Ramage's Trial

by Dudley Pope

  And he had made a few more hours slide by without thinking of Sarah. Plenty of work, plenty of bustle, plenty of alarms and emergencies…It was a good theory, but in practice it was going to be days and weeks and perhaps months of boredom, watching these mules making no attempt to keep position and knowing there was nothing he could do about it, except tow one or two – and leave some behind if necessary.

  Ramage had chosen a convoy formation which gave him a broad front: the seventy-two ships were formed up in eight columns, each of nine ships. There were almost endless variations – some commanders preferred a long thin column of ships, claiming it was easier to control them. That might be so, but it was almost impossible to defend them: even a single privateer, let alone a couple of enemy frigates, could cut the convoy in half.

  Having the ships advancing in a broad box-shaped formation meant that escorts could patrol ahead and astern, whence attacks were most likely to come, and since the box had narrower sides there was less room for a stray privateer to sneak in. But the real advantage, from Ramage’s point of view, was that the mules had less chance to dally and drop astern.

  With the convoy now formed up and heading northwards along the west coast of Barbados, the sun dipping low on the larboard beam, Ramage was weary but satisfied: getting under way could have been a lot worse. Even the abominable Beatrice was in position after Paolo had taken over half a dozen men to help the fools to weigh their anchor. Because of some tedious dispute about pay owing to some of her men, four of her six seamen had deserted last night in Barbados, swearing they would kill the master rather than sail with him again (and Paolo reported that he would not blame them). Four men short meant they could not turn the windlass to weigh the anchor, hence the wheft at the foretopmasthead.

  As every drill sergeant knew, the most important man on a parade was the “right marker”, the man against whom all the other files positioned themselves. Ramage realized how lucky he was in having Yorke and the Emerald as his right marker. But by giving Yorke the position of leading ship in the starboard column (and thus the pivot on which most convoy movements would be made) he had put the Emerald in the most vulnerable position of all if the French attacked with a squadron. However, in war there was always risk, and Yorke would be the last to complain. Yet he was not thinking of Sidney Yorke: if he was honest with himself, Ramage was worrying about Sarah, who had been caught up in the war by accident: she had gone off on a peacetime honeymoon with her new husband and the war had started again to wrench her away. To what, he dare not think.

  At least the two former prize frigates were turning out well. John Mead, the young lieutenant just made post and given command of L’Espoir, seemed a good shiphandler and had imagination. The sail handling was taking too long, but obviously during the next few days Mead would have his men working against a watch. Sail handling was second nature with most captains; but less popular was gunnery exercise. Guns firing meant scorched paint. There was always a spurt of flame upwards from the touch-hole and there was the muzzle blast, a mixture of smoke, unburnt powder and powdered rust from the shot. No matter how carefully shot was hammered and given a coat of blacking, there were always rust scales, and gunnery exercises (or a bout of action) always left the first lieutenant’s scrubbed and holystoned decks stained and greasy – and badly marked by the wooden trucks of the carriages. There was no way that four wheels supporting a gun weighing a ton and a half being flung back in recoil were going to avoid scarring the deck planking, even if it was already grooved from previous years. Carpenters could plane and seamen scrub with holystones, but the marks were there, like cart tracks on a country lane, and a couple of hours’ shooting worked the soot and rust powder well into the grain so that it looked like a chimney sweep’s neck. Anyway, that was the problem for L’Espoir’s new captain: Ramage’s only concern was that he carried out gunnery exercises.

  Summers, commanding La Robuste, was a completely different man: where Mead was lively and talkative, full of ideas which Ramage noticed he sometimes expressed without sufficient thought, Summers was dour; he gave the impression of never speaking a word (expelling it, almost) without chewing it ten or twenty times. It was not the hesitation preceding deep thought, of that Ramage was sure; the dourness came from a brain which turned over slowly, like a roasting pig revolving on a spit. Would Summers be as slow in reacting to an emergency – when a privateer rushed out of the darkness to cut off one of the convoy? Why had the admiral put Summers in command of La Robuste? If he had been an unsatisfactory first lieutenant in one of Tewtin’s ships, it was of course a convenient way of getting rid of him. It wasted an opportunity to promote a favourite, but there must be times for flag officers when the need to get rid of a really incompetent (or irritating) subordinate overcame the demands of favouritism.

