Tyger: A Kydd Sea Adventure (Kydd Sea Adventures)

by Julian Stockwin

  Kydd held the summary rigidly. In Bray’s hasty scrawl were numbers that clutched at his heart—thirty-six of Tyger’s crew had been chosen by Fate: eleven killed, nine wounded severely and sixteen who in some way would be reminded of this day for the rest of their life.

  The list was baldly stated and in no particular order.

  Digby, the young and bright quartermaster’s mate, who delighted in races to the tops—right leg shot away, an amputation. Even if he recovered he could now only look on as others raced by.

  Borden, master’s mate. Head taken off by a round-shot. Kydd recalled cursing his absence at one point and felt a twist of guilt.

  Dawkins, a long-serving able seaman whose work with sennit was legendary. His seamed face had been the “sea-daddy” memory that countless young seamen would take with them. A splinter in the lower abdomen, he’d lived for an hour.

  Others …

  The boatswain, Herne, had been savagely lacerated. Kydd had seen him imperturbably going about the bloody decks looking for damage. Twice he had spotted him through the smoke, steadily going aloft into the lethal storm on some urgent mission.

  A carpenter’s mate, Gordon. Taken by a splinter to the bowels while stemming a shot-hole with Legge, the carpenter. Kydd knew they were fast friends, always to be seen together stepping ashore. Not expected to live.

  Legge himself had been wounded, probably by the same ball bursting into the dark of the hull. He was marked as continuing duty but what grief he would be carrying.

  Three marines dead. Eight wounded. They had plied their muskets without flinching and had paid the price.

  The master, Joyce. Wounded in the ear. So that was the bloody bandage he’d seen on him. His cheery attitude had never faltered.

  Three gun-crew of number-five gun dead. He’d seen the ball strike and dismount the gun, the sprawling bodies. The gun-captain had been transfixed by hundreds of shards from the shattered gun carriage and was now below in the most hideous pain, craving death as a release from his torment.

  Then … Stirk, gunner’s mate. Kydd froze, his eyes pricking. Not Toby Stirk! The big-hearted tar who’d known him since those unbelievably distant days when he’d been a raw landman in his first ship.

  He blinked convulsively and read further.

  Gravely concussed, still unconscious. If he lived there was every chance he’d end in Hoxton, the asylum for lunatics maintained by the navy for cases like his. What an end—and to the bravest, truest man he …

  Kydd couldn’t go on. Racking sobs seized him. He buried his face in his hands and wept like a child.

  When it was over he sat back, shuddering waves of emotion receding—then he saw by his side a single glass of whisky. His eyes stung again at the realisation that Tysoe must have seen him in this state and left it there, then quietly withdrawn.

  It pulled him together. This was no time to indulge his feelings: his ship needed him. He had no idea how much she had suffered: he had to find out urgently and act decisively.

  “Tysoe,” he called. His valet was before him in seconds, grave and attentive.

  “Desire Mr Bray to attend on me at his convenience.”

  The first lieutenant arrived with suspicious promptness.

  “The ship—I’ll have a report by part-of-ship concerning all damage and—”

  “Sir. I’ve the heads of the matter here. We’re takin’ water into the hold, the carpenter’s down there now. The mizzen’s in sad state—we’ve fished with capstan bars above the tops but I doubts if she’ll—”

  “Anything else as will cause concern, Mr Bray?”

  “We can’t set any sail on the mizzen—the backstays are both stranded. Mr Herne is taking hawsers to the masthead and swears this will answer. The larb’d main-wale has sixteen shot-holes as are being plugged now, there’s a mort of splicing and we’ve only the barge and pinnace will swim.”

  It could have been far worse. No grave structural damage, but the leak was worrying.

  “So nothing as will see us embarrassed in the article of getting under way again?”

  Bray went to speak, then looked away.

  “What is it, Mr Bray?”

