Inferno

Chapter 37

Three days later Tyger sailed with the tide. Flank escort for a war convoy of more than eighty ships, she found herself to starboard of a sea crowded with sail, set and drawing for Sweden where they were to rendezvous and come under the orders of the commander-in-chief, Admiral Lord Gambier.

In warm summer sun and calm seas it was a bare three days before the distinctive hexagonal white lighthouse of the Skaw was raised, the northernmost tip of Denmark. It was a seamark of legend. Around the point, roils of discoloured water showed where the mouth of the Baltic met the open ocean.

The convoy did not delay, heading directly across the forty-mile entrance to the opposite shore until the Vinga beacon was raised. Ahead lay Sweden and Gothenburg.

There they were met with a sight that took the breath away. Anchored in those outer roads to Gothenburg was a huge fleet, an uncountable number of ships of all kinds, hundreds in warships alone, comparable to Nelson’s Trafalgar fleet, but with store-ships and transports amounting to far more.

In the centre was the largest. This was the expedition they were to join and the ship was the stately 98-gun Prince of Wales, flying the flag of Admiral Gambier.

While they waited for the busy aviso cutters to bring orders out to the newcomers, there was time to take in more of the spectacle.

‘There’s Agamemnon as I’m not a Dutchman,’ Joyce said, and gleefully began his yarn about the time he had seen Nelson in the admiral’s favourite ship.

Second Lieutenant Bowden had been a midshipman in Victory at Nelson’s final battle and had lived through much. ‘That seventy-four beyond Prince,’ he said quietly, ‘Mars, as I last saw taking fire from five battleships around her. She didn’t strike but lost her captain.’

‘She’s always been forward in any kind of action,’ Brice said, with feeling. ‘We were too late to assist when she took on Hercule seventy-four near the Pointe du Raz in a wicked state o’ tide.’

Knowing looks were exchanged: the frightful reefs and rocks on the Brest blockade were well feared.

‘Fought her to the finish – the Frenchy sees more’n three hundred drop and had to douse her flag. Pity of it is that Captain Hood didn’t live to see it.’

Bowden came in again: ‘Some other fine acquaintances I spy. Isn’t that Vanguard ? As will stay with me for all my days on this earth, as a new-breeched midshipman I saw her, masts by the board, being carried on to the rocks in Sardinia, Horatio Nelson being sent to his doom. Captain Ball in Alexander tries to pass a tow but he’s sent away to save himself. He ignores Our Nel’s orders and, in a right welter of seas, tries again and again. Only when the water’s shoaling fast does he get a line across and hauls her clear.’

‘And shortly goes on in her to immortality at the Nile,’ Kydd said, behind him.

‘Oh, hello, sir. Didn’t see you standing there.’

The others fell back respectfully.

‘Well, finish the count.’

‘Sir?’

‘Isn’t that Goliath I see two astern of her? As signal luff in Tenacious, I do remember well her going in first at the Nile. She it was under Foley who thought to pass inshore of the line to take ’em on both sides and win the battle.’

‘Aye, but over there’s a lady beats ’em all f ’r the smelling o’ powder,’ Joyce said, pointing.

‘Orion?’

‘Sir. Was wi’ ye at the Nile, but as well at y’r Glorious First o’ June, at St Vincent – even Trafalgar she made sure she were there.’

Such a roll-call of history. Were they to go on to further glory, conceivably against the Russians to free the Baltic?

A cutter interrupted from alongside with instructions for mooring and the spell was broken.