beat of hammers, and the occasional squeak of blocks as some item of rigging was hauled aloft to the upper yards. When he looked up, it was uncanny: the topmasts and topgallant spars were completely cut off by the fog, as if the frigate Indomitable had been dismasted in some phantom engagement.
He shivered, hating the climate, too used perhaps to the African sun and the south’s clear blue horizons.
He stopped by the empty hammock nettings and peered down at the water alongside. Lighters were moored there, and other boats were pulling this way and that like water-beetles, vanishing and reappearing suddenly in the mist.
This was Halifax, Nova Scotia. A busy and vital seaport, and a pleasant-looking town, from the little he had seen of it. He touched the nettings, like cold metal on this dismal day. But not for long, he told himself. Very soon this work would be completed, which, considering the winter’s bitter weather and the needs of all the other men- of-war sheltering here, was a record of which to be proud. Six months had passed since they had entered harbour after the savage battle with the two American frigates. The largest prize, Unity, had already left for England, and would be receiving all the attention she required. She had been so badly mauled that he doubted she would have survived the long Atlantic crossing if her pumps had not been kept going throughout every watch.
He gritted his teeth to prevent them from chattering. Some captains would have donned a thick boat-cloak to keep out the cold. James Tyacke did not entertain the idea. Indomitable ’s company had to work as best they could in their usual clothing, and he did not believe that he should take advantage of his rank. It was not some facile act to impress the men. It was merely Tyacke’s way.
Like the empty nettings. Ordinarily, when the hands were piped to show a leg and make ready for another working day in harbour, the hammocks were neatly stowed there, and kept in the nettings during the day: when the ship was called to battle they offered the only protection from flying splinters for the helmsmen and officers on the quarterdeck. But life was hard enough in a King’s ship, Tyacke thought, and here, when the only heating throughout Indomitable’s impressive one hundred and eighty feet was the galley stove, wet hammocks at the end of the day would have made things even more uncomfortable.
Figures loomed and faded in the mist, officers waiting to ask him questions, others wanting final instructions before they were pulled ashore to collect the quantities of stores and supplies required by this ship-of-war. My ship. But the satisfaction would not come, and the pride he occasionally allowed himself to feel kept its distance.
It was March, 1813. He stared along the deck. It was impossible to believe that next month he would have been in command of Indomitable for two whole years. What next? Where bound, and to what end? Indomitable was more powerful than most of her class. Built as a third-rate, a ship of the line, she had been cut down to perform the role of a heavily-armed frigate, and as she had proved in September when she had stood alongside the USS Unity, she was more than a match for the superior American firepower with her forty 24-pounders and four 18-pounders, as well as the other weapons she carried.
Surrounded by busy seamen whom he could barely see, Tyacke continued his walk, his forenoon solitude respected. He smiled briefly. It had not been easy, but he had welded them into one company. They had cursed him, feared him, hated him, but that was in the past.
The lessons had been learned. He looked down at the wet deck planking. They had paid for it, too. When the mist cleared as Isaac York, the sailing-master, had claimed it would, the repairs and replaced planks and timbers would be visible despite the caulking and the tar, the fresh paint and the varnish. Men had died aplenty that day in September. Matthew Scarlett, the first lieutenant, impaled on a boarding-pike, his last scream lost in the yells and the fury, the clash of steel and the crash of gunfire. Ships fighting, men dying, many of whom had probably already been forgotten by those who had once known them. And just there… he glanced at a newly painted shot-garland, Midshipman Deane, hardly more than a child, had been pulped into nothing by one of Unity’s massive balls. And all the while the admiral and his tall flag lieutenant had walked the scarred deck, allowing themselves to be seen by the men who, because of pressgang or patriotism, were fighting for their lives, for the ship. He smiled again. And, of course, for their captain, although he would never regard it in that light.
