by Dudley Pope
The “Captain’s Journal” was here, started the day Bullivant joined the ship, and Ramage put it in another drawer without reading it. Yes, here was the muster book, and an entry indicated the date that Bullivant had joined the ship “as per commission.” No one had noted that he was replacing Captain Ramage, who was on leave. Now there was a nice point—in noting that Bullivant had gone to the Murex “by order of the commander-in-chief,” did Ramage now note that Captain Ramage had taken (resumed?) command “as per commission,” thus having taken command twice without ever having (officially) left the ship? Or did he ignore Bullivant’s brief command?
Some tedious quill pusher at the Navy Board could worry about that bureaucratic problem, and no doubt the correspondence ensuing would continue for another ten years. He noted that no seaman had been discharged and no new men had joined the ship.
He put the muster book and letter book back in the drawer, and took Admiral Clinton’s order from his smock. Soon he would be back in uniform. Several officers in the flagship had offered spare uniform frocks and breeches, stockings, shirts and stocks, but Ramage guessed that his own clothes would still be in the Calypso, and indeed almost the first thing his steward Silkin had reported was that his trunks had been brought up from the hold and all the clothing was being washed or cleaned or ironed with a sprinkling of vinegar to get rid of the musty smell.
He opened Admiral Clinton’s two sets of orders and read the second one again. The admiral and Captain Bennett had drawn them up in a hurry, which ensured brevity.
“Whereas I have received information,” Admiral Clinton’s orders began, “that the French national frigate L’Espoir sailed from Brest very recently carrying as prisoners a large group of men and women accused by the French government of disloyalty and sentenced to transportation and exile in Cayenne, you are hereby required and directed to proceed with all possible despatch in His Majesty’s ship Calypso under your command and make the best of your way towards Cayenne and intercept the said French national frigate L’Espoir and free the prisoners and carry them safely to a port in England, reporting at once to my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty the success of your mission …”
He slid the letter between two blank pages in the order book and put the volume back in the drawer, locking it. It was lucky that Bullivant never bothered to put a key in his pocket—every drawer in this particular desk had a different lock.
The shouting, stamping and scuffling on the deck overhead had finally stopped and Ramage listened for feet clattering down the companion-way, to be halted at his door by the Marine sentry, who would then call out the person’s identity.
He sat back and sighed with sheer pleasure. It was exciting to be back—he had spent so long in this cabin it seemed like home. Indeed, it was his home. Certainly sitting at this desk dressed as a French fisherman was unusual, but there was no time to wait for Silkin’s smoothing iron to finish its work.
Since boarding the ship he had used the first fifteen minutes to listen to Silkin (who regarded his sartorial report as the most important the captain would want to hear) and then come down to the great cabin and read his orders once again. He had done this while Aitken prepared the ship for the next step.
And now there were the footsteps clattering down the companion-way, and the clank of a sword-hilt held high but not high enough to prevent it catching one of the steps.
The thump of feet and clatter of a musket indicated the Marine sentry coming to attention. Two voices, a question (from the sentry, one he would have had to ask even if the visitor had been his own mother), and a reply.
Then a tap on the door and the sentry’s voice: “Captain, sir—the first lieutenant!”
“Send him in.”
And in came a smiling Aitken, crouching slightly because of the low headroom, his sword held clear with one hand, his cocked hat under his arm.
“Ship’s company mustered aft, sir.”
“Aitken”—Ramage stood up and walked towards the young Scot, his hand extended. As they shook hands, Ramage added: “I’m glad to be back and I’m glad I have the same officers.”
“Thank you, sir. We held our breaths when we heard the British ambassador—Lord Whitworth, I think it is—had left Paris, but when you didn’t come back from your honeymoon we guessed that the French had captured you and her Ladyship.”
Ramage gestured down at his smock and trousers. “You didn’t expect to meet me off Ushant in this rig! Well, you should see her Ladyship—she’s dressed as a fishwife.”
