George kept his face blank and looked at Nicholson. Who let that piece of information out onto the streets? ‘What makes you think that, Donald?’
‘I’ll be honest, George.’ George did his best to keep a smile off his face. The idea of Donald Nicholson being honest was a joke in itself. ‘I pay a lot of people a lot of money to keep me informed of bits and pieces, which by themselves may be trivial, but when mixed with other pieces of information can be of great value to me.’
‘Are you telling me someone in my company has accepted bribes?’ demanded George, his voice rising. The last snort had got on his nerves.
‘George, George,’ said Donald, in a low whisper, and held up a hand in submission. ‘No, no, George, you have me wrong. I haven’t bribed anyone, but people talk. They talk in taverns, and at the docks while they work the ships. I have a number of sources, but none of them are your people.’
The explanation sounded logical to George, but he also knew there was little chance of him ever finding out if anyone did accept bribes. For the sake of peace he would allow himself to believe Nicholson.
‘Now you have this information, what do you intend to do with it?’
‘Nothing, George, but I do have a proposition for you. By the way would you like to be recommended for the committee? We are always on the lookout for new blood, people with new ideas.’
‘I am very flattered, Donald. May I think it over?’
‘Of course, my dear fellow, of course.’
‘You spoke of a proposition.’
‘The Margaret Rose is still in Liverpool?’ a snort emphasised the point.
‘Yes, she arrived from Ireland a couple of days ago.’
‘Very fortunate I met you today. I had planned to go to your office tomorrow, but I think this is a more pleasant environment than any office, be it yours or mine.’
George remained silent and waited for Nicholson to carry on.
‘You know I have been involved in the African trade for some years. I did have a ship lined up for my next venture to Africa, but she is late and I am not sure when she will arrive. Perhaps the French have taken her, who knows. I don’t wish to wait any longer. As you have the Margaret Rose, do you wish to join me as a partner?’
‘What would be required?’
‘I can rely on your confidentiality, of course, George.’ Snort. ‘We do not want this to get about too much, not until after our ship has sailed. Then it will not matter. I intend a run on the African trade. I have many of the sale goods already in a warehouse near Canning dock, and a first mate who has much experience of the trade, along with knowledge of the various loading areas in West Africa. He is also aware of the type of African required in the West Indies. Would it interest you to change the Irish trade for the African trade?’ asked Nicholson, with a smile on his face – slightly disfigured by a snort for good measure.
George sipped his brandy.
He was losing money on the Irish trade. Few people failed on the African trade, and he knew that Donald Nicholson had made a fortune shipping slaves to the West Indies. George could not find any negatives in the proposal, plus he may end up on the club committee if things went well. Nicholson had a first mate to replace William and would also contribute to the cost of chartering the Margaret Rose, as well as sharing the profits.
His decision made, George held out his hand. ‘King and Son will be happy to do business with you,’
Nicholson smiled and gripped George’s hand to settle the arrangement.
‘Excellent, excellent, come around to my home at the end of the week to discuss the details. This place has too many ears and eyes for my liking.’ His comment ended with a final snort.
Chapter Five
Liverpool
December 1805
Donald Nicholson, his wife Sarah, son Henry, and daughter Charlotte, sat wrapped in their cloaks in the carriage. The two women also shared a rug that had been packed around their knees when they left their home on Rodney Street. It was a cold December night, two weeks before Christmas.
‘I trust, Mother dear, you will make an effort to enjoy yourself,’ said the younger of the two women.
‘Charlotte, my manners and upbringing would not allow me to show any displeasure as a guest in someone’s home, and I am surprised you would even comment on such a matter.’
‘Please, Mother, don’t get upset. I just want us both to have a pleasant evening at Mr King’s. I believe he always has a very nice table.’
‘Nice table, indeed! He has his eye on you, and him old enough to be your father. I do not know what the world is coming to. In my day…’
‘Yes, Mother,’ interjected Charlotte, ‘in your day you worked long hours to help Father build the company, I know. You have mentioned the fact a number of times before. But I like Mr King, and he is rich enough to take a wife.’
‘A wife,’ snapped Charlotte’s mother. ‘It is not a lady’s position to consider marriage without first being asked by the gentleman.’
‘Mr King works hard, and since his son disappeared into the Navy he is lost.’
‘I suppose you will find him. I do not know what you find wrong with the young men of Liverpool. It is not as if you do not have a large choice of suitors. There have been plenty of young men from good families presenting their cards and asking us to family dinners.’
‘I know, Mother, but now I find the young men a little crass. I like a mature man who knows how to treat a lady.’
‘Treat a lady, indeed. What exactly do you mean by that? Remember, young lady, you are only eighteen, and you still need your father’s permission to marry anybody, especially an old man like Mr King.’
Donald sighed, realising that he was about to be drawn into the conversation between his wife and daughter. He closed his eyes and thought of Charlotte. She was a very attractive young woman with clear skin, bright eyes and long dark hair that was teased into curls. Many a young man had come to call, but he had made sure most of them realised they were not welcome. He’d always believed that if your only daughter was to marry, it should have the result of furthering the company, and the family. One should not waste such an asset on just any man, especially one with poor prospects or limited contacts.
