Julian Stockwin - Victory

‘Oh, I rather think it is, Captain,’ Clinton replied uneasily, looking to Dodd for support.

‘None more left in barracks f’r sea service, sir,’ the sergeant confirmed.

‘Very well. Get ’em kitted and ready for posting immediately.’

‘Sah!’

Ruing that they were sadly under strength as well with the Royals, Kydd turned to go below and saw Renzi standing on the quay, looking up in wonder. ‘Nicholas, ahoy there! Come aboard!’

Renzi mounted the brow slowly, taking in the sweep of the frigate, her teeming decks and bewildered new hands.

Kydd pumped his hand. ‘Welcome – welcome, m’ dear friend! Let’s below and I’ll tell you how she fares.’

After Renzi’s warm approbation of Kydd’s apartments, Kydd unburdened himself of his worries. ‘But she’s a prime frigate, Nicholas. We should have no trouble manning her, they hear we’re shortly outward bound.’

‘It would seem so, but I would think Portsmouth not your most favoured place. Have you considered the outports – Lymington, for instance?’

‘Set up a rondy there?’ A recruiting rendezvous was more usually to be found in the big merchant-shipping ports.

‘Why not? Some rousing posters promising adventure and glory pasted up where young lads can see them on the way to their work in the morning . . .’

‘Yes! Well said, Nicholas. And, o’ course, you’ll bear a fist in the writing, you being the prime article.’

A strange look passed over Renzi’s face before he hurriedly went on, ‘Be that as it may, brother. I rather think something like:

‘“All true British heart of oak who are able and willing to serve their King and Country, and um –”’

‘“– can carry a purse o’ Spanish cobbs a mile,”’ Kydd interjected.

‘“Be it known there are only a few berths left aboard the saucy L’Aurore now lying in, er –”’

‘“Lying at Spithead under orders from the King,”’ Kydd added stoutly, then muttered, ‘And that a lie – we’ve none yet.’

‘“Under the command of the famed Captain Kydd whose prize money from his last voyage –”’

‘Belay that, Nicholas, I won’t have it this is a voyage o’ plunder. It’s Boney we’re after.’

‘“– whose valour against the foe any stout heart may read for himself in the London Gazette , etc. Do repair to the right Royal Portsmouth rendezvous at the, er, some notorious tavern wherever—”’

‘That’ll do. Make it up fair and find a jobbing printer and we’ll have ’em up all over town – and Lymington too. I’ll have Gilbey man the rondy. That’s our second luff – you’ll meet him tonight with the others. Tomorrow we shift berth to the gun-wharf and ship our twelve-pounders so I’m having a dinner at the George while we can.’

The meal passed off heavily: L’Aurore ’s officers were little more than strangers at this point but the gesture had to be made.

Howlett was polite but thin-lipped. As administrative head of the ship, he had to make some sense of the few hands they possessed in terms of duties and it was an impossible job. Gilbey and Curzon had little to do until they had a full watch of the hands and were at sea, but their present idleness had its own tedium in a ship only half alive.

Renzi was taken warily after Kydd introduced him as his confidential secretary, but then accorded a civil respect when it was learned that he was a past naval officer in his own right before a near mortal fever. Clinton sat wide-eyed and silent before his superiors while Surgeon Peyton looked patently bored.

Kydd longed with all his heart to get to sea. It would throw them together in the age-old interdependence and brotherhood of the wardroom and their true character would then emerge. As it was, there was not much more he could do to bring the L’Aurores together.

In the morning a passage crew from the dockyard came aboard for the short tow to the gun-wharf close to the harbour entrance and, with sulphurous and imaginative cursing from Oakley, L’Aurore was brought alongside. Kydd left him and the gunner to sway aboard the twelve-pounders one by one, each with its matched carriage that would stay with it through all its service life.

Watching the main-deck being populated with L’Aurore ’s teeth of war, Kydd tried to console himself with the thought that, lesser in calibre though they were, these were one and the same as were carried by the mightiest first-rates – along their upper of three gun-decks.

Gunner’s stores, pyramids of shot – but not yet powder, which would be last aboard – arrived and the remaining vestiges of dockyard occupation fell away as the artisans and riggers concluded their last labours and left.

Then it was the final move in the fitting out: L’Aurore was brought out into the broad naval anchorage of Spithead and moored in lonely splendour, the fleet away in close blockade and other strategic deployments.

Kydd sent for the rest of his hands, the pressed men. Tenders brought them from the receiving ships and holding cells ashore: a straggling, resentful and dispirited rabble looking to desert at the first opportunity. And so few !

‘Sir, in all we’ve hardly half a watch aboard, counting the marines. Unless we—’

‘There’s some error, Mr Howlett. We’ll never sail with this complement. Get ’em on the books and I’ll step off and sort it out.’

The port-admiral listened courteously, but made it quite clear that the battleships of Britain’s strategic defences took priority and if Kydd was facing difficulties in manning, well, he was never the first, and enterprising captains would always find tricks to complete a crew.

As he made to leave, the admiral smiled thinly and produced a pack of orders. ‘As you’ve indicated to me that you’re in all respects ready for sea, Mr Kydd, here are your orders, which you’ll sign for in the usual way. Good luck in your commission, and if there’s anything further I can do for you . . . ?’

Burning with the injustice of it all, Kydd returned to L’Aurore where he was met by Curzon, who bitterly complained that the first lieutenant had not addressed him in a manner to be expected of a gentleman. Kydd gave him short shrift and demanded to know what the bedlam was below. It seemed that grog had got aboard and there was fighting between decks. He glared at Howlett and stalked off to his cabin.

With pitifully few petty officers there was no real chain of command, let alone a cohesive structure with perceivable limits of behaviour. The ship was descending into chaos before even it had established a character. All it needed was men – to fill the empty spaces but, more than anything, to form a connected whole and begin the process of coalescing into a single instrument of purpose.

Kydd took out the orders. Unless they had a bare minimum to handle sail it was futile to think L’Aurore could even weigh anchor, let alone form a useful addition to the fleet. He knew that it was not unknown for a captain to be removed in favour of another for failing to get his ship to sea.

He paused. Why wasn’t his confidential secretary present? At last Renzi had every right to be privy to ship’s secrets and he was going to take full advantage of it.

Renzi was in the coach, the next compartment forward, which had evolved into something approaching a ship’s office. There, also, the master was correcting his charts, the ship’s clerk was about his business and later the young gentlemen would be there, painfully going through their ‘workings’.

‘I’m opening our orders, Nicholas. To see what we should be about if L’Aurore had a crew,’ Kydd said. He tore off the wrapper and spread out the sheets in order.