Authors: Julian Stockwin
It was the age-old problem in war; men raised to a nervous pitch of skill and expectations, then forced to idleness while waiting for the enemy's next move. Traditional make-work employment in harbour centred around cleaning and bright-work, but nothing could be more calculated to dull the spirit; more warlike tasks, such as attending to the gunner's store had long since been completed to perfection. With a fine edge on every cutlass, pistols and muskets flinted and tested, shot brought to an impressive roundness by careful chipping with a rust-hammer, there was little more that Kydd could think of to do.
Poulden knocked tentatively at the door. “Not sure as what t' do with this'n,” he said, holding out a paper. “Mr. Calloway says ye'd be interested.”
Kydd read it and chuckled. “Why, this is just the medicine for the harbour mullygrubs! Gentlemen, your attention, please . . .” Lieutenant Keane and HM gun-brig
Locust
were issuing a challenge-at-arms to HMS
Teazer
for the honour of hoisting a “Cock of the Downs” for the better ship.
Locust
lay a quarter of a mile to the eastward, moored, like
Teazer,
head to wind. Keane was proposing a contest of boardingâthe very proficiency that would be so needed in the near future. Kydd read aloud the challenge: it was to be undertaken from an eight-oared pinnace, the only boat held in common by both sides, the object being to haul down the other's colours in the face of various unspecified discouragements, then return.
There were some interesting provisos. Boarders were to be fully “armed” and might not enter at any point between the quarterdeck and fo'c'sle. The winners would be the first to return to their own ship and triumphantly re-hoist their own colours to the masthead. And, to prevent later recrimination, the respective captains would lead the boarders.
“An impudence!” spluttered Hallum. “They can't justâ”
But Kydd had made up his mind and turned to Poulden. “Mr. Calloway is t' hoist
Locust
's pennant over the âaffirmative,' if y' please,” he said firmly.
It was well conceived. Distance to cover under oars was equal, as were the number of men carried in the boats. Bearing arms and coming aboard only over the bow or stern meant a boarding under realistic conditions and discouragements would add the necessary incentive to haste.
Recalling Keane's confidence, Kydd grinned. He would be leading the Teazers and it was fairly certain that the young officer had not heard of his own years as a young and agile seaman . . .
With boats in the water in deference to
Locust
's lack of the new-fangled davits, it needed only the signal to start.
Actaeon
's gig arrived and Savery, suitably grave as befitted an official umpire, proceeded to an inspection of
Teazer
's boarders.
“A fine body of men, Captain!” he pronounced. They were not the words Kydd would have used of his crew of desperadoes in every kind of piratical rig clutching their wooden “cutlasses” and grinning at each other in anticipation.
“Into your boats!”
Kydd settled at the tiller and tried not to beam back at Stirk, gunner's mate, and a seaman who went back to his earliest time at sea. Ready with his grapnel in the bows he snapped. “Toss oars!” In obedience to the “rules” oars were thumped down and held vertically as a sign that the boarders were standing by. Savery sighted over at
Locust:
their boat was in similar readiness.
“Fire!” A swivel gun manned up in the maintop cracked out but the sound was almost drowned in the storm of cheering from the spectators. Kydd's urgent roar sent oars thudding down between the thole pins and the boat slewing round to leap ahead, straight as an arrow, for the trim gun-brig.
The Locusts were in view almost at once, her captain crouched, urging on his crew like a lunatic and coming on at a dismaying rate. It was not Kydd's way to shout at men doing their best but he quickly found himself leaning forward and berating them as lubbardly old women and a hopeless parcel of gib-faced mumpers. The resulting expressions of delight seemed to indicate it might have been expected.
As the pinnaces passed each other halfway, yells of derision were hurled across. Keane stood precariously and bowed solemnly to Kydd, who couldn't think what to do other than doff his hat in reply. Then it was the final stretch, the seamen panting and gasping with the brutal effort.
Defenders were spaced evenly along the decks of
Locust
and doing suspicious things with sacks. Like
Teazer,
the gun-brig was flush-decked with a continuous deck-line. Her fo'c'sle was rounded and therefore without the usual beakhead with its useful climbing-aboard points. It had been agreed that boarding nettings would not be deployed as inviting damage to His Majesty's sea stores, so it was a choice between bluff bow or sturdy transom.
Kydd made up his mind and went for the stern. Instantly there was a frantic rush along the decks of the brig to take up position to repel boarders. He snatched a glance behind: the Locusts were heading at breakneck speed directly for
Teazer
's bows and there was the same mad scramble forward to meet the boarding. He smiled wickedlyâit would be a valiant crew who made it to that hostile deck.
Just a few hundred yards away from their goal he weighed up the angles and distances. With
Locust
's protruding rudder stock, a side-to approach allowing simultaneous exit from the boat would not be possible. Better a head-on one, with Stirk leading the charge up and over that plain sternwork.
They neared, and he spotted defenders hunkered behind the low bulwark. Just before they made ready Kydd twisted to look behind. At the last minute Keane had put over the tiller, shooting under the bowsprit and at full tilt sped down the length of the ship to end up under
Teazer
's more ornate stern. Grapnels flew up in a perfectly timedâ
“Sir!” Poulden's anxious cry brought him backâ
Locust
's humble stern with its two small windows, was looming above them but before he could act the boat drove head on into her timbers with a rending thump, sending the oarsmen down in a tangle of legs and bodies.
“Go!” Kydd cried hoarsely, from the bottom-boards but Stirk had already hurled his grapnel and swarmed up the line with a roar. He took the contents of a pail of galley slops full in the face, then bilge-water, flour, slush and the like rained down. Stirk let out a howl, but quickly recovered and fought his way slowly up through the deluge. The Teazers were now spurred on with the prospect of revenge, and as Stirk disappeared over the bulwarks he was followed by the rest, with Kydd fighting through the vile onslaught to join him.
