With an iron resolution, he clattered down the main hatchway past the marine drummer madly rattling out 'Hearts of Oak'. Of one thing he was certain: he would do his duty to the limit.
Touching his hat to Monckton, he verified the presence of the young midshipman and three men standing by the centreline grating, then turned his attention to the guns. If they fought both sides at once they would be short-handed; some gun numbers would have to cross the deck to work the opposite gun.
He stepped up on the grating while the wash-deck hose swashed across the deck. A seaman followed, scattering sand to give grip to the feet. Powder monkeys brought up the first cartridges in their long wooden salt boxes, and he watched as the quarter-gunner settled ear-pads on the young lads. Gun-crews made do with their bandannas, tying them tightly round their heads.
Kydd took his broad cross-belt, settling it to take the weight of his cutlass, which, as a boarder, he would wear for the rest of the battle. When the order came, he would seize a brace of pistols from the arms-chest and lead the second wave of boarders.
He paced slowly along, checking and rechecking: the middle of a battle was not a good time to be finding missing spares. Tucked in along the sides of the main-hatch, beside the ready-use shot lining it, were ranged spare breeching, complete training tackles, gun lashings, all becketted up neatly.
As he walked, he saw the gun-crews looking at him, eyes flashing. They would be forced to stand idle for all of the time it took to reach the enemy, their own guns unable to bear, while the Dutch could concentrate their whole fire unopposed. After their line was reached it would be another story: as they passed through they would blast a storm of balls down the length of an enemy ship from each side.
But first they had to reach them. Triumph was as ready as forethought and devotion to the sea crafts could make her. Now the fortune of war and the courage of her men would decide the day.
The enemy began to fire just after midday, the thunder of their guns loud on the inactive gundeck. Kydd joined the gun-crews leaning out of their ports to see. The whole line of the enemy ahead was nearly obscured in gunsmoke, the sea between torn by shot. To starboard
Vice Admiral Onslow's division was diverging, his flagship, Monarch, in the lead of a straggling group. Duncan must be anxious to start the fight, thought Kydd, that he did not form line of battle.
He crossed to the other side of the deck. As he did the first cannon strikes thudded home. These were longer-range shots and taken on the ricochet: closer in they would crush and splinter. Out of the gunports Kydd saw their own flagship, Duncan's Venerable, streaming out ahead, her blue ensign defiantly aloft, others coming up on her flank.
The sea hissed past a few feet below. They were running large, direcdy to leeward in the stiff wind — their time to fight would not be long delayed. Kydd pulled himself inboard. A sudden crash sounded somewhere forward. Something hissed past him, striking a deck beam then angling down to a gun, which it hit with a musical clang.
Then came the welcome smash of their own carronades on the deck above. Kydd dared a quick last look out of a port and saw, in a single flash ahead, Venerable bearing down on the big Dutch flagship, and at the same time the Dutch next astern courageously closing the gap to prevent Venerable passing through and breaking the line.
He pulled in and took post, conscious that his duty was to make sure Lieutenant Monckton's orders were carried out — whatever the circumstances.
'Point your guns!' The enemy were very near now. Gun-captains scrambled to sight down their pieces, signalling for handspikes to muscle the heavy guns round to train on target, then tracking it, waiting with gun lanyard extended for the word to fire.
So close. Smashing strikes and cries of injured men were general now, the moments seeming to last for ever. But then it died away and the sea outside shadowed suddenly. It was the enemy line.
'Fire!' came the order. In a rippled broadside from forward the twenty-four-pounders crashed out in a vengeful smash straight at the unprotected stern of the unknown Dutch ship — thirty-seven heavy iron balls at point-blank velocity in a merciless splintering path of destruction right down the length of the ship. The noise was overwhelming, going on and on as they passed through.
Kydd bent his knees to see. Through the smoke he caught sight of an ornate stern gallery riven into gap-toothed ugliness. Wreckage rained down and turned the sea white with splashes. He wheeled round, still bent, and briefly glimpsed, through the opposite side, the tangled bowsprit of another ship.
Crews flung themselves at their guns: sponging, the lethal grey cartridge and wad, then the deadly iron ball. Kydd felt the deck sway over to starboard and realised they must be coming round to lock into their opponent. He yelled hoarsely at the crews: doubling the rate of fire was as good as doubling the number of guns, and once around they would be facing an equal broadside from their opponent.
It came early, before they were fully round — and at ten-yards range the effect was lethal. The iron shot tore through the sides of Triumph, the balls rampaging the whole width of the gundeck before smashing through the far side, tearing and shattering. The deck trembled as more balls struck below.
Monckton raised his speaking trumpet and was thrown violendy along the deck. He did not move. Kydd ran to his body: there was no mark on it, but a red rash was spreading on the side of his face. He put his hand inside the officer's coat and felt for the heart it still beat.
'Bear a hand!' he roared at the men hovering around. They dragged Monckton to the centreline gratings and laid him out on his back. He had been knocked unconscious by the close passage of a round-shot. If he recovered he would want to be at his post, but for now Kydd must perform his duty.
A midshipman arrived from forward, wide-eyed, his hand convulsively gripping the hilt of his dirk. 'Get back to y'r post,' Kydd told him. 'Orders are th' same.'
Kydd turned to the gun-crews. There was no need for interference: the men worked like demons, their gun-captains throwing a glance his way, then getting on with it.
A messenger raced down from the quarterdeck and skidded to a stop at the sight of Monckton's body. Kydd stepped up. 'I'm in charge. What's y'r message?' The order was clear: each gun was to fire alternately at maximum depression or elevation. This would send their shot down to the enemy's keel or up through her unprotected decks, a terrifying ordeal for an opponent. Kydd ran along the guns, tasking off the gun-captains.
The hull of the enemy ship loomed through the gunports in the thinning smoke; dull black, with signs of cannon strike everywhere and jerking activity at her gunports. Their own guns crashed out Triumph's gun-crews worked savagely, needing no goading. Smoke swirled thickly back into the gundeck, obscuring everything. A mounting warrior's bloodlust set Kydd's heart aflame for victory.
There was no pretence at aiming: fire was general. 'Double shotting!' Kydd bellowed. As the two balls diverged at the muzzle, aim would be affected but the damage would be broadened and doubled. 'Smash it in 'em, lads!' he bawled. Yet in the wildness of the battle Kydd felt a serenity, the calm of a dedicated ferocity that he knew would take him through anything.
High screams close by — a young powder monkey with his lower body soaked in blood, pulling himself helplessly away on his elbows. Kydd motioned to an opposite gun-crew to carry the lad below.
A wrecked gun, its barrel askew and carriage in pieces, its crew in a moaning, bloody heap, was being cleared of its dead, tumbled out of the gunport to the sea below.
Then, unbelievably, a messenger appeared, shrilling urgently, 'Cease firing!' The crews, working like automatons, checked their fire and subsided into a trembling stillness. Kydd ran to the side and looked out. Roiling gunsmoke still hid much of the enemy, but there was an unnatural quiet aboard their adversary. Confused shouting from behind caused Kydd to turn round — but then came cheering, and maniac roars of jubilation. The enemy had struck!
It was ironic, thought Renzi, that when he had been reassigned to another ship at the last m
inute it had been this one, Tenacious, and within weeks of his final retirement from the sea he was headed into his second major fleet action in a year.
He knew Kydd had been shipped in Triumph, and there she was, the other side of Duncan's Venerable. He hoped that the lottery of war would spare his friend, whom he had not seen since their farewell in Sheerness — but this was going to be no stately fight against unwilling Spanish allies.
The Dutch were rightly proud of their maritime past, yet at the same time would be fearing the submergence of their national identity following their defeat and occupation by the French. If they could rise victorious over a field of war on their own, this would be preserved. It would be a sanguinary conflict indeed.
Renzi's post was at the quarterdeck nine-pounder battery. He would see what was developing, a mercy compared to the hell of a gundeck below, but he would be a target for enemy musketry. At least if he survived he could retire to the estate with as unique a claim to fame as any in the county set, he mused.
