Then there was sudden movement on her decks. The rags of sail still up were brought in until the ship was bare. Without the steadying of high canvas she began a sickening wallow, the merciless wind nearly abeam. A flicker of paleness showed around her plunging bow.
‘Ah!’ All eyes turned to Hambly, who cleared his throat self-consciously. ‘Er, that is t’ say, it’s clear they have right seamen aboard Vanguard. That’s a sprits’l they’re setting an’ they’ll wear ship with that.’
A spritsail was an ancient sail from another age, one spread below the bowsprit and long since disappeared from modern warships. The effect of the diminutive sail, set so far forward, was immediate. Painfully, Vanguard began to pay off under the leverage, rotating slowly until the seas previously battering her from abeam now came under her stern. She gathered steerage way and, bracing the spritsail yard hard round, showed canvas on her mizzen, completed the turn and finally wore round. At last the threat of shipwreck was averted.
The quarterdeck of Tenacious erupted in shouts of admiration – now their flagship had a chance! Only one frigate could be seen: the others must have been blown to – who knew where? The storm showed no sign of calming and the last frigate fell away into the spindrift, then disappeared.
It was now a matter of enduring the jerking, bruising motion; a tedious, wearying period that stretched time and deadened the spirit. A second night drew in, but before the light faded a flutter of colour showed at the admiral’s mizzen.
‘Mr Kydd!’ Houghton handed over his telescope. The image danced uncontrollably and Kydd adopted a foul-weather brace, right elbow jammed firmly to his side, the other against his chest with his feet splayed wide. Without needing to refer to his pocket signal book he knew the hoist. ‘Alexander’s pennant, “pass within hail”.’
Then Orion closed cautiously, and finally it was the turn of Tenacious. Coming up slowly on the flagship’s leeward side they saw the damage – topmasts missing, foremast a splintered stump, lines of rigging tangling on the decks – it could not possibly be repaired at sea.
Without doubt the cluster of figures on her quarterdeck would include Admiral Nelson. Kydd clung to the shrouds listening as Houghton brought up his speaking trumpet and hailed, ‘Flag ahoy!’ His voice was strong and well pitched, but it was nearly lost in the uproar of the swashing seas between the madly surging vessels.
‘Do ye hear?’ came distantly across from the flagship quarterdeck.
‘I do, sir.’
‘Have – you – charts –’ Houghton held up a hand in acknowledgement ‘– of Oristano?’
Sardinia. So the admiral was seeking a dockyard in Sardinia under their lee. ‘Have we? Quickly, Mr Hambly.’
‘No, sir, nothing more’n a small-scale o’ that coast.’
‘Regret – no – charts.’
The remote figure waved once and the ships began to diverge. The admiral had three choices: to chance unknown waters and a possibly hostile port in Sardinia; make a lengthy return to Gibraltar in his crippled ship; or, when the weather abated, transfer to one of the others and scuttle Vanguard.
Darkness came and the long night brought no relief from the hammering northerly. Only when dawn’s cold light imperceptibly displaced the blackness was there a moderation in the welter of torn seas. Alexander, Orion and Tenacious came together once more.
‘She’s signalling!’ Kydd’s eyes were sore with salt spray as he tried to read Vanguard’s hoist. ‘To Alexander – “prepare to take me in tow.”’
‘Now we’ll see what they’re made of, I think,’ said Bryant, wedging himself against the outside corner of the master’s cabin and calmly contemplating, across the chaotic, tumbling seas, the heroic feat of seamanship now demanded.
‘Boats won’t swim,’ said Kydd, similarly exercised.
‘Can float off a keg wi’ a messenger line,’ mused the master, ‘if Alexander dare take a wind’d position.’ This was where the main difficulty lay: to allow the keg to float downwind, or any like manoeuvre, implied placing Alexander upwind. The huge windage of the 74s at slow speeds would ensure they drifted inexorably to leeward but it would be at differing rates for different ships and weather conditions. The consequences of the ship to weather drifting faster and colliding with the one to leeward, with all the inertia of one and a half thousand tons, was too horrific to think about.
