Ramage & The Drum Beat

by Pope, Dudley

  CHAPTER FOUR

  George Edwards, the gunner’s mate of the Kathleen, had issued the gun locks, spare flints, trigger lines and other equipment for the carronades from his store, and then gone to the tiny lead-lined magazine. After taking off his boots and putting on a pair of felt slippers, he emptied his pockets of metal objects that might make a spark, unlocked the door with a brass key and entered to issue the waiting gun captains with powder horns containing the fine priming powder for the locks.

  The fire screens round the magazine had already been unrolled and were hanging down like thick blankets and dripping with water. By the light of the lantern placed outside and illuminating the magazine through a glass window, Edwards inspected the magazine men as they trooped in, stripped to the waist, bare-footed, and with rags tied round their heads to stop perspiration running into their eyes – heaving out the cartridges in the magazine was hot and exhausting work. As Edwards looked slowly round the dimly lit magazine, methodically checking what he saw, the magazine men lined up ready to hand the neatly stacked cartridges from the racks out through the scuttle to the waiting powder boys.

  Although he had not been back to his native Kent for more than a few weeks at a time in the last thirty years, Edwards had lost little of the Kentish burr in his voice and none of the slow, thoughtful, almost cautious habits of the fisherman, painfully learned during a boyhood spent in his father’s fishing boat working among the treacherous shoals of the Goodwin Sands from Deal beach.

  In build he was like one of the guns to which his life was devoted: slightly round-shouldered, barrel-chested with narrow thighs and long legs. From his shoulders to his feet his body had the same taper as a gun, his head forming the knob-shaped cascable at the end of the breech, his body the barrel.

  For once Edwards was satisfied with what he saw in the magazine: thanks to the captain he’d been able to exercise the men so they could be trusted to pass the cartridges to the boys with the minimum of fuss and movement; in fact they could do it blindfolded – that was how they’d been exercising for the past week.

  For all that, Edwards was puzzled when he heard the word being passed that the captain wanted to see him at once, and the sudden bright sunshine made him blink as he emerged on deck to find Mr Ramage and the Master waiting.

  Ramage said abruptly to him and the Master: ‘We have to make the Dons think we can destroy their ship.’

  Southwick said ‘Aye aye, sir,’ in a matter-of-fact voice, but Edwards thought of the row of gun ports along the frigate’s side.

  ‘How do you propose we should do it, Mr Southwick?’

  Both Master and gunner’s mate knew by now this was the captain’s way of testing them, and while Edwards pondered carefully Southwick admitted frankly and characteristically: ‘Haven’t thought about it, sir. Must be some way, though…’

  ‘Listen then, particularly you Edwards. I want you to be able to blow the stern off that ship.’

  Ramage, nettled by Southwick’s easy-going attitude and disappointed that neither looked surprised at what he’d just said, mistook their confidence in him for indifference and snapped at Edwards: ‘Any ideas?’

  The gunner’s mate shook his head. ‘Sorry, sir, it’s a bit – well, sudden, as you might say.’

  Ramage nodded, realizing that resentment from either man at the present moment would mean he’d lose their co-operation.

  ‘Well,’ he said, noticing both Gianna and Antonio edging closer to hear, ‘if the Dons can get a broadside into us, we’ll soon be down there,’ he pointed towards the seabed, ‘where the chart says “No bottom at ninety fathoms”. So we’ve got to tackle her from ahead or astern, risking only her bow or stern-chasers.’

  Ramage saw both men nod warily, obviously expecting another question to be shot at them.

  ‘Now then, you can see she’s lying with the wind fine on her starboard quarter, which means, Mr Southwick?’

  ‘That we can run across her stern, rake her with one broadside and luff round and rake her again with the other without getting into the arc of fire of her broadside guns!’ the Master answered promptly.

  ‘We could. Now supposing she was one of our own ships – on fire, perhaps, and we wanted to get the men off?’

  Southwick thought for a moment, ruffling his hand through his hair. ‘We could heave-to the Kathleen to windward and drift a boat down on a grass warp, sir.’

  ‘And how does all that help us with our present problem of capturing an enemy ship?’

  ‘Fill the boat with boarders?’ Southwick asked hopefully. ‘And have them picked off one by one by musket fire?’

  Edwards’ eyes narrowed. If it’d been a question of seamanship alone, Mr Ramage would have sent for the Master’s mate and the bosun’s mate as well as the Master, but certainly not the gunner’s mate. Since he had been sent for, it must be something to do with guns – or powder. Well, there was no harm in guessing.

