Ramage's Diamond

by Dudley Pope

  If the Admiral wanted to time the ship’s company he would find they could make sail, reef and furl as fast and as well as any frigate Ramage could remember. The only thing that could spoil it all would be for him to make a mistake while bringing the Juno into Carlisle Bay at Barbados or have a gun misfire when firing the salute, throwing out the timing. Or for the cable to kink while running through the hawse so the anchor touched the bottom a couple of minutes late, putting the ship a hundred yards or so away from where she should have anchored and perhaps letting her drift into another ship – the flagship, for instance.

  Ramage tugged his ear thoughtfully. Many a new ship joining an admiral had through some small mistake given her captain a poor reputation with the admiral that he never lived down. An anchor buoy rope too short for the depth of water, so that with the anchor down the buoy was submerged; some delay in hoisting out a boat: some trifling form not filled in and delivered to the admiral… There was also, Ramage remembered with a grin, the case of the captain who brought his ship in with a great flourish and began firing the salute without the gunner having made sure the guns were unshotted: the first gun of the salute had put a roundshot through the governor’s stables, though fortunately without killing grooms or horses.

  He picked up his hat and went up the companionway, acknowledging the Marine sentry’s salute. It was a glorious tropical night with more stars than seemed believable. Orion’s Belt, Sirius like a glinting diamond, the Milky Way wider, longer and much more distinct than in northern latitudes, and the Pole Star very low on the starboard beam, a bare twelve degrees above the horizon and the navigator’s friend. In the northern hemisphere the number of degrees the Pole Star was above the horizon throughout the night was your latitude: they would soon be in twelve degrees of latitude, running their westing down to arrive at Barbados, which was also in twelve degrees, and the Pole Star would be a dozen degrees above the horizon, having dipped a little every night from the fifty degrees of the English Channel. Being sure of your longitude, though, was a different matter…

  These nights before reaching Barbados were always the best part of a voyage to the West Indies: you remembered all the good things of the Caribbean, and forgot the bad – the whining mosquitoes that destroyed sleep, the wretched and almost invisible sand flies at dawn and sunset which attacked you as though armed with red-hot needles, the sweltering heat and humidity, the appalling sickness…

  The West Indies: from the time he was a young midshipman who would not need a razor for another year or so, the words had fascinated him. In later years he had come to know them well, from the cliffs and mountains and thick green rain forests of the southern islands of the Windwards like Grenada, St Vincent and St Lucia, to the flatter Antigua of the Leewards, drier and almost arid in parts, from the smoothly rounded high hills – one could hardly call them mountains, and they always reminded him of Tuscany – of the Virgin Islands to the green lushness and mountains of Hispaniola and Jamaica.

  The clear blue waters where you could often see the bottom at fifty feet, watching barracuda dart like silver daggers into a shoal of small fish, and the slower, grey shapes of sharks swimming smoothly, looking and waiting. And seeing the Spanish mackerel suddenly leap out of the water like a silver arrow in an arc a dozen feet high to land ten yards away in the midst of a swarm of silversides. The pelicans, outrageous looking birds and gawky when you watched them perched on a broken mangrove stump, holding out their wings like scarecrows, drying their feathers, but masters of the air when you saw them gliding along with wingtips an inch or two above the water, or searching higher in a strong wind, and suddenly diving vertically into the water, to fill the sack of skin under their long beak with fish. And the tiny laughing gulls harrying the good-natured pelicans, following them as they dived and as soon as they surfaced perching on their heads or backs, waiting eagerly to snatch any small fish that might escape from the pelican’s beak. The black frigate birds, true scavengers of the sea, long forked tails and thin wings like enormously overgrown swallows, but without the swallow’s beauty – indeed, they were menacing-looking birds, all black except for some with white breasts. The frigate bird would often hover high over some headland for an hour at a time, a black speck seemingly motionless, and then swoop and pick up some piece of garbage, never getting its feathers wet, rarely trying for a live fish. He was looking for a piece of rotten fruit, or a dead fish, stinking and bloated.

