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Lord Ramage #12
Ramage and the Renegades: The Lord Ramage Novels Series No. 10
Nelson's crews are standing down and Ramage is on leave when he receives secret Admiralty orders to inspect the small island of Trinidade off the coast of Brazil. Reaching the island, Ramage and the crew of the Calypso fetch up in a battle to free several captive merchant ships - and a beautiful woman passenger - as they cross swords with bloodthirsty priates.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
About the author
Dudley Pope
130 books93 followersDudley Pope was born in Ashford, Kent.
By concealing his age, Pope joined the Home Guard aged 14 and at age 16 joined the Merchant Navy as a cadet. His ship was torpedoed the next year (1942). Afterwards, he spent two weeks in a lifeboat with the few other survivors.
After he was invalided out of the Merchant Navy, the only obvious sign of the injuries Pope had suffered was a joint missing from one finger due to gangrene. Pope then went to work for a Kentish newspaper, then in 1944 moved to The Evening News in London, where he was the naval and defence correspondent. From there he turned to reading and writing naval history.
Pope's first book, "Flag 4", was published in 1954, followed by several other historical accounts. C. S. Forester, the creator of the famed Horatio Hornblower novels, encouraged Pope to add fiction to his repertoire. In 1965, "Ramage" appeared, the first of what was to become an 18-novel series.
Pope took to living on boats from 1953 on; when he married Kay Pope in 1954, they lived on a William Fife 8-meter named Concerto, then at Porto Santo Stefano, Italy in 1959 with a 42-foot ketch Tokay. In 1963 he and Kay moved to a 53-foot cutter Golden Dragon, on which they moved to Barbados in 1965. In 1968 they moved onto a 54-foot wooden yacht named Ramage, aboard which he wrote all of his stories until 1985.
Pope died April 25, 1997 in Marigot, St. Martin. Both his wife and his daughter, Jane Victoria survived him.
By concealing his age, Pope joined the Home Guard aged 14 and at age 16 joined the Merchant Navy as a cadet. His ship was torpedoed the next year (1942). Afterwards, he spent two weeks in a lifeboat with the few other survivors.
After he was invalided out of the Merchant Navy, the only obvious sign of the injuries Pope had suffered was a joint missing from one finger due to gangrene. Pope then went to work for a Kentish newspaper, then in 1944 moved to The Evening News in London, where he was the naval and defence correspondent. From there he turned to reading and writing naval history.
Pope's first book, "Flag 4", was published in 1954, followed by several other historical accounts. C. S. Forester, the creator of the famed Horatio Hornblower novels, encouraged Pope to add fiction to his repertoire. In 1965, "Ramage" appeared, the first of what was to become an 18-novel series.
Pope took to living on boats from 1953 on; when he married Kay Pope in 1954, they lived on a William Fife 8-meter named Concerto, then at Porto Santo Stefano, Italy in 1959 with a 42-foot ketch Tokay. In 1963 he and Kay moved to a 53-foot cutter Golden Dragon, on which they moved to Barbados in 1965. In 1968 they moved onto a 54-foot wooden yacht named Ramage, aboard which he wrote all of his stories until 1985.
Pope died April 25, 1997 in Marigot, St. Martin. Both his wife and his daughter, Jane Victoria survived him.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
February 11, 2020
Like all the Ramage books, some aspects of this story were great. The repetitive nature of the series-updates continued to grate on me in the writing - especially when he's even reminding about stuff that happened within that particular book rather than just earlier in the series (or when you get reminded multiple times).
The plot line is basically that Napoleon brokers peace and Ramage is sent to "capture" an island for Britain, including surveying it and establishing shore batteries and planting potatoes. On the way he gets collared by a mad captain who nearly shoots him out of the water as he doesn't realise the war has ended. On arrival they find a load of pirates using the bay as a base. Ramage cleverly overcomes them all, in the process of which he finds himself a new lady.....
