Victory

Chapter 1

At a hesitant knock on the cabin door Thomas Kydd’s servant paused in shaving his master.

‘Sir – Mr Hallum’s duty an’ Ushant is sighted to the nor’-east, eight miles,’ blurted the duty midshipman, a little abashed at seeing his captain under the razor.

‘Thank you, Mr Tawse,’ Kydd grunted.

Nicholas Renzi looked up from the papers he was working on by the early morning light. He and Kydd were friends of many years. Both had achieved the quarterdeck from before the mast, but while Kydd had gained command of his own ship Renzi now pursued scholarly interests and acted as his clerk. Peering out of the stern windows of the little brig-sloop he said hopefully, ‘And a fair wind for the Downs – I so yearn for a dish of Mistress Butterworth’s haricot of mutton.’

Teazer had been taken from her patrol line along the French coast near the invasion ports and sent with dispatches, passengers and mail to the blockading battleships off Brest. A small ship had to expect such lowly employment but on her return, she would have a short spell in Deal, then be back on station, playing her part to thwart Napoleon Bonaparte’s plans for the invasion of England.

It was the nightmare that haunted every man, woman and child – that the moat would be crossed and the staunch island nation must then taste the horrors of war. All it needed was for the emperor to wrest control from the Royal Navy for a few tides and, with half a million men under arms and two thousand vessels now in the invasion flotilla, he could flood the country with the armies that had conquered all Europe.

Kydd shifted restlessly. ‘Thank you, Tysoe. A breakfast when it’s ready.’ The towel was expertly flicked away and he was released to take up his lieutenant’s reworked quarters bill. They had lost two men to death and wounding and five to sickness; it had been made very clear that there would be no replacements, for the country had been stripped of trained seamen and Teazer’s humble station did not warrant special treatment.

He glanced at the paper irritably. Hallum had no doubt done his best but to rate up the pleasant but diffident Williams to full gun-captain was not the way to fill holes. Even now, after months in Teazer, his first lieutenant seemed not to know the men, their character, their individual strengths and weaknesses.

Kydd circled Bluett’s name in the gun-crew and scrawled, ‘to be GC’ then realised that as a sail-trimmer the man could not be expected to absent himself just when his crew would need him. Damn. Very well, he’d make young Rawlings sail-trimmer. Barely more than a ship’s boy, he was nevertheless agile and bright – he’d soon learn to swarm up to the tops with the best of them. But would he cope under savage enemy fire?

Imperceptibly the ship’s angular rhythm of pitch and roll changed to a smoother rise and fall as she rounded Ushant, the lonely island that marked the north-west extremity of France. Now, with this fair south-westerly, it was a straight run up-Channel for home.

The masthead lookout’s hail cut through Kydd’s thoughts. ‘Saaail hoooo! Sail t’ the larb’d quarter!’

He snatched up his grego against the autumn chill and joined the group on the quarterdeck. ‘Mr Hallum?’

‘Two points abaft the beam, sir, and steering towards us.’

Kydd nodded: the unknown ship was inward bound from the Atlantic Ocean. A lone merchantman? But every British merchant ship had by law to be a member of a convoy. Then was it a daring Frenchman breaking the blockade? If so, his luck had just run out . . .

‘I’ll take a peep, I believe,’ he said, and swung easily up into the main-shrouds, mounting to the main-top. His pocket glass steadied on the speck of paleness away to the west. Smallish, but unmistakable with its tell-tale three masts, it was a chasse marée, a lugger, and the favoured vessel of the infamous Brittany privateers.

A smile of satisfaction spread across Kydd’s face: he was perfectly placed to crowd the luckless corsair against the unfriendly Cornish coast, and in any chase the rising seas would favour the larger Teazer. He hailed the deck below, ordering the necessary course change to intercept.

Almost certainly the vessel was returning after a voyage of depredation from somewhere like St Malo, a notorious nest of privateers, but now it had found Teazer athwart its hawse. Suddenly the image foreshortened, then opened up again – it was putting about, back to the open ocean.

It would be to no avail: Teazer held it to advantage and would converge well before it could escape. Kydd descended quickly and stood clear as the guns were cast loose and battle preparations made. The privateer was making a run for it. It was unlikely to take on a full-blooded man-o’-war but it was armed and dangerous with plenty of men so nothing could be left to chance.

The wind was veering and strengthening; there would be reefs in its soaring lugsails soon and, with the quartering fresh breeze as Teazer’s best point of sailing, he could rely on an interception before noon.

