Ramage's Prize Read online

  “Well, the passengers are always embarked by now, of course, and the agent has had the mails brought on board. Then he musters the ship’s company, gives the commander any last-minute instructions, and bids them a safe voyage. Oh yes, he also checks the trim of the packet, to make sure the mails have been properly stowed, so the ship isn’t down by the bow or stern—that sort of thing.”

  “And then the packet sails for Barbados—whatever the weather?”

  “She sails at once, as long as she can carry a reefed topsail. You can get out of Falmouth in anything but a south-easterly gale—but you know that well enough.”

  Ramage nodded: obviously that was why the Post Office had chosen Falmouth in the first place. “And then what happens to that letter?”

  “Well, it gets carried to Barbados first. The packet then calls at two or three of the Windward and Leeward Islands delivering and collecting mail—Antigua would probably be the last—and then comes across the Caribbean direct to Jamaica.”

  “Where that letter comes under your care.”

  “Yes, indeed,” Smith said grimly. “I meet the packet with the Customs Officers and the doctor, take off the bags of inward mail, and bring them here, where they are sorted again and delivered.”

  “What happens to the packet and the crew?”

  “The commander provisions the ship, the men are allowed a few hours on shore—they all have Protections, of course, so they don’t have to worry about press-gangs—and then the packet is ready to sail again, when the fresh mails are loaded.”

  “Now,” Ramage said slowly, “imagine the brother here is replying to the merchant in London.”

  “Well, it’s much the same story in reverse, really, except that when the packet sails from here, she doesn’t go back across the Caribbean: she goes out to the north-east, touching only at Cape Nicolas Mole on her way through the Windward Passage into the Atlantic and then direct to England.”

  “Why the different route?”

  “Well, she has already delivered all the inward and picked up the outward mail at the other islands on her way to Jamaica.”

  “So apart from touching at the western end of Hispaniola, Jamaica is the last port of call before England?”

  Smith nodded.

  “And your searcher,” Ramage asked. “Is he as diligent as the one at Falmouth?”

  “No more and no less.”

  Ramage nodded in turn. “These ventures, do the officers … ?”

  “I hope you’re not asking me officially. As Deputy Postmaster-General, I have no knowledge of any ventures in any packet. Between you and me, I think the officers also regard themselves as badly paid, and the little profit they might make—well, it balances the books without costing Lombard Street anything.”

  “I’d like to ask a question addressed to you, not the Deputy Postmaster-General,” Ramage said. “Do you have any suspicion at all of what might be going on?”

  “None,” Smith said emphatically. “If I had, I’d tell you. I’ve thought of every possibility—from spies in the Department to passengers seizing the ships.”

  “Treason?”

  “Out of the question. The commanders and crews are eventually exchanged, and Lombard Street would soon hear. Anyway, the commanders own the ships. They have everything to lose.”

  “And when they are exchanged and get back to England, nothing they report has given Lombard Street any hint?”

  “Nothing. The story is always the same: my last communication from Lord Auckland”—he patted the pile of papers—”makes the point again: each packet was overtaken by a privateer and attacked and forced to surrender after sinking the mails.”

  Ah, thought Ramage, so we do know for certain that it is privateers …

  “Casualties must be quite heavy.”

  “No, I’m thankful to say they aren’t. The commanders have orders to run, not linger and fight: that’s a long-standing policy established by Lombard Street: the packets rely on their superior speed.”

  “Hardly superior, surely, if so many are captured?”

  Again Smith shrugged his shoulders. “I am merely telling you the Post Office’s policy, Lieutenant. The West India merchants, for example, think otherwise: they want the packets more heavily armed, so they can fight back.”

  “But Lombard Street doesn’t agree.”

  “No. They prefer the policy of a speedy escape.”

  I wonder, Ramage thought, how many packets have to be lost before Lombard Street admits its policy is wrong? He asked, “Who specifies the size and type of ship? I’ve noticed most of them are similar.”

