'When were those men supposed to start work, sir?'
The date the First Lord gave was the day after the Calypso arrived in Chatham. 'We might have been allocated 110 men, sir, but none has come on board, unless they started today. I was there on Friday and I can't think they'd work half a day on Saturday. Yesterday, Sunday, was a holiday.'
'The Commissioner himself signed this return, Ramage; are you calling him a liar?'
Ramage pictured the ingratiating figure at the jetty, rolls of fat quivering, servile to the Admiral - and using the Ramage family visit as an excuse for 'delaying' men not even on board.
'A liar, sir, with respect, and a fraud too. Where were those 110 men working?'
'I intend finding out,' St Vincent said grimly, 'but don't you go down to Chatham until your leave expires; it's better that I stir things up at Somerset House.'
The Navy Board occupied Somerset House, and there the Comptroller, Sir Andrew Snape Hamond, held sway. Probably the most dishonest man connected with the Royal Navy, he controlled the purchase of everything concerning the King's ships. Everything from rum to salt pork; timber to trousers for the men. All of it was bought from private contractors; all bought, Ramage thought bitterly, with 'a token of our esteem' being sent by the contractors to people like Hamond. More than a hundred dockyard men should have been working on the Calypso for more than seven days. What were they doing? Where had the Commissioner sent them? That many men in seven days could probably build a house, Aitken had said. Did one of the Commissioner's friends now have a new house on Gad's Hill?
The First Lord finished writing a note, rang a small silver bell and gave the sheet of paper to the clerk who hurried in. 'Give that to Mr Nepean. I want it ready for signature before noon.'
Once the clerk had left the room, St Vincent said: 'I deliberately left you in command of the Calypso. Have you wondered why?'
'No, sir,' Ramage said, trying to guess the reason for the question.
'You don't lack confidence, young man.'
Something in St Vincent's tone angered Ramage and before he could stop himself he said: 'Captains lacking confidence usually put their ships upon a reef, sir.'
'Quite,' St Vincent said amiably. 'I was commenting, not criticizing. Your skin is too thin. However, your new orders. You rarely carry out my orders in accordance with their wording -'
'But always in the spirit of their meaning, sir!'
'- their wording,' St Vincent repeated, ignoring the interruption. 'Where do you stand on the post list?' he demanded.
'About tenth from the bottom, sir.'
'An admiral tenth from the top of the flag list is more tactful when speaking to the First Lord.'
'I apologize for my manner, sir.'
'But not for your words, eh? Anyway, your new orders concern something where it is highly probable that your views and the Board of Admiralty's coincide.' There was a hint of a smile round St Vincent's mouth. 'They are also the first orders you have ever received in time of peace.'
Ramage recalled previous encounters with St Vincent and his predecessor as First Lord, Earl Spencer. Always there was the heavy emphasis on his disobeying orders, but it seemed more a question of 'give a dog a bad name' because the orders were always carried out. That was the important thing; no senior officer had ever told him to do something and then had to blame him for failure. The trouble was that senior officers soon regarded themselves as omnipotent. Instead of simply writing orders telling the officers what was to be done, they went into details of how they were to be carried out, and that was the mistake. No one could anticipate every circumstance. It was the man on the spot, the captain of the ship, who had to make his plans according to the situation he found. Surely a general did not order a colonel to capture a particular fort and tell him by what highways, tracks and byways he was to approach it. Perhaps generals did ...
'Do you know anything about surveying?'
'Surveying, sir?'
'Obviously you don't; the word has paralysed you. Well, you can go through the Marine Department and get some instruction from the Hydrographer, Dalrymple, or his assistant, Walker. You need to know how to survey an island and chart the water round it.'
'Aye, aye, sir. A large island?'
'No. Perhaps a couple of miles long by one wide.'
'Do any charts or maps exist, sir?'
'A rough chart; nothing to rely on.'
'Might I ask -?'
'Trinidade.'
'Trinidad? Why, there's -'
'Not Trinidad,' St Vincent said testily, 'but Trinidade.' He was careful to emphasize the second 'e' by pronouncing it as a 'y'. 'It's off the Brazilian coast, seven hundred and fifty miles east-north-east of Rio de Janeiro and seven hundred from Bahia.'
'Does it belong to Spain or Portugal, sir?'
'What I am going to tell you remains secret until you open your orders. At present it - I'm referring to the service upon which you are being sent - is known to the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State, myself and Nepean, who wrote the orders. As far as your family and your ship's company are concerned, you are bound for the South Seas.'
