by Dudley Pope
Ramage was looking round the horizon with his telescope when Aitken said laconically: “Their pump has stopped.”
Ramage swung round with his telescope. There was no more water streaming out of the pump dale and pouring over the side. The pump must have blocked, or the cranked handle jammed.
For a moment Ramage imagined himself in the French captain’s position: now would be the time of black despair. Water would still be pouring in through the leak, and now he could only get the men bailing with buckets—a hopeless job if the pump was being overwhelmed.
The rolling was getting worse: or, Ramage corrected himself, getting better. The French rate of fire was being badly affected: for longer and longer periods the guns were either pointing too high or too low to be fired. Even better, from the British point of view, the heavy roll was exposing the underwater hull so that round shot could smash through copper sheathing and make more holes in the hull to increase the leaks.
“Ah—there goes the pump again!” Aitken called as he caught sight of a small stream of water starting to run over the side again. “Not the full flow. Must be a blockage—or maybe it’s been damaged by one of our shot.”
Ramage watched as Le Jason slowly rolled to larboard again, checked and then slowly began to roll back to starboard. Then he saw men gathering at the foot of the mainshrouds.
“They’re going to furl the maintopsail,” he said to Aitken. “They want to try to reduce the rolling. Stand by to heave-to.”
At that moment the Calypso fired another broadside, and the group of men scattered, many of them vanishing below the bulwarks as round shot cut them down.
But the French frigate continued her rolling: the movement was getting massive and wild now; her masts were slicing great arcs through the sky and, Ramage realized, it would be only a matter of time before the gun ports dipped into the water.
Prisoners—or survivors, call them what you will: more than two hundred of them. No, he was not going to risk having them on board all the way to Naples: in fact with the island of Capraia just astern that was as far as he would take them. They would be prisoners on the island—unless they set to and made rafts—and they would be no danger to anyone, though they would run the local people short of food.
The French captain seemed to have given up trying to tighten the ship—he could still cut yards adrift, and he had not thrown all the booms and gratings over the side yet—but Ramage knew he must have given up: a hole in the hull which let in a leak which overcame the pump was the ultimate; apart from fire, it was the end.
With the freshening wind driving the frigate ahead, the rolling caused by the leak was giving her a curious corkscrew motion through the water, as though she was reluctant to move. Ramage watched as she rolled heavily towards him, paused for several agonizing seconds well heeled over, and then slowly rolled back again, to pause before returning.
“She hasn’t got much more time,” Southwick commented.
“Neither have we,” Ramage said. “I’ve changed my mind: we’ll put the survivors up on the fo’c’sle. I want a couple of the aftermost guns on each side trained round on to the fo’c’sle and loaded with case. And pass the word for Rennick.”
The master trotted off down the ladder, his long white hair flowing in the breeze, to arrange to have the guns slewed round and their tackles made up again. A couple of minutes later Rennick was standing in front of him, waiting for orders.
“The survivors, when we pick them up,” Ramage said.
Rennick made a face. “There’ll be plenty of them, sir.”
“I know,” Ramage said. “They might even outnumber us. But I’m going to put them on the fo’c’sle with four guns trained on them, and I want all your marines covering them but keeping out of the way of the guns. They’ll escort them from wherever they’re brought on board up to the fo’c’sle. Any nonsense, they’re to shoot to kill.”
“After they’ve swum around a bit, the French might have any wrong ideas washed out of them, sir,” Rennick said with a grin.
“I’m hoping so. But the point of keeping them up on the fo’c’sle is that I’m going to take them back to Capraia and dump them there. They’ll only be on the fo’c’sle a couple of hours, and if they give any trouble a few whiffs of case shot should quieten them down.”
“Very well, sir,” Rennick said and saluted before hurrying down the quarterdeck ladder.
Le Jason was lurching rather than rolling now: as Ramage watched the stricken ship he could imagine the hundreds of tons of water sloshing from one side and then to the other, each time the weight heeling the ship and throwing men off their feet.
“Her rate of fire is slowing down, sir,” Aitken said. “The water has probably flooded her magazine, apart from the difficulty of laying the guns.”
“She hasn’t much time left.”
“I wonder why the Frenchman hasn’t hauled down his colours.”
“It doesn’t make much difference whether he surrenders or not,” Ramage said sourly. “He’s going to sink whether or not he’s hauled down his colours. Anyway, he’s fought well. It was his navigation that put him on that rock: but for that I think we’d have had an even tougher fight.”
The more he thought about it, the more Ramage was convinced that his gunners were only wasting powder: they could not damage the enemy more effectively than she was already, and it was time for the guns’ crews to get muskets and pikes, pistols and tomahawks ready for the influx of French survivors.
He gave the order to Aitken which would silence the guns for the first time since they had opened fire on the first frigate, and which would send the men to get the weapons allocated to them in the quarters bill. Most of the men had a note against their name indicating what weapons they were to have, and whether they were boarders if the Calypso should board another ship.