  “They were of different designs before the war: whatever the contractors—which usually meant the commanders—wanted. Then Lombard Street specified that they should be the same design—179 tons burthen, with a ship’s company of 28 men and boys, and armed with four 4-pounders, and two 9-pounder stern-chasers. And small arms, of course.”

  “Not much against a privateer.”

  “No, but remember that the instructions to the commanders are, in effect, ‘Run when you can; fight when you can no longer run; and when you can fight no longer, sink the mails before you strike.’”

  “Tell me, Mr Smith, since the ‘run when you can’ policy has obviously failed, why hasn’t the Post Office tried larger and more heavily armed ships?”

  “The Post Office doesn’t want to be a party to privateering!” Smith said, smiling. “Early in the war there was some trouble because a few of the packet commanders were not above going after a prize themselves—and Lombard Street couldn’t allow such risks with the mails.”

  “One last question,” Ramage said. “When is the next packet due?”

  “Using the 45-day passage rule, she was due here yesterday. If she hasn’t been taken I’d expect to see her at the latest within the next seven days. But I’m not hopeful; in fact I’m refusing to accept mail or passengers for her.”

  Ramage stood up and thanked Smith. He had the curious feeling that there was a clue in all the information he’d been given, but discerning it was like trying to recall details of a half remembered dream.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THAT evening Ramage sat out on the terrace of the Royal Albion Hotel with Yorke, comfortably sleepy after a good dinner and, like most people in Kingston at that time, waiting for the offshore breeze to set in for the night and give the first relief from the sweltering heat they had endured all day. The palms were alive with the buzz of tiny frogs and mosquitoes whined; moths of all colours and sizes battered themselves against the glass of the lamps.

  “You don’t feel like changing your mind about the Governor’s Ball?” Yorke asked. “There’s still time …”

  “It’s too hot,” Ramage said drowsily. “If it’s anything like last night, the offshore breeze won’t set in at all. That damned ballroom turns into an oven even with half a gale blowing through it. Anyway, I’ve had my share of trying to make conversation with planters’ dumpy daughters.”

  “Come now, don’t blame the poor girls; the moment their mothers heard that Lieutenant Lord Ramage had arrived in Jamaica they knew the season’s most eligible bachelor was within their grasp: tall, dark and handsome, two romantic scars won in battle, wealthy and the heir to an earldom … what more could a mother—let alone a daughter—want from life?”

  “My friend,” Ramage said, “unless you use all your energy in spreading a story that I’m a notorious rapist and the family estate is mortgaged to the butler whose daughter my grandfather recently deflowered, I’ll drop the hint that not only is that young shipowner Sidney Yorke so rich that he lends small fortunes to nabobs at one per cent, but that his main reason for coming to Jamaica is to find himself a wife.”

  “Your ruthlessness appalls me,” Yorke said cheerfully, and glanced round to see if anyone was within earshot. “Well, you’ve been suitably mysterious all through dinner, so now you can tell me what’s happening.”

  “I have a new job—acting as Neptune’s Postmaster, I
think.”

  “Ah—so you accepted! Why was Sir Pilcher being so generous?”

  Ramage pointed across to the door from the dining-room where two men stood looking out across the terrace. “Here are Southwick and Bowen,” he said, waving to attract their attention. “They might as well hear about it at the same time.”

  Edward Southwick was a stocky man in his early sixties, with flowing white hair and a cherubic pink face. If he was wearing long vestments and holding a crozier in his hand, Ramage thought to himself, he could pass for an amiable bishop calling to exorcize the hotel terrace of jumbies. Certainly no one looking at him now would guess that he was never happier than when leading a boarding party with his enormous meat-cleaver of a sword in his hand—preferably against absurd odds. Ramage had a deep affection for the old man who had been Master of each of the two ships Ramage had commanded in the past two years. He treated the seamen like a group of wayward schoolboys, and Ramage with a quiet loyalty that made nothing of the fact that his Captain was young enough to be his grandson.

