A hovering Gursten was sent to the harbour-master to secure a large-scale chart, another official to the Customs house for a list of vessels in port, their tonnage and capacities. While they were gone Kydd started to sketch out some ideas.
By the time they were back he had a usable plan. Ships of modest tonnage would voyage from Konigsberg out to sea to avoid French guns, then back inshore to the location of the besieged army to anchor. Boats to take their stores on to the beach, unloaded by many willing army hands, and return. Tyger to sail slowly offshore, a more than adequate deterrent.
As long as the Konigsberg authorities had the wit to manage the assembling of supplies on the quayside in a timely manner, there should not be too much difficulty.
At length Dillon returned with the others.
Kydd nodded. “Gentlemen, please take a seat, we’ve much to do.”
The purser sat blinking and unsure, and the jovial master, Joyce, joined him, gingerly glancing up at the palace ornamentation. Gursten came in, reporting that charts and lists would be sent along as soon as possible.
Kydd started by outlining the problem and his proposed response.
“Now I need detail. Loytn’nt … That is to say, Lieutenant Gursten here will now tell us what rations and stores his army needs and we will shape our plans accordingly. We will start with bread. Sir?”
The young man concentrated. “Shall we take a per diem figure, to multiply later? Then that will be twenty-five thousand loaves, every day.”
“And meat?”
“If they are granted such, a half-pfund is the usual measure, so ten thousand pfunde allowing for waste. Er, the English I do not know.”
“The daily rate for seamen is two pounds o’ beef or one of pork,” Kydd said, adding, “unless it be a banyan day. So we’re saying that for every day for your sixteen thousand. And beer?”
“Essential for troops in the field without reliable water. Say two nosel each, which is to say a Dresden jar of, er, so big?” He mimed a container of about a quart in size. So that would be fifty thousand of those, and every day as well.
“Anything else?”
“We should provide oats, cheese, onions, sauerkraut, of course-the usual is to supply it by the ton …”
This was growing to an amazing amount-and it didn’t take into account the munitions of war that were needed: powder and shot, replacement muskets, blankets and so forth. Kydd tried to visualise the mountain of stores this translated to and found himself aghast. No wonder the Prussian general, with his thousands of horses and wagons, had been so scornful.
There were merchantmen to be had but not all would be suitable and some not fit for sea. Would there be enough? Anxiety tugged at him.
“Right. Assuming one-third more for general stores and munitions, and we have a sizeable problem. Shall we now figure the number of bottoms we’ll need?”
He drew up a pad and pencil. “Assume your usual coastal brig. A cargo volume of say sixty feet long, ten broad and a fathom or so deep. How much can she stow? Mr Harman, the dimensions of a standard loaf of bread, if you please.”
“Sir?”
“Come, come, sir,” Kydd snapped irritably. “You’ve twelve years in the service to tell you what a rack of soft tommy looks like.”
“Oh, yes. Er, your four-inch squared bread is eleven inches on the side.”
“You hear that, Mr Dillon? Get figuring and let’s see how many loaves a brig may take, while we talk about beef. Remind me, Mr Harman, how many pieces of meat do we find in one barrel?”
“In one puncheon we’ve a hundred and seventy pieces, sir.”
Kydd brought to mind the stout provision casks. “And what size are these?”
“Ah …?”
“Yes, Mr Joyce?” The sailing master had ultimate responsibility for stowage of provisions aboard a man-o’-war.
“I allows four foot f’r length an’ two and a half on the bilge.”
“So for y’r brig, let’s see … I make it sixteen alongwise, four across an’ three down. Say two hundred.”
“So. One puncheon holds …?”
“One cow. That’s my rule o’ thumb.”
“Thank you for that, Mr Harman.”
“O’ which we may say, of the fifteen hundred pounds of the beast we get seven hundred pounds as is usable.”
“Hmm. Therefore for our Prussian soldier we can find in each cask enough for fourteen hundred meals.”
“Aye, sir. So with two hundred, our brig is supplying near three hundred thousand-that’s eighteen days’ rations, I make it.”
And all in a single brig. It was looking much more possible.
“Twenty-five thousand.”
“I beg your pardon, Mr Dillon?”
“That’s how many loaves of bread can be carried.”
Kydd thought of the endless lines of mules and carts needed to load such an impossible number and shook his head in wonder. “I think we’re getting somewhere. Say we load the same number of puncheons for beer. That would be-”
“Seventy-two gallon for the Millbrook tertian we usually ships, sir.”
“Yields a hundred and fifty rations. Two hundred barrels on our brig makes our thirty thousand.”
“You’re in rattling good form, Mr Dillon. Gentlemen, what this is saying is that our resupply can be maintained with a convoy of some half-dozen brigs a week, or just one or two a day. I believe we can do it!”
After a Baltic convoy of some hundreds, each vessel many times bigger, this was easy.
“Well, now we know what’s required you may withdraw, Mr Harman. Have the charts arrived?”
Gursten fetched them and stood back respectfully as Kydd and Joyce spread them out.
There were two: one of Pillau at the entrance to the river and the other a detailed study of the approaches to Konigsberg.
The words were in German and the soundings were in klafters-but these were as near as maybe to fathoms so the charts were perfectly understandable.
But what they revealed brought a wash of shock and dismay.
“L’tenant Gursten,” he said heavily. “You said your army extends to the sea. Do show me where.”
He leaned aside to let the young officer find the spot. “Here, sir.” It was a substantial length of the coast that should have proved an ideal landing place, were it not for one thing.
“Pray tell me, then, what the devil is this?” Kydd pointed to a long spit that paralleled the land some three to four miles offshore and ranging as far as the chart boundary in both directions.
“Oh, it’s of no account. A mere piece of sand a few hundred yards across only and going nowhere-of no military significance at all.”
“And this interior water it encloses?”
“This is the Frisches Haff, a brackish lagoon. The only entrance is at Pillau in our hands, so you need not fear-”
Kydd held up his hands wearily. “L’tenant. You don’t know it, but you’ve just killed any chance of saving your army.”
Gursten looked appalled. “I-I had no idea … Is there anything …?”
“I fear that this is a matter between myself and the sailing master. We’ll call on you should we need anything further.”
He pulled the chart nearer and studied it intently, but there was no getting away from it. There would be no access to the army on the coast with that long spit barring the way the entire distance. Even if Pillau at the far northern end had an entrance, there were two very good reasons why their brigs could not sail inside down to the trapped army.
The first was obvious: the few soundings showed that no deep-laden ship could find depth of water to reach it in the near-tideless Baltic. The second was that the plan to sail out to sea to avoid the French artillery and in again to the locality of the besieged was no longer possible. Any approach inside the lagoon must inevitably pass close by the besieging enemy positions on the coast.
Joyce raised troubled eyes to his. “Boats?” he murmured.
It made nonsense of all their calculations-boats full of rowers could carry little, nothing like the massive amounts needed, and would be terribly vulnerable to artillery fire.
“Camels?” the master ventured.
These were barrels open to the water, firmly lashed along the waterline of a vessel, then at the right moment baled out-a method of raising a ship up bodily to take shallow water. It could conceivably work but would make them slow and cumbersome and an unmissable target for the French guns. It was not a solution.