Ramage's Diamond

by Dudley Pope

  Aitken turned to Baker: ‘Find Mr Southwick and go with him to the seat of the fire. It’s in his cabin so maybe he’s there already. Tell him I’m staying here at the conn. Hurry, man!’ He thought a moment and called hurriedly: ‘Tell him the captain died in the fire and I am in command!’

  All the other officers and warrant officers should have gone to their proper stations – but had they studied and remembered the Captain’s Orders? He weighed up the risk of giving too many orders against the danger of men wandering around having forgotten what they were supposed to be doing, and jammed the speaking trumpet to his mouth.

  ‘Gunner to the magazine… Bos’n and carpenter to their store rooms… Master-at-arms to examine the tiers and then report to me here… Carpenter’s mates with their mauls and axes to the larboard gangway…’

  What had he forgotten? Where the devil was Wagstaffe, the second lieutenant? – he and the fourth lieutenant, Lacey, were in charge of the pumps and hoses. He saw the two midshipmen waiting behind him, ready to run errands. He thought for a moment and chose Orsini. ‘Run and find Mr Wagstaffe. Ask him how soon the pumps will be ready and whether he has the hoses led down to the Master’s cabin yet, and report back to me.’

  The boy hurried off and Aitken saw the captain bend slightly so he could see the face of his watch by the binnacle light. Or was he looking at the compass?

  ‘How are you heading?’ Aitken snapped at the quartermaster. As soon as he knew they were still on course he took a quick glance astern to make sure no squalls were sneaking up in their wake and gestured at the other midshipman. ‘Benson, find the Surgeon and tell him to report to me here.’

  Even before the boy had time to point the first lieutenant heard Bowen behind him saying gently: ‘I did report, Mr Aitken, but you probably did not hear me.’

  ‘Very well,’ Aitken said, and realized it was time he had a report from where the fire was supposed to be: he did not want some over-eager idiots chopping away at bulkheads. ‘Benson, get down to the Master’s cabin and ask the third lieutenant for an immediate report!’

  The whole business was a disaster; that was the only thing that Aitken was sure about. A good ten minutes must have elapsed since Mr Ramage appeared alongside him in the darkness and a real fire in the Master’s cabin would probably have reached the magazine by now, since it was just below, and blown the ship to pieces.

  At least the engine was now in place; he could see that much. Head pumps were rigged over the side and hoses were being led across the deck like long twisting snakes. Kinks in them, no doubt; there always were. He glanced aft – there were the Marines lined up with the lieutenant in front of them. Well, even if he was a fat fellow no one could fault his efficiency.

  The head pumps! Damnation, they were rigged over the side: there was not a faint hope their hoses would suck at the speed the ship was going: they should have been led below to the cistern – and had the carpenter started to let water into the cistern ready for the head pumps to pump it up to the tank on the engine? Did Mr Ramage want him to flood the cistern or – he was about to walk over and ask him when he remembered the quiet ‘Regard me as dead in the fire…’

  He looked round hurriedly for a reliable messenger and saw Orsini scurrying towards him. The boy saluted and said excitedly: ‘Mr Wagstaffe says the pumps are ready, sir, but Mr Southwick’s compliments, sir, and he says the fire is out!’

  Aitken managed to stifle a sigh of relief: obviously the captain had given the Master instructions earlier. He saw the captain looking at his watch and then waving for him to come to the binnacle. At that moment a horrified Aitken saw the two helmsmen spinning the wheel, bringing the ship round to starboard and up into the wind: already the fluttering of the sails was turning into thundering claps and as the first lieutenant turned to shout at the two men, Ramage said, his voice loud to make himself heard and holding on to the binnacle box as the ship began to roll: ‘The tiller ropes seem to have parted, Mr Aitken… I’ll take the conn.’

  By dawn Aitken and the rest of the ship’s company were exhausted. One party had no sooner clapped emergency tackles to the tiller as topmen furled the topsail and the great mainsail and foresail were trimmed to get the strain off the rudder, allowing Aitken to report to the captain that the ship was under control again, than Ramage had ordered the ship to be hove-to, using the tiller tackles, and a cutter hoisted out to starboard, rowed round the ship carrying ten Marines, and recovered on the larboard side.

