Miss Anna's Frigate

by Jens Kuhn

“No,” Kuhlin replied. “Not if we want to keep our consciences clear.

  “So where do we start?” Eric asked.

  “Gray says she is going to Norrköping in order to save the king,” Tapper said.

  Eric af Klint groaned. “How is a single woman supposed to do that? Seduce every single rebel officer?”

  “Not even Anna could do that,” Kuhlin replied dryly.

  “So how is she to save the king then? She isn’t stupid, I am sure she has some sort of plan.”

  Kuhlin sat quietly for a while. Then his eyes brightened.

  “Eric,” he said. “Do you remember when we were at the theater?”

  Eric nodded.

  “And do you recall this British captain?”

  “Yes...”

  “He called on me, do you see? Wanted me to help him with information. Of course I couldn’t give him any, but I talked to Anna about it.”

  “Yes, I remember,” Eric straightened up. “Do you mean she went to him anyway? Even though she told us she wouldn’t?”

  “I wonder.” Kuhlin replied. “You did of course note the captain’s reaction to her?”

  “Of course, his eyes were all in her cleavage.”

  “So...”

  Eric af Klint groaned again. “She would have him under her spell in no time at all.”

  Kuhlin nodded. “I think Anna literally commands a powerful frigate by now.”

  “And will use it to bring the king out of the country.”

  “So how do we stop her?” Tapper asked?

  The explosions sounded amazingly dull, the sound muffled by the ice. Anna and captain Baker stood in the bows of the frigate and watched the detonations throw up grayish white geysers of ice, snow and gunpowder. Then hands were scurrying down the gangplank, boat hooks and boarding pikes in their hands. With those they started to push broken floes under the edges of the surrounding ice. It was dangerous work, the floes being of different size, some of them big enough to require one or several men to step onto them in order to push them low and under the edge. Other floes were small enough to be easily pushed under by boat hooks. And then there were the medium sized ones, the most dangerous. Several times, men who stepped onto them made them capsize, ended up in the water and had to be pulled back by their shipmates, drenched and shivering of cold.

  Still, after several hours of work, a canal appeared in the ice and the men were ordered to tow the frigate through it, all hands pulling the lines, including the officers and an insistent Miss Anna. The task completed, the ship was one cable length closer to the open water and the sun was setting.

  “This is going to take a week,” Captain Baker told Anna when they had supper in the great cabin.

  “We don’t have a week, my dear captain,” Anna replied. “Not that I would mind being here a week,” she added in a lower voice, her eyes on the captain’s.

  Baker swallowed. “There must be a faster method,” he said.

  Anna nodded. Putting her hand on his, she softly stroked his fingertips. “You will find it I am certain.”

  Baker smiled. “We could always use more gunpowder.”

  The next day they doubled the charges. Baker also ordered several lighter charges to be placed in random order between the straight lines marking the edge of the canal to be.

  “Now, Mr. Reeman,” Baker explained. “The general idea is that we might be able to confuse the ice enough – that is create small enough floes not to be needing to push them under the edge at all.”

  “You mean tow Tartar right through the ice, sir?”

  “Exactly. Now, Mr. Reeman see to the charges being set if you please.”

  The charges were set and detonated and there were yet higher geysers of white and gray and as by magic the ice in the canal was reduced to a grayish mush. That day, Tartar was towed one and a third nautical mile towards the open sea.

  “We will be sailing tomorrow,” Baker said, softly stroking Anna’s naked back. They were lying in his swinging cot, a wooden box, suspended on ropes from the ship’s deck beams, enabling him to sleep level even when the ship was heeling. The cot was quite small, but neither of them cared, their bodies pressed together tightly, both for warmth and from passion.

  “Yes, that will be lovely,” Anna whispered. “I haven’t felt the motions of a ship for months.

  “Do you like to sail?” he asked, his hand now in the small of her back, stroking the soft skin, occasionally moving up on the intriguing hills of her buttocks.

