Nobody’s Child

by Andrew Wareham

  We could all of us imagine that it was not wise to be a disabled survivor.

  “Then, Captain, we be safe from the clutches of the Navy?”

  “You are, Maneater… provided, that is, that you are not a deserter. The Navy will always reclaim deserters if it can lay its hands on them.”

  Jerry was shaking his head in the background. I asked why, in a safe whisper.

  “Half the boarders have sailed in a King’s ship before joining us, Giles. I think it safe to say that none received a lawful discharge. Several of the sailors have tattoos of ships’ names on their arms. I doubt many of the lads might wish to give their names to a King’s officer to check against the list circulated by the Admiralty. Most will have changed their names, of course, but they might still be recognised.”

  “Better taken as a deserter than to fall into the hands of Chinese pirates, I would have thought, Jerry.”

  “Not a lot to choose between them, Giles, not if the captain is a flogger.”

  I saw that the men were inclined to my viewpoint – Chinese pirates had a bad name for inventive butchery.

  “What is this of insurance, Jerry? I did not entirely understand its significance.”

  Jerry grinned. He had been waiting for me to admit my ignorance.

  “You know the principle of insurance, Giles? In effect it is a form of gambling. You pay a stake that is a small part of the value of your cargo, as a wager. The insurance company keeps your stake if you come to no harm, pays out the full value of the cargo if it is lost. The company knows the chances of wreck or other accident and hopes that nothing out of the ordinary may occur. It is easy enough. Say that one ship in a hundred is lost crossing the Atlantic. If the company charges two percent, it can pay out losses and make a profit in an average year.”

  That I vaguely knew.

  “Merchants of a criminal mind, Giles, might arrange for their ship to be captured by a pirate. They pay the pirate a fee – perhaps one half of the cargo – and have the remainder returned to them. They claim the value of the whole from the insurers. The pirates make an easy capture, without a fight; the owners make fifty per centum on the deal; the insurers lose out. In our case, the merchant takes back the fee he has offered us as well, thus making an extra profit. We get our throats cut.”

  “Do you think the good Mr Arbuthnot was aware of the details of this transaction, Jerry?”

  “I would suspect that he had doubts about the business, but that he took great pains not to ask questions of Mr Ainslie or listen to answers that he did not want to know.”

  “The old bastard!”

  “Yes… but there is no gain to saying so, Giles. He does not need us, but we are useful to him. We cannot survive without his good will.”

  It was a useful lesson, and one best learned early in my career. Righteous indignation is rarely a profitable emotion.

  We sailed well to the east of the normal track for East Indiamen, taking the Lombok Strait, I was told, and then east of the island of Borneo before heading north into the South China Sea. We saw any number of local boats, prahus, they are called, some few of them full of men, on the pirating lay for sure. They were fast little ships and sailed well, often making two knots to our one and able to lie far closer to the wind. When they spotted the size of our crew, the numbers of men with muskets leaning against the rails, they all chose to go elsewhere for their custom. They were in the commercial line, like us, and dog did not eat dog.

  Two days out of Canton and we picked up the convoy, which was fortunate, but not so surprising. More than forty large ships covered a substantial amount of sea and could be spotted from some distance.

  Captain Marker called for the Union flag to be raised and then ordered three sheets to be cast off the maintopsail, so that the sail flapped in the wind.

  “’Three sheets in the wind’, Giles, the sign of nautical distress in the absence of naval signals.”

  Signal flags ran up on the two-decker commanding the escort and a sloop ran down on us, placing herself off our stern quarter in easy shouting range, but out of the line of our broadside.

  “What ship?”

  “Jenny Dawes, sir. Out of Bombay and Galle for Canton. We saw a flotilla of twelve or more junks last evening and fled north when they turned towards us. I fear there may be others waiting off Canton, that we are being driven into them.”

  “What cargo?”

