The Captain's Nephew

by Philip K Allan

  ‘I can inform you of some of it. We are to make our way to Plymouth,’ continued Clay, ‘patrolling the French coast as we go. There we shall meet with a small convoy of East Indiamen who we are to escort as far as Madeira. The convoy will carry on to the Cape without us, and we will wait at Madeira for new instructions.’

  Booth pushed his chair back from the table, and drained the last of his wine. He was enjoying the Admiral Keppel’s excellent claret, which put him in mind of other wine.

  ‘So, we are bound for Madeira?’ he said. ‘Now there is a wine-producing island of consequence, like no other. We shall be able to pack the wardroom pantry with cases of fine Malmsey.’ He licked his lips at the prospect and summoned Hart over to refill his glass.

  ‘Madeira is a large Mediterranean island, I collect. Close to Sardinia,’ said Wynn, the wardroom’s newest recruit and on his first voyage.

  ‘By no means, sir,’ corrected Booth. ‘It is but a small island, and is firmly placed in the Atlantic, level with Morocco. Close to Sardinia, I ask you!’

  ‘But where will we be bound after Madeira?’ asked Sutton. ‘I can’t see the Admiralty sending us all that way south just to recall us back to perform dull blockade duty in the Channel.’

  ‘An intriguing question, Mr Sutton,’ agreed Booth. ‘It is a natural jumping off point for so many places. Where indeed do you suppose we might be bound, eh?’

  ‘It is near to the mouth of the Mediterranean. There is action aplenty there, around Toulon, Corsica, or further east in the Levant,’ said Windham. ‘I confess it would be good to feel some warmth, after all our months in the North Sea.’

  ‘You hear?’ hissed the surgeon to his friend Fleming. ‘Near to the mouth of the Mediterranean – I was but a trifle out in my reckoning. These nautical men can be such pedants!’

  ‘Or from Madeira we might travel across the Atlantic to the West Indies, on the trade winds,’ added Munro. ‘There is much fighting proceeding from the French possessions in the Windward Islands. Guadeloupe, Martinique, St Lucia,’ he listed, his eyes alight at the prospect of more action.

  ‘Swamp sickness, Yellow Jack, ague, bilious fever,’ added the surgeon, still annoyed. ‘I have heard of some men-of-war on the West Indian station that have been reduced to virtual ghost ships by sickness, Mr Munro.’

  ‘Or perhaps we will be sent farther afield,’ added Fleming. ‘The Cape, India, or maybe even the Pacific.’ They all paused over their wine, contemplating the many exciting possibilities.

  ‘Mr Booth, were you not in the Pacific before the American war?’ asked Clay, turning to the master. ‘With Captain Cook, if I recall.’

  ‘Indeed I was, Mr Clay,’ said the ship’s master. ‘I had the honour of being master’s mate of HMS Adventure. That was Cook’s second expedition, and he was provided with two ships in order to be able to widen the scope of his exploration. He commanded the Resolution, and Captain Furneaux had the Adventure. We were sent into the Pacific to search for and map the great southern continent, the ‘Terra Australis Incognita’ as the philosophers call it.’

  ‘How did you find voyaging in the South Sea?’ asked Sutton.

  ‘Well now, Mr Sutton, it had barely been explored at all in those days. Most of our charts were deficient in almost every detail, much of them simply blank white paper. It was our task to ensure that they were filled in for those that might follow us.’ He looked round the room, and saw that for once he held everyone’s attention.

  ‘To answer you more specifically, the southern parts of that ocean are perishing cold,’ he continued. ‘Once you travel much below forty degrees south you come across huge long waves the size of barns that sweep endlessly across the Southern Ocean, and mountains of ice when you get beyond fifty degrees. The sea is packed full of whales too, and huge sea birds that follow the ship unwearied for weeks on end, with never a beat of their wings.’

  The master was quiet for a moment, as if exhausted by his sudden burst of eloquence. His fellow officers exchanged glances. The grey-haired Booth was something of a joke to the younger members of the wardroom, used to his heavy drinking and incoherence. They were now seeing a quite different side to him.

  ‘What is the character of the islands of the tropics?’ asked Munro. ‘I have heard that they are full of cannibals?’

  Booth turned a dismissive, blood-shot eye on the Marine.

