Ramage At Trafalgar

by Dudley Pope

  Jackson had already rubbed down the crown with shagreen: he was lucky to get a piece of dried shark skin from the carpenter, who hoarded his meagre supply.

  The American scrambled up on top of the capstan and carefully pulled the cork from the bottle of size. He poured some into a shallow dish and recorked the bottle. He then painted size on to the part of the crown he intended gilding, found the pair of tweezers he had borrowed from the surgeon and, using his body to act as a shield should there be a puff of wind, opened the small book of gold leaf. The leaves were an inch wide by four inches long, and each leaf so thin that the gentlest breeze would blow it away.

  He held a leaf in the tweezers and then gently tore it out. He transferred it to the part of the crown with size, blowing the leaf so that it settled on the carved wood. He then worked it in to the carver’s indentations, using a piece of wood with a finely-curved end, leaving the odd edges of the leaf to be cleaned off when the size was dry. He then sized another section and repeated the transfer of gold leaf.

  Meanwhile Rossi and Stafford had removed the drawers, emptied out their contents and placed them on a small sheet of old and paint-stained canvas.

  “Mr Aitken’s goin’ ter want ter know ’xactly how many leaves Jacko’s used,” Stafford commented.

  “Is not hard to see,” Rossi grunted. He was putting on weight round his waist and bending over to work on the drawers was uncomfortable. Finally he sat down on the canvas, holding the first drawer to be painted.

  “Gold leaf would be rare old stuff to steal,” Jackson said. “You have to be careful when you puff it on to the size: if you breathe in you’re likely to suck it into your lungs.”

  “Then you’ll be the only sailor in the King’s service with gilded lungs,” Stafford said. “Every breff costs a guinea!”

  “You know about the guinea?” Jackson asked.

  “What guinea?” Stafford asked cautiously.

  “That’s what can be rolled to make enough gold leaf like this–” he held up the book, “–to stretch round the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral.”

  “Don’t sound right ter me,” Stafford declared stoutly in the special tone he adopted to express extreme doubt.

  “Can’t help that: s’fact,” Jackson said, in turn adopting the tone of voice that showed he was not prepared to argue the point.

  “It would not go round St Peter’s dome,” Rossi said triumphantly.

  “Is that the place in Rome?”

  “Is the greatest church in the world,” the Italian maintained.

  “Not as big as St Paul’s,” Stafford declared, defending the city of London’s superiority over anything foreign.

  “Mamma mia,” Rossi said, knowing that it was an argument he could not win, since he had seen neither St Peter’s nor St Paul’s, and did not really care about their respective domes.

  “Have you mixed the white?” he asked Stafford.

  “Start off with the blue!” Stafford said crossly. “Where’s yer brains, Rosey? Start off with white and then spill some blue on it and you ‘ave an ‘ell of a job getting rid of it. Starting orf with the blue, it don’t matter if there’s a splash of white: just dab on more blue.”

  “Better not to splash,” Jackson said as he jumped off the capstan and gave it a half-turn so that his body would still shelter the other half of the crown from random puffs of wind. “You’d better get a move on – I’m half-way through the gilding, and if the bosun or the first lieutenant come along…”

  “Why d’you always get the easy jobs?” Stafford demanded.

  “I’m the only man in this ship that can gild proper, that’s why!” Jackson said. “Needs skill and patience.”

  “An’ don’t take a deep breff,” Stafford said.

  After five minutes’ silence, Stafford said: “Flat sort o’ country, this Cadiz place. All sandspits and salt-pans. Wouldn’t like to live ’ere!”

  “Why not?” demanded Rossi, who tended to defend any person, place or thing criticized by Stafford.

  “M’skeeters,” Stafford said succinctly. “Must eat yer alive at night. All that whinin’ and bitin’. Marshes and salt-pans, that’s where they like to live, an’ this place is all marshes and salt-pans.”

  “Maybe the Frogs and the Dons are relying on the mosquitoes to keep us away,” Jackson commented. “Just trying to be irritating.”

  “Reckon they’re going to sail out, Jacko?”