Within a few hours the sombre dark grey of the English coast lifted into view and they had gained appreciably on the privateer, which would soon be in range. Apart from a far-distant scatter of coastal sail there did not appear to be any other vessels and Kydd would shortly make his move.

‘Bolderin’ weather,’ said Purchet, the boatswain, staring gloomily at the approaching change. Curtains of white hung vertically against sullen dark cloud banks. Teazer’s open main-deck in a line squall was not best placed for play with the guns; it was a challenge to try to keep the priming powder dry on heaving wet decks while rain hammered down.

The squall accelerated and then it was upon them, a hissing deluge of cold rain that blotted out everything beyond a hundred yards.

Suddenly Kydd snapped, ‘Three points to starb’d!’ The group about the helm looked at him in astonishment but hastily complied.

Teazer swung back before the wind, seeming to have abandoned the chase and wallowing in the temporary calm behind the line squall. But when the rain thinned and cleared, there was the privateer, not half a mile distant – and dead ahead. Kydd had instinctively known that the captain would reverse course in the squall with the intention of slipping past him.

‘Quarters, Mr Hallum,’ Kydd ordered. ‘We’ll head him, I believe,’ he added. ‘And when—’

‘Company, I think.’ Renzi had come up beside him. While others were more interested in the unfolding action ahead, he had spotted a frigate emerging from the drifting curtains of mist a mile or two away in the wind’s eye.

‘T’ blazes with ’im,’ growled Purchet. Admiralty rules dictated that all on the scene would share equally in any prize-taking, no matter their contribution.

‘Don’t recognise she,’ muttered Teazer’s coxswain, Poulden, at the wheel, his eyebrows raised.

‘Private signal,’ Kydd ordered Tawse.

Their flags soared up. After a short delay, fluttering colour mounted the frigate’s mizzen, with what seemed very like the blue ensign of Admiral Keith’s Downs Squadron accompanying it.

‘Can’t read ’em!’ the youngster squeaked, training the signal telescope.

The flags were streaming end on towards them, but who else other than a roaming English frigate would be this side of the Channel?

The privateer had gone about once more in a desperate bid to evade capture but there was no chance for it now with a frigate coming up fast to join the fun. Kydd judged the distance to the privateer by eye and decided to make his lunge.

‘A ball under his forefoot when within two cables,’ he ordered, then glanced at the frigate. If it interfered, disregarding the unwritten rules of prize-taking that as Kydd was first on the scene it was his bird, the commander-in-chief would hear about it. He couldn’t recollect ever coming across the vessel but it was not unknown for recent captures to be put into service without delay and this was clearly a frigate with distinct French lines.

The forward six-pounder cracked out: a plume arose not an oar’s-length from the privateer’s bows and precisely on range. The gunner straightened and glanced back to Teazer’s quarterdeck with a smirk of satisfaction. The lugger held on but it would not for long . . .

Then, in an instant, all changed. The frigate, now within just a few hundred yards, jerked down her ensign and hoisted another on the opposite halliard. After the barest pause it slewed to a parallel and guns opened up along its entire length, a shocking avalanche of destruction.

Aboard Teazer a man dropped, shrieking in agony, and one of the marines fell squealing. Kydd forced his mind into the iron calm of combat. The frigate had not achieved its goal: it had obviously aimed for their rigging, intent on disabling Teazer, so it could then range alongside and accept their surrender under the threat of overwhelming force. But Teazer sailed on obstinately, capable of fighting back, albeit with sails shot through and lines carried away aloft.

Kydd knew it was no dishonour to flee before such odds, and he would have to let the privateer go as his first duty was to preserve his ship. He looked around quickly. The frigate was in a dominating position to weather and he had noted her swift approach before the wind. Was she as fine a sailer close-hauled as Teazer?

‘Down helm, as close as she’ll lie, Poulden,’ Kydd cracked out. Teazer surged nobly up to the wind. The frigate, taken by surprise, was forced to conform also. They’d established a precious lead on the larger ship.

It was taking them in a hard beat back out into the Atlantic but it couldn’t be helped. Kydd bit his lip. If they were overcome, Napoleon’s newspapers would make much of one of Britain’s famed men-o’-war humbled, captured in glorious combat on the high seas and paraded into port for all to see, with no account taken of the odds. The frigate’s captain would be well rewarded by his new emperor.

The frigate, trailing by barely a couple of hundred yards, had only to make up the distance and the guns would speak once more. At the moment the gap stayed. And the privateer had not fled: it had curved around and was beating resolutely after them. Then Kydd realised they were working together.