  And the land: always the palm trees, their fronds rustling with the evening breeze, and the flamboyant – now, at the beginning of the hurricane season, they would be flowering, the whole tree a great mass of scarlet as though it was on fire. The frangipani, a spindly tree with flowers like stars with a most delicate perfume. And the belle of the night, which he had been lucky enough to see a few times: a great flower that spent weeks preparing, and then bloomed in one night, becoming a mass of golden strands in a white cup. By next morning, as soon as there was any heat in the sun, it closed up and died, it’s brief beauty never seen unless someone came along with a lantern.

  Long beaches with dazzling white sand, fringed by palms and often backed by mountains covered with thick rain forests; miles of steep cliffs and fallen rocks; low-lying coasts deeply indented with bays as though rats had gnawed them and with thick mangroves lining the banks, the leaves dark green and dense, the roots growing in and out of the water like thousands of gnarled, tortured fingers grasping down to the bottom or reaching up towards the sky.

  Termites, white ants, teredos…a fallen tree was soon attacked by termites which left the outside bark apparently sound but when you touched it the trunk began to crumble; wooden houses could look well-painted but a jab with your finger might show the inside of the wood riddled by white ants. A proud ship floating at anchor in a bay whose blueness was so bright as to seem artificial, and its bottom a honeycomb where teredo had eaten up and down the grain of the wood, never breaking through the sides of the plank.

  The heat…for much of the year bearable because the Trade winds were cooling, but at other times, during the hurricane season, so humid that every movement was an effort that soaked you in perspiration. When iron rusted at a tremendous rate and cloth mildewed; when a wise captain spending any time at anchor aired sails at least every two days, and always after rain. A morning rainstorm without the sails being aired in the afternoon was asking for the black spots of mildew to speckle the sail after a warm night.

  Much beauty – indeed, a man who had never seen the Caribbean could never fully understand beauty – but always it went hand in hand with violence, the violence of Nature: whether the sudden hurricane that tore down half a town, ripped up plantations like a great scythe, washed away tons of soil with torrential rain, and sank ships as though they were children’s toy boats, or the sudden violence of sickness that struck a man or woman so that twelve hours after they walked into their homes, laughing and well, they were dying of yellow fever, shuddering in the grip of malaria or dying in agonizing spasms from the bloody flux. Violence, always violence, and never more so than among the planters, many of whom had lived in the islands for several generations. Sugar was the main produce and with it came rum, the cheapest of the ‘hot waters’, and they drank heavily, and were short-tempered, quarrelsome and often petty as those living in small communities tended to be, clannish and petulant – and hospitable, too; quick to take offence if their hospitality was not accepted.

  So the West Indies were, for him, a violent contradiction: the mysterious beauty of the belle of the night alongside the ugliness of a man dying from the black vomit; the glory of a flamboyant tree contrasting with the termite-ridden log lying beside it. And over it, war, always war. That secluded bay with the sparkling beach and waving palms could be an anchorage for enemy privateers; that sail on the horizon could be a French ship of the line. Like an animal in the jungle or a fish in the sea, one always had to be on guard: against the unknown sail and the unknown cloud – for an innocent grey cloud could in five minutes beco
me a vicious line squall which, catching a ship all aback, might send her masts crashing by the board or shred the sails from the yards. And coral reefs and shoals – one watched the colour of the sea for the hint of pale green or brown that warned of shallows, reefs or rocks, for the waters of the islands were only roughly charted, and one’s own eyes were the best charts unless you wanted to rip out the ship’s bottom. Many a captain’s first warning of a reef was the sight of a row of pelicans apparently standing on the water – whereas in fact they had their feet firmly on rocks a few inches below the surface.

