Ramage's Mutiny

by Dudley Pope

  “Provisions?” demanded the Admiral.

  “Three months on the French scale, sir, and three months’ water.”

  “Very well. The Juno should be in within a day or two—I can’t think what’s delayed that young fellow: hope he’s not going to be a disappointment. Anyway, a week from the time she arrives, eh?”

  His round face was lined, and the thick black eyebrows which jutted out of his brow like small brushes were drawn down, giving him a quaintly fierce appearance, like a truculent shoe-black. “Now, her name. I don’t like Surcouf; no need for us to celebrate a dam’ French pirate.”

  “Calypso!” Ramage was startled to find he had spoken the word aloud and hurriedly added: “Perhaps you would consider renaming her ‘Calypso,’ sir.”

  “Sounds all right, but I’ve forgotten my mythology. What does it mean, eh?”

  Captain Edwards stretched out his legs with the air of a man whose subject had just been reached on the agenda. “When Odysseus was wrecked he was cast up on the island of Ogyvia, where Calypso lived. She was a sea nymph, sir. They—er, they lived together for several years, and when Odysseus eventually wanted to leave and go home, she promised him immortality and eternal youth if he stayed.”

  “But he refused, wise fellow,” the Admiral commented. “Can think of nothing worse than living forever. Anyway, that’s the woman you had in mind, eh Ramage?”

  “Yes, sir—”

  “Why?” the Admiral interrupted bluntly. “You seemed to have the name ready on the tip of your tongue.”

  “No sir, I didn’t know you intended renaming her. I was thinking yesterday that the Jocasta frigate was rather like Odysseus, only she’s held by the Spanish in a port on the Main—”

  “Very fanciful,” sniffed Admiral Davis, “but your job will be to get her out.”

  Edwards grinned. “Zeus ordered Calypso to release Odysseus, sir. Perhaps Ramage had you in mind as Zeus: you give the Calypso frigate orders to release Odysseus—or, rather, the Jocasta frigate.”

  “It all sounds just as vague and confusin’ as Greek mythology always was when I was a boy,” the Admiral grumbled, “but the name sounds right enough. Better than that damned French pirate. Very well, Calypso she is.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Ramage said politely, turning slightly so that the sun was not in his eyes. It was getting hot now; the heat was soaking through his coat and he had tied his stock too tight: his neck would be raw in places before he could leave the Admiral’s house and loosen it.

  Admiral Davis was frowning at the back of his sleeve, as though suspicious that the gold braid and lace was really pinchbeck. He seemed almost embarrassed. But Ramage knew that admirals were never embarrassed by anything they had to say to a junior post captain—in his own case one of the most junior in the Navy List. When he left England a few months ago his name had been the last on the List. Since then perhaps a dozen more lieutenants had been made post and their names would now follow his. Promotion was by seniority, which meant being pushed up from below, helped by a high mortality among the names above you on the List: there was nothing like a bloody war to hoist you up the ladder.

  Yet Ramage could see that the Admiral was certainly at a loss for words. He now inspected the nails of his left hand, tugged at his chin and finally gestured angrily at his burly flag captain. Edwards had obviously anticipated that this would happen, and he turned to Ramage. “The Jocasta,” he said. “You know how she fell into Spanish hands?”

  “I’ve heard only gossip,” Ramage said carefully, guessing this would be his only opportunity of finding out what really happened and realizing that the Admiral could hardly bear to talk about it.

  Captain Edwards caught the Admiral’s eye, noted the approving nod, and said: “She left Cape Nicolas Mole—that’s at the western end of Hispaniola, as you probably know—some two years ago. Captain Wallis commanded her and had orders from Sir Hyde Parker at Jamaica to patrol the Mona Passage for seven weeks with the Alert and Reliance in company.

  “After three weeks the Alert sprang a leak and Captain Wallis ordered her back to the Mole. A fortnight later, on a night when the Reliance had been sent off in chase of a suspected privateer, the Jocasta’s ship’s company mutinied. They murdered Wallis and all his officers and sailed the ship to La Guaira, on the Main. There they handed her over to the Spanish, who refitted her but, as far as we know, never sent her to sea. At present she’s in Santa Cruz.”

