by Dudley Pope
Stokes raised his hands, palms outwards, and assumed what he must have considered a man-of-the-world expression. “Ah, a few of each, I must admit; the flesh is weak and a chaplain can only advise and pray and point the way …”
“I’m thinking ye’ve abandoned your flock,” Aitken said, his voice sorrowful, “because while ye could perhaps have converted the whores and thieves and vagabonds in Essex, we dinna have one of any of those on board this ship for ye to practise on, Mr Stokes.”
“Ah, Lieutenant, there you are mistaken,” Stokes said patronizingly, assuming that the fact that Aitken deferred to the Captain meant that the chaplain’s position was between the two. “No man is without sin, is he, Captain?”
“He is in this ship,” Aitken said crisply, “otherwise he gets a flogging!”
Ramage was hard put to keep a straight face: Aitken had set the trap, Stokes had walked in and Aitken had sprung it. Stokes was not to know that Ramage had ordered only two men to be flogged since he first commanded a ship, and anyway, he was technically correct.
“Flogging?” Stokes’s eyes jerked from Aitken to Ramage, as though—as though what? Ramage was not yet sure. Did the thought of flogging horrify him, as it did Ramage and many other captains? No, it was more fear than horror in the man’s eyes.
“Yes, flogging. As you mentioned, no man is without sin; likewise no man is beyond the reach of the cat-o’-nine-tails.”
“Except the officers, of course!” Stokes tried to smile at his own joke, but Ramage decided to stretch the truth to see what effect it had.
“Officers, too,” he said. “The captain of a ship has more power than the King—you realize that, Mr Stokes?”
“Er, well, I did not realize that. In what way, sir?”
“The King cannot order a man to be flogged; I can.”
“So let us pray,” Stokes said unctuously, “that everyone behaves himself.”
“They won’t,” Aitken commented gloomily, “they never do. Well now,” he said, looking at his watch, “your fellow warrant officers will be busy taking all the food, so perhaps …”
The First Lieutenant picked up his hat and Ramage was thankful to see that Stokes was obviously going to follow him. However, there was just one thing to make clear right at the beginning of the chaplain’s ecclesiastical reign. “Mr Stokes neither I nor the ship’s company like long sermons. Apart from anything else, the weather is seldom suitable: too cold in northern waters for them to sit around for long, and too hot in the Tropics. So remember, ten minutes!”
“Oh Captain,” Stokes said reproachfully, “what can I tell the men in ten minutes?”
“I can read the Articles of War in less,” Ramage said. “They are the rules governing the behaviour of every man in the Navy, from an admiral to a boy, in peace or war, at sea or in harbour.”
“But all my sermons—”
Ramage pictured a packet of a couple of dozen sermons, written by some hack cleric and sold at fourpence each.
“The men don’t like shop sermons,” Aitken said. “Funny how they spot them, isn’t it, sir? They can tell at once whether a chaplain is talking from his heart or just reciting.”
“I’m not sure about all the men, but this Captain can, and he’s certainly not about to sit through a fourpenny tract.”
It was unfair to harp on fourpence, but Ramage was sure that one of the first questions asked by Stokes when he boarded the frigate was aimed at the purser—how many men did the Calypso muster? That number, multiplied by fourpence, told him how much his monthly “groats” would total.
Aitken opened the door and Stokes scuttled out, obviously distraught at the loss of his sermons for 24 Sundays.
The First Lieutenant returned two or three minutes later. “I think you’ve squared his yards, sir.”
Stokes had been brought to heel, like a wayward gun dog. “But,” Ramage said sourly, “that doesn’t alter the fact we’ve got to put up with him lurking round the ship for the next few months.”
“‘Lurking’—aye, ye’ve got him there, sir; the man’s a lurker, that’s for sure. But he’s the worst of the bunch; the rest o’ them seem pleasant enough.”
“I’ll see them two at a time this afternoon, beginning with the surveyors.”
