Guns to the Far East Read online

  “Are you seeking passage to the Shannon, sir?” he enquired.

  Phillip returned his salute. “Yes,” he answered, “I am. But … you have the advantage of me, I’m afraid. Your name is … ?”

  “Edward Daniels, sir.” The boy smiled. “I don’t suppose you’ll remember but we rode up to the Naval Brigade camp from Balaclava together a few days before the battle. And we met Lord Cardigan on his way back to his yacht for dinner— he was somewhat scathing about sailors on horseback and the quality of our mounts. I remember that because it rankled rather—I was proud of my pony. I’d just paid a fiver for it.”

  The young mid on the white pony, Phillip recalled, who had talked of his fears and hopes, his opinion of the Army and then, in a burst of frankness, had admitted that he doubted his ability to live up to the high standard of courage and leadership set by his present Captain, William Peel, to whom he had then just been appointed as aide-de-camp. The overimaginative fourteen-year-old who had confessed, almost apologetically, that he hated to see men killed in battle but who—when the real test came during the abortive June assault on the Redan—had saved Peel’s life under fire and been awarded the Victoria Cross for his gallantry. Edward St John Daniels had filled out and added several inches to his height but the same intelligent blue eyes met his and Phillip echoed the midshipman’s smile and held out his hand, genuinely pleased to see him again.

  “Good Lord—I hardly recognised you! But I remember you very well, Mr Daniels … and the illuminating conversation we had on our way to Kadikoi when, if my memory isn’t at fault, we agreed that our Service was vastly superior to the Army. You had strong views on the subject—sparked off, I fancy by Lord Cardigan’s appearance. You asked me, I think, how His Lordship could command a brigade of cavalry from a yacht.”

  Daniels reddened. “I expressed my opinions rather too freely, sir. I was a bit damp behind the ears in those days and didn’t know when to shut up. All the same”—his smile returned—“I still don’t see how ‘The Noble Yachtsman’—that’s what we used to call Lord Cardigan—managed to get away with it. He wouldn’t have, in the Navy, would he, sir? I mean, sir, Captain Peel and Admiral Lushington could have lived aboard the Diamond in Balaclava Harbour if they’d had Cardigan’s mentality but they didn’t, of course—they roughed it in camp with the rest of us. And so did Commodore Keppel, when he took over command of the Naval Brigade.”

  “True,” Phillip agreed. He nodded in the direction of the waiting boat. “Who have you come to collect, Mr Daniels?”

  “Our First Lieutenant, Mr Vaughan, sir, and some of our other officers. Lord Elgin invited them to take luncheon with him on shore. We gave His Excellency passage from Singapore, as you probably know, and it was, well, a sort of return of hospitality. Captain Peel was invited also but he had to call on the Commander-in-Chief.”

  “Then he’s not on board? I was hoping to see him.”

  “Oh, you will, sir,” Edward Daniels asserted. “I saw his gig leave the Calcutta ten minutes ago.” He consulted his pocket watch. “Our fellows shouldn’t be long now and I’m sure the Captain will be delighted to see you, sir.” He hesitated and then gestured to Phillip’s heavily bandaged arm. “Excuse my asking, Commander Hazard but—did you get that in the Fatshan boat action?”

  “After it, to be strictly accurate,” Phillip admitted. He explained the circumstances and saw the midshipman’s eyes widen in astonishment. “Good heavens! I never imagined anything like that happening. What a rum business and awfully bad luck—for you, I mean, sir. And to think we were kicking ourselves for missing Fatshan! There’s nothing much going on up river now, I believe.”

  “Not a great deal, they tell me, no.”

  “We aren’t likely to get there in any case,” Daniels said. “There’s a rumour that we and possibly the Pearl will be ordered to Calcutta but—” He broke off, as half a dozen rickshaws came to a halt on the quay, to decant the same number of immaculately uniformed officers from their curtained interiors. “Here are our fellows at last, sir. I’ll inform the First Lieutenant that you’re here.” He performed the introductions punctiliously. “Lieutenant Vaughan, sir—Commander Hazard, late of the Raleigh, sir. Lieutenant Salmon—Lieutenant Lind of the Swedish Navy, sir, on attached service. Our Surgeon, Dr Flanagan. And Mr Garvey and Lord Arthur Clinton, messmates of mine.”