Straining every nerve his little ship thrashed away over the miles, out into the wastes of ocean, in a desperate race for life. Speed was being dissipated with the loss of wind through the rents in the sails but it would be suicide to pause to bend on new.

Slowly the privateer overhauled Teazer and took position on her defenceless quarter, confident she could not break off to deal with it.

Meanwhile Purchet, watching the frigate, said in a low voice, ‘She’s fore-reaching on us.’ Out in the open seas the broad combers that rode on the lazy swell were meeting Teazer’s bow in solid explosions of white, each one a tiny brake on their progress, while the larger frigate was throwing them aside with ease.

Kydd felt the creeping chill of doubt. The privateer was easing closer under their lee, the masses of men it carried clearly visible. It had few guns – but on a slide on its foredeck there was a twelve-pounder, double the size of Teazer’s biggest carriage gun. Suddenly this crashed out with a heavy ball low over her quarterdeck. The vicious wind of its passage made Kydd stagger.

It was now deadly serious. With the privateer to leeward and the frigate coming up to windward, they would soon be trapped. Another shot sent powder-smoke up and away to leeward. The ball threw Dowse, the master, to his knees with a cry and smashed the forward davit. Their cutter hung suspended aft, splintering against Teazer’s pretty quarter gallery until it fell away.

Kydd saw it was the helm the lugger was aiming at. With that knocked out, the frigate would be up in a trice and it would all be over. But there was a card he could play.

‘Ready about!’ He was gambling their lives that the brig-rigged Teazer was handier in stays than the three-masted frigate, but if any fumbled his duty . . .

The privateer could do nothing to stop them, and the frigate must have thought their motions a bluff for it carried past as Teazer took up on the other tack. There was a price to pay, however – its other broadside thundered out at the sloop’s stern-quarters as she made away. Two shot shattered Teazer’s ornate windows and erupted through her captain’s cabin, slamming down the length of the vessel.

It was a stay of execution. Now on the opposite tack, Teazer was being forced back towards the French coast and would be lucky to weather Ushant. The privateer resumed its station off their ruined quarter and continued its slow but relentless fire as the frigate went about and took up the chase again.

There would not be another chance. They could only hope for the deliverance of a stray warship of the Brest blockading squadron having occasion to go north-about as they had done. Teazer’s luck had finally turned and there was every prospect that before the end of the day the tricolour of Napoleon’s France would be floating aloft and Kydd’s precious fighting sword would be in the proud possession of the unknown frigate captain.

Kydd’s eyes stung. Teazer – his first and only command. To be taken from him so cruelly, without warning and on her way home. It was—

A twelve-pounder shot struck an upper dead-eye of the main-shrouds with shocking force, setting the lanyards to a wild unravelling. The heavy rope jerked away, then swung dangerously free to menace the quarterdeck. Poulden gripped the wheel-spokes defiantly – another ball had nearly taken his head off before chunking into the hammocks at the rail and sending them flying to the wind.

With the privateer now redoubling its efforts to destroy the helm, Poulden continued to stand fast, doing his duty. Kydd honoured him for it as he balled his own hands in frustration. Then he decided: there was one last scene to be played. He knew his men were behind him in whatever must be done.

‘Mr Hallum,’ he said, to his lieutenant, in a calm voice, ‘I’m going to hazard a move at the privateer. If we can put him down, we’ve a chance – a small one – with the frigate. Post your men quickly now.’

The older man’s face lengthened. For a moment Kydd felt for him: he should be quietly at home with his grown daughters, not at the extremity of peril out here in the wild ocean. Then he realised that, although the lieutenant had no deep understanding of his men, the stolid and unimaginative officer was determined to do his duty as well in England’s time of trial. He added warmly, ‘Never forget, sir, we’ve the better ship.’

‘Ushant again,’ Renzi murmured. The grey smudge gratifyingly to leeward was token of Teazer’s weatherliness, but they dared not ease away south towards the blockade, for the frigate had already shown her qualities before the wind. It was time for the final throw of the dice.

Warned off, the men hauled furiously on the lines as Teazer wheeled on her tormentor, her carronades crashing out – but the privateer was clearly waiting for such a move. Instantly it put down its tiller and bore away, the pert transom offering the smallest of targets.

Kydd saw that the move had failed and, alarmingly, he now felt the weight of the wind more squarely on the battle-damaged fore-topsail. Then it split from top to bottom, each side flapping uselessly.

‘Ease sheets,’ he said dully, conscious of the many pale faces looking aft, waiting to hear their fate. What could he offer them? Surrender tamely? Fight to the last? Think of some ingenious stratagem that would even the odds?

