Ramage and the Drumbeat is the second book in a series of eighteen by Dudley Pope. Lieutenant Ramage is in command of his Majesty’s cutter, Kathleen, transporting the beautiful Marchesa di Voltererra, Gianna and Count Antonio Pitti to Gibraltar after rescuing them in the first Ramage novel. Ramage’s orders clearly state that he is to transport his celebrities to Gibraltar with all possible speed when they come across a thirty-six gun Spanish frigate that has been dismasted in a squall. Ramage’s cutter, Kathleen, had sixty-three crew members, which was quite a lot for a small, single-masted craft and would be no match for the much larger Spanish ship. Ramage concocted a clever, but risk, plan to scare the Spanish into surrendering their ship. And much to the Marchesa’s joy, it works, and the Kathleen resumes its passage with the Spanish ship in tow. That success doesn’t last long, however, and the Kathleen is captured by a large group of Spanish ships. The adventures on the Ramage cruise continue from there through the rest of the book.
It is only because of Pope’s encyclopedic knowledge of these ships that these books work. These small cutters should only hold about thirty crew members, but Ramage describes the Kathleen as including sixty-three. Feeding and finding space to sleep for such a large crew must have pushed Pope’s knowledge and fertile imagination to the limit. The Kathleen had large square topsails that Ramage uses as a weapon later on in the story.
It is Pope’s knowledge and writing skills that make these Ramage books so intriguing. Pope is not guessing about how these things worked; he knows how they worked, and he puts the reader into the thick of the battle. The Ramage is right up there with C.S. Forester’s Hornblower and Jack Aubrey in the Patrick O’Brian series. It is remarkable to me that there is such a marvelous complement of historical naval authors.