  ‘No more cannibals there than are to be found in Ireland, from what I have heard, Mr Munro. I am sorry that I must disappoint you, for I never saw any. The people I saw were on the whole very fine specimens of humanity. Their character is without conceit, and their general disposition is cheerful and open. Not a Christian soul among them of course, but they are good seamen to a man, able to navigate by the stars across the open ocean in their dugout boats. They may be a little backwards in their civilisation, but I found them to be very friendly for all that.’

  ‘Especially the women?’ added Fleming with a leer.

  ‘That is correct, Mr Fleming, for on most of the islands they have no iron. As a result they have a hunger for that metal that exceeds a miser’s greed for gold. Or even a pursers’ he added, to a general laugh at Fleming’s expense.

  ‘As a result,’ continued Booth, ‘the virtue of the fairest young maiden can be acquired, along with her services for a whole night, for the payment of a single nail. You can well imagine how popular the carpenter became on board with the crew. Captain Furneaux had to keep the ship’s entire stock of ironmongery under lock and key in his cabin during one prolonged stay in the Society Islands. Yet still the men seemed to be able to gain the favour of the local damsels. We were at a loss to know how they were achieving this, till a week later we needed to launch our red cutter. As the boatswain swayed it up, the whole bottom fell out. Not a single nail was left in any of the planks!’ The roar of laughter that greeted this story, echoed through the ship.

  ‘Not a single nail!’ chuckled the marine sentry outside the door as he shamelessly listened to his betters.

  It was rare for Booth to find himself so popular with his peers. He was thoroughly enjoying himself, for once the centre of attention for the right reasons. When the laughter died down, he carried on with a fresh anecdote.

  ‘The men are something to behold on most of the islands. As I said earlier, big strong fellows; dark of course, and every inch of their bodies and faces are covered by lines of ink built up over years. They draw the lines with a sharp wooden splinter dipped in plant dye. They pierce the skin by tapping it with a little wooden hammer, hence their name for it – tattooing. You comprehend? It is the sound the hammer makes. When the hands saw them doing it they took a fancy to having some tattoos of their own. Soon every man jack of them had tattoos all up and down their arms. They had anchors or the names of their sweethearts, or just banners with “Dread Naught” and the like on them – that sort of thing. When we got back, and they were all paid off, the men from our ships spread out through the navy taking their tattoos with them, and much admired they were by every tar that saw them.’

  ‘Well bless my soul, Mr Booth,’ breathed Sutton, ‘I did wonder where the craze for tattoos among the hands came from, but I would never have guessed that it originated from so far afield.’ He looked around the table at the animated faces, and sensed the better mood in the room. He was glad his dinner had succeeded, although he would never have guessed that it would be the iron-haired Booth that would have supplied most of the entertainment. He looked across at Windham meaningfully. Windham glanced back, blankly at first. He was still lost among the dusky beauties of the South Sea, but when Sutton looked down at his glass and then back up at him, he recalled his duty as the youngest officer present.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he announced, raising his glass, ‘the King.’

  *****

  ‘Not one bleeding nail left in the whole fecking cutter!’ ended O’Malley, bringing the story to a close amid the roared approval of his messmates, and those who listened at the nearby mess tables. The
laughter eventually petered out, leaving a ring of smiles and residual chuckles on the faces grouped around the table. A good-natured silence descended as the sailors thought of possible sources of iron they might have access to, and whether it would be wise to lay up a small stock, in case they too might be bound for the carnal pleasures of the Pacific Ocean.

  Outside the ship the sun sank in a furnace glow beyond the bows of the Agrius as she made her way along the Kent coast on her voyage down the Channel. All this splendour was quite invisible to the men of the larboard watch as they took their ease down on the windowless lower deck. The glow in the sky found an echo in the glow of the horn lanterns that hung at each of the mess tables ranged in two lines along the sides of the ship. Two bells rang out from the belfry on the forecastle – it would be three hours before they were next on watch.

  ‘So how did this wardroom dinner fare then?’ asked Rosso. ‘Was Pipe able to talk to Windy after this Flanders business?’

