1636 Commander Cantrell in the West Indies: Chapter Fourteen

PART III

July, 1635

St. Kilda archipelago, North Atlantic

    “Commander Cantrell, propellers are all-stop. Awaiting orders.”

    Eddie Cantrell looked to his left. The ship’s nominal captain, Ove Gjedde, nodded faintly. It was his customary sign that his executive officer, Commander Cantrell, was free to give his orders autonomously. Eddie returned the nod, then aimed his voice back over his shoulder. “Secure propellers and prepare to lower the vent cover.”

    “Securing propellers, aye. Ready to lower prop vent cover, aye.”

    “And Mr. Svantner, send the word to cut steam. Let’s save that coal. “

    “Aye, aye, sir. Cutting steam. Let free the reef bands, sir?”

    Eddie looked at Gjedde again, who, by unspoken arrangement, reserved rigging and sail orders for himself. The sails had been reefed for the engine trials and with the engine no longer propelling the ship, it would soon begin to drift off course.

    The weather-bitten Norwegian nodded once. Svantner saluted and went off briskly, shouting orders that were soon drowned out by the thundering rustle of the sails being freed and unfurled into the stiff wind blowing near the remote island of St. Kilda.

    Well, technically speaking, they were just off the sheer and rocky north coast of the island of Hirta, largest and most populous islet of the St. Kilda archipelago. If you could call any landmass with less than two hundred people ‘populous.’ But even that small settlement was pretty impressive, given how far off St. Kilda was from — well, from everything. Over fifty miles from the northwesternmost island of the already-desolate Outer Hebrides, and almost 175 miles north of Ireland, Hirta and the rest of the islands of the group were, for all intents and purposes, as isolated as if they had been on the surface of another planet. And, since it was rumored that most of the inhabitants were still as influenced by druidic beliefs as by Christianity, it was not an exaggeration to say that, even though the natives of St. Kilda did dwell on the same planet, they certainly did inhabit a different world.

    “Commander Cantrell, there you are! I’m sorry I’m late. I was detained below decks. Paying my respects to your lovely wife and her ladies.”

    Eddie swiveled around on his false heel. Time at sea had taught him, even with his excellent prosthetic leg, not to lose contact with the deck. “And you are” — he tried to recall the face of the man, couldn’t, guessed from context — “Lieutenant Bjelke, I presume?”

    The man approaching — tall, lithe, with a long nose and long hair that was several shades redder than Eddie’s own — offered a military bow, and tottered a bit as the ship rolled through a higher swell. “That is correct, sir. I tried to present myself to you immediately upon coming aboard, but I found myself embarrassingly, er, indisposed.”

    Eddie smiled, noticed that Bjelke’s pallor was not just the result of pale Nordic skin, but a manful, ongoing struggle against sea-sickness. “Is that why you did not attempt transfer to this ship until today, Mr. Bjelke? Waiting for good weather?”

    Bjelke, although only twenty, returned the smile with a courtier’s polish. Which was only logical: his father, Jens, had been the Norwegian Chancellor for more than twenty years and was certainly one of the nation’s wealthiest nobles. If one measured his stature in terms of influence rather than silver, he was arguably its most powerful lord, having been given the Hanseatic city of Bergen as his personal fief just last year. Henrik Bjelke had, therefore, grown up surrounded by wealth, influence, and ministers of etiquette.

    Fortunately, his father was also a fair and industrious man, having studied widely abroad and now compiling the first dictionary of the Norwegian language. And Henrik, his second son, had apparently inherited his sire’s talents and tastes for scholarship. Originally bound for the University in Padova, the arrival of Grantville had caught both Henrik’s interest and imagination. Like many other adventurous sons (and no small number of daughters) of European noble houses, he had gone there to read in the up-time library, augmenting that education with classes and seminars at the nearby University of Jena. It was perhaps predictable that he was assigned as Eddie’s adjutant and staff officer, as much because of Christian’s keen interest in the young Norwegian as Bjelke’s own unfulfilled desires to pursue a military career. He had ultimately done so quite successfully in the up-time world of Eddie’s birth, also rising to become the head of the Danish Admiralty.

