Authors: Dudley Pope
Below him the
Juno
rode at anchor with the
Surcouf
nearby. Wagstaffe was rounding the Rock in
La Créole,
obviously anxious to know what progress had been made. From the schooner's deck Wagstaffe should be able to see the Junos standing at the edge of the battery, even if he could not make out the barrels of the guns which were now pointing towards the headland.
Ramage turned to the north-westward where, in the distance beyond many other peaks, he could see the flattened top of Mont Pelée. Then he looked south-eastward towards Pointe des Salines, at the southern end of Martinique. Still no sign of the French convoy nor of Admiral Davis and the
Invincible
but, more worrying, still no sign of
La Mutine
returning. Perhaps the Admiral had held on to Baker, but that seemed unlikely, and anyway it did not explain why the
Invincible
had not arrived. Today was Friday and Baker had left on Monday. He had been trying to avoid the thought for the past 24 hours, but there was only one sensible answer: something had happened to Baker. For one reason or another
La Mutine
had not arrived in Barbados, and so the Admiral had not received the warning that the convoy was due.
It was a distinct possibility:
La Mutine
might have been dismasted in a sudden squall, sprung a leak, or been captured by French privateers. There might even be a French frigate lurking out there, sent on ahead of the convoy â¦
Both the guns were loaded and Aitken was waiting patiently. The man was so tired that he looked like a ghost, but he was still alert and active. He had been pleased at Ramage's praise but was apparently envious that Lacey was at work rigging a jackstay from the Marchesa battery.
Ramage was in no hurry: he wanted to imprint the scene in his memory. If the French arrived before the
Invincible
⦠The convoy would round Pointe des Salines with all the ships bunched up. There would be no stragglers for once, because the captain of each merchant ship knew that Fort Royal was being blockaded. The frigates would be on the alert and the convoy would hug the coast ⦠He stood for ten minutes fighting imaginary actions that would prevent the convoy reaching Fort Royal, and trying to calculate all the possibilities open to the French. At the end of it his calculations seemed of little value. What the
Juno
and the
Surcouf
could do depended on three things: the size of the convoy, the size of its escort, and whether or not Admiral Davis had arrived.
Trying to work out tactics now was like trying to guess the sequences in a game of chess against Bowen, who always seemed to have dozens of unexpected bishops, knights, castles and queens at his beck and call. He turned to the First Lieutenant. “Very well, Mr Aitken, are we ready?”
“Aye, aye, sir, the battery's ready,” the young Scot answered reproachfully, and Ramage realized that he must have been standing staring out across the sea for fifteen minutes or more.
The men, deeply tanned from the sun, their clothes torn, were shuffling into line and Aitken was standing in front of them. Ramage's heart sank as they obviously expected a speech and he had to admit they deserved one. They had slaved away at the battery and many of them had asked to be allowed to stay on and man it. There was not a bit of shade from the blazing sun, except whatever they could rig up for themselves, and no protection from rain.
Aitken brought them to attention and Ramage began speaking. He told them that they and their shipmates in the
Juno
had just done something that most people would have thought impossible and no one had ever previously attempted. He was proud, he said, to name their achievement the Juno battery. He wanted to end his little speech on an amusing note, and thanked them for leaving rope ladders for him to climb up the more difficult parts of the Diamond. “I still think I should have come up in the tub last night,” he added. “Nearly 600 feet is too much for someone whose daily climbing is limited to the companion-way!”
The men cheered him and Aitken gave the order for them to fall in at the guns, which were loaded and had already been laid. The First Lieutenant asked Ramage if he thought the shot would reach across the Fours Channel to the nearest part of the mainland, the steep cliffs where Diamond Hill met the sea.
Ramage smiled knowingly. “We'll have to keep a sharp lookout for the fall of shot,” he said, and Aitken grinned confidently, little guessing that Ramage had anticipated the question the moment he decided to set up the battery and had failed to work out a definite answer.
