From Powder Monkey to Admiral

By Richard Philbrick

Orphaned and homeless young William (Henry) Rayner signs on to a Royal Navy frigate at the end of the 1700s in order to better his life. With his quick intelligence and devotion to duty he rises through the ranks from the foc'sle to command.

The first of two volumes Book I tells of Henry's rise from serving before the mast to becoming a midshipman.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Philbrick
• Release date: Mar 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9780983307426

Richard Philbrick

Raised on Cape Cod. Lived in New Orleans for 10 years and left long before Katrina. Worked as a newspaper reporter, magazine editor, hospital public relations director and freelance writer before chucking it all and following my bliss which was to work on boats. Became a Coast Guard Licensed captain and worked for 20 years running yachts and small commercial craft including a three year stint as captain of a large sailboat on the French Riviera and sailing across the big pond in '91.In my own small sailboat I single-handed from Fort Lauderdale to Mexico, Belize and the Rio Dulce in Guatemala and back.

Book preview

From Powder Monkey to Admiral

By: W.H.G. Kingston

Edited for Today’s Young Reader

By Richard S. Philbrick

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Richard S. Philbrick

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Forward

There is a wonderful treasure trove of books that were written for young readers a century and more ago. While the tales are gripping, the writers didn’t have the timeless style of a Robert Louis Stevenson or a Charles Dickens, and the books fell by the wayside.

The dated spelling, grammar and syntax of these books put off young readers of the 21st Century and that’s a shame. This book, is full of adventure; pitched battles at sea with roaring canons, narrow escapes and heroism.

W.H.G. Kingston wrote over 150 books for young readers in the mid-1800s and this book was serialized in the magazine Boy’s Own Paper in 1883.

I have heavily edited the book to make it read as if it had been written today. Barely a paragraph remains as Kingston wrote it though the characters and plot remain as he presented them. The original book was over 120,000 words long. I have broken it into two separate books to make it easier for a young reader to tackle.

Chapter 1

Preparing to Start

A group of fifty or sixty men and a score of young boys rounded up from the back streets and alleyways around London and Portsmouth clambered out of the tender Viper and stood in stunned confusion on the deck of the Royal Navy Frigate Foxhound as it prepared to go to sea.

They were a mixed and curious lot.

There were long-shore men in swallow-tail coats and round hats, fishermen in jerseys and fur-skin caps, smugglers in big boots and flushing coats. Several had pasty-white faces, and close-cropped hair, leaving little doubt that their last residence had been a jail. There were sullen seamen, too. Most had spent months and even years on long voyages away from their homes and country and had been captured by the roving press gangs without having the chance to visit family and friends or even enjoy a long-anticipated spree on shore before being caught up and deposited on the decks of the frigate. Now they waited to be inspected by the ship’s first lieutenant, before their names were entered on the ship's books.

Most of the frigate’s crew were old hands who’d served a year or more on board the Foxhound and they paid little attention to the new lot. The ship had recently fought two fierce battles, and while victorious, her ranks had been thinned in the combat and the captain was anxious to restore the compliment as fast as possible and by every means in his power.

In short order the newcomers would go through a process leaving them indistinguishable from the older hands, except, maybe, when it came to splicing an eye, or turning in a grommet. Then their clumsy work would show them for what they were. Few were ever likely to be at the outermost ends of the yard-arms when sail had to be shortened on a dark, stormy night when it was blowing great guns and small arms.

The frigate lay at Spithead and had been waiting for these hands before putting out to sea. Lighters lay alongside, and whips were hoisting in casks of rum, bales and cases of all sorts, and it seemed impossible that everything could be stowed away.

From the first lieutenant to the youngest midshipman, it seemed everyone was yelling at the top of their lungs, issuing and repeating orders. There were two who out-roared all the rest: the boatswain and the boatswain's mate. They were proud of their voices. In the hardest gale, with the wind howling and whistling through the rigging, the canvas flapping like claps of thunder, and the seas roaring and dashing against the bows, they could make themselves heard above the storm. The boatswain was so accustomed to roaring that he couldn’t speak in a gentler voice even while anchored in a snug harbor, and the boatswain's mate imitated him.

The first lieutenant had a good voice of his own, though not so rough as that of the boatswain and his mate. He made it come out with a quick, sharp sound that could be heard from the poop to the forecastle, even with the wind ahead.

Jack, Tom and Henry looked at each other, wondering what was going to happen next. They were about the same age and height and, though strangers to each other, found themselves standing close together.

