by David McDine
‘Good morning, Hezikiah. Do I take it that you know what’s in the Gazette?’
‘That I do, sir. Mind you, I ’aven’t read it meself. I can read orlright but not to understand it, like.’
‘Hmm, well perhaps you’ll be good enough to let me have my copy and I’ll read out the gist of it to you so you’ll be able to spread the good news even wider, as it were.’
The rector was very well aware that by telling the carrier one would in effect be spreading the news in an ever-increasing circle, as the man was well known for exchanging news and gossip with everyone he met along the way.
Hezikiah nodded enthusiastically. ‘That’d be kind of you, your reverence. Now, let’s see, ’ere’s your copy, marked wiv your name, ain’t it?’
The Reverend Anson laid the paper on the back of the cart, quickly scanned the front page columns of advertisements and turned the page.
‘Ah, here it is! A letter written by my son’s divisional captain, Captain Hoare, to the Admiralty and reprinted in full by the look of it …’
He cleared his throat and read:
“To inform your Lordships of the successful taking of a French privateer off the port of Seagate by gunboats of the Special Sea Fencible Detachment under my command.”
‘That’s my son’s command of course. This chap is merely the figurehead, as it were. It wouldn’t do for Oliver to sing his own praises.’
He read on:
“The privateer Égalité, of twelve guns, out of Normandy, has been a regular raider along the coasts of Kent and Sussex for some months past, boarding, taking or robbing and sinking a number of small craft and causing disruption to trade.”
‘That’s true. According to what fellow clerics have told me this wretched Frenchman had been causing mayhem for a good while. And it was the same privateer that my Oliver tried to cut out in Normandy, you know, when he was wounded and made prisoner.’
Hezikiah nodded. ‘I remember that well enough, your reverence, on account of me bein’ the one what brought him ’ome from Dover …’
‘So you were, so you were. Anyway, to return to the captain’s report:
“The operation, which I had been planning for some time in line with intelligence gathered by me from westward, was timed to coincide with the privateer’s predicted appearance in the area of our Channel ports. It was carried out by two of the new gunboats currently being trialled by the said detachment under my command, and it is respectfully suggested that its success was largely due to the manoeuvrability and armament of these craft and of the determination and high level of training of my Sea Fencible crews.”’
The rector looked up, a cloud of doubt on his face. His understanding was that his son had trained the detachment, but perhaps praise for his part in all this was yet to come … He read on again, but silently now:
“The privateer which was in the act of attempting to capture a merchantman was herself taken by surprise in a carefully-planned operation, fired upon by my gunboats, boarded and taken after a stiff action following which the master of Égalité, styling himself Capitaine Lapraik, surrendered his sword to me. Fifteen of my men were wounded, some seriously. Of the French, some thirty were killed or wounded, and the remaining thirty-five, including their captain, taken prisoner and handed over by me to a military detachment I summoned from Shorncliffe for escort to the Medway hulks.”
Now the rector was astonished. This was nothing like the version that had been relayed to him by fellow clergymen in Seagate and Folkestone. It was Oliver who had planned and led the operation, yet he received no mention!
But then his eyes fell on the faint praise of Captain Arthur Veryan St Cleer Hoare’s penultimate paragraph before his plea for prize money:
“I have the honour to commend to your Lordships the steadiness and resolve of the S F and mention the support I received from Lieutenant Anson, of the Seagate Special Detachment, and Lieutenant Coney, of the Impress Service, under my command.”
Working himself up into a rage, the rector shouted: ‘Support? Support! It’s outrageous! He’s damned Oliver with faint praise – humiliated him. God damn the man!’ and he tore the newspaper into shreds and flung them into the air.
Never having heard a man of the cloth utter an oath before, and certainly not one invoking his maker, Hezikiah looked askance, asking nervously: ‘I take it Master Oliver’s boss ’as claimed all the credit for hisself, rector?’
But he got no answer. The rector of Hardres-with-Farthingham had already turned on his heel and was striding back up his driveway kicking stones this way and that as he went and muttering angrily to himself.
