Ramage and the Dido

'But what plants are they?'

'Furneaux calls them les mangues. He says they grow an oval-shaped fruit which is orange inside. He says the Indian name for them is "mango". You can either eat them as a fresh fruit or boil them up and make them into a preserve: something the Indians call "chutney", apparently.'

'So the French are experimenting with plants, eh? Well, Captain Bligh brought the breadfruit here from the Pacific not so many years ago, and that has been a success. And Louis de Bougainville brought a plant from Brazil in 1768 - if my memory serves me - which has a very pretty purple flower, and which was named after him.'

He thought a moment and then asked Hilclass="underline" 'Have any of the plants got fruit on them?'

Hill shook his head. 'No, sir: I looked carefully at all of them. The plants are in good condition, though: the French have been watering them regularly, and they look to me as though they'll grow all right.'

'Mangoes . . . well, we'd better send them to Barbados. She looks a fairly new ship, although she needs some paint.'

'Four years old, according to Furneaux, sir. Built at La Rochelle.'

'Well, Admiral Cameron will almost certainly buy her in. He's very short of frigates. I don't know what he'll do with the plants - probably grow them and call them "camerons"!'

Ramage started thinking about sending the Volage to Barbados. It was a voyage which, even though it was to windward, should not take more than a few hours, but he was reluctant to lose any more lieutenants. He decided to send the two senior midshipmen, mature men, along with a few seamen and some Marines.

'How many men on board her?'

'Ninety-eight, sir. Apparently they had a lot of fever in Mauritius and lost many men. Furneaux was complaining that he had only a few men and they spent most of their time gardening. He's not very pleased with the idea of introducing les mangues to the West Indies, and he's blaming himself for being too far to the eastward, so that he passed Barbados closer than he intended.'

Ramage smiled and said: 'Well, if les mangues grow successfully and people like them, perhaps his name will go down in history as the man who nearly brought them to the West Indies!'

'I think he can claim to have brought them to the West Indies, sir, but he failed to get them ashore anywhere!' Hill said.

Ramage laughed. 'Well, Captain Bligh is known as "Breadfruit Bligh" despite the Bounty affair, so perhaps we can invent something for Furneaux or the Volage.'

Furneaux was a very nondescript man; the sort, Ramage thought, who would be given the job of taking lesmangues to Martinique with too few crew, and who would make the mistake of passing too close to a British island after a voyage of thousands of miles. Every time his name, or that of his ship, was mentioned he jerked his head round to look at the speaker, a nervous gesture which showed the strain that he was under.

Ramage sent orders for the two midshipmen to make ready to embark in the frigate. 'Give them a course for Barbados, Mr Southwick. They should sight it in a few hours.'

He then turned to Furneaux. 'Tell me, Captain: about these plants you are carrying, have you any special instructions for planting them?'

Furneaux shrugged his shoulders in a typical Gallic gesture. 'I was told to give them plenty of water, that was all. We carried extra water for them. But special instructions - no. I received none.'

'Take him back on board the Volage,' Ramage told Hill. 'I'm sorry I can't make you prizemaster, but the Dido can't afford to lose any more lieutenants.'

CHAPTER TWELVE

Ramage had written a brief but tactful letter to Admiral Cameron outlining the capture of the Volage and describing the new plants, mangoes, that she had on board. Without mentioning Captain Bligh or breadfruit, he had tried to draw the admiral's attention to the fact that the mango might become an important fruit in the West Indies - a welcome change from the usual round of oranges and bananas and pawpaw. How did one tell an admiral that the mangoes in the Volage might be as important to the West Indies as the breadfruit, and obtained without having to send a special ship all the way to India to collect them?

Had the French split the journey up, first taking them from India to Mauritius and planting them out there, then a year or so later taking plants from Mauritius and bringing them here, thus cutting the length of the voyage almost in half?

How could one persuade an admiral in a letter to have the plants brought ashore and planted out, instead of throwing them overboard and fitting the frigate out with more guns, because he was so short of frigates? Better still, send the Volage on to Jamaica, the biggest British island and the most suitable, he thought, for experiments. They had big botanical gardens there: the staff would be just the right people to plant the mango and see how it prospered in the West Indies.

Anyway, the Volage was now carrying the letter to Admiral Cameron. If the admiral was really interested, there must be someone on the station who spoke French and could question Furneaux further.

Southwick, who Ramage suspected was a frustrated gardener, gave a sniff and said: 'If anything comes of this plant business, they'll probably call you "Mango Ramage" - you'll be as famous as "Breadfruit Bligh".'

'Bligh is famous for the Bounty, not the breadfruit,' Ramage said sourly, 'so I'll thank you for not making any comparison.'

'Well, mangoes sound tastier than breadfruit, so perhaps it won't be too bad.'

'Martinique,' Ramage said, to change the subject. 'Is the current playing tricks with us?'

'There's a bit o' west-going current here, but not enough to worry about. We should have Diamond Rock abeam in about three hours. That'll bring back some memories, eh?'

Ramage nodded. 'It seems a long time ago. I still don't know how we captured it!'

'I don't know about capturing it: the miracle was how we swayed up those guns to the top. And how we captured the Calypso.'

'Well, we may have captured it, but it was retaken by the French because of the drunken antics of an officer long after we had gone back to England.'

'Yes, the loss of the Rock was a shameful business,' Southwick said. 'If we'd have held on to it we would have continued to control everything that tried to get into Fort Royal.'

'And we wouldn't have the present trouble either. At least, Admiral Cameron wouldn't. And we wouldn't be here. Curious how the wheel seems to have turned full circle. It's about time for us to recapture Diamond Rock.'

'I should imagine the French have a proper garrison there now,' Southwick said speculatively.

'Well, I'm certainly not going to try it,' Ramage said. 'Times have changed. What a young officer commanding a brig can do, and get away with, is different from the circumstances of a post-captain commanding a seventy-four and with definite orders in his pocket.'

Southwick put his telescope to his eye. 'I can just make out Cabrit Island,' he said. 'You'll remember that is the southernmost tip of Martinique. We'll soon be up to Fort Royal, and loosing off a broadside into Fort Louis. Ah,' he said sentimentally, 'it's quite like old times!'

Half an hour later, when the Dido had hauled around to the north-west, a lookout hailed the deck to report a sail in sight in line with Diamond Rock, which it had just rounded.

Ramage immediately sent Orsini aloft with a telescope, and the young Italian was soon shouting down that the sail was a brig, which had just altered course towards the Dido.