Ramage At Trafalgar (19 page)

“You had no trouble with the Spanish getting on shore?”

“No, sir. We had to drive off a couple of mounted sentries to get back on board the cutter, but there was no difficulty.”

“We? Who did you take with you?”

“Midshipman Orsini, sir, the nephew of the Marchesa di Volterra.”

“Ah yes, you told me: he speaks fluent Spanish.”

“As well as being a very resourceful young officer, sir.”

“Yes. I’ll keep an eye on him,” the admiral said. “Has he passed for lieutenant yet?”

Ramage shook his head. “He won’t be twenty for another couple of years.”

“Well, we’ll do something about him later. Now, what had Señor Perez to tell you?”

Ramage repeated the Spaniard’s words as near verbatim as his memory allowed, so that he was near the end of his report when he came to the rumour – he carefully repeated Perez’s warning about it – that Villeneuve might have new orders directing him to the Mediterranean.

The chance that his quarry might bolt either to the north or the south did not seem to bother Nelson. “Twenty ships, Ramage, I shan’t be satisfied with less than twenty ships!”

“Leave one for me, sir,” Ramage said jokingly.

“There’ll be enough for everyone,” Nelson said, sitting down in his armchair, “but no frigates in the line of battle, Ramage; one broadside from a 74 will turn your ship into floating wreckage…

“Signals – I want you frigates to repeat my signals quickly: if you do that, you’ll have done your job. That’s what frigates are for, when serving with a fleet. On detached service – which you are used to – well, that’s a different matter. But with a fleet, keeping a sharp lookout and quick signals!”

“Yes, sir,” Ramage said.

Ramage sat at his desk, with the
Calypso
hove-to in a very light breeze five miles off the Fuerte de La Cortadura on the outskirts of Cadiz. The sun was occasionally breaking through high, watery clouds.

He pulled across his journal and dipped his quill in the ink. Blockading (or keeping a watch on an enemy port) must be the dullest job in the Service, apart from acting as guardship at somewhere like Plymouth or Portsmouth: for days you just stared at the same views. Days, weeks and perhaps months…

He flipped over some earlier pages. Sunday, 28th September: the day they joined the fleet, and next day was Nelson’s birthday. On the next night he and Paolo had gone on shore to find Señor Perez, and on 1st October he had taken the
Calypso
out to find Nelson and report on what the Spaniard had to say…Since then the
Calypso
and
Euryalus
had kept a close watch on Cadiz and Rota (close enough to see what was happening on board the French and Spanish ships hiding in Cadiz), with Thomas Dundas’ frigate
Naiad
and Thomas Bladen-Capel’s
Phoebe
close in. Several miles out – close enough to distinguish flag signals – was William Prowse with the frigate
Sirius
, with William Parker in the
Amazon
frigate, the schooner
Pickle
and the
Weazle
lying further out, over the horizon. Then, making up the rest of the links out to the fleet, were three ships of the line, acting as frigates because of the shortage – the
Defence
with Captain George Hope in command, the 64-gun
Agamemnon
(the first ship of the line that Nelson had ever commanded as a young post-captain) with Captain Berry, one of the few who knew Lord Nelson well, and finally, in sight of the fleet, the
Mars
and the Duff clan.

The entries in the journal reflected the dullness of the task: “5th October – anchored in Cadiz Roads, no movement among ships of the Combined Fleet… 10 October – cruising between Castillo de San Sebastián (the western tip of Cadiz city) and the Fuerte de La Cortadura… 15th October – patrolling the
Canal Principal
off Cadiz harbour: 35 tons of water remaining… 18th October hove-to in light winds off Castillo de San Sebastian, opened one cask of salt beef, six pieces missing…”

And then frequent entries were: “Ship’s company employed ATSR” (the abbreviation for “As The Service Required”)… “Ship’s company exercised at general quarters” (which meant at the guns)… “Topmen exercised at shifting foretopsail” (“shifting” meant sending down the topsail and then hoisting it up again and bending it back on to the yard, usually timing from “sail set to sail set again”). And painting…the gunner was given men to black the guns, painting them with a special mixture which included lamp-black and Stockholm tar (one drop of which, Aitken swore, would ruin his scrubbed decks). Aitken was perhaps the only man in the ship who favoured blockade and lookout duty – he had the men and the time to get all the jobs done that could not be undertaken in rough seas, when wet paint would be spoiled by spray or men having to move across it.