  ‘Powder, sir? A few barrels in the boat and a long fuse?’

  He was a man who spoke slowly and deliberately, as if every word was a shot to be aimed without haste and, when fired, to have the maximum effect on the target.

  Ramage nodded and unexpectedly felt relieved. Perhaps his idea wasn’t so wild after all if Edwards could guess it. He took a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, spread it on top of the binnacle and sketched with a pencil as he spoke. ‘Precisely. An explosion boat. I want a big enough explosion to damage her stern and spring the butts of the planks – just a couple on the waterline would be enough; the pumps couldn’t keep up with that. And she may be leaking already. So how much powder do we need in the boat?’

  ‘No idea, sir,’ Edwards admitted frankly, making no attempt to avoid Ramage’s eyes, which seemed to bore right through him. ‘Never heard of a thing like that before. No experience of powder exploding in an unconfined space. Lose p’raps two-thirds of the effect.’

  ‘If you loaded up a boat and saw it explode, do you reckon you could then judge how much more or less powder you’d need in another one to damage the frigate?’

  Edwards paused, his eyes almost closing with concentration. Then with complete confidence he nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’ He remembered how the captain hated anyone adding ‘I think so’ to a statement.

  ‘Very well, you’ll have the chance of seeing one. I want to force the Dons to surrender and take a tow. I don’t want to sink ’em unless we have to.’

  ‘Indeed we don’t,’ Southwick exclaimed, ‘think of all that prize money going to the bottom!’

  ‘So,’ continued Ramage, ‘first of all I want to explode a boat about fifty yards away. The Spaniards will have been wondering why the devil a boat with a canvas cover over it was being drifted down towards them. When it suddenly blows up they’ll get the shock of their lives. So I want a big bang and lots of smoke. Then, while they’re still feeling shaky, I shall send a boat over with a flag of truce, warn ’em the next explosion boat will remove their stern, and suggest they surrender.’

  ‘And if they don’t, sir?’

  ‘We blow their stern off,’ Ramage said grimly, rubbing the scar on his forehead.

  Neither man said anything and Ramage, knowing speed was now essential, snapped, ‘Now look at this sketch. Here is the Spaniard. We approach like this and lower the boat here, and tow it on a long warp – a grass warp because it must float. Then we carry on towards the Spaniard, making sure we keep out of the arcs of her broadside guns, and begin to turn here, and then we heave-to to windward. The boat should drift round like a tail, and I want it to explode about fifty yards from the Spaniards.

  ‘Your fuse, Edwards, will be lit when we get to there and must fire the powder when we are there. We’re making about five knots. I want at least a mile to get the boat into the right position. Say fifteen minutes from the moment you light the fuse.’

  ‘Right, Mr Southwick, prepare the boat and a long grass warp. Use the jolly boat and we’ll have to lower it loaded. Edwards, decide how much powder you w
ant, how you’ll fire it, and get it all loaded into the boat. Any questions?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Edwards. ‘The fuse. Fifteen minutes is a long time.’

  ‘Yes, but I daren’t risk less. Hadn’t you better use a portfire?’

  ‘I was just thinking that, sir. Safer than fuses. I’ll use two, in case there’s a dollop of spray or one goes out. They burn for fifteen minutes anyway so I don’t have to cut ’em.’

  ‘Don’t forget we’ll be towing the boat at five knots: there’ll be more than a dollop of spray flying over it.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir. How much time have I got to prepare?’

  Ramage looked at the frigate. ‘A quarter of an hour. And Mr Southwick, make sure the deck is thoroughly wetted round the jolly boat. A few loose grains of powder…’

  Edwards went down to the darkness of a magazine. He could think better there. It had the same peace as the fish cuddy in his father’s boat when the wind howled on deck, because the lead lining of the magazine with the dampened fire-screen hanging down deadened the noise. He sat down on a stack of cartridges, feeling the flannel of the bags coarse against his hand, and went through every point.

  First the powder. Should he use it in its special barrels or in cartridge bags? It’d have to be cartridge bags because barrels would need separate fuses and they probably wouldn’t explode simultaneously.

  How much powder? Well, to breach a wall you generally reckoned on fifty to a hundred pounds, depending on its thickness, and that had to be tamped down with a covering of ten times its own weight of earth. Each flannel cartridge weighed just half a pound, and he finally decided on a hundred. It was only a guess, but anyway he daren’t use more for the first boat because if he had to increase the quantity for the second one he’d be left very short of cartridges for the guns, since the rest of the powder was still in the copper-hooped barrels.

