by Dudley Pope
“Let’s hope we slide on gently. I’d sooner transfer to our new estate at our leisure.”
“Don’t you think we should wait until the Dons send out written invitations?”
“No, sir!” Southwick said with mock alarm. “We don’t want to put them to the trouble of rowing several miles to windward—why, it’s four or five miles from San Ildefonso to the middle of the reefs.”
“Then we’ll call on them with banners flying and bearing gifts, Mr Southwick,” Ramage said, in the ringing tones of some hearty politician. “By Jove, we mustn’t risk upsetting his Most Catholic Majesty!”
“Doubtless a full dress occasion, sir; but using a raft instead of a carriage is going to wash the shine off our boots.”
“Mr Southwick, if I dare mention more mundane matters than our proposed social engagements, would you care to place a man where he can give us a cast of the lead?”
“Indeed, sir, yours to command,” he said, giving what he imagined was a flourish more suited to a Spanish courtier wearing an ostrich-feather plume in his hat.
In fact the depths were great enough to require the deep sea lead, and Ramage told the Master not to bother, since any accuracy with that required the ship to be hove-to.
“Have a man ready with the ordinary lead; he can try for soundings from time to time.” With that, Ramage walked forward again to inspect the rafts. The bosun was in charge of the construction of the large one and had already named it the Gosport Ferry, well known to most seamen who had ever been in Portsmouth. Jackson was supervising the muskets and tools raft.
“Breakers ahead!”
The shout came from the lookout at the bow and in a matter of moments Ramage was standing beside him. The man pointed to a line of lighter green water ahead and to starboard. Beyond, some waves broke on a shoal a foot or two below the surface and just visible as a dark brown mass.
Snake Island was still two or three miles ahead when Ramage shouted back to Southwick, standing by the man at the tiller.
“Come over to larboard as much as you can: we might just scrape past south of them. Doesn’t matter very much now the rafts are ready.”
The last few words were for the benefit of the ship’s company, and Ramage waited patiently to see what Southwick could do.
Slowly the bow came round a few degrees. Ramage could see that unless the current eddied unexpectedly, they might just miss.
Damn! His memory!
“Mr Southwick! Make a signal to the Topaz: Breakers ahead!”
As seamen hoisted the flags from the staff lashed to the taffrail, Ramage saw that the Topaz, which had been in the Triton’s wake, was already changing course to conform. Yorke and his officers did not miss much. The Topaz would definitely clear since she was beginning her turn a cable sooner. It was going to be close for the Triton, though. He stood at the stem with the lookout, who kept muttering to himself, without any sign of fear, as though trying to will the ship clear, “It’s going to be close! It’s going to be close!”
Stranded on this reef with the wind blowing fresh for twenty-four hours and knocking up a brisk sea would see the Triton reduced to splinters. The rafts would be useless since there was a second line of reefs beyond the first. If the brig was wrecked on the first reef the rafts would smash up on the second. He wondered if Southwick would notice: the Master had not pointed out the possibility when they first discussed making rafts.
Then Ramage saw that the Triton would pass clear. It would be close, but reefs were no exception to the rule that a miss was as good as a mile.
The little black figures on the reef were pelicans: one flapped into the air, incredibly ungainly until it was flying several feet above the water. A moment later it dived, suddenly closing its wings and splashing into the water.
“Like a round shot, sir!” the lookout commented.
“Yes. And they hit with such a bang I don’t see how they avoid breaking their necks!”
He turned to call to Southwick and saw every man in the ship had stopped work and was standing staring at the reef. They were still shaken up. Guns blazing, cutlasses clanking, pikes jabbing, tomahawks thudding—these things were music rather than terrifying noises to the men. But the crazy, demented screaming of a hurricane; the penetrating hiss and bowel-shaking thump of enormous seas; the smooth curling of waves over sunken coral reefs were something different. Although the enemy couldn’t frighten the Tritons, nature could.
He began walking aft, unhurried, and pausing at the big raft. He looked at the bosun.
