.
2Frank's words to Jane closely echo sentiments he first expressed a few days after Trafalgar in a letter to his then-fiancée, Mary Gibson, written from the Canopus while off Gibraltar. —Editor's note.
Chapter 2
Dr. Wharton's Comfort
23 February 1807,
cont.
~
PORTSMOUTH IS A SAD PLACE IN THE ESTIMATION OF those who look only for beauty in a landscape; it offers no grandeur in its edifices, no promenades worth speaking of, no sweep of land that might draw the approving eye. It is a town of tight and jogging lanes quite crammed into the east side of a horseshoe, whose western leg is Gosport; a small ell of a place enclosing a secure harbour, with the deep-water anchorage of Spit-head immediately across the Solent. The landward side of town is girdled with drawbridges and moats, the fortifications deemed vital to the preservation of the Kingdom's naval stores; but the effect must suggest a medieval fortress, it confirms the desperate activity of war and frowns upon frivolity. The commercial streets do nothing to soften so martial an aspect—Portsmouth's shops are schooled to the business of ships, the men who command them and the men who build them.
There are chandlers, and tailors adept at the fashioning of uniforms, and purveyors of all such items as are necessary to a sailor's trunk—cocked hats, round hats for everyday wear, preserved meat and portable soup, Epsom salts and James's powders, nankeen and kerseymere waistcoats, black silk handkerchiefs, combs and clothes-brushes, tooth-powder, quadrants, day-glasses, log-books, Robinson's Elements of Navigation and The Requisite Tables and Nautical Almanac. Portsmouth may boast a few butchers and grocers, but they cannot look very high in their custom, the pay of the naval set running only to modest joints, and such comestibles as are cheaply in season.
Four coaching inns serve the well-heeled traveller come south for embarkation: the Crown, the Navy Tavern, the Fountain, and, of course, the George. I do not believe there is a town in England that cannot claim a George. It was to this latter that my brother intended to repair, to procure us both a light nuncheon before seeking the home of Captain Thomas Seagrave. I thought it likely that Frank did not wish to put the Captain—or his wife, did Seagrave possess one—to the trouble of feeding those who came to condole.
“There is the Stella Maris” Frank said quietly as we were rowed into the quay. “Cast your eyes upon that, Jane. Everything prime about her.”
I gazed in silent absorption at the single-decker's closed gun ports, her soaring triple masts. I knew nothing of the subtleties of ship design; I should have to accept Frank's assurances regarding this one. But the ship was certainly an article of spirit, rocking gently at her moorings like a swan come to rest: sails close-furled in the shrouds, quarterdeck bereft of life. Only a handful of men moved purposefully about her. The rest of her crew would be on shore leave.
“You can see where the foremast has been shipped and repaired,” Frank observed. “Splinters dashed from the poop railing and tops, as well—it is a French habit, you know, to train their guns on the masts and rigging, rather than the hull as we should do. I should like to see the damage the Manon took! She must be moored somewhere near about; the Stella will have towed her into port—but such trifles as this trim little frigate sustained, would never leave Seagrave dead in the water.”
He halted abruptly in this speech, as though his words risked an ominous construction; and we spoke no more of the unlucky action, nor of the trim little frigate, until the George was gained and our nuncheon consumed.
AS THIS WAS MY FIRST VISIT TO PORTSMOUTH, FRANK was all enthusiasm in conducting me through the streets once we quitted the George. He had first come to the town as a boy of twelve, a hopeful scholar at the Royal Naval Academy; he had returned some part of every year thereafter, and must regard it as almost a home. He was longing, I knew, to gain the naval dockyard in order to observe