by Dudley Pope
No one was very sure how the phrase originated. Blackstrap Bay was on the east side of Europa Point, Gibraltar, and any ship becalmed as she entered the Strait bound for Gibraltar was almost invariably swept past into the Mediterranean by the eastgoing current, and that was called “being blackstrapped” because even with all the boats out towing, the men would be lucky if they managed to work the ship crabwise into Blackstrap Bay and anchor to wait for a fair wind.
To the seamen, however, blackstrap really meant only one thing. It was common for the seaman’s daily allowance of one gallon of beer (small beer, admittedly, something just stronger than water but guaranteed not to go bad so quickly) to be replaced by something else when the ship was serving on different stations. In American waters, for instance, he was given a gallon of spruce beer, if it could be obtained. (Martin, to whom it tasted like a vile medicine, was thankful when the purser failed to get any.) In the West Indies it was nearly always half a pint of rum, which was popular as long as it was Jamaican or Barbadian. There was a peculiar rum distilled in Antigua and some other islands which seamen swore would serve better as horse liniment. Even Will Stafford, who would normally happily drink anything, reckoned it “a sovereign cure for a sprain or rheumaticks.” Anyway, the regulations said that “In the Streights” one pint of wine was to be issued in place of one gallon of beer.
The wine, usually a rough red that often had much in common with vinegar, was known throughout the Navy as “blackstrap.” Still he was thankful that wine-for-beer was the only “exchange of provisions of one species for another,” as it was known, practised in the Mediterranean. He had heard the West Indies was the worst station—rice for oatmeal, oil for butter and two pounds of Cheshire cheese for three of Suffolk.
In the meantime, there was the immediate question of the semaphore station and he was commanding the red cutter and carrying half the Marines, while Kenton was taking the other half in the green.
They would be landing on a sandy beach and with no swell out here, it was unlikely there would be any in the bay; just small wind waves. Very well, the cutter drew three feet eight inches forward, so he must make sure that if the Marines had to wade, their powder and flints would be slung on their shoulders to stay dry. Normally they could jump from the stem into shallow water, but there were usually one or two clumsy oafs with three left feet who fell.
Paolo Orsini was standing only a few feet from Martin. The lad brought up in the home of Chatham Dockyard’s master shipwright and now the acting Third Lieutenant of the Calypso (at least until Wagstaffe returned with his prize crew), and the young Midshipman raised in the palazzo at Volterra and, until the Marchesa married and had a son, the heir to the kingdom, were already firm friends.
Martin, knowing Paolo would be in the gig with the Captain, said quietly: “Remember the gig draws three feet eight inches forward. That’s when you’ll ground on the sand and the boat might start broaching.”
“Thanks, Blower,” Paolo murmured. “If anyone asked I’d have had to guess, and I’d have said five feet …”
With that he snapped the pistol he was holding yet again and cursed the flint, using colourful Italian blasphemy for the weakness of its spark, and tossed the pistol back into the skip and chose another.
“Have you seen the Captain’s pair of pistols?” he asked conversationally.
“No, the last time I saw him at general quarters—after he sank that frigate—he was wearing a pair of Sea Service, like the rest of us.”
“He prefers them,” Paolo said confidingly, “but tonight he’s wearing a matched pair given him by my aunt. Hexagonal barrels, and made by Mansfield in Bond Street. Almost like duelling pistols.”
“What’s he do, then, tuck them in his belt or put them in his pockets?”
“No, they’ve been specially fitted with belt-hooks.”
“I’d be afraid of losing ‘em,” Martin said. “After all, once you’ve fired ‘em you usually throw them!” He slipped the wide leather cutlass-belt diagonally over his shoulder and slid the cutlass into the frog. He would have to wait to load the pistol; the Captain was very fussy about having powder on deck.
Paolo’s thoughts had been running parallel to Martin’s, and neither realized that both Kenton and Aitken felt the same—that they were going to a great deal of trouble to capture what Paolo privately regarded as a thin wooden wall and a few hen houses. The wooden wall looked as though it was supposed to protect the hen houses from the wind, in the same way that many farm houses in Italy were protected by rows of cypress trees which broke the force of the strongest winds.
