by Dudley Pope
'His Lordship did well out of it,' Southwick commented. 'In giving you your Master and Surgeon, he has four lieutenants, three midshipmen and a Marine officer for himself.'
'I forgot to mention that he allowed me a dozen men for you ...'
'For me, sir?'
'Yes - Jackson, Stafford, Rossi, Maxwell and a whole lot more former Tritons.'
'By Jove, sir,' Southwick exclaimed delightedly, 'how did you manage to trace where they were?'
'Well, of course, Jackson, Rossi and Stafford were with me in France, so I could trace them, and Maxwell and the rest were all in the Victory here at Portsmouth, and one of them wrote to me on behalf of the rest a month ago, asking if I was ever given a ship ...'
'They're lucky fellows,' Southwick said. 'Anyway, I must admit I'm glad to be getting them. From the look of some of the men we have at the moment, we'll be able to promote some of the lads. By the way, sir, the ship's already provisioned for four months; that's the only pleasant surprise I had when I came on board!'
For the next half-hour the two men discussed how they would get the Juno into a condition where she could join the squadron of the most eagle-eyed of admirals, a discussion which ended when Ramage remembered that his trunk had not been brought below, and was sufficiently angry to send for the First Lieutenant, telling Southwick to wait in the coach.
The man stood just inside the door of the great cabin, swaying slightly and with a befuddled grin on his face. He was drunk not from a few incautious tots earlier, but because he had long ago reached the stage where he needed a tot an hour to get through the day, just as a ship could only get to windward by tacking. Apart from Bowen, he was the first officer ever to be drunk on duty in any ship Ramage commanded, and his eyes had the cunning look of a ferret. He was making no attempt to hide his condition and Ramage suddenly guessed the reason. An officer found drunk on duty would normally be sent to his cabin, if not put under an arrest. This wretched fellow, finding that the new Captain had done nothing about it, had concluded that Ramage was nervous and unsure of himself and, like the previous Captain, would let him stay happily drunk.
He did not know that Ramage had orders from the Admiralty to send the man off the ship and that it was unlikely he would ever be employed again. The letter transferring him out of the Juno was there on the sideboard and for a moment Ramage considered giving it to him. Then he decided to wait until next morning: the man ought to be punished, however lightly and briefly, for his part in reducing the Juno to its sorry state.
'My trunk?' Ramage asked quietly. 'Why has it not been sent below?'
'You told me to have it hoisted on board – sir.’
‘Iforgot to order you to have it sent below?’
'Yes.' The man was grinning.
'Very well. I hardly expect the First Lieutenant of a ship I command to need orders for such a routine matter. However, you are drunk; you were drunk when I came on board and now you are under arrest. Go to your cabin and stay there. If you have any liquor in your cabin you will leave it outside the door. If you touch a drop more I'll have you put in irons -'
'But you can't put me in irons!' the man exclaimed. 'I'm -'
By now Ramage was standing in front of him, his face expressionless. The First Lieutenant looked up and saw the narrowed eyes but he was too drunk to notice anything except that the Captain was not shouting: he was not the first man who failed to realize that the quieter Ramage's voice became, the more angry he was.
'Can't I?' Ramage asked, almost conversationally. 'If I thought it would sober you up I'd have you put in irons and stand you under the wash-deck pump for an hour.’
The man, suddenly alarmed, tried to stand to attention but banged his head on the beam overhead.
'Go to your cabin,' Ramage said. 'Report to me at seven tomorrow morning with your trunk packed. In the meantime you are relieved of all duties and are under close arrest'
The man lurched from the cabin and Southwick came back, shaking his head. 'There's no saving a man like that, sir; he's drunk because he is bad, not bad because he's drunk. I'll rouse out the master-at-arms and arrange for a sentry. I'll have your trunk sent down in five minutes.'
Ramage nodded. 'Well, we've made a start, but it's going to be a long job...’