The enemy opened fire. It would be a hard thing to achieve, a breaking of the line, but Venerable led the division nobly, her signal for close action seemingly nailed in place. The fire got hotter. A ball slammed through a file of marines and left bloody corpses in its wake. Twice Renzi staggered at the vicious slap of wind from a near miss.
He forced his mind to float free, calmly observing his actions and freeing his thoughts of a vortex of anxiety — it was the only rational course.
Venerable was close to starboard, clearly heading for the enemy flagship. Tenacious kept faithful station on her, and when they were closer Renzi could see she was going round the stern of de Winter's ship to deliver a crushing, raking fire - but her next astern bravely closed the gap and Venerable had to bear away to round her instead.
Tenacious, a humble 64, found herself alone in taking on the big Dutch flagship. As she swung to bring her own broadside to bear, the space between the two filled with acrid powder smoke and a devastating storm of shot. The enemy were not, like the French, aiming for rigging and spars to disable the ship. Instead they were smashing their shot home directly into the hull of their opponent in a brutal prize-fight.
There were no broadsides now: both ships at less than a hundred yards' range pounded to the limits of endurance. The air was torn by the whir of chain-shot, the heavy slam of thirty-two-pound balls, the vicious wasp-like hum of bullets - the whole against the continuous noise of guns and shattered timbers and the dry reek of gunpowder smoke.
Men struck by balls were blown into pieces like sides of beef in a butcher's shop or were disembowelled in an instant; those hit by splinters shrieked in agony as they were skewered. Renzi saw a midshipman, then the signal lieutenant drop in their tracks, and over at a disabled nine-pounder a corpse exuded blood that made tracks on the deck as the ship rolled and heaved.
The captain dropped to his knees with a bloody graze on his head, then crumpled to the deck; a midshipman started weeping, the pain from a crushed foot overcoming his young attempt at bravery. Renzi paced along the deck, watching his nine-pounder crews throwing everything into a frenzied cycle of violence, and ferociously excluded the logical probability that his own survival was in doubt.
He turned, and started to pace back the other side. Something like a horse's kick from behind threw one of his legs from under him. He fell to the deck. There was no immediate pain, and he scrabbled about trying to locate the source of a growing numbness, then noted spreading blood on the scrubbed deck. He sat up, trying to rise, but then the hot pain began and he flopped down again.
'Get yez below, mate,' said an out-of-breath gun captain, who lifted his arms. In shock, Renzi fell back while another took his feet in an awkward carry-and-drag to the blood-smeared hatchway. They bumped him down the ladder and staggered round to lower him down the next.
On the orlop it was a scene from hell. The entire deck was carpeted in wounded, an operating table contrived from midshipmen's chests in the centre. But the surgeon was not there: he with his lob-lolly boys could only move about the stream of wounded, as they came down, trying their best to ease their suffering.
Renzi was placed on an old piece of canvas, which was rapidly soaked with blood from his wound. He lay light-headed in the infernal gloom, listening to groans and cries. But there were also cheers of encouragement and bravery from some of those who would soon face the knife and saw. The back of his leg throbbed with increasing pain and he wondered abstractly if he would lose it.
A lanthorn bobbed nearer. It was the surgeon and his helper. In the navy way men were seen in the strict order they were carried below, no matter the severity of their wounds. Renzi waited for his turn, hearing the noise and shaking of the gundeck in action above.
The surgeon in his black smock, stiff with bloodstains, turned to him. His eyes were glazed. 'Where is the wound, if you please?' he said, kneeling beside Renzi.
Renzi tried to turn over but could not. The two lob-lolly boys - older men no longer suitable for work on deck — rotated him. He felt the surgeon's hands rip away clothing and tensed for the knife, but after a pause and cursory poke the surgeon straightened. 'You're lucky, my man. Superficial tissue loss but we'll need to staunch the blood.' He probed the area. Renzi could feel the man's breath around the wound. 'Yes, fit for duty in weeks. You know what to do,' he told the lob-lollies; then he was gone.
The excruciating pain of a vinegar solution on the raw flesh brought tears to his eyes, but relief was unfolding in a tide of emotion — he would not suffer under the saw. A dressing, a tourniquet; additional pain came from the biting cord. Then the indignity of being dragged to a further corner to recover — or die.
