by Dudley Pope
All of which meant that if a hurricane hit them with the usual few hours’ warning, only three or four ships were likely to survive. The flagship, the Topaz, probably the frigates and, less likely, the Triton and the Lark lugger. He was being pessimistic but much would depend on Goddard. Would he disperse the convoy in time to avoid them having a barrier of islands in their way as they ran before the winds? Sea room, plenty of sea room—that would be their only hope. In a hurricane the wind eventually goes right round the compass. It was a comfort that Maxine was in the best ship, anyway.
He was just rolling up the chart when Southwick came down again. He came into the cabin and simply raised an eyebrow.
“Escorts’ positions—and an extra ship joining the convoy,” Ramage explained.
“Oh—I thought they were up to something.”
“Not yet!”
“Extra ship? Where’s she come from?”
“I don’t know. Late arrival?”
“No,” Southwick said. “They didn’t lose anyone on the way out. Maybe a runner.”
“I was thinking that.”
“But why join the convoy now? His only chance of a profit is to get to Kingston a’fore the convoy and beat ‘em to the market.”
Ramage shrugged his shoulders. “She’s joined us, and one more to chase up won’t make any difference.”
CHAPTER FIVE
ALMOST the last of the 61 names written in the Triton’s current muster book, now locked in Ramage’s desk, was Thomas Jackson, and the details entered in the various columns beside it recorded all that the Navy Board, Sick and Hurt Board, Admiralty and various other branches of the Navy would ever need to know about him. In the column headed Where and whether or not prest was written “vol.,” showing that he had volunteered instead of being one of a press-gang’s haul.
In the next column, under Place and country where born, the neat copperplate handwriting recorded “Charleston, South Carolina” for Jackson. Compared with most entries in muster books, this was a wealth of detail, and showed that both the clerk making the original entry and the person it referred to could write and spell. A newcomer from a foreign town that was difficult to spell usually had only his country noted down. Various other columns yielded the information that Thomas Jackson 41 years old, was the captain’s coxswain and had been serving since the beginning of the war.
Like any government form, the muster book failed to indicate that Thomas Jackson was a human being. It did not show, for instance, why a thin-faced, sandy-haired and wiry American was voluntarily serving in the Royal Navy, nor reveal that for the past couple of years he had rarely been more than a few yards from Lieutenant Ramage and had shared in all his adventures, narrow escapes and triumphs. Nor did it give a hint of the curious bond that existed between the two men as a result of those shared experiences.
Standing beside Jackson on the fo’c’s’le just after dawn as the convoy sailed from Barbados was another seaman who had had a share in many, although not all, of Ramage’s exploits. Will Stafford, born 27 years earlier in Bridewell Lane, in the city of London, was a true Cockney, with the perky humour that traditionally went with the accent. Stocky with curly brown hair, a round and open face, and a confident, jaunty manner, he had a habit of rubbing a thumb and forefinger together, like a tailor feeling cloth.
An observant person might well have been curious about Stafford’s hands: although the skin was tough and coarsened by handling ropes, scrubbing decks, polishing brightwork with brick-dust and a dozen other tasks, they were delicately shaped, and he was very proud of the fact that before he was pressed into the Navy they had been deliberately kept soft. His original trade was locksmith but he was not afraid to admit that he had not always worked in daylight, nor invariably at the request of the owner of the lock. Working at night was more risky but a lot more profitable.
“Nah,” Stafford said, waving a hand at the merchantmen, “never did like all this work wiv a fleet.”
“Hardly a fleet!”
“Well, there’s an admiral, ain’t there? Anyway, I didn’t mean it literalilly.” He paused a moment, cocking his head to one side, then corrected himself. “I mean literalally.”
“If your tongue was a key, you’d never get a door open.”
“Not a lock yet made …” Stafford said airily. “What I’m tryin’ ter say, Jacko, is that I like it better when we’re on our own. None of these admirals waving flags so’s we run rahnd like kids at a Michaelmas fair.”