5
A Floating Gin Palace
The prison hulks lay closely anchored along the river below the village of Gillingham in line of sight of one another. Anson presumed that was so that from each one a watch could be kept on those either side to spot any trouble and render mutual support if required.
He recognised once-proud British warships – Bristol, Hero, Eagle, Camperdown – and noted a couple of captured ships he did not know. All masts, rigging and sails had been removed and apparently haphazard superstructures, erected to house prison staff and stores, cluttered the top decks.
The hulks were bedecked overall but with washing rather than flags hanging from lines slung all over the deck, and Anson mouthed a phrase his father had often used in his sermons: ‘How are the mighty fallen …’
He knew of the hulks only by ill repute – as overcrowded hell-holes often accommodating far more than twice as many men as they were supposed to and with a correspondingly high death rate.
It was rumoured that poorly paid guards were susceptible to bribes and that the chaos resulting from such large numbers of prisoners made it relatively easy to conceal escapes for some time – time that enabled determined men to make a complete get-away.
The boat’s crew were used to carrying visitors to and from the hulks and when they reached the third in line they shipped oars, the coxswain grabbed the painter and jumped for the wooden jetty that had been constructed at water level amidships.
Once the boat had been secured, Anson clambered onto the jetty carrying the canvas bag over his shoulder. Two militiamen standing guard there with muskets came to attention and the coxswain knuckled his forehead. ‘We’ve to wait and take you back once you’ve finished with these here Frogs, sir.’
‘Very good, coxswain. I’ll not keep you too long. No doubt these guards will prevent any prisoners from taking my place while you wait …’
The coxswain grinned. ‘Aye, aye, sir!’
Anson turned and made his way over the creaking jetty to the long stairway that led up to the top deck. This was a novelty – he had never gone on board ship up a rickety stair like this before.
He noted that a galleried walkway had been built around the outside of the ship, just above the high tide water-line, he supposed to allow patrolling guards to inspect for escape holes.
As he climbed the stairway, Anson saw that the open gun ports were covered with iron grills and at several of them he glimpsed wan faces staring out: French prisoners.
A vile smell that appeared to emanate from the rotting gash encircling the hulk, moulding timbers, boiled cabbage, urine and worse engulfed him and almost made him retch. He paused for a split second with his hand to his mouth before continuing.
At the top of the stair he stepped on deck, touching his hand to his bicorn hat and looking round for the officer of the watch who would have welcomed visitors aboard a proper warship in commission. But only the sergeant of the guard awaited him. Noting Anson’s uniform he snapped to attention, saluted and enquired: ‘Lieutenant Anson, sir? I’m to show you around this floatin’ gin palace.’
Anson had a great respect for the marines but could not help feeling a little miffed that the commanding officer had not seen fit to greet him when he had clearly been informed by Captain Wills in advance of his visit.
‘Thank you, sergeant. Obliged to you, but I’d lik
e to make my number with the captain first. Lieutenant Packham, is it not?’
‘That’s him orlright, but no can do, sir. He’s bin ashore since yesterday on what he calls business and we ain’t sure when he’ll be back. P’raps one of the midshipmen will do instead, like?’
Anson could imagine what the calibre of officer appointed to command a floating prison must be like and guessed that Packham’s business ashore might be less than official. But he held his tongue and nodded curtly.
The sergeant acknowledged by touching hand to hat and called to a nearby seaman: ‘Double along and fetch one of the mids!’
While waiting, Anson clasped his hands behind his back and looked around him at the higgledy-piggledy structures on the hulk’s once-immaculate upper deck.
After a few minutes a dishevelled and spotty midshipman emerged from one of the hut-like buildings looking as if he had just been roused from a deep sleep, which no doubt he had.
He hurried over to Anson, raised his hand to salute and appeared startled to discover that his hat was missing.
Anson, normally of a tolerant nature where youngsters were involved, was growing a trifle irritated.
