Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley

by Kenneth Roberts

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  Pepperrell, that he, Captain Dean, and Henry Dean must return to England to defend themselves against Langman's expected attacks, he explains: "'Colonel,' I said, "we know people like yourselves and these wonderful friends we've made in Portsmouth wouldn't believe Langman; but people in England aren't like that. Those around the docks believe anything they hear about people of property or position. They're too ignorant to investigateto find out the truth'" (368).

  "Telling the truth" is a common theme in virtually all of Roberts's novels. In Rabble in Arms, for example, his narrator's purpose is "to tell the truththe truth as to why wars are fought, and how they are bungled and protracted, while those who fight them lose their lives and fortunes" (577). In Boon Island, however, Roberts's "finding the truth'' theme refers to an abstract, motivating force as well as to "what actually happened." As Roberts concludes in his book: "How many of us have our Boon Islands? And how many have our Langmans? But doesn't each one of us have an inner America on which in youth his heart is set; and ifbecause of age, or greed, or weakness of will, or circumstances beyond his poor controlit escapes him, his life, to my way of thinking, has been wasted" (372).

  Thus, Roberts, a fervent nationalist all his life, maintains that America allows individuals to accomplish whatever they are capable of attaining. And while America also symbolizes the goals people wish to achieve, for Roberts Boon Island represents the courage and integrity that a person needs to confront and overcome life's inevitable adversities so he can reach these goals. Roberts summed up his feelings in a memo, written a few weeks before his death in July 1957. It read: "Boon Island is us fighting the world. We ain't got a Chinaman's chancebut with guts we can somehow lick the world." 14

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  Notes

  1. Page numbers cited in text refer to the present edition.

  2. Kenneth Roberts, Rabble in Arms (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1947), 577, hereafter cited in text; March to Quebec: Journals of the Members of Arnold's Expedition, compiled and annotated by Kenneth Roberts (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1953), 43.

  3. "Roberts Shocks Portsmouth: Famous Author Stirs Warner House Asc.," Kittery (Maine) Press, August 13, 1937, 1, 5.

  4. Kenneth Roberts, "Notes for a Discussion with Booth," August 24, 1934, Adams Manuscript Collection, Indiana University, Lilly Library.

  5. Lewis Nichols, "A Visit with Mr. Roberts," New York Times Book Review, 1 January 1956, 3.

  6. Alice Dixon Bond, "Kenneth Roberts' New Novel Proves Own View, That Writer Must Have 'Stood Up to Live,'" Boston Herald, January 15, 1956, sec. 1, p. 2.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Lewis Gannett, "Book Review," New York Herald Tribune, January 2, 1956, 11.

  9. John Deane, A Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Nottingham Galley, & c. Publish'd in 1711. Revis'd, and reprinted with additions in 1726, by John Deane, commander. [London, 1726], 28; reprinted herein; page numbers refer to the present edition; hereafter cited in text as Dean, Roberts's spelling of the name throughout Boon Island. Roberts's annotated copy is in the Kenneth Roberts Collection of the Dartmouth College Library.

  10. Kenneth Roberts, I Wanted to Write (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1949), 187.

  11. Christopher Langman, Nicholas Mellen, and George White, A True Account of the Voyage of the Nottingham-Galley of London, John Dean Commander, from the River Thames to New-England, Near which Place she was cast away on Boon-Island, December 11, 1710, by the Captain's Obstinacy, who endeavour'd to betray her to the French, or run her ashore; with an Account of the Falsehoods in the Captain's Narrative (London: Printed for S. Popping, 1711), 52; reprinted herein; page numbers refer to the present edition; hereafter cited in text as Langman.

  12. Herbert Faulkner West, "The Work of Kenneth Roberts," Colby Library Quarterly 6 (September 1962): 98.

  13. Walter Havighurst, "Kenneth Roberts' Somber Tale of Cold, Desperation," Chicago Sunday Tribune Magazine of Books, January 1, 1956, 3.

  14. Kenneth Roberts, memorandum, July 1957, Dartmouth College Library.

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  Boon Island

  Kenneth Roberts

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  With the exception of actual historical personages identified as such, the characters and incidents are entirely the product of the author's imagination and have no relation to any person or event in real life.

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  To Stephen Nason

  Vicar of St. Alfege, Greenwich

  with the gratitude and admiration of

  his American cousin

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  Chapter 1

  Greenwich, for all its faults, was a fascinating place, and I always left it with regret, especially at Trinity Term, to go up to Oxford.

  Twice a year I protested to my father that I'd be better off in Greenwich; but he wouldn't have it so. Roughly speaking, our wrangling went around and around, like moles in their devious underground wanderings; but, after the fashion of mole-holes, they seemed to arrive nowhere.

