Ramage And The Drum Beat (27 page)

‘One nor’wester be damned,’ snapped Ramage. ‘More likely four due north. Mr Southwick, man the head pump – Stafford can refresh himself by drinking a couple of mugs of Cowley’s special Cadiz Bay seawater and then stand under the pump for fifteen minutes until he knows whether he’s a lilly or a lally!’

‘Fetch me a mug!’ growled Southwick, seizing Stafford by the shoulder and giving him a push forward. ‘Man the starboard head pump,’ he bellowed, in a sudden burst of anger, ‘our Mr Stafford’s going to dance more than one jig at Cowley’s tonight!’

Ramage heard the pump gurgling as it began to draw, then its regular splashing. A few minutes later Stafford was violently sick, and Southwick came back to the binnacle still holding the mug. ‘Can’t understand him, sir. Been hoarding his tot, but I don’t think it’s because he’s scared. One nor’wester, though!’

Ramage remembered the cool way Stafford had burgled Admiral Cordoba’s house. ‘No – he’s not scared. Send another man forward as a lookout.’

Southwick’s reaction was amusing: clearly he was more disgusted that Stafford should be drunk after only one nor’wester than of his actually getting drunk. But Stafford was being modest: in sailor’s jargon, ‘north’ meant raw spirit and ‘west’ meant water, while a ‘nor’wester’ was a mug of half-water and half-spirit, which was clearly insufficient to provide the Cockney with enough inspiration for tonight’s antics.

Just after nine o’clock – by which time a sobered Stafford, shivering with cold and thoroughly ashamed of himself, had come aft and apologized, and been sent below to change his clothes – they heard the boom of one signal gun and then another: the signal from the Victory for the Fleet to tack in succession, and the other flag officers repeating it.

‘Belike the Captain’ll run into a patch of fog now,’ growled Southwick

‘If she does,’ said Ramage, ‘it’ll be the real Commodore, not Stafford shouting at us!’

The follow-my-leader turn after the order to tack in succession meant the Fleet was steering south-east. Unless they met the enemy or there was a sudden change of wind, it would stay on this course for the rest of the night. Somewhere ahead another fleet of nearly twice as many sail of the line was also under way, trying to make its way to Cadiz and being humbugged by variable winds and fog. The Spaniards would probably be uncertain of their position, desperately anxious to make a good landfall at daylight and, if they knew there was a British fleet near by, scared of their own shadows.

In three hours or so it would be St Valentine’s Day. Ramage thought of his parents. They’d be in Cornwall, at St Kew, and by now would have dined and probably enjoying a game of cards. But for that damnable trial, he realized with bitterness, his father’s flag might have been hoisted in the Victory, instead of Sir John’s. The devil take such thoughts. It was now Southwick’s watch and he decided to get some sleep.

‘From soon after midnight,’ Ramage wrote in a hurried letter to his father, ‘we heard the signal guns of the Spanish Fleet down to the south-west – so many that Cordoba was obviously having great difficulty in trying to keep his fleet together in this fog. Without doubt they were making up for Cadiz, and with the wind at south-west they have the weather gage, tho’ I doubt ’twill do them much good since there’s little more than a breeze which hardly shifts the fog patches lying between us.

‘At first light the Culloden (one of our leading ships) made the signal for “Strange sail” and shortly after six o’clock reported them to be Spanish frigates, but the fog drifts about so much I don’t know if they sighted us and warned Admiral Cordoba.

‘Shortly after seven, two of our frigates made the signal for discovering a strange fleet, south by west, and the Victory ordered the nearest frigate to investigate. Soon after that, through gaps in the fog, we had our first glimpses of several Spanish sail of the line on both larboard and starboard bow, but unless we get a decent breeze it will be noon before we are up with them, as we are only making a knot or so.

‘At a quarter past eight, Sir John signalled the Fleet “To keep in close order”, although despite a foggy night it was already in almost perfect order of sailing in two divisions, and at twenty past eight he made my second favourite signal, number fifty-three, “To prepare for battle”. This really repeated the same signal of yesterday and I think the Fleet was already prepared! Now we await my favourite, number five, “To engage the enemy”.

‘My Kathleens have long since breakfasted and are in great spirits; in fact I truly believe that if I told them I proposed boarding the Santísima Trinidad they’d give a cheer!