  ‘He may be a useless arse, but in fairness to Windy it was really the captain’s fault, not his,’ said O’Malley with authority. ‘It was the captain’s fecking despatch that caused the trouble. Pipe gave the captain what for the other day, according to Private Murphy, him being the sentry outside the cabin door. He thought they was going to start a fecking brawl, what with all the shouting an’ carrying on. But I am with Pipe on this one. We were all there on that beach. Without Pipe we would have been up to our shanks in shite.’

  ‘Don’t bleeding well mention Pipe or shit to me,’ said Evans as he loomed up behind O’Malley, his huge frame bent almost double under the low deck beams. He sat down on a spare stool with a sigh, and spread his long legs out over the deck. ‘That bastard has had me cleaning the heads since the end of the dog watch.’

  ‘What offence were you being punished for?’ asked Rosso.

  ‘Bad fucking language,’ growled Evans.

  ‘Why do we call him Pipe then?’ mused Evans, once the laughter died down. ‘Windy for Windham makes sense, and it suits the little flighty shit, but why Pipe?’

  ‘Well that’s easy enough,’ said O’Malley, ‘it’s after the pipe clay the Lobsters use to make their cross belts white.’

  ‘No, O’Malley, you’re wrong there,’ said an able seaman called Sullivan, chipping in from an adjacent mess table. ‘It’s Pipe as in a clay pipe that you smoke. I remember Rogers in the afterguard coming up with it.’

  ‘Well that’s passing strange,’ added Rosso. ‘I always thought he was named on account of those long thin shanks he strides about on being like pipes.’

  ‘Well you lot are no bleeding good,’ said Evans, ‘Here I am, the new volunteer, never been to sea before I joined the Agrius at Deptford and you can’t even tell me how Pipe got his bloody name!’

  ‘Sean, did any of the Grunters speak of where we be bound, or was it all that old soaker Booth and his tales of the South Seas?’ asked Trevan, looking up from the piece of scrimshaw he was working on.

  ‘Beyond Madeira they’ve no fecking idea,’ snorted O’Malley. ‘One thought the Mediterranean, the other thought the West Indies, so we’re probably bound for the arse end of Van Diemen's Land – I’d as soon enquire of the wardroom goat as one of that lot.’

  ‘How do you know all this, Sean?’ asked Evans. ‘Did the bleeding Grunters invite you too?’

  ‘Do I not share a twist of baccy with Hart in the galley of an evening at all?’ asked O’Malley, tapping the side of his nose with significance. ‘You know what they say, “What’s served for luncheon in the wardroom is dinner in the mess.” So long as the Grunters want a ship’s boy for a servant behind every chair, and stewards to cook for them, there can be no secrets on a ship.’

  Rosso shifted on his stool, wondering if any of his shipmates had guessed what his secret might be. To deflect the conversation he looked across at Trevan as he worked away, each tiny precise cut with his clasp knife accompanied by a vigorous blow to clean away the dust. The image of a ship was emerging from the butter yellow ivory, polished smooth from many months of handling. With surprise Rosso realised it was not the Agrius as he had assumed, but quite another vessel altogether.

  ‘What manner of creature does that huge tooth come from, Adam?’ he asked.

  ‘An ostrich,’ answered the Cornishman to general laughter, holding the sperm whale’s tooth up to the light before he made another cut.

  ‘What might the ship be on the tooth,’ persisted Rosso.

  ‘She is the likeness of the Emilia, the whaler I was taken off when I was pressed into the navy,’ said Trevan, before he added as an afterthought, ‘I am making this for my son.’

  ‘You have a son?’ asked Rosso. His surprise that Trevan had never mentioned this before was tempered by some relief at this evidence that secrets could exist at sea.

  ‘That I have, not that I have ever seen him, mind.’ The Cornishman returned to his scrimshaw as if unaware of the interest his revelation had caused.

  ‘Well, how old is this boy, then?’ asked O’Malley, shocked for once into not swearing.

  ‘I am not rightly sure in my reckoning,’ he replied, his clear blue eyes still focused on his work. ‘You see, I have not ever met the boy.’ His messmates waited for more, but none came.

  ‘Come on, mate, you got to tell us more than that,’ Evan’s exclaimed.

