by Dudley Pope
Only Southwick and the former Tritons had known he was not ruthless enough to carry out such a threat, but he could rely on them not only to warn the Junos that he was capable of doing so, but to embroider the threat that even the toughest of them would turn uneasily in their hammocks every night as the Juno made her way south-westwards to 'The Corner'.
Now 'The Corner' was less than thirty miles to the south, and unless this present calm patch lasted the Juno should pass the magic spot, twenty-five degrees north, twenty-five degrees west, during the night. Tomorrow would be the day the ship's company were dreading. Yet he was certain the threat had worked; for many days now Aitken and Southwick had been licking them into shape. They had reefed and furled in all weathers, sent sails down on the deck in half a gale and hoisted them up again, sent down yards for imaginary repairs and swayed them up again as black squalls drove down on them. The men had loaded guns, run them out, fired them and loaded them again until they were ready to drop. They had been roused in the middle of the night for fire drill, hoisting up the fire engine and rigging head pumps to fill the cistern, then roused again to repel imaginary boarders, man the chain pump or find imaginary leaks. They had been startled by orders to round up and pick up a man (a dummy the sailmaker had made out of a hammock) who had fallen over the side. That, Ramage reflected, had been a disaster; the seaman ordered to keep an eye on the 'body' had confused it with a large patch of floating seaweed, and the sailmaker had to make another 'body' which even now was waiting for the moment Ramage chose to repeat the manoeuvre.
Eventually Aitken had begun reporting much better times for sail handling, and the sullen atmosphere had gone. Perhaps the sunshine helped; they were now almost in the Tropics and the cold and damp of the Channel were but memories. Tomorrow he would know. Never before had he been forced to treat a ship's company like this - but never before had he inherited a ship from a drunken captain and first lieutenant, when the normal methods of training and leadership had proved useless.
It was ironic that this present calm patch was prolonging the agony: from what both Aitken and Southwick reported, the men viewed it with all the apprehension of a flogging through the fleet. Well, the Juno still had not reached 'The Corner' and found the Trades, although it looked as though she was going to be lucky this time. There was always an element of luck in it. Sometimes the North-east Trades arrived on time but many ships had to carry on south, down as far as the Cape Verde Islands, before picking them up. This time the wind was fitful and still mostly north, but for the past two days it had often veered north-east for an hour or two and, just as Ramage, Aitken and Southwick were congratulating each other that the Trades had arrived, it would suddenly back north and there would be a flurry of sail trimming. But they were nearly in the Tropics: the imaginary line in the heavens marking the Tropic of Cancer was almost overhead.
The sea was a fresh, deep blue, and the spray was warm. All the men new to the Tropics were keeping an eye open for their first sight of flying fish. The canvas awning was now rigged over the quarterdeck, and by ten o'clock in the morning the deck was getting hot. In a few days, another four or five degrees farther south, the deck would be uncomfortably hot by nine in the morning and no man, whether barefoot or wearing boots or shoes would want to stand still unless he was in shade. Paint would flake more quickly, the pitch in the deck seams that at Spithead had been brittle and cracking would be sticky, and long thin cracks, or shakes, would appear in the masts as the sun dried the wood out, and no amount of oiling would prevent it. Furled sails would have to be kept aired, otherwise they mildewed overnight; cold-weather clothing that had not been carefully washed before being stowed in seabags would sprout rich, remarkably coloured mildew, which seemed to flourish on food stains.
Already Bowen was treating half a dozen men for bad sunburn, men with very sensitive skin who had been affected before Ramage forbade anyone to be on deck without shirts for three hours either side of noon. Despite these problems caused by the hot sun, it was good to have the ship well-aired with scuttles, skylights and ports wide open; the sun, almost overhead at noon, penetrated parts of the Juno that had not seen sunlight since the ship was last in the Tropics.
