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Lord Ramage #11
Ramage's Signal
The Calypso and her captain, Lord Nicholas Ramage, venture further into the French-dominated waters of the Mediterranean on an Admiralty mission to sink, burn, and destroy. Aiming to confuse and distract the enemy, Ramage and his men find themselves isolated and outnumbered as they take on the might of Napoleon's fleet.
284 pages, Paperback
First published July 30, 1981
71 people are currently reading
178 people want to read
About the author
Dudley Pope
130 books92 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 - 17 of 17 reviews
July 16, 2019
Once again Ramage and his crew defy the odds and succeed in destroying a superior enemy and capturing numerous prizes, with very few casualties.
A little unbelievable, but enormous fun.
A little unbelievable, but enormous fun.
August 28, 2021
Spoilers ahead, in fact all spoilers.
Summary:
Ramage is given a free hand by the Admiralty in the Mediterranean. While sailing, he discovers semaphore towers on the coast and decides to destroy one. When he captures it (us readers get a good description of how it works and how it's manned) he intercepts a message that a convoy is about to sail. He changes the message so that the convoy would come to him. He then pretends to be the frigate escort and sails it to the coast of Sardinia. On the way there he destroys an Algerian pirate who was planning to capture some of the ships.
There are a total of 15 merchantman but he only has enough prize crew for 6 and decides to scuttle the rest. While at anchor a French 74 comes in the harbor and anchors. During the night he rigs two of the prizes up as bombs and completely destroys the 74.
Meanwhile Lt. Aitken is in command of the 6 prizes which he is sailing to Gibraltar. They meet a French frigate on the way and Orsini bluffs it off by saying they have the plague. After destroying the 74, Ramage races off to find the convoy and destroys another semaphore tower to prevent the French or Spanish authorities from being curious about the convoy.
Overall, it's not a bad book. There's a lot of action, all in easy mode for Ramage. Ramage indulges in a lot of heroics including going back in the bomb ship to save a sailor with a broken leg to covering the same sailor with his own body when the 74 explodes to giving poor fisherman one of the merchantmen instead of scuttling it. Again, there is a lot of rehashing of ancient history from previous books, admiration of the Marchesa and hero worship of Ramage.
Summary:
Ramage is given a free hand by the Admiralty in the Mediterranean. While sailing, he discovers semaphore towers on the coast and decides to destroy one. When he captures it (us readers get a good description of how it works and how it's manned) he intercepts a message that a convoy is about to sail. He changes the message so that the convoy would come to him. He then pretends to be the frigate escort and sails it to the coast of Sardinia. On the way there he destroys an Algerian pirate who was planning to capture some of the ships.
There are a total of 15 merchantman but he only has enough prize crew for 6 and decides to scuttle the rest. While at anchor a French 74 comes in the harbor and anchors. During the night he rigs two of the prizes up as bombs and completely destroys the 74.
Meanwhile Lt. Aitken is in command of the 6 prizes which he is sailing to Gibraltar. They meet a French frigate on the way and Orsini bluffs it off by saying they have the plague. After destroying the 74, Ramage races off to find the convoy and destroys another semaphore tower to prevent the French or Spanish authorities from being curious about the convoy.
Overall, it's not a bad book. There's a lot of action, all in easy mode for Ramage. Ramage indulges in a lot of heroics including going back in the bomb ship to save a sailor with a broken leg to covering the same sailor with his own body when the 74 explodes to giving poor fisherman one of the merchantmen instead of scuttling it. Again, there is a lot of rehashing of ancient history from previous books, admiration of the Marchesa and hero worship of Ramage.
March 18, 2024
Breezy and quick, you know that Lord Ramage will be the right combination of lucky and good to survive any predicament.
The details:
Ship: HMS Calypso
Crew: Everyone returns from the previous novel. Lieutenant “Blower” Martin is featured a little more.
Love Interest: the Marchesa. It’s been a while since Ramage had a fling. Maybe he’ll make an honest woman of her.
Locale: all around the Mediterranean, starting off the French coast, then to Sardinia and culminating off the southern coast of Spain.
The details:
Ship: HMS Calypso
Crew: Everyone returns from the previous novel. Lieutenant “Blower” Martin is featured a little more.
Love Interest: the Marchesa. It’s been a while since Ramage had a fling. Maybe he’ll make an honest woman of her.
Locale: all around the Mediterranean, starting off the French coast, then to Sardinia and culminating off the southern coast of Spain.
April 20, 2023
I enjoy this series, but I like it more when the battles are primarily at sea. This volume has Ramage and his crew in the Mediterranean to intercept ships but instead he captures a signal tower, with no shots fired, and a large convoy which he keeps some and scuttles some. I like the relationships between him and his men but I really like the battle stories. I will definitely finish the series and hope we get back to that.