It was no good. The end was inevitable: why spill his men’s blood just to make a point? He raised his eyes to the frigate coming up. It seemed in no rush – but, then, it had all the time in the world to finish them.

Should he haul down their colours before the broadside came? ‘Mr Tawse . . .’ but the order wouldn’t come out. The frigate altered course and made to run down on them, the row of black gun muzzles along her side probably the last thing on earth many of his crew would see.

But the cannon remained mute. ‘Ohé, du bateau!’ came a faint hail from the frigate’s quarterdeck.

Kydd cupped his hand: ‘Le navire de sa majesté Teazer.’

‘À bas le pavillon!’ demanded the voice, in hectoring tones – Strike your colours!

Feeling flooded Kydd. This was not how it was going to end with his beloved ship. He would not let the French seize and despoil her. It would be like the violation of a loved one. Fierce anger clamped in.

‘Never!’ he roared back, and braced himself.

The shock of the expected broadside did not come. Instead there was a brief hesitation and the frigate’s side slid smoothly towards Teazer’s.

‘Stand by to repel boarders!’ Kydd bawled urgently, drawing his sword.

It was crazy: a frigate carried several times their number and their own guns were charged with round-shot, not the merciless canister that would sweep their decks clear. It would all be over in minutes – one way or the other.

They closed. Now only yards separated them, the milling, shouting mass on the enemy deck jostling with naked steel amain in anticipation. Kydd heard a hoarse order in French and shrieked, ‘Get down!’

He flung himself to the deck just as the murderous blast of grape and canister lashed Teazer’s bulwarks. Choking on the swirling powder-smoke he heaved himself up. A swelling cheer rose about him as Teazer’s carronades smashed back, adding to the thick smoke-pall and screaming chaos. Then, through the clearing reek, Kydd saw the high side of the frigate bearing down.

‘Stand t’ your weapons!’ he roared. Around him Teazers hefted cutlasses, pistols and boarding pikes. There was an almighty shudder as the two vessels touched and groaned in unison, the movement sending several to their knees.

The seas were high, producing a corkscrew effect on the two vessels that made them roll out of step with each other. The yells of triumph from the Frenchman’s deck tailed off quickly at the sight of a dark chasm between the two ships and the boarders hesitated. Some stood on the bulwarks poised to leap and were hit by pistol shot and musket fire from Teazer’s marines. They dropped with shrieks between the grinding hulls; others held back at the sight of the lethal points of boarding pikes held by unflinching British seamen.

A swivel banged from Teazer’s rail, another from forward. The French boarders’ hesitation was fatal for at that moment the frigate caught a wind flurry and surged ahead and away, snapping the grapnels that held the ships together and spilling three men into the sea.

A storm of cheers went up from the Teazers at the sight of the frigate sheering off, but Kydd didn’t join in. As the frigate readied for another attempt the privateer was manoeuvring to close and it was obvious to him that this time there was the awful prospect of a boarding from both sides simultaneously.

He hastily summoned every man aboard to join the lines of defenders, sending some into the tops with grenadoes to hurl at the massing boarders, with swivels to mount that could bring fire down on them, but it was so little against such odds.

The frigate had backed its mizzen topsail and was slipping back in a stern-board to lay itself alongside Teazer – the privateer was cannily matching its movements on the other side, a crude gangway hoisted in readiness to lower over the void between them.

Kydd stood in the centre of the deck with drawn sword and turned to face the massing privateers. In seconds the screeching horde on the vessel would be flooding on to their deck – but dogged courage like a man-o’-war’s man’s would not be their style. If they met with too much resistance they would falter and break, the effort not worth any gain. If by naked courage the Teazers could sustain the fight until . . .

‘I shall attend on the frigate side, brother.’ It was Renzi, with a plain but serviceable sword that, since he had taken up his scholarly quest, he had sworn to draw only in the last extremity. Their eyes met, then the frigate bumped and ground into the hull as the privateer’s gangway crashed down on Teazer’s bulwarks.

A roar of triumph went up and Kydd sprang forward to meet the rush across the improvised bridge. The first corsair had a scimitar and a pistol that he fired left-handed as he jumped – it brought down Seaman Timmins in a choking huddle but before Kydd could face him the man took a pike thrust to the chest and he had to kick the squealing body away to confront another with a tomahawk and cutlass.

There was no science in it: Kydd lunged viciously for the eyes and, when the man recoiled, turned the stroke to slash down at the wrist. The cutlass clattered to the deck, but before he could recover, a flailing body from behind catapulted him on to Kydd’s blade, which did its work without mercy.