The plot line is basically that Napoleon brokers peace and Ramage is sent to "capture" an island for Britain, including surveying it and establishing shore batteries and planting potatoes. On the way he gets collared by a mad captain who nearly shoots him out of the water as he doesn't realise the war has ended. On arrival they find a load of pirates using the bay as a base. Ramage cleverly overcomes them all, in the process of which he finds himself a new lady.....
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 11, 2021
I'm almost halfway through this series and I think this is one of the better ones.
Spoilers ahead/summary:
It's the Peace of Amiens. Almost all of the historical naval series have one book on it but I think Pope has done the best job describing the political situation. And it's the only one where I heard the characters describe it as losing the peace. Most of the other authors make a hash of describing it, using dialog in too much detail or not describing it at all. He also spent a long time writing about how Gianna would be treated when she went back to her small Italian principality.
And as another reviewer mentioned, it almost seems like Pope combines a few small stories and puts the into a book. I don't find that bad at all as he touches on several interesting subjects. For example in this book he talks about:
Corruption of the dockyard where the ships are supplied with labor and materials to fix up ships. Instead the commissioner pockets the money or uses the men for their own purpose and even the foreman tried to hit up Ramage 5 guineas to do his job. Hornblower touches on that when he was commissioning his ship where he supplied the labor and branded the spoiled hogsheads. I don't know why the Admiralty didn't do anything about it since it would affect the effectiveness of their ships and navy.
Religion: Ramage was assigned a chaplain. I thought he could refuse it but he didn't and Pope describes how they got paid.
Mad captain: not nearly enough is written about this in all the books. But Ramage meets one on the way out. There surely must be a lot of unfit captains and it doesn't seem there was some kind of feedback to the Admiralty where they could get rid of them quietly and quickly without fuss.
Art: There's actually a good long side story on the artist who shipped with them. He talked about how light and colors looked in different parts of the world and how unbelievable the sky, landscape and sea looked to people who had never seen them. This was a good side story.
Estimating longtitude(?) before accurate watches were made. I think Pope did a good job of discussing it.
Romance: The romance part was fairly good. I normally don't enjoy them and find them a distraction but I thought this one was well done. The only part that was a bit cringy was that every woman that Ramage meets is the most beautiful woman that he's ever met.
Main story: Ramage is sent to Ilha da Trinidade, a very small island that the Admiralty doesn't think has been claimed by anyone. Ramage is given a number of supernumeries who are to map it, sound the surrounding waters, survey it, plant it with food crops, establish batteries, defenses and find out if there's water.
However once there he finds a pirate ship with 5 prizes. The pirates pretend to be privateers and makes it clear that they will kill the hostages if Ramage tries to rescue them. But Ramage plays dumb and pretends that he doesn't care about the prizes or the hostages. He spends a few days observing the ships then swims over to kill the guards on the prizes and attacks the privateer ship. The privateer ship explodes and Ramage is injured again. His new love is one of the hostages on the ship, the daughter of the previous Governor of Bengal.
Overall, one of the better and interesting Ramage books.
Spoilers ahead/summary:
It's the Peace of Amiens. Almost all of the historical naval series have one book on it but I think Pope has done the best job describing the political situation. And it's the only one where I heard the characters describe it as losing the peace. Most of the other authors make a hash of describing it, using dialog in too much detail or not describing it at all. He also spent a long time writing about how Gianna would be treated when she went back to her small Italian principality.
And as another reviewer mentioned, it almost seems like Pope combines a few small stories and puts the into a book. I don't find that bad at all as he touches on several interesting subjects. For example in this book he talks about:
Corruption of the dockyard where the ships are supplied with labor and materials to fix up ships. Instead the commissioner pockets the money or uses the men for their own purpose and even the foreman tried to hit up Ramage 5 guineas to do his job. Hornblower touches on that when he was commissioning his ship where he supplied the labor and branded the spoiled hogsheads. I don't know why the Admiralty didn't do anything about it since it would affect the effectiveness of their ships and navy.
Religion: Ramage was assigned a chaplain. I thought he could refuse it but he didn't and Pope describes how they got paid.
