Captain Cook's Apprentice

by Anthony Hill

  ‘Ye gang well,’ said Forby Sutherland from the Orkneys, helping Isaac to his feet. Strange how the crew were different at sea, too. Forby had snarled at Isaac when he first came aboard. Now, in his element, the older man was far more accepting of the boy’s attempts to find his own sea legs. ‘We’ll fear the lubber out o’ ye.’

  Isaac stood, holding onto a line, listening to the wind playing in the white-bellied sails. Down there, through the canvas clouds, he glimpsed the deck as a sea bird might have done. The ship’s boats lashed one inside the other on the ‘gallows’; the tiny figure of the helmsman at his wheel; the cocked hat of the officer of the watch moving about the quarterdeck. And looking up, Isaac saw the topsail yards (‘tops’l, matey’) – and higher, the topgallant yards (‘t’gallant, matey’) tracing their wide arcs against the sky as Endeavour tossed through the Bay of Biscay.

  He thought he might wait a little before climbing the topmast. Young Nick was already halfway up the rigging to the crosstrees, and calling back for Isaac to hurry along.

  ‘Up ye go, laddie,’ said Forby Sutherland. Waiting for the ship’s roll to larboard, Isaac swung himself out.

  His master, Robert Molineux, watching from below, was not pleased to see his servant playing aloft. ‘The boy’s wanted down here,’ he muttered. ‘I need him to fetch a spyglass from my cabin.’

  Lieutenant Cook was more sympathetic. He’d been a Master himself before given command of Endeavour. ‘Don’t be too hard on the lad, Mr Molineux. It’s best to start learning your ropes when young. Better still if it can be a game.’

  ‘Have you seen his ropes? A tangled, lubberly mess! He’d be better off learning to do a neat clockwise coil than fooling about up there.’

  ‘Remember thyself at that age, Robert.’

  ‘Aye, sir, indeed. And the boy has his duties to attend.’

  They all had their duties, every man jack of the ninety-four souls on board Endeavour. Sailor, soldier and civilian alike. Every officer had a servant, much like an apprentice, hoping to become an Able Seaman or even rise higher in his profession, as did Isaac – though few aboard were as young as himself or Nick.

  The wealthy naturalist, Mr Joseph Banks, had a whole retinue of staff and servants, among them two negroes – Tom Richmond and George Dorlton – the first black men Isaac had really known. They slept with the boys and marines in the low section of the mess deck; and sometimes before quiet time of an evening, they would tell distant memories of the hot grasslands in Africa where their families had grown up, before being captured and sold into the slave trade.

  ‘A whole line of people, Mr Isaac, men, women and children, chained together and marched down to the coast.’

  Isaac, safe in his hammock, could only thank God in his prayers there was no slavery in comfortable England. Unless, as a wry afterthought, it was to become a servant boy on one of His Majesty’s ships.

  With so many people crowded onto such a small vessel, Isaac’s duties brought him into constant contact with the scientific party. Within a short time, in fact, he was familiar with everyone on board.

  Thus, when the boy was sent to fetch a pair of compasses to the Great Cabin, where the Master and Captain bent over their charts, he’d see the artist Sydney Parkinson, with a hand to his head, groaning that he could barely hold his pencil. A young man of delicate disposition, Sydney was greatly troubled with seasickness.

  Isaac, of course, thought he was well over that. Standing at the stern as he fed the pigs and sheep, the hens and the goat kept to provide food and milk for the officers’ table, he flattered himself how quickly his body had adapted to the moving ship. Mr Banks and his party were still to find their balance. A platform had been built on the quarterdeck so that they could walk about without being swept off their feet every time the tiller arm moved. Even so, it amused Isaac to see the scientists grab for support whenever they examined their nets scooped up with specimens of small sea creatures.

  Interesting, too, how fine gentlemen – even Isaac himself – who would never have spoken to rough sailors in the fashionable streets of London, talked to the crew as they sought to understand this watery world, in which the seamen were at home and the scientists were strangers.

  ‘What do you call that large fish leaping beside us?’

  ‘That be a porpoise, sir.’

  ‘Ah, the Delphinus species of Linnaeus,’ remarked Banks’s Swedish friend and scientific adviser, Dr Daniel Solander.

  ‘And, pray, those birds hovering around the masthead?’

  ‘We call ’em Mother Carey’s chickens. And they always foretell a storm.’

