And that had been the problem in writing the report: to explain to Their Lordships the shock of the sudden attack and, much more difficult, to describe Shirley's behaviour without using phrases which, in condemning Shirley, would put Their Lordships immediately on the side of the senior captain.
Also (and perhaps more important) he had to bear in mind that the Board might be reading his report after receiving one from Shirley. Yorke and Aitken reckoned the advantage would rest with the man whose report was read first, but Ramage was not sure. Viewed from the Boardroom of the Admiralty it was a bizarre and utterly unimportant episode; to Their Lordships, discipline was probably the main question. For one British frigate to have fired on another could be an accident - that would be their first reaction. Then from both Shirley and himself they would read stories which (he assumed) flatly contradicted each other. Bowen had already reported, after his visit to the Jason, that Shirley regarded the Calypso's captain as mad, and no one in the Calypso had any doubt about Shirley. But what about all those silent men in the Jason: officers and men who did and saw nothing . . . How would the Board regard them?
The whole story, whether from the point of view of the Jason or the Calypso, sounded mad: that was Alexis's view, and she had argued that Their Lordships would naturally tend to disbelieve the first report they read. So, she said, Ramage must make sure that Shirley's was the first to arrive. Then, with Their Lordships completely puzzled by Shirley's description, along would come Ramage's report which would supply the answer (without saying it in as many words) - that Shirley was mad.
Alexis's argument (with which Southwick agreed) was a good one until one started thinking about other letters that Shirley might be writing: what friends he had who, to be fair to them, might not have any idea of Shirley's lapses into madness.
Well, it would not be long now. With the Lizard in sight and the Liverpool, Dublin and Glasgow ships, eighteen of them, formed up as a small convoy and sent off yesterday for the St George's Channel with L'Espoir, and the ten Bristol ships separated this morning with La Robuste, the Calypso was left with forty-four ships, most of which were bound for London, Hull and Leith, after first anchoring in Plymouth to see if there were any last-minute orders from their owners. Often the shippers of a cargo originally consigned for, say, London had a better offer by the time the ship arrived in England, involving delivery to another port, and Plymouth was well placed if a ship then had to go to, say, Liverpool.
Ramage had quite expected the Jason to leave the convoy and go on ahead to Plymouth or Spithead, and she did so long before the Lizard was in sight. So far (with only a few score more miles to go) it had been a successful voyage for the convoy. Most of the slow ships had responded well to being hurried; only two gales had hit the convoy and although both had scattered the ships, in each case the convoy had re-formed within a day. Then, in a final gesture, as the St George's Channel ships formed up into a small convoy to leave and the Calypso had sailed among them, helping L'Espoir, first one and then the remaining seventeen ships had fired an eleven-gun salute to the Calypso with their men lining the rails and cheering.
This gesture, combining their farewell with a genuine thank you, was not lost on the Bristol ships which this morning had also fired a salute as they were led off by La Robuste.
Now the Calypso frequently sighted other ships. One sloop coming down Channel had reported that a small convoy from the Cape of Good Hope and a larger one from the East Indies were already in the Channel bound for Spithead, and Ramage breathed a sigh of relief that the convoys had not met off the Lizard. There would have been collisions and confusion, Southwick commented, and Aitken added that a gale would probably have arrived as well to act as the spoon that stirred the brew.
They were now for all intents and purposes home: when the Calypso had been hove-to for a cast of the deep sea lead, they had found sixty-eight fathoms and a sandy bottom. Nearly two months had passed from weighing anchor in Carlisle Bay, Barbados, to finding soundings near the Chops of the Channel. He had dined on board the Emerald, either alone or with various of his officers as fellow guests, nine times. Sidney Yorke and Alexis had been his guests on board the Calypso five times and on three other occasions the Calypso's officers had (with his permission) invited them to dine in the gunroom and asked their captain to join them. He had dined on five other of the merchant ships and in each case returned the hospitality, though eating a heavy meal in the middle of the day with wine and having two or three hours' conversation with the master of the ship left him weary and bored, annoyed at wasting an afternoon that could have been spent with the Yorkes.
He put the draft of the letter in the drawer on top of the report. At the most a day or night and they would be anchored in Plymouth. Then he would have to face what he had been driving from his mind for the past couple of months - where was Sarah? Thank goodness there had been plenty to keep him occupied. Commanding a convoy of more than seventy ships meant that all day and every day and often much of the night there was some problem or other with any one of half a dozen of the mules. Someone would furl sails without a signal and the ships astern in the column would be hard put not to collide; another would suddenly sail diagonally out of the convoy (done thrice by the same ship and each time it transpired the master, the man at the wheel and the lookout had drunk themselves into a stupor . . .). Then there was Shirley and the Jason. On the brighter side, the Yorkes had done so much to make the voyage pleasant.
Sidney could be lively and charming but he could also be sober and wise. Alexis was much the same, a woman's instinct leading to conclusions men would never have found by logic.
Soon after dawn when the Calypso led the rest of the convoy into Plymouth Sound, one of the lookouts reported that the Jason was at anchor.
Once the merchant ships had anchored and the Calypso too had an anchor down, with the salute fired for the port admiral, the frigate's cutter was hoisted out. After rowing once round the ship to make sure the yards were square, Southwick went on shore to inquire what time would be most convenient for the port admiral to have the convoy commander call and make his report.
The old master, considerably agitated, returned to the Calypso with news and a large packet from the port admiral. The news was that the rear-admiral in Plymouth - the second-in-command, whose main function was to preside at court-martials - was Rear-Admiral Goddard, a man whose hatred of the Ramage family was longstanding.
The news of Goddard left Ramage strangely cold: for the moment he was more concerned with Sarah and getting the rest of the convoy round to London. He went down to his cabin. The packet obviously contained two or three letters, all inside a single sheet of thick paper folded and sealed with wax: the port admiral would not risk using a wafer, relying on gum. As he sat at his desk holding the packet, Ramage felt it was hardly necessary to break the seal and start reading: he could guess what they would say. This was the moment he stepped on the merry-go-round which was going to revolve for days, if not weeks.
He picked up the paper-knife, slid it under the seal, and opened the outer page which formed the envelope. He had been wrong in one respect: the first letter was a copy of one from the Admiralty to the port admiral, and after the usual opening, 'By the Commissioners for executing the office of Lord High Admiral', it went on:
Whereas Sir James Bustard, Vice Admiral of the white and commander-in-chief of His Majesty's ships and vessels at Plymouth, hath transmitted to us a letter of the third of September last, from Captain William Shirley, commander of His Majesty's ship Jason, requesting that you, commander of His Majesty's ship Calypso, might be tried by a court martial for various matters falling under certain of the Articles of War, namely numbers XV, XVII, XIX, XX, XXII, and XXIII.
And whereas we think fit the said Captain Shirley's request should be complied with: we send you herewith his abovementioned letter, and do hereby require and direct you forthwith to assemble a court martial for the trial of the said Captain Lord Ramage, for the offences with which he stands charged, and to try him for the same accordingly.
Given under our hands the seventh day of September . . .
And there were the names of four members of the Board - only three were needed to sign such letters, so he should be flattered that a fourth should have been added. Was it significant that the First Lord, Earl St Vincent, was not among them? No, he was probably out of town that day, or there was a quorum of signatures without having to bother him. But Shirley had acted quickly to get his letter to London. How long did it take to get a letter to London by messenger? A week? Probably less.
He smoothed out the second letter and glanced at it: Admiral Bustard was merely telling him that he had received orders from the Admiralty concerning him (a copy was enclosed) and he had therefore given the requisite orders. He also enclosed a copy of Captain Shirley's letter, referred to by the Board. The deputy judge advocate appointed for the occasion, Admiral Bustard concluded, would be communicating with him.
The third letter had his father's crest on the seal and was brief: on the off-chance that Nicholas would call at Plymouth the Earl was writing to tell him about Sarah. Obviously his father knew that St Vincent had written to Barbados.
'We have no more news,' the Earl wrote:
The Murex left the Fleet off Brest, and vanished. My own opinion is that she may have been dismasted or captured, and ended up in a French port to leeward, so Sarah will be a prisoner. Bonaparte regards civilians as combatants, so Sarah is probably a prisoner of war.
Your mother and I, and the Marquis, have done all we can to get news from France; St Vincent has been very understanding and pressure has been brought to bear on the French agent for the exchange of prisoners. I went to see him myself and am convinced he genuinely knows nothing.
Of Gianna - what a sad letter this is - we also have no news. Perhaps that is as well: we must prepare ourselves for the worst. We can be sure Bonaparte's men caught her, and he is a man without mercy.
The letter went on to give family news: Ramage's mother had spent most of the summer down at St Kew; the Marquis spent most of his time now in London, hoping for news of Sarah, and like the rest of the family eagerly awaiting Nicholas's return.
Ramage was just reading the final sentence when the Marine sentry outside the cabin door announced that the first lieutenant wished to see him, and Ramage called briefly: 'Send him in.'
Aitken, hat tucked under his arm, stood in front of Ramage's desk. 'Another boat has come off from the shore and is heading for us, sir,' he said, so lugubriously that quite unexpectedly it made Ramage feel cheerful.
'It'll be bringing a lieutenant - maybe even just a midshipman - with another letter for me, this time from the deputy judge advocate.'
'The deputy judge advocate?' Aitken repeated, as though he might have misheard: in fact was sure he had.
'Yes - telling me the date of my trial, in which ship it will be held and asking for a list of my witnesses.'
Aitken swallowed, and was obviously puzzled by Ramage's jocular manner. 'So there's going to be a trial, sir?'
'My goodness yes! A mad captain and Rear-Admiral Goddard together in the same port are (for us) one of those unhappy coincidences, like a spark in a powder magazine. A bag of powder and a spark alone are each harmless, but put them together . . .'
'You don't seem very worried, sir,' Aitken said, the relief showing on his face.
'I'm accused under -' he glanced at the Board's letter, '- under six of the Articles of War.' He had read them out to his ship's company scores of times, as required by Admiralty Instructions, but he still had to recite them to himself by rote. 'Only a few of them carry a mandatory death sentence.'
Aitken said bitterly: 'There's something wicked afoot when you're in more danger of death on board one of the King's ships than you ever were capturing the French frigates at Devil's Island, or rescuing those people from the renegades at Trinidade, or escaping the guillotine in France, or -'
'Aitken,' Ramage said, dropping the usual 'Mister' and indicating that the remark was man to man, not captain to first lieutenant, 'we've set off on some
