by Dudley Pope
‘Her guns just broke adrift,’ Ramage commented, breaking the silence that had fallen on board the Juno.
Still the hissing continued, and then it increased. Slowly the forward section began to dip and the remaining part sank lower. Great bubbles broke the surface as water forcing its way into enclosed spaces inside the hull drove out the air. Now the bow section was below the water, the line of the keel sloping steeply like the single rail of a slipway. Then, like a dolphin curving down into the water again after taking a breath, the whole forward section of the hull sank as the after section rose. For a full minute the ship seemed to hang almost vertically: the quarterdeck and taffrail reared up, and the watchers saw the name picked out in gilt on the transom. Then it all vanished, enormous bubbles spewing up floating wreckage and concentric rings of small waves spreading, unaffected by the wind and swell waves.
Ramage swallowed and said to the Master: ‘We’ll get under way, Mr Southwick…’
The Master did not move, his eyes still riveted on the pale green circle in the water which for a few moments marked the frigate’s grave. Ramage touched his arm gently and the old man gave a start. ‘A sad sight, sir,’ he muttered. ‘Shall I get under way?’
By nightfall the survivors from the two French frigates had been landed at the beach and the Juno’s and Surcouf’s boats retrieved. The two frigates had then run down to the Diamond, where La Comète’s boats were taken over to her. Ramage ordered Aitken on board the Juno for a quick conference. After hearing the story of how the two French frigates had collided, he outlined his plans for getting the merchant ships to Barbados and then sent the Surcouf off with orders to keep a patrol close in with the entrance of Fort Royal Bay for the rest of the night, watching particularly for any privateers that might try to sneak out to recapture the merchantmen.
The Juno’s jolly boat had been sent to the Marchesa battery with written orders for the men on the Rock: they were to rig the signal mast on top of the peak again and be ready to repeat signals they sighted any of Ramage’s ships making, while the original instructions concerning the sighting of other ships still stood. Ramage ended his orders by expressing his satisfaction at their accurate fire, and telling them that their victim had been the 36-gun frigate La Prudente, while their other target, now anchored below them, was La Comète which had been hit by eleven shot, of which two had caused leaks below the waterline. One of the hits, he added, knowing the men were in awe of the peppery little old man, had given the Juno’s carpenter a great deal of work before it was plugged satisfactorily.
While the jolly boat was away at the Marchesa battery, the Juno’s remaining boats were hoisted in again and Ramage had Wagstaffe come on board to receive his orders. They were simple enough – La Créole was to patrol the Fours Channel, covering the anchored merchant ships. As soon as the jolly boat returned it was hoisted on board and the Juno got under way, to spend the rest of the night patrolling between Cap Salomon and the Diamond.
While the frigate was stretching north, making slow progress in a light offshore breeze, Ramage went below to his cabin and began drafting a report to the Admiral. He was so weary that he had difficulty keeping his eyes in focus, and his left cheek was twitching slightly with an irritating monotony. He felt no urgency in sending the report to the Admiral but knew that unless he managed to get the details written down he would forget them; two hours’ sleep would leave his memory like a muddy pool.
He described the sighting of the convoy and his plan to attack it, giving credit to Wagstaffe’s sense of timing. Aitken’s tactics in causing two of the French frigates to collide took up several paragraphs, the problem being to translate Aitken’s droll description into the more prosaic phraseology of an official report. The young Scot had been steering the Surcouf for the centre of the convoy when the French frigate on its quarter bore away to run down to attack him on the starboard bow. A few moments later the frigate abreast the leading ships of the convoy hauled her wind and came down to attack him on his larboard bow. To begin with, Aitken thought that each would pass down either side, firing a broadside as she went by. This would have been such a bad mistake by the French – it would have left nothing between Aitken and the convoy – that he then decided they were laying a trap for him, and that each at the last moment would cross his bow in succession and rake him. If one then tacked and the other wore, they would stay between Aitken and the convoy. As he held on, waiting to see what was going to happen next, Aitken noted that the wind had veered slightly, but told the quartermaster to steer the same course, realizing that he could steer straight for the frigate on his starboard bow.
That decided him. He told Ramage he remembered the previous night’s warning that achieving surprise was half the way to victory, and he bided his time, watching the two frigates racing down towards him. Then he warned his guns’ crews to stand by and, with the frigate to starboard a bare quarter of a mile away, hauled his wind and steered straight for her, as though intending to ram her, bow to bow.
The French captain panicked: of that Aitken was sure, because he turned to starboard; bearing up suddenly without firing a shot. Aitken’s gunners fired a well-aimed broadside and while the smoke was clearing Aitken saw her continue turning as though intending to wear right round and follow the Surcouf, but in the excitement she had forgotten her consort which, still steering a course which would have taken her across the Surcouf’s bow if she had not altered course slightly, then rammed her. It had been ‘awfu’ gude value’, Aitken had said, two frigates for the price of one broadside.
Ramage then went on to describe the accurate fire opened by the Juno and Ramage batteries – how La Comète had been disabled and the gunners, under the command of a petty officer, had promptly shifted target to La Prudente and caused her to blow up.