A sudden hush fell over the Calypso as the guns stopped firing and all that Ramage could hear was the rush of the sea against the hull and the occasional slatting of a sail. He realized that he was deafened by the broadsides and he held his nose and blew hard, but it made no difference.
Southwick hurried back to the quarterdeck. “Those guns are trained round, sir,” he said. “We can’t get the tackles hooked on to anything substantial, so there’s no telling how they’ll recoil. Still, only have to fire them once, I expect,” he said complacently.
“Probably not even once,” Ramage said. “We’ll point them out to the French officers: that should do the trick.”
Even as he spoke he watched the French frigate heel right over until her deck on the larboard side was in the water. She seemed to stay there for an age, and then, as though tired of the struggle, she very slowly capsized: the masts came down below horizontal, the yards slewing round, and the trucks of the masts dipped into the sea and then began to sink as the ship continued turning.
She turned very slowly, great bubbles of air bursting out through the hatchways and ports. Ramage saw the Tricolour dip into the water and then there were splashes as guns broke loose and dropped through the ship’s side.
“Furl the maintopsail,” Ramage snapped at Aitken, and to Southwick he said: “Get the boats hauled round ready.”
From a distance of fifty yards Ramage found the sight of the frigate sinking both sad and, in another sense, a relief. It was sad because the sinking of any handsome ship—and Le Jason was a handsome ship—was always distressing, and yet a relief because her guns could not kill or wound any more men of the Calypso.
While the boats were hauled round alongside, Southwick was shouting orders for the boats’ crews to stand by, and while the men left the guns and ran to their stations, Ramage watched Le Jason. She had turned over completely and was lying in the water like a great turtle. Her copper sheathing was green except near the waterline, where it was pitted, restored to its normal colour by shots which had torn into it ‘twixt wind and water.
Great gouts of air escaped as the capsized hull rolled; then it gave a gigantic convulsion a
s though shaking itself free of something. Ramage guessed that the masts had come adrift. A minute or two later he saw first one and then another mast break water close beside the hull, a tangle of spars and rigging, and now freed of their weight the hull began to slide below the surface, water erupting in little volcanoes, propelled by random air pockets.
The surface of the sea was scattered with floating wreckage. Here and there he could see men, random black figures, clinging to spars.
Now all that was left was a great circle of smooth water, punctuated every now and again by a bubble of air coming up from the sinking ship. More pieces of wreckage, spars and other pieces of wood breaking loose came up to the surface, shooting out of the water like lances with the force of their buoyancy.
By now Aitken had the Calypso lying-to, and Ramage told him: “Get the boats away and start picking up survivors. Two marines in every boat as guards.”
Within five minutes the Calypso’s four boats were rowing round, through the wreckage, dragging men out of the water and, with little ceremony, tossing them into the bottom of the boats.
The first boat came back to the Calypso with more than twenty survivors. The two marine guards looked almost sheepish because the rescued Frenchmen were coughing or vomiting; there was no fight left in even one of them.
Rennick was waiting with Ramage by the entry port and as soon as the survivors arrived on deck they were escorted, five at a time, on to the fo’c’sle.
“We’ve nothing to worry about from those fellows for an hour or so,” Rennick remarked.
“No, it’s the old story of few of them being able to swim.”
“I don’t think many escaped from the ship, sir,” Rennick said.
Ramage shook his head. “No. I did a very rough count and saw about a hundred. Looks as though more than half of them went down with the ship.”
“Yes, even though she was rolling heavily, she went very suddenly in the end.”
When the third boat came alongside the cox’n shouted up: “We’ve got a couple of officers here, sir!”
When the two men were helped up the ship’s side, clothes torn and hair soaking, Ramage walked over to them and said in French: “Perhaps you would introduce yourselves.”
The elder of the two bowed, coughing at the same time: “Jean-Louis Peyrafitte, lieutenant de vaisseau, and captain of Le Jason, frigate. This,” he indicated the other man, “is the second lieutenant. He was with me on the quarterdeck.”
“M. Peyrafitte,” Ramage said, “I am afraid you have lost at least half your ship’s company.”
“I know. It was my fault. I did not realize she was so near capsizing. I should have cleared the decks.”
Ramage shrugged his shoulders. “It was easier to see from over here,” he said quietly. “You fought until the last moment.”
The Frenchman looked up for the first time. “You think?”
Ramage nodded. “You were rolling so much that I don’t know how your men aimed their guns.”
Now it was the turn of the Frenchman to shrug. He gestured round the Calypso’s decks and then up at the masts. “They were not very successful,” he said sadly.
“They were earlier,” Ramage said grimly. “I lost some good men.”
He turned to Rennick. “Put a marine guard on these two and then take them down to my cabin: they can dry off there.”
Rennick was about to protest that the wardroom would be more suitable when he realized that Ramage was paying a small tribute to the French captain’s bravery. “Very well, sir,” he said.
Ramage saw Orsini and told him: “Go down and tell my steward to give these two men towels and dry clothes.”