“Might be worth lashing a roll of canvas, or an old awning, on top there: the sun will bake us if we have to go far in the Gosport Ferry.”
“Aye, aye, sir. I’ll get up something for the other two rafts, too.”
He walked a few steps to where the smallest raft was nearly complete.
“She can be launched whenever you’re ready, sir,” Jackson said.
“You heard me telling the bosun about an awning.”
Jackson pointed to a bundle of canvas on the deck, secured to the raft by a line, and Ramage nodded.
All the men were back at work again, yet he was sure they had not yet passed the end of the reef. He walked leisurely aft to join Southwick, and from there saw that the reef was forty yards on the starboard bow.
Southwick mopped his face with a large green handkerchief, and said quietly: “I’m getting old for this sort of nonsense, sir. Being without masts in these waters is like riding a steeplechaser without a saddle.”
“We’re passing well clear.”
“Yes, but I didn’t think we would!”
Ramage saw a swirl in the water about two miles ahead and picked up the telescope. It was not just a single swirl: it stretched for a mile or more, tiny wavelets breaking on it, with a long band of dark brown just beneath the water.
A slowly shelving reef of coral? A sudden, sheer bank of rocks? Would the Triton run up gently, like a rowing-boat grounding on a sandy beach, or crash into it like a blind man walking into a low wall? The reef was long and stretched athwart their course so there was no way of avoiding it. This was the Triton’s grave and the only thing to do was to prepare for it.
He shouted for Jackson, and when the American arrived he said: “Make three signals to the Topaz—in this order: Breakers ahead. Breakers to the south-west. Breakers to the north-west.”
Southwick said: “That tells them the story!”
The shortcomings of the signal book always left captains trying to use their ingenuity to make their meaning clear. He hoped that Yorke would understand the signal was trying to tell him that this was the reef they would hit …
“Mr Southwick—please inspect those rafts. And make sure the men who can’t swim have some wood to hold on to. Have the cooper stave a few barrels: the staves lashed together are just the right size.”
Jackson, helped by Stafford, was hoisting flags and, as soon as the Topaz acknowledged them, hauling them down and preparing more.
How to lessen the Triton’s impact? That was important whether it was shelving coral or sheer rock. More important if it was sheer rock.
Let go an anchor just before they hit? It might work, swinging the ship round like a dog on a leash. But it needed perfect timing—and shallow enough water for the anchor to bite.
He gave Southwick orders to get ready to let go the starboard anchor.
There was nothing more to do until they hit—not on deck, anyway. He went down to his cabin with the signal book and quickly cleared the documents from his desk. Journal, orders, signal book, letter book, muster book … he put them in a box which had holes drilled in the sides and was weighted with a piece of lead, made specially for throwing secret papers over the side when there was a risk of capture.
Pistols. The pair of duelling pistols. He quickly loaded them, put them back in the wooden case, and slid that into a large canvas bag. He shoved clothing on top, and a pair of heavy leather boots, remembered his quadrant and put the box in another bag, then took the almanac and vo
lumes of tables from the little book shelf over the desk and added those to the items in the second bag. Without them he could not work out the sights. Pencils, a packet of paper, the chronometer and the miniature of Gianna.
He tied the necks of both bags and left them on his desk. After a word to the Marine sentry at the door, he went up on deck.
It was hard to believe that in half an hour’s time this cabin and the ship would probably have ceased to exist. It seemed a long time since he had been given command of the brig. He’d sailed the ship more than five thousand miles since then, and she was covering the last couple of miles of her existence right now….
Although he did not know the exact figures, Ramage thought of what had gone into the building of the ship. About 350 loads of timber had been worked up at old Henry Adam’s shipyard at Beaulieu, in Hampshire. About 130 tons of timber had gone into building her hull, along with eight tons of iron—wrought at the little ironworks at Sowley Pond—and nearly four tons of copper bolts. Her bottom—soon to be ripped out—was sheathed with nearly 800 sheets of copper, weighing more than three tons. Half a ton of mixed nails, nine thousand treenails, three tons of lead … all these were needed just for her hull. Two tons of oakum for hull and deck seams, seven barrels of pitch and seven more of tar, adding one and a half tons to her weight. The original three coats of paint put on by the builder weighed 1,500 pounds.
