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

‘To Fenella , “remain on station”,’ he threw at his signal crew and, without waiting for acknowledgement, set course round the island for the inner channel.

Almost immediately the top of the cliffs to the left and the round flank of the island erupted into fire: a fierce bombardment converging from both sides and within minutes the sea gouted and pocked with shot-strike.

‘Good God,’ Bray said, shaken. These were no common field guns but heavy pieces, coastal artillery in place for the purpose of destroying any who dared trespass within.

The storm grew wilder and Tyger began taking hits. The guns atop the cliffs to larboard with their increased height of eye could throw their shot far further and they were making the most of it, their massive balls tearing up the sea closer and closer as they ranged in.

Kydd took it in grimly. At this rate it was going to be a desperately run thing. Sooner or later a hit would do serious damage and, dead in the water, Tyger would be a sitting target. Yet there was no other course open to him, the task being so decisive.

A harsh crack sounded from forward – it was the foreyard, a shot taking a long gouge out of it towards the mid-line in a shower of splinters. It hung for a moment, then folded inwards and, driven by the wind, hung down, flogging the mast.

Tyger slewed off-course while men fought to control the tons’ weight of yard and rigging. No ship could survive in this and there was no point in trying to go further. Some other way had to be found to uncover the secrets of Rågervik.

The frigate wore around, making for the open sea.

‘We need to find somewhere to fish the yard,’ Kydd muttered. It was more to take time to think, rather than achieve the temporary repair to the foreyard. Without their information a strategic decision by Saumarez would be near impossible and—

‘ Fenella ’s leaving station,’ grunted Bray in surprise.

The brig-sloop had braced up and, for no clear reason, was making for the tip of the peninsula. She neared, then unaccountably put over her helm sharply to starboard to run down the line of cliffs, so close that her yards seemed to brush the white heights.

‘What the devil?’ said Kydd, taken aback by the nonsensical move.

‘I think I know,’ Bowden said sombrely.

‘Well?’

‘He’s going in under the guns.’

Of course! So close in to the cliff face the guns could not depress and could only fire harmlessly over the top of the plucky little ship – but at the risk of Fenella taking an uncharted rock or skerry in the shallows beneath. Bazely had nevertheless judged that the lesser draught of his brig would give him this chance and, with outrageous courage, was sweeping on into the inner anchorage.

He was disobeying orders, but who was Kydd to argue?

They couldn’t follow in a full-rigged frigate and looked on as the sloop disappeared behind the island. The muffled crump of guns sounded, rolling smoke appearing briefly above the island. It petered out and resumed further in. Fenella was getting through!

In a fury of impatience Kydd could only wait. Then he realised it was most likely that Fenella would emerge from the other side, the south. He snatched a glance forward – but the boatswain had things well in hand. Capstan bars had been hauled up into the fore-top and preparations were brought along to lash these lengthways around the foreyard at the split – to ‘fish’ the spar. It would serve in the short term until they could ship a new yard.

He willed Tyger on as she rounded the outer island in the opposite direction to position herself at the exit as Fenella emerged.

There was another fury of thuds, more roils of smoke snatched away by the wind.

And there she was! Missing her fore-topmast and sails riddled through, she limped into view – and in close chase were at least half a dozen lesser craft: cutters, luggers, yawls, enraged at the brig’s audacious penetration of their lair. At Tyger ’s sudden appearance they turned tail and promptly disappeared.

‘She still has to put about, sir.’ Brice knew how these small craft handled and had his doubts. Fenella had to take up on the other tack in order to make way against the steady westerly, for a short distance ahead the shore of the mainland would force the issue.

The brig cautiously came up into the wind, the yards braced around but at ‘let go and haul’ disaster struck. With sails full and drawing once more, the mainsail boom gave way and in moments the big fore and aft sail was rent from top to bottom. Unbalanced, with all the headsails and square sails on the fore bearing her off to starboard, in an uncontrollable wallow, the brig was driven back against the island she was rounding.

There was not a thing Kydd could do except watch in dismay.

At first it seemed they had a chance. Immediately clawing into the wind the brig cleared the first point but as the lack of sail on aft told, she fell away, nearer and nearer the wicked bluffs towering up. They tended inwards for a short distance and then, inevitably, sprawled out again in a welter of broken rocks … and Fenella was carried bodily into the grotesque twist of crags that would be her grave for all of time.

Wrung with pity, Kydd’s first impulse was to send his boats to the rescue but stopped. This was a much graver situation than it first appeared. First, the coast was impossibly craggy and sheer. No one was going to get up that near vertical rock-face. Worse, the heaving sea at the base was studded with white-torn black rocks for some distance out – no boat could get in through those.

His mind raced over the common methods of rescue. A keg with a line attached, a raft. Launch them into the seas and float them in. One fatal flaw: the westerly was parallel with the shore and would carry them out of reach down the coast. And the same twist of rock that had taken Fenella would ensure they couldn’t be set in the water up-wind as they would be carried past well offshore.

It was heartbreaking. Safe and dry on Tyger ’s deck, he must stand and watch while the gallant little brig was torn to pieces and her company drowned or battered to death as the seas rose. He could see them now, figures clinging to the canted side of their ship, staring out to where men still lived and breathed. After their bold and heroic deed, to meet their end in this way … Which one was Edmund Bazely?

He snatched Brice’s telescope and focused on the shoreline with a ferocious intensity. There had to be a way!

Not with that cursed twist of rock. It forced out anything to the point where it would drift in always out of reach. It was obvious that no boat could get in, but surely there had to be …

Yes. A running jackstay. A line secured somewhere in the rigging of the doomed vessel that would have a travelling block and strop running along it that sailors could grasp and be pulled to safety.

How to get the line to them? The same damnable problem – the line just couldn’t be floated in.

He resumed his scrutiny. The tangled rock, a brief patch of sand, a seaweed-covered rock—

Yes! If …

‘Mr Joyce. Take us in – we anchor in four fathoms, a whisker to weather of the rocky point.’ At this depth of water in these two-foot waves their keel would be scending no more than a few feet above that boulder-strewn sea-bed – but not more than a quarter-mile offshore.

While it was done, he worked out the rest.

The launch: under oars it could get to a point just to seaward of the fringing rocks, say a hundred and fifty yards and opposite the wreck of the Fenella . It would then throw out an anchor fore and aft and remain as a fixed point – a pierhead, in effect.