Battle Fleet (2007) (9 page)

‘I liked the place but I never liked the people Miss Lizzie mixed with. Lieutenant Gray was the worst and there were plenty similar. Hossack’s a bit like Gray too. I keep waiting for her to see through him. That awful God-given arrogance. I never liked Gray. The first row
Lizzie had with him was about me. “You’re far too familiar with that servant,” he said. After that she’d be snooty with me when he was there. Like it was expected of her. After they got engaged he started to drink more heavily.

‘I made up my mind that if she married him I was going to go. I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life being kicked up the backside by an oaf like that. Then one day she came home with a black eye and told me she was going to call off the engagement.

‘Gray got steaming drunk and told her, right in front of me, that he knew people who would kill her for five guineas. I wasn’t having that. I said “I know people who would kill you for nothing.” That shut him up.’

The
Orion
was a good half mile out at sea, and we could see they were still hauling the mast on board. Meanwhile, Hossack was plotting our best defence. ‘We must stay on guard for an attack at any quarter. The natives may decide to capture or kill us before our men return. They could come round under cover of the jungle and surprise us from behind.’

I looked over to the far side of the beach. They were still there, and I could swear there were a few more of them. A quick count numbered twelve. With ourselves and the men in the boat we would still just about outnumber them.

Bagley held his pistol plainly in front of him. ‘Don’t fire unless you’re sure of your target,’ said Hossack. ‘I have a pistol, but I have only powder for it and no shot.’

Every flutter of wings or snapping twig close by made us start. I counted fifteen natives now and perhaps more were creeping around the beach towards us. They stood plainly in view, leaning on their spears, staring over to where we sat.

We heard a clattering close by. Peering into the dense undergrowth we saw only dancing shadows. I caught a glimpse of a shoulder or an arm, perhaps ten yards away from us. Bagley must have seen it too for he fired his pistol into the forest. I saw a flash of orange fur as a monkey hurtled away. The whiff of gunpowder caught in my nostrils and when my ears had stopped ringing from the sound of the pistol I could hear laughter. Not close by, but from across the beach. The natives were amused by our behaviour. We had let them know how jumpy and frightened we were. Then they settled down and started to stamp their feet and spears again, as we had seen them do when the boat left.

‘I don’t think they’re sneaking round to attack us,’ I said. ‘I don’t suppose they’d be laughing if they thought we’d shot one of theirs.’

Now his last shot had gone, Bagley grew fretful. ‘Why don’t they come?’ he kept saying. Hossack was unusually patient. He might be an ass, but he was proving to
be a good man in a tight spot. ‘The tide is against us. When it comes in, the boat will return. Now fill your pistol with powder,’ he handed his powder horn over to Bagley. ‘We might at least be able to frighten them with some blank shots.’

It was mid-afternoon when the
Orion
’s cutter started back towards us. ‘Witchall, go and see if you can stand up and attract their attention somewhere where the natives can’t see you,’ said Hossack.

It seemed a forlorn task, but I retreated to the edge of the jungle and waved my arms wildly. The cutter headed close to our position.

It ran aground in the shallows, about ten feet from the edge of the shore, and Evison jumped out and waded towards us. So far, the natives had stayed where they were, but this was their cue. As soon as the Captain reached the beach, another ten of them emerged from cover and they all began to stamp their feet and beat the ground with their spears.

This was no time for clever tactics. ‘Run!’ shouted Evison, and we did. The fruit we had painstakingly gathered was abandoned and we hurtled along the beach towards the shoreline. The natives began to charge towards us and Hossack and Bagley both levelled their pistols and fired. At once, the natives threw themselves to the ground. It gained us several vital seconds before their courage returned and they raced forwards.

We reached the shore almost together, Bel running as fast as any of us, with her dress gathered up around her knees. But now stones were falling around us, and one hit me in the back of the head with such force it knocked me to the ground. I felt momentarily dazed but could hear Bel yelling, ‘Get up, Sam,’ as she dragged me to my feet. The spears would come next.

