by Peter Grose
Jimmy had an uncle living in Gravesend, then an important river port on the Thames Estuary, east of London. The uncle, a ship’s captain who owned a brig and a schooner,1 was no stranger to trouble with the law; he had lost several vessels after being caught smuggling. However, he proved to be an artful dodger, and his smuggling successes outnumbered his failures to the point where he became a rich man. He was tanned, ferocious looking, and in no mood to indulge his nephew. Young Jimmy was ordered to sea in the brig Sophia, whose captain, he was told, would ‘either make a sailor of you or an idiot’. Jimmy didn’t much care for any of this; he planned to run away but was not quick enough, and within a few days found himself setting out to sea in the Sophia, under the command of the tyrannical Captain Lindsay. His first voyage was to be long and arduous, 9271 kilometres (5761 miles) across the wild Atlantic Ocean to Rio de Janeiro.
Captain Lindsay proved to be as harsh as Jimmy’s uncle had predicted. In Jimmy’s words:
Before I hardly knew what a ship was, I was mastheaded [made to climb to the top of the main mast, a punishment] on the most trivial occasion, where I was obliged to hold on like grim death to a topmast backstay and, worse than all, we made very bad weather and a long passage, though it was the means of making a sharp lad of me.
When they reached Rio de Janeiro, Jimmy went ashore, and didn’t like what he saw: ‘many Negro Slaves’. He again decided to run away. To cover his needs while on the run, he stole ‘50 doubloons [gold coins] and a hundred dollars from the Captain, to defray expenses’. With another of the Sophia’s crew, he absconded and joined the crew of a schooner anchored nearby.
The Captain’s name was Pedro Blanco, a very keen fellow. He had formerly been Captain of a Slaver. My friend, being an able seaman, received 16 dollars and small stores, and the Captain said that if I made myself handy he would give me 12 dollars per month. I was content and remained with him for upwards of a 12 month, making several voyages with him, never caring much about going ashore until I had learned some of the language. However myself and friend left the schooner and shipped in a Barque2 named Anne of London homeward bound from Rio. We received very good usage on board.
Jimmy had sailed from England in 1815 and he landed back in England in 1817. He made his way to London and was reunited with his family. He complained to his father about his treatment at the hands of Captain Lindsay, adding that he thought Lindsay had acted so brutally on the specific orders of his uncle. This led to ‘harsh words’ between his father and his uncle, but over time the two brothers were reconciled.
Jimmy wanted to get back to sea, and in 1818 he signed on for a three-year voyage on a whaler, John Bull, which would hunt for sperm whales in the waters off Peru.
I was at this time a smart lad in a ship. We had a good passage until we neared the Horn3—terrific seas and dreadful colds—icicles and icebergs. I never experienced any real hardship until now, the cold being almost unsupportable. We were compelled to keep Man o’ War watches for fear of the Ice. Several of the crew were injured by the cold, and it caused one man’s death.
After six months’ cruising, the John Bull put into the port of Valparaiso in Chile, to replenish supplies. Jimmy went ashore. His account of what happened next is as interesting for what he doesn’t tell us as for what he reveals. We know nothing of the circumstances, but in Valparaiso he met a girl, Narcissa Martel (or Martell). He doesn’t say he fell in love, nor does he tell us anything about her, though we can deduce from later events that her family was at least moderately wealthy. We know nothing of her age, her beauty, or her many other attractions. All he tells us in his journal is: ‘Having a good deal of money about me, I bid farewell to the Ship, and a Spanish girl stowed me away on her father’s premises until the ship sailed again.’ In other words, he deserted ship and Narcissa’s family hid him. He continues: ‘I began to think of marriage by the continual persuasion of her friends.’
