by Dudley Pope
'Thanks to you, sir.'
A captain's dispatch after an action was addressed to Nepean, the Secretary to the Board, and began with the time-honoured phrase 'Be pleased to lay before their Lordships . . .' A description followed, showing success or failure - and often revealing something of the character of the writer. Ramage's dispatches were concise rather than brief; he had long ago noticed that the officers cultivating brevity did so quite deliberately, knowing that a reputation for such a style would be useful when reporting near failure.
When their Lordships considered that an officer had done particularly well, his dispatch (after being edited in case it contained information of use to the enemy) was sent to the office of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, further along Whitehall, to be handed over to the Gazette printer, Andrew Strahan, who had his office there.
His father had been the first to draw Ramage's attention to the importance of writing careful dispatches. He pointed out that a good captain did not need his dispatch to be published in the Gazette, because the Board knew his worth, but for a deserving officer serving with him in the action, a mention in a dispatch was invaluable; it was often the only road to promotion. It was useful for a lieutenant seeking promotion to be able to show a Gazette or two in which he was mentioned. And, as his father had emphasized, if a man has a common surname make sure you give the number by which he is known in the service.
The number of lieutenants John Smith in the Navy List was startling; it was not unusual to see 'Lt John Smith the Fourth' or seventh or tenth in a Gazette. Yet, again proving that a dispatch often revealed a good deal about its writer, it was not unusual to read one in which not a single officer or man was mentioned, so unwilling was the captain (or even the admiral - and St Vincent himself had been guilty of it after the battle which gave him his title) to share either credit or glory.
St Vincent tapped a copy of the Gazette lying on the table. 'You read yesterday's issue?'
'Yes, sir,' Ramage said, his voice neutral.
'What did you think of the main announcement signed by the Secretary of State and Otto?'
St Vincent was a friend of Addington; the Prime Minister was obviously proud of the treaty with Bonaparte, since his own Secretary of State had negotiated it. But Ramage, knowing that a wise man would tell a white lie but refusing to be a hypocrite, simply turned down the corners of his mouth.
'You don't like it, eh? Why?'
St Vincent never wasted words; he doled them out, spoken or written, as a miser might give a coin to an improvident nephew. Did a wise post captain with a good deal less than three years' seniority really reveal his views to the First Lord? Well, St Vincent was shrewd; probably he really wanted to know what Admiral the Earl of Blazey thought, and guessed his son's views were similar.
Ramage turned his hat in his lap, to give the impression he was taking time to consider his reply.
'With respect, sir: Bonaparte has made fools of us.'
St Vincent's eyebrows shot up. 'I don't think Lord Hawkesbury would like to hear you say that.'
Ramage shrugged his shoulders. 'My father has already told him that - and a good deal more - a couple of days ago.'
'In what way is Bonaparte supposed to have made fools of us?' St Vincent asked sarcastically.
'Our blockade has emptied his warehouses; he has no rope, canvas or timber to repair his ships. Now he makes us lift the blockade. We captured many of his islands - you yourself took Martinique, sir - and now he gets them all back, at no cost.'
'Not all,' St Vincent protested.
'All that matter, sir,' Ramage said stubbornly. 'We've lost thousands of men from sickness but very few from fighting, and spent millions of pounds on the war - to no purpose.'
'I didn't know you were a strategist,' St Vincent growled. 'If you intend to go into politics, let me give you some advice -' the Earl broke off when he saw the expression on Ramage's face. 'Yes, well, you take after your father in that respect.'
Ramage inspected the inside band of his hat.
'Now peace is signed,' St Vincent said, 'are you sending in your papers?'
Ramage looked up, startled. 'No, sir. At least, not unless their Lordships ask me.'
'You don't need the halfpay,' St Vincent said.
'I had no intention of requesting it, sir,' Ramage said tartly. 'As far as I know, I am still on full pay in command of the Calypso and on a month's leave.'
St Vincent had moved the Gazette, which had hidden a bulky letter bearing the Admiralty seal. The Earl picked up the packet, turned it over so that Ramage could read the superscription, and slid it across the table to him.
