Bolitho went over all that he had discovered about his new ship. Three years old, the ragged man had said. He would know. All Plymouth probably pondered over the care which was being taken to equip and man a frigate in these hard times.
Twenty-eight guns, fast and agile, Destiny was what most young officers dreamed of. In time of war, free of the fleet’s apron strings, swifter than any larger vessel, and more heavily armed than anything smaller, a frigate was a force to be reckoned with. Better hopes of promotion, too, and if you were lucky enough ever to reach the lofty peak of command, so too would a frigate offer the chance of action and prize-money.
Bolitho thought of his last ship, the seventy-four-gun Gorgon. Huge, slow-moving, a teeming world of people, miles of rigging, vast spans of canvas, and the spars to carry it. It was also a schoolroom, where the young midshipmen learned how to control and sustain their unwieldy charge, and they learned the hard way.
Bolitho looked up as the waterman said, “Should be seeing her about now, sir.”
Bolitho peered ahead, glad of the interruption to his thoughts. As his mother had said when he had left her in the big grey house at Falmouth, “Put it behind you, Dick. You cannot bring him back. So take care of yourself now. The sea is no place for the unwary.”
The mist darkened and edged aside as the anchored ship loomed into view. The boat was approaching her starboard bow and past the long tapering jib-boom. Like Bolitho’s new uniform on the wet jetty, the Destiny seemed to shine through the drifting murk.