Days later they raised the North Sea squadron and Kydd reported to Russell.
“… and I pressed redcoats to do duty as prize crew until we could get ’em to Pillau.”
Russell leaned back, his eyes alight. “And your Prussians, what do they think of it all? A right glorious occasion, I’d say!”
“They’ve other worries now, is my thinking, sir. Boney is making moves as will see him at the gates of their capital within the month. There’s nowhere left they can run to, and what then?”
“Well, that’s not our concern, of course. We keep well out of such, thank God. You’ll be off to Sheerness for survey and repair, I believe. I can give you Stoat as escort, enough do you think?”
If Tyger foundered on her way, that was just a cutter to take off all her crew. “I’d be happier with another, sir,” Kydd replied.
“Very well, you deserve the best. We’ll ask Lively, even if it leaves me short a frigate.”
“I’m indebted to you, sir.”
The weather had not improved, and the blustery, ill-tempered easterly had set Tyger to an edgy roll that was trying their temporary repairs to their limits.
As so often in these waters the weather then changed. The clouds scampered away and sunshine beamed down as if to speed the injured vessel on her way.
But before the sun had gone to its rest it had changed again.
In cold gusts, the easterly took charge. Flat and hard, it had the feel of the unknown regions of the limitless landmass of Asia about it. Coming in from astern, it strained the jury backstays and the multitude of other patches and repairs.
There was nothing for it but to take sail off her, but this brought other dangers. The pumps were holding for now but the carpenter had not yet found whatever other wounds Tyger had suffered in her bowels below the waterline. In the bracing weather in which the action had been fought, the ship had been rolling, exposing her hull, and shots would have struck between wind and water.
The ship with the wind aft and less steadying sail had a lively roll once more-and this was bad news. As she heeled to whichever was the side of the shot strike, the wound would be plunged deeper, and on each roll the ingress of water would change from nothing to a hard waterfall directly into her innards.
It was a race against time and the weather.
Kydd remembered the harrowing struggle after Trafalgar when a storm had overtaken the battered fleet and their prizes. Victory herself had been threatened and battle-weary men had gone to their doom as shattered prizes foundered in the night.
For them, however, the reassuring bulk of Lively was out on their beam, heaving and lifting as she conformed to their reduced sail. He glanced up at the shot-torn sail that still fluttered and bellied and eased his thoughts. It would be an uncomfortable several days but they’d make harbour.
Only two hours later it was a different story. The sharp blow had turned to a fresh gale, something that Tyger would have scorned in normal circumstances-but these were not normal.
A gale-driven swell had risen with it and this had increased her movement and, therefore, the whipping strain on damaged shrouds and stays.
Kydd gave the order to take in more sail-there was little else that he could do.
This sent seamen up in grim conditions with more than the usual dangers. High aloft there would now be severed footropes, lines giving way that men placed their trust in, shattered spars with cruel timber spikes gouging their bellies while they reefed, and always the sullen roll.
As night fell there was no sign of the gale easing.
Lively sent lanthorns to each masthead telling of comforting human presence nearby, but aboard Tyger there was misery and hardship. The galley fire could not be lit, and without good hot food the men must face the labour of saving their ship with hard tack and cheese on a mess-deck that swilled with water entering through so many shot-holes.
The glow of lights that were Lively’s lanthorns receded to pinpricks as the frigate kept at a cautious distance for it was all too easy in such a night to come to a disastrous encounter. Lookouts were posted in both ships with the sole duty to keep the precious lights in sight.
And those aboard Tyger endured.
Men whose bodies ached from their heroic exertions at the guns were now being asked to go to the pumps, the dreadful clanking monsters that needed brute force even to overcome the friction of the many valve parts, a heart-breaking grind.
For long hours Tyger heaved and fell in the increasing swell, the hard battering and dismal moan of the gale always with her as she fought on. On deck the watch stared into the night, slitting their salt-sore eyes into the storm.
Then came driving rain, in a hissing, stinging and miserable cold, invading oilskins and foul-weather gear.
Just after midnight the worst struck.
Kydd was with the group at the wheel as the middle watch coped with a split sail when, clear above the storm rack, a vicious crack sounded, followed immediately by a heavy slither as a hawser fell in a sprawling pile. Another quickly followed. Instantly Kydd bellowed, “Forrard-go for your lives!” They fled just in time. With a sickening splintering, like a falling tree, the fished mizzen topmast tumbled, driven awkwardly across to fall on the starboard side.
In the blackness of night and hammering rain, the tangle of ropes and canvas had to be brought under control. From nowhere the boatswain appeared, a nightshirt under his oilskins, roaring for men to douse all sail before setting about the fearful snarl.
Tyger, without steerage way, began a helpless wallow broadside to the sea. A party got out a sea-anchor over the bows that brought her round, head to sea, but at the cost of halting their progress to safe harbour.
There was nothing for it but to await the dawn to see what they could do.
The report came up that the water was gaining in the hold. There was only one course left.
“Watch and watch,” Kydd ordered, condemning tired men to man the cranks continuously.
There was a chance that if the weather moderated he could get men from Lively who would spell them but until then they would know their labour and pain were saving the vessel.
In the cold grey of early light the full extent of the damage could be seen: the long spar lying on deck seeming so massive close to, had taken the driver gaff with it and in so doing had torn the big aft sail down to ruin.
The frigate could no longer cope with basic navigational matters, like a change in wind direction, for without leverage aft she could not tack about and most probably neither wear around.
“We’ve got to get sail on her aft, Mr Herne,” Kydd said, to the dull-eyed, exhausted man. “Whatever it takes.”
He waited impatiently for the first sighting of Lively. They were so desperately in need of fresh men.
The report never came. Instead it was the age-old hail from the lookout at first light that normally would stand men down from the guns: “Clear! On deck there-I have a clear horizon!”
When they’d lost the topmast and come about to lie to a sea-anchor it had been in heavy rain and it was clear their plight had not been seen by their consort, who had sailed on.
It was no use to expect to be found eventually: the hard truth had to be accepted. They were on their own. If Tyger was to be saved it would be only themselves to do it, and if she wasn’t, her name would join those recorded to history as having vanished at sea.
The boatswain, sailing master and carpenter huddled with Kydd in his cabin to try to find a way out of their situation. It was vitally necessary to get under way again, which meant some kind of rig on the stump mizzen with the same functioning as the driver.