by Dudley Pope
Ramage was embarrassed. An evasive answer and a knowing look had been interpreted by Aitken as the confidence of superior knowledge. For a moment he wondered how many times in the past the various captains under whom he had served had got away with the same thing. Still, Aitken was only assuming that the shot had hit the land because it had not splashed in the sea. It might have disintegrated in mid-flight: that sort of thing was rare but not unknown and they would never have seen the tiny splashes made by the pieces. He had to be sure, and luckily there was an easy way of finding out without revealing his doubts.
‘Mr Aitken, let us see how accurately we are shooting. I want the gun captain of number two gun to drop a shot a hundred yards short of the rocks and watch for a ricochet.’
The second round landed just in front of the rocks, ricocheted twice and disappeared. ‘Fifty yards short at the first grave, sir,’ Aitken reported.
‘Very well, I think we can get back to the Juno.’ He looked round for the petty officer who was being left in charge of the batteries. ‘Ah, Richardson. Rig a mast out of those spars you used as sheers and watch the Juno and the Surcouf for signals. You have a copy of the signals?’ The man dug into the inside of his plaited sennet hat and showed Ramage the thin volume. ‘Good, and you have a set of flags. Fine, so all you need to do is keep a sharp lookout. You’ll see any ship rounding Pointe des Salines long before us. Keep in touch with the lower batteries. Any questions?’
The man shook his head and Ramage smiled. ‘You have food and water for three months, and muskets to chase the goats. However, I hope someone will be up to see you before then.’
It took Ramage and Aitken twenty minutes to scramble down the steep slopes to reach the site for the third battery, two hundred feet lower down the Rock. It was a perfect place: a cave in which all the provisions had been stored and still large enough to house a dozen men. With a flat platform of rock in front of it, facing to the north, it was large enough for two or three guns, let alone the single 12-pounder which was all that Ramage could spare from the Juno. He saw that Lacey and his men had already rigged the jackstay.
From this point the rock face dropped down to the Marchesa battery so steeply that men were having to use rope ladders. Ramage commented on the steepness and asked Aitken who had managed to climb it in the first place and get a ladder into position. The young Scot admitted that several seamen had tried and found that after fifty feet or so they could get no higher. In the end he had climbed up himself, with a coil of rope slung over his shoulder. Once he reached the platform he had secured an end of the rope and hurled the coil down to the waiting men, who had bent on a rope ladder which he had hauled up.
Both men were standing on the platform and looking across the Fours Channel to Diamond Hill when they noticed that the ropes holding one of the two ladders were shaking. A minute or two later Lacey’s perspiring face appeared over the edge of the rock.
‘I’m afraid we’re behind, sir,’ he reported apologetically to Ramage, ‘but I’m just bringing up a party to rig this end of the luff tackle; then we can start hoisting the gun immediately.’
‘It might be better to hoist the carriage first,’ Ramage said, ‘just in case…’
Lacey’s eyes fell. ‘Certainly, sir, if you would prefer it.’
Ramage glanced at Aitken and laughed. ‘No, carry on, Lacey, you’re in charge!’
The fourth lieutenant brightened up immediately. ‘If you’ll excuse me a moment, sir…’ he said and ran to the edge of the rock, calling down to the men climbing the ladders to hurry.
He returned a moment later and asked Ramage almost shyly: ‘If you could wait a minute or two, sir, I think the men would like you to be here when they secure the luff tackle: everything will then be ready for hoisting. And, sir…’
Ramage guessed what was coming next: they had thought of a name for this battery too, and wanted his permission. He was pleased with the names they had chosen so far: Gianna would be delighted, and it was a fine thing to honour the Juno frigate. What would it be this time?
‘Go on, then,’ he prompted Lacey.
‘Well, sir, they want to call it the Ramage battery.’
Ramage felt embarrassed for the second time in half an hour. The men meant well, but…
‘I am flattered, Lacey, but – well, I think the Admiralty might regard it as…er, well, a piece of pretentiousness on my part.’
