The Hungry Tide

by Valerie Wood

  I can remember we reached ’ice at ’beginning of May, he thought, but then his mind became confused, and his head was full of images of threshing whales and bloodstained seas and splintering ice. He heard a voice shouting, ‘Is anybody there?’ and was bewildered to find that it was his own.

  The woman came hurrying back through a door, and as his vision cleared he saw that he wasn’t alone in the long room, but that there were other beds besides his, some occupied and some empty.

  ‘Where am I?’ he repeated. ‘Am I in England or Greenland?’

  The woman laughed. ‘’Course tha’s in England. Tha’s in ’ospital, in ’Infirmary. Back ’ome in Hull.’

  ‘How did I get here? I was on board ’ship – who brought me?’

  The words started to tumble out incoherently and his leg twitched in a painful spasm.

  ‘Tha’ll have to wait and see ’doctor,’ she said, her voice and manner rough. ‘I don’t know owt about it, they don’t tell ’likes o’ me. I’m only ’ere to clean up after everybody!’

  She walked away to the next bed, but then turning back said in a softer tone, ‘If ’tha likes, after ’doctor’s been, I’ll fetch thee a jug o’ beer.’

  He closed his eyes and lay back again. The pain was getting worse and he was desperate for water to slake his thirst. ‘Nurse,’ he called. ‘Nurse!’ But she either didn’t or wouldn’t hear him and he drifted off again into an uneasy, tormented sleep where the screams of whales and men intermingled, and the icy Greenland waters washed over him, pulling him down into blackness.

  When he awoke again it was almost dark, the only light coming in from the bay window at the end of the room. There was a man sitting by the bed and as Will turned his head towards him he looked up and gave a gappy smile.

  ‘Hey, Will, I’d given thee up. I thought tha was a goner.’ The man cleared his throat and wiped his nose on his bandaged hand.

  ‘Is that thee, Rob? I’m right glad to see thee. What happened? Where are we?’ Will again tried to sit up, but he was curiously unbalanced and fell back once again in the bed.

  ‘We’re ’ome, thank God,’ said Rob Hardwick. ‘Though there’s some not so fortunate. We lost Richard Bewley: ’e were a good lad, his ma’ll miss him. Alan Swinburn. Does tha remember me telling thee he’d gone? Day after thy accident it was. What a way to dee. Killed by a barrel o’ blubber! I don’t like to speak ill of ’dead, but ’e’ll not be missed. ’E were a miserly old pinchgut, stinting on ’is poor bairns and spending ’is bonus in ’dram shop.’

  He leaned forward towards the bed, his eyes keen and searching anxiously into Will’s face. ‘Does tha remember us reaching ’ice and catching a big un?’

  Will nodded. He recalled three six-man boats putting out from the whaler. They’d made one clean kill and towed the whale back to the ship for the flensers to do their work of dismembering the carcase and storing the blubber. The following day they heard the cry of other whales and moved off after them.

  ‘Aye, well, it was that day that we made a dock in ’ice and gale started to blow, and we were all fearful of being stove in; but we put off four long boats and set out chasin’ again. We knew there was plenty about by ’row they was makin’.’

  Will put his hand to his eyes, trying to shut out the vision as recollection returned. The sea was his livelihood, the only one he had known, and he would wish for no other, yet he seemed to be haunted by the memory of the gush of blood staining the water, and could smell the oily reek of blubber. But most of all he thought he could hear the anguished cries as the harpoons struck their victim and see the stricken whale as it dived again and again, turning over and over as it vainly tried to shake off the barbed iron and line, until finally the great threshing body was stilled and it floated, its white belly exposed to the alien skies. The cheers of the men echoed in his ears.

  ‘Well, we’d got two that day,’ went on Rob, ‘and was just towing them back, when a third one just came out of nowhere, right up ’side of ’boat. It threshed about that much we had all on to keep ’boat upright. Then Richard Bewley threw his iron with such force that he went right over ’side. He never stood a chance. I reckon he went right under ’ice.’

  ‘Aye, aye, I know all that,’ said Will wearily. ‘But what happened later? Why am I in ’Infirmary with a broken leg? For judging by ’agony I’m in, that’s what it is. And why is tha bandaged? Did tha get ’frost?’

