Ramage's Trial by Dudley Pope

anchored ships and to the area well clear of the anchorage and off the town where the convoy was to form up. Form up, Ramage thought bitterly…easier to teach cows the quadrille than get these mules into their proper positions without broken bowsprits, ripped out jibbooms or, the more usual, having at least one ship locked in tight embrace with another, its jibboom and bowsprit stuck through the other’s rigging, its bow locked amidships by torn planking…
    Now Paolo was back. “Are you ready for my report, sir?” he asked with a grin.
    â€œYes – tell me, Mr Orsini, have you seen if any of the merchant ships have made me a signal?”
    â€œWhy yes, sir: I’ve just seen that one of them, the Beatrice , has a wheft flying at her foretopmasthead: I assume she wishes to communicate with you, sir.”
    â€œVery well, acknowledge it. If I remember rightly, hoisting a blue, white and red at the mizentopmasthead merely says: ‘The Commander of the convoy sees the signal that is made to him’.”
    â€œYes, sir, it doesn’t specify which signal or who is making it,” Paolo said, enjoying the game.
    Ramage nodded and then, still looking through his glass, he groaned. “That horse won’t start – the Beatrice is hoisting out a boat. We’ll have the master on board in a few minutes with a list of requests…”
    â€œâ€™Bout time for the next gun, sir,” Aitken reminded him, overhearing the conversation with Orsini and looking across at the Beatrice , a ship which was of no colour: her paint was worn off the hull by the combined attacks of sea and sea air, time and the wind. Time had turned the bare wood grey, so that she looked as if she had been built of driftwood. “The boat they’ve just hoisted out doesn’t look as though she’ll swim this far!” Aitken added.
    And Ramage saw that the first couple of men who had climbed down into the boat were now busy bailing: obviously the planking of the boat, stowed on deck without a cover to protect the wood from the scorching sun, had split as the wood shrunk: “shakes”, like the wrinkles on an old man’s neck, would let the water leak through. It would take hours of soaking for the wood to swell up and staunch the leaks enough for the boat to be usable. Stowing the boat with water in it would have saved them a lot of trouble because the rolling of the ship would have kept the water swilling round.
    â€œVery well, Mr Aitken, the last signal!”
    The first lieutenant, after checking with Southwick that the anchor was off the ground, gave the order for the topsails to be sheeted home, and another gun to be fired. That was the final order to get the convoy under way and given in the SIGNALS and INSTRUCTIONS as To Weigh, the outward and leeward ships first .
    â€œLet’s get out to seaward of them,” Ramage said. “If we stay here, one of them is sure to hit us.”
    â€œThe Beatrice , sir,” Orsini reminded him.
    â€œYou are the Keeper of the Captain’s Conscience, eh?” Ramage teased him. “They’ve signalled that they want to communicate – and we’re waiting for them.”
    â€œShe’s in sight of the flagship, sir,” Paolo pointed out.
    Indeed, the Queen was perfectly placed to see all that was going on, and if the Calypso left the anchorage without attending to the blasted Beatrice there would be plenty of sycophantic lieutenants on board the flagship only too anxious to make sure that the admiral was kept well informed.
    He was going to have to do something about the damned ship sooner or later, but in the meantime it would not hurt to scare the Beatrice ’s master. “We’ll circle the anchorage a few times while these mules get under way,” he told Aitken. “Once we’ve got the leaders of the columns in position, Orsini can take a boat over to the Beatrice . I’m more concerned with