Ramage & The Freebooters

by Pope, Dudley

  Even from five yards away it looked both terrible and grotesque: a vile and deadly tropical plant perhaps, or a deformed octopus – the stiffness of the line made the nine tails stick out like groping tentacles from the red handle.

  Ramage was thankful the men had not been guilty of theft because that would have meant the tails of the cat being knotted, three knots in each. Mutiny, desertion, disobedience, drunkenness, bestiality – for all those crimes the cat was not knotted; only for theft.

  Yet there was a crude justification for that apparent anomaly – men cheerfully put up with rats on board, and there were weevils in the bread that they shared with the mice and rats, but there was no worse animal in a ship than a thief; a seaman who stole from his shipmates.

  As he watched, Evans finished sewing a small bag of red baize with a drawstring round the neck, curled up the cat, put it in the bag and tightened on the drawstring. Then he began making the second cat.

  It was a ritual, a tradition, whose origins were probably lost in antiquity, and although he’d witnessed many floggings in ships in which he’d previously served, first as a midshipman and then as a lieutenant, Ramage never realized (perhaps, he thought grimly, because he’d never been responsible for ordering a flogging) just what effect a bosun’s mate sitting there making a cat had on the rest of the ship’s company. Perhaps even more of an effect – as far as being a deterrent was concerned – than watching an actual flogging.

  Always a new cat-o’-nine-tails for each flogging; always the cat was made the day before; nearly always it was given a red baize handle and put in a red baize bag.

  Red to hide the bloodstains? Hardly, since the whole ship’s company had to watch a flogging and could see the tails becoming soaked in blood and tangled after each stroke, so that the bosun’s mate had to straighten them out by running his fingers through them – ‘combing the cat’. And one look at a man’s back after even half a dozen strokes made such niceties as a red handle unnecessary.

  No, probably the origin was just that red was a colour of warning; that before the flogging, while the victim was being seized up and a leather apron tied high round the back of his waist to protect his liver, spleen and kidneys from the tails, the ship’s company would see the bosun’s mates standing there ready, some of them, depending how many men were to be flogged, holding red baize bags.

  One victim, one bag. But if he was to get more than a dozen strokes, then more than one bosun’s mate, because it was customary to change the bosun’s mate after he’d administered a dozen.

  Ramage knew of one captain who always made a point of having at least one left-handed bosun’s mate on board. If a bosun’s mate was right-handed, the tails of the cat fell diagonally downwards from the right shoulder. This captain boasted that his left-handed bosun’s mate ‘crossed the cuts’.

  Shaking his head as if trying to rid himself of the thought of flogging, Ramage turned and looked back at the Lizard. The wind was north, a nice breeze, almost a soldier’s wind to give Ushant a wide berth. In fifteen minutes the headland would be out of sight, and he took a bearing, noting it and the time on the slate.

  As he put the slate down on the binnacle he reflected how many thousands of times seamen before him had noted the bearing of the Lizard…

  The wretched Duke of Medina Sidonia with the Spanish Armada: the Lizard had been his first sight of the England he was supposed to conquer for his master, Philip II. It was the last sight of England for the Pilgrim Fathers sailing for America; Sir Francis Drake’s, too, before he died off Portobello almost exactly two centuries ago. (And how excited he must have felt, before that, as he sailed back to sight it and complete his great Voyage of Circumnavigation – three years in which he encircled the globe.)

  Nor did Ramage forget the Lizard was Cornwall. Hidden under its lee was Landewednack, whose parish church was the most southerly in England. There was the fishing village of Coverack whose fishermen often used the stone quay for landing strange cargoes at dead of night, since many of them more often fished for bottles and casks than fish; bottles and casks brimful of smuggled brandy. The French Directory might be at war with Britain, but nothing would interrupt one of Cornwall’s profitable industries, smuggling from Brittany.

