Ramage's Trial (5 page)

Any prizes taken in the course of the original operation, Nepean continued, should be handed over to the commander-in-chief, the Windward Island Station, who would buy them in for service or otherwise dispose of them. And Nepean had the honour to be, etc.

So there it was. Their Lordships (which probably meant in fact a quorum of three members of the Board) blithely assumed one could do the impossible, and afterwards punctiliously sent out fresh orders to keep one gainfully occupied, just as one leaned back to rest a moment and take a deep breath. Still, it was better than facing a court of inquiry (or even a court-martial) because of failure.

But now there was all the irritating detail, although arranging passages for the refugees should not be difficult – there were a couple of score of merchant ships already anchored in the Bay, and obviously a convoy was being assembled.

Admiral Tewtin would no doubt present a few problems (no local flag officer liked a ship in his waters receiving direct Admiralty orders) but Ramage could use the actual orders as a talisman: they were as binding on Tewtin as on Ramage himself. The two prize frigates – well, whatever price Tewtin decided on had eventually to be approved by the Admiralty and Navy Board who, to be fair, were just as likely to raise a low one as reduce another that was too high. So within the week the
Calypso
should be on her way across the Atlantic to England, with the Royalists following in the convoy.

The
Calypso
, he remembered with a shock like a gun going off beside him, would be going to an England where Sarah would not be waiting to greet them. And now he must go to tell Jean-Jacques.

 

Admiral Tewtin read through the Admiralty's orders once again and then looked up at Ramage, who was sitting opposite him across the big desk in the
Queen
's great cabin, the sun reflecting harshly through the sternlights and almost blinding Ramage when each wave threw up a flash of sunlight, as if deliberately trying to dazzle him. “Yes,” Tewtin said, folding the page, “it all fits together very well: I'll buy in the prizes because I need frigates to escort this next convoy: we'll arrange passages in the merchant ships for the refugees – for the Royalists,” he corrected himself, “and then you can command the convoy when it sails for England.”

“But…but that's not my understanding of the orders, sir,” Ramage protested.

“It's
my
understanding,” Tewtin said shortly, “and that's what matters.”

And Tewtin was right: it would be six months or more before the Admiralty could reprimand him for delaying the
Calypso
, and only a fool would think that the Admiralty valued the frigate's speedy arrival in England more than the safe arrival of a large trade convoy.

The Count was safe, which was what mattered as far as the Prince of Wales was concerned, and would be coming home in the convoy. In addition, Ramage reflected, from Tewtin's point of view there was a good chance of the convoy arriving unscathed if Ramage commanded it: all too often convoys were commanded by frigate captains who were fit for nothing else or had fallen out of favour with the admiral. It was not too difficult to fall out of favour with some admirals – when sent to “cruise”, a euphemism for hunting for prizes, it was no good coming back too often with stories of bad luck. The admiral's share in a prize was an eighth of its value; a couple of years on a good station usually meant he could buy a large country estate and put enough in the Funds to run it, apart from buying a knighthood or baronetcy and, with luck, having a seat in Parliament, being in effect issued one of those like Rochester which, with several others, the Admiralty regarded as its own property…Admiral Sir Hyde Parker was thought to have made £200,000 in prize money during his recent four years as commander-in-chief at Jamaica, generally reckoned the most lucrative station of all. So no doubt Tewtin had high hopes, and those hopes rested almost entirely on his frigate captains. That in turn depended on having frigates. No commander-in-chief ever had enough of them, so Tewtin was very lucky to have three arrive unexpectedly out of the south, a bonus he could use for the convoy without losing any of his own yet two of which he could fill with his own people. Each of the two prizes now needed a captain and three lieutenants, apart from warrant and petty officers. The commander-in-chief of the station made all such promotions, although they had to be approved afterwards by the Admiralty.

