Savage (18 page)

The stage was set for what was, for some, Gardiner's greatest triumph and for others his greatest débâcle. With hindsight it might appear that by the late 1840s his actions were tinged with madness. Most people would have returned from Banner Cove vanquished and demoralised, but Gardiner demanded a redoubling of effort. Success, he believed, was within his grasp, but he needed a floating mission station, a ship that could be anchored off Tierra del Fuego, small enough to enable contact with the native people but large enough to withstand their unwanted attentions and the possibility of attack. In England he launched a campaign to fund an 120-ton schooner. He gave lectures, spoke at rallies, and made stirring pleas; most significantly he became friendly with another man of strong character, the Reverend George Packenham Despard, who became the Society's secretary. But, at the end of it all, public interest was not there, and neither was the money. A well-wisher from Cheltenham donated £1,000, but that aside the coffers remained disappointingly empty.

Now, against the wishes of the committee of his own society, Gardiner amended his plans. Rather than a schooner he would take two 26-foot metal launches, the
Speedwell
and the
Pioneer,
along with two dinghies to Banner Cove. Accompanying him was a crew of six men: three Cornish fishermen, John Pearce, John Badcock and John Bryant; a Staffordshire surgeon, Richard Williams; John Maidment, a waiter and Sunday school teacher; and a ship's carpenter, Joseph Erwin, who had accompanied Gardiner on previous missions and who had declared that being with him ‘was like heaven on earth'. This might have been so, but within days of their arrival in Tierra del Fuego, in December 1850, it must have seemed like hell too.

The party was carried to the islands by the
Ocean Queen,
a barque headed for San Francisco. Once she had departed, native aggression forced the group out to sea, and on a rough passage to Bloomfield Harbour both dinghies were lost. It was a tough beginning, but it was not long before things deteriorated further: a few days later they found that the
Ocean Queen
had left with the powder and shot for their guns. Fish were scarcer than they had previously believed, and now hunting too would be difficult. In the coming days both launches were badly damaged on Lennox Island. After the group had repaired them and sailed forty miles to Spaniard Harbour, the
Pioneer
was smashed in half.

The remains of the shattered launch were brought ashore and used for shelter by Gardiner and Maidment. A mile and a half away, rocking at anchor in the Cook River, the other five stayed on the surviving boat. By March 1851 Badcock and Williams had scurvy. In June their fishing net was ripped to shreds by ice. In the grip of delusions brought on by illness and religious fervour Williams wrote in his diary: ‘Ah, I am happy day and night. Asleep or awake, hour by hour, I am happy beyond the poor compass of language to tell…' The hunger was cruel: mussels became a staple, mice a luxury. On 28 June John Badcock succumbed. In late August Erwin and Bryant died of scurvy and starvation. They were soon followed by Williams, Maidment and Gardiner. When a rescue ship under William Smyley arrived from Monte Video, in October, the wreck of the
Speedwell
was found with one body still lodged inside, an unexplained scar across its head and neck. Two more bodies were lying on the beach with papers, clothes and tools around them. Smyley was forced to leave in the face of a storm. Three months later HMS
Dido
arrived and found the remains of Gardiner, Maidment and the others. Next to the expedition leader they discovered his diary and a largely intact fragment of a letter to the already dead surgeon informing him of the demise of Maidment:

My dear Mr Williams,

The Lord has seen fit to call home another of our little company. Our dear departed brother left the boat on Tuesday afternoon, and has not since returned. Doubtless he is in the presence of his Redeemer, whom he served faithfully. Yet a little while, and though … the Almighty to sing the praises … throne. I neither hunger nor thirst, though … days without food … Maidment's kindness to me … heaven.

Your affectionate brother in …

ALLEN F. GARDINER

September 6, 1851

A funeral service was held, and the bodies were buried. The
Dido
's colours and those of her boat were struck half-mast and three volleys of musketry were fired over the graves.