June 27, 2017
Captain Ramage and his crew aboard the English ship Calypso are ordered to the Mediterranean, with orders to sink as many French ships as possible and make as big an annoyance of himself as possible. So Ramage does just that in a rather unorthodox manner.
February 8, 2020
Ramage gets to go and wreck mayhem in his own in the Mediterranean and decides to destroy a few semaphore stations as well as capture a convoy of prizes.
Nice story but I find if annoying how he constantly reminds us who everyone is and all of the precious history every few pages.
Nice story but I find if annoying how he constantly reminds us who everyone is and all of the precious history every few pages.
September 18, 2017
Ramages Signal. By Dudley Pope
19th century British naval story. If you like C S Forresters Hornblower series you like this. Gave this book 4 stars
19th century British naval story. If you like C S Forresters Hornblower series you like this. Gave this book 4 stars
July 29, 2018
I liked this story, very fast paced. I really ought to learn more about the sailing terminology! Seems to lead into the next in the series.
July 9, 2021
The buildups are certainly suspenseful, but the resolutions are a bit of a letdown…
August 6, 2022
Ramage and hi crew are in the Mediterranean trying to disrupt the French. Not a whole lot of ship-to-ship action but some ground action and some ship hijacking add to the action. Good read.
November 20, 2022
Almost like a short story but with a plethora of details on sailing ships.
March 31, 2021
This is the 11th episode in the adventures of Lord Nicholas Ramage, one of the youngest post captains on the Royal Navy list and possessed of an increasingly fearful reputation among French seamen, and it’s a considerable improvement over the past couple of yarns. There’s a tendency for mant authors to become bored or simply to lose their grip a bit as a series goes on, but perhaps Pope has snapped out of his growing malaise.
This one picks up within hours of where the previous one left off, with Ramage holding the sort of Admiralty orders that would delight any frigate captain -- to enter the Mediterranean with his French-built ship on a three-month cruise and play merry hell with the enemy any way he can. This time, the inspection from sea of one of the coastal semaphore stations set up by the French navy between their headquarters at Toulon and the principal Spanish naval base at Cartagena suggests to him an interesting way of disrupting enemy communications. But when he takes a party ashore to destroy the installation, he reads the signals log and discovers that a French convoy is awaiting its escort at the western end of the Med. Since Ramage’s Calypso is obviously a French frigate, maybe he could play Pied Piper and provide such an escort himself.
Well, the reader soon understands where all this is headed and knows the enemy isn’t going to enjoy the joke. Moreover, Ramage pulls it all off with hardly a shot being fired, which suits him fine. Pope is one of those authors who always likes to show off his specialized knowledge to his readers, and there’s a fair amount of that, but it’s a good story nonetheless. Ramage also has an unusually close relationship with his officers and men -- especially the half-dozen who have been with him since the series began -- and while the interplay is sometimes just a little too cheery to be credible (because the Royal Navy always heavily discouraged that sort of thing), it makes for a multisided narrative. This isn’t Patrick O’Brian but it’s a lot of fun.
This one picks up within hours of where the previous one left off, with Ramage holding the sort of Admiralty orders that would delight any frigate captain -- to enter the Mediterranean with his French-built ship on a three-month cruise and play merry hell with the enemy any way he can. This time, the inspection from sea of one of the coastal semaphore stations set up by the French navy between their headquarters at Toulon and the principal Spanish naval base at Cartagena suggests to him an interesting way of disrupting enemy communications. But when he takes a party ashore to destroy the installation, he reads the signals log and discovers that a French convoy is awaiting its escort at the western end of the Med. Since Ramage’s Calypso is obviously a French frigate, maybe he could play Pied Piper and provide such an escort himself.
Well, the reader soon understands where all this is headed and knows the enemy isn’t going to enjoy the joke. Moreover, Ramage pulls it all off with hardly a shot being fired, which suits him fine. Pope is one of those authors who always likes to show off his specialized knowledge to his readers, and there’s a fair amount of that, but it’s a good story nonetheless. Ramage also has an unusually close relationship with his officers and men -- especially the half-dozen who have been with him since the series began -- and while the interplay is sometimes just a little too cheery to be credible (because the Royal Navy always heavily discouraged that sort of thing), it makes for a multisided narrative. This isn’t Patrick O’Brian but it’s a lot of fun.
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..
January 14, 2014
I continue to enjoy Captain Lord Ramage, his band of loyal men, and his interesting exploits . . . These unconventional naval actions in the western Med against 'Boney' and his allies continue to entertain.
January 15, 2011
This is the middle one of a series of about 10 books, I think. Most excellent - not quite as good as Hornblower but not as densely poilitcal or naval as O'Brian. Thoroughly enjoyable read.
May 26, 2015
It was pretty good.
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July 28, 2009Enjoyed
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews