Ramage's Trial

by Dudley Pope

  “You’ve got our pendant number and the correct challenge bent on?” Ramage asked.

  “Yes, sir. And the correct reply bent on another halyard.”

  “Hoist our numbers and the challenge,” Ramage ordered.

  As Wagstaffe had already reported, the approaching ship was obviously a British frigate: her sheer and the cut of her sails were borne out by her using the Royal Navy’s signal book (quite apart from the fact that one was most unlikely to meet an enemy ship so close to Barbados). Nevertheless, she had hoisted the wrong challenge, and it was now important to see what reply she made to the correct one.

  Ramage watched the large flags flog and flap as seamen hauled down briskly on the other end of the halyard until the top of the uppermost flag reached the block.

  Orsini was watching the frigate, balancing himself on the balls of his feet to compensate for the Calypso’s roll, and the telescope seemed a part of his body.

  “She’s lowering her challenge, sir,” he reported just as the lookout aloft reported the same thing. A few moments later Aitken reported to Ramage that the Calypso’s guns were now loaded with roundshot, carronades with grape, “pistols, pikes and cutlasses issued”.

  “Very well, Mr Aitken.”

  The advantages of the “Captain’s Standing Orders” were only too obvious at a time like this: the guns and carronades had been loaded with the correct type of shot; the small arms routinely issued without orders (which wasted time); and people like Bowen had made their own preparations. Bowen’s surgical instruments would be ready, with bandages and dressings to hand, tarpaulins spread for wounded to lie on. Some captains liked to rig boarding nets, but Ramage considered they were for defence: they stopped (hindered, rather) an enemy trying to board, because like thick fish nets it took a minute or two for a cutlass to slash through it. More important, a net designed to stop the enemy from getting on board also prevented one’s own men from swarming over the bulwarks and boarding the enemy.

  Ramage looked across at the approaching frigate but knew that the sharp eyes of Orsini, Aitken and the masthead lookouts would keep him informed, so contented himself with an inspection of the Calypso. She was ready for battle, or for lining the bulwarks and giving a friendly ship a cheer.

  All the guns were run out; half a dozen men were gathered round each breech, their different shirts making splashes of colour. Most of them had narrow bands of cloth tied round their heads, across their foreheads, to prevent salty perspiration running into their eyes. Cutlasses were stowed along the inside of the bulwarks where they could be snatched up in an emergency; pikes and pistols were all placed near at hand. The muskets were still in the arms lockers, thanks to Ramage’s long-held view that a musket was a clumsy and bulky weapon in an open boat or a frigate, and useless (except as a heavy object to hurl at the enemy) after firing one shot.

  The 12-pounder guns were shiny black cylinders: the last job for the ship’s company before the Calypso left Carlisle Bay was to give all the guns another coat of blacking. Curious how every ship’s gunner kept secret his particular recipe, but they were all much the same, depending on soot, although he recalled one gunner who swore by rust which was pounded into a fine dust and bound together by lacquer. Anyway, most of the shot the Calypso would need if she went into action had just been scaled of rust by men tapping away with chipping hammers. It was hard to prevent them hammering too hard and pitting the roundshot with tiny dents. Almost more important, each shot had been passed several times through a shot gauge, a brass ring with an inside diameter precisely the correct size for a 12-pounder shot, just under four and a half inches. If there were any tiny hummocks of rust, or flakes of scale, the shot would stick in the gauge and the gunner would reject it, returning it to the men for more chipping.

  Now those shot were ready for use, sitting in the racks round the hatch coamings in scooped-out recesses, so that they looked like large black oranges. More shot were close to the guns held in small pyramids by shot garlands, small rings of thick rope put flat on the deck and preventing the shot in the lower tier from rolling away as more tiers were added to form a pyramid. This time they would not be needed and would have to be stowed away again as soon as the Calypso stood down from general quarters, but Ramage noted that each garland was full; each pyramid was finished off with a single shot at the top, so the men were not saving themselves work.