‘At twenty past nine Sir John made only his third general signal of the day (I wonder how many Admiral Cordoba had made by then!), which was “To chase”. A few minutes before then the wind had veered slightly and Sir John came round two points to starboard so we were steering due south.

‘The fog began clearing very slowly (the sun was getting some warmth in it) and soon we could count twenty sail of the line in two widely separated groups rather than in two divisions, straggling and in no sort of order, steering right across our bow for Cadiz. This shows they must have been caught in the Strait by “our gale” and blown well out into the Atlantic.

‘At ten o’clock one of our frigates made the signal for twenty-five sail of the line (we are fifteen, remember). Just then the wind veered again and Sir John came round to a course of south-south-west. It is now just before eleven o’clock, Cape St Vincent is eleven leagues to the north-east, and Southwick has just been down to tell me the fog has cleared, leaving banks of haze.

‘I had always thought the prospect of a fleet action would be frightening; but I’m glad to say I am too busy (at the moment, anyway!) for fears or premonitions. I have only one regret – that I am not commanding a seventy-four manned by 500 of my Kathleens. Before long we’ll be at the Dons’ throats, and I must put my pen away, but later I hope to add a few more pages describing a victorious outcome of our St Valentine Day’s endeavours.’

On deck he found Southwick pacing up and down, cursing the haze. The Kathleen might be small – the smallest ship in the Fleet, in fact – but Ramage was proud of her appearance: although little more than a terrier among a pack of wolf-hounds, the ship and ship’s company were ready for battle, yet somehow they looked – well, relaxed; there was no feeling of tension.

Besides each gun was a rammer, sponge, match tub and a stack of grape shot (each round looking like a rigid net bag packed with small onions) while the round shot were lying in fitted racks along the bulwarks, black oranges neatly spaced out on shelves. The boat was towing astern, head pumps were rigged and sprinkled sand made the dampened deck gritty underfoot.

The wind was still light and fitful, and each time the fog-soaked mainsail gave a desultory flap overhead it showered the men beneath with tiny water droplets. The fog condensing on the rigging had run down the shrouds, leaving dark puddles on the deck.

The crews were sitting or standing round their guns, chatting and looking as though they were waiting for a prize fight to begin. Stafford was at his gun: eyes bloodshot and face pale from the antics of last night but every movement showing he was brimming with his usual Cockney jauntiness. Near him Maxton’s brown face was split with its perpetually cheerful grin. Jackson, acting as a quartermaster, stood by the helm ready to pass on orders to the men at the tiller. Rossi was gesticulating as he described something to the man beside him – an amorous adventure, judging from the way he moved his hands. The men listed in the general quarters bill as boarders already had their cutlass belts slung over their shoulders, although the cutlasses were hooked on to the bulwark, ready to be snatched up.

Over on the larboard beam the Captain was keeping perfect station on the ships ahead and astern and beyond Ramage could see most of the ships in the other division. The sun, weak as it was, tinged the banks of haze with a pink which brought out the colour of the sails. The sight of the two- and three-deckers trying to keep their sails full (but the tiny feathers of white at their bows showing how slowly they were going) was a splendid subject for a painter. The gun port lids, painted red on the inside, here now open and triced flat back against the ships’ sides, making a checkerboard of red squares along the white or yellow strakes painted on black hulls which gleamed wetly, while the muzzles of the guns poked out like accusing fingers.

The haze softened the lines of the ships, and the tiny water droplets clinging to the rigging reflected the light like dew on spiders’ webs. How could a painter capture the colour of those sails? The warm tint of umber with a little raw sienna or perhaps a touch of yellow ochre? (But no painter would want to spoil the effect by showing the dark, uneven blotches of damp along the heads of the sails.)

‘Tuppence worth o’ leg of beef soup and a penn’orth o’ bread, that’s wot I’d like,’ he heard Stafford’s Cockney voice declare to one of the other men. ‘Minnie’s place at the back o’ me farver’s shop – though I ’aven’t bin there since the press took me up. Yus, I could do wiv that, but thanks to the Dons it’ll be cold ’ash for us today.’

He spat over the side through the gun port and grumbled, ‘This’ll be the fourth watch me jaws ’ave over’auled this chaw o’ baccy an’ it’s got abaht as much guts left in it as a bit o’ sail clorf, s’fact.’

Southwick suddenly paused in his march back and forth across the deck and snapped at Jackson, ‘The flagship’s signalling!’

Jackson snatched the telescope. ‘General – preparative – number thirty-one. Then compass, south-west.’

