by Dudley Pope
Her other dream, after recognizing that the people of Volterra would not accept Nicholas as her husband, was to have Nicholas sent there as His Britannic Majesty’s Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary. The ruler could summon the British Ambassador as frequently as she wished. Yet she knew that neither she nor Nicholas could accept such a relationship.
This was all in the past and in the future … Miserably, knowing she would eventually have to sacrifice her first and probably only real love, she wrenched herself back to the present. She watched Nicholas talking with his mother. The suntan was wearing off, and his brown eyes were just as deeply sunk beneath eyebrows that were like tiny overhanging cliffs, but the lines were going: years of squinting in Tropical and Mediterranean sun, and commanding one of the King’s ships in actions that usually resulted in a long despatch in the London Gazette, had left pencil-thin lines on his brow, round his eyes and beside his nose, but they were disappearing as he relaxed here in Palace Street. Nor did he have the worry of the ship: the Calypso was having an extensive refit in drydock at Chatham, and from what he and his father could find out at the Admiralty, he would stay in command when she was commissioned again. Unless … unless a peace treaty was signed.
Then, she gathered, at least three-quarters of the King’s ships would be paid off; the Royal Navy would be reduced to a peacetime size. Admirals, captains, lieutenants—there would be dozens to spare. Nicholas might resign his commission because the routine of commanding a ship in peacetime would be too boring for him after the past years of continuous excitement and action.
Yet Nicholas’s mother and father seemed almost hostile to the proposal of peace. No, Gianna corrected herself, not to peace itself but to dealing with Bonaparte. Well, no Tuscan trusted a Corsican, and if she was honest and dispassionate about it she did not trust Bonaparte either: he was the general who led the French army which invaded Volterra. Yet ironically but for Bonaparte she would never have met Nicholas, whose frigate had been sent to rescue her by Sir John Jervis (as he then was, but now Admiral the Earl St Vincent, First Lord of the Admiralty in the present government). So but for Bonaparte—and St Vincent—they would never have met and fallen in love.
Dreamily she returned to the Palace at Volterra: she pictured herself in the great state room, sitting in the chair reputed to be eight hundred years old. The big double doors would be flung open, His Britannic Majesty’s envoy would be announced, and Nicholas in full diplomatic uniform would march in to present his credentials. Both of them would be hard put to keep straight faces …
She gave a start as the Earl clinked the heavy crystal stopper back into the sherry decanter, walked with his glass to a chair and sat down carefully.
“Hood sends his regards, m’dear,” he said to his wife. “Terrible attack of gout; he can’t bear anyone within ten feet of him—afraid they’ll bump his leg. We were almost hailing each other across the room!”
“I think Gianna is anxious to know if you heard any news of Bonaparte’s—er, offer.”
“Yes, I did,” the Admiral said grimly. “Too much. Hawkesbury called in while Hood and I were talking, and told us about it. The negotiations are nearly complete; Hawkesbury sees this fellow Otto for three or four hours a day and despatches go off to Paris daily—apparently we have Revenue cutters waiting in Dover and they deliver Otto’s diplomatic bag in Calais and bring back Bonaparte’s instructions.”
Ramage said: “Did you discover anything about the terms, father?”
The old man was silent for a moment, lost in thought. In memories, Ramage guessed. Thousands of British men had been killed, dozens of ships sunk, countless women widowed and children orphaned. Now the present politicians were likely to make all these sacrifices worthless in their scramble for peace: they would accept any terms Bonaparte cared to offer because they knew a peace treaty meant votes, just as the previous government had squandered thousands of soldiers and not a few sailors through sickness to capture worthless West Indian spice islands because “victories” were always worth a Parliamentary cheer. Few members of Parliament realized that most such islands were only a quarter the size of a county like Kent. Few would remember that Bonaparte controlled everything that mattered, from the shores of the North Sea to the banks of the Mediterranean, including Spain, Italy and Egypt. Except for a naval base like Jamaica, the West Indian islands were irrelevant.