  “I do like it very much. It gives me a great feeling of freedom. Like if I could go anywhere...” She sighed.

  “You can go anywhere...” Baker replied. “Anywhere in the world”. Then he put his other arm under her waist and slid her atop of him while his mouth tasted the sweet scent of her neck. Anna, moaning, parted her legs and let him enter her, softly biting into his earlobe.

  Chapter 16 – Chase

  The sleigh raced towards Dalarö as fast as the horses could run. All three men were wearing their uniforms, trying to give their endeavor an official look. They also carried weapons. Kuhlin and af Klint wore their swords, while Tapper had organized three pistols. Kuhlin had tried to pry out of him where from, but the bosun had only smiled at him. And frankly, Kuhlin didn’t care. Organizing things was what petty officers were for in the navy, after all.

  Traffic was light this day, thank God, but they still had to dodge the occasional cargo sled. Sometimes they had to slow down behind one of them until the road widened enough to enable them to pass.

  When they neared the fort at Dalarö, Kuhlin pondered their options. He might just ask the commanding officer to lend him a few men, giving his mission a yet more official character. Or he could just pull up right to the frigate and ask for Anna. In any case, she would not like it.

  He could see the fort now, with its flagpole. A perfect sailing wind, he thought, right from the northwest. Unusual, too.

  Then the sleigh passed the highest point of the road and they started to descend to the seafront.

  “Hey, where is the frigate?” Bosun Tapper burst out.

  “It should be there with the other...” Kuhlin’s mouth fell open. “What the hell is that?” He reined in the horses and looked sharply at the anchorage. There was a straight canal of mushy water right from it to the sea. And no frigate.

  “Damnation!” swore Kuhlin.

  “They’ve sailed right out of the ice,” Tapper cried.

  Eric af Klint just shook his head.

  “Oh, this is so lovely”, Anna gasped. She stood on the quarterdeck of HMS Tartar, her furry cape tight around her, as well as one of captain Baker’s arms.

  “Yes, indeed. There is nothing worse than a ship that cannot sail. I am so pleased to be in open water again,” he agreed.

  The frigate was sailing under full plain sail on a southwesterly course, out to sea, away from the ice and the dangers of submerged rocks and barely visible skerries.

  Hands were tending the rigging, repairing some minor damages that had not been noticed with the sails furled and the rigging unused during the stay in the ice. In the waist of the ship others were tending to the ship’s boats or just huddling away from the wind. For even though it wasn’t nearly as freezing as when they came here, it was still winter and the northerly wind was bitterly cold.

  “How long do you think it will take?” Anna asked.

  Baker looked up at the full sails of his ship for a moment, then turned his gaze back onto her face.

  “How long do you want it to take?” he asked softly.

  Anna actually blushed. Then she tightened her grip around his arm. “You shouldn’t really ask me questions like that...”

  Baker laughed. “Don’t worry, my dear, we will get your king out. This is the Royal Navy, we can do anything.”

  Anna smiled at him.

  “So what are we going to do now? Tapper asked.

  Commander Kuhlin looked at the anchorage in despair. This was simply incredible.

  “I st
ill can’t believe it. It’s more than two miles. It must have taken tons of gunpowder.”

  In fact, he was positively awed. Not so much at the fact that it had been done, as a seaman he acknowledged the scientific fact that it was possible. He had even heard about similar things having been done in the Arctic. But that had been in order to survive, in order to not have one’s vessel crushed by the ice and sunk with all hands lost. A last desperate effort for survival. But this was something different. No Swedish captain would even have thought about it. There was definitely something admirable about the British. At least their sailors. They did not find anything impossible, and with that state of mind probably nothing was. Kuhlin pulled himself together.

  “Well, we need to continue south along the coast and find a place that is ice-free and where we can get ourselves a boat.”

  “A boat that is faster than a frigate?” Tapper asked.