“Count yourself lucky you’re not like me and responsible for reading the blasted signals,” Jackson said.
“Can’t read nor write proper. Keeps me off jobs like that.”
“You really can’t read?” Jackson did not hide his disbelief.
“Well, I can akshly, but I don’t let on.”
“Why not?”
“Where I was born, mate, it don’t always pay ter let on. ‘Ere, Jacko, ever bin ter Jamaica afore?”
“No.”
“Ain’t it near where you comes from?”
“Yes—as near as Gibraltar from where you come from.”
Stafford sniffed. “Hm. Ever thought of going back? Ter Charleystown, I mean. After all, yer got a Protection; they’d ‘ave ter let yer go. Or y’could run.”
“Nothing in Charleston for me.”
“Wot, no family?”
“No.”
“Only us lot, eh?” Stafford commented. “Mr Ramage an’ Mr Southwick, an’ me an’ Rosey … ?”
Jackson nodded, and the moment Stafford realized the American was serious he said quietly: “‘Ere, Jacko, I was only jokin’ about runnin’; never could see you desertin’. But yer mean it, about no family an’ no friends?”
“Yes. The ship’s my home. Gives me a big family, too,” Jackson added dryly.
“Cor, well, s’funny you should say that, Jacko; that’s ‘ow I feel. In uvver ships I’ve always looked rahnd fer a chansk ter run. Now it’d be like leavin’ ‘ome.”
“Ever thought why?”
“Well, got a good bunch o’ messmates, fer once.”
“Wrong,” Jackson said. “Half wrong, anyway. You’ve got a good bunch o’ messmates because Mr Ramage picked ‘em. Trained ‘em, anyway.”
“I know that!” Stafford said scornfully. “That’s wot I meant. It always depends on the capting whether or not a ship’s ‘appy. Speshly a small ship.”
Jackson ran his hand through his hair, which was beginning to recede.
“Better stop that; you’ll be bald soon enough,” Stafford warned amiably.
Jackson laughed, and suddenly Stafford asked suspiciously: “‘Ere, wotcher keep lookin’ at that ship for? Any women on deck?”
The American, watching the Peacock, said: “That’s the one that’s just joined the convoy. Her sails have got an odd cut—just look at the roach. And she’s floating so high: can’t be above half laden.”
“Where’d she come from? ‘Ere, you sure there ain’t any women?”
“Yes. From the Atlantic, as far as I could see.”
“Might be a light cargo. Bulky and light. Clorth, silk, that sort o’ thing.”
“Maybe she’s a runner. But her sheer—and that forefoot. There’s something—”
“Flagship,” Stafford interrupted.
Jackson snatched up the telescope, looked at the flags flying from the Lion, glanced at his list, and called: “Captain, sir! Flagship to convoy: To bear away, and sail before the wind.”
Ramage said, “Very well; repeat it.”
Southwick walked over to him.
“‘Bout time,” he grumbled. “Thinks he’s manoeuvring a squadron off Spithead. He’ll never see this bunch of mules in such good order again.”
Ramage grinned and pulled his hat forward. “If he does, he’d soon be ordering us to send over carpenter’s mates to repair the damage after they ran aboard each other!”
“Captain, sir,” Jackson called. “Flagship to convoy: For all ships to come under my stern.”
“Repeat it.”
The escorts simply repeated the Admiral’s orders, hoisting the same signal so every ship in the convoy could see it.
“Follow father,” Southwick grunted. “But let’s hope he knows where he’s going.”
Once the convoy got out of the lee of Barbados it was much cooler on board the Triton: the damp, cloying atmosphere of Carlisle Bay was left behind as they sailed into the brisk freshness of the Trade winds.
