Ramage and the Renegades r-12

by Dudley Pope

  'Yes, and by the time the treaty is ratified I suspect we'll have surrendered every acre of land we've taken except Ceylon and Trinidad, and we may have forced Bonaparte to leave Egypt.'

  'And Italy?' Gianna said.

  The Earl shook his head, as though trying to drive away his irritation. 'Bonaparte has made offers on behalf of France, Sweden, Denmark and Holland. The negotiations concern only territory belonging to Britain or those countries. There has been no mention of Tuscany, Piedmont, the Papal States . . . Nor does Hawkesbury see how we can do anything about them - I asked him.'

  'He's a weak man,' Gianna commented.

  'He's a politician,' the Earl said contemptuously. 'No votes come from Italy for Addington and his cronies, but the House of Commons will give them three cheers for Ceylon and Trinidad...'

  'When will the details be made public - officially, I mean?' Ramage asked.

  The Earl shrugged his shoulders. 'When Bonaparte, or this fellow Otto, say so. Officially Addington and Hawkesbury deny any negotiations are going on. That's where Otto is so useful: he's been the official French representative in London since the exchange of prisoners started, so no one takes any notice of his comings and goings.'

  'Gianna's dressmaker,' the Countess said firmly. 'We can do more good by visiting her than talking about the tidbits that Bonaparte tosses to us.'

  With that the two women left the room to put on outdoor clothes. Even though a watery sun made faint shadows, the chill of autumn was in the air.

  The Earl sipped his sherry. 'A sad business. Hood agrees with me that we are giving up just as the tide is turning in our favour.'

  Nicholas said: 'Yes, the French are desperately short of wood, rope and canvas for their ships. Our blockade is really hurting them. I'd have thought that's why Bonaparte's offering terms: he wants a year or so of peace to restock his larder. Then he'll go to war again, knowing we'll have paid off most of our ships and disbanded our regiments. Once the men have disappeared the pressgangs will never find them again.'

  His father put down his glass. 'Hood made the same points: he too reckons Bonaparte wants a rest, and lost his temper with Hawkesbury over the policy. But Jenks is only a politician, and for people like him no policy need cover more than the next division in the House of Commons. The frontiers of the world are bounded by the walls of the "Ayes" and "Noes" lobbies.'

  'Will the King agree, though?'

  'They'll persuade him Britain is going bankrupt. It probably is, but better bankruptcy than Bonaparte!'

  He held his sherry up to the light coming through the window. 'When will the dockyard be finished with the Calypso?'

  'Another three or four weeks. It'd be longer, but my fourth lieutenant's father is the Master Shipwright.'

  'At Chatham? Hmm, used to be a fellow called Martin. Very good. One of the very few honest men in all the King's dockyards.'

  'It must be the same man: his son is William Martin, known to his friends as "Blower".'

  ' "Blower"? What an extraordinary nickname!'

  'He plays a flute.'

  'Ah yes, you told me. Did very well in that Porto Ercole affair with the bomb ketches, and then with young Paolo in the convoy from Sardinia.'

  'That's the lad. If he goes on like this he deserves to get his flag.'

  'Won't stand a chance if there's peace. By the way, Nicholas, you ought to get Paolo up here from Chatham. Gianna is anxious to inspect her nephew, but she won't say anything to you for fear of it seeming like favouritism.'

  Ramage smiled and nodded. 'Yes, I'd guessed that, and talked it over with my first lieutenant and Southwick. There's an enormous amount Paolo can learn while a refit like this goes on, so we decided he'd get no leave for the first three weeks but they'd cram as much as they could into him and then make sure he has a week or two with Gianna.'

  'She's so proud of him.'

  'She's right to be. He's very much like her in some ways. Not so - well, explosive, but a very quick brain. Gets on very well with the men. Brave to the point of foolhardiness. If he survives and improves his mathematics, he'll pass for lieutenant at the first try.'

  'Have you thought of taking Gianna down to Chatham so that she could see the ship as well?'

