Invasion Page 11

  The prame wheeled about on its tormentor and Teazer pulled into the clouds of powder-smoke rolling downwind from the two. Suddenly, with a hideous splintering crash, they were careering along the side of a ship—timbers smashing to wreckage, sails snatched and torn away, ropes parting with a vicious twang in a long agony of collision.

  They stopped, two ships locked together in a hideous tangle and, for a moment, a shocked quiet descended. “It’s a Frenchy!” someone screamed, and broke the spell. Kydd fought to keep cool: this was an enemy and it was bigger than Teazer . “Teazers t’ board!” he yelled. “T’ me, the boarders!” He whipped out his precious fighting sword and leaped on to the enemy deck where Teazer’s bulwarks had been beaten flat.

  The French gun crews gaped at him, caught off-balance and dazed by the sudden turn of events. The first to recover was a dark-featured officer with a red sash who snarled in anger and rushed at him, swinging a massive sword. Kydd dropped to one knee with his own blade above his head. The weapons met in a clash, the shock numbing his arm, but his fine Toledo steel held and deflected the blow to one side.

  He let the stroke spend itself and, with a dextrous twist, got inside it and thrust out savagely, taking the man in the lower body. With a howl of anguish he dropped his sword and clutched at the skewering blade, then crumpled, knocking Kydd sprawling and tearing it from his grasp.

  The Teazer gun crews had snatched up rammers, tomahawks, anything to hand and were racing toward the unarmed Kydd. With an urgent thump on the deck, Renzi arrived first, taking position over Kydd with a boarding pike out-thrust, its lethal point questing for the first to dare an assault.

  The Teazers soon had their bridgehead; the disorganised gun crews saw no chance against fully equipped boarders and skidded to a stop. The rush turned to a rout.

  More Teazers arrived and the ship was theirs. Trembling with reaction to the near-disaster, Kydd sent parties to secure the vessel and looked about the battlefield. The action had moved away from them: the flotilla was doggedly pressing on towards Calais, and the English, firing wildly, were staying with them.

  He looked across at Teazer . The wreckage seemed confined to the bulwarks and fore-shroud channels but there was a trail of dismounted guns and, at more than one spot, the dark staining of blood on the decking.

  Purchet loped up and reported, “Spars still sound, sir, but th’ standin’ rigging t’ larb’d is in a sad moil.”

  “Get us free, quick as y’ like, Mr. Purchet. Stoppers and doubling— anything as’ll see us under canvas again.”

  He looked out at the broader battle scene. Actaeon was beset by four large sloops and nearly hidden by towering clouds of powder-smoke but gun-flashes regularly stabbed through from her and, as Kydd watched, a mast on one of the sloops descended and the damaged vessel fell away.

  The enemy did not seem inclined to pay attention to the two vessels locked together so they had a chance. The Royal Marines took charge of prisoners while the entire seaman complement of Teazer swarmed over the rigging aloft, passing stoppers that joined the severed ends of ropes and adding relieving tackles to weakened sections.

  When it was complete Kydd sent Hallum to limp back in the prize while he considered the state of Teazer . At a pinch they could keep to the wind, particularly running large as the flotilla was doing, but effectively they had lost all except one of the larboard guns and were open to the weather and small-arms fire along that side. And they had numbers away as prize-crew.

  Kydd watched the receding battle. He had been shaken by the savagery of the fighting, the desperate flinging of their force into the midst of the armada. And the French were far from running: they were staying together to brute it through and add this huge number of invasion craft to their concentrations.

  There was no alternative but to do his duty. With Kydd warily keeping an eye on the makeshift repairs aloft, Teazer set out after them but well before they were able to overhaul the rear the enemy entered Calais roads and the unassailable shelter of the fortress batteries.

  Regrouping beyond the treacherous offshore ground of the Ridens de la Rade the flying squadron hove to; it seemed that the Franco-Batavian flotilla had indeed won precious miles from Dunkirk towards their eventual destination, Boulogne, and all the squadron could now do was to leave a pair of watching cutters and return to the Downs.

