Ramage & the Saracens (33 page)

Now it was a question of waiting: being patient and waiting for the wind to swing north or south. It rarely stayed west for any length of time, according to Southwick, although these were waters that Ramage did not know. It was annoying to have to wait; yet again Ramage cursed that he had not been born with more patience.

Within ten minutes the
Calypso
was hove-to with the
Amalie, Rose,
and
Betty
lying to leeward, pitching slightly in the barely perceptible swell. There was just enough movement and little enough wind for Ramage to detect the smell of the bilges. There was always a few inches of water that the pumps could not suck out, and which stank. Normally, with a good breeze blowing through the ship, the smell was not too offensive. But now, with just enough movement to stir up the bilges but not enough breeze to clear the ship of the smell, Ramage found it unpleasant, and cursed the shipbuilders who could not build a pump that cleared those last few inches. It was very unfair on the worthy French shipbuilders who had constructed the
Calypso
in the first place, because no ship that Ramage knew of had such a pump. The smell of bilges was something that one lived with.

As Ramage stood at the quarterdeck rail, he tried to think of what was expected of him as the senior officer of a little flotilla, but he could think of nothing except that perhaps, while they were held up, hove-to and waiting for a fair wind, he ought to invite the captains over for dinner. He thought about it and then decided he had not the patience to go through the ritual of being polite to strangers. He would have to invite Major Golightly, but he quite enjoyed the soldier's company. The man had travelled, and he had kept his eyes open. He had spent five years in India, and had a fund of stories about life out there. He had also served in the East Indies and the West, and it seemed that he had only just missed meeting Ramage in the West Indies on a dozen occasions.

One thing for which Ramage liked him was that he shared Ramage's loathing for Antigua. He had many unhappy memories of guard duty on Shirley Heights, the high cliffs overlooking English Harbour, and at Fort St James, guarding the capital, St John. He had been intrigued to find that the
Calypso
had been captured from the French off Martinique, to the south, and then taken to English Harbour to be fitted out as a British ship-of-war. When Ramage had told him of the inefficiency and corruption he had found among the dockyard workers at English Harbour Golightly had been sympathetic: it seemed the army was in no better state, there being constant complaints about the quality and quantity of rations, with the men once threatening to mutiny.

Ramage supposed there was the same corruption in the dockyards and barracks in England and then found himself doubting it. He had never come across it so obviously in England. There was probably corruption in the dockyards but it was confined to the workmen (and probably the port admirals): it did not affect the ships and their captains as it did in the West Indies. It was as though the tropical sun made morals fester; that once removed from England men decided they were going to get rich, no matter who suffered or was cheated. A British ship-of-war cheated by some dockyard official was suffering as though harmed by the enemy. English Harbour was the worst offender in the West Indies, but how did it compare with Gibraltar, or Malta?

The real fault, he realized, lay with the Admiralty and the Navy Board and, for that matter, with the government. He had been browsing through the
Royal Kalendar
recently when he came across a particularly glaring case of nepotism. Coming under the Pay Office was the Pay Branch for Paying Seamen's Wages. The deputy paymaster in London was John Swaffield, paid £660 a year. The deputy paymaster at Portsmouth was John Swaffield junior, paid £440 a year, while the deputy paymaster at Plymouth was Joseph Swaffield, also paid £440. What was more significant was that they each had a deputy, paid £330 a year. In other words, they left their deputy to do the work. But the Swaffields did not confine their activities (or lack of) to the Pay Branch: in the next column, under Victualling Branch, was another one of them: the cashier of the victualling for paying bills, was G. Swaffield, paid £660 a year.

Nor was this sort of thing confined to the Admiralty: he remembered the pages headed “British Governments in America and the West Indies,” where Jamaica seemed a favourite spot for absentees. The receiver in chancery was the Hon. P. C. Wyndham; the secretary was the Hon. Charles Wyndham and, most surprisingly of all, the clerk of the court was Evan Nepean—who was earning £4,000 a year as secretary to the Board of Admiralty in London.