  The sum of all my contentions was that an Oxford education, so called because of the strange professors, dons, fellows and tutors to whom we were exposed, was a waste of time, if not downright dangerous.

  My father, however, insisted that no matter how much of a drunken sot a don or a tutor might be, education somehow worthy was bound to be achieved by my mere presence within the stone walls of my college, which was Christ Church, by my daily exposure to the portraits in Christ Church Hall, and to the conversations of those drunken dons, those barnacle-like fellows, all waiting for someone to die and provide them with a Livingand I

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  often wondered what idiot first applied the word "Living" to a bare existence in a miserable parsonage at the end of a muddy lane.

  "Look here, Miles," my father would say, "you defeat your own arguments against Oxford without realizing what you're doing. You want to study the writing of plays, and you complain that you're not allowed to do it, so Oxford is a bore and a waste of time. But you do do it! You belong to that Buskin Club of yours! You know Colley Cibber made a better play out of Richard III than Shakespeare did! 'Off with his head!' 'Richard is himself again.' That's Cibber: not Shakespeare!

  "You say your tutors are morose, profligate, insipid assesand you've learned it by yourself! That's a whole lot better than believing some old fool of a professor who tells you that a knowledge of chemistry is an elegant and desirable accomplishment because it was revealed to Adam by Heaven! To Adam, for God's sake! And by Heaven! Pish! Nobody's educated by that sort of teaching! All anybody does in collegeif he's fortunateis to learn how to make a start at educating himself: to change his mind if his mind needs changing."

  He was right, of course. If I'd never numbed my feet and fingers and nose in the cubicles of the Bodleian, reading the nice nastiness of Mrs. Aphra Behn and the humorless comedies of a score of imitation Shakespeares, I'd never have struck up a friendship with Neal Butler. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, I can't say, because it's possible that something worse than Boon Island might have happened to me.

  That's what I hope those who read this book will bear

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  in mind: no matter what dreadful thing a man may encounter, he might, but for the grace of God, be overwhelmed by something even more awful. I can't endure people who complain about this or that little thing; but I only reached that state of mind by sad experience.

  In the beginning, I had small use for Oxford, and its dreary dullness and monotony. I copied Dr. Atterbury's sermons until I was physically ill; I pored over grammar and rhetoric until my eyelids seemed glued togetherand I looked forward to nothing but returning to Greenwich at the end of Trinity Termto its life and its bustle, its palaces and taverns and parks, its endless traffic on the Thames.

  One of my reasons for disliking Oxfordand how I laughed, in later years, at such unreasoning follywas the fact that Trinity Term made it impossible for me to see the great fair held in Greenwich at Whitsuntide. I
never reached home until weeks after Whitsuntide, and to me a three-day fair was of more importance than anythingexcept, naturally, my father and my dinghy.

  So at the end of Trinity Term, in that memorable summer of 1710, my father had my dinghy waiting for me at the yard of the Naval Hospital, and within an hour after he had welcomed me home, I had pushed her out on the river and was being foully cursed by a hundred rivermen.

  A failing wind and the incoming tide carried me to Deptford Steps, where the river makes its great bend to the souththe bend that holds, as in a bag, the palaces and the Naval Hospital and all the taverns so famous for their whitebait dinners.

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  Even before the dinghy had touched the stone, a boy reached out for her bow, turned her sideways and drew her to the bottom step with no apparent effort. This takes strength, and it surprised me, for at first sight the boy didn't look overly strong; but when I climbed from the dinghy and we lifted her from the water to set her on the step, so that she'd be out of the way of the innumerable fishermen who were constantly on the move, he made it seem as easy as lifting out a broomstick.

  All these fisherfolk were concentrated between Ballast Quay and Billingsgatethe stretch where the incoming tide pushes whitebait by the millions against the abutments of the Naval Hospital.

  Seemingly every one of those thousandssailors, girls, gipsies, old women, dock workershad some sort of whitebait basket-trap, and was lowering it into the brown waters of the Thames and flipping it out again, so that the whole waterfront was a flurry of splashing spray.

  Above this spray hung a sort of medley of sound, caused by the groans, shouts, curses and shrieks of those who were either successful or unsuccessful in the yankings and jerkings of their traps. Their facial contortions, as they thus toiled, were something remarkable; but this particular boy would flip his wire basket from the water: then, whether the basket was empty or whether it held a glimmering flicker of those succulent little spratlings, he would glance at the whitebait fishers on either side with a sort of disarming concentration of amusement, generosity, amiability, apology ... apology, perhaps, for the smallness of his catch, or for his good fortune, or for his ineptitude, or perhaps for looking so much cleaner and neater than any of the men or boys who were sousing their baskets down and

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  up, down and up, with dour determination and scowling ferocity.