As he dried his razor and put it away in its leather case, Ramage reflected that one of the few advantages of commanding a ship the size of a frigate was that the Captain could usually have hot water for shaving. Today was an exception, and his own fault, since he chose to get up a couple of hours before the galley fire was lit.
The Juno was bowling along in the darkness - groaning along, some might say, since her timbers creaked as she pitched in a sedate seesaw motion. The Trade wind had settled steadily from the north-east and with luck they would now carry it all the way to Barbados. With the following wind came the following seas and the pitching and rolling, so that water slopped out of a basin filled more than a third full and fiddles had to be fitted to the tables - narrow battens which were the only way of preventing plates and cutlery sliding off.
He could hear the rudder grumbling as the men at the wheel kept the frigate on course, and ropes creaked as they rendered through blocks. The pitching was just enough to make the lanthorn flicker as the flames tried to stay vertical - and enough to make him sit down as he prepared to pull his stockings on.
Monday morning and the first full day after passing 'The Corner'. Well, the ship's company knew what it meant. The silk of the first stocking was cold; they would have to be a few hundred miles farther south before clothes always felt warm at this time of the day. He smoothed out the wrinkles and reached for the second one, No, there would be few men on board who were looking forward to the approaching dawn. He had not been entirely fair to the men in those early days: he had discovered, by way of his coxswain, Jackson, that the drunken captain had not been the only cause of the Juno's condition. The one before him had been slack, had rarely made more than a cursory inspection of the ship, and his seamanship had been lamentable. Orders to reef or furl as a squall came up were usually given too late, so that men were injured and sails were ripped. As far as Ramage could make out, the men had spent most of their time repairing sails. And discipline had been almost non-existent.
This had inevitably thrown all the responsibility on to the other officers. Had they been good men they might have been able to manage, but they were poor specimens who played the game of favourites, hoping that by toadying to a few chosen seamen and petty officers they would have a nucleus who could be relied on. As a result, the rest of the men became the scapegoats for everything that went wrong. Naturally enough, the ship's company had split into two groups, one large and one small, the victimized and the favoured, and they had hated each other. Then that Captain had been replaced by the drunkard who had cared nothing for the way the ship was run and who had brought his own drunken First Lieutenant with him. Apparently this had finally proved too much for the other officers, who had begun drinking from sheer frustration.
Because they were frequently drunk, or ill-tempered next morning from the effects of it, the victimization had become worse. The majority of the ship's company had been reduced to sullen hulks of men who did not give a damn whether a single reef point was left tied so that a sail ripped when it was let fall, and the officers did not give a damn either, knowing that the Captain would not back them up if they tried to punish delinquents.
Ramage wriggled into his breeches, pulled on a shirt, tucked it in and buttoned up the flap. By the time Captain Ramage came on board and read himself in, the men had no faith in captains, no faith in officers and precious little faith in petty officers either, because many of them had taken advantage of the situation to indulge in bullying and they too had played favourites. It was easy enough for a bos'n's mate to 'start' a seaman he did not like, giving him a slash across the back with the rattan cane that was his badge of office. A 'starting' took only a second but the pain lasted for hours, and the bruise for several days.
By the time Ramage had learned all this he had been
more than thankful that Lord St Vincent had let him have Southwick and the dozen Tritons and sent him Aitken. Perhaps the First Lord had known more about the situation in the Juno than Ramage realized. The Admiral was reputed to be able to see through a three-inch plank, apart from being a stern disciplinarian - very stern. As a captain he had become famous in the Navy for the fact that his ship invariably had the smallest sick list of any; he was ruthless in his determination that the ship should be kept well-aired below, that the men's bedding should always be clean and dry, that they should have fresh vegetables whenever possible (it was said that he paid for them out of his own pocket at times).
