Ramage and the Dido (6 page)

‘Yes, I noted them down with the glasses and cutlery. Sheets for the cot?’

‘Yes, four pairs. Silkin can’t get them all washed at the right time if we have much rainy weather.’

‘So you still have Silkin?’

‘Yes. He’s not the ideal captain’s steward, but he knows my ways now, which is half the battle with having a steward.’

‘And pillow cases?’

‘What? Oh yes, four of them.’

Ramage looked carefully round the cabin, trying to think of other things he needed, but they seemed to have listed everything. In any case, there would still be time to get anything they had forgotten.

‘Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s show you the rest of the ship, and you can meet your old friends.’

The tour soon turned into something of a triumphal procession. Sarah met Martin and Kenton on the quarterdeck and stopped for a chat with them, frankly admitting to Martin that she had forgotten to bring him any music for his flute. ‘Can you buy any in Portsmouth?’ she asked.

‘Yes, there is one shop in the High Street m’lady, and I’ve got a good selection now.’

Jackson and Stafford were squatting on the gangway, splicing rigging, and they put down their fids and stood up when Sarah came along. After the usual greetings, Sarah asked: ‘Any regrets at leaving the
Calypso
?
’

Both men nodded their heads. ‘You get used to a ship,’ Stafford said. ‘I ‘spect we’ll get used to the
Dido
in time, but there’s so much more to her.’ He pointed to the coil of rope he was splicing and grinned. ‘And so much more work to do!’

‘And what about you, Jackson?’

‘Well, the
Calypso
was small enough to be cosy. With a ship’s company three times as big, we’re going to lose some of that.’

‘Come now,’ Ramage said. ‘You’ve got to help train the new men and that way you’ll get to know them. You’ll soon like having some fresh faces around.’

‘More likely the place will be littered with clodhoppers, sir, with respect,’ Jackson said. ‘The ship will be a nursery, teaching them to knot and splice. They won’t know a long splice from a long drink of water.’

‘There are a couple of convoys due in, so we might get some prime seamen.’

Jackson sighed. ‘That means we’ll hear dozens of stories of how they’ve been cheated out of their wages by the masters of their ships.’

‘Well, do your best with the new men,’ Ramage said. ‘I don’t want the new and the old to split into two camps: that always means trouble.’

The four Frenchmen whom Sarah had got to know during their escape from Brest, when the war had broken out again while she and Nicholas were on their honeymoon in France, were on the fo’c’sle, splicing some standing rigging for the foremast. All four men were excited at seeing Sarah again.

‘Well, Gilbert,’ Sarah said, ‘how do you find life in the Royal Navy after being the Count of Rennes’ valet?’

Gilbert, who spoke very good English, grinned. ‘It’s different, my lady, but I like it. I like the comradeship. And always something new.’

She looked at Louis, who had started as a fisherman but, when his boat had been confiscated at the beginning of the Revolution, had become a gardener. ‘How about you?’

‘I prefer it to planting cabbages and fighting weeds, my lady, but I wish I was back fishing, my own master.’

Sarah nodded understandingly. ‘Still, you are free of the Revolution.’

Louis nodded his head vigorously. ‘The Royal Navy has no guillotine, and we eat regularly.’

Albert, who with Auguste had sold vegetables in the market at Brest before escaping, laughed and said: ‘We eat regularly, yes, but always the same thing. I miss the fresh vegetables we used to sell.’

Sarah looked at Auguste. ‘You feel the same?’

The Frenchman nodded. ‘I am happy enough serving with his Lordship, but it would be nice to chew at a fresh carrot, or eat an apple. These I miss.’

‘Don’t we all,’ Ramage said sympathetically.

Gilbert bowed slightly towards Sarah. ‘There is no family yet, milady?’

Sarah blushed slightly and shook her head. ‘Give us a year or two. Gilbert. Then what shall it be, two boys and a girl?’

‘At least,’ the Frenchman said emphatically. He thought and then added: ‘Three sons and two daughters would be best. Then, when the girls get married, you have five sons.’

Sarah laughed musically. ‘I’ll talk it over with his lordship!’