There has to be more than a suspicion that Jimmy’s motives were not romantic. Being Jimmy, he must have realised that he was onto a good thing. In Chile at the time, there was a fashion among high-society girls for marrying British sailors; marrying a European was seen as marrying up. There has to be a further suspicion that Jimmy spun a good yarn about his background and prospects. He says he had plenty of money at the time, so his story would have rung true. Perhaps he told the Martels that his uncle owned a shipping line, and that Jimmy’s promotion to captain of his own ship in his uncle’s line could only be a matter of time.
The family wanted the couple to marry straight away, but Jimmy considered himself too young (he gives his age at the time as sixteen). So he agreed with Narcissa’s father, Fernando Martel, that he would make ‘a voyage or two’ and then come back and marry her.
He joined the crew of an armed schooner, Liberta, which delivered Chilean troops to various points up and down the coast. He stayed with the Liberta4 for about a year, in the course of which he necessarily learned some military skills. He says he took part in some ‘skirmishes ashore’, and occasionally at sea, ‘giving the Spaniards a round turn from the schooner from our two Long Toms’.
After twelve months with the Liberta he returned to Valparaiso, and married Narcissa. There is no trace of the marriage in official records, so it is impossible to pin down a date or even a location. The best I could find was a brief reference in a genealogical paper about the Anglo-Chilean community written by L.C. Derrick-Jehu. In a long list of names of English people married to Chilean spouses there appears: ‘PORTER, James: b. in London c 1800. He m. before 1830 Narcissus daughter of Fernando MARTELL of Valparaiso (P.H.).’
Whether or not the marriage was happy, Jimmy doesn’t say. But it was certainly lucrative. The dowry included a farm about 21 miles (34 kilometres) from Valparaiso along the road to Santiago. Jimmy agreed with his new father-in-law that he would no longer go to sea, and he and Narcissa settled at the farm.
As Chile will play a key part in this narrative, it is probably worth digressing here to gallop through a bit of nineteenth-century Chilean history. Until 1810, Chile had been an impoverished but largely peaceful part of the Spanish colonial empire. It was governed by a viceroy, who answered to the Spanish government through a more senior viceroy in Argentina. Two waves of history then came together to ruffle the waters. First, in 1806 the French under Napoleon invaded Spain and by 1808 had overthrown the monarchy of Ferdinand VII. Napoleon replaced Ferdinand with his own older brother, Joseph Bonaparte, who became King José I of Spain. This led to turmoil in the Spanish colonial empire, loosening the grip of Spain on its colonies. The resulting power vacuum inevitably encouraged warring factions to emerge from inside the colonies.
The second wave was a burgeoning movement around the world to end colonialism and secure independence for former colonies. The Americans had thrown the British out in 1776. The Haitians threw the French out in 1804. Revolutions against Spanish rule spread across Latin America, starting with Bolivia in 1809. The Mexicans were restless. So were the Argentinians, and the Brazilians. In 1810 the Chilean authorities made the next decisive move by declaring independence, triggering irregular conflict. Some factions in Chile stayed loyal to the deposed King Ferdinand. Others thought they might as well accept Joseph Bonaparte, at least until Ferdinand could be restored to the throne. Those who rejected colonial rule and supported the new, independent government were known as Patriots, and the Patriots included Jimmy’s future in-laws. The Patriots fought a scrappy civil war against the various royalist factions within Chile, as well as against the Spanish themselves.
Given that the independent Chileans were fighting the Spanish and through them the French, it hardly comes as a surprise that the British gave them some covert help. Lord Cochrane, the hero of many a naval battle in the Napoleonic Wars (Napoleon called him le loup des mers—‘The Wolf of the Seas’), was conveniently in disgrace in England, and therefore free to pick his own fights. He led the navy of independent Chile against the Spanish during the civil war.5 The Br
itish couldn’t be seen to encourage the forces of anti-colonialism, as they had plenty of colonies of their own to cling to, but if they could give their enemies’ enemies a bit of a hand, what fun!
When the Chilean civil war was entering its sixth year, there came an event that changed everything. On 18 June 1815 Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo in Belgium, ending France’s dreams of leading a European empire with satellite colonies around the world. Spain was already weak after its defeat by France. As a result, Britain became the dominant world power, and the possessor of the biggest and most imposing navy, guarding a lucrative colonial empire spanning the globe.
