Missing Muster challenge : That which defies rating (fic)
Having issued the challenge, here I Am sneaking in a little on the late side - though entries are still welcome.
Here is another take on what happened to what should be ADM36/13143.
Author:Nodbear
Length:c 2,400 words
Disclaimer:No ownership claimed - otherwise Archie and Horatio would be in Bayonne too.
Rating:Gen
Characters:Edward Pellew,Jacques Bergeret,(Archie,Horatio,Styles and a number of historical Indy mids)
Summary;Sometime in the 1820s Jacques and Ned reminisce and create new designations for categories of officers and men.Tells the real fate of sundry brave and gallant Indyboys.
Of that which defies rating
It was a glorious Spring afternoon in Bayonne and those out walking seemed to be soaking up the first of the sunshine which really warmed the bones.
The patron of the inn which was an old sailors haunt was glowing with pride about the identity of the two customers who were seated In the half shade of an olive tree outside his bar. He was also, however, a successful innkeeper because he knew that discretion was the wisest course and so he served the two men with courtesy but with no other outward sign of recognition.
It might be that others could work it out, however. Though neither wore a uniform no one would mistake them for other than the naval officers they were .Clearly, in their case, officers who had worked hard for their success. He has noted fine details ,the wind-honed complexions, the calluses on the hands, the confident bearing of both .They had had a fine, long lunch and over their post prandial drink they were quietly playing some word game, conducted in a mixture of French and English, which seemed to have them both in high good humour .. Other customers took no notice of the two of them sitting, relaxed,with a bottle of the local liqueur of which le patron always seemed to have such a fine stock.
“You can’t guess Jacques ? I win this one then, my rating of choice this time is -a special category for French prisoners of note, such as you once were “IJ”=irredeemable Jacobin “
The younger man gave a bark of laughter
“IJ? An I and a J ! grands dieux that will be a test of a captain's clerk to leave legible and distinct It will give our historians un mauvais quarte d’heure trying to decipher that new rating .they will probably write papers about it - new rating nomenclature in the Napoleonic wars”
“Bah! Historians! I can see it already - Nelson and Villeneuve they will write reams about but me - I might a few mentions though half of it will be wrong as like as not , but you Jacques …will this town not remember you?"
“I will be lucky if they name a rowing dinghy after me let alone a ship or a boulevard “.
“But do we really mind all that much ?”
But Jacques was absently musing rather than answering - trying out the English of the description on his tongue ..
“ Irr-e-deem-ab le - barbarous nation to make two syllables out of such a word ending !
Still , it sounds like an ironic name for a very fine frigate -Lets see - the Irredeemable She was ,don’t you think, the one perfect fifth rate we never sailed on, Edouard - the ultimate and most glorious one, fast and adaptable and ideal in every way .yet curiously the one that the Ministry of Marine was always about to commission and never quite did !”
“ Indeed , or the one of which the Navy Board said that they could not compound so much expense right now, though of course they acknowledged its strategic necessity…”
“So then, Edouard, To the elusive,fabulous , and badly pronounced Irredeemable she who never quite came our way..”
“And To naval pen pushers the world over -Down with them!”
“A bas la bureaucratie!” the toast was duly drunk
“You got the beautiful Virginie though, and at a young age”
“Yes, and you took her from me , you old devil !”
“Not without effort my friend , you were damn good”
“But you were better”
“Just luckier, though, no it is true, they were a fine crew by then and the Indefatigable was a stern mistress but she had immeasurably great rewards for those who loved her."
Yes I remember thinking, in my exhaustion, that given I had had to surrender I had done it into the best hands For we commanders we all knew about what you did for poor Mullon and the la veuve MullonWe knew it was not a dishonour to be bested by Pellew and his men”
Another glass of the fiery peppermint liqueur appeared under their hands to facilitate the next toast.
