by Dudley Pope
Ramage shook his head. ‘No, I’m sure they didn’t.’ He put the telescope to his eye. ‘Doesn’t look like gunsmoke, either: it’s the wrong colour.’
‘What on earth’s going on, sir?’
It was a puzzle: the gunsmoke had blown clear of the Junon’s afterports, but there were still trickles of smoke which seeped, rather than spurted, from underneath the sails.
‘Perhaps some fool fired a gun and the flash set the sails on fire. That could easily happen.’
‘Yes, sir, but,’ Southwick persisted, ‘I can’t see any sign of a sail actually burning: the flames’d move pretty quickly.’
Ramage hurriedly examined the sails with the glass. Southwick was right: the sails were not on fire, but nevertheless smoke was coming from beneath them. And yes! From some of the ports just aft of the sails, the wisps were just starting, barely distinguishable. In fact without a glass they would not be seen and anyway Southwick was sharp eyed to have noticed the smoke under the sail.
But even as Ramage watched, the smoke from the forward ports, just abaft the draped sails, got thicker. He could see it with the naked eye now, and yes, it was moving aft, coming from other ports.
‘She’s on fire!’ he suddenly exclaimed. ‘She has a big fire forward, and it’s spreading aft rapidly. It might reach the magazine! Mr Aitken, bear away – we don’t want to be near an explosion.’
He could picture blazing wreckage raining down out of the sky and lodging in the Dido’s sails, apart from falling on her decks – which, fortunately, were still wetted and sanded.
Chapter Nine
The sudden order shouted by the bosun’s mates, ‘Firemen to the upperdeck!’ startled Stafford and his gun’s crew as they waited for the Dido to cross the Junon’s stern. None of them were down in the general quarters, watch and station bill as firemen, but fire in a ship was a seaman’s greatest fear. To begin with they thought the Dido was on fire, and Stafford was already looking round at the powder monkeys, ready to order them to throw their cartridges of powder over the side. But quickly the word spread through the ship: it was the Junon that was on fire, and the reason the Dido’s firemen were being ordered to the upperdeck was to deal with any blazing debris should she blow up.
Stafford immediately ran to the gunport and looked at the Junon, now broad on the Dido’s beam. His sharp eyes soon spotted the smoke coming from under the foresails draped over her side, and then saw the wisps of smoke curling out of the after gunports.
‘It’s her all right!’ he shouted to the others. ‘She has a fire forward – I reckon it’s right over her magazine. No wonder they passed the word for firemen; if she blows up she could shower us.’
‘Fire,’ Gilbert muttered. ‘The poor devils. She’s an unlucky ship. To be raked four times…’
‘She was unlucky to meet Mr Ramage,’ Rossi said. ‘Don’t waste too much sympathy on them!’
‘Yes, but we weren’t.’
‘No, thanks to Mr Ramage having some tricks to play. But we could have been blown out of the water. Look what we did to that frigate, and we’re only one seventy-four. Imagine what it would have been like to have one each side.’
‘No,’ Gilbert said emphatically, ‘I don’t want to imagine it.’
‘Well, just because you’re French don’t get weepy over the Junon.’
‘I’m not weepy. I’m thinking of six hundred men who risk being blown to pieces.’
‘But they’re French,’ Rossi protested. ‘If we were on fire no one in the Junon would give a damn; in fact they’d be cheering.’
Stafford called from the gunport: ‘We’re bearing away, putting a distance between us.’
‘Thank goodness for that.’ Louis said. ‘It will soon be raining burning beams.’
Stafford inspected the Junon again and announced: ‘The fire’s getting worse: the smoke is beginning to pour out of her hatchways, too. It’s even coming out of her stern ports: she’s making just enough headway to make a draught through the ship.’
A minute or two later he added: ‘She’s trying to heave to. They’re backing the maintopsail. Ah, they’ve got a fire engine to work. They’re squirting water down the forehatch.’
Rossi went to the gunport to have a look for himself and announced: ‘No fire engine is going to put out that fire!’