  Ramage walked aft to the taffrail and looked astern, where the ship’s bubbling wake was a stream of pale green fire, like a meteor’s tail, phosphorescence that no one understood but which was often bright enough to read by. In a few days he would be back in the West Indies, where promotion was often fast for those that survived, and he wondered how he would find Rear-Admiral Davis. One thing was certain: he would do his best to bring the Juno into Carlisle Bay so that no one could fault her.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The cry of ‘Land-ho!’ from one of the lookouts aloft came just after nine in the morning, and the call from the quarterdeck ‘Where away?’ brought the answer that it stretched from two points on the starboard bow to three on the larboard.

  Ramage sent Jackson aloft with a telescope to identify the land – none of the lieutenants had ever been to the West Indies before – and three minutes later Jackson hailed that Ragged Point bore one point on the starboard bow. Southwick nodded knowingly when Ramage glanced at him: it was the eastern point of the diamond-shaped island, and a perfect landfall. They would be in Carlisle Bay by afternoon. Barbados, nearly a hundred miles out in the Atlantic to the east of the chain of other islands, was much flatter; Southwick had once commented that it ‘looked like the back o’ the Wight’, and indeed except for the palm trees along the shore it resembled part of the Isle of Wight.

  They had in fact sighted the island late; even now Southwick was taking a bearing and horizontal quadrant angle to work out the distance off, but that was one of the problems of finding Barbados: the Atlantic rollers came smashing in on the rocky eastern shore, hurling up fine spray which drifted as a thin mist, borne inshore by the Trade winds and obscuring the land from seaward.

  Well, it was there and it was Barbados all right, and in a few minutes Southwick would be giving the quartermaster another course to steer, a little more to the south-west. They would run along the south-east coast until they passed South Point and then bear up to pass Needham Point and turn into Carlisle Bay, where they would be expected because the watchtower would have reported them.

  Ramage had a smug feeling as he looked at the land, now beginning to show as a low, grey-blue smear on the western horizon, with a scattering of cloud lying athwart the tiny Trade wind clouds. In the canvas bag on his desk was all the paperwork for the Admiral, duly completed. The various heads of department on board the Juno had written out their ‘Demands for Stores’, ranging from powder for the gunner and flax, reels of thread and plugs of beeswax for the sailmaker to shirts, trousers and shoes for the purser and rope and light cordage for the bos’n, along with detailed lists of provisions. The ‘Abstracts of Remains’ would tell the Admiral how much was left on board the Juno, while the ‘Defects of Ship’ which he had drawn up with Southwick and the carpenter was fuller than that normally rendered by a captain thanks to that Monday morning inspection.

  The ship herself looked smart enough; smarter than would normally be expected after a voyage of nearly four thousand miles. The paintwork was fresh, not just scrubbed. Two days of calm had allowed men to paint over the side from stagings, and the black hull and distinctive pale yellow sheer strake glistened. The figurehead, the head and shoulders of a rather florid Juno, was newly painted, and Ramage had agreed that it should be protected by canvas for the last few days. The masts had been scraped and painted; the tips of the studding-sail booms had been painted black. All the serving on the rigging had been repainted, the big quarterdeck awning had been scrubbed. The boats stowed on the booms were newly painted and once again the black was shiny, with the yellow sheer strakes giving them a distinctive touch, matching the Juno herself.

  Ramage looked at his watch. Three or four hours to go. Well, it was time to start the routine for going into harbour. ‘Mr Aitken,’ he said quietly, ‘I’ll have the sea gaskets off the yards and harbour gaskets on, if you please.’ It was a small thing; many ships as small as frigates did not bother, but well-scrubbed harbour gaskets looked smarter; they added a flourish to sails given a ‘harbour furl’.

  The studding sails had been taken in so that the ends of the booms could be blacked, and he had decided not to set them again, but he noticed that the booms on the foretopsail yard had not been run out to their marks, and he pointed it out to Aitken.

  He passed the word for the gunner. The sea was comparatively calm and the ship was not rolling, nor would she when she altered course. When the gunner reported, Ramage said: ‘Make sure the guns are unshotted, Mr Johnson, get the half-ports off, and make ready for the salute.’