  Ramage's face fell. 'What a fool I am! She'd love it and all the old Kathleens - Jackson, Rossi, Southwick, Stafford -would go mad. Would you and mother come down as well?'

  'Ah - well, I was hoping you'd propose it. Yes, we'd be delighted: we've already discussed it, so I know your mother's answer.'

  CHAPTER TWO

  The black-hulled Calypso frigate had caused a stir of interest from the moment she sailed up the muddy Medway on the first of the flood, her ship's company racing round the deck working sheets, tacks and braces as she tacked and then tacked again the moment she had way on. The Medway narrows up as it nears the towns past the ruins of Upnor Castle (battered a century and a half earlier by the Dutchman, de Ruyter), and has some nasty bends, with mudflats a few inches below the water to trap the unwary.

  Once she had moored off Chatham Dockyard, the ship and her men came under the authority of the Commissioner and was soon the target of all his minions. Ramage had managed to get a copy of a recent Royal Kalendar to see the names of the men who would be responsible for the Calypso's refit and whom Aitken, the first lieutenant, would spend several weeks cajoling, persuading and threatening to get work done properly and reasonably promptly.

  The first name in the Kalendar under 'Chatham Yard' was the Commissioner Resident, listed as 'F.J. Wedge, esq., 800 L., more for paper and firing 12 L'. Ramage conceded that the Commissioner probably earned his £800 a year pay, and probably quadrupled it from bribes and all the corrupt activities a man in his position could indulge in. The Navy Board were showing their usual parsimony in allowing only £12 a year to pay for stationery and fuel for the fires or stoves. Still, there must be plenty of old wood lying around.

  The Master Shipwright, Martin's father, was paid £200 a year - the same as the Master Ropemaker, Master Boatbuilder, Master Mastmaker, Master Sailmaker, Master Smith, Master Carpenter, Master Joiner and Master Bricklayer. The Bosun of the Dockyard received only £80, but the storekeeper received £200 and was probably - because of the opportunity for fraud - the wealthiest of the Dockyard employees.

  Most of them had come on board as the frigate was moored up, not because a 36-gun French frigate captured and brought into the King's service was an unusual sight but because the exploits of the Calypso and her captain had been mentioned in enough Gazettes to make them both famous. It would not mean any favourable treatment for the ship, because Dockyard officials were by nature close-fisted men, issuing paint, rope, canvas and the like as though they paid for it themselves. There was the story of one eccentric and aristocratic captain who, receiving the Navy Board's issue of paint for his ship, wrote to their Lordships and asked which side of the ship he should paint. Their Lordships were not amused and the captain ended up doing what most captains did - paying out of his own pocket for the extra paint needed.

  Ramage had stayed on board for a week as the Calypso swung on the buoy with wind and tide until their Lordships answered his request for leave - no officer was allowed 'to sleep out of his ship' without written permission, and that included admirals. Ramage had been given a month's leave and the ship was left in command of James Aitken. The Scotsman had no wish to go up to Perth on leave (Ramage discovered for the first time that Aitken's mother, the widow of a Navy master, had recently died) and he obviously trusted no one else to make sure the refit was done properly. Ramage knew that, however keen and eagle-eyed Aitken was, the man who really mattered was Southwick, the master, a man old enough to be the father and almost the grandfather of both his captain and first lieutenant.

  Leave for the men, all of whom had been away from Britain for at least a couple of years, was always a problem for any captain. Usually half the men had in the first place been seized by pressgangs, and if the ship was an unhappy one because of the
captain or her officers, giving the men leave would result in a number of them deserting: never returning to the ship and forfeiting a year or more of the pay due to them. Popular captains did not have to worry so much, but even if the men returned, a percentage of them would have spent their leave in and out of brothels and would come back riddled with venereal disease. This would put money in the surgeon's pocket, because he was allowed to make a charge for venereal treatment, but eventually it meant lost men: nothing cured syphilis.

