by Dudley Pope
And then he was yelling at Aitken while watching the passing enemy: “Come about! Don’t let him get away!”
The last gun of the Calypso’s broadside had hardly fired before topsails were slatting as the frigate tacked. Ramage realized that the enemy had the advantage in speed because she had all plain sail set; but she would be more difficult to handle with all that canvas. As the Calypso swung round to starboard, Ramage looked over the quarter at the enemy just in time to see her beginning to clew up her courses. So she was going to fight under t’gallants and topsails. Ramage was sure the French would soon furl the t’gallants; they were not handy sails for fighting—but furling them took topmen away from the guns …
The Calypso quickly turned and Ramage saw an opportunity. “Steer across his stern,” he ordered Aitken. “We’ll give him a raking broadside, even though at long range.”
The Calypso seems to be spending most of the day raking French frigates, Ramage thought, although this time it would be at a range of a couple of hundred yards, instead of twenty.
As soon as the ship came round on to the other tack and Aitken had braces and sheets trimmed, Ramage watched the departing enemy frigate closely and gave helm orders which would make the Calypso pass across the enemy frigate’s stern at an oblique angle, so that she had plenty of room to wear again to avoid running aground.
Now the Frenchman had his courses clewed up—and yes, he was furling his t’gallants: at least he was getting down to topsails, the usual rig for fighting. And it meant that he was slowing down, reducing the range for the Calypso’s raking broadside.
By now the first of the Calypso’s larboard broadside was firing again, the gunners hastily adjusting the quoin for the increased range. Ramage found himself counting with the slower rate of fire. He took up his telescope and trained it on the Frenchman’s stern, and was just in time to see a spark as a round shot hit a piece of metalwork, probably a fitting on the rudderhead. As his count reached sixteen Ramage realized that the French frigate—he had just read the name on the transom as Le Jason—was bearing away and was going to cross ahead of the Calypso.
“She’s going to rake us,” growled Southwick.
“And there’s nothing we can do to stop her,” Ramage said quietly.
Nor was there. The Calypso was committed to wearing to get away from the shore, which was fast approaching, and the Frenchman would pass across her bow firing a raking broadside into her. Ramage thought of the ship of the line they had encountered earlier in the day: please, no damage to the jib-boom and bowsprit!
The quicker the Calypso wore, the less time her vulnerable bow would be exposed to the Frenchman’s broadside. Ramage listened to the slamming of the sails and hoped the gunners were hard at work reloading.
And then Le Jason was crossing the Calypso’s bow, wreathed in smoke, her whole side a line of winking red eyes as her guns fired. Ramage heard a crash aloft and glanced up to see a wild shot had smashed six feet off the end of the fore-topgallant yard. The calico ripping noise of a dozen more round shot passing overhead showed him the French gunners had not yet settled down.
There were four or five shot-holes in the topsails: nothing that needed repairing. And the jib-boom and bowsprit were still standing, with no damage apparent from where Ramage stood.
“We’ve been lucky,” he commented to Aitken, and a moment later saw he could turn the tables on the Frenchman.
“Luff up and we can rake his stern as he goes past.”
He looked round for Orsini. “Warn the gunners that they’ll be able to rake the Frenchman on the starboard side!”
By now the Frenchman was heading north-west, steering for the shore and obviously about to tack or wear. The Calypso bore up slightly and Le Jason’s stern came round on to her starboard beam. Sounding like a huge drum being beaten irregularly, the Calypso’s guns started firing, and once again Ramage saw sparks as round shot glanced off metal. And the stern-lights were now an irregular shape: instead of being rectangles enclosing the glass, they were ragged shapes, chewed at by round shot.
Would it work? “Wear round,” he shouted to Aitken, “we’ll rake him again!”
The Frenchman seemed to be manoeuvring very slowly; after raking the Calypso, Ramage expected Le Jason to tack or wear to get offshore again, but she was staying on the same course, northwest, as though careless of the risk of going up the beach.