  “Did all the ship’s company mutiny?”

  Edwards shook his head. “She had a complement of some 150 men. We think about a third of them were active mutineers.”

  “And the rest?” Ramage asked, curious about their fate. Admiral Davis snorted and slapped his knee. “They’re mutineers too! All right, Edwards, I know you don’t agree with me, but they did nothing to stop the mutiny, nor did they try to recover the ship, so they’re just as guilty.”

  “Santa Cruz,” Ramage said hurriedly, noticing Edwards’s face reddening with suppressed anger, “is it well defended?”

  “Well enough,” Edwards said grimly. “The harbour is a large lagoon. The entrance is more than half a mile long and too narrow for a ship to tack. It’s a case of ‘out boats and tow’ if the wind is foul. Forts on each side of the entrance and a third one at the lagoon end of the channel. I have a rough chart ready for you,” he added quickly, as if dismissing the forts.

  “How many guns in the forts?” Ramage asked warily. Edwards shrugged his shoulders. “We can’t be sure. Perhaps thirty or forty.”

  “Altogether?”

  “No,” Edwards said uncomfortably, “in each fort.”

  More than a hundred guns, plunging fire at point-blank range, and the target a frigate being towed past them by men rowing in boats … Ramage felt the heat going out of the sun. Most of those guns would be twenty-four- or thirty-six-pounders, against the Calypso’s twelve-pounders.

  “And the Jocasta’s in commission, so there’d be her guns as well,” he said, then suddenly realized he was thinking aloud.

  “And more than three hundred men on board her,” the Admiral said, his voice carefully neutral. “We—the Admiralty, rather—have received word that she’s to sail for Cuba in the middle of July. In four weeks’ time.”

  Ramage now found himself puzzled as well as worried. Captain Edwards’s point about Santa Cruz’s entrance being narrow and strongly defended had made him think that the Calypso was intended to make a direct attack, which would be another way of committing suicide. But now the Admiral was talking about the Jocasta sailing for Cuba. He almost sighed with relief: his imagination was making him overly nervous; Edwards was being offhand about the forts simply because there was no need to go into Santa Cruz! He looked at the Admiral, who avoided his eyes, finding something of interest at the harbour entrance. “You want me to take her as soon as she sails, sir?”

  Admiral Davis shook his head, still looking away. “The Admiralty have ordered her to be cut out of Santa Cruz,” he said tonelessly. “Want to teach the Dons a lesson, I suppose, and they won’t risk her slipping through our fingers and reaching Cuba.”

  Ramage felt the chilly ripple of fear tightening his skin: again he pictured the forts firing at the Calypso as she was towed in, and at both frigates as they sailed out. Was the fear showing in his face? He was thankful that neither the Admiral nor Edwards was looking at him. The perspiration on his brow and upper lip owed nothing to the sun; it was cold, and he wiped it away with what he hoped would seem a casual movement of his hand.

  Then he caught a glance exchanged between the two men, and although he could not interpret it he knew there was something strange and underhand about the whole business. It had begun several months ago, when he was on leave in London, a lieutenant enjoying a rest. Then suddenly he had been summoned to the Admiralty, unexpectedly made post and given command of the Juno frigate.

  All that had been very flattering; orders were addressed to “Captain Ramage” and it did not matter that his name wa
s at the bottom of the post captains in the Navy List, the most junior of them all. Then he had been sent off to the West Indies in the Juno with urgent instructions for Admiral Davis and orders to put himself under the Admiral’s command. He had known nothing about the Admiralty’s instructions, except that they concerned some “special service.” They had nothing to do with Captain Ramage; he was merely the Admiralty’s messenger.

  He had since discovered that the “special service” was the recapture of the Jocasta, and that Admiral Davis had chosen his favourite for it, a Captain Eames, and despatched him to Santa Cruz. The newly arrived Captain Ramage had been given orders appropriate for the most junior captain on the station—to blockade the French port of Fort Royal, Martinique.

