Well, OK, 1'm sorry. I apologize to Dudley Pope. I had said some rather unkind things about one of his Ramage novels, based on an audiotape. To be fair I read another, Ramage and the Freebooters, and it's really quite entertaining. As with the C.S. Forester, Alexander Kent, and O'Brian series, this one is also set at sea during the Napoleonic War. Lieutenant Ramage, son of the disgraced admiral, is under a cloud himself for having performed some rather unorthodox maneuvers during the Battle of St. Vincent. These maneuvers were much to the delight of Sir Jervis and Lord Nelson, but to the consternation and dismay of the more traditional officers, who actually believe in following orders to the letter. Believing he is to be reprimanded, Ramage appears before Admiral Spencer, only to be given command of a small brig - ten guns the Triton. There's a catch, however. The brig is tied up at Spithead, and this is the year 1797. You will remember that was the year the British sailors mutinied at Spithead. Ramage's task is to find a crew and sail to the Caribbean to carry word of the mutiny to the rest of the British fleet command so they can take appropriate action. A tricky task. Should he succeed, the glory will go to the Board; should he fail, he becomes a convenient scapegoat. The mutineers' demands were really quite reasonable. Aside from a request for slightly higher pay --they were paid much less than sailors in the merchant service-- they asked for leave when in port (always denied for rear of desertion) and that a pound be considered 16 ounces. Normally, it was the custom of the purser, who had to account for everything, to receipt fur 16 ounces, but supply the men with only 14 ounces, arguing the difference was spoilage or wastage. He usually pocketed the difference himself. Another scam was to charge off all sorts of expenses to dead sailors, leaving little for the widow, but making himself wealthy. Pursers were not popular. Once Ramage arrives in the West Indies, he is assigned another tricky task. Schooners have been disappearing with regularity, and the Navy has been unable to discover what has happened to them Clearly they have been taken by privateers, yet a search of the entire region reveals no inlets or bays where they could be hiding and transhipping the cargoes. Pope has crafted a page-turning yardbracing mystery.
Another fun, quick read. Sure, if you look for depth in your Age of Sail fiction, you should rather look to O'Brian or Forester. But if you're looking for a more swashbuckling approach to high adventure on the seas during the Napoleonic Wars, Ramage will deliver.This time I wasn't quite as taken with the plot as with the first two novels, this one not featuring as many action sequences and therefore appearing a bit more slow paced. However, this is not to mean that Ramage & the Freebooters was by any means boring, or too long for its content. In fact, there is a lot going on, from suppressing a mutiny to a bit of spywork to fighting privateers while being trapped in lagoon and outnumbered (though we're never exactly told whether they're actually privateers or pirates, the book just switches from calling them freebooters to privateers at one point. What with killing civillians who have surrendered they're certainly not of the nice kind either way. None of them appear as actual characters however, which is a shame. It could have made the plot even more interesting.) The Villain/Hero divide in general in this book is very black & white. All the villains are extremely cruel people so you don't feel to sorry for them when they are killed by our heroes. And those antagonists that are pretty and a bit sympathetic had of course been forced into committing crimes by the proper villains. On a related note, I could have done without the romance aspect. (view spoiler)[ It seems like Claire only turned out to have been blackmailed instead of carrying out her spywork of her own free will, so it wouldn't spoil her affection for the hero. I would have actually have preferred her being a proper villain, seducing Ramage only to gain information. But she, like so many other characters, of course, admires Ramage for no good reason. They only knew each other for half a day, yet she considered killing herself because she could not bear betraying him. (hide spoiler)]
