Ramage At Trafalgar (10 page)

“Well, I’m not going down the dam’ Medway on an ebb tide,” Ramage said firmly. “Trying to save a few hours could cost us a couple of days stuck in the mud – and Medway mud is the deepest and stickiest known to man.”

Southwick sighed thankfully. “I was going to suggest we waited for the first of the next flood, sir… We’ll have a fair wind most if not all of the way to Sheerness, so it won’t matter that we’re butting the young flood. It’ll be so near low water we’ll be able to see the deep channel: this end of the river has more bends than a snake with colic.”

Ramage glanced at Aitken. “I’ve no doubt you’ve lots of reports, accounts, and so on for me to sign before we sail…?”

Aitken lifted a folder which he had put beside him on the settee. “I have them here, sir.”

“And the bill for that yellow paint?”

“That, too, sir, but Southwick and I had intended it to be a present.”

The run down the Medway to Sheerness had been notable – as Bowen had commented – for its smell. Medway mud seemed to be a vile and viscous mixture of sewage, blue clay and brown glue, stretching out in a wide band on each side of the fairway as the river twisted from Chatham to Garrison Point at its mouth, where it passed between Grain Spit to larboard and Cheyney Spit to starboard and ran into the Thames at Great Nore.

“Look at those dam’ sea birds,” Bowen had exclaimed, pointing at a dozen or so waders. “By rights they should stick fast in the mess!”

Southwick was more concerned with two birds jinking across the river, uttering sharp cries. “Ah, if only I had a fowling piece I’d get one of those snipe!” he exclaimed.

“And who’d retrieve for you?” Aitken inquired sarcastically.

As the river widened at Kethole Reach and Saltpan Reach in the approaches to Sheerness, the flood stream – now strong, eddying and curling round the few buoys (marking the entrances on the starboard hand to Half Acre and Stangate Creeks and West Swale) and tilting them upstream – carried swans past them, proud-looking creatures which refused to hurry, moving in a stately fashion to give the
Calypso
just enough room to pass between them as she passed the mudflats, one of which had a curious name, Bishop Ooze.

“They remind me of three-deckers,” commented Aitken, “but they tack and wear with less fuss.”

Soon Sheerness was astern and Southwick took the frigate down the fairway clear of Sheerness Middle Sand to meet Sea Reach, turning to larboard at the Great Nore with the flood stream under her to go on a few miles and then turn to come alongside the powder hoys at Black Stakes.

This part of the Thames was grim: to larboard, the Yantlet Flats were flat fields of thick, stinking and bubbling mud with what were like ditches where scour had cut runways. To starboard, the names on the chart told a similar but less smelly story – West Knock and East Knock were the entrances to a deeper channel across Southend Flats, which merged into the Marsh End Sand, Leigh Sand and the long stretch of the Chapman Sands off Leigh.

As the hoys came into sight, Ramage cursed himself for a weakling; he had done nothing about the gunner. The man was a dodger: he evaded responsibility as other men tried to evade diseases. But changing him meant a long argument with the Army’s Board of Ordnance, as well as the Navy Board. Both would want written evidence of his incompetence, and there was the rub: as a gunner the man was not incompetent; he looked after the
Calypso
’s guns and magazine; he – well, that was the trouble. He was just a man who dodged responsibility for anything, even boxes of slow match, although it was irritating for his fellow officers and his captain, it was not a crime.

Ramage could imagine arguments with both Boards – “I can’t send him away in charge of expeditions” – “Give an example” – “Well, I haven’t one because I daren’t send him off” – “Then how do you know you can’t trust him?” And so on.

Well, soon they would be alongside a hoy and taking on nearly ten tons of powder in 120-pound cases and 90-pound barrels. Ramage could be sure that both Aitken and Southwick would be watching every move, whether by seamen or the gunner, as the copper-hooped cases and barrels were hoisted on board, using the staytackle and a cargo net. And of course there would be boxes of portfires, signal rockets and quick match already cut into lengths and packed into boxes with sliding lids.

