Ramage At Trafalgar

by Dudley Pope

  Not far, not far, Ramage thought thankfully; the next village of any note is called Halfway House, though Ramage was puzzled by the name. It was certainly not half-way between London and Rochester. Perhaps between Gravesend and the Medway at Rochester?

  The bishop woke up, grunted and made another foray into his basket, cursing a fly which was anxious to spend a few minutes on a crumb clinging to the bishop’s chin. “Ha, soon be at Gad’s Hill,” he said, raising his head momentarily from the basket. “Damnably uncomfortable, these machines. I wonder they dare charge tenpence a mile. Ought to pay the travellers tenpence a mile to travel in ’em.”

  Ramage smiled politely at the only worthwhile comment the bishop had made so far. However, one does not have to attend his cathedral: imagine that voice droning on, warning the congregation against the sin of gluttony…

  The horses seemed to find a second wind: perhaps they could sniff the Medway and knew they now had a good clear run down a gentle slope to Rochester, where they would be taken out and replaced by fresh horses to take the carriage on to Sittingbourne before being changed again.

  Soon Ramage could see the 110-foot-high ruined keep of Rochester Castle, which had been guarding this crossing of the Medway since the twelfth century: yes, and there was the cathedral, one of the oldest in the county, if not the country. Rochester was a fine old town with dignified buildings and, like all places built with a reason – to guard the crossing of the Medway – having its own purposeful air about it, even though it was now a distant memory.

  Finally the ’chaise swung into the courtyard of the post inn at Chatham, and as soon as the boys had slammed down the steps, Ramage climbed down, every bone in his body aching, and the cobbles hard and unyielding underfoot. Make the most of it, he told himself; within the week you’ll be tired of tramping the Calypso’s deck. And there’ll be no changing horses at Cadiz…

  The livery coach clattered through the gate and rounded up alongside the Calypso as she sat four-square in the dock, seeming twice as big out of the water, her masts towering so high it seemed they ought to scratch lines in the low cloud.

  The steps slammed down and Ramage climbed out of the coach, thankful that he had left the bishop when he had changed from the ’chaise in Chatham town. But there was something odd about the Calypso. The new copper sheathing below the waterline was bright (but measled green where rain had started corrosion). A moment later he realized why it was different. Normally her hull was entirely black, with just a white strake the width of the portlids (which, painted red inside, made a chequerboard effect when the portlids were raised and the guns run out). But now there was a broad yellow strake along the side of the Calypso instead of the white. This was the way that Lord Nelson always painted his ship – the Victory had three rows, or strakes, of yellow – and many of his captains copied the style with their own ships, to show they were serving (or had served) with His Lordship. And now someone – Aitken, Southwick? – had added the yellow strake to the Calypso in anticipation.

  Not only had whoever it was braved the captain’s wrath (although it would take only a few hours to restore the white), but he must have paid for the paint himself, because the dockyard issued only black or white paint. Anyone wanting something different could paint his ship whatever colour he chose (Ramage could see a plum-coloured 74 in the next dock), but the captain paid for it out of his own pocket. A ship of the line painted a light colour showed that her captain had either a good independent income or had been lucky with prize money.

  And there were Aitken and Southwick, both looking remarkably worried, hurrying towards him as two seamen ran up to lift off his trunk.

  Aitken, as first lieutenant, saluted gravely and then, after briefly welcoming Ramage back, gestured at the Calypso’s hull. “We thought, sir, as we are joining Lord Nelson’s fleet, that…”

  Ramage deliberately looked grave. Southwick, saluting, said quickly: “We thought we’d anticipate your orders, sir.”

  Ramage looked him up and down. “What makes you think I’d want to fling pots of yellow paint at my ship, eh?”

  Both men looked so crestfallen, like guilty schoolboys, that Ramage laughed. “It looks very good, but I’ll pay for it: give me the dockyard vouchers and I’ll settle ’em. And we’ll need a few gallons more to keep it looking bright.”

  Aitken sighed with relief, but Southwick chuckled. “I told him you’d be pleased, but he was far from sure. In fact yesterday he wanted to paint it out, so we’d be back to a white strake.”