  So it proved. That afternoon the wind shifted to the west. Thunderclouds blackened the sky. The swell rose and, as the wind hardened into a gale, Endeavour pitched and tossed like a bathtub, her decks awash with breaking waves.

  It was too much for the gentlemen. Mr Banks retired sick to his cabin, though at six foot three inches he was too tall for his bunk. He lay on the deck and let his two dogs enjoy the comfort of the bed. Sydney Parkinson doubled over the ship’s side, pouring his heart into the sea (‘Down wind, if you please, sir!’). Tom Richmond lay where he was on the deck, vomit all around him and crying, ‘I think I’m going to die, Mr Isaac!’

  The boy wasn’t feeling too well himself. For all the confidence in his new-found sea legs, they became rather unsteady. His stomach began to churn. And watching amidships the seamen aloft furling the topsails as the rain pelted down, Isaac felt hot and flushed.

  Backwards and forwards. Up and down. The ship and her reaching yardarms rocked violently from one side to the other. Isaac was determined to weather it out, amazed at the skill of the seamen above as they hauled up the beating canvas, and wondering when he’d have the courage to go up in a tempest.

  When suddenly it happened.

  One of the topmen felt himself about to be sick. And in time-honoured custom he called below, ‘Watch under!’

  What? Did he want something? Isaac started forward.

  ‘’Ch under!’ And before he knew it, the boy was covered in a stream of spew raining down on him from above.

  It was the end. Isaac’s stomach heaved. Breakfast, dinner, and everything he’d ever eaten came emptying out. He lay with Tom Richmond on deck through the night. Drained. Exhausted. Wishing only that he also might die.

  The gale took several days to blow itself out, and it upset more than the sensitive stomachs of men and boys. A boat belonging to the boatswain (‘bo’s’n, matey’) was washed overboard. A plate on the main topmast had to be repaired. And several dozen hens were drowned, so no morning eggs for Mr Banks recovering in his cabin.

  The sheep and pigs still lived, however – and so did the nanny goat. But then, as one of the Mates, Francis Wilkinson, pointed out to Isaac as he tried to milk her one rough afternoon, the goat had survived worse than this storm.

  ‘She’s a good doer, look you. That goat’s already been around the world with Captain Wallis on the Dolphin. Now she’s doing it for a second time, boyo. Take more than a little wind and your clumsiness to finish her off!’

  Like the goat, Endeavour was a sturdy, heavy-duty little body. And as they left the coast of Portugal and headed into the Atlantic, life aboard resumed its course.

  Isaac continued to practise climbing the rigging – and even to venture out along the yards, shuffling precariously along the foot-lines. The old hands were mostly helpful with their advice. ‘Just fix your eyes on the horizon boy, because it don’t move. And remember that more men die falling from the bowsprit than they do from the tops. There’s less to hang on to out for’ard.’

  And looking into the sky, they’d observe the signs by which seamen told the weather, and recite the rhymes.

  If woolly fleeces bestrew the heavenly way, be sure no rain will come today.

  ‘Means barometer is holding steady, see.’

  As the sea calmed and the sun shone, the gentlemen returned to their scientific pursuits. A couple of seabirds, caught i
n the rigging, were brought down for their examination. One died and was promptly dissected. The other was kept alive by Joseph Banks for six weeks – until it was caught and eaten by the ship’s cat.

  Mr Banks’s boat was out casting for more tiny swimmers to be described and illustrated by Sydney Parkinson in his elegant drawings. Banks was excited, for much was new – though he became angry when Tom Richmond threw the net too wide. The string slipped from his wrist and the net sank, never more to take marine life captive.

  ‘It is too bad,’ Banks fumed. ‘The other nets are packed in the hold, and here are all these opportunities lost to science until they are fetched. It will not do, sir!’

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ Tom complained to Isaac that night in his hammock. ‘For a moment I could smell the scent of Africa on the wind, and I thought of home.’

  As well he might. For the easterlies were blowing fresh from the hot interior of the continent, driving Endeavour steadily south by west, until at length they came in sight of the island of Madeira, four hundred miles off the coast of Morocco. And there on 13 September the ship anchored in the deep outer harbour – the roads – of Funchal.