It was curious, she thought, how when talking to the Frenchmen one referred to Nicholas as ‘his lordship’, because in the Navy Nicholas did not use his title, but the Frenchmen were always punctilious about it. Well, they had all worked for a titled Frenchman they loved and respected, and they had no sympathy with the Revolution, which had ruined their lives in France.

Sarah and Nicholas continued their stroll through the ship, with Nicholas pointing out things that were different or bigger than in a frigate. They found Rossi making up a set of footropes for the maintopsail yard, and he hurriedly dropped his fid and gave Sarah a courtly bow.

‘Welcome to the
Dido,
milady,’ he said. ‘A much more fitting ship for you to visit than that little frigate!’

‘I liked the
Calypso,’
Sarah said. ‘She had an air about her.’

‘Ah yes, but a ship of the line is more fitting for the captain: he deserves her! Why, next it will be a three-decker, and he will be hoisting his flag as a rear-admiral.’

Sarah smiled at the Italian’s enthusiasm and reflected that Nicholas was lucky to have such men serving him. ‘All in good time, Rossi. It seems to me you have plenty to do getting this two-decker ready for sea.’

‘Boh,’ Rossi said with a shrug of his shoulders, ‘a few more days and we’ll be ready to sail.’

As they continued their walk along the gangway, Ramage reflected how well Sarah seemed to fit in. Although looking beautiful in her olive-green dress and cloak, which would have been suitable for a stroll down Bond Street, she nevertheless adapted well on board the
Dido,
lifting her skirt to step across coils of rope and ducking under pieces of rigging strung up to the shrouds.

They found Southwick under the halfdeck, inspecting the barrel of the wheel. Apart from the brief greeting at the entryport, they had not had a chance to talk. ‘How is the Marchesa?’ he asked. ‘Were you surprised to see her?’

‘We thought Napoleon’s men had murdered her in Paris, so you can imagine how surprised we were to find that she had escaped to Naples and that by chance you brought her back in the
Calypso.
She has been staying with the captain’s parents, as you know, but at the moment she is with friends in the country. As you saw on the voyage from Naples, her dreadful experience in Paris has not affected her.’

Southwick nodded. ‘She hardly recognised her nephew, he had grown up so much. He was a boy when she last saw him: now he is a young gentleman.’

‘Yes, I’ve noticed the difference, although I haven’t had a chance to talk to him yet. He’ll soon be taking his examination for lieutenant?’

‘This month, I think,’ Southwick said, ‘although he’ll have to wait until his birthday before he can call himself “Lieutenant Orsini”. In fact, he’ll probably serve as a master’s mate for a few months, until there’s a vacancy. We need a fifth lieutenant now, and the admiral will probably send us one before Mr Orsini can take his examination. But I gather he has all his papers ready.’

‘Will he pass?’ Sarah asked.

Southwick shrugged his shoulders. ‘He’ll come through with flying colours in everything but mathematics and navigation. There it’ll depend on what questions the board will ask. If he does well in seamanship – which I’m sure he will – the examining board may let him off lightly.’

‘Well, we must hope for the best. How are you keeping? You look very well.’

‘Middlin’ fair, m’lady. I get a touch of the screws in my back occasionally, but not bad enough to send me to bed.’

‘How do you like the change to the
Dido?’

‘Delighted with it, m’lady. A long overdue change for the captain. Let’s hope he won’t have to wait so long before getting a three-decker.’

‘I think he was happy enough with the
Calypso.’

‘Ah yes, you see he is a born frigate captain: plenty of dash.’ Southwick looked at Ramage and grinned. ‘I can say that now he’s said goodbye to the
Calypso.
Now he’s a married man with a ship o’ the line. By the time you’ve got a couple of sons, he’ll be ready for a three-decker.’

‘Is that how it works?’ Sarah said mildly. ‘So all successful naval officers have to be family men. A bit hard on the bachelors, isn’t it?’

Southwick’s reply startled Ramage, who regarded the master as a confirmed bachelor. ‘Serves ‘em right for not getting married.’

‘They might have trouble finding the right woman,’ Sarah said jokingly.

‘Aye, luck comes into it. As the captain well knows. If we hadn’t gone down to Brazil and put into Trinidada, and met you, who knows what the captain might have done?’

‘Remained a bachelor who has to buy his own furniture,’ Ramage said.

