The Ramage Touch (11 page)

‘
Their
feet,’ Jackson said.

‘Yes,
their
feet. First we put in the charge. Now,’ he said hurriedly, to forestall Rossi, ‘we will work on an elevation of forty-five degrees. Note that, forty-five degrees. Then we vary the charge to suit the range. The amount of powder can be critical – for example, one pound four ounces of powder gives us 892 yards and yet only another eight ounces gives us an extra 300 yards. I’ll choose a straightforward one,’ he said with a sharp look at Rossi. ‘Here we are: three pounds of powder gives us a range of 1,945 yards and the time of flight – the time it takes the shell to land after it’s been fired, Rossi – is twenty-one seconds and ten parts.’

‘The fuse in the shell,’ Rossi said casually, hoping he had now caught out the young midshipman, for a Genovese should always be able to get the better of a Tuscan. ‘How long should that be so we burst at the enemy’s feet?’

Paulo ran his finger across the table. ‘Four inches and seventy parts.’

‘Parts of what?’

‘Seventy parts of a hundred parts of an inch,’ Paolo said triumphantly.

‘What is the maximum range?’ Jackson asked.

‘Well, the maximum given in another table for a 10-inch mortar with a different elevation is 3,821 yards, using a twelve-pound charge. The shell takes exactly half a minute to land…’

‘I wonder if this bed–’ Jackson pointed to the one on which the mortar was mounted ‘–would take the recoil from a twelve-pound charge?’

‘We do not have to worry about that,’ Paolo said firmly. ‘We are learning about mortars in general. So we have the shell filled and the fuse filled. Now we must load the mortar. First we put in the powder charge after carefully measuring it, and then a wad. We beat that down hard with the rammer – that is most important: it is underlined here. Then we put in the shell, holding it with the two handles at the top – which of course means the fuse is uppermost.

‘Now we are ready to fire. An officer points the mortar or gives the inclination. That means it is first trained and then elevated, using bandspikes to lift it. The bed bolster is then slid in to keep the barrel at the correct angle. The top of the fuse is cut open – you remember it has a cover of beeswax and tallow – and the mortar is primed with the finest powder.

‘Two seamen each take a slow match – these have been burning while hanging over water in the match tub, of course – and wind it round a linstock and stand ready. At the order, one seaman lights the fuse in the shell, and quickly gets clear while the other fires the mortar.’

‘And away she goes,’ Stafford commented. ‘Our shell goes up high in the hair like a lark or a smokin’ cabbage with the fuse fizzing away, and then it lands wiv a thump at the enemy’s feet. A thump which puts out the fuse, sir!’ he added as an afterthought.

‘Oh no it doesn’t,’ Paolo said sternly. ‘There’s a note here about that. The fuse burns in air, water or in the earth. No thump is going to put it out.’

‘Supposing you don’t want to fire an explosive shell?’ Jackson said. ‘Supposing you were on land and being attacked by a great mass of men? I’ve heard something about using shot.’

Paolo read through three more pages and then said triumphantly: ‘Here it is,
pound
shot. Each shot weighs – well, of course, a pound. You use a two-and-a-half-pound charge of powder, and on top of that you put a wooden base. Then you put in one hundred of the pound shot. They’re in a bag, I suppose – it doesn’t say. Nor does it give maximum ranges. But just think, if the range was 2,000 yards. Imagine being hit with a shot weighing one pound which has just spent the last twenty seconds being hurled through the air. And for the last half,’ he added with an authoritative note in his voice, ‘with the force of gravity added…’

‘Yes, there wouldn’t be much velocity left from the charge,’ Jackson said. ‘In fact I should think it would be like being hit with a one-pound shot dropped on your head from a cliff a thousand yards high. Less, because you have to allow for the curve.’

‘The parabola,’ Paolo said. ‘“Amplitude of the parabola” – that’s what they call the range in these notes.’

‘They would,’ said Stafford sourly. ‘Makes gunners sound more important and a mortar sound more dangerous to the enemy. But it still sounds to me like trying to kill your neighbour by ’eaving bricks over ’is wall – an’ you don’t even know if ’e’s at ’ome.’

Rossi suddenly pointed up at the
Calypso
’s masts. ‘They’re hoisting a signal.’

