Ramage and the Dido

As soon as Eames was seated comfortably in the armchair, his wounded leg supported by a stool, he explained that the Heron was on her way back to England after escorting some John Company ships south of 25° North. 'A couple of them were carrying specie for the Honourable East India Company,' Eames said, 'so it was decided to escort them further south than usual. I was on my way back when the French seventy-four and the two frigates appeared. I was making a bolt for it - though with not much hope of escaping - when I sighted you and you answered the private signal. That was a relief, I can tell you!'

'I'm bound for the West Indies, as you've probably guessed. What are we going to do about all these French prisoners?'

'I don't have enough men both to guard and sail two frigates,' Eames said. 'If you can spare me some men to guard one frigate, I'll probably be able to get them both to England.'

Ramage nodded his head but said: 'I don't know if the first one, the Sylphe, will make it. We'll inspect her, but we may have to set fire to her and just leave you with the Requin. It means you'll lose some prize money, but we may not have the choice.'

Under the prize rules, if there was another ship in sight at the time that an enemy was captured - in this case the Heron - she shared in the money because the sight of another ship might have affected the enemy's decision to surrender.

Ramage thought Eames was not a man who could afford to lose prize money, but the other captain said: 'I did notice she was down by the bow when you left her.'

Ramage realized he had not looked at the Sylphe for a long time and he called to the Marine sentry to pass the word for the first lieutenant. When Aitken arrived he asked him if he had looked at the Sylphe recently. When he said he had not, Ramage sent him back on deck to look with the telescope.

The Scotsman returned almost immediately with a long face. 'I think she is sinking, sir: she's down by the bow and she's rolling heavily, as though she has a lot of water in her.'

Ramage grimaced: 'Looks as though we are going to spend most of the day fishing Frenchmen out of the sea.'

'Our boats are heading back from the Junon,' Aitken said. 'So they'll have done the best they can there.'

Ramage looked at Eames. 'I think you'd better take the Heron over to the Sylphe and see what's going on. There's no point in my going over because I don't have any boats yet.'

Eames lifted his wounded leg off the stool. 'Very well. What shall I do if she isn't actually sinking?'

'If you think a prize crew can get her back to England, make sure the French keep at the pumps, and put some men on board. If it looks as though she's going to sink - that the pumps can't keep up with the leaks - take off the French and set fire to her.'

The Dido's boats came back with a total of nineteen men from the Junon. 'We searched every bit of wreckage there was,' Hill reported, 'but the only survivors were men who were on deck when she blew up. They tell me there were more, but they drowned because they couldn't swim.'

'Any of them injured?'

'Yes, sir: one broken leg, two broken arms and two badly burned. The rest don't have a scratch between them.'

'Have Bowen deal with them.'

'They're already down in the cockpit, sir. Rennick has put a guard on the rest.'

Nineteen survivors out of more than six hundred men. Ramage felt a black depression spreading over him. Being given command of a ship of the line meant, in effect, that all figures had been multiplied by three. The Dido had almost three times the number of men that the Calypso had. In turn that meant that if she sank a ship of the line - the Junon for instance - she was likely to cause three times the number of casualties. Altogether more than twelve hundred men were involved. The figures were quite horrifying. He had just killed more than six hundred men in the Junon, quite apart from any he had killed in the Sylphe, which even now was probably sinking.

The sentry reported that the master was at the door and Ramage called him in. Southwick seemed to sense Ramage's mood without anything being said, and as he settled in the armchair he said: 'Bad business about the Junon.'

'I was just thinking about it,' Ramage said. 'More than six hundred dead.'

Southwick nodded and said quietly: 'Of course, it could have been us. A lucky shot could have set us on fire, and the fire could have spread to the magazine. Hill tells me they picked up nineteen Frenchmen. It could have been nineteen Didos. That really doesn't bear thinking about.'

'No, it doesn't,' Ramage agreed.

'Once you realize it's a "them or us" situation, though,' Southwick said conversationally, 'it's surprising how you see it all in a different light.'

And, Ramage admitted to himself, Southwick was quite right. He had summed up what war really was. Whether you served in a sloop, a brig, a frigate or a ship of the line, in the end it all boiled down to that one phrase: it's either them or us.

Yes, Southwick was quite right, but Ramage knew that as far as he was concerned he still had a guilty feeling about being the cause of the death of more than six hundred Frenchmen. Yet another part of him knew that if he had not been able to take the Junon like that, it might have been the Dido blowing up. He found he was getting confused.

'What about the Sylphe?'he asked Southwick, determined to break the train of thought.

'The Heron's hove-to close to her. She seems to be well down by the bow. If you want my opinion, she's sinking, and there's not a chance of holding on with the pump.'

'Well, Itold Eames that if he didn't think she could be saved he should take off the men and set fire to her.'

Southwick sniffed and said: 'We don't have much choice. And good riddance to her: the Heron will have her work cut out getting the Requin back to England.'

'Her share of the prize money should make up for it,' Ramagesaid.

'Yes, Eames is a lucky fellow. Or he will be, if he gets the Requin home safely.'

'We'll have to let him have some Marines,' Ramage said. 'He'll have nearly five hundred prisoners to guard from the two Frenchmen.'

'As long as we don't have to take any to the West Indies with us,' Southwick said. 'Eames realizes the problem?'

'Yes, but I think he'll be glad of some extra Marines.'

Eames returned in the Heron an hour later to report that he had taken all the French off the Sylphe because in his opinion she would sink of her own accord within a couple of hours, and for that reason he had not set fire to her. Ramage could not see why the fact that she was going to sink should prevent him from setting fire to her, but he decided to say nothing.

The more immediate problem was that the Heron had 211 Frenchmen from the Sylphe, and there were still 186 on board the Requin. How many men were needed to guard 397 Frenchmen? Plus nineteen from the Junon.

When Eames came across to the Dido again, Ramage proposed dividing the prisoners into two sections, half in each frigate. The Heron's Marines could guard the ones she had on board, and Ramage would provide twenty-five Marines from the Dido to guard those left on board the Requin.

'I'll let you have my fifth lieutenant and two midshipmen to handle the prize,' Ramage said. 'Fifteen of your seamen should be enough to sail her. Can you spare them?'

'Yes. I'll get 'em back as soon as we get to Plymouth. 'Fraid you'll be losing your people permanently.'

Ramage shrugged his shoulders. 'That's the problem with prizes taken when you are outward bound. If I meet many more people like you, I'll arrive in the West Indies with a skeleton crew!'

Two hours later, as Ramage watched, the Sylphe finally sank, as Eames had predicted.

Southwick said: 'That makes two out of two. We've attacked two ships and both have sunk. Or rather one blew up and the other sank. Either way they're destroyed.'