'Captain the Lord Ramage, H.M. frigate Calypso, Chatham.'
As Ramage reached out for the packet, St Vincent held up his hand. 'Don't open it yet: read the back.'
Just below the seal, copperplate handwriting said: 'Secret orders - not to be opened until south of latitude 10 degrees North.'
Ten North! That was south of the latitude of Barbados in the West Indies or the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of West Africa. So the orders concerned the South Atlantic. The coast of Africa or South America in peacetime? What on earth could be happening down there?
St Vincent stood up and walked to the window. There was not much to see; Ramage knew that this and the Board Room's three other windows overlooked a stable. The early morning sky with its scattering of cloud was now becoming overcast; there would be rain by teatime.
Abruptly, and with his back to Ramage, the First Lord asked: 'How is the Calypso's refit proceeding?'
Obviously the First Lord did not trust the daily reports he received from his dockyard commissioners. 'Slowly, sir, as far as I could see when I was on board three days ago.'
'Ah yes, you and your visitors took up a lot of time.'
'Indeed, sir?' Ramage could almost see the Commissioner's report. 'How so, sir?'
'The dockyard men could not get on with shifting the guns.'
'Sir, there hasn't been a single dockyard man on board since the Calypso moored up in Chatham.'
St Vincent swung round. 'Rubbish! You've had eighty men!'
'Excuse me, sir,' Ramage said carefully. 'I was told by the Commissioner I would get eighty men, to shift the guns. In fact none arrived and my own men have been doing the work. My first lieutenant had a great deal of trouble getting even a few hoys to carry the French guns on shore.'
St Vincent sat down at the table and quickly shuffled through a pile of papers. He found one page and ran his finger down it. His eyes flicked back and forth along the lines.
'The Commissioner has allocated 110 men to the Calypso. Eighty to get the guns out; twenty are riggers; and ten are to help strike that foreyard.'
'When were those men supposed to start work, sir?'
The date the First Lord gave was the day after the Calypso arrived in Chatham. 'We might have been allocated 110 men, sir, but none has come on board, unless they started today. I was there on Friday and I can't think they'd work half a day on Saturday. Yesterday, Sunday, was a holiday.'
'The Commissioner himself signed this return, Ramage; are you calling him a liar?'
Ramage pictured the ingratiating figure at the jetty, rolls of fat quivering, servile to the Admiral - and using the Ramage family visit as an excuse for 'delaying' men not even on board.
'A liar, sir, with respect, and a fraud too. Where were those 110 men working?'
'I intend finding out,' St Vincent said grimly, 'but don't you go down to Chatham until your leave expires; it's better that I stir things up at Somerset House.'
The Navy Board occupied Somerset House, and there the Comptroller, Sir Andrew Snape Hamond, held sway. Probably the most dishonest man connected with the Royal Navy, he controlled the purchase of everything concerning the King's ships. Everything from rum to salt pork; timber to trousers for the men. All of it was bought from private contractors; all bought, Ramage thought bitterly, with 'a token of our esteem' being sent by the contractors to
people like Hamond. More than a hundred dockyard men should have been working on the Calypso for more than seven days. What were they doing? Where had the Commissioner sent them? That many men in seven days could probably build a house, Aitken had said. Did one of the Commissioner's friends now have a new house on Gad's Hill?
The First Lord finished writing a note, rang a small silver bell and gave the sheet of paper to the clerk who hurried in. 'Give that to Mr Nepean. I want it ready for signature before noon.'
Once the clerk had left the room, St Vincent said: 'I deliberately left you in command of the Calypso. Have you wondered why?'
'No, sir,' Ramage said, trying to guess the reason for the question.
'You don't lack confidence, young man.'
Something in St Vincent's tone angered Ramage and before he could stop himself he said: 'Captains lacking confidence usually put their ships upon a reef, sir.'
'Quite,' St Vincent said amiably. 'I was commenting, not criticizing. Your skin is too thin. However, your new orders. You rarely carry out my orders in accordance with their wording -'
'But always in the spirit of their meaning, sir!'
