by Dudley Pope
‘’Vast heaving,’ he called, ‘and pall the capstan. Mr Lacey, secure to the mast now. Mr Southwick, let’s have the voyol block clapped on to the jackstay and secure the slings of the gun!’
He was hard put to keep the excitement out of his voice and Southwick was bustling around the decks like a jovial innkeeper seating his guests. Three men dragged the heavy voyol block and hung it on the jackstay. More men pulled across the single block of the tackle as others gathered beside its carriage, black, ominous and looking strangely naked.
Quickly the slings and the tackle were secured to the voyol block and the Master looked questioningly at Ramage as the fall of the tackle was led round the capstan again, ready for hoisting.
‘Take up the strain with the tackle, Mr Southwick – and get those steadying lines led forward and aft outside the rigging.’
With lines secured to the gun, one leading right aft and the other forward, Ramage hoped to prevent the gun from swinging wildly as it was hoisted up, but the immediate task was to get the gun on the first few feet of its journey without smashing the bulwark or catching in the rigging.
With a sweeping gesture of his arm the Master started the men tramping round, pressing on the capstan bars. The strain came on the fall of the tackle, travelling all the way up the cliff and back to the Juno. The slings tautened and jerked once or twice, the voyol block settling on the jackstay as the gun, weighing nearly a ton, started on the first few inches of its five-hundred-foot journey to the top.
The gun lifted and seemed reluctant to come clear of the deck. Then it was as high as the bulwark and still rising as the capstan hauled at the fall of the tackle. Ramage saw that the great weight was making the jackstay sag, but not enough to be a disadvantage: if anything the voyol block would sit better.
The gun was ten feet high now, hanging horizontally and seemingly crawling up the jackstay like some strange animal. Ramage saw that the men at the capstan would have to be slowed down: they were full of enthusiasm now, but did not realize they would be hauling for another three or four hours, possibly five or six. Although there were enough men on board to make up three capstan parties, they would have to be changed every half hour or perhaps even sooner, because of the heat.
It took half an hour to get the gun up to the height of the maintruck, but that was because there had been difficulty in handling the steadying lines. The sag of the jackstay was just right at the moment, but Ramage still feared it might prove too much once the gun neared the cliff top. They could heave the jackstay tighter but it would be dangerous work belaying the tackle with the weight of the gun on it so they could use the capstan for the job.
Now was the time to decide if there was going to be too much sag: it would be better to lower the gun to the deck again, take up more on the jackstay, and start hoisting all over again. If he waited until the gun was almost at the top and found the jackstay sag too much he would lose ten hours, instead of two now.
He had just decided to risk it and carry on hoisting when Southwick came up, beaming delightedly. It was an expression that Ramage could never quite place: it would look well on an innkeeper hearing that a royal duke was about to arrive with his suite; it would be appropriate for a parson who had just learned that his church had been left a large endowment by a rich dowager. It would also suit a poacher returning home with three brace of pheasant in his bag.
‘I never thought it would work, sir, and I don’t mind admitting it,’ he said, after making sure he could not be overheard. ‘We’ll swing in a bit as the gun gets higher, but those booms will hold us off. It’s hard work for the men, but they’re cheerful enough.’
‘I’ll take the sentry off the water butt soon,’ Ramage said. ‘The men can drink as much as they want.’
‘Aye, they’re sweating like bulls, but hauling with a will. Seems they already have a name for the new battery.’ When Ramage raised his eyebrows Southwick waved his hand across the ship. ‘The Juno battery, sir; they’re hoping you’ll think of the name yourself.’
‘I seem to be rather slow in naming things,’ Ramage grinned. ‘I told you how they caught me unawares with the Marchesa battery!’