  “How soon can we get afloat?” Ramage demanded, aware that the two seamen preparing to lift his trunk were deliberately dawdling so that they could hear what was being said.

  “On the next tide, as long as the master attendant agrees,” Aitken assured him.

  “Very well, arrange that: Lord Nelson and the Victory – with yellow strakes – are waiting for us at St Helens, and the French and the Dons are waiting for both of us in Cadiz!”

  Southwick grinned and said: “We’ll get afloat even if we have to open the dock gates ourselves: the men will be happy enough to knock away the shores – they’re fed up with life in dry dock!”

  “Very well, get word to the master attendant and report to my cabin in fifteen minutes.” With that he walked out along the gangplank and went on board. He stood on the quarterdeck before going down the companionway to his cabin. Yes, it was all here: the reek of paint, so strong that the smell ought to be visible as thick smoke, and somewhere there was the rapid metallic thud of hammers – the last of the sheathing nails being driven home? Probably. The noise echoed dully through the ship, as though the banging was on the outside of the hull.

  His cabin smelled like a paint store, even though the skylights were wide open and the portlids for the 12-pounders were hoisted up, wide open on each side of the great cabin and in the bed place and couch. In half an hour he would have a splitting headache. But all three cabins sparkled: there was fresh white paint on the bulkheads and deckhead, reflecting the light, and the canvas on the soles of all three cabins had been repainted, the black and white squares freshened up so that it seemed he had new carpets. His bed swung from the heavy metal eyes bolted into the beams and there were no spots of paint on it – someone had, thank goodness, stowed it out of the way before the paint brushes were put to work. And Sarah had sewn new covers for him, and made sure they were packed in his trunk.

  The letter from Sarah, given him by Raven as he boarded the ’chaise, nestled in the inside pocket of his frock coat, and after pitching his hat on to the settee he sat at the desk (the top freshly polished and still smelling of the bosun’s special beeswax-and-turpentine mixture that the men had used) and took a paper-knife from the top drawer.

  Pride, awe, delight…it was difficult to sort out the emotions, but the letter was addressed to him in Sarah’s handwriting, and there was the griffin seal. A letter from Lady Ramage. The first he had ever received but, God willing, the first of many.

  He was reluctant to break the seal for reasons he could not explain. Her handwriting and the Ramage seal seemed an entity: to open the letter would somehow spoil it. But leaving it sealed defeated the whole purpose…

  He slid the knife under the wax and opened out the folded page. The letter was brief. She loved him and was disappointed that this time she was staying at home while he went to sea – he had to smile: it was typical of Sarah to dismiss the long months that she had been one of Bonaparte’s prisoners in such a casual fashion. And, underlined, was a reference to his father’s admonition that frigates did not stand in the line of battle. Her final sentence stirred up memories to which his loins responded.

  He heard a stamping outside and noted that the captain now had his Marine sentry outside the door – either Aitken had passed the word or Rennick, the Marine lieutenant, had seen the carriage arrive. The sentry was probably rigged out in working dress ten minutes ago, painting or helping with the rigging, and had hurriedly changed into uniform, careful not to knock the pip
eclay off the crossbelts.

  Ramage was still holding Sarah’s letter when he heard feet coming down the companion ladder and, a few moments later, the sentry’s shout of: “The first lieutenant and the master, sir!”

  Both men came into the cabin in answer to Ramage’s call and he gestured for them to sit down. It was a ritual – the master with his flowing white hair and unadmitted rheumatism sat in the armchair beside the desk, while Aitken used the settee.

  The two of them waited patiently for Ramage to begin. However, although Ramage had seen them less than a week ago at the Royal Exchange at the Lloyd’s presentation, he wanted to hear first about the ship.

  “Well, as I told you on the dock, sir, we’re about ready,” Aitken said. “The men are hammering in the nails on the last few sheets of sheathing, as you can hear, and every inch of running and a good half of the standing rigging has been renewed. The master sailmaker agreed to condemn all the topsails and t’gallants, so we have new ones. They’ve all been scrubbed to get the size out of ’em. We had three days without a breath of wind so we could hoist ’em, let fall, and check over the cut. They’re all strong sails, sir, with the last row of reef points put in deep.