  “Not if they’ve got any sense,” Jackson said firmly. “Would you like to get across Lord Nelson’s hawse? Damned if I would. I heard the captain telling Mr Aitken that Lord Nelson says he wants at least twenty of ’em.”

  “Twenty what?” Stafford asked.

  Jackson groaned and said: “You know, Staff, sometimes you are so daft it’s hard to understand you. Twenty French and Spanish ships of the line destroyed, sunk, burned, captured – His Lordship doesn’t care about the details, but he’s set his mind on at least twenty.”

  “Good fer ’im,” Stafford said approvingly. “My mum always did things by the score. A score of candles, a score of eggs, an’ so on: she ’ated dozens, but scores she was very partial to. Never did understand why.”

  “She should have met His Lordship,” Jackson commented.

  A footstep and then Aitken’s soft voice said. “More talking than working, it seems to me. Who is scoring?”

  “No, sir,” Jackson said, leaning back to display how much of the crown he had so far gilded. “Not scoring, but a score. Twenty.”

  Aitken nodded. “So you heard the captain telling me, eh?”

  “Couldn’t help it, sir,” Jackson said.

  “We was just saying wot a good number a score is, sir,” Stafford said. “My mum always bought things by the score.”

  “And you stole by the gross,” Aitken commented, smiling as Rossi and Jackson began laughing.

  “I’m glad to see you started with the blue and not the white,” Aitken said and Rossi immediately began a long-winded explanation, repeating his own version of Stafford’s earlier comment.

  Aitken nodded and then said to Jackson: “There’s some gilding to be done at the entryport, while you have the size and the gold leaf out.”

  “That gold leaf, sir,” Stafford said. “You take a guinea and flatten it and you get enough gold leaf–”

  “To go round the dome of St Paul’s – yes, I know.”

  “So there!” Stafford said triumphantly to Rossi. “It’d probably go round St Peter’s twice.”

  On Thursday the wind had occasionally fluked eastward, as though teasing; Friday – yesterday – had been fine, with the wind still occasionally whiffling to the east, and then back to the north and west. Then, at midnight, it had set in from the east and Ramage and Southwick, walking up and down in the darkness of the quarterdeck, the stars above bright and the black outline of Cadiz sharp, had agreed that it looked as if it was going to stay east for a few days.

  Ramage had slept fitfully, fully dressed. Every hour or so he had gone up to the quarterdeck, talked with the officer of the deck and confirmed that the wind was staying east. The door to Cadiz was open; would the Combined Fleet make a bolt forit?

  Certainly not in the darkness: more than thirty great ships (among them two which were the biggest in the world) would want time and daylight to get their anchors up and sails set; the channel out of Cadiz, opposite the city, was only about four hundred yards wide; not enough for a big ship (with an inexperienced crew, foul bottom, probably nervous captain and several other ships around) to tack in an emergency. And unless the ship held its wind it would go aground on a two-fathom bank on the larboard hand or hit the edge of a mud bank on the starboard hand which dried out at low water.

  Ramage added a sentence to his night orders: “By dawn the Calypso must be passing south of the El Diamante bank steering for Cadiz Roads, and the captain is to be called.”

  As he tried to ward off the waves of excitement and sleep, Ramage reflected on the last few words of his night orde
rs. Yes, the captain was to be called, and to set an example of imperturbability, he would have to pretend to be asleep. But sleep when the French commander-in-chief was probably working by candlelight giving orders for the Combined Fleet to weigh and sail at daylight? And the Calypso (by a stroke of luck) the frigate whose turn it was to be close up to Cadiz Roads, so close at dawn that they would be able to see waves slapping on the breakwater and the beach at Punta de la Soledad.

  What would daylight reveal? A straightforward situation where a single signal from the Signal Book for Ships of War would tell the Euryalus what was going on? Or would it need Popham’s Code, allowing more details? Anyway, from the Euryalus the signal would be passed to the next frigate seaward and then on and on, like beacons being lit on a row of hills, until it reached the Victory.

  For days now the first signal of the day, started on its way to the Victory from the Euryalus as soon as it was light enough to distinguish the colour of the flags, had been: “The enemy as before”. The enemy, in other words, was still in Cadiz with a west wind (and perhaps no great eagerness to sail!).

