An Upright Man: The Fourteenth Carlisle & Holbrooke Naval Adventure by Durbin Chris

Author:Durbin, Chris
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Chris Durbin Author Ltd.
Published: 2023-11-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Lord Colville

Saturday, Twenty-Sixth of June 1762.

Northumberland, at Anchor. Halifax, Nova Scotia.

‘Ye’re Carlisle’s friend, I gather, Captain Holbrooke. He was in and out of here in ’fifty-eight and ’fifty-nine when we were dealing with the French. He brought you up from a master’s mate, if I heard the story correctly.’

‘Yes, sir. I served under him in Fury and then I was his lieutenant in Medina before Admiral Cotes gave me a sloop in Jamaica. I was lucky with the rash of promotions at the start of the war.’

Holbrooke understood that Colville wanted to establish some human connection before the business of reporting his news. He didn’t usually attempt to justify himself; he saw it as a sign of weakness, but under Colville’s gaze he felt that he needed to make some sort of explanation for his extraordinary rise through the ranks. It wasn’t unprecedented, but there were only a handful of post-captains who had made such rapid progress. In any case, he liked Colville already. He was a straightforward man, a Scottish lord with an impoverished estate and only his naval pay and prize money between him and penury. It was said that he held onto this unattractive post to avoid setting foot in his home country, with its ever-present threat of the debtor’s gaol. He must be close to the top of the post-captain’s list, so his flag was imminent. That would mean a return to Britain, and Holbrooke wondered how Colville would manage that transition, how he’d square his creditors at the same time as suffering an inevitable drop in income.

‘Well, he was the lucky one, in my opinion. You can’t imagine how many disappointments I’ve had with my protégés. Drunken wastrels, weak-kneed ninnies and outright poltroons, most of them. Oh, a few have turned out reasonably well, but none do me the credit that you’ve done for Carlisle.’

Colville looked wistfully at Holbrooke. It was an important point, and in many ways senior commanders’ reputations rested upon the performance of the men that they’d brought up, seen commissioned and in due course posted to a rated ship. Holbrooke could understand how it had come about. The North American command enjoyed none of the glamour of the other foreign stations, and for half of the year the squadron merely survived, battened down against the cold and damp in Halifax Harbour. Then, for the short campaign season, a senior admiral brought his own squadron across. But since Quebec fell in ’fifty-nine, there had been barely a sight of the enemy and Colville’s squadron was seen as a reserve of ships to be sent elsewhere as the need arose. Colville could no doubt attract young men from his home in Scotland, but otherwise he was left with the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel.

‘Well, enough of that. You’ve no mail for us, I understand, but you do have news of the French, and that might be a more cheerful thought.’

‘No mail, I regret, my Lord. When I sailed from Portsmouth I had no notion of sailing further west than the chops of the channel.

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