  Summers, then, was the question mark; the convoy was sufficiently large and the escort of three frigates (one, L’Espoir, armed en flûte, so that virtually she carried no guns) was pathetically small: it averaged out at twenty-four merchant ships for each frigate. The escort was just large enough for Tewtin to avoid criticism from the Admiralty – unless it was heavily attacked and suffered disastrous losses. In that case Tewtin would probably be agile enough to make sure all the blame rested on the shoulders of the convoy commander…after all, admirals could not be everywhere, and had to rely on subordinates…

  Still, it was a beautiful evening and Barbados was drawing astern on the starboard quarter, or rather the Calypso and the convoy appeared to be stationary on the sea, like small ornaments on a polished table, while the island itself seemed to be moving slowly away, distance softening the low outlines and turning the pale greys into misty and distant blues that would challenge a water-colourist.

  What was Sidney Yorke (and his sister Alexis, for that matter) thinking about as they passed this northwestern coast of Barbados? It was out here, in the time of Cromwell, that one of Yorke’s Royalist forebears had to escape from the island just a few yards ahead of the Roundheads and, according to Sidney, taking with him a French mistress, wife of some besotted Roundhead planter. He must ask Yorke to tell the story of that particular forebear, because he ended up in Jamaica as the leader of the Buccaneers, and the estates he then acquired now belonged to the Yorkes, though Ramage was far from sure that it was Sidney Yorke’s branch of the family. It must be strange, though, looking across at an island and knowing that one and a half centuries ago, or whenever it was, all that parcel of land belonged to your family and, but for Cromwell’s antics, would now belong to you.

  Ramage realized that Southwick was standing nearby, obviously anxious to say something but unwilling to interrupt. Southwick always knew when he was away in another country and often another century.

  “Ah, Southwick, this is probably the last time we’ll ever see these mules in such good order!”

  Southwick laughed and dismissed them with a wave of his hand. “I was watching those masters at the conference: that question you put Mr Yorke up to asking had an effect! You looked so fierce that every one of them could see the Calypso towing them under. Worth five dozen warning shots, that bit o’ play-acting.”

  “I hope no one got the wrong idea,” Ramage said. “I’ll tow when needed, but I’ll also leave ’em behind if they keep dropping astern at night.”

  “I heard you threaten that, sir, but you wouldn’t really, would you?” Southwick’s doubt was quite clear.

  “They’ll get a couple of warnings, maybe three, but after that I’m not keeping the convoy jilling around until after noon. Otherwise it means we get only six hours or so’s sailing out of twenty-four. We have to heave-to at daylight, say five thirty am, and the mule finally gets into position by noon. By six or seven o’clock at night he’s reefing or furling again and snugging down for the night – and we’ve had the pleasure of his company for six or seven hours, making perhaps five knots. So in the twenty-four hours the convoy’s covered thirty-five or forty miles, plus a bit for current if we’re lucky. Rememb
er, Southwick, we’ve got to sail 3,500 miles before we reach the Chops of the Channel. Does a hundred-day passage appeal to you? I’m damned if any of these mules are going to make me wait a hundred days for news of my wife.”

  “I understand that, sir,” Southwick said, looking round to make sure no one else could hear them, “but I was thinking of Their Lordships.”

  “What about Their Lordships?”

  “These damned shipowners have a lot of influence, sir. If we left one of their ships behind and they complained to Their Lordships…why, they could even cast you in damages. You personally, sir. If a shipowner cast you in damages in the High Court, and Their Lordships then decided you should face a court-martial under one of the Articles of War…”

  “I’d be in a pickle,” Ramage admitted ruefully. “But I’ll have some witnesses in my favour – the Count of Rennes, which means the interest of the Prince of Wales, and Mr Yorke and the master of the Emerald.”