But the Captain, Paolo mused, had behaved rather curiously when giving his orders for the attack: they must not damage the wall or the hen houses and were to seize all papers and books; particularly they were to ensure that the French did not set fire to anything. They must avoid using pistols as much as possible—unless they saw a man trying to burn anything.
Paolo noted that although Mr Southwick had not been in the cabin when the Captain gave his orders—he had been officer of the deck—he had quite cheerfully helped prepare the ship, refusing to go below to rest when his watch finished, even though he would be up all night. Nor, for that matter, had Mr Rennick shown any reluctance or boredom; in fact he seemed as alert and excited as the night he led the Marines in the attack on that castle at Santa Cruz, on the Spanish Main.
The Midshipman put the cutlass-belt over his head, selected a cutlass and put it in the frog, and then slid the hook of a pistol into his waistbelt. He could feel his dirk slapping against his buttock; a comforting reminder of his favourite weapon.
Jackson came up to him. “Mr Orsini—you’re in the gig. Can I leave the grapnel to you?”
Orsini nodded eagerly and Jackson said: “I’ll give you the word when to drop it over the stern, but the main thing is not to let the coil of line get twisted up: it’s got to run free, otherwise it’ll fetch us up short or you’ll lose the coil.”
“I understand, Jacko.”
“And if you’ll forgive me reminding you, sir, lower the grapnel slowly until you feel it on the bottom and then keep a steady pull on the line as you pay it out, to make sure the grapnel stays dug in. Otherwise it’ll try and skate across the bottom if there’s hard sand.”
“Yes, Jacko.”
“And don’t forget to make up the line on the cleat once we’re beached.”
“No, Jacko,” Paolo said patiently, with just enough edge in his voice to remind the American that he had done this sort of thing several times before.
“I know, sir,” Jackson said, having earlier detected the resentment in the boy’s voice, “but we don’t want mistakes tonight.”
“What is so special about tonight?” Paolo made little attempt to hide his contempt for the landing.
“Any action is special, sir,” Jackson said quietly. “You’re more likely to get killed if you’re careless, and you’re more likely to be careless if you think something’s unimportant.”
“Quite true,” Paolo admitted, “but attacking hen houses!”
“They’re barracks, sir,” Jackson said sharply, “with thirty or forty French soldiers in them. Each man has a musket and probably a pistol. That’s a hundred lead shot, any one of which can drag your anchors for the next world. And thirty or forty swords slicing you up like a leg of salt pork … Anyway,” he said in a voice which clinched any argument, “the Captain sets a lot of store by us capturing it.”
CHAPTER FOUR
IT WANTED a few minutes to midnight with a clear sky when the Calypso glided under fore and maintopsails into the bay formed by the headlands of Foix and Aspet. Every minute or so another seaman hurried back from the leadsman at the main chains and gave Ramage the depth of water: it was shoaling very gradually and unless they were unlucky enough to find and hit a high submerged rock they would very soon be anchoring in four fathoms close to the beach.
Aloft, out along the topsail yards, seamen were waiting to furl the sails, but instea
d of acting at Aitken’s bellow through the speaking-trumpet, ship’s boys would scamper up the rigging and pass the word, although the topmen would get a preliminary warning as the Calypso luffed and came head to wind, backing the topsails so that she would stop and then, gathering sternway, set her anchor.
The splash of the anchor hitting the water should be the only noise that might travel as far as the semaphore station, which was now about a mile away on the Calypso’s starboard beam.
The stars seemed everywhere, even reflecting in the water now and again as the frigate passed through what Southwick, who was waiting on the fo’c’s’le for the word to anchor, would call “a flat spot”; sufficient stars, Ramage noted, to give enough light to distinguish the shape of the land at a mile and recognize a man’s face at four feet.
Inspecting the semaphore station yet again with the night-glass, and allowing for the upside-down image, Ramage was surprised to see that the semaphore tower, or screen, or whatever it was called, was in fact built on a small hill, thus raising it another thirty feet or more, although the rest of the headland was flat, reminding him of a miniature Dungeness and making the ends of the barrack buildings stand out like shadowy gravestones.
