by Derek Yetman
The Beothuk Expedition
DEREK YETMAN
The
Beothuk
EXPEDITION
Copyright © 2011 Derek Yetman
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Yetman, Derek, 1955-
The Beothuk expedition / Derek Yetman.
ISBN 978-1-55081-360-9
1. Cartwright, George, 1739-1819 – Fiction.
2. Beothuk Indians – Fiction. I. Title.
PS8597.E78B46 2011 C813'.54 C2011-906012-4
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for Brenda
Contents
Jonah Squibb
Hugh Palliser
Jonah Squibb
Hugh Palliser
Jonah Squibb
John Cartwright
Jonah Squibb
Nehemiah Grimes
Jonah Squibb
John Cartwright
Jonah Squibb
George Cartwright
Jonah Squibb
John Cousens
Jonah Squibb
Israel Frost
Jonah Squibb
Friday Froggat
Jonah Squibb
Neville Stow
Jonah Squibb
Samuel Cooper
Jonah Squibb
John Cartwright
Jonah Squibb
Amelia Taverner
Jonah Squibb
Author’s Note
Jonah Squibb
The first faint aura of dawn seeped through the open ports, purple light giving shape and substance to the silent men around me. They were as I had imagined them in darkness, kneeling or crouching by the great guns, eyes straining for the first glimpse of their target in the foggy gloom. The cry of a gull and the creak of our timbers were the only sounds to disturb the awakening world. By slow degrees the shoreline emerged and the gun captains shifted their aim with a muffled clank of iron bars and the low rumble of wooden wheels.
Silence again as the shore grew distinct. I judged the moment with care and allowed another minute to pass. Then, at my nod, the gunner bellowed his command. His last word was neatly amputated by the deafening thunder of our quarter broadside. Teeth and eyeballs rattled in our skulls as the six great guns belched tongues of flame and shrieking metal. Behind it the din of shouting sailors and panicked livestock filled the air. Above it all, I heard the gunner cry: “Crows up, four!” Men and boys jumped to their tools, bare backs straining as number four gun, its barrel akimbo, was levered and cursed back onto its carriage.
“Swab and load!” roared the gunner. Smoke from the barrage drifted inboard, searing eyes and throats and obscuring my view of our target. A gap in the haze revealed it for an instant— long enough for me to damn the sight of it: Every one of our eighteen-pound balls had gone wide or high, smashing into the wall of rock and causing a small avalanche of shale. I turned my attention inboard in time to see a terrified pig collide with the legs of a man carrying shot. Down he went, iron balls rumbling away and the squealing pig running harum scarum along the gundeck. A ship’s boy abandoned his post and gave chase, narrowly dodging a vicious swipe from the marine guard. Boy and pig disappeared into the smoke and clamour as the guns, reloaded and primed, were run out for a second salvo. At my signal they bucked like iron horses, men clinging to the side tackles to check their recoil. The concussion entered my ears like a sailmaker’s needle and through the billowing smoke I saw another half-dozen showers of rock fall from the face of the cliff.
A murmuring hush crept over the fifty-odd men as I gazed at the unmolested barrels that had been the object of our gunnery. I was not completely deaf, for I could still hear the pig, along with the hoots and jeers from the weather deck above us. I turned and not a man would meet my eye. The stench of powder, sweat and animal shit filled the airless space.
“House your guns, Mister Bolger,” I sighed, loud enough for all to hear. “No doubt the enemy has injured himself with laughter.” Sheepish grins and averted eyes were the only reply. “Powder to the magazine and see to number four straight away.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” The gunner touched his forehead with a dirty finger.
“And have the pigs and goats returned to the manger,” I added.
The men cleared a path to the ladders and a moment later I emerged onto the upper deck and into daylight. I turned from the reproachful sight of the empty barrels on Southside Beach, reflecting that six years of peace had brought a new breed of sailor into the Navy—one who was slow to learn on what his survival depended. A pair of midshipmen walked past me, stifling grins as they made their way astern. On the quarterdeck, Mr. Tench, the second lieutenant, was gazing at the beach in smug amusement. I filled my pipe and moved to the larboard rail.
St. John’s had changed but little since my last visit. A familiar eye could see that old Fort William had been strengthened and a new battery laid at Crow’s Nest, though it was still the acres of drying fish that marked this outpost of empire. Wooden flakes ringed the harbour and blanketed the hills, their expanse broken here and there by a chimney or a roof. Such was the demand for space to dry fish that even the houses and roads were canopied with rough platforms, all laden with the salted wealth of the sea.
The harbour was now fully awake thanks to our antics, with schooners and brigs raising sail or signal or pumping their bilges. There was activity at every turn, for the ships were anchored only as long as it took to unload their catch or to stow the cured fish for a voyage to Portugal or the Indies. Gigs and dories moved among them, ferrying the men and supplies on which the fleet depended. My gaze moved along the hills and beyond the patchwork of flakes, to where tall stands of pine and spruce marked the edge of the island’s great wilderness.