Gunpowder. Curious stuff, just an innocent-looking grey powder. Two sorts, naturally. Most of the powder hoisted on board would be coarse, used in the bore of the guns to fire 12-pounder roundshot. But some, in specially marked containers, would be the fine powder used for priming: put in the priming pans of the 12-pounders, carronades, muskets and pistols. “Mealed” powder, it used to be called, but the important thing was that it was so fine it took fire the instant the flintlock made a spark (unless the powder was damp or the spark particularly weak). Priming powder was, pound for pound, a good deal more powerful than the coarse sort: load a gun with priming powder instead of coarse and you risked it bursting.

Well, that was the gunner’s responsibility: the coarse powder had to be used to fill the flannel cartridges, cloth tubes the diameter of the bore of the guns, and priming powder had to be put in the powder horns issued to gun captains as they went into action and to men armed with pistols or muskets.

One hour later the
Calypso
was secured alongside a hoy: bow, stern, breastropes and springs had been adjusted and the staytackle rigged, Aitken reported. Ramage had given orders to start loading the powder, after a second check had been made that the galley fire was out, that no men were smoking, that the fire engine had been hoisted up on deck and the cistern filled with seawater, and finally that the washdeck pumps were also rigged and the decks well wetted – running with water, in fact – in case any of the barrels or cases leaked powder while being slung on board.

Going into action? Ramage considered it was nothing compared to taking on powder. When going into action his mind was full of a dozen different problems, quite apart from giving orders and watching the enemy, but taking on powder – there was just the rattle and squeak of the blocks as the men hauled on the tackle to hoist the net on board, and he either paced the deck or sat in his cabin and thought of a tiny dribble of that grey powder falling on the deck, and something crushing it: just enough pressure to cause a detonation. No flame or spark needed. There would be a gigantic explosion and in the place of the
Calypso
and the hoy there would be a great circle of roiled water with planks and spars (and bodies) falling like solid rain… They’d hear the noise as far away as Chatham and Greenwich – and few would doubt what caused it.

With five tons of powder hoisted on board and carried below, Ramage decided he would inspect the magazine and powder-room. He had not been inside either since inspecting every inch of the ship when she was captured from the French. That was not quite true, since every Sunday he made his routine inspection of the ship, when he put his head round the door, but he did not enter because no one was allowed in unless he was barefoot or wearing felt shoes (and had been searched for any ferrous object: that could clink and make a spark).

He sat down on the settee in his cabin and took off his shoes. Silkin would not be very pleased to find his master had been walking round the ship in white silk stockings, but Silkin had an easy-going master, in Ramage’s view; the captain’s servant was a valet and many of them serving penurious captains had to spend much of their time mending stockings, shirts and stocks, so a little extra laundry would not overtax Silkin.

He padded out of the cabin, ignored the Marine sentry’s startled gaze but returned his salute as usual, and went on deck calling for Aitken.

The first lieutenant joined him by the capstan and was careful to keep his eyes above shoulder level.

“Don’t be so damned tactful,” Ramage growled. “Go below and take your shoes off – we’re going to give the magazine and powder-room a close inspection. Tell the gunner to stay on deck.”

Aitken grinned happily: the gunner was the only man in the whole ship whose mere appearance could put him in a temper.

Ramage went below, waited for Aitken, and then led the way along the passage leading to the magazine and powder-room. The passage had the silent, cold feel of the entrance to a vault but, like the rest of the area, it was specially constructed.

To begin with, both the magazine and powder-room were called officially the “hanging magazine”, because not only were both built below the waterline, but they were placed four feet lower than the deck level, like a large inset box, so that anyone entering had to go down several steps. More important, in an emergency it could be flooded with seawater and both magazine and powder-room would be submerged instantly, along with the powder, whether in case, barrel or flannel cartridges.

The passageway and both magazine and powder-room had the floors plastered with mortar, and over that had been laid a dry lining of narrow strips of deal planking, little more than lathes. Then all three had been lined with lead sheeting weighing five pounds to the square foot, Ramage recalled inconsequentially as he tapped with his knuckle, making sure that none of the sheeting had “crept”, coming away from the lathes-and-mortar base.

