 1st edition hardback | |
| Author | Dudley Pope |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Lord Ramage novels |
| Genre | Naval historical novels |
| Publisher | Secker & Warburg (first ed.) |
Publication date | 1979 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Preceded by | Ramage and the Rebels |
| Followed by | Ramage's Signal |
The Ramage Touch, is an historical novel by Dudley Pope, set during the French Revolutionary Wars. It is the tenth of the Ramage novels, following on from Ramage and the Rebels.
Ramage has been given orders for an independent fighting cruise of the Mediterranean to capture sink or destroy as many enemy ships as he can and generally create havoc. His ship, HMS Calypso is perhaps the only British presence in the Mediterranean at the time. [1] The Calypso is a former French frigate. With her French lines and still rigged with French-cut sails, she is well suited to such an endeavor. The novel opens at night, with the Calypso sailing off the Tuscan coast, near Punta Ala. Two oddly rigged ships are sighted coming to anchor for the night in the lee of the headland. [2]
Calypso's arrival at the same anchorage later that night rouses no alarm and the two ships are easily boarded and captured. Their strange rig is because they are bomb ketches. Each is armed with two large calibre mortars that fire exploding shells, intended to batter shore installations. Interrogating the senior captain, Ramage learns that they were to rendezvous with two French frigates [3] further down the coast at Porto Ercole – approximately 80 kilometres (50 mi) sailing. The frigates are to embark troops and the ships are to sail to the western Mediterranean. It appears likely that an invasion force is assembling. Regardless, Ramage sees an opportunity to disrupt Bonaparte's plans. He mans the two ketches from his crew and quickly trains them to proficiently employ the unfamiliar mortars. [4]
Ramage sails his ships toward the peninsular of Monte Argentario, with Porto Ercole on its southern side. Nearing Monte Argentario, three French frigates are sighted approaching Porto Ercole. While Ramage's ships wait off the northern side of Monte Argentario, Ramage, Martin and Orsini, disguised as gypsies, go ashore to gather more intelligence on the situation at Porto Ercole. They are captured but Jackson and Rossi have followed them (without orders) and help them escape. [5]
Returned to his ship, Ramage attacks Porto Ercole. The bomb ketches bombard the port as the frigates are moored and loading troops and their equipment. One frigate is destroyed, the second is severely damaged but the third sails clear of the port with Calypso in pursuit. The Frenchman was damaged by bomb blast and the hard chase has worked planks free. She strikes her colours and Ramage boards the sinking ship but she is beyond saving. Ramage is able to rescue many of the crew, including Rear-admiral Poitier, commanding the French ships. He has also captured the admirals orders, which had not been thrown overboard in the confusion. He was able to confirm that Bonaparte had planned a second invasion of Egypt; however, Poitier received orders at Porto Ercole that the invasion was cancelled. The soldiers being embarked were to garrison other French conquests. [6]
At Porto Ercole, the damaged frigate was abandoned by the French and cut out by the bomb ketches to become a prize. The saved French prisoners were released on parole, Wagstaffe was given command to sail the prize frigate to Gibraltar and the Calypso would continue her four-month cruise of the Mediterranean. [7] [8]
The USS Enterprise was a schooner, built by Henry Spencer at Baltimore, Maryland, in 1799. Her first commander thought that she was too lightly built and that her quarters, in particular, should be bulletproofed. Enterprise was overhauled and rebuilt several times, effectively changing from a twelve-gun schooner to a fourteen-gun topsail schooner and eventually to a brig. Enterprise saw action in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, and the Caribbean again, capturing numerous prizes. She wrecked in July 1823.
In the 18th century and most of the 19th, a sloop-of-war in the Royal Navy was a warship with a single gun deck that carried up to eighteen guns. The rating system covered all vessels with 20 guns and above; thus, the term sloop-of-war encompassed all the unrated combat vessels, including the very small gun-brigs and cutters. In technical terms, even the more specialised bomb vessels and fireships were classed as sloops-of-war, and in practice these were employed in the sloop role when not carrying out their specialised functions.