  From then on, Ramage thought wryly, the Admiral’s plans had gone awry. The junior captain had caused the capture of two French frigates, sunk three others, and seized seven merchant-men. The favourite captain, as far as Ramage could make out, had come back from Santa Cruz to report complete failure. Well, war was a massive game of chance; he was prepared to admit that good luck had brought the French convoy into the trap he had set off Fort Royal, and bad luck might have prevented Eames from cutting out the Jocasta. That being so, why was he now sitting on the Admiral’s balcony at English Harbour being given orders which were—not to put too fine a point on it—the ones that Eames had already failed to carry out? Eames was a very senior captain; he was sufficiently high in the Navy List that within a year or two he could reasonably expect to be given command of a 74-gun ship.

  The reason, he decided coldly, was that Eames had failed. He had failed miserably and the Admiral was hurriedly whitewashing him. He wasn’t sending Eames back to try again, nor was he risking any of his other captains; no, he was sending out the newcomer, Captain Nicholas Ramage. A man whose name was the lowest on the post list was supposed to succeed where someone halfway up the list had failed. And failed so badly, Ramage guessed, that everyone on the station was remaining tactfully silent about it.

  Suddenly he realized that Captain Ramage was not expected to succeed; he was expected to fail. He saw it as though he had just walked from darkness into a well-lit room. Admiral Davis was protecting one of his favourites and yet, in his own curious way, he was trying to be fair. He felt guilty about it; that explained why he had left Edwards to explain the situation.

  A despatch would soon be on its way to the Admiralty in the next Post Office packet brig describing how Captain Ramage had attacked and seized the convoy off Martinique, and their Lordships would be pleased that he had captured two frigates. The despatch would be printed in the Gazette and Captain Ramage’s stock would be high.

  Admiral Davis’s next despatch would tell their Lordships how Captain Ramage had tried to cut out the Jocasta from Santa Cruz, and how he had failed. There would be no mention of Eames’s earlier attempt; as far as their Lordships would know, Ramage had been the only one sent on the “special service.” Ramage would be the Admiral’s scapegoat: it was as simple as that. And, he realized, the one person who would not care would be himself; he would be dead. There could be few survivors from a determined attempt to cut out the Jocasta.

  Not only had Eames failed, Ramage reflected bitterly, but he had raised the alarm at Santa Cruz. For the past couple of years, and probably longer, the Spanish garrison had dozed happily in the heat of the sun; the enemy was never sighted and no doubt round shot rusted in the torrential tropical showers and the carriages of the guns rotted. Then Eames had appeared off the coast and roused the Dons as surely as a prodding stick stirred up a beehive. Sentries would now be alert, rust would be hammered from the shot, and gun carriages repaired. For the next few weeks the Spaniards would be full of bustle and zeal; they would be more than ready for the Calypso frigate …

  It was unfair, of course, but it was also the Navy. No doubt in the past lieutenants and captains had complained that the First Lord of the Admiralty had favoured young Ramage, giving him orders that allowed him to cut a dash and get his name in the London Gazette with almost monotonous regularity. Still, perhaps he had enough credit at the Admiralty by now so that if he survived a complete failure at Santa Cruz—a big “if”—it would not have a disastrous effect on his career.

  What had Admiral Davis just said? The Admiralty wanted to teach the Dons a lesson? Yes, it made good sense; cut out the Jocasta from under their very noses (and hope to find some of the original mutineers still on board, so that they could be hanged for treason as well as mutiny). It would be a warning for any British seaman who might have the thought of mutiny flash across his mind on a wet and windy night; a warning to the Dons for having welcomed a mutinous ship. They seemed not to realize that the spirit of mutiny was like fire—it did not respect flags or frontiers.

  Why had Eames failed, Ramage wondered. Driven off by the guns of the forts? Went aground in the channel? Sailed down to the lagoon but found the Jocasta too strongly manned to be able to board her? The Admiral had mentioned three hundred men, twice her normal complement under British command.

  He looked up to find both the Admiral and Edwards watching him closely, as if trying to read his thoughts. Or, he suddenly realized, more like fishermen trying to see if the fish had taken the bait.

  “Captain Eames,” Ramage said diffidently, “he—er, he met with some difficulty?”