Next morning Southwick grumbled to Ramage that the Juno was more like Vauxhall Turnpike when the Portsmouth stage came in than a ship of war. The former Tritons were arriving with sea bags, the officers leaving the frigate were cursing and swearing as sea chests were accidentally dropped, and each of the new lieutenants was wandering round the ship with the lost look of a Johnny-Come-Lately. Ramage gave up long before the sun had any warmth in it. He met the dozen former Tritons and welcomed them on board with bantering warnings that their recent holiday on board the Victory was over; he watched stony-faced as the former First Lieutenant left the ship, sober for the first time in many months and perhaps even ashamed of himself.
Bowen arrived just before noon and, with, three leather bags of surgical instruments, looked more like the prosperous surgeon from Wimpole Street that he had once been than a surgeon of a frigate. He greeted Southwick with obvious pleasure and, waving at the sea chest being hoisted on board, told him he had brought him a present of a set of chessmen. This announcement provoked a loud groan from the Master, who protested that he had vowed to play only on the even-numbered days of the month.
The new First Lieutenant, John Aitken, arrived an hour after the Surgeon. He was a fresh-faced and diffident young Scot from Perthshire who, half an hour after climbing the gangway steps, had changed into his second-best uniform and set the men to work cleaning up the ship. Head pumps were soon squirting streams of water across the decks as seamen sprinkled sand and scrubbed with holystones; aloft topmen were refurling sails, tying and retying gaskets until the quiet Scots voice coming through the speaking trumpet announced that the First Lieutenant was satisfied.
The other three lieutenants had arrived together and Ramage, with memories of joining ships in similar circumstances, saw from the way they behaved towards each other that they had already compared the dates of their commissions. The vital dates established their seniority and sorted them into the Second, Third and Fourth Lieutenants, without the need for a decision by Captain Ramage, the Port Admiral or the Admiralty.
To Ramage, now in his late twenties, the three junior lieutenants looked very young. Each must be more than twenty, because that was the youngest age allowed; but he was himself getting older, and this was the first time for a couple of years that he had seen a group of young lieutenants. They seemed cheerful and competent fellows: Wagstaffe, the Second Lieutenant, was a Londoner, Baker, the Third, was a burly youngster from Bungay, in Suffolk, and Lacey, the new Fourth Lieutenant, spoke in the easy relaxed burr of Somerset, having been born at Nether Stowey.
As he walked round the ship, watching but not interfering, storing items in his memory, noting the way certain men were working and others were hanging back, Ramage kept an eye open for the midshipmen. Gianna's nephew was due today - Ramage had emphasized that if he did not get on board today he would be left behind. To be fair to the boy he was having to make his way from somewhere in Buckinghamshire to London, buy his kit, and then get down to Portsmouth. Ramage stopped walking for a moment, appalled at the prospect of Aunt Gianna taking the boy shopping; he would probably arrive with a large trunk full of expensive nonsense, instead of a small sea chest tightly packed with the items on the list that Ramage had left behind.
He was thankful that the shop in Portsmouth had sent out his own purchases: two chests of tea, cases of spirits and wine, boxes of freshly-baked biscuits they swore would last two months without going hard, and after that could be freshened by soaking in water for a couple of minutes and putting in a hot oven. He had a good selection of preserves: cucumber put down in vinegar, quince jam, mint sauce in bottles, and there were a small string of garlic and several large ones of onions, stone jars of lime juice, a box of apples packed in h
ay ...
Promotion to the command of a frigate brought other changes, apart from the number of men and the size of the ship. The Captain of a frigate, with four lieutenants, Marine officer, midshipmen, Master and Surgeon, was expected to entertain; from time to time he would have to invite three or four of them to dinner, and spend an amiable hour being pleasant. It was up to the Captain to provide a palatable meal and make sure plenty was available: young midshipmen and junior lieutenants came to dinner with the Captain with awe and a hearty appetite.