Jackson, Rossi and Stafford were busy at just such a job: Jackson had drawn a booklet of gold leaf from the first lieutenant which Captain Ramage had paid for (the Navy Board did not issue gold leaf: their nearest was white paint). From the boatswain he had drawn a bottle of special size (for sticking down the gilding), a fine brush, and a chamois leather pad. Stafford and Rossi had brushes and paint.

They had to gild and paint the capstan, which was the size of a large fat cask standing on end. On top, in the middle, was a crown, whose gilding was wearing off, attacked by the sun and chipped during normal use of the capstan.

The most fiddling of jobs, the first started by Rossi and Stafford, were the wedge-shaped drawers which fitted into the slots taking the bars when the capstan had to be turned. When the bars were not slotted in, breast-high, the slots themselves held small drawers in which were stowed pieces of cloth to be used as bandages when in action and short pieces of line, each with a monkey’s fist knot the size of a walnut. They were the tourniquets that would be used to bind up a severed limb and stop the bleeding.

Jackson had already rubbed down the crown with shagreen: he was lucky to get a piece of dried shark skin from the carpenter, who hoarded his meagre supply.

The American scrambled up on top of the capstan and carefully pulled the cork from the bottle of size. He poured some into a shallow dish and recorked the bottle. He then painted size on to the part of the crown he intended gilding, found the pair of tweezers he had borrowed from the surgeon and, using his body to act as a shield should there be a puff of wind, opened the small book of gold leaf. The leaves were an inch wide by four inches long, and each leaf so thin that the gentlest breeze would blow it away.

He held a leaf in the tweezers and then gently tore it out. He transferred it to the part of the crown with size, blowing the leaf so that it settled on the carved wood. He then worked it in to the carver’s indentations, using a piece of wood with a finely-curved end, leaving the odd edges of the leaf to be cleaned off when the size was dry. He then sized another section and repeated the transfer of gold leaf.

Meanwhile Rossi and Stafford had removed the drawers, emptied out their contents and placed them on a small sheet of old and paint-stained canvas.

“Mr Aitken’s goin’ ter want ter know ’xactly how many leaves Jacko’s used,” Stafford commented.

“Is not hard to see,” Rossi grunted. He was putting on weight round his waist and bending over to work on the drawers was uncomfortable. Finally he sat down on the canvas, holding the first drawer to be painted.

“Gold leaf would be rare old stuff to steal,” Jackson said. “You have to be careful when you puff it on to the size: if you breathe in you’re likely to suck it into your lungs.”

“Then you’ll be the only sailor in the King’s service with gilded lungs,” Stafford said. “Every breff costs a guinea!”

“You know about the guinea?” Jackson asked.

“What guinea?” Stafford asked cautiously.

“That’s what can be rolled to make enough gold leaf like this–” he held up the book, “–to stretch round the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral.”

“Don’t sound right ter me,” Stafford declared stoutly in the special tone he adopted to express extreme doubt.

“Can’t help that: s’fact,” Jackson said, in turn adopting the tone of voice that showed he was not prepared to argue the point.

“It would not go round St Peter’s dome,” Rossi said triumphantly.

“Is that the place in Rome?”

“Is the greatest church in the world,” the Italian maintained.

“Not as big as St Paul’s,” Stafford declared, defending the city of London’s superiority over anything foreign.

“
Mamma mia
,” Rossi said, knowing that it was an argument he could not win, since he had seen neither St Peter’s nor St Paul’s, and did not really care about their respective domes.

“Have you mixed the white?” he asked Stafford.

“Start off with the blue!” Stafford said crossly. “Where’s yer brains, Rosey? Start off with white and then spill some blue on it and you ‘ave an ‘ell of a job getting rid of it. Starting orf with the blue, it don’t matter if there’s a splash of white: just dab on more blue.”

“Better not to splash,” Jackson said as he jumped off the capstan and gave it a half-turn so that his body would still shelter the other half of the crown from random puffs of wind. “You’d better get a move on – I’m half-way through the gilding, and if the bosun or the first lieutenant come along…”

“Why d’you always get the easy jobs?” Stafford demanded.

“I’m the only man in this ship that can gild proper, that’s why!” Jackson said. “Needs skill and patience.”