  From up here on the quarterdeck the flintlocks, carefully oiled small rectangular blocks of steel which could be fitted to the breech of each gun by wing nuts in a matter of seconds, glinted in the sunlight. The lock was the most important part of each gun, holding the flint in what looked like a cockerel’s head and beak. At the breech end the firing lanyard was secured to a ring so that a steady pull by the gun captain (standing behind the gun and beyond the recoil) released the powerful spring and, in effect, made the flint peck against steel, showering sparks which ignited the powder in the pan and sent a flash down the vent into the breech of the gun, firing the charge. Until the flintlock was brought into use fifty years ago, Ramage reflected, guns were fired by slowmatch (in effect a burning cord) wound round a linstock, a method little better than jabbing with a red-hot poker.

  Yet flintlocks did not always work – heavy rain or a shower of spray as a ship punched to windward could put them out of action until they were carefully wiped dry, and in action there was usually no time for that. As an insurance, a couple of feet of slow match for each gun was kept alight, fitted into notches round a tub of water so that the glowing end hung over the inside, ensuring that sparks should not ignite any stray grains of gunpowder.

  Sparks were not the only risk: the trucks, the wide wooden wheels on which the gun carriages recoiled, caused a good deal of friction. The metal-shod handspikes, the heavy wooden levers like massive broom handles and used to shift over the breech end of the carriage to traverse the gun, could make a spark. So the deck, drying fast although the sun was getting low on the horizon, was sluiced down with buckets of water, with sand scattered on top so that the bare-footed gunners should not slip.

  All these preparations, Ramage mused, because of the approach of another frigate which had almost certainly left Barbados a couple of days after the convoy, probably calling in on her way to England for routine despatches from Rear-Admiral Tewtin after visiting English Harbour, Antigua, braving the mosquitoes and general unpleasantness there to collect letters to the Admiralty and Navy Board, letters of absolutely no consequence. English Harbour had never been anything but an expense to the Royal Navy: even Rodney, after the Battle of the Saints (fought within seventy miles of English Harbour), had scorned the place and taken all his prizes (including the Ville de Paris, then the largest ship of war afloat) to Port Royal, Jamaica, seven or eight hundred miles away, giving Jamaica a sight still remembered, the largest fleet of ships of war ever assembled.

  Ramage suddenly became aware that Aitken was talking to him and he quickly emerged from his reverie.

  “That ship hasn’t answered the challenge, sir.”

  Yet she had hoisted her numbers and a challenge. Probably some muddled lieutenant with the wrong edition of the private signals (they were changed monthly), having made the wrong challenge (therefore receiving what seemed the wrong reply), would now be scrabbling about trying to find the current signal book, being harassed by an alarmed captain.

  In turn the captain would be angry because his lieutenant had made a fool of him over the challenge – and at the same time would know the seriousness of approaching a convoy and its escort without having made the correct reply to her challenge. Ramage was thankful not to be the lieutenant – though the fault was ultimately the captain’s because the particular book of private signals with the daily challenge and reply was in his care and he should know them in case a strange sail came into sight.

  He sighed: it was always the damned captain’s responsibility, just as now he had to decide what to do about this approaching idiot…

  He reached for his tel
escope, pulled out the tube and lined up the focusing ring. He balanced himself against the roll and was able to ignore the pitch. The view now brought closer by the telescope lenses showed a lower semicircle of dark-blue, almost purplish sea with an upper semicircle of duck-egg-blue sky, and right in the middle was the foreshortened frigate running down towards them. In a hurry, it seemed: she was still running under all plain sail, though surely a prudent captain would be clewing up the courses by now, if not actually furling, and certainly furling the royals, leaving the ship under topsails, ready to heave-to close to the Calypso.

  Ramage studied her carefully. Sails – a few patches but everything in good condition. Paintwork – the black paint of the hull was still black (mottled with dried spray) but did not have that purple tinge which showed age, too much sun and too much sea. And the copper sheathing on the bottom, showing frequently as the ship pitched heavily in the following seas, was bright and seemingly new, as though she was not long out of drydock.

