“My orders are to join the North Sea squadron off the Texel. I should be obliged if you’d honour my demands on stores and powder with the utmost expedition, sir.”
“As you wish, Sir Thomas. I should point out the ship is in … a parlous state, the people fractious and confused. And not having had liberty-”
“What is that to me, sir?” Kydd said tightly.
“-she’s grievous short-handed.”
He went on to add that in Yarmouth there were few trained seamen to be had as protections were insisted upon by both colliers and fishermen.
“Is her captain available to me?”
“Captain Parker? He is-but you’re not to expect a regular-going handover from him. The man’s in a funk over events and is ailing.”
“I’ll see him directly. Do send to Tyger that I’m coming aboard by the first dog-watch, if you please.”
Some hours later Kydd was in possession of a pathetic and disjointed account of a passionate rising, put down bloodily and untidily. Parker was a crushed man and Kydd had to come up with his own reading of what had happened.
A weak captain, hard first lieutenant-it had happened so many times before. He didn’t need much more. This captain was out of touch with his men, unable to read the signs, and had lost the trust of his officers.
As well, it had been a miserable year or more in these hard seas without action to relieve it, except for one incident. One day, out of a grey dawn, they had come across a French corvette. Finding themselves inshore of it, and therefore cutting it off from safety, it should have been easy meat. They had gone for it, but before they could engage, Tyger had missed stays and it had escaped. They had botched the elementary manoeuvre of going about on the other tack.
This could only speak of appalling seamanship-difficult to credit in a frigate after a year at sea-or a command structure that was fractured or incompetent. The effect had been a destructive plunge in morale and men deserting. With the inevitable suspending of liberty ashore, trusties suffered with the disaffected. A fuse had been lit in the prison-like confines and it had detonated when the ship received orders for sea.
God alone knew what he’d meet when he went aboard, for nothing was changed, nothing solved. The men were the same, as were the conditions that had sent them over the edge.
Kydd presented himself at the headquarters of the Impress Service. An aged rear admiral greeted him with respect and politeness but told him there was little hope for men in the shorter term. There was no receiving ship at Yarmouth to hold the harvest of press-gangs, and in the near vicinity pickings were slim from merchantmen unless a Baltic convoy had arrived.
The old sailor suggested that his only hope was to wait for the next periodic sally by his gangs in the north but that was not due for some weeks yet.
Kydd accepted the news without protest, knowing that it was well meant, and from a man retired who had felt it his duty to return to the colours to do what he could for his country, and who had been handed this thankless task. It was only by accident as he was leaving that he found he had been talking to Arthur Phillip, the man who had led the first convict fleet to establish a settlement at Sydney Cove in New South Wales.
There was no point in putting it off for much longer. He would take command of Tyger this hour.
But when he returned to the naval base he found waiting not a ship’s boat but a local craft: there were not even sufficient trusties in Tyger to man a boat.
They put out from the little jetty and shaped course for the ship. She was anchored far out, a diseased ship kept away from the others. It was a hard pull for the men at the oars but it gave Kydd some time to take in her appearance, her lines. A bulldog of a ship. Bluff, aggressive, there was no compromise in her war-like air.
And as far different from L’Aurore as it was possible to be. Where before there had been grace and willowy suppleness, it was now power and arrogance, the masts and spars thewed like iron and the gun-deck in a hard line, with guns half as big again.
Yet it reached out to him: this was a British ship, her stern-quarters without the high arching of the French, her timbers heavier-she was built like a prize-fighter.
As they drew nearer he could see other details. She was shabby, uncared-for. Her black sides were faded, and there was no mistaking an air of sullen resignation. Her figurehead-a spirited prancing tiger wearing a crown, its raking paws outstretched-was sea-scoured and blotchy.
Along the lines of the gun-ports boarding nettings had been rigged to prevent desertion and two shore boats pulled around lackadaisically in opposite directions on row-guard.
They shaped up for their approach and Kydd could see other signs of neglect: standing rigging not with the perfect black of tar but with pale streaks of the underlying hemp showing through where worn, the running rigging hairy with use where it passed through blocks and not re-reeved to bear on a fresh length. Even her large ensign floating above was wind-frayed, the trailing edge tattered and decrepit.
A side-party of sorts was assembling and Kydd prepared himself for the greatest challenge of his life.
The pipe was thin and reedy. The man wielding the call-presumably the boatswain-looked as if he’d be better off cosily at home by the fire.
Kydd stepped over the side and on to the deck of HMS Tyger.
There was no going back now.
The line of side-party glanced towards him as he came aboard: some with a flicker of curiosity, most impassive and wary. All individuals, all strangers, every one tainted by past events in one way or another.
A tall officer was at the inboard end of the line and took off his hat. “Hollis, first lieutenant, sir. May I present your officers?” he said formally, in clipped tones.
Kydd would have rather he explained why his boat had not been properly challenged but decided to let it pass.
The second lieutenant, Paddon, seemed mature enough but returned his look with defensive wariness. The third, Nowell, was young, barely into his twenties, and appeared lost and frightened.
An equally young lieutenant of marines, Payne, nervous and edgy, completed his commissioned officers and it was time for the ceremony.
“Clear lower deck, if you please, Mr Hollis,” Kydd said crisply, and while the pipes pealed out at the hatchways and companions he walked slowly aft to take position and waited, watching while the ship’s company of Tyger came up to present themselves to their new captain and hear him formally take possession of his command.
Kydd had done this before and knew what to look for in an able and trustworthy crew but he did not see it. The men came slowly, resentfully, hanging back, surly and suspicious, crowding the upper deck but with none of the half-concealed banter and out-of-routine jollity of seamen in good spirits. He could feel in the stares and folded arms a dangerous edge of defiance and he tensed as he took out his commission and stepped forward.
“‘By the commissioners for executing the office of the Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom of Great Britain …’” He read loudly and forcefully, conscious of an undercurrent of muttering that the dark-jowled master-at-arms did not seem to notice.
The time-honoured phrases, rich with meaning, rolled out in a measured rhythm ending with the customary “‘… as you will answer to the contrary at your peril.’”
It was finished. At the main masthead his pennant broke out, taking the wind and streaming to leeward where it would stay night and day until it was hauled down at the end of the commission or …
Now was the usual time for a new captain to address his ship’s company, to set the tone, inspire and give ground for confidence in the man to whom the seamen must trust their lives.
But this ship was on the edge and he knew nothing of the men or their mood.
“Officers and warrant officers, my cabin, fifteen minutes. Carry on, Mr Hollis.”