The Captain had to be infallible. He had to be an expert in ballistics, at home with trajectories and the effect of gravity and range on a twelve-pounder shot. He had to be a mathematical wizard, able to work out the trajectory (and thus the range) of shot fired from a height of 570 feet when all he knew were some vague ranges for shot fired from sea level.
Neither he nor Southwick were even sure of the distance from the Diamond to the shore: Southwick's chart was the best available, yet far from accurate and drawn on a small scale. It gave the distance as about 2100 yards, but it could be a hundred yards more or less.
An error of two hundred yards in the chart could be critical. The range tables he had on board for a twelve-pounder gun, such as they were, gave a maximum of 1800 yards using six degrees elevation, with a four-pound charge of powder. The
Juno
's gunner had tables giving shorter ranges, but they were scribbled in an old notebook and the man seemed more concerned with the recipe for making up the blacking for painting the guns than firing them.
Using the ranges he had, what happened when you placed the gun on top of a rock 570 feet high? Did a six degree elevation still give you a range of 1800 yards? Or increase it? Both he and Southwick were sure it increased it, but had no idea how to calculate the amount. When Ramage had begun cursing his own lack of mathematical knowledge, Southwick laughed and pointed out that it hardly mattered; for the battery to be effective, its shot did not have to reach the mainland because no French ship would pass within a hundred yards of the cliff for fear of getting caught by wind eddies off the hill and would most probably stay in the middle of the Fours Channel. “Never bet on a horse once the race has started, sir,” he added. “Just look wise and watch where the shot lands!”
It was good advice and Ramage had followed it. The two guns of the Juno battery were loaded with four-pound charges and carefully elevated to six degrees and Aitken was waiting patiently for Ramage to give the signal for the final order that would provide the answer.
Ramage nodded and Aitken bellowed: “Number one gun, fire!”
Ramage barely registered the crash of the gun firingâapart from noting that up here it was free of any echoesâas he trained his telescope on the rocks at the foot of Diamond Hill. He waited anxiously, but there was no plume in the water showing the shot had fallen short. Nor was there any sign that it had ricocheted off the rocks.
He turned to find Aitken almost dancing with excitement. “You were right, sir!” he said gleefully. “It reached, just think of that! I don't know how you calculated that it would, sir, but there's the proof! No splash so it must have hit the land.”
Ramage was embarrassed. An evasive answer and a knowing look had been interpreted by Aitken as the confidence of superior knowledge. For a moment he wondered how many times in the past the various captains under whom he had served had got away with the same thing. Still, Aitken was only assuming that the shot had hit the land because it had not splashed in the sea.
It might have disintegrated in mid-flight: that sort of thing was rare but not unknown and they would never have seen the tiny splashes made by the pieces. He had to be sure, and luckily there was an easy way of finding out without revealing his doubts.
“Mr Aitken, let us see how accurately we are shooting. I want the gun captain of number two gun to drop a shot a hundred yards short of the rocks and watch for a ricochet.”
The second round landed just in front of the rocks, ricocheted twice and disappeared. “Fifty yards short at the first grave, sir,” Aitken reported.
“Very well, I think we can get back to the
Juno.
” He looked round for the petty officer who was being left in charge of the batteries. “Ah, Richardson. Rig a mast out of those spars you used as sheers and watch the
Juno
and the
Surcouf
for signals. You have a copy of the signals?” The man dug into the inside of his plaited sennet hat and showed Ramage the thin volume. “Good, and you have a set of flags. Fine, all you need to do is keep a sharp lookout. You'll see any ship rounding Pointe des Salines long before us. Keep in touch with the lower batteries. Any questions?”
The man shook his head and Ramage smiled. “You have food and water for three months, and muskets to chase the goats. However, I hope someone will be up to see you before then.”
It took Ramage and Aitken twenty minutes to scramble down the steep slopes to reach the site for the third battery, two hundred feet lower down the Rock. It was a perfect place: a cave in which all the provisions had been stored and still large enough to house a dozen men. With a flat platform of rock in front of it, facing to the north, it was large enough for two or three guns, let alone the single twelve-pounder which was all that Ramage could spare from the
Juno.
