The Ramage Touch (9 page)

Ramage was not sure what had gone on in the gunroom during the
Calypso
’s Atlantic crossing, but Benn had been quick to ask for permission to leave the ship on arriving in Gibraltar, and Aitken, when asked by Ramage about what was a very unusual request, merely smiled and said he supported it. So Admiral Foxe-Foote’s favourite had left the ship and thrown himself on the mercy of the port admiral at Gibraltar in what Ramage soon discovered was, for Benn, a very unwise move.

When Ramage had reported to the port admiral next day and asked for a replacement, the admiral had bellowed (he rarely spoke in anything less): ‘Count yourself lucky to have got rid of that lapdog of Admiral Foote’s. Wonder you accepted him. Still, your fellows made his life a misery – and now I’m landed with him. There’s no commanding officer I dislike enough to inflict with him, so he goes back to England as a passenger by the next ship and Their Lordships can find him a berth – if they confirm his promotion. Now you want a replacement, eh?’

Ramage had agreed politely that the
Calypso
stood in need of a fourth-lieutenant.

‘What happened to your original one?’ the admiral demanded.

‘Promoted to third, sir.’

‘What happened to the third, then?’

‘Promoted to second.’

‘And the second?’

‘Killed in action, sir.’

‘Hmm. So you can’t be as bad as your late fourth-lieutenant implied. He told me you were always changing officers. I’m asking because you are going to be landed with one of
my
favourites. He’s a good lad, passed for lieutenant five months ago, plays a flute–’

‘A
flute
, sir?’

‘Yes, you know, a hollow stick with holes drilled in it. You blow into it with your mouth like this.’ The admiral gave a passable imitation of an old dowager sucking a bitter lemon. ‘Very tuneful.’

‘Er – I’m just wondering, sir,’ Ramage said warily, ‘if this young man really is suited to a frigate: after all, it–’

The admiral roared with laughter and slapped the table in front of him with a hand the size of a leg of mutton. ‘Damme, Ramage, if you don’t have the sheepish look of someone trying to jilt the parson’s daughter! Don’t fret – this lad’s a favourite o’ mine because he’s good and because his father is the master shipwright at the Chatham yard. He built his own skiff when he was eight and rowed all the way to Sheerness on its maiden voyage.’ The admiral looked directly at Ramage. ‘I have fresh orders for you from Their Lordships, and I know what they are. I want you to take this lad because he can learn a lot from you – if he lives long enough.’

‘Those sort of orders, sir?’

‘What? Oh no, I’m thinking of the lad. He’s too keen, if anything. You’ve learned already there are two kinds of keen officers – those who get killed in a blaze of glory, and those who
survive
in a blaze of glory. I see new hair growing over a pink patch on your scalp, there are a couple of scars over your right eyebrow, and you’re holding your left arm stiffly, so you’ve been wounded a few times – unless you were careless when getting out of some trollop’s bed. I’d say you haven’t made up your mind yet – or fate hasn’t, rather – exactly which of the two you are. If you survive, and young “Blower” Martin does, too, I hope he’ll go a long way with you.’

‘Blower’ Martin had since proved to be a very capable and popular young officer: his nickname was intended to tease because he could make a flute do almost everything except actually talk, and many an evening as the
Calypso
struggled eastward along the Spanish coast against light headwinds young Martin had started playing with perhaps a couple of people listening, and ended up with nearly every off-watch seaman in the ship squatting nearby, perched on guns or just lying back on the deck planking. Sometimes they danced, applauding themselves between tunes.

Thin-faced with wavy brown hair, slightly built and nervous and jerky in manner, Martin seemed out of place in uniform – until you watched him on deck. His eyes were never still. They would run along the horizon, up to the luffs of the topsails, along sheets and braces, to the compass card…the restless eyes of a true seaman, someone unlikely ever to be caught by a white squall, a badly trimmed sail, a stuck compass card, or an enemy ship sneaking over the horizon. Now, after not more than a few days, he had his own command for a day or so.