'- their wording,' St Vincent repeated, ignoring the interruption. 'Where do you stand on the post list?' he demanded.
'About tenth from the bottom, sir.'
'An admiral tenth from the top of the flag list is more tactful when speaking to the First Lord.'
'I apologize for my manner, sir.'
'But not for your words, eh? Anyway, your new orders concern something where it is highly probable that your views and the Board of Admiralty's coincide.' There was a hint of a smile round St Vincent's mouth. 'They are also the first orders you have ever received in time of peace.'
Ramage recalled previous encounters with St Vincent and his predecessor as First Lord, Earl Spencer. Always there was the heavy emphasis on his disobeying orders, but it seemed more a question of 'give a dog a bad name' because the orders were always carried out. That was the important thing; no senior officer had ever told him to do something and then had to blame him for failure. The trouble was that senior officers soon regarded themselves as omnipotent. Instead of simply writing orders telling the officers what was to be done, they went into details of how they were to be carried out, and that was the mistake. No one could anticipate every circumstance. It was the man on the spot, the captain of the ship, who had to make his plans according to the situation he found. Surely a general did not order a colonel to capture a particular fort and tell him by what highways, tracks and byways he was to approach it. Perhaps generals did ...
'Do you know anything about surveying?'
'Surveying, sir?'
'Obviously you don't; the word has paralysed you. Well, you can go through the Marine Department and get some instruction from the Hydrographer, Dalrymple, or his assistant, Walker. You need to know how to survey an island and chart the water round it.'
'Aye, aye, sir. A large island?'
'No. Perhaps a couple of miles long by one wide.'
'Do any charts or maps exist, sir?'
'A rough chart; nothing to rely on.'
'Might I ask -?'
'Trinidade.'
'Trinidad? Why, there's -'
'Not Trinidad,' St Vincent said testily, 'but Trinidade.' He was careful to emphasize the second 'e' by pronouncing it as a 'y'. 'It's off the Brazilian coast, seven hundred and fifty miles east-north-east of Rio de Janeiro and seven hundred from Bahia.'
'Does it belong to Spain or Portugal, sir?'
'What I am going to tell you remains secret until you open your orders. At present it - I'm referring to the service upon which you are being sent - is known to the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State, myself and Nepean, who wrote the orders. As far as your family and your ship's company are concerned, you are bound for the South Seas.'
'But forgive me, sir, is it Spain or Portugal?'
'Have you read the full text of the new Treaty with Bonaparte?'
'Yes, sir. At least, what was published in the Gazette. There might have been secret clauses...'
'There were none,' St Vincent said shortly. 'Did you see any reference to Trinidade?'
'No, sir, just Trinidad, which Spain loses and we keep.'
'Yes, one of the few places Bonaparte allowed us,' St Vincent said with the first indication of his own views about the terms of the treaty, although it was quite clear to Ramage that he welcomed the peace. 'Now, have you Trinidade placed in your mind?'
'Yes, sir. A thousand miles or so south of St Paul Rocks and Fernando de Noronha, and about the same distance west of St Helena.'
'Precisely. An isosceles triangle would have St Paul Rocks and Fernando de Noronha as its apex, Trinidade on the left of the base and St Helena on the right. Now, what strikes you about its position?'
'If it has water, then it is a perfect place for the King's and John Company ships to call on their way to or from the Cape of Good Hope. At present - or, rather, in the war - the Honourable East India Company were very nervous of having their ships call at St Helena for water because both French national ships and privateers usually lurked close to it. Trinidade would be a good alternative.'
St Vincent nodded with his rare wintry smile. 'And a good rendezvous for the trade bound to or from Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo and Buenos Aires, as well as the Cape. It has water, by the way.'
'Who owns it, then, sir?' Ramage asked for the third time, guessing from the spelling it had been named by the Portuguese.
'No one,' St Vincent said. 'We used it occasionally in this late war and can claim to have captured it, but it belonged to Portugal before that. It is not mentioned in the Treaty.'
