Ramage At Trafalgar (r-1) by Dudley Pope

Author:Dudley Pope [Pope, Dudley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: adv_history, adv_maritime

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Ramage sat at his desk, with the Calypso hove-to in a very light breeze five miles off the Fuerte de La Cortadura on the outskirts of Cadiz. The sun was occasionally breaking through high, watery clouds.

He pulled across his journal and dipped his quill in the ink. Blockading (or keeping a watch on an enemy port) must be the dullest job in the service, apart from acting as guardship at somewhere like Plymouth or Portsmouth: for days you just stared at the same views. Days, weeks and perhaps months . . .

He flipped over some earlier pages. Sunday, 28th September: the day they joined the fleet, and next day was Nelson's birthday. On the next night he and Paolo had gone on shore to find Señor Perez, and on 1st October he had taken the Calypso out to find Nelson and report on what the Spaniard had to say ... Since then the Calypso and Euryalus had kept a close watch on Cadiz and Rota (close enough to see what was happening on board the French and Spanish ships hiding in Cadiz), with Thomas Dundas's frigate Naiad and Thomas Bladen-Capel's Phoebe close in. Several miles out - close enough to distinguish flag signals - was William Prowse with the frigate Sinus, with William Parker in the Amazon frigate, the schooner Pickle and the Weazle lying further out, over the horizon. Then, making up the rest of the links out to the fleet, were three ships of the line, acting as frigates because of the shortage - the Defence with Captain George Hope in command, the 64-gun Agamemnon (the first ship of the line that Nelson had ever commanded as a young post-captain) with Captain Berry, one of the few who knew Lord Nelson well, and finally, in sight of the fleet, the Mars and the Duff clan.

The entries in the journal reflected the dullness of the task: "5th October - anchored in Cadiz Roads, no movement among ships of the Combined Fleet... 10 October - cruising between Castillo de San Sebastián (the western tip of Cadiz city) and the Fuerte de La Cortadura . . . 15th October - patrolling the Canal Principal off Cadiz harbour: 35 tons of water remaining . . . 18th October - hove-to in light winds off Castillo de San Sebastián, opened one cask of salt beef, six pieces missing ..."

And then frequent entries were: "Ship's company employed ATSR" (the abbreviation for "As the service required") . . . "Ship's company exercised at general quarters" (which meant at the guns) . . . "Topmen exercised at shifting foretopsail" ("shifting" meant sending down the topsail and then hoisting it up again and bending it back on to the yard, usually timing from "sail set to sail set again"). And painting ... the gunner was given men to black the guns, painting them with a special mixture which included lamp-black and Stockholm tar (one drop of which, Aitken swore, would ruin his scrubbed decks). Aitken was

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.