    However, Bjelke’s familiarity with things nautical had been a later-life acquisition. For the moment, it was clearly a mighty struggle for him just to maintain the at-sea posture that was the down-time equivalent of ‘at ease’ in the presence of a superior officer with whom one had familiarity (and with whom the difference in rank was not too profound). Eddie discovered he was inordinately cheered by Rik’s unsteadiness. At last! someone with even less shipboard experience than me! He gestured to the rail.

    Bjelke gratefully accompanied the young up-timer to the rail, but stared at it for a moment before putting his hand upon it. The ‘rail’ was actually comprised of two distinct parts, one of iron, one of wood. The iron part consisted of two chains that ran where the bulkhead should be, each given greater rigidity by passing tautly through separate eyelets in vertical iron stanchions. Those stanchion were form-cut to fit neatly into brass-cupped holes along the bulwark line, and thus could be removed at will.

    However, mounted atop those stanchions, and stabilizing themselves by a single descending picket that snugged into a low wooden brace affixed to the deck, was a light wooden rail. Each section of the rail was affixed to its fore and aft neighbors by a sleeve that surrounded a tongue-in-groove mating of the two separate pieces, held tight by a brass pin that passed through them both at that juncture. Henrik tentatively leaned his weight upon it. It was quite firm. “Ingenious,” he murmured admiring the modular wooden rail sections and ignoring the chain-and-stanchion railing. “Your work, Commander?”

    Eddie shrugged. “I had a hand in it.”

    Bjelke smiled slowly. “Modesty is rare in young commanders, my elders tell me, but is a most promising sign. I am fortunate to have you as a mentor, Commander Cantrell.”

    Eddie kept from raising an eyebrow. Well, Henrik Bjelke had certainly revealed more than a little about himself, and his role vis-a-vis Eddie, in those “innocent” comments. Firstly, the young Norwegian obviously knew the ship upon which this vessel had been heavily based — the USS Hartford of the American Civil War — since he was not surprised by the presence of what would otherwise have been the wholly novel chain-and-stanchion railing arrangement, which reduced dangers from gunwale splinters and, in the case of close targets, could be quickly removed to extend the lower range of the deck guns’ maximum arc of elevation. However, Bjelke had pointedly not been expecting the modular wooden rail inserts that Eddie had designed for greater deck safety when operating on the high seas. That bespoke a surprisingly detailed knowledge of the ship’s design origins, even for a clever young man who’d spent more than a year in the library at Grantville.

    Secondly, Bjelke confidently identified the innovation as Eddie’s, which suggested that he’d been well-briefed about the technological gifts of the young American. Which went along with the implication that his elders considered Cantrell a most promising officer.

    And that likely explained the third interesting bit of information: that Henrik Bjelke had not been encouraged to look at this assignment as merely a military posting, but as an apprenticeship of sorts.

    And all those nuances, having a common emphasis on familiarization with up-timers and their knowledge, seemed to point in one direction: straight at His Royal Danish Majesty Christian IV.

    Eddie had to hand it to his half-souse, half-genius regal father-in-law: USE emperor and Swedish sovereign Gustav Adolf might be running around physically conquering various tracts of Central Europe, but Christian had launched his own, highly successful campaign of collecting and captivating the hearts and minds of persons who were poised to become high-powered movers and shakers of the rising generation. His son Ulrik was betrothed to Gustav’s young daughter. His daughter Anne Cathrine was married to the most high-profile war-hero-techno wizard from now-legendary Grantville. And now, he had added sharp-witted Henrik Bjelke to the mix.

    And that addition brought distinct value-added synergies to many of King Christian’s prior social machinations. Bjelke’s appointment no doubt bought the gratitude of various influential Norwegians, who had, so far, been the ‘forgotten poor cousin’ of the reconstituted Union of Kalmar between Sweden and Denmark. Bjelke’s appointment also provided Eddie with a gifted aide who was unusually familiar with up-time manners and technology, and who no doubt understood that this mentorship was an extraordinary opportunity to put himself on a political and military fast-track.

