A/N: First, thank you, dear readers! This is my first AU and what I hope to be my first lengthy fic. I hope you enjoy the same boys we all know and love, just tossed into the 18th century.
Fun fact – I am neither from the 18th century nor a sailor. If you are here for a historical depiction of the time or of sailing, you will be disappointed. I recommend you read something from a professional; may I suggest some Patrick O'Brian? With that said I especially need to thank my husband for being my onsite historian. We are both amateurs though, so please remember this is AU for entertainment purposes, so any historical inaccuracies are the fault of my own, either overlooked or otherwise. Here there will be a misuse of rank, of sailing terms, of history as we know it.
Finally, the 1700s were a complex time, and history a web of differing bureaucracy, ideologies, and national interests. No offense is intended by the portrayals of the people and nations in this fic.
Also, by now it should be well-known that Thunderbirds is the property of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson.
Without further ado, and with disclaimers appropriately disclaimed…
bon voyage!
Chapter 1: Hoist the Skivvies
The Atlantic, 1778
Blue skies and bluer water showed no signs of land in the distance, though the winds whistling through the ship's sails sang a refrain of robust travel if they remained on course. The sun was freshly risen still low in the sky beyond her forecastle.
"One of these days you'll tip 'er over, Captain," laughed Thomas from below the jib as he secured the rope at the bow, and where a few feet out, over water, Captain Scott C. Tracy balanced his weight on the extended spur that commanded the attention of the ship's front as they sailed, his right hand wrapped around the outer jib rigging for stability.
The ship's intricate figurehead in the image of a bird soared with the sea, as if holding the figure above it aloft in her wingspan.
For a moment, Thomas froze as Scott glanced back at the shipman, his jacket billowing in a synchronized dance with the sails and looking every bit the commander he was, sabre at his hip. The banter was common among the shipmen, had even expanded to Misters Gordon and Alan since their journey. But for him to have made such a suggestion to his Captain….
"I'll lay off Mr. John's biscuits next time." The jibe to any other captain would have landed an unranked sailor without rations for a few days, but Captain Scott C. Tracy treated his crew like family. While Thomas feared the recourse from his Captain, Scott was delighted their newest recruit had started to relax enough around his commanding officers to jest.
Even if, perhaps, it came from a place of cabin fever after all this time at sea. They'd run out of biscuits weeks ago.
"He knows he shouldn't be up there in the first place," chided the ship's second as he walked up beside Thomas, clapping a hand on the youth's back, and reaching out towards Scott with the other. "Come on down, Captain. We don't want you falling in the drink." Through the worry, the suggestion was still said with a smile. Virgil knew just as well that Scott could balance on the bowsprit with his eyes closed, had even done it once for a dare, and had dragged Virgil along with him as a trust exercise.
This was, however, Thomas' first voyage with the USS Thunderbird, and though the youth had been on previous expeditions with other sea vessels, he didn't have the experience of dealing with hotshot captains in particular. Especially when they were being foolish.
Virgil did. He was, after all, his brother.
Scott grinned as he jumped down from the bowsprit, catching Virgil's hand with his own to offset the way his knees buckled slightly as he hit the deck.
"You got her well in hand if I do, Mr. Virgil," he said, waving off the attention and running his fingers through his windswept brown fringe once he settled his balance.
"Aye, but I don't really want to today, sir." Not today, not ever if they could avoid it. But that was in fact the role of the First Mate as the second-in-command, a role that Virgil accepted graciously and also despised that they needed. He was happy being just their surgeon.
They were a crew of nine.
The Captain treated his crew like family because half of them actually were. The USS Thunderbird was a family operation, and a family operation it would stay for all who joined her crew.
Scott C. Tracy, the commanding officer, had inherited the ship from their father who chose the name Thunderbird from a native tradition shared with them at their first settlement in the New World.
Virgil G. Tracy, second eldest after Scott and First Mate, Surgeon, and Naturalist, was their Renaissance Man, their jack of all trades who could both wrestle heavy cargo on board with his bare hands and spring into a jig on his violin right after.
John G. Tracy was their Navigator and Cartographer, though he would admit to mapping more of the stars than their sea routes. Although they all rotated the role of cook, after the first few weeks the better fare would change more to hardtack. John did what he could before that happened, but the life of a sailor was not a glamorous one in the least.
Gordon C. Tracy was their Boatswain commanding the deck crew, and he often took the helm. Gordon worked closely with Henry (Hal) Stranton and Benjamin (Benji) Lovell, as well as Thomas who was learning a little bit of everything on his first journey with the Thunderbird.