Ramage watched through the glass as the men in the
Calypso
’s red cutter heaved a cask overboard and half a dozen of them leapt into the surf to roll it up the beach. The big cask bobbed and spun in the waves, occasionally knocking a man over as it was pushed towards the line of surf where the sand started. The sun was glaring now, sparkling off the waves and almost blinding along the sand, which was nearly white along this stretch of the coast.

Fifty yards inland the juniper bushes began, then came the umbrella pines, a band of dark green, mushroom-topped trees forming a small elevated plateau. Even out here he could hear the whirring of the cicadas above the lapping of water against the hull, the faint whine of the wind in the rigging, and the slapping of the waves breaking on the beach. The smell of the pines was sharp and clean, the distant buzz of the cicadas continuous and punctuated by the occasional agitated squawking of the terns and the chattering of sandpipers striding along the water’s edge like self-important midship-men. He was once again back in Tuscany with Jackson and Stafford because charcoal was being made nearby, a heavier smell competing with the astringent pines. The
pinetas
, the charcoal smoke, the wash and gurgle of waves sluicing the sand…

He jerked back from his memories and looked through the telescope. The men from the red cutter had rolled their cask up the slope of the sand on to the level section beyond, halfway to the pines. Now they were levering it upright. He swung the telescope round to look beyond the
Fructidor
, where men from the green cutter were still struggling to get their cask up the sloping beach.

Each cask was exactly fifteen hundred yards away from its nearest ketch – or would be once it was set upright. Kenton had stood on the beach ahead of one ketch and paced out fifteen hundred yards, putting a marker in the sand, then he had done the same for the other. Now each ketch had a target 1,500 yards away, the one for the
Brutus
to larboard, the one for the
Fructidor
(he refused to use the whole name) to starboard. Fifteen hundred yards plus the extra two hundred yards or so distance from the ketches to the beach. Pythagoras.

In going over the loading, aiming and firing of mortars with Wagstaffe and Kenton, he had not reminded them of the two hundred yards. Both lieutenants had been given the gunner’s notebook to make whatever notes they wanted from the range tables. Both had been told to use up to twelve shells, each charged with four pounds of powder. Ramage had emphasized that they were not to rush; the winner would be the ketch that smashed the cask with the fewest shells, not in the shortest time. From time to time Wagstaffe and Kenton were to go down below and inspect the underdeck stanchions and bracing supporting the mortar beds: he wanted no accidents. The French obviously had confidence in the way they had converted these galliots but…Still, Renouf had handed over his own list of ranges and charges which corresponded to those in the gunner’s notes, and Renouf had been given the impression that he would be back on board his ketch, probably in irons, when the mortar was fired, so he would have been vociferous in expressing doubts if he had had them.

Ramage had, in effect, arranged a competition between Wagstaffe and Kenton in which each had an assistant and team: Wagstaffe had the new fourth-lieutenant, William Martin, and his prize crew; Kenton would have Paolo, Jackson, Stafford, Rossi and three more seamen. Wagstaffe had gone over to the
Brutus
confident that he and Martin would easily beat Kenton – and an apprehensive Kenton had gone off to the
Fructidor
without realizing what allies he had waiting for him. Only Ramage knew that Paolo had been studying the gunner’s notebook for a couple of hours that morning out of sheer curiosity, long before Ramage had decided on the shooting contest.

Predictably, there had been a great deal of grumbling among the rest of the men in the
Calypso
when they heard about the contest: they wanted Ramage to call for volunteers or, better still, put the opened pages of the muster book in front of a blindfolded man and let him use a sail needle to pick names – a modern version of the old ‘pricking’ as a way of choosing at random. Each mortar needed six men, so trying to choose a dozen from the
Calypso
’s two hundred was more unfair than saying arbitrarily that the two prize crews would also be the mortar crews.

Aitken had wanted to use both mortars in each ketch, but Ramage viewed the aftermost one with suspicion: if anything went wrong with the shell there was the risk that it would carry away the mainmast or mizenmast, whereas there was little chance of anything being carried away if a shell fired by the forward mortar ran wild like a winged partridge.

