Julian Stockwin - Victory

‘Pass the word for the purser’s steward. He’s to see every man shall get his double tot.’ There would be inhuman effort required to cut through the maze of ropes and canvas and shift the heavy spars, and little enough time to do it for it was now well into the afternoon.

Other thoughts intruded. Would the frigate return? Their fallen crossjack would have torn down much of the mizzen’s ropery and would not easily be mended, not this day – and by morning Teazer would be well away from the scene of the action. Kydd thrust away the possibility that the frigate captain could calculate their uncontrolled drift and lie in wait for them.

And where were they in this immensity of sea? Their desperate slant across the Channel and out into the Atlantic had been only hazily marked, the dead-reckoning tentative at best and their last frenzied moves not noted at all. The leaden sky offered no hope of a sextant sight – they were to all intents and purposes lost and adrift.

The day wore on. At three bells in the first dog-watch the young Seaman Palmer choked on blood and died. No longer in action, Teazer saw him buried at sea in the hallowed way. An early dusk put an end to their efforts to show sail and for the long hours of night they were left with their thoughts and weariness, awaiting the dawn and what it would bring.

With the tendrils of morning light spreading, there was hope. The sheer-legs took a boom lashed to the summit and a reefed fore-topgallant spread slowly below to the cheers of Teazer ’s company. Poulden hurried aft and took the wheel again, feeling for the life that was now filling her.

A fore-and-aft staysail rigged from the jagged main gave control and purpose in their creeping progress – until a dreaded call came from a sharp-eyed seaman forward. The grey cloud-bank ahead had firmed. Ushant.

If their crazily lashed-up sail could not allow them to double the wicked northern headlands they would end driven by the same wind inexorably into the iron-hard cliffs.

Kydd tried everything: sweeps on the starboard side, scraps of sail everywhere they could be set, manhandling the guns aft – but it was not enough. In the dying light of day Teazer touched once, then again, before lurching to a stop on the dark, kelp-strewn Chaussée, a series of sub-sea reefs in the shadow of the ominous craggy heights of the Ȋle de Keller.

Slewing sideways immediately, she lifted, then sagged, with a jarring, grinding finality, canted immovably over to larboard, the surf passing to end in hissing white rage on the further crags. It was so unfair! Nearly choked with emotion, Kydd fought against hopelessness and rage.

‘Get forrard, y’ chicken-hearted rabble,’ he snarled, at a terrified crowd of seamen who were scrambling for the higher reaches of the after part of the crazily angled ship. But for a space his heart went out to them: this was how so many voyages ended for sailors, in terror and drowning on a hostile shore.

And Ushant was the worst: an appalling mass of rock flung out into the Atlantic with surging ocean breakers and wild currents of ten knots or more, a place of nightmares for any mariner. The Bretons here had a saying, ‘ Qui voit Ouessant voit son sang! ’ – He who sees Ushant, sees his blood!

Kydd crushed his desolation. ‘Find the carpenter and send him below,’ he snapped at the nearest seaman, who stared back at him in fear. ‘Damn you, I’ll do it m’self.’ He pushed through the mass of men now on deck. The loss of the boatswain and his only lieutenant was a crippling blow: with just a single master’s mate and the petty officers he had to take control of the fearful, milling men before they took it into their heads to break discipline and run wild.

He found the carpenter, broken at hearing of the loss of his friend Clegg. ‘On y’r feet,’ Kydd said brutally. ‘Take a look around below, sound the wells an’ report to me instantly. Now!’ Without waiting for a response he stormed back to the wheel, collecting all the petty officers he could find.

‘We’ve a chance,’ he said urgently, shouting down the nervous cries from the back. ‘Do your part, an’ we’ll swim again – don’t and we’ll be shakin’ hands with Davy Jones afore nightfall.’

As if to add point to his words, a seething surf broke and thrust rudely past them, surging the hull further up with a deep, rumbling scrape that brought cries of terror from some.

But if they could get off the Chaussée and if they were not badly holed – there was hope.

‘A strake near th’ garboard forrard weepin’ an’ all, but nothin’ the pumps can’t clear,’ the carpenter said woodenly, breathing heavily.

Kydd rounded on the haggard faces watching them: ‘Hear that, y’ lubbers? Next tide’ll have us off! So clear this lumber and stand by!’

There was one thing he refused to think about: this was French territory. To his knowledge they had a form of military outpost, a signalling telegraph, on the western arm of Ushant, half a dozen miles to the south, probably tasked to report naval movements. If so, their situation would be known and . . .

‘Get moving, y’ shabs!’ he roared, shoving men to their posts. The tide would return some time in the afternoon and they had to be ready. All wreckage overside, lighten the ship by any means – but not the guns. Not so much that they could defend their poor ship but to deny the enemy the opportunity of later grappling them to the surface.

A boat was lowered and fought to seaward, a small stream anchor slung under, the vessel rearing and plunging as it struggled out past the combers. When it was at a distance, the lashings were cut and the killick dropped away into the depths.

The tide receded hour by hour, leaving them still and silent on the wet rocks. ‘They’s come!’ shrilled a voice, suddenly, and all eyes turned to the skyline above the black cliffs. Two figures stood looking down, and as they watched, others joined them.

‘We ain’t got a fuckin’ prayer!’ a young sailor blurted, eyes wild.

Stirk turned to him and scruffed his shirt. ‘Shut y’r mouth, y’ useless codshead. How’re they goin’ to come at us over that there?’ He jerked his head at the sea-white cleft separating them from the cliff. ‘They has t’ come in a boat, an’ when they do, we’ve guns as’ll settle ’em.’ He thrust the youth contemptuously away and turned to Kydd.

‘Sir,’ he said quietly, ‘an’ the carpenter wants a word. He’s in th’ hold.’

Kydd nodded. It was less than two hours to the top of the tide and then they could make their bid – pray heaven there was no problem.

They went down the fore-hatchway and Stirk, ignoring his leg wound, found the lanthorn. Without a word they went to a dark cavity at the after end of the ship. Moving awkwardly with the unnatural canting of the deck, Kydd dropped into the black void, filled with terrifying creaking and overpowering odours.

Stirk passed down the lanthorn and, bent double, they made their way to the lower side, where the carpenter and his mate stood with their own illumination.

No words were necessary. Evil and malignant, a wet blackness smelling powerfully of seaweed obscenely obtruded through the crushed and splintered hull for six feet or more, a fearful presence from the outside world breaking in on their precious home.

Kydd turned away that the others would not see the sting of the hot tears that threatened to overcome him at the unfairness of it all. ‘Don’t say anything o’ this,’ he said hoarsely. ‘We’ll – we’ll fother, is all.’ He nearly wept: for Teazer , to leave her bones in this break-heart place . . .

There was nothing the carpenter could do with a breach of such magnitude. There was a forlorn hope that fothering, dragging a sail over the outside, would give the pumps a chance.