Southwick nodded, and then said seriously: ‘I’ve been thinking over that business about taking possession of an island, sir, and apart from “by right of discovery” I can’t remember hearing of a procedure. There must have been some ceremony when we captured Martinique, for instance, though that was with a fleet and an army. Pity we ever gave it back again,’ he added crossly. ‘Just look at the trouble it causes us. All those politicians ever think of is getting a cheer in Parliament. Never consider the lives these damned spice islands cost to capture in the first place, let alone the men killed in recapturing them…’
The gun was slowly moving upwards, still hanging horizontally in the slings, and the men at the capstan had settled into a steady rhythm. Lacey was watching, changing them occasionally. One man was sent below to the Surgeon, his face white, and obviously a victim of heat stroke.
The Créole was coming into sight again and a quick look through the telescope showed that she was not flying any signals. ‘Just the time for the French to round Point des Salines,’ Southwick said with an irritating cheerfulness.
Ramage, who had been thinking of that for the past few hours, glowered at him. ‘That reminds me, I don’t see any axes ready in case we have to cut something adrift in a hurry…’
‘No, sir,’ Southwick said hurriedly, ‘I’ll see to it at once.’
It took four and a half hours for the gun to reach the top of the cliff and, lying on his back, Ramage watched with his telescope. Aitken and his men had hooked tackles into the slings, taking the weight of the gun and holding it at the top of the cliff ready to start parbuckling it the rest of the way to the top.
Now he could see that the voyol block and the gun tackle were swinging clear. There should be no difficulty in getting the gun tackle block down again this time: there was the weight of the voyol block, and the rope of the tackle was well stretched. Indeed, as the men in the Juno eased away on the fall so it came down, Ramage stood up to see Southwick supervising men securing slings under the carriage.
With two hours to sunset there was time to get the carriage up since it weighed only three hundredweight, but that would mean Aitken and his men finding their way down again in the darkness.
He called to Lacey and told him to get the cooper to find the largest tub on board. ‘I want to fill it with bedding and provisions and send it up with the carriage. Mr Aitken and his men can spend the night up there. They’ll prefer that to climbing down tonight and up again tomorrow.’
Noticing Lacey’s hesitation Ramage looked questioningly. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the young lieutenant said, ‘I was hoping I’d be able to go up tomorrow.’
Ramage tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Your turn will come. Now you know how to rig a jackstay, your job for tomorrow will be rigging one from near the Marchesa battery to the ledge half-way up the Rock and mounting a gun there. I propose landing you and twenty men at the battery with cable, tackles, a 12-pounder and carriage, and I’d like to hear you fire a round by sunset.’
‘Thank you sir!’ Lacey exclaimed with an enthusiasm that startled Ramage, and hurried off to find the cooper. Ramage shrugged his shoulders and began pacing the quarterdeck. He was lucky to have lieutenants who, after watching today’s performance, were almost pathetically grateful to be allowed to rig a jackstay on land, without any help from a capstan.
Ramage went below and scribbled a note to Aitken to be sent up in the tub. He told the first lieutenant that the carriage and tub were being sent up now so that if there was bad weather tomorrow and the Juno had to cast off the jackstay, Aitken would have a complete gun aloft. If there was time before darkness, he added, the tub would be sent up again with powder, shot and the rest of the gear. He paused a moment, wondering whether to add a line of congratulation, but decided against it: he preferred thanking a man to his face.
; By nightfall the carriage was on top of the cliff and the tub had made a second trip up the jackstay with the powder, shot, rammer, sponge, handspikes, three spars to make sheers, and a cask of water. It came down again with a pencilled report from Aitken written on the back of Ramage’s letter. The news it contained was good. The 12-pounder had been parbuckled to the peak and the carriage hauled to the top while the tub was coming up for the second time. At the time of writing the sheers were being rigged and the gun would be hoisted up on to its carriage and ready to open fire by dawn.