The green cutter’s men had their cask at the mark left by Kenton and were levering it upright. They stood back to look at it as they slapped their hands against their thighs to get rid of the sand. Now they were running back into the sea and struggling out to the green cutter, whose crew were backing water as the coxswain shouted impatiently. One after another the cask men climbed on board and while the last one was being hauled up, the cutter started making its way back to
Fructidor
. Each ketch would have a cutter lying astern on a long painter, just in case of accidents.

Southwick came to join him, mopping his face with a large red handkerchief. ‘Damned hot,’ he grumbled. ‘The temper-ature may be lower than the West Indies, but there’s no trade wind to keep us cool.’

Ramage closed the telescope and turned to the master. ‘You make the same complaint at the same time every day,’ he said unsympathetically. ‘You’ll just have to remember you’re back in the Mediterranean now. It has its compensations: there isn’t a British admiral within a thousand miles, and we increase the distance every day. Nearly every day, anyway.’

The master grinned and waved vaguely towards the distant hills and mountains. ‘I’m not complaining, sir. The nights are cooler, we’ll dodge this year’s hurricane season, and we’ve a better chance of seeing some action.’

‘But we might face a Mediterranean winter – or even the Channel,’ Ramage reminded him.

Southwick nodded and then looked first at one ketch and then the other. ‘Which are you betting on, sir?’

‘Neither,’ Ramage said. ‘I’m just putting up the prize guinea for the winning team.’

‘I’m putting my money on the
Brutus
. Wagstaffe’s a smart fellow, and this young Martin seems wide awake. I’m afraid Orsini’s mathematics are so bad he won’t be much help to Kenton, who’s a long way from being a mathematical genius himself.’

‘After the first shell, I should have thought a good eye for distance was more important,’ Ramage said mildly.

Southwick shrugged his shoulders. ‘Blessed if I know, sir,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve never served in a bomb ketch; never even seen one fire a round.’

‘Nor me,’ Ramage admitted. ‘I spent three months in one as a midshipman, but we never fired the mortars. That’s one of the reasons why I want to see what happens.’

Southwick looked at him knowingly from beneath bushy eyebrows. ‘Aye,’ he said enthusiastically, ‘it’s the kind of information that might come in useful one day.’

‘One never knows,’ Ramage said as he turned to the bosun and ordered: ‘Hoist that signal now.’

He had been very careful in his instructions to the two lieutenants to ensure that they fired alternately, so that he could observe the fall of the shells. It was, as Southwick said, the kind of information that might come in useful one day – if you did everything wrong and Their Lordships put you in command of a bomb ketch…Officers did not have to accept such a command, but if the alternative, as it certainly would be, was to spend the rest of your life on the beach picking up seashells and looking longingly at the distant horizon…

Doing something wrong, being afraid to take a risk because of the doubtful wording of orders, being scared of doing something because you did not have written orders and thus allowing the enemy to escape: all these were the best argument for a captain having a private income. He need not be a rich man; just rich enough to avoid having to worry about the fate of a wife and children, if he had them. Then he could do what was best for the Service without worrying too much about the idiosyncrasy of an admiral. A nice payment of prize money was often just enough.

This was not to say that a rich captain could or should ignore or disobey proper orders or take needless risks. Occasionally a situation arose which was not properly covered by written orders, however, and where the captain should use his own initiative, confident that his senior officer and the Admiralty would back him. In fact he could not always rely on such backing; in fact, too, he might do the wrong thing. Ramage remembered his father’s advice – better to be blamed for doing
something
than for doing
nothing
. All too often doing nothing was a form of cowardice; the form that paralyses your brain in the wish to avoid being blamed. The clerk’s creed, in other words: you could not be wrong if you never made a decision.

What the devil all that had to do with firing a couple of dozen shells from a pair of captured bomb ketches he did not know; nor, for that matter, did he know why the Navy always called them
bomb
ketches, abbreviated, oddly enough, as ‘Bb’, since what their mortars fired were called shells not bombs. When did a shell become a bomb? Grenadiers threw grenades – which were sometimes called bombs, but perhaps only loosely by people who did not know. Anyway, the Admiralty named most of their bomb ketches after volcanoes, several of which began with ‘V’, so in the Navy List there were, for example, ‘
Vesuvius
(
Bb
)…
Volcano
(
Bb
)…
Vulcan
(
Bb
)’ although he could remember
Tartarus
,
Terror
and
Thunder
.