Ramage's Signal

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The convoy was making good time and Aitken was pleased that his noon sight put them about twenty miles south of Cabo de Gata while dead reckoning had them forty miles short of it. Here, off the southeastern tip of Spain, Europa Point was a clear run of a little under two hundred miles to the westward. In fact they would have to sail more than that 'through the water' to overcome the eastgoing current constantly flowing into the Mediterranean from the Atlantic, but Aitken knew that it was more important that Cartagena, the last of the big naval ports, was now well behind them.

Almeria, just west of Cabo de Gata, was more of a commercial port, unlikely to hold any ships of war. From there to Europa Point and the safety of Gibraltar was only Málaga, again a commercial and not a naval port.

It was a miracle that the convoy had sailed so far without meeting a French ship of war that, as a matter of routine, would ask why the convoy was without an escort and, because it was so far west, whither it was bound. Until the last few hours, Aitken could always (using Orsini as his 'voice') claim to be bound for Cartagena, and accept the scorn of a French frigate captain at being so bad a navigator to get so far south. Now he was too far into the channel between Spain and the Barbary coast to use that story.

He was well satisfied with the way his ships were being handled. He had divided the six of them into two columns of three and knowing the difficulty of sailing at night in the wake of a ship showing only a dim stern lantern, he led the larboard column with the bosun following him in the Rosette schooner and Rennick bringing up the rear in the Matilda. The starboard column was led by Kenton and the Golondrina, followed by Orsini in the Caroline brig, and then Martin with the Bergère. This left Orsini conveniently placed should his French or Spanish be needed - but also kept him safely between Kenton and Martin in case his station-keeping was erratic.

Aitken was surprised that the Calypso had not joined them. Not that Mr Ramage had said he would, but both he and Southwick would soon get exhausted standing watch and watch about, and they were deprived of most of their good petty officers. It was typical of the captain's fairness that he had made sure the six ships of the convoy were well manned, although if they did not get through or anything happened to the Calypso, Their Lordships would put Mr Ramage on the beach for the rest of his life. Still, there - Aitken's thoughts were interrupted by a hail from the foremast-head.

'Deck there! The Bergère has just hoisted a signal, sir.'

Aitken picked up his glass and took his copy of the French signals from the binnacle box drawer.

Orsini had written a translation beside each of them and Aitken read the two hoists of flags without difficulty. The first said, 'Strange sail in sight' and the second gave the direction, 'In the northeast quadrant'.

'Acknowledge that signal', Aitken told the bosun's mate and shouted to the lookout aloft: 'Keep your eyes open; there'll be more signals soon.'

Aitken's first reaction as a naval officer had been to detach one of his ships to investigate, and when he realized it he grinned to himself. Habits were hard to break. For the last two days he had been the master of a French merchant ship and, as senior of the other French masters, the commodore of the convoy. And an unescorted convoy, unless attacked by a squadron of Algerine pirates - the only danger along this coast - maintained its course, particularly with a good southerly wind and fine weather, minding its own business.

Northeast quadrant. So the strange ship was on the convoy's starboard quarter and well down to leeward - too far away to be seen from the Sarazine but just close enough for her topsails to appear over the horizon and be sighted, tiny white specks, by the masthead lookout in the Bergère, the nearest ship. Merchant ships did not have lookouts at the masthead; ships of war, and prizes, did.

Martin would be pleased at being the first ship to spot the stranger, but they had sighted many strange sail in the last day or so, most of them small trading vessels, the larger ones preferring to sail in convoy.

What mattered now was whether or not the bearing of this strange sail remained the same. If it changed, then she was merely another ship on passage somewhere; if it stayed the same, then the ship must be beating her way up towards the convoy, and that could mean only trouble, because sailing on that course would otherwise take a ship to the Barbary coast, an unlikely destination.

He hoped Martin would have the sense to keep signals flying for as little time as possible. They had to use French signals and flags to keep up the pretence of a French convoy, but a French ship of war might get suspicious if too many signals were made across the convoy simply because all merchant ships, whatever their nationality, were as loath to make signals as small boys to wash behind their ears.

He picked up the slate and after a glance at his watch noted down the time of the signal. The 'strange sail' could be an Algerine pirate. If she was, would she attack the convoy? Probably not as such but instead would try to cut out a single ship at the rear, Martin's Bergère or Rennick's Matilda most likely, because any of the other four going to help would then have to beat back to windward. The Algerine would know enough to guess that in the event of an attack the convoy would in fact most probably panic and scatter and leave the victim to her fate ...