  “Packets for the factor in Canton, sir. For Mr Ainslie’s man. From Galle, sir.”

  Evidently, the Navy knew what that must mean. We were valuable, far more so than the ordinary run, and had probably been betrayed.

  “Close the convoy.”

  The sloop exchanged signals with the two-decker and then escorted us to lay under her stern. A boat came across and picked up Captain Marker to be interrogated in her captain’s cabin. He returned an hour later, gave the order for us to take station within two cables of the brig bringing up the rear of the convoy.

  “We are not popular, for the commodore thinks we may bring a pirate fleet down upon the convoy. It seems there are three fleets busy in southern Chinese waters at the moment. They will always attack any single Indiaman they come across, separated by storm, for example, but will never normally attempt the convoy as a whole. But the knowledge of an exceptional prize might be too great a temptation. The gun brig is to guard us and must not venture away from us. We must stand under arms watch and watch until we have landed our consignment at the factory.”

  I gave the word to the boarders and set them around the deck with permission to sleep during the day but to keep fully alert in the hours of darkness. I did not really expect anything to happen, but equally did not fancy having my throat cut if sampan loads of bloodthirsty pirates came aboard overnight. I think I made my disquiet felt.

  “Jerry – what will happen if the Navy discovers that we have lied to them? These pirate junks that we claim to have seen are mere figments of the imagination, after all.”

  Jerry was entertained by my enquiry.

  “Nothing to be proved, Giles. The likelihood is that we shall see one of the pirate fleets off Canton, and that will serve as corroboration of our tale. If our suspicions are true, then there will be a reception awaiting us – and if they have to attack the East Indies convoy, well, they might believe that they have a chance of picking up a few other valuable prizes. I would not be surprised if there is not some doubt among the pirates of the stories they have been told of the Royal Navy, masters of the seas, undefeatable in battle. There may be a Chinese Pirate King who thinks he is more than capable of cutting the foreigners down to size. We are arrogant, Giles – we know that Britannia rules the waves; but the Chinese, I am told, are no more humble than we and might like the opportunity to demonstrate that they are masters of their own seas.”

  It seemed peculiar to me.

  “Chinese junks armed with a few bronze cannon are hardly likely to stand up to our broadsides, Jerry.”

  “They outnumber us, Giles. If the admiral loses three junks in order to put four more alongside, well, he may think that a price worth paying. If we had four or five hundred men come aboard us, we would find it difficult to survive. Even the two-decker would find those odds hard.”

  It was a chilling thought. I went the rounds of the boarders and checked every flintlock, every spring on muskets, musketoons and pistols alike. Then I joined Master Gunner in working over the little swivels and bringing up ready-use loads for them and the six pounders and cannonades. We inspected the sky and decided it was unlikely to rain, and brought up extra cartridges in their leather buckets, set them along the centre line of the deck.

  Captain Marker forbade the men to smoke their pipes that night.

  The gun brig came close alongside soon after dawn, the lieutenant-in-command yelling that dead reckoning put us no more than a day out of Whampoa. We should see the first islands before nightfall.

  “Be ready for them. If anything is to happen, it must be in the next day.” />
  Captain Marker called his thanks for the warning.

  “Daft young bugger. Does he think we shall go to sleep without his words of wisdom? All the same, bloody Navy! Never hurts to be polite to them, Giles, however foolish they may be. How much good he will do, I really cannot suggest. Did you see his armament, Giles?”

  The brig was a few tons smaller than Jenny Dawes and certainly carried a smaller crew. She had ten guns on the broadside that I had counted, four pounders, I thought, and something larger in the bows.

  “What was the chaser, sir?”

  “Brass and not a naval gun. The possession of her captain, at a guess, taken in an action, probably from a shore battery. I think it was an old French gun, something like an eighteen pounder, far greater than one might expect in so small a vessel. He will have picked up shot as well at the same time. Not uncommon in the Navy to add to a ship’s power in such a way, the admiral choosing not to notice.”

