Battle Fleet (2007) (5 page)

It was a tense afternoon, sitting there waiting. In these waters it felt safer to be forever moving forward. Over supper the men echoed what Garrick had told us about the pirates here. When they attacked, they rarely left a soul alive. There were exceptions. ‘I heard they sometimes just mutilate all that are still alive,’ said Thomas Bagley. ‘Cut their hamstrings or worse.’ I was sick of this conversation and wanted to hear no more. But I knew Richard and I had made a bad start with our crewmates so thought it best to say nothing.

Bagley perked up. ‘Now here’s a juicy piece of tittletattle,’ he said. ‘I heard Hossack was captured by pirates in these waters a few years back. They stripped him naked and shaved his head.’ Everyone laughed out loud at that indignity. ‘Then they sold him as a slave. Lucky bugger was bought by a Chinaman who spoke English – he was a trader too. He set the Lieutenant free, worse luck for the rest of us.’

Bagley’s story cheered everyone up. We went back to our duties feeling perkier. No wonder Hossack was feeling edgy.

The breeze dropped a little as the sun sank into the horizon. Night fell and the sky grew dark once clouds obscured the moon. The heat seemed to settle over us like a wet cloth, and the darkness around the ship
took on a velvet, impenetrable quality. Another storm was brewing.

The passengers retired to bed, certain that they had seen the last of the day’s excitement.

As we waited for the merchant’s return, Hossack made his rounds far more frequently than every quarter hour. He and Evison were repeatedly found in deep discussion. Halfway through the evening Evison gave the command to raise the anchor. We would drift a little, to be sure, but he was preparing for a swift departure.

‘What’s keeping them?’ said Richard, who was on night watch with me. He was anxious too. ‘It’s a calm night. The sea’s as flat as a pancake. They should have returned by now.’ He yawned loudly. ‘I need my bed.’

To the east the sky began to rumble. ‘Maybe they’re afraid of being caught in a storm?’ I said.

My suggestion hung unanswered in the air.

‘Look, there’s a light,’ said Richard. ‘They’re coming back.’ Half a mile away, a single lantern could be seen swinging through the night, its reflection clear in the water beneath the bow of the vessel that carried it.

‘Good,’ said Garrick. ‘Let’s hope this business is over quickly so we can be on our way. We need to make the most of these night breezes. They’re often gone by daybreak and we’ll find ourselves becalmed.’

As the light grew nearer, the storm did too. Thunder began to rumble ominously in the distance. I welcomed
it. The rain would bring relief from the stifling heat. When the merchant ship was two hundred yards or so off, a flash of lightning away to the east fleetingly lit the sea around us. There behind the prau were two larger vessels. They were loaded to the gunnels with men, their scimitars and muskets outlined in an instant. ‘They’re pirates!’ I shouted. ‘There’s two other ships coming.’

Evison turned at once and hushed me. ‘Are you sure, Witchall?’ he said.

‘I swear it.’ There was no mistaking the purpose of those dark silhouettes.

The Captain seemed unperturbed by this sudden reversal of fortune. I admired his courage, for I was already feeling frightened. I knew these pirates would not obey the rules of war and we would be fighting for our lives.

He stared into the emptiness. ‘I can’t see any other vessels, but if they’re not carrying lights then we can be fairly certain they mean to do us mischief. Call all hands on deck and man the guns. Load them with grapeshot, every last one. Put word out to the male passengers. Anyone who can handle a musket should report to me immediately. I want this done as quietly as possible. We must make them think we know nothing of their approach.’

There followed a frantic five minutes of muffled activity. ‘As soon as we fire our broadside we must make
sail,’ said Evison to us all. With only thirty men in the crew we would scarcely be able to reload before the pirates were upon us. Judging by the fleeting glimpse I had gained, we were terribly outnumbered. How I longed to be aboard a Navy vessel with topmen to attend to sails whilst the rest of us manned the guns.