Alexander lay off, preparing her move. Any close manoeuvring was deadly dangerous in the wild seas and it would take extreme care to pass over the line safely. She wore round in a big circle and approached Vanguard from astern and to windward. Sail was shortened down to goosewinged fore-topsail and storm staysails, and she approached with the buffeting wind on her quarter. Closer, she eased the sheets of two of the three staysails and lined up for her run – she was clearly trying for a close glancing approach to Vanguard’s poop with one fleeting moment to get the line across.
The voluted beakhead of Alexander slowly approached the carved stern of Vanguard. As she did so, the scale of the independent plunging and rearing of the two ships was evident. Alexander’s bowsprit and its complex tracery of rigging speared closer. Then, in seconds, the situation changed. A chance convergence of wave crests into a larger one rose up on Alexander’s outer bow at the same time as its trough allowed Vanguard’s stern to slide towards her.
It looked as if the two ships would merge in splintering ruin but then the fo’c’slemen on the foredeck of Alexander boomed out the fore-topmast staysail to weather by main force and by small yards she yawed giddily and slid past.
Kydd strained to see any tiny thread of black rope against the white water indicating a line had been passed. There was none. The 74 plunged past Tenacious on her way round once more and Kydd could see activity on both ships. But when the light line had been finally passed across from Alexander it would in turn bring aboard a heavier hawser, then probably one of the anchor cables roused up from the tiers in the orlop. At more than a hundred and twenty pounds for every fathom streamed it would be a fearsome task to manhandle.
This time Alexander came up to leeward of the stricken flagship, necessarily head to head to bring their fo’c’sles adjacent. Kydd used his signal telescope to watch: he could make out a lone seaman in the forechains with his coiled, heaving line tensed, waiting.
The two ships closed, Alexander deliberately keeping well to leeward as she edged ahead. They began to overlap – the seaman started to swing his smaller coil in readiness – but even as he did so it became obvious that the windward vessel was catching more of the wind’s blast and drifting down fast on the more sheltered leeward. Alexander’s bowsprit sheered off rapidly.
Once more the big man-o’-war went round ponderously. Once more the seaman in the chains began his swing, and once more it proved impossible. Time wore on. In Tenacious hands were piped to dinner, and the heaving line was cast twice more. The afternoon watch was set – and on the next pass a line at last was caught on Vanguard’s foredeck.
Those watching in other ships dared not breathe as the dots of men on her fo’c’sle scrambled to bring in the line, but Alexander was falling away fast. Kydd knew what they had to do: a dark cavity in Alexander’s stern windows was where her cable would be led out, but first Vanguard must hold fast the precious light line while a stouter rope was heaved in from Alexander and manhandled through the hawse-hole, where it would be led to the main capstan.
Below in the sweating gloom this hawser would be heaved in, its distant other end seized to the main cable issuing out of Alexander’s stern windows as it was led from the giant riding bitts further forward.
It was now only a matter of time. Little by little the great cable, nearly two feet in circumference, was drawn across the foaming sea until Vanguard was finally tethered.
The weight of the seven hundred feet of heavy rope between the two ships formed a catenary, a graceful curve in the cable that acted as a giant spring in the towing, absorbing the shocks and fretful jibbing of the storm-lashed ships. Alexander showed small sail,
then more, until reefed topsails gave her enough force to pull Vanguard in line and then, miraculously, begin a clawing, slewing motion ahead.
As if in respect to the feat performed in the teeth of its hostility, the wind moderated from a full gale to a sulky bluster, then later to a steady north-north-westerly. And foul for Oristano.
The ships, limping at no more than walking pace, could not lie close enough to the wind to overcome the current taking them south, and the only dockyard on the west of Sardinia was left astern.
‘What now, do you think, Mr Hambly?’ Houghton asked. There seemed to be no avoiding a long and chancy tow back to Gibraltar.
Adams brightened. ‘Sir, when I was a mid in Cruizer we chased a corsair to Sardinia, and he disappeared. We found him in San Pietro Bay, south of here, in as snug a harbour as you’d find within forty leagues. I believe Admiral Nelson could lie there in perfect peace while he repairs enough to sail back to Gibraltar.’
‘Mr Hambly, lay me within hail of the flagship.’