Once launched, the hull, weighing some 160 tons, was towed round to Portsmouth where she went alongside the sheerlegs to have her two masts put in. Then she had received her topmasts and yards. The standing and running rigging and blocks all added their quota of weight; by the time the sails were on board and bent on, the anchors and cables (totalling more than eleven tons), water and provisions, carronades, powder and shot, gunner’s, bosun’s and carpenter’s stores, boats and ballast, the ship’s total weight was nearly 300 tons. Of that, the ship’s company and their sea chests accounted for eight and a half tons.
All this timber, cordage and paint amounted to a brig named the Triton; to everyone but those who had served in her, she was a name in a list of the Navy, one of the smallest ships of war commanded by a lieutenant….
To those who served in her—or to the majority of them—she was home and, like a home on shore, she had a personality; something about her that distinguished her from all others, no matter how close the apparent similarity. She was a ship men would reminisce about twenty years later; a ship a man would suddenly recall by a trick of the memory, a smell, a noise, or some bizarre circumstance.
She had been in action many times—although only twice under Ramage’s command. She was eighteen years old and had been blessed—with one exception—with good captains. But now her time was running out.
Nearly every man had a few personal treasures and his pitifully small store of clothing in a sea chest. He called Southwick over.
“Give the men the choice. They can get their chests and bags up on deck if they wish. If we break up, they’ll lose them anyway. If we hold together there’ll be plenty of time to get them up from below. On deck they’ll probably get swamped.”
“Best not give ‘em the choice, sir, begging your pardon. Having a lot o’ dunnage on deck when we hit …”
“You’re quite right; it could be dangerous. Very well, belay that.”
What gives a ship a personality? What makes an inert mass of timber, canvas and cordage into an almost living thing which inspires loyalty and affection among such men?
He shrugged his shoulders—a gesture noticed by a puzzled Southwick—and decided to stop thinking about it. Since it had never occurred to him to think about it before, there was no point in trying to find an answer now.
“An anchor is cleared away, Mr Southwick?”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“At least we won’t have to watch out for the masts going by the board.”
The Master chuckled. “We must count our blessings, sir.”
Snake Island was closing quickly now. Ramage glanced at Southwick’s chart to refresh his memory and then lifted the telescope.
On the south side and farthest from the Triton the island ended in Punta del Soldado, Soldier’s Point, a row of high hills dropping gently to a low peninsula. Nearest, on the eastern side, there were three big hills with San Ildefonso out of sight beyond. There was a small mountain, Cerro Balcón, to the north, with a higher one beyond—Monte Resaca, more than 600 feet high.
As he looked through the telescope and saw his immediate future magnified in the circle of the lens, he wondered how many Spanish telescopes on the island were watching the two hulks coming down towards them and what orders the commander of the garrison was giving to his troops to secure the capture of the two crews … then he noticed that the wind was dying.
More than two hours passed before the Triton hit the first of the reefs. The sun was dipping towards the horizon as her keel caught the staghorn coral sticking up from the bottom like small trees. The impact broke off the tops of the coral and the ship drove on farther, swinging round broadside to the wind and waves and crunching across more coral. The splintering and groaning of timber warned that the rudder was being torn off. Two men had been at the tiller until, a few minutes earlier, Ramage had ordered them to stand clear. They watched open-mouthed as it suddenly slammed over and broke off.
Then the ship stopped, heading north. Southwick had disappeared below at the first shock of impact, and Ramage waited impatiently for him to return.
He signalled to Jackson.
“Get both leadlines. Sound round the ship. Mind the lead doesn’t get stuck in the coral. Aft, each quarter, amidships and either bow.”