  “Mr Yorke, yes, and all the King’s officers in the convoy, but beyond that, remember the old saying, ‘Put not thy trust in princes’.”

  “We could trust the Count.”

  “Ah, yes, more than most men – particularly since he owes you his life. But,” Southwick said carefully, “I had in mind some of his friends in England: those who’d mistake the Board of Admiralty for another kind of gaming table.”

  Ramage nodded because the old master’s warning made a great deal of sense. Fame was a high place surrounded with traps set by jealous men. Without intending or wishing it, Ramage had become one of the Royal Navy’s most famous frigate captains, not a role he had sought or particularly wanted but one which was the result of many actions, many desperate fights, many prizes taken, many of his own men killed or wounded and more of the enemy. He had taken many chances too, and occasionally disobeyed orders deliberately, but for the good of the King’s service. And he always had loyal shipmates like Southwick, and seamen as brave and faithful as Jackson, Stafford and Rossi.

  Yet Southwick was thinking beyond all this: his memory was going back to Ramage’s childhood, when his father the Earl of Blazey was one of the youngest and certainly the most brilliant admirals in the Navy and who had been serving a government that needed a scapegoat for having sent out too small a fleet against the French and too late to do any good. Their scapegoat had been Admiral the Earl of Blazey, and his subsequent trial had split the Navy and the country.

  “Let’s hope the mules behave themselves,” Ramage said, and Southwick nodded: he had understood all the unspoken additional qualifications, ranging from Sarah to Sidney Yorke’s support and the bad luck which put at least one Beatrice in the convoy. Another half a dozen Beatrices would most probably turn up in the next week. It was remarkable how these ships generally needed extra canvas and cordage before the weather turned bad as they reached the more northern latitudes…

  Yes, the convoy was in good shape, the box of ships sailing along easily to the northwest to skirt Bermuda, the wind steady from the southeast, with L’Espoir out ahead, La Robuste tacking and wearing along the western edge, and to windward, placing her astern of the convoy, the Calypso under easy sail, in a good position to hurry down to the convoy in an emergency – and swoop on any merchantman showing signs of furling her wings for the night.

  It was time for the watch to change. In a few minutes Southwick would be relieved by Kenton. Over in the Emerald, hidden from the Calypso by the rest of the ships in the convoy, Sidney Yorke and Alexis would probably be drinking tea and talking of – what? Their forebears in Barbados and Jamaica? He shrugged and wished Sarah’s face would come clearly in his memory.

  Sidney Yorke spread some soft butter over the slice of bread on his plate, and nodded towards the jam dish. Alexis pushed it towards him and said: “If only this weather would last all the way to England.”

  “We’d take a year to get there!”

  “I don’t think I’d mind. London is so boring…”

  “Really boring – for a beautiful young woman like you?” Yorke asked with mild sarcasm. “Think what it must be like for a plain young woman!”

  “It’s much easier,” Alexis said unexpectedly, “if you’re plain and your father is only moderately wealthy, then you can dance and talk vapid nonsense. But if Nature made you beautiful and you happen to have a fair competence, as everyone seems to know I have, every man in the room, whether a pimply youth or some jaded old roué, is chasing after you.”

  “Beauty and the beasts,” Yorke teased.

  “Yes,” Alexis said crossly, “and even when you are there they ogle me and whisper suggestions.”

  “You never tell me!”

  “I should think not! If you knew what some of them said, you’d call them out, even tho’ duelling is forbidden now.”

  “Why don’t you find yourself a nice husband,” Yorke said banteringly. “Then he can protect you from the pimply youths and jaded roués.”

  “Oh yes, one looks around and finds ‘nice husbands’ are thick on the ground, like ripe apples after a thunderstorm. I notice you’re still a bachelor and certainly you rarely approve of anyone I happen to talk to for more than four minutes.”

  “Well, you do seem to choose the most extraordinary men. No chins, noses like beaks, ears like mug handles, wispy moustaches and with ‘fortune-hunter’ embroidered all over their elegant coats.”