It was a notion clearly to Nelson’s liking and the tow was shaped more southerly. The winds diminished rapidly to a pleasant breeze, and with the sun now strong again and in the ascendant, wisps of vapour rose from the water-logged decks.
A distant lumpy blue-grey appeared from the bright haze ahead. ‘San Pietro island, sir,’ Adams said smugly. ‘Our anchorage lies beyond.’
After several days of danger and hardship Kydd found the prospect of surcease and peace attractive. But as the sun went down so did the breeze and those who had cursed the wind were now regretting its failing. Sail was set to stuns’ls but their forward movement slowed to a walk again and then a crawl. The night came languorously in violet and pink, but no breeze blew from the Sardinian shore. A half-moon rose, stars pricked the heavens, and the ships remained drifting.
Then Kydd saw something that awakened memories of an Atlantic night when death had risen out of the darkness to claim his frigate. ‘Breakers, sir! I see breakers!’ Barely perceptible, but distantly picked out by moonlight, there was a white line of surf – the storm swell driving into the shore. It seemed that the other ships had spied it: there was movement of lanthorn light around their fo’c’sles. Without doubt they, too, would bend their best anchors to their cables.
Tenacious found out the sombre truth with the rest: there was no wind to haul off the land and the water was bottomless. It was unjust. Weary after so much strife they now faced another night of dread, feeling the sullen swell rolling under their keel, relentlessly bearing them towards the dark mass of the land while the sails hung useless in the moonlight.
They were long hours – restless, waiting, fearing the dawn and starting at every flap and shiver aloft, it was hard simply to endure. The deep sea lead was cast regularly; eventually it touched bottom at three hundred feet but this was too deep for anchoring.
When sunrise came it was soft and warm, welcoming them with the deep blue of the morning sky – but the royal blue of the open sea changed to the liquid green of inshore. Constrained by the dead weight of the tow, Alexander and Vanguard had not been able to take advantage of every little shift in the night breeze and now lay significantly closer inshore.
From the quarterdeck of Tenacious it looked a grave situation. The two 74s, still joined by the long cable, were now within a short distance of the shore and it was heartbreaking that after all their efforts the flagship would end in the breakers they could now clearly see.
‘Alexander must cast off th’ tow,’ murmured the master, shaking his head. At least one ship of the two would then escape. But there was no indication that this was planned – no boats in the water to take off the ship’s company of Vanguard, no general signal of distress or move to abandon ship. Both men-o’-war drifted on, carried together towards the bare, nondescript coast.
Then, as if relenting in its tantrum, the wind returned; just enough to fill the sails of Alexander and allow her to crawl past the craggy northern cape of San Pietro island. Safely past, a signal hoist mounted in the flagship. ‘Sir! Our pennants and, “assume the van”,’ Kydd said.
‘Means us to lead the way, I believe. Mr Adams, this snug harbour… ?’ Tenacious stole round the southerly point of the island, led in by Lieutenant Kydd in the cutter with a hand lead-line sounding ahead. Kydd had put Poulden on the lead-line and Bowden on the simple signal flags relaying back the depths; there was time enough to spy out the land.
They entered a fine inlet between San Pietro island and another; the enfolding bay was sheltered from everything but a southerly. They could anchor there in perfect peace with space enough for twenty ships – and it was good holding ground: shells and soft shale came up with the lead.
The bare, scrubby land shimmered in the glare of the morning sun and Kydd scanned it cautiously for any activity. There were some vestiges of cultivation on the steep slopes and the occasional red-tiled farm dwelling but no fortifications that he could detect.
He completed his sweep of the little bay and told Bowden to indicate with his white flag over red that he considered it worth bringing in Tenacious. Then he prepared to carry out the second part of his orders.
As he pulled deeper into the bay he looked for any signs that the local inhabitants might be hostile. Already dots were appearing on the sandy beach and dunes. ‘Stretch out, if y’ please,’ Kydd urged the rowers. If he was to represent the Royal Navy to a foreign power, he would make sure his men did not let him down. He turned the boat towards a knot of people, and when it beached, allowed himself to be chaired ashore by two seamen.