The rest of the report took up only a few lines. The abandoned merchant ships had been collected and anchored off the Diamond, joining La Comète, whose main leak had been plugged by the Juno’s carpenter. The remaining two French frigates soon sank after the Juno and Surcouf reached them and their survivors were taken to the beach and released because there were insufficient men to guard them.
He read it through again and saw that he had not given credit to Southwick and Lacey. He wrote in two sentences and then remembered the name of the petty officer in command on the Diamond and inserted that as well. In the left-hand margin, opposite the description of anchoring the merchant ships, he copied their names from the list given him by Wagstaffe.
Writing the report had cleared his mind a little and he put the draft in a drawer to be read through again at first light before the clerk made a fair copy. As he shut the drawer he sat back in the chair. The fighting is over, he told himself, and you’ve been lucky. Lucky, and well served by Aitken and Wagstaffe and the men on the Diamond. But there are still a French frigate and seven merchant ships to be disposed of without much more delay. By dawn, as the Juno returned to the Diamond after her night’s patrol, everyone would be waiting for orders…
He wondered for a moment about the fate of Baker and La Mutine. When she left for Barbados he remembered thinking that Baker and his men would probably be the only Junos left alive if the convoy arrived before Admiral Davis. La Mutine must have sunk. Had she been captured her captor would probably have brought her into Fort Royal. In time he would have to write to Baker’s parents. It was the kind of letter he hated writing, but he could praise him without feeling a hypocrite, and tell them that their son died performing a valuable service. He seemed to remember that his father was a deacon.
He was putting off the moment when he had to decide what to do with the prizes. Picking up the pen, he began writing out the alternatives. He could take ten men from each of the two frigates, put them in two merchant ships, and send them off to Barbados with La Créole as an escort. The schooner could then bring them back, probably with more provided by Admiral Davis…
The thought hit him like a cold shower that the Admiral must have sailed from Barba
dos, perhaps up to Antigua. He might have left a single frigate behind in Bridgetown which would account for…but no, it would not account for Baker, because La Mutine would have returned at once, even if for some reason the frigate captain was unable to leave Bridgetown.
Anyway, like that he could start two merchant ships on their way to Barbados. The second choice was to send the Surcouf with two merchant ships. It seemed the obvious thing to do, but he knew the Service too well. He would never see the Junos now on board the Surcouf again. The Admiral would want to commission the Surcouf at once, and taking twenty or so men from each frigate commanded by his favourites would not weaken them. Ramage off Fort Royal was managing with the men he had in the Juno, and he had La Créole as well. If he found himself undermanned he could always take the men off the Diamond. This would be the Admiral’s argument.
It was difficult in a dispatch to persuade the Admiral of the importance of the batteries on the Diamond: unless he saw them in action, or at least firing at targets in the Fours Channel and westward from the Rock, he would never appreciate them. He would read in the dispatch that they sank La Prudente and disabled La Comète, but he would call it luck.
Ten men from the Juno in one merchantman, ten from the Surcouf in another: that settled it. The Juno’s gunner could command one – he was sufficiently useless for it not to matter if the Admiral held on to him – and the bos’n the other. Wagstaffe would escort them with La Créole and would have written orders to bring the prize crews back as soon as the merchant ships were safely anchored and he had reported to the Admiral.
Then he remembered that there were now an extra nine hundred French naval officers and seamen, plus the crews of the seven merchantmen in Fort Royal. He took out his draft dispatch to the Admiral and added a paragraph pointing out that parole and exchange agreements aside, there were a dozen schooners in Fort Royal which could be manned by the former frigate crews. This, he added as the thought struck him, was why he was retaining the Surcouf for the present. He read the paragraph again. It sounded convincing; indeed it was the obvious and wisest thing to do.
He put the papers away and picked up his hat to go up on deck to relieve Southwick. It was a warm, starlit night, with the cliffs black to the eastward and the mountains beyond a vague blur. The Juno was making three knots, the water gurgling away lazily from her cutwater, the rudder post rumbling occasionally as the wheel was turned a spoke or two. Her wake was a bright phosphorescent path and occasionally a large fish leapt out of the water and landed in a splash of light.
Southwick went below, and his lack of protest at being relieved by the captain showed that the old man was utterly exhausted. Jackson was the quartermaster, and although he could not see them Ramage knew that the six lookouts posted all round the ship were keeping a careful watch. On almost any other night there might be a chance of one man dozing on his feet for a minute or two, but never the night after a brisk action.
As he began pacing the starboard side of the quarterdeck he noticed a small figure walking up and down on the larboard side. It was Paolo, whose watch ended when Southwick went below. He was about to call to the boy to get some sleep when he realized that he was probably too excited and enjoying every moment of it anyway.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Dawn found the Juno two miles off Petite Anse d’Arlet, under way after being becalmed for three hours and with Ramage pacing the quarterdeck in a fury of impatience. The first lookouts aloft reported a frigate a mile to the north, still becalmed, and a few minutes later identified her as the Surcouf. Diamond Rock was out of sight behind the headland at the foot of Diamond Hill, and the devil knew what urgent signals might be flying from her signal mast
Then the wind died again and the gentle curve in the Juno’s sails flattened and the canvas hung like drab curtains. ‘Bear away!’ Ramage snapped at the quartermaster, anxious to turn the ship before she lost way altogether so that she would get the full benefit of any fitful puffs. It was hopeless trying to sail her close-hauled in a wind as light as this; better bear away two or three points and give the sails a chance.