They were overwhelmed by the activity about them and too frightened to talk. Surrounded by both the crew and pressed men they’d come aboard with they simply listened to the conversation going on around them.

Hello, mate, where do you come from? asked a long-shore chap of one of jailbirds.

Oh, I just dropped from the clouds. Don't know where else I would have come from.

I suppose you got your hair cropped off as you came down?

Yes, the wind did it as I fell, answered the former prisoner. "And tell me, mate, how did you get on board this craft?" he asked.

I swam off, of course, seized with a fit of patriotism, and determined to fight for the honor and glory of old England, the crewman said with a laugh.

The three boys felt as if they’d dropped on deck from the moon. Everything was strange and bewildering. None had ever been on board a ship before, and Henry had never even seen one. Having little knowledge of trees, it seemed to him that the masts grew out of the deck, the yards were branches, and the blocks curious leaves.

Henry Rayner hadn’t been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He never knew his father. He and his mother lived in a garret and she died in a garret. But poor as they were his mother had done everything she could to instill principles in her son’s character. Lying on her deathbed she took Henry’s hand and, looking deep into his blue eyes said, Be honest, Henry, in the sight of God. Never forget He sees you and you must do your best to please Him. Have no fear about the rest. I’m no scholar, but I know what's right, and you know right from wrong. If others try to temp you into doing what's wrong, don't listen to them. Promise me, Henry, you’ll do as I ask.

I promise, Henry answered, and, small lad that he was, he meant what he said.

Poor as Henry’s mother was she had some education and had taught him to read, write and do simple addition and subtraction. Not that he was great at any of those things, but he possessed the basics. He loved to read, but having no money to spend on books he did his best to keep up his knowledge by reading sign boards, looking into book seller’s windows and studying any stray newspaper pages he found while sifting through trash bins looking for any discarded items he might be able to turn into a few shillings.

His mother was buried in a rough-hewn casket provided by the parish and Henry was left on his own. He did whatever he could; hunting through other people’s trash; running errands when he could get anyone to send him; holding horses for gentlemen or serving as a link boy holding flaming torches at grand parties or guiding pedestrians down pitch-black streets at night. More often than not, though, Henry went without supper to where he bedded down at night, either under a market-cart, in a cask by the river side, or in some other out-of-the-way place.

Like so many other London boys, Henry was constantly exposed to all sorts temptations. Many resorted to petty crimes. Others fell in with adult villains who taught them how to pick pockets. But even when almost starving and without a roof to sleep under or a friend to whom he could appeal to for help, Henry remembered the promise he’d made to his and resisted all the temptations put before him.

One day, having wandered farther east than he had ever been before, he found himself in the presence of a press gang, that was carrying off a group of men and boys to the river's edge. One of the man-of-war's men seized him, and Henry, thinking matters couldn’t be much worse for him than they already were, willingly accompanied the party, though he had no idea where they were going.

Reaching a boat the group tumbled in. Some resisted and tried to get away; but a gentle jab from the point of a cutlass, or a clout on the head with a club, made them more reasonable, and most sat in the launch resigned to their fate. When the boat was some distance from the shore a burly man, dressed in sailor’s garb, started striking out at the men nearest him and sprang overboard. Before the boat could be turned around the escapee had gotten nearly half way back to the landing-place.

Two of the press gang were armed with muskets. The man, looking back at the launch saw them lifting their weapons and he dove underwater and escaped the first volley. By the time the men on the boat had reloaded the desperate man had gained enough distance that the next shot spattered harmlessly into the water on either side of him.

Now, the sailors with the muskets were afraid of firing again for fear of hitting someone on shore, and the deepening gloom of dusk hid the man from view. Everyone on the launch knew he had landed safely from the cheers and jeers rolling across the river waters from the quay by the crowd who had followed the press gang and hooted at them as they embarked with their captives.

Henry thought he couldn’t be going to a pleasant place if the man had run such a risk to escape. Unable to swim Henry couldn’t have followed the man’s example even if he’d wanted to, so he thought it best to simply stay still, keep his mouth shut and see what happened next.

The boat pulled down the river until she came alongside a large cutter. Henry and the others were poked and prodded out of the launch and onto the cutter’s deck. The cutter was now so crowded no more men could be stowed on board and she got under way with the first of the ebb tide and dropped down the stream bound for Spithead.

Henry and most of the pressed men were kept below in a dark, fetid hold during his first trip to sea and he gained little in the way of nautical knowledge from the journey though he did have his first experience with sea sickness.