‘L’tenant Kydd, His Majesty’s Ship Tenacious,’ he announced loudly, bowing in a general way to the people and bringing an immediate hush to the crowd. ‘Er, anyone speaks English?’
Dressed in the exotics of the inner Mediterranean they looked at Kydd with curiosity. He picked out the most dignified of the men, and repeated the question. The man started in consternation, threw out his hands and jabbered fearfully. ‘We come t’ repair – in peace, that is,’ Kydd tried again, but could feel a rising tide of unease. More people arrived and he saw the curiosity replaced by scowls. He glanced back at his boat; he had deliberately not armed the seamen with him and had not worn his own sword.
A swirl of movement at the back of the crowd caught his eye: a donkey was coming down a track to the beach, ridden by an officer of some kind. Laughter broke out from the boat’s crew at the comical sight of the man’s legs flapping out to the sides of the diminutive beast.
‘Silence!’ roared Kydd, aghast. The officer came to a stop and slid to the ground, his face dark with anger. He wore an odd folded hat with a scarlet tassel and a faded but flamboyant uniform that ill fitted his corpulent figure. The seamen could not stifle their mirth and Kydd ground out, ‘I’ll take the cat t’ the next man who so much as grins, s’ help me.’ He bowed as low as he could to the officer, who stiffly returned the gesture, after he had snarled something to the crowd, which subsided obediently. ‘L’tenant Kydd,’ he began again, but the officer broke into impassioned speech, gesturing at Tenacious.
‘Sir, I can’t understand…’ Frustrated, they glared at each other, speechless.
‘Pardonnez-moi, mon commandant,’ Bowden came in awkwardly, ‘mais si vous avez le français…’
The officer’s expression changed fractionally and he answered in gruff, choppy French. They exchanged sentences and Bowden turned to Kydd. ‘Sir, this officer comes from Fort Charles on the island. He’s a captain of militia and therefore an officer of His Sardinian Majesty. He demands to know by what right we are coming ashore.’
All Kydd knew was that Sardinia was a neutral country. ‘Thank ye, Bowden. Do you tell him we’re only here a short time to repair storm damage an’ mean no act o’ hostility.’ Bowden relayed his words – some of the crowd understood what he said and passed it on to the others. The officer stiffened. Kydd looked at Bowden impatiently.
‘Sir, he says that under the terms of their treaty with France, Sardinia may
not allow an English vessel to enter any port in the kingdom, and that is his final word.’
Kydd saw there was no moving him – no argument or show of force was appropriate. On the other hand no repairs could be contemplated if the ships would be at the mercy of unfriendly local forces. ‘Bowden, listen carefully. I want you t’ say this so the others can hear, you understand?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Tell him that we agree not to enter his port, just anchor offshore.’ That was no concession – the little cluster of buildings and small wharf he could see at the inner coast of the island could not possibly take four ships-of-the-line. Bowden did as he was told. ‘Now mark this,’ Kydd went on. ‘Tell him that a big ship has many sailors – they must be fed. If any has livestock or vegetables, they can turn them into English silver this very day, should they bring them here to this beach.’
Excitement grew as the word spread. The man Kydd had addressed earlier now pushed across, wanting to know if the English sailors preferred beef or mutton, and small boys raced off with the news. The officer barked at them, but the mood had changed: here was instant prosperity for this tiny settlement and it would go ill with him if he stood in its way.
He hesitated, then turned to Kydd once more. Bowden translated: ‘Sir, he says that, after consideration, he finds that if we keep out of the port the terms of the treaty are not in violation. And, sir, he wishes us an enjoyable visit.’
The shouts of approbation that followed forced a smile from the officer, who clambered aboard his donkey, lifting his hand in farewell. Just at that moment three great ships-of-the-line came into view, filling the pretty bay with their warlike majesty and unanswerable presence.
The officer nearly fell off the donkey in fright. Kydd said quietly, ‘I dare t’ say, our admiral would be satisfied with the usual salutes…’
Nelson brought his battered flagship to rest, then signalled, ‘captains to report condition of ships for sea’. In addition to the usual readiness statement, an assessment of storm damage was required, and Tenacious hastened to comply.
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