  Yet within the hour there was movement: incredibly the flotilla was putting out once more. It was no feint: the canny Dutch commander had merely added to their number by drawing in those who had sheltered in the port earlier. Now nearly a hundred sail were issuing out, steadily heading south-west.

  It was an audacious and cynical move: they had no doubt reasoned that while the English were occupied in their butchery of the unfortunates, there would be left many more to plough on regardless and make their destination. The simple outworking of time and numbers would ensure that by far the majority survived.

  It was still before noon when heavy guns thundered out from the great citadel and no less than five forts. Falling back but warily pacing with them out to seaward, the squadron waited until the strung-out flotilla was clear of the port and its defences, then one by one selected a victim and once more sailed in to close with the enemy.

  Teazer was no longer in the best shape for another deadly action but the stakes were extreme. Therefore, with torn sails and trailing ropes, she set her bowsprit resolutely at the foe—three of the flat-bottomed bateaux canonnières, equipped with a stern ramp to take on even field guns and horses. These were therefore of prime value to Bonaparte and worth any sacrifice.

  At this point, with fewer sandbanks, the immense sea cavalcade huddled close inshore. It seemed incongruous to join battle before the mussel beds and lowly dunes, and with no larboard guns Teazer must work some miracle to come inside them to fight.

  But as she made her approach guns opened up—guns that had no right to be there. Shot tore up the sea all around and two heavy thumps told of hits—but from where?

  Through his telescope Kydd saw troops of horse artillery cantering up, unlimbering their field guns on the crest of the dunes and blazing away. It was an intelligent use of the immense military machine being assembled but it would only serve while they were close in with the land. Beyond the range of the fortress on the heights of Cap Blanc Nez there were devilish offshore hazards, which the French called “The Barrier,” that would force the armada miles out to sea.

  The guns ashore fell silent as the range widened and the predators closed in. It was close, vicious and bloody work—the invasion flotilla must be stopped and nothing would be spared. The first bateau dug in its steering oar and slewed around at Teazer— a field artillery piece was tied down with ropes on its clumsy foredeck but when it fired, the ball reduced Teazer’s quarterdeck rail to flying splinters, and ended the life of the lively and willing Philipon, an able seaman who had been with them since the Channel Islands.

  It was an heroic act by the Frenchman for they could not reload the piece: they must wait while Teazer stood off and destroyed them—except that her own guns on that side were useless. The two vessels faced each other defiantly but impotently until Kydd took his ship under the stern of the other and crushed the little craft with a single broadside.

  The next bateau sheered away cravenly inshore, taking the ground a full mile out in a shuddering stop, the shock canting the long vessel’s bow skyward. Tumbling over the side in a panic-stricken flight the crew stumbled away.

  A chaloupe appeared from the smoke, her eighteen-pounders opening on Teazer as soon as she appeared. The shots went wild and it disappeared as quickly as did the bateau they had been ready to engage.

  The din and acrid reek of powder-smoke drove in on Kydd— where was the next target? For a short time he could see Locust hammering away frantically at two chaloupes assaulting her but there was nothing Kydd could do for them and smoke drifted across to hide the scene.

  An unknown vessel lay stopped ahead, only a single mast left standing
. Men swarmed over the wreckage like ants—was it Bruiser? They had to take their chances for Kydd’s duty was to engage the flotilla and there inshore was another bateau canonnière— but beyond lay the dour heights of Cap Gris Nez.

  As if to mark the invisible boundary that had been crossed, a plume of water shot up—and another, and more as the ball skipped towards them. It was from the heavy guns on the dark heights of the iconic headland, and the mass of sails quickly converged on its deep-water flanks—it was now all but over.

  Held off by the formidable ring of iron, the flying squadron stayed out of range but kept with the armada as it rounded the cape and, with the last of the tide, passed into the safety of the harbours of Ambleteuse and Wimereux, their goal of Boulogne just six miles further on.

  It was not yet noon on a beautiful early-summer’s day: from first to last the action had taken just a few hours, but now it was time to leave.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE SUMMER SUN WAS HIGH in the sky when HMS Teazer made her way home with the others to find her anchor buoy and pick up her moorings once again. It was still warm and beneficent when Kydd returned to his ship after an immediate conference aboard Actaeon .