  A long eighteen would do some considerable damage to a junk, I suspected.

  “True, Giles, but reloading will be a tedious slow affair in the close confines of a small ship. If the captain reserves his fire until the junk is within half a cable, point blank, then he may be able to fire directly and low into her bows. He might sink a junk with the single shot. He will not double shot a brass gun – not a wise trick.”

  “Could we ship a great gun of that nature, sir?”

  “Only if we laid hands on one for free, Giles. Costly, great guns are, and their powder and ball not cheap. Eighteen pence a pound, best white grain gunpowder comes in at in England, and not so very much less in Bombay. Nine shillings and sixpence for a single shot from an eighteen pounder! That was why our barrels of brimstone were so well received, Giles. Foundries to cast large iron balls are few and far between – it is no simple task to cast them round and exactly to size, or so I am informed. Easier in lead, but even more expensive. I am told that the Chinese still often use stone balls – having cheap labour to cut and smooth them. I hear that the Spanish in South America do the same, using slaves.”

  It was all fascinating stuff - and talking was better than silently worrying over what might be concealed below the horizon.

  The men had brought the grindstone up on deck and were working together to put a sharp on every blade we possessed. Fred was sat with my sword, using an oilstone, it being too good to run over a coarse wheel.

  Even the cook was busy, boiling up some sort of extras for dinner, reckoning the men would do better for a full belly. I could smell onions and thought he was cobbling up some sort of stew, using rations and bits and bobs he had bought from the markets of Bombay. Jamadar Rao’s people were cooking as well, the smells of their spices fearsome to my nose, though I saw that many of our men found the aromas good. I am not one for this curry stuff!

  We ate and we drank our ration rum or gin, by preference, and we waited. It grew harder and harder simply to lounge on deck and talk about very little, trying not to show worried.

  Some of the men actually went to sleep. I could not believe it, but they did.

  Jerry was openly admiring of the sangfroid of those few.

  “Either too stupid to be afraid, Giles, or too quietly confident to worry. Whichever, I am not as they, Giles. I fear me that I am too much of a twitch to lay back and close my eyes.”

  I admitted to the same, saying that I did not like the waiting; perhaps it came from being young.

  “It is not easy, Giles, not at any age.”

  Mid way through the afternoon watch there was a stir towards the fore of the convoy and a hoist of flags on the two-decker. None of us could read the Admiralty code. The gunbrig reacted by closing us again and shouting.

  “Many sails on the port quarter at about eight miles. They have the wind. Convoy is to reduce sail and close up.”

  The East Indiamen normally held station in the convoy at about two cables distant, bows and stern, and one cable abeam in four tidy columns, about thirty-five ships, great Company vessels and smaller belonging to the Country merchants. Now they were clustering together in two lines at fifty yards apart. I watched them run out their broadsides, as many as twenty guns on John Company’s ships.

  “A mixture, Giles, of cannonades and long guns. Typically, eighteen pound cannonades, such as we have two of, and twelve and nine pound long guns. On the Country ships, generally fewer guns and smaller, but they may have the odd twenty-four, depending on what they have been able to scavenge.”

  “What about gunners, Jerry? The best of guns are pretty much useless without skilled men to use them.”

  “An interesting quirk of English law, as applied at sea, is that the ships of the Honourable East India Company are granted immunity from the Navy. Their sailors may not be impressed. The Navy may not even enter East Indiamen to inspect their crews, for any purpose.”

  The effects of that were obvious.

  “I see. Any deserter who happens to find his way onto an East Indiaman is safe there, and probably better paid than in the Navy?”

  “Exactly, Giles. Better pay and rations; very much so, in fact. Shore leave as a matter of course in every port. Enlistment aboard for just one voyage at a time. Sign up to the Navy and you are theirs for life; go aboard John Company and you are paid off at the end of the round voyage, normally with a request to sign on again and the offer of a bonus if you do. John Company is commonly short of gunners and will more than double the pay they receive in the Navy.”