  Edwards stood up and told the magazine men to pass a hundred cartridges out through the scuttle, calling to the powder boys to carry them up on deck and stack them near the jolly boat in the stern davits. After sending a man to warn the Master that the powder was on its way up, he sat down again. How was he going to fix the portfires? There was no question of just making a hole in the flannel bag of a cartridge and jamming one in – that would be a quick way of blowing up the Kathleen! No, he’d have to use a barrel, jamming the long cylindrical tube of the portfire into the bung-hole, then wedging each barrel among the bags of powder.

  He ordered two of the magazine men to get a couple of small barrels and then fill them with powder; another to get a lump of pitch and a ball of caulking cotton from the carpenter’s mate, and two pieces of leather and some marline from the bosun’s mate and bring them to him at the main hatch. With that Edwards went to see the captain.

  He saluted Ramage and said apologetically: ‘I know we are at quarters, sir, but I need to heat up some pitch.’

  Ramage knew the man too well to question the necessity, but for safety the galley fire had been doused immediately the drum beat to quarters. The only light left in the ship was illuminating the magazine. He remembered the little oil-lamp left behind by the Kathleen’s previous captain.

  ‘The oil-lamp for heating my tea urn will do. Get my steward to bring it up from the cabin. You’ve thought of a way of securing the portfires?’

  Edwards nodded and pointed to the paper and pencil on the binnacle. ‘May I just show you, sir?’

  He drew a quick sketch and Ramage nodded. ‘Wedge it among the bags so there’s no chance of it moving. And make sure the canvas over the boat is wet so it doesn’t catch fire.’

  Edwards nodded. ‘I’m afraid we’ll probably lose three minutes on the portfires, sir: I hadn’t allowed for the base going into the barrel. Difficult to know exactly when the burning part will reach the powder. I can’t guarantee anything more than twelve to fifteen minutes.’

  Ramage thought quickly. The boat would be drifting for perhaps three minutes. Well, the first one was only a demonstration, so whether it exploded fifty or a hundred yards from the hulk wouldn’t matter much.

  ‘Very well, you can’t help that. Carry on, then.’

  Within a couple of minutes Edwards was sitting on the coaming at the forward side of the main hatch with one small wooden barrel filled with powder held between his knees, bung uppermost, and another nearby. Beside him on his left were two portfires – fifteen-inch-long cylindrical tubes filled with a composition of saltpetre, sulphur and gunpowder mealed by treating it with spirits of wine, and which when lit burned steadily like a large Roman candle at the rate of an inch a minute.

  On Edwards’ right were a pair of scissors, a brass pricker looking like a large darning needle stuck into a wooden handle, two squares of soft leather, a ball of marline (the light tar on the line mingled curiously with the cobbler’s shop smell of the leather) and a chunk of pitch chipped from a large piece, black and shiny like coal but already beginning to dull and soften slightly in the sun, and a battered saucepan in which to heat it.

  Three men stood round the gunner’s mate holding leather buckets of water and each with strict orders to douse the powder-filled barrels at a word from Edwards, who picked up one of the pieces of leather and, standing a portfire on it, marked out the circular shape of its base using the tip of the brass pricker. He cut out the circle with the scissors and then with the same preoccupied air of a schoolboy pushing a pencil through a square of paper, slipped the portfire into the hole, making sure it was a tight fit.

  At that moment a seaman came up to report the captain’s oil-lamp was lit, and went away with the pitch and saucepan with orders to start heating it. ‘Just runny,’ Edwards said, ‘don’t let it start bubbling.’

  With a warning glance at the men standing round, Edwards gently drew the bung from the barrel, carefully folding the cloth in which it had been wrapped so that none of the slate-grey grains of powder still adhering to it should fall on the deck, and handing it to one of the men to drop in a bucket. Then he worked the piece of leather with the hole in it into the bung-hole, flattening it out with his fingers inside the barrel and over the top of the powder to act as a washer so that it covered the powder except for the hole he had cut out.

  He worked his index finger in the powder until he made a cavity three inches deep, picked up the portfire and pushed it through the leather washer and into the powder until the portfire stuck up out of the bung-hole like a candle on a cake. Taking up the roll of marline he tucked an end between the leather and the inside of the barrel and began to wind it round and round the base of the portfire, as though rewinding a cotton reel, pausing every now and again to push it down until the portfire was a tight fit in the bung-hole, and leaving a shallow depression all round.