  Teazer was to be stood down from the flying squadron due to battle-damage—much of her larboard bulwarks beaten flat and guns dismounted—and it would be several weeks before she could look to active service again.

  Kydd felt the need to stay on deck in the brightness of the day, with the pleasant sight of the town and its bustle, the constant to-and-froing of scores of ships about their occasions—reality, normality. But a captain could not idly pace among the men as they worked. Reluctantly, he went to his cabin and found Renzi at the table scratching away at papers, the interminable loose ends after any scene of combat.

  “A hot action,” he said, looking up.

  “Yes,” Kydd muttered, slumping into his chair. Only that morning his ship had been plunged into a desperate fight for survival and here she was, an hour or two later, battered and sore but lying to single anchor in sun-kissed tranquillity.

  Seeing Kydd’s drawn face, Renzi laid down his pen.

  Kydd went on sombrely, “As it was necessary, m’ friend.” The sheer savagery of the encounter and the seemingly unstoppable determination of the vessels assembled for their grand enterprise had unnerved him. He had also found himself quite affected by the death of young Philipon, a gay, laughing soul now removed from the world of men, and by the sight of Locust’s pinnace on its way past them to land the pitiful figure of her captain, writhing under a blanket and mortally wounded. Later, no doubt, others from the naval hospital would be making their last journey on earth to the austere St. George’s church in Deal.

  “‘. . . these are times to try men’s souls—but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of men and women . . .’” Renzi murmured.

  “What?” said Kydd, distracted.

  “Oh, naught but the rantings of an unfashionable rogue of fevered times now past.”

  Kydd sighed. “Who is your philosopher, then, Renzi?”

  “His name, you may have heard it, Tom Paine.”

  Kydd allowed a twisted smile. He had borne the name of the revolutionary since birth, his parents having once heard the great man speak and been caught up in the fiery rhetoric. “So the villain can conjure some right words, I’m to say.” He sighed heavily. “But its hard t’ take. After as grim a fight as ever we’ve been in, what’ve we won? Naught but a handful o’ Boney’s flotilla. They say that, with this last, he’s now above one thousand craft near Boulogne.” So many vessels with but one purpose—and he had seen for himself how powerless they had been against mere scores.

  “Mr. Hallum, I’ve a yen to step ashore. The ship is yours.” Kydd picked up his walking cane and clapped on his tall yellow beaver. Renzi was delayed with ship’s business and, anyway, he felt the need to walk alone, to let the calm tranquillity of the land work on his soul.

  With a lazy surf hissing in the shingle, he was carried ashore safe and dry by his boat’s crew. To the left was the King’s Naval Yard, with its Admiralty telegraph to London even now clattering away, and the smoky fumes of the smithy spiralling up behind the high wall.

  To the right, a long street faced the beach, the inns and taverns giving way to substantial buildings further on and the bright, hazy prospect of Pegwell Bay in the distance. Kydd struck out briskly, nodding to passing gentlemen and doffing his hat politely to promenading ladies, no doubt passengers from the Indiaman anchored offshore.

  He turned inland towards the town proper, entering Middle Street: here, there were courts and passageways with cobbled streets and rich merchants’ houses. He strolled on to High Street, with its bustling shops and markets, and his eyes caught a placard in one window:

  . . . And our brave Sons invite the foe to come;

  For they remember Acre’s valiant fight,

  When Britons put the vaunting Gaul to flight;

  Remembering too, Nile’s Battle . . .

  He had been at both and felt a stab of pride. Then he noticed a recruiting poster:

  Brave Soldiers! Defenders of YOUR COUNTRY! The road to glory is open before you—Pursue the great career of your Forefathers, and rival them in the field of honour. A proud and usurping TYRANT (a name ever execrated by Englishmen) dares to threaten our shores with INVASION, and to reduce the free-born Sons of Britain to SLAVERY. . . The Briton fights for his Liberty and Rights, the Frenchman for Buonaparte who has robbed him of both!