As Ramage tied his stock he wondered if His Lordship had deliberately chosen him for the Juno, with all her problems. There were several 32-gun frigates in Spithead and Plymouth and any one of them would have been suitable for the West Indies. But it hardly mattered now what had been in His Lordship's mind; the fact was that Captain Ramage now commanded the Juno and even if he had inherited two years of problems created by previous captains, the Admiralty would not give a damn: he was the commanding officer and the ship's efficiency was his concern and his alone. If he could not knock the ship's company into shape there were dozens of other captains at present unemployed who would leap at the opportunity. Captains with distinguished records, brave men and fine seamen, men who were relegated to half pay simply because there were not enough ships to go round. For every dozen captains ready and willing to go to sea, there was probably only one ship.
He picked up his coat and flicked the spirals of bullion on the epaulet. A ship's company judged its captain on performance: he was judged a fair man if he enforced discipline fairly. Contrary to what many people on shore thought, a ship's company did not like an easy-going captain - he left them at the mercy of bullying officers and petty officers. They liked a captain who ran a taut ship and enforced a consistent discipline. In other words, if a seaman hoarded his tots of rum for a few days, contrary to regulations, got drunk and was caught, then the punishment was a dozen lashes. But it had to be a dozen for any man who got drunk, not a dozen for one man and two dozen for the next.
Taut and consistent discipline: that was vital. Lack of consistency, from all accounts, had cost Captain Wallis his life in the Caribbean a year or so ago. He had been a strange man who apparently delighted in having men flogged and was utterly arbitrary. He had ordered one man four dozen lashes for drunkenness and let another go unpunished on the same day. He had court-martialled one man for attempted desertion and then freed another. It had gone on like that for months in the Jocasta frigate until the ship's company had become like wild animals trapped in the jungle, frightened and reduced to fighting for survival against an unpredictable captain. One moment he might smile at them, the next he would order them six dozen lashes (though the regulations permitted no more than two dozen).
The Navy was shocked when the news had eventually filtered through that a number of the ship's company had mutinied, murdered Wallis and his officers, leaving only the master and a midshipman, and sailed the ship down to the Spanish Main, handing her over to the Spaniards at La Guaria. Then a few men who had not taken part in the mutiny escaped and managed to get back to Barbados and Jamaica with the whole miserable story of Wallis's behaviour. Although captains had not dared speak their thoughts aloud - obviously mutiny could not be tolerated - few had sympathized with the dead Wallis. Fortunately many who might have eventually shared his fate learned a lesson in time.
Ramage picked up his hat, snuffed out the lantern and left the cabin, acknowledging the salute of the sentry at his door as he climbed up the companionway. On deck it was still a starlit night, the air fresh but not yet warm, the crests of the waves picked out as swirling lines of phosphorescence. The men would not expect the inspection and drills to start before half past eight and it would do no harm for those on watch to know that the Captain was on deck freshly shaven at half past three, even before they began to wash the decks.
Aloft the great sails showed as black squares blanking out the stars. On deck there was no movement except for the two men at the wheel, the dim light from the binnacle just showing their features. Near them was the quartermaster, and Ramage knew that lookouts were watching the whole horizon, one at either bow, one at the mainchains on each side, and one on each quarter. He walked aft and as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness he saw that Aitken was the officer of the deck.
The First Lieutenant was pacing up and down the larboard side, leaving the starboard side to Ramage, who decided to take a turn round the ship. He walked forward, careful not to trip over various eyebolts, tackles and coils of rope. That was one thing about a tropical night, it was rarely ever really dark. A figure moved as he reached the mainchains - that would be the lookout stationed there. As the Juno surged forward on the long swells her bow wave reached out diagonally in the darkness as far as he could see. Occasionally a flurry of phosphorescence showed a large fish swimming away, or darting after its prey. The lookout on the starboard bow recognized him in the darkness - it was Rossi, the Genoese seaman who had served with him for more than three years.
'Nothing in sight?' Ramage said conversationally.
‘Two dolphins playing under the bow, sir. You can see them - look there!'
Through the half port Ramage saw two pale green shapes moving fast through the water, crossing back and forth across the bow, missing the stem by only a few feet.