‘Ah, but we thought of that, sir,’ Lacey exclaimed triumphantly. ‘Officially it could be named Ramage after your father, because he fought his great battle in sight of Diamond Rock. But we, the Junos, sir, would know differently…’
Aitken, sensing Ramage’s discomfiture, said quietly: ‘The captain’s father is the Earl of Blazey, you know.’
‘I know he’s the Earl of Blazey now,’ Lacey said doggedly, ‘but he was Lord Ramage when he fought the battle ’cos he hadn’t succeeded to the earldom. Just as the captain is Lord Ramage now, but he’ll be the Earl of Blazey one day.’
Ramage realized that Lacey and the men must have had a long discussion about it, but Lacey was too young to remember that the battle had been a desperate affair, his father being sent out too late with only a few ships to fight an overwhelming French fleet. The result had been predictable and his father had been made the scapegoat for the stupidity of the government of the day, receiving no recognition for an action which had revealed him as a brilliant tactician. He suddenly decided that this little battery could indeed be named Ramage, and whatever the Junos thought he would be naming it after his father.
Lacey saw Ramage’s face softening and he grinned. ‘I can tell the men you agree, sir?’
Ramage nodded and then said emphatically: ‘I agree to it being named after my father because of the battle.’
‘Oh yes, sir,’ Lacey said, ‘they’ll understand that.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ramage arrived back on board the Juno to find Southwick waiting with ill-concealed impatience and asking for permission to leave the ship for two hours and to use the jolly boat. It was such an unusual request that Ramage frowned for a moment.
‘You want to go over to the Surcouf?’
‘No sir, I want to visit the Marchesa battery,’ he said gruffly.
Ramage then noticed that the Master had a bulky canvas bag normally used for carrying papers under his arm.
‘You can have the boat,’ Ramage said grudgingly, ‘but I can’t really spare you for two hours. What on earth is there to do at the Marchesa battery? Lacey was just about to sway up the gun when I left.’
Southwick gave one of his sniffs. ‘I’ve got my paints and sketching pad here, sir,’ he said. Then in answer to the puzzled look on Ramage’s face: ‘Masters of all the King’s ships are required to send sketches of unusual coastlines and harbours to the Navy Board, sir, as you well know, and I’ve always been very punctilious about that.’
‘I know, I know, and your sketches and paintings are excellent, but what is unusual about the Diamond Rock that the Navy Board don’t already know?’
Southwick sighed, obviously unwilling to reveal his real motive. ‘I wanted to make a water-colour of the side of the Rock showing the Marchesa battery, sir, and frame it, and I was going to ask you to give it to Her Ladyship with the compliments of the Junos.’
For the third time in an hour Ramage was embarrassed. ‘She’ll be delighted, Southwick, and so will I.’
With that he decided to go down to his cabin and put in an hour or two studying the chart of Martinique and then bring his Journal up to date. He might as well start a draft of a report to Admiral Davis, reporting that the Surcouf was ready and three batteries had been established.
He spread the chart on his desk and with a pair of compasses scribed a circle round the Diamond Rock so that one edge just touched the land at the foot of Diamond Hill. The guns certainly reached that distance, and it was startling how the western section of the circle would affect French ships making for Fort Royal outside the Diamond Rock a
fter rounding Pointe des Salines. It did not add much to the actual distance they would sail – sixteen miles from the Pointe up to Cap Salomon staying inside the Diamond Rock, the most direct route, and only seventeen and a half keeping outside the radius of the Juno battery’s guns. But it forced them another couple of miles offshore, into the strong current which might sweep them out westward, well to leeward of Fort Royal.
The last few days had shown him why the French ships, men-o’-war as well as merchantmen, liked to hug the coast once they rounded Pointe des Salines. For half the distance to the Diamond they did not risk running out of wind entirely because the land to the east was not so mountainous. If they lost some of the wind as they came up to the Diamond, intending to pass through the Fours Channel, at least they were out of the worst of the current.
