November 1779
First Week
From the Journals of Doctor Alfred Bassingford, MD,
Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians,
Surgeon - HMS Sapphire
Monday 1 November 1779
Julie came back from the village, where she had volunteered to oversee the altar flowers - today being All Souls’ Day - fair bursting with news. In my experience with my remarkable, wonderful wife, this almost certainly involves children, in some way, shape or form. Julie loves children.
When Julie proposed on John’s wedding day, I knew I would have no peace until I married her, though we did not wait for His Grace of Canterbury to perform the ceremony as John originally suggested. As a matter of fact, we got a special license the next week and were married very quietly in Thornbury parish church by my brother Peter, with only a few of our dearest friends in attendance, and John as my best man. When I apologized for interrupting his honeymoon, though they did not go anywhere special – Tara says she has done enough travelling to last her for at least a year and would just like to stay home for a time – John just looked at me and said something to the effect of ‘he wanted to be at the wedding to make sure I didn’t get cold feet and leave my bride at the altar’. To which Julie replied, “I’d have his guts for garters if he did, John. This is the first man I’ve met since Martyn died that was worth marrying, you know. Well, there’s you, but as you were already attached when I met you…” she finished outrageously, provoking a smile and a merry laugh from our precious girl Tara.
Since my old family home, the house that my parents had built almost fifty years ago, is not far from where Pat and Cristina are living with their twins, Julie can go over and coo at them every day. Since the Franklin contingent moved here in May Julie has, as always, managed to make herself indispensable and dearly loved in the community, acting as a sort of parish ombudsman to make sure that the needy of the parish are taken care of, as well as turning her hands to flowers, pew cushions and altar cloths. About the only thing she doesn’t do is sing, which is probably a good thing, given that her voice resembles a “rusty hinge that needs oiling in the worst way” - her words, not mine.
I put down the treatise on obstetrics I was reading – written by my friend Doctor Alexander Fleming – and went downstairs to greet my Julie with an embrace and warm kiss. John decided months ago that my string of illicit liaisons had to stop – and Julie has certainly stopped them, not because she is so formidable, though that is certainly true, but because I love her so very much – and because she is more than capable of keeping a man satisfied in the carnal sense. I just happen to be that very lucky man. I would be foolhardy in the extreme to leave a veritable feast for the meagre fare offered by some of the affairs I have had in the past, passionate though they were. Julie not only satisfies my body, she satisfies my soul – and that is of infinitely more value.
“What news, Juliette Bassingford?” I questioned when we had come up for air and were on the way upstairs to our bedroom, where a pleasant afternoon’s dalliance often ensued.
“First, little Barbara and baby John are growing like weeds – or flowers, in Barbara’s case. Pat and Tina are all excited about the christening later on this month at the church in Blackpoole. John and Tara have agreed to stand godparents, you know, along with the two of us, so we’ll all be going back to Lancashire together. Tina wants to do it there because our vicar, the Reverend Mr. Masters, was so good to her when she first came to England last spring.”
“Yes, I had heard something of the matter. It sounds an excellent idea, I think. But that’s not all the news.”
“You know me too well, Fred Bassingford,”
“In every sense of the word, madam wife, including the Biblical one, and may I say I have never been happier,” I said, reaching to caress her provocatively.
“Fred. Behave yourself, and get your mind out of the bedroom!”
“Why, when the rest of me is in the bedroom? And may I point out, my dear, that, that bed behind us is getting cold for want of use?”
“It can get cold a little while longer. Do try to control yourself, Fred.”
“Why? We’re married, there’s no reason to. Not that I did before we were married, but…”
“Fred Bassingford, if you so much as look at another woman I will hang you by your thumbs,” she threatened. “Now listen to me. You remember at Tara and John’s wedding that ‘Preacher’ Boyd was telling us about this orphanage his brother, the Reverend Mr. Abraham Boyd, runs for the foundlings of Bristol? Well, Peter told me today that he’s had to send two new children down there to be cared for. He told me prefers to send children there and help pay their keep out of parish funds because he knows they will be taken care of better, for all that Boyd is a nonconformist. Very broad-minded attitude for an Anglican vicar, I must say. But then again he is your brother so I suppose I shouldn’t be that surprised. Anyway, these two children, a boy of about two and newborn little girl, were found by a neighbour just a week or so ago. The father, Thompson, was a farm labourer who was killed in a harvest accident earlier this fall and the mother died in childbirth, alone in a wretched cottage but for that terrified little boy. When they were found the baby was just an hour or so old, still in its blood, and near starving, and the little boy was wearing nothing but a little shirt – not even a nappy. The neighbour cleaned the baby up, found someone to wet nurse her temporarily, and called for Peter. The Choirmaster, Mr. Nunnally, remembers that old Parson Wilkes christened the boy Martyn, though the family weren’t regular in their church attendance, and of course the babe hasn’t been named yet. Once they were strong enough to travel Peter and Kathryn took them down to Providence House.”