This was a good opportunity to talk to Rossi about young Paolo. The boy was full of high spirits and anxious to learn seamanship, but there was no way of teaching him properly. The other midshipman, young Benson, had been at sea eighteen mouths or more and his knowledge of mathematics and navigation was advanced enough for him to work with the Fourth Lieutenant. Paolo still had much plain seamanship to learn before he buckled down to mathematics and navigation. Ramage was determined that the boy should first become a prime seaman, able to knot and splice, lay out on a yard in a gale of wind and furl a sail, serve a gun and handle a boat. In a ship the size of a frigate, there was only one way to give him that kind of training, and that was put to him in the charge of a good seaman.
Rossi was the right man for the job. He and Paolo could talk Italian together and Rossi had the shrewd and pleasant manner that would make it work, as well as being a prime seaman. More important, perhaps, was that to Rossi the Marchesa was almost a goddess. He was one of the dozen or so former Tritons about whom Ramage had to give news whenever he wrote to Gianna.
It took only two or three minutes to describe what he wanted done. With a man like Rossi there was no fear that he would take advantage of the job by seeking extra favours. He was proud to be chosen, he liked the boy, and was confident it would work. Choosing Rossi had yet another advantage: since both he and Paolo were Italian, it would not make the other Tritons jealous. Several of them shared the same feelings for the Marchesa and would have been proud to instruct her nephew.
With Paolo's immediate future settled, Ramage continued his walk round the ship. There was a slight dampness in the air, just enough to soak into the tiny particles of salt in his coat and make it smell musty, as though it had been in a wardrobe all winter. The ship surged under the press of sail, the long and low swell waves picking her up on the forward side of their crests so that she hissed along like a toboggan, then leaving her to pitch gently and subside as the crests passed under her, speeding on to the westward as though trying to catch up with the wind.
James Aitken walked up to the binnacle for the twentieth time during his watch and glanced at the compass. South-west by a quarter west, though he did not expect the men at the wheel to hold the ship to within a quarter point; indeed, nothing annoyed him - or the Captain - as much as men turning the wheel back and forth unnecessarily, since the rudder moving from side to side acted like the brake on the wheel of a cart. Now the ship was well balanced, with the sails trimmed to perfection, and although she wandered off course for a minute as a swell wave lifted her, s
he usually came back as the crest passed on. The quartermaster noticed his movements and glanced anxiously at the helmsman, and then up at the sails and out to the dogvane on the bulwark, where the corks and feathers on a line streamed from a small staff to give the wind direction,
Aitken would not be sorry when the Third Lieutenant relieved him: today was the famous day when the Captain had promised them an inspection and exercises the like of which they had never seen. Aitken's heart had sunk when he heard the Captain's announcement to the ship's company off the Lizard. He had estimated then that it would take a couple of months to knock the ship's company into shape. Now he thought that there was a fair chance they would get through today without too many disasters.
What had bothered Aitken was the men's attitude when he - and the other officers for that matter - joined the ship. The drunken sot who had previously commanded her had not only let the ship go to pieces - the devil knew what he did with the paint the dockyard supplied, for it certainly had not been applied to the ship, and it was not in the storeroom - but he had let the men go to pieces, too. It took a long time to train a ship's company, but they could go to ruin in a month if they were not kept up to scratch.
It was like a reputation: he remembered his old uncle Willie Aitken, a pillar of the Church in Perth if ever there was one. He had been a widower with a parcel of land, and his fences were always mended so his sheep did not stray: he was a great believer that good fences made for good neighbours. He had a reputation for driving a hard bargain but a fair one, and never a man in Perthshire could say he had ever been slow to pay his bills. But at the age of fifty Uncle Willie had taken up with a housemaid: not one of his own, but a neighbour's, and within a week Uncle Willie's reputation was not worth a handful of sheep's wool hanging on a briar. He had ended the affair within a week, but by the time he went to his grave twenty years later his reputation was only just cleared.