In Chile the Royalists were finally defeated in 1821, and Spain gave up in 1826. So the Patriots won, and Jimmy’s new family found themselves on the winning side. Yet the independent Chileans had mixed feelings about the British. On the one hand, they distrusted all European powers, particularly those who maintained colonies. On the other hand, it would have been both churlish and counterproductive not to cooperate with the British when they seemed willing to offer practical help. So independent Chile’s relations with Britain could be characterised in three words—warm but wary.
Jimmy Porter’s life as a Chilean farmer seems to have got off to a flying start.
I found it a most beautiful spot. Quite congenial to my feelings, and I remained happy in the new situation for upwards of two years—my wife had a boy and a girl during this time—the girl died shortly after its birth. The country was very much agitated at the time as the patriots were contending for their independence and Lord Cochrane was very busy along the coast—scarce a man could call his life his own without being on the alert.
Jimmy does not say in either of his memoirs whether the farm was successful but nor does he complain about hard times. So we can reasonably assume that married life on the farm treated him well. However, throughout his life he displayed a spectacular gift for making terrible and self-destructive decisions, and that gift did not desert him now. Growing tired of what was almost certainly prosperous contentment on the farm, he took a decision that would wreck his life for years to come:
I again (like Gulliver) felt an inclination to go to sea for a trip or two, and mentioned it to my wife, which gave her great uneasiness. But, having seen her Parents, with great persuasion they consented. After taking affectionate leave of my Wife and Son, I shipped on a Chilean Brig called the Saint Juan bound to Callao in Peru.
By the time the Saint Juan reached Callao, the port of the Peruvian capital of Lima, Jimmy had discovered that the ship was on a smuggling trip. He decided to jump ship. The captain went ashore, headed for Lima. Without proper leave, Jimmy went ashore too. This made him an absconder, so the military were called in to find him. What might have been a minor incident now blew up into a major disaster.
The military found me in a grog shop. The chief mate, [of the Saint Juan] being with them, pointed me out. I, being rather groggy with aquadent [a fiery alcoholic home brew much enjoyed at that time in Latin America], would not go with them. They commenced using their sabres, by order of the Mate. I then drew a sling shot6 out of my pocket to defend myself, and a regular engagement occurred.
There being a couple of Blue Jackets7 in the grog shop with me, they assisted me against the four. The Chief mate drew one of his country knives, he being a Frenchman. Finding I had no alternative but to fight or lose my life I let drive with my sling shot and struck the mate on the back of the head. At that moment he was about stabbing me with his knife. I bilged in his head gear [injured his head, making it bleed profusely] with the blow and he fell senseless at my feet. The two sailors that were there with me played their part and knocked down two soldiers out of the three. The other bolted. I received a slight wound in the head and one of the sailors got a severe gash in the arm. We were compelled to make our escape as quick as possible for we expected a reinforcement in pursuit of us.
Jimmy hid in the streets overnight and throughout the next day. That evening he returned to the grog shop, where he could hear drunken carousing coming from some soldiers inside. Then he saw a sailor, and beckoned to him. The sailor turned out to be from the same ship as the two men who had fought alongside Jimmy the night before. Their ship was sailing the next day. Could they use an extra hand? Jimmy asked. Yes, they could. The sailor had one further piece of information. Jimmy would be well advised to ship out as quickly as possible: the chief mate whom he had hit with his slingshot was dead. His skull had been fractured. If Jimmy were caught, he would very likely be shot. So Jimmy joined the crew of the barque Mermaid and sailed for England.
It was not until the next day that I was stung with remorse at the very idea of leaving my wife and child behind me. I hoped I should see them once again. In the course of a fortnight or three weeks I felt a little easier in my mind and was determined that, should I reach England in safety, after having an interview with my friends, I would immediately ship for Valparaiso, consider it my native land, there to rest happy with my wife and child.