By late afternoon Ramage was heartily sick of the ship. Every time he wanted to walk the deck to ease his tension he had to dodge groups of busy seamen. The ship stank of pitch because Aitken had the carpenter's mates and caulkers hardening down some of the deck seams with hot irons; there was brick dust blowing around as seamen tried to work up a polish on brasswork that had been left to corrode for weeks. New coils of rope were being unrolled as Southwick and the bos'n replaced running rigging that had aged and stretched to the point of being dangerous. Cursing seamen struggled with fids as they spliced in new thimbles, and the gunner and his mates were systematically picking up shot from the racks and passing them through gauges, metal rings of an exact diameter which would show if too much paint or hidden flakes of rust on a shot would make it jam in the bore of a gun. Only Aitken was entirely happy: Ramage seemed to hear his soft Scots voice coming from a dozen places at once as he encouraged, cajoled and bullied the men to get the work done.
Gianna's nephew arrived at four o'clock with the midshipman sent by Lord St Vincent. Each boy had two sea chests and Ramage watched Southwick glaring as they were hoisted on board. He decided not to say anything unless more midshipmen arrived: with these two and the master's mate, the berth would not be too crowded because the chests made up for the lack of chairs.
Ramage gave both boys half an hour to settle in and then sent for them. Paolo Luigi Orsini was a typical young Italian: olive-skinned with black hair, large and warm brown eyes, and an open friendly manner. At the moment he was very nervous, overwhelmed at being in uniform and serving in one of the King's ships. Ramage suspected too that warnings from Gianna were still ringing in his ears about what would happen to him if he did anything to incur the Captain's displeasure. The high-spirited boy who had romped through the house in Palace Street, teasing Zia Gianna had vanished; in his place was a lad who gave the impression that he feared that at the slightest lapse he would vanish in a puff of smoke.
The second midshipman, Ramage was relieved to find, had been to sea before: Edward Benson, son of a cousin of Lord St Vincent's wife, had spent a year in a 74-gun ship of the line and was two years older than Paolo. Red-haired and freckle-faced, he was obviously high-spirited and Ramage recalled the First Lord's remark. Ramage had already met Edwards, the young master's mate who would be the senior in the midshipmen's berth, and he seemed more than capable of keeping an eye on both boys.
At five in the afternoon Aitken reported that the Juno's cutter had returned from the Dockyard after taking all the mail on shore, and Ramage guessed that the canvas bag had contained a bizarre collection of papers. He had written to Gianna and his parents, Bowen had written to his wife, the newly-joined lieutenants had scribbled letters to relatives and the seamen had sent four or five score letters telling wives and sweethearts that they were about to sail on a long voyage. Ramage had spent much of the previous evening and most of this morning working with his clerk, trying to get all the lists, affidavits, musters, invoices, pay tickets, surveys and inventories checked and signed where necessary. Together they accounted to the Admiralty, Navy Board, Sick and Hurt Board and the Port Admiral for just about everything on board the Juno, from her men to spare sail canvas, powder and shot to stationery, spare beer cask staves to caulkers' mauls. Fortunately the clerk had had everything ready up to the time the previous Captain went off to face the court martial, but there was no chance of Ramage checking whether all the items he was signing as having been received since then were actually on board. He would have to make up any shortages later out of his own pocket but for the time being he had to sail as quickly as possible, and he could not leave until the paperwork was done.
The gunner, bos'n, carpenter and various others had prepared their inventories, but it would take another three days to go through the paperwork item by item - as he had every right to do - and by that time the voice of the Port Admiral would be shrill and signals from the Admiralty would be arriving on board like broadsides. That was one of the disadvantages of the new semaphore telegraph set up between Portsmouth and the Admiralty building in London. In an emergency signals could be passed in a matter of minutes, but it also meant that the First Lord could sit in his office in London and ask questions and get answers back within half an hour...
The sentry announced the First Lieutenant again. Aitken reported that all the ship's boats had now returned and had been hoisted in and secured. The ship was trimmed correctly, and the replacement stun-sail booms had arrived from the dockyard. The guns were secured - Aitken paused a moment, thought and went on - the tiller had been checked and was moving freely, sails were ready for loosing.
It was always a good thing for the Captain to be able to remember something that the First Lieutenant had forgotten: it kept him on his toes. Ramage searched his memory: 'The sheet anchor?'
