Old Glory Read online

  OLD GLORY

  CHRISTOPHER NICOLE

  © Christopher Nicole 2015

  Christopher Nicole has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1986 by Severn House.

  This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1 – Ireland 1769

  CHAPTER 2 – The Atlantic 1769

  CHAPTER 3 – New York and the West Indies, 1769

  CHAPTER 4 – The Caribbean and New York 1769

  CHAPTER 5 – The Caribbean and New York 1770-75

  CHAPTER 6 – New York 1775

  CHAPTER 7 – New York, Philadelphia and the Bahamas, 1775-76

  CHAPTER 8 – Bahamas, New York and France, 1776-77

  CHAPTER 9 – England and France, 1777-78

  CHAPTER 10 – France, Ireland, and England, 1778-79

  CHAPTER 11 – France and Ireland, 1779

  CHAPTER 12 – Ireland and the North Sea, 1779

  CHAPTER 13 – France and England, 1779

  CHAPTER 14 – The United States and Chesapeake Bay, 1780-81

  CHAPTER 15 – Paris and London, 1783

  CHAPTER 1 – Ireland 1769

  ‘Breakers fine on the starboard bow,’ said Brian O’More. ‘That’s Saltee, that is.’

  His keen eyes peered through the gloom of the spring night; above, the stars were bright, but down on the surface of the sea there was nothing but darkness interspersed with the surge of white spray away from the bows of the sloop, the glimmer of the straining canvas above his head. And, as he had been the first to see, the ripple of white ahead which marked the surf surrounding the nearest little island.

  ‘Helm’s up,’ remarked Roderick Calhoun, the master. ‘We’ll pass them to the south. Free those sheets.’

  A big figure moved forward to release the ropes holding the foresail tight, and the sail began to billow as the sloop fell away from the wind.

  ‘Enough, Harry, enough,’ Calhoun called.

  The sails were pulling now, with about the force of four galloping horses, but Harry McGann checked the sheets with a single flexing of his shoulder muscles, and made the rope fast to one of the wooden cleats that marked the deck.

  ‘And there’s the revenue,’ said Tom Pollock, the fourth member of the crew. ‘Damnation to them.’

  Heads turned as the white sails of the revenue cutter became visible; she was just rounding the Saltee Islands which lay off the south eastern corner of Ireland, and standing towards them.

  ‘Bastards,’ O’More commented.

  ‘We knew she was around, somewheres,’ Calhoun said, staring at the approaching vessel. She was upwind of them, and therefore at this moment both faster and more manoeuvreable; they were in fact in a difficult situation. ‘Harden those sheets again, Harry.’

  ‘You’re not going up to her?’ O’More gasped.

  ‘’Tis the only way we’ll survive the night, Brian, me boy,’ Calhoun said. ‘She has the weather gauge. We’ll have to surprise her, and the devil to her gun.’

  He was already pushing the tiller away from him, and the Bonaventure sloop was swinging back into the wind, starting to lie over, her leeward gunwales submerged in racing water as she gathered speed, while on the foredeck Harry McGann gathered the sheets hand over hand and Calhoun smiled his appreciation. The year was 1769, and all seafaring Britain lay heavy beneath the rule of the customs revenue, regarded by the government as its prime instrument in repairing the ravages of the recent war with France, which had earned Great Britain an immense colonial empire, but had strained the finances of the island kingdom to the utmost. But if England was itself being made to bear a share of the cost of importing French wines and perfumes, that was nothing to the burden imposed upon the colonies and dependencies, of which Ireland was regarded as one of the most recalcitrant. Not that the Irish complained. Let the English send an entire fleet of revenue cutters to sea, they would still find a way past them or, in this case, through them, to drink their fill and keep their gentlewomen smelling sweet.

  Whatever the risks involved. But when it came to risks, no skipper could feel more secure than with a Harry McGann on the foredeck. Calhoun watched the huge arms gathering in the ropes hardening the sheets until the sails were almost in a line with the hull of the ship, and the wind was squeezing her out as fast as an orange pip when expelled between thumb and forefinger. Harry McGann was not only six feet four inches tall, he was truly as strong as the proverbial ox. And he knew the sea. As did his entire family. It was McGann money which had financed this ship, and would continue to do so, and it would be the McGann family waiting to distribute the goods when Tramore was reached.