He extracted a long black cheroot from his cigar-case, clamped one end between his teeth and lit the other. Closing his eyes once again, he tried to ignore the chatter of the women.
George King and the ventures they’d handled together in the past year or so had been profitable with little risk. Most of the ships they’d used were chartered, which allowed great savings and afforded them peace of mind. The three vessels Donald owned gave a very good return, particularly the Liverpool Lass captained by his son, Henry.
He opened his eyes and studied Henry. At twenty-five, and master of the Lass, he was known for his strict discipline. He was a big man, well over six feet tall, with a shock of coal-black hair. Regardless of what he did to his hair, it always grew like wild grass. Due to a large flat area across the bridge of his nose, his eyes appeared to be much wider apart than normal.
The flat area had been caused by an accident some years earlier on the Liverpool Lass. Donald had then been captain of the Lass. While in a storm, a block fell from the rigging and struck Henry, who was first mate, across the bridge of his nose. The power of the blow had forced the soft bone into Henry’s skull. Donald had patched up his son’s smashed face and eased the broken nose bones out from the skull. At the time he was frightened because he knew that if he made a mistake, the boy could die. The wild motions of the vessel, due to the storm, did not make it easy to retract the bone. In desperation, Donald decided it would be best if he closed the broken skin and secured the damaged bone. He had worked under the most difficult of circumstances, and had done his best. The result was a larger than normal spread of skin between Henry’s eyes. The accident also left him with a deep growl of a voice, which sounded as if it came from his nose rather than his mouth. The economic use of his lips in his speech
enhanced the impression that he spoke through his nose. Then there were his other unusual features: his black hair was set off by very fair skin, which, in the tropics, bore an abundance of small brown freckles. At a certain distance it appeared that Henry had some form of disease, similar to smallpox.
While some may have interpreted his son’s odd face as a sign that Henry was simple, however, they soon realised their mistake. Henry was not averse to taking his fists, or a knife, to any person he felt insulted him.
Donald watched Henry through curls of smoke. He knew that his son was never happier than when he was on the deck of the Liverpool Lass. His face didn’t matter to his crew, especially as a number bore the scars caused by similar accidents at sea.
By Henry’s acceptance of the invitation to dine with George King, Donald knew the two would become better acquainted. He was aware that Henry harboured a concern that George may be a threat to his own future, when his father retired.
Donald Nicholson smiled. A little fear of the future might keep Henry in line.
The prattle of the women was beginning to get on Henry’s nerves and he considered calling the evening off. He should return to the city for a night with friends in the local brothels. His face lightened as he thought of the pleasure he’d recently sampled with the new Irish girl at the Hill Street Gentleman’s Club near Toxteth Park.
He was fortunate to live in such times. The mills of Manchester attracted many young Irish women, as there was little work in Ireland. The women had heard that Manchester mills paid over seven shillings a week, and they thought that if they could just reach Manchester, all their worries would be over.
Ironically many of the girls with whom he dallied arrived from Ireland on the Margaret Rose, which belonged to George. If only George knew, thought Henry, and made a mental note to thank him for all of the pleasures he had unwittingly supplied.
The coach rocked him gently as his mind drifted.
The cost of advertising in Ireland, to encourage the girls to come to England, was cheap. They arrived in Liverpool not realising Manchester was a further thirty miles inland. They had little money, so with subtlety and some cunning, the proprietors of the Hill Street Gentleman’s Club would offer the girls work. They were told it was a temporary position, just to help out until they saved enough for the remainder of their journey. Of course many never saved enough after they’d paid for a bed and food.
After a few weeks these unfortunates would be given notice to leave. Their bed was required for new girls. Henry knew that many would do anything rather than be stranded in the street. This is when they became playthings for him and his friends.
His investment in funding the club was one of his better ideas. As the major shareholder, he had nothing to do with the management. He simply wanted a return on his money and a regular supply of new girls whenever he visited Liverpool. Some of the girls were frightened of his face, and he often chose those who appeared the most frightened to enhance the evening’s pleasure.
A simple arrangement with the staff saved him a lot of trouble. If the staff thought one of the girls would stand a little pain, she would be given a small bouquet of flowers to pin to her dress. Henry had suffered inconvenience in the past when taking girls to bed, only to find they did not like pain and screamed their heads off. He found a sharp slap would calm many of them, but on one occasion he had slapped too hard. She had fallen and broken her neck. He gave out a long sigh as he remembered how expensive that evening had become. The staff had managed to get rid of the girl; Henry didn’t care how they did it, as long as he didn’t become involved. The river was an easy place to lose a body.
‘A long sigh, Henry,’ said his mother.
‘I am bored and wish I’d never agreed to attend the dinner.’
‘Not long now,’ she said, and tapped his knee in affection.
Henry lapsed into silence. It appeared more and more gentlemen leaned towards the supply of strong discipline. There were many who liked a little punishment from a lady, whether she wielded a cane or a rope’s end. It didn’t bother him as long as they paid.
Strange desires meant high prices for the user and more profit for the supplier. The potential brought a smile to his face.