Mad captain: not nearly enough is written about this in all the books. But Ramage meets one on the way out. There surely must be a lot of unfit captains and it doesn't seem there was some kind of feedback to the Admiralty where they could get rid of them quietly and quickly without fuss.
Art: There's actually a good long side story on the artist who shipped with them. He talked about how light and colors looked in different parts of the world and how unbelievable the sky, landscape and sea looked to people who had never seen them. This was a good side story.
Estimating longtitude(?) before accurate watches were made. I think Pope did a good job of discussing it.
Romance: The romance part was fairly good. I normally don't enjoy them and find them a distraction but I thought this one was well done. The only part that was a bit cringy was that every woman that Ramage meets is the most beautiful woman that he's ever met.
Main story: Ramage is sent to Ilha da Trinidade, a very small island that the Admiralty doesn't think has been claimed by anyone. Ramage is given a number of supernumeries who are to map it, sound the surrounding waters, survey it, plant it with food crops, establish batteries, defenses and find out if there's water.
However once there he finds a pirate ship with 5 prizes. The pirates pretend to be privateers and makes it clear that they will kill the hostages if Ramage tries to rescue them. But Ramage plays dumb and pretends that he doesn't care about the prizes or the hostages. He spends a few days observing the ships then swims over to kill the guards on the prizes and attacks the privateer ship. The privateer ship explodes and Ramage is injured again. His new love is one of the hostages on the ship, the daughter of the previous Governor of Bengal.
Overall, one of the better and interesting Ramage books.
April 6, 2024
A decent adventure
Pope does a decent job with these fantastic tales. In this case, the captain of a frigate shucks his clothes in favor of an ad hoc loin cloth to stealthily dispatch pirates in the night. I suppose you have to be creative during the Peace of Amiens. More of a young person’s adventure story than a novel of the Napoleonic Wars.
By now Ramage has slipped into a pattern:
Ship: HMS Calypso
Crew: All the old stalwarts.
Love Interest: Exit the Marchessa, who had been sort of a narrative millstone for the last few novels, enter Sarah
Pope does a decent job with these fantastic tales. In this case, the captain of a frigate shucks his clothes in favor of an ad hoc loin cloth to stealthily dispatch pirates in the night. I suppose you have to be creative during the Peace of Amiens. More of a young person’s adventure story than a novel of the Napoleonic Wars.
By now Ramage has slipped into a pattern:
Ship: HMS Calypso
Crew: All the old stalwarts.
Love Interest: Exit the Marchessa, who had been sort of a narrative millstone for the last few novels, enter Sarah
September 4, 2022
Peace at Last. It's the end of the series. Not so quick. Yes, there is a peace treaty between the French and English, but we all know with Boney it won't last long. But the Captain will not be out to pasture. He and the Calypso's are sent on a mission to claim and survey, and island not mentioned in the treaty. They find the island being used by pirates and must act to save their prisoners. Good read.
May 6, 2023
Back to some action even though the war has ended. Ramage remains in the Navy and is sent on a surveying voyage. While there he discovers privateers who are now nothing more than pirates as their papers expired when peace was declared. Ramage rescues the ships that had been captured and meets a woman and falls in love on the way back to England.
January 3, 2019
Lots of action! Pirates, hostages, & Ramage falls in love again!
August 1, 2021
Enjoyable. Interesting finish. No he can move on…
December 11, 2022
The story continues! New love, new adventures!
