Tyger (11 page)

Yes, he could—and would!

He spotted one anchored apart from the others, like a cast-out leper. It had to be
Tyger
. Waiting for one who could cure a mortal sickness. Could he just leave her to her fate? Damn right he could!

About to close the curtains on the sight he stopped, remembering what he had seen in Tysoe’s face. To him Kydd’s decision was nothing less than a betrayal: his master was diminished, a coward—no longer one to admire, to serve with pride and respect. Kydd had let down the only person still with him from his early days as an officer. He’d been found wanting—and it hurt.

He balled his fists as a deeper realisation boiled to the surface. If he retired from the navy his public would be mollified, the Admiralty would be robbed of his humbling—but he would have to live with the surrender for the rest of his life.

He couldn’t do it. It wasn’t in his nature to run—and, by God, he wasn’t going to do so now!

“Tysoe! Where are you, man?” He found him in the other room, listlessly filling the trunk. “What’s this, laying out m’ shore-side gear? I said to pack, we’re leaving, and that is, I’m to board and take command o’
Tyger
frigate this day—but not in those ill-looking rags!”

K
YDD THREW ON A BOAT-CLOAK
and took coach for the naval base. It was only a short distance, near where the Yare river met the sea, an unassuming building with blue ensign aloft. The establishment was the smallest Kydd had encountered, with a modest stores capability and accommodation for the senior naval officer who had charge of a local force of sloops and brigs guarding the coast.

A single marine sentry snapped to attention at Kydd’s sudden appearance.

He didn’t care how he was received for there was only one objective in his sights: to fight and win in this unfair contest. Nothing else mattered.

Captain Burke rose to greet him with a look of polite enquiry.

“Captain Sir Thomas Kydd, to take command of
Tyger
frigate.” He handed over his warrant.

“Ah. We’ve had word of you, Sir Thomas.”

Burke was of the same rank as he. In the normal course of events, Kydd could expect to know only the company of lowly sloop captains, mere commanders. He felt the tug of temptation to unburden, but his mood was too bleak.

“I intend to assume command and put to sea with the least possible delay,” he rapped. “What is
Tyger
’s condition, pray?”

The man’s expression was guarded. “You’ll know she’s been in mutiny, and that only very recently?”

“I do. That’s in the past—I desire only to proceed to sea with all dispatch, sir.” Kydd’s instinct was to reach open water, then let sea air and ship routines do their work.

“Very well. She was near completing stores when it … that is to say, the mutiny happened, some eight days ago. In all other respects she’s ready.”

Like the majority of mutinies this one had broken out just as the ship was preparing to leave—very few happened on the high seas. And as was the way with mutiny, it had been met with instant justice: corpses at the yardarm only days after.

“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.”

He left the deck, feeling a need to claim at least some part of the ship as his own.

The great cabin, with a table big enough to seat eight, was broad and spacious, the sweep of stern-lights square-patterned and plain, the curve of side timbers restrained but massive.

Pathetic traces of its last occupant remained: a wistful miniature of a woman in lace, an amateurish landscape, a side-table with unremarkable ornaments. On one wall there was a needlework sampler with some doggerel beginning, “Tyger, tyger, burning bright …”

The bed-place still had the cot and wash-place trinkets—it would all have to go. His personal effects from
L’Aurore
were in store and this space would be achingly bare but it couldn’t be helped.

His gear was a change of linen only: Tysoe would be arriving in the morning with his remaining baggage and what cabin stores he could lay hands on at this notice.

There was only one chair at the table—it seemed that Captain Parker expected his visitors to stand. He sent for wardroom chairs and settled to wait.

They came together. Kydd motioned Hollis to the opposite end of the table and let the others find their places.

The next few minutes could make or break him. Much depended not on what he said, but how he said it. Should he come in hard and single-minded, tough and unbending—or was it to be understanding and forgiving, willing to give them latitude?

“Mr Hollis, be so good as to introduce the warrant officers.”

The gunner, Darby, came across as professional enough but bit off his words as though he paid for each one.

The boatswain, Dawes, did not inspire. Defensive and fidgety, he did not seem to know the condition of
Tyger
as well as he should, and Kydd sensed an element of mistrust in the attitude of others to him.

The sailing master was of another stamp entirely. In his thirties, young for the post, Le Breton was from Guernsey, its countless reefs and currents a priceless school in seamanship. Soft-spoken and quiet, he let others make the running and only then offered intelligent comment. Kydd warmed to him.

The surgeon and purser were not present, having sent their apologies.

“I’m Sir Thomas Kydd, late of
L’Aurore
frigate,” Kydd began. There was little change in their expressions but he knew what they were thinking: what was a knighted sea-hero so lately in the public eye doing in a contemptible mutiny ship?

“I’m sent here on short notice to relieve Captain Parker.”

They listened in watchful silence.

“I know of this ship’s past. Mutiny. I don’t care about the details. I don’t want to know about it. There’s only one thing I care for—that
Tyger
is restored to the fleet as a fighting frigate and in the shortest possible time. Is that clear?”

There were indistinct murmurs.

“I’ll not accept anything less than your full duty to that end.”

He paused significantly. “Their lordships have done me the honour of allowing me to name my officers. That’s as may be, but know thereby that if there are any who fail me, I swear I’ll have them turned out of the ship directly.”