Foreign Mud

by Andrew Wareham

  I was a free man, able to up anchor and leave.

  It was possible that I might wish to come back, one day.

  Fred carried messages for me to the Company and to Hardcastle, brief letters thanking them for their care for my interests and explaining that I must sail urgently, in pursuit of information I had received. It would do as an excuse for avoiding a long ceremonial set of farewell dinners and drinking parties – all far too tedious for my taste, then and now.

  I strolled out to my quarterdeck – not that that was what it truly was, privateers not indulging in naval formality – and started to make the acquaintance of my sailing master, the professional seaman who would do everything aboard apart from giving the final orders on course and engaging an enemy.

  “Mr Eccles, I was too busy tidying up my affairs ashore to greet you properly when I came aboard. My apologies, sir. What can you tell me of yourself and of Pearl River?”

  Chapter Seven

  I was captain of a private man of war – which would have been wonderful if only I had wanted to live a seafaring life.

  I did not. There was little I wanted less, in fact. Months at a time of sailing the featureless ocean in the hope of discovering some poor sod doing the same thing so that I could knock him over the head and steal his all. Very noble, or so I was told.

  I had no choice in the matter. I could not go back and throw the gift in my lord’s face. The more so, of course, because it was truly generous – Pearl River was a fine ship, one that any seaman would have loved. Even I could appreciate that she was out of the ordinary.

  The better part of five hundred tons, I estimated, the equivalent of most naval sloops, and built in an Indian yard from the best teak and with nothing stinted. Unusually to my eyes, her deck had been varnished; there would be none of this naval scrubbing and holystoning. She was made with finer lines than most commercial vessels, no doubt pointed up into the wind better than most, always useful in a predator.

  I glanced at the guns and whistled.

  She carried a broadside of long twelves, six to each side with a pair of John Company’s twenty-four pound cannonades on the quarterdeck. At a glance, it seemed that the cannonades could be turned to fire as stern chasers, useful in defence if we made a mistake and were caught by a Frog or Don out for blood. I could see a single chaser in the bows.

  “What do we mount on the forecastle, Mr Eccles?”

  “A long eighteen, sir, bought from a naval two decker written off the books for being too rotten to swim. A good gun, sir. Useful indeed in the trade.”

  “I must imagine so, Mr Eccles. Have we the crew to man these guns and our array of square sails?”

  “We have, sir, more or less, that is. There are sixty of lascar topmen, capable sailors who have all made at least one voyage to England. Other than that, there are one hundred and fifty of Chinee, sir, to be trained as gunners and boarders and seamen. There is a serang who will be boatswain and the Chinks have their own officers who speak this Pidgin.”

  “Two hundred – is that a sufficiency?”

  “More than, sir, provided all goes as it should.”

  “At sea, who is to tell, Mr Eccles? What of your officers?”

  “To my own selection, sir, and satisfactory. Three mates and three apprentices, all of whom have made their voyages and none of whom are drunks. I have a doctor and the Chinese have a healer of their own and the lascars say one of their men is cunning. There is a supercargo who has stored the ship and will take charge of the prize fund. We have cooks for the officers, for the lascars and for the Chinese, each with a separate hearth to work at. That, sir, took longer to arrange than any other aspect of the new ship. The Indians are all Hindoos and will not permit their food to be prepared by unsanctified hands; the Chinese do not give a damn but prefer their own diet; we English have our own tastes, though I much suspect we could live with the Chinese bill of fare.”

  That was by no means the first time I had heard complaint made of the difficulty of catering to the Hindoo dietary laws. A bigger nuisance than the Jews, so it seemed to me. They were good seamen, however, and we needed them.

  “Are we stored for a long voyage?”

  “Six months, sir. We can purchase at Cape Town, provided we are discreet, the Dutch there being none too concerned about European wars. Madeira will be open to us and the smaller ports of the Spanish Main will sell for gold. I have no fears of starvation, sir.

  All seemed well so far.

