Ramage and the Freebooters (2 page)

Ramage was rubbing the lower of the two scars on his right brow: an unconscious gesture which a few weeks earlier would have warned a whole ship’s company that their young captain was either thinking hard or getting angry.

Suddenly turning to the doorman – who was obviously enjoying the episode – Ramage snapped: ‘You! Go at once and tell the First Lord that Lord Ramage has arrived for his appointment.’

The man was scuttling for the corridor at the far end of the hall before Ramage turned back to the liveried attendant who, by now looking worried and rubbing his hands together like an ingratiating potman, said reproachfully: ‘Why, your Lordship, I didn’t realize… You didn’t tell me your name.’

‘You didn’t ask me and you couldn’t be bothered to see if I was the person on the list. You merely hinted that a guinea would help arrange for me to see a clerk. Now hold your tongue.’

The man was about to say something when he saw Ramage’s eyes: dark brown and deep-set under thick eyebrows, they now gleamed with such anger the man was frightened, noticing for the first time the two scars on the lieutenant’s brow. One was a white line showing clearly against the tanned skin; the other pink and slightly swollen, obviously the result of a recent wound.

But Ramage was still shaken – as was every other officer in the Royal Navy – by the latest news from Spithead and felt a bitter rage not with the man as an individual but as a spiteful personification of the attitude of many of the Admiralty and Navy Board civilian staff.

By now impatiently pacing up and down the hall, Ramage thought of the dozens of assistant, junior and senior clerks, and the assistant, junior and senior secretaries now working under this very roof, all too many of whom administered the Navy with an impersonal condescension and contempt for both seamen and sea officers amounting at times to callousness.

It was understandable because of the system; but it was also unforgivable. Many – in fact most – of these men owed their time-serving, well-pensioned jobs to the influence of some well-placed relative or friend. They filled in forms, checked and filed reports, and at the drop of a hat rattled off the wording of regulations parrot-fashion, unconcerned that the seaman they might be cheating out of a pension was illiterate and ignorant of his legal rights, or that the captain of a ship of war suddenly ordered to account for the loss of some paltry item might be almost at his wit’s end with exhaustion after weeks of keeping a close blockade on some God-forsaken, gale-swept French port.

An inky-fingered clerk was, in his own estimation, far more important than a sea officer; ships and seamen were to him an annoyance he had to suffer. No one ever pointed out that he existed solely to keep the ships at sea, well-found, well-provisioned and manned by healthy and regularly paid seamen. No, to these damned quill-pushers a ship of war was a hole in a gigantic pile of forms and reports lined with wood and filled with convicts.

Most of this shameful business at Spithead was due to men like this, whether a junior clerk at £75 a year humbugging the distraught widow of a seaman killed in battle or a senior secretary at £800 a year ignoring the sea officers and telling ministers what they wanted to hear. The Devil take the –

‘My Lord…’

The porter was trotting alongside him and had obviously been trying to attract Ramage’s attention for some moments.

‘My Lord, if you’ll come this way please.’

A few moments later he was ushering Ramage through a door saying, ‘Would you wait in here, sir: His Lordship will be with you in a few minutes.’

As the door closed behind him Ramage realized he was in the Board Room: in here, under the ceiling decorated with heraldic roses picked out in white and gilt, the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty sat and deliberated.

Their decisions, jotted down by the Board Secretary on scraps of paper as they were made, resulted in orders being sent out to despatch a fleet half-way round the world to the East Indies, or the 128th captain in the Navy List commanding a frigate off Brest receiving a reprimand for failing to use the prescribed wording when drawing up the report of a survey on a leaking cask of beer.

Large or small, right or wrong, it was here in this room that the decisions were made that governed the activities of more than six hundred of the King’s ships whether they were cruising the coast of India or the Spanish Main, blockading Cadiz or acting as guardship at Plymouth. If the ships were the fighting body of the Navy, he reflected, here was its brain, working in a long room which had three tall windows along one wall and was panelled with the same oak used to build the ships.