At the end of the passage the magazine door (which was also the entrance to the powder-room) was hung with heavy brass hinges which were secured with copper screws. The big lock was made of solid copper, and the huge copper key (which always made your hand smell if you had to carry it) was normally kept by Aitken and issued to the gunner only on the captain’s orders.

The only illumination came from the little light room, a wedge-shaped glass cupboard, accessible only from outside, in which stood a lantern which shone into the magazine with its flame separated from the powder by a thick glass window.

Ramage stood back to let four sailors pass him with cases of powder. The dim, yellow light of the lantern showed that the passageway was clean and none of the sheeting bulged on the sole, bulkheads or deckhead. Once the seamen had left the magazine, Ramage walked in. With its many shelves, which would soon be filled with flannel cartridges for the 12-pounders and the carronades, the magazine was completely lined with thin copper sheeting: a further precaution against sparks but, along with the lead, giving added protection against rats gnawing their way into the magazine and then chewing the flannel of the cartridges, allowing powder to spill.

The only reminder that from time to time an enemy could threaten the magazine was the rolls of thick felt, for the moment held up by tapes against the deckhead, out of the way of the men carrying powder, but in action the blankets of felt would be unrolled, to hang down, soaked with water, heavy curtains to prevent the flash from guns or an explosion from penetrating the magazine and blowing up the ship.

The last curtain had a small aperture cut in it: in action, each powder cartridge would be passed through it to a waiting powder monkey, who would hold up his wooden cartridge case and, with the flannel bag thrust in, push down the lid before hurrying back along the passageway past the wet felt curtains, and making his way back to the gundeck.

Ramage and Aitken, inside the magazine, inspected the copper. Several sheets near the doorway were a rich reddish-gold: they had been renewed in the past few days. The powder-room beyond – where both Ramage and Aitken had to back and fill so that their own shadows did not obscure what they were trying to inspect – also had some new sheeting.

When Ramage commented on it. Aitken said: “I took the opportunity when we had all the powder out. I asked the gunner if he had anything needing to be done down here, but he said no. So I made my own inspection. No sheet was actually worn through, but a dozen or more were paper-thin and would soon go…”

“That damned gunner,” Ramage said. “I did nothing about him…”

The run down the Thames and out into the English Channel always excited Ramage, not because he enjoyed navigating between the sandbanks which littered the twisting channels, where being an instant late in tacking or wearing round a buoy or getting caught in stays (or even misjudging the strength of the current) could put the ship hard aground, but because of the names.

Start with the Yantlet, at the western end of Sea Reach. Very well, that took its name from the Yantlet Flats, over to starboard, miles of mud and ooze. But Yantlet? There was no village on the chart; simply a small creek of that name.

East and West Knock, off Shoeburyness. Knock – like knock, knock? Out to the Great Nore again and then steering south-east for the Four Fathom Channel, leaving the long tongue of Red Sand to larboard, to come into the Kentish Flats and then bear up to the north-east into the Queen’s Channel to avoid two long stretches running parallel with the coast, Cliffend Sand (off Reculver) and Margate Sand.

And then the reach into Botany Bay, off Foreness Point, and a haul on the sheets to pass North Foreland, the eastern tip of the county of Kent. Botany Bay? The next to the west was called Palm Bay, but what could be botanical, backed by the wicked white cliffs that formed the Foreland itself?

Then Broadstairs Knoll, into the Old Cudd Channel and down the Gull Stream, to pass inside the Goodwin Sands and across the Downs, the comparatively sheltered anchorage favoured by ships of war and merchant ships waiting to go up to the port of London or the Medway.

Southwick was in his element in these waters: he knew theThames and the Downs “like looking at my face in the morning”; he rarely glanced at the chart and, although the leadsman stood ready in the chains, rarely called for a cast of the lead.

The
Calypso
stretched down from the South Foreland, seeming to delight at being at sea again, her copper-sheathed bottom clean, the new topsails and topgallants stretching into shape, the wind flattening out the creases and pressing the canvas into fair curves.

The wind, Ramage noted thankfully, was beginning to veer as they rounded the South Foreland and hardened sheets to bring Dover into sight. By the time Shakespeare Cliff was on the quarter and Danger Rock on the beam, the wind had settled into the north-west.