  “All the cabins have been painted out. We’ve had your cabins open ever since but I’m sorry the stink is still here. Five 12-pounders have been changed. Two of the old ones were honeycombed, so I suppose we can count ourselves lucky they didn’t blow up on us.”

  Aitken grinned at Ramage. “The master attendant wouldn’t believe how many times we’d been in action with them.”

  “If a honeycombed gun is going to blow up, it’s as likely to do it in practice as in action,” Ramage pointed out.

  “Aye,” Aitken agreed, his Scots accent pronounced, “but the effect could be disastrous in action; in practice it’d be just an accident.”

  “Has everything else been checked?” Ramage asked. “Rudder, gudgeons and pintles, tiller ropes, wheel ropes… Capstan and voyol block…?”

  “Everything,” Southwick said with more than a hint of reproach in his voice. “Even the ensign halyard’s been renewed, sir.”

  Ramage recognized the “why don’t you give over?” tone of the “sir”: Southwick had served with him since the day Lord (then just an unhonoured commodore) Nelson had given a very young lieutenant his first command. And that reminded him.

  “By the way, Southwick, Lord Nelson was inquiring after you. You’ll be flattered to hear that he remembered your name from the time he put me in command of the Kathleen, and seems to have noticed every time your name was mentioned in a Gazette letter.”

  The old master grinned with pleasure and then said, as a hint to Ramage to give some more news: “You mentioned in your letter yesterday His Lordship’s plans.”

  “Yes, we called on him and Lady Hamilton, but I’m here now because of a message I received yesterday morning – after the Dover ’chaise had left, otherwise I’d have been here earlier.”

  He then told both men of the talk he had had with Nelson, followed by Captain Blackwood’s unexpected visit the previous morning with the news of the Combined Fleet’s concentration at Cadiz.

  Southwick rubbed his hands together with the glee of a trencherman watching tender roast beef being carved. “St Helens, eh, and if the Victory’s gone, we race her to Cadiz. Give us a bit o’ luck with the winds in the Bay of Biscay, and we could beat her!”

  “At least we have a clean bottom and a decent suit of sails,” Aitken said.

  “What about the ship’s company?” Ramage asked suddenly, remembering he had caused several heads to shake in the dockyard when he gave permission for each watch to have ten days’ leave, starting with the larboard watch.

  The dockyard commissioner had wanted to countermand Ramage’s order, declaring that a good half of the men would desert. “You’re just turning ’em loose,” he had said, “then you’ll come whining to me that you haven’t enough men to shift the ship out of the dock, let alone get under way.” But Ramage had been adamant. It was a test of his own leadership: all the men had done very well from prize money (several of the senior petty officers were by their standards rich) and they served in a ship which was happy, frequently in action, and where sickness (thanks to the Surgeon Bowen and a sensible diet) was almost unknown. Ramage’s feeling was that if any men took advantage of his trust to desert, he did not want those sort of men anyway.

  “The ship’s company, sir?” Aitken repeated, as though puzzled by the question. “Well, we are still a dozen or so short of complement, as before, but everyone’s back from leave.”

  “All of them?”

  “All,” Aitken said. “In fact half a dozen came back early – spent all the money they’d drawn.”

  So much for the dockyard commissioner, Ramage thought. How did one let him know without offending a man who wielded great power within his dockyard walls?

  “What’s the earliest they can flood up?” Ramage asked.

  “The master attendant reckons he can start in a couple of hours. But we’ll have to wait for high water to get out over the sill of this dock, which is the smallest in the yard and used only for frigates, as you know, and by the time they’ve knocked away all the shores and fished them out so they don’t tear the sheathing, we’ll have an hour of ebb running…”

  “Well, I’m not going down the dam’ Medway on an ebb tide,” Ramage said firmly. “Trying to save a few hours could cost us a couple of days stuck in the mud – and Medway mud is the deepest and stickiest known to man.”

  Southwick sighed thankfully. “I was going to suggest we waited for the first of the next flood, sir… We’ll have a fair wind most if not all of the way to Sheerness, so it won’t matter that we’re butting the young flood. It’ll be so near low water we’ll be able to see the deep channel: this end of the river has more bends than a snake with colic.”