Beside him, Kydd was subliminally aware that Poulden was being overborne by a brutish black man and, without thought, swung his blade horizontally in a savage backhand slash that ended in a meaty crunch in the man’s neck. With a wounded howl he turned on Kydd, but Poulden saw the opening and thrust pitilessly deep into the armpit.

Kydd turned back to fend off a frenzied stab from a wild-eyed man – the crude flailing had no chance against Kydd’s skill and experience and, with one or two expert strokes, he had forced him to a terrified defensive. The man slipped and tried to ward off Kydd’s straight-arm thrust to his throat, but in vain – he went down gurgling and writhing.

Suddenly there were no more opponents: he saw that the makeshift gangway had clattered down between the ships and many were left impotently on the wrong side. He whirled round. Renzi, in a practised fencer’s crouch, lunged up at a frigate officer in a blur of motion. The man stood no chance.

Defenders from the privateer’s side righted the gangway, then sprang across the deck. The smoke-wreathed chaotic mêlée, wreckage, stench of blood, groaning bodies and frayed cordage whipping about was a scene from hell.

The frigate was in heaving movement with the high seas, the vertical motion making it a trial for those dropping down on to Teazer’s deck from its higher bulwarks. The attackers had to time their move, unavoidably signalling this to the defenders, and when they landed, stumbling and off-balance, they were easy meat for the pikemen.

A trumpet bayed from within the frigate above the clash of battle – and then again. The retreat? With swelling exultation, Kydd saw the attackers left on Teazer’s deck fling down their weapons in despair, knowing the penalty for turning their backs to return to their ship.

It was incredible, glorious, and Kydd’s blood sang. They had repelled the enemy and Teazer was made whole again. Inside, a cooler voice chided that in large part they owed their success to the restless seas.

The frigate pulled away and cheers were redoubled again and again from the smoke-grimed and bloodied Teazers. But in a cold wash of reality Kydd knew what was coming next.

‘For y’ lives! Hands to wear ship!’ he bellowed, stumping up and down to get the men from their guns and to the ropes. Teazer began her swing – but was it too late? The frigate was wearing about as well, but Kydd was gambling that their own turning circle was less.

It was – but it was not enough to escape. The frigate now no longer saw Teazer as a prize but an enemy who must be crushed. And against the unrestrained broadsides of a frigate the little sloop had no chance.

When it came the punishment was hideous. Quartering across Teazer’s stern the bigger ship’s cannon blows brought a cascade of ruin and devastation, a tempest of iron that smashed, splintered and gouged, brought down spars, turned boats to matchwood.

In the blink of an eye Purchet, who had been with the ship from the first, was disembowelled and flung across the deck, his entrails strung out into a bloody heap against the waterway. The inoffensive sailmaker, Clegg, huddled by the main-hatch, was frantically trying to stitch repairs when he simply dropped, his head dissolved into a spray of brain.

From all sides came shrieks of pain from cruel, skewering splinters.

Shaken by the destruction, Kydd shouted hoarsely for sail of any kind on the fore. If they could just . . .

The frigate completed her veering, but she had another broadside waiting on her opposite side and she took time to tack about, a manoeuvre that would end in her coming up alongside the wreck that would be Teazer.

He felt a cold wetness: a grey advance of drizzle brought a soft misery that seemed to shroud the scenes of dying and ruin from mortal eyes. It fell gently, dissolving the blood so that Englishman and Frenchman mingled in fraternal embrace before trickling together through the scuppers into the sea.

Kydd pulled himself together. There was now no alternative to yielding: he must therefore face— But, no, he saw one last move . . . As the frigate completed its turn and took up for its final run he wheeled the wounded sloop off the wind and steered straight for the privateer to leeward. By feinting at it and causing it to run directly from his ship, Kydd was bringing it into the line of fire from the frigate chasing Teazer. They would not fire on their own: for the moment Teazer was safe.

But they did.

The broadside erupted without warning. The storm of shot that broke over Teazer was cataclysmic, smashing into her with an intensity that numbed the senses. A series of unconnected images flashed in front of Kydd. The fore-hatch bursting upwards a split second before a ball ended its flight with a colossal clang against an opposite gun. A ship’s boy snatched from the deck and flung like a bloody rag into the scuppers. Hallum’s face turning towards him in horror and pain, his mouth working as the splinter transfixing his lower body turned in the wound. And then came the deafening timber-cracking of the main-mast as it fell in dignified but awful finality, taking what remained of the fore-mast with it in a tangle of cordage, ruined spars and canvas.