  Rob fiddled with a loose end of his grimy bandage, his eyes averted from Will. Then he got up from the chair and walked to the end of the bed, looking anxiously down the ward towards the door.

  ‘Tha’ll ’ave seen ’surgeon, ’asn’t tha?’ he asked nervously.

  Will’s blue eyes, already swollen with pain, narrowed suspiciously as he observed his shipmate, so obviously in confusion. ‘I don’t think so,’ he answered, ‘I don’t remember.’

  A sudden paroxysm of pain convulsed him, causing him to draw in his breath and clench his teeth, sweat running down his face as he tried to control the agony. He put his hand beneath the sheet to take hold of the offending source of pain, and found beneath his swollen, bandaged right knee a void, an emptiness. An emptiness of piercing, burning anguish which sent his senses reeling, and as he drifted into unconsciousness he hoarsely cried out, ‘Wilt tha fetch Maria and my bairns!’

  Maria sat once more in the hall of the Dock Office, her eyes closed and her head cupped in her hands. Her thoughts were a confusion of relief and despair as she gradually absorbed the knowledge that Will was alive, but she trembled at the realization that her proud, vigorous husband was now crippled.

  Annie and Mrs Bewley had been called in together. Annie turned towards Maria as she went through the door. ‘Wait on us, Maria, for I’m that afeard.’

  A shaft of sunlight slid from the high window and dust particles danced at her feet as Maria sat locked in her loneliness, whilst life outside continued its normal pattern. Sounds of activity filtered through into the quiet hall as the dock workers unloaded cargoes of timber, hemp, linseed, tobacco, brandy and rum on to the quay. Ships from Gothenburg, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Oporto and America were among the many foreign vessels which crowded the busy port.

  Then from within the inner room came wailing and a low pitched moaning, and Maria knew that her own suffering was as nothing compared with that of Annie and Mrs Bewley.

  By the time they reappeared Mrs Bewley behaved with quiet fortitude, as became an elderly widow. She sobbed quietly into the corner of her shawl, murmuring her son’s name over and over, shaking her head to and fro in disbelief. But Annie was distraught, clinging frantically with one hand to the clerk who had brought them back into the hall, and with the other clutching a bag with her husband’s belongings, and crying out in hysteria that she and her bairns would starve in the gutter, now that there was no man to support them.

  ‘He’s dead Maria! Crushed by a barrel of stinking blubber!’ she screamed.

  Maria rose pale and trembling from her chair and took hold of her arm.

  ‘Nay, Annie, don’t tek on so. Be brave and think on ’childre’. We’ll all help thee.’ Though God knows how, she thought. The little money saved through her thriftiness would soon be whittled away when there was no wage coming in.

  But Annie, she knew, had no money and was probably in debt to the moneylender for she was a poor housekeeper. Alan Swinburn spent his wages as soon as he came home, drinking rum heavily or gambling on cock fights, whilst Annie resorted to stealing coins from his pockets as he lay in a drunken stupor on the bed they shared with their children. There were times when he caught her out and then she was given a beating as a punishment.

  Maria sighed. Poor Annie, at least she would be spared that, for many times she had bathed Annie’s bruises and fed her ragged, pathetic children.

  The clerk tugged at Maria’s sleeve. ‘When Mrs Swinburn is over ’shock,’ he said quietly, ‘tell her to go to Trinity House, they’ll help her, it’s her right. And thee, Mrs Bewley,’ he added.
‘They’ll find a place for thee at Seamen’s Hospital.’

  At this Annie started to wail again. ‘We’ll have to go on ’relief. To collect our Sixpences!’

  Maria grew impatient. She felt drained of energy, she had an ache in her back, and was sick with anxiety over Will. Didn’t Annie think that others had worries too? Life was going to be hard, there was no doubt about it, but they would manage if they were careful.