Men in the cutter were already pushing it out from the shore, and the boat was afloat by the time we reached it. Hands grabbed and bundled us aboard as stones rained down with merciless frequency. The fastest of the natives had already reached the water, and would be upon us any moment. Evison felled him with a pistol shot.

I remembered something I had read in Captain Bligh’s account of his own battle with natives and shouted, ‘Let’s throw our clothes at them – that will distract them!’

Evison led by example. He took off his blue captain’s jacket with fine gold embroidery and gleaming brass buttons, scrunched it into a ball and threw it over the heads of the nearest natives and towards the shallows. At once, some turned and scrambled back, determined to be the first to reach this choice prize. I threw my own shirt. Other men spun their hats. One man even hurled his precious shoes at them. Not all the natives were prepared to be distracted by our offerings. But as we began
to scull for our lives towards the
Orion
, only a few still raced through the surf towards us. As it dawned on them they were now outnumbered, they stopped running. A last handful of rocks sailed over. In our confusion and haste to dodge them we failed to notice an incoming spear, aimed with deadly accuracy into the middle of our boat. Thomas Bagley was a target you could hardly miss. The spear hit him full in the chest and he lunged forward with a look of total surprise on his face, spitting blood over the back of the man at the oars in front of him.

‘Hold him down,’ said Evison heatedly as Bagley writhed in agony, ‘before he does for us all.’

Bagley shrieked pitifully as Garrick pulled the spear out. Then Garrick held the poor man in a bear grip, lying him down as gently as he could in the bottom of the boat. ‘Keep still, old mate, or we’ll all be slaughtered,’ he whispered.

‘Put him over the side,’ said Lieutenant Hossack. ‘He’s as good as dead.’

‘We’ll do no such thing,’ said Evison. ‘Now row for your lives.’

I had seen men with these sorts of injuries linger for days. Mercifully, Thomas Bagley did not live to see our return to the ship. He went a deathly pale and his legs began to tremble and after a few agonised spasms his body gave up the ghost.

In a few short minutes the
Orion
loomed before us. Silent faces stared down from over the rail. Bagley had been well liked on the ship. He was not a moaner or a carper and he mucked in whenever he was needed. Evison read the funeral service to a sombre, thoughtful crew. It could have been any one of us wrapped in that canvas sheet, food for the fishes thousands of miles from home. At least we were able to give him a proper funeral, and spared him the ordeal of being butchered by a frenzied pack of natives in the shallows of the shore.

We sailed through the oceans and the weeks merged one into the other. Our creaking ship braved the rigours of the sea and although men were frequently ordered to pump water from the hold, the
Orion
carried us through the Indian Ocean. Close to the Roaring Forties, we stopped briefly at the Cape to reprovision, then continued into the sluggish horse latitudes and doldrums.

As we approached the Equator west of Africa, there was no breath of wind for days on end. Our salty diet of dried meat and dried peas and beans produced a terrible
thirst in us all, especially on days when the heat was so fierce it melted the tar between the planking. Our water supply was sufficient but it was brackish and foul, even after a red hot poker heated in the galley fire was plunged in to purify it.

This was the worst part of the journey – there were no hostile natives or pirates to distract us, no volcanoes … We all lapsed into a glazed-eyed lethargy. Evison tried to keep his crew busy but we were too weary to grow restless and mutinous. Once every couple of days, to prevent an outbreak of disease, vinegar was sprinkled liberally below decks and the ship was smoked out with sulphur fumes. The sour smells lodged in our throats and made our thirst worse.

Although it was often hard to tell, we were making progress. The crew had long forgiven Richard’s and my initial arrogance but they remained fellow travellers rather than friends.

The hull held, despite the attentions of the teredo worm, although John Garrick was firm in his opinion that once home the
Orion
would be unfit for another deep water voyage. Even the mast Garrick had fashioned from the tree trunk stayed in place. Evison was wise enough not to employ its full complement of sail, but it supported the yards we placed on it well enough.

What did fall apart was Lizzie’s friendship with Lieutenant Hossack.