It had finished. It was defeat. The end of everything.

As if in a dream he watched men slowly emerge from under the wreckage, go to the wretched bodies, stare in haggard disbelief at the passing frigate – and then from forward came the single crash of a gun.

Squinting past the heaped ruin of spars and canvas he saw it was his gunner’s mate, Stirk, dragging a foot behind him but going methodically from gun to gun, sighting carefully and banging off defiance at their nemesis – whatever else, Teazer would be seen to go down fighting.

Eyes pricking, Kydd had not the heart to stop him. The frigate began its final turn to take possession of them – and, extraordinarily, one of Stirk’s shots told. At the precise point of the slings of its crossjack there was a sudden jerk, tiny pieces flew off and the spar dipped awkwardly, then fell, rending the mizzen topsail above it and engulfing the driver.

The frigate – name still unknown – fell back on its course. Disabled and unable to turn back, it eventually disappeared into the grey mists of rain. The privateer stayed with it and suddenly Teazer was alone and desperately wounded in the desolate expanse of the Atlantic.

Dizzy with reaction Kydd mustered the Teazers. They seemed dazed, the petty officers half-hearted in their actions, the men shuffling in a trance. Kydd didn’t waste time on words: if they were to survive it needed every man to rally to the aid of their ship. The time of grieving would come later.

Teazer wallowed sickeningly broadside to the seas, her fore-mast a three-foot stump, her main a giant jagged splinter. It was a deeply forlorn experience to see nothing aloft but empty sky, and with the loss of steadying sails, the vessel lurched to the swell like a log.

The first urgency was for a party of men to find the wounded and carry them below. The dead were heaved over the side. Hallum was dragged with rough kindliness to the lee of the capstan where he died quietly. Another party was sent to find the few Frenchmen still aboard who had hidden in fear of their own ship’s broadside.

But the main chore was to clear the deck and try by any means to get sail on. All hands turned to, including Renzi, who stood in for Purchet and led the fo’c’sle party to set a series of purchases on the main spars and haul them clear before starting work on a species of sheer-leg. Even a rag of sail set to the streaming oceanic winds would serve.

Kydd forced his mind to coolness as he reviewed their situation. There was just one thing in their favour: these Atlantic winds were south-westerlies that blew directly for England. If they could keep sail on Teazer they would eventually make an English port, however long it took.

The carpenter brought welcome news. He had sounded the wells and made his rounds and could confidently say there was no hurt to Teazer’s stout Maltese hull that he could not deal with – in a jet of warmth, Kydd realised that it was more than possible his command would be able to lay her before long to the tender care of a dockyard, her grievous wounds to be healed.

‘Pass the word for the purser’s steward. He’s to see every man shall get his double tot.’ There would be inhuman effort required to cut through the maze of ropes and canvas and shift the heavy spars, and little enough time to do it for it was now well into the afternoon.

Other thoughts intruded. Would the frigate return? Their fallen crossjack would have torn down much of the mizzen’s ropery and would not easily be mended, not this day – and by morning Teazer would be well away from the scene of the action. Kydd thrust away the possibility that the frigate captain could calculate their uncontrolled drift and lie in wait for them.

And where were they in this immensity of sea? Their desperate slant across the Channel and out into the Atlantic had been only hazily marked, the dead-reckoning tentative at best and their last frenzied moves not noted at all. The leaden sky offered no hope of a sextant sight – they were to all intents and purposes lost and adrift.

The day wore on. At three bells in the first dog-watch the young Seaman Palmer choked on blood and died. No longer in action, Teazer saw him buried at sea in the hallowed way. An early dusk put an end to their efforts to show sail and for the long hours of night they were left with their thoughts and weariness, awaiting the dawn and what it would bring.

With the tendrils of morning light spreading, there was hope. The sheer-legs took a boom lashed to the summit and a reefed fore-topgallant spread slowly below to the cheers of Teazer’s company. Poulden hurried aft and took the wheel again, feeling for the life that was now filling her.

A fore-and-aft staysail rigged from the jagged main gave control and purpose in their creeping progress – until a dreaded call came from a sharp-eyed seaman forward. The grey cloud-bank ahead had firmed. Ushant.

If their crazily lashed-up sail could not allow them to double the wicked northern headlands they would end driven by the same wind inexorably into the iron-hard cliffs.

