Second to None Read online

  CONTENTS

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Chronology

  Also by Alexander Kent

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  1. A Hero Remembered

  2. No Longer a Stranger

  3. A Matter of Pride

  4. New Beginning

  5. A Contest

  6. None Braver

  7. A Bad Ship

  8. No Escape

  9. Luckier Than Most

  10. Captain to Captain

  11. The Last Farewell

  12. Aftermath

  13. Envy

  14. Destiny

  15. Close Action

  16. In Good Hands

  17. The Family

  18. Of One Company

  19 ‘Trust Me . . .’

  Copyright

  About the Book

  June 1815

  On the eve of Waterloo, a sense of finality and cautious hope pervade a nation wearied by decades of war. But peace will present its own challenge to Adam Bolitho, captain of His Majesty’s Ship Unrivalled, as many of his contemporaries face the prospect of discharge.

  The life of a frigate captain is always lonely, but for Adam, mourning the death of his uncle Admiral Sir Richard Bolitho, that solitude acquires a deeper poignancy. He is, more than ever, alone, at the dawning of a new age for the Royal Navy, where the only constants are the sea and those enemies, often masked in the guise of friendship, who conspire to destroy him.

  About the Author

  Alexander Kent is the author of twenty-seven acclaimed books featuring Richard Bolitho. Under his own name, Douglas Reeman, and in the course of a career spanning forty-five years, he has written over thirty novels and two non-fiction books.

  The stirring story of the life and times of Richard Bolitho is told in Alexander Kent’s bestselling novels.

  1756 Born Falmouth, son of James Bolitho

  1768 Entered the King’s service as a Midshipman on Manxman

  1772 Midshipman, Gorgon (Midshipman Bolitho)

  1774 Promoted Lieutenant, Destiny: Rio and the Caribbean (Stand into Danger)

  1775–7 Lieutenant, Trojan, during the American Revolution. Later appointed prizemaster (In Gallant Company)

  1778 Promoted Commander, Sparrow. Battle of the Chesapeake (Sloop of War)

  1780 Birth of Adam, illegitimate son of Hugh Bolitho and Kerenza Pascoe

  1782 Promoted Captain, Phalarope; West Indies: Battle of Saints (To Glory We Steer)

  1784 Captain, Undine; India and East Indies (Command a King’s Ship)

  1787 Captain, Tempest; Great South Sea; Tahiti; suffered serious fever (Passage to Mutiny)

  1792 Captain, the Nore; Recruiting (With All Depatch)

  1793 Captain, Hyperion; Mediterranean; Bay of Biscay; West Indies. Adam Pascoe, later Bolitho, enters the King’s service as a midshipman aboard Hyperion (Form Line of Battle! And Enemy in Sight)

  1795 Promoted Flag Captain, Euryalus; involved in the Great Mutiny; Mediterranean; Promoted Commodore (The Flag Captain)

  1798 Battle of the Nile (Signal – Close Action!)

  1800 Promoted Rear-Admiral; Baltic; (The Inshore Squadron)

  1801 Biscay. Prisoner of war (A Tradition of Victory)

  1802 Promoted Vice-Admiral; West Indies (Success to the Brave)

  1803 Mediterranean (Colours Aloft!)

  1805 Battle of Trafalgar (Honour This Day)

  1806–7 Good Hope and the second battle of Copenhagen (The Only Victor)

  1808 Shipwrecked off Africa (Beyond the Reef)

  1809–10 Mauritius campaign (The Darkening Sea)

  1812 Promoted Admiral; Second American War (For My Country’s Freedom)

  1814 Defence of Canada (Cross of St. George)

  1815 Richard Bolitho killed in action (Sword of Honour) Adam Bolitho, Captain, Unrivalled. Mediterranean (Second to None)

  1816 Anti-slavery patrols, Sierra Leone. Battle of Algiers (Relentless Pursuit)

  1817 Flag Captain, Athena; Antigua and Caribbean (Man of War)

  1818 Captain, Onward; Mediterranean (Heart of Oak)

  Also by Alexander Kent

  Midshipman Bolitho

  Stand Into Danger

  In Gallant Company

  Sloop of War

  To Glory We Steer

  Command a King’s Ship

  Passage to Mutiny

  With All Despatch

  Form Line of Battle!

