Julian Stockwin - Victory

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—