The Earl glanced up at Nicholas. Two scars on one side of his brow, another the size of a coin on his head—the hair there was growing back white—and a stiff left arm: wounds inflicted in the West Indies, Mediterranean and Atlantic. Nicholas and Lord Nelson had disobeyed Sir John Jervis’s orders at the Battle of Cape St Vincent and in doing so had turned a miserable defeat into enough of a victory to earn Jervis an earldom, so that Earl St Vincent was now First Lord of the Admiralty. St Vincent was a fine administrator who had, by accident, won an undeserved reputation as a tactician. Had he ever forgiven that glorious act of disobedience by a young lieutenant called Ramage, which was spotted and backed by an almost unknown commodore in a 74 called Nelson? Now Jervis was Earl St Vincent; without those two he would still be Jervis, and few would have sympathized had he been put on the beach to draw half-pay for the rest of his life.
“Yes, and by the time the treaty is ratified I suspect we’ll have surrendered every acre of land we’ve taken except Ceylon and Trinidad, and we may have forced Bonaparte to leave Egypt.”
“And Italy?” Gianna said.
The Earl shook his head, as though trying to drive away his irritation. “Bonaparte has made offers on behalf of France, Sweden, Denmark and Holland. The negotiations concern only territory belonging to Britain or those countries. There has been no mention of Tuscany, Piedmont, the Papal States … Nor does Hawkesbury see how we can do anything about them—I asked him.”
“He’s a weak man,” Gianna commented.
“He’s a politician,” the Earl said contemptuously. “No votes come from Italy for Addington and his cronies, but the House of Commons will give them three cheers for Ceylon and Trinidad …”
“When will the details be made public—officially, I mean?” Ramage asked.
The Earl shrugged his shoulders. “When Bonaparte, or this fellow Otto, say so. Officially Addington and Hawkesbury deny any negotiations are going on. That’s where Otto is so useful: he’s been the official French representative in London since the exchange of prisoners started, so no one takes any notice of his comings and goings.”
“Gianna’s dressmaker,” the Countess said firmly. “We can do more good by visiting her than talking about the tidbits that Bonaparte tosses to us.”
With that the two women left the room to put on outdoor clothes. Even though a watery sun made faint shadows, the chill of autumn was in the air.
The Earl sipped his sherry. “A sad business. Hood agrees with me that we are giving up just as the tide is turning in our favour.”
Nicholas said: “Yes, the French are desperately short of wood, rope and canvas for their ships. Our blockade is really hurting them. I’d have thought that’s why Bonaparte’s offering terms: he wants a year or so of peace to restock his larder. Then he’ll go to war again, knowing we’ll have paid off most of our ships and disbanded our regiments. Once the men have disappeared the press-gangs will never find them again.”
His father put down his glass. “Hood made the same points: he too reckons Bonaparte wants a rest, and lost his temper with Hawkesbury over the policy. But Jenks is only a politician, and for people like him no policy need cover more than the next division in the House of Commons. The frontiers of the world are bounded by the walls of the ‘Ayes’ and ‘Noes’ lobbies.”
“Will the King agree, though?”
“They’ll persuade him Britain is going bankrupt. It probably is, but better bankruptcy than Bonaparte!”
He held his sherry up to the light coming through the window. “When will the dockyard be finished with the Calypso?”
“Anothe
r three or four weeks. It’d be longer, but my Fourth Lieutenant’s father is the master shipwright.”
“At Chatham? Hmm, used to be a fellow called Martin. Very good. One of the very few honest men in all the King’s dockyards.”
“It must be the same man: his son is William Martin, known to his friends as ‘Blower.’”
“‘Blower’? What an extraordinary nickname!”
“He plays a flute.”
“Ah yes, you told me. Did very well in that Porto Ercole affair with the bomb ketches, and then with young Paolo in the convoy from Sardinia.”
“That’s the lad. If he goes on like this he deserves to get his flag.”