  If Tramore was going to be reached. Taken aback by the suddenness of the sloop’s manoeuvre in turning towards her, the revenue cutter yet reacted quickly enough, and from the foredeck there came a belch of flame. It could hardly be more than a two pounder cannon, yet one of those balls, striking between wind and water, would send the Bonaventure to the bottom. This one splashed harmlessly into the sea a hundred yards away, but the fact that the cutter had opened fire without the customary summons to heave to proved that the coastguard had no doubt at all of the identity of the ship they were seeking to arrest, or of the cargo she would be carrying.

  ‘Aft,’ bawled Calhoun, as the strain on the tiller became too much for one man.

  Both O’More and Pollock moved towards the stem, and checked as Harry McGann went past them. He grasped the tiller and Calhoun gratefully relinquished it. The Bonaventure was now steering straight at the cutter, and the coastguard men were losing control. Almost the Irishmen could hear the skipper shouting, ‘Luff, luff,’ as he commanded his men to turn their ship up into the wind rather than risk a collision. Now the Irishmen could see the gun crew on the foredeck hastily ramming another shot home, while spray flew and the deck heaved.

  ‘Hold her, Harry, hold her,’ Calhoun begged.

  As if there was the slightest chance of Harry McGann not holding her. The boy’s — he was only nineteen years old — face broke into a grin, and then a tremendous bellow of laughter. Happiness for Harry McGann was helming a trim ship in a brisk breeze with a spice of danger in the offing. There were only fifty yards separating the two ships now, and someone on the cutter’s stern fired a pistol. Harry’s laughter grew, and his mates also uttered derisory bellows as the Bonaventure raced by, while the revenue ship still tried to come about and rolled helplessly on the waves, her gun pointed away from her adversary.

  ‘You’ll remember the reef,’ Brian O’More said, quietly.

  Harry looked over his shoulder; the cutter had now managed to turn, and if she could not point up to the wind as close as the sloop, she would yet cut them off if they steered back to the south west to avoid closing the islands. The only other way would be to go between the islands and the mainland; there was plenty of water and a wide channel, providing one remembered where the rocks were. But that would mean heading east for a few minutes, to clear the reef.

  ‘Ready about,’ he said, and looked at Calhoun as he spoke. But the skipper was content; the sea was in Harry McGann’s blood, and if any man alive could beat past the islands this close to, Harry was that man.

  ‘Ready,’ Pollock called from the foredeck.

  ‘Lee-oh,’ Harry replied, and pushed the tiller right down to the lee rail. The sloop’s bows swung up even more, and then pointed directly into the wind; the sails flapped. But she was still turning.

  ‘Fetch in those sheets,’ Calhoun commanded. O’More and Pollock strained, and the Bonaventure fell away on the port tack, gaining speed once more, virtually heading back the way she had come, while Harry moved r
ound the tiller to take his position against the upper gunwale, holding the bar of wood amidships now.

  From behind them came the explosion of a second cannon shot, but this ball was even more wide of the mark.

  ‘They’re following,’ O’More said.

  Harry grinned. The revenue ship really had no choice; the sloop might indeed be meaning to run all the way back to France. While once they got north of the islands …

  ‘Close,’ Pollock commented. ‘Close.’

  They could see the bulk of the land looking through the darkness now, and the flurries of surf surrounding the rocks which thrust up through the sea only fifty yards to port. Harry gave another glance over his shoulder. The cutter had dropped half a mile behind them during her attempt to come about, and was in addition steering even further to the east; again she could not point as close, but her master was also not prepared to risk sailing too near to the reef.

  ‘Ten minutes, I reckon, Harry me boy,’ Calhoun said, watching the rocks. There was deep water only a mile away, and beyond, they could see the lights of Waterford, glimmering faintly.