  Ramage already knew from a previous glance at the chart that the Triton was steering a course which, if one drew a line on a chart along her wake, would go through the Lizard and diagonally right across Cornwall to touch Tintagel on the west coast, the birthplace – so legend had it – of King Arthur.

  For the moment Ramage had little concern for King Arthur: the line, a few miles before reaching Tintagel, passed through St Kew, the home for several centuries of the Ramages.

  He imagined a bird crossing the Lizard and flying towards St Kew, mentally ticking off the places it would cross and revelling in their names, delighting in their very Cornishness, their complete difference from other names in the rest of the country. Indeed, the majority of Cornishmen still regarded anyone living outside the county boundary as foreigners.

  Over the Lizard, then, passing the little village of Gunwalloe in a small cove among towering cliffs – cliffs at the foot of which was the wreck of a treasure ship belonging to the King of Portugal, the St Andrew, driven there to her death by a south-westerly gale more than 250 years earlier. Legend had it that the folk of Gunwalloe saved eighteen great ingots of silver – and four suits of armour, made in Flanders for the King.

  On and on: Feock, Old Kea and Malpas, Penkevil, Probus and (too far for the poor bird to see, he admitted, but he delighted in the names) Sticker and Polgooth; and Veryan, near St Austell, where an ancient king was supposed to be buried in his armour, and beside him a golden boat in which, on the day he rose up again, he would sail away.

  Right over Castle an Dinas (a more suitable claimant to being the birthplace of King Arthur than Tintagel, Ramage always thought: any man born at Tintagel, with the sea thundering against the cliffs, would surely have been a great sea king). Then after Talskiddy and Bilberry Bugle the bird would be flying over rugged land laced with sheep tracks, gashed with rocky hills, softened by grassy mounds – Ramage country!

  Lying in the cemeteries of the surrounding churches were dozens of long-dead Ramages. Men of honour who’d died in battle, sickness and old age (and some had died dishonourably too: his family had had its share of black sheep). There were Ramages killed fighting the Royalist cause alongside Sir Bevil Grenvile and Sir Ralph Hopton, Sir John Arundel and Sydney Godolphin, Sir Nicholas Slanning and Sir John Trevanion – aye, they and almost every Cornish family, aristocrat or peasant had fought hard against Cromwell’s armies.

  And there were Ramages whose bodies had been brought back from distant battlefields to rest in the vaults of various branches of the family; and Ramages lost at sea in the King’s service whose very existence was recorded now only by memorial tablets inside the churches.

  Thinking of his forebears, it seemed the actual moment of death was not important to record: you died when those who lived forgot your existence. Gloomy thoughts…and he pictured the bird flying over the River Camel stretching away to the port of Padstow. Once one of Cornwall’s great ports, it was now being strangled by a sandbar across its entrance – the work, so the local folk had it, of a jealous mermaid – and well named the Doom Bar, because any ship missing the narrow channel through it on the west side (keeping so close to the rocks her yardarms almost touched them) was indeed doomed.

  He recalled the flood stream rushing over Doom Bar and up the Camel to cover the sandy stretches exposed by the low tide, floating the schooner lying aground at Wadebridge itself and delighting the ducks and swirling round the granite buttresses of the old bridge. And a mile or so up the valley, laced with sunken lanes, Egloshayle, where on a moonlit night the villagers gave the church a wide berth for fear of seeing a white rabbit with pink eyes – a rabbit who left the man who went to hunt it dead by the church, his chest full of the shot with which he’d loaded his musket.

&
nbsp; And not far away Tregeagle, where one house had regular visits from the ghost of a Cavalier, spurs ringing, curly hair loose over his shoulders.

  From Egloshayle the road ran north-eastward to St Kew Highway, with St Kew itself standing back from it. And within a circle of five or ten miles were the villages through which he had been driven as a small child in his father’s carriage and later ridden his own horse – Blisand, Penpont, Michaelstow and Camelford, all skirting Bodmin Moor… He remembered rides from Camelford across the Moors to the two great peaks of Roughtor and Brown Willy, towering nearly 1,400 feet over the surrounding countryside as if the guardians of all Cornwall.