‘There you are, sir,’ Southwick said triumphantly. ‘Instead of traipsing round Portsmouth buying pots and pans, you’ve got her ladyship to do it for you!’

Ramage and Sarah turned to each other and said simultaneously: ‘Pots and pans!’

Sarah took the pages from her bag and, using the binnacle as a table, added them to her shopping list.

Southwick, realising what was going on, said to Ramage: ‘If you’d forgotten them you’d never have heard the last of it from Silkin!’

‘And an iron!’ Ramage exclaimed, visualising Silkin carefully pressing his shirts and stock.

Sarah sighed. ‘This is hopeless – we are going to be remembering things right up to the moment you sail.’

‘I’ll get Silkin to give me a list of what he wants. His pantry is right opposite Luckhurst’s office, so Luckhurst can be in charge of the list, and I can add to it whenever I think of something.’

‘I hope you’re including a good armchair, sir,’ Southwick said with a smile. ‘I’m getting a bit old for a straight-back chair.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Sarah assured him. ‘Four armchairs and a settee are at the top of the list.’

To Ramage the fitting-out seemed to be proceeding with agonising slowness: each day that Jessop brought him alongside the
Dido
the ship seemed no different from the day before. Sarah had finished all the shopping, but had arranged that it would not be delivered for several days, just before Ramage moved from The George into the ship.

One day the painters were busy down on the dock painting the ship’s boats; for the following two days they were blacking the guns and painting their carriages. Then came the day when the fore and mainyard were swayed up and crossed, followed by the topsail and topgallant yards. It was at that point that Ramage began to note progress.

At last there was more to write in the ‘By what time will they have finished’ and ‘Crew – how employed’ columns in the Daily Report. There was more to write in the ‘State of the rigging’ column, too. But it was slow work.

He spent a day interviewing midshipmen. As soon as it was known that there were vacancies in the
Dido,
applications came flooding in. He had been given the command too suddenly for him to have a number of relatives or friends and acquaintances asking for a berth. He had already decided he would take only ten, giving him a total of eleven with Orsini. The applicants were a mixed bunch, ranging from fourteen-year-old boys – mostly unhappy with the conditions in the ships in which they were already serving – to older men attracted by Ramage’s reputation.

With his furniture not yet arrived, he had to interview them in Luckhurst’s tiny cabin. As he worked his way through the list, he found he was picking more that had served in frigates than ships of the line. It was not any bias on his part in favour of frigates; it was simply that those who had served in frigates fared better in answering his questions, which usually began with the phrase ‘What would you do if…?’ He was little concerned with mathematical ability and, if the applicant was young, his ability to work out a sight. What mattered most was that the applicant had initiative. By the time he had chosen his ten, he found that eight of them were under sixteen years old, one was twenty and one was thirty-two, a stocky young man already going bald.

The day after the interviews, Aitken started hoisting in the guns and carriages. The ship was filled with shouted orders, the creak of the mainyard and the squeal of the sheaves in the blocks, and then the rumble of the trucks on the deck as guns and carriages were rolled into position and secured.

It was tiring work for the men. The 32-pounders, of which the
Dido
had twenty-eight, each weighed fifty-five and a half hundredweight – just short of three tons. On top of that came the weight of the carriage, which because of the shape was difficult to hoist. The 24-pounders, of which she had thirty, were not much lighter, each gun weighing two and a half tons. Then there were sixteen 12-pounders, each weighing thirty-four hundredweight. Two of them were to go in Ramage’s cabin, and one in the coach and one in his bedplace. Finally there were eight 12-pounder carronades, only two feet two inches long, but fitted on slides, not carriages, which would go on the poop above.

While the guns were being swayed on board, the
Dido
received her full complement of Marines. Ramage had a letter saying that Lieutenant Rennick had been promoted to captain, and that was followed by the new first and second Marine lieutenants, two young men of whom Rennick approved. There were now four sergeants, four corporals, two drummers and 110 privates, a total of 123. Ramage, looking at their details set down in the Muster Book, noted that he now had half as many Marines in the
Dido
as the full complement of Marines and seamen for the
Calypso.
At once Rennick offered Aitken more men to help with the fitting-out, and what the Marines lacked in nautical skill they made up for with strength, being only too ready to tail on to the end of a rope and give a good heave.