Julian Stockwin - Tenacious

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Lieutenant Thomas Kydd takes his rightful place upon the quarterdeck, but the decisions he must make will test him to the limit!

THE SIXTH BOOK IN THE KYDD SERIES finds Thomas Kydd aboard Tenacious , part of a small squadron commanded by Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson. Its mission is to scour the Mediterranean and locate Napoleon and his army. Kydd's newly fired ambition leads him to volunteer for shore service with the British army in the capture of Minorca. Later, he faces the great ships-of-the-line at the Battle of the Nile as the British take on the French in a no-holds-barred struggle for supremacy in southern waters. But there is one more test to come: the siege of Acre, where Kydd and a handful of British seamen under the command of Sir Sidney Smith face an army of thirteen thousand!

Cover painting by Geoff Hunt. Cover design by Panda Musgrove.

TENACIOUS

A KYDD SEA ADVENTURE

THE KYDD SEA ADVENTURES , BY JULIAN STOCKWIN

Kydd

Artemis

Seaflower

Mutiny

Quarterdeck

Tenacious

Command

The Admiral's Daughter

JULIAN STOCKWIN

TENACIOUS

A KYDD SEA ADVENTURE

MCBOOKS PRESS, INC. ITHACA, NEW YORK

Published by McBooks Press 2006 Copyright © 2005 by Julian Stockwin

First published in Great Britain in 2005 by Hodder and Stoughton A division of Hodder Headline

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission of the publisher. Requests for such permissions should be addressed to McBooks Press, Inc., ID Booth Building, 520 North Meadow St., Ithaca, NY 14850.

Cover painting by Geoff Hunt. Cover and text design: Panda Musgrove.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stockwin, Julian. Tenacious : a Kydd sea adventure / by Julian Stockwin. p. cm.

ISBN: 978-1-59013-119-0 (hardcover: alk. paper) ISBN: 978-1-59013-142-8 (trade paperback: alk. paper) 1. Kydd, Thomas (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Great Britain—History, Naval—18th century—Fiction. 3. Seafaring life—Fiction. 4. Sailors—Fiction. I. Title. PR6119.T66T46 2006 823'.92--dc22

2006004000

Visit the McBooks Press website at www.mcbooks.com.

Printed in the United States of America

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THERE IS BUT ONE NELSON—

Lord St Vincent

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PROLOGUE

THE SOUND OF CARRIAGE WHEELS echoed loudly in the blackness of Downing Street. With a jangle of harness and the snorting of horses, the vehicle stopped outside No. 10 and footmen braved the rain to lower the step and hand down the occupants.

The Prime Minister, William Pitt, did not wait for the Speaker of the House of Commons, but Henry Addington knew his friend of old and smiled at his nervous vitality. "Quite dished 'em in the debate, William," he puffed, as he caught up and they mounted the stairs to the upper landing.

"It will hold them for now," Pitt said briefly.

The sound of their voices roused the household. A butler appeared from the gloom, with a maid close behind. "In here," Pitt threw over his shoulder, as he entered a small drawing room. The maid slipped past with a taper, lit the candles, and a pool of gold illuminated the chaise-longue . Pitt sprawled on it full-length, while Addington took a winged chair nearby.

"Oh, a bite of cold tongue and ham would answer," Pitt said wearily, to the butler's query, then closed his eyes until the man had returned with brandy and a new-opened bottle of port. He poured, then withdrew noiselessly, pulling the doors closed.

"Hard times," Addington offered.

"You think so, Henry? Since that insufferable coxcomb Fox rusticated himself I have only the French to occupy me." He took a long pull on his port.

Addington studied the deep lines in his face. "General Buonaparte and his invasion preparations?" he asked quietly.

There had been little else in the press for the last two months. Paris had performed a master-stroke in appointing the brilliant victor of Italy to the head of the so-called Army of England, which had beaten or cowed every country in Europe. His task now was to eliminate the last obstacle to conquest of the civilised world. Spies were reporting the rapid construction of flat troop-landing barges in every northern French port, and armies were being marched to the coast. Invasion of the land that lay in plain sight of the battalions lining those shores was clearly imminent.

"What else?" Pitt stared into the shadows. "If he can get across the twenty miles of the Channel then ... then we're finished, of course."

"We have the navy," Addington said stoutly.

"Er, yes. The navy were in bloody mutiny less'n a year ago and are now scattered all over the world. Necessary, of course." He brooded over his glass. "Grenville heard that the French will turn on Hanover and that His Majesty will oblige us to defend his ancestral home, dragging us into a land war."

"Ridiculous."

"Of course."

Addington cradled his brandy and waited.

Pitt sighed. "The worst of it all is not being possessed of decent intelligence. Having to make decisions in a fog of half-truths and guesses is a sure way to blunder into mistakes that history will judge without mercy. Take this, Henry. Spencer has confirmed that our grand General Buonaparte has left off inspecting his soldiers standing ready for the invasion and has been seen in Toulon. What's he doing in the Mediterranean that he abandons his post? No one knows, but we have enough word that there's an armament assembling there. Not a simple fleet, you understand, but transports, store-ships, a battle fleet. Are we therefore to accept that the moment we have dreaded most—when the French revolution bursts forth on the rest of the world—is now at hand? And if it is, why from Toulon?"

He paused. There was the slightest tremor in the hand that held the glass. "If there's to be a sally, where? Dundas speaks of Constantinople, the Sublime Porte. Others argue for a rapid descent on Cairo, defeating the Mamelukes and opening a highway to the Red Sea and thence our vital routes to India. And some point to a landing in the Levant, then a strike across Arabia and Persia to the very gates of India."

"And you?"

At first, Pitt did not speak, then he said quietly, "It is all nonsense, romantic nonsense, this talk of an adventure in the land of Sinbad. It's all desert, impassable to a modern army. It's a stratagem to deflect our attention from the real object."

"Which is?"

"After leaving Toulon, Buonaparte does not sail east. Instead he sails west. He pauses off Cartagena to collect Spanish battleships, then passes Gibraltar and heads north. With the fleet in Cadiz joining him as he passes, he brushes us aside and reaches the Channel. There, the Brest fleet emerges to join him, thirty of them! With a combined fleet of more'n fifty of-the-line around him he will get his few hours to cross, and then it will be all over for us, I fear."