Another drawn-out screech rent the air, sending a flock of herring gulls, already displaced by the first whistle, wheeling and diving above the nearby rooftops in raucous protest.

Quade moved to Hawkwood’s side. “She’s the Paragon, up from New York. She can do six and a half knots at a push. Seven dollars a ticket, I’m told, and it only takes thirty-six hours. It takes the schooners four days. You’ve not seen any of them in action?”

Hawkwood shook his head and watched as the steamboat shuddered and slowed. For a few seconds the clattering from her paddles seemed to diminish before suddenly increasing in volume once more. Hawkwood realized the wheels were now revolving in the opposite direction and that the vessel was travelling in reverse.

“Takes ninety passengers,” Quade said matter-of-factly as the boat’s stern started to come round. “Fulton used to swear they could turn on a dollar – the boats, that is, not the passengers. Don’t know if that’s strictly true. No one’s thrown a dollar in to find out.” He chuckled.

For a moment Hawkwood thought he might have misheard.

“Fulton?” he repeated cautiously, trying to keep his tone even.

“Robert Fulton,” Quade said. He looked at Hawkwood askance. “Good God, man, you must have heard of him! How long did you say you’d been away?”

Hawkwood said nothing. His mind was too busy spinning.

Fulton?

It had to be the same man. Robert Fulton, American designer of the submersible, Narwhale, in which Hawkwood had fought hand to hand with Fulton’s associate, William Lee, beneath the dark waters of the Thames, following Lee’s failed attack on the newly launched frigate, Thetis.

Hawkwood had killed Lee and left his body entombed at the bottom of the river, inside Narwhale’s shattered hull. It seemed like an age ago, yet memory of a discourse he’d had with the Admiralty Board members and the scientist, Colonel William Congreve, prior to the discovery of Lee’s plan, slid into his mind. Hawkwood heard an echo of Congreve’s voice telling him that at the same time as Fulton had been petitioning the French government to support his advances in undersea warfare, he’d also been experimenting with steam as a means of propulsion.

Hawkwood stared at the vessel, which was now side on to the quay, and watched as mooring lines were cast fore and aft. While Fulton’s dream of liberty of the seas and the establishment of free trade through the destruction of the world’s navies might lie in tatters at the bottom of the Thames, it appeared that his plans for steam navigation had achieved spectacular success.

“Can’t say the schooner skippers are best pleased,” Quade said. “They’ve lost a deal of passenger trade since the steamboats started running.”

“How many are there?” Hawkwood asked.