  When that had been done – with the decks still strewn with hoses and the engine sitting by the mainmast, well lashed down and its handles resting like a seesaw – Ramage had told the second lieutenant to take the conn. Aitken relaxed and was thankful that while they had been working on the tiller tackles he had remembered to make sure the lookouts were sent aloft just before dawn. He watched Ramage walking forward to the companionway and envied him: no doubt his steward would soon bring him a cup of hot tea.

  But at the top of the companionway Ramage paused, looked ahead and turned suddenly to the second lieutenant. ‘Mr Wagstaffe – I see breakers ahead. Your masts have gone by the board, so you’ll have to anchor.’ With that he disappeared down the companionway.

  Wagstaffe stared helplessly at Aitken. Since they were in the middle of the Atlantic, more than a thousand miles from land in any direction, they were nowhere near ready: the anchors were secured with preventer stoppers, the cables were ranged below, bucklers closed off the hawse-holes so that seas did not sweep through them and flood into the ship.

  Aitken paused a moment. It was obvious that the captain intended that Wagstaffe should carry out the first moves to deal with this particular emergency. He shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘You are the officer of the deck; we’ll be on the rocks in a few minutes unless you do something!’

  The moment Wagstaffe recovered from his surprise, like Aitken before him at the fire alarm, he seized a speaking trumpet and began bellowing orders. The first lieutenant was about to take over – the normal procedure once the officer of the deck had discovered the emergency and given the preliminary orders – when Orsini came scurrying up from below. The captain was to be informed, he told Aitken, the moment they were ready to anchor.

  The next ten minutes, as far as Aitken was concerned, had been chaos or, at best, partly controlled confusion: seamen working in almost complete darkness in the tier had wrestled with the cable, which was seventeen inches in circumference and 720 feet long, stiff and heavy – it weighed nearly four tons. The buckler closing the hawse had been removed so the end of the cable could be led out and round the bow and secured to an anchor and finally, hours later it seemed, Aitken was able to hurry below to report all was ready.

  He found Ramage sitting at his desk, a pile of papers in front of him. The first lieutenant recognized them – the routine reports that would have to be ready for the Admiral when the Juno arrived in Barbados: muster tables giving details of every man in the ship’s company, slop book showing what each had bought from shirts to tobacco, sick book, returns from the bos’n, gunner and carpenter concerning their stores…

  Ramage glanced at his watch as Aitken began his report and scribbled the time on a piece of paper, commenting sourly: ‘I’m glad they weren’t real breakers.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Aitken said miserably, ‘but it was an unexpected – er, evolution.’

  ‘Quite, but it’s the unexpected that sinks ships,’ Ramage said, his voice neutral. ‘Very well, carry on: unbend the cable and ship the buckler – and you’d better get the decks cleared. The ship looks as though the men from the Westminster Fire Office have been fighting a burning street.’

  Aitken went back to the quarterdeck with mixed emotions: resentment, annoyance at his own shortcomings, anxiety over what was to come… It was still only half past six and on a normal morning the ship’s company would by now have washed the decks, polished the brightwork, spread the awnings, and be waiting for the order to lash up and stow hammocks. Instead they had
gone through a complete fire drill in the darkness, rigged emergency steering, and prepared to anchor. And all the captain said was: ‘You’d better get the deck cleared,’ and made a sarcastic remark about one of the fire insurance companies. Of course the hoses were still all over the deck and the tackles were still rove in the tiller flat, although unhooked now and snaking all over the ward room. How the new rope in those damned blocks had twisted and kinked. That was one lesson he had learned – never use new rope in purchases for emergency steering: the men had to use handspikes to untwist them.