‘Mister …?’
‘B-blair, sir.’
‘Is it customary to appear hatless when on duty on board, Mister Blair?’
The boy answered hesitatingly and with the faint trace of an Edinburgh accent: ‘No, sir, sorry, sir! It had slipped my mind that we were to expect a visitor, sir …’
On board a proper navy ship the youngster would have been mast-headed, but this hulk had no masts, so Anson treated him to a withering stare instead.
‘I suggest you take immediate steps to reunite yourself with your hat, Mister Blair, and make a note to yourself not to be parted from it again, visitors or no.’
‘Yes, sir, I will, sir …’
‘And meanwhile the sergeant here will show me around this, er, ship, he being in possession of his hat.’
Anson registered an amused grunt from the sergeant as the quivering midshipman made to touch his absent hat, faltered, and hastened away.
Catching the marine’s eye, Anson raised his eyebrows in mock exasperation.
When they were alone he quizzed the sergeant about the crew and the make-up of the guard force. He learned that apart from the absent captain there was a master’s mate, young Blair and another midshipman, fifteen seamen and four boys.
Normally a lieutenant of marines commanded the guard force of a handful of marines backed up by a platoon of militiamen from the Midlands, the sergeant told him, but his officer was ashore in hospital with some sort of fever he had picked up aboard the hulk. That sounded ominous and Anson wondered how many Frenchmen went down with such illnesses in this malodorous floating prison.
‘Are the prisoners compliant?’
‘Most of them, yes, sir, but there’s more than eight hundred and you can be sure there’s plenty of awkward squads among ’em. The ones you’ll see are pretty much civilised, as Frogs go. But down on the bottom deck there’s the lowest of the low.’
Anson asked: ‘How so? Who are they?’
‘They’re the real dregs. Gamblers who’ve lost everything – any possessions they had when they were captured, their bedding, clothes. Even their food – not just today’s ration, but tomorrow’s, next week’s. You name it, those wretches will gamble it away.’
‘Good grief!’
‘Total loonies … they don’t give a shit, excuse my French, sir. Should ’ave said they don’t give a fig for the rules or anything else. They ought to be put down, if you ask me. But lying around mostly naked and without food a lot of them won’t last long anyway.’
‘But the rest conform?’
‘Pretty much. They choose from among themselves who they want to be in charge of this and that – like the cooks who take over the rations and do all the messing.’
‘Very democratic.’
‘Whatever, sir, but the real guv’nors are the bloke they call Citoyen Bardet – that’s “Citizen” to us Brits – and his committee. They pretty much say what goes on board this floatin’ paradise and there’s not a lot the captain and the guard force can do about it.’
Anson mulled over what he had been told before ordering: ‘Let’s proceed, sergeant. The boat will be waiting for me and I’d sooner not delay it too long.’
‘Right, sir, this way!’
He motioned two of the militiamen to follow and they stepped out smartly and descended a ladder to what had once been the spotless main gun-deck where they were greeted by an overpowering stench of unwashed human bodies, ordure, urine – and a din of jabbering voices that made Anson think of the Tower of Babel.
It was dark down there and it took a few moments for their eyes to adjust to the gloom.
Where once rows of great guns had dominated, Anson was confronted with an extraordinary scene of scores of prisoners, many seated on benches around the wooden walls, most wearing tattered remnants of mustard-coloured uniforms or scarecrow-like ragged clothing of every sort imaginable.
Many were chattering, reading, playing cards, sewing, working at handicrafts or painting. He spotted one man busily stitching an old boot and another surrounded by a small attentive group apparently holding a lesson of some sort. Anson was astonished to see a dancing class and a fencing lesson with wooden foils in progress in the middle of the deck.
But other prisoners were stretched out apparently asleep on or under benches and a few sat alone, heads bowed and pathetic as if overcome by melancholy.
There was a brief lull as many of the inmates paused to clock their visitors, but, evidently satisfied they were not worth further attention, the buzz broke out again and they turned back to their pursuits.