  Ramage turned to Aitken. “She doesn’t look French, from her condition. Sails and sheathing look almost new.”

  “That’s what I thought, sir; but ploughing down under all plain sail and not making the correct reply to the challenge…”

  Ramage shrugged his shoulders. “Well, we’re at general quarters so there’s nothing more we can do until she gets closer.”

  Aitken nodded. “That’s one thing about her, sir; she’s steering directly for us and not trying to dodge round to get at the convoy.”

  That had been the first thing that Ramage had considered: to him a natural reaction on first sighting a strange sail was, did she menace the convoy?

  “I think we’ll accept that the Jason – if that’s who she is – doesn’t have such efficient officers as the Calypso.”

  “Probably has a less tyrannical captain,” Aitken said in one of his rare flashes of dry humour.

  Certainly a more erratic one, Ramage thought: the Jason was leaving herself with less than a mile in which to clew up courses, furl royals, round up and then back the foretopsail ready for the Calypso’s approach, and unless she had a full ship’s company (which was unlikely: if she had 150 men out of an establishment of 210 she would be lucky) the next few minutes could provide an object lesson in how not to handle a ship. A lesson which would not be lost on Aitken, Wagstaffe, Kenton and Martin, he noted grimly.

  He was always thankful when some other ship, friendly or enemy, made mistakes which provided lessons for them: he had taught them just about all he knew; they had reached the stage where they were eager and well prepared to work things out for themselves. In effect he had taught them to add, multiply and subtract; now they had to tackle the various sums that sea life threw at them. So far, each one (and Orsini, too, of course) had come up with the right answers.

  Suddenly his mind slipped back several years and he saw himself through Southwick’s eyes, a green young lieutenant put in command of the Kathleen cutter, knowing how to sail the damned ship but with precious little idea how to command her. That was the hardest part of teaching leadership – making young men realize that being able to tack a frigate in a high wind through a crowded anchorage proved only that they could sail a frigate, not necessarily lead men into battle. Yet going into battle and winning was their ultimate task.

  And all that, he told himself crossly, is how Captain Ramage spends valuable seconds daydreaming instead of displaying the leadership he is always talking about.

  But that damned Jason was showing no sign of getting ready to heave-to; she was surging along like a runaway horse tearing down a lane dragging a laden haywain.

  Ramage walked over to the compass and glanced at the quartermaster, Jackson. There was no need to ask the question.

  “She’s just steering straight for us, sir: her bearing hasn’t changed from the time we went to quarters.”

  So the Jason was approaching with the wind on her starboard quarter. To pass the Calypso or to round up at the last moment without the risk of a collision, she would almost certainly turn to starboard and then back a topsail. By the same token the Calypso, beating up to her on the larboard tack, with the wind on the larboard bow, would have to come round only a point or two to larboard to back her foretopsail, or bear away to starboard if there was any risk of a collision.

  Southwick came up to the quarterdeck, obviously expecting that there would have to be some smart sail handling in the next few minutes and knowing he would be needed.

  “Hope the captain of this frigate isn’t senior to you, sir,” he muttered.

  “That thought just crossed my mind, too,” Ramage said. He was sufficiently young and his name was low enough on the Post List that the odds were that the captain of the Jason was senior to him, and therefore safe from anything Ramage could say about the way he handled his ship. But should he be junior…Ramage would take perhaps two minutes and never raise his voice, but the Jason’s captain would not act so stupidly again.

  “From her pendant numbers she’s the Jason,” Ramage said.

  “Aye, one of those three Thames-built frigates launched just before they signed that peace.”

