Quarterdeck: A Kydd Sea Adventure

by Julian Stockwin

  Yet his sacrifice was the saving of the ship. Caught in the gun’s small wheels his body caused the cannon to slew and stop. Kydd hurled his hammock in its path. Others threw themselves at it, Bryant’s crew with handspikes levering furiously, frantically.

  They had won.

  Shaken, Kydd needed the open decks. Lord Woolmer lay to a mile or so away, taking seas on her bows in explosions of white, pitching and rolling under her scraps of sail.

  Hambly was standing by the main shrouds, looking up at the racing dark clouds and the torn seascape. On seeing Kydd, he shouted, ‘We’re takin’ it more from the west, I fear.’ The rest of his words were snatched away by the wind’s blast.

  ‘And this means?’ Kydd had not heard Houghton approach behind them. Hambly wheeled round, then respectfully accompanied them to the shelter of the half-deck.

  ‘Sir, it means the centre o’ the storm is placin’ itself right in our path. We’ll be down t’ bare poles at this rate – we should really bear away an’ scud instead of lyin’ to. There’s no hope this storm is goin’ to blow itself out, sir.’

  Kydd wondered whether the real reason Woolmer was hanging on was the reluctance of her captain to deny his passengers hope of a harbour and surcease. To scud was to abandon all attempts even to hold a position and simply fly before the violence, but this was to turn about and be blown back over the miles they had won at such cost.

  ‘I understand, Mr Hambly, but we stay with them.’

  Conditions were deteriorating and it was hard to keep them in sight: the air was filled with stinging spray, the motion of the ship becoming a shuddering heave as the seas grew more confused.

  The hours wore on. Kydd imagined what it must be like for the people of Woolmer: an indescribable nightmare, endlessly protracted.

  After midday Woolmer finally submitted to fate and made the decision to scud. It would be touch and go: the swells issuing from the storm centre were now more than forty feet high, higher even than the lower yards, and clawed into white streaks by the pitiless wind. They had left it perilously late. To fall off the wind, then run before it they must first pass through the most dangerous time of all – broadside to the powerful seas.

  Tenacious stood by while Woolmer began to turn, all aboard holding their breath. Her captain had clearly planned his turn away from the wind, for the small sail left on main and mizzen vanished at exactly the same time as her headsails mounted. The leverage told, and the ship, plunging and rocking like a fractious horse, began putting her bow downwind, faster and faster. A rampaging comber burst on her side, checking her movement, but with the appearance of square sail on her fore – loosed by some heroic topmen aloft – Woolmer completed her turn. Rolling drunkenly at first she settled to her new track.

  ‘A princely piece of seamanship as ever I’ve seen, and with an injured mast!’ exclaimed Houghton. Kydd quietly agreed: it had been well done indeed.

  ‘At least they has no worry o’ being pooped,’ said Hambly, eyeing the stately East Indiaman’s high stern. With a following sea there was always the danger of a giant wave overtaking and crowding on to her deck to sweep everything before it.

  ‘That’s not m’ worry,’ Kydd said – seared on his memory was fighting the helm of a similar-sized vessel in the Great Southern Ocean, the frigate Artemis on her way round Cape Horn.

  Hambly looked at him, troubled. ‘What’s that, sir?’

  ‘No matter.’ Kydd could not voice the fears that had been triggered by the memory.

  Houghton broke in decisively: ‘I’m going to scud under fore-topmast stays’l and a close-reefed fore tops’l. Mr Hambly?’

  ‘Aye, sir.’ Hands went to their stations, Kydd on the poop at the mizzen. The reefed driver was brought in and all sail aft disappeared, released seamen sent to the main deck. Tenacious began her turn, experiencing the same vertiginous rolls before she, too, was round with the hard wind at her stern.

  Barely set on her course, Tenacious’s fore topsail split and was instantly transformed to streaming ribbons. ‘I’ll have a quick-saver on that,’ Houghton shouted at the hurrying boatswain, ordering the replacement topsail and a pair of ropes to be crossed over the sail to prevent it ballooning forward.

  Then, there were cries of horror. No more than half a mile away, Kydd saw Woolmer, her silhouette dark against the white of the spindrift, strangely misshapen. Her weakened mainmast had given way under the wind pressure: it had splintered and fallen in ruin over the side.