He led the way up the ladder and out on deck. The Marines were lined up in two ranks against the taffrail; Southwick, the lieutenants and Orsini were at the starboard end of the front file, and the seamen formed the other three sides of the square so that the quarterdeck was a box of men.
Ramage had mustered all the men not through any overweening conceit but, because of that confidence always existing among men who have fought beside each other many times, he knew that they wanted to see him and be reassured.
The drunkard who had briefly taken his place had been hoisted out lashed on to a stretcher shouting and screaming that the seamen at the staytackle were doing the Devil’s work. Now Bullivant was on his way to Plymouth in the Murex and he could only feel sorry for Sarah. She will, he thought grimly, see and hear what we went through with Bowen. Still, it is a bare one hundred and twenty miles from Ushant to Plymouth and the Murex should stretch over to the north-east at a good six knots, so that Sarah will have to put up with it for only 24 hours. Then she would post to London and very soon the thought of the recent excitement would be like a half-remembered dream.
On top of the main capstan: the ship was not rolling enough to make it difficult for him to balance, and he could look round and see everyone, except for two or three Marines hidden by the mizenmast. But it was a dam’ cold wind: the downdraught from the mainsail seemed to go straight through his smock. The advantage of full uniform in a northern climate was its warmth, although it was too hot for the Tropics—the cocked hat, for instance, seemed to gain a pound in weight for every ten degrees of latitude it moved south, so that near the Equator it was about as comfortable as a knight’s helmet.
Now the Marines were standing stiffly to attention, the lieutenants frozen to the deck, and the seamen looking up at him, some grinning, some straight-faced, but none sucking teeth. Few captains seemed to realize that the presence or absence of the sucking of teeth revealed more about the men’s attitude, happiness or discontent, than anything else.
He spoke a few words of greeting as he pulled the first of Admiral Clinton’s orders from the front of his smock and the Marines and lieutenants unfroze. The seamen knew only too well what was coming next and made sure they were standing comfortably.
Ramage unfolded the paper and began the ritual of “reading himself in.” Until that was completed he could not officially give any orders and expect them to be obeyed; he had purposely made “stand at ease” a gruff comment rather than an order, and the helm order to Southwick was to save time. Then he began reading.
“By virtue of the power and authority to me given as commander-in-chief of His Majesty’s ships and vessels comprising the Channel Fleet, and being off Brest and outside the Channel limits, I Reginald Edward Clinton, Vice-Admiral of the Red, do hereby constitute and appoint you captain of His Majesty’s ship the Calypso frigate, willing and requiring you forthwith to go on board and take upon you the charge and command of captain in her accordingly …”
Ramage paused for breath, cursing the man who had originally (probably a hundred years ago) drawn up the wording, never considering the poor captain who had to recite them loud enough so that over the sound of the wind and the sea every man in a ship’s company could hear them. Well, almost all the seamen were grinning now, and he continued.
“… Strictly charging and commanding all the officers and company of the said Calypso frigate to behave themselves jointly and severally in their respective employments … and you likew
ise to observe the General Printed Instructions … Hereof nor you nor any of you may fail as you will answer to the contrary at your peril; and for so doing this shall be your warrant …”
That last sentence meant just what it said: lieutenants, post captains and admirals had been court-martialled and broken for failure. The commission of course covered any orders given by superiors, and the admiral’s actual orders had a vagueness about them explained partly by the lack of much knowledge about L’Espoir, her prisoners and her route, but also so worded that whatever happened (in case of failure) the admiral could not be blamed. Admiral Clinton had been careful to note that he and Ramage were “outside the Channel limits,” because within Channel limits only the Board of Admiralty could appoint captains.
Ramage folded the orders and tucked them back inside his jersey: he had “read himself in,” he was (once again) commanding the Calypso. As soon as he had “read himself in,” Ramage reflected, a captain usually made a speech to the ship’s company (threatening, inspiring, flatulent, boring—different styles). But all these men, all the names attached to the sea of faces surrounding him, knew him well: they had gone into action with him, boarded enemies beside him, pistol, cutlass or boarding-pike in hand. Some had been blown up with him, most had seen him brought back unconscious from wounds. There were no words to say to such men.