“Won’t stand a chance if there’s peace. By the way, Nicholas, you ought to get Paolo up here from Chatham. Gianna is anxious to inspect her nephew, but she won’t say anything to you for fear of it seeming like favouritism.”
Ramage smiled and nodded. “Yes, I’d guessed that, and talked it over with my First Lieutenant and Southwick. There’s an enormous amount Paolo can learn while a refit like this goes on, so we decided he’d get no leave for the first three weeks but they’d cram as much as they could into him and then make sure he has a week or two with Gianna.”
“She’s so proud of him.”
“She’s right to be. He’s very much like her in some ways. Not so—well, explosive, but a very quick brain. Gets on very well with the men. Brave to the point of foolhardiness. If he survives and improves his mathematics, he’ll pass for lieutenant at the first try.”
“Have you thought of taking Gianna down to Chatham so that she could see the ship as well?”
Ramage’s face fell. “What a fool I am! She’d love it and all the old Kathleens—Jackson, Rossi, Southwick, Stafford—would go mad. Would you and mother come down as well?”
“Ah—well, I was hoping you’d propose it. Yes, we’d be delighted: we’ve already discussed it, so I know your mother’s answer.”
CHAPTER TWO
THE black-hulled Calypso frigate had caused a stir of interest from the moment she sailed up the muddy Medway on the first of the flood, her ship’s company racing round the deck working sheets, tacks and braces as she tacked and then tacked again the moment she had way on. The Medway narrows up as it nears the towns past the ruins of Upnor Castle (battered a century and a half earlier by the Dutchman, de Ruyter), and has some nasty bends, with mudflats a few inches below the water to trap the unwary.
Once she had moored off Chatham Dockyard, the ship and her men came under the authority of the commissioner and was soon the target of all his minions. Ramage had managed to get a copy of a recent Royal Kalendar to see the names of the men who would be responsible for the Calypso’s refit and whom Aitken, the First Lieutenant, would spend several weeks cajoling, persuading and threatening to get work done properly and reasonably promptly.
The first name in the Kalendar under “Chatham Yard” was the Commissioner Resident, listed as “F. J. Wedge, esq., £800, more for paper and firing £12.” Ramage conceded that the Commissioner probably earned his £800 a year pay, and probably quadrupled it from bribes and all the corrupt activities a man in his position could indulge in. The Navy Board were showing their usual parsimony in allowing only £12 a year to pay for stationery and fuel for the fires or stoves. Still, there must be plenty of old wood lying around.
The master shipwright, Martin’s father, was paid £200 a year—the same as the master ropemaker, master boatbuilder, master mastmaker, master sailmaker, master smith, master carpenter, master joiner and master bricklayer. The bosun of the dockyard received only £80, but the storekeeper received £200 and was probably—because of the opportunity for fraud—the wealthiest of the dockyard employees.
Most of them had come on board as the frigate was moored up, not because a 36-gun French frigate captured and brought into the King’s service was an unusual sight, but because the exploits of the Calypso and her Captain had been mentioned in enough Gazettes to make them both famous. It would not mean any favourable treatment for the ship, because dockyard officials were by nature close-fisted men, issuing paint, rope, canvas and the like as though they paid for it themselves. There was the story of one eccentric and aristocratic captain who, receiving the Navy Board’s issue of paint for his ship, wrote to their Lordships and asked which side of the ship he should paint. Their Lordships were not amused and the captain ended up doing what most captains did—paying out of his own pocket for the extra paint needed.
Ramage had stayed on board for a week as the Calypso swung on the buoy with wind and tide until their Lordships answered his request for leave—no officer was allowed “to sleep out of his ship” without written permission, and that included admirals. Ramage had been given a month’s leave and the ship was left in command of James Aitken. The Scotsman had no wish to go up to Perth on leave (Ramage discovered for the first time that Aitken’s mother, the widow of a Navy master, had recently died) and he obviously trusted no one else to make sure the refit was done properly. Ramage knew that, however keen and eagle-eyed Aitken was, the man who really mattered was Southwick, the Master, a man old enough to be the father and almost the grandfather of both his Captain and First Lieutenant.
