Julian Stockwin - Conquest

Exulting, Kydd saw the tables had been turned. Now the hunter was the quarry – between the two of them the French frigate would be at their mercy. It only needed considered teamwork and they would have it. Of course, Honyman in Leda was the senior but Kydd must deliver the Frenchman to him.

If the dogged pursuit continued it would be easy; otherwise Kydd’s duty was to turn and engage to achieve a delay until Leda could come up.

‘Helm down, alter four points to starb’d,’ he ordered. L’Aurore fell off the wind and, with furious work at the braces, they were quickly making off downwind. Unbelievably, the other followed suit almost immediately, the foremost guns on her broadside firing a ragged salvo at an angle, one shot punching a neat hole in L’Aurore ’s mizzen topsail.

Leda was now on the beam and on this course the tracks would eventually converge – yet still the Frenchman hung on. It could be that this was a determined attempt to crush them before Leda came up, but Kydd’s course was clear: he must stay ahead until they were two, then turn at last on his pursuer.

The seas were now moderating, the winds steady, the land far off: it was a clear field of battle for an all-frigate action with the odds for once on their side – but would the enemy stay to fight?

As Leda approached there was no sign of a breaking off. Still L’Aurore stretched out ahead, the French frigate stubbornly in her wake and Leda angling in from to leeward.

And then the Frenchman put over his helm and wheeled to starboard. As his broadside bore momentarily he opened up on L’Aurore ’s unprotected quarter in a storm of fire. Kydd staggered and fell to his knees with the wind of one ball, which went on to take the quartermaster squarely and send him into a bloody, squirming heap before severing a shroud with a bass twang . Another, blasting and splintering into Kydd’s cabin, brought shrieks of pain from further forward and yet one more ended in a brutal crunch somewhere in the hull.

The sudden eruption of violence was shocking: the malevolence of the nameless French captain had reached out and savaged L’Aurore ; it was now a punishing downwind fight against a cunning and tenacious enemy.

Even before he could struggle to his feet there was the sound of a further thunderous broadside – but this was from the frigate’s opposite side and it hammered into Leda ’s bows. Kydd gave a grim acknowledgement: to achieve a broadside on two opponents within such a short space of time was the work of a fighting seaman worthy of notice.

Kydd hauled L’Aurore around and now they were following. On an impulse he took out his pocket glass and trained it on the carved stern: Africaine . It now had a name.

They passed Leda beginning her turn, but then the Frenchman swung to larboard, and once again L’Aurore faced that deadly broadside, now to her bows. Time froze: but not a single gun fired. Kydd gave a cynical smile: this great captain had neglected gun drill in favour of manoeuvres, and despite the masterly tactics, he’d been let down by the gun crews and left with no guns ready.

And he would pay for it. Savagely, Kydd gave the orders that brought L’Aurore around parallel. Now the Frenchman must stay on course and endure what was coming – if he turned away he would take a full broadside to his high, scrolled stern. Kydd savoured the moment then roared, ‘ Fire! ’

Instantly L’Aurore ’s starboard broadside of twelve-pounders crashed out triumphantly, gunsmoke towering up between the two ships to be snatched away by the wind. To his intense satisfaction, Kydd saw the shot strike Africaine in gouts of splinters, the sudden appearance of black holes in the hull and the parting of ropes to trail in the wind. Their twelves would never be the battle-winners that the opposing eighteens, half as big again, could be, but they had hit back.

Something made him suddenly wheel around. He saw that the Frenchman had timed his turn precisely and had manoeuvred to be between L’Aurore and Leda leaving an impotent Honyman to curse Kydd for a fool in masking his guns. Face burning, Kydd was about to give the orders to sheer away when he realised with horror that to do so would be to fall in with the expectation that he would present his stern once again.

In a fury of self-accusation, thoughts flashed through his brain – then he bellowed, ‘Hard a st’b’d!’ It was crazy but it would not be expected that he would throw his ship entirely in the other direction – towards, instead of away. Understanding, the boatswain tore men from the guns in a frenzy to man the lines as L’Aurore swung about, taking up close-hauled hard to the wind to place herself directly in the path of the French frigate. There would now be a fearful and crippling collision if one of them did not give way – and it would not be Kydd.

At first the other frigate stood on, as though in contempt of the move, but Kydd knew his man now – at this moment he would be coolly reasoning that if L’Aurore ’s reckless tactic ended only in tangled rigging it would nevertheless give Leda all the chance she needed to close in and that was a risk he simply could not take.

Grimly holding to his course, Kydd saw the other’s bowsprit, like a spear, swinging round to aim at their vitals – then it wavered, slowed and began falling away. Within less than fifty feet it shot by the awkwardly turning frigate, Kydd regretting that with men away from the guns he could not slam in a broadside as it passed.

There had been a sputtering of musket shot but otherwise they were unscathed, and once past, Kydd lost no time in wheeling about for battle again. The frigate was taking punishment from a vengeful Leda ; Kydd’s larboard broadside being ready, he would ease in and resume his pounding when the range was clear. This was how it must be – teamwork.

Leda ’s cannonade ceased and she fell back while L’Aurore came up to take the other side. This would be the final act – a brutal battering between two fires until colours were struck. It could take hours – the frigate was still full of fight and, in the hands of its bloody-minded, devious captain, was capable of anything.

Kydd sent L’Aurore forward, her men at the guns keyed up for combat – but before she was in position the big frigate yawed widely to starboard and its broadside hammered out ahead of their own. Again the shock and violence of the enemy’s malice, debris falling from above, the insane flapping of a ragged sail and a hoarse, morbid bubbling from a doubled-over member of a gun crew. Then their own broadside opened up into the gunsmoke, sounding so puny against the eighteens.

So it was to be a smashing match! L’Aurore ’s topsails were shivered to spill wind and she eased back to allow Leda to come up for the next bout. Both ships fired simultaneously in a fury of gun-flash and smoke, Leda every bit a match in size and guns for the Frenchman, who nevertheless fought back furiously.

Guns reloaded, L’Aurore began her run in, Kydd alert for any ploy, but this time there were no broadsides. As they began their overlap L’Aurore ’s forward guns fired one by one, as soon as they bore in a deliberately aimed cannonade, but were answered gun for gun by the French in a display of cold courage that demanded respect.

But before half her guns had fired, there was the shock of a shot-strike on L’Aurore ’s lower fore-yard, and with a rending crack it broke in two, instantly ripping the fore-topsail from top to bottom and descending to the fore-deck in a tangle of ropes and torn canvas.