Julian Stockwin - Quarterdeck

The hours wore on. Kydd imagined what it must be like for the people of Woolmer: an indescribable nightmare, endlessly protracted.

After midday Woolmer finally submitted to fate and made the decision to scud. It would be touch and go: the swells issuing from the storm centre were now more than forty feet high, higher even than the lower yards, and clawed into white streaks by the pitiless wind. They had left it perilously late. To fall off the wind, then run before it they must first pass through the most dangerous time of all—broadside to the powerful seas.

Tenacious stood by while Woolmer began to turn, all aboard holding their breath. Her captain had clearly planned his turn away from the wind, for the small sail left on main and mizzen vanished at exactly the same time as her headsails mounted. The leverage told, and the ship, plunging and rocking like a fractious horse, began putting her bow downwind, faster and faster. A rampaging comber burst on her side, checking her movement, but with the appearance of square sail on her fore—loosed by some heroic topmen aloft— Woolmer completed her turn. Rolling drunkenly at first she settled to her new track.

"A princely piece of seamanship as ever I've seen, and with an injured mast!" exclaimed Houghton. Kydd quietly agreed: it had been well done indeed.

"At least they has no worry o' being pooped," said Hambly, eyeing the stately East Indiaman's high stern. With a following sea there was always the danger of a giant wave overtaking and crowding on to her deck to sweep everything before it.

"That's not m' worry," Kydd said—seared on his memory was fighting the helm of a similar-sized vessel in the Great Southern Ocean, the frigate Artemis on her way round Cape Horn.

Hambly looked at him, troubled. "What's that, sir?"

"No matter." Kydd could not voice the fears that had been triggered by the memory.

Houghton broke in decisively: "I'm going to scud under fore-topmast stays'l and a close-reefed fore tops'l. Mr Hambly?"

"Aye, sir." Hands went to their stations, Kydd on the poop at the mizzen. The reefed driver was brought in and all sail aft disappeared, released seamen sent to the main deck. Tenacious began her turn, experiencing the same vertiginous rolls before she, too, was round with the hard wind at her stern.

Barely set on her course, Tenacious 's fore topsail split and was instantly transformed to streaming ribbons. "I'll have a quick-saver on that," Houghton shouted at the hurrying boatswain, ordering the replacement topsail and a pair of ropes to be crossed over the sail to prevent it ballooning forward.

Then, there were cries of horror. No more than half a mile away, Kydd saw Woolmer, her silhouette dark against the white of the spindrift, strangely misshapen. Her weakened mainmast had given way under the wind pressure: it had splintered and fallen in ruin over the side.

While Tenacious watched, agonised, the inevitable happened. The crew were unable to cut away the substantial wreckage in time and it acted as a drag to one side. Woolmer yawed. Pulled to one side she was at the mercy of the onrushing water, which pushed her further broadside. Kydd's fears had come to pass: with no ability to come back on course she was forced right over on her beam ends, and the giant seas fell on the helpless vessel. Lord Woolmer capsized in a smother of wreckage, her long hull a glistening whale-like rock for a time before she disappeared altogether; lords, ladies and common seamen gone for ever.

"Mr Hambly," said Houghton, in an unnatural voice, "the best course for us?"

Hambly tore his eyes away from the scene and pulled himself together. "Er, to the suth'ard would keep us fr'm the centre . . . We scuds afore the westerly, that's undoubted, until we can show canvas and come about—there's nothing more we c'n do, sir."

Alone, Tenacious fought the sea, men moving silently in a pall of disbelief, senses battered by the hammering wind. For all of twenty hours the ship ran before the tempest until, in the early hours of the next day, the master judged it possible to set square sail on the main and thereby edge closer to the wind. By evening the winds had moderated to the extent that at last Tenacious could ease round more westward, towards the now distant Halifax.

But the storm had one last trial for the old ship. By degrees the wind shifted north and the temperature fell. The first whirling snowflakes came, then snow squalls that marched across the seas with dark, brassy interiors bringing intense cold.

It got worse. Ice covered shrouds, sails, decks, freezing exposed faces. It stiffened wet ropes to bars that seamen, with frozen fingers in wet gloves and feet in agony with the cold, had to wrestle with to coil.

Even breathing was painful: Kydd bound a cloth round his face but it soon clogged with ice as moisture froze. Below, the wardroom stank of damp wool, bear-grease and the hides used in foul-weather gear. No one spoke: it was too much effort. Renzi sat with his head in his hands.

On Kydd's watch the wind moan increased, the pitiless blast buffeting him with its fearsome chill. He hugged himself, grateful for his moose-hide jacket, and thought of the hapless men in the fo'c'sle. In the scrappiest clothing against the numbing chill they had to muster on watch day and night, working, enduring.

Hambly came over. "Shall have t' take in the main tops'l," he said, looking significantly at Kydd. They had been fortunate until now that they carried the same square sail, close reefed fore and main topsails, but the wind had increased again.

Kydd stared up at the straining sail. There was no question, the ship was over-pressed in these conditions and must be relieved—he could feel it in her laboured response to the helm. He was officer-of-the-watch and the responsibility was his, not the master's.

But there was the deadly glitter of ice on the shrouds, in the tops and along the yards: how could he send men aloft in the almost certain knowledge that for some there would be a cry, a fall and death?

His eyes met Hambly's: there was understanding but no compassion. Without a word Kydd turned and made his way down to the main deck where the watch on deck shivered, hunkered down in the lee of the weather bulwarks.

They looked up as he descended, their faces dull, fatigued, and pinched with cold. He paused. How could he order them to go aloft into a howling icy hell? Perhaps some rousing speech to the effect that the ship, they themselves even, depended on them taking their lives into their hands and going aloft? No. Kydd had been in their place and knew what was needed.

His face hardened. "Off y'r rumps, y' lazy swabs. I want th' main tops'l handed, now." They pulled themselves slowly to their feet. Their weary, stooped figures and bloodshot eyes wrung his heart.

"Lay aloft!" he roared. Every man obeyed. Kydd allowed a grim smile to surface. "An' there'll be a stiff tot f'r every man jack waiting for ye when you get back. Get moving!"

For two hours, ninety feet above Kydd's head, the men fisted the stiff sail in a violently moving, lethal world. Fingernails split and canvas was stained with blood, tired muscles slipped on icy wood and scrabbled for a hold, minds retreating into a state of numbed endurance.

And for two hours, Kydd stood beneath, his fists balled in his pockets, willing them on, feeling for them, agonising. That day he discovered that there was only one thing of more heroism than going aloft in such a hell: the moral courage to order others to do it.

For two more days Tenacious fought her way clear of the storm, which eventually headed north, increasing in malevolence as it went. On the third day the Sambro light was raised—and, after a night of standing off and on, HMS Tenacious entered harbour.