Leave for the men, all of whom had been away from Britain for at least a couple of years, was always a problem for any captain. Usually half the men had in the first place been seized by press-gangs, and if the ship was an unhappy one because of the captain or her officers, giving the men leave would result in a number of them deserting: never returning to the ship and forfeiting a year or more of the pay due to them. Popular captains did not have to worry so much, but even if the men returned, a percentage of them would have spent their leave in and out of brothels and would come back riddled with venereal disease. This would put money in the surgeon’s pocket, because he was allowed to make a charge for venereal treatment, but eventually it meant lost men: nothing cured syphilis.
Some captains gave leave only to selected men but Ramage disliked the system: it smacked of favouritism and the men not chosen were resentful. As he told Aitken, it was leave for all or for none, and he had decided on all: they would be allowed two weeks each.
One watch could go at once; the other when the first came back. He had mustered the ship’s company aft on the quarterdeck and told them of his decision—and told them he trusted them to come back on time. In the meantime, he added, the watch left on board would have to work twice as hard.
Nor had that been an exaggeration. One of the most arduous tasks to be done was changing the Calypso’s guns: she still mounted the French cannons with which she had been armed when Ramage and his men captured her. Ramage had managed in Antigua to get rid of the unreliable French gunpowder and stock the magazine with British, and there had been enough French round shot on board to fit their size of guns, but the ship had been in action enough times to have the gunner reporting that the shot locker was now less than a third full.
The Ordnance Board had agreed to supply British twelve-pounders to replace the French, and the shot to go with them, but not without a good deal of argument. Ramage never understood why the Ordnance Board, part of the Army, should have anything to do with naval gunnery, let alone control it completely. Anyway, hoisting out all the Calypso’s French guns and carriages and lowering them into hoys, and then getting all the shot up from the shot lockers—a deep, narrow structure in the ship like a huge wardrobe open at the top—was going to be hard work for the fewer than one hundred men comprising the one watch left on board. Then the hoys would bring out the new guns and carriages and getting them on board would be more wearying than disposing of the French ones.
Once the new guns were at their ports, there would be new train tackles and breechings to be spliced up—the master rope-maker had agreed that the French rope had not been of a very good quality to start with, and two years’ more service had brought it to the end of its life: when the rope was twisted to reveal the inner strands, they were grey; there was no
sign of the rich golden brown of good rope.
Halyards, tacks, sheets, braces and lifts were all being renewed, along with many of the shrouds. The master shipwright and master mastmaker had inspected the masts and decided not to hoist them out for inspection. Only the foreyard, which had broken in the Mediterranean and been fished by the Calypso’s carpenter and his mates, would be replaced. Then the Calypso would be towed by her boats into the drydock and, once all the water had been pumped out, leaving the ship sitting high and dry, shored up by large baulks of timber wedged horizontally between the ship’s side and the walls of the dock, her copper sheathing would be inspected. All the sheets round the bow and stern would have to be replaced—this was a regular procedure for ships-of-war because, for a reason not yet understood (though there were dozens of theories), the sheathing there always became thinner and thinner and was eventually reduced to a mass of pinholes. Ramage hoped—even though it would delay sailing—that all the sheathing would be renewed.
It was unusual to keep a ship’s officers and men standing by her during a long refit; usually the captain was given another command, and the officers and men distributed among other ships, but as a gesture to Ramage’s record, Lord St Vincent, the First Lord, had directed that the Calypso’s men should be kept together. Which was also more than a hint that he had a job for them all once the refit was over.
The Calypso, newly coppered, with new rigging and perhaps even new sails, would sail like a witch, he had told his father, who shared his enthusiasm for the skill of French naval architects: they had mastered that strange mixture of artistry and science which produced fast ships-of-war, particularly frigates.