More than ten minutes elapsed before the Bergère's next signal, which the French system forced Martin to make in three parts:

'Strange sail in sight... In the northeast quadrant... Is a frigate.'

'Acknowledge', snapped Aitken. He was both annoyed and pleased. Martin was being sensible in repeating the signal 'In the northeast quadrant' because that was obviously intended to tell Aitken that the vessel was deliberately steering for the convoy, not passing by. By identifying the ship as a frigate, Martin made it almost certain that the frigate was the Calypso. Yet... yet... Martin would himself have gone aloft with a telescope and had a good look. A ship identifiable as a frigate should also be recognizable as the Calypso because of the cut of her sails, even though her hull might still be below the horizon.

Aitken then cursed at his own slowness: Maftin would have done all that and not have recognized the masts and sails as the Calypso, so his signal meant just what it said - that the vessel was a 'strange sail' and 'a frigate', but not the Calypso.

Even then Aitken's Scottish caution made him think again. Supposing the frigate was the Calypso? How, using the French signal book, could Martin signal the fact? Aitken picked up his handwritten copy and looked at the last few pages, which gave in alphabetical order the names of all the ships of war in the French Navy, and the three-figure numbers of each of them so that by hoisting the three flags representing the numbers they could identify themselves. As he had guessed, the Calypso was still in the list under her original French name, although a neat ink line had crossed it out along with a dozen others - ships which had been sunk or captured. Yes, Martin was a bright lad; he would have thought of that and he would have given the three figures as the fourth part of his signal, knowing that it would be enough of a clue to set Aitken looking in the back of the signal book.

'Deck there! Foretopmast lookout here!'

'Deck here', Aitken replied.

'I can make out a sail on the starboard quarter of the convoy, sir. Three masts, royals flying ...'

'I'll send someone up with a glass!'

Aitken looked around, then decided to go himself, grabbing the telescope and making his way to the shrouds. Two minutes later, breathless, his shin muscles feeling as though they had been stretched three inches, he was standing beside the lookout. The Sarazine was surprisingly narrow below them; the mast seemed to be gyrating round the circumference of a fifty-yard circle.

The seaman pointed, and beyond the Bergère Aitken caught sight of a fleck of white.

'Royals set, eh?' he said doubtfully as he pulled out the eyepiece of the telescope. 'You must have sharp eyes.'

'Ah have that, sir', the man said firmly, thinking to himself that in Cumberland they poached just as skilfully as these Scotsmen; aye and without all that funny talk and across hills just as high.

'You're right', Aitken conceded after three minutes' struggle with the telescope, trying to keep it focused. 'Here', he said, 'take the glass and see if you think she's the Calypso.'

'Ah know that she isn't without needing the glass, sir', the man said, 'but a bring-'em-near might tell me more.'

Aitken thought back to his days as a midshipman, when the masthead seemed a second home, either because he had been mastheaded as a punishment or the captain wanted a ship identified. Those days, he thought ruefully, are Iong past. It was not the advance of old age; merely that he had lost the habit - and his nimbleness.

'French 36-gun frigate, sir; I forget the name of the class and I couldn't pronounce it even if I recalled it. Beating up for us, sir.'

'Right', Aitken said, starting down the shrouds, 'keep a sharp lookout with those poacher's eyes!'

As soon as he reached the deck, Aitken called: 'Bosun's mate! Hands to quarters. The ship's company may have laughed yesterday afternoon at gunnery practice with 6-pounders but it might make all the difference between spending next Sunday in Gibraltar or a French jail!'

On board the Caroline brig, the ship ahead of Martin's Bergère and the one astern of Kenton's Golondrina, Paolo Orsini had the slate and a copy of the signal book ready on the tiny binnacle box, and his telescope under his arm.

He could see the strange sail coming up fast now - the convoy was making less than six knots - and had finally decided she was French. Aitken had given very precise instructions about what the convoy was to do if attacked by French, Spanish or Algerines, and Paolo was thankful that an enemy frigate had not turned up earlier.