  “What of the standing officers?”

  “Gunner is a deserter from the Navy, sir, and will remain out of sight until we sail. He was a gunner’s mate with them and seems to know his trade. Rare for a warrant officer to run, and I have not asked him why.”

  “None of our affair. Keep him well hidden, Mr Eccles.”

  “Carpenter is an Indian man, not a Hindoo but not a Mussulman either. One of the lesser sorts. He says he will eat whatever is put in front of him and I shall not argue with that. The sailmaker is English and old and frail and has promised to train up a pair of Indian boys who I have put on for him. He wishes to see London again before he dies, but I fear he may have left it too late. He is all I could get here in Bombay. The rigging of square sails is not a local skill.”

  “We are in fact remarkably well-found, Mr Eccles. What of reward?”

  “Shares as normal, sir. The ship, which is you, to receive five hundred parts of the thousand. The Chinese, one half share apiece, but they are in some ways retainers to the gentleman who organised all. The topmen take a full share; their senior men, three of them, one to each mast, have one and a half. Boys, of whom we have just three, one assisting the officers’ cook, a half share. Standing officers – serangs and such – take five shares. Gunner has ten, being an Englishman and thus to receive more than Chinks and Indians. Doctors also ten. The supercargo has forty and the three mates have forty, fifty and sixty shares by seniority, their apprentices ten. The remainder is mine, sir.”

  That seemed entirely normal to me. It was how I remembered from my own first voyage.

  “Are your mates aboard at the moment, Mr Eccles?”

  “Not yet, sir. They are enjoying their last celebration before sailing. We are to sail tomorrow, I am informed. I expect them to be brought to the shore in wheelbarrows soon after nightfall so that they may get a full sleep before commencing their duties.”

  That also was as I remembered from my days at sea in a privateer.

  I made quiet conversation with Eccles for half an hour, making it clear to him that I was owner and the ultimate authority but that he was captain – he would give the orders in action or emergency. I might dismiss him afterwards; I would not take command from his hands. It was the only way to run a ship, I thought. It is probably the best way to run a country, for that matter.

  My views on matters political are hardly germane just now – I do not doubt I shall comment on them in time.

  I retired to my quarters, fit for an admiral, which must have been awkward in a small ship but was essential to the Chinese mind – and the lord had overseen the design of Pearl River, even if from a distance.

  I had two cabins, one for sleeping and the other for dining and idling during the day. There were others for the girls and the four menservants and a third for Fred. None of the cabins were large by shore standards; all were adequate at sea. My sleeping cabin had a broad bunk a good four feet wide; the strongbox was built in below it, opening to the front. It had no locks as such, merely a pair of bolts – if the ship was taken, locks would do no good and theft was not practical to the seamen or servants.

  I sat on the deck, Fred at my side, and opened the box, found it to contain a dozen of wooden chests, none of them vast. I suppose there was a little more than a cubic yard of space there.

  Ten were packed full of taels and catties, good, solid silver running at about eight English shillings to the tael, say five of them to two pounds.

  “Handy, Fred!”

  “A few thousand h
ere, Master Giles.”

  Neither of us was too much excited – we had seen wealth before.

  The two remaining were full of gold – and I defy any man not to find his heart skip a beat at the sight of a mass of dully shining guineas or pagodas or whatever. There is something about gold that silver lacks, a romance, if you will. I still like it, even at my age!

  “That will add nicely to the fund for our old age, Master Giles.”

  “So it will, Fred. Fifty years before we need worry about that, man!”

  We laughed, neither of us really expecting to survive so long. A short life and a merry seemed more likely.

  I dined with the officers in their great cabin, or wardroom as some insisted. Shore food and very welcome, to be enjoyed while we could. It would be a very few days before we were reduced to rations. That brought to mind the question of how we were victualled. I spoke to the supercargo after the meal.

  “I do trust we are rationed more generously than the navy might consider right, Mr Hales.”