Then Ramage stared hard through his telescope. Le Jason was leaving no wake: she was stopped in the water! And he noticed that her rudder was hard over.
“She’s aground, by God!” exclaimed Southwick just as Ramage was about to speak.
“We must have damaged her rudder with that raking broadside,” Ramage said.
“How close in can we go?” Southwick growled, reaching for the chart.
“Close enough to rake her again,’ Ramage said grimly. “And again and again. It probably won’t take them long to repair that rudder.”
Aitken gave orders to the quartermaster and the Calypso came round a few degrees. Ramage looked round for Orsini and sent him off to warn the gunners to expect to rake the enemy with the starboard broadside.
Ramage saw a red winking at the transom and realized that Le Jason had got a stern-chase gun in action. Almost immediately there was a crash aloft and the Calypso’s fore-topgallant mast crashed down, hanging by rigging, the yard swinging like a pendulum.
“Go and sort that out,” Ramage ordered Aitken. “I’ll take over the conn.”
Of all the damnable luck: at least, damnable for the Calypso and almost beyond belief for Le Jason. That a single shot from a stern-chase gun should bring down the Calypso’s fore-topgallant mast was an almost unbelievable piece of good fortune for the French.
But it did not make the Calypso unmanageable. By now she had worn round and Ramage was giving the quartermaster careful orders which would bring the frigate into a good firing position.
Another red wink and puff of smoke at Le Jason’s stern showed the French had managed to get a second stern-chase gun into action, and Ramage found himself admiring their coolness; they were in a lot of trouble, but they still had the will to fight back.
Ramage heard nothing of the shot and assumed it must have missed. At that moment Orsini appeared in front of him. “A message from Mr Bowen, sir.”
What had the surgeon to say at a time like this? “Well?”
“He said six men dead and five wounded, two seriously, from two round shot and splinters, sir.”
Ramage was dumbfounded: he had not heard or felt shot hitting the ship and knew nothing of casualties.
“Very well. Does Mr Bowen need help?”
“No, sir, I asked him. He has a couple of loblolly men and three seamen to help him, and that’s enough.”
Six men dead…. And he had not realized that the ship had been hit. Yet when he thought about it, it was obvious that some shot from Le Jason’s broadsides would have struck home. Fighting at these ranges meant casualties. He wondered how many Frenchmen had been killed.
Two points to starboard and trim the yards and sheets. That should bring them across Le Jason’s transom. How was the Frenchman going to get off? He had run ashore at an oblique angle; there was just a chance that if he ran all his guns over to the larboard side, hardened in the sheets on the starboard tack and prayed for a strong gust of wind, then he might just come clear. But Ramage realized that would not help: the Frenchman probably had no rudder, or at least not one that functioned, and without that the wind would just blow him harder aground. Was he actually aground on the beach, or an off-lying shoal? It was hard to tell from this angle.
Ramage decided that a hundred yards was as close as he was going to approach; there might be a spit of land or a spur of the shoal stretching well out, and having the Calypso going aground on the same bit of shoal would be a piece of irony he could do without.
“Do you need me here, sir?” Southwick asked. “Otherwise I’ll go and give a hand clearing up that mast.”
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“No, I can manage,” Ramage said. “The sooner we get that wreckage down on deck the better. It’ll be ripping the topsail any minute.”
The two pieces of the mast, along with the yard, were swinging like pendulums on pieces of rigging and halyards, and each time the ship rolled or there was a stronger than usual puff of wind, they slammed into the side of the topsail. Ramage could not understand why the splintered ends of the broken mast had not yet torn the canvas. Yes, he could order the topmen to furl the topsail, but the Calypso would be hard to handle with only the maintopsail, and anyway Aitken needed the topmen to secure the wreckage.
Two hundred yards to go. Two hundred yards to sail and he had to make sure the Calypso passed about a hundred yards off the Frenchman’s stern. The square on the hypotenuse—no, that did not apply because the hypotenuse was on the other side. Well, there was some mathematical formula to cover the situation, but he was damned if he knew it.
