Ramage & the Rebels (5 page)

It was a good question because the coast ran east and west, and the Trade winds blew regularly from east to west. Beginning at the eastern end meant that the
Calypso
and
La Créole
started up to windward, in effect starting at the top of the hill, and with luck would be able to chase the privateers to leeward, like wolves pursuing sheep downhill across a meadow, providing they did not make a bolt sideways for the shelter of the bays.

“We start well to windward of Maracaibo,” Ramage said. “With the Dutch islands, in fact, because the Admiral has been told that the privateers are using Curaçao as a main base.”

“Could be, could be,” Southwick muttered, half to himself. “The capital, Amsterdam, is a secure anchorage with a narrow entrance easy to defend, plenty of warehouses to store the loot, and well placed to intercept our merchant ships. Good market for prize-ships and prize-goods—those damned Hollanders are good businessmen, and wealthy, too. And a good rendezvous for all enemy privateers—the French from Guadeloupe, Martinique and Hispaniola, the Spanish from the Main only a few miles away, and from Puerto Rico and Hispaniola to the north. And of course the Dutch.”

Wagstaffe said diffidently: “There's an advantage there for us, too: Jamaica is to leeward, so our prize crews will have a soldier's wind sailing back to Port Royal.”

Southwick sniffed yet again, and Ramage guessed what was coming: “And every boarding party we send away with a prize we'll never see again: none of the King's ships in Port Royal will be coming to Curaçao; they'll just press our men. We'll end up with only fifty men left, having supplied the ships in Port Royal with two hundred well-trained men …”

It was a problem Ramage had already considered but put off any decision because that would only arise when they actually captured prizes, and remembering the sandbanks and cays and coral reefs littering the coast, he felt it unlikely to make him lose sleep.

He unrolled the chart on the top of his desk and weighted it down to stop it curling up again. “Gather round,” he said, “I want you all to refresh your memories of this coast. How we carry out my instructions—which are simply to get rid of the privateers, and yours, Lacey, will put you under my orders—will depend on what we find among the islands.”

He jabbed a finger down at the lower half of the chart. “There you have the island of Curaçao, the middle of the three lying just off the Main. There's Bonaire to one side and Aruba the other, but Curaçao is the only one that matters. Notice how Curaçao is like the centre of a clock—the islands of St Lucia and Martinique at three o'clock, Guadeloupe, Antigua, St Barts and St Kitts at one o'clock, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola at noon, and Jamaica here way over to the north-west at ten o'clock. And the Main to the south. All British merchant ships sailing between Jamaica to the west and the Windward and Leeward Islands to the east, have to cross these lines radiating from Curaçao …”

He took a pair of dividers from the rack and opened them up until they measured seven degrees, equal to 420 miles, against the latitude scale. Then he put one point on Curaçao and slowly swept the second leg across the chart until the other point finally rested on Grenada, the island at the southern end of the chain. “You see, only 420 miles to Grenada and the rest of them, Martinique, Antigua, Nevis, St Kitts, no more than 500 miles because of the way they curve round. Puerto Rico, most of Hispaniola—all inside the 420 miles.”

He shut the dividers with a snap. “Our merchant ships, whether sailing alone or in convoy, are passing east or west no more than four hundred miles north of Curaçao. Four hundred miles—that's probably no more than three days' sailing for the dullest sailor. Sail on Sunday morning, find a prize on Wednesday, and be back in Curaçao unloading the prize by Saturday night. A prize a week at least, and no reason why one privateer should not take three prizes in a day. A hundred men on board to provide boarding parties and prize crews … All on a shares-of-the-spoils basis.”

“Aye,” Southwick rumbled, “making bigger profits than commanders-in-chief.”

“Taking more risks, too,” Wagstaffe said, and then glanced nervously at Ramage, who began taking the weights off the chart.

“Lacey—you have a copy of this chart? In fact you'd better go through our chart outfit with Southwick, so you can make copies of anything you don't have. And the French signal book—you have a copy? The one we captured at Martinique, I mean.”

“No, I don't have a copy, sir.”

Ramage turned to Kenton. “You can help Lacey by making a copy. And Lacey, you treat it like our own signal book: always locked up when not being used, and always in the weighted bag ready to be thrown over the side …” He took out his watch. “Sunset in five hours. Very well, we weigh in three hours—get busy with pencils and paper, gentlemen.”