It was very doubtful if the Wyndhams or Nepean had ever been to Jamaica; it was even doubtful if they could find it on a map without a careful search. But they—and dozens more like them—were paid for the job they never did. If there was any work to be done they hired a substitute: there was a good profit in paying a man £50 a year for doing a job for which you were paid £660. And, of course, in the islands it was possible to keep things in the family—as in Bermuda, for instance. The president of the council was the Hon. H. Tucker; the secretary and treasurer was H. Tucker junior (presumably the president's son); while the speaker was the Hon. James Tucker, and the surveyor was John H. Tucker. There were dozens of other examples, though the names concerned he could not remember. In the West Indies, he knew very well, it was not unusual for someone comfortably resident in England to have two or three jobs in islands a thousand miles apart—jobs which he obviously could never carry out.

If you were paid for a job you never did, or paid very well to do a job for which you hired a deputy at a sixth of the salary, that was, as far as Ramage was concerned, corruption; it was legally stealing from the nation. Well, in the Royal Navy you could not be paid for commanding two ships at once!

He remembered a cynical comment his father had made some years ago, when Ramage had commented at the time on what he had found in the then current
Royal Kalendar.
“Corruption, my boy, makes the world go round. Great men have tried to put an end to it, but they all failed because always there are greedy men.”

Aitken was pointing up at the clouds. “The highest ones are coming from the north, sir,” he commented.

“There's no sign of a veer down here.”

“Perhaps during the night, sir.”

“Perhaps,” Ramage said. “Try and time it so that we can get under way at dawn!”

R
AMAGE was wakened next morning before daylight by the urgent voice of Orsini repeating: “Captain, sir; Captain, sir!” When Ramage sat up in his swinging cot, Orsini said: “Mr Southwick's compliments, sir, but the wind seems to have set in from the north.”

“Tell Mr Southwick I'll be on deck in a few minutes.”

With that a drowsy Ramage swung himself out of the cot and hurriedly dressed in the dark, cursing as he stubbed his toe against a chair. Why the devil did things always happen at night? Up on deck he found it a starlit night and the breeze was steady; it was obviously set in for several hours.

“What's the course for Sidi Rezegh?” Ramage asked Southwick. “South by west, sir.”

“Very well, hoist lights telling the flotilla to get under way, and then hoist the signal for the course.”

Southwick shouted for the watch to prepare lanterns and the wooden frame which would hoist them in a set pattern. As soon as the lanterns were lit and hoisted, Ramage gave another order: “Stand by to get under way, Mr Southwick.”

It was a warm night and Ramage noticed Aitken joining him at the quarterdeck rail. “A very good time for the wind to change, sir,” the first lieutenant commented.

“What time is it?”

“Just before four o'clock, sir. It should take us down to be off the port just after dawn.”

“Couldn't be better. I wonder if Saracens are early risers.”

“I suspect they are; they probably go to bed when it gets dark and rise with the sun.”

“But do they keep lookouts in that fort, I wonder?”

“I doubt it,” Aitken said. “Why should they? They probably haven't been attacked for a hundred years so they won't be expecting anything.”

At that moment, as the frame was lowered again and the lanterns extinguished, Ramage told Southwick: “We'll get under way, course south by west, you said.”

The watch on deck scurried round as Southwick shouted orders. Topmen hurried aloft to cast off gaskets and let fall the topgallants and topsails; the afterguard braced up the yards and tended the sheets. Soon the
Calypso
stirred to life: instead of being an inert mass wallowing in the sea, she began to pitch gently as the sails filled. The hull creaked as the planking worked against the frames; the yards creaked as they pulled against the pressure of the wind. And Ramage gave a shiver as the down-draught from the mainsail chilled him.

Then he remembered the rest of the flotilla. “Mr Southwick, we've no stern lantern!”

“Bless my soul!” exclaimed the startled master. “I completely forgot,” he admitted. “I'll see to it at once.”

