Ramage and the Dido (13 page)

‘You don’t deserve to have me as second captain of this gun,’ Rossi said. ‘Dying is a very serious matter for an Italian.’

‘It’s not exactly a lark for an Englishman either,’ Stafford said. ‘The family don’t usually gather round laughing and joking.’

He walked round to the gunport and leaned out. He could just see ahead, and then came back to report.

‘The Frog’s less than half a mile ahead. I think we’re catching up slowly. We may have raked her, but it doesn’t seem to have slowed her down at all. The other French frigate is further round to leeward with the British frigate engaging her. They seem to have been having quite a scrap.’

‘If it was the
Calypso
she’d be dismasted by now,’ Rossi boasted.

‘If the
Calypso
was here, we’d probably be engaging the seventy-four, knowing Mr Ramage,’ Stafford said soberly.

‘You see, it’s not so bad after all being in the
Dido,’
Gilbert said quietly. ‘It’s all death and no glory when a frigate has to fight a ship of the line. I’m not a proper sailor, but even I know that.’

Stafford adjusted the strip of cloth round his forehead to stop perspiration running into his eyes. ‘It’s hot down here. I wish I was working on the carronades, up in the fresh air.’

‘Not only fresh air up there,’ Rossi said. ‘Grapeshot and splinters too.’

‘Well, we’ll get roundshot and splinters down ‘ere,’ Stafford said philosophically, ‘so there’s not much to choose. I think I’d prefer the extra fresh air.’

With that he walked to the gunport again and, holding on to the barrel of the 32-pounder, leaned out to look ahead. ‘We’re gaining on her slowly and I reckon we’re pointing closer to the wind,’ he said.

‘She must have a foul bottom,’ Rossi said. ‘Usually the French are closer winded than us.’

‘We may have done her some damage when we raked her,’ Stafford said. ‘That was a smart move by Mr Ramage; we threw a raking broadside into her without getting a broadside back. One up to us.’

‘But it’s bound to end up a battle of broadsides,’ Gilbert said. ‘Gun for gun she’s the same as us, so it’ll be a question of who can last out the longest.’

‘Unless Mr Ramage thinks up some trick,’ Stafford said.

Up on the quarterdeck Ramage lowered his telescope and said: ‘We’re gaining on her. Slowly, admittedly, but we’re pointing higher.’

‘She’s foul all right,’ Southwick growled, ‘otherwise we’d never get to windward of her. I don’t know what’s wrong with our builders, but we can’t produce ships that go to windward like the French. Think of the
Calypso.
Her French builders knew a thing or two. The French can’t fight, but by God they can build weatherly ships.’

Ramage put the telescope to his eye again. ‘The
Heron
is fighting it out with the
Requin:
they’re lying alongside each other, bow to stern. I hope the
Sylphe
doesn’t do enough repairs to hoist her flag again and escape us.’

Southwick sniffed yet again. ‘I think they’ve got all their work cut out keeping her afloat. We fairly riddled her hull. And I doubt if she has many men left alive to man the pump as well as knot and splice rigging – she took a terrible pounding. If they’d had any sense they’d have hauled down their colours
before
we got alongside her.’

Ramage nodded. ‘Yes, she could have fired a few guns
pour l’honneur de pavillon
and then hauled down her colours. No one expects a frigate to take on a ship of the line.’

He looked across at Jackson and called: ‘Won’t she take a bit more? Can’t you luff in the puffs?’

‘The puffs don’t last long enough, sir. But we’re creeping up on her.’

Southwick, meanwhile, was busy with his quadrant, measuring the angle subtended by the
Junon
’s
main topgallant masthead. He made the last adjustment, balancing himself against the
Dido
’s
slight pitching, read the figures off the vernier scale, and consulted his tables. ‘Four degrees twenty-one minutes,’ he said, running his index finger down the column of figures. He read off the number opposite. ‘She’s just 745 yards ahead of us,’ he said. ‘There’s no doubt, we’re gaining on her.’