“Martyn. That was my father’s name – Martyn Bassingford. And now that I think of it I believe I can recall Peter mentioning it to me the other day. Well, I’m glad that they were rescued, and I know Boyd and the matrons at the home will take good care of them. Now can we go to bed?”
She slapped my roving hands away, but playfully, and then said, “I wasn’t finished. I want to go down to Bristol and see them.”
“Why? We know they are in good hands, and I am sure the matron will send Peter regular reports, if only to let him know how his funds are being used,” I asked. Silence stretched for a few minutes as my Julie smiled at me, and then the light finally dawned.
“Oh, no. You aren’t thinking – Madam, the answer is no! I am too old, they are too small, I’ll be going back to sea in a few weeks at most, and this house…”
“Has a perfectly adequate nursery floor. And as for your being too old, you’re the same age as John Sinclair and you just told me yesterday that Tara has conceived their first – and he will be forty-four when the child is born.”
“What about you – how are you going to handle two that young, at your age?” I knew the minute I said it that it was the wrong thing to say.
“So I’m too old, am I? Well, then, Doctor Bassingford, if I’m too old to care for children, then I certainly must be too old for certain pleasurable activities that often result in those children, so I guess that bed will have to stay cold awhile longer, won’t it!” She said in exasperation, though I know Julie well enough by now to know she is no more capable of living a celibate life, now that we have found each other, than I am.
“Fred, just go look at them, will you? That’s all I ask. Just look at them. We can hire a wet nurse for the baby, the boy is already two and weaned – and it’s not like we can’t afford a nursery maid!” she concluded, referring to the nearly three thousand pounds of prize money I have saved over the years.
“All right, Julie,” I sighed. “We’ll go and look at them. But I make no promises beyond looking.”
From the Papers of Patrick Franklin,
Junior Post Captain - HMS Jaguar, 32
Tuesday 2 November 1779
“Considering how severe the damage was, I really can’t complain, sir.”
We were standing on the quay overlooking the dry dock in which His Majesty’s Frigate Jaguar, now formally christened under that name following the approval of Lord St. John, sat upon her blocks even as the dock was being flooded. It had been just under three weeks since she had entered that dry dock to repair the below the waterline damage she’d suffered at the Battle of St. George Channel, now nearly two months in the past. Even the frigates of Commodore Sinclair’s Flying Squadron had, had to wait their turn for the use of Bristol’s dry docks, and Enchanted as the most severely damaged following Zamora’s rake of her stern had been given priority for the first one available. Jaguar and the Commodore’s own HMS Sapphire had followed her ten days later taking the places previously occupied by a pair of sixty-fours.
Six days ago Sapphire had left her dry dock and was even now completing the repairs to her rigging and bulwarks. Her place there having been taken by Will Mason’s 26-gun HMS Vanessa, while the little sloop-of-war Sandfly had not needed to be dry-docked at all, the majority of her damage having been above her waterline. Jaguar would not have needed as much time here had Sir John not prevailed upon them to copper her bottom once the repairs had been completed. I found myself looking forward to seeing how well she would sail once we returned to sea. The coppering combined with her exemplary hull promised to make her a supremely fast sailer if properly trimmed.
“No, the dockyard have done a surprisingly fast job this time,” the Commodore said in reply. “I have to agree with you there, Pat.” Neither of us had taken our eyes off the frigate’s lithe hull. Even naked as she was without her guns, masts and rigging – these having been removed in order to lighten her for the blocks – she was a thing of beauty. My father had more than once remarked that the French built excellent ships and in the time that I have held command of Jaguar I have discovered just how right he was to say that. But at the same time I have also learned that they seem to perform best for English masters. Indeed, even with a complement a full thirty percent below optimum, Jaguar had managed to capture a far larger and more powerful Spanish ship, which was sailing under a highly experienced captain as well.
But such thoughts brought my mind back around to the casualties we had suffered since my dear old Predator, now lying at the bottom of Machias Bay, had upped anchor for America last Spring. We had arrived in England a month and a half ago with 139 men aboard a frigate with a normal complement of 215, and of those more than two-dozen had been wounded. These had largely been men that I had known for years, first as Predator’s senior, then her Captain and finally as captain of Jaguar. They were more than just crew. In many ways they were almost family. Most of her officers had been my friends in the wardroom once upon a time. Ross Martel had been a fine young man whom I had watched rise from midshipman to second lieutenant, while I would always remember little Charles Oxley at the moment just as battle was joined when he plucked my sleeve to get my attention and then realized how greatly he had offended naval etiquette. Perhaps Their Lordships were right to rarely post a man to command the same ship that he’d been serving on as a lieutenant. There were fewer ghosts about him that way.
“There was nothing more you could have done, sir,” Jeffery Gordon had said to me one night toward the middle of last month when he’d come to visit Tina, the children and I. “We all know the risks when we sign on. We accept it.” Perhaps they did. I know that I have accepted the possibility of sudden death in battle, but it didn’t make the aftermath any easier to bear.
Gordon and Mr. MacMillian were ashore with the recruiting parties right now trying to round up the additional seventy-six men that we would need to bring us up to full complement. In the meanwhile the remainder of the crew was ashore under the watchful eyes of the bosun, Harry Keane, and his mates.
“How goes your recruiting, Pat?” The Commodore asked echoing my thoughts.
“Slowly I’m afraid, Sir John. We had very little luck here in Bristol. There are far too many able seamen with exemptions here. One would almost think it a crime to serve your King.”
“Even those with exemptions serve, Pat, albeit not in the way that seems obvious.” He smiled at my puzzled expression then explained. “One of our greatest strengths is our merchant vessels and our trade. The constant flow of raw materials into Britain is as vital to our cause as any fleet or army. It is those seamen that are exempt that keep those raw materials flowing. It would do us all well to remember that. Still, I can understand your frustration.”
I could not help but be struck once more by the kind of man that John Sinclair is. Even faced with the same problem of manning his ship as I, he had not allowed that to colour his perceptions of the myriad of elements that together made Britain the power that she was. While I, unfortunately, had allowed my personal difficulties to obscure the larger issues. I resolved not to do so in the future.
From the Journals of Doctor Alfred Bassingford
Friday 5 November 1779
Julie won. Julie always wins. John thinks it’s hilarious – I have finally met my match, in more ways than one. We went to Bristol, I fell in love at the same moment Julie did, and we came home the next day with papers granting us temporary custody, pending formal adoption proceedings, of little Martyn Bassingford, aged about two, named for Julie’s lost love Martyn Graves and my father, and Miss Tara Bassingford, aged about two weeks. The boy even looks a bit like me, poor little fellow, and as for the baby, she has the bluest eyes I have ever seen and a head covered with fine brown fuzz that promises to turn into a head of luxurious curls. Martyn, my son - how wonderful that sounds, my son - is very protective of her, despite his lack of years. If she so much as peeps, he runs for me, or Julie, or one of the maids, saying ‘Baby cwy. Huwwy. Baby cwy,’ and will not stop until someone makes the baby stop crying, usually by feeding her, changing her or bringing up her wind. The first time John and Tara came over to visit, they brought a silver rattle for little Tara and a toy boat for Martyn, complete with sails and rigging. Martyn took one look at John, in all the glory of a full dress uniform, and pointed to his gold-laced hat.
“What dat?” he asked peremptorily.
“What, my hat?” John said, taking it from under his arm and putting it on Martyn’s head, where it rapidly slid down over his eyes. Martyn peered out from under it, said, “Hat” and gave it back with an order, “Put hat on.”
“Well, I see you have trained him well, Fred. He’s been in this household two days and he’s already telling me what to do, just like you.”
“Must start them early, John. Only way to do it, you know.”
“I suppose.” John looked over to where Tara was holding her tiny little namesake and murmured. “She looks wonderful, Fred,” and I knew he wasn’t talking about my little girl, adorable though she is.
“It’s a dream come true for both of us, isn’t it, John? Marriage to a wonderful wife, and now children,” I said, referring to Tara’s pregnancy, which would not be evident except for the sparkle in her eyes for some months to come. “She looks so natural holding a baby.”
At that moment, tiny Tara turned her head to Tara’s breast and began to nuzzle. Tara coloured just a bit, laughed, and said, “I’m sorry, poppet, but I can’t help you, not just yet. Best give you back to Polly,” she said, smiling at the wet nurse, a young farm labourer’s wife from the village whose milk supply seemed more than adequate both for her own sturdy boy and our Miss Tara. In short order baby Tara was feeding greedily, even as John reached out a hand to beckon his wife to his side. Whatever it was he whispered to her, the look she gave him told Julie and me that they would be lucky to make it home before passion overtook them. Too bad the woods are damp and cold at this time of year.