  The gunbrig tacked to bring up the end of the larboard line of ships, ushering us into place immediately ahead of her. Another and slightly larger brig placed itself to starboard.

  “Sheepdogs, Giles. The job of the smallest vessels is to keep the merchantmen in line and take back any who fall to the pirates. As well, they will place themselves in front of any junks that attempt to attack from astern. There will be at least one at the head of the line, possibly a pair. I would expect the sloops and the frigate to form a line of battle behind the two-decker and go out to meet the junks.”

  We waited and watched. I discovered just how very slow action is at sea.

  The junks came on a at crawl, four or five knots, huddled together rather than in any recognisable formation.

  The Navy was tacking up to the pirates, closing one mile for every five or six their ships travelled as they worked their way against the wind.

  Towards the end of the afternoon watch the two-decker opened fire with a pair of big chase guns.

  “Twenty-four pounders, I think, Giles. Out of the ordinary. They can do damage at three parts of a mile or more. They are aiming at the biggest junk, the one flying streamers, look.”

  “Kill the Pirate King and bring the business to an early end, Jerry?”

  “Perhaps. More like they hope to anger him and to provoke him into foolishness. See, he is raising another banner, some sort of order perhaps.”

  A few minutes and a group of junks on their righthand side, thirty or more – I do not know how they were organised, whether they had squadrons as such – set more sail and began to press forward, trying to close on the two-decker, it seemed. The two-decker tacked, followed by the frigate and all three of the sloops, bringing themselves into a line oblique to the Chinese and opening their broadsides to the chasing group.

  They fired and the smoke came rolling back in a dirty-grey mass, obscuring everything for minutes, in which time they fired again and then a third time. We could see their mastheads and watched as they came about and fell down wind, back towards the convoy. Just off the wind, in fact, the smoke cloud blowing away to their starboard. We could see black smoke in the distance, shouted to our lookout at the masthead, demanding to know what was happening.

  “Sunk half of they, for sure. Set fire to four that I can count, and two of them ‘ave fouled others and the flames be spreadin’. I reckon I can count twelve of they still swimmin’, sir, and they taken some damage. Heaved to, so they ‘ave.”

  It had been an effective encounter. We w
atched as the two-decker swung across the wind to the head of the convoy, to add her weight there. The frigate led the sloops back towards the scene of battle, the four small ships reforming their line and silently coming closer and closer to the dozen or so of remaining junks in the attacking group.

  “Why do they not shoot, Jerry?”

  “First broadside is the most powerful, Giles. They might double shot the long guns, will certainly take their time to point them straight. The captain in command will time the broadside to do the greatest harm he can. He may well hold until he reaches pistol shot. He may have carronades which he will wish to take advantage of.”

  I knew of the thin-walled, light gun used by the Navy – more effective than the merchant cannonade but demanding a greater discipline of its crew.

  “Grape at the length of a cricket pitch, Jerry? That will kill by the score.”

  Jerry shrugged. Fighting Chinese pirates was not a game for the squeamish.

  “There they go, Giles! Now, watch them tack in their line and come round to cross the junks again.”

  Three broadsides in total and the small ships came away, obviously ordered not to come to hand-to-hand.

  They left nine junks afire and none others afloat of that lead group, retiring on the convoy and taking position separately to resume their escort.

  “Commodore of the convoy believes the job is done, Giles. More than thirty junks destroyed for minimal loss. The small ships will have taken some losses to musketry, possibly even to bow-and-arrow – the pirates are said to use archers still. In exchange, at least three thousand dead, assuming they have only one hundred men to each junk – there may be more. The pirate fleet has been much wounded. There are two others, we know, in southern waters, and they might now be in a position to fall upon the weakened third and destroy it, taking its harbours and wealth. I doubt the Pirate King here will risk further losses.”