  “Sir. I … that is, there’s a mountain o’ work needs doing afore we’re square … but the people, they’re dropping as dead with lack o’ sleep, there on the decks, work in their hands and … well, I—”

  A hot flush of shame washed over Kydd. A fire-eating driver like Bray caring more for his men than he. “Leave it with me,” he snapped.

  Dart and Stoat were summoned alongside and in short order they were secured astern and every man jack of their company was haled aboard to relieve the Tygers.

  Head swimming, Kydd summoned their captains to his cabin and learned the full story.

  They had correctly interpreted his actions and had stood by the transports, which had successfully taken off the army who were now marching to Königsberg from Pillau.

  “And the rearguard, have they been retrieved?”

  “No, sir. They’s to be what stops the Crapauds from interfering with the embarkation. They’re still there.”

  “Still there?”

  “That’s to say, they’s all dead, sir.”

  A wave of desolation swept over Kydd.

  “To the last man. Their captain, never forget him. Rode a white horse, full kit an’ all so everyone can see him, the enemy as well. Got around to the men, they heard him an’ followed him whatever he did. Brave as any I’ve ever seen.”

  “Still there.”

  “Aye, sir. I met the beggar several times. Seems he was somethin’ in Headquarters, safe and all, but volunteered for the job.”

  “What was his name?” he asked, with a sense of foreboding.

  “Oh, it was Gussan, Gusten, something like. A right valiant sort, I’ll give you that.”

  The pity of war. The crying, howling pity of war.

  “Th-thank you, gentlemen, for all your assistance to Tyger at this time. I find I’m overcome by fatigue. I beg you’ll forgive me but I really think I should rest …”

  HMS Tyger, under jury mizzen and an hour at the pumps every watch, took her leave of the Baltic shore. Her sick bay full of moaning, agonised humanity, splints and lashings keeping her sails aloft, she set course for home.

  At three knots she painfully passed through the Sound, unchallenged by the officious Danes, and in lowering, blustery winds, sailed around the Skagen and into the wider world.

  Days later they raised the North Sea squadron and Kydd reported to Russell.

  “… and I pressed redcoats to do duty as prize crew until we could get ’em to Pillau.”

  Russell leaned back, his eyes alight. “And your Prussians, what do they think of it all? A right glorious occasion, I’d say!”

  “They’ve other worries now, is my thinking, sir. Boney is making moves as will see him at the gates of their capital within the month. There’s nowhere left they can run to, and what then?”

  “Well, that’s not our concern, of course. We keep well out of such, thank God. You’ll be off to Sheerness for survey and repair, I believe. I can give you Stoat as escort, enough do you think?”

  If Tyger foundered on her way, that was just a cutter to take off all her crew. “I’d be happier with another, sir,” Kydd replied.

  “Very well, you deserve the best. We’ll ask Lively, even if it leaves me short a frigate.”

  “I’m indebted to you, sir.”

  The weather had not improved, and the blustery, ill-tempered easterly had set Tyger to an edgy roll that was trying their temporary repairs to their limits.

  As so often in these waters the weather then changed. The clouds scampered away and sunshine beamed down as if to speed the injured vessel on her way.

  But before the sun had gone to its rest it had changed again.

  In cold gusts, the easterly took charge. Flat and hard, it had the feel of the unknown regions of the limitless landmass of Asia about it. Coming in from astern, it strai
ned the jury backstays and the multitude of other patches and repairs.

  There was nothing for it but to take sail off her, but this brought other dangers. The pumps were holding for now but the carpenter had not yet found whatever other wounds Tyger had suffered in her bowels below the waterline. In the bracing weather in which the action had been fought, the ship had been rolling, exposing her hull, and shots would have struck between wind and water.

  The ship with the wind aft and less steadying sail had a lively roll once more—and this was bad news. As she heeled to whichever was the side of the shot strike, the wound would be plunged deeper, and on each roll the ingress of water would change from nothing to a hard waterfall directly into her innards.

  It was a race against time and the weather.