  Trinity House collected money from the seamen’s wages – known locally as the Seamen’s Sixpences – to give out in relief to the widows and children of drowned seamen, or those who were maimed at sea, and spendthrifts like Alan Swinburn were forced to subscribe. Old people like Mrs Bewley were taken for shelter into the almshouses to end their days. They were given food and clothing and a bed to sleep on and had no need to resort to begging in the streets like some less fortunate souls.

  ‘I’m going home,’ said Maria. ‘I must see to my bairns, and then I shall go to Will. He needs me. He’s been taken to ’Infirmary. He’s a cripple!’ As the words tumbled out she started to cry, the tension and emotion of the last few hours finally erupting into floods of tears.

  Annie stopped her wailing and stared at Maria. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, love. I’d forgot’ poor Will, and thee – tha must go home and rest a while, think on thy ’babby.’ Conscience stricken, she put her arms around Maria and Mrs Bewley, and together the three women walked out into the bright morning sunshine.

  Maria left Annie and Mrs Bewley in the Market Place. There was a crush of people for it was Tuesday and market day. The long thoroughfare was filled with shops and trades of all description. Shoemakers, bakers, grocers and tea-dealers traded side by side with saddlers and pawnbrokers, sailmakers and tallow chandlers.

  Outside the draper’s shop, rolls of cloth were propped up against the window. Irish linen, soft silks and velvets, were fingered fastidiously by ladies of quality whilst the draper fawned obsequiously and arranged folds of material about his person.

  Miss Rebecca Brown the milliner was placing the latest fashionable hats on to tall stands in her window, and trying to ignore the jeers and grimaces of the dishevelled urchins who pressed their dirty hands and faces to the glass as they watched her.

  Maria walked on towards the towering Holy Trinity Church. There was a confusion of canvas-covered stalls clustered around the church side and spilling out into the wide road. Vendors selling cereals, country cheeses, eggs and vegetables shouted out their wares. There were live chickens and ducks squawking and quacking in wicker baskets, goats bleating, and horses and carts trying to get through the multitude of people milling there. The sun shone warmly and the heat increased the smells of the town. The aroma of ripe fruit, fish, animals and their excrement mingled with that of unwashed bodies and the heavy stench of processing blubber and seed oil.

  She pushed her way through the crowd towards the front of one of the stalls and elbowed out of the way the unruly, grimy children who always hung around waiting for their chance to steal an apple or a pie, or even a purse from the unsuspecting. She bought a bag of barley for making broth, and today because she was weary she paid the market price without haggling, as she would normally have done. Then she went to the next stall for a sack of potatoes and turnips and a bunch of marjoram and rosemary which the stallkeeper, a country man, had brought in with him, and hoisting the sack over her shoulder she set off back through the town towards home.

  ‘What news of Will, Maria?’ a voice called to her as she crossed the long row of shops in the Butchery. Will Foster was well known to the tradesmen as an honest customer who always paid his bills, and in this close-knit community word was already out of the Polar Star’s return.

  ‘He’s in ’Infirmary,’ she paused to reply. ‘Mr Masterson has sent him. He told me not to worry, but I can’t help it. He won’t be whaling any more.’

  ‘They’ll look after him all right.’ The butcher nodded sympathetically. ‘They’ll be behodden to him, ’account of what he did. I hear tell he saved ’master’s nephew. Would that be right?’ He waited for confirmation of the morning’s news, his cleaver poised in his hand.

  Maria shuddered. ‘Aye, summat like that,’ she agreed. Will wouldn’t want people talking about him, even if it was complimentary. ‘I’ll take a bit of scrag end o’ mutton while I’m here,’ she added, ‘and make Will a drop of broth.’

  When she lifted the sneck of the door to her home in Wyke Entry she found a small bright fire burning in the grate, and yet the room felt cold and damp in contrast to the warmth outside.

  Tom was sitting on the bed with his arms around his sister, gently rocking her. ‘She’s badly, Ma, she’s got a cough.’

  Alice was flushed, her eyes bright and feverish and her dark hair damp on her forehead.

  ‘Mrs Morton lit ’fire. I found wood down by ’river,’ Tom went on eagerly, ‘and I’ve drawn ’water, but I couldn’t lift ’pot on to ’fire.’