    Of course, thus indebted to Christian, it was also to be expected that Henrik Bjelke, willing or not, would also serve as the Danish king’s — well, not spy, exactly, but certainly his dedicated observer. And lastly, the bold Bjelke might just be valiant enough to help save Eddie’s life at some point during the coming mission, thereby ensuring that Christian’s daughter did not become a widow and that the familial connection to the up-timers remained intact. Alternatively, Bjelke, learning up-time ways and now having first-hand access to up-time technology, might also make a reasonable replacement husband for a widowed Anne Cathrine. Yup, the old Danish souse-genius had sure gamed out all the angles on this appointment.

    About which Eddie reasoned he had best learn everything he could. “So what do they call you at home, Lieutenant Bjelke?”

    “At — at home, Commander?”

    “Yes. You know, the place you live.” Although, Eddie realized a moment later, that the son of Jens Bjelke wouldn’t have just one home. More like one home for every month of the year…

    But that didn’t impede the young Norwegian’s understanding of Eddie’s intent. “Ah, my familiar name! I’m Rik, sir. An amputated version of my proper name, so that I might not be confused with all the other Henriks in our family and social circles. Not very dignified, I’m afraid.”

    Eddie smiled. “Well, I’m not very dignified myself, so that suits me just fine, Rik. You got attached to the flotilla pretty much at the last second, I seem to recall.”

    Bjelke’s gaze wavered. “Yes, sir. There were impediments to overcome.”

    “Impediments? Political?”

    “Familial, I’m afraid. My father does not share in my enthusiasm for a military career.”

    Hm. Given the scanty biographical sources from up-time, that might actually be the truth, rather than a clever way of explaining away what might have been a maneuver by Christian IV to get Bjelke added to the flotilla without Simpson or Eddie having enough time to conduct research on his possible ties to the Danish court. What Christian had either not planned upon, or simply couldn’t outflank, was the possibility that Simpson and Eddie had compiled dossiers on all possibly mission-relevant personnel without waiting for assignment rosters.

    Which they had done. It had been time-consuming, but worth it. Although Eddie lacked any detailed information on many of the flotilla’s senior officers and leaders, he had a thumbnail sketch on most of them. In fact, Ove Gjedde was the only notable exception.

    Eddie nodded understanding at Bjelke’s professed plight. “But your father finally listened to your appeals?”

    Rik blushed profoundly, and Eddie could have hugged him: and he blushes faster and redder than I do, too! Damn, even if he is a spy, it’s almost worthwhile having him around so that another officer looks and acts even more like the boy next door than I do! But Eddie kept his expression somber as Bjelke explained. “My father remained deaf to my appeals for military experience — but not to King Christian’s.”

    Eddie was surprised and reassured by the frankness of that admission. He doubted Christian would have been happy with Bjelke drawing such a straight line between his own presence and the Danish king’s desires. And while it was possible that this was disinformation meant to instill false confidence in Rik, a look at the younger man’s face and genuine blush-response told Eddie otherwise. Bjelke was simply a polished, well-educated young man who was likely to prove courageous and capable in the years to come, but right now, was a youngling out on his first great adventure. If there was any duplicity in him at all, it would be minor, and contrary to his nature. Eddie could live with that. Easily.

    “Well, Rik, however you got here, you’re here. So, welcome aboard the Intrepid. First order of business is to make you at home.”

    “Thank you, sir. My man Nils has seen to my berthing and I must say it is a welcome change from the Serendipity. Those accommodations were most…uncomfortable.”

    “Well, I’m glad you like your stateroom” — more like a long closet, reflected Eddie — “but when I suggested we make you at home, I meant familiarization with the ship. Do you have any questions about the Intrepid that your briefers didn’t answer for you?”

    Rik brightened immediately; if he’d been a puppy, his ears would probably have snapped straight up. “A great many questions, Commander. Although not for want of my asking. Frankly, my briefers, as you call them, knew fewer particulars about your new ships than I did. I had studied the classes of American vessels that were the foundations of your designs, which they had not. And they could answer only a few questions about how they differed, other than the guns and the steam plants. Seeing them, it is clear that you have made other significant modifications.”

    Eddie nodded. “Yep, we had to. This class — the Quality I class — needs to be an even more stable firing platform than the original Hartford was.”

    “Because of the increased range and capability of her eight-inch pivot guns?”