  The man with him was perhaps ten years younger, tall with a stoop, but walking with an air of authority. An almost haggard face marked him as recently recovered from a severe illness. It was unlikely that many of the wealthy patients who had once flocked to his fashionable surgery in Wimpole Street would recognize him now. Since they had last seen him, James Bowen had changed from being one of the finest surgeons in London to a pathetic wreck needing a bottle of gin to get him through the day and whose nights were a private hell of drunken fears. Shame had finally driven him to quit his practice and go to sea. A Navy short of surgeons did not quibble about his drinking habits and sent him to the Triton brig, commanded by Lieutenant Ramage and bound for the Caribbean.

  But Lieutenant Ramage, responsible for the lives and well-being of a ship’s company of 75 men and bound for one of the unhealthiest stations in the Navy, was far from pleased that circumstances had brought him a drunken surgeon. With Southwick’s help, he had ruthlessly cut off the man’s alcohol and systematically nursed him through the horrors of delirium tremens. By the time they arrived in Barbados, Bowen had sworn never to drink again and had proved himself to be a witty and cultured man, as well as a superb chess player. Southwick, instructed by Ramage to play chess with Bowen to keep his mind occupied during the worst part of the cure, had unexpectedly turned out to be a good player.

  The two men pulled up rattan chairs and sat opposite Ramage and Yorke.

  Ramage gestured at the board and box which Bowen held in his lap. “I didn’t mean to interfere with your chess.”

  “Southwick isn’t in the mood, sir.”

  Ramage looked inquiringly at the Master, who grinned. “He’s beaten me six times in the last three evenings, so I’m not sacrificing anything! It’s time I got back to sea; this idle life is rotting m’ brain!”

  To Ramage’s surprise, Bowen asked: “No news of a ship yet, sir?”

  “Not exactly, but I called you over to hear the news I was just about to give to Mr Yorke.”

  He saw that Southwick’s face had fallen. Like the Surgeon, the Master knew that he would not get a ship if it was left to the Commander-in-Chief; their only chance lay in Ramage obtaining a command and asking for them.

  “I haven’t got a ship, but I’ve got an appointment. What it’ll lead to, I don’t yet know.”

  Quickly and briefly he told the men of the orders he had received from Sir Pilcher, and then described the information from the Deputy Postmaster-General about the lost packets. He purposely told them only the facts of the losses, and when he finished he said: “Well, has anyone a theory?”

  Yorke and Southwick both spoke up together, and the Master gestured to Yorke, who said: “I was puzzled by the number of homeward-bound packets that are lost. I’d have expected most of them to have been captured between Antigua and here.”

  Southwick agreed. “I was going to mention the same thing, sir. Those lost on the way home—were the majority captured on this side of the Atlantic, in mid-ocean, or as they approached the chops of the Channel?”

  “The Postmaster doesn’t know the positions—the Post Office in London didn’t bother to tell him. He seems to think most were taken on this side of the Atlantic—the moment they’d cleared the Windward Passage, to hear him talk—but I doubt it. For one thing, the crews are exchanged too quickly for them to be taken this side, carried to Guadeloupe, sent to France and then exchanged. That alone makes me certain packets are taken towards the end of the voyage.”

  “It sounds logical,” Yorke said, “especially since they are exchanged in—what, about eight weeks, didn’t you say?”

  Ramage nodded. “It seems amazingly quick to me, but the Postmaster didn’t seem to think there was anything unusual about it. Maybe there’s some sort of arrangement with the French Government so that the Post Office men get special treatment.”

  “I can’t see us getting a ship out of it,” Bowen said gloomily. He turned to Yorke. “Looks as if Southwick and I will be travelling back to England with you.”

  “I’d better start polishing up my chess,” Yorke said. “I have plenty of time, though; the next convoy isn’t due to leave for seven or eight weeks …”

  The four men sat in silence for several minutes, each engrossed in his thoughts, until finally Southwick said bluntly, “I’ll be damned if I see where you start, sir. Seems to me a job for the whole Channel Fleet; can’t see what good can be done this side of the Atlantic.”

  “Ah, Southwick, you’re an honest fellow,” Yorke said, tapping the Master’s knee. “But just think back. The Post Office referred the problem to the Cabinet, and the Cabinet turned it over to the Admiralty. And the Admiralty—I hope I’m not being too unfair to Lord Spencer—were as puzzled about where to start as you. Then they realized that since so many West Indies packets had been lost, they could get rid of the problem by passing it over to the Commander-in-Chief in Jamaica … Am I right?” he asked Ramage.

  Since he had not told them that Lord Spencer had named him especially—as well as passing the whole problem to Sir Pilcher—Ramage contented himself with a suitably cynical laugh and the comment, “I’m sure that’s how the Admiral views it!”

  But as he sat with the three men, he found himself wondering if the Post Office and the Board of Admiralty had considered the homeward-bound losses significant: Lord Auckland had not mentioned it to Smith: Lord Spencer had made no comment to Sir Pilcher.

  “Magic,” Yorke said suddenly. “The French are using magicians. Wouldn’t surprise me to hear the Ministère de la Marine has had a hot press out for them for the past couple of years.”

  “Aye,” Southwick said, “it must be something like that. It’ll be my birthday in a month or so, and since I could have fathered both you young gentlemen I’m not saying how old I’ll be. But if you’ll forgive me for saying so, sir,” he said to Ramage, “this story of the Post Office packets is the weirdest yarn I’ve heard, an’ I’ve heard a few in my lifetime!”

  Yorke was tapping his teeth with a thumbnail. “So the Post Office compensates the owner if a packet is lost,” he said, almost to himself.

  When Ramage nodded, Yorke commented: “So no underwriters are involved?”

  “I doubt it. You know more about marine insurance than I, but I can’t see the Government reinsuring on the open market.”

  “Nor can I; they would have to pay a pretty premium! And I have a feeling that before paying out underwriters would ask more pointed questions than the Inspector of Packets, who is probably an underpaid quill-pusher who has never been to sea.

  “He hasn’t,” Ramage said. “I checked that with Smith. It’s purely an administrative job. He has the book of rules and makes sure everyone abides by them.”

  “But what questions could he ask?” Southwick ran a hand through his white hair. “No one doubts the packets are captured by privateers; no one’s suggesting they sink, because the lads are exchanged.”

  “True enough,�
� Yorke admitted, “but are there really that number of privateers on either side of the Atlantic?”

  Ramage shook his head. “I doubt it very much. In fact Sir Pilcher has had a frigate at one end or other of the Windward Passage continuously for the past two years, and for the past twelve months they’ve sighted almost nothing.”

  “There’s only one way of finding out what goes on,” Southwick said bluntly, “and that’s to man a packet with proper fighting seamen, not these Post Office gentlemen raised on a bread-and-milk diet of running away. You take command, and we all sail for England …”

  “That’s a damned good idea!” Yorke exclaimed. “I’ll come as a passenger.”

  All three men were looking questioningly at Ramage who smiled grimly and shook his head. He had reached that conclusion long before leaving Smith’s office, but he had no hope of persuading either the Commander-in-Chief or the Deputy Postmaster-General to agree.

  “My last question to Mr Smith was ‘When is the next packet due?’”

  “And what was his answer?” Southwick growled.

  “His exact words were, ‘Using the 45-day passage rule, she was due here yesterday.’”

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean she’s lost,” Yorke pointed out. “Bad weather, light winds …”

  “No, I agree,” Ramage said, “and Smith gives her up to a week. But he’s not accepting any passengers or mail …”

  “Look on the bright side,” Bowen said cheerfully. “If she comes in, you really don’t think Sir Pilcher would agree—and give you three dozen former Tritons to man her?”

  Ramage shook his head again. “The knight’s move,” he said enigmatically. “It’s the only way to find out what’s happening, but …” He thought for a few moments, then said: “I can get the men—Sir Pilcher has already promised me a dozen Tritons without knowing what I wanted to do. But the Post Office would never agree …”

  Yet another idea was forming vaguely in Ramage’s mind; a possible improvement on the one that formed in Smith’s office. “You’re serious about going back in a packet?” he asked Yorke.