Even more surprising, neither Southwick nor Aitken had noticed during their close inspection from seaward earlier in the day that there was a low but wide hill two-thirds of the way round the bay, nearer Foix than Aspet, and as far as he could see the hill ran down to the beach and there was no sign of a road. Which meant that any road or lane from the semaphore station to the village of Foix, or joining the two headlands, would have made a long detour inland. So the sentry was likely to be on the north side of the camp, where the lane came in. Yes, a tiny building they had not seen before—was that the guardhouse?
He could hear the chatter of the bow wave round the Calypso’s cutwater, and the frigate’s decks looked strangely bare: the red and green cutters and the gig, normally stowed amidships, had been hoisted out and were now towing astern, full of Marines and seamen. Martin and Kenton would be quite happy with the cutters, but Paolo would be excited at the idea of being in command of the gig, at least until Ramage climbed down the rope ladder hanging from the taffrail.
He listened to the last sounding reported by a breathless seaman, looked again at the hill which was now just on the larboard bow, and then at the semaphore tower, now drawing round to the starboard quarter. “My compliments to Mr Southwick,” he told the seaman, “and tell him to stand by to anchor as convenient.”
Which was a simple way of saying let go the anchor as soon as the way is off the ship.
“Rowlands?”
Rowlands was a sulky but ambitious Welsh boy with no brains who enjoyed nothing more than being allowed to climb aloft, and Ramage had kept him standing by to carry the message to the maintopmen to furl. The moment the foretopmen saw the other sail being furled they would follow suit.
“Here, sir.”
“Right, up to the maintop with your message!”
As the boy ran for the ratlines Ramage told the quartermaster to bring the Calypso head to wind, and the order was immediately passed to the two men at the wheel while Aitken gave instructions to men standing by at braces, sheets and hal-yards. All blocks had been greased again during the day—much to the annoyance of the cook, who had to provide the grease, or slush, which floated to the top of the boiler when salt pork or salt beef was cooked. Although it was against regulations, the cook and his mate usually sold the slush to the men, who liked to smear it on their bread—the official name for the biscuits with which they were issued, hard as board when fresh and crumbling when attacked by age or weevils.
The Calypso turned to starboard, but so smooth was the water and still the night, that Ramage had the sensation that the ship was stationary and the half-moon of the bay was sliding from right to left, like the swing of a scythe across stalks of wheat.
The chattering of the bow wave quietened to a mutter and then went silent. The coxswain said quietly: “No weight on the rudder, sir; we’ll have sternway in a few moments.”
The forward movement of the ship, with water flowing past the rudder, meant that the men at the wheel had to use strength to turn the wheel and in turn the rudder, the amount of effort required being proportional to the speed. Once the ship stopped and then began to move astern, the action of the rudder was reversed.
A heavy splash forward, the drumming of heavy rope paying out rapidly and a strong smell of scorching as the friction burned both hemp and wood, showed that Southwick had let go the anchor. The backed topsails gave the Calypso enough sternway to make sure the anchor dug well in. The men aloft could see no more cable was being paid out, and a hissing and rustling told Ramage that two big topsails were being clewed up and then furled.
Everything seems to be a compromise, he thought crossly. He had given a lot of thought to the Calypso’s arrival in the Baie de Foix. It was essential that the French at Foix—at the semaphore station, anyway—thought she was a French frigate coming in to anchor for her own reasons. They had seen a French frigate pass westward at noon and bear away towards Minorca; now she had come back.