  Kydd remembered the harrowing struggle after Trafalgar when a storm had overtaken the battered fleet and their prizes. Victory herself had been threatened and battle-weary men had gone to their doom as shattered prizes foundered in the night.

  For them, however, the reassuring bulk of Lively was out on their beam, heaving and lifting as she conformed to their reduced sail. He glanced up at the shot-torn sail that still fluttered and bellied and eased his thoughts. It would be an uncomfortable several days but they’d make harbour.

  Only two hours later it was a different story. The sharp blow had turned to a fresh gale, something that Tyger would have scorned in normal circumstances—but these were not normal.

  A gale-driven swell had risen with it and this had increased her movement and, therefore, the whipping strain on damaged shrouds and stays.

  Kydd gave the order to take in more sail—there was little else that he could do.

  This sent seamen up in grim conditions with more than the usual dangers. High aloft there would now be severed footropes, lines giving way that men placed their trust in, shattered spars with cruel timber spikes gouging their bellies while they reefed, and always the sullen roll.

  As night fell there was no sign of the gale easing.

  Lively sent lanthorns to each masthead telling of comforting human presence nearby, but aboard Tyger there was misery and hardship. The galley fire could not be lit, and without good hot food the men must face the labour of saving their ship with hard tack and cheese on a mess-deck that swilled with water entering through so many shot-holes.

  The glow of lights that were Lively’s lanthorns receded to pinpricks as the frigate kept at a cautious distance for it was all too easy in such a night to come to a disastrous encounter. Lookouts were posted in both ships with the sole duty to keep the precious lights in sight.

  And those aboard Tyger endured.

  Men whose bodies ached from their heroic exertions at the guns were now being asked to go to the pumps, the dreadful clanking monsters that needed brute force even to overcome the friction of the many valve parts, a heart-breaking grind.

  For long hours Tyger heaved and fell in the increasing swell, the hard battering and dismal moan of the gale always with her as she fought on. On deck the watch stared into the night, slitting their salt-sore eyes into the storm.

  Then came driving rain, in a hissing, stinging and miserable cold, invading oilskins and foul-weather gear.

  Just after midnight the worst struck.

  Kydd was with the group at the wheel as the middle watch coped with a split sail when, clear above the storm rack, a vicious crack sounded, followed immediately by a heavy slither as a hawser fell in a sprawling pile. Another quickly followed. Instantly Kydd bellowed, “Forrard—go for your lives!” They fled just in time. With a sickening splintering, like a falling tree, the fished mizzen topmast tumbled, driven awkwardly across to fall on the starboard side.

  In the blackness of night and hammering rain, the tangle of ropes and canvas had to be brought under control. From nowhere the boatswain appeared, a nightshirt under his oilskins, roaring for men to douse all sail before setting about the fearful snarl.

  Tyger, without steerage way, began a helpless wallow broadside to the sea. A party got out a sea-anchor over the bows that brought her round, head to sea, but at the cost of halting their progress to safe harbour.

  There was nothing for it but to await the dawn to see what they could do.

  The report came up that the water was gaining in the hold. There was only one course left.

  “Watch and watch,” Kydd ordered, condemning tired men to man the cranks continuously.

  There was a chance that if the weather moderated he could get men from Lively who would spell them but until then they would know their labour and pain were saving the vessel.

  In the cold grey of early light the full extent of the damage could be seen: the long spar lying on deck seeming so massive close to, had taken the driver gaff with it and in so doing had torn the big aft sail down to ruin.

  The frigate could no longer cope with basic navigational matters, like a change in wind direction, for without leverage aft she could not tack about and most probably neither wear around.

  “We’ve got to get sail on her aft, Mr Herne,” Kydd said, to the dull-eyed, exhausted man. “Whatever it takes.”

  He waited impatiently for the first sighting of Lively. They were so desperately in need of fresh men.

  The report never came. Instead it was the age-old hail from the lookout at first light that normally would stand men down from the guns: “Clear! On deck there—I have a clear horizon!”

