Ramage & the Freebooters by Dudley Pope

Author:Dudley Pope [Pope, Dudley]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Historical Naval Fiction
ISBN: 9780935526783
Google: Ag1OPgAACAAJ
Amazon: 0935526781
Goodreads: 1077359
Publisher: McBooks Press
Published: 1969-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

Every captain--and master too--making the Atlantic crossing had one fear about making his landfall: that he'd be a few miles ahead of his reckoning so that in the darkness the ship would run up on the low-lying, rocky and wave-beaten east coast of Barbados. If you were too far north or south you could pass it in the night and, if to the south, run on to the rocks (some forty feet high and barely twenty wide) and tiny islands of the Grenadines beyond.

Well, Ramage knew Southwick was a good navigator but at this stage in the voyage all captains and all masters tried to outdo each other in showing confidence, yet most of them --the conscientious ones, anyway--always had a nagging doubt.

An error in me quadrant, in the chronometer, an unexpected current during the night between sights... All could land you on the beach at Barbados, where even in a calm day the swell waves thundered their way through outlying reefs and sent a fine spray drifting inland for several hundred yards, an almost invisible mist.

The lighthouse--one could never trust that a light had been lit; and even then couldn't be sure it wasn't put up by a wrecker in a position where it'd lead you on to rocks. More fortunes than anyone liked to admit had been made by wreckers in these islands; in Barbados alone two or three of the leading families were reputed to have a hand in it.

Soon after dawn next morning it seemed to Ramage every man in the ship was rubbing, scrubbing, polishing or painting. His own steward could hardly wait to get him out of the cabin to start pressing clothes which, for the previous three or four days had been hung up to air.

Seamen were busy with cloths and brickdust, rubbing vigorously to give all the brasswork an extra shine. The decks had already been holystoned and washed down.

The gunner's mate and a couple of men were methodically wiping over each carronade with oily cloths. Two days ago they'd gone round with a bucket of blacking--a mysterious mixture of vinegar and lamp black--painting it on spots where rust marks had been removed, and repainting all the shot in the racks.

There was still a strong smell about the ship: for the past two days the men had been painting the standing rigging with a mixture of Stockholm tar, coal tar and salt water which had been heated up in a fish kettle (and as they wielded their brushes Southwick danced around below, cursing them for spilling drops, despite the old awnings spread over the deck which had been liberally sprinkled with sand as an added precaution).

At the bow three men were putting the finishing touches to the Triton's figurehead. The wooden replica of the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite was small and well-carved and his head was bent forward slightly, as if supporting the bowsprit. His fish's tail twisted down the stem and the outline of each scale was picked out in gold leaf.

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