If the current was north-going, they could risk going outside the Diamond, but he knew from Captain Eames’ experience and Wagstaffe’s brief reports from La Créole that it was predominantly west-going. He laughed to himself. If he forced too many French merchantmen so far to the west that they ended up across the Caribbean at Port de la Paix at the western end of Hispaniola, there would soon be complaints to the Admiralty from the Commander-in-Chief at Jamaica that the French forces there were being heavily reinforced with supplies. It was an ill-wind…
He rolled up the chart and put it aside. Bowen’s sick list was under a paperweight, left there by the clerk, and he glanced through it. Only one man on it, and that the Marine wounded by a cutlass in the attack on the Diamond Hill battery. As young Paolo was not mentioned it showed that the boy was carrying out his duties despite his raw hands.
He opened his journal again, made an entry and then read through those he had made for the previous few days. The Surcouf prepared for sea, the guns for the Marchesa, Juno and Ramage batteries installed on the Diamond Rock, with three months’ provisions landed for the men, plus water and sheep. La Créole maintaining a patrol, the Juno battery’s range tried… The only thing missing was an entry recording the return of La Mutine. The distance to Barbados was just over a hundred miles, but it was a beat to windward. La Mutine was close-winded, so would probably cover 180 miles because of frequent tacks. She would make at least six knots to windward, probably eight. At a conservative estimate Baker should have arrived in Bridgetown thirty hours after leaving the Diamond some time last Tuesday. He would have reported to the Admiral, who might have kept him until noon on Wednesday before letting him sail. Or the Admiral might have told him to wait until the Invincible could get to sea and make for Martinique. A ship of the line like the Invincible would cover the distance to Martinique in eighteen hours at the most. Leaving at noon on Wednesday she would arrive off Martinique in the darkness, which the Admiral might have wanted to avoid, so she might have left that evening, to arrive off Pointe des Salines at daylight on Thursday.
That was yesterday and neither La Mutine nor the Invincible had arrived. But the convoy was due (as far as the French authorities in Fort Royal knew) by tomorrow at the latest.
He checked his figures again, but he had not made a mistake. So now, this afternoon, he had to assume that he was going to have to attack the convoy and its escorts with the Juno, the Surcouf and La Créole. And the Diamond batteries, of course, with all the advantage of surprise that they would have.
Two frigates and a schooner – he had managed to double the number of frigates maintaining the blockade, and had a schooner as well. It was a nice little squadron for the most junior captain in the Navy List to command, however temporarily. But no amount of juggling with figures could change the fact that he did not have enough men to use all the ships effectively.
He began writing again. Fourteen men at the Juno battery, seven at the Ramage and six at the Marchesa. Lacey had been disappointed at not being put in command of the Diamond, but Ramage needed him. That made a total of twenty-seven men on the Diamond. Wagstaffe and twenty men were in La Créole, and the third lieutenant and twenty men were away in La Mutine, wherever the devil she was. With nine Junos killed in the original fight with the two schooners, he was short of seventy-eight officers and seamen. The Juno’s original ship’s company had totalled 212, so he had only 134 officers and men left, including Marines.
He checked the figures again. Yes, Aitken and Lacey, Southwick, the Marine lieutenant, a master’s mate who had proved completely useless, two midshipmen, the Surgeon and 126 warrant officers, petty officers and men, to share between the Juno and the Surcouf. He was seventy-eight short if he wanted to man the Juno alone…
He sighed, feeling his earlier confidence slipping away as he stared at the figures he had scrawled. Then he took another sheet of paper and drew in two columns, heading one ‘Juno’ and the other ‘Surcouf’.
He wrote in his own name at the top of the ‘Juno’ column, followed by Southwick, Orsini, Bowen and Jackson. He would sort out the remaining sixty-three later. In the ‘Surcouf’ column he wrote the names of Aitken, Lacey, Rennick (which meant that all the Marines would have to go as well), Benson, and the master’s mate – he could never remember his name and so scribbled ‘MM’.
It seemed a fair division: Aitken had Lacey as his second-in-command and Rennick was a useful man whose Marines could be relied upon. He could have the gunner and the bos’n, too, and the Juno would make do with the mates. The carpenter might as well stay in the Juno: in battle he spent his time below, standing by with shot plugs and mauls.
