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Authors: Dudley Pope

Ramage's Prize

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Selected Historical Fiction Published by McBooks Press

BY
A
LEXANDER
K
ENT

The Complete Midshipman Bolitho

Stand Into Danger

In Gallant Company

Sloop of War

To Glory We Steer

Command a King's Ship

Passage to Mutiny

With All Despatch

Form Line of Battle!

Enemy in Sight!

The Flag Captain

Signal–Close Action!

The Inshore Squadron

A Tradition of Victory

Success to the Brave

Colours Aloft!

Honour This Day

The Only Victor

Beyond the Reef

The Darkening Sea

For My Country's Freedom

Cross of St George

Sword of Honour

Second to None

Relentless Pursuit

Man of War

Heart of Oak

BY
P
HILIP
M
C
C
UTCHAN

Halfhyde's Island

Halfhyde and the Guns of Arrest

Halfhyde to the Narrows

Halfhyde for the Queen

Halfhyde Ordered South

Halfhyde on Zanatu

BY
J
AN
N
EEDLE

A Fine Boy for Killing

The Wicked Trade

The Spithead Nymph

BY
J
AMES
L. N
ELSON

The Only Life That Mattered

BY
J
AMES
D
UFFY

Sand of the Arena

The Fight for Rome

BY
D
EWEY
L
AMBDIN

The French Admiral

The Gun Ketch

A King's Commander

Jester's Fortune

BY
D
UDLEY
P
OPE

Ramage

Ramage & The Drumbeat

Ramage & The Freebooters

Governor Ramage R.N.

Ramage's Prize

Ramage & The Guillotine

Ramage's Diamond

Ramage's Mutiny

Ramage & The Rebels

The Ramage Touch

Ramage's Signal

Ramage & The Renegades

Ramage's Devil

Ramage's Trial

Ramage's Challenge

Ramage at Trafalgar

Ramage & The Saracens

Ramage & The Dido

BY
F
REDERICK
M
ARRYAT

Frank Mildmay
or
The Naval Officer

Mr Midshipman Easy

Newton Forster
or
The Merchant Service

BY
V.A. S
TUART

Victors and Lords

The Sepoy Mutiny

Massacre at Cawnpore

The Cannons of Lucknow

The Heroic Garrison

The Valiant Sailors

The Brave Captains

Hazard's Command

Hazard of Huntress

Hazard in Circassia

Victory at Sebastopol

Guns to the Far East

Escape from Hell

BY
D
OUGLAS
W. J
ACOBSON

Night of Flames

BY
J
ULIAN
S
TOCKWIN

Kydd

Artemis

Seaflower

Mutiny

Quarterdeck

Tenacious

Command

The Admiral's Daughter

The Privateer's Revenge

BY
J
OHN
B
IGGINS

A Sailor of Austria

The Emperor's Coloured Coat

The Two-Headed Eagle

Tomorrow the World

BY
A
LEXANDER
F
ULLERTON

Storm Force to Narvik

Last Lift from Crete

All the Drowning Seas

A Share of Honour

The Torch Bearers

The Gatecrashers

BY
C.N. P
ARKINSON

The Guernseyman

Devil to Pay

The Fireship

Dead Reckoning

The Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower

BY
D
OUGLAS
R
EEMAN

Twelve Seconds to Live

The White Guns

A Prayer for the Ship

For Valour

BY
D
AVID
D
ONACHIE

The Dying Trade

A Hanging Matter

An Element of Chance

The Scent of Betrayal

A Game of Bones

BY
B
ROOS
C
AMPBELL

No Quarter

The War of Knives

Peter Wicked

Published by McBooks Press 2000
Copyright © 1974 by The Ramage Company Limited
First published in the United Kingdom in 1974 by
The Alison Press/Martin Secker & Warburg Limited

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission of the publisher. Requests for such permissions should be addressed to McBooks Press, Inc.,
ID Booth Building, 520 North Meadow St., Ithaca, NY 14850.

Cover painting by Paul Wright.

The paperback edition of this title was cataloged as:
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pope, Dudley.

Ramage's prize / by Dudley Pope.

     p.   cm. — (Lord Ramage novels ; no. 5)

ISBN 0-935526-80-3 (alk. paper)

         1. Ramage, Nicholas (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Great Britain—History, Naval—19th century—Fiction. 3. Great Britain. Royal Navy—Officers—Fiction. 4. Napoleonic Wars, 1800–1815—Fiction.  I. Title

PR6066.O5 R36 2000

823'.914—dc21

00-058626

The e-book versions of this title have the following ISBNs:

Kindle 978-1-59013-552-5, ePub 978-1-59013-553-2, and PDF 978-1-59013-554-9

www.mcbooks.com

For the Georgesons, who sailed the good ship
Alano
from Falmouth

AUTHOR‘S NOTE

T
HIS story is based on true events. Post Office packet brigs were surrendered to French privateers in the manner described because of “ventures” carried by treacherous officers and crews, and a P.O. packet was ransomed at Lisbon in the same circumstances and difficulties as the
Lady Arabella
of the story. It is worth recording that in Nelson's day mail from wartime England for the West Indies left Falmouth fortnightly and took only 45 days to reach the most distant destination, Jamaica. Nearly two centuries later, in the age of moon walks and computers, my experience based on eight years in the Caribbean shows that surface mail from England takes sixty to ninety days to reach various islands in the West Indies.

D. P.
Yacht Ramage
Tortola, British Virgin Islands

CHAPTER ONE

R
EGULAR sleep had been impossible in the hot and windless night so typical of the hurricane season in Jamaica: the occasional slight zephyr venturing in through the window rarely had enough energy to penetrate the mosquito net and cool him. After a night when every brief doze drifted him into a wild dream, Ramage sat at the breakfast table feeling as limp as damp laundry, sipping coffee and squinting at the reality of the harsh sun reflecting into the hotel dining-room despite a latticed jalousie over each window.

He took a letter from his pocket and read it for the fifth or sixth time since a special messenger had delivered it the previous evening. Addressed to “Lieutenant Ramage, at the Royal Albion Hotel,” it was signed “Pilcher Skinner,” and beneath the hurried scrawl a clerk had written, “Knight, Vice-Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty's ships and vessels … upon the Jamaica Station.”

The wording of the letter was straightforward enough, and many a young lieutenant losing his command after a hurricane ripped the masts out of his ship and drifted her up on a coral reef would have been glad to receive it. But Ramage knew that Vice-Admiral Sir Pilcher Skinner was far from being a straightforward man.

BOOK: Ramage's Prize
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