  Ramage glanced at Aitken. “I’ve no doubt you’ve lots of reports, accounts, and so on for me to sign before we sail…?”

  Aitken lifted a folder which he had put beside him on the settee. “I have them here, sir.”

  “And the bill for that yellow paint?”

  “That, too, sir, but Southwick and I had intended it to be a present.”

  Chapter Six

  The run down the Medway to Sheerness had been notable – as Bowen had commented – for its smell. Medway mud seemed to be a vile and viscous mixture of sewage, blue clay and brown glue, stretching out in a wide band on each side of the fairway as the river twisted from Chatham to Garrison Point at its mouth, where it passed between Grain Spit to larboard and Cheyney Spit to starboard and ran into the Thames at Great Nore.

  “Look at those dam’ sea birds,” Bowen had exclaimed, pointing at a dozen or so waders. “By rights they should stick fast in the mess!”

  Southwick was more concerned with two birds jinking across the river, uttering sharp cries. “Ah, if only I had a fowling piece I’d get one of those snipe!” he exclaimed.

  “And who’d retrieve for you?” Aitken inquired sarcastically.

  As the river widened at Kethole Reach and Saltpan Reach in the approaches to Sheerness, the flood stream – now strong, eddying and curling round the few buoys (marking the entrances on the starboard hand to Half Acre and Stangate Creeks and West Swale) and tilting them upstream – carried swans past them, proud-looking creatures which refused to hurry, moving in a stately fashion to give the Calypso just enough room to pass between them as she passed the mudflats, one of which had a curious name, Bishop Ooze.

  “They remind me of three-deckers,” commented Aitken, “but they tack and wear with less fuss.”

  Soon Sheerness was astern and Southwick took the frigate down the fairway clear of Sheerness Middle Sand to meet Sea Reach, turning to larboard at the Great Nore with the flood stream under her to go on a few miles and then turn to come alongside the powder hoys at Black Stakes.

  This part of the Thames was grim: to larboard, the Yantlet Flats were flat fields
of thick, stinking and bubbling mud with what were like ditches where scour had cut runways. To starboard, the names on the chart told a similar but less smelly story – West Knock and East Knock were the entrances to a deeper channel across Southend Flats, which merged into the Marsh End Sand, Leigh Sand and the long stretch of the Chapman Sands off Leigh.

  As the hoys came into sight, Ramage cursed himself for a weakling; he had done nothing about the gunner. The man was a dodger: he evaded responsibility as other men tried to evade diseases. But changing him meant a long argument with the Army’s Board of Ordnance, as well as the Navy Board. Both would want written evidence of his incompetence, and there was the rub: as a gunner the man was not incompetent; he looked after the Calypso’s guns and magazine; he – well, that was the trouble. He was just a man who dodged responsibility for anything, even boxes of slow match, although it was irritating for his fellow officers and his captain, it was not a crime.

  Ramage could imagine arguments with both Boards – “I can’t send him away in charge of expeditions” – “Give an example” – “Well, I haven’t one because I daren’t send him off” – “Then how do you know you can’t trust him?” And so on.

  Well, soon they would be alongside a hoy and taking on nearly ten tons of powder in 120-pound cases and 90-pound barrels. Ramage could be sure that both Aitken and Southwick would be watching every move, whether by seamen or the gunner, as the copper-hooped cases and barrels were hoisted on board, using the staytackle and a cargo net. And of course there would be boxes of portfires, signal rockets and quick match already cut into lengths and packed into boxes with sliding lids.

  Gunpowder. Curious stuff, just an innocent-looking grey powder. Two sorts, naturally. Most of the powder hoisted on board would be coarse, used in the bore of the guns to fire 12-pounder roundshot. But some, in specially marked containers, would be the fine powder used for priming: put in the priming pans of the 12-pounders, carronades, muskets and pistols. “Mealed” powder, it used to be called, but the important thing was that it was so fine it took fire the instant the flintlock made a spark (unless the powder was damp or the spark particularly weak). Priming powder was, pound for pound, a good deal more powerful than the coarse sort: load a gun with priming powder instead of coarse and you risked it bursting.