  ‘Ready about,’ Harry called, and put the helm down. The Bonaventure once again swung through the eye of the wind to take up the starboard tack, heading west at last; the sheets were freed, the sails billowed to the breeze, while the Saltee Islands surged by to the south, and the revenue cutter fired one last round, a feeble gesture of angry frustration. The gap was now more than a mile, and widening every minute.

  Calhoun came aft and slapped Harry on the shoulder. ‘Crucified them again,’ he shouted. ‘They’ve no answer, while Tramore stays true.’

  *

  And how could Tramore not stay true? The little village clung to its tiny bay, protected from the Atlantic by a rough stone breakwater. The Saltee Islands were twenty miles astern by now, and the revenue cutter long since out of sight. Yet there was still reason for haste. Brian O’More hung two lanterns, one above the other, on the forward shrouds as the Bonaventure came round the headland, and there was an almost immediate response from the shore. By the time the sloop, sails handed and neatly furled, ghosted up to her mooring in the centre of the bay she was surrounded by half a dozen small boats, manned by women as well as men and, late as it was, even by boys and girls, eager to help.

  ‘Any trouble?’ asked Seamus McGann. He was not as big a man as his son, but only just.

  ‘There’s a revenue cutter a few miles back, Pa. But we gave her the slip at Saltee,’ Harry explained.

  ‘Aye, there’s the place.’

  ‘But she knew us. I’m certain of that,’ Calhoun said.

  ‘Then she’ll be here in an hour. Haste, lads, haste. Let’s have that stuff ashore.’

  The casks of wine and the boxes of perfume were passed over the side, the oars dipped, and the dinghies plied to and from the beach, where the mothers and sisters of their crews were waiting to manhandle the goods ashore. When the Bonaventure came to port, all Tramore shared in the good news, as all Tramore would share in the profit. While when the last of the smuggled goods had left the hold, there was another boat waiting with a cargo of fresh caught fish, to be tipped on board, smothering all the pleasant smells that clung to the timbers, leaving no stranger in any doubt that the sloop had just returned from a fishing expedition and, with true Irish insouciance, had not been bothered to unload its catch that night.

  Harry splashed through the shallows and swept his mother from her feet in a bear hug, pulling off his woollen cap as he did so; immediately it was taken from his fingers by the teeth of the huge wolf-hound which had waited as patiently as everyone else, but now revealed its pleasure at the return of its master in a throaty growl which would have terrified a stranger.

  ‘Safe home,’ Sally McGann said. ‘I lit a candle.’

  She always did, and Harry was grateful for it. He hugged his sister in turn, shook hands with his two brothers and Father O’More, Brian’s uncle, and with everyone else who was standing by, while his eyes searched the crowds. Bridget, Brian’s sister, was a shy girl, at least in public. But there she was, waiting at the back of the throng, fingers twined in her apron to hold her skirt down against the breeze.

  Harry shouldered his way towards her, the hound, still carrying the cap in its mouth, padding behind him, lifted her in his arms as he had done the other women, but with more caution. Often he feared to touch her, because she was so small and dainty a careless gesture on his part, he had no doubt, would crack her ribs. Now she threw both her arms round his neck to hold herself on his chest, while her long, dark hair swirled around his face, and her tiny, mischievous features twisted with a mixture of delight and relieved concern. ‘Oh, Harry,’ she said. ‘Oh, Harry.’

  ‘It was just another voyage,’ he reminded her, continuing to walk up the beach towards the road, still carrying her, and ignoring the good-natured ribaldry to either side.

  ‘But there’s talk the revenue men were waiting for you …’

  ‘Aye, well, they seem to be working out where we come from and where we’re going all right. They’re not that stupid after all. But we gave them the slip.’

  ‘And the next time?’

  He grinned down into her face. ‘We’ll give them the slip the next time as well, Biddy, my darling.’