Which was a salute to a fine ship from her former captive : “ To the indefa , indefatigabl- stop laughing sir” but he was himself laughing too -
“Its just that I remember Susan writing to me about Fleet trying to teach you to say it properly!”
“ Only you would want to be captain of a six-syllable ship . To the ‘Indy’ then
“And to those who were her company of the brave And the brave who engaged in fair fight .But we forget our game you were about to grant me Incorrigible Jacobin for my turn then ?”
“I thought it was irredeemable - you are turning positively soft in late life, Edouard”
“It is being a great grandfather does that to a man- that and …the remembrance of past folly”
The younger man nodded in silent acknowledgment
“And the absence of friends” he added .
Then there was a silence which neither needed to fill after which the game began again
“Your turn to guess then - my next rating would be MD “
“Middy - no ,wait-something in your tongue - of course! Marin ?
Oui - et puis ?
“D? diabolical - for some obstreperous varlet stirring up trouble on the gun deck- no,…”
“Non, though I must say I rather think you have hit upon a good one in OV - Obstreperous Varlet You can’t guess it all then? You yield?
“I strike my colours “-
“Which you never did - not once in 40 years “-the tone changed to the slightly awed
“Well, there was luck in that too “
“And skill - but how is it you do not say, like some of the English would, that it is the hand of le bon dieu, although I know you believe?”
“Not in a God who arbitrarily favours one nation alone above another I don’t !So tell me, enfin, marin D?”
“Think of that seaman back on your Indy- one of the ones young Hornblower brought round into fine sailors in the end -Styles ,the joker, the clown, le marin drôle ”.
“ Yes I will concede the type .Old Styles ? do you know he follows Horatio still? - Oh no, he is not afloat any loner but he works for Horatio on his estate He got married last year to a widow from the village and the tattle is he has even combed his hair”
“That I should like to see ! But a good man once he was understood and given cause .If I don’t envy you your ships -and I don’t - I do envy you those men and your young stars most of all - A captain could sell his soul for your mids back then . Here’s another category for you, apropos, though it is not my turn: B e B ?
He watched with affectionate amusement as his friend struggled out of the reverie which inevitably came over him at mention of the ship that held his heart. He was clearly determined .to concentrate fully on the question and Jacques smiled. His friend was ever the fighter and ready with his return fire, even now with white hair and rheumatic shoulders.
“B e B ?” you were speaking of the lads of the Indy back then - B for Brave then - ..and bold -no wait a moment, you would say brave et courageux, not bold. Ah yes - whom did you meet that first day ?Mr Pateshall, Mr Hornblower and Mr Kennedy ,Mr Reynolds, so it has to be Brave and beautiful Brave et beaux !
It had not been lost on the Frenchman where , consciously or otherwise the first ‘and;’ had come in that last sentence, but he kept his counsel. Watching the weathered face lost in remembering again, Jacques decided his confession should come next.
“Edouard - I have something for you back at home - something which rightly should be yours “
“You have? But , my dear man, if you have had need of something of mine you would most likely to be welcome to it >”
“Wait - I need to tell you and to explain properly !You will remember your clerk taking all our names when you took the Virginie ? and you offered me the hospitality of your cabin - where Mr Metcalfe brought the muster register and asked me to confirm he had the details right .. I must own that I took it to read in the little berth you kindly put me in .I intended to return it but then we were moving ashore, you made me your guest and I was a little embarrassed by what I had done. After that I was gaoled and well…just to say in short, I have it still.
I can’t tell you why I did it , it was just - however much you think this incredible - there was something about that ship! And your crew too - maybe I sensed history in the making !But .I want you to have it back- there must be precious memories
Though I suspect you can still tell me about them all - where they are now without the aide memoire of a list.”
The older man nodded slowly and clasped both hands together in front of him on the table.
“ IS it my age Jacques, that I remember the dead first and the living later these days ?
-Will Warden he sleeps in the heat and dubious splendour of that Indian cemetery.
Young Bray is fathoms deep in the Atlantic cold.
