Free Ramage's Signal by Dudley Pope Page A

Marine and Colonies, as the first page proudly announced, although the guards at the camp had all been soldiers. Ramage had not seen the Lieutenant’s uniform because the poor fellow was still dressed in his nightshirt.
    The next page gave instructions for the siting and building of semaphore stations: they should be mounted as high as possible (“always bearing in mind that some desirable peaks or headlands might be too frequently hidden in cloud to be used”) and always within clear sight of the other station on each side. This, the Ministry warned, should be checked by direct observation; no reliance should be placed on maps or charts.
    Stations were to be manned from first light until dusk and this was to be interpreted as meaning from the time the next tower could first be seen in the morning until it was indistinguishable in the evening. The chief signalman would be responsible for the telescope and keep it locked up at night.
    A rough log must be kept “on the platform” and signed by the signalman who took down the message, and this would, as soon as practicable, be copied into the station signal log and signed by the chief signalman of the watch, and once a day by the commanding officer of the station, who was in any case to be told at once if any important signals were received, even if only for passing to the next station.
    At all times … and so it went on: Ramage reflected that the minds and limited vocabularies of the ministry clerks who drafted such books ran in the same narrow and rutted tracks whatever their nationality.
    And then, on page eight, was the key to the code. At first glance the diagrams seemed to be very simple. The big wooden frame had five opening windows or shutters. Four were at the corners of a square with the fifth above in the centre. Each letter of the alphabet was formed by opening shutters to form patterns so that there were twenty letters. J was missing, and single signals represented P and Q, U V W and X Y and Z, so one had to guess which was the correct letter. Numbers were simple—the X Y Z signal, all five shutters open, was repeated twice, and then the numbers 1 to 9 were represented by the same signals as the first nine letters of the alphabet, with the letter 0 also acting as zero. To change back to letters from numbers, the signalmen again sent X Y Z twice.
    Ramage saw that it was a laborious, slow but secure way of passing messages. Every letter of every word had to be spelled out, but there would be no mistakes. Nor could there be many situations where there was any urgency, and the garrison of a semaphore station had nothing else to do …
    Now for the signal log. Yesterday’s signals: the last one, addressed simply to Station Eighteen, said: “Powder will be sent.” Before that, Station Twenty was told: “Tell ship grain not available here.” Where was “here?” Presumably Toulon.
    Ramage read back through four pages until he found Station Thirty-four reporting briefly: “First ship of convoy only just arrived.” That answered the previous signal, presumably from Toulon, which asked the station when the convoy was due to sail.
    In the lower right-hand drawer of his desk Ramage found the signal book he had taken from the captured frigate and looked at the list of names which included Foix and Aspet. He saw that the number thirty-four was printed against Barcelona, while Toulon had number one. Here, Foix, was twelve and Aspet across the bay was thirteen. The last station, at the opposite end to Toulon, was Cartagena, the great Spanish naval base. The advantage of having such swift communication was obvious and the system was ingenious.
    He put the signal log book aside. The wind had dropped completely and there was not the slightest cooling draught through the cabin. He glanced up to make sure the skylight was open. Now for the pile of correspondence. Only four or five had the Ministry of Marine’s seal,