Dudley Pope - Ramage and the Dido

Southwick nodded. 'She hardly recognized 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, realizing 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, visualizing 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 agonizing 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.

Once the guns had been brought on board and hauled into position so that breechings and train tackles could be secured, the purser, a newcomer named Jeremiah Clapton, was calling on Aitken, saying that he wanted to start loading provisions. Since the captain had received orders to provision and water for six months, he warned, there was a great deal to be brought on board.

Very soon carts were delivering an almost bewildering quantity of supplies alongside, and Clapton and his mates were driven almost frantic keeping a tally. Ramage, watching for a few minutes as the carts were unloaded, was always almost bewildered by the variety of stores needed. There were casks of cheese, jars of oil, bags of bread, sacks of salt, wreaths of twigs for lighting the galley fire, butts, puncheons, hogsheads and barrels of beer, as well as a variety of measures of beef, pork, flour, raisins, suet, pease, oatmeal, rice, sugar, butter and vinegar.