‘I ‘ope they’ve flooded the ‘anging magazine,’ Stafford said. ‘Otherwise she’ll blow in the next five minutes. Oh, we’re heaving to as well,’ he added, as he watched the waves and heard the slamming of sails overhead. ‘That’s nice o’ ‘em, we’ll have a good view.’
The words were hardly out of his mouth when there was an enormous red and yellow flash, as though someone had suddenly opened a huge furnace door, and then a thunderclap as if they had just slammed it shut. The Junon’s outline was replaced by a cloud of smoke from which yards, masts, beams and dozens of pieces of burning wood lanced up into the air in geometrically precise parabolas and splashed down into the sea.
Slowly the wind dispersed the cloud of yellow, black and grey smoke, and there was no sign of the ship: simply – a turbulent ring of water pitted with splashes.
Up on the quarterdeck Ramage shut his telescope with a click and said to Aitken: ‘Hoist out the boats and let’s get under way: make for the spot where she exploded, then the boats won’t have to row so far.’
Southwick sighed and took off his hat, running his hand through his hair in a familiar gesture. ‘I think that’s the biggest explosion I’ve ever seen. I don’t suppose we’ll find many survivors.’
‘No, but we’ll look. Anyone who survived that deserves to be rescued.’ He pulled out the tubes of his telescope again and adjusted it, then he looked over the larboard bow at the two frigates, which were about a mile away. ‘The Heron and the Requin are still at it. As soon as we’ve got the boats in the water, we’ll leave them to search for men and go up and put a stop to those frigates squabbling. They must be causing a lot of casualties.’
The maintopsail yard was braced sharp up as the last of the boats were lowered into the water and the crews scrambled down rope ladders into them. Ramage directed Jackson to steer for the oily-smooth patch of water in which an almost incredible amount of debris was floating.
‘Enough wreckage there to build two ships – or so it seems,’ commented Aitken. ‘Plenty for survivors to cling to.’
The Dido hardened in sheets and braces and headed up towards the two frigates which, almost hidden in a cloud of gun smoke, were now lying with their bows to the north, and side by side, pounding each other with their broadsides.
‘Damned hard to make out which is which with all the smoke,’ commented Southwick.
‘The nearest one is the Frenchman,’ Ramage said. ‘She has something about her sheer that reminds me of the Calypso.’
‘Funny how we keep thinking about her. I’m beginning to see the advantages of a ship o’ the line at long last: you’ve more between you and the enemy’s shot!’
‘I don’t know that’s such an advantage: there are many more shot flying around.’
‘Aye, there’s that to it, and I suppose most of them are bigger. Still, up to now we’ve been lucky.’
‘Yes, a frigate and a ship of the line isn’t a bad score to start with. We were lucky with the Junon, though: raking her bow so many times must have smashed her up forward. And a lucky shot started that fire. I wonder what it was.’
Southwick shrugged his shoulders. ‘Could have been anything. Most probably a roundshot hit a cartridge. Or maybe it wasn’t us at all: it could have been started accidentally by the French. Must have been chaos forward, after our broadsides.’
It took fifteen minutes for the Dido to work her way up to the frigates: the wind turned fitful and once the big ship was left almost becalmed, Ramage tantalised by the thunder of the frigates’ guns.
Finally the Dido was in position, two hundred yards on the Requin’s larboard quarter, and ready to make the final run in to pour a broadside into her.
The gunners on the starboard side were warned to be ready, and Ramage found himself feeling slightly queasy: he could remember only too vividly what the Dido’s broadside had done to the Sylphe.
The Requin, like the Heron, was almost hidden in smoke and the flash of her guns firing played in it like summer lightning among evening clouds. The Dido approached slowly on her larboard quarter, Ramage watching her closely with the telescope. Not watching the ship, but watching the Tricolour, now hanging limp in a cloud. Suddenly he saw what he had been waiting for – the flag came down at the run: the French, seeing the Dido coming, had very sensibly decided the only way of escaping complete destruction was to haul down their colours before the ship of the line had a chance of firing a broadside into them.
