Julian Stockwin - Mutiny

'There's still Trinity House, Prime Minister,' Spencer stuttered.

'Yes, my lord, you'll spare me the details of my worthy and salty old gentlemen's valiant endeavours, please. But in the main, just what are their chances?'

'They have started at the northern limits, around the Swin, but there is difficulty . . .'

'Quite so. I understand,' Pitt said wearily. 'Putting that aside, we have to face reality, gentlemen. And that is, we have tried and we have lost. There is now no further course left. Except one. Grenville, it is with the deepest reluctance imaginable, but I have decided that the time has come to approach the French and treat for peace.'

Renzi returned to the Shippe Inn, tired and dismayed after his early morning walk. Despite his warnings, nothing had been done to prevent the blockade. It had been days, and the entrance to the Thames was now a chaos of jammed shipping, the wealth of England wasting away on the mud-flats. It could only be a short while before the nation collapsed into anarchy.

The oystermen grinned a welcome: his liking for a daily trip to the Nore was a profitable sideline. The smack put out from the Queenborough jetty, went smartly about and beat out to the anchorage.

Renzi sat bolt upright. To his shock there were now additional ships, big ones, settling to their moorings at the Great Nore. With them how many more thousands of sailors had swelled the numbers of mutineers? It was a fantastic, unreal thing that was unfolding, unparalleled in history.

As he let the fishermen circle the anchored warships he counted and memorised. It was a difficult and brain-racking chore to come up with small gems of intelligence gleaned from his observations yet which obeyed the principles he held. But it was vital if Kydd was going to have any chance to escape his fate.

The smack returned, Renzi careful to rhapsodise on the quality of the sunlight on cliffs, seagulls and sails. With as much patience as he could muster, he allowed the oystermen to fuss him ashore, brush him down and set him on his way.

The situation was now a matter of the greatest urgency. He wandered about the village and, when sure he was out of sight, stepped rapidly along the path to the dockyard. The amiable sentry passed him through and Hartwell came immediately. 'Sir,' said Renzi abrupdy, 'I advise most strongly that tonight is the best — your only chance.'

'Do I understand you to mean—'

'You do. Trinity House! Pray lose no time, sir. I need not remind you of what hangs on this night'

He left immediately, and on the way to Queenborough he kept looking over his shoulder. Before he was half-way, to his immense satisfaction, the telegraph on its stilts above the dockyard clashed into life, the shutters opening and closing mechanically with their mysterious code.

The afternoon passed at an interminable pace, giving ample time for reflection. The stark fact was that he had chosen a course of action that contradicted the principles he had arrived at: he could alert the mutineers and nullify the action, but this he had coldly and logically decided was a matter touching on the safety of the realm, and it must remain.

Now it had to be. Renzi knew that the attention of the mutineers would be on celebrating the arrival of their powerful new brothers; this would be the only time that the daring operation planned by the Elder Brothers of Trinity House had even the slimmest of chances.

It was, besides, a source of some satisfaction that Hartwell had trusted him enough to divulge the plot and consult him on the timing. His strategy was working.

At last, sunset He waited for a further hour, then made his way in the dark to the jetty.

'Why, sir, you haven't a grego,' an oysterman said kindly. 'Ye surely needs one on th' water at this time o' night'

Renzi accepted the fishy-smelling surcoat and boarded the smack by the light of one dim lanthorn. 'How exciting!' he made himself say. 'What kind of creatures are abroad at this hour, I can hardly conceive!'

Under easy sail to the night airs, the smack put out into the Swale. The moon came and went behind ragged clouds, and Renzi scanned the night tensely.

A splash nearby startled him. 'Don' never mind him, sir. Jus'a fish out on a frolic'

They met the Medway and paid off to starboard. Still no sign. Then he caught a sudden blackening of the wan glitter of moon on sea. 'What's that?' he asked quickly.

'That? Oh, jus' the Trinity Yacht, sir. Don' righdy know why she's abroad now, don't usually.'

Renzi setded back with relief. It was happening. His part was now finished.

From seaward, the approaches to London beckoned with lights in a confusion of beguiling sea-paths — hundreds of golden pinpricks ashore and afloat, the larger navigation beacons and the Nore light-vessel.

The Thames met the sea in a maze of sandbanks that stretched out to sea for miles, each one marked with the wrecks of countless unfortunate vessels that had strayed from the deep-water channels. No sailing master in his right senses would attempt to enter or leave without thankful reference to the buoys and lights set and maintained by the brethren of the Corporation of Trinity House, whose ceaseless work continued even in wartime.

On this night, Trinity House began a different task. To the seamarks of the Whiting, Rough and Gunfleet to the north, Girdler, Shivering Sand and Pan in the centre, and the Blacktail, Mouse and Sheers, their vessels converged under the command of Captain Philip Bromfield.

The Trinity Yacht, purpose-built for buoy lifting and heavy cable work, slipped through the night to her first rendezvous. She was fitted with a massive capstan and particular cathead to starboard. Her decking was of Danzig deal for laying out buoy and ground tackle, but her captain did not rig for buoy lifting. Instead, the buoy was hove short and the night's quiet was broken by the sound of men wielding axes and hammers, smashing into carefully crafted staves, wrecking tightly caulked seams. Then the buoy was let go, to disappear into the black depths.

One by one the seaward buoys that the buoy warden of Trinity House had dedicated his life to preserve were sunk without a trace. The work continued through the night, as quietly as possible, as they approached the Nore and the mutinous fleet.

By morning it was complete, carried off during the only night when there was any chance of success — a daring feat that so easily could have gone wrong. To seaward not a buoy or beacon remained: the Nore fleet was trapped, unable to get out across lethal sandbanks now lying concealed under an innocent sea.

Kydd found Parker forward, right in the eyes of the ship, alone. He was gazing out across the smooth, unblemished sea to the hard grey line of the horizon, his face a picture of grief.

'Why? Why do they force my hand in this way?' Parker mouthed.

Kydd mumbled something, but his own mind was in a chaos of feeling. Just hours ago they were dictating terms to the King himself, now they were trapped in their own impregnable lair. He could see nothing but the blackness of defeat ahead. Their mighty fleet was impotent - they would rot in place until...

Kydd forced himself to the present. 'What was that ye said, Dick?'

Parker turned to him with an intense expression of noble suffering. 'My friend, by their stubbornness, stupidity and malice they have forced me into the position where there is only the final sanction, the last move in the game. They insult us to think we would carry the fleet over to the enemy, for they've shown by their actions last night that this is their concern. Very well, this is barred to us. But this we can do. I have ten thousand men and a thousand guns at my command. At the expiry of our ultimatum, if the King is led by false advice to deny us our right, then we sail, up-river, to the capital. There we shall demand our due, and if not we shall with broadsides reduce the City to utter ruin.'