It was routine but really irrelevant. There was no question of ever refloating the ship so it would be of interest only to the court martial trying him for the loss of the ship. He realized suddenly that he had not thought of Jamaica, Rear-Admiral Goddard or Sir Pilcher Skinner for many hours.
Southwick returned to report that the Triton had not been holed and was not making water, and Jackson reported on the depths.
Both Ramage and Southwick then used telescopes to search carefully along the whole of the eastern shore of the island, looking for any sign of troops on horseback or boats putting out, but there was no indication anyone had seen them.
“Looks safe enough,” Southwick said. “No patrols or sentries, and they can’t look seaward from the village.”
“A lookout wouldn’t show himself.”
“No, sir, but we’ve been in sight for hours. Plenty of time to get boats ready.”
“They may be ready.”
“Doubt it, sir: they wouldn’t want to leave it until dark to try to get through the reefs to us.”
“Less risk from the reefs at night than from our guns in daylight.”
“True, sir, but all the same I’m sure we haven’t been spotted.”
Ramage shook his head, impatiently. “If I commanded a garrison here and I saw two ships drifting down on the island, I’d keep my presence secret.”
“But why, sir? Surely that would mean the seamen would be more eager to land. I mean, if they thought there was no opposition….”
“And I’d have my men hidden, so when they stepped out of their boats or off their rafts, I’d shoot them down.”
Southwick said ruefully, “You’re right, sir. I only hope they haven’t got a commander like you.”
“There may not be a garrison here anyway,” Ramage conceded. “I can’t see any reason for one. I doubt if the Spaniards use the island. Just fisherfolk and some sheep and goats.” And, he thought, frangipani and jacaranda, hibiscus and troupial birds singing….
As they talked they watched the Topaz. Yorke had very little steerage-way; the merchantman would hit the reef more or less where the current decided. But, Ramage was pleased to see, it would be close to the Triton.
The Topaz grounded seventeen minutes after the Triton and one hundred yards farther north. She too let go an anchor and then swung broadsi
de onto the sea, and by the time she had come to a stop, the two ships appeared to have reversed positions: the Topaz heading north seemed to be leading the Triton.
As soon as he saw the merchantman had settled, he shouted to Yorke through the speaking-trumpet: “Welcome to the Triton Shoal!”
“Thank you,” Yorke called back. “Sorry you beat me to it: I’ve always dreamed of naming a piece of territory.”
“It’s yours in fee simple, then,” Ramage told him. “I’ll put it in the log: ‘Both ships grounded on the Topaz Shoal.’”
Yorke swept off his hat in an exaggerated gesture. “Much obliged, m’lud, much obliged!” The two men, with throats getting sore from the prolonged shouting, discussed plans. Yorke agreed that the ship’s company of the Topaz and her passengers should transfer to the Triton for the night and join them for the trip to the shore in the rafts next morning.
Ramage gave Appleby orders to set men to work chopping away a section of the bulwarks so that the rafts could be slid over the side, and as soon as he saw the axes at work he had a talk with Southwick.
“The weather looks reasonably settled now. I want to send the Marines and a dozen seamen on shore tonight with muskets to be ready to cover us as we land tomorrow morning.”
Southwick nodded his head in agreement.
“They’d better start as soon as a raft is ready. I’m going to put Appleby in command of them.”
“Oh, Appleby?” the Master said. “I was hoping—”
Ramage shook his head.
“Shall I tell Appleby, then, sir?”
“Yes. And tell Jackson and the master-at-arms to take three men at once to empty the spirit room. I want all the spirits brought here.”
“The fish’ll get drunk,” Southwick commented as he went to find Appleby.
Ramage was thankful he could give the order about the kegs and barrels of rum stowed below without having sentries with muskets on guard everywhere. In all too many ships that went aground or started sinking, the accident was a signal for a number of the men to batter their way into the spirit room and drink themselves into a stupor. Often such men were the only ones drowned … He would keep a half hogshead of rum and the rest would be poured over the side.