Gunboat and the Last Slaver
an excerpt

Paul Baynard had composed the letter at least a dozen times when, just above his head, six bells in the afternoon watch sounded. Startled by what appeared to be an exceptionally rapid passage of time, Baynard pulled out his fine Swiss watch to check. A rather sly smile crept over his face: Mr. Parslow, the officer of the watch, was fast in his timekeeping by more than seven minutes. It would be quite pleasant to see the tortured expression on his first lieutenant’s face as he casually revealed the minor mistake in front of the crew. Baynard knew that Parslow cared uncommonly much what the men thought of him and how he dwelt over every misstep, no matter how inconsequential or mundane.
The last bell faded away into the sounds of men working on deck. The crew of Her Majesty’s gunboat Avocet had been turned out for more than six hours now, struggling to convert their tiny vessel from a floating winter shelter and back into a man-of-war. Baynard cast aside his pen and wadded up the paper he had been writing. A small measure of satisfaction was gained by hurling the ball at a particularly contented-looking cockroach, which scurried into a crack in the bulkhead at this literary assault. Baynard jury-rigged the letter to plug up the hole, vowing once again to return and caulk the gap. Not that it would really matter: the timbers of old Avocet were so thoroughly infested that sealing off his entire cabin would only delay the pests in returning.
Dusting off his uniform as he stood, bent at the waist, Baynard took one last survey of the cabin to make sure that everything was indeed in order, then squeezed his broad shoulders through the hatch and ascended onto the deck. The blinding light of a spring afternoon made him sneeze. Three sycophantic sailors shouted “God bless you, sir!” which directly preceded a most unhealthy-sounding creak and two screams: one, of terror, from over the side and one, of anger, from Ruadh the boatswain.
“Keep the slack off that line, ma ‘s e do thoil e, damn your eyes!” Ruadh cried, running up and down the line of sailors and continuing a prodigious stream of curses and blasphemies in a combination of English and Gaelic.
“Slàinte, chief, slàinte,” called back some impertinent hand, grossly manhandling a phrase the crew had learned when they got Ruadh drunk ashore nearly five months ago. There was laughter all down the line of men straining at the line; this much physical activity after a winter of constant tedium was rejuvenating for body and spirit, even in the crisp air of early spring on the Great Lakes.
It was not difficult, however, to see why Ruadh was so concerned. Hovering overboard, just about level with the deck, was one of Avocet’s two 68-pounder guns. The gun was hanging from a rather arcane-looking series of lines and pulleys attached to a spar that had been specially rigged up on the foremast; it was the only piece of lumber attached to any of Avocet’s three masts. A quick glance over the side confirmed that the midships gun had already been secured to a barge waiting alongside the ship. This success had apparently engendered little confidence among the Canadian bargemen as to the competence of Avocet’s crew; it was one of them who had screamed when it seemed that the gun was going to be dropped directly on top of them. It would be a hellish choice if something were to go wrong: either stay on the barge and be crushed, or jump over the side into the freezing water of Toronto harbor.
“Handsomely, boys, handsomely,” said Baynard. The proceedings were so distracting that he almost forgot why he had come up on deck -- almost. Parslow was standing just aft of the work, calmly conversing with Lovesey the engineer. Both seemed either oblivious to or inconsiderate of their captain’s appearance on deck.
“I do not see, sir, how you can argue this point in the face of my superior technical education,” said Lovesey.
“And I say damned be to your education, man, if you can so lightly discount my twenty years at sea!” said Parslow, gesturing over the rail authoritatively. Since the Avocet fitted out two years back, Parslow and Lovesey had spent most of their time bickering.
They were both Berkshire men, Baynard was given to understand, and some dispute over the change of county town from Abingdon to Reading set them at odds. That particular debate -- and Baynard had never bothered to learn the details of the entire affair -- had since subsided, but the rivalry had not. The two men were given to making ludicrously wild wagers, from a few pence to ten pounds against their future pay, on any situation which presented itself. Baynard’s tally was by no means authoritative, especially as both men seemed to forget the debt almost as soon as it was incurred, but he made the current balance as some eighty-seven pounds in Lovesey’s favor.
The only reason Baynard so closely followed the wagers was due to his role, as the Avocet’s captain, being the ‘neutral arbitrator’ for which Parslow was constantly calling. It wore on his at times, but right now it would be quite worth the double opportunity to sit Parslow back in his place.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said while Lovesey was pointing a finger about and talking rapidly about complex formulae. Both seemed rather shocked by Baynard’s sudden appearance, having been quite absorbed in their own conversation.
“Am I glad to see you, captain!” cried Parslow. “Lovesey here was just telling me that, never mind my own two eyes, but old Avocet would soon be drawing less than eight feet of water with the guns disembarked.”
“You disagree with this thesis, Mr. Parslow?” asked Baynard.