    Eddie shrugged. “That’s a large part of it. But it gets more complicated. Firstly, the Hartford had its broad side armament on the weather deck. We put ours below.”

    “Better performance in bad weather?”

    “Well, that too, but it was actually the result of some complex design trade-offs. Firstly, we wanted maximum clear traverse for the pivot guns. So that meant ‘clearing the gun deck,’ as much as we could. There was already a lot that had to go on up there. We needed our anti-personnel weapons on the weather deck so they could bear freely upon all quarters. And although we have a steam engine, that’s for tactical use only. Strategically speaking, we’re just a very fast sailed ship. Meaning we’ve got a full complement of rigging and sail-handlers on the weather deck as well. So, the only way we could clear the deck was to put the guns underneath.

    “What we got out of that was a more commanding elevation for our naval rifles. But it also allowed us to bring a lot of the weight that was high up in the Hartford down in our design, thereby lowering the center of gravity.”

    “So, putting the broadside weapons on a lower deck also made the ship more stable.”

    “Exactly. But then, we didn’t want to put our crew down in the bowels of the ship. So we had to put the crew quarters inboard on the gun-deck. The only reason we were even able to consider doing that was because our broadside weapons are carronades. They’re a lot shorter than cannons, and their carriages are wheeled so as to run back up inclined planes when they recoil.”

    “But that still wasn’t enough, was it, sir?” Rik looked over the side at the noticeable slope that ran out from the rail down into the water. “So to get the rest of the room you needed for inboard crew berthing, you pushed your battery further outboard by widening the beam of the gun deck.”

    Eddie nodded his approval. “Bravo Zulu, Mr. Bjelke.”

    “‘Bravo Zulu?’”

    Eddie smiled. “An up-time naval term. ‘Well done.’ Learned it from my mentor.”

    “Ah. That would be Admiral Simpson.”

    “The same. And so, yes, we widened the gun deck, which meant another change from the original Hartford. She had pretty much sheer sides, which is just what you’d want for a fast sloop. But when we designed the Quality I class, we realized that not only would adding that outward slope of the sides — or ‘tumble home’ — be a good thing to add in terms of deck width, but for stability in higher seas, thanks to how increased beam reduces roll.”

    Bjelke leaned out over the rail. His eyes followed the waterline from stem to stern. “Yes, these are the structural differences I saw, and at which I wondered. Thank you for explaining them, Commander.” He pointed at the somewhat smaller steam ship pulling past them at a distance of four hundred yards, her funnel smokeless, her sails wide and white in the wind. “I see the same design changes in the smaller ship — the Speed I class, I think? — but less pronounced.”

    Eddie nodded. “Yeah, we decided to keep her closer to the original lines of the sloop. So we put only one pivot gun on her, kept the tumble home shallower, and freeboard lower and the weather deck closer to the waterline. She sails sharper, faster, more responsively, and has three feet less draught.”

    “So better for sailing in shallows, up rivers, near reefs.”

    “Yes, and strategically speaking, our fastest ship. In a good breeze, she’ll make eight knots, and she’s rigged for a generous broad reach. Unless she’s fully becalmed, she can make reasonable forward progress with wind from almost three-quarters of the compass, assuming she has the room to tack sharply.”

    “And yet you do not label her a steam-sloop, as was the ship that inspired her.”

    “You mean the Kearsarge from the Civil War?” Eddie shrugged. “Well, as I understand the Civil War nomenclature, if a ship had a fully covered gun deck, she wasn’t a sloop. Even if she had a sloop’s lines, she’d still be called frigate-built. Although frigate-built doesn’t necessary imply a military ship.”

    Rik smiled ruefully. “I grew up on farms. Even though many of them were close to the water, I confess I do not have a mariner’s vocabulary yet. I find these distinctions confusing. Because, if the reports I hear are true, you are not calling the other ship — the Courser, I believe? — a frigate, either.”

    “No, we’re calling her class a ‘destroyer’ and the Intrepid‘s class a ‘cruiser’. As class names, they’re not great solutions. But at least they’re up-time terms that haven’t been used to describe ships, yet, so they’ll be distinctive and somewhat descriptive in terms of role. If you’re familiar with the up-time history of those classes of ships, that is. But anything else we tried to come up with ran afoul of the labeling confusion that already results from the current lack of international naming conventions.