And Dick - that poor, wicked silly boy- no one knows -but in the wild western states of America they say
And Robert's boy, buried on that unyielding rock.
And longest ago, in that oppressive Jamaican sun Philip, dead of that dire fever, and Kennedy- …Archie …”
Jacques did not have any need to interrupt the silence which followed - even as could so easily recall a sunlit return to Falmouth, his ship in tow as prize and high on her rigging many of the Indy’s sailors and young gentlemen , among them two figures ,heads close together, an habitual pose. They had been laughing together at some joke -dark and golden in the light. He waited, but he stayed silent.
Who died for love and loyalty .God rest all of them”.-
I still am not at all sure that I earned growing old, my friend but I know my time is drawing nearer now and mortality is a wise teacher - the hand that reached for the glass tightened as it was once again raised. Perhaps that is my last category of this day - MA - mortal Admiral “
“Better by far to be the mortal , flawed and aware of it ,than like some, proclaimed immortal on the basis of a memory half true glory and half a construction of fables. As for judgements, for all we mock them, they will be for the historians in the end.”
“Thank you my friend, and you may keep the muster - there are other documents which have nearly the same information.”
“In any case I have left letters for my family after my death, that all my papers will be kept and one day be given to some official place for such memories”
“ I should like to think one day someone will tell the story of those young men ,and who knows, we might get a mention in some scholar’s notes after all.”
“On the influence of Bayonnaise liqueur on elderly admirals ?”
“On the endurance of friendship and of hope, of love freely -offered.”
The patron watched as his two distinguished guests stood and walked arm in arm up the steps, the elder showing just a little tiredness as they headed up the sunlit street .He heard the ironic voice add, “ I would settle for a small alley named after me - one of those which lead to the waterfront - a memorial of the boy from Bayonne who learned wider horizons.”
Still he remained discreet, since he hoped his customers might return. He merely cleared the table thoughtfully, though privately he planned to tell his Jeanne later that evening that their inn had been visited by no less than Le Contre-Amiral Bergeret and his celebrated English friend, Grand- Amiral le Vicomte Exmouth.
Notes :
The papers of Jacques Bergeret, including a number related to his friendship with Edward Pellew were deposited in 2010 in the archives at Bayonne .So far the 1796 muster of the Indy has not been identified among them!
Robert Metcalf was at around this time alternately clerk and schoolmaster of the Indefatigable.As far as is known he is the longest lived of those who were not commissioned officers, as he was writing to the papers about his experience onboard well into the 1850s,though he does not appear on the medal roll for the GSM which means I am cheating probably by making him part of the capture of the Virginie
The young men mentioned in this story are all historical Indy young gentlemen who died, like Archie Kennedy, in their early years as lieutenants or commanders .William Warden was buried in India after dying of exposure and exhaustion, trying to cut away the masts of his ship to save her in a fierce storm in 1807.James Bray, whose ship sank with loss of all but a handful in wild weather off the United States coast in the war of 1812 .Dick Broughton, who after a troubled naval career and court martial dismissing him from the navy, is rumoured to have died in a remote part of what is now Montana, USA,in 1806 .Robert Carthew Reynolds (Son of Pellew's friend and fellow Admiral Robert Reynolds senior) after a spectacular action in cutting out an enemy ship died of his wounds in 1805 and is the only person ever buried on Diamond Rock off Guadeloupe. Philip Frowd is a relative of Susan’s who died of fever in 1804 in Jamaica and is buried in Port Royal Cemetery which was near the naval hospital. I like to think his grave is near that of his old shipmate, Archie Kennedy.
The admirals here are drinking the forerunner of Izarra the Basque for ‘star’- a liqueur made in Bayonne ,and dating back on paper at least to the 1830s,but from much earlier probably. The liqueur has been made by the same company since 1904 and then since 1913 on the same site as it is today
This year therefore, sees the centenary celebration of the making of Izarra at their works in Bayonne.