He just looked round slowly at all the men, raised his right hand in a salute that suddenly reminded him absurdly of a Roman emperor’s gesture, and jumped down from the main capstan amid a swelling roar of cheers: “Three cheers and a tiger,” and apparently led by Southwick.
Well, he was back. Where was L’Espoir?
The sea now had the is-it-mauve-or-is-it-purple? of the deep ocean, with white horses stippling the tops of a few wind waves while swell waves slid beneath them. The Calypso was pitching slightly and rolling heavily, the masts and their yards creaking and the bulging sails frequently flattening and slatting as a particularly quick roll suddenly spilled the wind for a minute or two.
Astern the sun had lifted over the line of distant black cloud lying low and flat on the eastern horizon like a shadowy baulk of timber floating on the sea, and quickly the last of the stars were dazzled away and the sky overhead turned pale blue and cloudless.
In a few hours they would be crossing that invisible line of latitude 23° 27’ North, marking the Tropic of Cancer, and, Ramage reflected thankfully, at last they seemed to have picked up the Trade winds.
For the previous few days it had been a damp and dreary ritual. During the night the wind dropped, leaving the Calypso wallowing in a confused sea which bounced her up and down like a doormat being shaken and made everything movable creak, rattle or bang. In Ramage’s cabin even the wine glasses clinked in their rack as though toasting each other. Two drawers full of clothes which had not been shut properly skidded across the painted canvas that served as a carpet on the cabin sole, spilling silk and lisle stockings, handkerchiefs, stocks and shirts as though a dog was making a nest in a draper’s storeroom.
Dawn each day had revealed thunderstorms building up all round them, the lower clouds foaming upwards towards a higher layer which soon cut off the sun. From time to time Ramage had stood at the quarterdeck rail, picturing L’Espoir scores of miles ahead and sailing in different weather, the Trade winds sweeping her south and west to Cayenne, sails bulging, the French captain cheerful as he marked his chart and filled in his journal to record a fast passage from Brest.
In the Calypso, Ramage, almost stifling with frustration, had looked up at the sails hanging down like heavy curtains, chafing against rigging, the foot of each one wearing against the mast since the sails of the King’s ships were cut with a straight foot, not the deep curve favoured by merchant ships deliberately to avoid the chafe but reducing the area of the sail, something a ship of war could not afford.
Clew up to save some of the chafe or furl and avoid any at all? Or leave them so that he would not lose a minute once the first gust of wind arrived? But when it came (this week or next) would the wind be just a nice gust or would it be a roaring blast from one of those great thunderstorms that would send topmen hurrying to furl as courses were hastily clewed up and Aitken doubled the number of men at the wheel so that four stood a chance of preventing the overpressed frigate broaching as she raced to leeward, barely under control?
Should he risk losing a mile or so of progress, should he risk that heart-stopping bang of sail torn in half by the brute strength of the wind and then the thudding and thumping of the pieces slatting, or should he furl everything and wait for the wind to set in properly?
Eventually while he argued back and forth with himself and Southwick paced up and down, a lonely figure on the lee side of the quarterdeck, or Ramage stopped and barked at the quartermaster or chatted with the officer of the deck, in this case Martin, whiffles of wind had been spotted by the lookout at the foremasthead (a man having to hold on for dear life, and Ramage would have forgiven him if he had been too dizzy to spot anything). But the dancing shadows on the water were coming from the south. Anyway, anything was better than having the ship slat and bang herself to pieces, so they had braced up the yards and trimmed the sheets and found that, with the swell from the east and the lightness of the wind, the best they could lay and keep the sails asleep was west by north. They could pinch her to west by south but she slowed like a carriage miring itself in mud.