A bomb vessel, bomb ship, bomb ketch, or simply bomb was a type of wooden sailing naval ship. Its primary armament was not cannons – although bomb vessels carried a few cannons for self-defence – but mortars mounted forward near the bow and elevated to a high angle, and projecting their fire in a ballistic arc. Explosive shells or carcasses were employed rather than solid shot. Bomb vessels were specialized ships designed for bombarding fixed positions on land. In the 20th century, this naval gunfire support role was carried out by the most similar purpose-built World War I- and II-era monitors, but also by other warships now firing long-range explosive shells.
Dudley Bernard Egerton Pope was a British writer of both nautical fiction and history, most notable for his Lord Ramage series of historical novels. Greatly inspired by C.S. Forester, Pope was one of the most successful authors to explore the genre of nautical fiction, often compared to Patrick O'Brian.
Lieutenant Fitz Henry Babbitt was an officer of the United States Navy who served during the War of 1812, and was killed during the capture of USS President.
Jean-Baptiste Perrée was a French Navy officer and Rear-admiral.
H.M.S. Defiant is a British naval war CinemaScope and Technicolor film from 1962 starring Alec Guinness and Dirk Bogarde. It tells the story of a mutiny aboard the fictitious title ship at around the time of the Spithead mutiny in 1797. It was directed by Lewis Gilbert with a screenplay by Nigel Kneale from Frank Tilsley's novel Mutiny (1958). The film's world premiere occurred at the Odeon Leicester Square in London's West End on 22 February 1962.
Alan Lewrie is the fictional hero and main character of Dewey Lambdin's naval adventure series of novels set during the American and the French Revolutions and the Napoleonic Wars. The series spanned some twenty-five novels with a 26th reportedly in progress at the time of Mr. Lambdin's death in July 2021.
Ramage (1965) is the first novel in the Lord Ramage novels by Dudley Pope. It is set during the French Revolutionary Wars and later in the series during the Napoleonic wars.
Ramage and the drum beat, later republished as Ramage and the drumbeat and as Drumbeat is an historical novel by Dudley Pope, set during 1796 and 1797 amongst the naval warfare of the French Revolutionary Wars. It is the second of the Ramage novels, following on from Ramage. During the book, Ramage becomes an integral part of ensuring British readiness for the Battle of Cape St. Vincent (1797).
The Battle of the Malta Convoy was a naval engagement of the French Revolutionary Wars fought on 18 February 1800 during the Siege of Malta. The French garrison at the city of Valletta in Malta had been under siege for eighteen months, blockaded on the landward side by a combined force of British, Portuguese. and irregular Maltese forces and from the sea by a Royal Navy squadron under the overall command of Lord Nelson from his base at Palermo on Sicily. In February 1800, the Neapolitan government replaced the Portuguese troops with their own forces and the soldiers were convoyed to Malta by Nelson and Lord Keith, arriving on 17 February. The French garrison was by early 1800 suffering from severe food shortages, and in a desperate effort to retain the garrison's effectiveness a convoy was arranged at Toulon, carrying food, armaments and reinforcements for Valletta under Contre-amiral Jean-Baptiste Perrée. On 17 February, the French convoy approached Malta from the southeast, hoping to pass along the shoreline and evade the British blockade squadron.
Ramage and the Freebooters, is an historical novel by Dudley Pope, set during the French Revolutionary Wars. It is the third of the Ramage novels, following on from Ramage and the Drumbeat.
The hired armed cutter Black Joke was a cutter that served the Royal Navy from 12 January 1795 to 19 October 1801. In 1799 she was renamed Suworow, and under that name she captured numerous prizes before she was paid off after the Treaty of Amiens.