Which are located at 9.Quai de l’Amiral Bergeret.
Here is another take on what happened to what should be ADM36/13143.
Author:Nodbear
Length:c 2,400 words
Disclaimer:No ownership claimed - otherwise Archie and Horatio would be in Bayonne too.
Rating:Gen
Characters:Edward Pellew,Jacques Bergeret,(Archie,Horatio,Styles and a number of historical Indy mids)
Summary;Sometime in the 1820s Jacques and Ned reminisce and create new designations for categories of officers and men.Tells the real fate of sundry brave and gallant Indyboys.
Of that which defies rating
It was a glorious Spring afternoon in Bayonne and those out walking seemed to be soaking up the first of the sunshine which really warmed the bones.
The patron of the inn which was an old sailors haunt was glowing with pride about the identity of the two customers who were seated In the half shade of an olive tree outside his bar. He was also, however, a successful innkeeper because he knew that discretion was the wisest course and so he served the two men with courtesy but with no other outward sign of recognition.
It might be that others could work it out, however. Though neither wore a uniform no one would mistake them for other than the naval officers they were .Clearly, in their case, officers who had worked hard for their success. He has noted fine details ,the wind-honed complexions, the calluses on the hands, the confident bearing of both .They had had a fine, long lunch and over their post prandial drink they were quietly playing some word game, conducted in a mixture of French and English, which seemed to have them both in high good humour .. Other customers took no notice of the two of them sitting, relaxed,with a bottle of the local liqueur of which le patron always seemed to have such a fine stock.
“You can’t guess Jacques ? I win this one then, my rating of choice this time is -a special category for French prisoners of note, such as you once were “IJ”=irredeemable Jacobin “
The younger man gave a bark of laughter
“IJ? An I and a J ! grands dieux that will be a test of a captain's clerk to leave legible and distinct It will give our historians un mauvais quarte d’heure trying to decipher that new rating .they will probably write papers about it - new rating nomenclature in the Napoleonic wars”
“Bah! Historians! I can see it already - Nelson and Villeneuve they will write reams about but me - I might a few mentions though half of it will be wrong as like as not , but you Jacques …will this town not remember you?"
“I will be lucky if they name a rowing dinghy after me let alone a ship or a boulevard “.
“But do we really mind all that much ?”
But Jacques was absently musing rather than answering - trying out the English of the description on his tongue ..
“ Irr-e-deem-ab le - barbarous nation to make two syllables out of such a word ending !
Still , it sounds like an ironic name for a very fine frigate -Lets see - the Irredeemable She was ,don’t you think, the one perfect fifth rate we never sailed on, Edouard - the ultimate and most glorious one, fast and adaptable and ideal in every way .yet curiously the one that the Ministry of Marine was always about to commission and never quite did !”
“ Indeed , or the one of which the Navy Board said that they could not compound so much expense right now, though of course they acknowledged its strategic necessity…”
“So then, Edouard, To the elusive,fabulous , and badly pronounced Irredeemable she who never quite came our way..”
“And To naval pen pushers the world over -Down with them!”
“A bas la bureaucratie!” the toast was duly drunk
“You got the beautiful Virginie though, and at a young age”
“Yes, and you took her from me , you old devil !”
“Not without effort my friend , you were damn good”
“But you were better”
“Just luckier, though, no it is true, they were a fine crew by then and the Indefatigable was a stern mistress but she had immeasurably great rewards for those who loved her."
Yes I remember thinking, in my exhaustion, that given I had had to surrender I had done it into the best hands For we commanders we all knew about what you did for poor Mullon and the la veuve MullonWe knew it was not a dishonour to be bested by Pellew and his men”
Another glass of the fiery peppermint liqueur appeared under their hands to facilitate the next toast.
Which was a salute to a fine ship from her former captive : “ To the indefa , indefatigabl- stop laughing sir” but he was himself laughing too -
“Its just that I remember Susan writing to me about Fleet trying to teach you to say it properly!”
