The Baltic Prize

Chapter 15

Tyger lay at short-stay in readiness and her orders were passed up by a dispatch cutter within the hour.

It was much as Cartwright had said. A single objective: to seek, find, burn and destroy that Dane. But it implied that Tyger would be sent off in a fast dash south to interpose herself between the 74 and the haven of the Copenhagen defences until the slower 64s could come up and join battle.

This was a chilling prospect. No frigate could contemplate taking on a ship-of-the-line except in extreme circumstances. With double the guns, and these considerably larger in bore, it would rapidly turn into a scene of carnage unless aid came quickly. How long should he suffer, throwing himself back and forth across the bows of the battleship, waiting for the slow 64s to come up?

It had been done: Pellew in the frigate Indefatigable in the legendary action that had seen the destruction of the 74 Droits de l’Homme in Audierne Bay in a gale – but he’d had Amazon with him. And Kydd had no illusions about the tenacity of the Danish, or their motivation after the humiliation of Copenhagen.

They got under way without delay; the rendezvous was given for the south-west and Tyger stretched out nobly to her fate, whatever that was to be.

Kydd hadn’t yet briefed his officers but into his consciousness stole a new consideration. He’d long ago come to terms with the imperatives of combat: the primacy of cold rationality over hot blood-lust, the iron control over fear and the ruthless suppression of instincts of survival. Now for the first time there was an additional factor in the equation, one that threatened to overturn those tried and true responses.

As battle was joined she would be there with him. She, whom he adored more than life itself and who, he knew, bore him such love in return. When the time came, would he flinch from giving the orders to lay alongside the adversary, to fling himself at the foe with no thought for himself? Or with an enemy at the point of his sword, would her image rise before him, causing a fatal hesitation, a faltering?

There was no way to foretell. Only in the crucible of battle would he discover it.

In the late afternoon, well into the Kattegat, the main passage between Denmark and Sweden before it narrowed into the Sound, a cry from the masthead announced a successful rendezvous.

The two 64s were an odd pair: Nassau had been Danish, captured at the first battle of Copenhagen, her lines stumpier to take the Baltic seas more kindly. Although rated as a 64 she mounted only fifty guns under the British flag. Stately was old and slow, built as far back as the American war, a troopship, hurriedly fitted out as a man-o’-war for this Northern Expedition.

These to take on a 74? This was going to be a serious business, mused Kydd, as Tyger slipped into position to leeward of Stately, her neat motions so contrasting with the ponderous heave of the other.

He raised his speaking trumpet to the figures on her quarterdeck and hailed. ‘Joining in obedience to orders, sir. What are your instructions?’

A thin voice came back faintly against the swash of the seas as they lay hove to together. ‘It is imperative this vessel is found and put down. All else is inferior to this objective. Do you understand me?’

‘I do, sir.’

‘I have Lynx sloop in addition. I will keep her with me as I enter the Sound in search. You will not enter. Instead you shall cruise with Falcon sloop to the northward of Sj?lland and into the Great Belt. In the event you come upon the Prinds you will dispatch Falcon to alert me, taking all measures necessary to delay and hamper her movements until I arrive. Clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

So Parker was taking the more direct route into the Sound, presumably in the expectation he would converge on the battleship somewhere off Copenhagen. This meant Tyger would not be faced with a wild fight to bar the big 74 from entering.

But there was an even chance that the canny Danish captain would take advantage of his local knowledge to go by the longer route, out of sight via the Great Belt, and if that happened in those confined waters, Tyger would be in a perilous position.

Now, her yards braced around, Stately got under way without further ado.

Damn this General Moore, Kydd cursed. But for his peacocking they’d have with them at least another pair of first-rank men-o’-war and frigates to match. As it was, there would be a close-fought and bloody action where there should have been a clean and overwhelming crushing.

Tyger paid off to leeward and took up on a broader tack for the Sj?lland coast in the gathering dusk, preparing for the coming encounter.