  As he stopped by the binnacle he thought again of the captain’s words: ‘It’s the unexpected that sinks ships.’ He had to admit there was some truth in it: those twisted purchases had wasted valuable minutes; in fact in heavy weather the ship would have been broached half a dozen times before they’d cleared them, and one bad broach could have left the Juno dismasted. And the mistake he’d made with the head pump hoses, and the delay in filling the cistern: by the time the engine was ready, flames would have reached the magazine. At least there had been no actual mistakes in preparing to anchor. Yet he had to admit that the risk of fire was present every moment of the day and night; it was the one thing that, with half a ton of powder in the magazine, could in half a minute transform the Juno into scraps of floating timber. And tiller ropes parting – that could happen unexpectedly. He could not seriously dispute that there were twenty hundredweights in the ton of truth that the captain had just spoken: you had to keep a sharp lookout for the unexpected.

  He realized that Wagstaffe was standing in front of him. ‘Did the captain say anything?’ the second lieutenant asked nervously, keeping his voice low.

  Aitken nodded warningly towards the skylight over the cabin. ‘Clear away the hoses, pumps and engines, get the tackles cleared away in the tiller flat, then carry on as usual.’ As he walked aft to the taffrail he wanted to add, beware of the unexpected, there’s a whole day of unexpectedness ahead of us yet.

  He looked astern, watching the Juno’s swirling wake and, on the distant eastern horizon, a long low bank of cloud behind which the sun had risen but was not yet visible. The band of cloud looked hard and menacing, as though bringing a gale of wind that would last a week, but Aitken knew from experience that it was a trick of the Tropics; once the sun had some heat in it the cloud would melt away, leaving a clear sky. Then, slowly and steadily, the Trade wind clouds would form up like balls of white wool rolling westward in orderly lines, and the decks would get hotter as the sun rose higher and higher.

  Then suddenly he understood completely what the captain was doing. That last remark was not just a casual comment intended to spur on the ship’s first lieutenant. Everyone on board, except perhaps Southwick, had expected today’s exercises to comprise sail handling and gunnery, rounded off with a thorough inspection of the ship’s paint and brightwork. Now he realized that the captain already knew how good (or bad) the men were at reefing and furling – he saw them doing it all the time. He already knew, from his regular Sunday morning inspection, the condition of the paintwork below. The captain had known all along what Aitken had only just recognized – the real efficiency of a ship’s company was not shown by the speed at which sails and guns were handled; it was the way they dealt with a completely unexpected situation that mattered. In fact, whether sailing the ship in a tropical breeze or taking her into action against the enemy, it was all that mattered. By the showing so far, Aitken reflected ruefully, the captain must be bitterly disappointed.

  He heard the bos’n’s mates piping through the ship, following the shrill notes with dire threats to anyone who did not hurry to lash up his hammock. On a morning like this, woe betide any man who lashed up his hammock so carelessly that the long sausage of canvas was too fat to pass through the special measuring hoop.

  The top edge of the clouds to the east were now lined with gold. Muster and stow hammocks…clean arms…the watch on deck to coil ropes and spread awnings while the watch below cleaned the lower deck…then, promptly at eight o’clock, breakfast. And after that, what had the captain in store for them?

  After breakfast, Ramage had given the order to beat to quarters and the boy drummer, excited by the occasion, had handled his drumsticks with all the flourish of the conductor of an orchestra. The gunner collected the bronze key to the magazine and disappeared below, head pumps were rigged and water squirted over the decks ahead of men sprinkling sand. Gun captains collected the locks for their guns, priming wires, trigger lines, boxes of quill tubes and flasks of priming powder. Tackles were overhauled, guns run in, and handspikes, rammers and sponges unlashed. Small tubs were put between the guns, ready to soak the sponges: other tubs with notches cut at intervals round the top were placed nearby and short lengths of slow matches, in effect slow-burning fuses, were tucked in the notches, the glowing ends hanging down safely over the water but ready for instant use should the flint in a lock fail to make a spark.

  As soon as the men were standing by the guns ready for the order to load, and with Southwick at the conn and each of the four lieutenants standing by his division, Ramage sent for the gunner.

  Johnson came up from the magazine with the big key in his hand as proof that he had left the door locked. He was a tiny man with iron-grey hair and although the skin of his face was wrinkled as an old leather boot he usually wore a cheerful expression. Now, as he reported to the captain, he looked worried: he had seen what had already happened this morning and dreaded to think what surprises were in store for his little kingdom of guns, powder and shot, ranges and trajectories, flintlocks and slow match.