Watched by Tewtin, Ramage picked up the Admiralty orders and read them through once more. They had been drafted in good faith and neither Their Lordships nor Nepean could have anticipated the present situation. Tewtin could not interfere with a ship acting under direct Admiralty orders, but he was too cunning for that. The Admiralty had ordered the
Calypso
back to England, but they had not added a phrase like “with all possible despatch”, or “without delay”. This, Ramage noted bitterly, allowed Tewtin to claim that since the
Calypso
was returning to England anyway, she might as well take the convoy under her protection.

There was just one more card to play, a poor and miserable card but the only one he had left.

“To be perfectly honest, sir, I'm worried about the Count of Rennes. He is in a desperate hurry to get back to England, to see the Prince of Wales – and of course he has large estates in Kent. I had been wondering whether or not I should keep him on board the
Calypso
and make a dash for it.”

Tewtin nodded understandingly. “I see your problem, but I hope the Count is grateful to you – and the Royal Navy – for rescuing him. Now is not the time to show impatience – why, but for you he would be rotting on Devil's Island. From what I hear, the prisoners don't last very long down there. If your Count of Rennes makes a fuss,” he said portentously, “I'll have a word with him. In the meantime, transfer him to that merchant ship – what's she called? – where he has a suite awaiting him.”

At that point Ramage knew he was beaten: at the end of a week in Barbados, he was going to have to command a convoy back to England, and all he could do now was hope that the merchant ships were not too undermanned, that their sails were not so ripe they were furled in anything of a breeze, that their spars were not so sun-dried and shaken that they would forever be signalling to one of the escort that they needed assistance – which meant sending across a carpenter and his mates to fish a spar.

All of which meant that all too many shipowners sent their ships to the West Indies with too few men and ancient sails, with rigging and cordage that should have been replaced a year ago, spars and yards that had shakes in them wide and deep enough to trap a man's finger, if not a whole hand – and always relying on the Royal Navy in an emergency to help them. And usually the Royal Navy had no choice: a disabled ship left behind by the convoy could be a ship lost to French privateers, and there would be violent letters of protest arriving at the Admiralty from the outraged owners and the insurance underwriters, and woe betide the poor frigate captain who was exasperated beyond control by these constant demands on his men and resources. Not for nothing did most commanders of convoys and the escorts refer to the masters of merchant ships as “mules”.

When would the Admiralty in its collective wisdom put its collective foot down and stop these profiteering shipowners from running their ships at the taxpayers' expense? With very few exceptions, shipowners were making their fortunes, thanks to the war. To begin with, the convoy system stopped any rush for a ship to be among the first dozen or so to arrive in England with the new harvest of sugar, tobacco, nutmeg or whatever it was to reap a high price in the market place. The convoy system meant all the ships arrived at once, their cargoes swamping the market, which was bad luck for the shippers (the planters in the West Indies, in this case) but fine for the shipowners. In peacetime, the faster ships (well kept and well commanded) could reasonably charge the highest freight because the planters, first at the market with their produce, made a good profit. In wartime there was no need for fast ships, and unscrupulous ship owners were quick to buy up any hull that would swim and could be insured: the convoy system ensured that she would not be beaten into port by faster ships and the Royal Navy was forced (blackmailed, in fact) to keep her afloat. And, to save any strain and wear on sails, spars, masts and cordage (costs, in other words), the damned mules always reefed at night, no matter how scant the breeze.

In turn that meant that each could sail with a smaller crew: with no risk of having to reef in a squall, many of these smaller traders sailed with only a master, mate, a couple of apprentices (whose indentures meant they were paying to be on board) and half a dozen men. Food, from what Ramage heard, was bad, and any complaints by the crew to a master met with a standard response: a man or two could easily be handed over to the next pressgang that came in sight. The choice was simple: serve in a merchant ship with bad food but higher pay, signing on for a single round-trip voyage, or be swept into one of the King's ships, serving until the next peace, which at the moment seemed a lifetime away.

 

When he returned to the
Calypso
and stepped through the entryport, Aitken met him with a broad grin on his face. “Mr Southwick wanted to talk to you before you go below, sir,” he said, “and I've passed the word for him.”

