Chapter 80: Europa in Chaos (Request for Subscription!)

Chapter 80 – Europa in a Porridge of Chaos (Request Subscription!)
In the cafe across from the Greenwich Police Station, Arthur was enjoying a rare moment of peace and quiet.

At the next table, Tony and Tom were earnestly learning the basics related to museum science and medicine with Darwin.

Robin’s case has stimulated both of them, and for the first time in their lives, the two officers feel that learning is so important, not only for the sake of Arthur’s three shillings subsidy, but also for the sake of protecting the lives of the citizens of London.

And sitting opposite Arthur was Elder, who had a dying look on his face.

Although today’s lunch was Arthur’s treat, Young Master Elder rarely had much of an appetite.

Arthur glanced at his half-dead expression and asked in a nonchalant manner, ”What’s wrong with you? Didn’t you say that Sir Isaac Newton is the only sun in your heart? Why don’t you go to Gresham College for a science lecture now that you have the time?”

“Listen to a science lecture? Where am I in the mood for that now?”

Elder clutched his head in agony, “Arthur, you don’t know, the Beagle’s refit is almost complete. If we keep going at this pace, it’s not likely that in a little while, Charles and I will be on board for sea training.”

Arthur raised an eyebrow and said, “You’re a cartographer in the Royal Navy, isn’t it normal to go for sea training? It will prepare you for a future circumnavigation of the world, and don’t you get double the pay you would get on land while floating at sea?”

“Arthur!” Elder sighed, “I wouldn’t want that money if I could choose. There’s nowhere to spend the money at sea, and besides, the Admiralty doesn’t actually pay more than a few pennies. It’s not like I’m a captain or a navigator, I don’t get paid that much.”

Arthur turned to the next page of the paper and spoke, “Eldad, think of the good things. Didn’t your uncle also float on the sea for more than twenty years, and only then did he save more than a hundred thousand dollars of his family’s capital? If you work hard, you might be able to do the same as him.”

Elder covered his face and lamented, “He just caught a good time and caught the last train of the Napoleonic Wars. Otherwise, where would you have asked him to get so much money?

Back then, in order to fight against Napoleon and his allies, every shipyard in the country was working at full speed to build warships, and the Royal Navy was constantly capturing warships. So my uncle was promoted to colonel and immediately assigned a ship as captain.

But what about now? The Royal Navy has over a thousand ships with almost two thousand captains, and the younger ones have to wait on shore to get in line to board.

Some people may not get a turn as a captain in their lifetime, and there are not a few who take the Admiralty’s land allowance all the way to retirement.

If it weren’t for the fact that there were so many men and so few ships, why do you think the Admiralty was so comfortable with young captains as navigating officers, responsible for writing logs to supervise the captains?
Because to the captains, taking out a captain is the equivalent of pitting an extra ship, and they never show their old bosses any mercy in court-martial as long as they’ve got them by the short hairs.”

Arthur froze for a long moment when he heard this, “Isn’t the Admiralty afraid of captains falsely accusing their captains when they do that?”

“False accusations? That rarely happens unless the captain is out of his mind.”

Elder rested one leg on the table and leaned his head back against the back of the chair, “Because a Captain’s promotion requires a letter of recommendation from the Captain, and if he dares to perjure himself and ends up failing to take the Captain down, he’ll be in for a world of trouble later.

Besides, there’s more than one captain on the ship, so unless they’re all colluding together, a false accusation won’t be that easy to pull off.

At the end of the day, even if they conspired, there was still the Sergeant Major on board.

The chief petty officers are all served by some skillful old sailors, because the chief petty officer has no hope of promotion, and his appointment and dismissal is not controlled by the captain of the ship, but is directly decided by the Admiralty, so the chief petty officer is usually too lazy to tell a lie.

If a captain can offend several captains and chief petty officers on board at the same time, he probably can’t win a war if he’s sent out to fight it, and deserves to be laid off.”

Arthur heard this and rubbed his chin, “Doesn’t that sound good? Then why are you so reluctant to do sea training? I just looked at you like you were going to die and thought you were going to be tied to the ramming horn by Colonel Fitzroy as soon as you went to sea.” “How dare he!” Elder glared, “He’s the one who suggested the sea training, and we’re all reluctant, so if he ties me to the ramming horn again, I guarantee he’ll be laid off as soon as the Beagle returns.

Who knows what’s wrong with his brain, doing six sea training sessions in three months, each lasting more than a week, the Mediterranean fleet my uncle was in didn’t train as hard as he did!”

“What does the Mediterranean fleet practice?”

Elder heard this and looked around mysteriously, then put his hand over his mouth and whispered.

“I’ll tell you, don’t tell anyone outside! In fact, ah, I heard from my uncle that their Mediterranean fleet spends more than half of the year lying in the harbor.

And this phenomenon, in each foreign fleet is very common, stationed in the place of the more pleasant climate living conditions the better, the fleet lying longer.

Mediterranean fleet lying time is the longest in the fleet, serious times, sixty percent of the time each year to stay in the harbor. The Baltic fleet is much more diligent, they are only about 30% or 40% of the time in the shore to recuperate.

After all, it wasn’t wartime, so what was the point of training so rigorously? The men of the Royal Navy get better wages for part-time work on land than they do on the ships.”

“Not wartime?” Arthur said here and smiled as he pushed the newspaper on the table to Elder, “Look at what’s this? It’s not likely that we’ll actually have to go to war after a while.”

Elder waved his hand with disinterest, “Isn’t it just that the king died? What’s the big deal? It’s not like I don’t know. The newspapers are full of stories cursing him, even the tabloids I read have dedicated two pages to him.

I still remember that tabloid quoted the Times as saying that there had never been any king in the world who died without receiving the pity of even one of his people. Who, may I ask, shed a tear for him? What heart throbbed for him, and evoked sincere mourning?
From the nobles to the clergy to the common citizens, there was not one who did not curse him. And he deserves to be scolded for dying on his own and delaying me from reading tabloid stories!”

“Did he?”

Arthur raised an eyebrow, “In case you didn’t know, I heard from a journalist friend who does parliamentary interviews, the same Charles Dickens, the clerk of the court, that the Duke of Wellington’s eulogy, read in the House of Lords, was one that praised the departed king as ‘the most cultured gentleman of his time.’ ”

Elder was stunned to hear that, “The Duke of Wellington could say that? I remember when the King blocked the Catholic Emancipation Bill, didn’t he privately call the King the worst, most selfish, most faithless, most ill-intentioned man he had ever met in his life, and worse still, the King’s complete lack of any good qualities that could compensate for his shortcomings?”

Arthur pursed his lips and smiled, “Eldad, you don’t understand, that’s what being Prime Minister is all about, two faces. Do you know how the Duke of Wellington reacted when he heard that the King had fallen ill and died?

He marveled, ‘I used to wager with His Majesty that he might not be able to do even one good thing in his life, and now it seems perhaps I was wrong’.”

Elder laughed out loud, “No wonder he called His Majesty the King ‘the most cultured gentleman of our time’. But what does that have to do with the possibility of war breaking out?”

Arthur pointed to today’s news headlines and said, “Because I’m not talking about Great Britain at all, look at what today’s headlines really are.”

Elder turned the paper over and moved it to his face.

The headline of the news was simple, but the meaning revealed was profound – ‘Revolution breaks out in France, National Guard occupies Paris’

(End of chapter)