Ramage's Diamond

The new First Lieutenant, John Aitken, arrived an hour after the Surgeon. He was a fresh-faced and diffident young Scot from Perthshire who, half an hour after climbing the gangway steps, had changed into his second-best uniform and set the men to work cleaning up the ship. Head pumps were soon squirting streams of water across the decks as seamen sprinkled sand and scrubbed with holystones; aloft topmen were refurling sails, tying and retying gaskets until the quiet Scots voice coming through the speaking trumpet a

The other three lieutenants had arrived together and Ramage, with memories of joining ships in similar circumstances, saw from the way they behaved towards each other that they had already compared the dates of their commissions. The vital dates established their seniority and sorted them into the Second, Third and Fourth Lieutenants, without the need for a decision by Captain Ramage, the Port Admiral or the Admiralty.

To Ramage, now in his late twenties, the three junior lieutenants looked very young. Each must be more than twenty, because that was the youngest age allowed; but he was himself getting older, and this was the first time for a couple of years that he had seen a group of young lieutenants. They seemed cheerful and competent fellows: Wagstaffe, the Second Lieutenant, was a Londoner, Baker, the Third, was a burly youngster from Bungay, in Suffolk, and Lacey, the new Fourth Lieutenant, spoke in the easy relaxed burr of Somerset, having been born at Nether Stowey.

As he walked round the ship, watching but not interfering, storing items in his memory, noting the way certain men were working and others were hanging back, Ramage kept an eye open for the midshipmen. Gia

He was thankful that the shop in Portsmouth had sent out his own purchases: two chests of tea, cases of spirits and wine, boxes of freshly-baked biscuits they swore would last two months without going hard, and after that could be freshened by soaking in water for a couple of minutes and putting in a hot oven. He had a good selection of preserves: cucumber put down in vinegar, quince jam, mint sauce in bottles, and there were a small string of garlic and several large ones of onions, stone jars of lime juice, a box of apples packed in hay ...

Promotion to the command of a frigate brought other changes, apart from the number of men and the size of the ship. The Captain of a frigate, with four lieutenants, Marine officer, midshipmen, Master and Surgeon, was expected to entertain; from time to time he would have to invite three or four of them to di

By late afternoon Ramage was heartily sick of the ship. Every time he wanted to walk the deck to ease his tension he had to dodge groups of busy seamen. The ship stank of pitch because Aitken had the carpenter's mates and caulkers hardening down some of the deck seams with hot irons; there was brick dust blowing around as seamen tried to work up a polish on brasswork that had been left to corrode for weeks. New coils of rope were being unrolled as Southwick and the bos'n replaced ru

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Ramage gave both boys half an hour to settle in and then sent for them. Paolo Luigi Orsini was a typical young Italian: olive-ski

The second midshipman, Ramage was relieved to find, had been to sea before: Edward Benson, son of a cousin of Lord St Vincent's wife, had spent a year in a 74-gun ship of the line and was two years older than Paolo. Red-haired and freckle-faced, he was obviously high-spirited and Ramage recalled the First Lord's remark. Ramage had already met Edwards, the young master's mate who would be the senior in the midshipmen's berth, and he seemed more than capable of keeping an eye on both boys.

At five in the afternoon Aitken reported that the Juno's cutter had returned from the Dockyard after taking all the mail on shore, and Ramage guessed that the canvas bag had contained a bizarre collection of papers. He had written to Gia

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