We crouched by our cannons, staring through gun ports into the blackness, not knowing where our targets might be. ‘They could be anywhere by now, those other ships,’ said Richard.

Minutes passed. The light grew nearer – close enough for us to see the outline of the bow. Still we could not see the other ships. I began to doubt my own vision. Then the sky flashed again and there they were – two other vessels close behind the first. Plenty saw them that time.

Evison quietly issued orders to his crew. ‘Lay your guns towards the light and wait for my command to fire.’ Then he called out across the water.

‘Vessel on the starboard bow. Declare yourself.’

A voice replied, ‘Good captain. Is your cloves.’

They hadn’t even bothered to get their story straight. We were expecting nutmeg and ginger.

‘Why are the two ships with you not carrying lights?’ shouted Evison.

‘No two ships,’ said the voice sharply. ‘We come with cloves.’ Then the light went out.

That was all the proof he needed. Evison drew his
cutlass and held it up. ‘On my command, fire,’ he said in hushed tones, ‘then go at once to let down the sails.’

He waited only another few seconds, as men grunted and strained to shift the heavy cannons as best they could towards the general area of the approaching ships. This would be our one chance. The cutlass came down. The
Orion
shook with our broadside. Momentarily deaf from the noise, we raced up the ratlines to lower sail as fast as we could.

As my hearing returned, I could hear angry shouting amid the screams of the wounded. At least some of our shot had found its target. It felt as if we had stirred up a wasps’ nest. ‘Let’s hope there’s enough wind to carry us away,’ I said to Richard. We could still not see behind us.

There, high up in the sails, I saw musket flashes from the praus and shots whistled past my ears. The handful of men on our quarterdeck returned fire. The
Orion
lurched forward as the wind filled her sails. ‘All hands to the guns,’ barked Evison into a speaking trumpet, loud and clear across the water. ‘Grapeshot. Rapid fire.’ He was bluffing. With so few of us it would take five minutes at least to reload these guns. But it might make the pirates think twice about getting close to us.

Then he beckoned his crew together. ‘Just man the two starboard guns nearest the stern, and the two stern chasers. The more shot we can get off at them the better.’

The rain began to pelt down. The wind picked up. The
storm was coming closer but the elements were in our favour. Six of us manned the stern chaser on the larboard side of the rudder. Whenever we saw our quarry in a lightning flash, we fired a round of grapeshot. We were getting away and they had no big guns to punish us. We would have been done for though, if they had got close enough to board us.

We sailed on. I was glad we were on our way. If one lot of pirates felt safe enough operating in these waters, then who was to say there wouldn’t be more. Ahead lay Coupang, where Evison had announced he would be going ashore, and Richard would be leaving.

For now, I was the hero of the hour. Seeing the pirates coming, I had saved the ship from a surprise attack. Several men who had previously ignored or jostled me clapped me on the shoulder to thank me. Something good had come of this encounter after all and in the days that followed there seemed to be a grudging acceptance of us among the crew.

I felt some trepidation when we first set eyes on Coupang. We had heard a lot about how dangerous these islands could be for sailors like us. But the settlement I could see looked safe enough to me. It was a small town, surrounded by palm trees behind, and with a forest of tall ships in the harbour, here to trade or resupply. Amid all this greenery stood a church, a fort and other European buildings. They looked out of place in the savage splendour of the landscape, dwarfed as they were by the mountains that surrounded the town. The natives had their own buildings in the foothills
above. There were scores of little huts, fashioned in a beehive shape.

The forest shoreline looked familiar enough, but what lurked beyond the settlement? The closer we got to the shore, the hotter and stickier the air became. It drained our strength and teemed with pestilent vapours. I wondered about the alien creatures that lurked in the forest. Were the spiders and snakes as poisonous as the ones we had found in the bush of New South Wales?

Late on an overcast afternoon we lowered our anchor. There had been no downpour that day but the sky was swollen with rain. Purple light shone through the hazy clouds, giving the place a dream-like air.