  While Tenacious watched, agonised, the inevitable happened. The crew were unable to cut away the substantial wreckage in time and it acted as a drag to one side. Woolmer yawed. Pulled to one side she was at the mercy of the onrushing water, which pushed her further broadside. Kydd’s fears had come to pass: with no ability to come back on course she was forced right over on her beam ends, and the giant seas fell on the helpless vessel. Lord Woolmer capsized in a smother of wreckage, her long hull a glistening whale-like rock for a time before she disappeared altogether; lords, ladies and common seamen gone for ever.

  ‘Mr Hambly,’ said Houghton, in an unnatural voice, ‘the best course for us?’

  Hambly tore his eyes away from the scene and pulled himself together. ‘Er, to the suth’ard would keep us fr’m the centre . . . We scuds afore the westerly, that’s undoubted, until we can show canvas and come about – there’s nothing more we c’n do, sir.’

  Alone, Tenacious fought the sea, men moving silently in a pall of disbelief, senses battered by the hammering wind. For all of twenty hours the ship ran before the tempest until, in the early hours of the next day, the master judged it possible to set square sail on the main and thereby edge closer to the wind. By evening the winds had moderated to the extent that at last Tenacious could ease round more westward, towards the now distant Halifax.

  But the storm had one last trial for the old ship. By degrees the wind shifted north and the temperature fell. The first whirling snowflakes came, then snow squalls that marched across the seas with dark, brassy interiors bringing intense cold.

  It got worse. Ice covered shrouds, sails, decks, freezing exposed faces. It stiffened wet ropes to bars that seamen, with frozen fingers in wet gloves and feet in agony with the cold, had to wrestle with to coil.

  Even breathing was painful: Kydd bound a cloth round his face but it soon clogged with ice as moisture froze. Below, the wardroom stank of damp wool, bear-grease and the hides used in foul-weather gear. No one spoke: it was too much effort. Renzi sat with his head in his hands.

  On Kydd’s watch the wind moan increased, the pitiless blast buffeting him with its fearsome chill. He hugged himself, grateful for his moose-hide jacket, and thought of the hapless men in the fo’c’sle. In the scrappiest clothing against the numbing chill they had to muster on watch day and night, working, enduring.

  Hambly came over. ‘Shall have t’ take in the main tops’l,’ he said, looking significantly at Kydd. They had been fortunate until now that they carried the same square sail, close reefed fore and main topsails, but the wind had increased again.

  Kydd stared up at the straining sail. There was no question, the ship was over-pressed in these conditions and must be relieved – he could feel it in her laboured response to the helm. He was officer-of-the-watch and the responsibility was his, not the master’s.

  But there was the deadly glitter of ice on the shrouds, in the tops and along the yards: how could he send men aloft in the almost certain knowledge that for some there would be a cry, a fall and death?

  His eyes met Hambly’s: there was understanding but no compassion. Without a word Kydd turned and made his way down to the main deck where the watch on deck shivered, hunkered down in the lee of the weather bulwarks.

  They looked up as he descended, their faces dull, fatigued, and pinched with cold. He paused. How could he order them to go aloft into a howling icy hell? Perhaps some rousing speech to the effect that the ship, they themselves even, depended on them taking their lives into their hands an
d going aloft? No. Kydd had been in their place and knew what was needed.

  His face hardened. ‘Off y’r rumps, y’ lazy swabs. I want th’ main tops’l handed, now.’ They pulled themselves slowly to their feet. Their weary, stooped figures and bloodshot eyes wrung his heart.

  ‘Lay aloft!’ he roared. Every man obeyed. Kydd allowed a grim smile to surface. ‘An’ there’ll be a stiff tot f’r every man jack waiting for ye when you get back. Get moving!’

  For two hours, ninety feet above Kydd’s head, the men fisted the stiff sail in a violently moving, lethal world. Fingernails split and canvas was stained with blood, tired muscles slipped on icy wood and scrabbled for a hold, minds retreating into a state of numbed endurance.

  And for two hours, Kydd stood beneath, his fists balled in his pockets, willing them on, feeling for them, agonising. That day he discovered that there was only one thing of more heroism than going aloft in such a hell: the moral courage to order others to do it.