*   *   *

The endeavour had been naïve. Despite the problems that had beset his earlier attempts, Gardiner had arrived without his floating mission station and less well prepared than ever. Failure rarely came more complete than this. No contact had been made with Jemmy Button, and nothing had been achieved, yet seven men had given up their lives.
The Times
reported the tragedy on 29 April 1852 and used its leader column to pillory the venture:

Neither reverence for the cause in which they were engaged nor admiration of the lofty qualities of the leader of the party, can blind our eyes to the unutterable folly of the enterprise as it was conducted, or smother the expression of natural indignation against those who could wantonly risk so many valuable lives on so hopeless an expedition … Let us hear no more of Patagonian missions! The promoters of the scheme have already incurred a responsibility which should give them subject for poignant regret, to cease only with their lives.

But the newspaper was out of tune with its readership, which liked nothing more than an emotional tale of derring-do, another example of British bravado, the ultimate act of selflessness. The slow death of Gardiner and his comrades on a far-off beach was a boon for the Patagonian Mission Society. For the first time funds rolled in, and once-empty coffers overflowed. Under the ruthless and opportunistic stewardship of George Packenham Despard, support was mobilised around an idea of using the Falkland Islands as a mission station, to which Fuegian Indians could be brought for education then return to civilise their people. Gardiner himself had expressed the idea to one of the islands' earliest colonisers and Society committee member, Bartholomew Sulivan, former lieutenant of the
Beagle,
to whom it must have had a familiar ring. At packed meetings and rallies the idea received warm support. Robert FitzRoy's backing was sought, and on 6 December 1852 he wrote,

I have given the subject … my best consideration.

It appears to me that your present plan is practicable and comparatively safe: that it offers a fairer prospect of success than most missionary enterprizes at their commencement, and that it would be difficult to suggest one less objectionable.

Demands grew for an appropriate monument to Gardiner: a statue, a plaque in Westminster Abbey. By March 1854 these had crystallised into the call for a ship to be built and named after him. ‘What more suitable [memorial] can be devised than what we are now raising – a vessel bearing the Christian sailor's name, and a chief instrument in furthering the object for which that Christian sailor died?' asked the Patagonian Missionary Society's magazine, the
Voice of Pity.
‘If the good Lord prosper our efforts for the conversion of these savages, in a few years, the approach of this vessel to these shores will be hailed with delight, and her name, teaching His name, will come to be a household word for Christian philanthropy.'

High ambitions indeed, but at a punishing cost. In a blatant call for cash that presaged the TV evangelists of a later age, the Society launched an emotional appeal, exalting its members to use self-denial, social influence, and prayer to bring in funds:

We want £2,300 … We want it at once. The exigencies of the heathen cannot brook delay. Souls are in misery; sinners are dying; hell is filling; Satan triumphs … Give pounds if you can; give shillings if you cannot give pounds; give pence if you cannot give shillings; give a postage stamp if you cannot give pence …

The
Voice of Pity
reported that energetic ladies in Scotland were going from house to house with appeal leaflets. An association in Maidstone had bought a boat for the ship. A chronometer had been donated, and a dress made for a Patagonian chieftain. For those with doubts it painted an idyllic picture of its aims, a vision of a future Tierra del Fuego, civilised and Christian. With a ship, hard work and God's help, the Society would stud the archipelago's inhospitable shores with

gardens, and farms and industrious villages … The church-going bell may awaken these silent forests; and round its cheerful hearth and kind teachers, the Sunday school may assemble the now joyless children of Navarin Island. The mariner may run his battered ship into Lennox Harbour, and leave her to the care of Fuegian caulkers and carpenters; and after rambling through the streets of a thriving sea port town, he may turn aside to read the papers in the Gardiner Institution, or may step into the week-evening service in the Richard Williams chapel.

By August 1854 the
Allen Gardiner
was afloat on the river Dart, and two months later it sailed out of Bristol, bound for the Falklands. In command was William Parker Snow, and with him went his wife, a catechist named Garland Phillips, a surgeon called James Ellis, Richard Dayas, a carpenter, and John Webber, a mason.

