by Dudley Pope
A full minute passed before the Brutus’s mortar fired. The shell landed only a yard or two beyond the water’s edge and burst two seconds later, fifty yards short of the cask and spraying up sand and water in a muddy fan.
‘Bit heavy-handed,’ Southwick commented. ‘Fifty yards over, and then fifty yards short…still, he’s cutting the fuse to the right length.’
Kenton’s fourth shell burst in almost the same place as the third, and when the smoke cleared Ramage saw that the shallow craters almost overlapped.
‘That’s the powder,’ he commented to Aitken. ‘Kenton must have made a correction in the charge, but the quality of the powder varies so much that it can trump the correction.’
Wagstaffe’s fifth shell landed within ten yards of the cask and for a few breathless moments the three men watched, waiting to see if the fuse would fail. Ramage counted eight seconds and suddenly a cloud of smoke spurted outwards from the shell, swirling slightly in the breeze, and when it had cleared the cask had vanished. Ramage then saw a few pieces of wood scattered across the sand. He swung round to look at the Fructidor and realized that Kenton and Paolo were not bothering to look at the fall of the Brutus’s shells so they did not know that Wagstaffe had won. Still, the Fructidor had her fifth shell to fire before the Brutus could claim the guinea.
Again the mortar grunted and spurted smoke, and Ramage, Aitken and Southwick watched the shell soaring up, the master cursing the sun, which had risen high enough to make a glare. They followed the black speck as it dropped towards the beach but before they could see where it had fallen a deep thud echoed back from the pines, with a pall of smoke, which the breeze quickly dispersed.
Ramage was just going to turn to the boatswain to tell him to hoist a signal when Aitken croaked, rather than spoke. ‘A direct hit, sir! It must have exploded just as it landed right on the cask!’
Ramage stared unbelievingly through his telescope. The cask was gone; in its place was a large crater. He could just make out small pieces of wood, many yards away.
He glanced across at the Fructidor. Six seamen and two powder boys were lined up behind the gun. Orsini was standing to attention in front of it, but Kenton was at the bow, staring towards the shore. He was still looking for the cask, Ramage realized; his height of eye was much lower than those in the Calypso – a little more than level with the bank of sand on which the casks had been placed. Then suddenly he pointed doubtfully and Orsini suddenly ran forward to join him.
Southwick saw what was happening. ‘It’s cost you two guineas to find out that these old ketches are good for breaking up casks, sir. Can we change the prize crews round so that I can challenge the first-lieutenant?’
CHAPTER SIX
The reddish-gold reflection of the sunset came through the stern lights and both sides of the skylight and brought out the rich colour of the mahogany furniture in Ramage’s cabin, deepening the tan of his face as he sat back comfortably in the armchair talking to Aitken.
‘These sunsets,’ the first-lieutenant said, ‘the colours are quite fantastic. This one stretches across three-quarters of the sky. We take a pride in our sunsets in Scotland, but these…’
‘You’ve never been along the Tuscan coast before?’ Ramage said: ‘Well, you commented this morning on the curious light. It has a strange clarity, inland as well as along the coast, particularly around Florence and Siena. In fact, you remember seeing paintings by Italian artists working in Tuscany?’
Aitken paused doubtfully, settling himself more comfort-ably on the settee, and then nodded. ‘Yes. Religious pictures, and all painted in a kind of a religious light.’
‘Not religious,’ Ramage said, smiling at the staunch Protestant disapproval in Aitken’s voice. ‘That’s Tuscan light. That’s what you’ve been seeing all day.’
The first-lieutenant nodded slowly. ‘Aye, I begin to understand now. Those artists weren’t deliberately painting a special background – as though there was some holy light shining on the subject, and on the countryside round them…’
‘No, they were just painting what they saw: that was, and is the normal summer light in Tuscany, and their backgrounds were often Florentine. No one in Britain has ever seen such vivid light, and they just didn’t believe it. They scoffed at the painters. It wasn’t until people began visiting Italy in larger numbers that they realized that the painters were truly painting what they saw.’
