Ramage's Diamond

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Ramage arrived back on board the Juno to find Southwick waiting with ill-concealed impatience and asking for permission to leave the ship for two hours and to use the jolly boat. It was such an unusual request that Ramage frowned for a moment.

'You want to go over to the Surcouf?’

'No sir, I want to visit the Marchesa battery,' he said gruffly.

Ramage then noticed that the Master had a bulky canvas bag normally used for carrying papers under his arm.

'You can have the boat,' Ramage said grudgingly, 'but I can't really spare you for two hours. What on earth is there to do at the Marchesa battery? Lacey was just about to sway up the gun when I left.'

Southwick gave one of his sniffs. 'I've got my paints and sketching pad here, sir,' he said. Then in answer to the puzzled look on Ramage's face: 'Masters of all the King's ships are required to send sketches of unusual coastlines and harbours to the Navy Board, sir, as you well know, and I've always been very punctilious about that'

'I know, I know, and your sketches and paintings are excellent, but what is unusual about the Diamond Rock that the Navy Board don't already know?'

Southwick sighed, obviously unwilling to reveal his real motive. 'I wanted to make a water-colour of the side of the Rock showing the Marchesa battery, sir, and frame it, and I was going to ask you to give it to Her Ladyship with the compliments of the Junos.'

For the third time in an hour Ramage was embarrassed. 'She'll be delighted, Southwick, and so will I.'

With that he decided to go down to his cabin and put in an hour or two studying the chart of Martinique and then bring his Journal up to date. He might as well start a draft of a report to Admiral Davis, reporting that the Surcouf was ready and three batteries had been established.

He spread the chart on his desk and with a pair of compasses scribed a circle round the Diamond Rock so that one edge just touched the land at the foot of Diamond Hill. The guns certainly reached that distance, and it was startling how the western section of the circle would affect French ships making for Fort Royal outside the Diamond Rock after rounding Pointe des Salines. It did not add much to the actual distance they would sail - sixteen miles from the Pointe up to Cap Salomon staying inside the Diamond Rock, the most direct route, and only seventeen and a half keeping outside the radius of the Juno battery's guns. But it forced them another couple of miles offshore, into the strong current which might sweep them out westward, well to leeward of Fort Royal.

The last few days had shown him why the French ships, men-o'-war as well as merchantmen, liked to hug the coast once they rounded Pointe des Salines. For half the distance to the Diamond they did not risk running out of wind entirely because the land to the east was not so mountainous. If they lost some of the wind as they came up to the Diamond, intending to pass through the Fours Channel, at least they were out of the worst of the current.

If the current was north-going, they could risk going outside the Diamond, but he knew from Captain Eames's experience and Wagstaffe's brief reports from La Créole that it was predominantly west-going. He laughed to himself. If he forced too many French merchantmen so far to the west that they ended up across the Caribbean at Port de la Paix at the western end of Hispaniola, there would soon be complaints to the Admiralty from the Commander-in-Chief at Jamaica that the French forces there were being heavily reinforced with supplies. It was an ill-wind...

He rolled up the chart and put it aside. Bowen's sick list was under a paperweight, left there by the clerk, and he glanced through it. Only one man on it, and that the Marine wounded by a cutlass in the attack on the Diamond Hill battery. As young Paolo was not mentioned it showed that the boy was carrying out his duties despite his raw hands.

He opened his journal again, made an entry and then read through those he had made for the previous few days. The Surcouf prepared for sea, the guns for the Marchesa, Juno and Ramage batteries installed on the Diamond Rock, with three months' provisions landed for the men, plus water and sheep. La Créole maintaining a patrol, the Juno battery's range tried . . . The only thing missing was an entry recording the return of La Mutine. The distance to Barbados was just over a hundred miles, but it was a beat to windward. La Mutine was close-winded, so would probably cover 180 miles because of frequent tacks. She would make at least six knots to windward, probably eight. At a conservative estimate Baker should have arrived in Bridgetown thirty hours after leaving the Diamond some time last Tuesday. He would have reported to the Admiral, who might have kept him until noon on Wednesday before letting him sail. Or the Admiral might have told him to wait until the Invincible could get to sea and make for Martinique. A ship of the line like the Invincible would cover the distance to Martinique in eighteen hours at the most. Leaving at noon on Wednesday she would arrive off Martinique in the darkness, which the Admiral might have wanted to avoid, so she might have left that evening, to arrive off Pointe des Salines at daylight on Thursday.

That was yesterday and neither La Mutine nor the Invincible had arrived. But the convoy was due (as far as the French authorities in Fort Royal knew) by tomorrow at the latest.

