A two-decker ship-of-the-line to the Caribbean? Kydd was dumbstruck. Was the admiral jesting? Where was the joke? Then he realised: the only way he could captain a seventy-four was if she was going to sail en flûte— all her guns removed to make room for troops and stores, a glorified transport, which would effectively remove him from the scene of action. “Sir, if y’ please, I’d rather—”
“Yes, yes, I know you would, but almost everything that swims is in commission now. Don’t suppose Volcano, fire-ship, appeals? No? Oh—I nearly forgot. Eaglet! Fine ship-sloop, in dock for repair. Confidentially, I rather fancy that, after the court meets, her present commander may find himself removed for hazarding his vessel and then we’ll have to find somebody, hey?”
Kydd realised he had probably reached the end of the admiral’s patience and, in any case, a ship-rigged sloop was an attractive proposition. “That would suit me main well, sir, I thank—”
“But then again . . .” Lockwood seemed to have warmed to him. His brow furrowed and he faced Kydd directly now. “It’s only proper to tell you, Eaglet will be long in repair. There is one other in my gift—but again, to be fair, no one seems keen to take her. That’s probably because she’s a trifle odd in her particulars, foreign-built, Malta, I think. Now if you’d be—”
“Sir, her name’s not— Teazer? ”
“As it happens, yes. Do you know her?”
“Sir— I’ll take her! ”
CHAPTER 2
KYDD’S FACE WAS SORE from the spray whipping in with the dirty weather disputing every foot of Teazer ’s progress, but it bore an ecstatic smile as he braced against the convulsive movements of his ship.
It would be some time before they could be sure of clearing the Cherbourg peninsula in this veering sou’-sou’-easterly, but it would be an easier beat as they bore up for Le Havre. Kydd couldn’t help but reflect that it was passing strange to be navigating to raise the enemy coast directly where he had every intention of anchoring and making contact with the shore.
Earlier, he had eagerly claimed his ship and set about preparing her for sea. Then, in the midst of the work, urgent orders had been hurried over from the admiral’s office: it was His Majesty’s intention to respond to the repeated provocations of Napoleon Bonaparte by “granting general reprisals against the ships, goods and subjects of the French Republic” within days. It would be the end of the fragile peace.
England planned to steal a march on Napoleon by declaring war first and any vessels, like Teazer, that could be spared were dispatched urgently to the north coast of France to take off British subjects fleeing the country before the gates slammed shut.
Teazer had put to sea within hours, terribly short-handed and with few provisions, little in the way of charts and aids to navigation, and neither guns nor powder. In the race against time she had left behind her boatswain, master and others, including Renzi, who was ashore acquiring some arcane book.
Still, miraculously, Kydd was at sea, in his own ship—and it was
Teazer, bound for war. What more could he ask of life?
Warmly, he recalled the welcome from the standing officers who had remained with the vessel all the time he had been far voyaging; Purchet the boatswain, Duckitt the gunner, Hurst the carpenter. And, in a time of the hottest press seen that age, the imperturbable quartermaster Poulden had appeared on the dockside, followed some hours later by the unmistakable bulk of Tobias Stirk, who was accompanied by another, younger seaman.
“Thought as how Teazer might need us, Mr Kydd,” Stirk had said, with a wicked grin, and pushed forward the young man. “An’ has ye need of a fine topman as c’n hand, reef ’n’ steer, fit t’ ship aboard the barky?”
Kydd had grunted and sized the man up; in his early twenties he had the build and direct gaze of a prime deep-water sailor. Of course he would take him—but why was the man wearing a grin from ear to ear that just wouldn’t go away? Then it dawned on him. “Ah! Do I see young Luke, b’ chance?” The ship’s boy of long ago in the Caribbean had grown and matured almost unrecognisably and was now Able Seaman Luke Calloway.
But as Stirk and Calloway were trusted men, Kydd had allowed them to go ashore and they were somewhere in the dockyard when he had sailed.
