Kydd Read online

  What was so hard to bear was that he had involved Renzi, who sat in irons uncomplaining next to him. Kydd sank into a quiet misery.

  Early the next morning the Master-at-Arms appeared. “Up!” he said.

  Shackles were removed, manacles went on their wrists and they were led up to the upper deck — for exercise, Kydd assumed.

  On the quarterdeck the Captain and Tyrell were waiting.

  The Master-at-Arms saluted. “Prisoners mustered, sir!” His pig eyes swiveled curiously to Kydd.

  Caldwell nodded and stepped forward. “You see there, Kydd,” he said, gesturing over to leeward.

  No more than a few cables off lay Artemis, the legendary crack frigate. She kept up lazily with the big battleship, effortlessly slicing through the water. She looked impossibly lovely-as new as Duke William was old, smart as paint and with fresh white sails, gold leaf gleaming on her scrollwork; she was an ocean racer, a lucky ship that had already made her daring captain a rich man.

  Kydd turned his dull eyes back to the Captain. “Sir?”

  “She has signaled us.”

  Kydd wondered what on earth this had to do with him.

  “Artemis has prize crews away — she has signaled us to the effect that she would be grateful if we could spare a dozen seamen. I have answered that we can.

  “Master-at-Arms, remove the gyves. These men are going to Artemis — thoroughly bad lot, glad to be rid of ’em!

  “We’d better get rid of their associates as well. They’d be of like mind, I’ll wager.”

  Dumbfounded, Kydd allowed his fetters to be struck off.

  Captain Caldwell continued, “The boatswain has explained to me what happened. It seems that unfortunately we left you behind in the hold when the brig sailed. My apologies.”

  “Then th’ prize money, sir?” Kydd said, greatly daring.

  “Let’s leave it at that, shall we?” Caldwell said smoothly. “Get your dunnage, and let me know who your accomplices are — they will be going with you.”

  Kydd and Renzi exchanged a quick expression of wild hope. Tyrell stormed forward, confronting the pair, but Caldwell gestured, placating. “Thank you, Mr. Tyrell. Kindly prepare to be under way in fifteen minutes, will you?

  “Now, Kydd, you go as a volunteer and able seaman according to the books — but let me warn you” — the Captain’s expression softened to a half-smile —“you’ll find life in a frigate just a little bit different from that in a ship-of-the-line!”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  * * *

  Kydd is based on real life. I feel that I would devalue what the eighteenth-century seaman really achieved were I to exaggerate or distort facts for the sake of drama — for me, a particularly odious form of betrayal. Therefore, all the major actions and most of the minor are as close as I can make them to the real thing. I have pondered this matter hard and have come to the conclusion that it is acceptable as a working principle to keep to what actually happened, but for the sake of narrative flow, in some cases, vary the time when it happened. For instance, Admiral Howe’s ships did not venture for France until some time after I say — I did not want to have Kydd start his sea adventures in a ship that first swings around its anchor for several months. My ships are actual vessels of the times; I have changed the names only. Engagements are based on real actions of the time with some variation in the time or place described.

  As for Thomas Kydd — in the circumscribed world of eighteenth-century society, there were those fortunate enough to be well-born, and there were the lower orders who knew their place and in the main accepted it. Yet in the twenty-two years of warfare at the end of the century, a total of 120 men crossed from the fo’c’sle to the quarterdeck through their own exceptional merit, passing thereby from common seaman to gentleman. They include Lieutenant Pasco, who was signal officer at Trafalgar and who famously amended Nelson’s immortal signal “England expects every man to do his duty,” and also Nelson’s own first lieutenant of Victory, a pressed man like Kydd. And of these, twenty-two went on to become captain of their own ship, and three ended as admiral!

  These men must have been titans — hard minded, iron willed and utterly resolute — but little is known of them, for none left an autobiog raphy, with the single exception of Bligh, who for all his faults went on to fight like a tiger as captain of a ship-of-the-line at Camperdown and for Nelson at the bloody battle of Copenhagen.

  Today it is hard to get a focus on such men. The distorting lens of Victorian sentimentality gradually changed public perceptions of the sailor to one of Jolly Jack Tar, an object of patronized quaintness. The eighteenth-century seamen were hard men who lived a hard life, and it is equally nonsense to think they were the dregs of humanity, as some more modern writers would have it. The mighty ship-of-the-line was as complex in its day as a moon rocket today. Most seamen were proud, self-sufficient and resourceful men sharing a remarkable culture, but they were not articulate. This book is my tribute to those who became masters of the sea in the greatest age of fighting sail.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  * * *

  Writing one’s first book is an adventure, but a perilous one — necessarily trusting untried skills and sailing into uncharted waters with no certainty that there will be a successful outcome to the voyage.

  I count myself blessed by the help I have received from others in this odyssey, the chief of whom is certainly my wife, Kathy. She persuaded me to set forth, and her sureness of touch and unwavering vision have kept me from the doldrums of self-doubt and the rocks of ill-practice.

  I readily acknowledge the debt I owe to the staff at the National Maritime Museum and the Public Records Office at Kew, the excellent services of the Society for Nautical Research and the Navy Records Society, and to that band of people on both sides of the Atlantic who have patiently distilled the overwhelming range of primary sources into a coherent, usable and fascinating account of this heroic period. I think particularly of Nicholas Rodger, Brian Lavery, John Harland, Peter Goodwin and Karl Heinz Marquardt, and others who are no longer with us — David Lyon, Christopher Lloyd, Michael Lewis — and William Falconer (lost at sea 1770), whose warmth and humanity transcended his century.

  And, of course, the professionals: professor of eighteenth-century studies Jack Lynch; my literary agent, Stuart Krichevsky; marine artist Geoff Hunt; and finally my publisher, Scribner.