  And Gianna would be at St Kew within a few days with his father and mother…

  Southwick, standing in front of him, had obviously just asked a question, which he repeated as Ramage looked at him blankly.

  ‘Grating or capstan, sir?’

  ‘What?’

  The Master had seen the Lizard disappear from view too often not to guess Ramage’s thoughts were either on his home beyond the Lizard or of the Marchesa, and he rephrased the question.

  ‘The floggings tomorrow, sir: shall we use a grating or the capstan?’

  ‘Capstan,’ Ramage said automatically, and Southwick thanked him and walked away.

  Why choose the capstan? He’d replied without thinking but answered his own question at once. In larger ships it was usual to take one of the gratings covering a hatch and stand it vertically against the bulwark or the fo’c’sle bulkhead. The man to be flogged was made to stand spreadeagled against the grating, and his hands and feet were lashed to it, the gridded wooden bars making it easy to pass the seizings. Because he was held hard up against the gratings, Ramage had noticed, he could not move an inch to absorb any of the crushing weight of the blows.

  But using the capstan, a common practice in smaller ships, was different. The capstan bars, each six feet long, were slotted into the capstan to project horizontally, like the spokes of a wheel lying on its side, at the height of a man’s chest – at just the right height to push against.

  For flogging, only one bar was shipped and the man stood as though pushing, only his chest was hard up against the bar, his arms stretched along it on either side.

  He was then secured to it by seizings round his wrists and just above his elbows; but the rest of his body was free: he could, by arching his back, move an inch or so, just enough to ride the lash. Little enough, but perhaps it helped.

  Evan Evans was putting a baize bag down on the deck after completing the second cat and picking up the third handle. And down below, guarded by Marines, Dyson, Brookland and Harris would be… Ramage began pacing the deck again, wishing for once Southwick was walking with him, prattling away about nothing in particular.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Next morning after the bosun’s calls shrilled and the order was passed – and obeyed – for ‘All hands aft to witness punishment’, Ramage went up on deck in his best uniform, sword at his side, to be greeted by Southwick, similarly dressed.

  The capstan was midway between the wheel and the mainmast, instead of right forward, as in larger ships. Being set aft meant it could be used for hoisting the heavy lower yards as well as for weighing anchor.

  The Marines were already drawn up in two files, one on each side of the capstan, with the ship’s company formed in a three-sided square round it, the fourth side being the quarterdeck.

  With Southwick he inspected the ship’s company and was surprised to see they were smartly rigged out in clean shirts and trousers, hair newly combed and retied in neat queues, and freshly shaven. Then, with their corporal, he inspected the Marines. Their red jackets were spotless, cross-belts stiff with pipeclay, brass buttons and buckles gleamed, their muskets immaculate, the metalwork looking oily but dry to the touch, the woodwork buffed to a high polish.

  Ramage then returned to stand just in front of the wheel. A bright sun shone fitfully through broken cloud, the ship was gently rolling and pitching, the tiller ropes creaked as the men turned the wheel a spoke this way and a spoke that to keep the Triton on course for the rendezvous with Admiral Curtis’ squadron. His clerk handed him a sheet of paper and a copy of the Articles of War, and the Marine corporal – who was not carrying a musket since his main role for the moment was to be master-at-arms – stood beside the prisoners.

  Flogging a man was more than a punishment; it was a ritual, a long and complicated rigmarole that Ramage could not alter or shorten, whatever his personal feelings. And as he stood there, his left hand on the scabbard of his sword, holding the Articles of War in his right, the three prisoners standing to attention in front of him, the sails overhead drawing in the north-west wind and knowing that below, locked in his desk, were secret and urgent letters from the First Lord to three of his admirals, he recalled a letter from his father congratulating him on passing his examination for lieutenant. He couldn’t remember the exact wording but the gist of it was still fresh in his mind.

