Ramage's Devil

'But they recognize our rig,' Swan protested. 'The French don't have any brigs like this one!'

'They had one briefly, until last night,' Ramage said. 'Remember, in wartime all sails are hostile until they prove themselves otherwise. I presume we still have a set of signal flags.'

'Yes, sir,' Swan said and took the hint. 'I'll have our pendant numbers bent on ready.'

'Deck there!' Once again the lookout was shouting from the masthead, the pitch of his voice rising with excitement.

'Deck here,' Swan called back.

'More sail, sir, just beyond those frigates. Must be a couple of dozen, I reckon, and some of them seventy-fours and bigger.'

'Count 'em, blast it!' Swan shouted. 'Divide 'em up and count 'em.'

Ramage counted the days since the declaration of war. Yes, it might be. Indeed, if there were ships of the line it had to be, so there would be an admiral. Which meant so much explaining to be done; so much persuading to be done.

'Deck there, foremasthead here ... I'm counting as we lift up on the swell waves, sir ... Looks like at least six o' the line - one of 'em bigger'n a seventy-four - and seven frigates, including the first two.'

'Very well,' Swan said. 'Report if you sight more.' He turned to Ramage. 'Well, sir, can't be French and I don't think they're Spanish.'

'No, it'll be the Channel Fleet coming out to blockade Brest again ... Well, they've had eighteen months' rest, but winter will soon be here.'

Phillips gave a dry laugh. 'The equinoctial gales will be along ... then they'll dream of being "Close up with the Black Rocks with an easterly wind"!'

Both Ramage and Swan laughed, but both were thankful they were not serving in the blockading fleet. The Black Rocks ... The description really stood for the twenty-five or thirty miles from the island of Ushant in the north to the Île de Sein in the south and, covering the entrance to Brest rather than the Rocks themselves, must make up the most iron-bound coast in the world: for almost every day of the year it was a lee shore wide open to the full fury of the Atlantic.

Yet by a quirk of nature the ships of the Royal Navy, forced to blockade Brest, were fortunate. The French fleet could leave Brest only with an easterly wind. A strong wind with much west in it left them unable to beat out of the Gullet and meant that they were also blockaded by nature.

The blockading British fleet's line-of-battle ships could stay twenty, thirty or even forty miles out to sea, so that they had plenty of room when the westerly Atlantic gales turned into storms lasting a week ... A captain with his ship under storm canvas could pull down his newly-tarred sou'wester and curse that he had ever chosen the Navy, but apart from keeping station on the admiral if possible (it never was in a full storm) it was more miserable than dangerous.

As a precaution a line of frigates, each within sight of the other, linked the fleet with the French coast. But with west in the wind the admiral could be sure that nature was his ally, keeping the French penned in. France was in fact unlucky because the perfidious English had along their Channel coast large and sheltered harbours which they could enter whatever the weather - Plymouth, Dartmouth, Falmouth, Portsmouth and the area inside the Isle of Wight, Dover and the Thames estuary.

The French were plagued with much higher tides and all their main Channel harbours - Calais, Havre de Grâce, Cherbourg and Boulogne - were artificial. The first of any size which was natural was Brest - which, as the Admiralty stated it - was 'outside Channel limits'.

So a west wind kept the French penned in; but the situation changed immediately the windvane on the church of St Louis de Brest swung round: an east wind tried to blow the blockading Royal Navy out to sea and gave the French a fair wind for slipping out of the Gullet while the blockaders beat back again to close the door.

Indeed, as Ramage knew from experience, that is why the blockading fleet had the frigates - as soon as the wind turned east the British frigates moved close up to the Black Rocks: close in with the Black Rocks, a couple of miles seaward of Pointe St Mathieu. They were, he reflected, a suitable name for rocks when you were commanding a frigate on a dark night in an easterly gale and peering with salt-sore and weary eyes for a sight of the white collars of breaking seas that would enable you to give hasty helm and sail orders to save the ship.

'Close up with the Black Rocks with an easterly wind' - words written on most midshipmen's hearts, and worthy of being carved on many a captain's tombstone, Ramage thought wryly. Still, it was worse for the admirals - they might have to spend a couple of years out here, shifting their flag from ship to ship while captains and seamen had a brief rest when they returned to Plymouth for water, provisions or repairs. The wear and tear on masts, spars and cordage keeping a close blockade off somewhere like Brest was beyond belief.

With her courses furled, the Murex was lying hove-to, her backed foretopsail trying to push her bow one way and maintopsail to turn it the other and the pair of them leaving the brig in a state of equilibrium, rising and falling on the swell waves like a resting seagull.

'The cutter is ready to be hoisted out, sir,' Swan reported. 'Two of the Frenchmen, seeing how short-handed we are, volunteered as boat's crew. Six men should be enough in this wind and sea.'

Ramage nodded. 'Someone is standing by to help Bridges with the flags?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And you can guess what the first signal will be.'

'I think so, sir,' Swan said with a grin.

The two frigates, one approaching from the north and the other from the northeast, were a fine sight: both had all plain sail set to the royals and Ramage guessed the one to the northeast was commanded by the senior of the two captains - the other was deliberately letting her reach the brig first.

Sarah, standing beside him and wearing her hastily repaired dress, said quietly as she watched the frigates: 'Should I go below, out of sight?'

'Most certainly not!' Ramage said. 'I'm anxious to show off my new bride! No,' he added, 'we have no signal book and very few men, so we want these fellows to guess at once that something's wrong. We don't want them to rush past hoisting a string of flag signals giving silly orders we can't read.'

'Can they give you orders?'

'Yes, if they are senior. If they were made post before me, in other words.'

'If their names are above yours in the List of the Navy? How will you know that, without looking them up in Mr Swan's copy as soon as you are introduced?'

Ramage grinned complacently. 'I know the names of the thirty or so lieutenants who were above me in my year, and all those in the two preceding years, so it's not too difficult!'

'What do you think will happen now? I was just beginning to look forward to the idea of getting back to London.'

'I don't know. It might be difficult to persuade the Admiral that fifty French Royalists being transported have any importance.'

'Who will the admiral be?'

'I don't know. Lord St Vincent commanded the Channel Fleet until the change of government saw him made First Lord. Now the war has started again, who knows...'

'Perhaps Lord Nelson. You know him, so it shouldn't be too difficult...'

'Perhaps, but I doubt it. After Copenhagen, I don't think the public - which means the politicians - would want to see him doing blockade duty. You don't have to be a brilliant tactician to blockade Brest.'

'No, but you need to be a brilliant tactician if the French fleet sails from Brest and you have to stop it!'

She was sharp-witted and wide awake. Ramage had to admit that, and said: 'You're right, and from what we saw in Brest, that admiral over there' - he nodded towards the British ships of the line beating up towards Ushant - 'will have to stay awake.'