Like Paolo, he had to make the best of a prize at anchor, but that would be exciting enough. Ramage recalled the first time he had ever been sent off in command of a prize as a young midshipman. For a few hours he felt the greatest sense of freedom that he could ever remember – but the feeling had lasted only until sunset. Then the prospect of a long, dark night had brought doubts and fears…confidence had vanished, black clouds on the horizon looked like the outriders of the most terrible storm, the sea had suddenly become vast and the prize had shrunk. His confidence returned with daylight, and he found he had learned his first real lesson in leadership – that it was a lonely business, but no more difficult in the dark.

Lonely, but exhilarating: here he was sitting in an armchair in the coach of a frigate he had captured and now commanded, and he was back in the Mediterranean with the kind of orders he had always dreamed of getting. They said, in effect, that for four months you sail round the Mediterranean and sink, burn or destroy everything that presents itself…

An idea flitted across his mind and he took out his keys as he went to the desk and removed the canvas bag in the locked drawer. The neck of the bag had several brass grommets worked into it, so that the line passing through them could close it up. Inside was a small ingot of lead weighing three or four pounds – enough to sink the bag and its contents if it was thrown over the side in an emergency. Some captains preferred a wooden box suitably weighted and drilled with holes, but he liked a bag: it was easier to throw and more certain to sink. There was the story of a captain who threw the box containing all his secret papers into the sea but forgot to lock it so that the lid popped open when the lead weight sank it just as the enemy boarding party approached. The signal book, the private signals for three months and his order book had all floated to the surface, where they were fished out by the French. The captain had been court-martialled as soon as the French exchanged him, and dismissed the service. The Admiralty did not give you a second chance where secret papers were concerned…

He took out his orders and read them again. They had been worded very carefully by Their Lordships, who knew only too well that most officers went over them searching for loopholes which would give an excuse for doing either more or less than was written. Ramage considered that there were two aspects to a set of orders – the wording and the spirit. You could ignore the precise wording and act in the spirit, though if you failed you were court-martialled on the precise wording. He ran a finger along the appropriate lines…yes, these orders had a loophole.

An appropriate word, loophole: it meant the slot or loop in the wall of a fortress through which you could fire down at the enemy, whether using a bow and arrow or a musket. Or, in this case, a bomb ketch. The orders had a loophole big enough for two bomb ketches to sail through because Their Lordships referred only to ‘the enemy’ without specifying (as they usually did) ‘enemy ships and vessels’. He folded the single sheet, slid it back into the canvas bag, pulled the drawstring tight, replaced the bag in the drawer and turned the key.

‘Pass the word for Mr Aitken,’ he called to the sentry. It was time for the
Calypso
to sail under French colours again – or at least stay at anchor under them. There was time for them all to learn more about firing mortars. French shells, French powder…plenty of target practice at no expense to Their Lordships; the gunner would have no forms to fill in though this would not stop the miserable wretch grumbling; he grumbled in the same way that a damaged cask dripped…There were no villages within ten miles of this stretch of beach; the nearest French were probably at the little fort of La Rocchette – if they bothered to garrison it. There might be a few Italian fishermen or hunters in the area, but whoever they were, French or Italians, they would not become alarmed at seeing ships with French flags firing on to deserted beaches in what was obviously target practice. A passing cavalry might pause and watch the fall of shot, and no doubt comment on the Navy’s skill with mortars, or lack of it.

Lieutenant William Martin was just twenty-three years old, celebrating his birthday on the day he joined the
Calypso
. He celebrated it quietly, keeping the fact to himself, because no one in his right mind joining a new ship as the most junior lieutenant would announce it was his birthday; that would be asking for everything in the history of gunroom practical jokes to be played on him.

Twenty-three. Eight years at sea as a captain’s servant, then midshipman, and then he had passed for lieutenant. Not a brilliant pass (not that they gave marks) but he was one of only three that passed out of the nine hopefuls presenting themselves at Gibraltar to the specially convened board of four captains. All four captains knew his father; all would no doubt be taking their ships into Chatham at some time or another, requiring work done in the dockyard. All would no doubt expect favours from his father as a result of passing his son.