‘If one of them had been on the beach this morning he could have used those mortar shells bursting as a model for the entrance to Hell,’ Aitken said. ‘But even as a landscape painting, what a picture it would have made: the hills and mountains brown and bluish – grey in the distance; the pine forest a line of dark green, with the juniper bushes in front; then the dazzling sand. And the sea – from pale green to deep blue.’
‘How does it all compare with those great beech trees turning coppery in the autumn at Dunkeld?’ Ramage asked, curious to hear the Scotsman’s reaction.
‘When I look inland at the way the mountains start, I don’t think it’s so different from Dunkeld in summer, apart from the light. There are the pines, the grass here is more parched – they don’t have enough rain in summer to produce rivers like the Tay…What I have noticed is the difference that’s come over you, sir, and Southwick, and men like Jackson and Stafford: the minute the sun rose yesterday morning and you could see those Tuscan hills again, you all came alive! I don’t mean,’ he added hurriedly, ‘that before then you’d been sleepy or anything like that. But you know how a man looks when he sees someone he loves after a long absence.’
Ramage did not answer and Aitken realized that the Captain had gone away with his thoughts to some private place – thinking of the Marchesa, no doubt. It was comfortable sitting here, knowing that a prize was anchored each side, and that thanks to the three French flags they would not be attacked. Ruse de guerre, a trick used by both sides with only one rule – that you could fly the enemy’s colours, but had to drop them and hoist your own before opening fire.
‘The Frenchman’s orders,’ Ramage said unexpectedly, coming back from wherever he had been. ‘He was supposed to be taking these two bomb ketches to Crete.’
‘Why Crete?’ Aitken mused. ‘What on earth can the French be planning against Crete? Surely they’ve occupied it anyway,’ he added gloomily.
‘I’m not at all sure,’ Ramage admitted. ‘I hope we aren’t going that far. I’ve heard that the harbours aren’t much use, but I don’t think Crete was the bomb ketches’ final destination. I’m sure they were going on to somewhere else. I have a feeling that the French are simply using Crete to assemble a powerful force – a fleet complete right down to bomb ketches, and transports, and an army to travel with it.’
‘Where could they be planning to attack?’
‘Another attempt at Egypt? A landing on the Levant in the hope of forcing a way through to India? With this madman Bonaparte one can never be sure.’
‘Perhaps that’s putting a lot of meaning into the orders for two bombs, sir,’ Aitken commented cautiously. ‘There might be some anchorage or harbour that the French are finding useful but which has no fort to protect it. Easier to anchor a couple of bombs there than build a fort…’
Ramage shrugged. ‘There’s no need to build a fort anyway – why not just construct a battery on a cliff? Some thick planks put down on levelled ground, a few baskets or bags of earth to make a parapet…No, Renouf received additional orders when he reached Toulon. Two frigates were to meet him at Porto Ercole on the thirteenth of this month. He was to water and provision there and be anchored outside by the time the frigates arrived to go in and embark cavalry and field guns. The frigates would then carry them to Crete, escorting the bombs at the same time.’
‘En flûte?’
‘Probably,’ Ramage said, knowing that frigates carrying troops and stores usually had most of their maindeck guns removed to make more space and the port lids caulked, leaving the ships armed with only the guns on the fo�
�c’sle and quarterdeck. ‘Using a couple of frigates en flûte makes sense here in the Mediterranean now; as far as the French are concerned, it’s unlikely they’ll meet any enemy ships of war. There may be occasional Algerine pirates – the Italians still call them i Saraceni, the Saracens – but nothing that two frigates couldn’t drive off or sink.’
‘I wonder what happens,’ Aitken mused, ‘when the frigates arrive at Porto Ercole on the thirteenth and the two bombs aren’t anchored outside waiting for them?’
‘I don’t think you should worry yourself with questions like that.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ Aitken said hastily. ‘I didn’t mean to–’
‘No, always make your views clear. All I meant was that I can see no reason why the bomb ketches shouldn’t be anchored outside Porto Ercole waiting for them.’
Aitken sat bolt upright, his eyes bright. ‘What a trap!’