Aitken brought in two young men whom Ramage assumed were brothers until the First Lieutenant mentioned their names. David Williams, the elder, was a Welshman, black-haired and blue-eyed and with what Ramage thought of as a laughing face; Williams obviously saw the humorous side of life, while his fellow surveyor, Walter White, also black-haired and blue-eyed, came from Kettering and obviously took a far more serious view of his work and his immediate future. One could imagine his notebook showing the distance between two distant points as being correct to half an inch, while Williams would prefer rounded figures.
“Can you give us any idea what we’ll be surveying, sir?”
“No, I’m afraid not. I’m not being unnecessarily secretive: we are sailing with sealed orders. But I can assure you there’ll be plenty of work for both of you once we arrive.”
Williams grinned happily. “It’s our first voyage, sir, so we’re excited. We’re lucky it’s with you, sir!”
Ramage smiled and said: “You’ve heard of me?”
“I’ve got a copy of every Gazette mentioning you, sir.” White said it in such a lugubrious voice that it took Ramage a few moments to realize that the young man was making a proud boast.
“I didn’t realize the Gazette was so popular in Kettering!”
“Ah, no, but we both worked in the Navy Office, sir.”
“The Navy Office?”
“Yes, sir. The Hydrographer came over to Somerset Place one day and talked to the head surveyor, and we were offered this job. Neither of us is married, sir.”
“Well, I wish I could tell you more about the work. It’ll be typical of the naval service, though; weeks of tedium getting there, then a frantic rush where eighteen hours’ work a day won’t be enough, and then weeks more tedium.”
He nodded to Aitken, and the surveyors were replaced with the draughtsmen. They had been recruited in the same way and were equally anxious to know their destination. Their task, they explained, was to take all the measurements supplied by the surveyors, mostly angles and distances, and turn them into maps for people to look at.
The last pair, the botanist and the artist, seemed at first to be an ill-assorted couple. The botanist, Edward Garret, a grey-haired man with the weathered face of a fisherman or farmer, promptly denied that he was a botanist. “I’m a farmer who likes to experiment,” he told Ramage. “The Admiralty asked the Board of Agriculture for someone likely to make plants grow on a barren island, and they recommended me. I’m still not sure if the Board want to get me out of the way for a few months—I’m always chasing them, you know!”
“The Board of Agriculture?” Ramage inquired. “What does it do?”
“Not enough!” Garret said crossly. “The office is in Sackville Street and its membership looks like the House of Lords at a Coronation—the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Dukes of Portland, Bedford and Buccleuch, and dozens of earls, among them Chatham and Spencer—you’ll recall he was the last First Lord of the Admiralty. And politicians—Mr Pitt, the last prime minister, and Mr Addington, the present one. You’d think that with such a membership the Board would be very powerful.”
“Yes,” Ramage agreed. “Archbishops and prime ministers—they should be able to move Heaven and earth!”
“You’d be quite wrong, sir; quite wrong. Apart from Arthur Young, the secretary, they’re all nincompoops. Just look at the price of flour and bread. Yet farmers feed grain to their livestock. Your father’s not a member!”
Ramage raised his eyebrows. Father was notoriously a non-joiner. He would send a subscription each year but he refused to be a patron. The “Sea Bathing Infirmary in Margate, Instituted for the Benefit of the Poor” ended up asking the Prince of Wales; the “Society for the Relief o
f the Ruptured Poor” managed to persuade Henry Dundas to be their president (and thus nearly lost the Earl of Blazey’s annual subscription). There was another philanthropic institution that his mother favoured, and was cross with the Earl for refusing to be the patron (but the Duke of York finally agreed). He recalled that it was “The Benevolent Institution for the Sole Purpose of delivering poor Married Women at their own Habitations.” His mother occasionally went to their meetings at the Hungerford Coffee House in the Strand to make sure the forty midwives it employed were competent and clean.
Garret laughed at Ramage’s obvious interest in the Board. “I mention your father, sir, because he is one of about a dozen landowners I hold up as examples to the Board. And not one of the others is a member either.”
“Well, the Board must have some use, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“Ah yes, sir: I owe that to Lord Spencer. He was talking to your Mr Nepean, who mentioned something about settling a desert island and needing a botanist. Obviously your Mr Nepean is not very clear about botany, but Lord Spencer understood and suggested me.”