All four, William Martin thought with satisfaction, would be disappointed, because he had not told his father their names. He was not ungrateful, but when he discovered from the other midshipmen the kind of questions they had been asked and the answers they had given, he knew he would have passed whether or not he was the son of the master shipwright at Chatham. None of the captains had offered him a berth as a lieutenant, so he owed them nothing. He had had to wait another three years, serving as a master’s mate, until the
Calypso
gave him a chance and now he was serving with Mr Ramage he was prepared to admit the wait had been worth it. They had not done anything very much up to now, but the gunroom gossip was that Mr Ramage’s orders were to make as much trouble in the Mediterranean as possible in four months, which was like giving a bull his own china shop.

Peter Kenton, the third-lieutenant, although a year younger had served with Mr Ramage in the West Indies and just about worshipped him. So did Wagstaffe, the second. Mr Aitken was remote and did not mix much and certainly rarely revealed his feelings unless he was angry. But it was obvious that he respected the Captain, and Mr Aitken was the kind of man that most people in turn respected. Yet Mr Ramage was hot-tempered, impatient, had a caustic tongue, and obviously did not stand fools gladly. The lads told some remarkable stories about Admiral Foxe-Foote, the commander-in-chief at Jamaica and a fool among fools.

Apparently Mr Ramage had rescued an Italian marchesa from somewhere nearby, and Paolo Orsini, the
Calypso
’s only midshipman, was her nephew. Well, Orsini was a bright and eager youngster. Some of the men who had helped rescue her were still serving with Mr Ramage and, according to Southwick (who also knew her), these seamen had formed themselves into a special guard, without Mr Ramage knowing it, and now they also kept an eye on young Orsini, half because they knew how upset the Marchesa would be if anything happened to the boy, but also because they seemed to regard the Captain, the Marchesa and Orsini as a family to which they owed their loyalty. It sounded a bit like some Caesar with a – what was it called, he had learned it at school? Praetorian guard? Something like that.

It was all a long way from Rochester. This stretch of Tuscan coast was beautiful, with the big rounded hills becoming more pointed and mountainous as they went farther inland. He had grown up amid the flat marshy land on either side of the River Medway; he had been a boy of the saltings, trapping wild duck over the marshes and bringing home sea kale which they were thankful to boil as vegetables, because there was never enough money in a family that included three brothers and four sisters.

His father had let him roam in the dockyard; he had watched many a 74-gun ship grow from a baulk of timber until it was a great thing of beauty and menace sliding down the ways to the cheers of hundreds of people, launched with a bottle of port wine. Frigates, sloops – aye, even some bomb ketches – had been built and launched at Chatham, but no launching had excited him more than that of the
Bellerophon
. There was, of course, a 74-gun ship called the
Bellerophon
, better known to her men as the Billy Ruff’n, but his
Bellerophon
had been seven feet long, a cross between a punt and a skiff. He had made her from scraps of timber and copper rivets and roves which he had cadged from the shipwrights.

His father and the shipwrights had prepared a surprise for him: they had taken over one of the vacant building slips, carried the skiff to it overnight and fitted it on to a small, weighted carriage which, when a line was jerked, would run down into the water and launch the skiff. One Saturday morning at the midday break he launched the
Bellerophon
, tossing a tankard of good Kentish ale over her bow as he named her, and going red with embarrassment as she slid down the ways and the shipwrights gave him and the skiff each three cheers and a tiger. And then, with the
Bellerophon
floating in the water, he had suddenly realized that his father was still standing there with his men and they were all grinning. It was then he remembered he had built the boat but forgotten to make oars.

Then, from behind a nearby shed, a shipwright had brought a pair of oars and given them to his father, who had presented them to him amid even more cheers. They were beautiful oars, made from ash and perfectly balanced, with strips of copper sheathing protecting the tips of the blades. With that he had rowed round to Hoo, thankful that it was nearly high water so that he could get the skiff up to the stretch of gritty beach in front of their house – at low water several hundred yards of smelly mud separated them from the river – and his mother, admiring the boat, had agreed that next day he could miss church and take half a loaf and a piece of cheese and row down the river towards Sheerness.