'But forgive me, sir, is it Spain or Portugal?'
'Have you read the full text of the new Treaty with Bonaparte?'
'Yes, sir. At least, what was published in the Gazette. There might have been secret clauses...'
'There were none,' St Vincent said shortly. 'Did you see any reference to Trinidade?'
'No, sir, just Trinidad, which Spain loses and we keep.'
'Yes, one of the few places Bonaparte allowed us,' St Vincent said with the first indication of his own views about the terms of the treaty, although it was quite clear to Ramage that he welcomed the peace. 'Now, have you Trinidade placed in your mind?'
'Yes, sir. A thousand miles or so south of St Paul Rocks and Fernando de Noronha, and about the same distance west of St Helena.'
'Precisely. An isosceles triangle would have St Paul Rocks and Fernando de Noronha as its apex, Trinidade on the left of the base and St Helena on the right. Now, what strikes you about its position?'
'If it has water, then it is a perfect place for the King's and John Company ships to call on their way to or from the Cape of Good Hope. At present - or, rather, in the war - the Honourable East India Company were very nervous of having their ships call at St Helena for water because both French national ships and privateers usually lurked close to it. Trinidade would be a good alternative.'
St Vincent nodded with his rare wintry smile. 'And a good rendezvous for the trade bound to or from Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo and Buenos Aires, as well as the Cape. It has water, by the way.'
'Who owns it, then, sir?' Ramage asked for the third time, guessing from the spelling it had been named by the Portuguese.
'No one,' St Vincent said. 'We used it occasionally in this late war and can claim to have captured it, but it belonged to Portugal before that. It is not mentioned in the Treaty.'
'So whoever notices the omission and gets there first. . .'
'Exactly,' St Vincent said. 'Speed and secrecy, my dear Ramage. You have a fast ship and a good crew. Now go and claim it for His Britannic Majesty.'
CHAPTER FOUR
The Hydrographic Office was simply a small room: Dalrymple sat on one side of a table and his assistant, Walker, on the other. One wall was taken up with what appeared to be tall chests of drawers, the drawers being wide but shallow, and each labelled. A small table at the far end of the room was piled high with volumes which Ramage recognized as masters' logs, and he recalled a paragraph from the Regulations and Instructions concerning masters: 'He is duly to observe the appearances of coasts; and if he discovers any new shoals, or rocks under water, to note them down in his journal, with their bearing and depth of water.'
A conscientious master usually did better than that. Many were skilled with a paintbox, enjoying making sketches of unfrequented coastlines and preparing good line and wash illustrations. Often a master would make two sketches, one to go into his own collection of charts and views, the other to be inserted in his log, which had in due course to be sent to the Navy Office. One of Dalrymple's most difficult tasks, Ramage guessed, was getting logs from the Navy Office: the Navy Board had a reputation for losing documents. The few hundred yards from the Navy Office in Somerset Place to the Admiralty in Whitehall might well have been a few thousand miles.
Dalrymple was courteous. Few captains visited his office; usually he saw only masters, who were, officially, responsible for the actual navigation of a ship.
Yes, he said, he had a map of Trinidade, but not a chart. The map was in fact Spanish, and found on board a prize, which accounted for the Spanish spelling, with the final 'e'.
He went to his chests of drawers, pulled out the one labelled 'T', sorted through some papers and then extracted a rectangular sheet of parchment measuring about two feet by one. He blew dust from it and brought it to the table, where he wiped it again with a cloth.
'You see, the cartographer - I'd hardly call him a surveyor - was more concerned with drawing the voluptuous cherubs in the corners than details of the island. There's enough giltwork to cover a ship of the line's transom!'
Ramage stared at the map. The island reminded him of a mole. It sat diagonally southeast-northwest, with the northern coast, the back, almost a straight line, with no bays. There were several small anchorages on the south side formed by pairs of peninsulas sticking out like teats hanging down from the belly. He picked up a magnifying glass and began reading the Spanish references to the 'A', 'B', 'C' marks on the island itself.
The latitude and longitude were given, 20° 29' South and 29° 20' West. There were six hills, looking like sugar loaves in the centre of the island, and someone had pencilled in the heights in feet, the highest being nearly 1,500 feet and the lowest 850 feet. There was a small rivulet of fresh water on the north side and another