  For two more days Tenacious fought her way clear of the storm, which eventually headed north, increasing in malevolence as it went. On the third day the Sambro light was raised – and, after a night of standing off and on, HMS Tenacious entered harbour.

  Chapter 7

  ‘Damn! That cursed tailor will hound me to my grave,’ groaned Pringle. The mail-boat had arrived back from the dockyard and the wardroom sat about the table opening letters and savouring news from home.

  Adams, clutching six, retired to his cabin but Bampton slipped his into a pocket and sipped his brandy, balefully watching the animation of the others.

  Kydd was trying to make sense of his borrowed Essays on Politesse Among Nations, despairing of the turgid phraseology; his restraint in matters social, and sudden access of interest in literature, was generally held to be owing to some obscure improving impulse, and he was mostly left to it.

  ‘You don’t care for letters, Mr Kydd,’ Pybus said, with acerbity. He had received none himself, but was still scratching away lazily with his quill.

  Kydd looked up and saw that there was indeed one letter left on the table. ‘For me?’ He picked it up. ‘From m’ sister, Doctor,’ he said. She wrote closely, and as usual had turned the page and written again at right-angles through the first to be frugal in the postage.

  ‘Well?’ demanded Pybus.

  But Kydd was not listening.

  Dear Thomas – or should I say Nicholas as well? I do hope you are keeping well, my dears, and wrapping up warm. The willows are budding early along the Wey here in Guildford and . . .

  The words rushed on, and Kydd smiled to picture Cecilia at her task. Her evident concern for them both warmed him but her admiration for him as an officer in the King’s Navy sparked melancholy.

  A hurried paragraph concluded the letter:

  . . . and Father says that it would be of service to him should you enquire after his brother Matthew. You remember they came to some sort of a misunderstanding an age ago, and his brother sailed to Philadelphia? Papa says that was in 1763. Since then we have heard nothing of him, except that in the War for Independence he was a loyalist and went north with the others to Halifax in about 1782. Thomas, it would so please Papa to know that he is alive and well – do see if you can find him!

  Of course, his uncle: an adventurer in this wilderness land, carving a future for himself – or perhaps he was a successful trader, even a shipowner in the profitable Atlantic trade routes.

  ‘News?’ Pybus said drily.

  ‘Oh, aye. Seems it could be m’ uncle is here, Doctor, in Halifax. Who would credit it?’ A Kydd ashore, possibly one who had achieved eminence in society and was highly thought of in the community. For the first time in a long while he felt a rush of excitement. ‘I do believe I’m t’ visit him today.’

  ‘Kydd – Mr Matthew Kydd.’ It was strange uttering the words. There were not so many Kydds in the world that it felt anything other than his own name.

  The man he had stopped considered for a moment. ‘Can’t say as I’ve heard of the gentleman, sir,’ he said finally. ‘You may wish to try Linnard’s the tailors. You’ll understand they know all the gentry hereabouts.’ But Kydd was tiring of the chase. It was becoming clear that his uncle was far from being a notable in Halifax. It had been foolish of him to imagine that one of modest origins could have pretences at high office – but this did not mean that he had not secured a lesser, well-respected place in society.

  He toiled up the street, a curious mix of fine stone edifices and shoddy clapboard buildings, but it was not practical to think of entering and asking at random: there had to be a more efficient way. An idea came to him. He would contact Mr Greaves, the commissioner for lands. If his uncle was in any form a landowner he would know him. Kydd brightened as he savoured the effect on his uncle of receiving a card out of the blue from a Lieutenant Kydd shortly about to call.

  The land registry was a stiff walk well to the south, and Kydd set out along Barrington Street, past the elegance of St Paul’s Church. A line of soldiers was marching up and down on the large open area to his right, and when Kydd approached, the young officer in command halted his men and brought them to attention, then wheeled about and saluted. Kydd lifted his hat to him, which seemed to satisfy. With a further flourish of orders the soldiers resumed their marching.

  Then an unwelcome thought struck. Supposing his uncle had fallen on hard times or was still a humble tradesman? It would make no difference to him – but if Greaves thought he was of lowly origins it might prove embarrassing . . . He would move cautiously and find out first.