  The next thing Ramage knew was Orsini banging on his door: it was still dark in the cabin, but an excited Orsini reported that dawn was about to break. Ramage wiped his face with a wet cloth, pulled on his shoes and picked up his hat after dragging on his coat. He felt grubby and greasy, his chin rasping on his stock every time he looked down.

  “Morning, sir,” Hill said politely. “Wind due east; we’re half a mile south of the El Diamante Bank in four fathoms, fore and main topsails set.”

  “Very well,” Ramage said in reply to this routine report, “keep the lead going.”

  A long and wide sandbank thrust out into the Canal Principal from the actual sea wall protecting Cadiz harbour. As Southwick had commented, it was a deliberate trap for nosy frigates who did not keep to the north-east of it.

  Yes, the sky was turning grey over to the east, above the sand dunes on the east side of the bay. No cloud was obscuring the stars which were beginning to fade. Yes, the outline of Cadiz was getting greyer and softer. He began to make out objects on the deck – the square box of the binnacle, the bulk of the mizenmast, the round-shouldered bulk of the 12-pounders and the carronades…

  Yes, there was the breakwater protecting Cadiz harbour, the Muelle de San Felipe, jutting out to the north-east. The church of San Francisco was at the landward end and, further on, two towers and yet another church (Carmen, noted on Southwick’s chart as “Conspicuous”) and the whole city (really a small town) built round the Torre de Tavira, a watch-tower which could see all round the compass.

  “General quarters, Mr Hill,” Ramage said quietly and noticed that Aitken and Southwick had come on deck. The lieutenant gave the order which started bosun’s mates hurrying through the ship, their calls twittering as they shouted vile threats to get the men out of their hammocks and standing to the guns. They would greet the dawn, as did every one of the King’s ships in wartime, with guns loaded and run out, as ready to tackle an enemy as greet a friend. The deckwash pumps groaned asthmatically as they ran water over the decks, to be followed by men sprinkling sand. There were distant shouted orders and then the dull rumble as the guns were run out.

  “Ship’s company at general quarters, sir,” Hill reported.

  “Very well,” Ramage said out of habit, and waited for the hail.

  It came first from the lookout on the larboard bow. “See a grey goose at a mile,” he bellowed in the traditional way of greeting daylight – or as much daylight as would allow that feat.

  “A short mile,” Ramage commented to Hill. The lookout was unlucky that instead of the usual (before the blockade) empty horizon there was the city of Cadiz, complete with cathedral, towers, castle and long stone mole, all less than a mile away.

  “Send the lookouts aloft, but keep the men at general quarters,” Ramage said. The wind was still east; he walked over to the binnacle box drawer and reassured himself that the copy of Popham’s Code was there, along with the Signal Book.

  Looking at the Mole of San Felipe, he took his telescope from the drawer and pulled the tube until the engraved ring was lined up. He scanned along the mole, shifting to one side so that the foremast was not in the way.

  “Come round a point to larboard,” he told Hill: the Mole was obscuring too much of the anchorage. He waited a couple of minutes and then lifted the telescope again. The nearest ships of the Combined Fleet of France and Spain were clearly visible.

  He snapped the telescope shut and in a couple of paces, was at the binnacle box drawer, taking out Popham’s Code and flicking over the pages, checking the words (in alphabetical order) and the numbers beside them.

  “Orsini,” he snapped, “make to the Euryalus the following.

  “Telegraphic code flag; then 249 – ‘enemy’, 354 – ‘have’, 864 – ‘their’, 875 –, ‘top’, 756 – ‘sails’, 986 – ‘yards’, 1374 – ‘hoisted’. Got that? Right, get it hoisted as quick as you can.

  “Mr Hill, stand by to heave-to the ship. The enemy seem to have called in their gunboats.”

  “Yes, sir: I was going to report that as soon as you had finished with the signal.”

  The gunboats – boats from the ships of the Combined Fleet with a small gun mounted temporarily in the bow – had regularly patrolled the few hundred yards directly in front of the harbour, looking as threatening as water boatmen on a village pond.