  Kuhlin shrugged. “Any boat. Even if it’s not faster, we might be able to cut her off by sailing inshore, closer to the rocks. I am sure, captain Baker will take his ship far out to sea in order to keep her out of danger.”

  The three men climbed back on the sleigh and urged the horses forward, following the coastal road south.

  On another road, another man made his way south on horseback. Carrying only a bag of despatches, alike the one Dillquist brought till Åland, sub-lieutenant Winther was on his third horse since he left the capital, only having stopped to eat and sleep for four hours. Despite being dead tired, he was committed to continue to his destination without further delay. Or the first of his possible destinations in any case. Because there were three of them, three places along the coast that might or might not be ice-free. Winther desperately hoped the first one would be. Then he could get himself a room in a boarding house at the harbor, have a good meal, some ale and perhaps even a girl. And just wait.

  Let there not be ice, he thought. Please let there not be ice.

  But there was ice, and lots of it too. Groaning, Winther allowed himself two hours of rest until he continued south, on yet another new horse.

  Kuhlin, af Klint and Tapper reached the small fishing village of Nynäs shortly after dusk. There was still enough light, what with the snow reflecting what the full moon threw at it, to see that there was some ice, but not too far out. Half a mile off the tiny harbor there was dark water, definitely open water.

  “Let’s find some place to spend the night,” Kuhlin said. “Tomorrow we will get us a boat that is small enough to be dragged over that ice until it can be sailed – and big enough to carry us where we want to go.”

  Tapper smiled. “That’s the navy way.”

  Eric af Klint frowned. “Does the navy ever eat?”

  The next morning they explored the harbor. There were actually a few fishing boats already dragged out over the ice and moored against the edge of it. After all, fishermen needed to fish to make a living, and when there was open water, they would try to get to it.

  “So are we just going to steal one of those boats?” af Klint asked.

  Kuhlin shook his head. “You mean borrow, like we did in Finland last summer when we rescued Anna in Turku?”

  Eric af Klint smiled at the memory. That had been an exciting adventure. And a successful one as well. They had saved Anna right in the middle of Russian occupied territory and killed a Swedish traitor in the process.

  “Well, there wasn’t anyone around then,” he said. “I don’t think we can get our hands on a boat this easily here.”

  “Watch me,” Kuhlin said, then turned to Tapper. “Bosun, get that pistol of yours primed and follow me.

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  The three men closed on the biggest of the fishing boats. Two men were aboard her, mending nets. When the officers stopped next to their boat, the men looked up, a wary expression on their faces.

  “Good day to you,” Kuhlin said cheerfully.

  The fishermen only nodded at him.

  “Nice boat you have here,” Kuhlin continued. “Looks quite seaworthy indeed.”

  “Aye, she is,” the older of the fisherman replied, apparently being too proud of his vessel not to admit the fact.

  “Now look, I am sorry, men, but I need to commandeer your fine vessel for a few days.”

  The older man rose to his feet. “You can’t do that! It’s my only way to make a living.”

  Kuhlin smiled at him, trying to calm him down. “I will do my very best to have the inshore fleet pay you. I’m not trying to take your boat away from you. But I really need it and I have the right to take it. So I will give you the choice. You can charter it to me, go with us yourselves and, hopefully be paid. Or we will take it by force.”

  The man stood silent for a while. “Consider it chartered, then,” he said and shrugged.

  “Very good. Eric, get aboard. Bosun, undo those mooring lines. You men, get the sails ready. There is not a minute to be lost.”

  Kuhlin stepped aboard the vessel and positioned himself at the tiller. He had to try very hard to suppress a grin. It felt so good to be in command of a vessel again, even if it only was a 25 foot fishing smack.

  And it wasn’t a bad boat either. Despite its size the small lug rigged vessel cleaved the choppy gray water of the Baltic nicely enough, its shallow draft enabling them to short-cut through inside passages and round rocks and headlands at biscuit-toss distance. Occasionally, when they encountered a headwind in a sound or straight too narrow to tack effectively, they used two pairs of oars and pulled the boat slowly but persistently towards their destination.

