14-Caribbee: A Kydd Sea Adventure

by Julian Stockwin

  It hit home. Kydd breathed deeply. ‘As always you have the right of it, Nicholas,’ he said raggedly. ‘I’m to go forward and damn any who point the finger.’

  A mirthless grin spread. ‘After all, am I not a post-captain? They can’t take that away.’

  ‘Stout fellow!’ Renzi said, ‘It’ll pass, you’ll see.’

  ‘Nicholas.’

  ‘Yes, brother?’

  ‘You’re forgetting one thing.’

  ‘Oh? What’s that?’

  ‘Tomorrow I will see the bastard – and must take his orders. How is that to be borne, my friend?’

  Chapter 12

  It was a morning like any other. But before the day was out Kydd knew two things would have occurred: L’Aurore would have met the enemy in battle – and he would have come face to face with Tyrell.

  Tense and uneasy, he left his cabin to make his way to the captains’ conference in Hannibal for orders in the taking of Marie-Galante.

  The watch was securing for sea but at Kydd’s appearance on deck furtive glances and a sudden need to occupy themselves left no doubt as to what they were thinking. Kydd’s face burned.

  ‘My barge,’ he snapped at Curzon, whose studied blankness was just as revealing.

  His boat’s crew were paragons of behaviour but over his shoulder Kydd saw faces at L’Aurore’s gun-ports, others at the rails and more in the tops, watching.

  He forced down his emotions. This was an operation against the enemy and he had to keep cool. His duty was to his men and no personal antagonisms must be allowed to deflect him.

  Yet as they approached Hannibal his resolve wavered. Would Tyrell be waiting to greet each captain, and there in front of everybody expect him to shake his hand?

  He couldn’t do it, nor look him in the eye.

  Telling the boat to hang back, he allowed Lydiard of Anson to board while he wrestled with his feelings. Then there was no more time.

  The pipes pealed as he mounted the side and stepped aboard, but Tyrell was not on deck. Trying not to let his relief show, Kydd followed the first lieutenant to be introduced to the waiting captains, who stood together by the main-mast. But as he approached, the talking died away and they turned to face him warily.

  ‘A good day, gentlemen,’ he said, with a brittle lightness.

  There were muttered acknowledgements and then they turned back to their conversations. Kydd flushed with anger at the intolerable behaviour but then it dawned on him that they were probably hiding their embarrassment.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bowden standing some yards away; the young man smiled awkwardly at his old captain.

  The first lieutenant cleared his throat. ‘Er, gentlemen? Captain Tyrell will welcome you in the great cabin now.’

  They began to file into the space, Kydd standing aside until they were all before him, then following. At the last minute he hesitated at the door and the marine sentry’s eye swivelled to him in apprehension. There was no more delaying the moment so he stepped inside.

  ‘Come in, then!’ Tyrell was at the head of the table, getting his papers in order. He looked up sharply. ‘Sit down. We’ve no time to waste.’

  Kydd took the last chair, which was on Tyrell’s right-hand side. He found himself so close he could feel the man’s animal ferocity radiating, but Tyrell ignored him.

  Kydd held rigid and forced himself to an icy cold.

  ‘Right. The assault on Marie-Galante.’ Tyrell sat forward aggressively, glaring around the table. Apart from bloodshot eyes, he seemed untouched by the night before and had once more the tight, dangerous air of a ravening leopard.

  ‘As senior, I’m in command. Therefore you’ll obey my orders without question. Is that clear?’ he rapped.

  He seemed oblivious to the hostile atmosphere building. ‘Now listen. My strategy is simple. If we secure the capital of this miserable island the rest will fall. That’s Gron’ Borg. It’s defended by a fort that commands the harbour so we can’t go in and take it from the front. But I have a plan.’

  He looked about him, as if inviting argument, then snapped, ‘And it’s this. Red Party will land to the north of Gron’ Borg, Blue Party to the south. And then?’

  ‘They advance from both sides?’ Lydiard drawled.

  ‘No!’ Tyrell barked triumphantly. ‘They head inland, both. When in the damned forest and out of sight, they turn inward, meet, and come in on the town and the fort from the land side. Clear?’

  ‘While the fort is being engaged from seaward?’ prompted a captain lower down the table.

  ‘Of course!’ Tyrell bristled.

  ‘Who shall command the landing parties?’ another asked. If there was to be any glory and distinction it would be for those facing the enemy. The rest would be mere spectators offshore.

  ‘Why, the hero of Curaçao for one!’ Tyrell turned and gave a beaming smile.

  Kydd jerked back and stared. Was this a clumsy attempt to make up for his blunder of the night before?

  ‘Um, thank you, Mr Tyrell.’ His voice sounded thick and unnatural.

  ‘Mr Kydd will be leading the Blue Party and …’

  He waited for their full attention. ‘… and I will lead the Red Party.’

  There were indrawn breaths but Tyrell went on remorselessly, his deep-set eyes restless. ‘We have seamen and marines in each party, but only as many as can be transported in our fit of boats. The Crapauds can be relied on to put up a fight, but we’re more’n a match for any Frenchy trooper! Cold steel and a willing heart, that’s how we’ll win, and be damned to it, that’s what we’ll do or I’ll know why.’

  Lydiard interjected quietly, ‘Rufus, I understood this operation to be something in the way of a strike to extirpate some kind of secret naval base, not a grand invasion.’

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s being taken care of by Kydd’s party. Your worry is to stop interference in the landings from Guadeloupe or similar. Hannibal will be off Point-a-Peter and after recovering boats the frigates cruise at the four corners of the island, three leagues to seaward. Shouldn’t be too hard an assignment,’ he added sarcastically.

  ‘It seems not,’ replied Lydiard, with the barest hint of irony.

  ‘Good! I’ll bid you all farewell. We sail in an hour. Mr Kydd to remain.’

  He watched them leave, then turned abruptly to his right. ‘You’re taking the Blue Party,’ he growled. ‘You can do it?’

  Kydd mumbled an acknowledgement.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I said, I can do it.’

  ‘You’ll have to make up numbers from your own ship. We’re short of volunteers.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This damn-fool secret base – I take it you’ll detach a flying column the same as failed in Curaçao?’

  ‘I will,’ Kydd bit off.

  Tyrell sat back and fiddled with a pencil.

  Kydd waited. Was this going to be a grudging apology for his behaviour? Should he accept or …

  ‘You wondered why I chose you for the Blue Party?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘’Cos you’ve a way with your men. Don’t know why, and don’t really care, but you seem to know ’em better than most.’

  Slowly it dawned on Kydd that Tyrell wasn’t going to offer an apology because he didn’t remember what he’d said in his drunken state. His burning anger began to cool. The man was a sot, lost to drink ashore – but his inexcusable behaviour was not driven by malice.

  Tyrell’s brow furrowed as though trying to recover a lost thought. ‘I’ll confide to you now, Kydd, this is my first chance at distinction in a major action this war, and I’m going for it with all my heart. At the end we’ll see the white ensign atop the biggest damn building in Gron’ Borg and m’ name will be right up there as conqueror of Marie-Galante.’

  Kydd, a Trafalgar veteran, had his views on what constituted a major action but he held his tongue.

  He’d never forget what the man had done to him but for now there were bigger i
ssues. ‘Right enough, Rufus. It’ll be your name as will be talked of wherever men remember Marie-Galante.’

  That pleased Tyrell. ‘And pity help any who don’t top it the tiger when bid!’ he growled, his face like thunder.

  Kydd stood up. ‘I’ll get back aboard. Good fortune to you, Rufus.’ He did not hold out his hand, and Tyrell seemed not to notice. He turned on his heel and left.

  Ignoring the nakedly curious looks on the upper deck, he signalled for his boat and told them to stretch out for L’Aurore. Oakley’s pipe shrilled loudly and he came aboard to a set of faces agog.

  ‘Get those men to work!’ he roared, incensed. ‘The barky’s like a pig-sty.’

  There was a great deal to do to complete for sea inside the hour. The naval system of divisions saw to it that each lieutenant had a fair share of every talent the ship possessed: topmen, midshipmen, gunners, those capable of bearing a musket or swinging a cutlass and even artificers. A landing party, however, had to be fit for purpose; this was a fight ashore and the Royal Marines would figure highly.

