Dudley Pope - Ramage’s Prize

This story is based on true events. Post Office packet brigs were surrendered to French privateers in the manner described because of "ventures" carried by treacherous officers and crews, and a P.O. packet was ransomed at Lisbon in the same circumstances and difficulties as the Lady Arabella of the story. It is worth recording that in Nelson's day mail from wartime England for the West Indies left Falmouth fortnightly and took only forty-five days to reach the most distant destination, Jamaica. Nearly two centuries later, in the age of moon walks and computers, my experience based on eight years in the Caribbean shows that surface mail from England takes sixty to ninety days to reach various islands in the West Indies.

D.P.

Yacht Ramage Tortola, British Virgin Islands

Regular sleep had been impossible in the hot and windless night so typical of the hurricane season in Jamaica: the occasional slight zephyr venturing in through the window rarely had enough energy to penetrate the mosquito net and cool him. After a night when every brief doze drifted him into a wild dream, Ramage sat at the breakfast table feeling as limp as damp laundry, sipping coffee and squinting at the reality of the harsh sun reflecting into the hotel dining-room despite a latticed jalousie over each window.

He took a letter from his pocket and read it for the fifth or sixth time since a special messenger had delivered it the previous evening. Addressed to "Lieutenant Ramage, at the Royal Albion Hotel", it was signed "Pilcher Skinner", and beneath the hurried scrawl a clerk had written, "Knight, Vice-Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty's ships and vessels ... upon the Jamaica Station".

The wording of the letter was straightforward enough, and many a young lieutenant losing his command after a hurricane ripped the masts out of his ship and drifted her up on a coral reef would have been glad to receive it. But Ramage knew that Vice-Admiral Sir Pilcher Skinner was far from being a straightforward man.

To begin with, the document was a letter, not a set of orders: in effect Sir Pilcher was making him an offer. But, he mused suspiciously, admirals do not make offers to lowly lieutenants - particularly not to one newly arrived in Jamaica, and whose first official duty had been to report the loss of his ship. Apart from that, every Commander-in-Chief has his circle of favourites: young lieutenants and captains who have been serving with him for some time, and look to him for patronage, promotion and fortune.

On the Jamaica Station - notoriously the most unhealthy in the Service, where an officer bright and healthy at sunrise can be dead from the black vomit by sunset - promotion is rapid. The funeral of a young frigate captain means a favoured lieutenant is promoted and given his first command. In turn, favoured frigate captains are sent cruising in areas off Hispaniola and the Spanish Main where they are most likely to find French and Spanish merchantmen, prizes that enrich both the captains and the Commander-in-Chief, who receives a regular percentage of the prize money.

Frigate captains out of favour - or not known to the Commander-in-Chief, which for practical purposes meant the same thing and included those recent arrivals who had escorted convoys out from the United Kingdom - can expect only more convoy duty, the dreariest work in the Navy and far removed from any chance of prizes or promotion.

For what it was worth, Ramage thought ruefully, he fitted into a very special category which ensured that he would never be included in Sir Pilcher's favoured circle. To begin with Ramage's father, Admiral the Earl of Blazey, had been one of the most brilliant officers in the Navy - until a frightened government made him the scapegoat for their own stupidity. Sir Pilcher dabbled in politics, and his party supported the Government, with the result that Sir Pilcher had all the wariness of politics and politicians of someone who understood neither but hoped to profit from both. Apart from that, in late middle age, Sir Pilcher was still only a member of the lowest order of knighthood, and it was common knowledge that he thirsted for a peerage - yet that was something that would for ever evade him since it was rarely bestowed on a naval officer, and then only on a commander-in-chief following a very successful fleet action. Not even the most sycophantic officer in Sir Pilcher's circle could visualize that ever happening. But, even worse, he knew Ramage not only had a title, but made a point of never using it in the Service. Ramage guessed it must irk Sir Pilcher to know that letters such as the one he was now holding should, strictly speaking, be addressed to "Lieutenant Lord Ramage".

Any one of these things, Ramage knew only too well, was enough to make him out of favour; but the last straw for Sir Pilcher was probably the fact that Ramage had come out to the Caribbean originally in command of a brig acting under the direct and secret orders of the First Lord of the Admiralty. A man with Sir Pilcher's nature would always be suspicious that hidden influences were at work.

Ramage glanced up at the tall, casually debonair man joining him at the table.

"Morning - you're up early. Couldn't you sleep?"

"Those damned mosquitoes," Sidney Yorke said viciously. "They must have found a hole in my mosquito net. I can still hear them whining in my ears. Just look!"

He showed wrists red and swollen from bites. "My ankles are the same."

"You shouldn't scratch them," Ramage said unsympathetically. "And get yourself a new mosquito net."

Yorke looked up at the coloured waiter. "Ah, there you are, Albert. Just a pot of your excellent coffee, please, and some toast. Dry toast. No, I haven't been drinking," he assured the startled man. He turned to Ramage and pointed at the letter.

"From the large and impressive seal, I don't imagine that's a love letter."

"It's been a long time since Sir Pilcher wrote a love letter."

Yorke nodded and, since Ramage obviously did not want to discuss it, changed the subject. "I've been inquiring about getting a passage back to England. Not too hopeful, though; there's no convoy for at least two months."

Ramage laughed. "There's something ironic about a shipowner being stranded in Jamaica for the lack of a ship!"

"Since I lost mine as a result of the same hurricane that put your ship up on the same reef, you might be a bit more sympathetic," Yorke protested amiably.

"You own five more ships - why not wait until one comes in and take over command of her? Pension off the master, or give him leave until the underwriters pay up and you can build a replacement!"

"Drink your coffee. The shipyards are on the Thames and I'm in Jamaica. A small point but relevant... Who is likely to have any influence with the Post Office?"

Ramage shrugged his shoulders. "Are you thinking of trying to get a berth in a Post Office packet?"

"Only as a last resort."

"You've heard the news then?"

"I've heard that in the last few months most of the packets have been captured on their way back to England, and the Jamaica merchants are angry and frightened."

"Not only the merchants," Ramage said, tapping the letter beside him on the table.

Yorke sniffed contemptuously. "Perhaps if the Commander-in-Chief showed more interest, his frigates would catch these damned French privateers before they catch the Post Office packets, and honest citizens like myself could get home again. You'll be going back in a frigate, I suppose," Yorke said casually.