Dead Reckoning Read Online Free Page A

to his wife was dated from Table Bay on January 14th 1806, and was entrusted (like the first) to H.M. Ship Diadem, which also carried the dispatch in which Sir Home Popham announced his conquest of the Cape:
    My dearest Fiona—Now you can be allowed to know on what particular service the Laura was sent overseas. I was not myself informed until after we had sailed from Madeira but had made my guess before that. The result was that my seamen were taught their arms drill by our marine sergeant and my officers and midshipmen were instructed by Mr Fenner on how to serve as infantry. There was some grumbling at first, seamen muttering that they had never reckoned on becoming sodgers or lobster-backs, but theylearnt their drill in the end and even held their own (or very nearly) in a competition against the marines with the purser holding the stopwatch and the surgeon as judge. It was as well we did this because we had to provide a detachment for service ashore and they did very well under Fitzgerald’s command and were ’specially commended by Captain Byng. I myself did not go ashore until the fighting was over. When I did so it was to find the colony in our possession again—and what a lovely place it is! Capetown has a delightful climate and is overlooked by the impressive height of Table Mountain. Inland the farms are built in the Dutch style and are so picturesque that I made sketches of several and lacked only the time to turn them into proper water-colours. Do you remember drinking Constantia at a dinner given by Sir John and Lady Warren? Well, I have now visited Constantia itself, the vineyard from which it comes and where I bought some of the wine which is excellent. So I think well of our conquest and feel that we were foolish to have given it back after its previous capture. Wine of that quality is wasted on the beer-drinking Dutch and we shall do well in future to keep it for ourselves. You will be glad to know that we have lost very few men in killed or wounded, the Laura having lost none, and that nearly our whole damage was sustained by the Leonidas of 64 guns, which grounded while attempting to cover the landing with her broadside. Unfamiliar with Saldanha Bay, Captain Watson took his ship closer to the shore than was prudent, following the example of the Encounter and Protector, smaller ship for which there was depth enough. The result is that the Leonidas, which was to have escorted the China Fleet back from Canton, is now ordered home forrepair. Some other ship will now have to go to China in her place but the rumour is that Sir Home, having some further operation in mind, refuses to detach any ship-ofthe-line, nor even the Diomede of 50 guns. Should this be the truth, as seems not improbable, I may yet be able to boast that I have been to China. Nothing is decided yet and I would not have dared say so much in a letter were it not for the fact that the mail will go home with Captain Donovan together with the Commodore’s dispatch and so will not fall into the enemy’s hands. I could only wish that Sir Home would write another dispatch, amplifying the first, and this time make me the bearer of it. This does not seem likely! I comfort myself, however, with the thought that the Cape is now in our hands. For years past the French island of Mauritius or the Ile de France has been the base for cruisers and privateers, some of them having had great success against the country trade in the Bay of Bengal or the Straits of Malacca. Some of these marauders have been taken but the only effectual remedy, as everyone knows, must lie in the capture of Mauritius itself. Now the Cape is ours we are brought within shorter range of the French islands and can blockade them as a first step towards their eventual conquest. When they are taken, fewer men-of-war will be wanted in the Indian Ocean and the Laura may well be one that can be spared. That is still my hope and I comfort myself with the thought that we