At what point, Ramage tried to decide, did it become a matter of interest to the garrison at Foix? If she came in and anchored in broad daylight the commanding officer of the garrison would expect to be called on board or, more likely, have himself rowed out, in the hope of an invitation to dinner. An evening arrival meant the same thing, with the hope of a half bottle of brandy. But an arrival late at night—not surreptitiously, to raise suspicion, but without a lot of noise to rouse the sleeping garrison commander—might leave the decision to the sentry. If he happened to notice a ship anchoring in the bay he would probably not bother (or dare) rouse the commanding officer, who would curse him for raising the alarm at the arrival of what he knew to be a French ship. And obviously she was French: they had seen her pass flying a French flag, and when had any of them seen, or even heard of, a British ship? Everyone knew the rosbifs had been driven out of the Mediterranean …
Would that be what was happening over at the semaphore station? He shrugged his shoulders. It seemed likely. Coming in quietly like this would seem natural enough—if the commanding officer of the garrison was by chance awake, he would assume he could hear so little because of the distance. If he was asleep hellip; well, he should sleep on.
A seaman appeared out of the darkness to report how much cable Southwick had veered, and pass on the Master’s opinion that the anchor was holding well in what the leadsman—who had “armed” the lead, filling the cavity in the bottom with tallow so that a specimen of the sea bottom would stick to it—reported was hard sand and some small shell.
Aitken appeared beside him as the Calypso finally swung head to wind, the hill showing clearly as a black lump on the larboard bow and the semaphore tower as a square top to a small anthill on the starboard quarter.
Ramage pulled his sword round, pushed down on the pistols in his belt to make sure the clips were secure, and jammed his hat down hard on his head.
“Well, Mr Aitken, I hand over the ship to you. We should be back within an hour with the prisoners.”
Aitken saluted, “Aye aye, sir. I’ll have her careened and painted by then!”
Ramage laughed: the young Scot rarely joked, and that he should do so at this moment was an indication that he regarded the operation as about as important as sending a boat away with casks and axes on a wooding and watering expedition.
The cutters had a few yards farther to row than the gig, so he called down for them to be on their way as soon as they were cast off. Seamen at the Calypso’s taffrail took the painters from the kevels and dropped them down to the two boats, and Ramage heard both Martin and Kenton give the first of the sequence of orders that would have the oars in the water and rowing briskly, cloth bound round them to deaden the noise where they worked between the thole pins.
Ramage climbed down the rope ladder into the gig and as he sat down in the
sternsheets, moving his two pistols slightly so the butts did not dig into his lower ribs, he said to Jackson: “Let’s get under way.”
As soon as the American had called up to the Calypso’s taffrail and Ramage had heard the painter landing in the bow of the gig, where the bowman quickly coiled it, he said to both Jackson and Orsini: “We’ll be landing more to the north. Farther inshore.”
Martin had been instructed to take the red cutter in a wide sweep round the end of the sand spit to the far side, to land his party of Marines—who were under the command of the sergeant—as close to the second barrack hut from seaward as possible, while Kenton was to land on the bay side by the second barrack hut on that side.
Under the plan, a corporal would attack the seaward hut with a section of Marines while the sergeant attacked the second hut on the far side and the other corporal would attack the third hut, next to it, but farther inland.
Rennick, in Kenton’s cutter, would take the nearest hut, the second on the bay side, while a section of men would run to help the corporal attacking the seaward hut (and also cutting off any Frenchmen trying to bolt) and another group of Marines would run inland to secure the fifth hut, the nearest to the semaphore tower.
Ramage’s last-minute change was that the seamen in his gig would land well to the north of the semaphore tower, skirt the hill on which it stood and, as soon as they met the track or lane leading to the village, find where the guardhouse was and seize the sentry or the whole guard, if that was how the French had arranged it.
Ramage and his seamen would be the first to catch the rabbits if the Marine ferrets bolted them. But, he hoped, guile would work better than a ferret.
As the men bent to the oars and the gig spurted forward, Ramage could just make out the two cutters to starboard, each diverging slightly, and ahead was the small hill with the strange wooden wall on top of it, high enough to blot out some low stars, as though it was a square sail. It was high; now he could see that the men on Aspet, with a decent spyglass, could read the signals, however they were made. Still, it must be strongly built not to have been blown down by a mistral from the northwest, the most frequent strong wind along this coast, or the labé from the south-west. Or, for that matter, the levant from the east or the céruse from the south-east, all of which would hit the tower, or wall rather, more or less at right angles. The ponant from the south and tramontane from the north should hit it end-on.