  Enemy in Sight

  The Flag Captain

  Signal – Close Action!

  The Inshore Squadron

  A Tradition of Victory

  Success to the Brave

  Colours Aloft!

  Honour This Day

  The Only Victor

  Beyond the Reef

  The Darkening Sea

  For My Country’s Freedom

  Cross of St George

  Sword of Honour

  Relentless Pursuit

  Man of War

  Band of Brothers

  Heart of Oak

  Second to None

  Alexander Kent

  Especially for you, Kim,

  With all my love.

  The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters

  Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

  T. S. ELIOT

  THE MIDSHIPMAN STOOD beneath the cabin skylight, his body accepting the heavy motion of the ship around him. After the cramped quarters of the midshipmen’s berth of the frigate in which he had taken passage from Plymouth, this powerful man-of-war seemed like a rock, and the great stem cabin a palace by comparison.

  It was the anticipation which had sustained him when everything else seemed lost. Hope, despair, even fear had been ready companions until this moment.

  The shipboard sounds were muffled, distant, voices far off and without meaning or purpose. Someone had warned him that joining a ship already in commission was always hard; there would be no friends or familiar faces to ease the jolts and scrapes. And this was to be his first ship.

  It was still impossible to accept that he was here. He moved his head slightly and watched the cabin’s other occupant, who was sitting behind a desk, the document the midshipman had carried so carefully inside his coat to avoid spray from the boat’s oars turned towards the light of the sloping stern windows, and their glittering panorama of sea and sky.

  The captain. The one man upon whom he had placed so much hope; a man he had never met before. His whole body was as taut as a signal halliard, his mouth like dust. It might be nothing. A cruel disappointment, the end of everything.

  He realised with a start that the captain was looking at him, had asked him something. His age?

  ‘Fourteen, sir.’ It did not even sound like his own voice. He saw the captain’s eyes for the first time, more grey than blue, not unlike the sea beyond the spray-dappled windows.

  There were other voices, nearer now. There was no more time.

  Almost desperately he thrust his hand into his coat again, and held out the letter which he had guarded and nursed all the way from Falmouth.

  ‘This is for you, sir. I was told to give it to no one else.’

  He watched the captain slit open the envelope, his expression suddenly guarded. What was he thinking? He wished he had torn it up without even reading it himself.

  He saw the captain’s sun-browned hand tighten suddenly on the letter, so that it shivered in the reflected light. Anger, disapproval, emotion? He no longer knew what to expect. He thought of his mother, only minutes before she had died, thrusting a crumpled paper into his hands. How long ago? Weeks, months? It was like yesterday. An address in Falmouth, some twenty mi
les from Penzance where they had lived. He had walked all the way, his mother’s note his only strength, his guide.

  He heard the captain fold the letter and put it in his pocket. Again, the searching look, but there was no hostility. If anything, there was sadness.

  ‘Your father, boy. What do you know of him?’

  The midshipman faltered, off guard, but when he answered he sensed the change. ‘He was a King’s officer, sir. He was killed by a runaway horse in America.’ He could see his mother in those final moments, holding out her arms to embrace him and then to push him away, before either of them broke down. He continued in the same quiet tone, ‘My mother often described him to me. When she was dying she told me to make my way to Falmouth and seek your family, sir. I – I know my mother never married him, sir. I have always known, but . . .’

  He broke off, unable to continue but very aware that the captain was on his feet, one hand on his arm, his face suddenly close, the face of the man, perhaps as few others ever saw him.

  Captain Richard Bolitho said gently, ‘As you must know, your father was my brother.’

  It was becoming blurred. The tap at the door. Someone with a message for the captain.