The flotilla leader, in this case the
Calypso,
had to burn a lantern for the rest of the flotilla to follow, particularly at a time like this when all the ships were forming up again after lying to. For a few moments Ramage thought of the responsibility of getting a fleet under way; twenty or thirty ships of the line, not to mention attendant frigates. He thought of Lord Nelson manoeuvring his fleet the night before Trafalgar. Not only did his Lordship have the problem of manoeuvring the fleet, but he was having to work out what the enemy was doing, and make moves to counter them. And the enemy that night had made some strange moves. Suddenly he felt very humble; he had another frigate and two sloops under his command, and he had forgotten the elementary thing of a stern-light. Well, he thought, let's hope the lamp trimmer has done his job properly and the light is bright enough for the rest of the flotilla to follow.

Sidi Rezegh—at last they were really on their way to attack it. He wondered what Rear-Admiral Rudd's thoughts had been when he gave him the orders. It was strange that the admiral had not committed any of his 74s. Admittedly it was unlikely that any of them would have been able to enter the port because of their draft, but they had enough guns to pound the place before landing a considerable number of troops, marines and seamen. A 74 could easily land three times as many men as a frigate, and she carried more than twice the number of guns, of vastly superior calibre.

But Admiral Rudd had not seen fit to send even one 74. Why? Ramage thought the answer to that was simple and twofold: he did not think a 74 would be able to do the job, and he did not want either of his two captains saddled with failure. So he had been reduced to sending a couple of frigates and a couple of sloops, to show the British minister (and the King of the Two Sicilies) that at least he was doing something. Ministers would know nothing of the tactical problems of attacking an enemy port, especially a strange one with the natural problems of Sidi Rezegh.

There was even a touch of irony: one of the frigate captains was his favourite, and he would suffer if the venture failed. Indeed, Ramage thought wryly, he might spend the rest of his life chained to an oar in one of the galleys if the failure was complete. He shivered: the price of failure would be very high.

That was the worst of these early starts: one's spirits were at a very low ebb at this time of the morning, prey to fears which would never enter one's mind in daylight, or when one's stomach was decently full of food and a hot drink. He guessed that most men were cowards at four o'clock in the morning—he was, and he freely admitted it. Now, Southwick was a man who never suffered from it; Southwick exuded four o'clock in the morning courage.

A cast of the log every hour showed that the flotilla was making just under six knots with a fair wind, and dawn brought a cloudless day, the early dawn shadowing the four hummocks of hills surrounding Sidi Rezegh. There was an air of excitement in the
Calypso,
whether it was among the men holystoning the deck, the watchkeepers occasionally hauling on braces and sheets to trim the sails to a slight change in wind direction, or the successive officers-of-the-deck as the watches changed.

Major Golightly had his troops formed up on deck as soon as there was light enough to see and Ramage watched them performing arms drill amid clouds of pipeclay. Their boots thumped as they marched and countermarched, and Aitken, who was on watch, shuddered with each stamp.

“I hope they're not tearing up my deck with their damned boots,” he muttered to Ramage. “If I'd known Golightly was going to march them up and down, I'd have waited before having the deck holystoned.”

“The gallant major means well,” Ramage said consolingly. “Just think of those soldiers thundering down the quay and chasing those Saracens. Why, the sound of their boots pounding alone should frighten them!”

By now the hummocks were getting close and with the glass Ramage could distinguish the town of Sidi Rezegh. It comprised a clump of white buildings, still pinkish in the early light, and the round fort at the end of the quay showed up dark. It was easy to make out the dome-shaped roof of the mosque, which seemed to be built on a slight hill in the middle of the town.

How many miles off? Ramage guessed at three and Southwick agreed. Half an hour's sailing. Well, the flotilla had its orders and knew what to do. “Stand by to hoist out the boats, Mr Aitken,” Ramage said and then turned to Orsini. “Make the first signal!”

In less than five minutes the two frigates and two sloops were hove-to and hoisting out their boats, leading the painters aft so that they would tow astern. As soon as he saw all the boats in the water, Ramage told Orsini to hoist the second signal, to get under way.