  It had to be assumed that their assault on the fort from landward would not be protracted. Any sensible garrison commander, seeing himself surrounded, would not be inclined to hold out for long enough to warrant taking ladders and siege kit. Likewise, the artillery: with the countryside entirely in British hands, it would be foolish to await a formal battering before yielding.

  For the flying column, it was a different matter. Thankfully, they had Renzi’s detailed description, carefully sketched out, with his estimate of its defences. How it would be protected was any man’s guess but if they moved fast and advanced on it from inland they had a good chance of surprise.

  Renzi stood at his side as Kydd received his stream of reporting officers. ‘Nicholas, I’m giving you Mr Curzon and a midshipman, with Mr Clinton and eight of his marines, and a dozen armed seamen. Look after them, if you please.’

  ‘You’ll be requiring Mr Gilbey to head the shore party?’

  ‘Not on this occasion. Tyrell leads his party so it’s to be expected I shall do likewise.’

  ‘Interesting. That Tyrell is taking a party himself, that is. Will it be his own men he leads? I wonder if they’ll follow …’

  Kydd raised an eyebrow. ‘We’ve both seen him in a tight corner before, against the revolutionaries in Brittany. There’s many a man owes his life to his bloody-minded leadership.’

  ‘Umm. We shall see, I think.’

  On the hour a gun banged in Hannibal and her colours rose. They were on their way.

  The assault was planned for dawn, allowing the expedition to pass in clear waters by Guadeloupe in the hours of darkness, to appear out of the mists of daybreak directly before the island of Marie-Galante.

  As sunrise tinged the sea with pink and gold, the inhabitants of Marie-Galante and their defenders watched with disbelief then fear as a battleship and four frigates closed in to less than a mile offshore and boats, too many to count, started towards them, in each scarlet and gold, blue and white – and the glitter of steel.

  From his own boat on its way to the end of the reef to the south, Kydd could see the Hannibals heading in a mile north towards Grand Anse. It was all going according to plan: they were both out of range of the fort above the town and could land unopposed.

  The shoreline grew clearer. At Pointe des Basses the reef ended and he took in pale beaches and thick dark vegetation nearly down to the water’s edge. Ideal for the landing.

  ‘There, where the fallen tree touches the water,’ Kydd instructed Poulden, who obediently put over the tiller. The other craft were strung astern – it was going to be easy, just— But then he saw figures moving urgently among the thick growth and the first shots rang out in the still morning air, gunsmoke rising lazily. The four marines tasked in each boat got to work in the bows, firing at the origins of the smoke, methodically reloading in relays.

  It was imperative to get men ashore, whatever the cost. Having the equivalent of five regiments’ artillery afloat was a dead card, however – the ships would be firing on their own men.

  As they drew nearer the shore the whip of bullets was more insistent.

  ‘Pull, y’ bastards! Lay out and pull for your lives!’ Kydd bawled. The men heaved like demons and the boats flew; the firing fell off as they came in and the opposition melted away.

  The boat hissed to a stop in the sand and the men scrambled out, following Kydd, army niceties like forming up lost in the urgency to gain a foothold. Fronds and branches whipped across his face as he led them on, nerves stretched to the extreme. He slashed at the vegetation with his sword until he came upon a semblance of a track that wound inland.

  ‘Move yourselves!’ he bellowed, and went along the path at a trot. He could hear the clink and jingle of the men panting behind him as they followed. Almost certainly the firing had been from a platoon hastily sent to delay them, but their expectation would be that the invaders would turn down the coast road to advance on Grand-Bourg, while of course they were heading inland.

  After a couple of hundred yards Kydd slowed at a clearing and waited for his force to come up with him. ‘Well done, you men!’ he acknowledged breathlessly. ‘We head into the country, then hook around until we’re above the town. A mile or two at most. Where’s Mr Renzi?’

  His friend, solemnly flanked by both Curzon and Clinton, the Royal Marines lieutenant, was in plain but serviceable civilian dress with a wide hat set at a rakish angle.