  Adam Bolitho awoke, his body tensed like a spring as he felt the uncertain grip on his arm. It came to him with the stark clarity of a pistol shot. The ship’s motion was more unsteady, the sea noises intruding while his practised ear assessed each in turn.

  In the dim glow of a shaded lantern he could see the swaying figure beside his cot, the white patches of a midshipman. He groaned and tried to thrust the dream from his mind.

  He swung his legs to the deck, his feet searching for his hessian boots in this still unfamiliar cabin.

  ‘What is it, Mr Fielding?’ He had even managed to remember the young midshipman’s name. He almost smiled. Fielding was fourteen. The same age as the midshipman in the dream which refused to leave him.

  ‘Mr Wynter’s respects, sir, but the wind is freshening and he thought . . .’

  Adam Bolitho touched his arm and groped for his faded sea-going coat.

  ‘He did right to call me. I’d rather lose an hour’s sleep than lose my ship. I shall come up directly!’ The boy fled.

  He stood up and adjusted to the motion of His Britannic Majesty’s frigate Unrivalled. My ship. What his beloved uncle had described as ‘the most coveted gift’.

  And it should have been his greatest prize. A ship so new that the paint had been scarcely dry when he had read himself in, a frigate of the finest design, fast and powerful. He glanced at the dark stern windows, as if he were still in the old Hyperion’s great cabin, his life suddenly changed. And by one man.

  He touched his pockets without even noticing it, ensuring that he had all he needed. He would go on deck, where the officer-of-the-watch would be anxiously waiting to gauge his mood, more nervous at the prospect of disturbing his captain than at the threat of the wind.

  He knew it was mostly his own fault; he had remained apart and aloof from his officers since taking command. It must not, could not continue.

  He turned away from the stern windows. The rest was just a dream. His uncle was dead, and only the ship was reality. And he, Captain Adam Bolitho, was quite alone.

  1

  A Hero Remembered

  LIEUTENANT LEIGH GALBRAITH strode aft along the frigate’s maindeck and into the shadows of the poop. He was careful not to hurry, or to show any unusual concern which might create rumour amongst the groups of seamen and marines working at their various forenoon tasks.

  Galbraith was tall and powerfully built, and had learned the hard way to accustom himself to low deckhead beams in one of His Britannic Majesty’s ships of war. He was Unrivalled’s first lieutenant, the one officer who was expected to maintain order and discipline as well as oversee the training of a new ship’s company. To assure his captain that she was in all respects an efficient unit of the fleet, even to assume command at any time should some disaster befall him.

  The first lieutenant was twenty-nine years old, and had been in the navy since the tender age of twelve like many of his contemporaries. It was all he had known, all he had ever wanted, and when he had been promoted to acting commander and given a ship of his own he had thought himself the luckiest man alive. A senior officer had assured him that as soon as convenient he would take the next step, make the impossible leap to full captain, something which had once seemed like a dream.

  He paused by an open gunport and leaned on one of the frigate’s thirty eighteen-pounders, and stared at the harbour and the other anchored ships. Carrick Roads, Falmouth, glittering in the May sunshine. He tried to contain the returning bitterness, the anger. He might have had a command like this fine ship. Could. Might. He felt the gun’s barrel warm under his fingers, as if it had been fired. Like all those other times. At Camperdown with Duncan, and at Copenhagen following Nelson’s flag. He had been commended for his coolness under fire, his ability to contain a dangerous situation when his ship was locked in battle with an enemy. His last captain had put his name forward for a command. That had been the brig Vixen, one of the fleet’s workhorses, expected with limited resources to perform the deeds of a frigate.

  Just before he had been appointed to Unrivalled he had seen his old command lying like a neglected wreck, awaiting disposal or worse. The war with France was over, Napoleon had abdicated and been sent into exile on Elba. The impossible had happened, and with the conflict in North America being brought thankfully to a close by Britain and the United States alike, the prospect of peace was hard to accept. Galbraith was no different; he had never known anything but war. With ships being paid off, and men discharged with unseemly haste with neither prospects nor experience of anything but the sea, he was lucky to have this appointment. More than he deserved, some said behind his back.

