Julian Stockwin - Mutiny

It came early, before they were fully round — and at ten-yards range the effect was lethal. The iron shot tore through the sides of Triumph, the balls rampaging the whole width of the gundeck before smashing through the far side, tearing and shattering. The deck trembled as more balls struck below.

Monckton raised his speaking trumpet and was thrown violendy along the deck. He did not move. Kydd ran to his body: there was no mark on it, but a red rash was spreading on the side of his face. He put his hand inside the officer's coat and felt for the heart it still beat.

'Bear a hand!' he roared at the men hovering around. They dragged Monckton to the centreline gratings and laid him out on his back. He had been knocked unconscious by the close passage of a round-shot. If he recovered he would want to be at his post, but for now Kydd must perform his duty.

A midshipman arrived from forward, wide-eyed, his hand convulsively gripping the hilt of his dirk. 'Get back to y'r post,' Kydd told him. 'Orders are th' same.'

Kydd turned to the gun-crews. There was no need for interference: the men worked like demons, their gun-captains throwing a glance his way, then getting on with it.

A messenger raced down from the quarterdeck and skidded to a stop at the sight of Monckton's body. Kydd stepped up. 'I'm in charge. What's y'r message?' The order was clear: each gun was to fire alternately at maximum depression or elevation. This would send their shot down to the enemy's keel or up through her unprotected decks, a terrifying ordeal for an opponent. Kydd ran along the guns, tasking off the gun-captains.

The hull of the enemy ship loomed through the gunports in the thinning smoke; dull black, with signs of cannon strike everywhere and jerking activity at her gunports. Their own guns crashed out Triumph's gun-crews worked savagely, needing no goading. Smoke swirled thickly back into the gundeck, obscuring everything. A mounting warrior's bloodlust set Kydd's heart aflame for victory.

There was no pretence at aiming: fire was general. 'Double shotting!' Kydd bellowed. As the two balls diverged at the muzzle, aim would be affected but the damage would be broadened and doubled. 'Smash it in 'em, lads!' he bawled. Yet in the wildness of the battle Kydd felt a serenity, the calm of a dedicated ferocity that he knew would take him through anything.

High screams close by — a young powder monkey with his lower body soaked in blood, pulling himself helplessly away on his elbows. Kydd motioned to an opposite gun-crew to carry the lad below.

A wrecked gun, its barrel askew and carriage in pieces, its crew in a moaning, bloody heap, was being cleared of its dead, tumbled out of the gunport to the sea below.

Then, unbelievably, a messenger appeared, shrilling urgently, 'Cease firing!' The crews, working like automatons, checked their fire and subsided into a trembling stillness. Kydd ran to the side and looked out. Roiling gunsmoke still hid much of the enemy, but there was an unnatural quiet aboard their adversary. Confused shouting from behind caused Kydd to turn round — but then came cheering, and maniac roars of jubilation. The enemy had struck!

It was ironic, thought Renzi, that when he had been reassigned to another ship at the last minute it had been this one, Tenacious, and within weeks of his final retirement from the sea he was headed into his second major fleet action in a year.

He knew Kydd had been shipped in Triumph, and there she was, the other side of Duncan's Venerable. He hoped that the lottery of war would spare his friend, whom he had not seen since their farewell in Sheerness — but this was going to be no stately fight against unwilling Spanish allies.

The Dutch were rightly proud of their maritime past, yet at the same time would be fearing the submergence of their national identity following their defeat and occupation by the French. If they could rise victorious over a field of war on their own, this would be preserved. It would be a sanguinary conflict indeed.

Renzi's post was at the quarterdeck nine-pounder battery. He would see what was developing, a mercy compared to the hell of a gundeck below, but he would be a target for enemy musketry. At least if he survived he could retire to the estate with as unique a claim to fame as any in the county set, he mused.

The enemy opened fire. It would be a hard thing to achieve, a breaking of the line, but Venerable led the division nobly, her signal for close action seemingly nailed in place. The fire got hotter. A ball slammed through a file of marines and left bloody corpses in its wake. Twice Renzi staggered at the vicious slap of wind from a near miss.

He forced his mind to float free, calmly observing his actions and freeing his thoughts of a vortex of anxiety — it was the only rational course.

Venerable was close to starboard, clearly heading for the enemy flagship. Tenacious kept faithful station on her, and when they were closer Renzi could see she was going round the stern of de Winter's ship to deliver a crushing, raking fire - but her next astern bravely closed the gap and Venerable had to bear away to round her instead.

Tenacious, a humble 64, found herself alone in taking on the big Dutch flagship. As she swung to bring her own broadside to bear, the space between the two filled with acrid powder smoke and a devastating storm of shot. The enemy were not, like the French, aiming for rigging and spars to disable the ship. Instead they were smashing their shot home directly into the hull of their opponent in a brutal prize-fight.

There were no broadsides now: both ships at less than a hundred yards' range pounded to the limits of endurance. The air was torn by the whir of chain-shot, the heavy slam of thirty-two-pound balls, the vicious wasp-like hum of bullets - the whole against the continuous noise of guns and shattered timbers and the dry reek of gunpowder smoke.

Men struck by balls were blown into pieces like sides of beef in a butcher's shop or were disembowelled in an instant; those hit by splinters shrieked in agony as they were skewered. Renzi saw a midshipman, then the signal lieutenant drop in their tracks, and over at a disabled nine-pounder a corpse exuded blood that made tracks on the deck as the ship rolled and heaved.

The captain dropped to his knees with a bloody graze on his head, then crumpled to the deck; a midshipman started weeping, the pain from a crushed foot overcoming his young attempt at bravery. Renzi paced along the deck, watching his nine-pounder crews throwing everything into a frenzied cycle of violence, and ferociously excluded the logical probability that his own survival was in doubt.

He turned, and started to pace back the other side. Something like a horse's kick from behind threw one of his legs from under him. He fell to the deck. There was no immediate pain, and he scrabbled about trying to locate the source of a growing numbness, then noted spreading blood on the scrubbed deck. He sat up, trying to rise, but then the hot pain began and he flopped down again.

'Get yez below, mate,' said an out-of-breath gun captain, who lifted his arms. In shock, Renzi fell back while another took his feet in an awkward carry-and-drag to the blood-smeared hatchway. They bumped him down the ladder and staggered round to lower him down the next.

On the orlop it was a scene from hell. The entire deck was carpeted in wounded, an operating table contrived from midshipmen's chests in the centre. But the surgeon was not there: he with his lob-lolly boys could only move about the stream of wounded, as they came down, trying their best to ease their suffering.

Renzi was placed on an old piece of canvas, which was rapidly soaked with blood from his wound. He lay light-headed in the infernal gloom, listening to groans and cries. But there were also cheers of encouragement and bravery from some of those who would soon face the knife and saw. The back of his leg throbbed with increasing pain and he wondered abstractly if he would lose it.