On the neat little after deck the Locusts were waiting with their wooden cutlasses at point, except one sailor who was taken helpless with laughter at the sight of the enemy. It was too much for Stirk who threw himself at the man and, with a show of strength, wrestled him to the side and up-ended him bodily into the sea.
The decks resounded to fierce snarls and the sharp
clik-clok
of wooden combat, but the Teazers' blood was up and it didn't take long to fight through to the mainmast halliards. Guarded by a ring of vengeful seamen, Kydd rapidly hauled down their colours.
Returning to the boat, some jumped headlong into the early summer sea to rid themselves of their ordure, then hauled themselves dripping over the gunwale. “Move y'selves,” Kydd urged, taking the tiller again.
They stretched out manfully. The contest would not be over until their own colours had been restored. The Locusts, however, were already two-thirds back, well on their way to victory.
When the Locusts drew abreast Kydd's boat to pass, more taunts were thrown. Keane stood up in the boat and bowed low. It was galling to be treated this way againâKydd spotted a
Locust
flour-bomb among the mess in the bilge, and as Keane straightened his posture, he received it full on the chest.
It burst with a satisfying white explosion and the young man teetered and fell, bringing down his stroke oar and causing the next man to catch a crab, then lose his oar. The boat came to a stop in hopeless confusion while the Teazers savagely saw their chance and threw themselves at their oars.
It was sweet victory! Captain Savery shook his head at the sight of the seamen who heaved themselves aboard but allowed the Teazers triumphantly to haul their colours aloft once more. A crestfallen Keane was summoned back to witness the award to the victor.
“Sirâsir, I . . .”
“Yes, Mr. Keane?”
“It wasn't fair!”
Kydd couldn't help it. “Fortunes of war, old trout!” he rumbled smugly.
Savery held up the trophy, a handsome red-painted mast vane in the shape of a cockerel. “Cock o' the Downs. And this I award to the rightful winner with the strict injunction:
in hoc signis vincit!
”
“Under this sign go ye forth and conquer!” murmured Renzi, next to Kydd.
With a satisfied smile Kydd stepped forward to accept the prize.
“Not you, sir!” Savery said, in mock horror, snatching away the vane. “The Locusts are declared victors this day. Come forward and be honoured, Mr. Keane.”
“The Locusts sir?” Kydd spluttered. “I don't understandâwe wereâ”
“Mr. Kydd! I have above a hundred witnesses who will swear they saw you resume hostilities on your opponent even while your colours were struck. This is not to be borne, sir. Yet I dare to say you will be seeking a
rencontre
at another date . . .”
The north-westerly eased and veered overnight leaving a fine summer morning to spread its beneficence abroad. But at eleven, as the wind passed into its easterly quadrant, there was the thump of a gun and the red flag of the alert was hoisted. The wind was favourable for the French.
A hurried muster revealed the absence of the gunner and his mate at the King's Naval Yard and a victualling party at the storehouse. Both midshipmen were dispatched with trusties to find them post-haste and
Teazer
moved to sea watches.
Before noon her complement was entire and the ship ready for sea; lying to a ready-buoyed single anchor, sails bent on to yards, her broadsides primed and waiting. Kydd's eyes turned to
Actaeon
. The first sign of an alarm might be the sudden blossoming of a signal at the halliards and a warning gun. Then the flying squadron would be streaming instantly to sea.
But the day wore on. Was this to be their entire existence, to lie waiting at a split yarn? It could be days, weeks, before the French made their move to sea.
At sunset the men were piped to supper; at least, here they would eat well, fresh greens and regular meat from the garden county of Kent. And Renzi was clearly content with his lot: little ship's business to do and a stand of books to devour that would not disgrace a bookseller.
Kydd vowed to find fresh ways to keep the men occupied and in fighting trim, but for now he turned in early and drifted into sleep.
“Sir! Mr. Kydd, sir!” called an anxious Moyes. As mate-of-the-watch he was confronted with the old naval dilemma. He had been sent to wake an officer, but if he shook him this might in theory be construed as laying hands on a superior, with all the dire penalties that the act entailed.
Kydd propped himself up in his cot and rubbed his eyes. Moyes was streaming water from his oilskins; it must be dirty weather topside, although the ship's gentle motion did not indicate a blow. “What o'clock is it?”
“Middle watch, sir, an'
Actaeon
is hanging out three lights with a gun.”
All captains!
“I'll be up directly. Rouse up a boat's crew and have the gig in the water immediately.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Moyes disappeared, considerately leaving his lanthorn, and Kydd thudded to the deck, shaking his head to clear it of sleep.
“Cast off!” he growled, after they had entered the boat. He had only a sea-coat over his nightdress and maddeningly the light rain trickling off his hat found several ways to penetrate to his sleep-warm body. But he knew there could only be one reason for the urgent summons.
The boat hooked on and he heaved himself up the rain-slick side of the frigate, noting bustle through the open gunports. The ship was fully awake.
Savery lost no time. When all were assembled he snapped, “An alarm, gentlemen. Sir Sidney Smith has sent urgent word of an invasion flotilla slipping out from Ostend, taking advantage of this nor'-easterly and thinking to join with others in Calais and Boulogne. It must be stopped.”
There were grave expressions on the faces of those who stood about, wet and drooping and in all manner of strange night attire.
“This is no small force. It numbers over sixty craft and, being a joint Dutch force, is defended by the Jonkheer ver Blaeu, who, I might remind you, learned his trade under de Winter at Camperdown.”