Kydd tried everything: sweeps on the starboard side, scraps of sail everywhere they could be set, manhandling the guns aft – but it was not enough. In the dying light of day Teazer touched once, then again, before lurching to a stop on the dark, kelp-strewn Chaussée, a series of sub-sea reefs in the shadow of the ominous craggy heights of the Ȋle de Keller.

Slewing sideways immediately, she lifted, then sagged, with a jarring, grinding finality, canted immovably over to larboard, the surf passing to end in hissing white rage on the further crags. It was so unfair! Nearly choked with emotion, Kydd fought against hopelessness and rage.

‘Get forrard, y’ chicken-hearted rabble,’ he snarled, at a terrified crowd of seamen who were scrambling for the higher reaches of the after part of the crazily angled ship. But for a space his heart went out to them: this was how so many voyages ended for sailors, in terror and drowning on a hostile shore.

And Ushant was the worst: an appalling mass of rock flung out into the Atlantic with surging ocean breakers and wild currents of ten knots or more, a place of nightmares for any mariner. The Bretons here had a saying, ‘Qui voit Ouessant voit son sang!’ – He who sees Ushant, sees his blood!

Kydd crushed his desolation. ‘Find the carpenter and send him below,’ he snapped at the nearest seaman, who stared back at him in fear. ‘Damn you, I’ll do it m’self.’ He pushed through the mass of men now on deck. The loss of the boatswain and his only lieutenant was a crippling blow: with just a single master’s mate and the petty officers he had to take control of the fearful, milling men before they took it into their heads to break discipline and run wild.

He found the carpenter, broken at hearing of the loss of his friend Clegg. ‘On y’r feet,’ Kydd said brutally. ‘Take a look around below, sound the wells an’ report to me instantly. Now!’ Without waiting for a response he stormed back to the wheel, collecting all the petty officers he could find.

‘We’ve a chance,’ he said urgently, shouting down the nervous cries from the back. ‘Do your part, an’ we’ll swim again – don’t and we’ll be shakin’ hands with Davy Jones afore nightfall.’

As if to add point to his words, a seething surf broke and thrust rudely past them, surging the hull further up with a deep, rumbling scrape that brought cries of terror from some.

But if they could get off the Chaussée and if they were not badly holed – there was hope.

‘A strake near th’ garboard forrard weepin’ an’ all, but nothin’ the pumps can’t clear,’ the carpenter said woodenly, breathing heavily.

Kydd rounded on the haggard faces watching them: ‘Hear that, y’ lubbers? Next tide’ll have us off! So clear this lumber and stand by!’

There was one thing he refused to think about: this was French territory. To his knowledge they had a form of military outpost, a signalling telegraph, on the western arm of Ushant, half a dozen miles to the south, probably tasked to report naval movements. If so, their situation would be known and . . .

‘Get moving, y’ shabs!’ he roared, shoving men to their posts. The tide would return some time in the afternoon and they had to be ready. All wreckage overside, lighten the ship by any means – but not the guns. Not so much that they could defend their poor ship but to deny the enemy the opportunity of later grappling them to the surface.

A boat was lowered and fought to seaward, a small stream anchor slung under, the vessel rearing and plunging as it struggled out past the combers. When it was at a distance, the lashings were cut and the killick dropped away into the depths.

The tide receded hour by hour, leaving them still and silent on the wet rocks. ‘They’s come!’ shrilled a voice, suddenly, and all eyes turned to the skyline above the black cliffs. Two figures stood looking down, and as they watched, others joined them.

‘We ain’t got a fuckin’ prayer!’ a young sailor blurted, eyes wild.

Stirk turned to him and scruffed his shirt. ‘Shut y’r mouth, y’ useless codshead. How’re they goin’ to come at us over that there?’ He jerked his head at the sea-white cleft separating them from the cliff. ‘They has t’ come in a boat, an’ when they do, we’ve guns as’ll settle ’em.’ He thrust the youth contemptuously away and turned to Kydd.

‘Sir,’ he said quietly, ‘an’ the carpenter wants a word. He’s in th’ hold.’

Kydd nodded. It was less than two hours to the top of the tide and then they could make their bid – pray heaven there was no problem.

They went down the fore-hatchway and Stirk, ignoring his leg wound, found the lanthorn. Without a word they went to a dark cavity at the after end of the ship. Moving awkwardly with the unnatural canting of the deck, Kydd dropped into the black void, filled with terrifying creaking and overpowering odours.

Stirk passed down the lanthorn and, bent double, they made their way to the lower side, where the carpenter and his mate stood with their own illumination.

No words were necessary. Evil and malignant, a wet blackness smelling powerfully of seaweed obscenely obtruded through the crushed and splintered hull for six feet or more, a fearful presence from the outside world breaking in on their precious home.