  Mrs Morton lived in the room upstairs, with her husband when he was home from the sea, her aged parents, and a large brood of children which increased yearly, and Maria was grateful that she would take the trouble to keep an eye on her own children.

  ‘Tha’s a good lad,’ she said. ‘Now fetch me some more wood and I’ll put ’broth on to boil.’

  She put the fatty meat, a handful of barley, the vegetables and the bunch of pot herbs into a large iron cauldron and lifted it on to the fire. The potatoes she put at the side of the grate where they would cook in the hot ash, and then sat down wearily on the bed, drawing Alice to her.

  When Tom returned with another armful of kindling, Maria explained what she knew about the Polar Star and its disastrous voyage, how it had been in great danger of being crushed as the ice closed in and of their father’s accident.

  ‘Shall I go to work now, Ma, if Fayther can’t go whaling?’ Tom was very anxious to start work and become a man like some of his friends, but Will and Maria had always insisted that he wouldn’t until he was at least ten, which was still two years away, and Will was adamant that he wouldn’t be allowed to go whaling, that he would find him a job in the shipyards when the time was right.

  Maria sighed. ‘I hope not, but we’ll have to wait and see. Now, Tom, listen, tha must come with me to see thy fayther, but first I want thee to go to ’apothecary in ’Market Place and ask for summat for Alice’s cough. Tell Mr Dobson I sent thee.’

  She gave him a coin from her pocket. ‘Be quick now and don’t dally.’ Holding Alice close, she lay down on the bed, drawing the thin blanket over them. There would be no work at the staith side for her today, even though she would lose a day’s wages.

  ‘Try to rest now,’ she said to the child. ‘Tha’ll feel better when tha wakes,’ and she too closed her eyes as a great tiredness and exhaustion came over her. With their arms around each other for comfort, they slept.

  2

  A large section of the ancient crumbling gates and walls of Hull had come tumbling down in 1775 as work commenced on the building of the New Dock. The medieval walls, which were constructed of local brick and stone, had been built to repel invaders and to keep the waters of the Humber from drowning the low-lying town. In centuries past the town had opened its gates in welcome to kings and noblemen, and closed them in defiance as well.

  Maria had lived and played beneath the shadow of those town walls. Broken, dilapidated and overgrown as they were when she was a child, they had been a refuge from the stinking alley which was home. She used to stand with her brothers on the top of the old Humber wall, her hand shielding her eyes against the brightness of the sun on the water below, watching the great ships of the world coming in to the crowded port, their huge canvas sails creaking and billowing in the east wind.

  The shimmering brightness, though, was an illusion, for beneath the turbulent surface lay the glacial deposits of sand and gravel, while silt and clay held the rotting corpses of mangy dogs and the refuse of humanity. Infection lay in perilous wait for the people of th
e town as they took the river water for their drinking, washing and cooking.

  There was good spring water coming into the town from the country district of Spring Head, but for the destitute people living down by the old walls, this was their river, the waters which brought them their scanty livelihood and where some of them ended their days. Here too at the old South End sat the ducking stool, a grim reminder of what would happen to scolding, shrewish wives who didn’t keep their place.

  On 19 October 1775, Maria had been taken by her father to watch the first stone of the dock ceremonially laid by the Mayor, Mr Joseph Outram, and within four short years the work was finished. With an air of great festivity the first fishing vessel, the Manchester, entered the dock. The bands played and the flags and banners flew and the townspeople cheered enthusiastically and proudly.

  Maria had stood in awe watching as the shipping merchants, local aristocracy, and members of the Dock Company arrived for the occasion, alighting from their fine carriages with their handsome wives whose feet were clad in softest leather, and whose elegant dresses were of the finest fabrics that money could buy. She could recall too her father saying with great emotion that this dock, the largest in the kingdom, and this historic day would be a great turning point for Hull and its shipping industry.

  His words were true, for the shipping and fishing trades increased and the merchants grew rich. They became discontented with their homes which were cheek by jowl with the insanitary hovels of their workforce and, repulsed by the foul smells of the industry which had brought them their wealth, they moved out of the town in their hundreds leaving the poverty-stricken unfortunates to fend as best they could for shelter, fire and food.