“What's all this about?” Ramage asked impatiently: he had been sitting in his cutter so long that the heat now soaking him with perspiration seemed to come from inside his body, as though it was a glowing coal. At that moment Southwick, also grinning, bustled up.

“You have visitors, sir, and I took the liberty of taking them down to wait in the cabin, where it's cooler.”

Why was Southwick so concerned about visitors? Why the grin? Why the “I've got a surprise for you” way he was rubbing his hands like a parson with the Easter offering? Ramage, still at the entryport, looked outboard along the boat boom, rigged out at right angles to the ship's side and to which the painters of boats were secured. Only the
Calypso
's cutter was now secured there, so how had the visitors arrived? Had they dropped from a passing cloud? And who wanted visitors at this moment: he was still so angry over Tewtin's behaviour that he just wanted to go down to his cabin and brood in peace and quiet. Sulk, really, because Tewtin had trapped him with an Admiralty order, and the prospect of driving a convoy of a hundred mules back to England at an average speed (if he was lucky and found the right winds and persuaded the mules to keep enough canvas set) of perhaps four knots. Days and weeks must pass before he could discover anything about Sarah.

At such a time a man wanted solitude, just as a sick animal hid away in a dark corner. He did
not
want to be surrounded by a noisy throng, all of whom would be fortifying themselves with rum punches and determined to cheer him up, not realizing that trying to cheer up a man in these circumstances only emphasized his loneliness: one was never more alone than in a crowd.

But Southwick and Aitken were still waiting expectantly, and he walked aft to the companionway. He clattered down the ladder, acknowledged the salute of the Marine sentry outside his door, pushed it open and walked into the cabin which, because his eyes had been dazzled by the sun reflecting up from the sea and the scrubbed decks, seemed very dark. There was a man sitting at his desk and he was just conscious of another smaller figure on the settee.

As the man stood up, Ramage recognized him and suddenly realized that of all his friends – few as they were – this was the one he most wanted to see at this moment. No wonder Southwick was grinning: the three of them had been shipmates several years ago, when Ramage had been under orders to find out why so many of the Post Office packets were being captured by French privateers.

As a startled Ramage just stared the man laughed. “You didn't expect to find that fellow Sidney Yorke sitting at your desk, eh?”

Ramage shook his head, trying to gain a few moments while he collected his thoughts. “No, hardly! I expected you to be in London, chasing clerks, bullying your shipmasters, and becoming very rich. Oh yes, and marrying and beginning a large family.”

As he finished the last sentence he followed Yorke's eyes round to the settee and saw that the person sitting on it was a woman of such beauty and poise that he felt dizzy, almost disoriented by the surprise. Yorke had found an exquisite wife, and Ramage found himself walking forward in a daze to kiss the proffered hand and muttering “Daphne”.

“You two have never met,” Yorke said, his voice revealing a pride in both of them.

“But I have heard so much about you, Captain,” the woman said, “that I feel I have known you for years. Why Sidney never persuaded you to visit us I don't know!”

Ramage hurriedly thought back across the years. Yorke had never mentioned a wife.

“The gallant captain was always rushing about in those days,” Yorke said, “and of course there was the beautiful Marchesa!”

“Ah yes,” the woman said, “the Marchesa. But we heard before we left England that she had returned to Italy…”

She broke off, as if realizing she should not have mentioned it, but Yorke said: “It's all right: Nicholas must know she was caught in France when the war started again. Have you any news of her?”

Ramage shook his head. “Not a word. I know she stayed a few days with the Herveys in Paris, but whether or not she had left for Italy, I don't know.”

Ramage pulled himself together and realized he was still holding the woman's hand, and Yorke introduced them formally: “Captain the Lord Ramage…Miss Alexis Yorke…”

Ramage kissed her hand and then said politely: “Sidney, I trust you and Mrs Yorke will stay to dinner? Are you travelling in one of your own ships?”