The siege of Porto Ferrajo was a French attempt to force the surrender of the Tuscan fortress town of Porto Ferrajo on the island of Elba following the French occupation of mainland Tuscany in 1801 during the French Revolutionary Wars. The Tuscan garrison was heavily outnumbered, but received significant support from British Royal Navy forces who controlled the Mediterranean Sea and ensured that supplies reached the garrison and that French supply convoys were intercepted. The French began the siege with 1,500 men in May 1801, later reinforced to more than 5,000, but could not make an impression on the fortress's defences, instead seeking to starve the defenders into submission with the support of a squadron of French Navy frigates operating off the coast.
The Battle of Orbetello, also known as the Battle of Isola del Giglio, was a major naval engagement of the Franco-Spanish War of 1635. It was fought on 14 June 1646 off the Spanish-ruled town of Orbetello, on the coast of Tuscany, Italy, between a French fleet led by Admiral Armand de Maillé, Marquis of Brézé, and a Spanish fleet commanded by Miguel de Noronha, 4th Count of Linhares sent to break the blockade of Orbetello and relieve the town, besieged since 12 May by a French army under the command of Prince Thomas of Savoy. The Battle of Orbetello was tactically very unusual, since it was fought by sailing ships towed by galleys in a light breeze.
The Algeciras campaign was an attempt by a French naval squadron from Toulon under Contre-Admiral Charles Linois to join a French and Spanish fleet at Cadiz during June and July 1801 during the French Revolutionary Wars prior to a planned operation against either Egypt or Portugal. To reach Cadiz, the French squadron had to pass the British naval base at Gibraltar, which housed the squadron tasked with blockading Cadiz. The British squadron was commanded by Rear-Admiral Sir James Saumarez. After a successful voyage between Toulon and Gibraltar, in which a number of British vessels were captured, the squadron anchored at Algeciras, a fortified port city within sight of Gibraltar across Gibraltar Bay. On 6 July 1801, Saumarez attacked the anchored squadron, in the First Battle of Algeciras. Although severe damage was inflicted on all three French ships of the line, none could be successfully captured and the British were forced to withdraw without HMS Hannibal, which had grounded and was subsequently seized by the French.
The Croisière de Bruix was the principal naval campaign of the year 1799 during the French Revolutionary Wars. The expedition began in April 1799 when the bulk of the French Atlantic Fleet under Vice-Admiral Étienne Eustache Bruix departed the base at Brest, evading the British Channel Fleet which was blockading the port and tricking the commander Admiral Lord Bridport into believing their true destination was Ireland. Passing southwards, the French fleet narrowly missed joining with an allied Spanish Navy squadron at Ferrol and was prevented by an easterly gale from uniting with the main Spanish fleet at Cádiz before entering the Mediterranean Sea. The Mediterranean was under British control following the destruction of the French Mediterranean Fleet at the Battle of the Nile in August 1798, and a British fleet nominally under Admiral Earl St Vincent was stationed there. Due however to St. Vincent's ill-health, operational control rested with Vice-Admiral Lord Keith. As Keith sought to chase down the French, the Spanish fleet followed Bruix into the Mediterranean before being badly damaged in a gale and sheltering in Cartagena.
HMS Acheron was the mercantile New Grove, launched at Whitby in 1799, that the Admiralty purchased in 1803 and fitted as a bomb-vessel. She served in the Mediterranean for about a year. On 3 February 1805 she and Arrow were escorting a convoy from Malta to England when they encountered two French frigates. Arrow and Acheron were able to save the majority of the vessels of the convoy by their resistance before they were compelled to strike. Arrow sank almost immediately after surrendering, and Acheron was so badly damaged that the French burnt her. However, the British vessels' self- sacrifice enabled almost all the vessels of the convoy to escape.
HMS Infernal was an 8-gun bomb vessel of the Royal Navy, constructed in 1757 and in service until 1763. Designed by Thomas Slade, she was the prototype for six subsequent Infernal class bomb vessels which saw service in the Mediterranean and the West Indies during the Seven Years' War with France. In 1760 she was refitted as a sloop and returned to active service in the Caribbean.
Ramage's Signal, is an historical novel by Dudley Pope, set during the French Revolutionary Wars. It is the eleventh of the Ramage novels, following on from The Ramage Touch.