  Some captains gave leave only to selected men but Ramage disliked the system: it smacked of favouritism and the men not chosen were resentful. As he told Aitken, it was leave for all or for none, and he had decided on all: they would be allowed two weeks each.

  One watch could go at once; the other when the first came back. He had mustered the ship's company aft on the quarterdeck and told them of his decision - and told them he trusted them to come back on time. In the meantime, he added, the watch left on board would have to work twice as hard.

  Nor had that been an exaggeration. One of the most arduous tasks to be done was changing the Calypso's guns: she still mounted the French cannons with which she had been armed when Ramage and his men captured her. Ramage had managed in Antigua to get rid of the unreliable French gunpowder and stock the magazine with British, and there had been enough French roundshot on board to fit their size of guns, but the ship had been in action enough times to have the gunner reporting that the shot locker was now less than a third full.

  The Ordnance Board had agreed to supply British 12-pounders to replace the French, and the shot to go with them, but not without a good deal of argument. Ramage never understood why the Ordnance Board, part of the Army, should have anything to do with naval gunnery, let alone control it completely. Anyway, hoisting out all the Calypso's French guns and carriages and lowering them into hoys, and then getting all the shot up from the shot lockers - a deep, narrow structure in the ship like a huge wardrobe open at the top - was going to be hard work for the fewer than one hundred men comprising the one watch left on board. Then the hoys would bring out the new guns and carriages, and getting them on board would be more wearying than disposing of the French ones.

  Once the new guns were at their ports, there would be new train tackles and breechings to be spliced up - the Master Ropemaker had agreed that the French rope had not been of a very good quality to start with, and two years' more service had brought it to the end of its life: when the rope was twisted to reveal the inner strands, they were grey; there was no sign of the rich golden brown of good rope.

  Halyards, tacks, sheets, braces and lifts were all being renewed, along with many of the shrouds. The Master Shipwright and Master Mastmaker had inspected the masts and decided not to hoist them out for inspection. Only the foreyard, which had broken in the Mediterranean and been fished by the Calypso's carpenter and his mates, would be replaced. Then the Calypso would be towed by her boats into the drydock and, once all the water had been pumped out, leaving the ship sitting high and dry, shored up by large baulks of timber wedged horizontally between the ship's side and the walls of the dock, her copper sheathing would be inspected. All the sheets round the bow and stern would have to be replaced - this was a regular procedure for ships of war because, for a reason not yet understood (though there were dozens of theories), the sheathing there always became thinner and thinner and was eventually reduced to a mass of pinholes. Ramage hoped - even though it would delay sailing - that all the sheathing would be renewed.

  It was unusual to keep a ship's officers and men standing by her during a long refit; usually the captain was given another command, and the officers and men distributed among other ships, but as a gesture to Ramage's record, Lord St Vincent, the First Lord, had directed that the Calypso's men should be kept together. Which was also more than a hint that he had a job for them all once the refit was over.

  The Calypso, newly coppered, with new rigging and perhaps even new sails, would sail like a witch, he had told his father, who shared his enthusiasm for the skill of French naval architects: they had mastered that strange mixture of artistry and science which produced fast ships of war, particularly frigates.

  'Jacko!' Stafford said as soon as he found the American on deck among the crowd of men who were preparing to hoist a gun out of a port.

  'Jacko, you 'eard the scuttlebutt? About the captain?'

  The tall, narrow-faced American whose sandy hair was thinning, seemed to freeze. He turned round slowly and stared at Stafford. 'No. He's all right, isn't he?'

  The Cockney seaman laughed, not realizing the effect his question had on the captain's coxswain. 'Yus, he's all right - what harm could come to him in London? No, he's bringing the Marchesa down to see us. And his father and mother. Old "Blaze-away" himself!'

  'You gave me a scare,' Jackson said, turning back to give orders to the men straining at the rope. 'I thought something dreadful had happened.'

  'You don't trust him on his own!'

  'I've picked him up unconscious enough times, bleeding like a stuck pig from a sword cut or a bullet, never to take anything for granted.'