  He called for the hot pitch and the seaman came running from the fo’c’sle with the old saucepan. Edwards inspected the pitch in case it was too hot, then gently poured some on to the marline wound round the portfire in the bung-hole, filling up the circular depression, He then wound on more turns of marline, pushing them down with the pricker, and poured on more pitch, using the pricker to shape it so that when it set there would be a little mountain of pitch stuck up on the barrel with the portfire sticking out in place of a peak He inspected it carefully, waiting for the pitch to cool, then gently pressed the portfire. It was firmly seated.

  Motioning to the man to take the pitch back to the lamp and keep it hot, and telling another to hold the completed barrel, he then set to work repeating the whole operation with the second one. He had just finished when Southwick came bustling up.

  ‘Well, Edwards, have y’ got those boxes of fireworks ready yet? The cartridges are stowed in the boat the way you said, and the boat cover’s rigged and ready to be secured. We haven’t much time left y’know. Look!’

  Edwards glanced up and was startled to see how near was the frigate. He ordered the barrels to be carried aft. ‘Handle ’em gently,’ he warned the men. ‘If you knock those portfires I’ll personally dry y
our corpses in the sun and sell the meat to the Dons as prime jerked beef.’

  The tone of his voice warned them he was only just joking, and as soon as they were by the taffrail, holding the barrels as though they were glass, Ramage walked over and carefully inspected each one.

  ‘You’ve done a good job, Edwards. Let’s hope the portfires burn true. You’ll see the boat cover’s rigged so that once you’ve lit the portfires and got from under it, that line has only to be drawn taut and belayed and the cover’s snugged well down. Don’t rush things when I give the word, but remember that even if the portfires burn the full fifteen minutes, we can’t afford to lose a moment from the time you light them.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ said Edwards and climbed up on to the taffrail and out to the boat slung in the davits. ‘You,’ he said to a seaman, ‘come and give me a hand in here.’

  The two men almost disappeared under the canvas cover and then took the first barrel as it was handed to them. Edwards lifted out some of the stacked cartridges to make two separate gaps for the barrels to be wedged in. As soon as he had fitted them he put a square of canvas over each one, the portfire sticking up through a slit in the centre. The canvas was thick enough to protect the flannel of the cartridge bags from the sparks thrown out by the sputterings of the portfires. He told the seaman to get back on board and crawled to the opening in the boat cover.

  ‘Ready now, sir.’

  ‘Very well, but you might as well stay there for a few minutes,’ Ramage said, and turned to look once again at the frigate.

  Although the curvature of the earth just hid the waterline – indicating she was still more than four miles away – her roll was so violent he frequently glimpsed the copper sheathing on her bottom. His telescope clearly showed the discoloured reddish-yellow of the metal and Ramage noted there was no green streak of weed or patches of barnacles.

  That told him a great deal – the frigate had been docked in the last month or two and, more important, since Spain came into the war only a few weeks ago, was almost certainly newly-commissioned with a raw crew and probably unseasoned officers and captain as well, if ships were being rushed into commission. And even trained guns’ crews would be hard put to hit anything from a ship rolling like that – anyone peering along the barrel of a gun would sight the sea a hundred yards away one moment and the blue sky the next, the horizon flashing past in a split second. For a few moments he pictured the Kathleen with the explosive ‘red herring’ towing astern at the end of the floating grass rope. For the demonstration, time was not so important. But if his bluff was called and he had to try to sink her, the boat must be in position under the Spaniard’s stern just as the portfires exploded the powder; a minute too soon and the Spaniards would have time to drop round shot through its bottom. A minute too late might not be so disastrous: much of the explosive effect would be lost, but it’d probably be enough to start some planks. How about musket fire? Well, it’d take a lot to sink the boat or make it leak enough to spoil all the powder. What were the snags then? It was late in the day to start thinking of them, but why hadn’t anyone used an explosion boat before? After all, fireships had been used against the Armada…Would powder exploding in an unconfined space do much damage? Well if he didn’t know, presumably the Spanish didn’t either; but since the first boat was bound to make a splendid firework display the Spaniards, as the potential victims of a second one, would be more nervous than he was. And in his experience the bigger the bang the more frightening the weapons, irrespective of the damage – which was why he’d been training the Kathleens to avoid shouting unnecessarily when working the guns, but scream like madmen if they ever had to board an enemy ship or repel boarders.