Kydd turned away that the others would not see the sting of the hot tears that threatened to overcome him at the unfairness of it all. ‘Don’t say anything o’ this,’ he said hoarsely. ‘We’ll – we’ll fother, is all.’ He nearly wept: for Teazer, to leave her bones in this break-heart place . . .

There was nothing the carpenter could do with a breach of such magnitude. There was a forlorn hope that fothering, dragging a sail over the outside, would give the pumps a chance.

Trusted men sat cross-legged in the gloom below, frenziedly sewing oakum and weaving matting into the sail, until it was obvious that the tide was ready to lift. It had to work: Kydd made sure the petty officers and others knew the stakes and personally selected the brawniest seamen to man the capstan that was to haul them off towards the anchor.

They had mounted the reef at about an hour before high water. Husbanding the strength of his men, Kydd waited until the ship shifted and moved restlessly, then drove them mercilessly.

Sobbing with the pain of the effort the men threw themselves at it, straining and heaving – and won. A sudden jerk, an odd wiggle like an eel, and Teazer was afloat and alive in the surging waters. Like a madman, Kydd roared his orders. Sail on the jury rig, the pumps manned instantly, parties ready at every conceivable point of trouble and the anchor cut loose just in time.

As they wallowed in clear water the fother sail was hastily produced, hauled into place and secured. Everything depended now on a clear run for England.

The wind was veering fitfully more westerly, fair to make an offing – but it would take them perilously close to that improbably named headland, Le Stiff. However, it was a bold coast, steep to with deep water, and in the brisk winds Teazer was making respectable way and within the hour had it laid astern.

Kydd had his two midshipmen positioned to relay any news from the hell below. He knew the chain pumps were beasts to drive, the rubbing of the many leather flaps of the watertight seal creating an inertia that was bone-breaking to overcome. It was not unknown in extreme circumstances for men to fall dead at the endless brutal exertion. ‘Mr Tawse?’

‘Holding, Mr Kydd.’ The youngster was pale, his set face giving nothing away.

The hours stretched out. Kydd stood motionless on the quarterdeck, willing on his ship. After what she’d gone through . . . but they must be nearly halfway by now. In just hours more they would make landfall, say Plymouth or further on at Torbay. Rest for his sorely tried ship.

The carpenter broke into Kydd’s thoughts: ‘Sir, I’m truly sorry t’ say, we’re makin’ water faster’n we can get rid of ’un.’ Kydd could feel it now. A terrible weariness, no reaction to the bluster and boisterous play of the seas, a—

‘Saaail!’ Without tops to mount a lookout at a height, the stranger could not be far off.

‘The Frenchy frigate,’ Kydd said dully, as it smartly altered towards them. Fury slammed in on him – how could he give up his brave, his infinitely precious ship to the enemy after all this?

‘No, it ain’t!’ Poulden said excitedly. ‘That’s Harpy, ship-sloop!’ A friend! Glory be, they had help – they had a chance.

The sloop came alongside and hailed. In a whirl of feeling Kydd saw a tow-line passed and the men below on the pumps spelled. All the while, with a terrible intensity, he urged his wounded ship on.

With fresh men and new heart they laboured unceasingly, but the tow proved a difficult haul. At a little after one, a tiny blue-grey line was seen ahead: England. As if relenting, the seas and westerly began to ease and the unnatural wallowing softened as they struggled on.

But Kydd could feel in his heart that a mortal tiredness lay on Teazer. Like a dog in its last hour trying to lift its muzzle to lick its master’s hand, she could no longer respond to please him. She was dying.

He hurried below in a frenzy of anguish. The men, in every stage of exhaustion, were fighting the pump to work amid as deadly a sign as the buboes on a plague victim: ankle-deep water, which was sloshing unchecked from side to side across the decks.

A lump in his throat threatened to choke him as he went back to the quarterdeck. The land was close enough to make out individual fields, the calm loveliness of Devon. And it was now so cruelly apparent that Teazer would not now make her rest. He could do no more for his love, his first command, she who had borne him on the ocean’s bosom for so many leagues of both adventure and heartache.

It was time to part.

The tow was cast off, the men released from their Calvary and set to transferring their pitiful belongings to the boats. Such stores as could be retrieved were taken aboard and then, with the seas lapping her gunports, HMS Teazer was abandoned, her captain the last to leave with a final caress of her rail.

In mute sympathy, Harpy stood by as Teazer lay down and slipped away for ever from human ken.