Alan S. Tracy, was the youngest, but anyone who knew him wouldn't let that affect their opinion of him. The young man was a capable master gunner, in charge of the four cannons on their main deck, and the eight more below with the ammunition.
Reporting primarily to Alan was Lee Dorsey, an older grey fellow, older even than the Captain, who came highly recommended as an artillery man, but who still took a few weeks at sea before finding his sea legs. Between the two of them, Alan and Lee, they were a master pair with the Thunderbirds' twelve guns.
The rotations of the terrible two, Gordon and Alan, and their sea men, was the devil of a dance stored in Virgil's head, as the officer in charge of the shifts. Virgil himself kept to as normal a schedule as he could unless called upon, which worked out because the superior officer he filled in for rarely slept. As of late, Scott had been practically a part of the night watch with John and Benji.
"So what time did you get up this morning?" Virgil asked as they let Thomas return to his work checking and securing the jib rigging. "And don't lie to me again, Scott."
"I slept!" The deck creaked under their feet as the two senior officers traversed the ship where Hal was manning the helm.
"Morning, Cap'n! Chief," came the respectful greeting from behind the ship's massive wheel as they approached.
"I trust there's no need to alter course this morning, Hal?"
"No, Chief. Steady as she goes according to Master John this morning. You just missed him."
"He retired an hour or so ago," Scott confirmed for his brother.
Virgil hummed. "It's just as well," he said, nodded in understanding. Where Virgil had a healthy relationship with sleep, John took after their older brother and often challenged his ability to stay up for longer than he should. Virgil was glad John had gone to bed at a time that constituted a normal hour for the night shift, even if it meant Virgil only had the few hours after supper to spend with his star drunk sibling.
From the quarterdeck that housed the helm the officers had the best view of the whole of the ship. Her two masts seemed to touch the heavens, her fully extended cotton sails romping with the clouds above. It was a view, despite their years at sea, neither of them got tired of.
Mornings were much of the same every day, a series of haul, ho chants lead by Gordon as they checked the sails, adjusted any rigging, and ran through their deck chores. Alan and Lee would join in only after their tasks below deck, primarily checking to make sure the gunpowder was dry, securing any cannon balls that may have rolled in the night, and any maintenance and cleaning to the artillery below before checking the ones above.
The movements of the ship, and her crew within her, was a dance the officers knew well, and eventually the chanties would blend into sea songs as the crew relaxed into their routine. Alan at Three, Lee at Four, both checking the ropes securing the affectionately named guns at the starboard side of the ship, Thomas and Gordon wrestling with the ropes at the main mast, the haul, ho chant evolved into a different tune. And up she rises.
What do we do with a drunken sailor earl-eye in the morning?
Virgil smiled. He could write a book of lines Gordon had created for the song that usually landed the poor sailor in precarious positions. That was the best thing about sea songs; they were not tied so resolutely to their lyrics. It wasn't really fun to express a threat to throw him in the bed with the Captain's daughter, if their Captain didn't have a daughter. So Gordon improvised, at the amusement of his companions.
It was a talent really.
"Hoist his skivvies up the main mast!" Gordon called. "Hoist his skivvies up the main mast, earl-eye in the mooooorning."
Where the others usually joined in once they heard Gordon's reveal of their new line, the repeated phrase was just Gordon's strong timbre this time, booming through howls of the crew. Including Scott himself and Hal, his hands clenched around the ship's wheel to keep himself from laughing too hard.
"I don't know, Mr. Virgil," Scott chuckled, "I like those colors better."
Virgil frowned, following Scott's gaze up past the sails where a strange shape that definitely was not supposed to be there flapped in the wind, and he squinted up at his own underclothes exposed for all of Neptune's children to see. And below, smugly elevating the garment into the skies -
"GORDON!"
Virgil rushed down from the helm and dove for his brother sending both of them to the deck. The blond, proud, grinned cheekily as he caught Virgil's weight with his chest and they rolled. In a manner of seconds, Virgil had him pinned. Gordon could hold his own in a fight, but Virgil had the weight on his little brother.
And honestly Gordon was too busy laughing to try.
"Take those down," Virgil growled.
"Ah, mercy," Gordon wheezed between laughter despite his face pressed against the deck, the tips of his ears turning red from exertion.
"Easy, Mr. Virgil," Scott said, resting a hand on Virgil's tense shoulder. "Please don't kill our Bosun today."