'Stowed, sir; I forgot to mention it'
Ramage nodded. 'We are ready to man the capstan?’
'Aye, aye, sir.'
It wanted an hour to high water and by some miracle the ship was ready a day early, Ramage picked up his hat and led the way on deck. Apart from some clouds sitting over the hills to the north, the sky was clear; the wind was from the north-west. When the Juno left Spithead - which she would do within the next fifteen minutes - she would leave behind the brief memory of a captain court-martialled for drunkenness, and another story to add to those told about Lord St Vincent's ruthlessness: that he had cleared all the commission officers out of the Juno frigate because the captain liked to tipple. Like most such stories it would be only partly true but it might serve as a warning.
Ramage stared for a moment at the rest of the ships at anchor nearby, and gave a shiver. The story of the Juno's drunken captain could in fact be the story of the captain of any ship: everything depended on him. Every failure on the part of a captain showed immediately in the ship. His lack of seamanship was revealed in the way the ship was handled; his lack of leadership in the way the officers and ship's company behaved. His courage or lack of it would be shown the moment the ship went into action. The captain was not the tip of a pyramid, as most people thought; in fact it was just the reverse: he was the spindle on which everything else balanced.
He looked up at the waiting Aitken. 'Is the fiddler on the quarterdeck? Ah, I see him. Very well, man the capstan!'
CHAPTER THREE
Ramage wiped his pen and put it away in the drawer as he waited for the ink to dry on the page of his Journal. The figures he had written in under the 'Latitude In' and 'Longitude Made' columns showed that the Juno had almost reached 'The Corner', the invisible turning point just short of the Tropic of Cancer where she would pick up the North-east Trade winds to sweep her for 3000 miles across the Atlantic in a gentle curve to the south-east that would bring her to Barbados.
The 'Journal of the Proceedings of his Majesty's ship Juno, Captain Nicholas Ramage, Commander', told the story of the voyage so far in terms of winds, courses steered, miles run from noon one day to noon the next, and apart from the column headed 'Remarkable Observations and Accidents', mercifully almost blank, told the Admiralty all it wanted to know.
As he flicked over the earlier pages, Ramage thought that the journal told very little of the story. His Log and the Master's faithfully recorded the time when the Lizard sank below the horizon astern, the last sight of England for many months - the last sight ever for some of the men on board. It mentioned the westerly gale that caught them off Brest and drove them into the Bay of Bisc
ay, noted the three occasions when they sighted other frigates and made or answered the challenge, recorded the time that the tip of the island of Madeira was sighted and its bearing ... But it made no mention of the afternoon, with the Lizard still just in sight, when he had finally lost his temper with the whole ship's company, mustered them aft, and given them a warning.
For the first few hours after weighing from Spithead it had seemed that the men were trying, that they realized they had grown slack under the previous captain and were anxious to make amends. But as the Juno beat her way out to the Chops of the Channel they had eased off and became sullen. A topsail had been let fall with a reef point still tied so that the canvas ripped; evolutions that should have taken five minutes had taken twenty. In fact it seemed that all the work was being done by the dozen former Tritons.
Aitken and Southwick had done their best and he could not fault the other three lieutenants. The new Marine Lieutenant, Rennick, had a firm grip on his men, who were always smartly turned out. Yet there was an insidious sullen air on the mess deck, and that afternoon Ramage had vowed to get rid of it. With the glass falling and the Juno thrashing her way westward out of the Channel, he mustered them aft and, using a speaking trumpet to make his voice heard above the howl of the wind, he had given them a solemn warning.
The day after they reached 'The Corner' he would inspect the ship from breasthook to archboard; he would exercise them aloft and at the guns with a watch in his hand. If at the end of the day he was satisfied, then the rest of the voyage to Barbados would be a routine cruise; but if he found so much as a speck of dirt in even one of the coppers, if furling a topsail took thirty seconds longer than it should, if there was any hesitation or delay over emergency procedures (and here he was warning the officers more than the seamen), then he promised them 3000 miles of misery, when they would beg for a flogging to get some relief.