‘It can be a trap only if it was good shooting and not luck that blew up those casks this morning.’
‘I had a talk with Wagstaffe and Kenton because I was curious too,’ the first-lieutenant said. ‘It was good shooting. They both complained that the French powder is so bad that every round fell differently. If they realized that, then they must have been confident. Both reckoned that with our own powder they’d have hit the casks with the third shell. Each of them told me that before he had had a chance to compare notes with the other.’
Ramage nodded and stood up to take a rolled up chart from the rack above him. As he opened it on his desk, using paperweights to prevent it rolling up again, he said: ‘You might wonder why the French chose Porto Ercole. Look, here you can see Argentario. It is almost an island a mile or so from the coast and I always think it looks like a bat hanging from a beam, with each leg a causeway. Here,’ he ran a finger from the island to the mainland, ‘you can see the northern one is the Pineta di Gianella, and the southern, which is wider and almost touches Porto Ercole, is the Pineta di Feniglia.
‘The Feniglia is covered with pines but there’s a track cut through it, which is the route to Porto Ercole from the mainland. Between the two causeways is a large lake. Shallow, of course. And here, sticking down like a stubby finger between the two causeways, and pointing at Argentario, is a peninsula with the town of Orbetello on the end, almost surrounded by water.’
‘Why did the French choose this place to embark troops?’
‘I’ve been thinking about that. This road here on the mainland, running parallel with the sea, is the via Aurelia, one of the great Roman roads leading to Rome. If you want to embark troops and cavalry along this coast you can use Leghorn, way up here, a hundred miles to the north, or Civita Vecchia, forty miles to the south. I assume these particular French troops are stationed closer to Porto Ercole than either of the other two points. Probably at Grosseto, the nearest big town.’
He picked up a magnifying glass. ‘Hmm…three and four fathoms inside this little bay that forms Porto Ercole; ten to fifteen fathoms outside. The French frigates can get in – the point is, will they? They might decide it is too shallow.’
‘The alternative is loading guns and horses, using their own boats. Hoisting frightened and kicking horses on board using slings under their bellies…’ Aitken muttered, clearly talking to himself, seeing the problem through the eyes of a first-lieutenant, upon whom the responsibility for the task would fall. ‘I doubt if there’ll be any lighters or barges in a place like Porto Ercole: it’s simply a fishing village. Those forts,’ he said, ‘I hope they’re not manned…’
‘I don’t know,’ Ramage admitted. ‘But I doubt it. There are two of them – Santa Catarina, the star-shaped and small one low down on the headland on the north side, and Filippo, which is on the top of a big hill overlooking the whole port. Both are Spanish. Probably built by Philip II – he seems to have spent his time and money building forts on the coasts of the West Indies and Europe when he wasn’t sending an Armada against us. You see that Porto Ercole is one side of the little bay and Le Grotte is the village at the other.’
Aitken pointed to the jetty, which formed the western side of the small bay. ‘The frigates can’t get alongside because it’s too shallow. I think I’d get in as close as possible, securing stern to the jetty, and use fishing boats as ferries. Even use ’em as a bridge of boats, planks lashed across them, if I could get in far enough.’
‘Let the French worry about that,’ Ramage said, lifting the weights and letting the chart roll up. ‘I’m sure they’ll anchor inside. The bomb ketches can anchor wherever they want, and because they have the advantage in range they might as well choose a place beyond the reach of any guns there might be in the forts.’
‘The gunner’s tables give a maximum of 4,000 yards for a 10-inch mortar,’ Aitken said. ‘That’s with a 12-pound charge.’
Ramage shook his head doubtfully. ‘That might be all right for a properly designed and constructed bomb ketch, but a 12-pound charge sounds too much for converted galliots. I’d expect the recoil to drive the mortar through the bottom!’
‘Aye, I wasn’t suggesting we tried ’em at that, sir,’ Aitken said hastily, thumbing through the gunner’s textbook. ‘Here we are – this seems the most likely. It’s a table of ranges using a 92-pound shell and with the mortar set at an elevation of forty-five degrees. A three-pound charge gives a range of 1,945 yards, which is 900 more than the French frigates are likely to reach if they’re only armed en flûte. And even if they’re not,’ he added with a grin, ‘they’ll hardly be expecting visitors. If they moor stern to the jetty their guns won’t bear round to cover the entrance anyway.’
