Julian Stockwin - Conquest

Sail doused, it was nearly impossible to keep head to sea. The seething combers met the bow, flinging it skyward to crunch back at an awkward angle, which frantic work at the oars could only just meet. Kydd could see that even if he brought the boat to land through the surf they would never get off again, given this force of wind and sea.

‘Set the fores’l ’n’ jib!’ he roared, above the thunder of the waves. They clawed off, every man soaked and Doud frantically bailing over the side. ‘We can’t make it, sir!’ Kydd bawled, at the hunched-over figure of the general.

Ferguson looked up and met his eyes. If a well-found ship’s pinnace could not get through to the shore, then sending in heavily laden, crowded assault boats would risk catastrophe. ‘No. I’ve seen enough. We return.’

At the flagship further out, the seas gave little hint of their bull-rampaging power at the shoreline. ‘Sir, it’s my firm opinion they’ll never get on shore in this,’ Ferguson told Baird urgently, as the general came up to meet the returning party. ‘We must not attempt it.’

Baird looked at him as if he were demented. ‘Not proceed? Sir, by your own report the enemy has not reached the landing place. You’re proposing I suspend operations, recall the boats and lie in idleness while the enemy finds time to complete his deployment?’

To shoreward of Diadem the boats were assembling in concourse for the line of assault, bobbing and sliding on the swell and perilously full of soldiery; the embarking was near complete.

The tension on the quarterdeck was electric.

‘Sir! Might I . . . ?’ Kydd interposed, unsure of the proper form for contradicting a commander-in-chief.

‘Captain?’

‘I fear General Ferguson is right. These beaches are open to the full force of the Atlantic. Our seamen will try their best but with all those soldiers on board . . . That is to say, with their oars they’ll need . . .’ He trailed off at Baird’s thunderous expression.

‘You’re trying to say the Navy can’t find a way to land my men on an unopposed shore?’ Baird said, with biting savagery. ‘That a vital strategic move against the enemy, devised and planned by His Majesty’s War Council in Whitehall, is to be overborne by – by you, sir?’

Despite his vitriol, Kydd felt for the man – with all his detailed plans and hopes, he now had an impossible choice: to go ahead and risk disaster before his very eyes or wait for someone to tell him that he could go – and take responsibility when he was bloodily and decisively beaten on the beaches by a prepared enemy.

‘Er, may the commodore and I consult, sir?’ Kydd said evenly, seeing Popham arriving on the quarterdeck.

At Baird’s grunt, he motioned Popham aside. ‘Sir, the conditions are insupportable. This westerly has kicked up a long swell that’s pounding the sand. No boat can live in that surf. You must . . .’

The commodore’s brow creased and he paused before he replied. ‘I see, Mr Kydd. You will appreciate, however, that this cannot be received by the commander-in-chief with anything but resentment and more than a trifle of anxiety but I will speak with him.’

He approached the fuming general and took him by the arm. ‘David, I really do feel we must discuss this further. Shall we go below?’

A little later Popham returned alone. ‘Well, now. The general has a pretty dilemma but I flatter myself we have a naval plan that shall see him mollified.’

Kydd’s spirits rose. ‘Then how shall we get them ashore, sir?’ That was the nub, but the commodore probably had ideas such as pontoons on a line through the breakers or—

‘We don’t.’

‘Sir?’

‘Consider. We had notions of landing here because we had a chance of getting ’em ashore and established before the enemy had time to advance up the coast to contest the landing. Now he has the time. Therefore do you not think that our primary purpose is to dissuade him from such a course? To remain where he is and allow us to land here when the weather improves?’

Popham’s look of smug superiority irked Kydd, but he would play the game. This was the man who’d devised a radically new system of signals that had been adopted by the whole Navy and whom he’d witnessed devise an ingenious solution for delivering Fulton’s torpedoes when his submarine was seen as not practical.

‘Er, a feint as will draw his attention away?’

‘Umm?’

It was beginning to come. He remembered Baird’s reasoning behind his decision to land in this particular location. ‘Make a motion in his rear, say Camps Bay, as will persuade him we intend to cross, um, Kluffnick Pass—’

‘Kloofnek.’

‘– to fall on him from behind. In this way he’ll not want to be caught with his army straggling out in the open if there’s a chance we’ll strike at his centre.’

‘Very good. Pray continue.’

Of course! That was the solution. ‘So we are giving out that the Losperd’s Bay show with boats is merely by way of enticing him out – and the real landing is at Camps Bay.’

‘Bravo!’ Popham said. ‘Their field commander and governor, General Janssens, is a wily bird. He may or may not fall for it, but at the very least he’ll hesitate before committing his troops this far out from the town and castle.’

At a hurriedly reconvened council-of-war Baird wasted no time. ‘Gentlemen, I’ve given orders that the landing is not to proceed.’

A dismayed hubbub died away at his calm smile. ‘Instead we turn the delay to our advantage. I’m asking Commodore Popham to make a flourish at Camps Bay for the purpose of getting General Janssens to think again of where the landing will be taking place. No army commander would dare to be caught with his column of advance strung out and a landing in his rear.’

There were murmurs of appreciation and Popham avoided Kydd’s eye. ‘Nevertheless, I’m to take precautions, I believe. It’s my desire to set troops on the shores of Africa and to this end I’m dispatching General Beresford with the Twentieth Regiment of Dragoons to the closest sheltered harbour, which is Saldanha Bay in the north. Having established a presence there, he will march down to meet us at the landing or alternatively hold a position. Any questions?’

Kydd had none, but Saldanha Bay, while less than a day’s sail away for a ship, was a march of seventy miles across African wilderness for soldiers weakened by the voyage. If the weather stayed from the west and the main landing was impossible, on arrival they would be cut to pieces while he and the others looked on helplessly.

Any watcher from the dunes would have seen, in the last of the daylight, first a frigate and then other ships detach from the invasion fleet one by one and slip south, in full view, past the castle with the colours of the Batavian Republic and continuing by Cape Town itself, before rounding the point out of sight as a sunset blazed in from the sea. The conclusion would hopefully have been that the British were readying for a dawn assault – and the Dutch commander could congratulate himself for not falling for the gesture at Losperd’s Bay: his forces were still in place and fully capable of defending the town.

Kydd’s little fleet of a single frigate and harmless transports, however, were waiting for a sign. It came in the darkness at a little after two in the morning. Under easy sail well offshore, they felt the wind die to a whisper and then, an hour before dawn, it strengthened – from the south-west.

Signal lanthorns were hung in L’Aurore ’s rigging and sail was set for the north. When day broke, they were back in the lee of Robben Island with the invading force and a very different prospect.

The seas were now subdued and the wind, backing yet further into its accustomed summer direction, was no longer a threat. The landing was on.