“ Only you would want to be captain of a six-syllable ship . To the ‘Indy’ then
“And to those who were her company of the brave And the brave who engaged in fair fight .But we forget our game you were about to grant me Incorrigible Jacobin for my turn then ?”
“I thought it was irredeemable - you are turning positively soft in late life, Edouard”
“It is being a great grandfather does that to a man- that and …the remembrance of past folly”
The younger man nodded in silent acknowledgment
“And the absence of friends” he added .
Then there was a silence which neither needed to fill after which the game began again
“Your turn to guess then - my next rating would be MD “
“Middy - no ,wait-something in your tongue - of course! Marin ?
Oui - et puis ?
“D? diabolical - for some obstreperous varlet stirring up trouble on the gun deck- no,…”
“Non, though I must say I rather think you have hit upon a good one in OV - Obstreperous Varlet You can’t guess it all then? You yield?
“I strike my colours “-
“Which you never did - not once in 40 years “-the tone changed to the slightly awed
“Well, there was luck in that too “
“And skill - but how is it you do not say, like some of the English would, that it is the hand of le bon dieu, although I know you believe?”
“Not in a God who arbitrarily favours one nation alone above another I don’t !So tell me, enfin, marin D?”
“Think of that seaman back on your Indy- one of the ones young Hornblower brought round into fine sailors in the end -Styles ,the joker, the clown, le marin drôle ”.
“ Yes I will concede the type .Old Styles ? do you know he follows Horatio still? - Oh no, he is not afloat any loner but he works for Horatio on his estate He got married last year to a widow from the village and the tattle is he has even combed his hair”
“That I should like to see ! But a good man once he was understood and given cause .If I don’t envy you your ships -and I don’t - I do envy you those men and your young stars most of all - A captain could sell his soul for your mids back then . Here’s another category for you, apropos, though it is not my turn: B e B ?
He watched with affectionate amusement as his friend struggled out of the reverie which inevitably came over him at mention of the ship that held his heart. He was clearly determined .to concentrate fully on the question and Jacques smiled. His friend was ever the fighter and ready with his return fire, even now with white hair and rheumatic shoulders.
“B e B ?” you were speaking of the lads of the Indy back then - B for Brave then - ..and bold -no wait a moment, you would say brave et courageux, not bold. Ah yes - whom did you meet that first day ?Mr Pateshall, Mr Hornblower and Mr Kennedy ,Mr Reynolds, so it has to be Brave and beautiful Brave et beaux !
It had not been lost on the Frenchman where , consciously or otherwise the first ‘and;’ had come in that last sentence, but he kept his counsel. Watching the weathered face lost in remembering again, Jacques decided his confession should come next.
“Edouard - I have something for you back at home - something which rightly should be yours “
“You have? But , my dear man, if you have had need of something of mine you would most likely to be welcome to it >”
“Wait - I need to tell you and to explain properly !You will remember your clerk taking all our names when you took the Virginie ? and you offered me the hospitality of your cabin - where Mr Metcalfe brought the muster register and asked me to confirm he had the details right .. I must own that I took it to read in the little berth you kindly put me in .I intended to return it but then we were moving ashore, you made me your guest and I was a little embarrassed by what I had done. After that I was gaoled and well…just to say in short, I have it still.
I can’t tell you why I did it , it was just - however much you think this incredible - there was something about that ship! And your crew too - maybe I sensed history in the making !But .I want you to have it back- there must be precious memories
Though I suspect you can still tell me about them all - where they are now without the aide memoire of a list.”
The older man nodded slowly and clasped both hands together in front of him on the table.
“ IS it my age Jacques, that I remember the dead first and the living later these days ?
-Will Warden he sleeps in the heat and dubious splendour of that Indian cemetery.
Young Bray is fathoms deep in the Atlantic cold.