“Sir!” Teazer ’s only other officer, Kydd’s first lieutenant, Hodgson, pointed astern. Twisting in his streaming oilskins Kydd saw the dark outlines of questing scouting frigates emerge through the blurred grey horizon and then, behind them, lines of great ships stretching away into the distance.
He caught his breath: this was Cornwallis and the Channel Fleet—ships-of-the-line on their way to clamp a blockade on the great port of Brest and thereby deny Napoleon the advantage of having his major men-o’-war at sea on the outbreak of hostilities. The grey silhouettes firmed; the stately seventy-fours passed by one after another, only two reefs in their topsails to Teazer ’s own close-reefed sail and disdaining to notice the little brig-sloop.
The grand vision disappeared slowly to leeward across their stern. Kydd felt a humbling sense of the responsibility they held, the devotion to duty that would keep them at sea in foul conditions until the war had been won or lost.
“We’ve made our offing, I believe,” Kydd threw at Hodgson. “Stations t’ stay ship.” Now was the time to put about to clear Start Point for the claw eastwards.
Kydd was grateful that a brig was more handy in stays than any ship-rigged vessel but he had to make the best of the situation caused by their hasty departure. “You’ll be boatswain, Mr Hodgson, an’ I’ll be the master.” As well as the absence of these vital two warrant officers, he had a raw and short-handed ship’s company.
They wore round effectively, though, and set to for the thrash up-Channel. With no shortage of wind, they would be in position to seaward off Le Havre at dawn the next day.
However, Kydd was uncomfortably aware that nearly all his sea service had been in foreign waters; the boisterous and often ferocious conditions of these northerly islands were unfamiliar to him. The morning would tax his sea sense to the limit: all he had of the approaches was the small-scale private chart of Havre de Gr’ce of some forty years before, published by Jeffreys, with barely sufficient detail to warn of the hazards from shifting sandbanks in the estuary.
Daybreak brought relief as well as anxiety: they were off the French coast but where? Small craft scuttled past on their last voyages unthreatened by marauders and paid no attention to the brig offshore under easy sail. Kydd had ensured that no colours were aloft to provoke the French and assumed that if any of the vessels about him were English they would be doing the same.
He steadied his glass: rounded dark hills with cliffs here and there, the coast trending away sharply. From the pencilled notes on the old chart he realised that these were to the south of Le Havre and Teazer duly shaped course past them to the north. They would be up with their objective in hours.
His instructions were brief and plain. He was to make the closest approach conformable with safe navigation to Honfleur further up the river, then send a boat ashore to make contact with an agent whose name was not disclosed but whose challenge and reply were specified. It would mean the utmost caution and he would need to have men with a hand-lead in the chains as they entered the ten-mile-wide maze of channels and banks in the estuary.
They closed slowly with the land; the wind was now moderating and considerably more in the west. Then he spotted a sudden dropping away and receding of the coastline—it was the sign he had been looking for: this was where a great river met the sea, the mouth of the Seine. Paris, the centre for the storm that was sweeping the world into a climactic war, was just a hundred miles or so to the south-east.
In the forechains the leadsman began to intone his endless chant of the fathoms and deeps below: the Baie de Seine was a treacherous landscape of silted shallows and other hazards that could transform them into a shattered wreck, but that was not Kydd’s greatest worry. As Teazer busily laid her course into the narrowing wat
ers, who was to say that the peace had not ended while they were on passage, that behind the torpid quiet of the just visible fortifications ahead soldiers were not casting loose their guns and waiting for the little brig to glide past?
The firming heights of Cap de la Hève loomed on the north bank of the estuary; the chart noted the position closer in of the Fort de Sainte-Adresse, which lay squat atop the summit of its own mount, but their entry provoked no sudden warlike activity. The huddle and sprawl of a large town at its foot would be the main port of Havre de Gr’ce; their duty was to pass on, to lie off the ancient village of Honfleur on the opposite bank and make contact with the shore.
Uneasily Kydd conned the ship in. His chart was at pains to point out the menace of the Gambe d’Amfard, a sprawling, miles-long bank that dried at low water into hard-packed sand, lying squarely across the entrance. He glanced over the side: the turbid waters of the Seine slid past, murky and impenetrable.