The sea was now a deep blue and frequent shoals of flying fish emerged like silver darts, dropping back into the water after a brief flight a few inches above the waves. Out of the wind, the sun was scorching; the decks were still uncomfortably hot—no one stood still unless he had to—and the pitch between the seams was as soft as when the caulker first poured it. But in the wind seamen moved without bothering to seek out the shade and went less frequently to get a mug of water at the scuttlebutt. The burly and red-faced Marine sentry guarding the water supply looked less wilted, although he was careful to hold his cutlass out of the sun. The heat could make metal unbearably hot to touch in less than a quarter of an hour.
“Getting away from the land is like a shower of rain on a flower garden,” Southwick commented to Ramage.
“The flowers don’t look so wilted!” Ramage said, gesturing towards the seamen.
“Aye, sir, the breeze freshens them up.”
“No weeds, either!”
“No, we can be thankful for that,” the Master said, mopping his face with a large handkerchief. “Six months and not a flogging … never heard of longer.”
During the next hour, in obedience to a stream of signal flags hoisted from the Lion, the escorts tacked and wore, cajoling and threatening the merchantmen until they were in their proper positions. Eventually the Antelope frigate was right ahead of the convoy, followed by the Lion which in turn was ahead of the leading ship in the centre column. The Lark lugger was astern with the Raisonnable frigate to leeward over on the larboard quarter and the Greyhound frigate to starboard, up to windward.
Ramage took the Triton to the position Admiral Goddard had assigned him on the windward side of the convoy, abreast the Topaz and ahead of the Greyhound.
“A pretty picture,” Southwick growled, waving at the convoy. “I’d like to think these mules were secretly plotting to drive the Admiral mad,” he continued maliciously, careful the seamen could not hear him. “The masters know that if they get into exactly the right position for an hour or two it’ll show the Admiral they can do it, and he’ll go berserk when they start spreading themselves across the ocean …”
Ramage laughed. For the moment the convoy was in perfect formation, the symmetry spoiled only by the extra ship, the eighth and last in the Topaz’s column. Southwick saw him looking at her.
“Something about that ship, sir,” he commented, pointing at the Peacock. “That hull wasn’t built in England, nor those sails cut by Englishmen.”
“Scotsmen, maybe; perhaps she’s a Clyde ship!”
The Master took off his hat and scratched his head. “No, I—”
“I know what you mean, but she is probably a prize bought by someone or other. And in ballast—a runner come over to find a cargo. She looks odd with all that freeboard. You’re used to seeing ships fully laden—aye, fully laden and a few tons more!”
After looking at her again through his telescope, Southwick said, “That’s it; she was a prize. French built, or I’m a Dutchman.”
The merchantmen and escorts were reaching to the northwest with a comfortable quartering wind and pitching only slightly.
“With a steady breeze like this, let’s hope some of the mules are having another look at their standing and running rigging,” Southwick said sourly.
“You’re an optimist: they’ve already sailed four thousand miles from England with it; they’re just hoping it’ll last another few hundred until they get into Kingston.”
As if aware that with the routine of watches this would be one of the few opportunities for chatting with his Captain, Southwick said, “I still don’t see why the Lion is out there ahead of the convoy, sir. Her place is to windward; she ought to be out beyond the Greyhound,” he added, nodding towards the frigate astern of the Triton.
“I think it’s the Admiral’s idea, not Croucher’s,” Ramage said, since the Master was echoing the question that occurred to him the moment he received his latest orders. “Croucher’s an odd fellow but he knows his job.”
“Odd!” Southwick snorted. “After that court martial you call him odd? Well, the Admiral has weakened himself by a ship o’ the line by sitting out there to leeward. The Lion can’t do a thing unless we meet an enemy dead ahead: she’ll never be able to beat up to windward to get at a privateer unless there’s a gale o’ wind blowing. We ought to be ready for light airs, not a gale o’ wind. Up to windward, that’s where the Admiral ought to be with that haystack, so he can run down to anything. Hmmp—hey! Watch your luff!” he suddenly bellowed at the quartermaster, who gestured to the men at the wheel.