‘Not fast enough,’ grumbled Ramage, lifting up his telescope once more. Although there was no doubting Southwick’s quadrant, the
Junon
did not seem any closer; she was ploughing her way to windward. She obviously intended to fight: she had her courses clewed up, like the
Dido,
so she was still under fighting canvas. If she was intent on bolting, Ramage thought, she would let fall her courses. Yet that was odd: she
was
bolting – she was abandoning the
Requin,
which was still fighting and which the
Junon
could rescue by swinging away to leeward and pouring a broadside or two into the
Heron.
Why? Why had she not let fall those courses? There must be a reason. Perhaps the captain had been killed and the second-in-command was still pulling himself together. Yet the obvious thing, if you were making a bolt for it, was to set every inch of canvas without wasting a moment.

There must be a reason for it, but what was it? Ramage shrugged his shoulders: there was no point in making wild guesses – not that he could think of even a wild guess.

‘Five degrees six minutes,’ Southwick intoned, and once again consulted his tables. ‘Six hundred and thirty-nine yards, sir,’ he reported. ‘We seem to be overhauling her faster now. We must have a better slant o’wind. Give us another five knots o’breeze and we’ll be sheering up alongside her and boarding in the smoke!’

Ramage still watched through his telescope, puzzled by the clewed up courses. Suddenly the outline of the
Junon
seemed to blur, then he saw the foremast lean, almost lazily, and topple back on to the mainmast before slewing round and falling over the side to leeward.

‘Look at that!’ bellowed Southwick. ‘By God, our raking broadside
did
do some damage after all!’

And that explained why the courses had been clewed up: obviously the raking broadside had damaged the mast, cut the forestay or badly damaged the bowsprit, and the crew of the
Junon
had been so busy trying to make repairs that there was no question of setting the courses. Not that with the foremast in danger of going by the board, as it had just done, there was any question of setting the forecourse.

Southwick was still busy with his quadrant: the
Junon
had slowed down appreciably, with one mast over the side and the sails and yards dragging in the water like a brake. She was still under way – Ramage could see she was still leaving a wake, and the rest of the sails were still drawing. He could imagine frantic men with axes slashing at the tangle of shrouds and halyards to cut the mast free. With the main and mizen still standing they could manoeuvre the ship, though it would call for all the seamanship that the captain possessed.

‘Six degrees five minutes!’ Southwick said delightedly, consulting his tables. ‘She’s only 533 yards now!’

For a moment Ramage felt sorry for the French captain: he had lost his foremast because he had let himself be taken by surprise – he expected the
Dido
to sweep down his starboard side, and instead of that she had cut across his bow, raked him and come down his larboard side, where the guns were not ready. Now he was commanding a ship which he could barely manoeuvre and with a British seventy-four coming up astern, less than half a mile away. Admittedly a lucky French shot could send one of the
Dido
’s
masts by the board, but the French would indeed need to be lucky, cutting a stay. It would take more than one roundshot to do much damage to the
Dido
’s
mainmast, for instance, which was more than three feet in diameter.

One thing was certain, Ramage decided, this action was not going to degenerate into a battle of broadsides, with the
Dido
lying alongside the
Junon
and pounding away: the
Dido
could still manoeuvre, even if the
Junon
was reduced to an almost inert mass in the water. The French would have to watch their mainmast now: with stays torn away and sheets and braces ripped out, the mast might well be tottering, waiting to follow the foremast.

Ramage turned to Jackson. ‘Steer to pass fifty yards off along the starboard side.’

Then to Aitken he said: ‘Pass the word to the guns that we’ll be engaging to larboard at fifty yards’ range. Fire as the guns bear.’

Southwick was taking his last reading with his quadrant. ‘Seven degrees thirty-six minutes – ah, that’s more like it!’ He read from his tables, a note of triumph in his voice: ‘Four hundred and twenty-six yards, sir. We could stand off and tease her with the carronades!’

