Harry Heron: Midshipman's Journey

by Patrick G Cox

  “So it did,” Harry replied, suddenly feeling very tired and wanting nothing but to sit down and cry. He looked at Ferghal and noticed that his friend seemed to be bleeding from a wound. “You are wounded. Have you had it attended to?”

  “This? It is no great thing.” Ferghal smiled, touching at his broken scalp. “A scratch, no more. Most of this,” he indicated the blood splattering his shirt and trousers, “is from he who gave it me. He was so intent on taking me that he saw not Ben Hawking with his boarding axe.” His laugh was unsteady as he said this.

  “Well, take care; I must find the Lieutenant and obtain his instructions.” Realizing that his friend was grinning at him, Harry asked, “What amuses you?”

  “Why, Master Harry.” Ferghal grinned mischievously. “You ask where I got my scratch, yet your coat is torn half from your back, there’s blood on your head and hands, and by the sound of it, you have lost your choirboy voice into the bargain. I scarce knew you when you approached.”

  Harry frowned, at first puzzled by Ferghal’s remark, then he laughed. “Ferghal, you rogue. You tease me. I should have you flogged for it. Now delay me no longer—I am sure the has work for you yonder.” He hurried away to the break in the poop and walked beneath it to find the door to the Captain’s cabin open. From within came Lieutenant Rogers’s voice, angry and disgusted. Harry knocked at the door and waited until his senior snapped, “Yes? Oh, Mister Heron, come in. Make your report, lad.”

  Quickly Harry gave his report and asked for instructions, adding, “We have lost a number of our hands, sir: four dead and five wounded with one of our boys missing. Perhaps we could take some volunteers from among the convicts?”

  “What? Oh, yes. I will signal Captain Blackwood to that effect.” The Lieutenant gave Harry an appraising look. “Set the to assist the ship’s own mates to setting the damage to rights; then signal Spartan with my request.”

  This angered the Maid of Selsey’s master. “You have no authority to take any hands from this ship,” he growled.

  Ignoring this intervention, the Lieutenant said to Harry, “Carry on, Mister Heron, you have your orders.”

  As Harry left, closing the door behind him, he heard the Lieutenant say, “And you, sir, have no power to prevent me or my Captain calling for volunteers from among your seamen or prisoners.” The door closed on the rest of what sounded to be the beginnings of an argument. Emerging onto the deck, Harry quickly carried out his orders and managed to get a signal hoisted with the request that volunteers might be found to replace any losses. It was acknowledged from the Spartan, and he set about helping the wounded and restoring calm in the prison holds.

  It was here that another idea struck him, and he sought out the Lieutenant. “Sir, we have a number of women below decks, and many of them are skilled in tending the sick. May I have your permission to employ some to assist with the wounded. That will free the men to help with more pressing matters. There is also the matter of damage to the main bilge pump, sir, and we have four feet of water in the hold.”

  “Have we, by God,” exclaimed the Lieutenant. “Very well, Mister Heron, then get some men to assist with the pumps.” He fired a question at the ship’s master. “Have we a carpenter aboard?” Receiving an affirmative reply, he said, “Come, Mister Heron, let us attend to this immediately. Find me this carpenter and bring him to the hold. Get some volunteers from among the women for the wounded. I will deal with the men.”

  “We may have need of some boys as well, sir,” Harry dared to venture. “There is one here I know. Taken for a poacher, sir, but I think I can vouch for him and he for others.”

  “Eh?” The Lieutenant frowned. “Yes, by heaven, you’re right.” He laughed. “Cheeky devil you are, Mister Heron. Very well, fetch your young poacher friend.”

  The signal to Spartan received a somewhat more direct reply in the form of the first Lieutenant, Mister Bell himself, arriving in one of the launches. He confronted the master.

  “I have here a requisition from Captain Blackwood for volunteers to fill our vacancies. You will find it in order, sir.”