He checked his figures again, but he had not made a mistake. So now, this afternoon, he had to assume that he was going to have to attack the convoy and its escorts with the Juno, the Surcouf and La Créole. And the Diamond batteries, of course, with all the advantage of surprise that they would have.

Two frigates and a schooner - he had managed to double the number of frigates maintaining the blockade, and had a schooner as well. It was a nice little squadron for the most junior captain in the Navy List to command, however temporarily. But no amount of juggling with figures could change the fact that he did not have enough men to use all the ships effectively.

He began writing again. Fourteen men at the Juno battery, seven at the Ramage and six at the Marchesa. Lacey had been disappointed at not being put in command of the Diamond, but Ramage needed him. That made a total of twenty-seven men on the Diamond. Wagstaffe and twenty men were in La Créole, and the Third Lieutenant and twenty men were away in La Mutine, wherever the devil she was. With nine Junos killed in the original fight with the two schooners, he was short of seventy-eight officers and seamen. The Juno's original ship's company had totalled 212, so he had only 134 officers and men left, including Marines.

He checked the figures again. Yes, Aitken and Lacey, Southwick, the Marine Lieutenant, a master's mate who had proved completely useless, two midshipmen, the Surgeon and 126 warrant officers, petty officers and men, to share between the Juno and the Surcouf. He was seventy-eight short if he wanted to man the Juno alone ...

He sighed, feeling his earlier confidence slipping away as he stared at the figures he had scrawled. Then he took another sheet of paper and drew in two columns, heading one 'Juno' and the other 'Surcouf.

He wrote in his own name at the top of the 'Juno' column, followed by Southwick, Orsini, Bowen and Jackson, He would sort out the remaining sixty-three later. In the 'Surcouf column he wrote the names of Aitken, Lacey, Rennick (which meant that all the Marines would have to go as well), Benson, and the master's mate - he could never remember his name and so scribbled 'M.M.'

It seemed a fair division: Aitken had Lacey as his second-in-command and Rennick was a useful man whose Marines could be relied upon. He could have the gunner and the bos'n, too, and the Juno, would make do with the mates. The carpenter might as well stay in the Juno: in battle he spent his time below, standing by with shot plugs and mauls.

He was hot, sticky, tired and depressed. His head ached from the heat of the cabin and his eyes ached from spending all the morning and much of the afternoon in the glaring sun, climbing up and down that damned Diamond Rock like an outcast goat. Suddenly he sat up as a thought struck him: if the Juno was in battle and had sixty-three men and her Captain and Master still alive and unwounded, he would never dream of breaking off the action.

Then he remembered his famous Monday morning lecture to the Juno's officers about preparing against the unexpected. This was a perfect example of what he meant. Put yourself in the place of the senior officers of the French escort, he told himself. If there were three or four frigates, the Frenchman would be the most senior of the captains. If there was a ship of the line, then it would be a very senior captain, if not a rear-admiral.

As the French rounded Pointe des Salines they would be looking for the British ships known to be blockading Fort Royal. They would have been worrying about them for some time; probably ever since they left France. They would not know whether to expect one frigate or four; a ship of the line and three frigates or a carriage and four greys complete with postillions. However, if they saw two manned British frigates they would assume that they were fully manned and ready for action, and would behave accordingly. They would never for a moment expect that neither ship had a third of her proper complement. That, he realized, put the unexpected on his side. And the batteries on the Diamond represented his most powerful surprise.

Aitken needed written orders putting him in command of the Surcouf, but there was no point in giving him additional written orders telling him what to do if the convoy arrived because there were too many possibilities.

He remembered the day some years ago when he was the junior lieutenant of the Sibella frigate. She had been trapped by a French ship of the line off the Italian coast and a flying splinter had knocked him unconscious. He had recovered to find that the captain and the rest of the officers were dead and he was in command. The ship was sinking fast and almost by chance he had found out from the papers in the captain's desk that the Sibella was acting under special orders. That was how he had come to rescue Gianna using an open boat. He had realized then the danger of a commanding officer assuming he was immortal and failing to keep his officers informed about what the ship was supposed to be doing.

Some orders, of course, were extremely secret, but secrecy was rarely vitally important on board a ship, and certainly not now. As soon as Southwick returned from his water-colour expedition he would have Aitken, Lacey, Wagstaffe, Rennick and the Master down here in the cabin. They would go over the chart, discuss the possibilities and, perhaps more important, the three lieutenants would absorb enough of his ideas and attitude to make it all work.

He went to the skylight and called to Orsini, who was on watch, to hoist the signal for La Créole's captain to report on board. Then he returned to the desk and sat down, reaching for the pen and unscrewing the cap of the ink well. Five minutes later he had written and signed Aitken's orders and told his clerk to copy them into the Order Book. The Navy stayed afloat on a sea of. ink; if only they could sink the French by firing broadsides of quill pens . . . The only consolation was that the French Ministry of Marine's appetite for forms, surveys, lists, dispatches, copies of letters, orders, logs and muster tables was probably as voracious as that of the Admiralty and the Navy Board. The capture of the Diamond would eventually result in a pile of papers in those two offices quite as high as the Rock itself ...