  Southwick’s comment was followed by one of his famous contemptuous sniffs which were a language of their own. Ramage recognized this one as referring to the peace treaty: a comment, on the stupidity of Addington in falling for Bonaparte’s carefully baited agreement which gave him breathing space to restock his empty armouries, granaries and shipyards. The peace had lasted eighteen months, and the politicians were congratulating themselves instead of being impeached. Ramage dare not think of the Navy’s condition if the First Lord had snatched that brief period of peace to carry out the threatened reforms. They were laudable and long overdue, aimed at rooting out corruption in high places and low, but not something to start in the middle of a war. Except, of course, St Vincent and Addington had been too shortsighted to realize that Bonaparte’s Treaty of Amiens was simply an eighteen-month pause between campaigns.

  And still the Jason came on. He lifted his telescope again and examined her carefully. She was getting too close in view of her odd behaviour. Her guns were run out on both sides, tiny, jutting black fingers. Her ensign was British, but she had lowered her pendant numbers. Ah…they were beginning to clew up the courses, but slowly, as though the ship was manned by cripples or the old and infirm. No, he was not being fair because the Calypso’s ship’s company had served together for years and as far as sail handling was concerned it mattered not at all whether it was blowing a gale or the ship was becalmed, whether tropical sun dazzled or it was a dark night.

  “Took long enough,” Southwick commented. “Perhaps half the ship’s company’s down with black vomit – could be,” he added. Ramage wondered – sickness usually hit a newly arrived ship, and the Jason did not look as though she had been very long in the West Indies. A ship serving in the Tropics somehow acquired a bleached look; the sails would be faded, the paint on the hull would show it, even though recently applied…Somehow the frigate looked as though she was fresh from England. It was a feeling that Ramage could not have explained, and when he mentioned it to Southwick the master nodded. “Not a sheet of copper sheathing missing, as far as I can see. That alone rules out much service in the West Indies!”

  Ramage looked astern at the convoy. The great mass of ships was now far enough away that they merged into a narrow band on the horizon, a band which now took on the colour of the sails like a faintly reddish blur of smoke. Yet the Jason’s lookouts would have spotted it: her officers must have examined it with their telescopes. It must be obvious to the captain of the Jason that the Calypso was one of the convoy’s escorts, so why all this prancing about?

  Ramage lifted his telescope once more. Yes, the other frigates had obeyed his instructions: L’Espoir had moved out to starboard, up to windward of the convoy and able to cover the front by running down to leeward. La Robuste had moved across from the leeward side to take the Calypso’s place astern and to windward. So the convo
y was still covered: until they were all well away from the islands there was always a chance of French privateers attacking from Guadeloupe. That butterfly-shaped island had plenty of bays providing perfect bases for privateers. They could sail westward to intercept ships bound from Barbados to the more important islands to the northwest, like Tortola; or eastwards to intercept the Europe traffic. These privateers should be kept under control by the Royal Navy ships based in Antigua, but these days few people placed much reliance on English Harbour, which seemed to have an enervating effect on anyone based there.

  Meanwhile what the devil was the Jason up to? Now half a mile away and steering an opposite course to the Calypso, she was perhaps five hundred yards over to larboard, which meant she would pass too far off to hail. She had no signals hoisted; nor would there be time to answer if she hoisted one now. And Ramage had no idea who commanded her…someone senior, or some young fool at the bottom of the Post List who wanted to cut a dash?

  The Calypso was slicing her way up to windward but unable to close the five-hundred-yard gap. Considering she had not been careened, her bottom must be cleaner than he thought. But what the deuce was he to do with this Jason idiot? Just bear away as she passed and run back with her to the convoy? Why the devil did he not hoist a signal?

  Probably, Ramage decided, her captain was a man sufficiently high on the Post List who had identified the Calypso and guessed who commanded her and now wanted to catch him out in some silly game – like, hoisting a signal at the last moment and demanding an instant answer. The price of a little hard-earned fame in the Navy, Ramage had discovered, was to be the object of envy (jealousy was perhaps too strong a word) of all the failures who were senior on the Post List. They wanted, it seemed, to prove that he had feet of clay, and Ramage could almost hear the refrain – “There, that shows him he’s not as clever as he thinks he is!” It was tiresome, boring even, for someone quietly doing his job.