  There were houses now between them and the activity on the beach. That activity would continue most of the night, but not for the crew of the Bonaventure; they had completed their work. And in the activity, neither he nor Biddy were likely to be missed. She put up her face to be kissed, while he lodged his fingers round her buttocks to raise her higher yet. She squirmed against him, and their tongues touched, while he continued to walk down the lane which led to the paddock behind his father’s inn. The stable was there, and thick piles of clean straw. He was near exhaustion, but he would sleep better with Bridget O’More in his arms.

  Just in his arms. He did not doubt that everyone in Tramore, including Brian and his parents, would know they had taken themselves off somewhere private, but no one was going to criticise or interfere. The O’Mores would not even have warned Bridget to bundle, or encase herself from the waist down in a tightly tied sack or pillowcase, as was the country custom when an unmarried girl was entertaining her swain in private. They knew that no matter how many hours she spent alone with her swain, Bridget would go to the altar a virgin, because she and Harry McGann had been betrothed since puberty, and Harry McGann was to be trusted. Tramore people believed in each other, and above all they believed in Harry McGann.

  He pushed the stable door open with his foot, moving with the utmost certainty through the darkness. The mare gave a soft whinny, but it was more of pleasure than alarm; she knew the identity of the intruders. The hound lay down in the doorway with a huge sigh of pleasure; its master was home for the night.

  ‘Softly, girl,’ Harry told the mare, and dropped to his knees on the straw, Bridget slowly reclining on her back before him.

  ‘I worry so,’ she confessed, her mind still on the cutter.

  He lay beside her, kissed her mouth and eyes and nose, stroked his hand gently across her bodice and released the ties to touch the wind-hardened nipples and feel her shiver. ‘They’ll never catch Harry McGann,’ he promised her. ‘Or Brian O’More, either.’

  He felt her hands unfastening his breeches. This was not only what she wanted, but it was safest, too. And it was what he wanted as well. If he looked forward to full possession, soon indeed, as the wedding was set for the following September, when Bridget would be seventeen, it was still a continuing delight to know a woman so well, and have her know him, equally. They would go to their marriage bed as the most intimate of lovers, with only the ultimate joy of thrust and entry to be experienced. That and the nakedness of her. Harry had never seen a naked woman. Even the French whore Calhoun had introduced him to in Nantes had not seen fit to remove all of her clothing. He anticipated the nakedness of Bridget more even than the possession of her. But that too would be shared without a ca
re or an inhibition, he knew. Because that was Harry McGann’s world, his assured place as the darling of all Tramore.

  He had never truly known another world, even if, on his very brief visits to the French channel ports to load cargo, he caught sights of the world that was there, lurking beyond the sunlight of his own personality, his own pride of place in the community of Tramore.

  ‘Salt,’ she said. ‘You’re all salty.’

  ‘So go easy.’ As if she did not have the most gentle fingers in the world. Saltee, he thought, and wondered where the revenue cutter was now, and knew, an hour later, when he was awakened by the noise down at the shore.

  Bridget was also awake. ‘They’re here,’ she whispered.

  ‘Slipping around in dead fish. There’s naught they can do, save they catch us in possession, and they’ll not do that,’ he assured her. ‘Go back to sleep.’

  The cutter was gone by morning, and Tramore basked in its usual sleepy fashion in the sunlight — or appeared to do so. Harry bathed beneath the pump in the yard behind the inn, Bridget having returned home before sunrise, and listened to the bustle coming from the cellars, where the goods were being divided up, while Boru the hound panted and watched him with loving eyes.

  ‘You’ll put on your best coat and be up to the Manor,’ Seamus McGann said.

  Harry nodded.

  ‘Give him these three bottles, and that perfume for his lady,’ Seamus went on. ‘And tell him there’s some cases of that claret waiting, if he’s in the mind for it. The price will be the same as last time.’

  ‘That I will.’ Harry pulled on his breeches, went upstairs for his good shirt, with its ruffled sleeves. He had no cravat, but tied a large kerchief loosely round his throat, then put on his blue broadcloth coat with its imitation cloth of silver hemming and epaulettes, smoothed his curly black hair as best he could, placed his coat-matching dark blue tricorne with its also imitation silver beading squarely on his head.