Ramage reflected that more secrets were revealed in London’s drawing-rooms than anywhere else: Nepean should know better than to confide in a former minister. They were the worst gossips of all, trying to make up for the loss of power by retailing tales passed on by people like Nepean, who were adept at keeping in with anyone ever likely to get back into office.
“Don’t discuss your forthcoming work with anyone, Garret; it’s a secret.”
“Ah, yes sir,” Garret said, in what Ramage realized was the preliminary to anything he said, just as other men might take a deep breath, “but planting potatoes and maize can’t be very secret.”
“No,” Ramage agreed, and then added sharply: “But where you plant them not only could be but is, so guard your tongue.” He turned to the artist, finding he did not like Garret’s marketplace oratory, which seemed to be combined with a horse-coper’s sharpness. “Now, Mr Wilkins, how came you to be included in this expedition?”
The artist was young—Ramage guessed he was about the same age as himself. Curly blond hair, skin very white, eyes blue, a thin face but eager. A man who would have to watch the sun in the Tropics.
“Nepotism, really,” he said frankly. “An uncle of mine is professor in painting at the Royal Academy. I studied under him and through him know several of our leading painters—people like Sir William Beechey, Hoppner, Opie, Zoffany and the sculptor Joseph Nollekens … with such friends one does not need much merit!”
“You’re very modest!”
“You look alarmed, sir, but I’ve specialized in painting flora and fauna—and can turn my hand to landscapes, if they’re needed.”
Ramage nodded, relieved at Alexander Wilkins’s natural assurance. “If you get bored, you have some unusual fauna in the gunroom!”
Wilkins grinned and glanced at Aitken, as though he had asked the First Lieutenant about something and had been told to ask the Captain. “Since you mention it, sir, I would like to attempt a portrait of Mr Southwick. Would you have any objection?”
“Of course not. You are free to do anything that does not affect the running of the ship, and I’ve known Mr Southwick long enough to be sure he won’t want to sit for you when he should be on watch!”
Ramage realized that Wilkins had been quick to spot what must, to an artist, be the most interesting and challenging face in the ship: Southwick, now well past sixty, had unruly white hair that he usually described as being like a new mop spun in a high wind. His face verged on plump, but it was the plumpness of contentment rather than soft living. His eyes were grey, revealing a sense of humour. At first sight he appeared more like the bishop of a rural diocese than the master of one of the King’s ships, but the more observant might detect a delight in wielding a huge fighting sword with all the facility that a bishop would handle a crozier.
Aitken took out his watch and looked at it significantly. “It’ll be high water in an hour, sir; if we want to catch the first of the ebb …”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE first few miles on a voyage which would take them a quarter of the way round the world were bound to be the most tiresome, Ramage thought. The wind was light from the south-west when they dropped the moorings off the dockyard, and with topsails drawing there was enough strength in it to carry them over the last of the flood: the Calypso’s smooth bottom, newly coppered, more than made up for the fact that with extra provisions and three months’ water she was floating lower on her marks than at any time since she was first captured.
Ramage disliked sailing down a river on a tide which would be falling before he was a quarter of the way to the entrance: going aground meant the ship would stick for a whole tide. Sailing with the flood, on the other hand, meant waiting a few minutes and the ship would float off …
The Medway was the worst of the rivers the King’s ships normally navigated: it twisted and turned every few hundred yards between banks of mud and acres of saltings, across which snipe jinked and startled duck quacked, watched by seamen who pictured them plucked and roasted.
Southwick had a chart spread over the top of the binnacle box and held down by weights. The men at the wheel and the quartermaster were not concerned with the compass as Southwick tried to pick out where the channel lay in stretches of water that were greenish-brown and gave no indication of the depths.
Aitken, speaking-trumpet in hand, kept the men busy trimming the sails to every change of course; yards were braced, sheets hauled or slacked. A seaman standing in the chains heaved the lead and sang out the depths in a lugubrious monotone, but everyone knew the ship would be hard aground before anyone could react to shoaling.