*   *   *

Gardiner's mission had been rejuvenated, but at its heart was a shambles, characterised by a lack of clear and realistic goals, far-fetched expectations and little understanding of the area that the ship was visiting. Channels of communication, which were extraordinarily complex under the best of circumstances, had not been clarified. Methods of payment were uncertain, lines of authority flawed. Events had moved so quickly that the Society had not even been able to find a mission superintendent to take control of the station, whenever and wherever it was established. In the
Voice of Pity,
the Society rarely reflected the troubles it was experiencing at home and abroad – but, try as it might to hide it, there can be no doubt that by the time their ship reached its destination there were deep-rooted problems.

Much of the trouble revolved around the turbulent temperament of the captain of the
Allen Gardiner,
William Parker Snow. He had come to his present position after replying to an advertisement in
The Times
in August 1854. The thirty-seven-year-old son of a naval lieutenant who had fought at the battle of Trafalgar, Snow had been at sea off and on for twenty-five years. His had been an up and down career, high in incident, low in achievement. At the age of sixteen he had left the Royal Navy and emigrated to Australia, where he had wandered into the bush and taken up a wild life that had verged on criminality. In 1836 he returned to England, but fell into bad company and destitution. To escape his debts he joined another ship, but was punished for desertion soon after. He finally won his discharge after rescuing a shipmate from the jaws of a shark off the coast of Africa. A short career in writing followed, but as success beckoned he was robbed of all of his money and went blind for a time. Then he ran a hotel in Melbourne with his wife, but illness forced them back to England, where he became amanuensis for Thomas Macaulay, transcribing the first two volumes of his
History of England.
After a dream in which he learned the ‘true' location of the Franklin expedition – Sir John Franklin and 128 officers and crew had gone missing while searching the Arctic for the north-west passage in 1848 – he joined an unsuccessful rescue mission that left for polar waters in 1850.

The triumphs and adversities of Snow's life had shaped his outlook. He was a liberal humanist, with a keen interest in the world around him and a special concern for the well-being of native peoples, whether they were in Australia, Africa, the Arctic Circle or South America. However, the batterings and setbacks of his life had made him cynical of authority and to some he was a whinger, one of life's more dogged complainers, forever predicting disaster or crying foul play. He was a nineteenth-century Cassandra and, like Cassandra, was rarely believed by anyone, which was a pity for he was frequently right.

When he applied for the job with the Patagonian Missionary Society he offered to work for free. They snapped him up, but although they insisted on paying him a wage, he had immediate regrets: the ship, though brand new, was uncomfortable and leaky, its decks were strewn with planks to be transported to the Falklands and his colleagues left much to be desired. Garland Phillips, the catechist, was arrogant and zealous to the point of subversion, the crew – so hard to come by because of the ongoing Crimean war and the insistence of the Society that they were religious men – were insolent and verging on the fanatical. By the time the ship left England, Snow had already tendered his resignation three times.

Snow believed that Phillips, with his teachings of the ‘elect', religious ascendancy and the supremacy of God, was instilling both insolence and insubordination in the crew. He felt that the man had been waging war with him ever since they had left Bristol. ‘The strange mode of religious teaching that was adopted, against my repeated warnings and remonstrances,' wrote Snow, ‘was enough to bring the best disciplined ship into disorder.' It had resulted in ‘constant jealousy, opposition, and evil-mindedness, masked under a demure and humble countenance'. On one occasion Snow was punched to the ground and kicked in the ribs by a crew member. Another time, in Monte Video, the captain announced that, due to the pressure of work, there would be one religious service a day, not two as before. Next day the ship's two mates refused to work until the second service was restored. Their truculence was sufficient to warrant a call for the help of a passing French man-of-war. The two were discharged, and deposited unpunished in Monte Video, where they wished to go about ‘converting the wretched sailors and bigoted papists'. The first voyage of the
Allen Gardiner
was not a happy one.