Tyacke had always hated the thought of serving in a major war vessel, let alone one that wore an admiral’s flag. Bolitho had changed that. And strangely, in his absence, without the admiral’s flag at the mainmast truck, Tyacke felt no sense of independence or freedom. Being forced to remain in harbour undergoing repairs while they awaited orders had merely increased his feeling of confinement. Tyacke loved the open sea: more than most, he needed it. He touched the right side of his face and saw it in his mind as he did when he shaved every morning. Scored away, burned, like something inhuman. How his eye had survived was a mystery.
He thought again of those who had fallen here, not least the one-legged cook named Troughton. He could recall the moment when he had assumed command of Indomitable, his stomach knotted with nerves as he had prepared to read himself in to the assembled company. He had forced himself to accept the stares and the pity in his previous command, the brig Larne. Small, intimate, with every hand dependent on the others, she had been his life. Bolitho himself had once referred to her as the loneliest command imaginable. He had understood that solitude was what Tyacke needed more than anything.
He had known that first day aboard Indomitable that those who had waited in the silence for him were undoubtedly more worried about their new captain’s character than his disfigurement: he was, after all, the lord and master who could make or break any one of them as he chose. It had not made his ordeal easier, starting again under the eyes of strangers, in what had seemed a vast ship after Larne. A company of two hundred seventy officers, seamen and Royal Marines: a world of difference.
One man had made it possible for him: Troughton. Indomitable ’s company had watched in disbelief as their new and hideously scarred captain had embraced the man, who had been crippled by the same broadside that had burst in on Tyacke’s yelling, sweating gun crews, at what they now called the Battle of the Nile. Troughton had been a young seaman then. Tyacke had always believed him dead, as most of those around him had died when his world had exploded, and left him as he was now.
Now even Troughton was gone. Tyacke had not known until two days after the fight with the Americans. He did not even know where he had come from, or if there was anyone to mourn him.
He felt a slight movement against his cheek, the wind returning. York might be proved right yet again. He was fortunate to have such a sailing-master: York had served as master’s mate in this ship, and had won promotion in the only way Tyacke truly respected, through skill and experience.
So the fog would clear, and they would see the harbour once more, the ships and the town, and the well-sited central battery that would repulse any attempt, even by the most foolhardy commander, to cut out an anchored merchantman or some of the American prizes which had been brought here.
Forlorn, and in much the same condition as she had been after the battle, the American frigate Baltimore was beyond recovery. Perhaps she would be used as a hulk or stores vessel. But isolated and partly aground as she was now, she was a constant reminder of the day when America ’s superior frigates had been challenged and beaten.
Sir Richard Bolitho would be back soon. Tyacke hesitated in his regular pacing. Suppose he was directed elsewhere? The Admiralty was never averse to changing its collective mind. In despatches brought by the last courier brig Tyacke had been warned of Valentine Keen’s impending arrival in Halifax: he would hoist his flag in Valkyrie, another converted two-decker like Indomitable, with Adam Bolitho as his flag captain. It was still hard to fathom why he would want to come back to these waters. Tyacke was acquainted with Keen, and had attended his wedding, but he did not consider that he knew him as a man. This would be his first command as a flag officer: he might be out for glory. And he had recently lost both wife and child. Tyacke touched his burned face again. It could scar a man more deeply than others might realize.
He saw a guard-boat pulling abeam, the armed marines straightening their backs in the stern sheets as Indomitable took shape above them through the thinning fog.
He returned his mind to the Valkyrie, still invisible in the misty harbour. Peter Dawes was her present captain, and acting commodore until Keen’s arrival: he was a post-captain, young, approachable, competent. But there were limits. Dawes was an admiral’s son, and it was rumoured that he would be raised to flag rank as soon as he was replaced here. Tyacke had always nursed doubts about him, and had told Bolitho openly that Dawes might prove reluctant to risk his reputation and the prospect of promotion when they most needed his support. It was all written in the log now: history. They had fought and won on that terrible day. Tyacke could recall his own fury and despair: he had picked up a discarded boarding-axe and had smashed it into one of Unity’s ladders. His own words still came in the night to mock him. And for what?
He knew Bolitho had warned others about the difference. This was not a foreign enemy, no matter what the