  ‘We’ll inspect the guns, Johnson,’ Ramage announced, and led the way. At the first gun he pointed to two of the gun’s crew. ‘You two stand fast and the rest of you go and stand by on the fo’c’sle.’ He did the same at the next gun and repeated it until only two men stood by each of the frigate’s twenty-six maindeck guns, the rest of the men now crowded on the fo’c’sle. Then he led the way back to the quarterdeck, passing the word for the first lieutenant and followed by a puzzled Johnson, who kept looking at the men grouped forward and shaking his head.

  As soon as Aitken joined them Ramage said: ‘We are in battle, we’ve suffered heavy casualties, and the men at the maindeck guns are all you have left – forget the 6-pounders. When I give the word, you’ll fire two broadsides to larboard and two to starboard.’

  ‘But sir,’ the gunner protested, ‘two men can’t run out a gun, it’s much too heavy!’

  ‘Tell that to the French, Mr Johnson,’ Ramage said grimly. ‘Imagine that we are trapped, running between two enemy ships, and our only chance of surviving is keeping up as rapid a rate of fire as possible.’

  ‘But sir–’ Johnson broke off as he saw Ramage rubbing the scar over his brow, and then taking out his watch. The first lieutenant gestured to the gunner to follow him and hurried down to the maindeck taking Orsini with them.

  Southwick walked over to Ramage and grinned, removing his hat and running his fingers through his flowing white hair. ‘It’s been quite like old times so far today, sir,’ he commented.

  Ramage nodded. ‘Except that we learned all these things the hard way!’

  ‘Aye, and I’m beginning to wonder if that gunner has ever been in action before. He seems a conscientious man, but ’twould seem to me he lacks experience.’

  ‘He’s been in action half a dozen times, but only a few casualties,’ Rainage said. ‘That’s–’

  He broke off as Orsini hurried up, saluted and reported that they were ready to open fire.

  ‘My compliments to Mr Aitken,’ Ramage told him, ‘and tell him to open fire when he is ready.’

  Ramage was curious to know what Aitken and the gunner had contrived, but he had decided right from the start that today he would be an onlooker; an observer with a watch in his hand. Later this afternoon he would have a word with the ship’s company, and then the officers would be invited down to his cabin while Southwick acted as officer of the
deck. He would hold an inquest on what did happen and what should have happened, and in front of him would be the sheet of paper with times written on –

  There was a shout from forward and several guns on each side fired, the sharp explosions followed a moment later by the heavy rumbling of the trucks rolling across the decks as the guns flung back in recoil. Ramage saw that alternate guns had fired: the remainder were still run out.

  The spurts of smoke merged into oily yellow clouds drifting forward in the following wind and some of it, swirling across the group of men on the fo’c’sle, set many of them coughing. Ramage glanced at his watch and waited as men hurriedly sponged them and began to reload. Then the remaining thirteen guns fired and Ramage, stifling a sigh of relief, glanced across at Southwick, who was nodding his approval.

  Aitken and Johnson had done the right thing. They had obviously had all the guns loaded – two men at each gun could manage that. Then two men from alternate guns had helped the two at the next to run out and fire – that accounted for half the broadside on each side. Each four men had then run out the remaining guns, which had fired the second half of the broadsides.

  So far, so good: the real test was how long it would take two men to reload each gun and then repeat the whole performance. But the important thing, Ramage knew, was that Aitken and Johnson, faced with two choices, had picked the right one. They could have run all the guns out and fired a full broadside, or they could divide them. Either way was effective but Ramage had a particular reason for preferring the divided broadsides. A ship firing full broadsides but at long intervals revealed to the enemy that heavy casualties had slowed her rate of fire. However, dividing the broadsides meant that at least some guns were firing frequently – and making a lot of smoke which would certainly obscure all the gun ports and probably conceal from an excited enemy that the real rate of fire was very slow. In battle it might prove decisive: at a critical moment for the Juno the enemy might sheer off, convinced they were doing no good. It will be interesting to hear the explanation of Aitken’s choice, Ramage thought; it is easy enough to do the right thing for the wrong reason…