Ramage unrolled the chart again and weighted it down. He took a pair of dividers from a rack and set them to a mile on the latitude scale. Then with one point stuck on the jetty of Porto Ercole he swung the other in an arc covering the outside of the port. ‘We’ll be able to get the exact range from the heights of the frigates’ masts, but as I shall wait two or three days before we go down to Porto Ercole, we’ll have the bomb ketches practising on targets along the beach at 2,000 yards. We might even experiment and increase the charge half a pound at a time and see what we consider a safe maximum range.’
‘That French captain,’ Aitken said. ‘He might have…’
‘Yes, I’m going to have a chat with him. Fortunately he’s expecting to be returned to the Fructidor, so he knows it’s in his interest to give us accurate information, otherwise he might find one of the mortars crashing down on his head.’
Ramage put the chart back in the rack. ‘We must keep a sharp lookout for any French cavalry riding along the beach and wanting to pay us a social call: their commanding officer might take it into his head to try to invite himself to dinner.’
‘Then what do we do, sir?’
‘Ignore shouts from the beach and call me. Always be ready to resume mortar practice at short notice: a mortar shell exploding on the beach will panic horses. You’d better work out some system of signals between us and the bomb ketches so that we don’t have to hail in English.’
‘Wooding, sir. Can I send some wooding parties on shore? There’s no fresh water around according to the chart. No streams or anything.’
Wooding and watering: tasks which were a recurring problem in the course of a cruise: the cook always needed wood to fuel the galley fire under the water in the coppers in which most of the ship’s food was cooked, and a sensible captain grabbed every opportunity to fill casks with fresh water because that was almost the only thing that limited the range of a cruise. But as Aitken had commented, the chart showed no streams running into the sea for several miles, apart from one which came out of the pine trees to reach the sea just ahead of the Calypso as a stony sunken track, laced with tree branches washed down in the winter and now stripped of bark and bleached by the scorching sun. There had been no rain for many days and summer had parched the area. Was it worth the risk of having a party of seamen cutting or picking up wood being surprised by a French patrol? A few cor
ds of wood in return for risking the whole operation with the bomb ketches? Ramage shook his head. ‘We’re not desperately short of wood. And we can always stretch over to the Corsican or Sardinian coasts afterwards for both wood and water.’
Later that evening Ramage gave his orders to Wagstaffe and Kenton: they would each send a party on shore next morning to place casks at 2,000 yards and 3,000 yards. Each would fire a dozen shells at the 2,000-yard target, and then increase the range by increasing the powder charge, using the 3,000-yard cask to help estimate distances. But, he emphasized, they were to watch the mortar bed; they must not risk damaging their ships.
Ramage did not tell them that Renouf, who was genuinely fascinated by bomb ketches and very proud of his mortars, regarded 4,000 yards as an acceptable range: the master armourer at Brest had tried out all four mortars at the sea range off Camaret, firing five rounds from each, with the master shipwright in attendance, and going down and inspecting the underdeck stanchions and the stringers after each round was fired.
Almost more important as far as the two lieutenants were concerned was Ramage’s agreement that they could take a barrel of powder with them. With powder made by the British Powder Factory, they said, they would guarantee better shooting. The French powder should be fed to pigs; it would produce streaky bacon of a high quality.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘Haystacks,’ Southwick growled, giving one of his sniffs that expressed contempt without wasting words or breath. ‘A soldier’s wind – and it’d have to be a gale – is the only thing that’ll get them going.’
‘At least they can lay the course,’ Ramage said mildly, ‘and it’s a nice sunny day.’
‘Aye, but it’ll be winter and blowing a maestrale before we get to Porto Ercole,’ Southwick said. ‘Or a sirocco – we just need a few days of strong south winds; then these dam’ bombs would end up aground at Genoa.’