  The Admiral grunted, as though the question had given him a sharp and unexpected prod under the ribs. “Completely misunderstood his orders, unfortunately. Came back with valuable intelligence, though. Had to send him straight off on another operation, otherwise he’d be on his way back to Santa Cruz.”

  Ramage smiled politely and the Admiral smiled back, and then Edwards smiled, and all three of them knew that each understood Eames’s role. The failure at Santa Cruz was now Eames’s raddled mistress, a shrill harridan who for the rest of his life in the Navy would occasionally look over his shoulder and nag him. Officially no one would talk about her—there would probably be the occasional captain who would gossip, but that couldn’t be helped, because Admiral Davis could not hope to keep it a secret forever—but Eames would always be ashamed, always worried in case someone broke the rules and spoke.

  “Yes, we owe Captain Eames a lot for providing valuable information about the entrance,” Admiral Davis said as Edwards unfolded a piece of paper and began smoothing it out. “Edwards has a copy of the chart. Plenty of soundings on it—to seaward, anyway. And the guns—the exact number are marked in. On the two forts at the entrance, anyway …” His voice trailed off as he realized that his praise was damning Eames.

  “Neutrals,” Edwards said suddenly, obviously intending to break the silence that followed. “Eames said one or two neutral ships go in and out of Santa Cruz every week. Mostly American. These dam’ Jonathans seem to get in everywhere with their cargoes of ‘notions’ and salt fish.”

  He finished smoothing the sheet of paper and gave it to Ramage. “It’s rather a small scale, I’m afraid; Eames’s Master didn’t have time to re-draw it. No need to return it, though: I have a copy.”

  Ramage nodded. The sketch was small but it was neat and, judging by the distance from the forts at the entrance to the nearest sounding, it damned Eames for a cowardly poltroon. Ramage glanced up and saw that Edwards had read his thoughts on this occasion, but instead of causing embarrassment it seemed to hint at a friendly understanding. In the dim future Edwards might prove to be an ally—or, at least, not an enemy.

  “A week,” Admiral Davis said absently. “A week after the Juno comes in. If the Calypso is delayed much longer, I’ll have to send you men from the flagship. The Jocasta’s due to sail from Santa Cruz in four weeks—not a lot of time, even though the Dons are always late.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  BACK ON BOARD the frigate, Ramage settled down at his desk to read through the Calypso’s inventory. On the deck above his head he could hear carpenter’s mates getting ready to rig a stage over the transom to remove the board with the name Surc
ouf carved on it, and the carpenter was already over in the dockyard searching for a suitable piece of straight-grained wood on which to carve the new name of Calypso. No doubt he was cursing the choice because it included four curved letters. Carpenters preferred names like “Vixen” or “Kite” which, in capitals, meant the chisels or gouges had to cut only straight lines.

  The inventory ran to dozens of pages, each signed by the four dockyard men, and beside each item was their valuation. The first few pages covered the hull, masts and spars. Then came all the sails, blocks and cordage, as well as the spares. He noted that the French followed the Royal Navy in allowing four anchors and six cables, although at one hundred fathoms each the cables were shorter.

  He turned the pages of the rest of the inventory, the first full one he had ever seen, and although he saw many of them every day he found himself surprised at the number of items needed for a ship as small as a frigate. The reason was simple enough, of course; she was the home of more than two hundred men as well as a fighting ship which had to be sailed and navigated.

  He glanced at random at the descriptions. Three large copper kettles in which the ship’s company’s food was cooked were valued at £12 each. There were two-minute, half-hour and one-hour glasses (“with sand running free”) which cost less than he would have expected—the two-minute glasses were valued at twopence each.

  Then came the spare sails: a new main-topgallant was valued at £12 5s 4d. The list of purser’s stores had a note that the clothing was new “but of poor quality.” Well, that would have to be taken on shore; the storekeeper must get rid of it as best he could. Ramage was not having poor-quality clothing sold to his men.

  Perishable stores—the French must have gone to a lot of trouble in Fort Royal to provision the ship. He noted that, by Royal Navy standards, there was an enormous quantity of various cheeses which the dockyard surveyors had not tried to name, merely contenting themselves with the comment that they were in good condition “and strong in flavour.”