“You’re sure Mr Bowen didn’t need help?” he asked Orsini.
“No sir,” Paolo said firmly. “There are only five wounded and he has them bandaged up. It was a shot from the first broadside,” he added, to show Ramage that Bowen had plenty of time.
Once again Ramage stared over the starboard bow. They were approaching Le Jason fast now and Ramage imagined the French gunners hurriedly reloading the stern-chasers. They would be under no illusion: they would know that within a matter of minutes they would get up the full raking broadside from the Calypso and the quarterdeck would be swept with shot. But—there, again a red wink and spurt of smoke as they opened fire at what must be the extreme traverse of the gun. Again Ramage did not hear the shot: perhaps it hit the hull well forward.
Five hundred yards … four hundred … three hundred … The Calypso’s gunners would sight her out of the corner of the ports. Two hundred yards, and a hundred: gun captains would be taking up the strain on the lanyards and the second captains would have cocked the locks and jumped clear. Fifty yards and he could see the lettering on Le Jason’s transom. The other stern-chase fired and Ramage felt rather than heard a thud as its shot hit the Calypso’s hull.
The leading gun in the Calypso’s starboard broadside coughed and Ramage saw a spurt of smoke. Then the second gun, and the third. He picked up the telescope and trained it on Le Jason’s stern. Yes, there was a cloud of dust, so at least one shot had ploughed through the planking on the transom. Yes, another puff of dust as another shot smashed through. Suddenly he saw a black shape rear into the air above the taffrail and realized that a round shot had dismounted one of the stern-chase guns.
One by one the Calypso’s guns fired. A shot sent up a spurt of water twenty yards short of the French frigate: one of the gun captains had fired on the downward roll so that his shot fell short. It was an easy mistake to make: a matter of a second late in tugging the lanyard.
And that was the last gun. Ramage saw the spurt of dust it caused as it hit the corner of one of the stern-lights. Now the guns’ crews would be hard at work sponging and ramming—worming too, by now, in case a piece of burning cartridge was left in the bore and likely to explode the next cartridge prematurely.
Suddenly Orsini was gesticulating at the French frigate and Ramage glanced across in time to see her courses being let fall. He snatched up the telescope and saw the yards being braced round and the sheets trimmed so that as soon as the huge sails tumbled down they filled and bellied out. A moment later the fore- and main-topgallants were let fall and as soon as the halyards had hoisted them the yards were braced and the sails trimmed.
What on earth was going on? As far as a puzzled Ramage could see, setting the sails would only drive Le Jason further up the beach. But the French captain must have a very good reason. And a moment later he saw what it was.
The frigate began to move slowly, and as soon as she had way on, her yards were braced sharp up and she began to claw offshore.
At that moment Southwick hurried up the ladder, red-faced and breathless. “You’ve seen, sir? The dam’ fellow wasn’t ashore after all!”
Ramage shook his head. “No, he must have been caught on a spur of rock. And his rudder wasn’t damaged after all: they must have had it hard over to try and get off.”
“I hope the rock stove in a plank or two,” Southwick growled.
Ramage realized he had a chance to rake the Frenchman’s bow as he clawed off the shore and gave new orders to the quartermaster. It meant altering course only a point or two and the Calypso would pass fifty yards or so ahead of Le Jason before her captain had got his ship squared away properly for the beat to windward that would get him clear of the coast.
He shouted orders through the speaking-trumpet to get yards braced and sheets trimmed, and then he bellowed down to the gunners to get ready for a target to larboard.
So an easy time passing up and down raking a stranded French frigate was turning back to be a battle of broadsides: Ramage thought of the six men killed already. What would be the butcher’s bill before the sun went down? In all the actions he had fought up to now, in the Mediterranean and the West Indies, he had never suffered heavy casualties. Was his luck going to run out today? He had already had one lucky escape: if that ship of the line had pinned the Calypso across her bows, she would have sent across a boarding party which would have slaughtered most of the ship’s company. Was this damned frigate going to do a lot of damage through lucky shots, like the one that had brought down the mast?