I overheard them talking one afternoon on the quarterdeck while I was taking a turn at the wheel. Lizzie absently asked him which ship he had sailed on before the
Orion
and he smugly told her he had been First Lieutenant on a slaver – the
Salamander
. ‘We prided ourselves on only losing a quarter of our cargo,’ he swaggered. ‘The British slavers are the most humane in the world.’

Lizzie looked disgusted and Hossack bristled with righteous indignation. ‘Come now, girlie,’ he blustered, ‘these Sambos are fair game. They’re prisoners from their own little wars. The chieftains and princelings who trade in them would kill them if we did not take them.’

Lizzie was trying hard to rein in her indignation. ‘And is it true that each of these poor men and women is chained for the whole voyage and that they have so little space in the hold that some are forced to lie upon each other?’

‘They are hardly men and women like us, Miss Borrow,’ said Hossack. ‘Barely more than animals. If you saw them, you’d no doubt agree.’

‘I have to say, Mr Hossack, that I am a great supporter of Mr Wilberforce and his abolitionists.’

Hossack’s mask slipped. Perhaps it was the heat which made him so intemperate. ‘Mr Wilberforce is an interfering do-gooder. Slavery is a blessing. The African is incapable of living as a free man. I’m sure you will know
your Bible, Miss Borrow, and I can tell you that slavery is sanctioned from Genesis to Revelation. “
Cursed be Canaan. The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.
” It’s there in Genesis. Plain as daylight. Ye’ll know good Christians believe that Canaan settled in Africa.’

‘Mr Hossack,’ said Lizzie sternly, ‘I am unshakeable in my belief that slavery is contrary to the laws of God and the rights of man.’

Hossack’s blood was up. ‘Rights of man! Are ye referring to that subversive document by the traitor Tom Paine?’

Lizzie sighed. ‘Mr Hossack. Perhaps we should restrict our conversation to lighter matters in future, such as the clemency of the weather and the progress of the
Orion
. We still have a long journey ahead of us. It would be so disagreeable to spend the rest of it in perpetual enmity.’

There at the wheel I was trying so hard not to snigger I nearly burst a blood vessel. I couldn’t wait to tell Richard. It brought him a little glee and happiness when the rest of us were at our lowest ebb.

By late August of 1803 we could sense the days were getting shorter and colder. The journey had taken much longer than we had hoped but now at least we were back again at a latitude that chimed with our childhood memories of summers and winters.

Lizzie and Bel remained our good friends and I knew I would miss them when the voyage was over. Richard told me he had half a mind to ask Lizzie if she wanted to come back to Boston with him. ‘It’s the perfect time,’ he said. ‘If she says no, then I’ll never see her again!’ I knew she wouldn’t go, but I didn’t know whether she would be touched by his proposal or amused by his audacity.

Lizzie was the first of the passengers to spot the English coast. ‘We’re home! We’re home!’ She ran shrieking down the deck to drag Bel out of their cabin. There it was – Lizard Point – on the southern tip of Cornwall. Here were people who looked like us (but not as weather-beaten), and talked like us (though not as coarse nor spouting those sailors’ words that were double Dutch to landlubbers), and more than likely thought like us too.

I had such a lump in my throat when I saw the first of England, I wanted to cry with joy. But there was a rage there too, at the injustice of our transportation, which had not entirely gone away. I shook those thoughts from my mind. There was so much I had seen and done on this extraordinary voyage. Wasn’t that what I had wanted from a life at sea?

My thoughts turned to my home village of Wroxham. I had been so keen to escape that little piece of Norfolk that I had chosen the most dangerous occupation open to me. I had mixed feelings about going back. I did not
know what I would find there. My childhood sweetheart Rosie, what had happened to her? Were my mother and father and brother Tom in good health, or even still alive? I had heard from them only once during my stay in the penal colony. I had written back telling them what a wonderful place it was – that was before things went wrong. I wrote again just before we left, telling them of our pardon. I had been assured the letter would be carried alongside official despatches and delivered in as little as six months, certainly faster than we would make it home.