  If I seem to talk overmuch of Greenwich whitebait, it's because those insignificant minnows, in season, were Greenwich's most important product. People came from miles around, especially from London, to dine on them, even to have official whitebait banquets, such as were never held elsewhereand for an excellent reason. No place in the world produced such delectable morsels as the whitebait brought ashore at Greenwich; and whitebait at its finest arouses a sort of frenzy in the breasts of those who know it. Nobody ate mutton in Greenwich during the whitebait season, nor fowl, nor beefnot if he could get whitebait.

  When the boy went back to his fishing-station, I saw that he had been fortunate; for on a square of wet sacking close behind him were perhaps two thirds of a bushel of whitebait, a good part of them still flopping and shimmering; so as a reward to him for helping me, as well as a home-coming gift for my father, I thought to buy some of them at a generous price. To that end I put my hand on his arm to get his attention.

  To my amazement he shied away from my outstretched hand, as a puppy might shrink from a threatening foot, and the look he darted at me was almost violent in its wariness. Then, in a moment, he was merely a polite boy again, snapping his trap from the river, bringing with it a score of wriggling, glittering minnows which he dumped skillfully on his square of sacking.

  "There's already enough for a dozen suppers," I said. "Spare me a fewtwo shillings worth, perhaps?" Two

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  shillings should have been enough to buy half a bushel, but the boy only concentrated silently on the submerging of his little trap.

  Not wishing to embarrass him by too much talk, I told him to bring all he could to my father's house on Church Lane, two streets beyond the Naval Hospital. ''If you have difficulty finding the house," I said, "ask for Magistrate Whitworth. I'm Miles Whitworth."

  "I can't, sir," he said. "I'm fishing for Mr. Langman."

  "Nonsense!" I said. "I'll pay you two shillings for a quart, and I'll bet your Mr. Langman, whoever he is, doesn't do as well for you!"

  "No, sir," he said. "Mr. Langman pays a shilling for four quarts, but I made a contract with Mr. Langman. On the days I don't work for Mr. Penkethman, I catch whitebait for Mr. Langman." He twitched his trap from the water, swung it deftly within hand's reach, spilled another shower of whitebait into his burlap container; then looked apologetic as he lowered his trap to the water again.

  "Penkethman!" I cried. "Penkethman of the Haymarket? The actor-manager?"

  The boy gave me a look of approval. "Comedian, sir," he said. "He moved his players here this monthsome from the Haymarket and some from Drury Lane."

  I studied him more carefully. There was almost a look of elation about him, such as young girls so often have, but boys almost never. When he stood, he had an air of being about to rise on his toes. In short, he looked happy.

  "Don't tell me," I said, "that you're an actor! Not at your age."

  "Well, sir," the boy said, "I'm not exactly an actor, but Mr. Penkethman prints my name on the billsNeal Butler.

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  I'm only the prompter's call boy for Mr. Penkethman; but my father taught me how to write, so I write parts as well, forty-two lines to a length, and a penny for each one. Whatever I write, I remember, so I'm a quick study."

  "How old are you, Neal?" I asked.

  "Mr. Penkethman said I wasn't to tell my age," the boy said. "When I play female parts, he says it helps him with the rakes if we leave 'em guessing."

  "Rakes?" I said. "Female parts? You play female parts?"

  "Oh, yes, sir," the boy said. "There was an accident one night, and Mr. Penkethman let me play the page in Mr. Otway's Orphan." He proudly repeated, ''I'm a quick study," and he had good reason to be proud, as I had learned at Oxford, when I spent long hours struggling to memorize wordy speeches from The Fair Quaker of Deal.

  He snatched his fish trap from the water, found only two minnows flopping on it, gave me a look of pretended haughtiness that was vastly amusing; then dropped the trap back into the river. "Once he let me recite Mr. Cibber's epilogue about the Italian singers, and when I'm better at Italian, he'll let me do it again."

  Female parts! A quick study! They helped him with the rakes! A penny for a length of forty-two lines! Mr. Otway! Mr. Cibber! Better at Italian! This boy, only a little more than half my age, was a real actor, even though his modesty prevented him from saying so.

  "You're learning to speak Italian?" I asked.

  "Oh, no, sir, just something that sounds like Italian." He placed his free hand on his breast, regarded me with candid wide eyes, and from his lips there gushed a stream of foreign syllables among which English words were dropped disconcertingly. The whole effect was foreign,

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  but falsely foreign: the words seemed to have meaning; yet they meant nothing, and were merely excruciatingly droll, especially when, as if emphasizing his strange flood of nonsense, he hauled up violently on his fish trap to find it brimming with whitebait. As he swung it sideways, to deposit the minnows on his square of burlap, one of the four cords broke: the basket slipped, and all his minnows spilled back into the brown Thames water.