That dark and unexplored forest was the subject of much speculation amongst the men of my ship. Few of them had seen anything wilder than the park of an English manor, and tall tales and superstitions abounded on the lower decks, much to the amusement of the older hands. The Newfoundland woods were vast and unknown, to be sure, but as a boy I’d wandered freely there and seen nothing of the fairies or fearsome creatures conjured by simple minds. I smiled at the thought, unaware that the forest held things more terrible than even a sailor could imagine.
I was born on the Newfoundland station and, at the age of twenty-four, had spent much of my life at sea. I’d recently been posted as third lieutenant of the Guernsey, a fifty-gun man-of-war that had been launched well before my birth. Indeed, many judged her to be the slowest, leakiest tub in the whole of His Majesty’s Navy, a distinction for which she had much competition. I’d sailed on her before, plying the Channel in pursuit of smugglers and keeping an eye on the French. It was in that storm-battered service that she’d become increasingly derelict. A cruise to the West Indies and a warm engagement with a Spanish privateer had done her no fa
vours. Lately her poor joints had worked themselves loose and the movement of her parts required the rigging to be bowsed taut every other day. It was in this condition that she had sailed to the island as the flagship of Captain Hugh Palliser, the naval governor.
Our orders were to patrol the coast and to regulate the fishery, though in truth, the Guernsey spent as much time in port as she did at sea. Those long summer days of awaiting or undergoing repairs passed slowly for me, the ship being well manned and my duties light when we were not under sail. The officers stood their watches and went about a routine that was established by custom and decree, and yet I found time heavy upon my hands.
My principal distraction from the boredom of harbour life, aside from gunnery practice, was reading. I’d brought with me a number of books and with so few duties, had finished all but two of them. That very morning I’d resolved to read the remaining volumes in alternate fashion, in the vague hope of prolonging the pleasure. One was a fine octavo edition of Henry Fielding’s Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, full bound in polished calf. The other was a marbled board reprint of Travels Through France and Italy, from the former naval surgeon, Tobias Smollett. It was on the 15th day of August, the very day that we departed St. John’s, that I began to read these narratives of travel in foreign parts. I had hoped to find in them a spiritual escape from the confines of the ship, but I was not to be so well rewarded. In fact, the authors’ remarks on the human condition might well have been made from an observation of life on board the ancient Guernsey.
And so, on that August morning, as the sun rose and the shadows shortened, the order came to strike our moorings and prepare to sail on the falling tide. Boats were lowered and oarsmen bent to the task of towing our ship from the crowded harbour. I took my place on the quarterdeck, enjoying the first stir of excitement that precedes a welcome voyage. We passed through the anchorage in an orderly manner until we were into the Narrows and the boats were hoisted aboard. As the topsails fell, the deck came to life beneath our feet. Drawing abreast of the Devil’s Cleft, that great vertical slash in the rock of Signal Hill, my ears fetched the roar of the sea from deep within. We were courting a westerly breeze, though faint, and once outside the Narrows, Mr. John Cartwright, our first lieutenant, called for all canvas. This was done handily enough, but my practiced eye detected a sloppy effort on the mainsail yard. One of the hands was a trifle slow in letting go his reefing lines and Frost, the boatswain, was quick to address him.
“Ahoy there, Greening!” he boomed. “Shall I send up your hammock, sir? Look lively, you whore’s egg, or you’ll know the taste of my rope, by God!” His words had their intended effect and young Greening scurried up the shroud to assist in setting the topgallant. I knew the lad to be Newfoundland born, and though he’d been raised on the water, he was unaccustomed to the precise workings of a man-o-war. But he did show promise, which was why the boatswain threatened him so frequently.
The Guernsey responded to the light airs as well as she could, her every timber groaning as the helm went over. For a long minute she wallowed indecisively. Then, ever so slowly, she turned her bow northward like an old whale that instinctively follows its path of migration. In fact, the ship had made the voyage north many times before and may have retained some sense of where her destination lay.
We settled on our course and I looked to the weather rail where Captain Palliser stood, his eyes hard fast upon the sails. He was a tall man of about forty-five years, his hair graying but his eyes as sharp as a seahawk’s. I had come to know him as a fine seaman and a fair and reasonable officer in the bargain. He had been at sea from the age of eleven and had acquitted himself well as lieutenant of the Essex in an engagement off Toulon in 1744. He later took command of the Weazle sloop, where he found the sea room to demonstrate his full abilities. In short order he’d captured four French privateers, a feat that had earned him a captain’s epaulets and command of a seventy-gun ship of war, all at the ripe old age of twenty-five. A misfortune befell him, however, on a cruise to Dominica. The ship’s armourer carelessly struck fire to an arms chest, igniting the cartridge boxes and discharging every musket and pistol in the chest. The armourer and his mate were killed outright and the captain was badly wounded by three musket balls to the back, hip and shoulder. Having youth and health on his side, he recovered but remained lame in the left leg, and suffered great pain when the weather turned cold and damp.