  'An' he's saved you enough times,' Stafford said, intending to tease.

  'Five times up to now,' Jackson said soberly, if I stay with him I may reach old age and see South Carolina again.'

  'You don't seem very pleased at the idea o' seein' the Marchesa again.'

  'I am. It's just I'm still cold all over from your clumsiness. And his father. What a sailor he was. The Countess must be a remarkable woman, judging from her husband and her son.'

  'There's Rossi - hey, Rosey, hear about the Marchesa?'

  The Italian seaman looked up. He had no need to ask 'What Marchesa?', but because of the tone of Stafford's voice he suddenly grinned. 'Are they getting married?'

  'Nah, nothing like that. But they - she and the captain and his father and mother - are coming down to see the ship tomorrer. Probably coming down specially to see Signor Alberto Rossi, once the pride o' Genoa!'

  'Watch out,' Jackson muttered, 'here comes the bosun.'

  The two seamen began heaving on the rope while Jackson went to the gun and made sure the cap squares holding the trunnions down on to the carriage had been pulled up and swung back out of the way. He checked that the sling was square, so that as soon as the men hauled down on the yard tackle the gun, weighing nearly a ton, would rise vertically and not damage anything. He went to the port and looked over the side. The hoy was secured alongside; the men in it were waiting patiently for the next gun to be lowered to them and join the five already lying in the bottom of the hoy, wedged with bags of sand so that they could not move.

  Stafford gave a shiver as a gust of wind swept down the reach, pushing at the frigate so that she strained at the heavy ropes securing her by the bow to the mooring buoy. 'This east wind - goes right through you. All that time in the West Indies and Mediterranington makes yer blood thin.'

  'Mediterranean,' Jackson said, automatically correcting Stafford, who had a remarkable inability to pronounce place names correctly. 'It's the damp in the cold that makes it worse. I'm surprised the captain is bringing visitors with the ship in such a mess. Anyway, how do you know about it?'

  'That chap Hodges. He's the first lieutenant's servant while the other fellow's on leave, and 'e 'eard Mr Aitken and Mr Southwick talking about it. An' we're going to have to tiddly up the chair; the rats have been chewing the red baize.'

  'Anything to get away from these guns," Rossi said wearily. 'Accidente, twenty men should make light work of hoisting one gun, but they seem to leave the hoist to me.'

  Stafford laughed and said: 'You mean to say it's too heavy? A French gun? You ought to be able to lift it up like a baby out of a cradle, without usin' a tackle.'

  He helped heave down on the fall and added: "Ere, the Marchesa's goin' ter 'ave a surprise when she sees Mr Orsini. You'd never think he first came on board a shy boy trippin' over every rope in sight and slippin' on every step of a
companionway.'

  Paolo Orsini had just left the first lieutenant and his head was in a whirl. He had expected to be given a couple of days' leave so that he could visit his aunt and the captain, and of course, the Earl and Countess, at the Palace Street house. He had never thought for a moment that all of them might visit the ship. His aunt knew what a frigate was like because one had brought her to England from the Mediterranean after the captain (and men like Jackson, Rossi and Stafford) had rescued her from a beach in Tuscany, but now she was to visit the Calypso she would see not only the ship in which he served but which he had helped capture. And since then the Calypso had been in action - well, how many times was it? He found he could not remember; his memory was blurred by the time he had been second-in-command to 'Blower' Martin in a bomb ketch, and when he had (all too briefly) commanded a captured tartane.

  He had grown a good couple of inches; the sleeves of all his jackets were too short, so that his wrists stuck out like sections of bamboo; the legs of his breeches ended just on his kneecaps, making them very uncomfortable - so much so that most of the time he felt like a hobbled horse, though on watch at night he pulled them down so that the waistband was tight against his hips.

  There was no chance of getting on shore and buying new uniforms here in Chatham: he had hinted to Mr Aitken, who had pointed to the shiny elbows and mildewed lapels of his own uniform and said dourly: 'This is ma best - you see what the Tropics did to it!'