But the coal was the main reason, and the justification for spending a week in the Hôtel du Palais at John Stone's expense. Britain was going through one of its periods of anxiety about the Mediterranean. It was always going through these, of course, but currently anxieties were higher than usual; the fear was that there was going to be yet another assault on Britain's position in the Near East, with the Russian Empire and the French combining to pressure our interests in the Black Sea and Egypt, and hence our communications with India through the Suez Canal. Although the Royal Navy could cope quite easily with an assault by either fleet, the fear was that the French and Russians were going to combine their efforts, and dealing with both simultaneously would be a problem. That was why, more than anything, the Government was keen to prevent Russia building a shipyard on the Black Sea and so be in a position to service a major fleet in the region. That was also why the Russians were keen to do precisely that.
So were the French thinking of sending out their fleet from Toulon? That was what I was supposed to discover. All the usual sources of information had failed; if anything was planned, word had not yet filtered down to the ranks. But it probably would not have done; I doubted anything would materialise before the following spring at the earliest, in about seven months' time. The problem was that, if Britain needed to reinforce its Mediterranean fleet, it needed to know soon, so that ships could be recalled from the West Indies, re-equipped and sent out again. This also would take several months.
Hence my interest in coal. Battleships consume prodigious quantities of fuel, and keeping them at sea, ready for action, is a major logistical operation. Tens of thousands of tons of coal are required, and supplies have to be in place at coaling stations when they are needed. You cannot just send out some ships any more; you need a lot of work in advance, for a battleship lying dead in the water, unable to move, is no use to anyone. While all navies kept reasonable quantities of coal scattered around the world, not even the Royal Navy kept that amount in place everywhere it might be needed.
Had the French navy been ordering coal in large quantities? Had they commissioned tenders from the Mediterranean merchant fleet to distribute it? Were supplies being diverted from the Atlantic ports to the Mediterranean? If I knew the answers to these questions now, I would be able to tell the Government in London not only what the French navy would be doing next year, I could hazard a guess about French foreign policy in the near future as well.
To discover all this I ended up dining one night in August with a French naval captain and his mistress. He was a sweet man who should never have been in the military; he had not a shred of the martial about him and preferred collecting Japanese woodcuts to charging over the high seas ready to board an enemy. Family tradition and an overbearing admiral for a father had determined otherwise, however. Ordinarily, I would have spent time trying to come alongside the father, so to speak, but Captain Lucien de Koletern was quite interesting enough for me at that moment. For he was a terrible failure, poor man. His lack of ability in the business of commanding others had meant that the navy, with some acuity, had refused to allow him anywhere near anything that actually floated; instead he had been given a job in Paris, in which place he spent his time trying to avoid the disappointed frowns of his father and – more importantly – organising logistical supplies, in particular coal. For this he had some considerable talent; what he lacked in dash and flair he made up for in meticulous attention to detail and an obsessive concern with filing cards.
He was an interesting conversationalist, as well; he knew he was a bitter disappointment to his family, but was quite philosophical about it.
'I know it sounds absurd, but I really do believe that what I do is where the future of the navy really lies. Not with ships at all,' he said.
'And what do you do?' I asked innocently.
'Supplies. Coal, mainly.'
'But doesn't a navy need ships?'
'Not really. If you think about it, the French navy has not actually been used for anything since the Crimean War, and there is little prospect of it being used again. If the ships never left harbour, it would make no difference.'
'But if that happened, you wouldn't have all that much to do,' I pointed out.
'Ah,' he said, waving a finger. 'But ships keep their boilers going even when they are tied up. That is enough to keep me busy. Then what happens? If the fleet ever put to sea, they would suddenly decide they wanted more. Do you have any idea how much coal a fleet needs when it sets off somewhere?'
'No. Not the slightest,' I said.
