Julian Stockwin - 19 The Baltic Prize (Thomas Kydd #19)

‘We’ve suffered worse, dear fellow. The League of Armed Neutrality not so long ago? A direct threat to our freedom of the seas, and all it needed was for us to send in our glorious Admiral Nelson to knock heads together and they saw reason directly.’

‘Hmmph. It seems to have escaped your notice that things are much different now. The old ways are not open to us and—’

‘You said we can’t go on, Charles,’ a dry, intense individual interrupted. With a sharp, legal mind, John Newton was principal director in a sizeable canal enterprise and had every reason to fear these words.

‘Too much has turned against us recently. Boney’s system was a near dead letter while we could ship in and out of Denmark. A neutral, all our exports went into Husum or Tonningen as a paper trade, for re-export under the Danish flag a few miles overland to the Continent at large. A sovereign highway into Europe as served us well.’

‘And now we’ve laid waste to Copenhagen …’

‘It’s closed to us.’

‘There’s still one who defies Boney.’

‘Sweden? Our ally, yes, but with a deranged autocrat on the throne and the country having no convenient border with the Continent, a lost cause, a liability. And besides which …’ He paused significantly. ‘Do I need to remind you? Russia has declared war on us and must now be accounted the enemy.’

A brutal, conservative and backward nation of unknown millions and with a large navy, it was about to turn the Baltic into a Russian lake.

‘So the Baltic is lost to us. Why on earth can’t you merchantry open up somewhere else?’ Newton asked. ‘The Spanish-American colonies spring to mind.’

‘Let me answer that,’ Richard Egremont, a precise and quiet man in curiously plain attire, intervened. ‘I know I’m a guest here tonight, but pray give me leave perhaps to enlighten some.

‘You are all captains of industry or bankers with concerns of your own. I am at a Treasury desk and see figures in the aggregate. And I’m grieved to say that, in my opinion, Charles is in no wise guilty of exaggeration. The situation is dire, gentlemen, and I cannot readily conceive how we might recover from it.’

‘What is it that you see, Richard?’

‘This Baltic trade is our tenderest point and he who severs it brings us to our knees, to nothing less than capitulation to Bonaparte’s will, I fear.’

‘Oh, come, sir, that is a trifle rich!’

‘Nothing less, Cuthbert. Let me throw you a few figures. The navy demands twenty miles or some such extraordinary amount of rope to set a ship swimming and several times that for wear in its lifetime. Where does this rope hemp come from? Ninety-five per centum by poundage from the inner Baltic. The same can be said of spars, decking timber and so forth, and therefore before long we look to having our sure shield floating about quite helpless for lack of repair.’

He smiled thinly. ‘And there’s worse. Before the late unpleasantness with Denmark, do you know the value of goods carried by our near seven thousand ships a year going through the Sound?’

‘A pretty penny, you’ll be telling us, Richard.’

‘You may believe it. If we take all other trade we conduct, wherever in the world, then our commerce with the Baltic is more than twice this entirely added together.’

‘Good God – I’d no idea!’

‘And a last figure, and one I ask you refrain from repeating lest it cause undue dismay.’

‘Say away, I beg.’

‘Very well. It is that after our lamentable harvest of the past year there is a shortage of grain in these islands in the calamitous amount of some twenty per centum. A fifth of our people therefore will have no bread and must starve, are we not to take steps? In the past it’s been our practice to mount a grain convoy or two to obtain the deficiency from beyond our shores. But …’

‘From the Baltic.’

‘Just so. Prussian wheat and Russian corn. Both now denied us.’

‘And time is running out.’

‘Quite, Cuthbert. But my immediate concern is that the Baltic ice is, as we speak, giving way and a host of merchants find the season for sailing is now open to them. They must have answer – dare they sail into the pit?’

Chapter 1

The anchorage at the Great Nore

His Majesty’s Frigate Tyger came to, her bower plunging down to take the ground at last. She carried two prisoners, Count Trampe, the Danish governor of Iceland, and Jørgen Jørgensen, its self-styled king, to be landed into the custody of Sheerness dockyard, and a new-wed lady to step ashore.

For Kydd the last few weeks had been dream-like, a procession of unforgettable scenes, from the Stygian dark landscape of Iceland pierced by the glitter of vast glaciers, the fumaroles, the blue lakes, the wheeling gyrfalcons – and the vows solemnly exchanged in a timber cathedral.

And now he and Persephone were one, man and wife; there was not a soul on the face of the good earth who was as happy as he.

‘Sir?’ Bowden, his second lieutenant, proffered a paper with a faint smile playing.

‘Oh, yes, thank you.’ Kydd dashed off a signature and, too late, realised he hadn’t stopped to check what he was signing. He collected himself: it would not do for the captain to be seen adrift in his intellects even if there were good reasons for it.

However, this was no doubt the fair copy of his brief report to be forwarded to Admiral Russell on blockade off the Dutch coast with the North Sea Squadron he’d left at Yarmouth. It told of the recent happenings in the north and the necessity to land the two main players in the drama to be dealt with by higher authorities in London. They had already been sent off, with his main report to the Admiralty, who would either detain him as a material witness or release him to resume his duties with the North Sea Squadron.

‘Ah, Mr Bowden. A favour of you, if I may.’

‘Sir?’

‘Would you be so kind as to conduct Lady Kydd to the residence of her parents for me?’

‘Of course, Sir Thomas. I would be honoured.’

With a stab of tenderness, Kydd knew that it was only the first of the many partings that sea service would demand of him but this, so soon after their marrying, would be harder than any. Feeling a twinge of guilt, he didn’t envy her what she had to do. Not only had she to let her father and mother know that she had not disappeared and was very much alive but also that she was now wed to a man they detested.

They had lunch together before she left, a quiet occasion and charged with bitter-sweet feeling – and then it was time to part. Kydd saw her over the side, and as the boat shoved off into the grey sea for the distant shore his heart went out to the lonely figure carrying his hopes and love. She waved once and he responded self-consciously, watching until they were out of sight, then went below without a word.

The Admiralty’s response, when it came, was neither of the possibilities he’d foreseen. He was not required in the matters of Jørgensen and Count Trampe but neither was he to re-join the squadron. Instead he was to hold his command in readiness for duties as yet not determined.

It was odd, a first-class frigate not snapped up for immediate employment, but he’d seen before how, in their mysterious way, the Admiralty had chosen to deploy a pawn on their chessboard to effect a grand strategic move that made perfect sense later – the tasking of L’Aurore so soon after Trafalgar came to mind. That had taken him to the Cape of Good Hope and conquest of an entire colony at the end of the world.

In a surge of delight he realised what it meant: not needed for a routine idleness and away from an admiral’s eye, he was free to take leave with his bride – a telegraphed communication with Plymouth would have him notified within an hour or so of any orders.