The sergeant took in the officer’s amazed look. ‘Incredible, ain’t it? You just don’t credit all the things they get up to, do yer?’
Anson shrugged. ‘Chiefly I am here to see the French officer recognised by the others as their commander – this Bardet you mentioned – but I also wished to see how the prisoners live, and I confess I find the whole scene down here quite extraordinary.’
‘They live like what you see, sir. They’re crowded, right enough, and ’tis much the same on the other decks, except those dead-beats down below that I told you about, but this lot ain’t dead and they gets fed, so it can’t be all bad, can it? As to Citizen Bardet, well, he’ll surely be here on the main gun deck – that is if he ain’t on a run ashore, heh, heh!’
‘Will this Bardet or any of the others be willing to talk to me?’
The sergeant put a hand up as if to shield his ear. ‘Not a problem, sir. It’s trying to stop the beggars talking that’s the problem!’
He pointed to a heavily-bearded, coarse-featured individual with thick curly hair, who was holding forth to a small group of fellow prisoners.
‘There he is, over there, Citizen Bardet surrounded by what he calls his committee havin’ yet another meeting I expect. Gawd knows what they find to rabbit on about dawn to dusk. Anyhow, he speaks pretty good English so you won’t have to resort to Frog-speak.’
He led the way across to the group calling: ‘Oi, you, Frenchie! Have a word with this orficer, will you? He proberly wants t’know what you’d like fer yer birthday …’
The man held up his hand to pause the meeting and turned to look Anson up and down.
He asked in heavily-accented English: ‘What can I do for you, lieutenant?’
‘You are Lieutenant Bardet?’
‘The men call me Citoyen Bardet. Did you not ’ear that we ’ad a revolution?’
‘I did, indeed. In fact I was lately in France as a prisoner myself, but I formed the opinion that all that revolutionary stuff had by now given way to using proper military parlance again. Do you tell me I am wrong?’
‘You were exchanged?’
‘No, I was wounded so had not given my parole and was able to escape with a clear conscience.’
Bardet spat on the deck. ‘Pa
role, pah! It is for cowards. You were right not to give it. I ’ave refused to give mine and so they keep me ’ere in this floating pigsty. But I, too, will escape when I am ready.’
He said it with such certainty that Anson had no doubt that’s exactly what he would do when the opportunity arose. It was, after all, what he would do himself if their places were reversed.
‘So lieutenant, why are you ’ere and what do you want with me?’
Anson cleared his throat. ‘Earlier today I attended the funeral of one of your comrades, a Lieutenant Hurel …’
The man thought for a moment before nodding. ‘Yes, I remember ’im. He was on this deck, a, ’ow-do-you-say, solitary man without especial friends, although ’e did give fencing lessons to some of the other prisoners – for a few coins. A few days ago ’e fell ill and the guards took ’im away. I am sad to ’ear that he ’as died, but not surprised. Death is never far away in the ’ulks.’
‘Yes, dead and buried, I’m afraid. We gave him an honourable funeral. Your tricolour was draped over his coffin, some words were spoken over him by one of the French burial party, and marines fired a salute over his grave.’
The Frenchman shrugged. ‘Ça ne fait rien. The words were wasted. There is no God, but at least you could say he ’as escaped the ’ulks.’
Although he was the son of a clergyman himself, Anson was not entirely sure there was a God either, but this was not the place for a philosophical discussion.
Instead he offered the canvas bag. ‘I have been asked to bring you this. It was Lieutenant Hurel’s.’
‘And what is in it?’
‘I have no idea, I have not looked in it, but I understand that it contains a few possessions he wanted you to dispose of, as you see fit.’
Bardet laughed. ‘You are very trusting, monsieur. Suppose ’e had left me a pair of pistols?’
Anson shrugged and allowed himself the ghost of a smile.
The Frenchman took the bag. ‘I doubt ’e had much to leave, but yes, I will see that ’is pitiful possessions go where they are most needed.’