  There was a hard gaiety on the air: women sported martial cock-ades and children strutted about, every gentleman wore his sword. The markets were thronged, and the street cries, as lusty as ever, suggested that none in this town was about to be affected by the awful forces gathering just a few leagues across the water.

  The cheerful hustle lifted his spirits. Restored, he threw a coin to a begging child and returned to the seafront. The view from the shore was impressive: the crowding ships in the Downs and, just visible on the horizon, a sable-brown line that was the Goodwin Sands.

  Reluctant to quit his view of the sea he strolled along in the warm sunshine and pondered the peculiar difference to be had in perspectives of it: from the rock-still shore, the land-bound saw the line of white waves acting as a boundary between the two worlds, and beyond, the sea’s mystery, with ships disappearing so quickly from man’s ken over the horizon to far and unknowable regions.

  A sailor’s prospect, however, was of being borne along on a constantly moving live quintessence without limit, the land an occasional encounter in the endless oceanic immensity.

  His steps took him past the King’s Naval Yard and on to Deal Castle. Part of a coastal chain put in place by Henry VIII, under much the same invasion threat, the battlements were small, round and squat. They were from an era when cannon had been changing the rules of war but even today they were manned by redcoats and ready for service.

  At the top of the shingle, scores of Deal luggers were drawn up before humble cottages and huts, each of which had a capstan to the front with men working on them or just sitting in the sun with a comfortable pipe and baccy. Kydd wandered up. Every tiny sea-place on England’s coasts had its own peculiarities and he was curious to see how the unusual steep shingle landings had influenced the boats’ construction.

  They were all substantial craft, few less than forty feet long and fifteen broad, long-yarded with a square-headed dipping lug sail and handy mizzen, and remarkably high-waisted. Most had an iron skeg with an eye at the turn of the forefoot to assist in hauling up, and all were bright-sided, the varnish work on them as winsome as a new-fallen horse chestnut.

  Eyes turned suspiciously on Kydd as he crunched through the shingle to take in the bluff lines of one, the Kentish Maid. He bent double to catch the rise of bilge. As he suspected, the high gunwale was matched by a broad, flat bottom, ideally suited to coming ashore on a steep beach in anything of a sea.

  He peeped over the gunwale. It was simply equip
ped with a small shelter forepeak; it was easy to sense great strength. The boat stank richly of its sea gear. Caressing the sturdy sides in admiration he was startled when a shrill voice challenged him. “Oi! Th’ young man yonder! I seen ye—what are y’ doing wi’ that boat?”

  A wizened but bright-eyed old man sitting on a pair of shipwreck timbers shook a knobby stick at him. Kydd chuckled and went over to him. “Why, sir, I’m taking m’ pleasure in the sight of as fine a barky as ever I’ve seen. Elm-built, is she?”

  The man squinted at him. “Then who are ye, then?”

  “M’ name is Thomas Kydd. May I know . . . ?”

  “Tickle—William Tickle—an’ ye hasn’t said as why ye’re so taken wi’ th’ Maid .”

  Kydd had passed an ancient tap-house on the way. “Sir, if you’d tell me more o’ these I’d be honoured t’ stand you a glass o’ the true sort in the tavern.”

  “No.”

  “Well—”

  “I likes th’ prospects here,” Tickle said, waving his stick at the boats drawn up. “Go to y’ tavern an’ get me a jorum of ale an’ I’ll tell ye all there is t’ know.”

  Kydd returned with a potboy and, leather tankards a-flow with dark beer, he learned from the Deal boatman.

  “A hard life, t’ be sure,” Tickle began. “Hovellin’ an’ foyin’ is all we got, isn’t it? That an’ the other.”

  “The other?”

  “Gift o’ the sea. Free tradin’, like.”

  Smuggling.

  “Er, tell me of your foying, Mr. Tickle.”

  “Aye, well, it’s naught but plyin’ for trade wi’ the merchant jacks out in th’ Roads as wants fresh wegetables, dry provisions, y’ knows.”

  Kydd nodded. There would be many a blue-water merchantman inbound from a lengthy voyage who would be more than willing to pay over the odds for fresh victuals.