But it was so tempting.
"Fine, Captain." Virgil released his brother and stormed off below deck grumbling about letting them fall in the drink next time.
Gordon rolled onto his back, still assailed by laughter, as Scott and Alan offered him their assistance up. He accepted their hands, springing up with a flourish and a bow to his brothers and crewmen.
"Bold one," Alan declared, nudging Gordon's shoulder. Scott clapped the two youngest on the back, draping his arms around their shoulders. They all fixed their gaze on the unmentionables fluttering happily in the wind. The Captain then leaned in between the two and whispered something in Gordon's ear that had them all laughing again.
Such was the life on the USS Thunderbird.
o-o-o-o-o-o
Below decks, Virgil had what constituted an office perhaps. It was their medical cabin, full of surgical tools as well as bindings, salves, and tonics to aid in any misadventures that occurred on ship. The space was also a welcome sanctuary when he needed it, and it was where he kept his books, leather-bound journals, and utensils for sketching. He preferred to use the fine line of graphite pencil rods for his documentation of the creatures they encountered on their journeys, and charcoal for the representations of their ship interspersed between the pages.
Virgil pretended to ignore that he knew Gordon hadn't released his clothes immediately. But the damage was done, his embarrassment immortalized in a sailor's song. He'd heard the refrain a few times since the morning, mostly by Gordon or Alan and never by the crew, reluctant to draw the First Mate's ire so soon after the incident.
By high noon, Gordon had replaced Hal at the helm, humming a tune cheerfully. Virgil found his delight annoying.
"Here Squid!" he said, "catch," a few moments after he had already chucked an orange at his forehead, not one to let his younger brother off the hook.
"Mr. Squid to you, Chief!"
Proud as ever. Virgil rolled his eyes, turning to distribute his bag of oranges to the rest of the crew. He was disappointed, but unsurprised to see the Captain was once again at the bowsprit, this time sitting at her base. He frowned.
"Scott?" he inquired as he joined him at the foreward. "Shouldn't you be getting some rest, sir?" At his brother's lack of response, Virgil sat opposite on the deck and watched the hustle of the shipmen as Scott looked out over the sea.
"What's on your mind, Captain?"
The lines around Scott's eyes betrayed his weariness, despite Gordon's show this morning. Virgil would never admit it, but after walking off the initial surge of fury, his anger had faded fast. It had been a long time at sea, and laughter was the best medicine for when routine became monotony. That was his expert opinion on the matter, as a doctor. It had done them all well to laugh a little, even if at his expense.
A tired sigh into the wind. "Almost there, Virgil."
"I know. Six weeks at sea. We are almost out of oranges." Virgil smiled with resignation, offering his brother the fruit. "I'll need to stock up when we get to Marseille. Maybe lemon juice instead. Or a mix of both."
The main advantage of the citrus was to ward off scurvy; Virgil just preferred the fruit more because it was great morale booster after the taste of hardtack for days. The challenge with oranges was having the space to store them, deep in the ship where they'd stay freshest. The barrels took up a lot of space in the hold dedicated to the ship's own resources, separate from the goods they transported between peoples. So with lemon juice they could afford the overage, and with oranges the fruit would only keep for two months at the most if they were lucky.
The brothers both peeled back their oranges, the acidic juice stinging any sore part of their hands that weren't callused over quite yet.
Virgil knew that it wasn't the management of cargo and supplies that had their Captain on edge, however; it was where they had to go before making it to Marseille that was the cause of worry. The Strait of Gibraltar was British territory.
At its narrowest point, the strait stretched a mere seven nautical miles between land masses. Their schooner was built for speed, small in comparison to other high sea vessels, but at her heart she was a merchant ship.
Virgil preferred to trade between the ports along the American coast and the Caribbean, where they could stop in port frequently and meet the locals or where he could record various animal species discovered on their voyages. The trip of this kind across the ocean had been done only once before, but at a time when tensions between nations were not as high.
In this case, the merchandise just happened to come with the danger of provoking the ire of the British who would not take well to the colonies sneaking under their nose for ammunition and medicine from the French in support of the American call for Independence.
They would have to be calculated with their approach. Capture was not an option.
The men followed the Tracys because the Tracys cared, Virgil reflected. It was the reason they admired the Tracy name and were eager to perform their stations on the ship. As their Captain who accepted the mission, Scott kept the weight of the world on his shoulders. That same compassion that earned their crew's respect was the reason Scott's profound guilt and fear for the lives he led had festered for weeks into deeply rooted knots between his shoulder blades, settled in for permanent residence.