And Ramage saw it was an impressive room which had absorbed something of the drama and greatness of the decisions Their Lordships had made within its walls during the last five score years or more, sitting at the long, highly polished table occupying the middle of the room.

The high-backed chair with arms at the far end was obviously the First Lord’s, and the pile of paper, quill, silver paper-knife, inkwell and sandbox in front of it indicated he probably used the Board Room as his own office.

Ramage, intrigued by several long cylinders looking like rolled-up white blinds and fitted on to a large panel over the fireplace, walked over and pulled down one of the tassels. It was a chart of the North Sea. A convenient way of stowing them. Then he noticed the whole panel was surrounded by a frieze of very light wood covered with carvings of nautical and medical instruments and symbols of the sea.

The instruments were beautifully carved, standing out in such relief it seemed he could reach up and use any one of them. An azimuth overlapped an astrolabe; a set of shot gauges hung over a pelorus; a cross staff used by the earliest navigators was partly hidden by a miniature cannon. And, emphasizing the importance of good health in a ship, especially on long voyages of discovery, the snakes and winged staff symbol of Aesculapius and a globe of the world.

There was what seemed to be the face of an enormous clock on the wall opposite the First Lord’s chair, but instead of two hands it had a single pointer, like a compass needle. Instead of numbers round the edge, there were the points of the compass, while the map of Europe painted on its face had the axle of the pointer exactly where London was.

He saw the pointer was moving slightly, ranging between ‘SW’ and ‘SW by W’. It was the dial that his father had long ago described to him and which, by an ingenious arrangement of rods and wheels, showed the direction the wind vane on the Admiralty roof was pointing.

And it was very old – that much was clear from the map which showed the North Sea as ‘The British Ocean’. Calais appeared as ‘Calice’ while the Scilly Isles were simply labelled ‘Silly I’.

Each country was indicated by the arms of its royal family, and even a casual glance showed Ramage that some of them had long since vanished, removed from their thrones by death, intrigue, revolution or conquest.

As he reached for his watch he noticed the tall grandfather clock beside the door through which he’d entered. Ten minutes past nine. The figure ‘17’ showed in a small aperture carved in the face – the date, 17 April. Ingenious, yet the clock was obviously very old: the wood was mellow, the metal of the face – which was surrounded by elaborate gilt work – had a rich patina, the mirror on the door was dulled with age, like old men’s eyes.

Ramage remembered something his father had told him about the clock: it was made –

‘Good morning!’

Ramage spun round to find Lord Spencer had come through a door at the far end of the room which had been indistinguishable against the panelling.

‘Good morning, my Lord.’

Ramage shook the proffered hand.

‘Your first visit to the Board Room?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I guessed as much, though your father knew it well enough. Were you admiring the clock or bemoaning the unpunctuality of the King’s ministers?’ Spencer asked banteringly.

Ramage grinned. ‘Admiring, and trying to remember what my father told me about it. And admiring the whole room.’

‘I love it,’ Spencer said frankly. ‘I use it instead of my own office. I’ll be your guide before we sit down to settle your business.’

The words were spoken lightly, but for Ramage they had an ominous meaning. Certainly the First Lord was being affable enough, but the family had suffered enough at the hands of politicians for him to be wary.

‘Let’s start with the clock. Made by Langley Bradley, the man who made the one for St Paul’s Cathedral. It’s been telling the time and date for nearly a hundred years, so the mirror’ – he bent down to grimace at his own image – ‘has reflected every Board meeting since this place was built in 1725.

‘These carvings over the fireplace – pearwood, by Grinling Gibbons, as you’ve probably guessed. He did them in the 1690s and they were probably taken from Wallingford House, which was knocked down to make room for this building.

‘And how do you like our wind dial? I can glance up and see if a nice west wind is keeping the French shut up in Brest, or if there’s an east wind on which they might slip out. In fact until I became First Lord I never realized what danger an east wind brings to this country, giving every enemy fleet from the Texel to the Cadiz a chance of getting out of port. Or what an ally we have in a west wind, penning them in like sheep!’