Several of the more heartless men, seeking to relieve their own misery, taunted him. Indeed poor Henry, thin, pale, shoeless, hatless and clad in garments so patched it was almost impossible to say which was the original fabric, was truly a miserable object.

With the wind fair the trip didn’t last long and Henry was relieved when the cutter pulled alongside the big frigate and he and the rest of the men climbed on board. He quickly recovered from his sea sickness with the fresh air that blew across the Foxhound’s decks.

Tom Fletcher, who stood next to Henry, had the advantage over Henry in outward appearance. Tom was dressed in a somewhat nautical fashion, though any sailor would have seen with half an eye Tom’s costume was newly made by a shore-side tailor.

Tom had a good-natured but not very sensible look about him. He was strongly built and in good health and there was the making of a sailor in him even though this was the first time he’d ever actually been on a ship.

Earlier in the day he’d fallen in with a party of men returning on the expiration of their leave and he’d told them he wished to go to sea. The men glanced at each other with sly smiles and allowed him to enter their boat. From the questions some of the men asked, and by the answers Tom gave, they suspected he had run away from home. That was, in fact, just what he’d done. Tom was the son of a solicitor in a country town, who had several other boys in the family, Tom being the fourth.

He’d read everything he could get his hands on about the voyages of Drake, Cavendish and Dampier. He devoured the adventures of the celebrated pirates such as Captain Kidd and Blackbeard and the lives of some of England’s illustrious naval commanders like John Benbow, Hawke, Rodney and others whose gallant actions he full expected to imitate, or better, some day.

Tom had pled with his father to let him go to sea but Mr. Fletcher, knowing the boy was completely ignorant of a sea life, set his son’s wish down as mere fancy. Rather than trying to show he was serious Tom took off one fine morning and made his way to Portsmouth. If he’d waited and persisted it’s possible he might have been sent to sea as a midshipman and placed on the quarter-deck. Now, however, he was entered as a ship’s boy before the mast.

Having made his bed he now had to lie on it. Even if he wrote home now he might have been able to change his position. But he thought himself clever and had no intention of letting his father know where he had gone.

The last of the trio was far more accustomed to salt water than either of his companions. Jack Peek was the son of a fisherman. He’d come to sea because he saw little chance of getting bread to put into his mouth if he remained on shore. Jack's father had lost his boats and nets the previous winter, and had, himself, been pressed on board a man-of-war shortly afterwards.

Jack had done his best to support himself without being a burden to his mother, so when he proposed going on board a man-of-war, she, mended his shirts, bought him a new pair of shoes, and gave him her blessing. He gathered his clothes in a bundle and trudged off with determination, to serve His Majesty and fight the battles of England.

Jack went on board the first man-of-war tender he could find, and had been immediately transported to the Foxhound.

He told Tom and Henry his story but Henry wasn’t ready to open up about his own history. His patched clothes said as much about him as needed to be told. A boy who’d spent all his life on the streets of London wasn’t likely to say more to strangers than necessary.

The fresh hands were called before the first lieutenant, Mr. Saltwell, and their names were entered in the ship’s books by the purser after a few questions were put to them to determine if they were qualified for any rating.

A few, including the smugglers, were entered as able seamen and some as ordinary seamen but the majority were unfit to go aloft or were unlikely to be of much use in any way for a long time to come and were rated as landsmen and would be relegated to doing all the dirty work aboard the ship.

Finally the boys stood before the lieutenant and each gave an account of himself. Tom dreaded being asked any questions which he would have to answer about his background, but no questions were asked where men or boys came from. Mr. Saltwell glanced briefly at all three and, in spite of his ragged clothes, entered Henry first, Jack next, and Tom, greatly to his surprise, was listed last.

Chapter 2

Up Anchor!

As soon as the boy’s names were entered they were turned over to the ship’s corporal who took them forward to obtain suits of sailor’s clothing. They were made to wash themselves thoroughly before putting on their fresh gear and when they came on deck with their hair nicely combed it was soon seen which of the three was likely to prove the smartest sea boy.

Henry had never had such neat clothing in his life and he felt himself a completely different person. Tom strutted around trying to look big and important. Jack wasn’t much changed except he now had a round hat instead of a cap, clean clothes and lighter shoes than the thick boots he’d come on board wearing.

Since neither Tom nor Henry new the stem from the stern of the ship, and even Jack felt strange being on something as large and formidable as the frigate they were handed over to Dick Brice, the biggest ship’s boy who had orders to teach them their duties.

Dick had great faith