Ramage snapped out another order to the quartermaster and then asked Southwick: “What about that damage forward?”
“They’ll have the wreckage lowered in a few minutes, sir; there’s no chance of damage to the topsail now.”
“I hope it won’t take too long; I want those men back at the guns.”
“Mr Aitken has it under control, sir,” Southwick said soothingly. “I say, are we going to rake that fellow again?”
“We’re getting into the habit,” Ramage said lightly. “Not that it seems to be doing him much harm.”
“We’ve smashed in his stern-lights!” Southwick said.
“Yes, but it’s his jib-boom and bowsprit we want to smash. Right at the moment we’re doing as much damage as a crowd of mice.”
By now Le Jason was plunging her way seaward, the waves from the shallower water slapping into her bow and sending up small sheets of spray which darkened the foot of her forecourse. She was beginning to pitch slightly and her Tricolour streamed out aft like a board.
As the Calypso sailed northwards to pass across Le Jason’s bow with fifty yards to spare, she too began to knock up the spray, her starboard bow shouldering into the waves, sending the sea drifting aft over the deck like heavy rain. Ramage could taste the saltiness on his lips and noted that the wind was increasing, though the sky apart from a few scurrying clouds was clear and the usual bright blue that was special to this corner of the Tuscan coast.
Raking broadsides: he doubted if he had fired as many in his whole life as he had fired against Le Tigre and Le Jason. But as far as Le Jason’s fighting ability was concerned—apart from the dismounted stern-chase gun—he might as well be bombarding her with snowballs.
Well, in a couple of minutes he would have his next chance: with a bit of luck this broadside would really damage her bow. Even bring the foremast toppling down? He shrugged: one could only hope.
A gust of wind caught the Calypso and she surged forward, her bow wave hissing down her sides. The masts and yards creaked, acknowledging the gust rather than protesting at it.
“Orsini—whip round and tell the gunners that they’ve two minutes!”
Ramage was sure that giving the gunners a warning when he could was increasing their accuracy: he had noticed that the broadsides had been fired with a comforting regularity, rather than three guns going off at once. The regular fire meant that the gun captains were firing when the enemy was precisely in their sights, rather than jerking the lanyards hopefully.
He looked across the larboard b
ow at the French frigate. One minute to go—and Orsini should have got to all the gunners by now. Half a minute—and he could begin to make out details of the Frenchman’s rigging and patched sails. She had a figurehead but they had not bothered to paint it; the old paint was faded and peeling. Was that as a result of the Revolution, that seamen no longer bothered about things like figureheads? In the king’s ships they were prized and regularly painted, and many of them were covered with canvas in rough weather to protect them.
Then the Calypso’s first gun fired with a satisfying cough. The smoke would bother Aitken’s working party, but they would have to cough and bear it: the faster they cleared away the wreckage the sooner they would be out of the smoke. They would not, of course, because most of them belonged to the guns, and as soon as they finished they would return to the guns—and the smoke.
The guns settled down to firing regularly and once again the smoke streamed aft up to the quarterdeck. Ramage watched the French frigate’s bow with the telescope but could not spot any hits. Two shots fell short, sending up tall spouts of water, but there seemed to be no damage to the jib-boom or bowsprit.
Southwick, also watching with a glass, gave a disgusted sniff. “Don’t know what’s happened to our gunners,” he said disgustedly. “If they can knock us about with a stern-chaser, we ought to do better with a raking broadside.”
By now the Calypso had passed across Le Jason’s bow and Ramage gave orders for her to go about, so that on the starboard tack she would range up alongside the French ship, exchanging broadside for broadside.
As the Calypso swung round on to a parallel course and while the gun crews prepared the starboard broadside, Ramage wondered whether to let fall the main-topgallant.
As if the French captain read his thoughts, he saw Le Jason begin to clew up her courses and, a minute or two later, start furling her topgallants, so that—now she was afloat again—she was back in a fighting trim of topsails only, matching the Calypso.