  “I have given a free hand to the Chinese and Indian serangs to victual as their people desire, sir. For the Englishmen, I have some small store of salt beef and pork, neither being easily obtained in Bombay, and far more of dried prawns and fish, sir. We have two score of chickens with food for them, so there should be a few eggs each day. Beyond that, a store of beans and lentils and chickpeas and rice and some wheat flour. Onions in quantities, naturally. We have fruit of various sorts and amounts of peel of lemons and such, preserved in sugar. I have been able to lay my hands upon a good store of lemon juice. We are not to eat exactly in English fashion, I fear, but should manage a good meal each day and a substantial breakfast. I have ensured there is a fishing net, sir. We have a sufficiency of rum, gin and arrack.”

  It would do. Bombay was not the ideal port for fitting out an English ship.

  I turned to Mr Eccles.

  “We sail in the morning, Captain Eccles. What have you in mind? East or west?”

  “At your liking, sir, west. There is not too much chance of trade around the Philippines and it is a long way to the South American west coast. Best we should make our way to the Mauritius and thence to the Cape of Good Hope, in my opinion.”

  “What of the Dutch East Indies? The Spice Islands are said to be rich.”

  “They sail only a few ships, sir, and them commonly powerful, armed as heavily as any of John Company’s ships. The ports are mostly fortified and may harbour a frigate or two. Not my idea of a profitable excursion, sir.”

  “The Mauritius it is, Mr Eccles. What of the Red Sea or Persian Gulf after that?”

  “The Bombay Marine views those seas as closed, sir, theirs to harvest and not for outsiders to poach in.”

  I was persuaded. The Bombay Marine was not to be trifled with.

  “So then, Mr Eccles, off to the Cape and then to the Spanish Main, I must imagine. To Rio and make our way north to the Sugar Islands and see what may be discovered there?”

  “That was in my mind, sir.”

  “Very good. We are agreed. The western coasts of Africa – the Bight of Benin and such - are not a healthy place and I have no great wish to trawl them, hunting for slavers.”

  Mr Eccles agreed; slaving was low and we were not to seek profit from it, unless it proved convenient.

  We sailed and I waved my farewells to Bombay – a place with much to be said for it if you were a young man seeking profit and adventure. It had its drawbacks as well and was home to some of the deepest misery I have seen on Earth. I would not wish to guess how many hundreds died of starvation there each week – the number cannot have been small. The famished lived side by side with the rich – I cannot estimate how many there were there who wallowed in wealth. A place of extremes with room in the middle for traders to carve out a prosperous existence, as the Company evidenced.

  I was, on balance, not sorry to leave but I watched the city sink below the horizon before I turned from the rail.

  “Sad to be going, sir?”

  “I came there as a boy, Mr Eccles, and leave as a rich man. Much to be said for that, I suppose. More to be said for going back to England, hopefully richer yet. What do you plan when we reach the Mauritius, Mr Eccles? Are we to cruise offshore or land at a port?”

  “Cruise, sir. The forts protecting the harbours are powerful and the likelihood is of a full brigade of European troops in the barracks. If possible, if we are in luck, we will take a trader and be satisfied. The warehouses on shore might well contain millions, but they are not for us in a single small ship. To be open with you, sir, I have little expectation of taking much before we reach the Sugar Islands.”

  “I came out on a small privateer from Poole, Mr Eccles. We made some profit along the African coast due east of the Mauritius. We took Arab slavers there and tucked some elephant’s teeth away in the holds as well as a little of their own gold.”

  Eccles had not considered interfering with the Arab slavers. He agreed it was worth attempting.

  “They take many thousands a year, Mr Jackson, so it is said. I know that a deal of ivory comes down to Bombay by way of the Red Sea traders. Apparently, African ivory fetches a better price than Indian, though why, I know not.”

  “The traders in Canton said that it works better than Indian. What that means, and why, I do not know.”

  I still don’t, by the way. Never bothered to find out. I am not a collector of ivories, though I have seen some elegant pieces that might have tempted me as a gift for Sunny. Not really my thing, ivory.

  The lascars performed their work quietly and efficiently and watched as we laboured to convert the Chinese from coolies into gunners and seamen. We had no fear of their prowess as boarders but I knew of the inexperience of the Chinese peasant when it came to gunnery. Their masters preferred that the peasantry remained downtrodden and without the skills of modern warfare, in the expectation that they would use their new abilities to kill off the warlords who exploited them.

  It will happen one day. The Chinese peasants will get hold of guns and teachers and then they will turn China upside down. Good luck to them! If ever there was a country that needed a revolution, China was it in my day. Still is, in all likelihood. They will rise, I do not doubt, and kill their own masters and then turn on the gwailos who make such a profit on their back. As long as I am not there at the time, good luck to them!

  Where was I? Training Chinese gun crews. The biggest problem was their size – guns are heavy and Chinese generally are small. We had to add an extra man to each gun crew. Once that was done, it was into the daily grind of practice.

  I watched and cheered and encouraged the best crews. As always, little prizes did no end of good for their willingness to work hard.

  A bottle of India Pale Ale apiece to the fastest crew of the day made a huge difference to the energy they would put into the work. A fresh egg each did equally well – they did not have to be great prizes, it was just a matter of giving them a little something to recognise their virtue.

  We fired live once a week with, naturally, a prize to every crew that hit the target we floated out. That grew expensive eventually – they worked hard at their marksmanship. It was not at all unusual to see irate hands cuffing their gunlayer if he missed.

  I do not doubt the Navy would have apoplexy at the very concept of rewarding hands for excelling in their duty – strange people, professional sailors! What’s it they say, ‘rum, bum and baccy’? There might be better ways of organising naval life.

  Not to worry! We were half way efficient when we arrived off the Mauritius and took a look around both islands. Fortunately, I suspect, we discovered nothing and hared off to the shores of East Africa, taking a southward trip along those wild shores. We saw some lateen sails in the distance, where they stayed, able to point up far more than any square-rigged ship and keeping well clear of us.

  There were fortalices with small guns and lots of armed men at every working harbour along the coast. It was all very discourag
ing to private endeavour.

  We were far more effective when we called at Cape Town, all innocent and seeking no more than water and provisions and, importantly, offering gold pieces in exchange. The burghers were adamant that they must not trade with the British, so we assured them we were American and they did not ask to see our papers.

  Barrels of dried mutton; salt pork and bacon and hams; twice-baked biscuit – all of the ordinary needs of the sea, sufficient for a run to the States or to London quite equally. News of the wars as well – the British winning at sea, the French conquering on land. Everything as normal. We bought some of the excellent brandy they distilled there, naturally – we needed more prizes for the guns.

  The Dutch confirmed that Spain was at war with Britain, which was as we had thought and hoped. Six months distant in Bombay, we could not be sure that our information was up to date. I did not want to become a pirate by accident.

  We sailed north along the African coast and then due west for the shores around Montevideo, expecting to discover trade there.

  There had been a long discussion about lookouts, none of us certain that we should put Chinese to the mastheads and unable to take lascar topmen away from their duties. The trouble was that the doctor was convinced the Chinese had weak eyesight, due to the shape of their eyes. Dr McGregor was an experienced naval surgeon and, rarely for the breed, was habitually sober; he had been ten years at sea and had actually practiced on shore for a few years, joining the naval service for seeking adventure and wishing to see foreign parts, in which he had succeeded. He had come to Pearl River in search of money and a passage back to England. I had a deal of respect for him – I had observed him to wash his hands quite frequently, which I found pleasant in a medical man, considering the substances they so frequently dabbled in.

  “The eye, you see, Mr Jackson, is, or should be, by its nature round. The Chinese orb is clearly not so. Therefore their sight must be impaired. We may observe them in everyday life not to be short-sighted and so they must be incapable of resolution at long distance. The Chinaman, with the best will in the world, cannot be an efficient lookout.”