Governor Ramage RN

Chapter Four

Ramage was hot when he sat down at the desk in his tiny cabin on board the Triton later that day. He was pleasantly drowsy from the champagne Yorke had produced and pleasantly bloated from a superb meal cooked by the French chef in the St Brieuc entourage.

The perspiration soaking his clothes and trickling down his face was not entirely due to the sun heating his box of a cabin. Warmth came in waves, as if a furnace door was opened, when he thought about the past couple of hours on board the Topaz-He was flushed with embarrassment for his behaviour.

My only excuse, he thought to himself, is that it's been months since I talked to intelligent and sophisticated people. And they are the first people outside the Service or the family with whom I've ever discussed the Goddard business. And, dammit, I feel all the better for it. Indiscreet I may have been, and Goddard and his cronies would call it disloyal, but somehow the idea of Goddard setting a trap for me doesn't seem so frightening now and I don't feel so damned lonely. There's nothing Yorke or the Frenchman can do; there's nothing anyone can do, short of wafting Goddard off to the Indian Ocean. He and Croucher have a free hand but maybe I can survive by staying wide awake...

On board the Topaz, because of an encouraging word from St Brieuc, a puzzled lift of Maxine's eyebrows, a polite question from St Cast and a blunt question from Yorke, I talked and talked. I told them about the rescue of Gianna, the trial at Bastia, losing the Kathleen cutter, the battle of Cape St Vincent and capturing the St Lucia privateers. I also amused them with tales about Goddard and Croucher...

Come to think of it, he mused, I don't feel as embarrassed as I should. In fact I feel curiously free: the sensation of being trapped, so strong at the conference and almost crushing later at that bizarre interview with Goddard, has gone completely. I have got my confidence back and feel positively jaunty. Somehow they all seemed to understand much more than I'd expected, and Maxine seemed to grasp how lonely it was being on a distant station at the mercy of a vindictive admiral...

Ramage shook his head; Maxine with her exciting body and delicious accent wasn't a convoy plan, and he had a convoy plan to draw up. He put the instructions and orders to one side, with the list of the forty-nine merchantmen on top, cleaned the point of his pen, unscrewed the cap of the inkwell and then scratched his chin with the feather of the quill.

The convoy comprised forty-nine ships; they were to sail in seven columns of seven. He smoothed out a clean sheet of paper and drew seven evenly spaced dots in a line across the top. These were the ships leading the seven columns. Beneath each dot he added six more, one below the other, until he had drawn a square full of dots, seven along each edge - and seven horizontally, vertically and diagonally. A pity seven's not my lucky number, he thought inconsequentially. Six letters in Maxine's name and in his surname. Fascinating - and probably forty-nine dots make a magic square, and if you keep on making the knight's move starting from one particular dot, the track you make spells out your sweetheart's name.

Not many captains bother to draw convoy plans; but not many captains have an admiral watching every move for a mistake and probably working out ambiguous orders and complicated manoeuvres to make sure a mistake occurs. Having a clear plan showing every ship in the convoy by name and pendant number was good insurance. A sudden order from the flagship would not mean rushing to look up written lists and wasting time.

Most shipowners had no imagination, to judge by the names on the list. They seemed to favour the husband-and-wife tombstone names. The William and Grace, the Benjamin and Mary... Might be worth suggesting that Yorke use Samson and Delilah.

Dip and scratch, dip and scratch ... The names of the seven leading ships were in place. The champagne was no help; nor was Maxine's face smiling up from the paper. In the tropical heat and the privacy of the Topaz's saloon she'd worn a dress of thin lacy white silk. The new French fashion had its advantages: without corsets you could at least see a woman's natural shape, and the clinging silk had cupped Maxine's breasts as if ... he jabbed the pen in the ink and looked at the next name on the list of ships.

The present system of numbering for small convoys had been invented by his father, he remembered sourly. The left-hand column was led by No. 11, with 12, 13 and 14 and so on following astern, while the second column was led by 21, the third by 31 and so on right across to 71, which led the seventh column, and down to 77, which was the seventh (and last) ship in the seventh column. The advantage of the system was the ease of finding a ship: number 45 was the fifth in the fourth column; 72 was the second in the seventh column.

Round the box of ships were the escorts. No point in marking in their positions since the Admiral hadn't given any indication of what he intended and they would probably change frequently, governed by the direction of the wind. Obviously Goddard would keep the frigates up to windward, ready to run down and drive off enemy ships or investigate strange sail. He expected to see Goddard's flagship in the middle of the convoy, but no number was allocated to the Lion. Apparently she'd stayed outside the convoy all the way from England, instead of being in the middle as a focal point. Was Goddard afraid of the indignity of having his flagship rammed by a merchantman in the middle of the night? It was a reasonable fear.