The reason was simple enough: the convoy was now in the narrowing channel leading to Gibraltar, so if he had to flee with the Caroline in a different direction from the rest, he would know once it was dark that by the following dawn land should be in sight to the north (Spain) or south (Africa), and as long as he steered westward he was bound to reach Gibraltar. It was not that he distrusted his celestial navigation, of course; simply that his quadrant must be damaged so that his altitudes of the sun were in error, because the latitude he calculated each noon was never quite the same as that hoisted by the Sarazine and the Golondrina. In fact his own answer that day, just over forty-nine degrees north, was (according to the French atlas he found in the former captain's cabin) obviously wrong because the Caroline could not be as far north as Paris.

Obviously Martin, by repeating the bearing, was telling Mr Aitken that the frigate was heading up to them, and Paolo knew from an inspection through his own glass that she was not the Calypso.

Baxter, his sharpest-eyed seaman, was up the mast now and shouted down that she was a French frigate; he thought one of the 36-gun class like the Calliope, a name which at first puzzled Paolo when he looked her up in the French list because Baxter pronounced it Cally-owe-pee.

Paolo looked round for a senior rating but apart from the man at the wheel the nearest was a Marine.

'General quarters!' he shouted. 'Leave the portlids down, and don't underestimate four 9-pounders. If we add up all the guns in the convoy -'

'They don't come to thirty-six', a cheerful Baxter shouted down from the masthead, 'but they'll make a lot o' smoke, sir, an' perhaps bring tears to the Frogs' eyes!'

Paolo looked astern to avoid laughing: he had dreamed hundreds of times of taking his own ship into action; he had imagined himself at the quarterdeck rail in full uniform, dress sword, telescope under his arm, snapping crisp orders to quartermaster, gunner, first lieutenant, master... But the ship in his dreams had been at least a frigate with a crew of 250, not a bedraggled trading brig of 300 tons with a barnacled bottom, four guns and ten men. But at least the ten men had exercised those four guns ...

At that moment Rossi appeared from below.

'Better we fight that frigate with our tongues than our guns, sir', he said in Italian.

'We may not have the choice, but you have the right idea', Paolo said, sarcastically. 'We must think of the right thing to say to the French. Like "What a bella figura you make standing on your quarterdeck, captain!'"

Rossi chuckled at the thought as he went to Paolo's cabin to get the key to the Caroline's pitifully small magazine.

Rennick in the Matilda had long ago identified the distant ship as French and at this moment had all his men, except for the lookout and the man at the wheel, standing in a circle round him.

'Mr Aitken's order, if the convoy is attacked by an enemy ship, is to disperse', he told the men. 'That means we all sail off in different directions. But one of us is bound to be caught, and if the Frogs put a prize crew on board her quickly enough they can go after another ship. In fact if they're awake they can capture all six of us.'

'Prison', muttered one of the Marines. 'I've 'eard about them French prisons.'

'So have I', Rennick said grimly. 'But you remember what Captain Ramage always says ... Come on, now!'

The men shuffled their feet and sucked their teeth, brows furrowed with concentration, and increasingly embarrassed at Rennick's impatience.

'Come on! Come on!'

'Surprise!' the Marine corporal yelled triumphantly. 'Ye gotta do somefing ter surprise the barstids!'

'Exactly', Rennick said, proud that it was a Marine and not a seaman who had come up with the right answer. 'Do the unexpected. Now, what would that Frenchman not be expecting, eh?'

'Us to attack 'im', a seaman said firmly, as if disposing of that possibility once and for all.

'Exactly!' Rennick said once again, slapping his thigh and laughing with delight. 'Mr Aitken can't give us any orders because of the signalling problems, so we must use our common sense.'

He looked round at the eight men, the man at the wheel and the lookout aloft. Ten, led by himself as the eleventh. Well, it could not be helped. Surprise would have to provide the equivalent of the other 290 men he would prefer to have.

'Our common sense tells us', Rennick said firmly, glaring round him for any sign of dissent, 'that if we can save five ships of the convoy, we'll have won.'

There were enough 'Ahs' and 'S'rights' showing agreement that Rennick promptly seized the moment to tell them his plan.

'So we ram the frigate with the Matilda.'

Without knowing that he was repeating a tactic used by Ramage against a 74 only a few days ago, he explained: 'We go for her jibboom and bowsprit. If we can carry them away we'll send her foremast tumbling by the board.'

'They won't arf be cross wiv us', a Marine muttered gloomily. 'Still', he added, brightening up, 'it'll be quite a sight!'