  He had been pulled around the ship an hour earlier in the jolly boat, to study the trim as she lay motionless above her own reflection. She had been in commission for five months, and with her rigging and shrouds blacked-down, each sail neatly furled to its yard, she was a perfect picture of the shipbuilder’s art. Even her figurehead, the naked body of a beautiful woman arched beneath the beakhead, hands clasped behind her head, breasts thrust out in a daring challenge, was breathtaking. Unrivalled was the first to carry that name on the Navy List, the first of the bigger frigates which had been hastily laid down to meet the American threat, which had cost them dearly in a war neither side could win. A war which was already becoming a part of history.

  Galbraith plucked his uniform coat away from his chest and tried to push the resentment aside. He was lucky. The navy was all he knew, all he wanted. He must remember that at all times.

  He heard the Royal Marine sentry’s heels click together as he approached the screen door to the aftermost cabins.

  ‘First lieutenant, sir!’

  Galbraith gave him a nod, but the sentry’s eyes did not waver beneath the brim of his leather hat.

  A servant opened the door and stood aside as Galbraith entered the captain’s quarters. Any man would be proud, honoured to have her. When Galbraith had stood watching with the assembled ship’s company and guests as the ship’s new captain, her first captain, had unrolled his commission to read himself in and so assume command, he had tried to banish all envy and accept the man he was to serve.

  After five months, all the training and the drills, the struggle to recruit more landmen to fill the gaps once the pressed hands had been discharged, he realised that Captain Adam Bolitho was still a stranger. In a ship of the line it might be expected, especially with a new company, but in frigates and smaller vessels like his Vixen it was rare.

  He watched him warily. Slim, hair so dark it could have been black, and when he turned away from the stern windows and the reflected green of the land, the same restlessness Galbraith had noticed at their first meeting. Like most sea officers, he knew a lot about the Bolitho family, Sir Richard in particular. The whole country did, or see
med to, and had been stunned by the news of his death in the Mediterranean. Killed by a marksman in the enemy’s rigging, the very day Napoleon had stepped ashore in France after escaping from Elba. The day peace had become another memory.

  Of this man, Sir Richard Bolitho’s nephew, he had heard only titbits, although nothing remained secret for long in the fleet. The best frigate captain, some said; brave to a point of recklessness, others described him. He had been given his first command, a brig like Galbraith’s, at the age of twenty-three; and later lost his frigate Anemone fighting a vastly superior American force. Taken prisoner, he had escaped, to become flag captain to the man who was now Flag Officer, Plymouth.

  Adam was looking at him now, his dark eyes revealing strain, although he was making an effort to smile. A youthful, alert face, one which would be very attractive to women, Galbraith decided. And if some of the gossip was to be believed, that was also true.

  Galbraith said, ‘The gig is lowered, sir. The crew will be piped at four bells, unless . . .’

  Adam Bolitho moved to the table and touched the sword which was lying there. Old in design, straight-bladed, and lighter than the new regulation blades. It was part of the legend, the Bolitho sword, worn by so many of the family. Worn by Richard Bolitho when he had been marked down by the enemy.

  Galbraith glanced around the cabin, the eighteen-pounders intruding even here. When cleared for action from bow to stern Unrivalled could present a formidable broadside. He bit his lip. Even if they were so badly undermanned. There were cases of wine waiting to be unpacked and stowed; he had seen them swayed aboard earlier, and knew they had come from the Bolitho house here in Falmouth, which would be the captain’s property now. Somehow it did not seem to fit this youthful man with the bright epaulettes. He noticed, too, that the cases were marked with a London address, in St James’s Street.

  Galbraith clenched his fist. He had been there once. When he had visited London, when his world had started to collapse.

  Adam forced his mind into the present. ‘Thank you, Mr Galbraith. That will suit well.’ He waited, saw the questions forming in the first lieutenant’s eyes. A good man, he thought, firm but not impatient with the new hands, and wary of the old Jacks who might seek favours from an unknown officer.