Captain Evison announced we would go ashore the following morning. That evening, as the sun sank over the western horizon, I stood on the deck with Bel and Richard, watching a vivid sunset. Was Richard really going to leave us tomorrow? I couldn’t quite believe it.

Purple and orange light filled the sky. The world felt utterly still. Bel said, ‘Makes it all worthwhile, dunnit – all the rain and the seasickness and the awful food – seeing something like this. I never seen a sunset like this back in Bermondsey.’

‘Did you talk to the Captain about going ashore?’ I asked her.

She nodded but her mouth puckered into a pout. ‘Mrs
Evison wun’t ’ear of it,’ said Bel, mimicking her Lancashire accent. ‘“More than my life’s worth t’tek the risk,” the Captain says. We’re not giving up though,’ she laughed. ‘We’re going to nag him to death about it!’

She went below soon after and Evison came over to us at the rail. ‘I’m taking a small party ashore to meet the local merchants,’ he said to Richard and me. ‘I’d like you both to come with me.’

‘But I’m intending to leave the ship, sir,’ said Richard.

‘I know,’ said Evison. ‘Come anyway – you’ve plenty of time to find an American ship. This’ll teach you about trading here.’

‘The sly old dog,’ I thought. He wants Richard to stay, and he’s letting him know he’s valued. I was pleased he’d asked me too. He obviously thought we were worth a bit of his time and effort. I knew we could learn a great deal from someone with his experience.

When Evison had gone I said, ‘You’re not really leaving me on my own with this lot, are you?’

Richard’s mind was made up. ‘What’s that line from the Bible you’re fond of, Sam? “To everything there is a season …” Well my season in the British Navy, merchant or otherwise, is at an end. I’ll be sad to leave you behind, and Miss Lizzie. I shall miss seeing her every day.

‘Come with me, Sam,’ he said suddenly. ‘Or come over to visit when you can. My family would give you a
job. We can sail ships together. You’ll make your fortune there. We’re not so bothered about what a man’s station in life is. We take people as they come in Boston.’

It was a tempting thought.

Next morning Evison paid him off. Then we took one of the
Orion
’s smaller boats to the quayside, just the Captain, Richard and me. Although it took a while to get used to it, it was good to put my feet on solid ground again. Richard headed off, keen to find a ship to take him home. He promised he would return to say goodbye, but I watched him disappear into the crowded quayside with a lump in my throat, convinced I would never see him again.

‘Won’t we need more of us?’ I said to Evison. ‘Safety in numbers.’

The Captain shook his head. ‘Natives round here are a pretty docile lot.’

They seemed quite lively to me and very different from the wild inhabitants of New South Wales. Although most wore little more than a linen cloth around their loins, they were clean and healthy and the children especially seemed bright and curious.

Evison had a few words of the local dialect and stopped to ask a young man directions. ‘I’ve been here before,’ he said to me, ‘but I need a slight reminder of where to go.’ The fellow disappeared, then returned a
moment later with a pail of a slightly milky liquid. The Captain must have used the wrong words. He wasn’t concerned. ‘Try this,’ he said handing over a coin, and offering me a small wooden cupful. It smelled sugary. I took a sip. Cool and sweet, it slipped down like nectar.

‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’ said Evison with a smile. ‘It comes from those palm trees. Lontars they’re called.’

‘Is it coconut milk?’ I asked.

‘No, they tap it from the trunk – collect it twice a day. I’d buy it to sell in London if it would keep. We’d make a fortune. But it won’t travel.’

Ahead of us was a large, noisy crowd. As we drew nearer, I heard angry squawking. It was a cockfight. Evison stopped a while to watch, but I held back, not wanting to look. I saw enough to know the birds had blades attached to their legs. When I was a boy, I had kept three chickens – William, Mary and Matilda – and had grown to love them. As far as I knew, they were still alive in Wroxham. They were so tame they would come to the kitchen door and peer inside, waiting to be picked up. Then they would coo as I stroked their soft feathers.