Ramage's Trial

by Dudley Pope

  “So you can watch the pretty ships sail out of Plymouth, eh?” Jackson said sarcastically. “And all your pretty daughters can stand on the Hoe with their chaperones and wave the sailors goodbye!”

  “It’d suit me,” Stafford said happily, “s’long as the sailors don’t get too close.”

  “Why so?” Rossi asked.

  “I wouldn’t trust those dam’ sailors wiv my daughters,” Stafford declared. “I know what they’re like with pretty girls!”

  Jackson shook his head. “No dukes and latifondisti for me. Just a nice comfortable coaching inn; I just fancy myself as ‘mine host’.”

  “All that truckling to the rich gentry,” Stafford complained. “‘Fetch some more port, my good man!’”

  “Won’t worry me because I’ll be truckling them a big bill as well. And if they aren’t the likes of Mr Ramage, then we shan’t have any rooms available.”

  “We?” Stafford asked derisively. “So the Jonathan will take himself a wife, eh? Some poor and innocent English girl will get herself lured by your sweet American promises…”

  “I’ll keep ’em, that’s for sure,” Jackson said, and Rossi recognized another lonely man who had come to terms with the unpleasant fact that he would never settle down in the land of his birth. That, Rossi knew well by now, was the penalty of travelling. A man crossed distant horizons and sometimes found beyond them lands which were greener or more welcoming…where it was easier to find a good job, a comfortable home, a sympathetic wife…Where one did not have to lock the door and secure the windows, nor risk arrest by secret police who spirited a man away so his family never saw him again. England, Rossi had long since decided, did not have as much sun as Genoa, but it bred the likes of Mr Ramage, and every man was born with as much freedom as he needed. And anyway he now had enough prize money to stay well clear of the clink…

  The Calypso seemed to be sliding into Carlisle Bay like a skater on ice: the light wind scattered wavelets across the half-moon bay. Looking over the side, Ramage was once again delighted by the deep blue of the sea gradually shading into the faintest of blues and greens as it shallowed and was edged here and there by coral reefs. He had spent enough time in the Tropics to be able to judge the depth of water by the colour – what seemed barely a fathom, hardly enough to float a jolly-boat rowed by half a dozen men, was often deep enough to let a ship of the line swim without risk. Still, when approaching an anchored flagship it was wise to have a man in the chains heaving the lead and singing out the depths in the monotonous voice that it was all too easy not to notice.

  The gunner was standing by ready to fire the salute to the admiral (a rear-admiral received thirteen guns, but if he was also a commander-in-chief he received seventeen). Paolo Orsini, midshipman and rapidly growing into a lean and handsome youth, as well as being a fine seaman, was standing by with his telescope, ready to read off immediately first the flag which would reveal the exact rank of the flag officer and then the hoist of flags by which the flagship told the Calypso where to anchor.

  The place indicated by a bearing and distance was usually where any reasonably competent captain would in any case anchor his ship, but admirals (or more likely those around him) liked to exercise the brief authority granted them by pointing out the obvious.

  “Red ensign with a white ball,” Orsini reported and added, unnecessarily, “the commander-in-chief is a rear-admiral of the red.” A few minutes later he followed that with: “Flagship about to hoist a signal, sir,” having caught sight of a couple of seamen handling coloured bunting and preparing to hoist away at a signal halyard.

  Ramage glanced forward to the fo’c’sle where Southwick was waiting with a couple of dozen seamen, like a shepherd standing on a hillock with his flock, ready to let go an anchor at the given signal.

  More men were standing by, preparing to trim the yards and braces; others were at the shrouds, ready to swarm aloft to furl the Calypso’s topsail. The fore and main course were already furled, and Ramage was taking the ship in under topsails. With the wind as light as this it was a slow job, but as far as Ramage was concerned few admirals worth their salt were impressed by young frigate captains tearing into crowded anchorages under a press of sail, anchoring and furling with a flourish. Too many admirals had seen too many anchored ships hit by new arrivals to offer any encouragement, and signalling a ship where to anchor certainly slowed down the gamblers and calmed show-offs.