‘Put us alongside, Mr Aitken,’ Ramage said. ‘I doubt if the Heron is in much of a shape to take possession of her.’
Ramage waited for Aitken to pass the necessary orders and then sent one of the midshipmen to fetch Rennick. The Marine captain arrived in a hurry and stood to attention in front of Ramage.
‘As soon as we get alongside I want your Marines to take possession of the frigate,’ Ramage said. ‘Be very careful they don’t get mixed up with a boarding party from the Heron. The smoke should be clearing very quickly, so there’ll be less chance.’
Rennick strode off, glad to have something specific for his Marines to do, and quickly the men were drawn up in files under the two lieutenants, one to board from forward, the other aft.
The Dido was carrying more way than Aitken expected and he gave the order to clew up the topsails a minute too late, so that she crashed into Requin with a thump that threw some of the Marines off their feet. But almost at once Rennick was bellowing orders and the Marines swarmed across the gap between the two ships, while Ramage was thankful that in addition to telling the Dido’s gunners not to fire he had ordered them to run their guns in, so their muzzles would not be torn aside by the Requin’s topsides.
Ramage suddenly remembered that the French captain would probably formally surrender to the larger ship, the Dido rather than the Heron, and sent a midshipman hurrying down to his cabin to fetch his sword. As soon as the boy arrived back with it he put it on, saying to both Southwick and Aitken: ‘You ought to be wearing swords: these French have fought well and we owe them the courtesies.’
Five minutes later, Rennick came back on board with the French captain escorted by two Marines. The Frenchman was about thirty years old, with a lean face, aquiline nose and sallow complexion. He spoke some English and, proffering his sword, haltingly began explaining why he had surrendered.
He had only just started when, helped by two of his lieutenants, the captain of the Heron hobbled on board, his shin tied up with a bloodstained bandage.
He was an older man, heavily built and with a chubby face and grey eyes. ‘Edward Eames,’ he said as he introduced himself to Ramage. ‘I’m sorry I took so long to get over here, but the beggars winged me just before they hauled down their colours, and I had to get a lashing put on it – it was spilling a lot of blood and filling m’ boot.’
Ramage introduced himself and spoke quickly so that the Frenchman would not understand what he was saying to Eames. ‘I’ve only just arrived alongside so I’ll go by what you say. This fellow seems to have put up a good fight: do we let him keep his sword?’
Eames nodded vigorously. ‘It was touch and go before you arrived: he fought well enough.’
Ramage turned to the Frenchman and said in French: ‘Please keep your sword and regard yourself as a prisoner at large: you could not be expected to fight on.’
‘The Junon – what happened?’
‘She caught fire and blew up: my boats are looking for survivors – though I don’t expect there to be many.’
‘We saw the explosion,’ the Frenchman said, ‘and we realised our last chance had gone: we just had to fight on against the frigate, but when you approached…’ The man shrugged his shoulders.
‘You did the wise and honourable thing,’ Ramage said. ‘Now you’ll be taken back to your ship.’
He repeated it to Rennick. ‘He’s a prisoner at large. I’m just going to discuss with Captain Eames here who takes possession of the ship.’
He turned to Eames. ‘Is your leg all right? Would you like my surgeon to have a look at it?’
‘No, thank you. I’m all right. That Frenchman seems a decent sort of chap. Put up a deuced determined fight.’
‘Yes. It must have been very depressing for him when he saw the seventy-four blow up: she was his last hope.’
‘Yes, you’d already put paid to the other frigate. By Jove, your broadsides smashed him up.’
Ramage nodded. ‘I was commanding a frigate until recently,’ he said dryly, ‘and I ran into a couple of seventy-fours in the Mediterranean. I speak with experience of both sides when I say there’s no disgrace in a frigate hauling down her colours when she meets a seventy-four.’
‘I hope a court of inquiry would agree with you,’ Eames said. ‘I think some of them expect you to run up a butcher’s bill before striking.’
‘Then they’ve neither experience nor imagination,’ Ramage said. ‘Now, let’s go down to my cabin and decide what we do next.’