  When they’d lost the topmast and come about to lie to a sea-anchor it had been in heavy rain and it was clear their plight had not been seen by their consort, who had sailed on.

  It was no use to expect to be found eventually: the hard truth had to be accepted. They were on their own. If Tyger was to be saved it would be only themselves to do it, and if she wasn’t, her name would join those recorded to history as having vanished at sea.

  The boatswain, sailing master and carpenter huddled with Kydd in his cabin to try to find a way out of their situation. It was vitally necessary to get under way again, which meant some kind of rig on the stump mizzen with the same functioning as the driver.

  It was Joyce, looking grey and old, who came up with the most promising plan.

  A staysail secured at its peak to the topmast cap and reversed. At its lower end it was the clew that was affixed to the lower mast and the tack spread by a lower stunsail boom pressed for the service. A species of traveller could be contrived with two tackles at its end.

  The new “driver” could be goosewinged and, with other tricks, it would see them tolerably well placed to resume headway west.

  After all, Herne remarked, they were before the wind the whole way … should the weather hold.

  By mid-morning the strange-looking rig was spread abroad and the sea-anchor hove in. They wallowed around and took up on their old course under small canvas.

  There was no sighting of the sun, and with their erratic movements dead reckoning was chancy, but a voyage to the Thames estuary was straightforward enough, no more than lying along the line of latitude of fifty and a half once they’d won their southing.

  That wasn’t Kydd’s main worry. It had to be how long he could expect men to keep up the grinding toil at the pumps. There was a day or so to safe haven but to men on the edge it was an eternity—and there was not a thing he could do about it.

  At the extremity of fatigue, men walked about the decks in a trance, staring at bulkheads, dropping where they stood. Yet not a word of complaint.

  The following morning it was difficult to make out anything in the racing murk to leeward but the low coast of Kent could not be far off.

  Then at last the carpenter formally reported that the water flooding in had overtaken their ability to pump it out.

  Tyger was done for: at some point the rate would suddenly increase as the lower ports submerged and the gallant ship would sink beneath the waves for ever. And in this filthy weather, with no ships in sight, still less land, each and every one would go to his death unseen by the world of
men.

  The pitiless sea had won.

  It was unbearable! To have come so far …

  Kydd flogged his tired brain mercilessly but in the end it always came back to the same thing. Even with men giving their all, the pumping was not enough: the callous equation was final.

  Then from somewhere his mind presented a desperate idea. If the capacity of the pumps was not enough, what if the speed of their operation increased? The net flow must, of course, increase—but this was crazy thinking!

  Doggedly he pursued the thought: what if he sent every man jack aboard to do a trick but this for only ten minutes at a time before spelling him, but at the same time expect a more furious rate?

  His imagination visualised a long line of men waiting their turn. There were four places at the cranks along the main shaft. If each man was spelled in a staggered sequence the momentum would be kept up.

  Yes—there was a chance!

  In a short time he had explained it to Bray and the boatswain and left it to them to organise a means to work the ship from those coming off the pump before resuming their place in the line.

  Meals? What could be held in the hand? Sleep? Snatched there and then on the deck. Respite? None!

  “Form the line!” Kydd roared.

  The first man stepped up ready.

  It was the captain, who threw off his jacket and stood flexing his hands.

  There was shuffling nearby—Bray, pushing aside Bowden. Behind him was Brice—the first four on the cranks would be the ship’s officers.

  “Take hold!”

  Each grabbed a pitted iron handle and braced.

  “Start!”

  It was astonishingly difficult, winding up the long chain with the drag of their leather seals and Kydd’s muscles burned with the effort. Panting, he drove around the cruel bar, now heaving it up, next pushing it down, in a dizzy cycle that left no room for thought.

  “Faster!” he gasped, throwing himself into it.

  Reluctantly the muffled rumble of the drive chain rose in tone a little, and then more. Sparing nothing, he worked like a madman until the note rose higher still. It was furious labour and a mesmerising rhythm took hold.