  Paolo read out the signal giving a bearing and distance, and by eye, without having to bend over the azimuth compass, Ramage saw that he had guessed correctly and the Calypso was already heading for the position, with her two prizes astern like two swans obediently following the cob.

  Ramage lifted the speaking trumpet to his lips after giving an order to the quartermaster, who swiftly passed it on to the two men at the wheel. Slowly the frigate turned into the wind; another order saw the maintopsail furled, followed by the mizentopsail. As she headed into the wind it pressed on the forward side of the Calypso’s foretopsail, pushing it against the mast like a hand on a man’s chest and slowly brought the ship to a stop. Ramage then bent over the compass, checking the bearings given in the flagship’s signal. He noted the distance, and waited for the Calypso to gather sternway. He walked to the ship’s side and looked down at the water. A tangled strand of floating seaweed which had been floating past now slowly stopped alongside and then began to move ahead. Or, Ramage corrected himself for the thousandth time in his career, the ship had begun to move astern. He gave another order to the quartermaster because now the rudder’s effect was being reversed and, looking ahead to make sure that Southwick was watching him, he lifted his right arm vertically.

  Seamen let go the anchor. The splash of its thirty-seven hundredweight, almost two tons, hitting the water was followed by the cable (it was hemp, seventeen inches in circumference, as thick as a man’s lower thigh) which snaked over the side, leaving a haze of smoke at the hawse as its friction scorched the wood. Southwick watched from the bulwark and as it slowed and stopped for a few moments gave the signal for the men to snub it round the bitts. The Calypso, pushed astern by her backed topsail, which was being braced round to keep it square to the wind, then kept a steady strain on the cable, and Southwick gave the order to veer more. Finally he signalled to Ramage that the Calypso was safely anchored. The holding ground in Carlisle Bay was good, but in many islands weed on the bottom, or sunken palm fronds, made anchors drag.

  Ramage shouted down to the gunner: “Begin the salute!”

  The first gun on the starboard side spurted smoke and its sharp crack – being unshotted there was no boom – echoing and reechoing across the bay sent the sleepy-looking pelicans into the air after their usual ungainly run across the surface of the water, and it set the black-headed gulls wheeling and screaming in protest at the interruption in their hunt for the fish scraps left by the pelicans.

  Ramage could imagine the gunner muttering the time-honoured phrases used to time the salute – words which when spoken reasonably quickly took five seconds: “If I wasn’t a gunner I wouldn’t be here…Number two gun fire!” And repeating the phrase to himself reminded him yet again that he must replace the gunner: the man was useless, running a mile faster than take a ha’porth of responsibility and completely unsuited to the Calypso. But changing a gunner was a tedious business: it was not a question of applying to the commander-in-chief, as one would to change an unsatisfactory lieutenant. No, a gunner was appointed by the Board of Ordnance, which of course was part of the Army. Guns and gunnery in the King’s ships was the Army’s affair – at least by tradition. Gunners were examined and given their warrants by the Board of Ordnance, which also arranged for the casting of guns and shot and provided the powder. Thus changing a gunner (or such an application by a ship’s captain) was likely to be seen by the Army as a criticism, and the application would end up in the pigeon-hole reserved by the clerks for the paper to smother in dust.

  Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…and th
at was it: the commander-in-chief of His Majesty’s ships and vessels upon the Windward Island station had received the salute due to him by a ship visiting his station from some distant part.

  Southwick joined Ramage at the fore end of the quarterdeck and commented: “I can almost see the sun reflecting on the telescope lenses! They must be wondering how the devil we collected those two!” He gestured to the two prizes now anchoring astern.

  “Yes, any moment the flagship will hoist the signal for me to go over to report. But I want you to start getting our men back on board here from the prizes as soon as they have anchored. Just leave a dozen behind in each one.”

  Southwick nodded: no explanation was needed because everywhere in the world any one of the King’s ships was short of men, but here in the West Indies, where sickness was the enemy, not the French, many of the frigates and smaller ships were being sailed with half their official complement of men. Since sickness, mostly the black vomit, did not distinguish between officers and men, promotion could be rapid for both lieutenants and captains – but equally the appointments could be brief, and one of the most prosperous men in Barbados was the mason carving names and dates on marble headstones in the cemetery (the wording was carefully copied out and sent home to relatives).

  “Boat leaving the flagship with a lieutenant on board, sir,” Paolo Orsini reported. “Heading our way.”

  “The admiral smells his share of prize money,” Southwick muttered as Ramage went below to his cabin to change his uniform and put on his sword. A brief but comprehensive “Report of Proceedings” waited on his desk: it lacked only the name of the admiral, which he had yet to discover.

  Ten minutes later a young lieutenant arrived on board and was brought down to the cabin, where he introduced himself as Lieutenant Newick. He told Ramage that the admiral wished him to make his report as soon as possible. “The two prizes,” he said hesitantly. “We had no idea that there were two such French frigates in the area, although we guessed we might see you.”

  “Oh – why was that?” asked a puzzled Ramage. What could have brought him to the commander-in-chief’s notice?

  The lieutenant looked embarrassed. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned it, sir. There’s a letter from the Admiralty waiting for you, and the admiral had one at the same time. Came out in the last Post Office packet that arrived a week ago.”

  “Let’s go,” Ramage said. He could think of no reason why Their Lordships should be writing to him, but despite the heat of the tropical sun coming down through the Calypso’s deck, he felt a sudden chill. The unexpected was usually unwelcome: so far he had learned that much about life.

  Chapter Two

  Rear-Admiral Edwin Tewtin greeted Ramage at the entryport of his flagship the Queen with what Ramage later described to Southwick as well controlled amiability lightly cloaked with a curiosity which was clearly as painful to ignore as a nagging toothache.

  After all the formalities of a little-known rear-admiral (commanding one of the Royal Navy’s smallest stations) finding himself greeting one of the most famous of the Navy’s young frigate captains had been completed – with a pardonable amount of wariness on either side – Tewtin led the way down to his cabin and waved Ramage to the comfortable chair, sitting down opposite him while Lieutenant Newick perched nervously to one side in a straight-backed seat.

  Ramage saw at once that Tewtin had probably not (so far, anyway) done well from prize money: the furniture in the great cabin verged on being spartan; the curtains bunched on either side of the sternlights would have been appropriate in one of the public rooms of a small but busy coaching inn; the rows of wine glasses nesting in a rack on the bulkhead above the sideboard could have come from the bar parlour, and the buckles on the admiral’s shoes were made of pinchbeck, not gold.

  None of which, Ramage told himself, necessarily made Rear-Admiral Tewtin any less efficient as a flag officer, and might indeed indicate heavy expenses at home – many a man had been ruined through inheriting a large estate without the money to run it, or acquiring a wife whose style outranged his purse.

  Although Ramage waited a minute or two, expecting Tewtin to hand over the Admiralty letter, the man made no move, and his desk was bare. He looked up at Ramage and asked: “You have a written report of your proceedings?”

  Ramage bent down to open the canvas pouch he had leaned against the side of the chair, but Tewtin said: “I’ll read that later. Just tell me what brings you here with two French frigates as prizes.”

  And now, Ramage thought to himself, choose your words carefully. He had written orders from the commander-in-chief of the Channel Fleet, Admiral Clinton, for the operation he had just carried out, and these concluded that the Calypso should then return to England and report direct to the Admiralty (leaving Admiral Clinton happily distant in the event of failure). There was nothing to prevent Rear-Admiral Tewtin holding on to the two prizes (indeed, Ramage hoped he would, after he had bought them in).

  “It’s a bit of a long story, sir,” Ramage said apologetically.

  “Well, keep it short: you’re here now; where did you start from?” Tewtin smirked at Newick, as if to indicate that famous young captains were really rather silly fellows who needed a guiding hand from admirals like Tewtin.

  “At a friend’s château near Brest, where I was spending my honeymoon, sir.”

  The smirk left Tewtin’s face, but now he was clearly puzzled: was Ramage teasing him, or…“Honeymoon? Did you finally marry that Italian woman?”

  “You mean the Marchesa di Volterra, sir?” His voice was just cold enough to point out Tewtin’s lapse.

  “Yes, I think that was her name.”

  “No,” Ramage said shortly. “At the signing of the Treaty she returned to the Kingdom of Volterra – of which she is the ruler.”

  “But…well, Bonaparte must have had her arrested when the war started again.”

  “Probably. I have her nephew serving with me. She was not to be persuaded to stay in England.”

  Now Tewtin realized he had blundered but he could see no way out. “Er, you did say you were on your honeymoon? Who was the lucky woman?”

  “Yes, sir – I married the daughter of the Marquis of Rockley.”

  The embarrassed smirk vanished from Tewtin’s face as though a barber had wiped off shaving soap: he realized that with a few ill-chosen remarks he might have antagonized the son of the Earl of Blazey (who was still an admiral of the white although retired), referred to an Italian woman as though she was a tart (and now found out she in fact ruled an Italian state) and then discovered that this young puppy Ramage had married the daughter of a marquis (who had been the most powerful man in India and presumably had enormous influence with the present government in London).

  It would be hard, Tewtin thought ruefully, for a rear-admiral near the bottom of the flag list who had been lucky enough to get this job (and it was luck; he admitted that) to drop so many bricks in so short a time – less than five minutes. Anyway, the last had hit the deck; now he would handle Ramage carefully.

  “May I congratulate you?” Tewtin said. “‘All the world loves a lover’, eh? You were describing your honeymoon.”

  “Hardly that, sir,” Ramage said tightly. “I said I was staying near Brest on my honeymoon.”

  “Of course, of course. At a friend’s château when the war started again, I think you said.”

  Ramage nodded. “Yes sir. Bonaparte’s police arrested my friend, but my wife and I managed to escape. At the same time, the ship’s company of one of our brigs mutinied and ran into Brest with her–”

  “Yes, yes, I’ve heard from Their Lordships about that.”

  “Good,” Ramage said, “that shortens my story. So when we reported to the Channel Fleet–”

  Tewtin held up a hand. “Wait! Their Lordships simply warned me that the men had carried the ship in and sent me a list of their names.”

  Ramage deliberately gave a gentle sigh, hoping Tewtin would take the hint. “Y
ou asked me to start at the beginning and keep my story brief, sir, but there are some details I have to give to make sense of it.”

  “I do understand, my boy; go on,” Tewtin said encouragingly.

  “After my wife and I escaped from the château we had to think of a way of getting back to England, and also see if we could rescue our host–”

  “Your duty was to return to England and report at once to the Admiralty,” Tewtin said heavily, like a bishop admonishing an errant deacon.

  “Of course, sir, but we had no transport, and our host was a friend–”

  “Friend!” Tewtin almost exploded, slapping the arm of his chair for emphasis. “Surely you put your duty to your King before your social obligations to a friend – a Frenchman, I presume!”

  “–a friend of the Prince of Wales,” Ramage finished his sentence.

  “You don’t mean that you were staying with…”

  “The Count of Rennes is an old friend of my family, and of course apart from being a leader of the French Royalists who fled to England, he is a close friend of the Prince.”

  Tewtin hauled a large handkerchief from his pocket as though, Ramage thought, he was letting fall the Queen’s foretopsail. The admiral mopped his brow, rubbed the sides of his nose vigorously to give himself time to think, then found he had wiped the whole of his face and brow without thinking of anything: the crash of falling bricks was leaving him stunned. “Do go on,” he urged Ramage.

  “Well, sir, at the same time that we found the Count had been put on board a French frigate with many other Royalist prisoners to be transported to Devil’s Island, my wife and I and some French fishermen (Royalists, of course) managed to recapture the Murex brig that had mutinied after the villains had been taken off by the French, and sailed in time to meet the Channel Fleet, which was just arriving off Brest to resume the blockade.”