  Southwick came up from below, still holding his quadrant, and when he gave the new course to the quartermaster Aitken shouted the orders to trim the yards round.

  ‘What depth are we likely to be anchoring in, Mr Southwick?’ Ramage asked.

  ‘Eight fathoms, sir.’

  Ramage turned to the first lieutenant. ‘Have the cables ranged, Mr Aitken, if you please and we’ll be needing anchor buoy ropes for ten fathoms.’

  He looked around for his coxswain. ‘Jackson! Bend on our pendant numbers and hoist them. Those fellows in the watchtower will be having their glasses on us soon.’

  The three flags would tell the men in the watchtower that the frigate’s number was 367, and reference to the List of the Navy would show she was the Juno frigate, thirty-two guns. Ramage pictured the word being passed along the coast to Bridgetown, at the western end of Carlisle Bay, and no doubt Rear-Admiral Davis would wonder if the Juno was bringing him orders before going on to Jamaica, or whether she was another ship for his command. For sure he would have the name of her captain wrong: his Navy List would still give the old commanding officer, and the name ‘Ramage, Nicholas’ would be buried among five thousand other lieutenants.

  Ramage watched as the yards were trimmed to keep the sails full on the new course. As soon as the Juno anchored in Carlisle Bay two boats would be needed – one to take him to the flagship, or wherever Rear-Admiral Davis had his headquarters, if he was living on shore, and another for Southwick to be rowed round the ship to make sure the yards were square. The lifts were marked but ropes stretched. Ramage wanted both boats hoisted out the moment the Juno was at anchor with her sails furled.

  ‘Mr Aitken,’ Ramage told the harassed first lieutenant, ‘have both cutters ready for hoisting out, and see that the stay tackles are prepared.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ Aitken said cheerfully, and Ramage was thankful his days as a first lieutenant were over: it was a thankless job. If everything went well, no one, least of all the captain, gave you credit for careful planning; if anything went wrong, you received all the blame and the fact that some order you had given had not been carried out was no excuse.

  The word would soon get round Bridgetown that a frigate was coming in from England and people would be expecting to hear the latest gossip from London, see the latest newspapers (Ramage had remembered to buy several copies before he left for Portsmouth), and receive any mail she might be bringing. There would be invitations for the officers to dine on shore, unless Admiral Davis wanted the ship to sail immediately. Soldiers would want to hear news of the war; the ladies would be waiting avidly to hear news of the latest fashions, the latest scandals…

  For the moment Ramage was more concerned with getting the Juno into Carlisle Bay in a smart and seamanlike manner. Half the problem was that there were no regulations for many of the manoeuvres. Firing a salute, for instance: it was not laid
down whether a ship began firing the salute when the flagship came in sight – in which case there was a good chance that in a high wind it would not be heard, and puffs of smoke through the ports would be all that told the officer of the deck on board the flagship that a salute was being fired. Or did one wait until the salute could be heard on board the flagship – which could mean that it would not be completed until the ship was at anchor. Most admirals had their preferences, but one only discovered them after the salute had been fired.

  Ramage, like many captains, liked to begin the salute as he approached the anchorage, timing the approach so that the last few guns were fired as the foretopsail was backed, the anchor splashed down and the rest of the sails were furled. It was difficult because the guns had to be fired at regular intervals. Again, no interval was laid down, although most captains used five seconds, which was timed by the gunner chanting to himself: ‘If I wasn’t a gunner I shouldn’t be here, number one gun fire! If I wasn’t a gunner…’

  As the frigate turned away to the south-east, converging slightly on the coast as it trended away, the grey of the land slowly took shape, becoming low, rolling hills covered with sugar cane, which began to have colour the closer they approached. As the rest of the island came over the curvature of the earth they could see first the heads of palm trees along the beach and then the long line of the sand, glaring white with the sun almost overhead, the sea pale green as the water shallowed.