  If you are to be a true leader – a man others follow because he is a natural leader, not just a legal one who has to bolster his authority with his commission and the Articles of War – you will, apart from obeying, have to give orders that make you angry and resentful; make you feel that the Articles or the Regulations are too inflexible, forcing you to act unjustly or unreasonably.

  Do not forget, however, the Articles and the Regulations have evolved since the Navy first began. No set of rules can cover every eventuality – otherwise lawyers would be out of business. There will be injustices; but when you command your own ship, the crew will be watching you. They know when a shipmate’s punishment is just or unjust. If it is well deserved, neither the man nor the ship’s company will complain. If it is not, they will soon let you know in a hundred small ways. But of this you can be sure: if you show any signs of weakness – then they’ll treat you unjustly, and you’ll only have yourself to blame. A weak captain leaves the ship’s company at the mercy of harsh officers. A good captain requires the same obedience from his second-in-command as from the youngest boy on board…

  And how right the old man was. Yesterday the ship’s company were mutinous in everything except actually taking over the ship. Last night (but for Jackson and the rest of the group) they’d have done that too. Yet this morning, for reasons he couldn’t explain, there was a completely different atmosphere on board. The men hadn’t been singing or laughing before being piped aft to witness punishment; but – well, he sensed the atmosphere was now fresher, as though some hidden menace and tension had gone.

  Perhaps it was more significant that every man had obviously taken particular care with his appearance – they’d all shaved, although it was Tuesday and they were required to shave only twice a week, on Sundays and Thursdays. And there was no order for them to appear in fresh clothes. Certainly they could not wear dirty, but there was a difference between clean and fresh. He was sure it wasn’t a bizarre gesture to the men being flogged; a curious defiance of authority. The men weren’t subtle enough for that.

  Everyone was watching him; he’d been staring at the carved crown on the top of the capstan for several seconds – more likely a couple of minutes. He wondered what they’d think if he told them he’d just recalled his father’s advice so that although five minutes ago the prospect of flogging some men nauseated him, he was now going to order the floggings knowing it was both necessary and right.

  Suddenly he realized why the atmosphere had changed: the men had known it all the time: three of their number had been caught planning a mutiny and naturally they must be punished.

  He felt foolish and inexperienced and hurriedly glanced at the piece of paper, beginning the ritual.

  ‘William Dyson!’

  The master-at-arms stepped smartly alongside Dyson as the man took three paces forward.

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  Ramage had been surprised at the man’s appearance – he too was shaved, and dressed in fresh clothes. Now his manner was
slightly defiant – no, perhaps not: Ramage admitted he didn’t know the man well enough to be sure.

  ‘William Dyson, you were charged by the Master with breaking into the breadroom, being drunk and disorderly, fighting and trying to resist arrest.’

  To the corporal, Ramage snapped: ‘Seize him up!’

  Two Marines put their muskets down on the deck. One picked up a capstan bar lying beside the companionway coaming and slotted it into the capstan head; the other led Dyson the few steps to the capstan. His shirt was stripped off, the thick leather apron was produced and tied over the lower part of his back, his arm were stretched out horizontally along the capstan bar, and within two minutes he was ready for the flogging to begin.

  But there was still more ritual.

  Ramage opened the Articles of War. For once he was thankful for Article Number Thirty-six, nicknamed the ‘Captain’s Cloak’ and so worded that it could be used to cover any villainy that ingenious seamen might devise.

  As Ramage removed his hat, Southwick bellowed: ‘Off caps!’

  ‘Article number Thirty-six,’ Ramage began in a clear voice, as soon as every man was bareheaded. ‘“All other crimes not capital, committed by any person or persons in the Fleet, which are not mentioned in this Act, or for which no punishment is hereby directed to be inflicted, shall be punished according to the laws and customs in such cases used at sea.”’

  Dyson was lucky, since even the drunken night in the breadroom left him open to more serious charges.