  Next morning, Captain Cook moved the ship closer to shore and moored with anchors fore and aft. However, the hawser on the small stream anchor astern slipped. One of the Mates, Alexander Weir, was sent with a crew in the longboat to haul up the anchor and take it further astern. Isaac, watching from the rail with Molineux, saw the anchor rise dripping from the deep, Weir coiling its cable and buoy-rope neat and shipshape in the boat, as you’d expect from such a good seaman.

  They rowed off a little. But then Mr Weir made a mistake. As he prepared to lower the anchor again, Alex carelessly stepped inside the rope coil attached to the marker-buoy. The anchor dropped beneath the waves. The glistening cable unwound and plunged after it, like a sea serpent chasing its prey. In so doing, the buoy-rope snatched Alex around the ankle, dragging him over the side.

  ‘Help!’ His one scream before disappearing.

  ‘Man overboard!’ shouted the rowers. ‘Help us!’

  It happened so suddenly that Isaac didn’t quite comprehend what his eyes had seen. It was some moments before he, too, took up the cry. ‘Man overboard!’ But Molineux sprang before him.

  ‘Try to haul up the anchor cable to save him,’ he called to the boat crew. ‘Sound the bell! Hands for’ard to the windlass!’

  Shouts ran through the ship. Feet scuttled up the companionways. Captain Cook and the officers appeared on deck.

  ‘Lieutenant Gore, assist Mr Molineux.’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  The men in the longboat were hauling the cable, but the weight of Weir’s body entangled with it was such that they couldn’t bring it in. The other end of the line was attached to the windlass, held between two wooden end-posts carved in the form of sailor’s heads, near the foredeck. Bit by bit, men winched it in, using wooden bars inserted into the drum slots.

  ‘One . . . two . . . six . . . heave! Heave away, bullies!’

  Isaac tried to help. Midshipman Saunders shoved him aside. ‘This is heavy men’s work, boy.’

  So Isaac and Nick Young observed as the anchor was slowly brought alongside the ship. And as it was hoisted they saw Weir’s corpse, his foot still held in the serpent’s bite, fished up like one of Mr Banks’s specimens. Alexander’s pigtail flopped helplessly behind. His face, so alert half an hour ago, was now as lifeless as the windlass heads. And his belt buckle winked wickedly as they reeled him in.

  Mr Weir was returned to the sea that afternoon.

  Two days later came another terror to initiate young Isaac.

  They’d called at Madeira for provisions before crossing the Atlantic Ocean. While Mr Banks and his party were exploring ashore, the Endeavour crew were lading her with water and wine (for the beer was running low), fresh beef, greens, onions, more hens, and even a live bullock to be butchered later. For James Cook believed his men should eat fresh food wherever possible.

  ‘It’s the best way I know to prevent the horrors of scurvy,’ he told Lieutenant Gore. ‘You’ve been round the world twice, John, on the Dolphin. You’ve seen men so weak with disease they cannot move – aye, and die with their gums rotten raw, and skin black as sullage.’

  ‘I surely have, suh.’ John Gore was American-born. ‘Most of us went down with scurvy at some time on both voyages. And many didn’t live to get up again.’

  ‘Lord Anson lost three-quarters of his crew to it in ’49. I’ll not have that on my ship. Seamen are set in their ways and don’t take easily to change. The sauerkraut, that’s been recommended, they can eat as they please. But fresh meat and vegetables I do insist upon.’

  The Captain was quite right. Sailors are a conservative lot. When Isaac and Nick Young went to get their dinners of fresh boiled beef from John Thompson, the one-handed cook, they heard many complaints from the mess tables.

  ‘Oi, what’s this muck?’ called Henry Stephens. ‘What’s wrong wi’ salt beef?’

  ‘Captain’s orders,’ replied Thompson.

  ‘Let ’im eat it hisself. I want the tack I be used to.’

  ‘That’s right,’ piped up one of the marines, Tom Dunster. ‘And what will I do wiv twenty pounds of onions?’

  ‘Eat ’em. With the fresh beef. Like Captain said.’

  ‘Blast the Captain!’ muttered Henry Stephens. ‘And damn him,’ added silly Tom Dunster.

  ‘Ee! That’s mutinous talk,’ cried John Thompson, banging the copper boiler with his ladle.

  ‘What is?’ enquired Richard Pickersgill, the Master’s Mate, passing by.