Within an hour Barbados was already so far astern that the curvature of the earth dropped the beaches on the west coast below the horizon, hiding the band of almost luminous pale green sea that marked the shallows and reefs stretching out from the shore. The palm trees had long since merged into strips of dark green, and from this distance it was clear that the land was losing its parched brown appearance as the thirsty dry earth soaked up the first heavy rains heralding the approach of the rainy season. Rainy season, Ramage thought to himself: a nice euphemism for the hurricane season.
For anyone brought up in the uncertain and unpredictable weather of European waters, the comparative predictability of the Caribbean—outside of the hurricane season—was almost unsettling, Ramage realized. It was so predictable that it made a man apprehensive; it was like worrying when too many things went right.
At this end of the Caribbean the wind always blew between north-east and south-east; wind from any other direction—apart from the land and sea breeze—usually meant the weather was about to change for the worse. And even then the change was predictable—the wind south or south-west, bringing rain and stronger, gusty winds.
Almost always the wind dropped in the evening and stayed light or calm throughout a starlit night. About eight o’clock next morning a breeze would start ruffling the water and steadily increasing until it was a fresh breeze by nine or ten o’clock. It was the best time of the day in the Caribbean—the sun bright and warm but not yet scorching, the wind cool and not yet strong, and the sea flat. It was the time the Caribbean seemed the finest sea in the world for ships and seamen. By ten-thirty it would usually be a strong breeze, except in the hurricane season, and the seas would begin to build up, short seas which sent the spray flying in sparkling showers from the bow of the ship beating to windward.
Small clouds would start appearing from nowhere, small balls of fluffed white cotton which soon formed into regular lines running east and west, the bottom of each cloud flattening and the top forming a weird shape. Some looked like the marble effigies of ancient knights and their wives recumbent atop their tombs; others were turtles, alligators and mythical beasts. Often they looked like the profiles of politicians lying flat on their backs, glassy-eyed and copied straight from one of Gillray’s more outrageous cartoons.
By noon most well-found ships would be carrying all plain sail and making their maximum speed, while one of the King’s ships in a hurry would cheerfully hoist out studding sails. Then by four o’clock the wind would start to falter and by five o’clock would be light and fitful while the clouds began shrinking, and vanishing in the reverse order of the strange way they appeared. Soon after six o’clock the sun would set in an almost cloudless sky and darkness would fall with a startling suddenness, and another tropical day would be over.
Although the ritual never ceased to fascinate Ramage, who loved the Tropics and hated the chill, northern latitudes, there were exceptions to the weather patter
n: the Trade winds often fell away in the hurricane season—unless there was a hurricane actually nearby—and close to the big islands like Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and Cuba, the offshore breeze of the night and onshore breeze of the day were more pronounced.
Ramage found himself brooding that it was late in the season to be fooling around with a clutch of merchantmen. He looked eastward to the broad Atlantic, which stretched three thousand miles to the coast of Africa, a great sea desert all the way. Somewhere out there—although how, where and why no man knew—the hurricanes were born. Between July and October the people living in the Caribbean waited in fear for the winds which tore down houses, sank ships and brought torrential rains that washed land into the rivers and the sea. Hurricanes could even conjure up tidal waves: in 1722 the port of Port Royal that had survived the great earthquakes of 1692 had been largely destroyed by one.
Traditionally the only early warning a hurricane gave was swell waves, which could be felt for days before it arrived, and long periods of calm. These calm periods often prevented ships from getting to shelter in time. But not all swell waves or periods of calm presaged a hurricane; probably not one in fifty. Hurricanes were so unusual and unpredictable that apart from avoiding voyages in the hurricane season one could only wait and hope.
At the convoy conference, no one had tried to gloss over the fact that the convoy was well over a month behindhand and that they were crossing the Caribbean dangerously late in the season. If anyone had wanted to make light of it, every master knew that the underwriters were already charging all those merchantmen double premium for being at sea in the Caribbean in July, and that in a couple of weeks’ time all policies would be cancelled. The underwriters made good livings because of their skill in basing their premiums and wording their policies on their past experience.