  Mister Bell cast an eye around the deck. “It will no doubt relieve you of the burden of provisioning them for the remainder of this voyage. I will speak to Lieutenant Rogers, and a boat will be sent to collect the volunteers on my signal. I trust I have your cooperation in this.”

  “It seems I have little choice,” the master replied angrily. “By all means relieve me of some of these scum—gallows bait all of them.” He turned and stomped away to confer with his surviving mates.

  Several hours later, Harry and the remaining men from the Spartan returned to their own ship. Harry seated tiredly and proudly in the sternsheets, his torn and blood stained uniform a testament to their achievement. Forward, Ferghal huddled in the bows with several other men and boys, among them Cormac Murphy. Though still in his prison rags, Cormac was already looking about him with hopeful eagerness as he tasted the clean fresh air of the sea around them. Between the rowers, watched by the red-coated Marines, sat or crouched another twenty men and boys. Like Cormac, their eyes showed hope for the first time in many months as they peered at the towering bulk of the Spartan.

  Later, in his hammock, Harry drifted into sleep, the image of the shattered corsair dragging her human cargo to their deaths as she sank, borne down by the weight of her guns and ballast, vivid in his mind. He sent a prayer heavenward for their souls as he sank into an exhausted slumber. At least he had been instrumental in the release of a few unfortunates from the misery of the convict ship. Perhaps it balanced the account.

  Chapter 20

  Ocean Landfall

  “Land ho!” The cry from the lookout brought a pause to the ship’s activities. Word spread to the carpenter and his mates as they checked the frames and timbers deep within the hull, to the sail makers as they worked on the repairs to the heavy weather canvas, to the gunner as he and his mates checked their stock of cartridges, and finally, to the midshipmen in their improvised classroom near the gratings beneath the boat tiers.

  “That will be the island of Ascension, sir,” the master told the first Lieutenant. “A nice piece of navigation, if I may say so, sir.”

  “I shall return the compliment, Mister Wentworth,” the Captain said as he emerged from his great cabin. “It is thanks largely to your care with the charts and the handling of the ship that we have reached our destination safely and in a timely manner.”

  The Captain turned to the first Lieutenant. “Very well, Thomas, we will lie off the island at Georgetown.” To the master he said, “You have visited this place, have you not, Mister Wentworth? What does it offer?”

  “There is good water here, so we may replenish our casks, and the prison ships will be able take on fresh water and other supplies they need, sir.”

  “Excellent news, Mister Wentworth; now, bear in mind, men, that this is the last opportunity before we reach the Cape of Good Hope. We shall no doubt be called upon to assist the other ships since there is no harbour here, and the boats must land through surf and navigate it once again when loaded. If we are fortunate and the winds remain as they are, we may have little difficulty since the landing beach in the town is shielded from the oceanic swell.”

  He paused then added, “The anchorage is difficult, but has good holding: sandy bottom with rocky outcrops. Very exposed and quite shallow, but the ground drops away steeply once you clear the island.”

  The sun was dipping below the horizon as the ships crept into the anchorage guarded by the low-lying fort crouched on one side of the town. The bang of the guns as the salute rolled back and forth between the Spartan and the fort raised flocks of sea birds screaming and wheeling from their nests.

  “By the deep seven,” the leadsman’s voice carried from the fore chains. “Rocky bottom with this line.”

  “That will do.” The Captain nodded. “Bring us into the wind, Mister Wentworth. Let go the anchor, Mister Bell!”

&nb
sp; The helm went hard over, and the sails vanished from her yards as the topmen clawed the heavy canvas into a harbour stow. Men swarmed in the ordered chaos as the ship paid off with the wind at her head and came to rest with her great hull lying broadside to the land and her head angled to the wind. The response from forward was followed by the splash as the anchor plunged into the depths below the ship.

  “Have the leadsman sound all round us if you please, Mister Beasley,” ordered Captain Blackwood. “According to the charts, this anchorage has a number of shoals, and I have no desire to discover any of them.”

  While the sails were being furled and stowed, an awning was spread over the quarterdeck, and now the smell of food from the galley chimney made Harry’s stomach growl.