Ramage had folded the note, put it in his pocket and forgotten about it by the time he went down to bed. He had taken the first watch and then handed over to Southwick. He slept soundly, even though he knew that there were only half a dozen seamen and the officer of the deck on watch. In an emergency the rest of the men would come swarming up in a matter of moments. In any case he had given permission for them to sleep on deck if they wished, to take advantage of the cool night breeze, so some would probably be there already. Everyone was exhausted and he wanted all of them to get as much rest as possible, so they would be ready to hoist the second gun and its carriage next day. He also wanted to send the tub up as many times as he could, carrying extra powder, shot, provisions and water. He shuddered at the thought of the alternative, men climbing up what must be sheer rock in places, hoisting sacks and casks…
He was just climbing up the companionway at dawn the next morning when there was a heavy boom above and a moment later Southwick was bellowing for the men to go to quarters. Then Ramage remembered the pencilled note from Aitken in his pocket: the first lieutenant had kept his word.
‘Belay all that!’ he called to the Master, ‘that was Aitken firing the first round from the Juno battery!’
‘I’ve just realized that,’ the Master said ruefully, pointing to smoke drifting away from the clifftop. ‘He might have warned us!’
‘He did,’ Ramage said, ‘he wrote me a note but I forgot to pass the word.’
‘Well, sir, we’re ready to start hoisting the next gun,’ Southwick said stiffly, ‘and the purser is attending to the provisions to go up in the tub. A month for fourteen men, you said, sir.’
‘Yes, but we’ll make it three months if we have the time: it’s the quickest way of getting it all on shore. I want to let go of the jackstay and get clear of here by nightfall. If we can get three months’ supplies by then, so much the better. Warn the purser, so he can get them on deck ready. Lacey can go on shore now to start on the other battery.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
At noon next day a weary but exultant Ramage stood between the two guns of the Juno battery, 570 feet up on top of Diamond Rock. The sun was almost directly overhead, the sea a deep blue and stippled by waves. The headland formed by Diamond Hill, across the Fours Channel, seemed near enough to touch.
Below him the Juno rode at anchor with the Surcouf nearby. Wagstaffe was rounding the Rock in La Créole, obviously anxious to know what progress had been made. From the schooner’s deck Wagstaffe should be able to see the Junos standing at the edge of the battery, even if he could not make out the barrels of the guns which were now pointing towards the headland.
Ramage turned to the north-westward where, in the distance beyond many other peaks, he could see the flattened top of Mont Pelée. Then he looked south-eastward towards Pointe des Salines, at the southern end of Martinique. Still no sign of the French convoy nor of Admiral Davis and the Invincible but, more worrying, still no sign of La Mutine returning. Perhaps the Admiral had held on to Baker, but that seemed unlikely, and anyway it did not explain why the Invincible had not arrived. Today was Friday and Baker had left on Monday. He had been trying to avoid the thought for the past twenty-four hours, but there was only one sensible answer: something had happened to Baker. For one reason or another La Mutine had not arrived in Barbados, and so the Admiral had not received the warning that the convoy was due.
It was a distinct possibility: La Mutine might have been dismasted in a sudden squall, sprung a leak, or been captured by French privateers. There might even be a French frigate lurking out there, sent on ahead of the convoy…
Both the guns were loaded and Aitken was waiting patiently. The man was so tired that he looked like a ghost, but he was still alert and active. He had been pleased at Ramage’s praise but was apparently envious that Lacey was at work rigging a jackstay from the Marchesa battery.
Ramage was in no hurry: he wanted to imprint the scene in his memory. If the French arrived before the Invincible… The convoy would round Pointe des Salines with all the ships bunched up. There would be no stragglers for once, because the captain of each merchant ship knew that Fort Royal was being blockaded. The frigates would be on the alert and the convoy would hug the coast… He stood for ten minutes fighting imaginary actions that would prevent the convoy reaching Fort Royal, and trying to calculate all the possibilities open to the French. At the end of it his calculations seemed of little value. What the Juno and the Surcouf could do depended on three things: the size of the convoy, the size of its escort, and whether or not Admiral Davis had arrived.
Trying to work out tactics now was like trying to guess the sequences in a game of chess against Bowen, who always seemed to have dozens of unexpected bishops, knights, castles and queens at his beck and call. He turned to the first lieutenant. ‘Very well, Mr Aitken, are we ready?’