  ‘To be sure, a Kydd,’ murmured the clerk, at the desk of the weathered timber structure near the old burying ground. ‘There was one such, resident of Sackville Street, I seem to recall, but that was some years ago. Let me see . . .’ He polished his spectacles and opened a register. ‘Ah – we have here one Matthew Kydd, bachelor, established as trader and landowner in the year 1782, property on Sackville Street . . . Hmmm – here we have a contribution to the Sambro light, er, the usual taxation receipts . . .’

  It was certainly his uncle. At last! How would he greet him? He had never met the man: he had sailed from England well before Kydd had been born. Should it be ‘Uncle Matthew’ or perhaps a more formal salutation?

  ‘ . . . which means, sir, we have nothing later than the year 1791.’

  Kydd’s face dropped. ‘So—’

  ‘We find no evidence at all for his continued existence after then. I’m sorry.’

  ‘None?’

  ‘No, sir. You may wish to consult the parish books of St Paul’s for record of his decease – there was fever here at the time, you understand.’

  ‘Thank ye, sir.’ Kydd made to leave, but another clerk was hovering nearby.

  ‘Sir, you may be interested in this . . .’ They moved to the other end of the office. ‘My wife admired Mr Kydd’s work,’ he said, ‘which is why she bought this for me.’ It was a handsomely carved horn of plenty, taking bold advantage of the twisted grain of the wood, and supported at the base by a pair of birds. ‘You will understand that time is on our hands in the winter. Mr Kydd used to occupy his in carving, which I think you will agree is in the highest possible taste . . .’

  Kydd stroked the polished wood, something his own near relative had created: it felt alive.

  ‘Yes, those birds,’ the clerk mused. ‘I confess I have no knowledge of them at all – they’re not to be seen in this part of Canada. But Mr Kydd always includes them in his work. It’s a custom here, a species of signature for claiming fine work as your own.’

  ‘But I recognise it well enough,’ Kydd said. ‘This is y’r Cornish chough, sir. And it’s the bird you find in the coat-of-arms of our own Earl Onslow of Clandon and Guildford.’

  The man looked back at him with a bemused kindliness, but there was nothing more to learn here. Kydd emerged into the day: he was not yet due back aboard so his hunt would continue.

  But at St Paul’s there was no entry for Ma
tthew Kydd, in births, deaths or marriages. A whole hour of searching in the gloom of the old church sacristy yielded only two entries in the tithe-book, and a smudged but tantalising reference to banns being called.

  A mystery: at one time he had existed, now he did not. It was time to face the most unsatisfactory result of all: his uncle was not in Halifax but somewhere else in Canada – or, for that matter, he could be anywhere. And it explained why no one seemed to know of a Kydd in Halifax. He would regretfully conclude his search and write to his father accordingly.

  ‘If you’d be so good, Tom . . .’ Adams seemed anxious, but it did not take much imagination to grasp why he would want to absent himself from church that Sunday morning.

  ‘I trust she’s so charming you hold it of no account that you put your immortal soul to hazard?’ Kydd said. The captain had made it plain that he wanted an officer from Tenacious at the morning service on Sundays, and it was Adams’s turn.

  Kydd had no strong feelings about religion, although he enjoyed the hearty singing of the grand old hymns. With his Methodist upbringing he was inured to sitting inactive for long periods.

  Army officers with ladies on their arms swept into the church. Other ranks waited respectfully outside and would crowd in later. Kydd took off his hat and made his way inside, settling for an outside seat in a pew towards the front, nodding to the one or two other naval officers scattered about.

  A pleasant-faced woman sat down next to him and flashed him an impish smile. ‘There, my dear,’ said the stern, stiffly dressed man by her, settling a rug about her knees.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, and as soon as it was seemly to do so, turned to Kydd and whispered, ‘I don’t think I’ve seen you here, sir.’

  ‘Lieutenant Kydd of the Tenacious,’ he whispered back, unsure of the etiquette of the occasion.

  ‘Mrs Cox. Your first visit to Halifax, Lieutenant?’

  The church was filling fast but the front pew was still decorously empty.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Cox. Er, a fine place f’r trade.’