Somewhere outside the battle's fury continued; the fabric of Tenacious shuddered with savage blows. On deck it would be chaos, but the cruel logic of war meant that duty must be done and the battle fought irrespective of the hideous scenes.
Renzi rolled to his side in discomfort. Then he noticed the glint of gold lace being carried down the hatchway. It was the first lieutenant, his head lolling ominously to one side. The quarterdeck was being cleared fast.
Possession of their prize — Wassenaar— released Triumph for hotter work. Passing Venerable and Tenacious she rounded into the enemy line again, laying herself bow to bow with a yellow-sided man-o'-war.
Her guns opened again with a thunderous broadside, which was answered with equal venom by their opponent - but having practised over long weeks at sea the English guns spoke faster and truer. Kydd, below, drove on his men with bellows of encouragement as the side of their opponent bulked just yards away.
But Triumph was coming under fire from another quarter. A previously untouched Dutch ship had approached and opened up on her opposite side. Kydd was taken by surprise at the sudden irruption of cannon fire — but almost immediately the sea was lit by a flash, and a sullen boom rolled over the waves.
The enemy fire slackened and stopped. A ruddy glow tinged the sea. Fire! Kydd stooped to look out, and saw, only a few hundred yards off, the attacking warship lit by a spreading blaze near the base of the mainmast. Something must have touched off powder on deck, and if the flames reached tarred rigging and sails she would turn into a fire-ship, a danger to friend and foe on the crowded sea.
Kydd turned back to his task and saw that the yellow-streaked ship's angle away had changed and, after another exchange of fire, she could be seen gathering way: she was fleeing! Triumph continued on to wear round; it was clear she was keeping away from the burning ship and falling back to support the hard-pressed Venerable. Kydd set about clearing away and squaring up.
In the lull a midshipman messenger hurried down the ladder to Kydd. 'Captain desires your report, if y' please.'
Kydd tried to keep his mind calm as he emerged on deck. Triumph was cut about grievously, wreckage strewn about, ropes trailing from aloft, blood smears on the deck. This was his first sight of the open battlefield. While he hurried aft, his eyes took in the vastness of the scene: ship
s in every direction at every angle, boats in the water, cannon splashes around ships still under fire, an immense pall of smoke over the whole area.
'You, er, Kydd?' The captain was obviously in pain, his arm in an improvised sling, his face blackened and red.
'Sir.'
'Lieutenant Monckton?'
'Regret he's still unconscious, sir. I have him on th' gratings 'midships so if he comes to . ..' 'Quite right. And the guns?'
'Number seven larb'd dismounted, number nine larb'd has a blown vent bushing. Lost a truck off number six stb'd, but the crew is managin'. Er, we lost six men on number seven, an' there's a total of — let me see - thirteen been taken below.' Kydd added, 'We c'n still give ye a full broadside less two t' larb'd, an' all to starb'd, but could be pressed t' fight both sides. But, sir, we're in fine spirits, don't worry of us.'
Captain Essington nodded slowly, looking closely at Kydd.
'Sir, may I know — f'r the others — how's the day?'
Essington smiled grimly. 'You see there,' he pointed to the south, 'the starb'd division has taken all five of their opponents and are bearing up to join us. And there,' he indicated the ships they were steering for locked together in the throes of combat, 'that is their flagship, and she has lost all her masts, and fights three of our ships. I rather fancy she will strike soon — and the day will then be won.'
Kydd touched his hat and went below. Monckton was still unconscious, breathing heavily, so Kydd tried to make him comfortable and turned back to the task of clearing away the debris of battle.
A swelling roar of cheers sounded on deck followed by a shout at the ladderway: 'She's struck! The Dutchy admiral threw it in!' The cheers were instandy taken up on the gundeck by Kydd's men, smoke-grimed, bloody, but victorious - and in that moment all the emotional tensions of recent events melted away for Kydd. He punched the air with rediscovered pride.
The deck heeled once more, staying at an angle. They were wearing round to the north again, seeking new opponents. Kydd leaned from a gunport two or three vessels could be seen away to the north, but the guns of all those nearer were silent. The background rumble and thunder of heavy guns was no longer there.
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