  Vaughan was a tall, thin man of about his own age, Phillip observed, who gave him a firm and friendly handshake. Salmon was younger, fit and athletic, the Swedish officer a blond young giant with a humorous quirk to his mouth, and the surgeon—just as typical of his race as the Swede—the oldest of the six. Of the two midshipmen, Garvey was dark and well built, Clinton fair and frail, with almost effeminate good looks—a younger son, as Phillip later learnt, of no less a personage than the Duke of Newcastle.

  They boarded the boat—Vaughan giving him precedence— the bowman cast off, and the crew gave way smartly together. During the ten-minute pull to the Shannon’s anchorage, Lieutenant Vaughan questioned him minutely as to the present situation in the Canton River and the effect and nature of the recent actions there. Phillip did his best to answer the stream of questions, aware that the others were listening with equal interest and—on the part of Salmon and Lind—undisguised envy. Both had apparently served in the Baltic Fleet throughout the Russian War, where opportunities for action had been fewer and less glorious than in the Crimean theatre and Black Sea, and both looked frankly disappointed when Phillip repeated the gist of what his host of the previous evening had told him.

  “Then it looks as if we shall be ordered to Calcutta,” Salmon said resignedly. “Not that it’s likely to be any more exciting for us than this place. We’ll be stuck in the Hoogly, I expect, defending Calcutta with the mere threat of our guns! We probably shan’t even get ashore.”

  “You think there really is a chance of your being sent to India?” Phillip asked Vaughan.

  The First Lieutenant shrugged. “If there isn’t going to be anything doing here for the next month or two, then it’s certainly on the cards. Lord Elgin said at luncheon today that he’s seriously considering the advisability of going there, in order to confer with Lord Canning and to see for himself how bad the situation is. From all accounts, it’s pretty bad … and it could get a great deal worse. If His Excellency does decide to go, we shall take him.”

  They were approaching the Shannon now and Phillip studied her with appreciative eyes as her First Lieutenant proudly listed her virtues. She had been built only two years previously, as the first of a new and very powerful class of steamscrew frigates, designed to obtain great speed under either steam or sail and to carry very heavy armament. Of 600 horsepower and 2,667 tons, she carried 51 guns, Lieutenant Vaughan stated—twenty 56 cwt. 32-pounders on the upper deck, one 95 cwt. 68-pounder on the forecastle, and thirty 65 cwt. 8-inch guns on the main deck.

  “We’ve had twelve knots with the screw, Commander Hazard. And after we left Simon’s Bay, in a strong nor’-westerly gale, under double reefed tops’ls, courses, and reefed foretopmast stuns’ls, she averaged between fourteen and fifteen knots. During one squall, when the log was hove, she was going at 15.8. Not bad, eh?”

  “Not bad at all,” Phillip agreed. He thought nostalgically of the beautiful Raleigh, without steam-power, one of the last of her kind. Commodore Keppel had brought her out of Portsmouth Harbour under studding-sails, scorning the assistance of the tugs standing by to take her in tow, and she had made a record passage from South America to the Cape, averaging 275 miles a day for six days under sail alone. But now … He sighed and said nothing and, as Midshipman Daniels brought his boat alongside the Shannon’s accommodation ladder, Lieutenant Vaughan asked courteously, “Is yours a social call, sir, or do you wish to see the Captain?”

  “My call is on the Captain but he’s not expecting me, Mr Vaughan, so perhaps you’ll be so good as to ascertain if it is convenient to receive me.”

  “I’m sure it will be, sir. But I’ll a
scertain of course. You knew him in the Crimea, didn’t you?”

  Phillip nodded. The First Lieutenant escorted him to the Captain’s day cabin, knocked on the door and, being given permission to enter, opened the cabin door and announced him by name. “Go in, sir,” he invited. “Captain Peel says he’ll be delighted to see you … Commander Hazard, sir, of the Raleigh.”

  “Late of the Raleigh, to my sorrow, is it not, Phillip?” William Peel rose and came to meet him, his hand outstretched, He had changed little since Phillip had last seen him. At thirty, Peel had been the youngest Post-Captain in the Navy, with a brilliant record, which service with the Naval Brigade in the Crimea had enhanced. Now, at thirty-three, he still looked as youthful as he always had, a smile of singular warmth lighting his pale and rather austere face, as he ushered his guest to a chair and went to pour drinks for them both.