“Not far to Sheerness now, sir,” Southwick said. He had long since taken off his hat, and the wind ruffling his white hair once again reminded Ramage of a mop. “That’s Hoo Fort on our larboard beam, and Darnett Ness on our starboard bow.” He gestured to a tiny island marooned in a depressing stretch of sea and which, at low water, would be reduced to a knob amid a vast stretch of smelly mud.
“Once we round the Ness, we pass Bishop Ooze to starboard, and Half Acre Creek joins us. Beats me where they get the names from. Past the Ness we’re in Kethole Reach. I wonder if it was once “Kettle”? Then we come into Saltpan Reach. Oh, just look at that …”
Southwick delivered one of his prodigious, disapproving sniffs, and Ramage, who was thinking of a woman with black hair in a carriage on the Paris road, gave a start and looked ahead. At least four Thames barges were coming up Kethole Reach. For the moment he could see only the big rectangular sails, a deep red ochre from the red lead and linseed oil with which they were painted.
“Don’t give ‘em an inch, sir,” Southwick said. “I know they’re beating and we’re running, but they only draw about four feet laden. If there’s dew on the grass a barge can float! They can sail in to the bank until they see the leeboard lifting as it touches bottom, and then tack with plenty to spare. Don’t forget we’re drawing sixteen and a half feet aft, sir.”
Aitken had walked over to stand beside Southwick, as though to lend his weight to the Master’s comments.
“The trouble with you,” Ramage said, keeping an eye on the sails, “you’re afraid they’ll scratch your paintwork!”
“Scratch the paint!” Southwick snorted. “If they’re laden with stone, they’d stove in planks, and I’m sick of that dockyard!”
Ramage noticed that the barges had tacked one after the other so they were now sailing diagonally across the river, their hulls hidden beyond the bend. They were on the starboard tack, steering south, each great sprit holding out the sail like a matador’s sword extending his red cape.
“Sir, the channel’s but forty yards wide here; you remember coming up to Chatham we had to club haul and even then touched.”
Ramage glanced at the chart and said mildly to the Master: “You really mustn’t be a bully, Mr Southwick. Just because we’re so big, we can’t j
ust force barges aground. They’ve got a living to make. A man and a boy and a dog handling a vessel eighty feet long—more, some of them.”
The barges were in line ahead now. At first glance this was not obvious, because the gap between each of them varied, but Ramage decided to continue for a few more minutes. Aitken was looking worried now but turned away to shout orders for sail trimming as Southwick gave a new direction to the quartermaster—and the wheel turned a few spokes.
“It’s soft mud, anyway,” Ramage said dreamily. “We’d sit snug as a duck until the tide made again.”
“But sir!” Southwick was certain that worrying about the Marchesa had temporarily deranged the Captain. “The sides of the channel slope; if we ground we’ll slide and probably roll over as the tide leaves us!”
“The Good Lord will provide,” Ramage said. “You forget we have a chaplain now.”
“Sir—those barges can sit on the mud: they’re flat-bottomed and built to dry out …”
By now the first barge was bearing away a point, having been allowing for the ebb, and shooting up Half Acre Creek. Southwick, alarmed by his Captain and keeping a sharp eye on the river bank each side, with its unappetizing expanse of mud, had not looked ahead again.
The second barge shot into the Creek. Aitken spotted it and turned quickly, about to tell Ramage. He caught sight of Ramage’s face and grinned, turning away to face forward again.
“I really can’t be responsible, sir,” Southwick protested. “We ought to have an anchor ready. Those four barges are so close to each other we don’t have a snowball in hell’s chance of getting through without hitting one of them.”
The third barge went into Half Acre Creek and Ramage said: “The war is over, Mr Southwick. We can’t bully these poor bargemen. I’d be court-martialled if we sank one!”
“Sir, sir,” Southwick said desperately, “you will be court-martialled if you damage this ship and delay the expedition—God bless my soul!”
Southwick had glanced up and found Kethole Reach clear of sails as the last barge went into the Creek. He turned to Ramage, a sheepish grin on his face. “Sorry, sir, you fooled me! Did you know they were going into Half Acre Creek?”