Donald Nicholson watched the scene between his wife and his son. He thought about his son’s smile and would have liked to know what he was thinking.
Even though he was Henry’s father, he had to admit Henry could be cruel. He had heard tales of the ‘houses’ visited by Henry, and the monetary cost when things went wrong. He remembered when eighteen-year-old Henry sailed as his first mate to Africa. He could not fault the running of the ship, but he had seen his son’s cruelty first hand. Henry made sure that at all costs the profits returned to Liverpool and the Nicholson family. Lord Nelson had scanned the horizon with his blind eye, so too did Donald turn a blind eye at his son’s trade activities.
Donald knew that Henry’s methods on the African coast were close to being illegal. Henry always packed a few more slaves than was allowed to offset the losses during the Middle Passage. The first time any slave caused trouble, Henry would make an example of the troublemaker, along with those slaves shackled on either side. The use of the whip soon brought the remaining slaves to submission.
The slaves were simply cargo. Donald insured them against drowning. If a slave died from old age or sickness, the insurance company would not pay any compensation, but if the slave drowned, the insurance company would pay out on the value of the slave. In Africa the basic cost of a slave was twenty-five pounds – equivalent to the cost of a specific amount of chintz material, flint, shot, gunpowder, muskets, beads and brandy. For twenty-five pounds one expected to buy a healthy full-grown male. The cost of a female or youth dropped in proportion to the overall value of a healthy male. The sale price of the male slave in the Caribbean was sixty pounds, or almost two years’ wages for the average English working man. Donald, like other slavers, considered insurance companies to be thieves. They would only pay out the cost of the goods, not the final sale price, so any death by drowning meant a twenty-five pounds payout, against nothing if the slave died from sickness. Regardless of how a slave died on the Middle Passage, Henry made sure they were all logged ‘Drowned attempting to escape’.
Sick slaves were simply heaved overboard as their value could drop as low as one or two pounds each. No Caribbean plantation owner wanted the trouble of nursing a slave back to health. Twenty-five pounds from an insurance company was better than a pound from a plantation owner, and there was the cost of food and water for the sick slave while at sea. It was good business in Henry’s eyes simply to throw overboard the sick, or those who looked as if they would not last the voyage.
Donald had some concerns at the number of deaths Henry reported, but as long as he sailed into Liverpool with a profitable cargo of sugar, having sold the slaves at a profit in the Caribbean, he would not investigate the deaths too closely.
Lately the women’s arguing had become more frequent due to the friendship between Donald and George King. Charlotte had set her eyes on George, and Donald surmised that George had strong feelings for Charlotte.
An uneasy silence fell between the two women. Charlotte peered out of the window of the carriage and shivered. The bare branches of the trees that lined the road appeared to wave at her. The wind caused the carriage light to flicker, and the shadows caused in her a child-like fear that each tree would try and catch the vehicle.
The wheels rattled over the cobbled stones of Duke Street as the coach drew nearer to their destination. Charlotte could make out the shape of a large home set back from the street, with lights shining from all of its windows. The entrance area had a Greek theme. Large Corinthian pillars supported the stone roof, which protruded from the house to cover an area of the drive. Guests would not have to step down from their carriage in the rain as the large covered area accommodated two horse and carriage at the same time. The Nicholson carriage swayed as it turned into the driveway.<
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Charlotte couldn’t help but admire the large house set on the corner of Duke and Kent Street, a very fashionable part of Liverpool. When she was a child, her father had showed her the outside of the house. It had been built, he told her, in 1768 by Richard Kent, a Liverpool shop owner. She liked the use of local sandstone. The house dominated the crossroads.
The carriage halted before a footman. He stepped forward and opened the carriage door, allowing a set of steps to unfold, and offered his arm.
George King waited at the entrance to his new home. He watched his manservant, Alfred, bow each lady from the coach.
Alfred, a black man from Africa, was one of a number of slaves captured on the West African coast. The Elizabeth Rose’s captain had taken a liking to him, and kept him rather than sell him in the Caribbean markets. During the return voyage to England, Alfred was trained in the basic skills of being a steward. George kept and named him, the name being easy for the African to pronounce. Over time Alfred learned English and became more useful around the home.
Donald stepped down from the coach, flicking away his half-smoked cheroot before striding up the stairs to George. The ladies followed in his wake.
‘A fine house, George, a much better residence than the city combination of offices and home.’
‘Glad you like it, Donald.’
‘Henry, glad you could come,’ said George, offering his hand to the young man. Henry shook hands and grunted an unintelligible greeting. George hesitated to ask him to repeat himself. Henry always made him uncomfortable.
‘Good evening, ladies, thank you for coming,’ said George, while another servant helped them with their cloaks. George bowed over Sarah’s hand to kiss it lightly. ‘I trust you are well, Mrs Nicholson?’
‘Tolerably. Thank you, Mr King. I am well.’
George raised his face. ‘Good, good, such a cold night.’ He turned as Charlotte extended her hand to him.
‘Good evening, Mr King.’
‘Good evening, Miss Nicholson,’ and he bent to kiss her hand. ‘Welcome to my home, ladies.’
Triangle Trade Page 5