That fond hope was not to be.
Jimmy arrived back in England at the end of 1821, and stayed a year. He soon fell into bad company and, being short of money, opted for the last big hustle. As he tells it: ‘I was persuaded to make one push which would make me rich or cost me my life.’ With two accomplices, he took part in a raid on a cutter8 anchored at Northfleet, near Gravesend on the Thames Estuary. They made off with a good haul of silk and beaver fur, and might have got away with it if one of the others had not secretly hidden some of the loot under his clothing, hoping to score a larger than fair share of the spoils. The trio made it safely as far as London, but the fraudster was caught. He then betrayed his two accomplices. All three were imprisoned, found guilty, and sentenced to death. It was something of a milestone in young Jimmy Porter’s life—his first death sentence, though not his last.
Jimmy says he had planned to keep all of this from his parents and grandmother, and simply accept his fate. But the betrayer somehow got word to Jimmy’s parents. ‘The shock nearly cost my mother her life,’ he wrote. ‘But, being of strong constitution, she recovered.’ Not so Jimmy’s grandmother. She died with, according to Jimmy, ‘my name being the last words she pronounced’. Her death came before she could be told that he was to be spared the gallows. Instead his sentence was commuted. He now faced the lesser penalty of transportation to Van Diemen’s Land. For life.
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1 A brig is a two-masted, square-rigged sailing ship. A schooner is also a two-masted sailing ship, not necessarily square-rigged, with the forward mast shorter than the rear mast.
2 A barque is a three-masted sailing ship with square-rig sails on the forward and main masts.
3 Cape Horn, at the southern tip of South America, famous for its wild seas, furious winds and dangerous ice.
4 It is a measure of the problems of accepting Jimmy’s version of these and other events that there is no trace of a ship called Liberta in the Chilean Navy, or any other navy for that matter. However, in 1819 there was an expedition called Expediciôn libertadora del Peru (‘Peruvian liberation expedition’) that involved plenty of skirmishing along the Chilean and Peruvian coasts as far north as Callao, the port serving the Peruvian capital of Lima. It is possible Jimmy was part of that.
5 Cochrane is thought to have been the inspiration for two twentieth-century fictional British naval heroes: C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower, and Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey.
6 A slingshot—a weapon made from a band stretched across a forked stick, and firing anything from a stone to a ball bearing—can be a fearsome device (just ask Goliath).
7 The term Blue Jacket can include almost any sailor, but in this context Jimmy’s allies were probably from a British Royal Navy ship.
8 A single-masted sailing ship, similar to a sloop but with its mast more to the rear.
Chapter 2
TRANSPORTATION
Without the American Revolution, the events of the story that follow
s might never have happened.
It all began with the concept of class, which was widely accepted in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as something God had ordained. There were three major classes in society: upper, middle (or merchant) and lower. There was no use arguing with it—God had already made up his mind. In the words of that dismal nineteenth-century hymn ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’:
The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.
There was a further class possibility. The rulers of Britain held to a simplistic belief that there was another separate and identifiable group: the criminal class. As long as this idea was accepted, the solution to the problem of criminality was obvious. If the whole criminal class could be kept at a safe distance from decent and law-abiding citizens, there would be no more crime. Job done.
The authorities set about achieving this solution in three ways. The most certain means of neutralising criminals was to kill them. Offences that might today be punished with a fine or a dose of community service could, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, lead to the hangman’s noose. Over 200 offences carried a mandatory death sentence. People convicted of murder were almost certain to die at the end of a rope. Non-violent criminals such as forgers, petty thieves, burglars, even people who had done nothing more than chop down a tree that wasn’t theirs, could also find themselves mounting the scaffold, sometimes publicly, before being dispatched to eternity. Others were handed custodial sentences to be served in a prison or a ‘hulk’. Being in custody would punish them; it would also keep them locked away from their victims, past and future.