For more than three quarters of an hour the boats combed the wreckage for survivors, but when they were finally recalled they had found only 163 men. The only officers to survive were still the two found by the third boat, the captain and second lieutenant. Most of the others, Ramage guessed, had stayed with their divisions of guns.
Finally, the four boats were hoisted on board, the fore-topsail and maintopsail were hoisted, and Ramage gave orders for the Calypso to wear round and set a course for Capraia.
“I wonder what we’ll find with the other frigate,” Southwick said.
Ramage laughed. “You want two frigates in one day, eh?”
“I don’t see why not,” the master said.
“Pass the word for Bowen—providing he’s not in the middle of operating. I want to know what the butcher’s bill comes to.”
Bowen came up on deck, his clothes still bloodstained, and reported to Ramage.
“Twelve dead from gunshot wounds and splinters, five badly wounded from splinters, and seven slightly wounded, gunshot and splinters, plus one man completely dazed when the gun was dismounted. It’s only the second time I’ve seen such a case, but he is speechless and although he’s not deaf, he doesn’t understand what is said to him.”
“We’ve been lucky,” Ramage said grimly. “If Le Jason had not had that leak, we could have lost half a hundred men.”
Bowen looked up at the ragged group of men up on the fo’c’sle. “At least. Are those the French survivors?”
“A hundred and sixty-three, and two officers.”
“How many men did she have on board?”
“I haven’t asked the captain yet, but probably about two hundred and fifty.”
CHAPTER SIX
THE trip back to Capraia was a run of less than two hours, and Ramage steered for a position on the coast about three miles north of the little port. He took the Calypso in to three quarters of a mile from the beach and then, wary of the kind of outlying rocks that had holed Le Jason, brought the frigate head to wind and anchored.
“Hoist out the boats, Mr Aitken,” he said after Southwick assured him the anchor was well dug in. “Let’s get rid of our passengers.”
During the run back to the island he had a long talk with Peyrafitte. Le Jason had had a complement of 277 when she began the action, so that 112 men had been lost, either from the Calypso’s gunfire or by drowning.
The French captain confirmed that the ship had hit a rock off Capraia and the impact had started several planks. At first the pump had kept up with the leak but after that Le Jason’s speed through the water while engaging the Calypso had made it worse, and towards the end he was having to take men away from the guns to replace those exhausted at the pump.
Peyrafitte, a stocky and black-haired man with deep brown eyes, said ruefully: “But for the leak, we may have taken you!”
“You had 50 more men and we had the same number of guns,” Ramage said. “We should both have lost a great number of men.”
“I did anyway,” Peyrafitte commented.
Ramage shrugged his shoulders. “There could have been more. Considering everything, you are fortunate that you have more than half your men up on the fo’c’sle.”
“I know,” the Frenchman said, “but I will have to account to my admiral for my navigation.”
“Your navigation?” asked a puzzled Ramage.
“That rock,” Peyrafitte explained. “It was shown on my chart. I thought we were farther offshore.”
“Your chart is better than mine: I had no indication that there were any rocks there.”
It was the Frenchman’s turn to shrug. “Your chart showed no rock and mine did. You didn’t hit it and I did. My admiral will want to know why. He will order a court of inquiry …”
“But a court of inquiry is routine anyway,” Ramage protested.
“Yes,” the Frenchman agreed, “but what can I answer when they question me? They won’t even know that your chart did not show a rock: it will be enough that mine did and I hit it.”
Ramage wanted to console the man: he had fought bravely and he had been beaten by a leak. But from what Ramage had heard the French Navy dealt harshly with anyone who made mistakes, even if they involved misjudging the position of a rock by a few score yards in the midst of an action.
It took an hou
r to ferry the prisoners ashore. The two hours spent up on the fo’c’sle had done much to revive their spirits; so much so that Ramage told Rennick to put four marines in each boat, just in case a wild spirit decided to try to rouse his comrades into making an attempt to get control.
The first frigate, Le Tigre, was out of sight round the bend in the coast, and after the boats had returned and men had weighed anchor, Ramage ordered the ship to general quarters.
“She probably won’t be there,” he said sourly to Aitken.
“They’ve certainly had time to send up the yards, but we damaged the main-yard.”
“She could have got under way with topsails,” Ramage said. “She could have gone southabout round the island and we would not have seen her.”
“Well, we gave her a battering,” Aitken said. “For sure the captain won’t be able to use his cabin without dockyard repairs!”
Ramage recalled the raking broadsides they had poured into Le Tigre’s stern. How many of those broadsides had swept the length of the ship, dismounting guns and slaughtering men? Perhaps not enough to prevent her escaping while the Calypso pursued Le Jason.
Jackson sat on the deck surrounded by his gun’s crew. Stafford said firmly:
“She won’t be there. She’s had plenty of time to bolt. You fink she’s going ter ‘ang about after Le Jason came down to rescue ‘er?”
“Didn’t do Le Jason much good,” Rossi observed.
“Nah, but what’s ter stop Le Tigre escaping?”