  “Boat putting out from the shore, sir,” Midshipman Peterson called.

  “Side party, stand to!”

  Harry hurried to join the group at the entry port as his duty required, now that the ship was at anchor. Around him, several sideboys, a Marine guard, and a took their positions to greet the visitor. Overhead the tackles were already hoisting out the ship’s boats, with the largest launches and the barge required to fetch water and livestock for the ship, if any were available.

  By the time the shore boat arrived alongside, order was rapidly being restored and its occupants clambered aboard to be greeted by the fifes and drums of the Marines with the stamping of feet as the guard moved to attention and presented arms. To Harry’s amusement the side party seemed to be enveloped in a fog of pipe clay from their belts and pouches as they stamped through their salute.

  A portly gentleman in the uniform of an artillery Colonel clambered through the entry port first followed by several other soldiers and an elderly Lieutenant in naval rig.

  Greeting the visitors, Captain Blackwood escorted them aft to his great cabin, saying as he passed Harry, “An unusual post for a Colonel of the artillery, is it not, to be governor in such an outpost?”

  From the response, Harry gathered that the Colonel in question held the position temporarily while the civil incumbent had been recalled to London. Then his Lieutenant dismissed him to his supper and some rest before he was required to stand watch later. Already the Lieutenants and the senior midshipmen were drifting aft to join the Captain and his guests, and soon the Captains of the two frigates and the brig that made up the escort would join them.

  THE SUN HAD NOT LONG CLEARED THE HORIZON when the first boats were dispatched toward the shore. The visitors of the previous night had lingered late and departed for the shore in darkness. The Lieutenant assured Thomas Bell that the boat crew knew their way by the feel of the currents. This was proved by a check at dawn with the large signal telescope, which showed the boat drawn up on the beach in the small inlet that formed the harbour.

  The barge was loaded with the empty casks, and the first Lieutenant instructed the second. “Take care that the men scrub the casks properly, David. We can’t afford to have salt remaining in them when they are refilled. We do not know what reception we may have at the Cape, and we will need all the water we get here.”

  “As you say, Mister Bell,” Lieutenant Rae answered. “I have the cooper and his mates with me to ensure they are properly found when we are ready to fill them.” He glanced across at the nearest of the prison ships. “Do you wish me to check that our consorts take adequate supplies as well?”

  “That may be wise.” The first followed his companion’s gaze to the prison ship nearest their position. He drew his breath sharply at the sight of ragged figures being herded together in the ship’s waist while others manned the deck pump. “It looks as if they are at least attempting to cleanse the people in their charge.” He shook his head sadly. “They may be gaol bait and the sweepings of the gutters, but I question the need to use such force on fettered and restrained men and women, and some children besides.”

  Lieutenant Rae held his peace. He knew that the first Lieutenant’s believed firm handling and respect of the men bore better fruit than brutality and fear. He did not entirely agree with his senior, but he also did not approve of senseless bullying or the abuse of authority. Instead, he said, “I have arranged for some of the ship’s boys to accompany me, sir. They may do some of the simpler tasks, and I can use them to run errands and seek out the suppliers of the provender we require.”

  “Aye, that will keep them well occupied.” Thomas Bell was, at heart, a kindly man and regarded the welfare of the ship’s contingent of boys in a fatherly manner. He added, as the thought came to him, “Try to secure us several pigs and some hens, or at least obtain a price for them.” He handed the Lieutenant a small purse. “Perhaps you and the others in the wardroom will join me in purchasing some for our own use.”

  Mister Rae nodded. “I shall do so. Mister Beasley and the others have already given me some coin and a list of things they would like to enjoy. If you’ll pardon me, sir, I shall put your proposal to them.”

  He returned a few minutes later stowing a fatter purse into his pocket as Midshipman Bowles arrived, also armed with a purse and a list of items the gunroom needed to bolster their rations.

  Harry stopped Ferghal as that worthy lad made his way to the side. “Going ashore, Ferghal?”