  ‘Well, it happened like this,’ said Trevan, putting down his knife. ‘My Molly was great with child before I left on the Emilia. Now that the Atlantic’s pretty well barren of whale, we was heading for the Southern Ocean. Our whaling fleet was out for well over two years, only returning when the hold was fat with oil. We had no notion that war had broken out till we got back within sight of the Lizard. Up came a Navy cutter to board us, and I was pressed into the service. That were a year ago, but if Molly has got that letter you wrote for me in Deal, Rosie, I might see her and maybe the nipper in Plymouth.’

  The Cornishman returned to his unknown son’s present, unaware of the shock his tale had had on those around him.

  ‘That’s a cruel story, and no mistake,’ said Evans, shaking his head. ‘Pressed after two years away, without putting a foot on land, how can that be right?’

  ‘And you wonder why the Irish hate your fecking government,’ added O’Malley.

  After a pause Rosso felt moved to put a clumsy arm around Trevan’s shoulder. ‘You alright, mate?’ he asked.

  ‘I try not to think about it too much,’ said Trevan. In truth his heart brimmed with longing. ‘In time of war the press gang is a sailor’s fate. Was ever thus, and I don’t doubt always will be.’

  The seamen all sat in silence around the table, thinking about the unfairness of their friend’s treatment. Trevan picked up his knife again, and continued to work away at the huge tooth. After a while Evans nudged O’Malley.

  ‘Come on Sean,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a tune, something as will cheer us up. A song maybe?’ The Irishman ran a hand through his dark curls and reached for his fiddle. He gently plucked at the strings, testing their tone while he decided what he would play. After a moment he swung the violin up under his chin.

  ‘Only one thing cheers up a true seaman, bar drink,’ he declared, as he started to play. ‘Fecking prize money!’

  Don’t you see the ships a-coming?

  Don’t you see them in full sail?

  Don’t you see the ships a-coming?

  With the prizes at their tail?

  Oh! my little rolling sailor,

  Oh! my little rolling he;

  I do love a jolly sailor,

  Blithe and merry might he be.

  Sailors, they get all the money,

  Soldiers they get none but brass;

  I do love a jolly sailor,

  Soldiers they may kiss my arse.

  Oh! my little rolling sailor,

  Oh! my little rolling he;

  I do love a jolly sailor,

  Soldiers may be damned for me.

  The tune was lively, the words well
known and the sentiments appreciated. Soon many in the larboard watch joined in. Some bellowed the words out strongly, the more talented singers harmonised the melody. Even Trevan put down his scrimshaw work and added his voice to those around him. The sound drifted up through the gratings and ladder ways of the ship, among the watch on deck, and back as far as the quarterdeck.

  ‘Upon my word, it is good to hear the hands in such fine voice, Nicholas my boy,’ said the captain to his nephew, as they strolled together in the evening air. ‘I always hold it to be a sign that the men are well content with their lot.’

  Chapter 4

  Channel

  Some days later, Lieutenant Clay left the wardroom at the very moment that eight bells sounded, and the ship erupted into noise as the watch changed. He was about to take the ladder way he used most mornings, which began outside the wardroom door and led up to the main deck when he changed his mind. For once he decided to walk forward along the length of the lower deck and come up via the fore hatchway. It was just after dawn, and all around him was a melee of activity. Half-dressed seamen pulled on their clothes; others rolled and packed away their hammocks, all under the urging of the boatswain’s mates. He was soon in the centre of a mass of humanity, a wall of respectful seamen knuckling their foreheads in salute. Many of their arms were webbed blue with tattoos. He smiled to himself as he thought about the master, and his time in the distant Pacific. He continued to advance down the ship towards the fore hatchway, parting the crowded deck like Moses crossing the Red Sea.

  With a sensitivity born from long years aboard ship, Clay had subconsciously assessed the ship’s progress through the movement of the deck beneath his feet as he walked. He knew from the heel of the deck that the Agrius was on the starboard tack, moving slowly in light airs. From the slight corkscrew motion of the ship he could tell that gentle rollers passed under him at an oblique angle, flexing and bending the hull with a chorus of creaks from the ship’s frames as they did so. What he had no idea of until his head came level with the main deck was that the ship was sailing in thick fog. The surprise of it made him stop at the top of the ladder way, while the watch poured up past him from below, hurrying to stow their hammocks in the netting.