He saw that Lacey and his men had already rigged the jackstay.
From this point the rock face dropped down to the Marchesa battery so steeply that men were having to use rope ladders. Ramage commented on the steepness and asked Aitken who had managed to climb it in the first place and get a ladder into position. The young Scot admitted that several seamen had tried and found that after fifty feet or so they could get no higher. In the end he had climbed up himself, with a coil of rope slung over his shoulder. Once he reached the platform he had secured an end of the rope and hurled the coil down to the waiting men, who had bent on a rope ladder which he had hauled up.
Both men were standing on the platform and looking across the Fours Channel to Diamond Hill when they noticed that the ropes holding one of the two ladders were shaking. A minute or two later Lacey's perspiring face appeared over the edge of the rock.
“I'm afraid we're behind, sir,” he reported apologetically to Ramage, “but I'm just bringing up a party to rig this end of the luff tackle; then we can start hoisting the gun immediately.”
“It might be better to hoist the carriage first,” Ramage said, “just in case ⦔
Lacey's eyes fell. “Certainly, sir, if you would prefer it.” Ramage glanced at Aitken and laughed. “No, carry on, Lacey, you're in charge!”
The Fourth Lieutenant brightened up immediately. “If you'll excuse me a moment, sir ⦔ he said and ran to the edge of the rock, calling down to the men climbing the ladders to hurry.
He returned a moment later and asked Ramage almost shyly: “If you could wait a minute or two, sir, I think the men would like you to be here when they secure the luff tackle: everything will then be ready for hoisting. And, sir ⦔
Ramage guessed what was coming next: they had thought of a name for this battery too, and wanted his permission. He was pleased with the names they had chosen so far: Gianna would be delighted, and it was a fine thing to honour the
Juno
frigate. What would it be this time?
“Go on, then,” he prompted Lacey.
“Well, sir, they want to call it the Ramage battery.”
Ramage felt embarrassed for the second time in half an hour. The men meant well, but â¦
“I am flattered, Lacey, butâwell, I think the Admiralty might regard it as ⦠er, well, a piece of pretentiousness on my part.”
“Ah, but we thought of that, sir,” Lacey exclaimed triumphantly. “
Officially
it could be named Ramage after your father, because he fought his great battle in sight of Diamond Rock. But we, the Junos, sir, would know differently ⦔
Aitken, sensing Ramage's discomfiture, said quietly: “The Captain's father is the Earl of Blazey, you know.”
“I know he's the Earl of Blazey
now,
” Lacey said doggedly, “but he was Lord Ramage when he fought the battle 'cos he hadn't succeeded to the earldom. Just as the Captain is Lord Ramage now, but he'll be the Earl of Blazey one day.”
Ramage realized that Lacey and the men must have had a long discussion about it, but Lacey was too young to remember that the battle had been a desperate affair, his father being sent out too late with only a few ships to fight an overwhelming French fleet. The result had been predictable and his father had been made the scapegoat for the stupidity of the government of the day, receiving no recognition for an action which had revealed him as a brilliant tactician. He suddenly decided that this little battery could indeed be named Ramage, and whatever the Junos thought he would be naming it after his father.
Lacey saw Ramage's face softening and he grinned. “I can tell the men you agree, sir?”
Ramage nodded and then said emphatically: “I agree to it being named after my father because of the battle.”
“Oh yes, sir,” Lacey said, “they'll understand that.”
R
AMAGE
arrived back on board the
Juno
to find Southwick waiting with ill-concealed impatience and asking for permission to leave the ship for two hours and to use the jolly-boat. It was such an unusual request that Ramage frowned for a moment.
“You want to go over to the
Surcouf?”
“No sir, I want to visit the Marchesa battery,” he said gruffly. Ramage then noticed that the Master had a bulky canvas bag normally used for carrying papers under his arm.
“You can have the boat,” Ramage said grudgingly, “but I can't really spare you for two hours. What on earth is there to do at the Marchesa battery? Lacey was just about to sway up the gun when I left.”