  The two fishermen sat mostly quiet, following Kuhlin’s orders, but otherwise doing nothing to be either of help or hindrance. Which was fair enough, Kuhlin thought. After all they had just lost command of their boat. He turned to Tapper, who huddled together with the fishermen in the small forward cabin while af Klint who had taken over the tiller.

  “Is there any chance of something hot to drink, bosun?”

  Tapper shot a glance at the fishermen, silently relaying the question.

  “There is some soup,” the older fisherman said, pointing at the small one-stove galley. “You need to get that thing going though.”

  Tapper moved over to the stove. It was a small wood burning stove of cast iron, bolted to the deck of the fishing boat. It would do perfectly as long as the boat did not heel too much. If it did, he would have to hold the pot of soup straight or the liquid would all spill out.

  “Yes, sir, I think I can produce some hot soup. But it’d be a lot easier if the boat be on an even keel while I am heating it,” he said to Kuhlin.

  The commander nodded. “Very well. Get the stove going and then we will drop the sails and pull until you’re done. After all, some exercise will do us good and help to keep us warm.”

  Captain Baker was worried. Not that he thought he couldn’t complete this mission, he wouldn’t have made post captain if he hadn’t had a healthy portion of self-confidence. No, it was the subtle implications of this operation that worried him. As well as the weather. To start with the latter, the absolutely most important factor in any naval operation, it was increasingly less probable they would be able to sail into Norrköping itself. Even if the inlet was ice-free all the way in – which of course he had no way of knowing – the wind had veered into the west. It was still good enough for their current course and it would let them close the coast, albeit they would have to sail close-hauled. But getting inside the inlet was a completely different matter.

  Norrköping was situated all the way in this inlet, Bråviken, which for Baker looked like a navigational nightmare. The very opening to the sea was wide enough, but littered with rocks and skerries, dangerous even in a favorable wind. But tacking through them? With a three masted square rigged vessel, a vessel which crew needed at least ten minutes to execute a complete tack? Well-nigh impossible. But that wasn’t all either. A bit further in, Bråviken narrowed considerably, and Baker was certain that they would have the wind right into the nose
in those very narrows.

  He wondered how this place ever could have become a port. But then again, it wasn’t a naval port and trading ships usually didn’t tack. They just tucked themselves up in the lee of a nice island and waited for the wind to become right for the next passage. And if they so had to wait a week.

  But Baker didn’t have a week. He needed to get into that town as quickly as possible – and then out again the same way. He could let her boats tow Tartar through the narrows of course. But that would be tedious and slow work and once in, there was the question of getting out again. He further had no idea about what coastal defenses were to be expected along the shores of the inlet. And who would be in charge of them.

  Which led him to the second part of his worries. England and Sweden were supposed to be allies, but with a coup d’etat on its way – or perhaps already completed – Baker couldn’t be sure if his interference would be approved or at least tolerated. To be honest, he could not even know if he was about to get into trouble with his own admiralty. Post captains on foreign missions had a wide scope of initiative – but they were expected to take full responsibility for their actions, too.

  And Baker’s orders did, after all, only require him to observe. Of course, the orders were old, and things had happened since that could defend his taking action. The seizing of British ships on the west coast for example. But that had been ordered by the king, the very king he now was about to rescue. Not a good defense in a court-martial, he thought.

  He was painfully aware, that he mostly did this because he had become completely besotted with this woman. It simply was impossible to deny her anything. Which wasn’t a good defense in a court-martial, either.

  Baker pushed away the thought and returned to the nautical problems at hand. He could send boats with marines and a lieutenant into Norrköping while leaving Tartar anchored off the inlet. But this was a task that could not be delegated to a mere lieutenant. He would need to go himself and probably Anna as well. Hearing a rustling sound behind him, he turned in time to see Anna ascend the quarterdeck. She did not wear her cape and her face, arms and neck were flushed pink from the cold.