March 31, 2021
In 1801, after eight years of war against Britain, Napoleon Bonaparte negotiated a peace -- the Treaty of Amiens -- by which the naïve, incompetent new administration in London (under Addington, Pitt having resigned) gave up most of what the Royal Navy had gained and began cheerfully dismantling the navy itself. And Bonaparte thereby gained time to restock his warehouses and rebuild his own forces before returning to war. Every author of a Napoleonic Wars naval series has had to deal with this interval, to decide how his protagonist will respond. In the present case, will Capt. Lord Nicholas Ramage “go on the beach” when three-quarters of the wartime establishment is laid up in ordinary? He certainly doesn’t need the income, but making war at sea is his business -- and, like most of his colleagues in the officer corps, he knows perfectly well that the peace is only a temporary catching of breath. Actually, he wants to keep his first-rate crew and collection of officers together for that eventuality, so he pulls a few strings and gets himself and his refitted frigate, Calypso, sent off to map and chart a small uninhabited island off the coast of Brazil and claim it for Great Britain. He takes along a party of surveyors and draftsmen and an artist, as well as a horticulturalist who will seed the island with self-sustaining crops for the benefit of future visitors. It’s almost like a holiday, especially since they no longer have to go to quarters at the sight of every unknown sail. And when they arrive at Trinidade, they find an anchored British privateer and her five prizes -- including an East Indiaman as well as French and Dutch merchantmen. The privateersmen have reacted to the peace by turning pirate. All the merchant crews are interned under guard on the island while their paying passengers are being held as hostages on their ships -- knowing full well the privateersmen will kill them rather than bothering to arrange ransoms. How is Ramage going to deal with the privateers, liberate the captured crews, and prevent the murder of the hostages? Being Ramage, you know he’s going to think of a way.
Meanwhile, Ramage’s personal affairs are sorting themselves out as well. He’s realist enough to understand that his previous ardor for the Gianna, the Italian marchesa he rescued from Bonaparte’s pursuing cavalry in the first book in the series, has gradually cooled to simply a high regard. As the heir to an earldom (and, of course, a Protestant), he’s never going to be able to marry her. She has the duty to return to her little kingdom, not stay in Cornwall -- and her subjects would never accept Ramage as her consort in any case. Anyway, Gianna has taken advantage of the peace to return to Italy on her own, even though Bonaparte is keeping the peninsula for himself, and even though his secret police are extremely unlikely to allow her to attempt to take up the reins of her government again. Other plot points aside, Pope is opening the way for Ramage to develop a relationship with some other woman that has more of a future in it -- and just such a well-born candidate turns up (surprise, surprise) among the passengers of the Indiaman. This, the twelfth episode, is one of the better in the series so far -- lots of well-described action, a few hair-raising moments, a leavening of sometimes grim humor, and lots of humanity among the characters we’ve come to know so well.
Meanwhile, Ramage’s personal affairs are sorting themselves out as well. He’s realist enough to understand that his previous ardor for the Gianna, the Italian marchesa he rescued from Bonaparte’s pursuing cavalry in the first book in the series, has gradually cooled to simply a high regard. As the heir to an earldom (and, of course, a Protestant), he’s never going to be able to marry her. She has the duty to return to her little kingdom, not stay in Cornwall -- and her subjects would never accept Ramage as her consort in any case. Anyway, Gianna has taken advantage of the peace to return to Italy on her own, even though Bonaparte is keeping the peninsula for himself, and even though his secret police are extremely unlikely to allow her to attempt to take up the reins of her government again. Other plot points aside, Pope is opening the way for Ramage to develop a relationship with some other woman that has more of a future in it -- and just such a well-born candidate turns up (surprise, surprise) among the passengers of the Indiaman. This, the twelfth episode, is one of the better in the series so far -- lots of well-described action, a few hair-raising moments, a leavening of sometimes grim humor, and lots of humanity among the characters we’ve come to know so well.
May 5, 2012
The first of the Ramage books - all of which are exciting and well written. The Ramage series ranks 3rd with me behind Hornblower and Bolitho for age of sail excitement. Ramage is just a little too good and nothing is impossible..
July 21, 2019
Another exciting adventure with Captain Ramage as he has to find a way to defeat a group of pirates without getting a group of hostages killed. Not only does he get himself wounded, but he also finds love, again.
Read
July 28, 2009Enjoyed
May 31, 2016
Another Ramage adventure that left me wanting more. To me it is a good solid read.
June 13, 2016
Just another action packed story. It is amazing how Ramage can solve a dilemma.
July 1, 2016
Possibly the best in the series!
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews