Ramage Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright & Information

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Maps

  Voyages of Ramage - LH

  Voyages of Ramage - RH

  Voyages of Ramage - Full

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Series order & Synopses

  Ned Yorke Series

  Ramage Series

  Synopses (Fiction & non-fiction)

  Copyright & Information

  Ramage

  First published in 1965

  Copyright: Kay Pope; House of Stratus 1965-2010

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of Dudley Pope to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2010 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  1842324721 9781842324721 Print

  0755124278 9780755124275 Pdf

  075512443X 9780755124435 Kindle

  075512460X 9780755124602 Epub

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  Dudley Bernard Egerton Pope was born in Ashford, Kent on 29 December 1925. When at the tender age of fourteen World War II broke out and Dudley attempted to join the Home Guard by concealing his age. At sixteen, once again using a ruse, he joined the merchant navy a year early, signing papers as a cadet with the Silver Line. They sailed between Liverpool and West Africa, carrying groundnut oil.

  Before long, his ship was torpedoed in the Atlantic and a few survivors, including Dudley, spent two weeks in a lifeboat prior to being rescued. His injuries were severe and because of them he was invalided out of the merchant service and refused entry into the Royal Navy when officially called up for active service aged eighteen.

  Turning to journalism, he set about ‘getting on with the rest of his life’, as the Naval Review Board had advised him. He graduated to being Naval and Defence correspondent with the London Evening News in 1944. The call of the sea, however, was never far away and by the late 1940’s he had managed to acquire his first boat. In it, he took part in cross-channel races and also sailed off to Denmark, where he created something of a stir, his being one of the first yachts to visit the country since the war.

  In 1953 he met Kay, whom he married in 1954, and together they formed a lifelong partnership in pursuit of scholarly adventure on the sea. From 1959 they were based in Porto Santo Stefano in Italy for a few years, wintering on land and living aboard during the summer. They traded up boats wherever possible, so as to provide more living space, and Kay Pope states:

  ‘In September 1963, we returned to England where we had bought the 53 foot cutter Golden Dragon and moved on board where she lay on the east coast. In July 1965, we cruised down the coasts of Spain and Portugal, to Gibraltar, and then to the Canary Islands. Early November of the same year we then sailed across the Atlantic to Barbados and Grenada, where we stayed three years.

  Our daughter, Victoria was 4 months old when we left the UK and 10 months when we arrived in Barbados. In April 1968, we moved on board ‘Ramage’ in St Thomas, US Virgin Islands and lost our mainmast off St Croix, when attempting to return to Grenada.’

  The couple spent the next nine years cruising between the British Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, before going to Antigua in 1977 and finally St.Martin in 1979.

  The sea was clearly in Pope’s blood, his family having originated in Padstow, Cornwall and later owning a shipyard in Plymouth. His great-grandfather had actually preceded him to the West Indies when in 1823, after a spell in Canada, he went to St.Vincent as a Methodist missionary, before returning to the family business in Devon.

  In later life, Dudley Pope was forced to move ashore because of vertigo and other difficulties caused by injuries sustained during the war. He died in St.Martin in 1997, where Kay now lives. Their daughter, Victoria, has in turn inherited a love of the sea and lives on a sloop, as well as practising her father's initial profession of journalism.

  As an experienced seaman, talented journalist and historian, it was a natural progression for Pope to write authoritative accounts of naval battles and his first book, Flag 4: The Battle of Coastal Forces in the Mediterranean, was published in 1954. This was followed in 1956 by the Battle of the River Plate, which remains the most accurate and meticulously researched account of this first turning point for Britain in World War II. Many more followed, including the biography of Sir Henry Morgan, (Harry Morgan’s Way) which has one won wide acclaim as being both scholarly and thoroughly readable. It portrays the history of Britain’s early Caribbean settlement and describes the Buccaneer’s bases and refuges, the way they lived, their ships and the raids they made on the coast of central America and the Spain Main, including the sack of Panama.

  Recognising Pope’s talent and eye for detail, C.S. Forrester (the creator of the Hornblower Series) encouraged him to try his hand at fiction. The result, in 1965, was the appearance of the first of the Ramage novels, followed by a further seventeen culminating with Ramage and the Dido which was published in 1989. These follow the career and exploits of a young naval officer, Nicholas Ramage, who was clearly named after Pope’s yacht. He also published the ‘Ned Yorke’ series of novels, which commences as would be expected in the Caribbean, in the seventeenth century, but culminates in ‘Convoy’ and ‘Decoy’ with a Ned Yorke of the same family many generations on fighting the Battle of the Atlantic.

  All of Dudley Pope’s works are renowned for their level of detail and accuracy, as well as managing to bring to the modern reader an authentic feeling of the atmosphere of the times in which they are set.