Yorke must be regarded as a steady captain: the Topaz was No. 71, leading the seventh column. On a voyage like this, where the wind would probably be from the east or north-east - providing the Trades stayed constant - the seventh column would also be the one to windward. This meant the Topaz would be the pivot, and providing she and the ships in her column kept their positions, there was a good chance the rest of the convoy would too. As the Marines and soldiers termed it, the Topaz would be the right marker; the ships leading the other columns would keep in position on her larboard side, each two cables' distance - four hundred yards - apart; each ship would be a cable astern of her next ahead - in theory, anyway.

In practice, Ramage thought savagely, the frigates and the Triton and Lark will be dashing back and forth like snapping sheepdogs trying to keep the flock together. The merchantmen would scatter, not giving a damn for orders, and apparently oblivious that the convoy's safety lay in concentrating, so that the escorts could protect them from enemy ships lurking on the edge of the horizon, just far enough away to be safe from the guarding shepherds, just close enough to dash in and carry off a sheep that strayed in the night...

It's bad enough for any man-o'-war's captain to have to escort a convoy, Ramage thought, but when people like Goddard and Croucher are in charge it savours of the "cruel and unnatural punishments" forbidden by the Regulations and Instructions ...

He filled in the other names on his plan. They were an odd collection; proof, if any was needed, that Britain was short of ships and shipowners were sending anything that would float to sea. Some of the ships would stay in Jamaica for the hurricane season, so the convoy's arrival at Kingston would be the signal for ships of war to lower their boats and send lieutenants and boarding parties off to the merchantmen to press as many seamen as possible.

The masters would let their best men row for the shore, to hide until it was time to sail or until the ships of war left them in peace again. There was little chance of the men deserting - the masters ensured their return by keeping most of the pay due to them. Still, for the seamen, hanging around the quayside was to risk being picked up by a roving press gang or falling into the hands of a crimp who sold his victims to the highest bidder - a master short of men, a Navy captain desperate enough to buy men out of his own pocket rather than risk sailing dangerously shorthanded.

A clattering of feet on the ladder outside the cabin was followed by the Marine sentry stamping to attention and calling, "Mr Southwick, sir!"

At Ramage's hail, the Triton's Master came into the cabin, his mop of white hair plastered down with perspiration, his forehead marked with a band where his hat had been pressing the skin.

"Boat just left the flagship and coming our way, sir."

"Who's in it?"

"A lieutenant, sir. Thought I'd better warn you."

Ramage glanced up. Gossip must travel fast - the old Master was obviously worried on his behalf.

"There's no need to worry until you see our pendant and the signal for a captain!"

"Aye aye, sir. It's just that with those two..."

"No disrespect to the flag, Mr Southwick." The mock severity brought a grin from Southwick.

"I'm not being disrespectful, sir," the old man said with a sudden burst of anger, "just mutinous, seditious, treasonable, and anything else that's forbidden by the Articles of War."

Ramage felt a great affection for Southwick. The Master had the chubby, pink, almost cherubic face of an amiable country parson - and the build of one. Once stocky, he was now verging on portly. His hair, grey and white, long and usually sticking out like a windblown halo, would have looked well on a bishop. But Southwick's looks were deceptive. Apart from being an extremely competent seaman and a good navigator, he was a born fighter: the prospect of battle transformed the benevolent vicar into a malevolent butcher.

Southwick was as old as Ramage's father. For many men in late middle age, taking orders from a lieutenant just past his twenty-first birthday was hard to accept. They had to accept it, of course, because it was part of the system, backed by tradition and the Articles of War. On board a merchantman the master was the captain; in a ship of war the master was simply the sailing master, the man responsible, under the captain's orders, for the sailing of the ship. Masters held their jobs by virtue of a warrant; they did not even have the commission granted the lowliest lieutenant a day past being a midshipman or master's mate.

Ramage's relationship with Southwick was unusual. In many ships with young captains, an elderly master just did his job: no omissions, no errors and no helping hand. If the captain made a mistake, the master pointed it out later but rarely in time for it to be avoided.

Southwick understood - without ever having experienced it - that commanding and making decisions was a lonely occupation, and he made allowances. He treated all the seamen impartially as well-meaning but oft-erring scallywags; schoolboys to be taught patiently what they didn't know and forever watched because of their capacity for mischief.

Southwick looked at the convoy plan.

"Forty-nine ships and quite an escort," he growled, as though suspicious.

"It's a big convoy. The Admiral expected more frigates."