  Ramage opened the telescope and looked again. Yes, several of the ships were hoisting in boats, swigging away at staytackles and swinging the boats in to nest them on top of the spare booms and spars. Topsail yards hoisted, along with boats…today, October 19, was going to be the day the Combined Fleet sailed from Cadiz, of that he was sure.

  “The signal’s sent and the Euryalus has acknowledged, sir,” Orsini reported.

  “Ship hove-to on the starboard tack, sir,” Hill reported.

  “I’m going below to wash and shave,” Ramage said. “Keep a sharp eye on the Euryalus for signals,” he told Orsini. To Hill, he said: “Pass the word the moment there’s any sign of the enemy ships weighing anchor.”

  Shaving in cold water – with the ship’s company at general quarters the galley fire had been doused – helped waken him thoroughly: he was too impatient to strop the razor sufficiently, and this morning the soap was reluctant to lather, so that each stroke of the razor seemed as though he was wrenching out each whisker by the roots. With his eyes watering he finally rinsed his face and then combed his hair.

  Silkin waited at the door with clean underwear, fresh stockings and newly polished shoes, along with a clean stock. Ramage dressed leisurely. Thus were legends started. The captain had felt greasy and bristly and tired, in no shape to think very clearly after an almost sleepless night, and as soon as the morning’s signal had been sent off he had shaved and changed. But within a month (if they were all still alive by then) the ship’s company would have embroidered the tale so that Captain Ramage was having a leisurely shave while thirty-four ships of the line of the Combined Fleet prepared to sail and give battle with the Calypso. Ramage grinned to himself. He had heard many similar stories told about brother captains, and guessed they had similar origins. Anyway, they were a sign that a ship’s company was proud of their captain and the ship, and if it made them fight better, no harm was done. Seamen had keen eyes, and if an officer was a braggart they quickly ignored him, simply obeying orders.

  The marine sentry was announcing Orsini.

  “Mr Hill’s compliments, sir, but the Euryalus has just repeated our signal to the Sirius, and one of the enemy has just let fall a topsail.”

  Ramage pulled on a stocking. So the signal was already on its way across the fifty miles to Lord Nelson’s fleet, and the enemy were making the first (the first of thousands!) move towards sailing. The significant report would be when the first of them hove up her anchors.

  Each ship would have at least a couple of anchors down – that was, apart from any oth
er considerations, the only way of packing so many ships into such a confined anchorage without them swinging into each other. Heavy anchors and a muddy bottom: Ramage could picture the clunking of the pawls on the capstans – and the stench of the mud on the cable, with water similar to sewage being squeezed out of the strands of the rope as it came through the hawsehole…pity the poor fellows down in the cable-tier whose job it was to coil the cables as they passed below.

  Finally Ramage was dressed and he went up to the quarterdeck. In the half-hour he had been below it had turned into a fine day: three miles away to the eastward there was the gentle slope of vineyards, and then the land trended southward to the village of Santa Maria at the entrance to a small river and became dunes. They continued on to the marshes and salt-ponds on the other side of Cadiz, separated from the spit by the channel in which most of the Combined Fleet were moored.

  He examined Cadiz with the telescope. There was no flag on the Torre de Tavira, but that three-decker there, French (was she Villeneuve’s flagship, the Bucentaure?), was making signals. One ship had just started catting her anchors. Another, Spanish, was at short stay and moving ahead slowly as the capstan hauled in the remaining anchor cable. He examined the ship’s masts. There were men out along the fore and maintopsail yards – obviously throwing off gaskets.

  Yes – there’s the foretopsail let fall. The breeze is light, not enough to shake out the creases in the canvas. Now they’re bracing the yards sharp up – the captain is anxious to get under way the moment the anchor is aweigh, so that the wind does not drift him sideways on to the mudbank only a few yards on his larboard side.

  Ah, the other anchor is breaking the surface, and they’ve let fall the maintopsail. And there goes the maincourse and now the forecourse, and headsails are being hoisted. She’s under way.

  “Mr Orsini,” Ramage said briskly, “to the Euryalus: make number 370.”

  Orsini, out of habit, said: “Number 370, sir, ‘Enemy’s ships are coming out of port, or getting under sail’.”