For the rest of each of those days they had jogged along at four and five knots, with the wind falling away at night and dawn bringing more thunderstorms. And the glass had fallen a little.
Except for this morning: while it was still dark the wind had again set in light from the south but he noticed that the glass had stopped falling and went on deck to find the sky was full of stars, already a good deal brighter than usual in northern skies. As dawn had begun to push away the dark of night the wind backed slightly—the coxswain had reported it as fluking around south-east by south, and the Calypso would just lay south-west-by-west. An hour later it was a steady east-south-east with the Calypso almost laying the course.
By noon it had backed another few points so that Southwick marked the slate in the binnacle box drawer and recorded the wind as north-east-by-east, with the ship making seven knots with all sails set to the royals and laying the course. More important, the ship’s company were getting the stunsails up on deck ready for hoisting. The Trades had really set in? They could only hope. The noon sight—with Southwick, Aitken and Ramage himself on deck with quadrants and sextants measuring the sun’s altitude—gave the latitude as 24° 06’ North. Orsini had also taken a sight, which involved only turning the adjusting screw of the sextant to get the highest angle the sun made and did not depend on the accuracy of the chronometer. The young midshipman had achieved all that without difficulty, but had stumbled over the simple calculations which involved the sextant angle and the sun’s declination. The latitude, he finally admitted to Southwick, had to be wrong, as the master pointed out with mild irony, since it placed the Calypso on the same latitude as Edinburgh.
Ramage was allowing a knot of south-east going current but previous experience showed this was too much. However, like Southwick who was a cautious navigator, he preferred that any error put the reckoning ahead of the ship: if the ship was ahead of the reckoning she could (and many did!) run on to unseen rocks and reefs guarding the destination.
As he was taking the noon sight, Ramage felt sure the Trades were setting in with their usual abruptness. At the moment only a few of the typical Trade wind clouds—small, flat-bottomed with rounded tops and reminding him of mushrooms—were moving in neat lines apparently converging on a point beyond the western horizon.
Trade wind clouds were a never-failing entertainment in the Tropics. In fact, he reflected, weather in the Trades could also be alarming for a Johnny Newcome, whether a seaman or officer fresh to the Tropics. In crossing the Atlantic, often one would find at dawn a band of low, thick cloud to the east (to windwar
d and therefore, one would think, approaching) which would become black and menacing as the sun rose behind it: obviously, one would think, the herald of a strange tropical storm or gale, or at least a devastating squall.
The beginning of the day in the ship usually meant that for an hour or two every man was fully occupied, and then the Newcomes would suddenly remember (with more than a stab of fear) and look astern for that low, black cloud. But a quick glance to the eastward would show a clear horizon and an innocent sun rising with all the grace and smoothness of a duchess composing herself for a portrait artist.
So by nine o’clock the sky would be clear from horizon to horizon and the sun just beginning to hint that soon it would have some warmth in it. Then the parade of the mushrooms would begin.
He called them mushrooms but they really started in the distance as rows of white pinheads on a pale blue velvet pincushion. They would gradually move to the westward, keeping in neat lines but each pinhead beginning to expand like a fluffy ball of cotton growing on its bush. On and on to the westward they would move, and the sun warming the air would make the clouds blossom larger, but they would still stay in orderly and evenly-spaced lines, like columns of well-drilled soldiers advancing across a plain. Sometimes the shapes would change: while the bottom stayed flat, the top would take up a grotesque shape, like a bun determined to alarm the baker’s wife.
For Ramage the actual growth of the lines of cloud was the least of it. The fun came in looking at each of them. With flat bottom and bulging top, many were like recumbent effigies on the tops of tombs; with others the white vapour curved and twisted into the shape of faces staring up into the sky. In the course of fifteen minutes, ten chubby, long-faced, pug-nosed or long-nosed politicians familiar from cartoonists’ broadsides, a dozen friends, and a dozen more bizarre but identifiable shapes would sail past on their way westward.