"No admiral ever had enough frigates. Still, it's a biggish convoy for inside the Caribbean," Southwick admitted grudgingly, "but small for the Atlantic. All for Jamaica?"

"No - four for Martinique, and three for Antigua. These," Ramage said, pointing to the last ship in each column.

"Surely we're not having to make a great dog-leg northward just for the Antigua ships?"

"Apparently so," Ramage said, sharing Southwick's annoyance, since it meant the convoy had to cover two sides of a triangle.

"Aye - and any north in the wind and these mules will scatter to leeward and end up beached on the Spanish Main."

That was only too true. The course for Antigua was northwest; the Trades blew between south-east and north-east, and the Atlantic pouring into the Caribbean caused a strong current between each of the islands.

Ramage laughed at Southwick's indignation, but the Master protested, "That's no exaggeration, sir; have you seen 'em? Why, there's only one ship with decent rigging, and that's the Topaz: the rest have rotten rigging, rotten masts and spars - and a bunch of coasting mates commanding 'em."

"And all on a 'share the profits' basis, no doubt, so they're making as much as admirals," Ramage teased.

"Don't let's talk of it, sir," Southwick said crossly. "It's hard enough keeping my temper with them now when they're at anchor: just think of 'em shortening sail and dropping back every night... If I think-"

The Marine sentry's call interrupted him.

"It'll be that lieutenant from the flagship," Ramage said. "Send him in."

With the receipt signed and the lieutenant gone to call on the other escorts, Ramage slit open the sealed packet. It was innocent enough after all, a plan giving the positions for the escorts, and informing all captains that an extra ship would be joining the convoy, and her number would be 78. Ramage glanced again at the name, Peacock, and put her on the convoy plan, the eighth ship in the seventh column.

Where had she come from? Could be a runner, one of the fast and lightly armed ships that usually sailed from England without a convoy, hoping speed would save her from capture. Good profits - at high risks - for such shipowners: arriving weeks ahead of convoys meant merchants could always get very high scarcity prices for the freights.

He was impatient for the convoy to weigh; even more impatient for it to arrive. Kingston meant an unpleasant voyage over and the possibility that he'd avoided any of Goddard's tricks.

Reaching up to the rack over his head he pulled down a small-scale chart of the Caribbean and unrolled it. His eyes followed the islands. At the bottom right-hand corner was Barbados, where they were at the moment; and to the westward, in a line running upwards, to the north, the chain of the Windward Islands - Grenada, then St Vincent, St Lucia and Martinique - merging into the Leewards - Dominica, Guadeloupe, Antigua and several small islands at the top right-hand corner. How the islands had changed in the last few years - only Guadeloupe was still held by the French...

Then, going left across the top of the chart, Virgin Gorda, Tortola, St John and St Thomas - the Virgin Islands; then the Spanish Islands of Puerto Rico, Hispaniola - part of which was French - and Cuba. Just below the gap between Hispaniola and Cuba lay Jamaica. He walked the dividers over the chart, measuring the distances against the latitude scale: 260 miles from Barbados up to Antigua, then just 900 westward to Kingston.

With the hurricane season just beginning the refuges were few enough. English Harbour, in Antigua, had a tiny and mosquito-ridden dockyard for the King's ships to refit themselves, but was otherwise of no importance to man or beast. Bereft of drinking water and as barren as a mule, it was cordially disliked by everyone. An almost enclosed bay at St John in the Virgin Islands; a similar one at Snake Island - Spanish owned and named Culebra by them - between St Thomas and Puerto Rico; a couple on the south side of Puerto Rico, which the Spaniards would stop anyone else from using; and precious little else.

All of which meant that if a hurricane hit them with the usual few hours' warning, only three or four ships were likely to survive. The flagship, the Topaz, probably the frigates and, less likely, the Triton and the Lark lugger. He was being pessimistic but much would depend on Goddard. Would he disperse the convoy in time to avoid them having a barrier of islands in their way as they ran before the winds? Sea room, plenty of sea room - that would be their only hope. In a hurricane the wind eventually goes right round the compass. It was a comfort that Maxine was in the best ship, anyway.

He was just rolling up the chart when Southwick came down again. He came into the cabin and simply raised an eyebrow.

"Escorts' positions - and an extra ship joining the convoy," Ramage explained.

"Oh - I thought they were up to something."

"Not yet!"

"Extra ship? Where's she come from?"

"I don't know. Late arrival?"

"No," Southwick said. "They didn't lose anyone on the way out. Maybe a runner."

"I was thinking that."

"But why join the convoy now? His only chance of a profit is to get to Kingston a'fore the convoy and beat 'em to the market."

Ramage shrugged his shoulders. "She's joined us, and one more to chase up won't make any difference."