T
HE kneeling seaman carefully removed his plaited straw hat and took a soggy, stringy piece of tobacco from the lining, but before he put it in his mouth and began chewing he commented: “My jaws are getting tired of overhauling this piece: it's the second day, and there ain't much taste left. You ‘aven't got the lend of a piece, ‘ave you, Jacko?”

“Since when have I ever chewed ‘bacca?”

“I know, but you might've ‘ad a bit tucked away.”

“Oh yes, as a charm against rheumatism and snake bites.”

“Oh, you're a Yankee misery. Now, ‘old the cloth still. Cor, the sun's bright. You ready with those scissors, Rossi? Wait, let me flatten out that crease. Now, snip away!”

The three men were crouching down on deck, cutting out the pattern of a pair of trousers drawn on a piece of white duck. Alberto Rossi, the Italian seaman from Genoa, snipped carefully, the tip of his tongue poking out between his lips revealing his concentration.

The man in the straw hat, Stafford, was a young Cockney for whom the trousers were intended, and who scorned “slops,” the clothing sold by the purser, all of it made to standard patterns. One of the more crushing judgements that a self-respecting seaman could make of another man was: “He's the sort o' feller who'd wear pusser's trousers.”

Rossi paused a moment with the scissors and inspected the cloth, “Staff, I think you draw the line too tight here—” he gestured with the scissors—”and you might damage yourself. Shall I leave extra cloth?”

Stafford looked at it doubtfully, certain that his pencilled line had been accurate, but Jackson nudged him. “You pencilled round the outline of the trousers you're wearing but you forgot to allow for the seams.”

The Cockney's face fell. “So I did; I was concentrating on holding the cloth still—in this wind. All right then; give us an extra ‘alf an inch all round, Rosey.”

All three men stopped and looked round as another group of men kneeling nearby started a violent argument and one of them suddenly stood up, waving a ragged piece of cloth.

“You bluddy idjit!” he screamed. “Look wotcher dun! Yer've cut froo two ficknesses, not one, an' took off the other leg! I sedjer coodn't be trusted wiv them bluddy scissors. Ten bob's worth o' cloft, that's whatcher've ruined. Why'ncher go'n sit on the jib-boom tossing guineas over the side, heh?”

“As long as they're your guineas it's all the same to me,” the other man answered calmly. “But you marked it and you held it, and I just cut where you said.”

With another scream of rage the first man flung the piece of cloth down on the deck and jumped up and down on it, shaking his fist. “You rusty cuttle-bung; oooh you milk-livered jakes-scourer, why—”

“‘Ere, ‘old ‘ard,” the man with the scissors interrupted mildly, “if you go on like that, I shan't ‘elp you no more.”

Stafford prodded Rossi. “Come on, snip away; don't pay no attention to them or you'll be doing the same. Don't forget, arf an inch outside the line.”

Stafford watched carefully and then muttered: “‘Ere, Jacko, ain't there someone around what'll lend me a chaw of ‘bacca?”

“Pay attention to your trousers, otherwise you'll end up with four legs and no seat, like a broken chair.”

Finally the trousers were cut out and the front section was held up against Stafford, who looked down at it critically. “Seems all right,” he said doubtfully. “Wotcher fink, Rosey?”

“Is all right,” the Italian said. “
Sta attenti
with the stitches. Not those great big ones you put in a sail.”

“‘Taint often the bosun catches me for sail mending,” Stafford boasted. “I volunteered when the fore-topsail split yesterday, but that was so's I could get my fingers on a sail needle.”

“I hope you picked a sharp one. Most of ‘em are rusty,” Jackson said. “They're the ones left on board by the French—poor quality they are. No guts in the metal; they won't hold a point.”

“I did get a nice sharp one, but I can't find it now,” Stafford admitted. “‘Aven't got one I could borrow, ‘ave you, Jacko?”

“‘Bacca, needle—I suppose you've got a reel of thread?”