'Good, good', Rennick said briskly. 'As soon as the Frogs recover they'll board us. We don't fight; we surrender. There'll be no dishonour. We'll be outnumbered about thirty to one, and if her foremast has gone, we've nothing more to do. So we'll be prisoners.

'Now listen carefully. Being taken prisoner means marching to prison, maybe across Spain and halfway across France. So make sure you've got shoes or boots, and put on two pairs of socks if there's room. And wear any thick coat you have. You'll look dam' silly now but later, trying to sleep alongside a mountain track in the snow, you'll be glad of every stitch you've got.

'Roll up blankets so you can put 'em round your neck like a horse collar. The French may steal them, but if they don't ... And if you have any money, get below right now and sew the coins into a thick part of your clothing. You've ten minutes to do that, so dismiss!'

Orsini took one more look at the still distant enemy sail and knew she would never notice any unusual move by the Caroline. The idea had come to him just like that, 'out of the blue', a very good expression the English used. But he needed Mr Aitken's approval before trying it - indeed, there might be a dozen reasons why the French would not fall for the trap, but it was worth suggesting, even if it made Mr Aitken angry.

Fifteen minutes later the Caroline was sailing with her larboard bow only a few yards from the Sarazine's starboard quarter, with Rossi at the wheel. Baxter was perched in the Caroline's foreshrouds carefully watching the Sarazine's quarter, which was close enough for him to lob a biscuit into the muzzle of one of her 9-pounders, and giving helm orders to Rossi, whose forward vision was limited by the fo'c'sle so that he could see only her masts and rigging. Orsini was standing on the Caroline's bulwarks right forward, gripping part of her anchor and waiting to get close enough to Aitken, who was sitting astride the Sarazine's taffrail, the mouthpiece of a speaking trumpet to his ear.

'Can you hear me, sir?'

Aitken waved.

Paolo then explained his proposal, Aitken listening carefully. Finally, putting the speaking trumpet to his lips, Aitken shouted: 'It's a good idea and it might work. Try it. I'll leave the timing to you.' He then shouted a word which Paolo could not understand, but Rossi called: 'Va bene, sir, I know it.'

Aitken gave another wave and shouted: 'Good luck, lads; I'll see you all in Gibraltar!'

Paolo walked back to the wheel, his heart thumping with pride and excitement and his face flushed with pleasure, but he was met with a growl from Rossi. 'For how long we stay in this position, sir? Any minute we lose our bowsprit through hitting the Sarazine!'

With a muttered curse Paolo returned from the dizzy realms of convoy tactics to the mundane problem of getting the Caroline back into her position as the second ship in the starboard column. The French frigate, he noted, was about a mile away and tacking once again in the long zigzag to get up to the convoy. On this tack he estimated she would stretch up to the head of the convoy and pass just across the Golondrina's bow, allowing for the convoy's forward speed remaining the same. Unfortunately there was no chance of any change in the wind's strength or direction; indeed, with the sky blue and dappled with small white clouds and the sun still hot, he was reminded of Trade wind conditions. The Mediterranean weather was being kind when the convoy needed it to be at its most treacherous.

Aitken watched the Caroline dropping back into position and had to admit that Orsini was ingenious, particularly considering his age. Was he sixteen yet? The idea might not save them, but certainly it was their only chance. The French frigate was obviously intent on getting ahead of the convoy, and that made sense because, as Aitken reminded himself, by now her captain would be sure the convoy was French, all the ships flying Tricolours, and would have no suspicions. The convoy knew he was their enemy, but the French captain was just following the usual routine. The only thing that would concern him was the whereabouts of the escort and why the convoy was so far south and steering west. And he would know that whoever was the senior captain of the convoy would probably be in one of the two leading ships. It was a pity, Aitken thought, that there had not been time to have the Golondrina and the Caroline exchange positions.

If only the Calypso would come in sight now! But even that would be too late; the French frigate was less than a mile away and fairly racing along, every piece of plain sail drawing. Ah, now she was clewing up her courses, because she needed only topsails for manoeuvring round the convoy - and, as if to show how right he was, Aitken saw the royals being furled as well. The way the frigate had tacked up to the convoy, never once overstanding a hundred yards, and the way she was being handled now, left no doubt that her captain was an experienced officer. Yet for Orsini's scheme that was an advantage; the more experienced the better.