In his five years as governor, Captain Palliser had introduced many improvements to the trade and defence of the colony, including new laws to govern shipping and a customs house for St. John’s. And yet there were those who did not agree with his ideas or his methods of implementing them. These included the island’s merchants, who were long accustomed to doing as they pleased. I was not familiar with all of his reforms but there was one that I would soon know more about.
Our destination that day was the harbour of Bonavista and I judged that it would take us a fortnight to get there in such an inferior breeze. Still, I was happy at the prospect of time to read my books and to study Mr. Cook’s new coastal charts. That able gentleman had been the sailing master on my old ship, the Northumberland, in 1762, when he’d been kind enough to provide me with instruction in the navigational sciences. For that and for his patience, I was forever in his debt. Since that time James Cook had served the governor as marine surveyor of the island and Labrador. As master and commander of HMS Grenville he’d thoroughly charted the local waters, named harbours and even discovered new islands. The previous governor had persuaded the Admiralty to publish his charts, and now he was about to sail from Plymouth as captain of the Endeavour, bound for a lengthy cruise of exploration in the South Pacific. I was pleased that the reputation of my old teacher was so rapidly advancing.
The purpose of our own voyage that morning was to rendezvous with the frigate Liverpool, which was patrolling the northeast coast of the island. From Bonavista, we would proceed in company to the Isle of Fogo and join the other ships of the governor’s squadron. These were the frigates Lark and Tweed, of thirty-two guns apiece, which were returning from provisioning the garrisons at Fort Pitt and Fort York in Labrador. Those new defences were another of Captain Palliser’s ideas, undertaken to protect British interests and to prevent the French from trading with the natives. Another motive, no doubt, was to discourage settlement on that coast, for the governor viewed any increase in the year-round population as a threat to the Navy’s supply of able seamen. Mr. Palliser was of the view that the migratory fishery was an ideal training ground for sailors, and those returning to England from the island were perfect candidates for recruiters or the press gangs. To me this seemed a flawed argument, for could not a larger resident population produce its share of sailors as well? And what of the benefits of year-round settlement to the colony’s defence? Such lofty matters were not my concern, however, and my mind turned to other things as we altered course to greet a subtle change of wind.
I was happy to be at sea again and not only to escape the monotony of the harbour. In truth, I had a particular desire to leave St. John’s because of melancholy thoughts that had troubled me while we lay at anchor. I had tried to ignore them but they were a constant shadow, plaguing me by day and disturbing my sleep at night. The reason for this was the memory of an event that had occurred there some six years before, on my last visit to the place. It was then that a letter had come into my hand, a letter that had served to change the course of my young life. It came from Amy Taverner, my childhood sweetheart at Trinity, and I had welcomed it with a joyful heart. My happiness was brief, however. I was not prepared for what she had written, not for the blow of learning that she had become engaged to another. My youthful world had collapsed like a mast shot through.
Because of that letter I had turned my back to Amy Taverner and to my home, giving my life over to the sea and to His Majesty’s service. It was a life that suited me well enough, but after six years I had begun to pine for Newfoundland again. For what reason, I was
at a loss to say. Was it the beauty of unspoiled Creation, the vast forests or the soaring capes and headlands? Or was it the very sea and air, those servants of nature’s whims? It may have been the remembrance of my childhood or a longing for the happiness that I had been denied. In any event, I was drawn to this place as if by a spell, and more than once I’d felt like a fool for my attachment to this remote rock in the ocean. And yet the bond was real and the urge to return could not be ignored. But now I found it nearly as painful to be here as it had been to stay away. Six years had passed and still the wound refused to heal.
On this particular evening, I did as I’d done many times and tried to put thoughts of Amy Taverner from my mind. She was but a ghost from my past and one best forgotten if I was ever to be at peace again. Here now was the reality of my life— the lift of the Guernsey’s quarterdeck, the island to windward and the great expanse of sea rolling out to meet the sky. It was all that I could wish for, and yet my desire to believe it did not make my heart grow lighter.
St. John’s fell away as we lumbered north, turrs and hagdowns skimming our wake, our bow wave white, sails snapping in the uneven breeze. The dying sun lay off the larboard beam and lit the sea in a thousand jewels of light, broken only by the long swell that rose and fell between ship and shore. I watched as Skerries Bight and Small Point slipped past and Sugar Loaf Head loomed on our quarter. The ship’s bell had just sounded the half-hour when I heard a low voice from near at hand. I turned to see the boatswain standing on the gangway, his grey head ducking in salute. He cast a wary eye at the captain’s back and asked if the gunroom might have the pleasure of my company. My watch on deck was hours away and I accepted most happily, for Frost and the other warrant officers had at times invited me to their mess for a turn at cards or to share a bottle. It was kind of them, though I knew it was done out of misguided pity.