He was hot, sticky, tired and depressed. His head ached from the heat of the cabin and his eyes ached from spending all the morning and much of the afternoon in the glaring sun, climbing up and down that damned Diamond Rock like an outcast goat. Suddenly he sat up as a thought struck him: if the Juno was in battle and had sixty-three men and her captain and Master still alive and unwounded, he would never dream of breaking off the action.
Then he remembered his famous Monday morning lecture to the Juno’s officers about preparing against the unexpected. This was a perfect example of what he meant. Put yourself in the place of the senior officers of the French escort, he told himself. If there were three or four frigates, the Frenchman would be the most senior of the captains. If there was a ship of the line, then it would be a very senior captain, if not a rear-admiral.
As the French rounded Pointe des Salines they would be looking for the British ships known to be blockading Fort Royal. They would have been worrying about them for some time; probably ever since they left France. They would not know whether to expect one frigate or four; a ship of the line and three frigates or a carriage and four greys complete with postillions. However, if they saw two manned British frigates they would assume that they were fully manned and ready for action, and would behave accordingly. They would never for a moment expect that neither ship had a third of her proper complement. That, he realized, put the unexpected on his side. And the batteries on the Diamond represented his most powerful surprise.
Aitken needed written orders putting him in command of the Surcouf, but there was no point in giving him additional written orders telling him what to do if the convoy arrived because there were too many possibilities.
He remembered the day some years ago when he was the junior lieutenant of the Sibella frigate. She had been trapped by a French ship of the line off the Italian coast and a flying splinter had knocked him unconscious. He had recovered to find that the captain and the rest of the officers were dead and he was in command. The ship was sinking fast and almost by chance he had found out from the papers in the captain’s desk that the Sibella was acting under special orders. That was how he had come to rescue Gianna using an open boat. He had realized then the danger of a commanding officer assuming he was immortal and failing to keep his officers informed about what the ship was supposed to be doing.
Some orders, of course, were extremely secret, but secrecy was rarely vitally important on board a ship, and certainly not now. As soon as Southwick returned from his water-colour expedition he would have Aitken, Lac
ey, Wagstaffe, Rennick and the Master down here in the cabin. They would go over the chart, discuss the possibilities and, perhaps more important, the three lieutenants would absorb enough of his ideas and attitude to make it all work.
He went to the skylight and called to Orsini, who was on watch, to hoist the signal for La Créole’s captain to report on board. Then he returned to the desk and sat down, reaching for the pen and unscrewing the cap of the ink well. Five minutes later he had written and signed Aitken’s orders and told his clerk to copy them into the Order Book. The Navy stayed afloat on a sea of ink; if only they could sink the French by firing broadsides of quill pens… The only consolation was that the French Ministry of Marine’s appetite for forms, surveys, lists, dispatches, copies of letters, orders, logs and muster tables was probably as voracious as that of the Admiralty and the Navy Board. The capture of the Diamond would eventually result in a pile of papers in those two offices quite as high as the Rock itself…
He went up to the quarterdeck for a walk in the fresh air, hoping to get rid of his headache. The sun was low now and he saw La Créole approaching. Wagstaffe had obviously seen the signal flying from the Juno.
As he walked the deck the words ‘so few men’ echoed with every step. Was he overestimating the effectiveness of the Juno and Ramage batteries against French ships trying to pass? Three 12-pounders could not keep up a fast rate of fire, however eager and well-trained the men. It would be plunging fire and thus much more effective, but that in turn required more accuracy. Firing from sea level meant that a shot falling short of the target would ricochet onwards and might hit, but a roundshot curving down from the height of those two batteries could ricochet in almost any direction.
He stopped walking and stared across the Fours Channel. It was a mile wide and French ships passing through it would be within range of the two batteries for a distance of perhaps a mile and a half. If they were making six knots they would be within range for about fifteen minutes – not long enough. If there were five merchantmen it gave the Juno and Ramage battery gunners three minutes for each ship in theory but they would not change target like that: they would concentrate on one ship, and continue fìring until she was disabled.