He went up to the quarterdeck for a walk in the fresh air, hoping to get rid of his headache. The sun was low now and he saw La Créole approaching. Wagstaffe had obviously seen the signal flying from the Juno.

As he walked the deck the words 'so few men' echoed with every step. Was he overestimating the effectiveness of the Juno and Ramage batteries against French ships trying to pass? Three 12-pounders could not keep up a fast rate of fire, however eager and well-trained the men. It would be plunging fire and thus much more effective, but that in turn required more accuracy. Firing from sea level meant that a shot falling short of the target would ricochet onwards and might hit, but a roundshot curving down from the height of those two batteries could ricochet in almost any direction.

He stopped walking and stared across the Fours Channel. It was a mile wide and French ships passing through it would be within range of the two batteries for a distance of perhaps a mile and a half. If they were making six knots they would be within range for about fifteen minutes - not long enough. If there were five merchantmen it gave the Juno and Ramage battery gunners three minutes for each ship in theory but they would not change target like that: they would concentrate on one ship, and continue firing until she was disabled.

They must keep the merchantmen inside the segment of the invisible circle representing the Juno and Ramage batteries' range for longer than five minutes. Ideas came slowly to his weary brain as he began striding the deck again. Knowing himself, he did not try to force them. They would come in their own good time.

The schooner was rounding up now and anchoring, and he saw the jolly boat returning from the Diamond with Southwick's rotund figure in the sternsheets. This was his squadron: a former privateer schooner, a captured French frigate and the Juno frigate, with the Diamond batteries watching over them all. Here were all his guns and all his men. He had assembled his entire force. If only he could do - what?

Concentration! Somehow he must lure the French convoy and its escort into the Fours Channel and then use the Juno to block one end and the Surcouf to close the other, with La Créole darting in among the merchantmen, helping to create as much confusion as possible. With them all concentrated and confused, roundshot would start plunging down on them unexpectedly from the Diamond batteries. The masters of the French merchant ships would panic. Some would wear round and try and beat back through the Channel the way they came; others might try to carry on through. The French escorts would attempt to fight off the Surcouf and Juno, but in the meantime some of the merchantmen might collide with each other, drifting with yards locked, bowsprits and jibbooms caught in shrouds. Slowly drifting merchantmen would be perfect targets for the Diamond batteries.

His elation vanished as quickly as it had arrived. It was a splendid dream and no more because the French would never be lured into such a trap. It was eleven miles from Pointe des Salines to the Diamond and that would take the merchantmen a couple of hours to cover. This, in turn, meant that the French escorts had two hours in which to drive off the British ships. Drive them off, perhaps try to board and capture them, but certainly divert the convoy from the Fours Channel.

The French would not let themselves get trapped - unless they did not know the trap was there until the moment Ramage decided to spring it. His advantage was that he held the Diamond but the French convoy did not know it. It could act as a signal station as well as a battery.

He tried to control his growing optimism in case he had forgotten some obvious drawback. Again he put himself in the position of the senior officer of the French escort. Rounding Pointe des Salines he would only be able to see to the northward as far as the headland of Diamond Hill. He would not see two frigates waiting just round the corner, in Petite Anse d'Arlet, the second bay beyond the Diamond Hill headland.

Petite Anse d'Arlet would serve the purpose: it was just two and a half miles north of the headland of Diamond Hill and the same distance from the exit of the Fours Channel. But if the Juno and the Surcouf, waiting in Petite Anse d'Arlet, could not see the Diamond they would be as blind as the French.

He thought for a moment and glimpsed La Créole out of the corner of his eye. The French would not be at all surprised to see a French schooner stretching south a couple of miles off the Diamond Hill headland: they would recognize the hull and rig, and naturally assume that she was a French privateer coming down to meet them, or leaving Fort Royal on a cruise. What other explanation could there be, from a French point of view? None that he could think of: sighting a French privateer would seem like a good sign. It would suggest to the convoy that there might be no British frigates around at all and that Fort Royal was not being blockaded.

That would cheer them all up and they would surely be confident enough to follow the usual easy route and hug the coast all the way round to the Fours Channel to avoid the current. They might even notice the French privateer hoisting a signal - perhaps a single flag. They would not understand it but they would not worry. In fact the privateer could hoist a Tricolour. The French naval officers might joke about the casualness of privateer captains not identifying themselves, but they would have no reason to suspect that La Créole was no longer a French ship, and was flying the Tricolour up to the time of opening fire as a legitimate ruse de guerre...