‘Aye, aye, sir, the battery’s ready,’ the young Scot answered reproachfully, and Ramage realized that he must have been standing staring out across the sea for fifteen minutes or more.
The men, deeply tanned from the sun, their clothes torn, were shuffling into line and Aitken was standing in front of them. Ramage’s heart sank as they obviously expected a speech and he had to admit they deserved one. They had slaved away at the battery and many of them had asked to be allowed to stay on and man it. There was not a bit of shade from the blazing sun, except whatever they could rig up for themselves, and no protection from rain.
Aitken brought them to attention and Ramage began speaking. He told them that they and their shipmates in the Juno had just done something that most people would have thought impossible and no one had ever previously attempted. He was proud, he said, to name their achievement the Juno battery. He wanted to end his little speech on an amusing note, and thanked them for leaving rope ladders for him to climb up the more difficult parts of the Diamond. ‘I still think I should have come up in the tub last night,’ he added. ‘Nearly six hundred feet is too much for someone whose daily climbing is limited to the companionway!’
The men cheered him and Aitken gave the order for them to fall in at the guns, which were loaded and had already been laid. The first lieutenant asked Ramage if he thought the shot would reach across the Fours Channel to the nearest part of the mainland, the steep cliffs where Diamond Hill met the sea.
Ramage smiled knowingly. ‘We’ll have to keep a sharp lookout for the fall of shot,’ he said, and Aitken grinned confidently, little guessing that Ramage had anticipated the question the moment he decided to set up the battery and had failed to work out a definite answer.
The captain had to be infallible. He had to be an expert in ballistics, at home with trajectories and the effect of gravity and range on a 12-pound shot. He had to be a mathematical wizard, able to work out the trajectory (and thus the range) of shot fired from a height of 570 feet when all he knew were some vague ranges for shot fired from sea level.
Neither he nor Southwick were even sure of the distance from the Diamond to the shore: Southwick’s chart was the best available, yet far from accurate and drawn on a small scale. It gave the distance as about 2,100 yards, but it could be a hundred yards more or less.
An error of two hundred yards in the chart could be critical. The range tables he had on board for a 12-pounder gun, such as they were, gave a maximum of 1,800 yards using six degrees’ elevation, with a four-pound charge of powder. The Juno’s gunner had tables giving shorter ranges, but th
ey were scribbled in an old notebook and the man seemed more concerned with the recipe for making up the blacking for painting the guns than firing them.
Using the ranges he had, what happened when you placed the gun on top of a rock 570 feet high? Did a six degree elevation still give you a range of 1,800 yards? Or increase it? Both he and Southwick were sure it increased it, but had no idea how to calculate the amount. When Ramage had begun cursing his own lack of mathematical knowledge, Southwick laughed and pointed out that it hardly mattered; for the battery to be effective, its shot did not have to reach the mainland because no French ship would pass within a hundred yards of the cliff for fear of getting caught by wind eddies off the hill and would most probably stay in the middle of the Fours Channel. ‘Never bet on a horse once the race has started, sir,’ he added. ‘Just look wise and watch where the shot lands!’
It was good advice and Ramage had followed it. The two guns of the Juno battery were loaded with four-pound charges and carefully elevated to six degrees and Aitken was waiting patiently for Ramage to give the signal for the final order that would provide the answer.
Ramage nodded and Aitken bellowed: ‘Number one gun, fire!’
Ramage barely registered the crash of the gun firing – apart from noting that up here it was free of any echoes – as he trained his telescope on the rocks at the foot of Diamond Hill. He waited anxiously, but there was no plume in the water showing the shot had fallen short. Nor was there any sign that it had ricocheted off the rocks.
He turned to find Aitken almost dancing with excitement. ‘You were right, sir!’ he said gleefully. ‘It reached, just think of that! I don’t know how you calculated that it would, sir, but there’s the proof! No splash so it must have hit the land.’