Because of his father, Ramage had known the Spencer family since boyhood. Never very well, but enough to allow the First Lord to relax with a lowly lieutenant for a few minutes.

And now he was impressed with the older man’s obvious enthusiasm for his job as First Lord of the Admiralty. But for all that he was a politician; any day a government reshuffle might promote him to some other post or demote him to some well-paid sinecure like the President of the Council for Trade and Plantations. Or to complete eclipse if the government fell – which he guessed it might do over the Spithead affair. Yet since Spencer was appointed First Lord three years ago he’d become both popular and respected: an unusual combination.

If the Board Room was about seventy-five years old, Ramage reflected, it meant members sitting at that table had given the orders which sent Anson on his great voyage round the world in the
Centurion
. And Captain Cook on three voyages revealing the extent of the Pacific Ocean. And sent Admiral Byng – much too late and with a small and ill-equipped squadron – to defeat off Minorca. Then, as the resulting public outcry threatened to topple the government, had obeyed its order to make Byng the scapegoat and brought him to a mockery of a trial which led to him being shot by a firing squad on the quarterdeck of the
St George
at Portsmouth.

And, he realized with a shock, from here had gone the orders sending his own father to the West Indies in command of a similar squadron in similar circumstances. Following the inevitable defeat, similar orders for a court martial had been given and for similar reasons – though his father had been disgraced as the price of the government staying in power, not shot…

Spencer must have read his thoughts because, his face expressionless, he said casually: ‘Yes, some great and some shameful decisions have been made in this room. I can’t claim credit for any of the former nor undo any of the latter.’

Ramage nodded, since no answer was needed, but he felt a considerable relief because Spencer had said more than mere words. The trial of Admiral the Earl of Blazey had been a cold-blooded political manoeuvre, but it had also split the Navy.

That had been inevitable because many officers were active in politics or linked by family ties or patronage with leading political figures. They had been quick to strike at the government of the day through his father – and not a few took advantage of an opportunity to satisfy their jealousy of a young admiral already famous as one of the Navy’s leading tacticians. Although several of these men were now dead or superannuated, there were still many in high positions who carried on the vendetta against the Earl’s family – helped in turn by the younger officers who looked to them for promotion – and the vendetta had extended to the Earl’s son and heir, Ramage himself.

‘Sit down – here, in Lord Arden’s chair.’

Arden, second senior of the Lords Commissioners, sat at the First Lord’s left hand.

As Spencer unlocked a drawer in the table, Ramage thought of the brief and peremptory letter in his pocket ordering him to report to the First Lord. It gave no reason, but as far as Ramage was concerned there could be only one.

Spencer put several papers on the table and, patting them with his hand, remarked: ‘Mercifully there are few lieutenants in the Navy List who’ve had so many contradictory reports on them forwarded to the First Lord.’

And here we go, Ramage thought bitterly. First the honeyed words: now the harsh judgement. Well, it wasn’t unexpected. He’d been back in England for several weeks since the Battle of Cape St Vincent. For the first three he had been recovering from the head wound, and as soon as he wrote to the Admiralty reporting himself fit he’d expected the summons to London or an order to report to some port for a court martial.

His father hadn’t tried to comfort him; in fact the old Admiral insisted he didn’t accept any reprimand and, if necessary, demanded a court martial. But the days had gone by without anything more than a bare acknowledgement of the letter. While it meant no reprimand it also meant no employment.

Turning the pile of papers over so the bottom one was uppermost, the First Lord said: ‘Let’s just run through these. Then you’ll see my predicament. Here’s one from Sir John Jervis – as he then was – dated last October and praising you for your bravery in taking command of the
Sibella
frigate after all the other officers had been killed, and going on to rescue the Marchesa di Volterra from Napoleon’s troops. He encloses one from Commodore Nelson – as he then was – which is even more fulsome, saying you literally carried the Marchesa off from beneath the feet of the French cavalry.

‘Now for the next one. This, from another admiral, refers to the
same
episode and says you should have been condemned by a court martial for cowardice, and that the trial he’d ordered was interrupted.