Would the
Junon
haul down her colours and save what would otherwise be a senseless slaughter? Ramage was not sure. Losing a foremast in these circumstances was a good enough reason for surrendering. Good enough, but not an overwhelming reason. Ramage thought for a moment of a French court martial, trying the captain for the loss of his ship. A case could be made out for surrendering – and an equally good case could probably be made out for fighting on, relying on that lucky shot.

He wished he did not keep thinking about the French captain’s plight, but the fact was he did not look forward to what he had to do: it had been bad enough pounding the
Sylphe
in an action which would bring him no credit – a 74-gun ship was expected to pound a frigate into submission. Admittedly it would be different with the
Junon,
because two equally powerful ships had started off on level terms, and the
Dido
had gained the advantage by using surprise. But he hated the idea that the French captain would fight on because of pride, and probably cause the death of fifty of his men and the wounding of double that number.

Would a French captain be having these thoughts? He shook his head impatiently: no, he almost certainly would not. So it was his job to get fifty yards to windward of the
Junon
and pour in a full broadside to start the proceedings.

This was the first time he had been able to compare the windward ability of the
Dido
against another ship, and he was quite impressed by her performance: she had pointed higher than the
Junon,
which at the time had been all that mattered. One learned about one’s ship at the oddest times.

They were approaching the
Junon
fast now. The thunderclouds were clearing; blue patches of sky were hinting at a clearance. The wind was less gusty and perhaps a little stronger: there were hints of whitecaps on the water.

And now the
Dido
was within a few minutes of firing her larboard broadside into the
Junon,
and it was important to remember that although the French ship had lost her foremast and some of the larboard guns were obscured by sails hanging over the side, her starboard broadside was unaffected: every one of those guns would be loaded; at this very moment the French gunners would be waiting for the
Dido
to come into their sights.

Ramage had one big advantage – he could manoeuvre the
Dido.
Use that advantage, he told himself; do not lie alongside the
Junon
and indulge in a slugging match. The way to fight this action was to keep on making darting attacks – raking the Frenchman across the bow and across the stern, keeping out of the way of her broadsides as much as possible while pouring a heavy fire into her unprotected ends. So after his first broadside the
Dido
would be raking her.

He watched from the quarterdeck as the distance rapidly lessened: four hundred yards, three hundred, two hundred, and then the tight feeling of anticipation as the
Junon
seemed to come into fine focus: all the colours seemed intensified, from the sea to her copper sheathing (revealed as she rolled gently), from the scroll bearing her name (at this distance the red seemed gaudy) to the flax colour of her sails and the black of the muzzles of her guns poking out of her side.

Ramage could see the Marines raising their muskets as Rennick and his lieutenants gave them orders. He imagined the second captains of guns cocking the locks and leaping back out of the way of the recoil, while the captains would be taking up the strain on the triggerlines, ready to give that tug that would fire the guns. And, of course, the French gunners would be going through the same drill.

A hundred yards, fifty, a ship’s length…and then the deep cough and spurts of smoke and flame as the first of the
Dido
’s guns opened fire, punctuated by the sharper crash of the
Junon
’s
opening broadside. Almost at once the smoke drifted aft and set them coughing, and as the broadsides continued Ramage heard the tearing calico sound of roundshot passing close. There was a crash and he saw one of the cutters disintegrate: a reminder that he had not paused earlier to hoist out the boats and lower them, to tow them astern out of harm’s way, and where they would not be smashed into showers of lethal splinters.

He could feel the thuds as some of the French shot slammed into the
Dido
’s
side, but so far no yards had been damaged. Were the French gunners not firing into the masts and spars as they usually did? Perhaps the
Dido
’s
steady fire after raking her had shown the French how devastating was a broadside fired into the hull.

The popping of the Marines’ muskets seemed laughable, too light to be lethal, but he reminded himself that every pop meant a musket ball, each one of which could kill a man. Now the 12-pounders on the quarterdeck were firing, and almost immediately Orsini’s carronades joined in. And by now the
Junon
’s
quarterdeck was abreast that of the
Dido
and he could see a small group of French officers standing at the forward end, looking across at the
Dido
just as he was watching the
Junon.