  ‘These two men,’ replied Thompson. ‘They won’t eat their fresh beef, and they speak against the Captain.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘We just want what we’re entitled to,’ said Stephens.

  ‘And by God you’ll get it!’ Pickersgill flared.

  ‘He’s let the cat out of the bag now,’ murmured Young Nick to Isaac. He spoke literally. For the flogger’s whip – the cat-o-nine-tails – hung in a red bag from a beam on the mess deck, as a constant reminder of what happened to insubordinates who broke the strict rule of naval conduct.

  Pickersgill told Molineux, who reported to the Great Cabin. The result was that Captain Cook ordered all hands on deck that afternoon to witness punishment at defaulters parade. All hands. No one was excepted.

  The officers and Midshipmen stood in their uniforms on the quarterdeck. The red-coated marines paraded on guard with the seamen and servant boys in the waist. A wooden grating was lashed to the rail by the gangway: and Henry Stephens was tied to it, hand and foot, a leather wad between his teeth, bare back pale and tensing.

  They waited as Lieutenant Cook read the Articles of War entitling a Captain to summarily order a dozen lashes for breaches of discipline. In fact many exceeded it – though not in this case: ‘Mr Reading, do your duty.’

  The Boatswain’s Mate, John Reading, flexed the whip with its nine heavy thongs.

  ‘He’s got room enough to swing his cat out here,’ observed Young Nick. Excitement was in his voice. He was fascinated by the spectacle. As was Isaac.

  The cat leaped in the air, and with a snarl scratched nine red claws across the man’s shoulders. One.

  Two. The tears deepened.

  Three. Skin broke.

  Four. Pools of blood welled to the surface.

  Five. The blood trickled in small rivulets.

  Six. And turned into streams.

  Seven. Flooding crimson, like a delta, down Henry’s back.

  Eight. Bits of gore and torn flesh flecked the air.

  Nine. Nick was wide-eyed. But Isaac could bear no more. Henry Stephens had helped him by the yard that first time he climbed the rigging at sea. Now this . . .

  Isaac turned to flee. To be sick again. Yet Richard Pickersgill grasped him by the jacket and whispered savagely into his ear, ‘You’ll stay and watch, boy. Otherwise you’ll be tied over a cannon and punis
hed yourself on the bare backside.’ Then his voice softened a little, for Richard was only nineteen himself and could remember. ‘It’s our way. You must understand that.’

  So Isaac stayed until Henry was cut down to be carried below, and Tom Dunster tied in his place. But the boy stared beyond them to the cultivated hills above Funchal town, that he might not see what was happening and start to blub.

  Nor was that all. Madeira had one more lesson in the navy way to teach him.

  When Alexander Weir died, Endeavour needed another seaman to replace him; and as no one volunteered from the several merchant ships in port, a press-gang was sent ashore under Midshipman Saunders and Mr Reading.

  They searched several taverns after dark, and eventually found young John Thurman, from a New York sloop, straggling in a laneway under the burden of too much liquor.

  ‘How do, bully boys. Come to enjoy yourselves?’

  ‘To be sure we have,’ replied Mr Saunders, casually approaching him.

  ‘Let me recommend the Madeira wine to ye, gents. ’Tis good drinkin’.’

  ‘Most kind . . .’ As the party closed in and surrounded John Thurman, Saunders’s voice suddenly changed. ‘In the name of King George, I impress you into service aboard His Majesty’s ship Endeavour.’

  ‘But . . . but I’m bound for home.’

  ‘Not any more you’re not. Seize him!’

  Before he could resist, Thurman was grabbed, bound, dragged to the beach and bundled into a boat.

  ‘I’m only twenty!’ he struggled. ‘I’ve not seen my family for a twelvemonth.’

  ‘Then they’ll have to wait a bit longer for ’ee, matey.’

  ‘Help! Help me!’

  ‘Silence him. Lively now!’

  Thurman was hit across the head with a wooden belaying pin. Silent then, he was rowed out to Endeavour and kept prisoner below until she sailed.

  Madeira! And there was Tom Richmond telling Isaac of a chapel he’d visited with Joseph Banks.

  ‘You should have seen it, lined from floor to ceiling with human bones.’

  That only reminded the boy of Saint Nicholas’s church at Deptford with a skull and crossbones on the gatepost, and skeletons in the charnel house. The seamen’s church. And Isaac wondered why he’d ever wanted to join them.