“Indeed I do, sir, begging your pardon. I’ve been in the Queen’s service near my entire life now and I know full well that there’s no way we’ll get a sixty to that draft. I’ve been on my share of expeditions to mangrove swamps on the West African patrol; I know how shallow one of these boats can be made.”
“And I’ve been over Mr. Timbrell’s numbers time and time again,” said Lovesey. “I’ve run them myself. Without those guns -- they’re ninety-five hundredweight each, for God’s sake! -- and taking the temperature of the water at this time of year into account, I tell you that we shall be less than eight feet deep.”
The mere mention of Timbrell’s name was enough to make Baynard want to side against Lovesey in this particular argument. The rotund little man, while pleasant enough by himself, reminded Baynard too much of the enormous forces which were accumulating to force his withdrawal from the Great Lakes. Just a few years before, when the Fenian threat was very real to the British government, Avocet and her sister ships were dispatched to Canada to help hold the border. Very fortunately for Paul Baynard, by the time Avocet arrived on scene, the Battle of Ridgeway had been fought and the Fenians dragged back to New York by USS Michigan. Thus unencumbered by any serious work, Baynard had been free to enjoy Toronto’s social scene and spent a most enjoyable winter there with his ship frozen in the harbor.
The next summer had been a series of communications with the Admiralty, moving at a fortuitous snail’s pace, of a highly technical nature with Baynard claiming that the ice damage to Avocet was too great to allow her passage back through the canals to take her new station in the West Indies. Baynard loathed nothing more than he did the tropics -- great heat-ridden, native-infested fever sinkholes, to use his usual language -- and was hoping that, if he delayed long enough, the need might never arise for Avocet to make for Bermuda.
There was a darker part to Baynard’s particular aversion to the West Indies, and one which his men and polite company never discussed: four years ago, Baynard had served during the Morant Bay rebellion under Lieutenant Brand of HMS Nettle. Although he had not been directly involved in the operations ashore nor in the kangaroo courts martial presided over by his commanding officer, nonetheless Baynard worried that his name was well-known in Jamaica and that, were he to once again set foot on that island, he would be begging for a bullet in the back.
None of this took away from the fact, however, that changing political forces around him meant that Avocet’s stay in Toronto would soon be cut short far before Baynard anticipated. He had been sure that he would be able to play the Admiralty for at least another few months -- long enough to ensure that he would be frozen in again, hopefully -- and yet the order which had arrived was completely unambiguous. The Dominion of Canada was now technically its own country and it had been receiving some fairly clear notes from its large southern neighbor. The Yankees wanted the treaties disarming shipping on the Great Lakes respected, and Prime Minister Macdonald had agreed completely.
Apparently, he had a few strings to pull with the British government because it was not long at all before Sir John Young, the new Governor General, summoned Baynard and told him in no uncertain terms to vacate immediately. Sir John had heard all of Baynard’s protests about the unready state of his ship and dismissed them out of hand. Even the contention that Avocet’s draft was too deep, because of the damage from the ice, to allow her to pass through the canals had been solved; Sir John had produced Mr. Timbrell, a a puffy little man who explained in excruciating detail how unloading Avocet’s two 68-pound guns would lighten the gunboat just enough to slip past the canals and back to Montreal.
Fortunately for the pursuit of justice, Baynard was able to swallow his great distaste for Timbrell and all he stood for to objectively consider the question posed to him by Lovesey and Parslow: would Avocet’s draft be less than eight feet? He considered it for a few moments, secretly enjoying the way Parslow was rocking on his heels awaiting the judgment fiat on a matter of mathematics from his commander.
“I should think,” said Baynard at last, “that considering we were able to move into the Lakes in the first place, it ought to be a matter of simple deduction that, at one point, we were drawing less than eight feet of water. It would therefore be simple to conclude that such a feat, once performed, would be simple to repeat ten tons lighter.”
Lovesey smiled with the joy of a vindicated man, quietly reminding Parslow of the fifteen pounds they had riding on the captain’s decision.
“I should think that you would not have let so much money ride on your mathematical abilities, Mr Parslow,” said Baynard offhand. “After all, you were more than five minutes early ringing six bells.”
Parslow opened his mouth once or twice, his shame quite obviously flaring underneath his cheeks. Baynard kept his face as neutral as possible and congratulated himself and Fortune on a job well done. A loud cheer from the men distracted him before he could celebrate his victory too much further.
Glancing over at the work, Baynard saw that the men had successfully lowered the second gun into place on the barge, where the Canadian boatsmen were busy strapping it into place. Avocet herself would be able to tow the barge, moving under steam, through the canals. If he had not been so furious at being forced to leave Toronto, Baynard might actually have felt a sense of accomplishment in the athletic feat. As it was, he merely wondered what exactly he would put in that letter to Elizabeth that he had not even started to write.