  He was of no more than medium height, slightly built and cleanshaven, his brown hair—worn a trifle longer than current fashion decreed—luxuriant and curling, despite the severity with which it was dressed. He had, Phillip thought, many of the qualities which distinguished Commodore Keppel— breeding, personal courage, and a fine brain, coupled with exceptional powers of leadership. Like Keppel, he was immensely popular with the officers and men he commanded, and his meteoric rise to his present rank had won him more friends than enemies. There were a few, of course—mostly his contemporaries, men with less brilliant records than he—who professed mistrust of Peel’s volatile temperament and keen intelligence, maintaining that his rapid promotion had been due rather to the influence of his father, the late Sir Robert Peel, than to his own merit. But he had confounded his critics in the Crimea and won the wholehearted approval of Their Lordships and no one in naval circles doubted that he was destined for further advancement in the near future—in spite of his age.

  “I was truly distressed to hear about the Raleigh,” he went on, passing Phillip a glass and courteously raising his own. “Good health! Because we’re not likely to see her like again in naval service, are we? Even this ship, although she’s the first of her class, is really a compromise. With the development and perfection of the marine engine, it won’t be long before we dispense with sail altogether and that will indeed be a sad day.”

  “It will,” Phillip agreed, with feeling. Peel questioned him about the circumstances of the Raleigh’s loss and then said, gesturing to his arm, “I see you’ve been winged, my dear fellow … is it bad?”

  “No, it’s healing nicely. But I was lucky not to lose it.” In response to Peel’s prompting, he supplied a condensed account of the Fatshan action, ending wryly, “I got this when we were coming down river in the Hong Kong, after it was all over. The junks we had taken in the early morning attack had been set on fire and abandoned so hastily that their guns were still loaded and, of course, they were going off in the heat. A charge of grape hit us and I, like an idiot, failed to duck.”

  “I’m glad the wound’s healing. Mine took a very long time, as you may have heard … oddly enough, it was also my left arm. By what I now regard as a curious coincidence, some of my officers were arguing, the night before the assault on the Redan”—Peel smiled reminiscently—“as to which limb they could best spare, if one had to be lost. Dayell and young Wood both agreed on the left arm but I said that arms were more useful for sailors than legs. They talked me round eventually by suggesting that a one-legged man would probably become very stout and next day, believe it or not, all three of us were hit in the left arm! Poor Dayell lost his, Wood and I were more fortunate, although I almost certainly wouldn’t have been if my other A.D.C., Edward Daniels, hadn’t come to my aid so promptly. Fine boys those, Phillip … Daniels, as you probably noticed, is with me still. He was the only one, out of seven officers, who wasn’t hit that day. Wood, incidentally, obtained a cornet’s commission in the Cavalary. He’s now in India with the Seventeenth Lancers, in Bombay, I believe.”

  “Talking of India, sir …” Phillip began. “I …”

  “Don’t tell me,” William Peel put in, his smile widening. “There’s nothing likely to be doing here for the next two or three months and you’ve heard the rumour that we may be ordered to convey Lord Elgin to Calcutta. You’ve also heard that India is threatened with a sepoy revolt and you’ve come to ask if the Shannon has any vacancies for officers. Am I right?”

  “Yes,” Phillip admitted. “But how did you guess?”

  “You are now the fourth officer to approach me on the same errand today, my dear fellow,” the Shannon’s Captain returned dryly. “The other three buttonholed me aboard the Commander-in-Chief’s flagship this morning, all of them convinced that the Shannon’s departure for Calcutta is imminent and drawing the inference that, if I’m in command, a Naval Brigade is bound to be formed and sent up country to assist in quelling the mutiny!”

  Even the possibility of such an outcome rekindled Phillip’s hopes and he asked, unable to hide his eagerness, “Is there any chance of that happening, sir?”