“Well, not reely; I know Rosey's got some good fred, and I was ‘oping …”

The Italian glared at him. “This cloth we just make the cut, Staff; you buy him from the purser? I wonder. The purser not sell any slops since we leave Antigua, and I don't remember …”

“Well, I didn't steal it from any of me shipmates,” Stafford declared hotly, “you know me well enough for that. Why, I'm—”

“Accidente!”
Rossi said sharply. “I was only going to ask why you didn't take the thread from the purser at the same time, and you need two buttons.”

“I got the buttons all right,” Stafford admitted, “but old Nipcheese didn't get the fred out.”

“Old Nipcheese saw you coming,” Jackson commented. “Not all pursers are daft!”

Ramage paused at the forward end of the quarterdeck and looked across the ship. It was a scene being repeated on board every one of the King's ships at sea: Sunday afternoon and “make and mend,” with the men off watch doing just what they wanted.

Some dozed in the sun, others mended clothes, while yet more were cutting cloth and stitching, making new trousers and shirts and repairing old ones.

It was curious how fussy the average seaman was about his clothes, Ramage reflected. Expect him to wear slop clothes and he would be outraged; unless he was lazy or particularly unskilled with needle and thread he did not want to wear a purser's shirt of the same cut and cloth as his shipmate; he wanted a wider or narrower collar, or he sewed the whole shirt with French seams so he could also wear it inside out. His hat would be different; some preferred the natural straw colour of the sennett while others tarred it. Some liked a large hat almost resting on their ears with a wide brim which shaded their eyes and the back of their head; others wanted a narrow brim with a small hat worn high on the head and tilted rakishly forward.

Some captains tried to force the men to wear the same kind of clothes of the same colour and cut, a sort of ship's uniform, as though they were Marines or soldiers, but Ramage disagreed with them. His only rule was that his boat's crew should wear white shirts and trousers and black hats when they rowed him away from the ship on official business, but they were all volunteers and if they did not want to make themselves white trousers they could step down. In fact Aitken reported more than a hundred men clamouring for the dozen places … Eccentric captains (and he admitted there were a few of them) dressed their boats' crews in absurd rigs—Wilson had made a fool of himself when commanding the
Harlequin
and the story went that his admiral, taking one took at the men in the boat, asked him if he was commanding a ship or a circus. Wilson was such a fool that most people would have been unsure.

Ramage glanced at the dog-vanes—corks strung on a line with feathers stuck in them—on top of the bulwark nettings, then up at the scattering of white clouds drifting westward in neat lines. The weather was holding and the wind had backed to the east. Sailing in the North-east Trade winds meant that one could be sure that they rarely if ever blew from the north-east. Today the wind had been mostly between east and south-east, so that he could short-tack along the Hispaniola coast and have something of a lee from the short, sharp seas rippling across the top of these larger swell waves which the
Calypso
did not like: they were just the wrong length, and each time she dug her bow into the bigger ones she came almost to a stop, the wind not strong enough to thrust her through.

Another few miles, though, and he would be able to turn south, direct for Curaçao. Almost direct, anyway; a course which counteracted a knot of west-going current. With this wind a knot seemed about right. A week or two of strong easterlies always increased the current, but crossing the Caribbean from the Greater Antilles to the Spanish Main reduced navigation (the setting of an exact course, anyway) to inspired guesswork. You hoped for luck and nodded your head knowingly if you made a good landfall.

The approach to Curaçao from the north was clear of outlying reefs and rocks, and with luck and careful navigation the first the privateers knew that a British frigate and a schooner was after them would be when the island's lookouts sighted them coming over the horizon. Even then, there might be a few hours of uncertainty because both the
Calypso
and
La Créole
were French-built and still used French-cut sails which were distinctive with their deep roaches, and with the ships too far off for their ensigns to be distinguished the worthy burgomasters of Curaçao might be forgiven for thinking their French allies were sending reinforcements or calling in for water and provisions, for which no doubt they would have to pay cash in advance.

Southwick, who had just been supervising the casting of the log, came up to report the ship was making a little less than six knots. There was land along the north horizon which ended to the eastward as Hispaniola gave way to the Mona Passage, one of the Caribbean's main gateways into the Atlantic. Just off the south-eastern tip of Hispaniola was the island of Saona, and Ramage pointed to it. “As soon as the eastern end of Saona is in line with the Punta Espada we'll bear away for Curaçao.”