  Kydd gave him a tight smile. ‘Nicholas, you know where you want to go. Stay with us until you’re ready to move on the base. March on!’

  Almost without warning a rearing cliff, hundreds of feet high, loomed above the trees and palms. But they saw the path took a sideways loop following the contours and they made good speed, their altitude rising slightly and Grand-Bourg firmly in sight below.

  Tyrell had been right: this route had taken the defenders completely by surprise and now they had only to meet in the heights above the capital, then together descend to victory.

  The going got thicker as they neared the town. Sheltered depressions were covered with luxuriant growth, and at one of these Renzi decided to make his move. ‘The villa – it’s down further, about a quarter-mile. I’ll, er, leave you now, if I may.’

  Kydd watched Renzi and his party vanish downwards into the lush green, then ordered his men onwards.

  The joining up would be very soon now.

  Bowden was in the second boat behind Tyrell and could hear the man’s roars as he urged on his rowers. It had been a fraught time in the lead-up to the landings; Tyrell seemed to have no idea of the knife-edge of feeling among the men. While the squadron was formed up there was no danger of a bloody mutiny, but there would be other times and places …

  Tyrell’s bulldog character, aroused by the coming battle, was transforming him. Petty spite and vindictiveness was replaced by a towering eagerness to fall on the enemy. The moods, the suspicions, the menace were gone, leaving a roaring, raging warrior.

  Away to the right L’Aurore’s boats were nearly in, white puffs along the coastline showing where they were meeting with opposition. It seemed to have drawn the enemy’s full attention for their own length of coast was quiet and the boats came to a rest in a sheltered sandy cove. Bowden remembered it was here that Columbus had landed to name the island.

  There was an uncanny stillness but Tyrell stormed fearlessly inland and found a clearing. ‘To me!’ he bellowed, raising his naked sword.

  The men came on warily, sullen. Bowden formed them up in a rough file and moved them to Tyrell, who was waiting impatiently. They tramped forward into the thickening growth after him, but from none came the customary joking and easy talk to be expected of Jack ashore.

  Next to him marched Hinckley, an older captain in charge of the small detachment of the 69th Gloucestershires that made up a third of their force. ‘I mislike this quiet,’ he muttered. ‘I’d be happier were there scouts on our flank.’


  Bowden glanced at him. Hinckley had seen service around the world and was much respected by his men. ‘We’d be slowed, surely.’

  ‘We’d be slowed more should they press home an attack while your men are strung out like that.’ He had his own troops in a tight formation, muskets a-port, alert for anything.

  As they trudged on inland, from out of sight ahead came the occasional bull roar of Tyrell’s hectoring. Bowden fancied he could hear musket fire in the direction of the L’Aurore landing and, with a pang, wondered how they were faring – so like a dream had been his service in the frigate, utterly different from the sour moodiness in Hannibal.

  But he had to accept that this was his duty … and with a turn of the stomach he remembered that after this action was over there had to be an accounting – a resolution to the dilemma the Hannibal officers faced.

  Ragged firing broke out ahead. As one, the seamen dived for cover, wriggling into bushes and under broad-leafed ferns. The soldiers stayed in formation, nervously eyeing Hinckley.

  ‘I’ll go up and see what’s afoot,’ Bowden said, loping forward in a crouch.

  They were not far from the join-up position, the ridge above the town, but it quickly became clear that something had happened.

  ‘God damn them for a parcel of old women!’ choked Tyrell, hunkered down and gesturing angrily at the strewn articles of abandoned kit on the path and his men cowering in the vegetation. ‘As it’s only a few Crapaud militia sent to delay us!’

  There was desultory firing from positions off to the left and a stray bullet whipped through the branches and leaves above.

  ‘Get up and move!’ Tyrell roared in vexation. He stood up. ‘To the fore, advance, you mumping rogues – or I’ll have every man jack o’ you flogged to within an inch o’ your lives.’

  None came out from their hiding places.

  ‘By God!’ he yelled. ‘I’ll have the hide off you for as cowardly a bunch of lubbers as ever I’ve heard on. We’ve an island to conquer – get on your feet and go!’