  “Dear brother,” Alexis said patiently, “you don’t understand and you never listen. I’ve met only one real man in the last two or three years. One.”

  “Why didn’t you marry him, then?”

  “He didn’t ask me,” she said, blushing in spite of herself.

  “Oh? So being rich and beautiful isn’t enough, eh?”

  “He was already married,” she said bitterly, and as Yorke went on to tease her she burst into tears and, gathering up her skirt with one hand and trying to hide her face with the other, she ran from the cabin.

  Yorke sighed and cursed his crude tongue: the girl was probably frightened to death of ending her days as a spinster, surrounded by lapdogs of all varieties and visited daily by a fawning parson hoping to be remembered in her will…Alexis who, even though she was his sister and he was prejudiced, was among the half dozen women he had ever met who combined beauty, elegance and wit with a natural warmth that prevented her being distant and forbidding.

  But who was this man? Yorke was curious, but searching his memory he could not remember seeing her with any particularly outstanding married man. In the last two or three years, she had said. Well, he had not been away very often, so who the devil could it be? He knew of only one man he’d care to have as a brother-in-law. Anyway, he would have to go and make his peace with her.

  She had been badly upset when she saw the Kingsnorth plantation and the old house as they had passed the northwestern corner of Barbados: she had wept when he told her what he could remember of Ned Yorke, their great-great-great-great-uncle, who had been driven from his estate by Cromwell’s Roundheads, and she had wanted to know more – with what seemed to him to be a fierce longing – of the French woman who had escaped with him to become his wife and their distant aunt. That was the trouble, sailing the turbulent islands, be they British, French, Danish, Swedish or Dutch: there were too many Yorke family memories entwined in their violent history. In fact, what few people seemed to realize was that the history of the West Indies was simply the combined history of settler families, be they English, Scots, Welsh, Irish, Dutch, French, Danish, Swedish…yes, and Spanish and Portuguese, of course; the other half of the coin, as it were.

  At that moment the door of the saloon opened and Alexis, now dry-eyed, came in and said briefly: “I’m sorry; I made a fool of myself.”

  He wanted to ask her about the man, but he knew her too well: he was sure her tears were at least partly caused by vexation with herself for having said so much.

  “Let’s go up on deck,” he said. “It’s going to be a glorious sunset, and we can watch Nicholas chasing up an
yone starting to dawdle.”

  “His ship is so far astern it’s impossible to see her – will she stay there the whole voyage?”

  “No, probably not. The escorts usually shift about according to the wind direction. The Calypso will probably always stay to windward as you can see, we have a quartering wind, but as it hauls round I expect you’ll find the Calypso closer to us.”

  “We might invite him to dinner – on a calm day, of course.”

  “Indeed, we shall. And he’ll invite us back, and you’ll see what it’s like for a young lady to be controlling her skirts while she’s being hoisted on board one of the King’s ships.”

  “Hoisted? What, like a bullock, slung over a strop?”

  “No, no! The Royal Navy are very polite where women are concerned. Instead of the strap under the belly they use for a bullock, they lower a small seat, like the one for a child’s swing. You climb into it and settle your skirts and arrange a brave smile on your face, and they hoist you right up into the air out of the boat on to the deck, where – if you are beautiful or important enough – the captain and all the officers are waiting to salute you and kiss your hand. A glimpse of an ankle as you alight from the chair and they are your slaves for – well, until the next beautiful ankle comes on board, which is unlikely to be within the next five years if they’re on a foreign station!”

  “Why don’t we have such a chair in the Emerald?”

  “We probably have, but we usually have the gangway rigged. You’d sooner walk up a gangway, I know.”

  She smiled. “It depends on the naval officers,” she said.

  A few moments later she asked: “What shall we have for dinner?”

  Yorke looked puzzled. “When?”

  “Oh wake up. Why, when we have Captain Ramage for dinner.”

  “We’ll have to invite some of his officers as well, so we’ll kill a sheep.”

  She had already produced a tiny notebook from a pocket in her dress. “Whom shall we invite, apart from Captain Ramage?”