Virgil's Captain, though, and his older brother were one and the same; he didn't need to physically see through the mantle of the commander's jacket to discern beneath it. It was obvious by Scott's silence why he hadn't taken the bait to talk about oranges.
"You know you don't have to figure this out alone, Scott," Virgil reassured. "That's what we are here for. Call a meeting. We'll make a plan."
What Scott seemed to forget was that his brothers all chose this life.
They would follow Scott into the depths of hell, sail into the mouth of the Kraken herself if that's where Scott was headed. They would never leave their Captain on his own to face the hazards of the world, because together they would have a fighting chance.
They were the Tracys.
o-o-o-o-o-o
A cloudy sky meant a starless night for the most nocturnal of the Tracy brothers. On the quarterdeck and leaning on the portside railing, John kept their nighttime helmsman company with wistful French refrains. Benji, of course, understood none of it, but swayed along nonetheless, humming along with the tune.
The Tracy officers often sang together, their voices twining in pleasing harmonies, but Virgil preferred to play his violin and John, of all of them, had the gentlest of solo singing voices, like velvet, and he rarely shared it.
Slow and careful with his words as he was, the tune could be mistaken for a lament.
"C'est un fameux trois-mâts, fin comme un oiseau, Hissez haut! Santiano …." he murmured. The words trailed off into the night, lanterns illuminating ginger hair and emerald eyes, which glistened brightly with the impression of the stars he serenaded, shy as they were this evening.
"That was lovely, Master John."
"Just a song I picked up from some sailors in La Nouvelle-Orléans last we visited, Benji," John shared. "Et merci."
Leaning against the open doorway of his quarters, Scott listened, heard the wandering words above him, but felt the anxiety in his heart echoed in his brother's hymn as he reeled with the creaking of the ship.
"You can come up, Captain," John invited. "My apologies for waking you. I was practicing my French before our arrival."
There was no one on the ship except John who knew the language fluently. Scott had picked up phrases here and there and could hold his own, but John was the one he relied on for any negotiations with the French. As infrequently as he used it while at sea, John did not really need to practice. He had an ear for languages.
Scott swallowed, rasping through the dryness in his throat as he ascended the steps to the quarterdeck at the stern. "You don't need an excuse to sing, Mr. John," he said, "and I was already awake."
"Are you trying to incite the wrath of our dear doctor?"
Scott grunted, "I'll sleep once we get to Marseille."
"You're incorrigible, I hope you know."
Scott settled into position next to his brother, silhouettes in the night, blue eyes joining green to plead to the night sky for safe passage.
"She's right there," John whispered after a few moments breathing in the chilly night air. "Just a little timid tonight."
Scott's eyes followed the path of John's finger to a point in the sky covered by shadows. While John also carried a sword at his side, just as all the officers did, their navigator's most valuable weapons were his scope (and no, it's not a spyglass, Gordon), his thorough knowledge of the stars and their movements, and his sextant – the angular mechanism that told the distance between the horizon and the astronomical bodies that guided them. What might seem like intuition to anyone else, John would call data.
Regardless of what it was called, Scott trusted his brother's assurance that Polaris was still there where he expected her to be.
"We should be seeing land in the next few days."
Scott knew it as well. His gut was a never-ending squall of tension and trepidation. "Virg wants me to call a meeting."
"He's not wrong. We should have a plan. We won't get through easy this time."
"I was thinking dawn," Scott nodded thoughtfully. "Johnny, are you happy?"
"Captain?"
"I mean if we hadn't become merchants, what would you be doing? Studying the stars likely?"
John shifted on his feet. His call had never been to the sea herself the way she beckoned for his brothers. And yet….
"Out here in the quiet is the best place for me to study the stars, Scott," John replied. He paused, then added, "If we weren't merchants, we all probably would have been caught up in the revolution and I wouldn't have time for the stars anyway. You've kept us out of the war."
Scott's heart clenched.
"Begging your pardon, John," Scott despaired, "but I haven't." His shoulders slumped. No matter how good intentioned they were, or how fair and kind, no matter how much they loved meeting different peoples and cultures, and believed in independence but not unnecessary violence, their family hadn't been merchants for months. The revolution had already caught up with them.
Because no matter how they spun it, the Tracys were a family of American privateers.
End Notes: "Drunken Sailor" and "Santiana" are commonly covered sea shanties, though for the latter the French version "Santiano" is from the 1960s by Hugues Aufray.