“An’ don’t take a deep breff,” Stafford said.

After five minutes’ silence, Stafford said: “Flat sort o’ country, this Cadiz place. All sandspits and salt-pans. Wouldn’t like to live ’ere!”

“Why not?” demanded Rossi, who tended to defend any person, place or thing criticized by Stafford.

“M’skeeters,” Stafford said succinctly. “Must eat yer alive at night. All that whinin’ and bitin’. Marshes and salt-pans, that’s where they like to live, an’ this place is
all
marshes and salt-pans.”

“Maybe the Frogs and the Dons are relying on the mosquitoes to keep us away,” Jackson commented. “Just trying to be irritating.”

“Reckon they’re going to sail out, Jacko?”

“Not if they’ve got any sense,” Jackson said firmly. “Would
you
like to get across Lord Nelson’s hawse? Damned if I would. I heard the captain telling Mr Aitken that Lord Nelson says he wants at least twenty of ’em.”

“Twenty what?” Stafford asked.

Jackson groaned and said: “You know, Staff, sometimes you are so daft it’s hard to understand you. Twenty French and Spanish ships of the line destroyed, sunk, burned, captured – His Lordship doesn’t care about the details, but he’s set his mind on at least twenty.”

“Good fer ’im,” Stafford said approvingly. “My mum always did things by the score. A score of candles, a score of eggs, an’ so on: she ’ated dozens, but scores she was very partial to. Never did understand why.”

“She should have met His Lordship,” Jackson commented.

A footstep and then Aitken’s soft voice said. “More talking than working, it seems to me. Who is scoring?”

“No, sir,” Jackson said, leaning back to display how much of the crown he had so far gilded. “Not scoring, but a score. Twenty.”

Aitken nodded. “So you heard the captain telling me, eh?”

“Couldn’t help it, sir,” Jackson said.

“We was just saying wot a good number a score is, sir,” Stafford said. “My mum always bought things by the score.”

“And you stole by the gross,” Aitken commented, smiling as Rossi and Jackson began laughing.

“I’m glad to see you started with the blue and not the white,” Aitken said and Rossi immediately began a long-winded explanation, repeating his own version of Stafford’s earlier comment.

Aitken nodded and then said to Jackson: “There’s some gilding to be done at the entryport, while you have the size and the gold leaf out.”

“That gold leaf, sir,” Stafford said. “You take a guinea and flatten it and you get enough gold leaf–”

“To go round the dome of St Paul’s – yes, I know.”

“So there!” Stafford said triumphantly to Rossi. “It’d probably go round St Peter’s
twice
.”

On Thursday the wind had occasionally fluked eastward, as though teasing; Friday – yesterday – had been fine, with the wind still occasionally whiffling to the east, and then back to the north and west. Then, at midnight, it had set in from the east and Ramage and Southwick, walking up and down in the darkness of the quarterdeck, the stars above bright and the black outline of Cadiz sharp, had agreed that it looked as if it was going to stay east for a few days.

Ramage had slept fitfully, fully dressed. Every hour or so he had gone up to the quarterdeck, talked with the officer of the deck and confirmed that the wind was staying east. The door to Cadiz was open; would the Combined Fleet make a bolt forit?

Certainly not in the darkness: more than thirty great ships (among them two which were the biggest in the world) would want time and daylight to get their anchors up and sails set; the channel out of Cadiz, opposite the city, was only about four hundred yards wide; not enough for a big ship (with an inexperienced crew, foul bottom, probably nervous captain and several other ships around) to tack in an emergency. And unless the ship held its wind it would go aground on a two-fathom bank on the larboard hand or hit the edge of a mud bank on the starboard hand which dried out at low water.

Ramage added a sentence to his night orders: “By dawn the
Calypso
must be passing south of the El Diamante bank steering for Cadiz Roads, and the captain is to be called.”

As he tried to ward off the waves of excitement and sleep, Ramage reflected on the last few words of his night orders. Yes, the captain was to be called, and to set an example of imperturbability, he would have to pretend to be asleep. But sleep when the French commander-in-chief was probably working by candlelight giving orders for the Combined Fleet to weigh and sail at daylight? And the
Calypso
(by a stroke of luck) the frigate whose turn it was to be close up to Cadiz Roads, so close at dawn that they would be able to see waves slapping on the breakwater and the beach at Punta de la Soledad.