  “For God’s sake, Phillip, I don’t know! I don’t even know as yet whether Lord Elgin intends to pay a visit to Calcutta. He’s mentioned it, certainly, but nothing’s been decided. Elgin’s only been here a few days—he hasn’t had time to reach a decision.” Peel spread his hands in a resigned gesture. “He has to consult with Sir John Bowring and Parkes and the other Plenipotentiaries, as well as with the Admirals—ours and the French and the United States Commodore. I don’t suppose he’s had time to read all his mail from England yet—there was a stack of it waiting for him when he arrived.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “All I can tell you is that the situation in India is giving cause for grave anxiety, Phillip. But how much help we can give from here doesn’t depend on me.”

  “I realise that, sir. But didn’t the Admiral say anything?” Phillip persisted. “I mean, if there’s no prospect of our attacking Canton for the next two or three months, surely he doesn’t need to retain a large fleet here?”

  William Peel shook his head. “No, but he could say nothing definite. Lord Elgin is the one who will have to decide, I tell you. Dear God, have you become a glory hunter? I should have thought that you’d have had enough action to last you for a while, after Fatshan … but you can’t wait to get into the thick of it, can you?”

  His tone, if not quite censorious, was critical and Phillip stared at him in surprise. “You misunderstand me, Captain Peel,” he defended stiffly. “I’m not looking for glory, I assure you. I—”

  “Then why all this damned eagerness to get to India? That’s what you’re after, is it not? It’s why you’ve come to see me, in spite of having one arm in a sling and—”

  “I have two sisters in Lucknow, sir. My damned eagerness is prompted by fears for their safety,” Phillip returned, still stiff. “If you imagine that I—”

  “I’m sorry, my dear fellow.” Peel laid a hand on his arm. “I didn’t realise. In Lucknow, you say—both of them?”

  Phillip nodded. “As far as I know they are but there’s been no recent news of them. One is married to a subaltern of the Queen’s 32nd and, when my parents last heard from her, she and her husband were in Cawnpore, expecting to follow the regiment to Lucknow. My elder sister, Harriet, was in Sitapur, which is an out-station about forty or fifty miles north of Lucknow. She assured my mother that there was no likelihood of their sepoy regiments joining the mutiny but, if they did, it had been decided to send the women and children to seek refuge with Sir Henry Lawrence’s British garrison at the Lucknow Residency. I can only pray they got there safely … Harriet has three small children, the youngest less than a year old.” He had a mental vision of his sister Harriet’s pretty, smiling face. He had not seen her since her marriage, seven years previously, to Major James—Jemmy—Dorling, but as a boy, she had been his favourite sister, an affectionate, gentle person, who had frequently defended him from his father’s wrath and whom he had loved deeply. He looked up to meet Peel’s gaze and added quie
tly, “If there’s any chance at all of a Naval Brigade being sent up country, sir, I’d … dear heaven, I’d give my right arm, as well as this one, to be able to go with them! In any capacity—as a volunteer, if necessary, without pay. I can’t stay here, kicking my heels when they … I must do something and I’d esteem it a favour if you could make any use of my services, Captain Peel.”

  “This puts a different complexion on the matter,” Peel said. “I understand how you feel but …” He was frowning. “If we’re ordered to India—and there’s no guarantee that we shall be— I could probably give you passage, Phillip. As a volunteer or in a supernumerary capacity. All the Raleighs will have to be reappointed to other ships, obviously, and I’m sure you know that nothing would please me more than to have you appointed to the Shannon—but your rank raises a problem. I have my full complement of officers and my First Lieutenant, Jim Vaughan, is junior to you, although I think he has a couple of years’ more service. It would hardly be fair to put you over his head, would it?”

  “No, no, of course not. I wouldn’t expect you to do anything of the kind, sir.”

  “And what about that arm? It is really healing?”

  Phillip reddened. “It is, I promise you. Your Surgeon can examine it, if you wish.”

  Peel smiled. “Nonsense, I’ll take your word for it, my dear fellow. Failing all else, it might serve as a valid reason for you to apply for sick leave and take a cruise to Calcutta with us to recuperate.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Phillip confessed.

  “Then think about it,” William Peel advised. “You said it was immaterial in what capacity you joined us, did you not?” He rose, holding out his hand for his visitor’s glass. “Let me replenish that for you.” Busy with the selection of bottles on his sideboard, he went on, “You could also make a formal request to the Admiral, you know—or ask your Chief to do so on your behalf. Commodore Keppel’s very persuasive and you do have good reason for wishing to go to India. He’ll be sympathetic, will he not?”