Using La Créole as his lookout was a far better idea than relying on the Juno battery. It would allow the battery lookouts to signal round the corner to the Juno herself. He was now pacing up and down with his shoulders braced back. It was a splendid plan and it worked perfectly - if the Juno battery comprised ten 24-pounders instead of two 12-pounders and the Ramage battery had five 24-pounders and if he had five fully-manned frigates instead of two partly-manned and, of course, providing the French convoy had a weak escort... But he had to make do with what he had. Anyway all this planning and fretting and fussing would probably prove unnecessary because Admiral Davis would arrive in plenty of time with the Invincible and some frigates or because the convoy would be late. On the other hand, a French ship of the line could be escorting the convoy and perhaps La Mutine had never arrived with the message.

He watched Southwick board from the jolly boat and saw that Wagstaffe was on his way from La Créole. Aitken, Lacey and Rennick were already on board, so he went to his cabin to lay out the chart and measure off some distances and bearings.

By dusk, as he watched Aitken and Wagstaffe being rowed to their ships, he felt a little more confident. Lacey was preparing a cutter to take over the men who would form the rest of the Surcouf’s ship's company. At least there were a dozen men who had been on board the former French frigate since she had been captured and, as Southwick had pointed out, by now they should know where everything was stowed.

The jolly boat was on its way to the Marchesa battery with written orders for the Juno and Ramage batteries, telling them that they were not to open fire or in any way reveal their presence until either the Juno or the Surcouf made the signal. The petty officer was told to place the signal mast on the western slope of the peak, where the signals he made would be seen by La Créole to seaward but not by French ships approaching from Pointe des Salines.

The Master offered to work out a new general quarters, watch and station bill for the Juno's reduced complement, and Ramage accepted gratefully. He also accepted Aitken's suggestion that all the former Tritons should stay on board the Juno. 'They bring you luck, sir,' the Scotsman had commented. 'You've been through a lot with them and now's not the time to tamper with Lady Fortune.'

As Ramage went down to his cabin he felt guilty about poor Southwick. He had more than an hour's work dividing the men into various groups - fo'c'sle men, foretopmen, maintopmen, mizentopmen, after guard, gunners - then he had to divide them into two watches, starboard and larboard, and finally give each man a number showing his place when the ship went into action, what arms he would carry for boarding or repelling boarders, his station for furling, reefing or loosing sails, anchoring or weighing, tacking the ship or wearing, making or shortening sail. It was a tedious, job, but it meant a seaman who knew that his number was, for example, 16 could see from the bill that he was a foretopman in the larboard watch, and when going into action he was second captain of a particular gun, that under arms he would have a cutlass and a tomahawk, and for the rest of the evolutions the bill showed him precisely what he did on the foretopsail yard. The Juno's original bill was for a full complement of 212 officers and men. Now Southwick had to make sure that every important task was performed using only sixty-three.

He could hear the clop-clop-clop of the pawls on La Créole's windlass as the schooner weighed to resume her patrol and make sure that by daybreak she would be off Diamond Hill. By then the Juno and the Surcouf would be under way and heading for Petite Anse d'Arlet, where they would anchor and wait, watching La Créole for signals with even more concentration than a fisherman waited for the float on his line to twitch.

He wondered what the Governor of Fort Royal made of the various pieces of information he was receiving. By now cavalry patrols along the coast must be reporting a great deal of activity off the Diamond, and he might be speculating what the Juno had been doing while hidden behind the island. The patrols might have heard the ranging shots of the Juno battery, though it was very unlikely they would have guessed where they came from.

He was taking a risk that the Governor might find a way of warning the convoy, but it was a slight one. There were only two ways of passing such a warning - sending out a vessel in the hope that it would find the convoy, or making a signal once it was in sight of the coast. Well, La Créole's frequent looks at Fort Royal and the patrol off the coast made sure that no pnivateers escaped to raise the alarm, and there were no signal masts anywhere along the coast. If the French hurriedly erected one at Pointe des Salines - the obvious place - it would be spotted by La Créole and he could land Marines to demolish it. But in any case the commander of the convoy escort would not be looking for signals: he would know there were no regular signal stations and, not expecting to receive signals, he would be unlikely to spot any made from the shore. There was just a possibility that a small fishing vessel was available in one of the two little harbours on the Atlantic side of the island, but the chance of such a craft being able to beat out against the Trade winds to get to the convoy in time - for its position was not known - was slight enough for him to ignore.

No, as long as he could keep the door shut on the privateers in Fort Royal and keep a sharp eye open for any sign of a signal mast being erected along the coast, especially at Pointe des Salines, he had little to fear. Meanwhile the Governor must be a very frustrated man.