Southwick flicked through the pages of the signal book ‘“Form line of battle ahead and astern of the admiral as most convenient…”’

He looked up to make sure Ramage had heard and grumbled, ‘Unless we get a breeze those wine-swilling, fish-on-Fridays, priest-ridden gallows birds’ll be in Cadiz, their yards sent down and everyone home for Easter before we form the line. Bah – chasing at a couple o’ knots indeed!’

With that he banged the scabbard of his enormous sword against his boot. The sword intrigued Ramage and he’d watched how carefully Southwick had honed it the previous evening.

‘How did you come by that meat cleaver, Southwick?’

‘My father was a butcher, sir,’ he grinned, ‘but I bought this one at the best sword cutler’s in London, Mr Prater’s at Charing Cross. Paid for it with the first prize money I ever had. ’Scuse me sir – Jackson! Watch for–’

‘Preparative’s coming down, sir!’ called Jackson.

‘Very well.’

Ramage knew for the next minutes there’d be something of a free-for-all as the fifteen ships in two columns manoeuvred to form a single line, each captain determined to get as near as possible to the head of it, using the excuse that the position conformed with the admiral’s signal as being ‘most convenient’.

For all the polite but determined jostling the Fleet might be manoeuvring at a Royal Review at Spithead: a topsail backed here, lower yards braced sharp up there, a jib let fly for a minute or two, and quickly the two columns of ships merged into a single line nearly two miles long. The Captain was so close to the Namur that her jib-boom almost overhung the taffrail, and Ramage could imagine how the Commodore had been urging on Captain Miller, who commanded the Captain, and guess what Captain Whitshed was thinking as he looked anxiously astern from the Namur’s quarterdeck.

‘The Culloden’s done it!’ Southwick exclaimed. ‘Trust Captain Troubridge!’

The Culloden had managed to lead the line, the Victory was seventh, followed by Vice-Admiral Waldegrave in the Barfleur, with Vice-Admiral Thompson and the Britannia eleventh. The Captain – hmm, thought Ramage, the Commodore’s the thirteenth in the line – would it be his unlucky day? The fifteenth and last – ‘the whipper-in’, as Southwick called her – was the Excellent, commanded by Captain Collingwood.

Neither Ramage nor Southwick made any attempt to hide their excitement at the sight of the fifteen great ships in line of battle. Each knew he was watching one of the greatest sights of his lifetime; yet each saw it differently.

Southwick’s professional eye noted whether each ship was the correct distance astern of her next ahead and that all her sails were drawing. The banks of haze into which they sailed from time to time were to him only simple problems in station keeping not, as Ramage saw them, delicate veils softening the ships’ lines, giving them the same air of mystery and enigmatic beauty that real veils gave to an otherwise naked woman.

Nor would Southwick ever understand a thought passing through Ramage’s mind – that the great two- and three-deckers were magnificent monuments to the muddled world in which they lived. The largest wooden objects ever made by man, and designed solely to fight the elements and kill the enemy, they were, nevertheless, among man’s most beautiful creations.

A ship like the Captain was built of a couple of thousand oak trees grown in the clay soil of Sussex (from acorns, Ramage calculated, which would have been sprouting at the time Cromwell won his victory over the King at Worcester). She’d be fastened with about thirty tons of copper nails and bolts, and ten thousand or so treenails. Such a ship’s lower masts probably came from America, from the forests of Maine or New Hampshire, where pine trees of the necessary diameter were still abundant, while the topmasts and yards were shaped from trees that grew on the shores of the Baltic.

The seams of her decks and hull would be caulked and payed with ten tons of oakum and four of pitch; even the paint would weigh a couple of tons. Ten thousand yards of material would have gone into her sails. (It was ironic to think the entire weight of the Kathleen was a lot less than that of the men in the Captain’s ship’s company and their gear, and the standing and running rigging and blocks.)

Yet the beauty of these great ships was similar to the beauty of a woman: there was no single thing that made them beautiful: it was the total effect of many, like the tiny individual marble chips that made up a mosaic. And the beauty of even a particular part was hard to define – the curves of a woman’s lips might differ only slightly from her sister’s, while the sweep of one ship’s sheer varied only a fraction from another’s. And yet, although the tiny differences defied description or explanation, one woman’s mouth had the beauty her sister’s lacked; one ship had a pleasing sheer and the other had not.