A King's Cutter

forenoon Trollope's detachment rejoined their admiral. Duncan's ships were indifferent sailors and he had neither time nor inclination to form line. De Winter's fleet was dropping to leeward into shoal water by the minute and the old admiral accepted their formal challenge with alacrity. Duncan hoisted the signal for 'general chase' and the British, grouped together into two loose divisions, Duncan's to the north and Onslow's slightly advanced to the south, bore down on the Dutch.

The increase in the westerly wind with its damp air had brought about a thickening of the atmosphere and the battle that was now inevitable seemed to be marred by disorder amongst the British ships. Just before noon Duncan signalled that his intention was to pass through the enemy line and engage from leeward, thus denying the Dutch escape and ensuring all the windward batteries of the British ships could be used. The signal was repeated by the frigates and cutters. At noon they hoisted that for close action.

Thirty minutes later Onslow's Monarch opened the action by cutting off De Winter's rear between the Jupiter and Harlem, ranging up alongside the former, raked by the heavy frigate Monikendaam and the brig Atalanta forming a secondary line to leeward of the Dutch battleships. Amid a thunder of guns the battle of Camperdown had begun.

Kestrel, in common with the other cutters as a repeating vessel, was not a target. Stray shot might hit her but in general the conventions of a fleet action were observed. The British cutters and Dutch yachts were expected to render assistance to the wounded where they could be found clinging to fallen spars and continue to repeat their admirals' signals. Kestrel had formed part of Onslow's division and Drinkwater found himself in a confusing world of screaming shot, choppy seas and a strong wind. Smoke and mist enveloped the combatants as gun flashes began to eclipse the dull daylight.

Within minutes Drinkwater had lost sight of Monarch behind the Dutch line and he altered to the north to maintain contact with Russell, but Trollope, too, cut through the line and Kestrel found herself passing under the stern of the Dutch seventy- four Brutus, bearing the flag of a rear-admiral at her mizen.

Through the rolling clouds of smoke a brig was seen to leeward and her commander did not extend the courtesy or disdain of his bigger consorts. Shot whistled about Kestrel and a shower of lancing splinters from the starboard rail sent one man hopping bloodily below in agony to where Appleby had his gruesome instruments laid out on the cabin table.

'Down helm!' roared Drinkwater, his eyes gleaming with concentration now the final, cathartic moment of action had arrived. 'Haul the sheets there!' the cutter bore away from her overlarge opponent and headed north, passing Brutus as the latter turned to assist De Winter ahead, now being pressed by several British ships tearing pell-mell into battle.

Suddenly ahead of them loomed a Dutch sixty-four, fallen out of line with her colours struck. For a moment Drinkwater contemplated putting a prize crew on board for it seemed unlikely that her antagonist, Triumph, engaged to larboard by a frigate and the seventy-four Staten General, had had the opportunity. But a sudden crash shook the cutter. One of the crew of Number 12 gun fell dead, cut clean in half by a ball that destroyed the jolly boat and the handsome taffrail. The brig which had fired on them had set her topgallants and was coming up fast in pursuit.

Drinkwater looked wildly round him. 'Down helm! Harden in those sheets there, put her on the wind, full and bye! Down centre plates! And throw that,' he indicated the faintly twitching lumps that a moment before had been a living man, 'overboard, for God's sake!'

Kestrel pointed up into the wind, escaping as she had done off Ushant, heeling to the hardening of her sails. Spray whipped over the rail and tore aft. Drinkwater looked astern.

'Well I'm damned,' he said aloud and beside him Hill whistled. The brig, unable to continue the chase so close to the wind, had come up with her consort, the surrendered sixty-four Wassanaer. Seeing her shameful plight the brig opened fire into her. In a few moments the Dutch tricolour jerked aloft again and snapped out in the wind.

'This ain't like fighting the Frogs, Mr Drinkwater. Look, there's hardly a mast down, these bloody squareheads know how to fight by Jesus… The bastards are hulling us. Christ! There'll be a butcher's bill after this lot…'

Russell loomed up ahead and Kestrel wore round in her wake.

'Ahead of you, sir,' Drinkwater bellowed through the speaking trumpet, 'a seventy-four. Yours for the taking…' He saw Trollope wave acknowledgement.

For a moment or two they kept pace with the battleship, huge, majestic and deadly, as she ran down her quarry. Her sides were already scarred by shot, several of which could be clearly seen embedded in her strakes. Seamen grinned at them from a jagged hole where adjacent gunports had been amalgamated. Thin streaks of blood ran down her sides.

'Spill some wind, Mr Hill. We'll drop astern.' Russell drew ahead, driving off the brig with one, apocalyptic broadside. Wassanaer surrendered again.

Kestrel crossed Russell's wake. To larboard two or three ships lay rolling, locked in a death struggle. One was the Staten General.

Suddenly, from behind the hard-pressed Dutchman, leapt a small but familiar vessel. Her bowsprit stabbed at the sky as her helm was put over and her course steadied to intercept the British cutter. At her masthead flew the black swallowtail pendant.

Drinkwater had no idea how Santhonax had persuaded De Winter to allow him the use of the yacht. She flew the Dutch tricolour from her peak but there was no mistaking the significance of that sinister weft at the masthead. Drinkwater thought of the corpse of Major Brown, of the hanged mutineers of the Culloden, of the scapegoats of the Nore and of the collusion between Capitaine Santhonax and the red-haired witch now in Maidstone Gaol. He was filled with a cold and ruthless anger.

'Larboard battery make ready!'

The yacht was on the larboard bow, broad-reaching to the northeast and closing them. For a few minutes they both ran on, lessening the range.

'Ease her off a point,' then in a louder voice, 'fire when you bear, Mr Bulman!'

Almost immediately the first report came from forward and Number 2 gun recoiled inboard, its crew fussing about it reloading. A ragged cheer broke from the Kestrels as they opened a rolling fire. Holes appeared in the yacht's sails. She was trying to cross Kestrel's bow to rake and Drinkwater had a sudden idea.

'Down helm! Headsail sheets! Hard on the wind!' Kestrel turned, presenting her bow for the raking broadside but at a time of her own choosing and too quickly for Santhonax to take full advantage. Only two balls from his broadside came near and they struck harmless splinters from the starboard gig. 'Starboard guns! Starboard guns!'

Traveller held his hand up in acknowledgement, as if coolly assuring his commander that no last minute manoeuvre would rob Jeremy Traveller of his moment. He had all the quoins out and the guns at full elevation as they made to cross the yacht's stern.

But Santhonax rose to the occasion. The yacht turned now, spinning to starboard so that the two vessels passed on opposite courses at a combined speed of nearly twenty knots. Doggedly they fired gun for gun, time permitting them one shot from each as they raced past. Drinkwater saw huge sections of the yacht's rail shivered into splinters. Jeremy Traveller had double shotted his guns.

Then the whine of shot, the impact, thumps and screams of the yacht's fire turned Kestrel's deck into a shambles of wounded and dead men who fell back from their cannon. Aft, Drinkwater laid his pistol at a tall man near the yacht's tiller and squeezed the trigger. The ball missed its mark and the fellow coolly raised his hat and smiled. Drinkwater swore but he was cold as ice now, lifted on to a terrible, calculating plane that was beyond fear. He had surrendered to providence now, was a hostage to the capricious fortune of war and had long forgotten his earnest promises to Elizabeth. Elizabeth was of another world that had no part in this dull and terrible October afternoon. For this was not the Nathaniel known to Elizabeth, this was a man who had taken the French lugger and quelled incipient mutiny. This was an intelligent man butchering his fellows, and doing it with consummate ability.