'So whoever notices the omission and gets there first. . .'
'Exactly,' St Vincent said. 'Speed and secrecy, my dear Ramage. You have a fast ship and a good crew. Now go and claim it for His Britannic Majesty.'
CHAPTER FOUR
The Hydrographic Office was simply a small room: Dalrymple sat on one side of a table and his assistant, Walker, on the other. One wall was taken up with what appeared to be tall chests of drawers, the drawers being wide but shallow, and each labelled. A small table at the far end of the room was piled high with volumes which Ramage recognized as masters' logs, and he recalled a paragraph from the Regulations and Instructions concerning masters: 'He is duly to observe the appearances of coasts; and if he discovers any new shoals, or rocks under water, to note them down in his journal, with their bearing and depth of water.'
A conscientious master usually did better than that. Many were skilled with a paintbox, enjoying making sketches of unfrequented coastlines and preparing good line and wash illustrations. Often a master would make two sketches, one to go into his own collection of charts and views, the other to be inserted in his log, which had in due course to be sent to the Navy Office. One of Dalrymple's most difficult tasks, Ramage guessed, was getting logs from the Navy Office: the Navy Board had a reputation for losing documents. The few hundred yards from the Navy Office in Somerset Place to the Admiralty in Whitehall might well have been a few thousand miles.
Dalrymple was courteous. Few captains visited his office; usually he saw only masters, who were, officially, responsible for the actual navigation of a ship.
Yes, he said, he had a map of Trinidade, but not a chart. The map was in fact Spanish, and found on board a prize, which accounted for the Spanish spelling, with the final 'e'.
He went to his chests of drawers, pulled out the one labelled 'T', sorted through some papers and then extracted a rectangular sheet of parchment measuring about two feet by one. He blew dust from it and brought it to the table, where he wiped it again with a cloth.
'You see, the cartographer - I'd hardly call him a surveyor - was more concerned with drawing the voluptuous cherubs in the corners than details of the island. There's enough giltwork to cover a ship of the line's transom!'
Ramage stared at the map. The island reminded him of a mole. It sat diagonally sou
theast-northwest, with the northern coast, the back, almost a straight line, with no bays. There were several small anchorages on the south side formed by pairs of peninsulas sticking out like teats hanging down from the belly. He picked up a magnifying glass and began reading the Spanish references to the 'A', 'B', 'C' marks on the island itself.
The latitude and longitude were given, 20° 29' South and 29° 20' West. There were six hills, looking like sugar loaves in the centre of the island, and someone had pencilled in the heights in feet, the highest being nearly 1,500 feet and the lowest 850 feet. There was a small rivulet of fresh water on the north side and another almost opposite on the south. Three places were marked as possible positions for batteries while another could be a signal station. There was no date on the map; not one depth was shown in the waters round the island.
'What date was this drawn?'
Dalrymple shrugged his shoulders and glanced at Walker, who shook his head. 'At a guess from the style and decorations, I'd say about 1700. I suspect a privateersman had thoughts about using it as a base against the Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires trade. Or perhaps the Spanish government wanted to keep privateers out. Whoever it was took care against the map falling into the wrong hands.'
'The lack of soundings?'
'Yes, with that kind of detail of the land, normally I would have expected soundings. Someone did not want to encourage visitors.'
'There must be some dangerous reefs, otherwise the soundings would be of little importance.'
Dalrymple nodded and said: 'I was just thinking that. It's a rocky island, so one would expect deep water close in, with rocks and foul ground. As you can see, it's an island the size of Hyde Park put down in the South Atlantic and rarely visited by the King's ships. The masters of those that have been there did not bother to do any survey work.'
'Can you make a copy of this map?'
'Of course,' Dalrymple said. 'I'm sorry we don't have it ready, but we had no warning. Walker and I do the best we can to prepare charts we think might be needed, but you can see those logs . . .' he pointed to the other table. 'Now the war has ended and scores of ships will be laid up, you can imagine how many more logs will be arriving for us to examine.'