  Some of the many compliments paid by reviewers about Dudley Pope's work:

  ‘Expert knowledge of naval history’- Guardian

  “An author who really knows Nelson’s navy” - Observer

  ‘The best of Hornblower’s successors’ - Sunday Times

  ‘All the verve and expertise of Forrester’ - Observer

  Dedication

  For three friends,

  Jane and Antonio and Imek

  Maps

  Voyages of Ramage - LH

  Voyages of Ramage - RH

  Voyages of Ramage - Full

  Chapter One

  Ramage felt dazed and grabbed at the thoughts rushing through his head: he guessed it was a nightmare, so he would soon wake up safely in his cabin; but for the moment his mind was appar
ently separated from his body, floating along free like a puff of smoke in the wind. All that noise sounded like continuous thunder and now he was beginning to wake up, hesitating and unwilling to open his eyes and slide from blissful and contented drowsiness into the sharp bright light of consciousness.

  Yet he felt a vague uneasiness, wondering if he had overslept and would be late on watch. Uneasiness gave way to apprehension as slowly he realized the thunder was of gunfire: from an enemy’s broadsides, punctuated by the occasional deep-chested, bronchitic cough of his own ship’s 12-pounder cannons firing, followed by the familiar cartwheels-across-a-wooden-bridge rumble of the trucks as the carriages jerked back in recoil until they reached the limits of the thick rope breechings, which groaned under the strain of halting them.

  Then, as his sense of smell returned and the acrid fumes of gun smoke burnt the back of his nostrils, he realized–

  ‘Mr Ramage, sir!… Mr Ramage, sir!’

  It was his name, but they were shouting from a long way off, reminding him of his childhood when he had gone over the fields and into the woods and one of the servants called him back for a meal. ‘Master Nicholas,’ they’d shout, ‘you come this minute; ’is Lordship’s terrible angry when you’re late.’ But Father was never angry; in fact–

  ‘Mr Ramage! Mr Ramage – wake up, sir!’

  But that isn’t a servant’s voice – there’s no Cornish burr: it’s a boy calling – a frightened and almost hysterical boy with a sharp cockney accent.

  ‘Mr Ramage – ohmygawd do wake up, sir!’

  Now a man’s voice joined in, and they began shaking him as well. Heavens, his head hurt: he felt as if he had been bludgeoned. The enormous grunt and rumbling interrupting them must be another 12-pounder going off close by and slamming back in recoil.

  Ramage opened his eyes. His body still seemed remote and he was startled to find himself lying with his face pressed against the deck. The pattern on the planking was really most extraordinary. He noticed – as if seeing it for the first time – that constant scrubbing and holystoning with sand and water had worn away little alleys of soft wood between the harder ridges of the grain. And someone must swab up the blood.

  Blood staining the scrubbed planks: the words forming in his mind shocked him into realizing he was now conscious, but still curiously detached, as if looking down from the masthead at his own body sprawled flat on its face between two guns, nose pressed against the deck, arms and legs flung out, like a rag doll on a rubbish heap.

  They shook him violently and then rolled him over.

  ‘Come on, sor…come, Mr Ramage, wake up!’

  He opened his eyes reluctantly but his head spun for several moments before he could see their faces, and even then they were distant, as though viewed through the wrong end of a telescope. Finally, by concentrating hard he managed to focus the boy’s face more clearly.

  ‘Yes?’

  God, was that his voice – a rasping croak like a holystone being dragged across a dry deck?

  ‘Yes – what’s the matter?’

  The effort of speaking brought Ramage’s memory back with a rush: it was a stupid question: everything was the matter when late one sunny September afternoon in the year of Our Lord 1796 a French 74-gun line-of-battle ship, the Barras, trapped His Majesty’s frigate Sibella, of 28 guns…

  ‘Ohmygawdsir, it’s awful,’ gabbled the boy. ‘All dead they are, sir, an’ a shot caught the Captain right–’

  ‘Steady boy: who sent you?’

  ‘Bosun, sir – said to tell you you was in command now, sir: everyone else’s killed and the Carpenter’s Mate says there’s four feet o’water in the well and the pumps smashed, sir – can’t you come on deck, sir? ’Ere, I’ll ’elp you,’ he added pleadingly.

  The urgent, terrified note in the boy’s voice and the phrase ‘You was in command now, sir’ helped clear Ramage’s head (which was beginning to throb in time with the pumping of his heart) but the significance was chilling. Every junior lieutenant dreamed of commanding a frigate in action; but that terrible rumbling a few hundred yards away – as though some giant god of mythology was hurling bolts of lightning through the frigate’s hull, butchering men and timber alike – was the French line-of-battle ship firing her broadside, some 35 heavy guns. The spasmodic coughs and grunts close by were obviously all that remained of the frigate’s puny broadside of 14 light guns.

  No, that was not included in a junior lieutenant’s dream of glory; nor was having the command thrust upon him when most of his wits had been scattered by a blow on the head and so far refused to return. Still, this deck was deuced comfortable…

  ‘Come on, sor: I’ll ’elp you up.’

  Ramage opened his eyes again and, as he recognized one of the seamen – a fellow Cornishman named Higgins, or Briggins, or some such name – realized he had been slithering back into sleep or unconsciousness, or whatever it was that drained the strength from his body and befogged his brain.

  Higgins – or was it Briggins? Oh, it didn’t matter – stank of sweat: cloying yet sharp, but it did not burn the nostrils like smoke from the guns. As they hoisted him to his feet Ramage closed his eyes to stop his head spinning, and he heard Higgins or Briggins roundly cursing another seaman: ‘Wrop his bloddy arm round yor bloddy neck, else ’e’ll fall down. Now hold his wrist. That’s it. Now walk ’im, you heathen Patlander!’

  Ramage’s legs flopped one in front of the other while the Cornishman on one side and the Irishman on the other dragged him along: they probably had plenty of experience of getting a drunken shipmate out of a tavern.

  In front, through the smoke swirling across the decks and curling into strange wreathing patterns as it was caught by eddies of wind coming in at the gun ports, danced the boy, whom he now recognized as the First Lieutenant’s servant. The late First Lieutenant’s servant, he corrected himself.

  ‘What the ’ell now? ’Ow are we ter get ’im up the ladder?’

  The ladder from the main deck up to the gangway and quarter-deck has eight rungs – Ramage was pleased with himself for remembering that – and is only wide enough for one man. Eight rungs mean nine steps to the top, and every one of those eight rungs is mine to command.

  The stupidity of the thought shocked Ramage into realizing he was making no real effort to pull himself together: the two seamen could carry him no farther: he was on his own: up those eight rungs was the quarter-deck where, as the new commanding officer, he now belonged: where several score men were looking to him as their leader.

  ‘Where’s a tub?’ he asked, freeing himself from the men’s grasp.

  ‘Just here, sir.’

  He lurched a couple of paces and knelt beside it. When the ship beat to quarters before the action began, small tubs of water had been placed near the guns for the men to soak the sponges used to swab the barrels of the guns. As he plunged his head into the water he gave a gasp of pain, and groping fingers found a big swelling and a long gash across the back of his scalp. The gash was not deep, but enough to explain why he had been unconscious: probably a flying splinter of wood.

  Ducking his head again, he swilled water round in his mouth, and spat it out, then pulled the wet hair back from his forehead, took several deep breaths, and stood up. The sudden movement set his head spinning again but already he felt stronger; the muscles were coming back to his legs.

  At the foot of the ladder he paused, a spasm of fear twisting his stomach: at the top carnage and chaos awaited him. Decisions, vital decisions, had to be made and orders given – by someone who had been below, commanding one division of the guns for most of the action, his field of view restricted to what could be seen through a gun port, and unconscious for the rest of the time.

  As he struggled up the ladder Ramage found he was talking to himself, like a child learning something by rote: the Captain, First and Second Lieutenants must have been killed, which leaves me the next senior. The boy said the Bosun had sent word that I’m in command, so presumably the Master
was also dead, otherwise the message would have come from him. Well, thank God the Bosun survived, and let’s hope the Surgeon’s been spared and stayed sober.

  How many of the Sibella’s guns have fired in the last few minutes? Four or five, and they are all on the main-deck, which means the upper-deck guns and carronades must be out of action. With only four or five guns firing on the engaged side, how many of the ship’s company are still alive? There’d been 164 answering last Sunday’s muster.

  Two more rungs and I’ll be at the top. Another broadside from the Barras on its way: strange how gunfire across water sounds like thunder – and now the tearing canvas sound of passing round shot, and the horrible punching which shook the ship to the keel as more shot crashed into the hull.

  More screams and more men killed. His fault, too: if only he’d hurried he might have done something that’d saved them.

  Now his head was level with the narrow gangway running the length of the ship, joining fo’c’sle to quarter-deck, and he realized it would soon be twilight. Then he was on the gangway itself, staggering over to the bulwark. But he hardly recognized the ship: on the fo’c’sle the carronade on each bow had been wrenched from its slide and piles of bodies showed the crews had been killed at the same time. The ornamented belfry and galley chimney had vanished; great sections of the bulwark along the starboard side were smashed in and dozens of rolled-up hammocks lay scattered across the deck, torn from their usual stowed positions in nettings on top of the bulwarks.

  Looking right aft across the quarter-deck he saw that all the rest of the carronades had been torn from their slides, and round each of those on the starboard side were more bodies. One section of the main capstan was smashed in, leaving the gilded crown on top hanging askew; and instead of the double wheel just forward of the mizenmast, manned by a couple of quartermasters, there was just a gaping hole in the deck. Shot had bitten chunks out of the mizenmast – and the mainmast. And the foremast, too. And bodies – it seemed to Ramage there were more bodies sprawled about the deck than men in the whole ship’s company; yet seamen were still running about – and others were working the remaining guns on the deck below. He saw four or five Marines crouching down behind the bulwark abreast the mizenmast reloading their muskets.