  “Aye, Master Harry.” Ferghal grinned and touched his forelock. “I am accompanying the cooper, though he says I may only carry his tools and scrub the casks.”

  “You have all the luck,” Harry said. “My seniors have decided that they have the right to a shore visit and not those of us still under instruction, as Mister Barclay puts it so politely. Mister Bowles is to buy us some fresh eggs and perhaps a chicken or two for our table—assist him if you can.” He finished with a wink.

  “O’Connor.” The second’s voice cut across their conversation. “Into the barge with you now, or the gunner’s daughter will be seeking your kisses.”

  Though the threat was more for effect than real, Ferghal saluted Harry and ran to obey the Lieutenant, scrambling down the long tumblehome and into the barge, already waiting to slip its painter.

  The day passed in a frenzy of hard labour. Even those who remained aboard had much to do. The entire content of the hold seemed in need of moving and stowing. Harry watched and sometimes leant his own slender weight to the work as the casks of salted beef and pork were moved and secured to make room for the new stores. The water casks required similar attention, with the purser, the boatswain, and the fourth Lieutenant checking each cask and its contents carefully. Among these, two were found to be leaking and only partly filled. These were swung out and manhandled to where they could be hauled up on deck and repaired, then carefully cleaned and sent ashore for refilling.

  On deck, the sun blazed down on the toiling men; the awning spread over the quarterdeck and poop did little to alleviate the incessant heat. Only the steady breeze gave them some relief.

  The stores began arriving just before dinnertime, eight bells in the forenoon watch. There were fresh vegetables in crates, live chickens, and even several pigs among the various containers. Then came the casks of preserved salted pork and a quantity of pickled vegetables, much to the seamen’s disgust. In between these, the ship’s barge travelled back and forth with the empty water casks to be laboriously refilled and the full ones to be stowed.

  Similar scenes were evident around each of the ships at anchor, though the prison ships seemed to take on somewhat less than the men o’ war or the Indiamen. By dusk, Harry and the other midshipmen were exhausted and had barely the energy to eat their supper before tumbling into their hammocks.

  “What a place,” Ferghal told Harry as he cleared the remains of the midshipmen’s meal. The sun had reddened his face painfully, and he had already endured a scolding from the surgeon. “The whole island seems made of some black grit, and the grass grows but sparsely. Even the trees struggle to survive. They say it is a volcano, though I cannot see it.”

  “Well, I shall have the chance to see it for myself tomorrow
,” Harry said. “I am to accompany Mister Rogers and the Reverend Bentley to Fort Hayes to collect mail for onward passage and to deliver our own for transport homeward when a ship serves.”

  HARRY AND KIT TANNER HAD DISCOVERED THAT MR BENTLEY was a fountain of knowledge when it came to bird and animal life. In fact, the reverend gentleman was an accomplished ornithologist and became quite passionate when observing species he had not before encountered. The brief visit to Ascension provided an opportunity to add to his extensive journal of notes on the variety of birds found nesting there.

  He enlisted Harry to make detailed drawings of some of the specimens that Kit, a dead shot with a fowling piece, managed to shoot. This gave an opportunity to go ashore with him once Spartan had taken in all she required and waited only for the completion of some repairs to the Maid of Selsey, which her master, truculent as ever, described as “minor matters occasioned by that late assault.”

  “Now then, Mister Heron,” the parson called. “Follow me, please. I am advised there is a nesting site nearby of a bird I have previously observed only in flight. You too, Mister Tanner, but cautiously—I do not wish to have them fly away.”

  Harry glanced at Kit and grinned. With a wink to his friend he replied, “Aye, aye, sir.” He followed carefully behind the parson as they picked their way up a small slope.

  “Ah….” The parson had stopped and was peering over the top of an outcrop at something beyond. “Make no sudden noise or movement—we have found a nesting Atlantisia Elpenor. They are now quite rare, but my references say it was once extremely abundant here.”

  Harry eased himself into a position from which he too would be able to see the bird. “I see it, sir, but what makes it so remarkable?” he asked in a quiet voice.