He straightened and caught Hodgson looking at him gravely, others round the deck were still and watching. If the venture ended in failure there was no one to blame but the captain.
Kydd began to look for little rills and flurries in the pattern of wavelets out of synchrony with their neighbours, the betraying indications of shoaling waters. A deep-laden cargo vessel was making its way upriver and Kydd fell in to follow, carefully noting its track. A passing half-decked chaloupe came close to their stern and the man at the tiller hailed them incomprehensibly; but his friendly wave reassured Kydd as they passed the batteries into the confines of the river mouth.
Honfleur was five miles inside the entrance, a drab cluster of dwellings round a point of land. Kydd sniffed the wind: it was still unsettled, veering further, but if it went too far into the west they stood to be embayed or worse. “Stand by, forrard!” he snapped.
He turned to the set-faced Hodgson. “Take th’ jolly-boat an’ four men. There’ll be one in th’ character of an agent looking f’r us somewhere in th’ town.” He moved closer, out of earshot of the others, and muttered, “Challenge is ‘peur,’ reply ‘dégoût,’ Mr Hodgson.”
“S-sir? Purr and day-goo? ” the lieutenant asked hesitantly.
“That’s fear an’ loathin’ in the Frenchy tongue,” Kydd said impatiently.
“Ah, I see, sir. Fear and loathing—yes, sir.”
“ Peur and dégoût, if y’ please!”
“ Purr and day-goo. Aye aye, sir!”
Kydd smothered his irritability: it had not been so long ago that he was equally ignorant of French, and if the agent was wise, allowances would be made for uncultured Englishmen.
“And, sir,” Hodgson held himself with pathetic dignity, “perhaps it were best that I shift out of uniform while ashore?”
Kydd hesitated. “Er, I think not. How will th’ agent sight ye as a naval officer else?” He refrained from mentioning that in uniform it was less likely Hodgson would be mistaken for a spy.
It was unsettling to order another into danger, particularly the harmless and well-meaning Hodgson, who had been almost fawning in his gratitude to be aboard—he had spent the last five years on the beach—but there was no other with the authority. “Send th’ boat back wi’ the agent. We’ll keep the rest o’ the boats manned ready to ship th’ refugees as y’ sends ’em.” Kydd stood back while Hodgson called for volunteers. There were none: Teazer had yet to acquire that sturdy interdependence within her ship’s company that would develop into a battlefield trust, and even the most ignorant could see the danger. Kydd picked the only names he could remember, “Harman, Joseph,” then pointed at a nearby pair, “an’ you two.” Later the rest would find themselves manning the other boats.
In deference to the unknown tide condition the anchor went down a quarter-mile offshore and Teazer swung immediately to face upriver, a disquieting measure of the strength of current. “Ye may leave now, Mr Hodgson,” Kydd said encouragingly. “Red weft at th’ main is y’r recall.”
The little boat leant jauntily under a single spritsail, bobbing through the hurrying waves in a series of thumps of spray. It disappeared round the headland to the small port beyond, leaving Kydd under a pall of apprehension, now the rush and excitement had settled to danger and worry.
It seemed an age before the jolly-boat hove into view; the busy river still had no apparent interest in the anchored brig with no colours and the boat wove tightly through the other vessels. Hodgson was not in it but a dark-featured man with an intense expression boarded quickly and hurried to Kydd.
“M’sieur le capitaine?” he said in a low, nervous voice. “Nous devons nous déplacer rapidement!” Then, glancing about, he exclaimed, “C’est guerre! Le tyran a choisi de se déplacer contre l’Angleterre!”
Kydd went cold, and the agent continued. Napoleon had suddenly declared war himself on the pretext that Britain had not ceded Malta under the terms of the 1801 treaty. The news was not yet public but dispatches were being sent even now all over France—and the worst was that, contrary to the rules of war and common humanity, the First Consul had ordered the instant arrest on the same day of every citizen of Britain, including civilians, on French soil.
It could be days, hours or the next minute that the orders came, and when the origin of the unknown brig off Honfleur was revealed the guns would open fire. They were inside the ring of forts and in full view: the time to leave was now. But ashore there were desperate people who had made a frantic dash to the coast. Their only hope was Teazer. Kydd could not just depart.
“Every boat in th’ water. We’re not leavin’ ’em to Boney,” he yelled, and challenged the seamen with his eyes. “Do ye wish t’ see the ladies taken b’ the French soldiers? An’ th’ gentlemen cast in chokey?” There were growls of unease, but they came forward.
“Well done, y’ sons o’ Neptune,” Kydd said heartily. “There’s those who’ll fin’ reason t’ bless ye tonight.”
The first boat returned. The sight of the packed mass of forlorn, wind-whipped creatures brought mutterings of sympathy from those still aboard who helped them over the side, but Kydd did not want to waste time in introductions and waited apart.
Poulden dealt manfully with a tearful hysteric while the gunner took the brunt of a tirade from a foppish young blade. An animated babble replaced Teazer ’s disciplined quiet until the first passengers were shooed below at the sight of the cutter coming with others. More arrived, including a tearful woman who had been separated from her husband, and an older man with a strong countenance who looked about watchfully as he boarded.
How much more time would they be granted? A muffled crump sounded ominously from across the estuary, answered almost immediately from the Ficfleur battery further up the river. A horrified lull in the chatter on deck was followed by excited speculation, then alarm as another thud was heard. This time the ball could be seen, the distant plume of its first touch followed by an increasing series of smaller ones as it reached out towards them.
“Send up th’ signal weft,” Kydd ordered. There was no longer any doubt about French intentions: the news had got through and they must now know of Teazer ’s origins. “Be damned to it!” he said hotly. “Hoist th’ ensign, if y’ please.” They would go out under their true colours. “Hands t’ unmoor ship.” There was every prospect of the situation turning into a shambles; so many were away in the boats still, yet he needed men to bring in the anchor, others to loose sail.
“Silence on deck!” he roared at the milling crowd, as more boatloads arrived in a rush.
Where was the damned jolly-boat? Was Hodgson having difficulties disengaging from the other frantic refugees who, no doubt, had arrived? His mind shied away from the memory of a similar plight in Guadeloupe and he tried to focus on the present. One more thud, then another—shots from cannon ranging on them. Distances over sea were deceptive for land-based gunners but sooner or later they would find the range and then the whole battery would open up on them.
He needed time to think: most forts faced the wrong
way to be a serious menace at this stage but that didn’t mean Teazer was safe. Any warship hearing gunfire and coming to investigate would end their escape before it began.
A ball skipped and bounced not more than a hundred yards away to screams of fright from those who had never been under fire before. Kydd knew they had to go—but should he wait for Hodgson? Send someone back for him? There was still no sign of the jolly-boat but to put to sea now would condemn both the officer and the four seamen with him to capture and incarceration— or worse. Could he bear to have this on his conscience?
In a whirl of feeling and duty he made the decision to leave.
He lifted his face to sniff the wind again; it would dictate how Teazer should unmoor and win the open sea. Then he realised that while he had worried over other things the wind had shifted westwards and diminished—the arc of navigability for a square-rigged vessel was closing. Already their entry track was barred to them; more mid-channel and tightly close-hauled on the larboard tack was the only way out—and be damned to the half-tide banks.
He sent a hand forward to set axe to cable as others loosed sail on the fore alone. Tide-rode and therefore facing upstream, Teazer rapidly began to make sternway, and under the pressure of full sails on the fore, and a naked mainmast together with opposite helm, she wore neatly around until able to set loose at the fore, take up close-hauled—and proceed seaward.
A ripple grew under her forefoot: they were making way at two or three knots, and with the current from the great river this was increasing to a respectable speed. They had a chance. Kydd trained his glass on the fortifications. They seemed to have been caught unready by Teazer ’s smart pirouette and were silent, but the penalty for making mid-stream was that they were opening the bearing of the closer Villerville guns—and shortening the range for those on the opposite bank.
The Admiral's Daughter Page 2