‘We could try wetting the sails, sir,’ Southwick suggested.
Ramage glared at him. ‘That’s an old fish-wife’s tale,’ he snapped. ‘It just makes them heavier.’
‘The water fills the weave and stops the wind passing through, sir,’ the Master said defensively.
‘Damnation take it,’ Ramage exploded, ‘this wind is so weak it can’t crawl down the side of a cliff, let alone get through the weave of stiff canvas.’
‘Aye, aye, sir,’ Southwick said mildly, knowing he had had twice as much sleep as the captain who, the quartermaster had reported, had his light on for much of the night writing reports.
Ramage looked seaward with his telescope. ‘Just look at that wind shadow over there. It’s a mile away. It’ll be noon before we get another puff here and in the meantime the whole damned French fleet could have arrived off the Diamond.’
‘They would be becalmed too,’ Southwick offered sympathetically.
‘Not a chance! There’ll be a nice breeze round Pointe des Salines and right up to the Fours Channel. It’s just in the lee of these damned mountains–’ he pointed to the half a dozen peaks between Morne la Plaine to the north and Morne du Diamant to the south ‘–that we lose the wind.’
At that moment his steward appeared on deck to report that his breakfast was ready and Ramage, who had already put it off twice, decided that his empty stomach was neither improving his temper nor extending his patience. He went below with muttered instructions to Southwick to call him the moment the wind piped up.
He washed and shaved, changed into clean clothes, ate his breakfast, reread the draft of his report to the Admiral and his orders for Wagstaffe, filled in his journal and wrote several more paragraphs of his diary-like letter to Gianna, and still no word came. The sun rose and the sunlight coming through the skylight made circles on the painted canvas covering the deck of his cabin as the Juno slowly turned in the current, like a duck feather floating on a village pond.
The clerk brought the dispatch and orders for him to sign and Ramage growled at him to sharpen his quill. Were the order and letter books up to date? he demanded. The clerk said they were. Were any more reports, inventories, surveys and the like outstanding? No, the clerk said, everything was up to date, including the weekly accounts. Ramage dismissed him, irritated that the man had nothing for him to do. At the same time he was amused. The clerk usually had great difficulty in getting him to deal with any paperwork.
The fact was that he was trying to avoid going on deck. The sight of the cliffs and beaches gradually drawing south as the current took the Juno north was almost more than he could stand. If only the current had taken the frigate out to the west, where they would get a sight of the Diamond…
On deck the ship’s company went about the day’s work. Hammocks had long ago been lashed up and stowed, decks scrubbed and washed down, awnings spread, brasswork polished and the brickdust carefully swept up afterwards. The gunner’s mate had appeared with a request that he be allowed to start the men blacking the guns and shot and complained that much had been chipped off the previous day. Ramage, appalled at the thought of men painting coal tar on to the barrels of guns that might be needed within a few hours, refused and told him that if he was making work for the other gunner’s mates they could sew up some more canvas aprons for the gun locks. Usually several were lost when the ship went into action. The gunner’s mate had agreed in his doleful voice that indeed it did happen, owing to the carelessness of the men, but all the necessary new ones and a dozen to spare had been completed an hour ago. ‘Report to Mr Southwick,’ Ramage said in desperation, but the gunner’s mate said he had already done so, and Mr Southwick had sent him to report to the captain.
‘Grommets,’ Ramage said firmly. ‘We need a lot more grommets.’
The gunner’s mate’s eyes lit up. ‘Ropework is for the bos’n’s mates, really sir, but my men wil
l do their best.’
By ten o’clock Ramage and Southwick were pacing the deck together. The Surcouf was almost at the southern side of Fort Royal Bay, and the Juno less than a mile short of Cap Salomon, but there was not a breath of wind and the sea had flattened into a glassy calm. A dozen times Ramage had thought of hoisting out a cutter and having himself rowed down to the Diamond. It was only the realization that there was nothing he could do when he arrived there that made him finally dismiss it. If enemy ships arrived the only guns that could open fire at them were the Diamond batteries, and they could be relied on to do that anyway.
The very air seemed hot and almost solid and the slightest effort soaked a man in perspiration. Noon came and the men were piped to dinner. With the sun almost overhead, shadows were nearly vertical and the pitch soft in the deck seams. Southwick commented gloomily that they could be in the Doldrums for all the chance they had of getting a wind.
Five minutes later, as the men finished dinner, the wind came. A fitful puff from the north at first which caught every sail aback and started Ramage bellowing orders, and which died a moment later. A longer puff from the east lasted less than five minutes, and then a steady wind set in from the north-east.