    “In fact, ‘frigate’ would have been the most confusing label we could have settled on. Ever since down-time naval architects started doing research in the Grantville library, most of the shipyards of Europe have started building new designs, the straight-sterned frigate chief among them. So if we called our new steam-ships frigates, they’d routinely get confused with the new sailed vessels currently under construction throughout Europe.”

    Bjelke nodded attentively, but Eddie saw that his focus was now split between their conversation and something located aft of their current place at the rail. As soon as Eddie noticed Rik’s apparent distraction, the young Norwegian moved his eyes, ever so slightly, upward over his superior’s shoulder and toward the new item of interest.

    Eddie turned and saw, back by the entrance to the companionway leading down to the officer’s quarters, that his wife — and her ‘ladies,’ as Bjelke styled them — had emerged to stand on the deck in a tight cluster. They were not an uncommon sight topside, but they usually reserved their appearances for fine weather, not overcast skies. However, despite the mild wind freshening from out of the southeast, they were all dressed for cold weather, apparently. Or were they? Eddie squinted, saw no coats or shawls, which made him only more confused. So why the hell do they have kerchiefs covering their heads? And all three of them, no less. Damn, I’ve never seen a lady of the aristocracy allow herself to look that, well, dowdy. And now they’ve all adopted the same frumpy look? What the heck is that abou — ?

    “Commander, given the arrival of the ladies, perhaps it would be convenient for you if I were to take my leave?”

    Eddie nodded. “Probably so. Tell my wife that she can” — and then a voice inside his head, the one that was partially schooled in the etiquette of this age, muttered, No, Eddie, that won’t do. Think how it will look, how it will seem.

    Damn, ship protocol was tricky, and yet was still kind of free-form in this era when navies weren’t really navies just yet, and had protocols for some things, but not for others. For instance, take the simple desire to have his wife join him alone at the rail. He couldn’t very well wave her over. That would be an obvious blow to her stature, and mark him as an indecorous boor, which would work against his accrual of respect as well. But if he sent Bjelke over to summon her, that would be like making the young Norwegian nobleman his valet and also be entirely too formal, to say nothing of downright stupid-looking. Yet, if Eddie left the rail to go over to Anne Cathrine, then it could be difficult to extricate themselves from the presence of their respective attendants — Bjelke and the ladies — if they didn’t all know how to take a hint —

    Eddie discovered that, for the first time since he had stepped on a deep water ship, he had a headache and an incipient sense of seasickness. Which he allowed, probably had nothing to do with the sea at all.

    But Bjelke offered a slight bow to Eddie, and inquired, “Might I — with your compliments — inform the ladies and your wife that you are currently without any pressing duties? And that I would be happy to escort any and all of them wherever they might wish to go?”

    And for the third time — wasn’t that some kind of spiritual sign, or something? — Eddie felt a quick outrush of gratitude toward the young Norwegian. Bjelke’s simple solution allowed the junior officer to decorously depart from his commander, greet the ladies, and inform them of the status of the ship’s captain. Then Anne Cathrine could approach or not — with Bjelke and her ladies in tow or not — and this idiotic etiquette dance would be over and Eddie would have thus achieved the hardest nautical task of his day thus far: finding a way to converse with his wife, on deck and in private, for a scant few minutes.

    Eddie nodded gratefully — hopefully not desperately — at Bjelke, who smiled and with a more pronounced bow, left to carry out his plan.

    Which worked like a charm. He arrived at the ladies’ group and presented himself. Cordial nods all around, a brief exchange, then he walked with Anne Cathrine halfway across the deck, and by some miracle of subtle body language, managed to successfully communicate to Eddie that he should meet them about half way. Which done, effected a serene and stately rendezvous between man and wife as the crew watched through carefully averted eyes.

    Bjelke nodded to both spouses and retraced his steps to the two remaining ladies. Eddie smiled at Anne Cathrine and as they walked back to the rail, the young American breathed a sigh of relief. Another terrifying gauntlet had been run.