And Dick - that poor, wicked silly boy- no one knows -but in the wild western states of America they say
And Robert's boy, buried on that unyielding rock.
And longest ago, in that oppressive Jamaican sun Philip, dead of that dire fever, and Kennedy- …Archie …”
Jacques did not have any need to interrupt the silence which followed - even as could so easily recall a sunlit return to Falmouth, his ship in tow as prize and high on her rigging many of the Indy’s sailors and young gentlemen , among them two figures ,heads close together, an habitual pose. They had been laughing together at some joke -dark and golden in the light. He waited, but he stayed silent.
Who died for love and loyalty .God rest all of them”.-
I still am not at all sure that I earned growing old, my friend but I know my time is drawing nearer now and mortality is a wise teacher - the hand that reached for the glass tightened as it was once again raised. Perhaps that is my last category of this day - MA - mortal Admiral “
“Better by far to be the mortal , flawed and aware of it ,than like some, proclaimed immortal on the basis of a memory half true glory and half a construction of fables. As for judgements, for all we mock them, they will be for the historians in the end.”
“Thank you my friend, and you may keep the muster - there are other documents which have nearly the same information.”
“In any case I have left letters for my family after my death, that all my papers will be kept and one day be given to some official place for such memories”
“ I should like to think one day someone will tell the story of those young men ,and who knows, we might get a mention in some scholar’s notes after all.”
“On the influence of Bayonnaise liqueur on elderly admirals ?”
“On the endurance of friendship and of hope, of love freely -offered.”
The patron watched as his two distinguished guests stood and walked arm in arm up the steps, the elder showing just a little tiredness as they headed up the sunlit street .He heard the ironic voice add, “ I would settle for a small alley named after me - one of those which lead to the waterfront - a memorial of the boy from Bayonne who learned wider horizons.”
Still he remained discreet, since he hoped his customers might return. He merely cleared the table thoughtfully, though privately he planned to tell his Jeanne later that evening that their inn had been visited by no less than Le Contre-Amiral Bergeret and his celebrated English friend, Grand- Amiral le Vicomte Exmouth.
Notes :
The papers of Jacques Bergeret, including a number related to his friendship with Edward Pellew were deposited in 2010 in the archives at Bayonne .So far the 1796 muster of the Indy has not been identified among them!
Robert Metcalf was at around this time alternately clerk and schoolmaster of the Indefatigable.As far as is known he is the longest lived of those who were not commissioned officers, as he was writing to the papers about his experience onboard well into the 1850s,though he does not appear on the medal roll for the GSM which means I am cheating probably by making him part of the capture of the Virginie
The young men mentioned in this story are all historical Indy young gentlemen who died, like Archie Kennedy, in their early years as lieutenants or commanders .William Warden was buried in India after dying of exposure and exhaustion, trying to cut away the masts of his ship to save her in a fierce storm in 1807.James Bray, whose ship sank with loss of all but a handful in wild weather off the United States coast in the war of 1812 .Dick Broughton, who after a troubled naval career and court martial dismissing him from the navy, is rumoured to have died in a remote part of what is now Montana, USA,in 1806 .Robert Carthew Reynolds (Son of Pellew's friend and fellow Admiral Robert Reynolds senior) after a spectacular action in cutting out an enemy ship died of his wounds in 1805 and is the only person ever buried on Diamond Rock off Guadeloupe. Philip Frowd is a relative of Susan’s who died of fever in 1804 in Jamaica and is buried in Port Royal Cemetery which was near the naval hospital. I like to think his grave is near that of his old shipmate, Archie Kennedy.
The admirals here are drinking the forerunner of Izarra the Basque for ‘star’- a liqueur made in Bayonne ,and dating back on paper at least to the 1830s,but from much earlier probably. The liqueur has been made by the same company since 1904 and then since 1913 on the same site as it is today
This year therefore, sees the centenary celebration of the making of Izarra at their works in Bayonne.
Which are located at 9.Quai de l’Amiral Bergeret.