As soon as Eames was seated comfortably in the armchair, his wounded leg supported by a stool, he explained that the Heron was on her way back to England after escorting some John Company ships south of 25° North. ‘A couple of them were carrying specie for the Honourable East India Company,’ Eames said, ‘so it was decided to escort them further south than usual. I was on my way back when the French seventy-four and the two frigates appeared. I was making a bolt for it – though with not much hope of escaping – when I sighted you and you answered the private signal. That was a relief, I can tell you!’
‘I’m bound for the West Indies, as you’ve probably guessed. What are we going to do about all these French prisoners?’
‘I don’t have enough men both to guard and sail two frigates,’ Eames said. ‘If you can spare me some men to guard one frigate, I’ll probably be able to get them both to England.’
Ramage nodded his head but said: ‘I don’t know if the first one, the Sylphe, will make it. We’ll inspect her, but we may have to set fire to her and just leave you with the Requin. It means you’ll lose some prize money, but we may not have the choice.’
Under the prize rules, if there was another ship in sight at the time that an enemy was captured – in this case the Heron – she shared in the money because the sight of another ship might have affected the enemy’s decision to surrender.
Ramage thought Eames was not a man who could afford to lose prize money, but the other captain said: ‘I did notice she was down by the bow when you left her.’
Ramage realised he had not looked at the Sylphe for a long time and he called to the Marine sentry to pass the word for the first lieutenant. When Aitken arrived he asked him if he had looked at the Sylphe recently. When he said he had not, Ramage sent him back on deck to look with the telescope.
The Scotsman returned almost immediately with a long face. ‘I think she is sinking, sir: she’s down by the bow and she’s rolling heavily, as though she has a lot of water in her.’
Ramage grimaced: ‘Looks as though we are going to spend most of the day fishing Frenchmen out of the sea.’
‘Our boats are heading back from the Junon,’ Aitken said. ‘So they’ll have done the best they can there.’
Ramage looked at Eames. ‘I think you’d better take the Heron over to the Sylphe and see what’s going on. There’s no point in my going over because I don’t have any boats yet.’
Eames lifted his wounded leg off the stool. ‘Very well. What shall I do if she isn’t actually sinking?’
‘If you think a prize crew can get her back to England, make sure the French keep at the pumps, and put some men on board. If it looks as though she’s going to sink – that the pumps can’t keep up with the leaks – take off the French and
set fire to her.’
The Dido’s boats came back with a total of nineteen men from the Junon. ‘We searched every bit of wreckage there was,’ Hill reported, ‘but the only survivors were men who were on deck when she blew up. They tell me there were more, but they drowned because they couldn’t swim.’
‘Any of them injured?’
‘Yes, sir: one broken leg, two broken arms and two badly burned. The rest don’t have a scratch between them.’
‘Have Bowen deal with them.’
‘They’re already down in the cockpit, sir. Rennick has put a guard on the rest.’
Nineteen survivors out of more than six hundred men. Ramage felt a black depression spreading over him. Being given command of a ship of the line meant, in effect, that all figures had been multiplied by three. The Dido had almost three times the number of men that the Calypso had. In turn that meant that if she sank a ship of the line – the Junon for instance – she was likely to cause three times the number of casualties. Altogether more than twelve hundred men were involved. The figures were quite horrifying. He had just killed more than six hundred men in the Junon, quite apart from any he had killed in the Sylphe, which even now was probably sinking.
The sentry reported that the master was at the door and Ramage called him in. Southwick seemed to sense Ramage’s mood without anything being said, and as he settled in the armchair he said: ‘Bad business about the Junon.’
‘I was just thinking about it,’ Ramage said. ‘More than six hundred dead.’
Southwick nodded and said quietly: ‘Of course, it could have been us. A lucky shot could have set us on fire, and the fire could have spread to the magazine. Hill tells me they picked up nineteen Frenchmen. It could have been nineteen Didos. That really doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ Ramage agreed.
‘Once you realise it’s a “them or us” situation, though,’ Southwick said conversationally, ‘it’s surprising how you see it all in a different light.’